Posted inBooks God

“God is Not One” shows how different religions are

A few days ago I was drawn to buy "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero after seeing Stephen Colbert interview him in Colbert's always entertaining fashion. Prothero gives his take on the interview here, and you can watch it below.The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cStephen Protherowww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox NewsI liked how Prothero emphasized how different are the problems religions attempt to solve. Christianity is all about being saved from sin; Buddhism aims to eliminate suffering; Hinduism seeks freedom from reincarnation's rounds of birth and death; Daoism teaches how to live life naturally and freely.(If you're…
13
Posted inPersonal/Stories

If I’m a guru, where are my devotees?

A few days ago I got an email from someone who thinks that I've become a guru. That struck me as a strange thing to say. After all, I'm not aware of anyone in the world who views me that way (certainly not my wife, and definitely not my dog -- except when she wants to go on a walk or get her favorite chew stick treat, when she'll temporarily get a look of absolute devotion to manipulate me into doing her canine bidding).My correspondent asked for a blog response, so here it is. I've interspersed my comments in regular…
11
Posted inScience Universe

Finding meaning in an accidental universe

Looking around, the universe seems to be flowingly interconnected, a seamless web of smoothly functioning laws of nature. Sure, there are lots of nasty things we humans find distasteful -- earthquakes, diseases, tornadoes, and such -- but even these have causes. They're just often extremely difficult to discern or predict, given our lack of knowledge about the details of how things operate in the world.But there's another way of looking at the cosmos. Here's an excerpt from the jacket on Marcelo Gleiser's "A Tear at the Edge of Creation," a book that I blogged about before. (Subtitle: a radical new…
5
Posted inScience

Science is open to the supernatural

Many people mistakenly believe that modern science rules out the possibility of God, soul, spirit, and other supernatural entities. They think that scientists are only interested in the natural world -- this physical universe of space and time, plus everything within it.Not true. Thanks to a link emailed to me by Alex Szeto of the Hong Kong Unitarian Universalists, I was able to read and enjoy "Is Scientific Inquiry Restricted to Nature?" by Tom Clark and Ursula Goodenough (seems like that was the name of a James Bond femme fatale; at least, it should have been).Actually, Goodenough is a noted…
3
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Yeah, I’m enlightened. Deal with it.

After writing a couple of recent posts about boundless existence (see here and here), I've decided that it's time to reveal a truth that I've been reluctant to even tell myself.So let's learn it together: I'm enlightened. Ah, it feels so good to say those two words, "I'm enlightened." I don't know why its taken me so long to do this -- to embrace the realization that I know what's really real.For me. Which brings me to another truth that we need to acknowledge together: You're also enlightened, if you also know what's really real. For you.I have no idea what…
18
Posted inBooks Wu Project

Boundless Existence — meaningless backdrop to a meaningful life

As I said in my previous post about Milton Munitz' marvelous book, "Does Life Have a Meaning," the notion of boundless existence sends a chill up my churchless spine. This isn't really a "notion," though. Munitz makes clear that the awareness of That -- That existence exists -- can never be anything more than exactly That: simple awareness, without any cognitive content of What boundless existence is.At best, all we can have is an awareness of Boundless Existence. But this awareness is not an exercise in understanding, of making possible a kind of intelligibility. Nor is it a case of…
6
Posted inFundamentalism Spiritual practice/meditation

Integral egos gone wild: Wilber and Cohen relish worship

As I said in this post, I used to have a love-hate thing going on with Ken Wilber and his Integral philosophy. (Click on that link and you'll be led to examples of what I liked and disliked.)Last night, though, I got around to reading the September - November 2009 issue of EnlightenNext, a magazine devoted to uncritical lauding of Wilber's work, along with that of his Integral comrade, Andrew Cohen.When I got through reading "The Second Face of God," I'd reached a clear conclusion: Wilber and Cohen aren't aiming to go beyond the limitations of religiosity in their quest…
26
Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

The beauty of boundless existence

"Existence" is one of my favorite things to ponder, mostly because existence (the boundless variety) is imponderable. It's just what it is: Isness, Thatness, whatever you want to call primal That -- which isn't a What.A few months after I started this blog, I wrote "Existence exists. Amazing!" And said in that post:My head hurts when I think too much about existence. But I get an enjoyable chill up my spiritual spine when I simply try to wrap my psyche around existence. Not in a wordy way. In, well, an existential way. This happens when I try to let the…
2
Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Religion should be seen as an art from

Lately I've been surprising myself. My churchless psyche isn't nearly as down on religion as it was a few years ago, when I was closer to my saying "goodbye" to an organized spiritual, mystical, and metaphysical belief system.This is natural. Right after I got divorced from my first wife some twenty-one years ago, I thought about her much more, and considerably differently, than I do now. We've each moved on to other relationships. Emotions and attachments, whether positive or negative, almost always fade with time.It still bothers me when fundamentalists expect other people to accept their view of reality on…
7
Posted inBooks Reality

Reality is real, but brains construct knowledge

When Amazon delivered Paul Thagard's "The Brain and the Meaning of Life," I knew I was going to enjoy the book after I perused some chapter titles -- the first four being We All Need Wisdom, Evidence Beats Faith, Minds are Brains, and How Brains Know Reality.  Ah, inspiration for my churchless non-soul. I'm one chapter away from finishing the book. Probably I'll write another post about it after I read Making Sense of It All. (I can only hope; that's a pretty confident claim for a chapter.)Here I'll focus on some key concepts in How Brains Know Reality. This subject…
No Comments
Posted inReality Science

