Posted inBooks Delusions Reality

Presumptions are necessary for reasoning to work

Almost everybody who has had a child -- that includes me -- knows how annoying it can be when they learn how to make "Why?" into a way to drive a parent crazy. You need to turn the TV off and go to bed.Why?Because it's late and you need to go to school tomorrow.Why do I need to go to school?So you can learn things.Why should I learn things? And so it goes, until the parent gets fed up and ends the discussion with "Because I said so! Go brush your teeth!" Andy Norman uses this sort of Why? reasoning…
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Posted inDelusions

What makes a cult a cult?

The July 12 and 19 issue of The New Yorker has an interesting book review called "Beyond Belief: What makes a cult a cult?" Here's some excerpts: If we accept that cult members have some degree of volition, the job of distinguishing cults from other belief-based organizations becomes a good deal more difficult.  We may recoil from Keith Raniere's brand of malevolent claptrap, but, if he hadn't physically abused followers and committed crimes, would we be able to explain why NXIVM is inherently more coercive or exploitative than any of the "high demand" religions we tolerate? For this reason, many…
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Posted inDelusions Politics Religions

QAnon is the religion of right-wing crazies

My wife and I have watched the first two episodes of HBO's "Q: Into the Storm" because we find QAnon both ridiculous and dangerous. Ridiculous, because QAnon faithful believe in absolutely crazy stuff -- such as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats operating a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant. Dangerous, because so many followers of Trump in this country accept the QAnon insanity, including that mass arrests of Democrats will take place and the Orange One (Trump) will become president again. I can't recommend the HBO series because it is much more boring than…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Delusions

There are no essences, just interpretations

We humans want to make more of reality than is actually there. We believe that things have more substance, more independence, and more of an unchanging essence than is justified. This is the message of my previous post about the relative nature of the quantum world. And as I noted in that post, it fits with a core tenet of Buddhism -- emptiness. Buddhism emptiness doesn't mean a void, or nothingness.  It refers to the fact that nothing has inherent existence. Nothing has an unchanging essence. Nothing stands alone, complete in and by itself. In the book I've been writing…
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Posted inDelusions Personal/Stories

I talk chakras and meridians with a churchless visitor

Following on the heels of a previous email exchange of views that I fashioned into a blog post, here's another one. This time I was asked about a relative of a Church of the Churchless reader who surprised this person by embracing a yogic view of chakras that was "woo-woo."  Here's the message that I got, followed by my response. Dear Brian,   You might remember, a while back, you were kind enough to send me that lovely killer list of books that I'd requested for a cousin of mine who was working on her thesis.   Well, she finished…
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Posted inDelusions Politics

Cult of Trump shows how delusion is linked to blind devotion

Cults come in various forms. Sure, religious cults are what first come to mind, but any form of blind devotion to an authority figure can result in cultish behavior and attitudes. On January 6 I wrote a post for my Salem Political Snark blog, "Insurrection at Capitol today caused by the Cult of Trump." This is what happens when people fall under the spell of an authoritarian cult leader. A woman died today in the Capitol building after a mob incited by Trump stormed the building in an insurrection aimed at stopping Biden from being declared president-elect by Congress. ...The…
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Posted inDelusions God

Why God is an illusion, along with other supernatural stuff

Here's a perplexing question: Why are so many people convinced that they've had an experience of God, or some other supernatural entity, when there is no demonstrable proof that these things exist? Are these people lying? Some probably are, but not all. So the most likely explanation is that they've fooled themselves into believing that their divine experience was real. How this happens is one of the subjects psychiatrist Ralph Lewis discusses in his fascinating book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even if the Universe Doesn't."  I've just started reading this book,  but can tell that…
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