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in a world that is defined by a rapid rate of change, staying on the cutting edge has as much to do with shedding outdated notions as adopting new…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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Posted inBooks Morality

Ten modern atheist non-commandments

A few months ago I wrote about Lex Bayer's and John Figdor's atheist manifesto in "Halfway through 'Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart,' I love this book." Having finished it, here's their full list of ten non-commandments (I'd only gotten to six at the time of my first blog post). 1.  The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.2.  We can perceive the world only through our human senses.3.  We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world.4.  All truth is proportional to the evidence.5.  There is no God.6.  We all…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” video is well worth $4.99

I've read Sam Harris' book, Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion. I've written four blog posts about his book (see here, here, here, and here).  So when I learned that Harris was offering a $4.99 video -- an hour of him talking about the message of "Waking Up" plus an hour or so of audience Q&A -- I wondered if it was worth five bucks to me. Turns out, it was.  I came away with a deeper appreciation for Harris' central theme: the supernatural side of religions is bullshit, but a secular understanding of how human consciousness functions…
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Posted inBooks

Cutting out the bullshit from “nonduality”

A few days ago I rediscovered a book that I'd starting reading a few years ago, David Loy's "Nonduality: A Study in Comparative Philosophy."   It's one of the few writings on the subject of nonduality that doesn't make me want to barf up the New Age pseudo-mystical crap that almost always infects this book genre. I talked about this in my first 2013 post about Loy's book, "Pink Panther and Alan Watts on nonduality." I'm reading a book about nonduality by David Loy that has a pleasingly appropriate title, "Nonduality." Loy is a Zen practitioner and a university professor. …
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Posted inBooks God

Halfway through “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart,” I love this book

With Christmas just a couple of weeks away, it's time to start thinking about what to get your atheist friend who, of course, doesn't believe in Christ (but still enjoys giving and receiving presents). Here's a book idea: Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century, by Lex Bayer and John Figdor.  Yeah, it's a bit spendy, even in the Kindle version. That didn't stop me from getting a copy, though, because I was fortunate to get a free one from a publicist who thought churchless me would enjoy the book and write a review of…
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Posted inBooks Science

“Self” is a confabulating part of the body

After buying the new book by noted biologist Edward O. Wilson, "The Meaning of Human Existence" (can't pass up a book with this title, so long as it isn't written by someone religious), I couldn't resist jumping this morning to the Free Will chapter.  The excerpts below, in bold, are some of the clearest writing about how the brain/mind works I've ever come across. And I've read a lot of books about modern neuroscience.  I've taken the liberty of commenting, in italics, on Wilson's words. Conscious mental life is built entirely from confabulation. Ooh, I love that word, confabulation: "to…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Questions I had in Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” meditation chapter

Oh, Sam, you almost deeply disappointed me. But after a closer reading of the Meditation chapter in your new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion," I'm feeling better about your approach to understanding consciousness without mixing in religious crap. After writing two positive blog posts about the book, here and here, I was looking forward to reading the chapter on meditation this morning. Before I meditated, something I've been doing every day for about 45 years. As noted in my "Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self," this is an appealing notion -- or…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” arrives tomorrow. Here’s a preview.

Oh, yeah, I'm ready for it! Bring it on, USPS or UPS, whichever Amazon has selected to deliver Sam Harris' new book, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion."  Delivery day is tomorrow. Within a week I expect to be all woken up. Unless it takes longer, like ten days.  But seriously... I'm looking forward to this book, notwithstanding my previous doubting that I will indeed wake up as a result of sending $15.85 to Amazon. Even if I don't achieve a secular enlightened state (perhaps because I already am!), reading an interview with Harris in the New York…
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Posted inBooks Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

Religion’s false story about the “Great Other”

So here we are in this world, surrounded by the universe and an even greater cosmos beyond the limit of what can be observed in our corner of the space-time continuum. Understanding this is a life's work. Well, many lives. From the dawn of recorded history, and certainly well before that, humans have been extending the boundary of what is known. Of course, as physicist John Wheeler said, "As our island of knowledge grows, so does the shore of our ignorance." However, for various reasons religions, philosophies, spiritual belief systems, and mystical practices aren't willing to accept the mystery of…
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Posted inBooks Science

Core and extended consciousness. Here and now, there and then.

Today I came to an interesting chapter, Mind and consciousness, in "The Systems View of Life," a book I blogged about a few days ago. One of the main conclusions is an unsurprising one: mind is the brain in action, not something transcendent. Let us now summarize the recent advances in cognitive science discussed in this chapter. The main achievement, in our view, has been the gradual but consistent healing of the Cartesian split between mind and matter. In the 1970's, a few cognitive scientists recognized that mind and consciousness are not "things" but cognitive processes, and they took the…
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Posted inBooks

Will Sam Harris’ “Waking Up” do that for me? Probably not.

