Posted inReality Religions Science

Reality isn’t an abstraction. Religion is. Which is why religion isn’t real.

If something can't be perceived either directly (like rocks) or indirectly (like the subatomic particles that make up rocks), then there's no reason to believe that it is real -- where "real" means being part of the natural world. Many things exist without being real in that sense. Fairies. Unicorns. God. Heaven. These are mental concepts, abstractions. They exist in human minds, but not in the world at large. Yes, a concept can become real if there is evidence for it in the natural world. Einstein's theory of relativity moved from mathematical abstraction to reality when observations and experiments confirmed…
8
Posted inReality Science

Is consciousness more fundamental to reality than quantum physics?

The title of this blog post was the subtitle to an article by Karmela Padavic-Callaghan in the May 2, 2026 print edition of New Scientist, "The essence of reality." It became the title of the online article, which I've shared below. Is consciousness more fundamental to reality than quantum physics? | New Scientist Here's how the article starts out: Imagine you could take a cosmic mixing bowl and cook up reality from scratch. It would be a strange kind of baking, with the end results including everything from space-time and satellites to cats and the cosmic web. But here’s the…
5
Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

“The Tao is Silent” is my favorite Taoist book, because it makes no sense

In my bookcase I have an entire shelf devoted to Taoism. Or Daoism. Take your pick. There's quite a few translations of the Tao Te Ching. There's many books about Taoist philosophy. Modern takes on Taoism. And my favorite book of all, Raymond Smullyan's The Tao is Silent. The back cover says "Raymond M. Smullyan is an internationally known mathematical logician." Indeed, there's a lot of books by him on Amazon. Most are heavily mathematical. The Tao is Silent is the only one I'd have a chance of understanding. But I can't understand it either. Which is why I like…
7
Posted inReality Universe

Searching for a deep meaning to the universe assumes there is one — which is dubious

My previous blog post, "What if there's no deep answers to cosmic questions because there's no deep truth," made me aware how dubious the assumption is that there's a deep meaning to the universe in addition to facts about the universe. Facts, after all, are much closer to being an objective quality of the universe than meaning is. Meaning is manufactured by human minds. Facts arise naturally from investigations into the nature of reality. As noted in the previous blog post, it seems entirely possible to know how the laws of nature operate without adding on a layer of deep…
9
Posted inReality Universe

What if there’s no deep answers to cosmic questions because there’s no deep truth?

When I used to give talks at meetings of my religious group, Eastern religion variety, almost always I'd use one of my favorite terms: ultimate reality. I loved those two words. They meant a lot to me, something to aim for, something to devote myself to, something to search for as a lifelong pursuit. Reality, I thought, was interesting. But ultimate reality -- that was the pot of gold at the end of the spiritual rainbow. While I didn't know what it was, I had some ideas in line, not surprisingly, with what the Eastern religion I belonged to for…
8
Posted inReality Religions

The world is what makes a difference between mere words and reality

"Water" can't quench our thirst because it is just a word, not H2O. So it is with language in general. "Hawaii" conjures up a pleasant sensation in me, but it is nothing like lying on a warm sunny beach listening to the waves. But when it comes to the supernatural side of religiosity, believers have to be content with words. For where is the reality that corresponds to "God," "heaven," "soul," and other terms that fill holy books and holy sermons, delighting readers and listeners with promises of supernatural experiences that are always something to look forward to, not a…
18
Posted inBuddhism

More Zen pseudo-wisdom from Dainin Katagiri

Carrying on from my previous post where I criticized what Dainin Katagiri said in some concluding chapters of his book Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, here I'll share some additional criticisms now that I've finished reading the book. While naturally I'll focus on what Katagiri said, his confusing, non-sensical statements are reflections of general problems I have with similar books about spirituality and religion. I'm open to persuasive evidence and arguments for things that I used to believe in, but no longer do. Like, the existence of God, life after death. immaterial consciousness,…
17
Posted inBuddhism

Bodhisattva B.S. is an annoying part of Buddhism

I'm finding more not to like in the concluding chapters of  Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, by Dainin Katagiri. In my previous post I criticized Katagiri for buying into the Buddhist notion of past lives, which reeks of unproven supernaturalism. In some reading I did in the book today, I came across another subject that, thankfully, I've rarely encountered in other books about Zen Buddhism: bodhisattvas. Katagiri said: There are two ways of manifesting your life every day: there is an ordinary life and a bodhisattva life. The ordinary type of life is…
9
Posted inBuddhism

Buddhist belief in past lives is ridiculous, especially for Zen Buddhism

While there's a lot to like about Buddhism -- of any religion it comes closest to being in tune with modern neuroscience -- the supernatural aspects of Buddhism turn me off. Like believing in past lives, whether this be called rebirth, reincarnation, or some other name. Buddhist scholars twist themselves into logical knots when trying to explain how it is that Buddhism, which embraces impermanence and the lack of an enduring self, can also assert that after death, some sort of essence remains of a person that ends up becoming a new person (or animal?). I much prefer secular sorts…
46
Posted inAtheism Delusions

What I used to think was God’s grace now seems just like ordinary luck

There's lots of reasons I'm happier being an atheist than a religious believer. One reason is that I much prefer feeling like an ordinary person rather than a special "chosen" child of God. Or of a guru, which amounted to the same thing in the Eastern religion I belonged to for 35 years. (Radha Soami Satsang Beas taught that the guru is God in Human Form.) Among many weird things that I used to do was thank god/guru for mundane things like finding a parking space in a crowded downtown, or being met with a series of green lights when…
12
Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness Uncategorized

Being fully absorbed in an activity is enlightenment

Usually I hate to stop reading a book after I've started it. Unless it is really bad. I figure that even though I'm not enjoying the book very much, there will be something in pages to come that I'll learn or be entertained by. So I'll read more rapidly, less carefully, as I make my way further into the book. This just happened to me with Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, by Dainin Katagiri. I go hot and cold with this book as Katagiri shifts from interesting practical advice about living to conceptual Buddhist…
5
Posted inReality

Buddhists are wrong about impermanence. One thing is permanent: existence.

