Posted inAtheism Radha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

I’m an atheist with more faith than any religious believer

A week ago I came up with the title to this blog post. The next day I wrote a comment in reply to someone who goes by "In Search Of" that ended up being a good start to explaining why I consider that atheist me has more faith than religious believers. Here it is. Following my comment you'll find excerpts from one of my first Church of the Churchless blog posts from way back in 2004, "Just have faith." I'm pleased that while I've become more of an atheist over the past fifteen years, my basic faith in reality hasn't…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

We humans are stuck in The Matrix of our own brains

Most religions, mystical practices, and spiritual paths assume there's a truer reality than our everyday existence. Few people, though, think deeply about how it is possible to tell whether Reality X is more true than Reality Y -- assuming that both actually exist. Historian Yuval Noah Harari does think about this sort of stuff, though. Today I read the Science Fiction chapter in his newest book, 21 Lessons for the 21st Century.  Harari notes that movies like The Truman Show and The Matrix show people trapped in an illusory reality that they have to struggle to get out of. However, both…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Religions forget that we humans are animals

Calling someone animalistic isn't an insult. It is a fact. We humans are animals. Just unusual ones, since members of no other animal species can write articles (or blog posts) about the fact that they're animals. Thus our bodies do what other animal bodies do.  Pee. Poop. Breathe. Have sex. Play. Feel. Sleep. Eat. Drink. And so on.  Sure, we also think about all kinds of stuff. The structures we build are more impressive than a termite hill. Our social relationships are more complex than a wolf pack.  Yet the fact remains, we are animals. One reason I've come to…
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Posted inReality

Why atheist me isn’t interested in religious views

Recently a regular commenter on this blog, Spence Tepper, proposed an experiment. Basically, it was a sort of "reflective listening" exercise, where before arguing for your own position, you state as clearly as possible how someone opposed to your position feels/thinks. Here's what Tepper said: In fact, Brian, I would like to offer a social psychology experiment for those of us participating here regularly. Let's all work with you to create a list of our names and our current position on matters of Atheism, Agnosticism, Theism etc. And the opposite position. Then, for one week, each day we comment on…
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Posted inAtheism Reality Religions

Join the godly, supernatural, mystical “I Don’t Know For Sure” club

It gives me great pleasure to invite not only visitors to this blog, but everybody in the whole freaking world, to join a non-exclusive club I've just formed: The I Don't Know For Sure club.  Admission is free. There are no dues. Also, no meetings. Nor any sort of organization. This club exists only in the minds of those who answer "no" to a simple question. Are you 100%, completely, absolutely, without-a-doubt confident that what you believe about god, the supernatural, and mystical experiences is objectively true? Now, though this question is simple, I still feel a need to explain…
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Posted inMystics Reality

Reality requires a broad scientific look, not narrow mystic visions

Put on your philosophical wading boots. I'm about to jump into the deep end of some interesting, but sort of complex, questions about the nature of reality as seen through the eyes of quantum physics. But rest assured that, in accord with the focus of this Church of the Churchless blog, I'll be drawing some inferences about what makes sense, and what doesn't, when it comes to religious, mystical, and spiritual claims about reality. This might take a few blog posts, so I'll do my best to keep this initial post as short and simple as possible. (Which means, it…
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Posted inReality

It hurts to argue with reality

This is a great simple explanation of why it makes sense to love science, to love truth, to love reasoned fact-based discussions of what is happening in the world. Fantasies can be fun, but reality has a way of biting us in the butt when we ignore what is.
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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 inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality

Religious believers ignore reality, while making up fantasies

After fourteen years of blogging here on the Church of the Churchless, I'm not surprised anymore by this evident fact about most religious believers: They make two mistakes. They ignore aspects of this evident physical reality that conflict with their chosen religious dogma. And they embrace fantasies about supernatural realms that almost certainly don't exist.  Thus religious believers close their eyes to what can actually be known, while making up stories about what is unknown -- such as what, if anything, lies outside the bounds of our universe. Here's some examples of what I'm talking about.  I've written several posts…
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Posted inMystics Reality

Why I don’t believe in anyone’s supposed supernatural experience

Today I got an email from someone who said: Well, here in your blog itself, you have all of these people sharing their experiences.  Huge voluminous paragraphs detailing all kinds of dramatic experiences, with stars and moons and spatial flight and GIHFs [God In Human Form] popping up with personal guidance and what-have-you.  My question is : Why do you ignore them now, now that you do see these experiences spoken of, quite plainly? This was my response.----------------------------As you might expect, I consider that people who say they’ve had experiences of a supernatural reality are either deluding themselves, or other…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

“Existence is entirely futile.” A brave essay on the human condition.

