Posted inReality Science

The secret truth gurus don’t know (but scientists do)

In my life I've flown in both directions: toward mysticism as taught by gurus, and toward scientific understanding as taught by scientists. For a long time I felt like it was possible to meld the best of both worlds in an even-better combination. Now, though, I feel like whatever mysticism claims to offer needs to be assessed from within the world of reality known to science. Understand: I'm not saying that scientists are anywhere close to knowing what life, the universe, consciousness, and All That is all about. Mysteries abound. Maybe they always will, since it seems that most of…
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Posted inReality Science

In living, focus on “differences that make a difference”

I've come across this phrase quite frequently in philosphical and scientific writings: a difference that makes a difference. It's appealing.  What good is a difference that doesn't make a difference? In fact, is it even really a difference, if nothing about it makes a difference? These are deep epistemological waters. I'm not competent to dive into them. I just enjoy pondering Gregory Bateson's definition of information, which seems to apply more generally to other areas (of course, it could be reasonably argued that information is the essence of everything). Consider the mind-body problem. Or in some religious circles, the mind/soul-body…
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Posted inMystics Science

Spiritual sages were clueless about how the brain works

Almost every religious prophet, mystic guru, spiritual sage, revered master, elevated yogi, or other supposed knower of what lies beyond everyday appearances shares a common denominator:  They were essentially clueless about the human brain with which they made their pronouncements about divine reality.  So they had no idea about how the knower of their purported knowledge works. I'd realized this before, but the factiness of this fact hadn't really hit me until I started reading Patricia Smith Churchland's "Brain-Wise: Studies in Neurophilosophy."  In the Introduction, Churchland reminds us how neuroscience has only come into its own very recently. By contrast,…
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Posted inBuddhism Science Taoism/Tai Chi

The self: a trick your mind plays on not-you

Here's some good news, and some even better news, from the current special issue of New Scientist: "The Great Illusion of the Self." You're being tricked by an expert! And who doesn't like amazing tricks? Even better, the trickster is your own mind! You're your own magician.  Well, you would be if you existed. But almost certainly you don't. At least, not in any way close to how you feel that you do. In 10 pages, several New Scientist stories -- "Who Are You?," What Are You?," "When Are You?," "Where Are You?," "Why Are You?" -- persuasively present evidence that an…
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Posted inScience

Don’t understand the brain? You can’t understand spirituality.

Here's a follow-up to my "Spirituality without neuroscience is bullshit" post. Since I wrote it I've been pondering ways to convert religious believers to what seems to me to be an obvious truth: if you don't understand the brain with which you do your understanding, your understandings are going to be shallow. I'm not saying that everybody has to be expert in the anatomy and functioning of the brain. But without basic knowledge of what lies within the cranium of each of us, how we look upon the world is going to be skewed by our ignorance. Let's consider an…
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Posted inBooks Science

Spirituality without neuroscience is bullshit

For most of my life I've been an avid reader of philosophical, spiritual, mystical, religious, and otherwise what's it all about? books.  I've mentally devoured ideas that were way out there. Well, usually they also were way in here. Meaning, those notions concerned our innermost core being: soul, pure consciousness, Buddha-nature, atman... that thingless thing goes by lots of names. My evolution into churchlessness has changed my appetite for books that I once found delicously tasty. I'm much more attracted now to readings which accept reality as known to modern science, while delving further into the many mysteries lying beyond the…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Beyond humanism and absolutism… mystery

What is real? Great question. Just the sort of question to tackle in a blog post. Such is the hubris of bloggers.  Hubris is a word that's used a lot in David E. Cooper's "The Measure of Things: Humanism, Humility, and Mystery." Wikipedia clues us in to the meaning of hubris. Not a good quality to have if you seek to know the nature of reality. Hubris (pron.: /ˈhjuːbrɪs/), also hybris, from ancient Greek ὕβρις, means extreme pride or arrogance. Hubris often indicates a loss of contact with reality and an overestimation of one's own competence or capabilities, especially when the person exhibiting it is in a position of…
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Posted inReality Science

Cosmos could be beyond human knowing

Listening to a Philosophy Talk podcast on "Has Science Replaced Philosophy?" while exercising today, I heard a discussion of how science seeks empirical knowledge while philosophy is after logical knowledge. Or something like that. I've got the basic notion correct, if not the precise philosophy talk language.  Anyway, it's an interesting idea. Often religious people disparage science, and scientists, arguing that the mysteries of the universe can't be fully understood by reason and logic. True enough. However, science isn't always reasonable or logical. Quantum theory, for example. At the quantum level of reality (which some say is all of reality),…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science progresses. Religion doesn’t.

Science knows a lot about reality. Even more impressive, science steadily knows more and more about reality. I subscribe to several science magazines, New Scientist and Scientific American. In every issue I learn about advances in the scientific understanding of the cosmos. But when was the last time religions told us something factually new about how the world works? In fact, so far as I know there hasn't been a first time. Or an anytime. Meaning, even though prophets, mystics, sages, gurus, enlightened masters, and such supposedly have had access to beyond-normal ways of knowing, none of them ever have…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Science

People in United States are embarrassingly ignorant of evolution

Way to go, citizens of the United States! We're almost #1 in... Percentage of people who don't accept the reality that humans evolved from earlier species of animals. If we can just get more people in Turkey educated in modern science, and/or divorced from fundamentalist religion, the United States has a good chance of being #1: the most ignorant of 34 countries about a central fact of modern science. Pathetic. Embarassing.  It's no wonder the United States is falling behind the rest of the world in so many areas. Our citizens are astoundingly clueless about basic facts every person should…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Science

Self/Soul is evolution’s trick to make us think “I’m important!”

