Posted inGod Religions

Mine disaster shows absurdity of prayer

“Just a few minutes before they were praising God, and now they were cursing.” That’s how a relative of one of the men trapped in the West Virginia mine described the abrupt mood change when the crowd gathered in a church learned that all but one of the miners actually were dead—not alive, as they had been mistakenly told several hours earlier. It shows the absurdity of prayer. The belief that God listens to pleas such as “Save the trapped miners, Lord” and decides whether or not to intervene in human affairs almost certainly is superstition. If prayer has any…
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Posted inReligions

Barbara Walters special may be closest I’m getting to heaven

I put in several hours last night watching a recording of Barbara Walters Tuesday special: “Heaven: Where is it? How do we get there?” Unfortunately, none of her guests said that watching a spiritually-oriented TV show garnered good heaven-karma. Otherwise, opinions were all over the map concerning Walters’ central questions. The head of an atheist society expressed her firm opinion that we weren’t alive before we were born and we won’t be alive after we’re dead. Several Christian clergy were just as sure that those who believe in Jesus and have been “born again” (whatever that means) are absolutely, positively…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions Science

Doubt differentiates science and religion

Here’s a simple way of determining whether you’re scientifically or religiously inclined: how do you feel about doubt? If you’re opposed to doubt, or even, well, doubtful about doubt, then you’re a religious sort. If you’re open to doubt, then you’re a scientific type. I got to thinking about the pros and cons of doubt after thumbing through the August 2005 issue of “Spiritual Link.” This magazine is published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an organization based in India that also is referred to as the Science of the Soul or Sant Mat. I came across an article titled…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Religions

The Chronicles of Narnia: a myth about a myth

Christians are getting excited about the release this week of “The Chronicles of Narnia,” a movie based on C.S. Lewis’ “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” fantastical allegory. Newsweek reports that “preachers are reportedly urged to give ‘Narnia’-themed sermons and invite non-Christians to see the movie with the congregation.” Well, when my daughter, Celeste, was young I read “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe” to her. I don’t remember thinking, “Ah, how Christ-like is Aslan the lion.” Of course, maybe if I had been a Christian the allegory would, let’s say, have leapt out at me. A few…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Prize for proof of superior religion

Do you believe that your religion is The One, the most fabulous faith in the whole wide world? Do you have a convincing reason why your belief should be believed? If so, you’re on the inside track to winning 25,000 yen, courtesy of The Huge Entity’s “Can You Prove Religious Superiority?” competition. Now, before you get all excited about the new car you’re going to be able to buy, I should point out that according to the XE.com currency converter your prize will be a not-so-huge $207.51. But, hey, that would buy a bunch of Bibles, Torahs, Korans, Dhammapadas, Adi…
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Posted inReligions Science

The Vatican gets it right (for once)

My thanks to Steve, a Church of the Churchless reader, for letting me know that the Vatican says the faithful should listen to science. Since it is likely that a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices soon will be Catholics, maybe this will help spur the court to make a correct decision if an Evolution v. Intelligent Design case comes up. It was encouraging to hear that at least some Vatican functionaries have a decent understanding of what differentiates evolution and intelligent design/creationism: proof. Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Do you need to kill the Buddha?

Previously I’™ve written:

“If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!” Buddhists are fond of saying. And not just Buddha: also Jesus, Mohammed, Moses, Lao Tzu, Guru Nanak, every spiritual teacher. And not just these people are to be killed: also the concepts that comprise the shell of their teachings. For only then can the kernel of truth be released.

But is this really the case? Below you can read an email message from a person in the United Kingdom who argues otherwise. He, like me, is an initiate of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, also known as “Sant Mat.” The “satsangs” mentioned in his message are meetings of this group.

These are special words, unfamiliar to most people. But the questions being explored here are universal. To what extent does an evolving skeptic or agnostic need to disassociate from a religious organization to which he or she currently belongs? Can you discern grains of truth anywhere you look and find a way to separate them from ritualistic, dogmatic, fundamentalist chaff?

