Posted inReligions

On getting rid of those little men in your TV set

Douglas Adams – author, humorist, and great admirer of science – was fond of telling a story about how televisions work. Here's how his friend, Richard Dawkins, related it in his "Lament for Douglas Adams" (Adams died of a heart attack in 2001 at the age of 49). A man didn't understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained about high-frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, transmitters and receivers, amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Balanced between belief and doubt

I enjoyed my 45 minute or so BlogTalkRadio conversation with medium Marcel Cairo yesterday. We were supposed to talk about Science, Spirituality, and Spinoza, which we sort of did. The archived AfterLifeFM show is here. To hear me in my (somewhat muffled) glory, scroll down and click on one of the symbols to the right of "Dismantling Dogma." The arrow thingie fires up Windows Media Player. Alternatively, I'll share my memory of some conversational highlights. This is the third time Marcel and I have talked over the Internet. We've got a thing going. As a medium, Marcel obviously believes in…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Me talk Spinoza on BlogTalkRadio today

Who knew there was such a thing as BlogTalkRadio? Not me, until medium Marcel Cairo invited me to be on his AfterLifeFM show today, 4 PM Pacific, 7 PM Eastern, some other time in between the coasts. Tune in. Or better yet, call in. You listen via the Internet by pressing the "Click here" thingie when the time comes. You can call in via any sort of phone: 646-478-5711. Our subject is Dismantling Dogma: Science, Spirituality, and Spinoza. I'm no expert on Spinoza, but I've filled up a large-post it note with pithy reminders of his philosophy, which should be…
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Posted inMorality

Morality has nothing to do with religion

Thanks to Middle Earth Journal, I learned about an exchange between Michael Gerson and Christopher Hitchens concerning whether religion is necessary for people to act morally. Gerson started it off with his "What atheists can't answer." With a title like that he should have known that an answer would be forthcoming. In fact, it took Hitchens just a day to come back with "An Atheist Responds." Hitchens, author of God is Not Great, is a tough guy to argue with. In this case, though, a middle school debate team could have handled Gerson with one argumentative hand tied behind their…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Skepticism is the fruit of knowledge

James Randi is a magician. He knows the tricks. What's different about Randi is that he openly exposes the magic game, as I read in a recent AP story about him. He gave up performing as The Amazing Randi years ago, but his words to the audience at the end of each show foreshadowed his next act. ''Everything you have seen here is tricks,'' he would say. ''There is nothing supernatural involved here.'' Randi now dedicates himself to exposing frauds. His web site features a million dollar paranormal challenge to anyone who can demonstrate "super" powers in a controlled setting.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Ridiculing my own religious fundamentalism

Recently I made fun of keeping kosher – including the absurd practice of getting around a prohibition of lighting a fire on the Sabbath by starting an oven ahead of time and disabling its light bulb. Some commenters gave me heat for ridiculing this practice of observant Jews, even though I was careful to point out that I wasn't singling out Judaism. Every fundamentalist religious practice deserves to be laughed at. I replied to one comment with: Like I said, I'm an equal opportunity ridiculer. I particularly enjoy ridiculing my own previous unsupported beliefs. So now let's have some laughs…
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Posted inFundamentalism

My oven’s “Sabbath Feature” shows idiocy of keeping kosher

Before making fun of keeping kosher, I want to assure any observant Jew who comes across this blog post that I'm an equal opportunity religion-basher. So you're not being singled out because you're Jewish. It's your religious fundamentalism, which comes in many denominational varieties, that's deserving of some ridicule today. Which happens to be July 10. The temperature has hit an unusual 100 degrees here in Oregon. So there's good reason to keep the oven off today. However, not turning our Frigidaire electric wall oven on during the Jewish Sabbath (basically, Friday night to Saturday night) – that's kosher nonsense.…
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Posted inWu Project

Sheer absence of soul reveals its nature

Ah, sheer poetry. About the soul. Featured on the front page of The Oregonian Living section yesterday, of all things. I've poeticized a quote from Gunther von Hagens, creator of the Body Worlds 3 exhibit that I wrote about recently. In the exhibitionthe pure absence of the soulactuallyunderlines the soul The longer I aman anatomist,the closer I amto the soul just because ofits sheerabsence I was surprised by the tone of the story, headlined "Exhibit or exhibitionism?" The reporter, Nancy Haught, must have gone out of her way to find people who were offended by this display of plastinated human…
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Posted inReligions

Religions aren’t alike. I think I know why.

It's (churchless) confession time. I'm getting down on my bloggish knees and admitting to a mea culpa. Not a very juicy one, though. It's philosophical rather than salacious. For a long time I've been an advocate of the notion that under their dogmatic skins religions share a common skeleton. Aldous Huxley called this the Perennial Philosophy and wrote a book by that name. But now I've come to agree with Stephen Prothero, chair of Boston University's Department of Religion, who said in Newsweek recently that the proposition "The Major Religions are Essentially Alike" is false. Religious people do agree that…
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Posted inScience

Science is more spiritual than religion

On this July 4, Independence Day in the United States, let's remember that the founders of this country wanted its citizens to be free of religious tyranny. So you can bet they wouldn't be happy with the fundamentalist excesses in the United States today. Most of our founding fathers were deists who believed that religious beliefs have to be founded on reason, not holy books. To them, God is revealed in the laws of nature, not religious superstition. Science thus becomes more godly than religion, because the nature of the creator is revealed through (no big surprise) nature. Ann Druyan,…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Salvation isn’t so serious to me anymore

