Posted inReality

Does Santa Claus exist? Depends on the nature of belief.

With Christmas coming in a few weeks, it seemed just the right time to read a book by Eric Kaplan called "Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Investigation." Now, I'm not quite done with the book, and I also don't want to give away what I suspect Kaplan's ending will be. So I'll focus on the existence of Santa Claus in another post. Here I'll zero in on a thought-provoking thought experiment about beliefs and reality that Kaplan throws out in the introductory chapter. It's a good example of what I like most about the book: a pleasing blend of quirky…
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Posted inScience

Max Tegmark: “Consciousness is the way information feels”

I felt unsatisfied after reading Margaret Wertheim's "I feel therefore I am: How exactly did consciousness become a problem?"  Wertheim, a talented science writer, ably reviewed philosophical and scientific conceptions of consciousness. But she ended up favoring a mysterian view where subjectivity supposedly is just too different from physical matter to have consciousness explained by particles. This is all thrilling science, yet a question remains: will any of it explain subjective experience?  Chalmers, the philosopher, claims that the problem of experience is not mechanistically reducible and he argues that it will ‘persist even when the performance of all the relevant functions is explained’.…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Fundamentalism

No surprise: Planned Parenthood shooter is a religious fanatic

I don't believe in ESP. But it didn't take any supernatural powers of perception for me, and many others, to accurately predict that the man who entered a Planned Parenthood clinic, killing three and wounding nine, was religiously motivated. A well-researched New York Times piece, "For Robert Dear, Religion and Rage Before Planned Parenthood Attack," describes Dear's religious sensibilities. Excerpts: He found excuses for his transgressions, she said, in his idiosyncratic views on Christian eschatology and the nature of salvation. “He claims to be a Christian and is extremely evangelistic, but does not follow the Bible in his actions,” Ms.…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Science

Physicist Sean Carroll debunks unscientific religious myth-making

My wife is a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, so we get the organization's excellent newsletter. On paper, even! I just got around to reading the August 2015 issue. It had an excellent piece by physicist Sean Carroll -- the address he gave after winning FFRF's "Emperor Has No Clothes Award."  You can read "Physicist Carroll: Atoms and Eve incompatible" on the FFRF web site. Or via this PDF file: Download Physicist Carroll: Atoms and Eve incompatible - Freedom From Religion Foundation Only the paper version had two interesting graphics. So I took photos of them to share…
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Posted inBuddhism Wu Project

In Buddhism, ultimate truth is an absence, not a presence

Yeah, I'm on an emptiness roll, Buddhism style. Three blog posts in a row on this fascinating subject (see here and here for #1 and #2). Having finished Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness," I ordered a roughly similar Newland book, "Appearance & Reality." Both books are giving me new insights into what Buddhism is all about.  There's very little religious supernaturalism in them, a big reason why they appeal to me. I'm fine with philosophical Buddhism, which by and large is compatible with modern scientific understandings of reality. Once we get into rebirth, omniscience, and additional other-worldly stuff, though, I…
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Posted inBuddhism

Buddhism: the illusion of life is believing in a fixed reality

For many years -- decades, really -- I believed that the everyday world in which we live was an illusion. Meaning, there was an unseen truly real realm beyond the bounds of ordinary consciousness.  Changeable matter and mind weren't part of this ultimate reality. Only the eternal unchanging soul, our true self, was able to be aware of it.  Now, I understand that I had things completely backward. Such is how science comprehends the world. Also, Buddhism. As noted in my previous post, the Buddhist notion of "emptiness" is that nothing -- including us, and even emptiness itself -- has…
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Posted inBuddhism

Emptiness is ultimate reality: nothing, including us, has an intrinsic nature

I run hot and cold about Buddhism, depending on what sort of Buddhist writing I'm reading. Religious Buddhism turns me off, but I like philosophical Buddhism that doesn't fall prey to unfounded supernaturalism.  Recently I've been re-reading Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness." It's a clear and persuasive description of the core notion in Mahayana Buddhism, emptiness.  In the first few pages of his book, Newland explains what emptiness is all about. First, he speaks of the suffering that arises because we wrongly believe that we are something we're not. We suffer unnecessarily because we do not know ourselves. Like addicts…
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Posted inFundamentalism

“Imagine” is the solace I needed today

After hearing about today's attacks in Paris, I considered writing a blog post about religious fundamentalism. But then I realized that John Lennon had already said everything I wanted to say. And in a much better way.------------------------------- Imagine Imagine there's no heavenIt's easy if you tryNo hell below usAbove us only skyImagine all the peopleLiving for today... Imagine there's no countriesIt isn't hard to doNothing to kill or die forAnd no religion tooImagine all the peopleLiving life in peace... You may say I'm a dreamerBut I'm not the only oneI hope someday you'll join usAnd the world will be as one…
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Posted inBuddhism Reality

Asked to say something about love, I’m pretty much speechless

Yesterday I got an email message: Dear Mr. Hines , Your blog is very honest and nothing is more beautiful save love itself. Please tell us more about self-less and mutual love  and your views on the subject. Sincerely, __________ Reading those words, I realized that I haven't written much explicitly about love during the eleven years this blog has existed. This will be post # 2,140. When I used the search box in the right sidebar to see what popped up when I put in "love," almost all of the Google results for my two blogs were on my more…
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Posted inScience

Beauty is enhanced by science, not diminished

Here's a great video of physicist Richard Feynman speaking about science and beauty, combined with some gorgeous images.  Feynman makes some excellent points.  I've never understood why some wrongly believe that scientists, and the scientifically-minded (I include myself in this group), don't appreciate the beauty in life as much as other people do.  Feynman points out that scientists look upon the world in the same way as everybody else. But they also have a deeper factual understanding of certain aspects of reality. This enhances, rather than diminishes, the scientific appreciation of beauty.
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Death is scary. How we deal with the fear… often even scarier.

