Posted inReality

Mystery and Reality have an intriguing relationship

I'm a fan of both Mystery and Reality. I'm capitalizing their names to personalize them, as if they were beings we could actually interact with rather than abstract ideas. Mystery is, well, mysterious. (I'll use "she" to talk about her because, being a man, I find females to be more of a mystery than males.) You can't say much about her because there's not much to be said. She's what lies outside the bounds of our knowing. That makes Mystery intriguing, just as a beautiful woman in a suggestive dress makes us want to learn what lies beneath the surface…
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Posted inReality

Become an unknowing fool. It’s the wisest thing to do.

Here's another post from the early years of this blog that I just came across in the course of choosing content for my second book of Church of the Churchless posts. I'll probably keep on doing more of this "blast from the past" stuff until I'm finished with the second book, which doesn't have a name yet. The less time I spend on writing new content for this blog, the more time I'll have to work on that book. As before, the italicized introduction is what will accompany the post. I like to share a few thoughts about how I…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Brian Greene: “Nothing supersedes the laws of physics”

I've been needing some cosmic scientific perspective during my morning pre-meditation reading time, given how the coronavirus pandemic dominates the news and peoples' psyches. Physicist Brian Greene's new book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe," has been meeting that need nicely. He's an excellent writer, thinker, and popularizer of scientific truth.  Here's an example of what appealed to me in the first four chapters. I'm sure I'll be sharing more from the book as I get deeper into it. Nothing supersedes the laws of physics. I love this bold simple statement.…
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Posted inReality Religions

Perfection is an imaginary ideal, a lifeless dead end

This morning I finished the book I've been blogging about recently, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto, by Lesley Hazleton. It's a wonderfully thoughtful and well-written description of what it means to be an open-minded agnostic (or atheist), rather than a closed-minded religious believer. Below are some passages that I liked in the concluding chapter, "Imperfect Soul."  Hazleton starts out by debunking the notion of perfection. There's no such thing. Perfection, she says, is an idea, not a fact. This rings true for me, based on my 35 years of experience with an Indian religious organization whose teachings wrongly proclaim that there is…
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Posted inReality

Magic is in the details of everyday life

One of the most important things I've learned in my 70 years of living is this: the world is way more interesting than I am. So the more I can get out of my head, and into what surrounds me, the happier I am. By and large. There are exceptions to every rule, including this one.  As I've noted before, and surely will note again, mindfulness has become my meditation. I'm no longer seeking enlightenment, mystical uplift, or even self-knowledge.  In fact, I don't believe that I have, or am, an enduring self. The world exists. I exist. When I'm…
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Posted inBooks Reality

“The View from Nowhere” is a laudable goal

Quite a few years ago I heard of Thomas Nagel's book "The View from Nowhere," liking the provocative title. Nagel is better known for his What Is it Like to be a Bat? paper, which raised equally profound questions about subjectivity and objectivity.  No human knows what it is like to be a bat. Only a bat does.  The same is true of every species, and indeed of every individual within a species. I've been married to my wife, Laurel, for 29 years. So obviously I know her very well. But I don't know what it is like to be…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Reality

Deep thoughts about a typo in my new book

I'm eager to write about a newfound typo in my recently published book, "Break Free of Dogma," for a couple of reasons. One is that this gives me another chance to plug my book, which is prominently displayed at the top of the right sidebar.  Also, I've got some deep thoughts about the typo that I just discovered in the book. It came to light today after I gave some copies of the book to my fellow Tai Chi students. Handing a book to Jeremy, I told him that several of the mini-chapters refer to Tai Chi, such as the…
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Posted inReality Religions

If God is beyond thought and language, then shut up if you’re religious

I'd like to rephrase in a more blunt fashion what I quoted Donald Hoffman as saying in yesterday's blog post. Here's Hoffman. If a system of thought, religious or otherwise, offers a claim that it wants taken seriously, then we should examine it with our best method of inquiry -- the scientific method. That is taking it seriously. Some topics -- such as God, the good, reality, and consciousness -- have been claimed to transcend the limited scope of human concepts and thus the methods of science. I have no quarrel with someone who claims this and then, being consistent,…
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Posted inReality Science

“The Case Against Reality” seems more right than wrong

It's rare that I find it difficult to put down a non-fiction book because I'm so eager to read the final chapters and grasp the author's concluding arguments. Such was the case, though, with The Case Against Reality: Why Evolution Hid the Truth From Our Eyes, by Donald Hoffman. I hadn't planned to spend so much time reading the book this morning, but I carried on until I'd read all but a technical appendix. Hoffman's Big Idea is this: evolution selects for fitness, not truth. If a living organism perceives reality well enough to be able to pass on its…
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Posted inReality Science

Calculus is cool. Spiritual, even. Infinity rocks.

Astoundingly, I'm enjoying a book about calculus, Infinite Powers by Steven Strogatz. The subtitle is the reason: How Calculus Reveals the Secrets of the Universe. Hey, I'm all in on having the secrets of the universe revealed to me. Especially when the cost was a mere $16.52 to have Amazon deliver the book to my doorstep.  I started this post with the word "astoundingly" because I was forced to take a calculus class in the first year of my Systems Science Ph.D. program studies way back when. (I completed the course work, but then gave up on being called Dr.…
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Posted inConsciousness Reality Science

Science is our best guide to a possible supernatural reality

Here's another comment from David C. Lane on a recent post of mine that makes so much sense, I'm sharing it even before I've even lunch. Sometimes my hunger for transmitting truth is greater than my stomach's yearning for food.  Didn't someone  once say, man does not live by bread alone? (or Trader Joe's meatless chick'n tenders). Lane talks about his Remainder Conjecture in which supernatural claims should only be accepted after a rigorous examination of them through the lens of science. This fits with David Hume's observation, which I wrote about yesterday, that we have a tremendous amount of…
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Posted inAtheism Reality Religions

Changing your mind is a superpower. Use it.

I have a superpower. But unlike those with superpowers who inhabit the pages of comic books and the screens of movie theaters, my astounding ability is available to everyone. It's called changing your mind.  I'm sure you've used it  -- many times. After all, we change our minds about countless things during the course of our lives. For example, I've changed my mind about my... Politics (Used to be conservative, now I'm a liberal). Cars (I've gone from a 57' VW bug to a 2017 VW GTI, with many other makes in between). Marriage (Got divorced, then remarried).Profession (Earned a master's…
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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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