Here's something curious (or, maybe not). Back in my fundamentalist days – yes, there's Eastern fundamentalism also – I was deeply concerned about my salvation. I felt just like Woody Allen: I don't want to achieve immortality through my work. I want to achieve it through not dying. Yet now that I've evolved to a more open and non-dogmatic form of spirituality, I don't obsess nearly as much over whether I'll live on after I die. Or in what fashion my rebirth will occur, should that be in the cards for me. So when I was nominally more religious, a…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Seeking the truth is better than finding it

This morning I came across an intriguing quotation in the final chapter of Christopher Hitchens' "God is Not Great." I've always thought how terrific it'd be to know the truth about life, the universe, God or unGod—in short, everything. But Gotthold Lessing, an 18th century German writer and philosopher, says that even if you could possess truth, you'd be better off perpetually seeking it. The true value of a man is not determined by his possession, supposed or real, of Truth, but rather by his sincere exertion to get to the Truth. It is not possession of the Truth, but…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Invitation to write a churchless “sermon”

Over on the left sidebar you'll find a new "Posts Compendium" section. I managed to take the assemblage of Church of the Churchless posts that I proudly called my blogistic compendium magisterium and transfer them from Google Page Creator to Typepad—my blog host. Typepad now has the ability to create web pages in addition to posts, so it seemed preferable to keep the compendium as part of this blog rather than over on Google. Browsing through my numerous posts, which date back to November 2004, I was reminded of how many words I've written. And also, of how much I…
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Posted inReality

Maybe the meaning of life is…life

Given how philosophical I've been for so many years, it's sort of surprising to me that I'm losing interest in pondering the meaning of life. More and more, living life is meaningful enough. Adding something called meaning seems like decorating a cake that's already nicely frosted. It can be done, but what's the point? How many layers does life need? I do keep reading about the meaning of life, though. This morning it was the final chapter in Nicholas Fearn's book about the latest answers to the oldest questions: "The Meaning of Life and Death." I liked this passage: A…
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Posted inUncategorized

Compendium of Church of the Churchless posts

A compendium magisterium of my blogistic compositions(in other words, all my blog postings in one place) --currently up to November 2007-- Categories: Introductory, Books, Buddhism, Christianity, Death, Fundamentalism, God, Humor, Miracles, Miscellaneous, Morality, Mystics, Personal/stories, Politics, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Reality, Religions, Science, Spiritual practice/meditation, Taoism, Universism, Vedanta, Wu Project The posts are in chronological order within each category, earliest first. Introductory Welcome to the Church of the Churchless Spiritual non-practice Just have faith How do I join? Church symbol Our creedless creed Discussion group Books Five books to support the churchless  Plotinus: Vision "The Supreme Doctrine," thirty-six years overdue…
Posted inDeath/Rebirth

“Body Worlds 3” helps death lose some of its sting

Yesterday afternoon I spent two hours looking at dead bodies. Plastinated ones, so skillfully presented and preserved the smallest nerves and tendons could be seen. I got tickets to Body Worlds 3 at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry (OMSI) in Portland because it was my wife's birthday. Laurel wanted to see the exhibition. I wasn't as wild about the idea, given that I've got this decided preference for existing rather than not-existing. I've also been known to ask our estate planning attorney, "Instead of saying When Brian dies…, could you substitute When Brian gerbils…? We'll know what you…
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Posted inPolitics

“Wall of Separation” looks like an American history con job

It's a plain and evident fact that the United States' founding fathers were deeply concerned about this country becoming a religious theocracy. That's why we have a godless constitution—the title of a book I'm reading. So given what I know about how strongly George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and other leaders of their era felt about keeping religion out of government, my ears perked up when I heard mention of a PBS pseudo-documentary, "Wall of Separation," that suggests the wall may really have been an open door. The PBS web site says: But is this conventional wisdom of "secularized"…
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Posted inReality

What is reality?

That's a great title: "What is Reality?" It gets right down to the nitty-gritty of what life is all about. Being real. Whether we live only once, or have an opportunity to live another physical or metaphysical existence, making the most of these precious human moments means really living them. So I leapt to open an issue of New Scientist magazine that had "The Big Questions" emblazoned on the cover. "What is Reality?" is the biggest of the big in my opinion. And seemingly that of the magazine's editors also, since they featured Roger Penrose's essay on this subject in…
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Posted inGod

Spinoza’s God is Einstein’s God. And, mine.

I'm a long ways – a very long ways – from sharing Albert Einstein's understanding of the universe. But when it comes to Einstein's religious bent, we're almost soul brothers. Just as, I suspect, many other churchless people are. As described in a TIME article, "Einstein and Faith," in 1930 Einstein wrote a credo called "What I Believe." It ended with this oft-quoted passage about what he meant when he called himself religious. The most beautiful emotion we can experience is the mysterious. It is the fundamental emotion that stands at the cradle of all true art and science. He…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Finding our energetic groove

The past few days haven't been real cheerful for me, save-the-world (or 137 acres, at least) wise. My wife and I have been leading a fight against a proposed subdivision on groundwater limited farmland adjacent to our neighborhood. Wednesday we got screwed by a purely political decision by our county Board of Commissioners. They ignored an independent hydrogeologic assessment and their own Planning Commission. That night I had trouble getting to sleep, as travesty of justice visions kept running through my brain. Thursday I got to vent to a television news reporter. That made me feel a bit better, even…
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