Posted inDeath/Rebirth God

Don’t be 100% sure about anything, including God and life after death

In the course of looking through old blog posts yesterday to find those related to death, because I'm working on another book based on my writing on that subject, I came to a couple of posts that made me think, in my usual humble way, Dude, these are fantastic! They make so much sense, it's a freaking secular miracle! So, behold... Some ten years later, this is still my best guess about God. Also, about life after death, existence, and the nature of the self. Looks like I’ve reached a pretty stable stage of my atheism. My best guess about…
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Posted inGod Religions

Ugh. Brady Breeze says fumble recovery in Rose Bowl was “gift from God.”

Well, obviously my 2004 request to God for no more sky-pointing in televised sports events was met with deaf divine ears, probably because God doesn't exist, so has no ears (nor anything else, of course.) Because here's Brady Breeze, safety for the Oregon Ducks football team (number 25), lifting his eyes skyward, along with his right hand, following his recovery of a fumble by the Wisconsin punter which he ran in for a touchdown. Being a big Oregon fan, living as I do in Salem, about 60 miles north of Eugene, the home of the University of Oregon, naturally I…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus God

Do you believe Jesus was the Son of God?

It's Christmas day here in the United States. Seems like a good time to put up a poll about Jesus' divinity. Finally, a post from an Oregon blogger will settle the question! (In my dreams.)  Feel free to leave a comment on this post if you want to expand on your poll answer, which is anonymous, of course. Do you believe Jesus was the Son of God?    
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Posted inGod Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

Belonging is what we long for

I'm not religious now. But I used to be.  What turned me off about religions was how divisive they often are. Each religion has its own theology, its own rituals, its own moral codes.  I got tired of feeling special. I got tired of feeling different. My spiritual quest now is to find common ground, to come to grips with whatever universal human yearning leads people to seek solace in religions. Today I started reading a book about how psychedelic entheogens -- psilocybin, peyote, mescaline, LSD, and I'd add marijuana in a sense -- can produce a sense of divinity…
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Posted inGod Religions

What if God existed, but life after death didn’t?

I think the question I asked in the title of this blog post is an excellent one. After all, most religious people believe in these two things. (1) God exists(2) Life after death exists So what if only the first proposition was true? Would religion have such a hold over billions of humans if God was real and so was the finality of death? Meaning, no life in heaven. No life in hell. No life after reincarnation. No life at all after we humans take our last breath. I strongly suspect that religiosity would lose a large part of its…
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Posted inGod

Breaking news about God! (don’t get excited, there isn’t any)

If you listen to CNN for more than a few minutes, especially if Wolf Blitzer is the anchor, you're guaranteed to hear "Breaking news!"  Of course, usually it isn't genuine breaking news that hasn't been reported before, but rather fairly fresh news that I'd heard before, though not a whole lot. When was the last time, though, that you recall hearing breaking news about God?  I'll provide the answer: never. Not once in my lifetime, all 70 years of it, has there been a credible story about some new divine revelation from the Big Guy/Gal upstairs in heaven.  For some…
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Posted inGod

Thank God you know God doesn’t exist

Here's some thoughts about Thanksgiving (holiday today in the United States) from "JB," a regular commenter on this blog. Can't disagree with anything he said. If God is in charge of this world, He/She/It would have to be a sadistic, uncaring psychopath.  Much more likely alternative: God doesn't exist. Here's JB's comment on a recent post: On this day of thanks, I also want to thank the precious lord God for all of his selfless care. I want to thank him for all of the children that are dying of cancer and all of the parents that spend every moment…
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Posted inGod Science

Stephen Hawking asks “Is there a God?” (Spoiler alert: No.)

Being a big fan of both science and Stephen Hawking, naturally I had to buy his last and most recent book, "Brief Answers to the Big Questions," which was published after he died this year.So far I've only read up through the first two questions, "Is there a God?" and "How did it all begin?" Since Hawking was an atheist, you can predict what the answers are. But I'll save the details for later in this post. First, I want to acknowledge Hawking's amazing courage and commitment to truth. He talks about the progression of his ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis),…
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Posted inGod Morality

Meaning comes from us, not God

Many religious people wrongly believe that atheists, secular humanists, and others who don't believe in a personal God (most Buddhists and Taoists fit this category) lack meaning in their lives. Actually, we do. Most of my friends and relatives are atheists. They live deeply meaningful lives.  In his book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World," psychiatrist Ralph Lewis explains how an unguided universe contains people who lives caring, loving, purpose-driven lives. Below is a summary of key themes in his book from the final chapter. I've written a couple of other blog posts about Lewis' book:"Why God is an illusion,…
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Posted inGod Reality

