Posted inMorality Religions

Agnostics and atheists are better than believers

Since I turned churchless, I've become a way better person. So I can testify to this truth that has been been revealed to me by the grace of absolutely nobody but myself: Agnostics and atheists are better people than believers, by and large. Note the "by and large," which protects my truth from being challenged by someone pointing out that agnostic/atheist human X is a world class asshole, while religious human Y is a marvelous example of what us Homo sapiens can become. I shall now engage in one of my favorite blogging activities -- demonstrating with impeccable logic and…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

Susan Blackmore’s Zen’ish theory of consciousness

Combine a Zen master and a psychologist interested in neuroscience. Bingo! You've created Susan Blackmore, or someone very much like her. I've finished reading her Consciousness: A Very Short Introduction. I'm fascinated by consciousness, because it's what I am. All I am, really, since whatever I'm not conscious of doesn't exist for me. So whatever consciousness is, or isn't, seemingly would tell me a lot about who I am, or aren't. I used to believe in supernatural notions of consciousness, but now I'm much more interested in scientific theories. After all, I'm a body with a brain. Or a brain…
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Posted inHumor

Another great Duhism

I'm a daily reader of Duhisms. Here's a recent one that I enjoyed. The proof of spiritual attainment is shown by transcending "I." Is anyone else made a wee bit suspicious that "I" believe this? Along this line, after I watched about half of The Advaita Trap cartoon I figured out that the dark brown creature must have written most of the books that I've bought about non-duality. Check it out. I confess that once I got to the five minute mark my head felt like it was going to explode, so I didn't watch the rest.  
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

I’ve stopped having spiritual experiences

I can't remember the last time I had a spiritual experience. Well, more accurately, the last time I had an experience that I called "spiritual." I used to have lots of them. I've been to India twice, each time spending several weeks at the Radha Soami Satsang Beas headquarters in the Punjab. Seeing the guru, who is considered to be God in human form, seemed deeply spiritual to me. Ditto with having a feeling that I should take I-205 rather than I-5 just before crossing the Columbia River into Oregon -- I was driving home after seeing the guru give…
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Posted inHumor

God doesn’t appear at Rally to Restore Sanity

Well, what a non-surprise. At today's Rally to Restore Sanity on the National Mall in Washington, DC, God didn't make an appearance -- despite the implorings of not-exactly a Father Guido Sarducci. I watched the first half of the rally on C-Span, so got to see Father Sarducci's benediction. It was appealingly comedic, though not without some fairly serious philosophising at the expense of true believers. Noting that there lots of religions in the world, each of which believes that it knows the truth about God while the rest are mistaken, Sarducci asked God to send a sign to the…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Exploring the moral landscape with Sam Harris

This morning I finished reading Sam Harris' newest book, "The Moral Landscape." After blogging favorably about the first two chapters, I continued to enjoy Harris' neuroscientific, yet eminently readable, take on how human wellbeing can be expanded via facts rather than faith. Events in the world, and the brain, affect how we experience life. If we study the relationship between those events and our experiences, we stand a good chance of being able to climb higher on the "moral landscape" (individually and collectively). Harris says: Throughout this book I make reference to a hypothetical space that I call "the moral…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Raptitude is an inspiring Buddhist’ish blog

When I scanned through the Twitter tweets put up by the people I follow, a few days ago I saw a link to "9 Mind-Bending Epiphanies That Turned My World Upside-Down." Great title. I had to see what that piece said. Reading it on the Raptitude site, I was introduced to some excellent writing by David Cain. Here he describes how Raptitude came to be. I am a regular guy who has beat up his biggest demon. To make a long story short, I used to find life very difficult and now I don’t. For a while I was having…
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Posted inMorality Reality

People aren’t free to believe

Here in the United States, you often hear "It's a free country, so...[I can do such and such.]" Reflecting this attitude, I frequently say on this blog that people are free to believe whatever they want to, so long as they don't try to force those beliefs on others. But Sam Harris has caused me to see the caveats in this. In his new book, The Moral Landscape, a section in the "Belief" chapter is called Do We Have Freedom of Belief? Short answer: No. If you ask me to raise a hand, I can choose either my right or…
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Posted inBuddhism Science Wu Project

We all may be living selflessly

Usually we consider that being "selfless" means acting altruistically. This casts the word in a moral sense, which is how most religions see it. We're supposed to put God and others before ourselves. But there's a scientific side to selflessness that I'm finding increasingly intriguing: the notion that nobody has a self, so we're all selfless -- including the greediest, most egotistical, and me-centered among us. Recently I wrote about a book where noted thinkers talk about what they believe, but cannot prove. I quoted psychologist Susan Blackmore: It is possible to live happily and morally without believing in free…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris doesn’t really believe in God

Wow, that was scary for a moment. I open up Newsweek and find an article with the headline, "Sam Harris Believes in God." My churchless brain started to scream, Noooooooo! Sam, how could you become a believer?! After all, Harris wrote a couple of great anti-religious books, "The End of Faith" and "Letter to a Christian Nation." It would have been disappointing for me to find that he had gone over to the dark side of blind belief. Fortunately, the very first paragraph of the story started to relieve my anxiety. Sam Harris, a member of the tribe known as…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Buddhism’s consensual core isn’t supernatural

