Posted inReality Science

Churchless challenge: What supernatural fact are you sure about?

Today, here at the Church of the Churchless, we've got a short and simple question for believers in some extra-physical reality: What supernatural fact are you sure about? I was tempted to say 100% sure, or absolutely sure. But I'm an admirer of science, and science isn't 100% sure about anything (every seeming fact about physical reality might be falsified one day, though the chances are miniscule for extensively verified facts). So let's just leave it at "sure." Meaning, the supernatural fact you're sure about isn't just a matter of belief, hope, faith, or tentative conclusion that it is true.…
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Posted inReligions

Welcome to the age of apatheism — not caring about God

That's a great word, apatheism. I hadn't come across it until I read a recent New Scientist article, "Losing Our Religion." (On the magazine's web site it is called "God not-botherers: Religious apathy reigns.") Of course, New Scientist is a British publication. The article says, "The UK is one of the least religious countries in the world, with around half of the population saying they don't belong to any religion."  However, there is good news for my country, which is a lot more religious. Even in the US -- a deeply Christian country -- the number of people expressing "no…
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Posted inReligions

Supreme Court says prayer is OK at town meetings. Ugh!

Today the United States Supreme Court said it was just fine to have prayers from a "chaplain of the month" open a town's public meetings.  Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in a 5-to-4 decision that divided the court’s more conservative members from its liberal ones, said the prayers were merely ceremonial. They were neither unduly sectarian nor likely to make members of other faiths feel unwelcome. “Ceremonial prayer,” he wrote, “is but a recognition that, since this nation was founded and until the present day, many Americans deem that their own existence must be understood by precepts…
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Posted inScience Universe

No need for “making” in a mathematical universe. It just “is.”

I've finished Max Tegmark's fascinating "Our Mathematical Universe," a book I blogged about before here. The final chapter was a bit of a letdown. Tegmark ambled off into extraneous subjects, like how Earth might come to its demise and whether other conscious entities exist in the universe. Surprisingly, Tegmark thinks we humans probably are the most intelligent life-form in the universe. If true, and I doubt that it is, that's depressing. Geez, 14 billion years have passed since the Big Bang, and Homo sapiens are the most sapient entities the cosmos could come up with? But I still enjoyed the…
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Posted inReality Science

Is the cosmos, including us, made of mathematics?

For several weeks I've been reading some of Max Tegmark's "Our Mathematical Universe" each morning. It's been a mind-bending journey, one which I'm about to complete -- just 26 pages left. Tegmark argues that rather than mathematics just being able to describe the universe, mathematics actually is the universe. Along with everything else in existence, which includes four levels of the multiverse. I'm enjoying the book. To me, Tegmark makes a lot of sense. I've always wondered, Where are the laws of nature? Meaning, physicists can precisely model many of these laws via mathematical equations. But why should the universe…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I enjoy Kay Packard’s hand analysis of my “philosopher’s hands”

So what is irreligious, scientifically-minded, skeptical me doing holding prints of my hands that I was about to mail off to a person who does hand analysis -- and soon would tell me what those prints say about myself? Well, Kay Packard, founder of the American Academy of Hand Analysis, is an old friend. Kay was the "little kid" next door during my childhood growing up in Three Rivers, California (small town in foothills of the Sierras, the gateway to Sequoia National Park).  We've kept in touch over the years. Her mother, Rosemary, was an astrologer. Rosemary did charts for…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Research shows meditation doesn’t do much

I've meditated almost every day for thirty-four years. I like to think that those many, many hours of meditation (one to two hours a day for most of the time) have made me a better person. Maybe. But lots of stuff in my mind falls into the "I like to think..." category. This is true of everybody. We humans have a marvelous capacity for wishful thinking, rationalization, selective use of data, and confirmation bias. A rigorous review of research on the effectiveness of meditation casts doubt on the buoyant claims of meditation advocates that it is good for just about…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Atheists can enjoy religious beliefs also

I don't believe in God anymore. Yet once in a while, just before I go to sleep at night, if my wife hasn't come into our bedroom yet, I'll get down on my knees, put my elbows on our mattress, fold my hands, and recite the Lord's Prayer. I did this when I was a child. I'm pretty sure my mother, who raised me, didn't believe in God any more than I do now. But she thought it would be good for me to learn some religious rituals, such as praying.  Sure, I remember some as being rather creepy. Like…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

Typepad downtime is over. My blog is back.

If you've been frustrated by not being able to access this blog during the past five days or so, join the club. Me too. Typepad, my blogging service, was hit with a full-force DDoS (distributed denial of service) attack. It took them a long time to get their web site and associated blogs back up and running. I don't believe in hell, but this would be a great place to send the jerks responsible for the attack. Reportedly they made a ransom demand to Typepad, which spurred an FBI investigation.  Sorry to disappoint any religious believers who thought the Church…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Spiritual practice/meditation

“Meaning of life” is only meaningful some of the time

Every other day, usually, I write a post for this blog. it takes me about an hour, sometimes more, sometimes less.  That's just about the only time when I really ponder The Meaning of It All. If even then, since I might be writing about a churchless subject that doesn't rise to that level of profundity.  So very little of my daily life has anything to do with matters of philosophy, religion, mysticism, spirituality, or such. Mostly I'm doing everyday nitty-gritty stuff.  For example, this morning I dealt with a turn of events in my campaign to save three large…
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Posted inReligions Science

