Posted inReality Science

David Lane on “Why Science Works”

Check out David Lane's response to Don Salmon, who disagreed with some central points Lane and his wife made in their essay, "Mysticism's Version of Intelligent Design: A Critique of John Davidson's Projective Creationism." I liked the essay a lot. Praised it in a blog post, "Devastating Critique of Radha Soami Satsang Beas lies." After Don Salmon left a comment on my post, I responded in my own fashion.  Don Salmon: I think David wrote a very interesting article, which quite accurately (though unintentionally) reveals most of modern "science" to be a thoroughly metaphysical belief system. This is most clearly stated…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Make the mind cat-like (and win a gold medal)

I don't really believe in sychronicity or the universe has a message for me, but in the past 24 hours three pieces of information have combined to produce a feeling of, well, synchronous messaging going on. Last night I was reading TIME's summer olympics special issue. Lolo Jones, the American hurdler, describes what happened during her disastrous run for a gold medal in the 2008 Olympics. In the midst of the race... And then there was a point after that where I was like, Wow, these hurdles are coming up really, really fast. You have to make sure you don't…
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Posted inScience Universe

More thoughts on Jim Holt’s “Why Does the World Exist?”

Via an email (thanks, Nick) I learned about a Slate article that's based on a chapter in "Why Does the World Exist?" by Jim Holt, a book I blogged about recently. Updike on the Universe describes Holt's interview from John Updike, a noted novelist who has mused about the mystery of existence in his writing. It's worth a read. Here's a sample: “When you think about it,” he continued, “we rationalists—and we’re all, to an extent, rationalist—we accept propositions about the early universe which boggle the mind more than any of the biblical miracles do. Your mind can intuitively grasp the…
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Posted inBooks Science

Free will doesn’t exist. Compatibilism makes no sense.

I don't believe in free will. I've got good neuroscientific company, which includes Sam Harris, author of "Free Will." (See here and here for my previous blogging about the book.) Reading a New York Times review of "Free Will," I was reminded of how the have-it-both-ways notion of compatibilism doesn't make sense to me. Compatibilism claims that free will and determinism are compatible. Huh? is my reaction. Harris' also, according to the review. For quite a while now, philosophers and public intellectuals, including Harris’s friend Dennett, have tried to rescue something like the common notion of free will from the…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Morality has nothing to do with scientific truth

Einstein revealed some amazing truths about the cosmos through his theory of relativity and other research. Einstein also spent time with six girlfriends while he was married.  Is there any connection between these two facts? Should we question the validity of the theory of relativity because Einstein engaged in behavior that would seem morally questionable to many people?  No, of course not.  Universal scientific truths have no connection with individual, or even societal, moral norms. The cosmos doesn't care what we do with our bodies and minds. Laws of nature aren't dependent on human thou shalt's and thou shalt not's.…
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Posted inScience

Discovery of “God particle” has nothing to do with God

Bravo, CERN scientists! It looks like you've found evidence of the Higgs boson, a particle produced by knocking a tiny chunk out of space-time with a high-energy particle accelerator. This discovery could answer the question, "Where does mass come from?" That is, why is there something we can point to and say there!, rather than everything being formless pure energy? According to the Standard Model, the Higgs boson is the only manifestation of an invisible force field, a cosmic molasses that permeates space and imbues elementary particles with mass. Particles wading through the field gain heft the way a bill going…
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Posted inScience

Untrue intuitions lead people to not believe in science

Religious people often claim that believing in God is a difficult path to follow, since it goes against the ways of the world. Actually, understanding the truth about materiality is a lot tougher than embracing spiritual falsities. If you doubt this, check out an interesting New Yorker article by Jonah Lehrer, "Why We Don't Believe in Science." The main conclusion I drew from the piece is this: if our intuitions about how the physical world works often are so wrong, why should we believe that our intuitions about God, heaven, soul, spirit, and other aspects of a supposed spiritual world…
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Posted inScience Universe

God isn’t happy with deeply religious Americans

I had a conversation with God today. I'm sure of it. Just as sure, at least, as so many other prophets, gurus, masters, and other purported communicators with the divine have been.  In my case, a godly voice didn't come out of a burning bush. It was more intimate than that: God spoke to me from right inside my own head, which makes it difficult for me to doubt a divine encounter that was so direct. Below you'll learn what God commanded me to preach. Be warned, God has a foul mouth. He doesn't mince words when he's seriously pissed. And…
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Posted inBuddhism Science Spiritual practice/meditation

Key to self-knowledge: knowing you don’t have a “self”

I love the idea that "I" don't exist. Life sure seems like it'd be a lot simpler without a "me" around. Most of my problems aren't physical, but psychological. So if my body is real, but my self isn't, potentially that removes a large source of difficulties. Fortunately for the "me" who I don't want to be, modern neuroscience has come to a pretty firm conclusion that, indeed, the self is an illusion.  Such is the central theme of a book by Bruce Hood I've started to read, "The Self Illusion." I blogged about an interview Sam Harris did with…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

Sam Harris interview with author of “Illusion of the Self”