Divinity isn’t necessary to make life meaningful

I was planning to write about another subject today, but a commenter on this post (Brian from Colorado) pushed my meaning-of-life button when he wrote:If I have this right, Blogger Brian, you're hope is that others will hear your message of hopelessness, and deem it worthy of belief?You would characterize the whole of existence as an accidental soup of random particles bouncing about in meaningless fashion, and then seek some modicum of consolation in having mastered the one true way of unblinking, tough-minded knowledge about "The Way Things Really Are." (or, at least that's what I seem to be getting…
20
Posted inGod Science

100% proof isn’t possible, plausibility is

Nice offering on the Atheist Meme front from Greta Christina today.Very few claims can be proven or disproven with 100% certainty. But we can still assess whether those claims are more or less likely to be true. And that includes religion. Atheism doesn't mean 100% certainty that there is no God: it's the conclusion that the God hypothesis is not plausible. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.We can only hope.
1
Posted inReality Science

Can you be spiritual without being scientific?

Short answer to my blog post title: No. Absolutely not. Especially in these 21st century times. Maybe back in the Dark Ages, when accurate scientific knowledge was extremely limited.Today we know with considerable certainty that the universe is some 13.7 billion years old, having begun in a big bang that is still banging (and indeed, accelerating). And that life has evolved on Earth from humble unicellular beginnings to we Homo sapiens who are able to contemplate our origins. And that the "mind" is a product of the "brain," an amazingly complex agglomeration of neural processes which enable us to perceive,…
1
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Cirque du Soleil reflects great philosophy of life: openness

Usually I don't come away from a theatrical performance feeling that I've just been exposed to a marvelous philosophy of life. But usual and Cirque du Soleil aren't words that belong next to each other. Last Friday my wife and I journeyed up to Portland (Oregon) to see Kooza. It was our first Cirque du Soleil experience. And surely not the last. We loved the show, including the Tapis Rouge pampering that we ended up getting at no additional cost. I found Kooza deeply moving. Always eager to fire up my philosophical neurons, I've spent the past few days musing…
No Comments
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Radha Soami Satsang Beas rakes in cash (and a river bank)

Thanks to David Lane (a.k.a "Neural Surfer") I came across a link to a news story about a big real estate deal involving land owned by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a Indian religious/spiritual organization headquartered in the Punjab. A commenter points out that the sale is for about $108 million, with houses on the property slated to sell for around $2 million. Wow. Parts of India must be imitating Beverly Hills.I also was emailed a link to another story about RSSB: "Dera raising embankment to change course of river; farmers complain." Hundred million dollar deals and questionably legal construction…
123
Posted inReality Science

How to tell science from pseudoscience

Since religious believers often put down science as an inadequate means of knowing reality, it's interesting that science pops up so often in the names of metaphysical belief systems. For example, there's Science of the Soul, Christian Science, Religious Science, and Scientology.How, then, can we tell the difference between genuine science and pseudoscience? Last night I read a review in New Scientist of "Nonsense on Stilts: How to tell science from bunk," by Massimo Pigliucci.Naturally I had to fire up Amazon and order the book. It sounds right up my churchless alley. The review by Amanda Gefter says:Pigliucci, a philosopher…
1
Posted inBuddhism

Nice simple description of Zen

I've read lots of books about Buddhism and Zen. Often the core teachings get submerged under a bunch of confusing verbiage. So it was refreshing to pick up "The Zen Teachings of Master Lin-chi" and find a wonderfully clear introduction by the translator, Burton Watson.Of all the world's "spiritual" faiths (using that term loosely), Zen Buddhism and it's iconoclastic cousin, Taoism, strike me as being the least religious'y. Burton makes this clear. I'm not endorsing what he says as the gospel truth -- that'd be opposed to what he says, even if I heartily believed in it. I just wanted…
5
Posted inReligions

Crazy or religious? Tough to tell the difference.

After putting up my post about Muslims in Pakistan going batshit crazy over a Facebook page that celebrates Everybody Draw Muhammed Day!, I got to thinking about how religious believers would be considered certifiably insane (or at least seriously out of touch with reality) if society didn't look upon collective delusions more favorably than individual wacked-out'ness.I mean, let's imagine that there aren't any religions on Earth. So...no unproven metaphysical dogmas. No faith-based theologies. No imagined heavens/hells, astral planes, or soul-traveling destinations. No hypothesized divine beings with miraculous powers. No hidden system of godly rewards and punishments. But people still have…
1
Posted inFundamentalism Humor

Draw Mohammed Day freaks out fundamentalist Muslims

Example #[infinity] of why religions are so ridiculous: Pakistan shuts down Facebook over a page that promotes "Draw Mohammed Day."The Pakistan Telecommunication Authority issued the order a day before "Everybody Draw Mohammed Day," scheduled by a Facebook group with the same name. "Obviously it (the blocking of Facebook) is related to the objectionable material that was placed on Facebook. That is why it is blocked," said Khoram Ali Mehran of the telecommunication authority.Check out Everybody Draw Mohammed Day! on Facebook. No reason not to -- aside from defying the will of Allah and being damned for eternity, along with having…
2