Posted inReligions

My response to religion: “So what?”

The way I feel about religion now is similar to how I feel about my ex-wife. Not much. Meaning, most of the time I don't think about religion, or her. I've got some pleasant memories of each, along with some unpleasant memories. But neither occupies much space in my brain these days. This wasn't the case soon after my marital and spiritual divorces. Splitting up after a lengthy attachment, it takes some time to get the other party out of your mind. For twenty-one years I've been married to another woman. However, I've had no inclination to get married to…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religious believers are acting in accord with evolution

Having arrived at a churchless view of reality, I'm amused when true believers accuse me of taking the easy way out by being a skeptic about God and other things divine'ish. They see religious belief as a courageous stand against rampant secularism -- a bold independent search for ultimate reality that transcends materialistic boundaries. Actually, the truth is far different. Religious belief is the default human condition. What takes courage, effort, and determination is going against the religious current that sweeps the vast majority of people into a faith-based ocean. Interestingly, the evidence for this is scientific. Evolutionary psychology has…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Religions

Humans are naturally optimistic. Which helps explain religion.

Most people's brains are hard-wired to generate an optimistic outlook on life. Evolution, it seems, has favored an ability to look into the future and see good things happening. Such is the message of TIME magazine's cover story this week, "The Optimism Bias." It's a highly interesting article. Tali Sharot, the author, says that "optimism starts with what may be the most extraordinary of human talents: mental time travel, the ability to move back and forth through time and space in one's mind." This ability was naturally selected for in the course of Homo sapiens' evolution because it had so…
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Posted inGod Religions Science

Religion is like a placebo with no active ingredient

So you don't believe in God, but you want the benefits that come with being religious: feeling special, not being afraid of dying, embraced by a loving divine power, and such. No problem. You can keep your atheism or agnosticism and have your Godly presence also. This is the message that I draw from a fascinating study about placebos, which found they can be medically effective even when people know they're getting a fake drug. Patients can benefit from being treated with sham drugs even if they are told they contain no active ingredient, scientists have found. The finding suggests…
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Posted inReligions

Saints are imperfect

Here's something for believers in sainthood and heroic human perfection to reflect upon: Hampton Sides' "Shattered Faith" in Newsweek. On some level, we still subscribe to the myth of the man in the white hat. We yearn to believe not only in his good deeds but in his inherent goodness as a person. Perhaps it’s something rooted in our Puritan past, but we seem to have a monochromatic view of heroism. We have a hard time believing that the doer of a heroic deed could have serious defects or even be rotten to the core. Heroes are supposed to be…
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Posted inReligions

Texas governor calls for prayer to end drought

Well, good luck Texas. Your governor, Rick Perry, has decided that the way to solve the state's exceptional drought is with three days of prayer for rain. Suggestion: it would have made a lot more sense for Governor Perry to call for three days (or better, three weeks) of study by Texas citizens into the nature of global climate change, which is causing climate extremes to become more common. Climate is defined not simply as average temperature and precipitation but also by the type, frequency and intensity of weather events. Human-induced climate change has the potential to alter the prevalence…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Religion is a joke which some take seriously

If you've followed my musings on this blog since I started it in November 2004 -- and shame on you, you churchless sinner, if you haven't! -- I can see why you might think that I've mellowed out, anti-religion wise. Indeed, it's true that my most rabid rants against religiosity were written in the early Church of the Churchless years. Now I'm more inclined to ignore dogmas than to foam at the mouth about how ridiculous they are. In short, I don't take religions as seriously as I used to. What irritates me the most are the effects of fundamentalism…
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Posted inGod Religions

Koran burners and murdering Muslim protesters: two of a kind

It's tough for me to decide which brand of fundamentalist religious craziness is most appalling: (1) Christian pastor Terry Jones holding a mock trial of the Koran, then burning it, or (2) Islamic Afghan protesters of the Koran incineration who have killed 24 people in the past few days. What I do know is that believing in some unseen supernatural being who supposedly commands devotees to fight affronts to its honor is just about the stupidest thing humans do. Scarily, billions of people subscribe to Christianity, Islam, and Judaism -- the main monotheistic religions. Each religion considers that God/Allah/Jehovah is…
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Posted inGod Religions

Leonard Pitts is wrong about atheism being “fundamentalist”

Glancing at the title of a Leonard Pitts column in our local newspaper yesterday, I had a feeling that my emotional blood pressure soon would be surging. My premonition was correct. Parts of "Belief in what cannot be proved requires humility" (originally called "Atheists, I believe in God because I do") irritated me mightily -- because Pitts failed to grasp some basic facts about religious belief and atheism that get harped on regularly here at the Church of the Churchless. Fact one: Not believing in God isn't a fundamentalist belief system, just as not believing in Santa Claus isn't. Atheism…
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Posted inReligions Science

Behold the glorious mystery of your brain

Traditionally, people have looked outward toward mystery. For a long time maps of the world had large sections labeled "terra incognita" (unknown land). Now Earth is almost entirely explored, but the vast universe beyond attracts those who are lured by the unknown (witness the popularity of Star Trek and other forms of science fiction). Religions have capitalized upon our human fascination for mystery. God often is viewed as unknowable, unfathomable, beyond being -- leading apophatic theology and mysticism to emphasize what God is not, rather than what God is. Searching the (almost) omniscient Google for what I've written about mystery…
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Posted inMorality Religions

