Posted inComments Personal/Stories

Thanks for another good churchless blog year, whether or not you are an unbeliever like me

With less than three hours to go before 2025 draws to a close here in Oregon, the main thing I want to say in this final blog post of the year is... I deeply appreciate each and every person who visited the Church of the Churchless this year. It was a difficult period for me a few months ago, after I learned that Typepad, my blogging service for 22 years, was shutting down for good on September 30. I'd thought that this could happen at some point. Still, it was a shock. Fortunately, with the expert assistance of Glory Webs,…
31
Posted inComments Personal/Stories Politics

Open respectful discussion of controversial issues is what the world needs now

Today, the first day that I've started posting on this WordPress version of Church of the Churchless after 21 years of blogging on the Typepad platform that is shutting down on September 30, a well-known 31 year old advocate of Republican and conservative policies, Charlie Kirk, was assassinated while speaking at a college in Utah. His death has thrown the United States into turmoil. We've had too many recent instances of politicians and political leaders on both the left and right killed in the name of some sort of twisted ideology. Or sometimes, for no discernible reason at all. Somehow,…
8
Posted inComments

Reminder about how to use AI responses in comments

A reminder to those commenters who don't have a good memory of what I've said before about using AI responses in comments. You'd remain nameless if I didn't say that "sant64" is the worst offender here. This is what the Commenting page at the top of this blog says: (8) No unattributed AI comments. If you want to use the response of an AI (Artificial Intelligence) model like ChatGPT in a comment, you need to indicate at the beginning of the comment what AI model was used and what question was asked of it. Keep the AI response brief.
No Comments
Posted inComments Reality

I’m not impressed with NotebookLM or weird notions of oneness

I do my best to accept the diversity of opinions expressed by people who leave comments on this blog. Diversity is good. If we all believed in the same things, life would be super boring.  However, I'm also big on coherent conversations. While I understand that it is difficult to accomplish this via blog post comments, there's much more value in comments that can be understood by other people, as understanding is the foundation for agreements or disagreements.  Here's an example. A few days ago I wrote "Some thoughts about what oneness is, and isn't." It wasn't one of my…
50
Posted inComments Science

Denying scientific truth isn’t welcome on this blog

I've loved science since I was a child. Way back when (late 1950s) I crammed a card table into my bedroom closet, hung a light over the clothes rod, and happily conducted science experiments via chemistry sets and science kits delivered every month, thanks to my mother, who also deeply admired science. (I wrote about this in a 2007 post, "Thanks for the chlorine gas, Mom (cough, cough).") Since, I've retained my love of science, even though I ended up getting a B.A. in Psychology and a Master's degree in Social Work. But then I completed the course requirements for…
32
Posted inComments Neuroscience

For those following the comment game, Spence Tepper lost

For those who have been following the interesting exchange of views about consciousness and the brain in comments on a recent blog post, I'm pleased to present the final score on a debate about whether there's evidence that awareness can be free of filters and concepts. Commenter Spence Tepper ended up without scoring a debate point due to his religious dogmatism. Commenters Appreciative Reader and myself scored numerous debate points because we used facts and logic. Tepper never actually played the debate game, choosing to ignore calls to produce evidence for his assertion. Bottom line: you can't win a game…
42
Posted inComments

How we talk online is much different from how we talk in person

Next year I'll celebrate the 20th anniversary from when I started this blog in 2004. But, hey, I figure that  I might as well spread out the festivities by making some observations from time to time about this here Church of the Churchless. Like, right now. The most important thing I want to say is gratitude. Over the years I've learned a great deal from the people who visit this blog and leave comments. Typepad, my blogging service, says there have been 70,198 comments on 3,390 posts.  So that's about 21 comments, on average, per post that I've written. I…
5
Posted inComments

Here’s how you can help me deal with trolls on this blog

Frequent commenters on this blog will have noticed that I turned on the "moderate comments" feature this morning. I did this because an Internet troll who calls himself Harry Poole was leaving a bunch of troll'ish comments after I wrote a blog post about the weird questions he asked me in an email. So rather than leave them up for a while and then delete them, I decided to publish comments manually instead of automatically. That's no big deal for me. But it inconveniences other commenters who are used to seeing their comments published immediately (unless my blogging service wrongly…
2
Posted inComments Mystics

Mystical experiences need testing if they become a worldview

As I've noted before, and surely will do so again, one of the pleasures I get from this blog is reading intelligent comment conversations on posts that I've written. Or in this case, on an Open Thread where the comments are the substance of the post.  Below is a comment that Appreciative Reader left on an Open Thread in response to a comment by manjit. If you want to read manjit's comment, click on that link and scroll up to the preceding comment. Appreciative Reader has a knack for saying things in a way that I've never come across before.…
6
Posted inComments Miscellaneous

Back to basics: our faithless faith and commenting policies

It never hurts to return to the basics. So in this easy-to-write post I'm going to copy in one of the first posts I wrote after I started this blog in 2004, "Our Creedless Creed," plus this blog's commenting policies. Regarding the latter, note that comments are supposed to stick to the subject matter of a post. I'm flexible about this, but today two commenters (UM and Nimfa) engaged in an almost entirely irrelevant series of eleven chat comments on a post about the RSSB guru's authoritarianism.  That's unacceptable. As you can read in the commenting policies, off-topic comment conversations…
8
Posted inComments Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

Is a mechanism required for realizing Oneness?

