Posted inBooks Reality Science

“War of the Worldviews” ends with clear win for science

Just like I thought after reading only four of the nineteen debates between spiritually-minded new age sage Deepak Chopra and scientifically-minded physicist Leonard Mlodinow in their book, "War of the Worldviews," I finished the final chapter feeling that science emerged the decisive victor. Understand: I've got a lot of sympathy for mysticism, meditation, and unconventional ways of viewing the cosmos. I don't believe that science has all the answers, because I don't believe that anybody does.  But I've always liked my "spirituality" (a term that doesn't mean to me what it used to, yet which I continue to use out…
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Posted inReality Science

Physicists may have discovered extra dimensions

Note the word "may" in this blog post title. That's the most important thought in the potentially super-exciting story of how CERN researchers may have discovered that neutrinos travel slightly faster than the speed of light. If this is true, the implications would be astronomical. Literally. Because a leading explanation for the Einstein-defying neutrinos (his theory of relativity makes the speed of light an absolute speed limit) is that the nearly massless particles are taking a short cut through extra dimensions of reality on their way from CERN, near Geneva, Switzerland, to a particle detector near L'Aquila, Italy. An article…
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Posted inReality Science

A mind-blowing fact about infinity

What can you say about infinity? Well, the word has a pretty lengthy Wikipedia page, so clearly the answer is "a lot." Which makes sense, since if there's one thing we know about infinity, it's this: infinity is freaking big. Or at least, limitless. I suppose something could be infinitely small -- getting smaller and smaller without limit. But this would mean that it's a freaking big bit of small. God supposedly is infinite. Infinitely loving, infinitely knowing, infinitely powerful. Heck, God probably has an infinite number of positive qualities, being so infinite. This is assuming that God exists. We…
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Posted inReality Religions

Conspiracy theories — another form of blind faith

One person believes that Jesus was resurrected after dying on the cross. Another person believes that the Bush administration was behind the 9/11 attacks. Each belief lacks a foundation of demonstrable evidence. Each belief almost certainly is untrue. Each belief has many adherents who vehemently hold to it, despite how bizarre their blind faith is. I'm a religious skeptic. I'm also a conspiracy theory skeptic. What seems strange to me is how people who decry fundamentalist religion often cling to fundamentalist conspiracy theories. But after reading Michael Shermer's new book, "The Believing Brain," I'm better able to see the connections…
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Posted inReality

Life is as absurd as we make it

Is life absurd? Sometimes it seems to be. I ponder how large the universe is (a hundred billion or so galaxies, each with a hundred billion or so stars) and how old it is (about 13.7 billion years), and compare this with my puny earthly existence. How insignificant I am compared to the cosmos! How absurd it is that I consider my life to mean anything in light of my miniscule'ness! And yet... If you want to know how a philosopher persuasively addresses that and yet, give Thomas Nagel's "The Absurd" a read. I did so yesterday, finding it pleasingly…
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Posted inReality Science Universe

Mystery of existence eludes both religion and science

"Why is there something rather than nothing?" This is the ultimate question. So ultimate'y, it shouldn't be viewed as a question, because questions imply answers. I prefer, "There is something rather than nothing." Leave out the "why." Embrace the stark, unarguable reality of existence. Forget God. Something must exist or God couldn't exist. So my awe is directed toward existence, not God. Existence is everlasting, eternal, omnipresent, unfathomable. Wild! If I want to feel a tingle up my psyche's spine before I fall into sleep, I ponder there is something rather than nothing as I doze off. (Some reflections of…
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Posted inReality Science

The three wisest words in the world: “I don’t know”

I've got some affirmations for you that will change your life. Repeat them over and over in your mind until they seem to be part and parcel of you. Because in truth, they already are. "I don't know." "I'm clueless.""I have no idea what's going on.""It's all a mystery to me." None of us knows how we know. That's a neuroscientific fact. I talked about this a few years ago in Knowing that you know: impossible. This blog post was based on a terrific book by Robert Burton, "On Being Certain." One of Burton's central points, which seems as certain…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Get loopy! Feel better fast with feedback loops

Old religious habits can take a long time to die. As churchless as I am these days, sometimes I long for a "revival." The faith to which I previously subscribed was Eastern rather than Western, so my notion of a revival was to attend a weekend meeting where speakers (maybe even the guru himself) would urge devotees to apply themselves to meditation and other spiritual practices/vows more assiduously. I enjoyed feeling that I had a clear-cut spiritual goal, and that if I did this-and-that, such-and-such results could be expected. Maybe not soon; maybe not even in this lifetime; but someday…
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Posted inReality Religions

For me, “getting real” means getting rid of religion

What are you doing when you feel the most real? What makes you exclaim, "Wow, that was real!" What circumstances lead you to feel, If I were to die now, I'd die content? Obviously only you can answer those questions. All I want to do is raise them,  because I think they're well worth pondering. If life isn't filled with really real moments, are we truly living? For me, reality seems most vibrant, clear, energetic, and alluring when I'm engaged in a physical activity that has an edgy aspect to it. "Edgy" is a term that's hard to pin down.…
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Posted inReality Science

Mathematics is both invented and discovered

I'm fascinated by the question of whether the laws of nature are "out there" in an objective external world, or "in here" within the subjective confines of the human brain. A recent post on my other blog about male/female conversation styles mentions how I'd talk about this topic with another philosophically-minded man. When men talk, most of the time they aren't trying to either reveal, or gain access to, inner feelings. My wife and I used to get another with another couple. The other guy and I would converse in one corner of our living room, while the wives huddled…
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Posted inReality Taoism/Tai Chi