What is the essence of a religion? That is, how can we tell whether someone is a "real" Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Jew, Buddhist, or whatever? What degree of supposed heresy is beyond the bounds of a belief system? These are tough questions to answer, in part because they are religion-specific. Hinduism seems to be a lot more accomodating of alternative viewpoints than Christianity is. Yet Mormons usually are considered to be Christian, even though they stretch the gospel truth (so to speak) in some far-out directions. I got to thinking about this after having a comment interchange with Todd on…
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Posted inBooks Death/Rebirth

Here’s a tale from the afterlives

I'm hugely enjoying David Eagleman's "Sum: forty tales from the afterlives." This is a marvelously creative and thought-provoking book, unlike anything I've ever read before.

Sum is a work of fiction (maybe). The back cover says:

With a probing imagination and deep understanding of the human condition, acclaimed neuroscientist David Eagleman offers wonderfully imagined tales that shine a brilliant light on the here and now.

There's no way to explain the book. So I'll simply share one of the tales that I especially enjoyed. Read on.

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Posted inBuddhism

Buddhist atheism irks B. Alan Wallace

Wow, I thought serious Buddhists were supposed to be full of compassion, empathy, and oneness with all sentient beings. Guess not. Because I just quickly read through a scathing critique of Stephen Bachelor's "Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist," which B. Alan Wallace hates. (Thanks to Ira for an email that turned me on to this essay in Mandala, a Buddhist magazine.) Wallace is a leading Buddhist thinker who tries to meld science and spirituality. According to Wikipedia: His life's work focuses on a deep engagement between Buddhist philosophical and contemplative inquiry and modern science and philosophy, with a special emphasis…
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Posted inBooks Science

What do you believe but cannot prove?

This is a great question. Seeing it on the cover of a book in Sisters' (Oregon) Paulina Springs Books made me instantly believe, "I'll be standing at the cash register soon with my VISA card in hand." I couldn't have proven that I'd end up buying What We Believe But Cannot Prove, yet I believed it. And it turned out that I was right. What I didn't know at the time, though, was that all of the mini-essays in the book are available for free online at Edge. So if you want to learn how some of the most brilliant…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Open Thread 8

It's been a while, but Open Thread has been resurrected. I got a few comments that didn't fit with a recent existing post, so it seemed fitting to give them a home here to start the OT 8 off. Here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. Comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free. Just observe the comment policies (click on…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mental “avalanche” can cascade you to a better place

If we're on the slope of a steep snowy mountain, it makes sense to be afraid of an avalanche. Bodies usually don't fare well by suddenly being ripped from their moorings in a violent manner. But minds/brains, they're different. Having our psyche turned upside down, twisted around, mixed up topsy-turvy... this can be marvelously interesting, productive, creative, truthful -- maybe even enlightening. A New Scientist article, "Disorderly Genius," describes how the brain operates on the edge of chaos. Have you ever experienced that eerie feeling of a thought popping into your head as if from nowhere, with no clue as…
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Posted inBooks Morality Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Sam Harris says morality can be scientific

I love Sam Harris' books. His "The End of Faith" came out about a year after I started this churchless blog in the fall of 2004. It provided me with a surge of faithless energy, validating my decision to do what I could to help rid the world of destructive religious dogma. "Letter to a Christian Nation" (2008) also was a winner, but didn't appeal to me quite as much. Never having been a Christian (aside from pretending to be one in my early elementary school years), I guess his focus on the ridiculousness of Christianity seemed self-evident to me.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Religion doesn’t add anything to human experience

Here's a big misunderstanding that most religious people make: when they feel good, they attribute those positive feelings to their religiosity -- not realizing that if they didn't have faith in God, Guru, Brahman, Allah, or whatever, they'd feel just about the same. I say this because I used to be such a person. For the thirty-five or so years I was an active member of an India-based religious organization I was almost always in a positive frame of mind. I was energetic, confident, productive, and happy. But this also describes how I was before and after my immersion in…
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Posted inBuddhism Reality Science

Relationship is the essential nature of reality

Some people are attracted to an "Eastern" holistic outlook on life. Others, to a "Western" analytical viewpoint. I've always thought that these were just two different ways of looking at reality, with each having its strengths and weaknesses. But some passages in Winifred Gallagher's Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life present another possibility. She describes research by psychologist Richard Nisbett about how Americans and Japanese describe an underwater scene quite differently. Americans focus on the largest and most colorful fish, while the Japanese would say things such as "It looked like a stream. The water was green. There were rocks…
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Posted inBuddhism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Taoism/Tai Chi

Are Buddhism and Taoism akin to Sant Mat?

People here in the West often speak of "Eastern religions" as if they were all alike. This shows how little understanding citizens of predominantly Christian nations have of other cultures. Actually, some Eastern faiths have as much, or even more, in common with the Big Monotheistic Three (Christianity, Judaism, Islam) as they do with monistic/atheistic teachings such as Buddhism and Taoism. Case in point: Sant Mat, which means the "path of saints." For about thirty-five years I was an active member of an India-based Sant Mat organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, so I know whereof I speak. That's why I…
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