Posted inScience

Life of a carbon atom fills me with irreligious awe

Here's a scan of a page from a wonderful book by Caleb Scharf, "The Zoomable Universe: An Epic Tour Through Cosmic Scale, from Almost Everything to Nearly Nothing."After I highlighted the section in yellow, I wound my way through the nineteen steps in the scientifically-valid journey of a carbon atom that begins 10 billion years ago inside a massive star, and ends today with the eating of a potato.  Coincidentally, I ate a baked (OK, microwaved) potato for dinner tonight.  When I read the page below this morning, I found it surprisingly moving. Sure, I was familiar with the idea…
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Posted inScience

Good Jerry Coyne piece about free will (the lack thereof)

I'm a big fan of writings that debunk free will. (Just can't help myself.) Here's a good piece by Jerry Coyne that appeared on his Evolution is True blog: "Dawkins and Krauss on free will." It makes the same points that I've made in my own writings about free will, albeit in a clearer fashion. Here's an excerpt. But you really should read the entire post.  If you don’t believe in libertarian free will, then the concept of moral responsibility becomes problematic, though the problem of responsibility itself is not problematic. What changes is how we reward and, especially, punish people. Think…
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Posted inScience

What does it mean if you are, because you have to be?

The title of this blog post sounds like a theological or philosophical question. Actually, it is an outgrowth of a scientific theory, that of eternal inflation.  Which doesn't mean that the price of stuff keeps going up forever. In this context it means universes being created without end. So in an infinity of universes, there is room for anything and everything to happen.  However, even though the question of meaning in an inflationary universe has a scientific origin, physicist Brian Cox says that answers to this question can arise from anyone, which naturally includes you and me. Here's an excerpt from…
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Posted inReality Science

My atheist sources of awe: existence, evolution, consciousnessI

In my previous Church of the Churchless post I talked about how much I liked "The Way of Wonder" by Jack Haas. Wonder, awe, even reverence -- these aren't feelings that only religious believers have.  Hey, us atheists are equally wonder-filled, awestruck, reverent before something much greater than us. We just are in awe of what really exists, not what is imagined to exist.  (Like God, heaven, soul, spirit.) On a dog walk this afternoon I got to thinking about what I find most atheistically awesome about reality. Here's my top three, in order of awesomeness.  Naturally I've included links…
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Posted inReality Science

It isn’t all about us. Humans aren’t special.

We have no option but to use our human ways of knowing to understand the universe. However, this doesn't mean that us Homo sapiens possess the capability of accurately answering all the questions about the cosmos that come to mind.  Or even being sure that we're able to ask the proper questions.  More and more, I'm embracing the conclusion that human consciousness likely isn't capable of grasping the Great Big Questions (notably including why the universe exists at all), much less the answers to them. Here's a letter from the June 2017 issue of Scientific American on this subject. I've…
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Posted inFree will Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Experience of conscious will is an illusion

I don't believe in free will. But like most people, I have a feeling that my intention to do something is what causes that thing to happen.  So we have two things going on: (1) A scientific world view doesn't support a belief in free will. As I've written about a lot on this blog (type "free will" into the Google search box in the right sidebar to find the many posts), there is no evidence of an immaterial self/soul that somehow floats free of the material/physical goings-on in the human mind. So there's no entity within us which can…
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Posted inReligions Science

Compared to science, religion knows nothing about reality

Here's another of my wife's monthly letters to the editor of the Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal newspaper. Her April offering was titled "Reader prefers science over religion" on the opinion page.  Me too. As we were driving around today, talking about this and that, including the ridiculousness of religiosity, Laurel mentioned that nothing in the Bible or any other holy book has led to any new understanding of reality in the way science does all the time. Meaning, one would think that the prophets, sages, gurus, enlightened beings, divine sons/daughters of God, or whoever would have been privy to some…
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Posted inReality Science

Have faith that reality is better than any belief

One of my first Church of the Churchless posts, "Just have faith," was written in November 2004. It's still one of my favorites. Re-reading it today, I was pleased that I still agree with just about everything in it.  The reason: even though thirteen years ago I was more open to the hypothesis of God and life after death than I am now, the method of open-minded scientific faith that should be used to investigate all sorts of hypotheses -- both worldly and spiritual -- rings as true to me today as it did back then.  My personal research into…
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Posted inMorality Science

Without magical thinking, the American flag is just a piece of cloth

Recently KGW, a Portland (Oregon) television station, had a story about a military veteran who was intensely distraught when some people protesting Trump's inauguration burned the American flag.  Eric Post, who served in the Marines, made an emotional Facebook video that's been viewed over 2.5 million times. His basic argument is that anyone who burns the flag doesn't believe in American ideals, doesn't respect the sacrifices of soldiers, and is a coward.  Of course, flag burners look upon themselves differently. They consider themselves patriots. They view flag-burning as free speech protected by the Constitution, which the Supreme Court has ruled…
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Posted inReality Science

Reality is a terrible thing to waste — yet religions and politicians do

What is real? This is one of the most important questions. I've grappled with it for my entire adult life.  The basic problem I or anyone else faces in answering that question is that we humans are subjective beings who exist in an objective world.  So subjectivity and objectivity are intermingled in everything we do, which includes grappling with the nature of reality. Wisdom, in my admittedly subjective opinion, largely lies in recognizing the difference between "I believe," "I feel," and similar I-based views, and "It is true that..." The latter sort of statement refers to an intersubjective reality, which…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

