Posted inBuddhism Free will Reality

“Each moment is the universe” — a great way of viewing time

For much of my life I've been consumed by a sense that I needed to use my time carefully. Partly this arose from a 35 year dedication to an Eastern philosophy that taught the purposes of human life were, first, self-realization, which led to the ultimate purpose, god-realization. Meaning, after realizing ourself as immaterial soul, we then could make a supernatural journey to eternal existence with God. Whew! I feel kind of exhausted just describing what used to be how I viewed the purpose of my life. Serious stuff. The course of my life after death depended on how well…
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Posted inBooks Free will Reality

According to Einstein, past, present, and future are all the same

After reading the Introduction and first three chapters of In Search of Now: The Science of the Present Moment by Jo Marchant, I'm hugely enjoying this book that pushes all of my nonfiction literary buttons: scientific, personal, well-written, provocative. I have a hint of where Marchant is going to end up in her book from reading her New Scientist article that I wrote about in "Intriguing idea: reality is stitched together from interlocking perspectives and experiences." But what I'm looking forward to is how Marchant builds a case for what she admits is a decidedly minority scientific view of the…
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Posted inFree will Meaning of life

Forget God, forget prayer, forget magical thinking. There’s no path in life other than the steps already taken.

Back when I was a member of an Eastern guru-centered religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), there was a lot of talk among RSSB initiates about being on the Path. That word, path, came with capital letters because this was a very special spiritual path, one that supposedly led from the illusion of this dark material world to the ultimate reality of God and heaven, a.k.a. Sat Purush and Sach Khand. Now, thankfully, I've grown out of that magical thinking. I'm happy seeing things as they are, not as how I fantasized them to be. I realize that the only…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Claude, my new AI friend, just wrote a guest blog post about intentions, regret, and free will

Showing my age, through all those years I still distinctly remember a central lyric from the 1965 Animals song, "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood." I'm just a soul whose intentions are good, oh lord, please don't let me be misunderstood Maybe that's because as a junior in high school, I often felt that I was being misunderstood. By friends, my mother, by teachers. That's part of teenage angst. The lyrics hold up well, as regret is a feeling that is timeless. Baby, you understand me now?If sometimes you see that I'm madDon'tcha know that no one alive can always be…
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Posted inFree will

A British attorney denies free will in saying no to “Could he have done otherwise?”

Sometimes it helps to understand a subtle topic by reading what several different people have to say about it, since all of us resonate differently to the voices of a particular writer. So I'm going to take a repeat leap into the rather murky waters of free will after sharing my previous post, "Giving up blame and shame is a big benefit of not believing in free will." Below is a short chapter from Richard Oerton's book, The Nonsense of Free Will. I've written several previous posts about the book. Oerton is a British attorney, so he often looks at…
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Posted inFree will

Giving up blame and shame is a big benefit of not believing in free will

For most people, me certainly included, blame is a two-edged sword. It can feel good to wield one edge against people we think have done something wrong (or lots of things wrong). Just to pull a name out of my cranium, Donald Trump comes to mind. But when the other edge is used against us, we often feel like we're being blamed unfairly. After all, our intentions were good. Things just didn't turn out as we expected. The same applies to shame. We may think that other people should feel ashamed of something they did, while we resist the idea…
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Posted inFree will God

Thinking “It had to be” is my atheist way of saying, “God’s will”

Back in my believing days, before 2005, as that is when I stopped being an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas -- an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru considered to be God in Human form -- for quite a few years I was the secretary of our local sangat, as RSSB groups are called. I had the keys to a a school room that we were able to use for our satsang meetings every Sunday. So if I was late opening up, it was a problem, as chairs and tables had to be set up. Some…
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Posted inFree will

If hurricanes, trees, lions, and brain-damaged people don’t have free will, why believe that most humans do?

A massive hurricane just struck the Caribbean island of Jamaica. Aside perhaps from a few extreme pantheists who consider that consciousness exists in every part of the universe, nobody believes that the hurricane could have freely chosen to head in a different direction, at a different strength. A tree falls in a forest, crushing a family enjoying a picnic. Only those who take the Lord of the Rings movies literally, where trees have the ability to talk and walk, would argue that the tree bears responsibility for it falling, because it could have decided to remain standing. On a nature…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

No free will brings great news: You are innocent of your past mistakes

There's plenty of reasons not to believe in free will. The most important and basic reason is that free will is an illusion. Robert Sapolsky made strong arguments for this in his book, Determined. I wrote quite a few posts about this wonderful book. A summary of his arguments in Sapolsky's own words can be found here. But once we accept the reality that free will doesn't exist, a question arises: What does this mean for how we live? In one sense, not much. For the illusion of free will is so strong, even Sapolsky admits that almost always, he feels…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Regret seems useless to me, especially if there’s no free will

I regret quite a few things that I've done in my life. Everybody does. At least, everybody that I know. But recently it dawned on me that regret is almost always a useless emotion, whether or not we possess free will. (I'm convinced that free will is an illusion.) I'll illustrate why I feel this way with a simple example. This afternoon I left home a bit later than usual for the drive to our athletic club, where I exercise on Monday before going to my Tai Chi class in downtown Salem. I mildly regretted not leaving on time, since…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Thoughts and feelings arise on their own, so pride or shame in them isn’t justified