If you’re a questioning Christian and want to relate this message to your own experience, you could substitute “church”€ for “€œsatsang,”€ “Christianity” for “Sant Mat,”€ “Christians” for “€œsatsangis,” and so on. For the issues discussed below are common to anyone who feels an urge to move beyond the boundaries of a well-defined faith.

In Zen master Seung Sahn’s book “Dropping Ashes on the Buddha” he tells a student:

Throw away teaching, throw away everything. If you say you are not attached to methods of practice, this is being attached to method. If you cut off your attachment, then your words (“€œthe real ‘˜I’ functions without thinking or talking”) are not necessary.

And also:

You say that you have no faith in your Buddha-nature. I too have no faith in my Buddha-nature. And I have no faith in Buddha or God or anything. If you have no faith, you must completely have no faith. You must not believe in anything at all…€But when you see red, there is red; when you see white, there is only white. You must let go of both faith and non-faith. Things are only as they are.

Seung Sahn is fond of saying things like “If you understand yourself, I will hit you thirty times. And if you don’t understand yourself, I will still hit you thirty times.” When asked “Why?”€ he will say, “It is very cold today.”€

Here’s a weather report from my British correspondent:

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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Being religious without a religion

Can you be religious and not belong to a religion? Of course. In fact, I believe this is the only way to be genuinely religious—to give up religion. This seems contradictory, but one non-religious “religion,” Buddhism, already has proven that it can be done. I’m referring to original Buddhism, that of the Buddha himself. After the Buddha died, it wasn’t long before his teachings were turned into a traditional religion. However, Huston Smith writes in “The World’s Religions” that few traces of six normal features of religion can be found in the Buddha’s message. These features are authority, ritual, speculation,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

What are the odds?

Beating exceedingly long odds (1 in 146 million), someone in Oregon just won $340 million in the Powerball lottery. This got me to thinking, what are the odds of someone winning the God lottery? That is, of choosing the right religion or spiritual practice and enjoying a really big prize: salvation, enlightenment, heaven, gnosis, god-realization. I’ve enjoyed reading the comments to my previous “I’ve been fired” post. Some I agree with, some I don’t. This statement by Robert Searle (mildly edited for clarity) got me pondering probabilities: I am coming to the conclusion that the much despised term "blind faith"…
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Posted inReligions

Religion is bad for societal health

The more religious a country is, the more dysfunctional it is. That’s the basic conclusion of a study reported in The Journal of Religion and Society. A Los Angeles Times article, “The Dark Side of Faith,” summarizes the findings of the researcher, Gregory S. Paul: He found that the most religious democracies exhibited substantially higher degrees of social dysfunction than societies with larger percentages of atheists and agnostics. Of the nations studied, the U.S. — which has by far the largest percentage of people who take the Bible literally and express absolute belief in God (and the lowest percentage of…
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Posted inHumor Religions

Become a religion of one

Most people belong to a religion with many members. There are about two billion Christians in the world, over a billion Muslims, and nearly a billion Hindus. Sure, company is nice, but here are some reasons to become a religion of one: --You can hold a worship service whenever and wherever you want. Your church just needs to be as big as you are. --No contentious arguments about leadership. Any jockeying for power in your religious organization will be between you and you. --Doctrinal disputes are easily resolved. What you say, goes. --If you’ve ever wanted to be known as…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions Spiritual practice/meditation

My religious unconversion

Lots of people talk about their religious conversion. Few speak about their religious unconversion. Google gave me 7,150,000 results for “religious conversion” and just 187 for “religious unconversion.” I hope to make it 188. I’m proud of my unconversion. Much prouder than of my previous conversion. For it is more challenging to embrace a universal spiritual openness and uncertainty than a defined spiritual system and its corresponding dogma. Each unfaithful person has their own unconversion story. Google gave me “Escape From Religion, My Untestimony,” the tale of an increasingly questioning Christian, and a (long) riff on “The Meaning of Life”…
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Posted inGod Religions

A churchless song: “When God Made Me”

