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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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Science loves being wrong. Religion hates it.

Are you sure you're right about something? Whether it is going to rain tomorrow; whether space aliens have visited Earth; whether God exists. Whatever. If so, you've got a religious attitude, even if you don't consider yourself to be religious. That's because science is never completely certain. Scientists always are open to having their ideas about reality disproved.  In short, they love being wrong. Indeed, says Steven Ross Pomeroy in his Scientific American blog post, "The Key to Science (and Life) is Being Wrong." A good scientist must be willing to be wrong. Such an inclination is liberating, for it…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Science

Salem (Oregon) skeptics meet under Center for Inquiry banner

Last night my wife and I entered a den of secular, scientific skeptics. Not surprisingly, we enjoyed our first CFI Salem Humanists meeting. There was some sort of merging between the local Center for Inquiry and Humanist groups, but CFI seems to be the main banner under which they meet now. Laurel and I had read about the meeting, an honoring of Carl Sagan, in our local newspaper. We figured we'd meet some like-minded people. We figured right. There were quite a few other newbies in an upstairs room at the IKE Box coffeehouse. So it took a while for…
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Posted inReality Science

Reality belongs to those who know, not believers

Reality is real. This is, for some, an unreal statement. They believe that reality is whatever someone considers it to be, that it's possible to create our own reality, that reason, logic, facts, and demonstrable evidence are useless in revealing whatever lies behind obvious appearances, that intuition and a gut feeling are better guides to truth. Well, as I said in a post a few days ago, Tuesday's national election in the United States was a victory for reality. And a concomitant defeat for those who value subjectivity over objectivity, passionate belief over reasonable facts, "I feel..." over "I know...…
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Posted inFree will Science Universe

Free will is a wonderful thing to lose

Most of us are afraid of losing our freedom. We like being able to say what we want, go where we want, do what we want. Within limits, of course. Absolute freedom is impossible. Constraints are part of the human condition. This helps explain the almost universal belief in free will, and the desire to exercise free will to the fullest. Even if we're constrained by outer circumstances, such as not being able to drive 200 miles an hour because our car won't go that fast, most people have the feeling that what they are capable of choosing to do…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

In spiritual science, discussing and debating beats blind faith

I'm amused at the advice I frequently get in comments on blog posts and emails: "Stop thinking so much, Brian. Believe in God. Have faith in your guru. Meditate and experience the truth that has eluded you." These people don't understand that I view spirituality and mysticism as a science. Always have. Likely always will. If I wanted a religion, I had one in my brief career as a Catholic. I was attracted to the Sant Mat teachings, Radha Soami Satsang Beas version, because they were billed as a "science of the soul." Cool. Spirituality and science wrapped up in…
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Posted inScience

Phi, integrated information, the fountain of phenomena

I've read a lot of neuroscience/neurophilosophy books. But none like "Phi: A Voyage from the Brain to the Soul," by psychiatrist Giulio Tononi. It's amazingly creative, filled with literary, historical, artistic, philosophical, and scientific allusions that made me feel like a Neanderthal. How the heck does Tononi know all this stuff? Guess I spend way more time watching The Daily Show and Survivor than he does. In the lavishly illustrated book, a blend of theory, fact and fiction, Galileo meets Francis Crick, Alan Turing, Charles Darwin, and other great thinkers. It's pleasingly entertaining, yet left me feeling like I'd eaten…
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