Posted inAlan Watts Morality

Alan Watts was true to his moral philosophy

There's nothing that irks me more on this blog than commenters who are annoyingly sanctimonious, taking an I'm-holier-than-thou attitude to people they feel morally superior to. So when I saw this comment about Alan Watts by Spence Tepper yesterday, it irritated me. Allan Watts may appeal to drug addicts, alcoholics, sex addicts and fame addicts, but he would have done them greater good acknowldging his own struggles with these things. A man who fails, but struggles, openly acknowldging his struggle, and fights directly as best he can, that is a source of real inspiration. But a man who escapes his…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Rationality leads to progress and morality

In his new book, "Rationality," Steve Pinker ends with a Why Rationality Matters chapter. Here's some excerpts.  Pinker starts off by looking at human progress. Though the availability bias hides it from us, human progress is an empirical fact. When we look beyond the headlines to the trend lines, we find that humanity overall is healthier, richer, longer-lived, better fed, better educated, and safer from war, murder, and accidents than in decades and centuries past. Having documented these changes in two books, I'm often asked whether I "believe in progress." The answer is no. Like the humorist Fran Lebowitz, I don't…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Equanimity is like a 360 degree openness

Most mornings I listen to a guided meditation by Jeff Warren on my iPhone's Calm app. Fairly frequently Warren talks about equanimity. One way he describes equanimity is as a 360 degree openness.  I like that image. I picture myself sitting in a chair that rotates in a full circle so I can see everything through the panoramic window of my mind. The stuff I like. The stuff I don't like. Worries. Problems. Joys. Challenges. Pleasantness. Irritations. Whatever.  To alter the metaphor a bit, I picture my mind's panoramic 360 degree window as not being made of glass, but having…
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Posted inBooks Morality Science

Humans are animals. Religions should accept this fact.

Frans de Waal has written a fascinating book about animal intelligence, "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" I'm only a little ways into the book, but what I've read so far has gotten me to thinking about how religions view humans -- as animals, or as a non-animal species? Here's a passage from the prologue that makes clear how de Waal looks upon this question. In all this, we love to compare and contrast animal and human intelligence, taking ourselves as the touchstone. It is good to realize, though, that this is an outdated way of…
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Posted inMorality Politics

American’s support for Black Lives Matter has risen sharply

With the coronavirus crisis still going strong, and Donald Trump still acting as badly as ever, it's great to have some good news to celebrate. Behold... This graphic comes from a story in today's New York Times. Net support is the difference between the percent of people supporting a policy minus the percent of people opposing the policy. Here's how the story starts out. American public opinion can sometimes seem stubborn. Voters haven’t really changed their views on abortion in 50 years. Donald J. Trump’s approval rating among registered voters has fallen within a five-point range for just about every…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Morality

Sexy Super Bowl halftime show wasn’t liked by Christian fundamentalist

Over on my HinesSight blog I addressed the all-important question of whether last Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show was too sexualized. Check out my post, "Sexy Super Bowl halftime show by J. Lo and Shakira offends some, but not me." Here's how it starts out: Call me courageous -- Brian, you're so brave! -- but I've got to take an outspoken stand on yesterday's Super Bowl halftime show featuring Jennifer Lopez, a.k.a. J. Lo, and Shakira. I am unabashedly in favor of beautiful women wearing as little as possible during a musical performance, and dancing in a sexually provocative manner.…
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Posted inMorality

Golden Rule is a poor guide to morality

Here at the Church of the Churchless we aren't big on rules -- especially the religious variety. Morality is an individual decision. If doing something works for you, and it doesn't harm other people, go for it.  Oh, but what about the Golden Rule: "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Or words to that effect. Isn't this a non-religious rule that makes sense?  Sometimes. But not always. Maybe not even usually.  Frans de Waal explains why in his fascinating book, "The Bonobo and the Atheist," which I wrote about recently in A bonobo talks to…
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Posted inBooks Morality

A bonobo talks to an atheist about morality and religion

OK, the title of this post isn't literally correct. Bonobos can't talk, at least not in a human language. But Frans de Waal is an expert on bonobos and other primates, who are our closest evolutionary relatives. At the end of his book, "The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism among the Primates, " de Waal imagines what a bonobo would tell an atheist.  This amounts to a good summary of the entire book, which I finished reading recently. Frans de Waal doesn't believe in God. He does, however, recognize that while religions are a human invention, they…
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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 inMorality Religions

Everything can be reduced to the survival instinct

One of the benefits of having this blog is getting intelligent, provocative, thoughtful emails about some churchless topic. Often I'll enjoy the message so much, I'll ask if I can share it in a blog post. Such is the case with what you'll read below. The premise of this mini-essay is that survival is the central concern of us human beings.  I think the author gets this pretty much right. For sure, almost all religious belief includes a focus on survival after death. Having and raising children provides some immortality of sorts. Altruism, as noted in the essay, contributes to…
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Posted inBooks Morality

Why do gods and spirits matter?

