There’s no “nothing” to compare with the cosmos’ “something”

Like I said a few days ago, it's absolutely awesome that existence exists. Oh, guess I should add, "awesome, dude... ." Which reflects how marvelously meaningful what I said is. And also how meaningless.  It happened again today. That sudden "bottom falling out from under me" feeling, sort of the mental equivalent of being startled by an elevator going into free fall. I like the feeling. It's the most genuine sensation of spirituality, not really an apt word, but best I can come up with, that comes over me in my churchless way of looking at the world. What it is…

Weirdness: editing a book I wrote that I no longer agree with

This afternoon I decided that I've got to get serious about finishing my re-write of "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder," a book I wrote in the early 1990's that has been out of print for a long time — since the publisher went out of business.

Years ago I edited the book significantly. My preachiness bothered me. Of course, at the time I wrote it, what I said didn't sound preachy to me. Hey, it was the truth!

So this evening I spent 90 minutes or so on proofreading and editing instead of on writing my usual Church of the Churchless blog post. It was a pleasingly weird experience. Whenever I read what I wrote in this book, even de-preachy'fied, I'm struck by how differently I look upon life now.

Which is a good thing. I feel like I've evolved into a more genuine way of understanding my place in the cosmos. Still…

There are moments when I read what my true-believing self wrote and think, "Ah, back then it was sort of nice to be so sure about God, soul, spirit, life after death, and all that stuff."

Why, you might wonder, would I want to re-publish a book that I don't really believe in any more? Well, several reasons.

Some other people will find my arguments more convincing that I find them myself nowadays. In fact, there's a chance I was on the right track before, and the wrong track now. I put a lot of work into researching and writing this study of how "ageless mysticism" relates to the "new physics." And I wouldn't mind getting some royalties from Amazon to support my senior citizen longboarding passion and caffeine addiction. 

Until I get the revised version of God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder back in print (both paper and electronic forms), I'll probably spend less time writing original posts for this blog. Maybe I'll continue to share excerpts from the rewritten book.

Feel free to laugh at me. I do so myself. Here's how the introduction reads now. Can't recall how different it is from the original. Perhaps not much. I made more changes to other chapters.

Think less, sense more. Stress relief made simple.

Here's some good advice from Daniel Bor, a cognitive neuroscientist, in his book "The Ravenous Brain: How the New Science of Consciousness Explains Our Insatiable Search for Meaning."  After enumerating some oft-heard ways to reduce stress (get enough sleep, exercise regularly, etc.), Bor says: But eclipsing this list in the fight against stress is one simple mental exercise: meditation. This is often written off as being too esoteric and not sufficiently scientific, but it's been shown to profoundly help virtually any mental ailment, whether the person has a psychiatric condition or is merely suffering from the stresses and strains of…

The illusory self loves to make up stories

Who are we? Is there both an "I" and a "me" inside my head? Where do my stories about myself come from? Is it possible to live without a coherent life story? Great questions. So it didn't take me long to reply to this email with a "Sure, Alex, I'll put up a post about the video." Hi Brian,I'm writing from the Institute of Art and Ideas, where we organise a philosophy and ideas festival called HowTheLightGetsIn in May every year. All the debates at the festival are filmed and released over the course of the following year and I thought a…

There’s more, and less, to reality than we believe

We humans are mavelously anthropocentric creatures. Of course, our two dogs are marvelously caninecentric creatures. All they know about the world is what their dog brains are able to perceive.  I don't get the feeling, though, that Serena and Zu Zu feel that their way of looking upon reality is the only way, or the best way. Whereas lots of people do. One exception: when they're engaged in an intense sniffing project while we're on a walk and I tell them, "Come on, let's go!"; their bemused look at me speaks What an idiot -- why isn't he as interested…

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…

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…

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,…

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…

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…

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…

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…

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),…

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…

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…

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…

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…

“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 --…

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.…

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…