Posted inScience

Skepticism isn’t “blind faith”

Religious believers like to say that agnosticism or atheism also is founded on faith – faith that there's no evidence for God. So skeptics are as filled with faith as the faithful. That's ridiculous. It's the sort of word play that led Donald Rumsfeld, the incompetent Secretary of Defense, to say "absence of evidence isn't evidence of absence" in reference to Iraq's unfound weapons of mass destruction. Well, I see no evidence of a unicorn in our living room right now. There's just my wife and our dog, neither of whom looks like a horse with a horn coming out…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Let it go. So simple.

Most people think that being spiritual or religious means holding on to something or someone. That's what they think faith means: clinging to unproven beliefs or an unsubstantiated savior. "Jesus died for our sins." "Guru is God." "There is no God but Allah." There's no end to religious dogma. An amazing variety of thoughts and world-views are contained in the minds of true believers. If you can conceive of it, likely someone has faith in it at this moment. So how is it possible to choose which of these countless belief systems is worthy of acceptance, given that they contradict…
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Posted inMorality

Morality doesn’t need a middleman

Doing good. We all want to do it, aside from a small number of people with a highly me-centered worldview. For I see the essence of morality as act toward others as you'd want them to act toward you. When there's no sense of mutuality, of relationship, of reciprocal give and take, morality (such as it is) is reduced to act toward others however you want. It's all about me, me, me. So goodness, like Tango, takes two. Otherwise, it's selfishness. However, most religious believers want to complicate morality by adding in a middleman. God. Or a stand-in for God,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

More evidence Sant Mat is a religion

Yesterday Jay Lou left a comment on one of my posts that started off, "I don't want to be rude to you. But if you can't say anything good about something then don't say it at all." I was surprised by that sentiment. I seem to recall an elementary school teacher saying something similar back in first or second grade, but adults rarely, if ever, speak that way. It struck me as remarkably unscientific. Yet it was pretty obvious that the commenter was a devotee of Sant Mat (likely the Radha Soami Satsang Beas branch), a spiritual path that I…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Believers, let’s have a faith-off

Everybody's familiar with a face-off. It's a confrontation. Well, I'm challenging religious believers to something similar: a faith-off. Bring it on. Your best philosophical stuff. Let's see who can be reasonably considered to have the most faith – churchless me, and those who share my antipathy to dogmatism, fundamentalism, and other "ism's," or those who profess the traditional religious commitment to a belief in the reality of things unknown. In my utterly biased opinion, it's no contest. Those, like me, who proclaim a faithless faith are head and shoulders above the crowd of religious believers. For open-mindedness is a much…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Conversing with a churchless Christian

Periodically I have a pleasant email conversation with Steve, a Christian who rarely goes to church. I like how Steve is willing to consider the blasphemous and ungodly musings posted here.

Interestingly, it was two years ago today that I shared a thoughtful message from Steve in my “Why I’m not a Christian.” Since, Steve has been a regular Church of the Churchless visitor.

On New Year’s Day he emailed me again. Steve spoke about the lack of change he observes in the content of this blog – both my posts and the comments of other people. I found this intriguing.

Because I both agree and disagree with him.

I expressed my yin and yang reaction to his message in a reply. Which led to Steve…(make a guess) changing.

Cool. I like a guy who walks his own talk. Wish I could be as self-consistent. Anyway, our email conversation follows, mildly edited. My favorite line from Steve: “Maybe the conversation itself is the goal.”

Join in, if you like. Has anything you’ve read here changed your mind about something? Or spurred you to lead your life differently in some way?

(the conversation between Steve and me is fairly lengthy, so I’ll make it a continuation to this post)

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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

I’m a Bright, see me shine

I'd heard of brights before, but didn't know that it was possible to become a Bright (with a capital "B") until Tao, a frequent Church of the Churchless visitor, mentioned the brights web site in a recent comment. This evening I learned enough about bright-ness to conclude that I could sign up as an official Bright. You can be a lower case "bright" just by considering yourself to be such. But registering on the brights web site turns you into a honest to God nature "Bright." Slipped up just now. Hope my reference to a supernatural entity doesn't void my…
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Posted inReality

Don’t obscure life with blind beliefs

It was one of those moments when the universe seemed to be sending me a wake up! call. I have them fairly frequently. I'd probably be aware of more if I wasn't asleep so much of the time. Not literally, though napping is one of the things I'm best at; what I mean is sleepwalking through life – absorbed in something other than what is really going on. A few days ago I was walking up our driveway to get the morning newspapers. We live in rural Oregon countryside, so when I talk to myself on a cold dry December…
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Posted inUncategorized

Converse. Connect. Question. Answer.

