Posted inMorality Science

The virtue of a Playboy philosophy of life

No, I don’t read it just for the articles. But frequently Playboy does feature thoughtful articles on one of my favorite subjects, the relation of religion and science. For example, the April 2006 issue had “Faith & Reason” by philosopher Michael Ruse. Several other writers threw in their two cents on the subject. My favorite was comedian Lewis Black, who offered up some pithy advice about how to handle intelligent design believers. The concept of evolution doesn’t take away from the concept of God. You’d have to be out of your mind not to see through the bullshit. You can…
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Posted inMiracles Science

Million dollars says there’s no evidence of the supernatural

Almost every time I write something like “There’s no proof of anything beyond the physical” I get challenged by believers in ESP, astral projection, life after death, or other supernatural phenomena. That’s fine. I love challenges. If I wanted to have everything that I say accepted without question, I wouldn’t be a blogger. Nor would I have been married for thirty-five years. But here’s the thing: when I say “proof” I mean proof. The real deal. Scientific confirmation. Controlled studies. Replicated studies worthy of being published in a major journal. Proof that makes skeptics into believers. The James Randi Educational…
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Posted inGod Science Wu Project

Science shows God does not exist

Ah, excellent! More support for my Wu Project. Physicist Victor Stenger has concluded that “beyond a reasonable doubt the universe and life appear exactly as we might expect if there were no God.” This quote is from the Amazon description of his forthcoming book, “God: The Failed Hypothesis. How Science Shows That God Does Not Exist.” Provocative title. I’m stoked. Amazon has gotten my pre-order. Just need to wait for January 2007 to have my faithless faith invigorated. Stenger came to my attention recently when I read a review of his “The Comprehensible Cosmos” in New Scientist. Since I found…
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Posted inFundamentalism Science

Intelligent design believers settle for second-rate God

If I’m going to believe in God, I want to put my faith in a top-notch creative power. The very best. A1. That’s why the God of evolution is so much more appealing than the God of so-called “intelligent design.” Which doesn’t seem to be a very intelligent divinity. I mean, what kind of half-baked god creates human beings then, according to intelligent design dogma, slaps himself on the head and says, “Oy! I forgot to make eyes that work! Better get going on some redesigning.” Creationism, after all, has been discarded (publicly, at least) by Christian fundamentalists. Their new…
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Posted inScience

Evolution is sacred, religion is profane

Here are two books. One fills me with reverence for the creative power that caused life to appear on Earth and continues to guide the course of every living being. The other elevates man above all things, profanely denying the reality of the Source that created and sustains us. That’s why I just finished reading Richard Dawkins’ “The Ancestor’s Tale: A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution” and hardly ever pick up the Bible. Truth inspires me. Fables don’t. Unfortunately for the propagation of truth, Dawkins’ book is a challenging read. It won’t appeal to those who resonate with this…
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Posted inScience

Wisdom from Carl Sagan: A pale blue dot

This is Earth from 4 billion miles away. In his book, “Pale Blue Dot,” Carl Sagan mused upon the meaning of this photo taken by Voyager 1 as it sped out of the solar system. As senseless war rages in the Middle East and other places around the world, I urge you to take a few minutes and read his words: "We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived…
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Posted inScience

Poised on the pivot point of uncertainty

Tilting one way or the other. That’s easy. Maintaining centered balance. That’s difficult, whether we’re talking about physical, mental, or spiritual activity. Last night, as I wrote about on my other weblog, I went to bed thinking that I probably had Lyme’s disease. A rash had appeared on my back, circling the site of a tick bite. It was Sunday and too late to do anything about it. So I tossed and turned, pondering what lay ahead if I indeed had Lyme’s disease. I couldn’t shake the anxiety that came with my tilt toward the Yes, you do. Then, sometime…
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Posted inScience

Worshipping at the altar of science

I don’t go to church. Who needs fantasy when reality is so much more compelling? When it comes to conveying the mystery and majesty of the cosmos, the fanciful tales found in holy books pale in comparison to findings of modern science. For example, I’ve read a lot about emptiness in Buddhist writings. Nothingness comes in for a lot of mention also—not only in Buddhism, but in the mystic teachings of every religion (“nada, nada, nada,” says St. John of the Cross). Yet this eleven-mile wide web page really hit home to me how little of something, and how much…
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Posted inReligions Science

Yoism, an open source religion

Hey, it works for Linux, the alternative to Windows. So why not apply open source principles to the creation of a new-time religion? Out with dogmatism and hierarchy; in with freedom and independence. Such is the allure of Yoism, which bills itself as the world’s first open source religion. Thanks to a link sent to me by Church of the Churchless visitor Steve, I’ve been able to browse around the intriguing cyberhalls of Yoism and get a feel for the Almighty Yo. Yo, I learned, is “the Infinite Unknowable Essence from which all that we experience manifests.” All right, I…
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Posted inScience

Prayer doesn’t work. It’s a fact.