As evidenced by my previous post, Buddhists talk a lot about impermanence. So far as I can tell, in Buddhism nothing is considered to be permanent. Everything arises from causes and conditions. Everything lacks inherent existence, which means existing as and for itself. That's the nature of emptiness, basically, interdependence. Even emptiness is empty of inherent existence. Yet... My experience tells me that even though impermanence rules the roost of existence, there's one thing that is permanent -- the roost itself, existence. This is one of my favorite subjects, closely related to, if not identical with, the classic question, Why…
8
Posted inBuddhism

Turn toward true impermanence

With some books, I feel comfortable stating their message in my own words. With other books, I don't. Zen titles often fall into that category, because they tend toward subtlety, paradox, indirectness, metaphor. In that spirit, here's some quotations from Each Moment Is the Universe: Zen and the Way of Being Time, by Dainin Katagiri. I resonate with each of them, even though I may not agree fully with some of them. (Zazen is Zen meditation.) It is the momentary structure of time that makes you talk to yourself that way. Impermanence creates a gap that makes your mind blink,…
No Comments
Posted inBooks Reason

Being reasonable sounds like a very reasonable thing to me

I learned about philosopher Krista Lawlor's book, Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue, from a New Yorker article by Nikhil Krishnan. "In Defense of the Moderate" appealed to my sense of moderation, but I was conflicted about the degree I wanted to be reasonable in what so often seems to be a highly unreasonable world. Here's  a PDF file in case that link doesn't work for you. In Defense of the Moderate | The New Yorker Reading Krishnan's article, I wondered if being reasonable amounted to surrendering to the most extreme political, religious, and other sorts of factions…
9
Posted inArtificial intelligence

The philosophy behind Tesla’s Full Self-Driving (Supervised)

I'll begin with a confession. A practical confession. Because if you read on in this blog post, you're going to realize that I came up with a great title for it, but I'm not going to be able to deliver much on the philosophical content. At least, not in anything more than my limited perspective. Last Wednesday, two days ago, my wife and I picked up the Tesla Model Y Juniper that we're leasing. Last night I wrote about the car in "Meet my end-of-life crisis car: a 2026 Model Y Premium." The photo above shows me standing next to…
10
Posted inConsciousness Reality

We are all aliens to each other, since we view the world from different perspectives

In particle physicist Daniel Whiteson’s book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, he speaks about how if alien beings came to Earth and we tried to communicate with them, almost certainly this would be very difficult, given how differently they likely would perceive reality. And without common perceptions, understanding is hard to come by. Assuming, as we progress along our Drake equation, that visiting aliens are mathematical, scientific, and communicative, the next hurdle to a full scientific mind meld is whether we are looking at the same Universe. If aliens have different senses, they will perceive different bits of the Universe --…
9
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions Science

Truth-telling is difficult. Lying is easy. Which explains popularity of religion.

Yesterday on my Salem Political Snark blog I wrote "Chernobyl is a HBO miniseries with a lot to say about truth in these Trumpian times." After noting that authoritarian regimes despise truth-telling, I ended the post with: Soviet authorities were fine with blaming the people in charge of operating the nuclear plant. But they did all they could to hide the fact of a serious design flaw in the Chernobyl nuclear reactor that led to a manageable problem turning into a major disaster. Admitting the existence of the flaw would undermine confidence in the supposedly infallible Soviet system. In the…
17
Posted inReality Science

“Do Aliens Speak Physics?” speaks to the nature of science and human assumptions

If you want a synopsis of particle physicist Daniel Whiteson's book, Do Aliens Speak Physics?, an article by Whiteson in the March 14, 2026 issue of New Scientist provides an overview of his provocative question. Here's a PDF of the article. It starts out this way: Would aliens do physics, or is science a human invention? | New Scientist Modern physics offers a remarkable lens on reality. In just over a century, it has decoded the architecture of atoms, traced the early history of the universe and produced laws that seem to hold everywhere, from Earth’s crust to distant galaxies. It is…
5
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Here’s all of the fascinating posts critical of RSSB by Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate

Truth-telling is contagious. Not always, but often. When we hear someone speak the truth -- not only their own personal truth, but also an objective truth insofar as objectivity is possible -- we can be inspired to follow in their truth-telling footsteps. That's how I felt after reading the guest blog posts from Anon, someone I've never met and have no idea what their real name is or where they live. This person, like me, is an ex-initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization headquartered in India that is headed up by a guru who is believed…
30
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

What is next for RSSB?

Below is another guest blog post from Anon, an ex-RSSB initiate. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years, which explains my interest in sharing criticisms of the faith that I also found lacking. GSD stands for Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current RSSB guru. I'm really impressed with what Anon has shared. It's a brilliant look at some of the alternative futures for RSSB. A must read. What is next for RSSB? RSSB is genuinely facing an identity crisis. Originally it started among humble rural…
62