An evangelical climate scientist bridges science and religion

There isn't any inherent conflict between scientific facts and religious beliefs. The natural and the supernatural can be viewed as inhabiting different realms, with different laws. Such was the view of leading scientists during the Enlightenment. There was this notion of The Book of Nature, where nature was viewed as the word of God. Learning about how the world works thus was akin to knowing the mind of God. But nowadays many religious believers put their credence in what a Holy Book says rather than what nature says. Fundamentalist Christians in the United States deny evolution and global warming despite…
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Posted inScience

Belief in free will linked to desire to punish

There are lots of reasons not to believe in free will. Also, there are plenty of reasons to believe in free will.  Which shows why it makes much more sense not to believe in free will. After all, if free will really exists, reasons wouldn't matter. People would just freely will to either believe or not believe in free will. If that sounds crazy to you, join the No Free Will club.  Reasons... cause and effect... influences... interrelationships... laws of nature. A belief in free will, genuine free will, not the fakey compatibilism variety, does away with most of our…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

My mini not-really-mystical revelation

Hey, when you're as churchless and unreligious as I am, you take your revelations in any form they might appear. Today I was driving around, aimlessly switching channels on satellite radio, trying to decide whether listening to news stations or the music of Chill was better for my non-soul. CNN was still heavy into its obsessive coverage of the missing Malaysia Airlines plane. For a while I tuned into a discussion of the effort to locate the plane's black box device by picking up its battery-powered "pings."  An expert said something along the lines of, "The batteries should last 30…
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Posted inReligions

Religious abstractions like the “devil” are ridiculous

It's crazy to believe in a world that doesn't exist. This is what many mentally ill people suffer from: a mistaken belief that what their dysfunctional minds tell them is true, really is.  Today I heard on the radio that a pastor presiding over a service in the town where the Fort Hood shootings took place said "the devil is the author of what happened."  Whatever made Ivan Lopez kill three soldiers before he killed himself almost certainly was not the devil. (I added the "almost" to show my scientific credentials, since absolute certainty isn't a hallmark of the scientific…
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Posted inReality

Existence is the only unchanging thing. If it exists.

I've loved pondering the mystery of existence. Not individual stuff that exists within existence. Existence pure and simple. The fact that existence itself exists. (Some of my ponders, along with links to others, can be found here, here, here, and here.) However, lately I've been wondering whether this whole existence pure and simple notion makes any sense. For a long time I've had this intuitive, emotional, awestruck feeling that somehow there is an existential underpinning to the cosmos that is, duh, existence.  Meaning, existence is akin or identical to "being." Which is a word that both philosophers and ordinary people…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Slomo’s simple philosophy of life: “Do what you want to”

For today's spiritual uplift, there is no better way for you to spend 16 minutes than by watching "Slomo."  I loved this documentary about a 69 year old guy, John Kitchin, who gives up his life as a neurologist and becomes a full-time inline skater -- in slow motion, sort of -- on the San Diego boardwalk. The filmmaker says:  I’ve long been fascinated by people who make seismic changes late in life. It goes against the mainstream narrative: Grow up, pick a career, stick it out, retire. I was also curious about Slomo’s concept of “the zone,” a realm…
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Posted inReligions

How much smarter are atheists than religious believers?

A video about religion from The Idiot's Guide to Smart People series makes fun of religious believers -- which isn't difficult, of course. But I also enjoyed the take on adamant atheists. They're much smarter than religious people, since they don't accept myths, fantasies, and wishful thinking. (At least, not of the godly variety.) Yet how smart is it to waste a lot of time debating people who do believe in this theological crap? I don't have a good answer. I wouldn't have seen the godless light without having my beliefs challenged by friends, family, and a bunch of books by…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

We have a conventional self, but not a soul-self

For good reasons I don't believe in a human "self." Or a non-human self either. But this doesn't mean that I deny people exist.  This notion of no-self can be confusing. To some, no-self implies oneness. Yet it is obvious that I am me and you are you. We have different bodies and different brains. There are connections between us, but we are distinct entities. I've found it difficult to explain both to others and myself how the non-existence of a self is compatible with the existence of individual human beings. Re-reading part of "Living As a River" today, I…
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Posted inReality

For relatives of MH370 passengers, hope is like religious faith

If someone I loved had been at the missing Malaysia Airlines flight, MH370, probably I'd be acting like the actual grieving relatives. Many, if not most, are clinging to hope that, against all odds, the plane landed safely somewhere. The passengers are being held hostage. For some reason, the hijackers haven't made any ransom demands yet. None of this makes sense. It is so improbable as to be virtually impossible. Believing in what I just said requires leaps of logic across vast gaps of implausibility.  Yet on radio and TV I keep hearing the relatives speak that way.  One man…
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Posted inReligions

How can corporations have religious beliefs?

The Hobby Lobby case that was argued before the U.S. Supreme Court today shows why religious beliefs can be dangerous to your health. In this instance, if you work for a company run by owners who want to impose their religious dogma on their employees.  To me, it's a no-brainer: corporations should have to follow the law, just like everybody else. I don't see why there should be exemptions for any sort of religious belief. After all, who is to say what is "religious" and what isn't? Meaning, what difference is there between (1) the owners of Hobby Lobby who…
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