Religions

Do you know someone who tries to follow every commandment, injunction, rule, and ritual of his or her religion absolutely correctly? Within their faith they probably are considered to be exemplary examples of rectitude. But there's another way of looking at them, which I learned about today thanks to a blog comment from Sapient. They could be suffering from scrupulosity – a mental disorder. Religious belief, and membership in a faith community are important factors in the lives of many individuals. In addition to moral and spiritual guidance, they can provide a sense of purpose, structure and community. For certain…

I had one of those oh, yeah! moments yesterday when everything became so clear to me. Now, I've had such moments before. In my "Mini-secret of universe revealed" I described a couple of them. One mescaline-fueled. One clear-headed. So I'm not claiming that my most recent epiphany is It, the Big One, a foretaste of my impending satori. But hey, it could be. And it's in line with my other revelations, though you might have to be under the influence of a psychedelic to appreciate my late '60s insight that it's all about a paper bag turned inside out. I…

Douglas Adams – author, humorist, and great admirer of science – was fond of telling a story about how televisions work. Here's how his friend, Richard Dawkins, related it in his "Lament for Douglas Adams" (Adams died of a heart attack in 2001 at the age of 49). A man didn't understand how televisions work, and was convinced that there must be lots of little men inside the box, manipulating images at high speed. An engineer explained about high-frequency modulations of the electromagnetic spectrum, transmitters and receivers, amplifiers and cathode ray tubes, scan lines moving across and down a phosphorescent…

It's (churchless) confession time. I'm getting down on my bloggish knees and admitting to a mea culpa. Not a very juicy one, though. It's philosophical rather than salacious. For a long time I've been an advocate of the notion that under their dogmatic skins religions share a common skeleton. Aldous Huxley called this the Perennial Philosophy and wrote a book by that name. But now I've come to agree with Stephen Prothero, chair of Boston University's Department of Religion, who said in Newsweek recently that the proposition "The Major Religions are Essentially Alike" is false. Religious people do agree that…

I showed you mine a few days ago. Now you show me yours. Your favorite "religion." Which, because I put quotation marks around the word, could be: An honest-to-god (or godless) religion; a philosophy of life; a metaphysical system; a spiritual path; or something describable that's along these lines. What I believe is just a touch vague. If golf, NASCAR, romance novels, raising gerbils, or watching "24" reruns is your religion, that's nice. But I'd just as soon that you didn't extol it in a comment to this post. Because I'm sincerely – maybe even seriously – interested in finding…

It was the kickoff to a great coffee house conversation today: "So, Brian, would you say that you're still a satsangi?" Meaning, a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB)—an India-based spiritual organization. I've had this sort of talk before. It leads to all sorts of interesting spinoff questions that apply to anyone of any faith. What does it take to deserve to be called a Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu, or any other persuasion? I started with an obvious answer. "I was initiated into RSSB thirty-six years ago. Guess that means I'm a satsangi." Hans, my philosophical discussion…

About time to leave Maui. Hawaiian shirts have been bought. Waves have been boogie-boarded. Some tropical photons have managed to make it through SPF 30 and gifted me a take-home tan. I'll let a Maui resident, James Miner, do much of the speaking today. He wrote an intriguing letter that was published in the Maui News last Saturday—a philosophical cut above the usual letter to the editor fare. It speaks to me on several levels. Over on my other blog I wrote a few days ago that Maui overdevelopment makes for sad sights. That's part of what Miner is getting…

Once again, the right-wing conspiracy theorists were wrong. I suspected as much. Tuesday the "Where's Your Brain" blog theorized that Cho Seung Hui, the Virginia Tech killer, was some sort of Muslim terrorist—because the words "Ismail Ax" were written on one of his arms. That sounded crazily unlikely to me. I left a comment on the blog post saying as much: Yeah, and you probably think there Saddam had weapons of mass destruction and supported Al Qaeda, right? I realize that facts are irrelevant to the right-wing brain (truthiness rules!), but this post is particularly ridiculous. Anything is possible, but…

Most people have a strong tendency toward drawing distinct lines. Between belief and unbelief. Between right and wrong. Between all sorts of false dichotomies. False, because life generally is a lot fuzzier than our "got to be this or that" minds take it to be. Today's Dilbert comic gets it right. I've been pondering fuzziness recently because my wife and I are preparing for an appeal hearing on a nearby proposed 217 acre subdivision. We and our neighbors are fighting the development because we don't believe there is enough groundwater for additional wells in the area. The developer does. So…

Religious people often talk about how difficult it is to have faith in God and stay on a spiritual path. They like to think of themselves as brave souls choosing the road less often taken, going against the grain of a materialist, godless, faithless culture. Actually, there's increasing evidence that the truth is just the opposite, since the minds of human beings are hard-wired for religion. What's difficult is recognizing our instinctual propensity to believe, and choosing a course that leads in the direction of reality. Such is one of the messages of an excellent online article in the New…

It’s always a delight to read Sam Harris, author of The End of Faith and Letter to a Christian Nation. He’s got a knack for speaking honestly about subjects that often are taboo topics in polite conversation. Like, “Why do you cling to such weird religious beliefs?” In a November 13, 2006 Newsweek essay, “The Case Against Faith,” Harris socks it to the faithful in six paragraphs that had me cheering from my seat in the churchless bleachers. After lamenting that more than half of Americans believe the entire cosmos was created 6,000 years ago, he says: This is embarrassing.…

Step right up and choose your God: Authoritarian, Benevolent, Critical, or Distant. A major national survey of American attitudes toward religion has found that an Authoritarian image of the Almighty is the most popular at 31%. Distant comes in second at 24% with Benevolent not far behind, 23%. Critical brings up the rear with 16%. This finding goes a long way toward explaining why our country is so screwed-up. Almost half of our citizens go through their days believing that an authoritarian or critical god is looking over their shoulders, judging them for every moral misstep. When I read the…