Posted inMiscellaneous

Why I removed the previous post

UPDATE: Because some of the comments on this post are wildly inaccurate, here's some additional context. I still feel bound by confidentiality to not state explicitly why the person who provided me with information about the Sabnanis asked me to remove the previous post. So I'll simply state some general observations about my experience with other religious "whistleblowers." After I started this blog in 2004, I've heard from many people disillusioned either with the teachings of their religious organization (usually, but not always, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, because I belonged to the group for 35 years) or with the behavior…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Got some good and bad news: I’m going to die on December 7, 2039

If you can't stand this heretical, ungodly, religion-bashing blog, I've got some good news for you. The Death Clock app says I'm going to die in December 2039. (I don't expect to be writing blog posts after I die, unless an atheist miracle happens.)  The bad news is that this is about 14 1/2 years from now. So you're going to have to put up with many more blog posts that you dislike. The Death Clock app calls their when-you're-going-to-die prediction "Save the Date." Church of the Churchless haters might want to start making plans for a Yay He's Finally…
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Posted inIndia Mindfulness

How Amit Sood escaped his Asian Indian spiritual traditions

Once in a while I enjoy picking up Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century, by Amit Sood, M.D. to remind myself why I liked the book so much when I first read it in 2019. Here's the blog posts I wrote about Sood's book back then. Mindfulness Redesigned for the Twenty-First Century -- my new favorite bookDalai Lama isn't big on single-pointed attentionDon't look within for inner peace. Look without. This morning I re-read the "Guilty and Back" chapter where Sood describes how the traditions he grew up with in India held him back from coming up with the modern…
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Posted inMeaning of life Reality

This is a great scene in Netflix’s The Four Seasons about emotions and reality

Sometimes I get more meaning and wisdom from a short television scene than from a long book. That was the case last night when my wife and I finished watching The Four Seasons on Netflix, a streaming series (not to be confused with the 1981 romantic comedy with the same name). I can't avoid giving away an important happening in the final episode, so consider this a spoiler alert. It really isn't necessary to understand what The Four Seasons is all about to appreciate the dialogue in a scene that I thought was really well written and thought-provoking. But here's…
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Posted inReality Science

Quantum theory is still largely unexplained, but that’s how science works

Quantum theory (or quantum mechanics) is the foundation of our modern world. Without it, we wouldn't have computers, the Internet, GPS, and so many other inventions that we've come to take for granted.  I'm fascinated by quantum theory. Though it is generally associated with goings-on at the atomic and subatomic level, not at the level of everyday life, since everything is made up of particles and energy, obviously the existence of we humans and all that surrounds us is dependent on quantum processes. This is where much of the mystery of quantum theory resides: how is it that the uncertain,…
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Posted inNeuroscience

You can feel better by giving yourself the advice you’d give someone else

Subjectivity is what separates us from other people. Meaning, each of us knows our self as a subject, a person we know from the inside, while we know someone else as an object, a person we know from the outside.  I recall that Sartre discussed this at some length in Being and Nothingness, a book that I devoured as a college student during my existentialism phase, but which, when I looked at it fairly recently, gave me more of a headache than inspiration. Still, Sartre was on the right track when he spoke about being the Other to a friend…
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Posted inGod Politics

If you’ve been looking for God’s Chosen One, his name is Donald

I'm aware that many people who visit this blog, notwithstanding its churchless nature, are either believers in God or are searching for a sign of God's presence in the world. Well, I've got some good news for you. There's no need to journey to India, no need to pray deeply, no need to meditate assiduously. For I learned today that God's Chosen One isn't hiding from view but is readily apparent. Way too readily apparent for my liking. But I'm biased, since I neither believe in God nor in God's Chosen One. So I'm pleased to share the name of…
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Posted inFundamentalism Politics

“Original Sin” book about Biden’s decline also has lessons about religious zealotry

When I first heard about the book by Jake Tapper and Alex Thompson, Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again, I wondered why that title was selected. Not the subtitle, the main title, Original Sin. I bought the book recently and have read a bit less than a quarter of it. That's enough to tell me why it's called Original Sin. Since the title has religious implications, I figured sharing some excerpts from the first seven chapters would be an interesting exercise in how politics and religion often have quite a bit in…
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Posted inNeuroscience Radha Soami Satsang Beas

We humans are good at making illusory magic

Almost everybody enjoys a good magic show. I sure do. But hardly anyone actually believes in magic. We understand that when a magician does something that appears to violate everyday laws of nature, that trick is based on illusory magic, not genuine magic. An article in the April 12, 2025 issue of New Scientist, "Magicology," talks about how psychologists are looking to magic tricks to better understand how our brains make sense of the world around us. I found this example fascinating. A classic deception known as the “vanishing ball illusion” – already well-known when Binet discussed it in 1894…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

My Oregon softball obsession shows the pluses and minuses of attachment

For 35 years I belonged to an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that was an offshoot of the broader Sant Mat movement. As I wrote about in 2013, RSSB had a decided renunciative focus, as contrasted with a life-affirming focus. For about 35 years I was a member of an India-based organization headed up by a guru whose teachings were definitely in the renunciative camp. The goal was to leave this physical world behind and find a better one in higher realms of reality. To do that, it was necessary to beware of the Five Deadly Foes, lust,…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