The title of this blog post asks a question that's a chapter title in Pascal Boyer's challenging, but intensely interesting, book, "Religion Explained: The Evolutionary Origins of Religious Thought." Boyer is an anthropologist who is also well-versed in psychology. His book isn't an easy read, but I'm enjoying making my way through it, occasionally by skipping a chapter and moving ahead to a chapter that grabs my attention more. Not surprisingly, I'm carefully reading the "Why do gods and spirits matter?" chapter, since this is such an important question. Below is how the chapter starts off. I decided to share…
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Posted inMorality

Sam Harris sums up morality in eight tweets

Sam Harris did a nice job of encapsulating what morality is all about, from a broad perspective, in these eight Twitter tweets: Getting from “Is” to “Ought” 1/ Let’s assume that there are no ought’s or should’s in this universe. There is only what *is*—the totality of actual (and possible) facts. 2/ Among the myriad things that exist are conscious minds, susceptible to a vast range of actual (and possible) experiences. 3/ Unfortunately, many experiences suck. And they don’t just suck as a matter of cultural convention or personal bias—they really and truly suck. (If you doubt this, place your…
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Posted inMorality Religions

Morality has nothing to do with religion

Here's another atheist-themed letter to the editor that my wife, Laurel, has been sending in monthly to our local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal.  She makes some great points. Laurel's letters usually generate quite a few comments. This one has 18 so far. Such as: "Thank you Laurel. Pompous, so-called 'Christians' make judgements that are not backed by facts. Their faith does not equal truth. Life is not black and white. We are a diverse world, so get over yourselves." Absolutely! Read on for the letter. Not all moral advances in society come from the religious In a letter by…
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Posted inMorality Universe

Rejoice in the glorious indifference of the universe

I'm no Carl Sagan, but after coming up with the thought expressed in the title of this blog post I did some Googling to find an image to share which expressed that sentiment. So Carl Sagan and I are on the same indifferent wavelength, the difference regarding our realization of indifference perhaps being that I find this worthy of rejoicing in the gloriousness of it. Which is a decidedly minority opinion, because most people fall into these Belief Camps, which are not mutually exclusive: (1) Believing in a God who loves us, cares for us, watches out for us. Usually…
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Posted inMorality Science

Without magical thinking, the American flag is just a piece of cloth

Recently KGW, a Portland (Oregon) television station, had a story about a military veteran who was intensely distraught when some people protesting Trump's inauguration burned the American flag.  Eric Post, who served in the Marines, made an emotional Facebook video that's been viewed over 2.5 million times. His basic argument is that anyone who burns the flag doesn't believe in American ideals, doesn't respect the sacrifices of soldiers, and is a coward.  Of course, flag burners look upon themselves differently. They consider themselves patriots. They view flag-burning as free speech protected by the Constitution, which the Supreme Court has ruled…
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Posted inMorality Religions

Religious superstition is a great threat to the world

Today our local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal, published my wife's "Good Without God" letter to the editor. Naturally I feel that Laurel makes a lot of sense, fellow scientifically-minded atheist that she is.  After her letter, I'll share the earlier letter from Dale Kirby that stimulated Laurel's response. Another person, Larry Nelson, also took issue with Kirby. I've shared his letter as well.  I can't resist adding comments on my own, in red.  First, here's my wife's letter. Dale Kirby’s Nov. 30 letter claimed there is a “war” against religious freedom in our country. Naturally, there isn't. Unless you…
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Posted inMorality Religions

Our modern secular world is safer and more moral

After reading Steven Pinker's book, "The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined," my thoroughly atheist wife recently was moved to write a letter to the editor of our local newspaper, the Salem Statesman Journal. The claim that the 20th century was the most violent is not true. Most other scientific information shows that although the two world wars killed large numbers of humans, in terms of numbers of humans killed versus world populations at the time, this was actually mild compared with killings by Genghis Khan and others eons ago. Historic facts now known demonstrate that the…
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Posted inMorality Politics

An atheist Supreme Court justice would be great for the U.S.

Being a member of an oppressed minority -- atheists -- I'm totally on board with physicist Lawrence Krauss' call to put one of us on the Supreme Court, now that Antonin Scalia's death has created a vacancy.  Three per cent of Americans say that they are atheists—which means that there are more atheists than Jews in the United States. An additional four per cent declare themselves agnostic; as George Smith noted in his classic book “Atheism: The Case Against God,” agnostics are, for practical purposes, atheists, since they cannot declare that they believe in a divine creator. Even so, not…
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Posted inBuddhism Morality

Tantra vs. Buddhist ethics (Tantra is a lot more fun!)

I don't know much about Tantra. I've had the impression that Tantra was all about wild spiritual sex -- which might have some truth to it, but possibly just a little. David Chapman, though, knows a lot about Tantra. The real Tantra. Also, Chapman is an expert on Buddhism. So he's just the guy to write a post called "Buddhist ethics": a Tantric critique. The post, like all of Chapman's writings (I'm a fan), is clear and nicely composed. Still, it will strike people not into this subject as rather Buddhist-geeky.  Which isn't a criticism. Just an observation.  I read…
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Posted inMorality

Traditional Buddhist morality is worse than modern secular morality

Buddhism often is embraced by people who reject other forms of religion. It's sort of like a spiritual security blanket for those who no longer feel comfortable taking shelter under theistic theologies like Christianity. Something to hold on if it is just too scary to let go of religion entirely. I've used Buddhism in this way, being attracted to its non-supernatural aspects while rejecting rebirth, karma extending over multiple lives, and such. I don't see anything wrong with this. But there's a decent argument to be made that when the unappealing side of Buddhism is discarded, what's left isn't really…
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