Why do humans feel that we have (or are) a Self/Soul that's distinct from the body/brain? Buddhism and neuroscience agree: there's no such thing, no self, no soul. Yet it sure seems like there is. We look at the world with a consciousness that screams, "I'm floating above my mind and body! I'm in control of my physicality, not just material brain meat doing its thing." A few weeks ago I blogged about Nicholas Humphrey's fascinating short book, "Seeing Red: A Study in Consciousness." The passages I shared in that post showed how Humphrey starts with a description of seeing…
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Posted inMiracles Reality Science

Spiritual hallucinations provide illusory certainty

Synchronicity. I don't believe in it as something supernatural or miraculous. Just as an interesting phenomenon which has a natural explanation. Still... I enjoyed the connection between a book I started reading this morning, and a new video from David Lane, a.k.a. neuralsurfer, I came across a few minutes later via a Lane Facebook post. Common theme: brain-produced hallucinations which can seem absolutely real to the person hallucinating. The book is Oliver Sacks' "Hallucinations." Sacks is a professor of neurology who writes books about ways the brain produces unusual experiences.  Here's some of what I learned in the first few…
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Posted inScience

“Spiritual” hallucinations are brain-based

The human brain is amazing. Though it is entirely physical, the brain can produce sensations that seem spiritual, soulful, supernatural.  Oliver Sacks, M.D., a professor of neurology, describes how the brain does this in a fascinating Atlantic article, "Seeing God in the Third Millenium: How the brain creates out-of-body experiences and religious epiphanies." Here's some excerpts that I found particularly interesting. Below Sacks explains why people are so convinced that what they hallucinate is objectively real, not a product of their own brain -- which it is. But the fundamental reason that hallucinations -- whatever their cause or modality --…
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Posted inMiracles Radha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Believing in miracles is an insult to God

In tune with the Christmas season, which is full of talk about unproven religious miracles, yesterday "G" left a comment on my "Where have all the miracles gone?" post.  Sorry Peaceseeker, if you want proof of the RSSB miracles all you have to do is do a Google search, it's funny how there is positive news about RSSB on Google but Brian doesn't incorporate it on here. But when there is false news about RSSB he's quick along with the other bloggers to incorporate it here. My response made a lot more sense. G, please share the proof of RSSB miracles.…
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Posted inScience

Great video! “The Burden of Proof.” Claims demand evidence.

I just watched a terrific eleven minute You Tube video, "The Burden of Proof," that should be required viewing for everyone who believes in God, miracles, psychic powers, or anything else in the supernatural realm.  Also for those who challenge them. I highly recommend the video. This is the sort of clear thinking that cuts through religious bullshit like a razor sharp blade. It's no different from the prove it! and demonstrable evidence, please! pleas that I regularly utter to true believing commenters on this blog. The video just does a great job of demolishing the ridiculous notion that it…
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Posted inScience

Seeing red. Much more to this than meets the eye.

I love pondering Big Questions About the Cosmos. The stark existence of, well, existence is one of them, though I'm not sure if this is really a question. Maybe just a brute fact about which nothing more can be said.  (Along this line, recently I read a letter to the editor in New Scientist magazine arguing that circular reasoning, sort of like "existence exists," has to be the nature of a final truth. Otherwise there's always another truth along another link in a chain of causes/effects or reasoned explanations, and we never get to the end.) Sometimes, though, little questions…
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Posted inFree will Science

Sitting in the jury box, I deny free will

Ah, it was my first time to sit in the jury box as a prospective juror. I didn't want to waste my opportunity. Which, because I hate jury duty, was the opportunity to not be a real juror.  Yet I'd held my right hand up along with the other eleven people in the jury box (six were needed for the trial) as the judge swore us to tell the truth during the voir dire process of the defense and prosecuting attorneys questioning us prospective jurors about whether we could fairly decide the case (it involved menacing without physical contact). So…
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Posted inScience

Brain has no outside authority

Free will, or rather the lack thereof, fascinates me. I've blogged about this subject a lot. (Couldn't help myself, for deterministic reasons.) In the December 2012 issue of Scientific American there's a letter about a recent Skeptic column by Michael Shermer. In the column it was argued that what humans really have is "free won't." Shermer says: But if we define free will as the power to do otherwise, the choice to veto one impulse over another is free won’t. Free won’t is veto power over innumerable neural impulses tempting us to act in one way, such that our decision to act…
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Posted inScience Universe

Scale of the universe makes belief in God look very small

I'm not religious. But if I were ever to embrace a religion, I'd want it to be a modern one. A scientific one. Meaning, a religion that seeks to explain whatever might lie beyond the physical universe without denying the reality of what does indisputably exist. The dogmas of every major world religion, though, date from prescientific times. Back then, most people believed that the Earth was the center of the cosmos. The Sun and stars orbited around our planet. We humans were special. Both in terms of our relation to the rest of the universe, and of our relation…
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Posted inReality Science Spiritual practice/meditation

How true are your religious predictions?

Today Nate Silver was called a "data god" in the Doonesbury comic strip. So I figure it's appropriate to honor his sacredness with another post about his fascinating book, "The Signal and the Noise." Silver is a hero of the reality-respecting community, of which I'm a proud member. He successfully predicted the outcome of the 2012 presidential election, getting the Obama vs. Romney winner correctly in all 50 states. Early on in his book, Silver talks about how we have a lot more information now, but this doesn't mean we have more knowledge. Meanwhile, if the quantity of information is…
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