When I visit the Amazon page for a forthcoming book by Sam Harris, "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion," Amazon helpfully reminds me that I pre-ordered way back on March 7.  Ooh, ooh! Release date is September 9! Just 25 days and I'll be on my way to waking up! Maybe. But I doubt it. I admire Harris, because he is a noted atheist critic of religion who also is expert in neuroscience and has a fondness for meditation, Buddhist variety. So I'm confident that I'm going to resonate with his new book. It should sell well, given…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Halfway through “10% Happier.” I feel 5% better now.

I'm glad my Amazon guilt led me to buy Dan Harris' "10% Happier" in the charming Paulina Springs Bookstore in Sisters, Oregon.  Whenever I visit the bookstore, usually once a month in spring and summer, I do my best to buy something. This assuages the guilt I feel from buying books via Amazon the rest of the time. So when I saw a copy of "10% Happier" last Sunday, I ended up purchasing it after thumbing through the book. Previously I'd read reviews of Harris' book that made me wary of adding one more meditation/ mindfulness title to my extensive…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories

Why I like Don Miguel Ruiz’s “The Voice of Knowledge”

I feel like I need to defend my churchless cred. Yeah, a few days ago I put up a post that praised what the front cover says is A Toltec Wisdom Book, "The Voice of Knowledge."  Can't be sure, but I seem to recall reading one of Don Miguel Ruiz's earlier books. Maybe it was "The Four Agreements." There's a lot of Four Agreement stuff in The Voice of Knowledge. For whatever reason, Ruiz's message was more appealing to me this time around. Now, I readily admit that Ruiz engages in quite a bit of God-talk. Also, prayer talk (particularly…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Don’t believe yourself, and don’t believe anybody else

I'm an easily-pleased book buyer. If there is just one memorable sentence in a book I've bought, a line that sticks with me, I consider my money well-spent.  Don Miguel Ruiz' "The Voice of Knowledge" has that sentence. If you want to know the truth, if you are ready to take your faith out of the lies, then remember: Don't believe yourself, and don't believe anybody else. I really like that advice. Sure, it sounds shocking. But Ruiz does a good job explaining why it makes sense. Here's some excerpts from the book. ...Now we know what is going on in…
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Posted inBooks Universe

Free will debate continues: Harris crushes Dennett

I don't believe in free will. There are good reasons for why I feel this way. And given the conditions of the universe at every instant during my lifetime, which encompasses those reasons, it isn't possible for me to believe or feel about free will in any way other than the way I do now.  That's why I don't believe in free will: I understand that I'm part of a whole, as Einstein put it, called "universe."  As I blogged about a few weeks ago, philosopher Daniel Dennett took some shots at Sam Harris, author of the excellent "Free Will."…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Jack Haas’ poetic wonder-filled aphorisms

I like Jack Haas a lot. Never met him. Just know him through his books. I've blogged about them here, here, here, and here. And now, here I go again.  I'd stuck Haas' "The Dream of Being" under some other books. A few days ago it came to light, no worse for wear. I finished reading the book this morning. As the front cover says, it's filled with aphorisms, ideograms, and aislings (vision poems). One of my here's has some passages from the book.  I'm sharing more. Haas has a great way of speaking about what can't be spoken about. He's…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Cold Mountain poems — Zen without dogma

Like I said before, I'm thinning the herd of my Zen Buddhism books. Even many of them are too religious'y for me now.  But I'll probably keep "Cold Mountain Poems," translated by J.P. Seaton. I was reminded of the book when I read a story in today's Oregonian about another translator of Han Shan who lives in Port Townsend, Washington: Bill Porter, a.k.a. Red Pine. I just ordered Red Pine's translation of Cold Mountain poems. I liked what was said about his translation approach in the Oregonian story. Red Pine says he couldn't write an original poem if he tried. He says…
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Posted inBooks

Meaning (of life, or anything) is a human construction

Here's some wise words from Richard David Precht in his book, "Who Am I? And If So, How Many?" Great title. Meaning is invisible to itself; a scale has no idea what it weighs. The only way to address the question of the meaning of life today is subjectively, to ask what meaning I see in my life. The reason is simple. Meaning is not a characteristic of the world or of nature, but a quintessentially human construction. "Meaning" is a need and an idea cooked up in our vertebrate brains. The point is not to find meaning in the…
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