“Atheist Experience” guys demolish arguments of a supernatural believer

I've come to the conclusion that a big part of being a spiritual person is thinking clearly. (When I say "spiritual," I don't mean religious or supernatural; I mean finding meaning in life, the underlying spirit of one's life, so to speak.) If we don't think clearly, there's a danger that our emotions, feelings, desires, intuitions, and such will lead us astray. I'm certainly not saying that thoughts are more important than other aspects of our psyche -- just that we need to find a balance between the rational and non-rational parts of ourselves. Case in point: this You Tube…
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Posted inAtheism God

Oneness is like the Hotel California: you can’t leave it

I'm a big fan of spontaneous, well-written, heartfelt descriptions of how someone realized that atheism is the way to go. And if they've got a bunch of profanity in them, even fucking better! So when I read a comment by regular Church of the Churchless visitor Osho Robbins that met those criteria, I knew the comment should be elevated into a blog post. There's references to Indian words in the comment, but it can be understood just fine without knowing Indian philosophy. Briefly, Sach Khand is roughly equivalent to heaven. Sat Purush is God. And the lyrics to Hotel California…
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Posted inGod

Atheism isn’t a belief. It is the absence of a belief.

I don't know why it is so difficult for religious believers to understand that atheism isn't a belief. But during the 14 years I've been blogging here on the Church of the Churchless, I keep hearing, "Atheism is just another belief system." No, it isn't. Atheism is the absence of a belief in theism, which means believing in a god or gods. (See here and here.) Below is a recent comment on this subject by Osho Robbins. I liked the way he described the atheist position, and how he related this to a not guilty verdict by a court. If…
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Posted inGod

Why God is a psychological illusion

Billions of people believe that God is real, even though there is zero demonstrable evidence of God's existence. So there must be something in the human mind that produces the illusion of God. In his engrossing book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World: Why We Care Even if the Universe Doesn't," psychiatrist Ralph Lewis quotes evolutionary psychologist Jesse Bering on why people are so prone to supernatural beliefs.  Theory of mind is mentioned in the quotes below. Heres's how Lewis succinctly describes what this is. Part of people's belief in a higher power stems from our ability to form a…
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Posted inGod Humor

Thanks to Ariana Grande, I now believe God is a woman

Hey, I've become a believer. In God. Who is a woman. The lyrics explain this profound theology: You, you love it how I move youYou love it how I touch youMy one, when all is said and doneYou'll believe God is a womanAnd I, I feel it after midnightA feeling that you can't fightMy one, it lingers when we're doneYou'll believe God is a woman I don't wanna waste no time, yeahYou ain't got a one-track mind, yeahHave it any way you like, yeahAnd I can tell that you know I know how I want itAin't nobody else can relateBoy,…
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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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Posted inGod

Five reasons why I don’t believe in God

Since 2004 I've written 2,365 posts on this here Church of the Churchless blog. That's a scarily large number, which testifies to my commitment to churchlessness after spending 35 years being firmly churched in an Indian guru-based form of religiosity. During the past fourteen years I've talked a lot about why I no longer believe in God. I've put forth numerous reasons for my conversion to atheism. Here's a fairly brief description of five key reasons.  (1) Existence must always have existed. Most religions teach that God brought our universe into existence. But I've never heard any believer argue that…
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Posted inGod Humor

Young Sheldon beats a pastor at the God game

Young Sheldon is the precursor to Older Sheldon in the popular TV series, The Big Bang Theory. So says Wikipedia. Here's a video of Young Sheldon showing his scientific and logical skills as he gets the best of a church pastor. This clip gets Einstein wrong. He didn't believe in the Christian God. Einstein believed in Spinoza's god, which is Nature.
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Posted inGod Personal/Stories

My atheist interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer

Sometimes I feel like praying, even though I don't believe in God. The only prayer that I remember from my brief time in Catholicism as a child is the Lord's Prayer. So I enjoy interpreting the familiar words from a scientific atheist point of view.  Our Father who art in heaven, The laws of nature aren't bound by time and space, being both universal and responsible for the space-time continuum of our universe. These laws are our father, mother, sister, brother, and every other sort of familial relationship we might consider ourselves having with them. Hallowed be thy name. We humans…
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Posted inGod Religions

If God is real, why do religions disagree so much about God?

One of the best arguments against believing in God is that there so many varieties of religious belief. This doesn't happen in science, where there isn't an Eastern or Western science. Nor is there a Chinese or American science. Because modern science deals with entities that are real, there's agreement on, say, how subatomic particles behave, or the equations needed to put a satellite into orbit. A friend of ours recently overheard a conversation between two men sitting behind her while she was on a plane. It started with one of the men asking the other, "Are you a believer?"…
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Posted inGod

This atheist has a few simple questions for religious believers

I don't believe in God. I'm virtually certain that God doesn't exist, because there is no demonstrable evidence for a god or gods. Thus I deeply doubt that anyone, alive or dead, has ever known anything about God other than what they make up in their own mind. So I've got some simple questions for religious believers -- a number of whom are regular readers of this blog (which is kind of weird; it's sort of like avid meat-eaters frequenting a vegetarian web site). I understand that many religious believers just have faith that God exists. They don't claim to…
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