Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mantra versus mindfulness — which is better?

Paying $24.95 for a Learn to Meditate course based on a mantra, that is roughly akin to the Transcendental Meditation approach, had at least one immediate benefit for me. It got me to pondering the pros and cons of using a mantra, versus pursuing mindfulness. This is going to be a fairly short blog post, because after a couple of days where I experimented with repeating the one-word mantra that I chose for the course -- "peace" -- it dawned on me why I gave up on using a mantra and made mindfulness my meditation.  Yes, I still play around…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

I pay $24.95 for a Learn to Meditate course

As I was reading Galen Strawson's book, "Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, Etc.", I read a mention by Stawson that he'd tried out psychologist Patricia Carrington's approach to meditation, liked it, but didn't stick with it for very long. Curious, I headed to Carrington's web site, which has sort of an old-fashioned internet vibe to it. I poked around the site for a while, focusing on what she has to say about meditation, and liked her emphasis on meditation being as effortless as possible. Since I'm a firm believer in spiritual laziness, I decided to fork over…
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Posted inFree will

Believing in free will isolates us

Before I head off into other directions in my blog posts, I want to share some additional thoughts about free will, and the lack thereof -- a subject that has been a theme of mine recently. (And also non-recently, since I've written a lot about free will over the years.) The main reason I don't believe in free will is that there doesn't seem to be any good reason to believe in it. By and large I prefer truth over falsehood, reality over illusion. Especially when it comes to science. Movies, novels, and TV shows -- I'm fine with falsehoods…
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Posted inFree will

Another good reason to not believe in free will

I'm addicted. To many things. One of them is reading about why free will makes no sense. I ingest books and essays on this subject with delight. Until another one comes along. Then I eagerly imbibe it also. This morning I got my No Free Will fix courtesy of a chapter in Galen Strawson's book, Things That Bother Me: Death, Freedom, The Self, Etc. The chapter, "Luck Swallows Everything," started off in a familiar fashion. Strawson, a philosopher, picked apart the easily pickable argument that free will exists in the form of compatibilism, an incoherent argument that we humans have…
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Posted inMeaning of life

Is it necessary to make our life into a narrative, a story?

As I noted a few days ago in "Are you endurant or transient? Me, I feel like I'm a bit of both", there was more to say about this distinction between people who feel a sense of continuity about themselves during their lifetime (endurants) and people who feel that they're being constituted anew as their life unfolds (transients). Part of that additional saying relates to what Galen Strawson, whose book ("Things That Bother Me") is where I'm getting these ideas, calls a narrative approach to one's life. Meaning, we not only recall events in our life, but make a story out…
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Posted inBooks

Are you endurant or transient? Me, I feel like I’m a bit of both.

In Galen Strawson's book, "Things That Bother Me," he makes an interesting distinction between people who feel a sense of continuity about themselves during their lifetime (endurants) and people who feel that they're being constituted anew as their life unfolds (transients). There's a lot to say about this. For now, the hour is late, I've been working on getting new iPhone 14's up and running for my wife and I today/tonight, so I'm simply going to share how Strawson defines "endurants" and "transients." He says he's a strong transient, while most people are endurants. Me, I kind of split the…
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Posted inGod

God should be able to find us, so give up the God search

After spending 35 years searching for God, some time ago I came to the belated conclusion that this is a really stupid thing to do. For if God is too ignorant, or too uncaring, or too weak, or too busy with other stuff to find us, why should we exert any effort to search for a God who is much more limited than a human being? Consider: experts say that if you're lost outdoors here on Earth, the best thing to do is stay put if you're unsure where to go and get unlost. (See here, here, and here.) One…
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Posted inFundamentalism Religions

Image of Muhammad causes uproar. I’m pleased to share it.

It's bizarre how fundamentalist Muslims get so upset over images of their Prophet Muhammad, whether these be paintings or cartoons. Just another example of the utter irrationality of religious believers. Today the New York Times had a story, "A Lecturer Showed a Painting of the Prophet Muhammad. She Lost Her Job." This happened even after the instructor told her students in advance what she was going to do and on the day of the showing gave the students another chance to say if they had a problem with this. Erika López Prater, an adjunct professor at Hamline University, said she…
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Posted inAtheism Meaning of life

“It had to be” — a great four-word secular philosophy

At my age, 74, it gets more common to have worries pop up in my life that are different from younger person concerns. Health problems, for example. They occur at any age, but when you're young, things that are wrong with you tend to get better. However, the older we get, the more likely we have to deal with chronic problems, things that aren't going to go away.  Best we can do is manage them so they're annoyances, not major obstacles to living an enjoyable life. I find that when I have a doctor appointment scheduled where I'm not sure…
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Posted inConsciousness

The hard problem isn’t the nature of consciousness, but of matter

The Portland Oregonian sometimes has the New York Times Book Review section in its Sunday online edition. Looking it over last weekend, I noted an ad for a book containing 133 essays from the Times' award-winning philosophy series. I gave "Question Everything" to myself as a belated Christmas present. It arrived recently, and I read one of the essays by Galen Strawson this morning: Consciousness Isn't a Mystery. It's Matter. Wow. Really interesting and thought-provoking. Strawson presented a fresh view of consciousness that I'd never come across before. This is the power of philosophy, which to me simply means clear thinking…
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Posted inBooks Neuroscience