Independence is impossible

So here we are in the United States, celebrating Independence Day this July 4, and my philosophical mind is thinking independence is impossible. And who would want it, anyway? But lest my fellow citizens accuse me of wishing that the colonies had never broken away from Britain (ugh! what a horrible idea; I'd have to watch boring soccer rather than exciting football), I'm talking about a much more cosmic level of reality than political. Religions are big on independence, though the concept almost always is expressed using different terms, such as salvation and liberation. Whether Eastern or Western, dualistic sorts…
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Posted inReality

Objective reality isn’t for us to unravel

I only want to devote a half hour or so to writing a blog post tonight, so I'll tackle a simple subject: what is reality? I'm not being facetious. It actually is easier to talk about the Big Questions of life rather than the small ones. I feel like I've got a pretty good understanding of the basic elements of reality. But how my computer's operating system works behind the scenes... that's a huge mystery to me. What are those elements? Subjectivity and objectivity. Meaning, basically: my subjective experience is mine alone. As is yours. As is our dog's. Nobody…
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Posted inReality Science

We are to the brain as the cosmos is to us

What's our biggest problem in life? Us. Ourselves. If there wasn't any me, I wouldn't be dissatisfied, unhappy, or feeling that a situation should be different from how it is. Of course, I also wouldn't exist. For most people, not being anything isn't an attractive solution to the irritating somethings that are part and parcel of our daily existence. But perhaps there is an in between, a middle ground which comfortably avoids the extremes of too little me (personal non-existence) and too much me (ego-encapsulated anxiety). This is the promise of many forms of spirituality, philosophy, psychotherapy, mysticism, meditation, religion,…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Yes, us churchless folks are searching for truth

Ooh, I love good questions. Here's four. Nice! Marina offered them up in a comment to a recent blog post. Is there anyone here on this blog who is looking to realise the truth or are we more interested in realising how right we are, how wrong others are?Are we into defending our beliefs and condemning others for theirs?Are we more interested in getting 'facts' about others then finding out 'facts' about ourselves?Are we so much enjoying the 'dramas' that we don't care about the truth, the real truth about ourselves and realising that?Just wondering........ I found these thoughts fascinating,…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

The profundity — or not — of “it is what it is”

An Urban Dictionary entry for it is what it is shows that this phrase is deeply irritating to some people. A trite, overused and infuriatingly meaningless cliche that is utilized by provincials who think they are adding some deep, meaningful insight during a discussion when all they are offering is senseless, unwarranted repetitiveness to what would otherwise be a far better conversation had they not shown the shallowness of the gene pool they spawned from by using this asininely useless and redundant phrase to begin with. An interesting conversation is being had, when quite suddenly: Robin: My house burned down…
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Posted inReality Science

If we’re an alien computer simulation, could we ever know this?

Religions turn me off. Science turns me on. And in the science books I read, the notion that we could be living as artificial intelligences within a computer simulation keeps popping up. I'm fascinated by this possibility (see previous blog posts here and here). I've finished physicist Brian Greene's new book, "The Hidden Reality." He talks about simulated universes in a Universes, Computers, and Mathematical Reality chapter. My interest here is in those who would be drawn by the purity of electrical impulses to program simulated environments populated by simulated beings that would exist within a computer's hardware; instead of…
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Posted inReality Science

Know when reality should look fuzzy or sharp

People are strange, and I certainly include moi in this overarching statement. Here's one of the weird things that we do: Trying our best to make inherently fuzzy aspects of reality all crisp, clear, and coherent, while blurring up inherently sharp facts about the way things are. Now, I realize that what I've just said is open to challenge. And I'll agree that "What's up with this inherently business?" is an entirely appropriate question. Am I justified in viewing reality in such a black and white (or rather, fuzzy and sharp) manner? Sure, I answer. It seems obvious that we…
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Posted inMystics Reality Science

Physicists are becoming mystics (sort of)

Unseen dimensions of reality. Trillion year cycles of cosmic birth and rebirth. Laws of nature utterly unlike ours. Mysterious connections between the physical universe and other realms. These sound like the airy-fairy notions of mystics who have been smoking something stronger than tobacco in their hookas. But they're all serious hypotheses of modern physics. Their cosmological implications are described by noted physicist Brian Greene, author of "The Hidden Reality," in a Hovering Universes in Nearby Dimensions chapter I read this morning before meditating. Inspirational stuff for my churchless non-soul. Having written (plug alert!) a book about mysticism and the new…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Reality Universe

If the universe is infinite, we’re immortal (sort of)

Wow, I got some great news after reading only two chapters in physicist Brian Greene's new book, "The Hidden Reality." I'm immortal! Only catch is, the "me" who exists forever isn't really the same me who is typing out these words. Though maybe it is. Just depends on how I look upon myself: (1) as a being with a unique essence peculiar to myself (I don't mean a smell, but a non-physical identity), or (2) as a configuration of atoms which could be almost exactly duplicated in another corner of the cosmos. I've read Greene's previous books, enjoying them, but…
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Posted inReality

Does “Being” exist?

I suspect that churchless skeptics who are drawn to question traditional belief systems also enjoy the feeling of an elevator suddenly descending, when it seems like the floor has fallen away from under your feet. At least, this is a sensation I frequently have now that I've stopped being a True Believer. It isn't disconcerting, because after an initial jolt of finding that one more unquestioned assumption needs to be closely examined, it feels good to have discarded an additional piece of conceptual junk which doesn't deserve the prominent positioning it used to have in my Philosophical Display Case. For…
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