Criticism of Israel, a nation, is not antisemitism since Judaism is a religion

Most people in the United States are Christian. This doesn't mean that anyone who criticizes the United States is anti-Christian. Likewise, most people in Israel are Jewish. This doesn't mean that anyone who criticizes Israel is anti-Jewish, or antisemitic (which means hatred of, or prejudice toward, Jews). Of course, it is possible to be anti-Christianity, anti-Judaism, or anti-religion in general. Being an atheist, I lean decidedly in that direction. But I'm equal opportunity in this regard: I find all religions ridiculous in my current state of unbelieving, though I'm attracted to Buddhism in its non-supernatural form.  Recently on my Salem…
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Posted inNeuroscience

Emotions aren’t good or bad; they are just information

The title of this blog post is a quote from a book by psychologist Ethan Kross, Shift: Managing Your Emotions -- So They Don't Manage You, that I've just started reading after seeing a mention of it in a recent New Scientist article about emotions. I'll have more to say about the book after I get further into it. So far, I'm enjoying some fresh insights about emotions, which obviously are key to how we experience the world. Everything outwardly can be going fine with us, but if we feel sad, disappointed, listless, or are under the sway of some…
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Posted inMorality

Reaction to Biden’s cancer diagnosis shows power of empathy and compassion

Today the news broke that Joe Biden, the former president of the United States, has a serious variety of prostate cancer.  Former President Joe Biden has been diagnosed with an aggressive form of prostate cancer, with metastasis to the bone, according to a statement from his personal office Sunday. Doctors diagnosed Biden last week with a prostate nodule after he experienced increasing urinary symptoms. By Friday, they diagnosed him with cancer. Biden’s office said the cancer “appears to be hormone-sensitive which allows for effective management.” A spokesperson said in a statement that the 82-year-old Biden and his family are reviewing…
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Posted inMindfulness

What we do isn’t as important as how we do it…mindfully

Maybe it wasn't much, but I'll take it. A few days ago I found that an insight which I've rationally known for a long time had partially passed through the dividing line between intellectual understanding and experiential understanding. Meaning, the insight now wasn't so much something that I thought about, but something that had become more of my basic attitude to life. Put into words, my aha! sounds rather trite. Yet it resonated with me. I realized that I'll always be disappointed if my goal is to resolve the problems in my life. For as soon as I deal with…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Here’s a story of someone’s Grand Disillusion with RSSB and Gurinder Singh

It's always a pleasure to hear from someone who has become disillusioned with a religion. In this case, it was a person who had a history fairly similar to mine with an India-based religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), that is headed up by a guru. Below you can read the document this person sent to me that's called "The Grand Disillusion." They want to remain anonymous, but said I could share this info about them. The Dera is the RSSB headquarters in the Punjab. Gurinder Singh is the current RSSB guru. Charan Singh was the guru prior to Gurinder…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

There’s value in experiencing new things, even if you’re not sure you’ll like them

We simply don't know what the future will bring. That's a basic fact of life. I was reminded of that today when I rummaged through a drawer where I keep blank notebooks and notepads, making room for a new supply I'd gotten from Amazon. Down at the bottom of a bunch of rarely used stuff was an envelope. On it I'd written "Will (open -- obviously -- only if I die)" It was a one-page document dated March 2, 1991 called Last will and testament.  I'd written it in a period between my marriage to Laurel in 1990 and whenever…
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Posted inAlan Watts Free will

Freedom, says Alan Watts, isn’t personal but a quality of the world

I don't believe in free will. But I believe in freedom. This isn't a freedom of my personal will to do what I choose. It is the freedom of realizing that I'm part of the unified whole we call the universe.  This view is scientific. I much prefer it to unscientific notions of free will that basically say, "Because we humans feel that we have free will, it must be so." Unfortunately, feelings have little or nothing to do with truth. In his book, Determined, Robert Sapolsky laid out the reasons why free will is an illusion. An appealing illusion,…
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Posted inAlan Watts Christianity/Jesus

I ponder the new Pope and the present moment

This morning I turned our TV on, wanting to watch some news while I did my physical therapy exercises, to find that CNN's attention was focused on the Vatican following white smoke coming from a chimney -- the sign, along with bells, that a new Pope has been elected by the cardinals. I found this fascinating in a theatrical sense. Meaning, since I'm not at all religious and don't believe in God, who the Pope is only matters to me in a "political" fashion. I liked Pope Francis because he genuinely cared about the poor and downtrodden, a moral quality…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Deep thoughts about my obsession with a frustrating Starlink internet problem

For a bit more than 24 hours I've been obsessed. Not with the state of suffering humanity. Not with how I can become a better person. Not with any high level moral obsession that I'd be proud of. No, my obsession was with why our normally reliable Starlink satellite internet had stopped working. This is our only genuine broadband option out here in the wilds of rural south Salem, Oregon, where we live a whole six miles from the city limits of a state capital but have "broadband" options that people in Outer Mongolia would scoff at. (6-7 Mbps DSL…
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Posted inMeaning of life

If an experience promises to transform us, it’s difficult to decide about it

Should you become a vampire if the opportunity presented itself? More realistically, should you have a child? If you're deaf from birth, should you get a cochlear implant?  These questions, among others, are raised by philosopher L.A. Paul in her book, Transformative Experience. It's a fascinating look at something I'd never thought much about before: if an experience promises to transform us, it's difficult to decide whether to have the experience. I'll add a question that came to mind as I read the book. Should you join a religion or other form of spirituality that claims to be able to…
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