Posted inDeath/Rebirth Politics

Assisted suicide is moral, Scalia isn’t

Most of us here in Oregon were thrilled when the Supreme Court upheld our state’s assisted suicide law. Tuesday’s decision was a victory both for state’s rights and common sense. Twice, Oregon voters have affirmed their belief that terminally ill people with six months or less to live have the right to end their life if they come to feel that it isn’t worth living. I can’t understand how anybody could argue with this. Who else should be in control of the life of an adult who is capable of making his or her own decisions but that person? No…
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Posted inMiracles

Atheists in foxholes do exist

Recently a couple of people have asked me, “What’s wrong with believing?” after listening to one of my rants about the power and glory of Faithlessness. It’s a question that is akin to the more basic query: “What’s wrong with feeling good?” Because religious belief does make many people feel better. Yesterday on a cable news channel I saw an interview with a female doctor about the power of prayer. She said that she had a patient who now was almost totally paralyzed. He told her that prayer and a belief in God’s goodness—that there was a divine reason or…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

The boots at the top of the stairs

Last night my wife and I spent several hours engaged in stimulating conversation with six friends. The eight of us covered many topics. When we turned to miracles and psychic phenomena, our discussion got passionate. Usually it’s considered that religious/spiritual people have the most passion about their beliefs. For example, “The Passion of the Christ.” But scientific sorts can be equally passionate. Our group included a Ph.D. chemist, a Ph.D. computer scientist, and a scientifically-minded attorney—each of whom forcefully argued for the primacy of reason, well-designed experiments, and laws of nature that aren’t arbitrary or capricious. They didn’t put much…
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Posted inReligions

Throwing stones at the devil–idiotic!

I think it’s obvious from today’s news that God is sending humanity a clear and powerful message: religions are idiotic. Even more, they can kill you. At least 345 Muslim Hajj pilgrims have been killed while throwing stones at the devil. They were caught up in one of the stampedes that happen with disturbing regularity: 1,426 pilgrims were trampled to death in 1990. More recently, 35 were killed in 2001, 36 in 2003, and 251 in 2004. A rational person would say, “This is absurd. The devil-stoning ritual has to stop. When people are being killed in a devilish fashion…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Limbo on the way out

This is big news. The design of the cosmos is about to change: the Catholic Church is dismantling limbo. Theologically speaking, of course. In David Van Biema’s TIME essay that I read last night, “Life After Limbo,” there’s no hint the Vatican believes that its theological ponderings have any effect on reality, per se. Whatever limbo actually is or isn’t, Papal pronouncements have no causal connection with its state of existence. The whole debate over whether there is a half-baked afterlife in between heaven and hell further proves the ridiculousness of religion. Nobody knows! Most likely, there is no limbo.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation isn’t dog training

In a comment to my “Be a spiritual rebel!” post, Stephen asked if anyone who reads this blog had been successful in meditating for 2 ½ hours daily over a two-year stretch. He wondered what happens after engaging in this much meditation. My initial response to him was: not much. Stephen, now that I have more time to reply to your query, here’s an elaboration based on not just two, but about twenty years of meditating for 2 ½ hours a day (following the mantra-based technique taught by Radha Soami Satsang Beas, or RSSB). For the other sixteen years I’ve…
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Posted inBooks Christianity/Jesus Spiritual practice/meditation

Be a spiritual rebel!

Here are some inspirational quotations about spiritual independence from Anthony de Mello, a Jesuit priest who was born in India and wonderfully melded the best of East and West. In 1998, after his death, his writings were condemned by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith and Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, the current Pope. To me that’s a high recommendation of de Mello. If you’re condemned by the Catholic Church, you must be doing something right spiritually. I have two of his books. The quotations below are from “The Way to Love.” This is an official-looking de Mello website. More…
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Posted inGod Religions

Mine disaster shows absurdity of prayer

“Just a few minutes before they were praising God, and now they were cursing.” That’s how a relative of one of the men trapped in the West Virginia mine described the abrupt mood change when the crowd gathered in a church learned that all but one of the miners actually were dead—not alive, as they had been mistakenly told several hours earlier. It shows the absurdity of prayer. The belief that God listens to pleas such as “Save the trapped miners, Lord” and decides whether or not to intervene in human affairs almost certainly is superstition. If prayer has any…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Tell yourself your spiritual secrets

It’s a new year. Time to tell yourself your secrets. Especially, your spiritual secrets. I’m sure you have them. Almost all of us do. You’re sitting in church, temple, mosque, meeting hall, your own living room. Praying, meditating, singing, listening to a sermon, reading your holy book. And from your psyche’s secret chamber a barely audible whisper comes. It’s your own voice. But you don’t want to listen to what it is saying. The voice is telling you a secret. Something that is true but rarely spoken to yourself. Not openly. Not directly. Only in whispers. Which usually are met…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Another soul says “RSSB not for me”

It’s always a pleasure to hear from a like-minded soul: someone who approaches spirituality with a scientific bent and isn’t shy about questioning dogmas that don’t seem to make sense. Yesterday I got an email from Cynthia, who is, like me, an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). She shared what brought her to this spiritual path and also what has caused her to draw away from it. Below is the core of her message, mildly edited for clarity and readability. When Cynthia told me that it was fine to post her words, she asked me to make sure…
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Posted inReality