Neil Young asks some great questions in his “When God Made Me” song that he performed last night at the televised Shelter from the Storm benefit for Hurricane Katrina victims. Through the magic of our digital video recorder I listened to the lyrics several times. They moved me. Young had a sort of gospel choir backing him up, but “When God Made Me” isn’t really a Christian song, in my opinion. It asks questions about God’s intentions, but doesn’t answer them. I liked that. Here’s an example: Was he planning only for believers, or for those who just had faith?…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religious Americans: tolerant but gullible

Since I have a decidedly nontraditional attitude toward spirituality, it was reassuring to see that a Newsweek/Beliefnet poll found that 79% of Americans answered “Yes” to the question, “Can a good person who doesn’t share your religious beliefs attain salvation or go to heaven?” Of course, I’d feel even better if I could get that assurance directly from whatever higher power is responsible for doling out salvation. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Christians appear to be more tolerant than I have been giving them credit for. Evangelical Protestants were the least tolerant, but 68% still were willing…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics Religions

Fundamentalism is religious racism

Racists erroneously believe that there is proof one race is superior to another. Fundamentalists erroneously believe that there is proof one religion is superior to another. Thus there’s a natural affinity between fundamentalism and racism. This is one reason, among many, why fundamentalism in any form—Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sikh, whatever—can’t be tolerated by tolerant people. On my other weblog, HinesSight, I recently wrote about the danger of “Religious right on a crusade.” Now, many people would accuse me of overreacting to the attempts by Christian fundamentalists to take control of the political, educational, and judicial systems in the United…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science is flexible, religion is rigid

It’s good to be flexible physically, mentally, and especially, spiritually. This is why science should be embraced and religion rejected. For religion promotes a truth-denying rigidity while science emphasizes the need to be open to reality in all of its guises. The current controversy about the teaching of intelligent design, which is creationism in new clothes, illustrates this difference between open-minded science and don’t-bother-me-with-facts religion. Science is founded on the scientific method, a process for revealing the truth about how things work in the physical universe. Whatever demonstrable truths this process ends up finding are added to science’s fund of…
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Posted inReligions Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Plunging deeper into Universism

As reported on my other weblog, I’ve decided to sponsor a Universist face-to-face discussion group here in Salem. Currently the group has two members: me and my wife, Laurel. This makes it easy for us to meet, but it would be nice to expand the membership between the confines of Hines. So if you live in the Salem area, consider becoming a group member (sign up here). Though this discussion group will be under the Universist banner, there’s essentially no difference between the philosophy of Universism and what gets preached here at the Church of the Churchless. I know this,…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

We all believe in jihad

It isn’t just Muslim extremists who believe in jihad. Almost without exception, every person does. Rooting out jihadists, or mujahideen, is impossible. There’d be nobody left on earth if this were to happen. For the root meaning of jihad is “to strive” or “to make an effort.” In the Islamic world this striving takes on certain characteristics, while elsewhere the striving manifests differently. Always jihad flows from the same psychological condition, though: a belief that individual effort can make the world a better place. Before I get inundated with angry emails and comments calling me a moral relativist offering up…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Politics Religions

Universism, a kindred unfaith

A few weeks ago I became a Universist. I didn’t have to give up my churchless faith to do so, for Universism is a marvelously kindred philosophy. The Universists just are a lot more organized than the Church of the Churchless ever will be and have a much cooler web site. They actually sign people up who are willing to affirm that they fit the definition of a Universist. I figured, “What the heck?” and proclaimed my allegiance to Universism (pronounced “universe-ism”). I’d already joined the Unitarian Jihad, so signing on to another uni-philosophy seemed right in line with the…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

More criticism of Radha Soami Satsang Beas

A few days ago I got an email from a long-time member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), the spiritual group that I’ve been affiliated with since 1971. This person was stimulated to write after reading a comment posted to my “Why I embrace unorganized religion” post. You’ll see that my correspondent begins by quoting an excerpt from that comment and then heads off from there. Now, I don’t want this Church of the Churchless blog to become overly focused on criticism of a single small religious organization. But the reality is that my current preference for churchlessness is an…
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