Posted inPolitics Reality

Three philosophical approaches for coping with a Trump presidency

Like a lot of people, I was shocked last Tuesday when, instead of the Hillary Clinton win that I expected, I went to bed with the nightmare of a President Trump coursing through my still-awake brain.  It took me a long time to fall asleep. I did my best to relax, to reassure myself that this wasn't the end of the world. But damn, it sure felt like it.  During the past post-election week, I've been exploring mental defusing approaches to keep my head from exploding. They seem to be helping, though it's difficult to separate the healing that comes…
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Posted inGod Reality

Shermer on why a supernatural God almost certainly doesn’t exist

This month's Scientific American has a great "Skeptic" column by Michael Shermer: At the Boundary of Knowledge: Is it possible to measure supernatural or paranormal phenomena? Shermer cites physicist Sean Carroll's book (The Big Picture, which I enjoyed) in this passage. Take our understanding of particles and forces, which Carroll says “seems indisputably accurate within a very wide domain of applicability,” such that “a thousand or a million years from now, whatever amazing discoveries science will have made, our descendants are not going to be saying ‘Haha, those silly twenty-first-century scientists, believing in ‘neutrons’ and ‘electromagnetism.’” Thus, Carroll concludes that…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Free will is an illusion: convincing Sam Harris video

Below is a 9-minute video that encapsulates Sam Harris' views about free will. Which, in short, is that it is an illusion. And that the world would be better off if people recognized this, rather than wrongly believing that humans are able to freely choose what to do at any given moment. The background music in the video is a bit distracting. But Harris' message is so convincing, and the video is so well done (aside, perhaps, from the music selection), I urge you to watch it.Now, I realize that some people don't look upon free will in the way…
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Posted inReality Science

Science warns: don’t get sucked into a black hole of belief

When I was in college forty-six years ago, back in the ancient year of 1970, I was attracted to a Eastern form of mysticism that went by various names, including Science of the Soul.  I really liked the idea of being able to do a spiritual "experiment."  Become a vegetarian. Live a moral life. Meditate for several hours a day as instructed by the guru. Observe what happens in meditation. Explore the hypothesis that there are higher non-physical domains of reality. Attempt to enter these via an altered form of consciousness. For about thirty-five years I diligently conducted that experiment.…
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Posted inReality Universe

“Existence exists” — the cosmic lock to which humans have no key

I'm obsessed, in a pleasing way, with a cosmic notion: existence exists.  (A Google search of my blogs reveals the posts where I've tried to "eff" this ineffable subject. Some are here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.) Seemingly there's not much I could add to what I've said about this ultimate mystery. Except... what I'm going to add right now. Which is another attempt to speak about the unspeakable feeling that comes over me when I contemplate the fact that existence exists. This feeling can't be produced on demand. Right now I'm talking about a memory of it,…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Stephen Hawking’s “Genius” series looks at free will confusingly

Wow! As a big Stephen Hawking fan, I never thought that I'd write a blog post where I took him to task for getting a scientific subject wrong.  But after watching Episode 3 of Hawking's new "Genius" series, I've got to point out how confusing this Why Are We Here? episode was when it came to free will.  I've read a lot about free will. I've thought a lot about free will. I've written a lot about free will. (For example, see here, here, and here.) So I was all eyes and ears as Hawking led three ordinary people --…
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Posted inReality Religions

2016 Portland Atheist Festival: Laurel Hines rocks the stage

Yesterday my wife, Laurel, and I made a non-religious pilgrimage northward up I-5, where we (and three other faithless Salem friends) took part in the first-ever Portland Atheist Festival. Laurel volunteered to walk around with an "Atheists rock!!" sign and handouts. Which, not surprisingly, she handed out to people who wandered over to check out the booths in downtown Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square.   This video shows Laurel taking part in a "coming out" feature of the festival, as described in an Oregonian story, "Upcoming Atheist Festival hopes to coax non-believers out of the closet."  This Thursday, one person after…
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Posted inReality Religions

Non-believers in religion urged to come out of the closet

Here's a Guest Opinion by my wife, Laurel, that is in the current issue of Salem Weekly -- our city's alternative paper. In it she plugs the May 26 Portland Atheist Festival. Laurel and I are signed up to be some of the people who will speak for two minutes about why they're proud to be atheists. Non-Believers Come Out of the Closetby Laurel Hines If you are one of the ever-growing numbers of people who don’t believe in a religion, you are “a-theist” (not part of a religion). If you don’t like the religious dogma that Ted Cruz and…
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Posted inReality Science

“Free will isn’t. Existence is.” My hoped-for TEDx talk.

Well, it's time for my third annual TEDxSalem speaker application. I was rejected in 2014 and 2015, having pitched Grand Talks About The Cosmos that, obviously, didn't strike the speaker selection committee as being such marvelously interesting topics as I considered them to be. Noting that the deadline for prospective speakers to apply for the 2016-17 event was coming up on April 18, I decided to pitch another talk idea. This time, Free will isn't. Existence is. If nothing else, another TEDxSalem rejection will add to my Tortured Artist (or Misunderstood Genius) resume. In my old age, well, more accurately,…
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Posted inReality Science

Understanding reality (including religion) is a matter of “likely”

After almost a dozen years of writing Church of the Churchless posts, and reading comments on them, I'm familiar with the arguments religious people use to justify their beliefs.  When I point out that there is no demonstrable evidence supporting a belief in God, heaven, soul, spirit, angels, the afterlife, or any other form of supernaturalism, frequently I'll hear something like this: Hey, Brian, you can't prove God doesn't exist, so there's no proof for your skeptical view either.  Thus, it's a tie! There's no proof God exists, and there's no proof God doesn't exist, so it's up to each…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