I've got no problem admitting that I'm afraid of dying. I've grappled with a primal fear of nonexistence. I've asked our attorney, when drawing up our wills (or living trusts) to substitute the word "gerbils" for "dies" when speaking about me, as in When Brian gerbils, his possessions will go to...  But my fear of death has moderated quite a bit as I've grown older. (I'm 67 now.) I'm still more than a little interested in the subject of death, though. So when I heard about a book called "The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in…
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Posted inReality

Why we believe in things we know aren’t true

It's a well-worn saying here in the United States: "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."  We all deny reality. We all prefer to feel good about a falsity rather than embrace a harsh truth. But some people struggle against our human inclination to believe in things that aren't true, while others make little or no effort to resist the lure of denial.  A piece in the New York Times, "Believing What You Don't Believe," casts light on what's going on here.  How is it that people can believe something that they know is not true? For example, Kansas City…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Coach’s praying on field deserved a Satanic response

When religious fundamentalism runs amok, I love it when the overly-righteous get an unwelcome reflection of their own dogmatism. Here in the Pacific Northwest (I live in Oregon), local newspapers have been running stories about a high school football coach in Washington state, Joe Kennedy, who likes to overtly pray on the field.  Pleasingly, he was sacked on the Unconstitutional Goal Line. An assistant football coach at a Washington high school who prayed at games after he was told to stop praying was placed on paid administrative leave Wednesday night. The Bremerton School District placed Bremerton High School assistant football coach…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

My new affirmation: softer, slower, smaller

I've been practicing Tai Chi for about eleven years. Before, I was into hard style martial arts -- traditional Japanese Shotokan karate at first, then a mixed style focused on Korean karate.  Soft-style martial arts like Tai Chi (a.k.a. internal styles) take considerably more time to learn and, perhaps, master. External styles are centered on punching, kicking, blocking, and such. What you're supposed to learn is pretty much open to view. Sure, there's a mental side to karate, but by and large the emphasis in training is on what your body is doing, not your psyche. With Tai Chi, there's…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Religions

“Soul” — an appealing notion, but no agreement on what it is

For many years I believed that I had, or was, a soul. This idea was comforting, because the spiritual philosophy I followed taught that the essence of human beings was non-material, pure consciousness, and everlasting. So when my body died, supposedly my soul would live on. Worse case was, it, or I, would be reincarnated as another bodily life form. Best case was, my soul, or True Me, would leave matter and mind behind forever. In this case, soul-me would exist in a "heavenly" realm beyond time and space. Now, it was always hard for me to imagine what such…
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Posted inGod Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

“Faithless Feminist” speaks to irreligious women and men alike

My wife, Laurel, is an increasingly ardent scientifically-minded religious skeptic. After starting a Meet Up discussion group here in Salem -- Science Minded Skeptics --  she's gotten to know Karen Darst, a Portland woman who runs the Faithless Feminist web site.  Check it out. It isn't just for women, or feminists. I liked Garst's "The Devil Made Me Do It" post. The whole idea of the devil is ridiculous, but the notion of an supernatural power in opposition to God (who is another absurd idea) can be found in Eastern as well as Western religions.  For a long time I…
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Posted inScience

Consciousness could be the mind’s way to explain unconscious actions

One of my favorite parts of New Scientist issues are the letters. Not surprisingly, given the readership, the letters typically are intelligent, insightful, and creative.  Below is one from the October 10 issue that grabbed my attention. It just seems like it could be so right, though I'm not sure how anyone could test this hypothesis.  The letter writer suggests that just as the human mind/brain has an inherent tendency to attribute conscious purpose to other people (basically, "theory of mind"), perhaps that same ability to construct a purposeful agent also is applied inwardly -- to one's own mind.So when we…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Afterlife myths enabled early humans to cope with fear of death

Members of a wolf pack who are hunting prey with sharp horns don't stop and think, "Damn, if I keep chasing those animals, I could freaking die!"  Early humans did. Because we have self-awareness, while animals, almost certainly, simply are aware.  Meaning, a human can anticipate his or her death, even when the threat of that happening isn't imminent. Other animals also fear death, but only when their lives are immediately threatened. This is a huge difference. An important difference. A difference that makes all the difference between us and other species. It also is a central theme of a…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Mantra meditation basically is useless

First off, tonight I had another circular moment when I decided to search Google for "mantra meditation useless," the topic that I wanted to blog about. This has happened to me before when I've asked the Great God Google to enlighten me on some subject. I do a search, then find that some of my own Church of the Churchless posts are the top results.  So I turn out to be the answer to the question that I asked myself.  In this case, Google led me to my "Meditation is useless" and "Skeptical look at mantras and Transcendental Meditation" posts. …
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Posted inPolitics Religions

“Our God is a Woman! Our Mission is Protest! Our Weapon are bare breasts!”

FEMEN International has a good slogan -- the title of this post.  Recently they made good on those words, as described in "Topless female protesters manhandled after disrupting Islamic conference in France."  Members of a feminist protest group known for storming events topless has disrupted an Islamic conference in France and caught what appears to be a bit of a beating in the process....Even right-wing media sites like Breitbart were impressed when two young women, sans shirts, took the stage last weekend at what was billed as a “Muslim salon” in Pontoise, France, a town just outside of Paris. The salon, as…
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