Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 22 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks devoid of substantive content are an exception. Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Anti-gay church shows absurdity of religious belief

Over on one of my other blogs, Salem Political Snark, I've been writing about an ill-considered plan by city officials here in Salem, Oregon to pay the Salem Alliance Church to use a building the church owns as a temporary home for the public library while renovations are being made. You can read why the Salem Human Rights Commission unanimously voted to oppose this idea in my post, "Human Rights Commission rejects plan for library to use church building."  Why? Because the Salem Alliance Church holds to the archaic view that same-sex marriage and same-sex sex are sins. So their…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Straight talk about RSSB guru and dogma

It's great when I start out my morning by reading a comment that makes me smile with delight -- because it is honest, true, well written, and makes fun of religious blind belief. In this case, the blind belief of defenders of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, who is deeply embroiled in financial fraud, death threats, criminal complaints, and garnishment of his assets by the High Court of Delhi. But, hey, everything is going according to God's plan in the eyes of RSSB true believers, who refuse to see the facts yelling Look at me! right in…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Good overview of RSSB guru’s financial fraud involvement

It's difficult to follow the twists and turns in the Bollywood'ish drama involving Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in India. About a billion dollars is at stake here, much of it in the form of fraudulent loans that ended up in the pockets of Dhillon, his family, and close associates. Add in criminal complaints, death threats, squabbles with his relatives Malvinder and Shivinder Singh, investigations by Indian financial authorities, and court rulings -- yes,  it gets tough to keep track of what's going on. Today Spence Tepper left a comment on a recent blog post…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness

What is it like to be you? Impossible to know.

I bought a book written by Sam Harris' wife, Annaka Harris, because the title appealed to me  (Conscious: A Brief Guide to the Fundamental Mystery of Mind), and I wanted to see if she'd disagree with her husband -- a noted atheist neuroscientist whose Waking Up guided meditations I listen to every morning via an iPhone app. As I suspected, this little (110 pages) book didn't contain much that I didn't already know. But Harris did discuss consciousness in an appealing fashion, and had an interesting take on the possibility of panpsychism.  Here's how she distinguishes between prescientific notions of…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Turban tying and Bollywood dancing at World Beat Festival

As a change of pace from our usual Church of the Churchless programming, I wanted to share what I did yesterday: attend the opening day of the Salem World Beat Festival, as I do every year. It's difficult to draw profound philosophical messages from a highly enjoyable celebration of multiculturalism. But that won't stop me from trying. After I got back from the festival, I shared photos and videos that I'd taken in an Adobe Spark web page. You can peruse them by clicking below.   Obviously -- but sometimes the obvious needs mentioning -- there was zero evidence of…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB involved in controversial land deal

Someone sent me a link to an Indian Express story, "Mystery deepens over Pune land deal as Chandrakant Patil defends his actions."  It mentions Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization in India that quite a few visitors to this blog are interested in for various reasons.  Just as Patil claimed that the temple trust had obtained the charity commissioner’s permission to convey the land to the Radha Saomi Satsang Beas (RSSB), a non-profit organisation, in 1998, Jayant submitted official papers in the House to show that in 1963, a local tribunal had ruled that this land wasn’t a…
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Posted inBooks Science

Give up the illusion of body and mind being different

Here at the Church of the Churchless we worship truth. I love truth. I sprinkle truth on my cereal every morning. I rinse with truth when I take a shower. I brush with truthpaste three times a day. That's why I adore science and dislike religion. And why I'm enjoying Susan Blackmore's new book, "Seeing Myself: The New Science of Out-of-Body Experiences" so much.  Blackmore, a British psychologist, is a spiritual but not religious sort of person. As she notes in the passages from the final Who am I? chapter in her book (which I read first, because the title…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Stuff happens

Here's what I'd call a guest post, if I wasn't the guest, since I wrote it for my HinesSight blog a few days ago. There I called it, Stuff happens. Things fall apart. Such is life. But "Stuff Happens" is a fine title all by itself. Enjoy. Unless you don't. Which is fine, since stuff happens. Sometimes the most obvious things about life need to be talked about. It's easy to overlook them not in spite of their obviousness, but because the familiar tends to fade into the background, while new stuff grabs our attention. So here's a few obvious…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

A thirteen year old blog post that still rings true to me

About a month ago I started working on a book that will be a compilation of my favorite posts from the early years of this blog, 2004-2006.  Most days I try to find some time to re-read the blog posts that I've chosen, correcting typos, deleting links, and adding a brief introduction that describes how I feel about the post now. I just came across a post from January 2, 2006 that I still like a lot. Well, actually I still like all the posts I've written on this blog, but I like some more than others.  Here it is:---------------------------------…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB and other religions play on peoples’ egos