“The Simplest Case Scenario” is a must-read for philosophical science-lovers

Scientific. Philosophical. Well-written. Creative. Mind-expanding.  "The Simplest Case Scenario" by Karl Coryat pushed all of my book-loving buttons.  It's subtitle points to why I liked it so much: How the universe may be very different from what we think it is. I've believed this for my entire adult life. But for most of that time I thought that the Secret of the Cosmos could only be revealed through mysticism, meditation, philosophical contemplation, enlightenment, psychedelics.  At the same time, I've always adored science. I've read countless (almost) books about quantum mechanics, cosmology, neuroscience, cutting edge physics, systems theory, evolution, and such.…
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Posted inBooks Science

“I Am a Strange Loop” — a book that beautifully explains consciousness, soul, and I-ness

When I decluttered some bookshelves recently, and gave a bunch of books away, one of the titles in the Absolutely Must Keep pile was Douglas Hofstadter's "I Am a Strange Loop."  This is one of my favorite books. It does a marvelous job of explaining the nature of mind, soul, consciousness, I-ness, and such. Hofstadter's approach is based on modern neuroscience, but he doesn't focus on brain minutia. Rather, he takes a broad perspective that ties together science, philosophy, and everyday experience in a highly convincing fashion. I've blogged about "I Am a Strange Loop" before: If I'm not an…
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Posted inBooks Science Taoism/Tai Chi

“Incomplete Nature” shows how life is based on absence

Demonstrating some spousal exaggeration, my wife has been saying that she fears being crushed by a pile of books I've read that are awaiting my blogging attention. (I made sure to include a chair in this photo for scale; unless Laurel shrinks to two feet tall, I think she has nothing to worry about. However, I will admit that there's another pile behind this one, so combined they could possibly be a risk to wifely health.) The top light green book, 600 pages thick, seemed like a good place to start on reducing the pile. It is Terrence W. Deacon's…
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Posted inFree will Science

Free will is a meaningless expression

Here's another episode in my so-far never-ending quest to convince readers of this blog that free will, as normally understood, is an illusion. (For previous attempts, type "free will" in the Google search box in the right sidebar.) Below is a letter to the editor in the July 30 issue of New Scientist, a British publication. Which explains the weird spelling of "randomize" and "recognize." Damn, can't those Britons speak English correctly, like us Americans do? Anyway, I digress. I thought Carpenter's last paragraph was right-on. Along with reflexes, intuitions seem to be another example of unconsicous brain processes that we…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Free will is an illusion: convincing Sam Harris video

Below is a 9-minute video that encapsulates Sam Harris' views about free will. Which, in short, is that it is an illusion. And that the world would be better off if people recognized this, rather than wrongly believing that humans are able to freely choose what to do at any given moment. The background music in the video is a bit distracting. But Harris' message is so convincing, and the video is so well done (aside, perhaps, from the music selection), I urge you to watch it.Now, I realize that some people don't look upon free will in the way…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Science

“#Pray for Turkey” — a demonstrably useless gesture

Prayer has no effect on anybody or anything. Except, perhaps, the person praying. There is no scientific or other sort of demonstrable evidence that praying helps make the world better.  In fact, the largest research study on the efficacy of prayer found that not only was it useless in helping heart bypass patients recover, patients who knew they were being prayed for had a slighter higher rate of complications.  Dr. Herbert Benson of Harvard Medical School and other scientists tested the effect of having three Christian groups pray for particular patients, starting the night before surgery and continuing for two…
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Posted inFree will Science

Free will exists. Freedom of the will doesn’t.

I've written a lot about free will on this blog. To me it seems obvious that free will doesn't exist. At least not in the way most people believe that it does.  (You can find my numerous posts on this subject by typing "free will" into the Google search box in the right sidebar.) But after finishing Paul Singh's book, "The Great Illusion: The Myth of Free Will, Consciousness, and the Self," I realize that when commenters on my posts object to free will being an illusion, they're usually thinking of free will of being something different than how I…
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Posted inReality Science

Science warns: don’t get sucked into a black hole of belief

When I was in college forty-six years ago, back in the ancient year of 1970, I was attracted to a Eastern form of mysticism that went by various names, including Science of the Soul.  I really liked the idea of being able to do a spiritual "experiment."  Become a vegetarian. Live a moral life. Meditate for several hours a day as instructed by the guru. Observe what happens in meditation. Explore the hypothesis that there are higher non-physical domains of reality. Attempt to enter these via an altered form of consciousness. For about thirty-five years I diligently conducted that experiment.…
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Posted inFree will Reality Science

Stephen Hawking’s “Genius” series looks at free will confusingly

Wow! As a big Stephen Hawking fan, I never thought that I'd write a blog post where I took him to task for getting a scientific subject wrong.  But after watching Episode 3 of Hawking's new "Genius" series, I've got to point out how confusing this Why Are We Here? episode was when it came to free will.  I've read a lot about free will. I've thought a lot about free will. I've written a lot about free will. (For example, see here, here, and here.) So I was all eyes and ears as Hawking led three ordinary people --…
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Posted inBooks Science

Sean Carroll’s “Planets of Belief” — ideally constantly changing

I've loving a new book by theoretical physicist Sean Carroll,  "The Big Picture: On the Origins of Life, Meaning, and the Universe Itself." After reading just a few chapters, I felt compelled to leave a laudatory Amazon reader review. Here's part of what I said. I'm an inveterate consumer of both science and philosophy books. Almost always, the scientists lack the ability to talk about philosophy cogently, and almost always the philosophers are clueless about basic scientific understandings. So each frustrate my desire to simultaneously (1) learn about how the world is, and (2) find meaning in the world, given…
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