Something’s happening here: Existence

With our electricity off for a reason known only to God and Portland General Electric, my laptop’s battery is showing a quasi-ominous (given my normal weblog verbosity) “87% remaining.” So this is an excellent time to share some thoughts from Will and keep my writing relatively brief tonight. Will, a new cyberspace acquaintance, said in an email that he had just stumbled across the Church of the Churchless. I’m glad he did. For his relatively brief message was sufficient for me to recognize a kindred spirit—both of us being fascinated by Existence. Not the existence of things that exist, but…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation and space-time diagrams

Yesterday Scientific Santa brought me a book by physicist Leonard Susskind, “The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design.” Proving that I can get spiritual inspiration from seemingly unlikely sources, I read the first few chapters before meditating this morning. Susskind begins his overview of particle physics with the best layman-friendly description of Feynman diagrams that I’ve ever come across. You can see an animated Feynman diagram here. It shows two electrons and a photon traveling through space and time. Time is the vertical axis, and space (with three dimensions necessarily condensed into one) is the horizontal…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus God

God is born in everybody, not just Jesus

With the supposed day of Jesus’ birth about to be celebrated tomorrow, it’s worth remembering that God became human not just once a few thousand years ago but countless times. Such is the teaching of the German Dominican Meister Eckhart, one of my favorite mystical theologians. Back in the middle ages he reached understandings about God, Jesus, and the incarnation that are much more spiritually advanced than the confused rantings of modern Christian fundamentalists, who mistakenly worship Jesus as if he was a one-time special deal. Rather, says Eckhart: People think that God became human only in the Incarnation, but…
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Posted inReligions

Barbara Walters special may be closest I’m getting to heaven

I put in several hours last night watching a recording of Barbara Walters Tuesday special: “Heaven: Where is it? How do we get there?” Unfortunately, none of her guests said that watching a spiritually-oriented TV show garnered good heaven-karma. Otherwise, opinions were all over the map concerning Walters’ central questions. The head of an atheist society expressed her firm opinion that we weren’t alive before we were born and we won’t be alive after we’re dead. Several Christian clergy were just as sure that those who believe in Jesus and have been “born again” (whatever that means) are absolutely, positively…
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Posted inScience

Evolution triumphs over intelligent design

It was a great Christmas present for believers in reality rather than fantasy: a Pennsylvania judge ruled today that intelligent design can’t be taught in the classroom because that would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. Intelligent design is, of course, merely creationism in disguise. There’s nothing scientific about it. Not a single research paper ever has been published in a reputable scientific journal supporting the premise that our universe was designed by a creator god. So Judge Jones was absolutely correct when he wrote in his opinion, "We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Spiritual practice/meditation

Gurus and disciples—masters and slaves

I’m not attracted to being the slave of someone. Some people are. The Master/slave Conference is dedicated to “exploring dominant/submissive relationships.” Many websites and weblogs, such as Magdala’s Submission, are devoted to the M/s and BDSM lifestyle. All that is fine with me. Whatever turns you on. But melding dominance and submission with spirituality strikes me as strange. I’ve never been able to look upon God as someone who desires a Master/slave relationship with the beings He/She/It has created. Yet religious and mystical literature is replete with claims that God desires just that. Here are some excerpts from “Sar Bachan…
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Posted inGod Mystics

The nothingness we fear is the everything we are

What do we fear the most? Losing our identity, a firm sense of who we are. And how does every deep mystic tradition describe the highest reality? As an entity with no characteristics that can be described, existing as it does outside of all limitations and boundaries. This is one of the many enlightening observations that I’ve come across in Luther Askeland’s essay, “When the Word-Animal Discovers Signlessness: A Reflection on the Possibility of the Mystical,” which is available on Luther’s website. I’ve been reading a few pages of this lengthy essay every morning before I meditate. The first two…
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Posted inMorality Personal/Stories

A Playboy moral lesson

The January issue of Playboy arrived a few days ago. It’s been sitting on the kitchen counter where we dump our mail, as I haven’t had time yet to give the magazine the concentrated attention that it deserves. However, Playboy’s mere presence has stimulated me to blogishly contemplate a somewhat surprising subject: morality. Of course, when I turn the issue’s pages my mind surely will turn in other directions. But for now I’m interested in the feelings that I have whenever I walk by the counter and glance at the cover. Rightness. Honesty. Sincerity. Truth. I'll explain, since I realize…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Don’t just do something, stand there!

This topsy-turvy notion came to me today as I was pondering how every religion or spiritual path claims that it, and it alone, has the map that leads to the Treasure of All Treasures, variously termed salvation, nirvana, enlightenment, and so on. There are countless maps. Bible, Koran, Talmud, Dhammapada, Upanishads, Tao Te Ching, Adi Granth, many others. Believers in these supposedly sacred writings consider that they contain directions to a spiritual treasure chest. All you have to do is follow a particular way and eventually you’ll get the holy goodies. The problem, though, is that these maps lead every…
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Posted inUniversism

Salem Universists fail to answer life’s big questions

No answers, but great conversation about the questions. That’s how our Salem Universists monthly get-together went last night at the Blue Pepper coffee house. A couple of new members (who are a couple themselves) joined us: Eva and Matt. As Eva says on her Meetup member page, she and Matt recently escaped from Roseburg. Progressive, open-minded, and non-religious people that they are, living in Roseburg turned out not to be a good fit for these ex-San Diego residents. Eva noted that in southern California diversity is embraced; in most of rural Oregon, Christian conservatism is the accepted norm. Here are…
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