Below I've shared a lengthy comment from "Appreciative Reader" that deserved to be made into a blog post. Why? Because the comment is nicely thought out and well written. It addresses an interesting question: whether someone's experience of Oneness just happened, and can't be described in a step-by-step fashion, or whether a mechanism that leads to an experience like this can be communicated to others. I tend to agree with Appreciative Reader that in general, someone's spiritual realization is capable of being analyzed and critiqued to a significant degree. As I've noted before, dreams are highly personal and unlike everyday…
59
Posted inComments Mystics Science

Narratives and cognitive structures aren’t “traps”

What never fails to amaze me is how religious believers and mystical enthusiasts will use the power of their human mind to criticize other people who use their human mind to criticize religion and mysticism. The plain fact is that there's no way to communicate with other people except through mental capabilities such as language, reason, and such. So unless someone wants to remain in their own private internal world -- and everyone who comments on this blog has indicated this isn't what they want to do -- narratives and cognitive structures are the only way to interact with others.…
34
Posted inComments Personal/Stories

More churchless do’s and don’ts from commenters

In my recent post, "Here's some churchless do's and don'ts for the new year," I invited blog visitors to leave their own do's and don'ts in a comment. So far, five people have done that.  Here's what they said. Nicely done, guys. Osho RobbinsDON'T seek God because He ain't seeking youDO live your life as an ordinary personDON'T seek enlightenment because it's already thereDO simply BE YOURSELFDON'T try to be anything other than what you areDO simply BE YOURSELFDON'T complain about your lifeDO simply accept what you have in lifeDON'T think you NEED anything to be happyDO be happy regardless…
No Comments
Posted inComments

Do you think this person likes me? Hard to tell.

It's sometimes said that love can masquerade as hate. If so, whoever wrote this comment on one of my blog posts really loves me. Oh, so sweet. Makes my day. (But I decided not to publish the comment, since it goes against the blog's commenting guidelines.) Shame poor Brian defending his pathetic flock of denial driven derelict delinquency. You are the miserable little coward you dumb little asshole creep. No wonder your blog site has steadily degenerated into a pathetic little ass wipe between your godforsaken psychophant collection of irrelevant disgruntled groupie goons, and anyone who has the guts and…
21
Posted inComments

No false “facts” and other commenting policies

It's time to remind visitors to this blog of the Church of the Churchless commenting policies. I approve comments that are in line with these policies. Which is almost all comments. But some people continue to disregard them. Note that I've added a new policy regarding false information about COVID-19 and other critical topics, number 7. After 16 years of running this blog, which as gotten 58,484 comments, I'm used to commenters saying all sorts of crazy stuff about their religious beliefs. That's the nature of religion, subjective and unprovable. But spouting false stuff about COVID-19 is way different. Saying…
7
Posted inComments

Comments not posting

Typepad, the blogging service I use, is having a problem with comments. They aren't being posted correctly. Only the name of the poster and the date show up, and apparently sometimes not even that. I've let Typepad know about the problem. I'm getting the comments and am publishing them, but they aren't showing up at the moment. UPDATE: Comments seem to be posting OK. I suspect the problem could have been a comment that someone posted with HTML that wasn't correct. I've noted that incorrect HTML in a comment can cascade and affect other comments. So generally it isn't a…
1
Posted inComments

Open Threads are now going to be insult-free

Some religiously-minded people have been using the Open Threads on this blog (free speech for commenters) to insult other commenters in a nasty way. I apologize for allowing this to go on, though I have been disapproving some of the extra nasty comments. My rationale, for what its worth, was that allowing religious people to show how hateful and mean they are demonstrates why it makes sense to either be an atheist, or to be a religious person who is a normal nice human being who respects the views of others. But now I've decided to adhere to the rule…
16
Posted inComments

Reminder: no trolling, flaming, or off-topic’ing in comments

A recent burst of comment activity in trolling, flaming, and off-topic'ing (new word!) leads me to once again remind visitors to this blog of its commenting policies.  That link, which is echoed in the Commenting section of the Navigation bar at the top of the page, replaces another post that said the same thing, but in a less detailed fashion.  I've copied in the commenting policies below. If you submit a comment and want it to be approved, be sure to read what follows closely and follow the policies.  Regarding irrelevant off-topic comments, it will be obvious from the title…
12
Posted inComments Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Great comment about RSSB truth-telling

Here's a comment by "j" on a recent blog post about Gurinder Singh Dhillon's involvement in a financial fraud investigation that I heartily agree with.  Truth needs to be spoken. Journalists, in India and elsewhere, do a good job of revealing truth, by and large. Yes, sometimes they make mistakes, as do we all. But the stories in the Indian financial press about the RSSB guru's alleged role in financial fraud have been almost entirely accurate, and I've been pleased to share them on this blog. I'll continue to do so.  Sure, I know that some devotees of Radha Soami…
12
Posted inComments

Commenting is good. Insulting is not.

I've added a "Commenting" link in the navigation bar at the top of this blog to remind people of my comment policies. They're pretty loose, but if you're wondering why a comment of yours wasn't approved, do some introspecting after you read the comment policy.  Each guideline is important, but failure to follow the one about insults probably irritates me the most, because there is nothing more boring than simple-minded personal insults. They belong in middle school, maybe, but not elsewhere. Like I say... It's boring to insult people in a comment. Don't do it. Stand up for issues, ideas,…
4