After visiting this blog, head on over to the Church of the Churchless Message Board. It's another way to practice faithless faith and be part of a non-dogmatic community. The Message Board is new, but the topics are old – timeless, in fact. Learn more about it here.
Posted inDiscussion group

Message Board added to Church of the Churchless

Check it out. Note: Due to lack of use, the Message Board will go out of business near the end of 2009, as I won't be renewing my subscription for the board service. As part of my unending (until it ends) dedication to serving the churchless, I've put up a Church of the Churchless Message Board. My hope is that this will be another way visitors to this blog can share ideas about spirituality, religion, mysticism, and such. Up to now, commenting on blog posts has been the only way to do this. The Message Board opens up another option.…
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Posted inPolitics

Founders’ faith was pretty much faithless

Listening to conservative talk radio before Christmas, to hear what the uninformed and clueless have to say, I wasn't disappointed when the subject turned to how the founding fathers of the United States supposedly were devout Christians. That's a bunch of hooey. The main evidence that usually is dragged out for this crock of historical B.S. is the reference in the Declaration of Independence to the Creator. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit…
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Posted inGod

No, Virginia, Santa Claus is just as unreal as God

I've managed to only read the dreadful "Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus" piece a few times in my 59 years. It pops up each Christmas day in every newspaper that I've subscribed to. I notice it, but rush on to more important stuff – like the comics and sports page. Today I decided to see if I could read this response to an eight year old girl, first published in the New York Sun in 1897, without getting sick to my churchless stomach. I suspected that this syrupy drivel wouldn't go down so well now that I've become…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Conversing is cool

I've been doing a lot of conversing lately. That's cool. By and large I have a grinch'y attitude toward Christmas – I absolutely hate the Salvation Army guy who plays "Joy to the World" on a loud trumpet in the foyer of a store that I go too frequently. But I enjoy the social events that blossom this time of year, and the conversations that accompany them. Last night my wife and I hosted our annual Holiday Potluck and White Elephant Gift Exchange. Aside from being able to get rid of some junk that we wrapped up and foisted onto…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Near death experience revelation: “No B.S.”

Today I talked with an old friend. We'd only spoken once before since our college days, when we were initiated on the same day in 1971 into the Indian mystic-religious faith of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. We're both heretics now, a comfortable state for each of us. He'd been perusing some of my Church of the Churchless posts and felt like giving me another call. I'm glad he did. I enjoy conversations that start out with a bang, in this case with "I died this year." Yeah, that grabbed my interest. He had me at "I died." Which was true.…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Some comments flagged as spam

I just realized that TypePad, which hosts this blog, has been over-zealously filtering some legitimate comments as spam. I just added a comment to a recent post (the subject of most of the rejected comments) explaining the problem. Amazingly, my own comment about the over-zealous spam filter was rejected as spam! That's what happens when rigid dogma, in this case programming related, overrides common sense. Hopefully TypePad will get its act together soon. Until then, I'll check regularly to see if any legitimate comments have been flagged as spam and publish them if they have been. Here's what I said…
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Posted inHumor

Blessed bottled water – not for sinners!

Watch out, Church of the Churchless visitors. In my never-ending quest to promote honest sin and discourage hypocritical virtue, I've got to warn you about a seemingly innocent product that could be extremely dangerous to your health. Holy Drinking Water. As described in a Newsweek article, "Bless This Bottled Water," this spiritual alternative to Evian is blessed before it's shipped off to be sold. The Holy Drinking Water website has a warning, which may or may not be tongue-in-cheek: "If you are a sinner or evil in nature, this product may cause burning, intense heat, sweating, skin irritations, rashes, itchiness,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

What’s wrong with thinking too much?

Fairly often I'm told, "Brian, you think too much." Invariably this statement comes from someone who is thinking that I think too much. So this pot calling the kettle black sort of sentiment doesn't have much effect on me. I find it interesting, though, that almost always the person telling me I think too much is a religious devotee. Usually a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, my once chosen faith, because I still hang out with RSSB initiates – most of whom have no problem with my current churchlessness. But even when I was giving talks to the faithful…
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Posted inPolitics

Questioning a politician’s religious belief isn’t unconstitutional

In a recent column, "An Overdose of Public Piety," Charles Krauthammer gets the issue of religion in politics partly right and partly wrong. That's pretty good for Krauthammer, because usually I find myself disagreeing with his conservative world view. But in this piece he appropriately decries how Republican presidential candidates, like Mitt Romney, feel that the only source of genuine inspiration for "values voters" is religious belief. Romney has been faulted for not throwing at least one bone of acknowledgment to nonbelievers in his big religion speech last week. But he couldn't, because the theme of the speech was that…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Talking about One is fun, but decidedly Two

It's a good day when I combine a tall nonfat vanilla latte with some stimulating philosophical conversation. This afternoon I enjoyed both in the company of Patricia Herron, a religious studies professor. We get together periodically at the south Salem Beanery to solve the mysteries of the universe. Never quite get there, no matter how large the latte, but the journey is the thing. Today we started out musing about nonduality and duality. It's fun to talk about the One, my favorite non-religious euphemism for "God." But as countless mystics and philosophers have pointed out, as soon as you say…
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Posted inMiracles

Where have all the miracles gone?

Before class started yesterday, a Tai Chi friend (Eric) and I were talking about miracles. Christian miracles, specifically, but a miracle is a miracle. Well, more accurately: no miracles are no miracles. Because we mused about the fact that they sure are in short supply these days. Where's the walking on water, the resurrection of the dead, the mysterious manifestation of bread loaves? Conveniently, with the arrival of modern science – including video cameras, medical monitors, and other hard to fool objective instrumentation – miracles have taken a leave of absence. Religious types would say, "On God's command." I say,…
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