The Cosmic Significance of how I get back to sleep

Here's how I ended my previous post, "When trying to get back to sleep: to think or not to think?" Now, does this insight have any Cosmic Significance regarding the Big Questions of Life? Damn, I sure hope so! But that's a subject for another blog post. I'm starting to feel sleepy... very sleepy... I don't want to leave the question of Cosmic Significance hanging out there. Sure, I might be the only person on Earth who cares about the answer. But since I'm pretty darn important to me (leaving aside the issue of whether there's any difference between us),…
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Posted inReality

Since everything is “sacred,” no particular thing is

I liked this letter in New Scientist a lot. It won't please religiously-minded people, because religions like to divide the world into parts -- like sacred and profane, godly and devilish, spiritual and material.  That sort of thing. But as letter writer Howells says, the word universe starts with uni, one. Meaning, a whole. Once we start making manmade divisions such as sacred and profane, we're moving away from reality and into unproductive abstractions. Wisdom leads us to either think, everything is sacred or nothing is sacred. They really amount to the same thing. Read on to understand why. Editor's pick:…
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Posted inReality Religions

The universe is indifferent to us. But religions believe we’re special.

Here's a big reason why religions appeal to people: they claim that humans are special. Christianity says we are made in God's image. Eastern religions like Hinduism have a similar notion, since the soul (Atman) supposedly is essentially the same as God (Brahman). Not only that, but almost every religion teaches that the cosmos has a special relationship with us Homo sapiens. We're being looked out for, guided, loved, and embraced by the Creator of It All.  Even when it comes to the Devil or other sorts of negative cosmic powers, human beings are viewed as being the special focus…
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Posted inReality

Deal with these scientific facts, religious believers

I'm a proud believer in reality. That's my god, now that I've deconverted from religious belief: natural reality.  Science is the best, and arguably the only, way we humans have of knowing solid facts about the universe, which is the only natural reality available to us. One of the reasons I'm enjoying re-reading "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" (by Alex Rosenberg) so much is that Rosenberg -- though a philosophy professor -- has a solid background in science.  His philosophical conclusions don't come out of thin air. They're grounded in fundamental understandings of modern science.  Below are some of those…
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Posted inReality Science

“The Atheist’s Guide to Reality” — a mind blowing book

I like books that take some of my cherished assumptions about how the world works and chew them up into tiny pieces before putting them in a Truth Blender where they're dissolved into unrecognizable thought-mush. "The Atheist's Guide to Reality" by Alex Rosenberg is such a book. After reading it four years ago (I blogged about it here, here, and here) I've finished re-reading the second half of the book.  And, yes, once again it has blown my mind. But in a different way from the first time, because I'm a different person now.  Being a habitual highlighter and back-of-book…
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Posted inReality Science

Neuroscientist David Eagleman: the brain creates our reality

Somehow my wife and I missed most of the original showing of the 6-part PBS series, "The Brain - With David Eagleman." We saw the final episode, and wanted to catch up on the rest. So last night we streamed What is Reality?, the first episode. It's available on iTunes and Amazon Prime, with clips on the PBS web site. Here's one of the clips: Really interesting. The basic neuroscientific message of this episode is that reality doesn't directly stream into consciousness through our senses, or by any other means. Instead, the brain does all sorts of processing of raw…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

On a bike ride, I embrace natural reality and ignore a manmade rule

Philosophically-inclined guy that I am, I can find profound meanings in just about any everyday experience. Today I rode my Streetstrider outdoor elliptical bike at Salem's Minto Brown Island Park during a (partial) break in the heavy rains that have been hitting the Pacific Northwest all week. I'm a big believer in the adage I expressed in a 2009 blog post, "There are no rules (including this one)." Now, there are no rules points back at itself. Meaning, there are no rules. Unless you want to follow a rule. Feel free. There's no rule that says "never follow a rule." We all do…
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Posted inReality

Does Santa Claus exist? Depends on the nature of belief.

With Christmas coming in a few weeks, it seemed just the right time to read a book by Eric Kaplan called "Does Santa Exist? A Philosophical Investigation." Now, I'm not quite done with the book, and I also don't want to give away what I suspect Kaplan's ending will be. So I'll focus on the existence of Santa Claus in another post. Here I'll zero in on a thought-provoking thought experiment about beliefs and reality that Kaplan throws out in the introductory chapter. It's a good example of what I like most about the book: a pleasing blend of quirky…
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Posted inBuddhism Reality

Asked to say something about love, I’m pretty much speechless

Yesterday I got an email message: Dear Mr. Hines , Your blog is very honest and nothing is more beautiful save love itself. Please tell us more about self-less and mutual love  and your views on the subject. Sincerely, __________ Reading those words, I realized that I haven't written much explicitly about love during the eleven years this blog has existed. This will be post # 2,140. When I used the search box in the right sidebar to see what popped up when I put in "love," almost all of the Google results for my two blogs were on my more…
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Posted inReality

Why we believe in things we know aren’t true

It's a well-worn saying here in the United States: "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt."  We all deny reality. We all prefer to feel good about a falsity rather than embrace a harsh truth. But some people struggle against our human inclination to believe in things that aren't true, while others make little or no effort to resist the lure of denial.  A piece in the New York Times, "Believing What You Don't Believe," casts light on what's going on here.  How is it that people can believe something that they know is not true? For example, Kansas City…
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