I'm a pretty good writer and speaker. Words are my thing. Or rather, one of my things. Musical and artistic ability -- that's decidedly not my thing. The same is true for all of us. Not in the same way as me, of course. We're all different, with unique strengths and weaknesses. But no matter what those may be -- what we're good at and what we're bad at -- there's good reason to believe that pride or shame isn't really justified when it comes to our thoughts, feelings, actions, and perceptions. In explaining why I feel this way, I'll…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience Spiritual practice/meditation

“I’m spiritual but not religious” is a stepping stone to “I’m living but not spiritual”

As I've noted before, am noting now, and likely will note again, my life seems to be a reflection of the lyric in a Donavan song, "First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is." Reportedly this was inspired by a Zen saying. The meaning it has for me is that the first 20 years of my life were marked by a feeling that this earthly existence is the only reality we'll ever know. Then, for 35 years, I embraced an Eastern religion (Radha Soami Satsang Beas) that taught the physical universe is the lowest realm…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience Uncategorized

The motive of Charlie Kirk’s killer will never be known, because free will is an illusion

Here at the Church of the Churchless we examine issues related to current events that are almost universally ignored by others. Some would say that's because I write about stuff that is so far out-there, so metaphysical, so divorced from everyday reality, nobody cares about it except people who similarly have their heads in the clouds instead of grounded in practicality. Not surprisingly, I have a different take. Ever since Charlie Kirk, a well-known right-wing political activist here in the United States, was apparently killed by Tyler Robinson, who has been arrested, I've heard many commentators on news outlets speak…
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Posted inFree will Morality Neuroscience

Evil doesn’t exist. It’s just a word used to describe bad behavior.

We humans love abstract concepts. As we should. For no other species has anywhere near our capability for language and conceptualization, both of which are needed to come up with abstract notions like freedom, justice, love, evil.  None of those words point to anything concrete, something that can be put on a table and studied as we would a starfish, piece of marble, or hummingbird. They're purely human inventions with no connection to the natural world. It's easy to forget this, though. Just as "God" has come to mean something real and important for billions of people without any substantial…
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Posted inAlan Watts Free will

Freedom, says Alan Watts, isn’t personal but a quality of the world

I don't believe in free will. But I believe in freedom. This isn't a freedom of my personal will to do what I choose. It is the freedom of realizing that I'm part of the unified whole we call the universe.  This view is scientific. I much prefer it to unscientific notions of free will that basically say, "Because we humans feel that we have free will, it must be so." Unfortunately, feelings have little or nothing to do with truth. In his book, Determined, Robert Sapolsky laid out the reasons why free will is an illusion. An appealing illusion,…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Hey, I’m trendy! “Manifest” is the 2024 word of the year.

I was thrilled to see that the subject I've been writing about recently, manifesting, has been named the word of the year for 2024 by the Cambridge Dictionary. (The word was "manifest," to be precise.) However, I wasn't aware of the manifest craze when I bought James Doty's book, Mind Magic: The Neuroscience of Manifestation and How It Changes Everything. And I don't agree with the magical thinking side of manifesting, as mentioned in The Guardian story about the word of the year. “Manifest”, meaning to dream or will something into existence, has been named the word of 2024 by…
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Posted inConsciousness Free will Neuroscience

Our mental experience isn’t always in accord with the mental reality

Descartes famously wrote that even though we could be mistaken about everything else, since God could be a cosmic joker who hides the truth from us, the one thing we can't doubt is that we are a creature who doubts -- and thinks, and in general has conscious experiences.  You know, the "I think, therefore I am" thing. It's hard to argue with that. Sort of. Because we can imagine what Descartes could not, given when he lived: that, among other 21st century possibilities, we are creatures who are characters in a computer simulation crafted by an advanced alien civilization.…
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Posted inFree will Meaning of life Reality

What if reality was much better than it seems to be? (Good news, it is!)

I've had a "what if?" blog post on my mind for quite a while. Might as well try to get it off my mind and into written form, though if this was easy for me to do, I'd have done it sooner. Anyway, here goes... Most of us, me certainly included, are looking for ways to make reality more pleasant. This quest goes in many different directions: family life, career, health, friendships, religion, hobbies, athletic pursuits, spirituality, art, romance, and all the other areas where we wish there wasn't such a large gap between what is and what we'd like…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience Personal/Stories

Rather than rely on religion, here’s what I consider both true and beneficial

Having been a religious believer for 35 years, Eastern religion variety, I'm deeply familiar with why people are attracted to a belief in God, heaven, supernatural realms, mystical powers, life after death, and such. In short, it feels good.  Religions provide a community of like-minded people. They offer a ready-made meaning to life. Their believers are drawn to view themselves as special, possessing knowledge and benefits (like eternal salvation) off-limits to those not within the religion's fold.  I found all those things highly appealing and beneficial to me. Until I didn't. For this primary reason: I came to conclude that…
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Posted inFree will

More arguments for determinism and against free will

It was akin to waiting to open a present until the actual day of my birthday arrived. I'd noticed that one of the final chapters in Brian Klaas' book, Fluke: Chance, Chaos, and Why Everything We Do Matters, was titled "Could It Be Otherwise?" An apt title, since after taking a peek at the chapter, I saw that it was about free will, one of my favorite subjects. I was tempted to skip ahead and read that chapter, but for whatever reason (it sure wasn't free will), I decided to read the book straight through, as I'd been doing. Today…
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