Posted inReality Science

John Burroughs’ appealing scientific pantheism

Whenever I take one of those quizzes that tell you what religion/ philosophy melds best with your beliefs, pantheism always ends up close to the top. That makes sense. I've got a naturalistic view of the universe, but I also have a powerful sense of awe when I contemplate the cosmos -- either in its incomprehensibly vast totality, or the mystery of how a single flower has come to be.Today I came across a mention of John Burroughs in "The Quotable Atheist," a book I pick up regularly for some churchless inspiration. The Burroughs quotes I liked the most were…
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Posted inScience Universe

The universe is expanding into nothing

For a long time I've been fascinated by the fact that our universe is expanding because of the Big Bang that brought it into existence. I've visualized an edge to the universe, where a incomprehensibly vast tidal wave of raw existence cascades onward, into...What? This is the question that always stymied me. What is the universe expanding into, if the universe is all that exists? Or at least, all that we know to exist. Even if we say the universe is expanding into nothing, doesn't "nothing" thereby become a something?The marvelous mind-blowing nature of these cogitations is one reason why…
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Posted inScience Universe

Finding meaning in an accidental universe

Looking around, the universe seems to be flowingly interconnected, a seamless web of smoothly functioning laws of nature. Sure, there are lots of nasty things we humans find distasteful -- earthquakes, diseases, tornadoes, and such -- but even these have causes. They're just often extremely difficult to discern or predict, given our lack of knowledge about the details of how things operate in the world.But there's another way of looking at the cosmos. Here's an excerpt from the jacket on Marcelo Gleiser's "A Tear at the Edge of Creation," a book that I blogged about before. (Subtitle: a radical new…
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Posted inScience

Science is open to the supernatural

Many people mistakenly believe that modern science rules out the possibility of God, soul, spirit, and other supernatural entities. They think that scientists are only interested in the natural world -- this physical universe of space and time, plus everything within it.Not true. Thanks to a link emailed to me by Alex Szeto of the Hong Kong Unitarian Universalists, I was able to read and enjoy "Is Scientific Inquiry Restricted to Nature?" by Tom Clark and Ursula Goodenough (seems like that was the name of a James Bond femme fatale; at least, it should have been).Actually, Goodenough is a noted…
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Posted inReality Science

Divinity isn’t necessary to make life meaningful

I was planning to write about another subject today, but a commenter on this post (Brian from Colorado) pushed my meaning-of-life button when he wrote:If I have this right, Blogger Brian, you're hope is that others will hear your message of hopelessness, and deem it worthy of belief?You would characterize the whole of existence as an accidental soup of random particles bouncing about in meaningless fashion, and then seek some modicum of consolation in having mastered the one true way of unblinking, tough-minded knowledge about "The Way Things Really Are." (or, at least that's what I seem to be getting…
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Posted inGod Science

100% proof isn’t possible, plausibility is

Nice offering on the Atheist Meme front from Greta Christina today.Very few claims can be proven or disproven with 100% certainty. But we can still assess whether those claims are more or less likely to be true. And that includes religion. Atheism doesn't mean 100% certainty that there is no God: it's the conclusion that the God hypothesis is not plausible. Pass it on: if we say it enough times to enough people, it may get across.We can only hope.
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Posted inReality Science

Can you be spiritual without being scientific?

Short answer to my blog post title: No. Absolutely not. Especially in these 21st century times. Maybe back in the Dark Ages, when accurate scientific knowledge was extremely limited.Today we know with considerable certainty that the universe is some 13.7 billion years old, having begun in a big bang that is still banging (and indeed, accelerating). And that life has evolved on Earth from humble unicellular beginnings to we Homo sapiens who are able to contemplate our origins. And that the "mind" is a product of the "brain," an amazingly complex agglomeration of neural processes which enable us to perceive,…
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Posted inReality Science

How to tell science from pseudoscience

Since religious believers often put down science as an inadequate means of knowing reality, it's interesting that science pops up so often in the names of metaphysical belief systems. For example, there's Science of the Soul, Christian Science, Religious Science, and Scientology.How, then, can we tell the difference between genuine science and pseudoscience? Last night I read a review in New Scientist of "Nonsense on Stilts: How to tell science from bunk," by Massimo Pigliucci.Naturally I had to fire up Amazon and order the book. It sounds right up my churchless alley. The review by Amanda Gefter says:Pigliucci, a philosopher…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Eastern brains are different from Western brains

The differences between Eastern and Western philosophy -- which includes religions with a corresponding bent -- are clear. Most people tilt one way or the other philosophically. I certainly have many more Buddhist, Taoist, and Hindu/Vedanta books in my library than titles with a Western bent.However, I did write a book about a Greek philosopher, Plotinus. He didn't believe in a personal God, though, viewing reality in a rather "Eastern" fashion, yet generally expressing himself in an analytical "Western" manner.In an introductory chapter I talked about what I saw as the difference between a Western and an Eastern mind. Eight…
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Posted inBuddhism Science Taoism/Tai Chi

If there’s no “me,” I don’t have any problems

Following up on "My best guess about God" musings, I wanted to take another crack of getting down to the core of a whole lot of religiosity, spirituality, mysticism, and philosophy.My inspiration is Wei Wu Wei's "Open Secret," which I finished today. Like many books with a Zen, Buddhist, Taoist, Advaita, or non-dual slant, I passed through many stages of literary emotion while reading it.Interest. Irritation. Confusion. Agreement. Contentment. Bewilderment. To name a few.What kept me turning the pages were the glimpses of something intriguingly simple that the author, a.k.a. Terence Gray, was trying to communicate. It isn't an original…
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Posted inScience

A Theory of Everything is science’s mythical “God”

