Posted inBooks Vedanta/Advaita

Osho on how life is purposeless (a good thing!)

A few days ago somebody emailed me a document about how life is purposeless, since I'd recently blogged about "The joy of living in a meaningless world." They weren't sure who had written the piece, but thought it was Osho (previously known as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh). They were right. I found this out via a Scribd file, which I've copied in below.  I like what Osho says. I agree with almost everything in the piece, which is an excerpt from a book he wrote, "Vedanta: Seven Steps to Samadhi." Because it is about 3,000 words long, and some people may not…
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Posted inBooks Religions

Why we ignore facts and embrace falsehoods, both in religion and science

The title of "Denying to the Grave: Why We Ignore the Facts that Will Save Us" pretty much sold me on the book.  Even though the authors focus on medical myths, often the same factors that lead people to embrace health falsehoods are responsible for unfactual religious beliefs. On page 5 we get a list of "healthcare beliefs that fly directly in the face of scientific evidence and that are supported by at least a substantial minority of people." Vaccination is harmful. Guns in the house will protect residents from armed intruders. Food containing genetically modified organisms (GMOs) are dangerous…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

“The Simplest Case Scenario” is a must-read for philosophical science-lovers

Scientific. Philosophical. Well-written. Creative. Mind-expanding.  "The Simplest Case Scenario" by Karl Coryat pushed all of my book-loving buttons.  It's subtitle points to why I liked it so much: How the universe may be very different from what we think it is. I've believed this for my entire adult life. But for most of that time I thought that the Secret of the Cosmos could only be revealed through mysticism, meditation, philosophical contemplation, enlightenment, psychedelics.  At the same time, I've always adored science. I've read countless (almost) books about quantum mechanics, cosmology, neuroscience, cutting edge physics, systems theory, evolution, and such.…
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Posted inBooks

Who’s afraid of The Big Bad Contingent World? Sartre, but not me!

Here's a true tale about my life that does a pretty good job of illustrating the philosophical notion of "contingency." I related it in a comment on my 2006 post, "Breaking free of family influences."  I graduated with a useless BA in psychology and was contemplating applying for an appropriately menial job. Then I overheard a conversation in the San Jose State cafeteria. "Man, I can't do anything with a psych degree. And it takes at least three years to get a Ph.D." His friend replied, "You should get a M.S.W. It's just two years, and there are good jobs…
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Posted inBooks Science

“I Am a Strange Loop” — a book that beautifully explains consciousness, soul, and I-ness

When I decluttered some bookshelves recently, and gave a bunch of books away, one of the titles in the Absolutely Must Keep pile was Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop."  This is one of my favorite books. It does a marvelous job of explaining the nature of mind, soul, consciousness, I-ness, and such. Hofstadter's approach is based on modern neuroscience, but he doesn't focus on brain minutia. Rather, he takes a broad perspective that ties together science, philosophy, and everyday experience in a highly convincing fashion. I've blogged about "I Am a Strange Loop" before: If I'm not an…
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Posted inBooks

Empty bookshelves reflect my religious deconversion

I love books. I learn a lot from books that I've bought.  But yesterday I also learned a lot from deciding which books to give away (to the Friends of Salem Library, who sell them to support the library). Two large bookshelves and a small bookshelf no longer fit our living room's decor. So my home decorating guru, a.k.a. My Wife, She Who Must Be Obeyed, let it be known that it was time to move the bookshelves into my office. Which meant, I had to remove all of the books. Then decide which ones I wanted to keep. Most…
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Posted inBooks Science Taoism/Tai Chi

“Incomplete Nature” shows how life is based on absence

Demonstrating some spousal exaggeration, my wife has been saying that she fears being crushed by a pile of books I've read that are awaiting my blogging attention. (I made sure to include a chair in this photo for scale; unless Laurel shrinks to two feet tall, I think she has nothing to worry about. However, I will admit that there's another pile behind this one, so combined they could possibly be a risk to wifely health.) The top light green book, 600 pages thick, seemed like a good place to start on reducing the pile. It is Terrence W. Deacon's…
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Posted inBooks Taoism/Tai Chi

Lessons for living from a fictional assassin: the “Gray Man”

Here's how far down the churchless rabbit hole I've burrowed: I'm able to find existential "spiritual" meaning in a book series about an unstoppable assassin, the Gray Man, a.k.a. Court Gentry.  Court Gentry is known as The Gray Man – a legend in the covert realm, moving silently from job to job, accomplishing the impossible, and then fading away. And he always hits his target. But there are forces more lethal than Gentry in the world. And in their eyes, Gentry has just outlived his usefulness. Now, he is going to prove that for him, there is no gray area…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Eating, drinking, shitting, fucking — the most “spiritual” aspect of our reality

Religions typically disparage our animal and vegetative nature. They urge us to embrace soul, mind, spirit -- whatever immaterial essence supposedly lies within us and connects us with a higher divine reality. Re-reading the first chapters of Hubert Benoit's marvelous book, "Zen and the Psychology of Self-Transformation: The Supreme Doctrine, " I was struck again by how brilliantly Benoit talks about Zen. His outlook is pleasingly fresh. In The Existentialism of Zen chapter, Benoit says that we mistakenly value living more than existence. We aren't content with just being an integral part of a much larger reality. No, we seek…
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Posted inBooks Science

Sean Carroll’s “Planets of Belief” — ideally constantly changing

I've loving a new book by theoretical physicist Sean Carroll,  "The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself." After reading just a few chapters, I felt compelled to leave a laudatory Amazon reader review. Here's part of what I said. I'm an inveterate consumer of both science and philosophy books. Almost always, the scientists lack the ability to talk about philosophy cogently, and almost always the philosophers are clueless about basic scientific understandings. So each frustrate my desire to simultaneously (1) learn about how the world is, and (2) find meaning in the world, given…
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Posted inBooks Science

