Posted inReality Science

Does spacetime emerge from a more fundamental reality?

The title of this blog post is a question posed on the cover of the February 2022 issue of Scientific American. It refers to a story in the issue, "The Origins of Space and Time."  I enjoyed the story, even though it was difficult to understand.  Here's an image that encapsulates the two main approaches to figuring out what space and time (or as relativity theory puts it, spacetime) emerge from -- assuming they emerge from anything. So if you were expecting some explanation that could be fit, or crammed, into a religious or mystical worldview, expect again. Science of…
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Posted inScience

We humans are animals. But most of us deny this fact.

I'm enjoying Melanie Challenger's book, "How to Be Animal: A New History of What It Means to Be Human." Here's some excerpts about our dental that we're animal. The point here is that life is neither straightforwardly good nor progressive. This might be unbearable if it weren't for the possibility that humans are special. Something important saves us from the threatening parts of earthly life. We're told this comes from the heart of human nature, some essential part of us. We can't see it and we can't measure it, but it marks us out as the most important life form…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Respect for facts is a great virtue

I'm a lover of facts. That's why I'm a hater of religion. Ah, but don't religions seek the truth? Not really. They claim to, but only in the sense that QAnon followers believe they're truth-seekers.  In each case, religion and QAnon, truth is viewed much more as a belief, as something they hope is the case, rather than as an aspect of objective reality. So facts are different from truth. There's lots of ways people define those two terms, as I learned by doing some Googling.  This article describes the difference quite clearly. A Fact and a Truth walk into…
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Posted inReality Science

Reason rules with God’s will, karma, and laws of nature

Having written about reason and rationality recently, here's some thoughts that came to mind (weird phrase, since where else would thoughts appear?) as I was musing about how people believe in God's will and karma as other-worldly explanations for why things happen as they do. It struck me that God's will and karma are appealing notions for many because they provide reasons for happenings that often aren't pleasant. Or are surprising. For example, I know someone who got stage 4 lung cancer even though she never smoked. Thankfully, she's doing quite well, even after several years have passed since the…
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Posted inReligions Science

Supernatural beliefs lack both causes and mechanisms

When I press on certain keys on my MacBook Pro keyboard, magic happens! Which you can see. Because I can touch type, words form on my laptop's screen. After I publish this post, the words appear on my Church of the Churchless blog. Of course, all this isn't really magic. There's a chain of causes that leads to the words appearing in a blog post. Underlying those causes are hidden mechanisms -- software, hardware, internet functions, and such -- that most of us don't understand very well. But what we're certain of is the overall way someone typing out thoughts…
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Posted inReality Science

The chance that you know something others don’t is very small

After over fifty years of pursuing spirituality in one form or another, I've come to one firm conclusion. I'm nothing special. And neither are you. Nor is anybody else. Now, I'm not saying that everybody is the same. Obviously every person is different. We all have different thoughts, emotions, talents, likes and dislikes, appearance, and so on. What I mean is that we're all material beings living in this material world, to sort of quote Madonna.  So whatever we know about the world, almost certainly other people possess the same knowledge. Most of us like to think that in some…
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Posted inReligions Science

Science is repeatable. Religions aren’t.

There are lots of reasons to choose science over religion. Chief among them, of course, is that science comes up with solid knowledge about reality, while religion doesn't.  But I find science's repeatability to be an especially appealing feature of science.  Meaning, if somehow all scientific knowledge were to disappear from the face of the Earth, while leaving humanity intact, there's little or no doubt that this knowledge eventually would be rediscovered.  In other words, science is repeatable. It's methods aren't dependent on one-of-a-kind happenstance, like Einstein being born at a particular time and place with certain aptitudes.  If Einstein…
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Posted inConsciousness Science

Quantum theory doesn’t say consciousness creates reality

I'm no quantum physicist. That option closed down for me early on, when I was kicked out of my high school physics class because I was paying more attention to my girlfriend sitting behind me than to whatever the teacher was saying.  But I've made up for that by reading lots of books about quantum theory, many of them in the course of researching my first book about the connection between ancient mysticism and the new physics, "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder" -- which I got back in print via a rewrite that took out the preachy parts.  I no longer…
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Posted inBooks Science

Metacognition is key to knowing yourself

I'm about halfway through reading Stephen Fleming's Know Thyself: The Science of Self-Awareness. Basic concepts of the book are mind reading, in the sense of inferring what is in someone else's mind, and metacognition, literally thinking about our thinking, or more broadly, being aware of ourself.  Since Fleming, a British neuroscientist, cites many research studies in his book, reading it can take some effort. However, Fleming is a good writer, and frequently uses examples from everyday life, so on the whole I'm liking it a lot.  The title, Know Thyself, points toward a fact I've marveled at for a long…
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Posted inGod Science

If “God” is all there is, science is the way to know God

The August 16, 2021 issue of The New Yorker has a fascinating article about the new James Webb Space Telescope that will be launched soon. It will be much more powerful than the Hubble space telescope.  I liked the end of "The Youthful Universe." You can read it below. Science truly is our best way of learning about "God" -- if by that word is meant everything that exists. That's how I've come to view God. Sometimes during my day I'll say, "Thank you God." I'm not thanking a divine being. I don't believe in supernatural entities. Rather, I use…
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Posted inBooks Science

What could be better than contemplating the inner and outer worlds?