Wow! What a surprise this isn’t. Researchers have found that praying for heart bypass patients had no effect on their recovery. In fact, the complication rate was higher for those patients who were confident that someone was praying for them, compared to those who were uncertain of such prayers. This implies that if you’re faced with a serious situation you shouldn’t say, “Please pray for me.” Rather, make it “Please, don’t pray for me.” Another interpretation: “The results laid bare Jesus' hostility towards those who think he can be bothered with their personal problems.”
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Posted inScience Universe

Compared to the cosmos, you’re nothing

Like you, my goal every day is to make something of myself. A successful, knowing, active, loving, happy thing. The problem is, on the scale of the universe the value of each of us is vanishingly close to zero. Rounded off to any reasonable number of decimal places, we’re nothing--no thing. We are small. Very, very small. Check it out for yourself. Each of us is one of six billion people on a planet circling one of 200 billion or so stars in the Milky Way galaxy, which is one of 100 billion or so galaxies in the observable universe,…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Meditation and space-time diagrams

Yesterday Scientific Santa brought me a book by physicist Leonard Susskind, “The Cosmic Landscape: String Theory and the Illusion of Intelligent Design.” Proving that I can get spiritual inspiration from seemingly unlikely sources, I read the first few chapters before meditating this morning. Susskind begins his overview of particle physics with the best layman-friendly description of Feynman diagrams that I’ve ever come across. You can see an animated Feynman diagram here. It shows two electrons and a photon traveling through space and time. Time is the vertical axis, and space (with three dimensions necessarily condensed into one) is the horizontal…
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Posted inScience

Evolution triumphs over intelligent design

It was a great Christmas present for believers in reality rather than fantasy: a Pennsylvania judge ruled today that intelligent design can’t be taught in the classroom because that would violate the constitutional separation of church and state. Intelligent design is, of course, merely creationism in disguise. There’s nothing scientific about it. Not a single research paper ever has been published in a reputable scientific journal supporting the premise that our universe was designed by a creator god. So Judge Jones was absolutely correct when he wrote in his opinion, "We have concluded that it is not [science], and moreover…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions Science

Doubt differentiates science and religion

Here’s a simple way of determining whether you’re scientifically or religiously inclined: how do you feel about doubt? If you’re opposed to doubt, or even, well, doubtful about doubt, then you’re a religious sort. If you’re open to doubt, then you’re a scientific type. I got to thinking about the pros and cons of doubt after thumbing through the August 2005 issue of “Spiritual Link.” This magazine is published by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an organization based in India that also is referred to as the Science of the Soul or Sant Mat. I came across an article titled…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Science

Intelligent design is creeping me out

I just read an anecdote about the visit of an intelligent design advocate’s son to Disneyland. It creeped me out. Not only because I feel sorry that this boy’s critical thinking ability is being squashed, but also because the story reveals how Christian fundamentalists want to usurp science, and indeed the whole American culture, for their own ends. Yesterday I wrote on my HinesSight weblog about how intelligent designers are out to Christianize America. This morning I read a few more chapters in the book that my post was based on, “Signs of Intelligence.” Actually, it should have been called…
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Posted inReligions Science

The Vatican gets it right (for once)

My thanks to Steve, a Church of the Churchless reader, for letting me know that the Vatican says the faithful should listen to science. Since it is likely that a majority of U.S. Supreme Court justices soon will be Catholics, maybe this will help spur the court to make a correct decision if an Evolution v. Intelligent Design case comes up. It was encouraging to hear that at least some Vatican functionaries have a decent understanding of what differentiates evolution and intelligent design/creationism: proof. Monsignor Gianfranco Basti, director of the Vatican project STOQ, or Science, Theology and Ontological Quest, reaffirmed…
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Posted inScience Universe

Embracing the oddness of everything

Does life ever seem absolutely weird to you? It does to me. Often. I’ve got some distinguished company in this regard: George Will, who wrote a great piece in Newsweek called “The Oddness of Everything.” Will shares a bunch of strange facts about the universe culled from Bill Bryson’s book, “A Short History of Nearly Everything.” Now, facts aren’t really “strange,” “odd,” or “weird.” They’re simply facts. But when it comes to facts about the basics of life, time, space, and the universe, human cognition blows a fuse. Our brains can’t handle that much reality. There’s an awful lot of…
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Posted inBooks Radha Soami Satsang Beas Science

Don’t believe, just have faith

Sunday I gave a talk to my spiritual group that inspired me. So before I lose touch with my self-induced inspiration, I figured that I should capture it in a weblog posting. That way hopefully I can re-inspire myself as needed. However, I have to admit that this whole way of thinking is at odds with what I was talking about. Namely, the absurd split between “I” and “me.” More defensible are the splits between “belief” and “faith” or “religion” and “science.” Nonetheless, we humans love to divide up reality with concepts divorced from experience, then get anxious about feeling…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religious Americans: tolerant but gullible

Since I have a decidedly nontraditional attitude toward spirituality, it was reassuring to see that a Newsweek/Beliefnet poll found that 79% of Americans answered “Yes” to the question, “Can a good person who doesn’t share your religious beliefs attain salvation or go to heaven?” Of course, I’d feel even better if I could get that assurance directly from whatever higher power is responsible for doling out salvation. Nonetheless, I was pleasantly surprised to learn that Christians appear to be more tolerant than I have been giving them credit for. Evangelical Protestants were the least tolerant, but 68% still were willing…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

Seeing clearly now

My philosophical mind is always trying to find the commonalities in spirituality. Also, my scientific mind. We don’t say “What science do you believe in?” But “What religion do you believe in?” is a common question. That’s because science is a universal approach to learning about physical reality, while every religion considers that it alone holds the key to the truth about a presumed spiritual reality. So scientists are able to stand on common ground with other people, while religious believers end up isolated on their own distinct islands of false understanding. I’m attracted to the possibility that it’s possible…
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