My (only) big problem with Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” book

I'm re-reading Sam Harris' Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. Having read it first in 2014, I wanted to see if I looked upon the book any differently now -- having altered my views about meditation, consciousness, and such during the past few years. Well, I'm still having a problem with how Harris looks upon consciousness. It's pretty much the same problem I talked about in "Questions I had in Sam Harris' 'Waking Up' meditation chapter." It sure seems in the "In fact..." passage that Harris is touting the good that comes from feeling that he is a…
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Posted inBooks Religions

Worst and best part of being human: imagining what doesn’t exist

Imagination is wonderful. Except when it isn't.  That's one of the core messages of psychologist Daniel Gilbert's marvelous book, "Stumbling on Happiness."  I'm re-reading the book after first discovering it in 2006, when I wrote "Happiness is a new mountain bike. Maybe." On the same day I bought myself this present, I received a few other gifts from myself after a visit to my other favorite Sisters store, Paulina Springs Books. I saw “Stumbling on Happiness” by Daniel Gilbert on the new non-fiction table. At first I figured that the book would tell me how to do just that. But…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Quotations from “Nature’s God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic”

l am loving Matthew Stewart's brilliantly written book, Nature's God: The Heretical Origins of the American Republic. It demolishes the absurd oft-heard claims that the United States was founded as a Christian nation. Yet it is difficult to summarize Stewart's arguments why this is untrue. "Nature's God," which I'm about 2/3 through, is a complex blend of history and philosophy. It isn't enough to simply say that this country was founded by deists, not theists.  Yes, this is true. But to understand the book's subtitle, "The Heretical Origins of the American Republic," not surprisingly requires Stewart to journey through a…
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Posted inBooks Religions Science

Knowledge must be based on facts

Recently I wrote about "Five criteria for a 'God Theory' that religions fail." One of philosopher L.R. Hamelin's criteria related to private knowledge. If her theory can be tested only by private revelation, not by observations available to everyone, she unjustifiably claims private knowledge. Someone left a comment on this post, wondering why private knowledge wasn't justifiable. This was my reply: Here's how I see the issue of "private revelation" and "private knowledge." Can knowledge be private? Only if we define knowledge in a way that makes it virtually (or completely) synonymous with subjective experience. But then it isn't really knowledge…
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Posted inBooks God

Five criteria for a “God theory” that religions fail

Science rocks. Religion sucks.  I'm only a few chapters into a new book by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, "Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible." But it's pretty darn clear that those four words are a good summary of his thesis. Which I totally agree with.  Coyne has no patience for accommodationists who believe that science and religion are somehow complementary, offering up different ways of understanding the cosmos that, when combined, produce more knowledge than either science can alone. In a summary of what the book is about, Coyne writes: I also take up the notion of…
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Posted inBooks

What do we want? Happiness, experiences, or meaning?

About all it took for me to order Todd May's book was the title: "A Significant Life: Human Meaning in a Silent Universe."  How could I resist? Hey, I want a significant life. Filled with meaning. And I totally agree we live in a silent universe. That is, one which doesn't have a God or some other cosmic entity whispering in our ears, Here is what makes life meaningful... I've got a few chapters left to read. Ordinarily getting this far into a philosophical book would make me confident that I know what the final conclusions will be. But May,…
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Posted inBooks God

“A God That Could Be Real” doesn’t seem very real

After spending half an hour or so perusing articles about, and reviews of, a book called "A God That Could Be Real: Spirituality, Science, and the Future of Our Planet," I've pretty much concluded that... This God doesn't strike me as potentially real enough to buy what Nancy Abrams wrote. But I'll give her credit for this: creativity, thought-provoking'ness, poetic prose, and a semi-gallant attempt to explain a God that is compatible with modern science. Since I don't understand how her God is any different from the collective imagination of humanity, I don't feel like I can explain Abrams' conception…
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Posted inBooks Science

This Idea Must Die — great idea for both science and religion

Browsing through Portland's amazing bookstore, Powell's, I came across "This Idea Must Die: Scientific Theories That Are Blocking Progress" in the new non-fiction area. Couldn't resist it. The back cover said: Few truly great ideas are developed without first abandoning old ones. In the past, discoveries often had to wait for the rise of the next generation to see questions in a new light and let go of old truisms. Today, in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new…
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Posted inBooks Science

Consciousness is a fundamental property of matter

After attending a talk in Portland, Oregon by neuroscientist Christof Koch (see here), I've been re-reading his book, "'Consciousness: Confessions of a Romantic Reductionist." In his talk, as in my blog post about it, Koch emphasized his search for the neural correlates of consciousness. That is, the specific goings-on in the brain that produce a specific "percept," like seeing the color red. A few commenters have correctly noted that this doesn't answer the Hard Problem question: how and why we have phenomenal awareness in general, leaving aside the question of how and why this particular bit of awareness comes to…
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Posted inBooks Science Universe

Here’s a science book with a radical view of reality

Oh, man. I'm so glad I got pulled in by the Book Magnet.  That's how I explained my purchase of two thick, serious books to the cashier at the Book Bin in downtown Salem, Oregon. I'd parked my car in front of the bookstore, gone to my Tai Chi class, and was all set to drive home until, poised to unlock the car door... Go inside and check out the new books, the everpresent voice inside my head told me. Must obey, I happily told myself. "The Singular Universe and the Reality of Time" stared me in the face almost…
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