Mind-blowing idea to start 2023: thoughts aren’t about anything

Might as well make my first churchless blog post in 2023 about a subject that first caught my attention back in 2011, which was the first time I read Alex Rosenberg's book, The Atheist's Guide to Reality: Enjoying Life Without Illusions.  It's the notion that our thoughts aren't about anything at all. That link leads to a blog post where I did my best to describe why Rosenberg says this. I won't repeat most of what was said in that post, so I invite you to read it if you want to have your mind blown so early in the…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Best wishes for a pleasant 2023

This being New Year's Eve, with several hours to go here on the west coast before 2022 departs, I want to share a few thoughts about how this year has gone on this blog, and what I look forward to in 2023. First, I'm thankful for those who visit the Church of the Churchless, especially the regular visitors. Without people reading what I write, this blog would be a private diary, not a public square.  Those who leave comments on my blog posts earn a special thank you.  Just as those posts appeal to some, but not to others, I…
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Posted inNeuroscience

Paradox: loss of self becomes deeply meaningful to our self

Recently I picked up Kevin Nelson's book, The Spiritual Doorway in the Brain: A Neurologist's Search for the God Experience, after reading it quite a few years ago. I first heard of Nelson, a leading researcher in near-death experiences, via a New Scientist article that I blogged about in 2010. Not surprisingly, in his book Nelson concludes that spiritual experiences are decidedly physical. In his Epilogue, he writes: We have placed fragmented consciousness at the heart of many of our spiritual experiences and stripped away the illusion of the seamlessly integrated self. Odd as it may seem, we have shown…
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Posted inBooks Neuroscience

Often we know, but don’t understand how we know

I used to be in love with mysticism, where hidden secrets of the cosmos supposedly are revealed in a mysterious fashion.  I'm still enthralled with hidden secrets being revealed in a mysterious way, but now I realize that there's no need to invoke gurus, meditation, god, inner visions, and all the stuff that mysticism evokes, because everybody has that capacity in everyday life. This is one of the fascinating messages of Blink, a 2005 book by Malcolm Gladwell that a friend gave me, along with two other books by Gladwell that I'd never read before.  Its subtitle is "The Power…
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Posted inReligions

Worst thing about religions is unreasonable expectations

Since today is Christmas, supposedly the day Christ was born of a virgin (a crazy idea explored here), I feel like I should write about why I've come to dislike religions so much, whether of an Eastern or Western variety. That's a difficult question to answer, because there's so much to criticize about these belief systems founded on supernatural premises that basically have zero grounding in any sort of evidence-based reality. Here's an attempt that discusses something I haven't emphasized much in previous blog posts, at least not explicitly:  One of the worst things about religions is how they encourage…
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Posted inHumor Personal/Stories

My icy driveway experiment: what slides furthest?

Following up on my previous post where I spoke about the freezing rain that coated my area of Oregon with a sheet of ice yesterday, I'm pleased to present the video results of an experiment I conducted today on our very icy driveway in rural south Salem. My quest was to determine what would slide furthest: a shoe, a banana, or a stuffed wolf? After the experiment, I then attempted to rescue the wolf from the middle of the driveway, which didn't go so well, as shown in the video. Nonetheless, I await my senior citizen scientist award.
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Here’s our 2022 Christmas letter, along with freezing rain thoughts

First, I'm pleased to share the 2022 Christmas letter that I wrote for my wife and I, which we call a Holiday Greetings to be all inclusive and non-religious. If you're addicted to reading Christmas letters, you can help feed your habit by clicking here, where you'll find the letters I wrote from 1995 onward. After the letter, which is in both PDF and JPEG formats, I'll share some thoughts from unusually frigid Oregon about what freezing rain has to say about the Big Questions of Life. And also, mundane questions.Download 2022 Christmas Letter PDF Regarding freezing rain, it is one…
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Posted inAtheism

How Armin Navabi became an atheist after trying to die for God

At the end of Armin Navabi's book, Why There Is No God, a book I've written about several times before, I came to a fascinating description of Navabi's efforts to know God as a devout Muslim boy. It was written by a friend of his, Mohammad Savage. Armin Navabi Enjoy these excerpts. I find this tale highly inspiring. It shows that many atheists have pursued God with tremendous effort and determination, choosing to disbelieve only after giving belief a very good chance.  Armin was born and raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran. He was indoctrinated quite thoroughly since early…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Today I beheld the glory of blessed Lionel Messi

It was meant to be, I guess. Being guided by a higher power, the Soccer God, referred to as the Football God by parts of the world other than the United States who don't recognize that if God wanted everyone to worship her as the patron saint of football, she wouldn't have created the genuine sport of football in my country. Anyway, I must be viewed with special favor by the Soccer God, since just before turning our television off last night after watching the 11 pm news from Portland, a thought burst unbidden into my mind: "Thou shalt record…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Scientology gets much-deserved ridicule in South Park episode

There's so much competition for The World's Craziest Religion, it's impossible to pick a clear winner. But Scientology has to be somewhere near the top of Mt. Crazy. I say this even though I don't know very much about Scientology. Well, until today. For after watching a South Park episode that was on one of the televisions in the aerobics room of my athletic club where I exercised this afternoon, I feel like I do know a lot about Scientology. You can too, if you watch the 22-minute episode. Wikipedia has a summary of the plot of "Trapped in the…
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