Below is an interesting comment from Ned that he just left on my recent post, "The arrogance of believing you're a chosen one, RSSB variety or otherwise."  I agree with Ned. We all want to feel worthy. But religions preach about how fallen and sinful their devotees are, then boost their ego by telling them they are "chosen people." He's absolutely correct when he says that a core teaching of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the Indian religious organization led by a guru I once belonged to, is how special and chosen RSSB initiates are. This isn't something devotees make up.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

The arrogance of believing you’re a chosen one, RSSB variety or otherwise

Not long after I started this churchless blog, I wrote a post called "Bursting belief bubbles." In it I talked about feeling really special when I still belonged to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) and believed I'd been chosen by God and the guru for a spiritual journey only available to a few. I used to believe in belief. It felt good to believe that my religious beliefs were better than other peoples’. I recall standing in line at a movie theatre, feeling exactly like someone standing in line at a movie theatre, when I remembered to do my guru-given…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Malvinder Singh’s message to the RSSB guru is moving

At the end of the attachments to the criminal complaint filed by Malvinder Singh against his cousin, Gurinder Singh Dhillon (the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas), there's some messages that are both moving and enlightening -- as they cast light on the complicated financial scandal involving the Singh brothers, the Dhillon family, and others. I'd looked at these quickly when I wrote a blog post about the criminal complaint. Today I read them more thoroughly. I've made screenshots of several messages from Malvinder to make it easier for other people to read them. To begin with, in May 2018…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB sells NYC building for $26 million

For a change of pace on this blog from news about the massive financial scandal the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, is involved with, here's some news about a massive real estate sale of property owned by RSSB in New York City.  Maybe Radha Soami Satsang Beas has started to raise cash to keep their guru in the lavish lifestyle that he's become accustomed to. After all, reports in the Indian financial press indicate that in recent years Dhillon and his family were the beneficiaries of up to a billion dollars in shadowy and sometimes fraudulent…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Blind faith prevents defenders of RSSB guru from seeing reality

It's not surprising that devotees of a guru who is considered by them to be God in human form, despite any evidence he possesses any divine qualities, are unable to recognize the reality of the massive financial fraud Gurinder Singh Dhillon is deeply enmeshed in. Reading irrational comments on this blog from people afflicted with blind faith, I feel like I'm viewing a murder trial where a defense attorney repeats over and over, "Members of the jury, his fingerprints weren't on the murder weapon, so you must find my client not guilty." OK. That one fact is true. But the…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Religious faith explains illogical devotion to RSSB guru

Why do otherwise intelligent and reasonable people lose touch with reality when religion is involved? I've been wondering about this whenever I read comments on this blog from fervent defenders of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas who is deeply involved in financial fraud totaling hundreds of millions of dollars. They ignore obvious facts. They offer up ridiculous excuses for inexcusable behavior. They keep repeating falsehoods even after the truth has been repeatedly pointed out to them. Today I read further in Martin Hägglund's excellent book, "This Life: Secular Faith and Spiritual Freedom."  (Which I wrote…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

What’s next for the RSSB guru and Singh brothers scandal?

The massive financial scandal involving the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas and the Singh brothers, Malvinder and Shivinder, has been likened to a Bollywood movie -- albeit one whose ending hasn't been written yet. If you browse through the posts in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas category of this blog, focusing on the posts related to this scandal, it'll soon become evident that this subject is complex. There are many actors in this drama, each playing their own unique role. There's no way to accurately predict what will happen next. I've summarized the broad scope of the scandal in…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Would you buy the RSSB guru again?

There's an adage about buying and selling stocks that fits with buying into spiritual or religious teachings, especially those where the leader or guru is an integral aspect of those teachings. If you wouldn't buy a stock at this price, you probably should sell it. Here's another way of putting this: given everything you know about a company right now, would you still choose to buy the stock that you paid money for some time ago? If the answer is "No," you probably should sell the stock, even at a loss. One reason buying and selling decisions with stocks are…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

RSSB deletes financial fraud stories from website

So much for openness and transparency. Here's a comment that was just left on this blog. GSD refers to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas. Has anyone noticed that all the links to the news articles about the Singh brothers saga on RSSB website have been removed ....https://www.rssb.org/articles.html The question is Why ? Only a few weeks ago GSD had said in reply to a Q that RSSB is not involved and all the news articles are posted on their website. This person is correct. The Bloomberg story is gone. Can't remember if there were others…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Why the RSSB guru is responsible for financial fraud

We're conducting a psychological experiment on this blog. How is it possible that devotees of an Indian guru are unable to recognize the facts about his involvement in financial fraud involving hundreds of millions of dollars? Comments on numerous blog posts based on reports in the Indian financial press show that denial is alive and well in the minds of those who want to believe that the guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, is a "perfect living master" rather than a money-hungry Indian guy who has been using his position as head of Radha Soami Satsang Beas in enrich himself and his…
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