With the author's permission, here's a highly thoughtful, well-reasoned, nicely-written email message I received recently that presents a stark, but persuasive, perspective on the human condition.  I enjoyed reading about what led this person to change from a hopeful spiritual person to a nihilistic atheist. The message ended with an invitation to me to comment on it, which I was pleased to do -- which led to some further thoughts from the message sender. I've shared an edited version of our interchange after the essay itself. Enjoy. And I mean that word, enjoy, because even though what follows will strike…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

A test that science passes and religion fails: reality “kicks back”

How do we know what is real? This is a question that has occupied philosophers and scientists for as long as we humans have been pondering the nature of reality. I don't pretend to know the answer, but I resonate with physicist David Deutsch's approach to the question. In his book, "The Fabric of Reality," Deutsch views explanations as being key to understanding what is real. He writes: Explanations are not justified by the means by which they were derived; they are justified by their superior ability, relative to rival explanations, to solve the problems they address. That is why…
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Posted inReality

All problems and solutions are within the mind, not the world

One reason I love to read is that a few sentences in a book can make me go Wow! or Whoa! to such an extent, I feel like it is worth reading hundreds of pages to be exposed to a single fresh thought. That happened to me this morning as I was reading the "Criteria for Reality" chapter in physicist David Deutsch's book, The Fabric of Reality. Here's what grabbed my attention: Galileo may have seen the world as a book in which the laws of nature are written in mathematical symbols. But that is strictly a metaphor; there are…
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Posted inReality Religions

Religion is a warm bath. Atheism is a cold shower.

I love not only warm baths, but hot ones. It feels good to be immersed in water close to my body temperature. It relaxes me, makes me feel comfortable, sometimes puts me to sleep. When I want to wake up, though, a cold shower is much better. Now, I don't actually take cold showers unless our water heater is broken and I'm desperate to get clean. However, I have taken a cold shower of truth, which is why I chose atheism over religion after some 35 years of being an ardent believer in God, soul, spirit, and heaven. (Eastern religion…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Free will and religion are both comforting fantasies

I've just about finished re-reading a great book by a British attorney, Richard Oerton, who has spent half a century pondering the nature, or rather lack thereof, of free will.  Previously I've written about "The Nonsense of Free Will: Facing Up to a False Belief" in these posts: Free will is a wonderful thing to loseSitting in the jury box, I deny free willBelief in free will linked to desire to punish Oerton makes some highly persuasive arguments against free will, building his case with a mixture of logic and facts. I'm enjoying his book even more the second time…
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Posted inReality Religions

How deluded are you? (If you’re religious, you’ll score higher.)

The most recent issue of New Scientist has a story called "Delusional You." The online version is differently titled: Grand delusions: Why we all believe the weirdest things. Now, most of us consider that it is other people who are deluded, and that we're an exception, being nicely connected to reality. Which, I suppose, is another delusion. Here's an excerpt from the story. That we are all prone to delusions may not be so surprising. A range of cognitive biases makes the human mind fertile soil for growing all kinds of irrational beliefs. Confirmation bias, for example, means we ignore inconvenient…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

How an atheist can find “spiritual” inspiration

A few days ago I was talking with somebody about finding "spiritual" uplift without believing in God or any other supernatural entity. I put that word, spiritual, in quotation marks because I no longer consider that there's some sort of other-worldly spirit or soul. Not in me. Not in anybody else. Not in the cosmos. Yet I'm still attracted to the notion of spirituality. In a thoroughly secular sense. Meaning, well... it's all about meaning. Whatever inspires us to carry on through tough times; whatever propels us forward on our life journey when we're not sure if we can take…
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Posted inReality Religions

Tempting as it is to pray, health problems should be managed without God

I've got some semi-serious health problems. Meaning, they aren't fatal or debilitating. But they're damn annoying. The details aren't necessary to know for the purposes of this post, though I've blogged about what I'm going through here.  It's been interesting to see how my atheist mind has been dealing with the stress I've been feeling. Back in 2006 I wrote a couple of posts on the subject of turning to God during difficult times. The first was "Atheists in foxholes do exist." It concluded with: Religious belief or faith is almost always individualistic. That’s a paradox, considering that humility and loss…
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Posted inReality

When should a subjective spiritual experience be trusted as reflecting objective reality?

I love the title of this blog post, because it is such a damn fine question. During the thirteen years this Church of the Churchless blog has existed, I'd say that this question has been at the root of more posts and comments than any other existential issue. After all, consider how relatively easy it is to assess the validity of (1) objective experiences of physical reality, and (2) subjective experiences of physical reality.  As an example of (1), if someone claims that they saw a giraffe in their back yard, we've got to consider the circumstances. Perhaps they live…
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Posted inBooks Plotinus Reality

“The Realm of the Wise” is a book I both agree and disagree with

A while back I got an email from Marc Deprey, who shares my interest in Greek philosophy -- notably Plotinus' conception of the One as being both the fountainhead and essence of existence.  Deprey said that he'd written a book, "The Realm of the Wise," that has quite a bit in common with my book about Plotinus' teachings, "Return to the One."  Bookaholic that I am, I couldn't resist ordering a copy from Amazon. The Realm of the Wise is appealingly short -- just 134 pages.  There is very little, if any, overt religiosity in Deprey's book, another plus. He…
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