Damn! (but actually I'm happy) Another $19.57 has found its way from my VISA account into Amazon's accounts receivable, thanks to Sam Harris' interview with the author of Illusion of the Self -- another neuroscience book that the "I" who isn't me was led to order by largely unconscious brain processes over which the "I" who isn't me has no control. If you're interested in this stuff, but not twenty bucks worth of interested, it'll cost you nothing to read the interview. I'm fascinated by the increasingly evident neuroscientific conclusion that there's no such thing as a Self to be…
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Posted inReality Science Universe

Physics knows more about “nothing” than theology or philosophy

It's amazing, how much can be said about nothing. Nothing always has been a favorite topic of theologians and philosophers. Now physicists are getting into the Nothing Game, big time (see here and here). There's a basic dispute between fact-focused scientists on one side, and concept-obsessed thinkers on the other: is "nothing" a something that can be investigated, or an absolute absence of anything? (including "absence") I've read a bunch of books and articles that argue both sides of this question, which is central to the classic Why is there something rather than nothing? question. More and more I favor…
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Posted inScience

Neuroscience says people aren’t things. We’re processes.

Who am I? That's a big question. For the ancient Greeks, and many others, it's the biggest question. "Know yourself." An imperative. Modern neuroscience is casting factual light on this philosophical issue. Well, not only philosophical. Religon, spirituality, mysticism -- they also have explanations of what essential human nature is. Usually, dualistic. Meaning, supposedly there's the human body, which includes the brain. Then there's a mysterious something else. Soul, mind, psyche, spirit, some thing which inhabits, connects with, or otherwise associates with the body while we're physically alive. But since that thing isn't physical, usually it is believed to survive bodily death.…
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Posted inScience Wu Project

Great free will question: What do we want to be free from?

Having given up a belief in resurrection, physical immortality, eternal soul, or living on through my works, I've settled on another approach for dealing with my eventual demise: Not being me.  Now, some will say, "That's Buddhism 101." Sort of true. Anatta, not-self, is indeed a core Buddhist concept. But I'm lazy. Buddhists, including those of the Zen variety, go through a heck of a lot of effort to realize that the entity striving to become enlightened doesn't exist. My feeling is, why not simply begin and end with the nothing-much-of-anything that I am?  Done. Finis. Enlightenment trophy, please. There's no…
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Posted inGod Religions Science

Analytical thinking weakens religious belief

This is one of those scientific findings that cause me to say, "Well, yeah, of course!": analytical thinking leads people away from religious believing. TIME magazine has a good summary of the not-unexpected research conclusions. We all fly both ways, on the complementary wings of intuition and analysis. These basically correspond to "fast thinking" and "slow thinking," the brain's System 1 and System 2 in the parlance of Daniel Kahneman (see my blog post, Don't mistake God for your intuitive brain speaking. Sometimes it makes sense to intuit; other times, to analyze. As the TIME article says, both brain capabilities…
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Posted inReality Science Taoism/Tai Chi

How humans perceive the cosmos isn’t how it really is

Really. A great word. It can be used, or said, so many ways.  Put a question mark on the end; add a note of sarcasm; and you've got an ironic Really? Or... Finish with an exclamation mark; make your tone confident; and you've got a declarative Really! I find it easy to swing both ways. To me, the scientific method is our best way of defending a Really! However, this only applies what can really be known by us humans. And what we can know is determined/limited by how we know -- using the human brain and sense organs. So when…
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Posted inReality Science

Self-consciousness comes and goes. Like the self.

Everybody has had this sort of experience: Walking into the house after driving home, I'm carrying the car keys in my hand. A few minutes later I'm wandering around the living room, kitchen, bathroom, and bedroom, muttering Where the hell are my damn car keys?! I was conscious the entire time after I came in the front door. I didn't black out. I didn't suffer amnesia. At every moment I was aware of where I was. Yet at some point I became divided into a "me" who had put down the keys somewhere, and a "me" who had no idea…
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Posted inScience

What science says will make you happy

I'm a bit suspicious of "top ten" lists. Seems to be too much of a coincidence that the number of fingers we humans have is the same number of important things. Why aren't there more "top eight" or "top twelve" lists? Regardless... Yes magazine's "10 Things Science Says Will Make You Happy" seems eminently believable, by and large. I note there's no mention of God or religion. My favorite is numero uno: Savor Everyday Moments Pause now and then to smell a rose or watch children at play. Study participants who took time to “savor” ordinary events that they normally…
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Posted inScience

Nibiru/Planet X won’t destroy Earth in 2012

Today I learned that I'm out of the loop of wacko conspiracy theories about the End of the World in 2012. I listened to a podcast featuring astrobiologist David Morrison, who answers questions submitted to NASA's "Ask an Astrobiologist." I'd heard about the supposed Mayan prediction that Earth ends this year (Morrison says that's news to the ancestors of ancient Mayans still living in Mexico), but didn't know that lots of people are freaked out about a large planetary object -- Nibiru/Planet X -- that they believe is on a collision course with Earth. Of course, that isn't true. Just…
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Posted inMorality Radha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Religion is wrong, but it feels right to believers

So how is it that religious beliefs are almost certainly wrong, yet the vast majority of people in the world accept them? What makes religiosity so attractive?  A central theme of my previous post, New Scientist looks at the science of religion, is that belief in the supernatural comes naturally to humans. Early on in childhood development we understand that "agents" with desires, intentions, and a consciousness like our own exist even though we can't perceive these beings. It isn't much of a jump to divine unseen agents, gods and other entities. But after listening to a Point of Inquiry…
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