Posted inDiscussion group

Discussion group

The Church of the Churchless discussion group has been languishing since I started it off with a question about a question in December 2004. I said, “If you had the chance to ask one question of ultimate reality and could get a clear answer in English, what would you ask?” I got a few responses and would enjoy reading more. Laura, bless her, recently woke up the discussion group from its slumber and asked another good question: “Why is there injustice in the world, what purpose does it serve?” If you have an answer—or a comment about the question—head on…
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Posted inBuddhism Religions Science

Western religions holding back stem cell research

Watching “Nightline” a few days ago, I was pleased to find an expert supporting my contention that religion is at the root of the reason why the United States is falling behind other nations in crucial health care research. In my “God must be a Buddhist” post I argued that the Western monotheistic religions have more of a problem with absorbing scientific facts into their worldviews than do Eastern faiths such as Buddhism, Taoism, and Hinduism. Thus recent breakthroughs in embryonic therapeutic cloning occurred in South Korea, not the United States, because irrational tenets of fundamentalist Christianity have resulted in…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Touching the Void

I didn’t expect that a mountain climbing movie would move me spiritually. Yet “Touching the Void” did. Roger Ebert’s highly laudatory review focused on how harrowing and gripping the movie was. Yes, I shared his can’t-take-my-eyes-off-the-screen experience, though it was a television in my case. But this Commonweal review by Rand Richards Cooper better describes the deeper dimensions of “Touching the Void.” I won’t bother to summarize the story in any detail—you can read the reviews if you’re not familiar with the film. It is about two British climbers, Joe Simpson and Simon Yates, who attempted an ascent of a…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality Religions

What’s wrong with faith?

I’m often asked, generally by myself, “What’s wrong with faith? Doesn’t faith help us get through tough times and feel positive about the future?” Here’s how I answer, generally to myself: “Faith is fine when it points toward objective reality. But when faith keeps us revolving in the merry-go-round of subjective conceptions, it’s dangerous and should be discarded." Never passing up an opportunity to quote myself, this is how I discussed the issue in my book, “Return to the One”: The scientific method, by and large, is founded on the first assumption [“I’ll believe it when I see it”]: what…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Knowledge, belief, and feathered dinosaurs

Let’s say you believe in creationism or “intelligent design,” as creationists now like to call their addled explanation of how living beings came to be. You don’t accept evolution. Everything was created all at once by a supreme being that knew exactly what he/she/it wanted to do and did it just right the first time around. Then you are confronted with solid evidence of feathered dinosaurs—a fossil dinosaur covered head to tail with downy fluff and primitive feathers. Evolutionary theory predicted that birds evolved from dinosaurs and, ta-da!, the hypothesis has been confirmed. As paleontologist Mark Norell says, “Dinosaurs are…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual investing takes nothing

Here’s some further thoughts about spiritual investing, a subject that I’ve enjoyed pondering since writing my post of a week ago. I advised that, just as it makes great financial sense to invest in index funds that mirror an entire market, a person’s spiritual endeavors should be similarly widely diversified. However, there’s a difference between worldly and other-worldly markets that I neglected to address sufficiently before. When you buy a monetary index fund such as the Total U.S. Stock Market, you end up owning a piece of every single company stock in the United States. Thus diversification is accomplished in…
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Posted inMiracles Spiritual practice/meditation

Pray for me, I need a Mini Cooper

Happy National Day of Prayer. In honor of this day I invite everyone to pray for a worthy cause: me. To make things easy for you I’ve written out the prayer, complete with annotations: “Almighty _______ [fill in name of your chosen higher power], I beseech you to grant the unselfish desire of Brian Hines, who lives on Lake Drive in Salem, Oregon [this is needed to direct the prayer away from the other undeserving Brian Hines’ in the world, and also to make sure my desire is delivered to the right place]. “Please place a supercharged Mini Cooper, racing…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual diversification, a sound salvation strategy

In financial investing, it’s well accepted that attempting to beat the market is a fool’s game. This is why index funds are so popular (and lucrative). You don’t bet on particular stocks or bonds. Instead, you put your money in the entire universe of investments represented by an index fund, such as the U.S. Total Stock Market or the U.S. Total Bond Market. Wise financial professionals advise that if you want to save money for retirement, it’s best to invest in index funds. Increasingly, people do. But when it comes to saving their souls for eternity, most of those same…
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