Today I finished physicist Anthony Aguirre's book, "Cosmological Koans: A Journey to the Heart of Physical Reality." Rather than describing how the book ends, you can read the ending yourself. I liked what Aguirre says here. To me, one clarion message comes through: when you are tempted to think or say "the Universe is fundamentally like this," then go and sit and think some more. So why do we like to divide things into opposing camps? Probably no small part of it is a rather strong drive, bestowed upon us by our evolution as surviving beings, to identify some certain…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism Science

Here’s an elusive cosmological koan to beguile you

When I saw a book called Cosmological Koans mentioned in another book I was reading, there was little doubt in my mind that it would be delivered to me by Amazon before too long. And so it came to pass. Anthony Aguirre is a Professor of Physics at University of California - Santa Cruz. That is so perfect! I can't imagine a more appropriate place for a koan loving, Buddhism inspired, creative writing physicist than UC Santa Cruz.  (I went to college at San Jose State in the 1960s; Santa Cruz beaches were a favorite spot for LSD trips, along…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

I’m enjoying my Mendi neurofeedback device

Recently I got the Mendi brain exercise (neurofeedback) device that I'd ordered early last year via a Kickstarter campaign. Repeated delays kept pushing back the estimated time us backers would get our Mendi. Finally it came, from Sweden. Here I am modeling my Mendi. I took the photo in front of several katana swords and a fan in my office, because the Mendi has a certain Japanese/samurai look to it. The Mendi web site describes what the device does. An iPhone app connects with the Mendi via bluetooth. You train your brain by playing a game. You focus on a…
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Posted inReality Science

Thanks to Appreciative Reader for defending the scientific worldview

There are three thousand word comments that deserve trashing. Then there are comments of the same length that deserve fervent applause from those of us who respect reality, truth, evidence, reason, and the scientific worldview. That's why I'm sharing another lengthy comment from "Appreciative Reader" below.  As you'll see if you read the following comment published on my Why neither unicorns nor God are to be believed in post, Appreciative Reader absolutely demolishes the religious perspective of another commenter, Spence Tepper. If this were a boxing fight, it'd be called after the second or third round because too much damage…
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Posted inScience

Why neither unicorns nor God are to be believed in

Once again, I'm sharing a marvelous comment from "Appreciative Reader" on a recent post of mine. I especially liked the Shadowfax part near the end. Shadowfax is an invisible unicorn impervious to detection by all means, yet lives in Appreciative Reader's spare garage. Or at least, this is what Appreciative Reader claims.  Should other people assign Shadowfax a 50-50 probability of actually existing? Of course not. They should consider that perhaps one day there will be evidence of Shadowfax, since anything is possible. But until that day arrives, there's no reason to believe in this invisible unicorn. Just as there's…
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Posted inScience

Science embraces the unknown, but wants evidence of it

I'm a huge fan of the comments "Appreciative Reader" leaves on my blog posts. Which means, I agree with almost everything this person says. I only wish that I could express myself as clearly and reasonably as Appreciative Reader does. He writes so expertly, I enjoy sharing his top performing comments in a blog post. That's what I've done here.  I don't mean to disparage the views expressed by other commenters. No doubt some other people would find their arguments more impressive than Appreciative Reader's -- because they resonate more with the mystical/religious worldview of some of the other commenters.…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Reality Religions

Why should anyone else believe what you believe?

Well, the responses I got to my previous post, "Objective reality is validated by the reality-based community," were underwhelming.  Not really surprising, since I said: The question I'd pose to those who hold a mystical, religious, or intuitive view of reality is this: what alternative to Rauch's approach below do you suggest for determining the nature of objective reality? Meaning, it is easy to criticize reason, rationality, facts, science, open discussion, criticism of propositions about reality, and such. But it is difficult, if not impossible, to come up with a better approach than the Constitution of Knowledge. Read what follows.…
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Posted inBooks Science

Each of us isn’t a thing, but a web of connections

Before moving on to subjects other than quantum theory, which I've written about here and here recently, I want to talk in my own words regarding what I like about Carlo Rovelli's book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The previous posts consisted mostly of excerpts from the book. So here's my attempt to describe what appealed to me the most about Helgoland. (That's an island in the North Sea where Heisenberg came up with his key concepts about the quantum world.) Rovelli is an exceptionally clear writer. He also has a poetic sense that isn't unique among physicists, but…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness Science

Mind and consciousness through the eye of quantum physics

Here's additional excerpts from physicist Carlo Rovelli's wonderful new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution." (See here for my first post about the book.) The passages below are from final chapters where Rovelli focuses on the nature of mind and consciousness in light of quantum physics.  Rovelli's take on this subject is very much in line with a post I wrote in 2018, "Awareness is a process, not a thing."  Consciousness isn't a thing. It is a process. Thinking of it as a thing makes us wonder what kind of a thing it is, whereas we should be…
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Posted inBooks Science

Relational view of quantum theory reeks of truth

If you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. Well, whether or not you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. At least a little bit. Because below I've shared an excerpt from physicist Carlo Rovelli's amazing new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The excerpt doesn't do justice to the entire book, but it will give you a feel for Rovelli's relational take on quantum physics -- which makes so much sense, it's hard to understand how anyone could disagree with it (though I'm sure many do). I'll have more to say about…
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