Judgment precedes reason — in religion and elsewhere

Most of us like to think of ourselves as being reasonable creatures. Our decisions, choices, beliefs, values, morality, philosophy of life, political orientation, and such make great good sense. It's the other guy who is whacked-out, irrational, out of touch with reality, a nut job. Of course, for him or her, we're the one who has embraced some far-out crazy shit. How to make sense of all this? After all, people manage to get around in the world just fine together. Almost always we agree to obey the same traffic laws, stopping on red and going on green. We courteously…
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Posted inGod Religions

Since love is blind, so is love for God and gurus

Shakespeare may have been the first to say it: "love is blind." Everyone who has fallen in love knows what this means. When we're infatuated with someone, we focus on what we like about them, ignoring their faults. Speaking from experience (I've been married twice, once for 18 years and currently for almost 21 years, giving me 39 years of marital knowledge), this honeymoon period starts to fade not too long after the "I do's" are said. Then traits that previously seemed endearing -- he's so wonderfully casual and carefree! -- start to be annoying: why doesn't he put the…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

The “self” is culturally determined

We in the West (not the wild west, but Western culture) are obsessed with ourselves. "I've got to find my true self," people say. Self-development is a big industry, featuring countless workshops, books, lectures, and such. We're big on autonomy, independence, finding our own way in life, not marching to the beat of someone else's drummer. Other cultures, such as those in East Asia, are quite different. To a much greater degree than self-absorbed Americans and Europeans, they view the self as including family, community, and societal relationships. Such is the message of an interesting Philosophy Talk podcast that I…
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Posted inReligions

Religion is the biggest joke — but with no punchline

What if you spent quite a bit of time doing something that was very serious and important to you? And then you came to understand it was a joke and useless. How would that make you feel? Probably, disturbed that you'd wasted so much effort on something so laughable. Yet also happy that you reached your realization before frittering away more of your life on a big bit of nothing. This is how I see religions now. As jokes, but without a punchline. Often a joke isn't funny until the very end. That's when we see the humor in the…
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Posted inReligions

No, Randi Rhodes, I can’t tolerate blind faith

This afternoon, all it took was a few minutes of listening to Randi Rhodes on Portland's progressive talk station (KPOJ) to get irritated by what she was saying. Usually it takes a bit longer, but eventually I always find Rhodes to be almost as difficult for me to listen to as Glenn Beck, Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, and Michael Savage -- her ideological opposites. (See here, here, and here for my previous anti-Randi rants.) Today I tuned into her show as she was talking with an atheist caller. He said that he couldn't believe in any religion, or God, because…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Religions (and RSSB) should come with a guarantee

If a product lets buyers down, consumer advocates -- along with plain consumers -- jump into aggrieved action. Sometimes excessively. I'm amazed that Consumer Reports, a magazine I love and have subscribed to for as long I can remember, still isn't recommending purchase of the iPhone 4 because of a minor antenna reception problem that really wasn't that big of a deal. However, it was a defect that Consumer Reports felt should have been fixed by Apple before the iPhone 4 was released. This makes me wonder: Wouldn't it be great if religions came with a guarantee that salvation, enlightenment,…
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Posted inReligions

Muslims shouldn’t be afraid of modernity

Every religion is crazy in its own peculiar ways. It's difficult for me to decide which deserves to win the Looniest of Them All award. Christianity deserves consideration for its "born of a virgin" and "walked on water" weirdnesses (among others). Judaism's rituals and requirements are beyond strange (such as the Sabbath Feature on our oven). Hindus are into all kinds of bizarre stuff, including Tantric sexual fluid transactions. But whenever I read about how scared Muslims are of the modern world, I'm struck by how dangerously crazy this attitude is. After all, Islam is the controlling force in many…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Spiritual sadness and humor

Sad: a PBS video about the Devadasi practice in India -- religiously sanctioned prostitution. Funny: a graphic economic argument against the reality of supernatural phenomena. (thanks, Clare, for letting me know about these)
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Posted inMorality Religions

Agnostics and atheists are better than believers

Since I turned churchless, I've become a way better person. So I can testify to this truth that has been been revealed to me by the grace of absolutely nobody but myself: Agnostics and atheists are better people than believers, by and large. Note the "by and large," which protects my truth from being challenged by someone pointing out that agnostic/atheist human X is a world class asshole, while religious human Y is a marvelous example of what us Homo sapiens can become. I shall now engage in one of my favorite blogging activities -- demonstrating with impeccable logic and…
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Posted inReligions

What’s wrong with burning a religious book?

I've written several books. They're deeply meaningful to me, because I put so much work into them. But if I heard that someone was planning to burn hundreds of copies of a book I wrote, it wouldn't freak me out so much that I'd riot, pillage, or kill. (In fact, I'd be happy that so many books had been bought in order to be burned. Yay, more royalties!) Yet when Christian pastor Terry Jones laid out his plans to burn a bunch of Korans (a.k.a. Qur'ans) tomorrow, 9/11, the proverbial shit hit the proverbial fan. He got calls from the…
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