Often my journey from true believing to churchlessness has felt like an exciting amusement park ride. Descending from the heights of religious dogmatism, I'm both thrilled and unsettled by a sudden drop, Wheeeeee!, as beliefs drop out from under me. Then I hit a plateau and roll along comparatively smoothly until...Wow! Another free fall, as I realize that the spiritual philosophy I embraced after discarding an Eastern form of fundamentalism is still unduly faith-based. So I'm off on another abrupt descent, figuring that now maybe I've reached some sort of ontological ground floor where life's meaning, or the lack thereof,…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Psychedelics and placebos more effective than religion

For some churchless inspiration, check out Mark Morford's "Placebo effect beats out God, Prozac." He discusses the finding that anti-depressants are pretty much useless, except for cases of extreme depression. A sugar pill works as well as Prozac, if the patient believes he or she is getting the real deal.The placebo effect -- hereby defined as the sheer force of will and belief, of the mind's (and heart's) ability to heal and nurture itself sans external assistance -- applies to all sorts of constructs in our tortured modern world.Organized religion? Hell yes. Is your life flawed and painful? Are you…
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Posted inScience

Deepak Chopra challenged by quantum physicist

I used to enjoy Deepak Chopra a lot more than I do now. I don't know whether he has changed, or whether I've changed. Probably it's both.My impression of him used to be that he was a spiritual maverick, someone who sifted out the crap from religiosity and rejected just have faith dogma. But I've come to see him as a New Age entrepreneur who makes big bucks by peddling his own brand of irrational, unbelievable pseudoscience.This view was strengthened by watching Nightline's most recent "face off," Does God Have a Future? Chopra was the champion of the "yes" side.…
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Posted inScience Vedanta/Advaita

Deep dreamless sleep isn’t my mystical goal

I've often wondered why the state of deep dreamless sleep is so appealing to some mystically-inclined people. Since we're dead to the world -- both inner and outer -- seemingly the only difference between deep dreamless sleep and death is that we wake up from sleeping. I can understand wanting to experience a mystical super-consciousness, but why aspire to unconsciousness?The Indian Upanishads probably are largely responsible for the high marks given to deep dreamless sleep. For example:The third quarter is prājña, where one asleep neither desires anything nor beholds any dream: that is deep sleep. In this field of dreamless…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

I want my “spirituality” to be physical

I had an interesting experience this morning. Sitting in my meditation area, sipping a strong cup of coffee, I settled down to enjoy reading a spiritual book.I'd already read about half of Scott Kiloby's "Love's Quiet Revolution." My churchless psyche was enjoying his subtitle theme, the end of the spiritual search. I wasn't agreeing with everything Kiloby said, but his general stance seemed agreeable enough.Until... it didn't.I started using my highlighter to pen in yellow question marks in the margins. Lots of them. I skipped through pages that now struck me as ridiculous. Why? Because scientific reality had caused me…
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Posted inScience

Brain’s “dark energy” casts doubt on pure awareness

I like my spirituality (if there is such a thing) to be as scientific as possible. Fantasy, imagination, and speculative philosophizing are fun, but when it comes to understanding myself and my place in the cosmos, getting real is more appealing to me.So an article in the March 2010 issue of Scientific American struck me as having important implications for an oft-heard assumption of meditation-based spiritual and mystical paths:That it's possible to arrive at a state of pure, or mostly pure, awareness. Meaning, basically, that one's consciousness isn't contaminated by thoughts, emotions, and other egocentric manifestations of me, me, me.For…
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Posted inBooks Science

“Natural Reflections” shows how science is superior

I've finished reading Barbara Herrnstein Smith's "Natural Reflections," which I blogged about before on the basis of a New York Times review.Smith's main thesis is that science and religion are, well, natural reflections of each other. This is a seriously scholarly book and I'm not crystal clear about what she means by this. But her final two paragraphs summarize her case in an agreeable fashion.Scientists share cognitive tendencies, achievements, and limits with nonscientists; religious believers share them with nonbelievers. Although each may put the world together and conduct his or her life in ways that are at odds with or…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science and religion are so different, they aren’t at odds

Who worries about reconciling the deep philosophical meaning of rap music and bird watching? Or professional basketball and quantum physics? Or motorcycle maintenance and ballet dancing?Maybe science and religion are similar to these examples, because they are so different. Not only that, perhaps all the vigorous debates over the centuries about whether science or religion is closer to ultimate truth misses the point:There isn't any #1, alpha dog, primo, unsurpassed approach to knowing reality. All we have are various ways of dealing with reality. This is, more or less, what the central theme of Barbara Herrnstein Smith's recently released book,…
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Posted inBooks Religions Science

“The Quotable Atheist” is well worth quoting

My daughter, a chip off of her dad's churchless block, gave me The Quotable Atheist for Christmas. Organized alphabetically, I'm all the way up to "B." Lots of more great quotes to enjoy.I could tell I was going to enjoy the book as soon as I started reading the Introduction by Jack Huberman. He's got an engaging "take no prisoners in the war against religion" attitude. Here's some Huberman quotes.The world (not just America) is deeply divided. The main fault line is where the tectonic plates of religion and of reason/ secularism/ modernity/ science/ Enlightenment meet and grind against each…
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Posted inScience

Space aliens are more likely than God

Driving home tonight, I listened to a BBC program about the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). I never heard the name of the American scientist who was answering questions from a British audience, but his style and sense of humor were engaging.He led me to think, "This is why I prefer science over religion; open-mindedness is so appealing."Someone asked if he thought that aliens were visiting Earth. His reply: this is within the realm of possibility, because it wouldn't violate the laws of physics. If they were traveling at the speed of light, it could take aliens thousands of years…
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