Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Cells, common ancestors, and Gaia — suggestions of immortality

Like I said in my post "We can never be dead (but we're not immortal," in his book Stephen Cave does an excellent job of describing ways we humans attempt to achieve immortality -- then showing why they aren't up to the job. Staying alive... we can try to make our years on Earth as many as possible, but it's obvious that everybody dies eventually. Resurrection... Jesus supposedly did it, but there's no solid evidence of this, and no proof anyone else has pulled off the trick either. Soul... nice idea, that a conscious non-physical aspect of us continues on…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

We can never be dead (but we’re not immortal)

I've got some bad news and some good news for those who believe they have, or are, a soul. Bad news is, almost certainly the soul doesn't exist.  The good news is, no matter. Because we can never be dead. However, the good news doesn't mean we're immortal, which is the promise of soul. It just means, as Stephen Cave says in his fascinating book, "Immortality," that it is impossible for us humans to imagine our own nonexistence -- because whenever we try to do this, we're still alive. That's what I learned from a quote in the leadoff reader…
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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 inChristianity/Jesus

Anne Rice’s Christian deconversion

Even though several years ago I'd blogged about vampire author Anne Rice's rejection of organized Christianity, I'd forgotten about this until recently -- when I saw her interviewed on The Colbert Report. The Colbert Report Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive In the interview it sounded to me like Rice had gone all atheist/agnostic. Maybe she has...now. Back in 2010 she was still professing a commitment to Jesus, but not to Christianity as practiced by many, if not most, people these days. This is what she said on her Facebook page, when she announced her…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Uh-oh. God in Human Form doesn’t like this blog.

Guess I'm doomed, salvation-wise. (Of course, I already knew that, having denied the Holy Spirit and embraced eternal damnation in exchange for a free DVD.) Someone sent me some copies of Australian "Science of the Soul" newsletters, figuring that I might be interested in news about Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) -- the India based religious organization I was an active member of for over thirty years. RSSB is led by a guru. The guru is believed to be God in Human Form. So not surprisingly, whatever the guru says is taken very seriously by his devotees. Me, not so…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Resurrection has some problems. Like cannibalism.

Today I celebrated Easter in a churchless fashion. To commemorate the resurrection of Jesus from the dead, I read a fascinating chapter in Steven Cave's book, "Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization." The chapter, St. Paul and the Cannibals, dealt with one of the four paths by which immortality is sought: Resurrection. Cave describes it as, "Although we must physically die, nonetheless we can physically rise again with the bodies we knew in life." (The other three paths are Staying Alive, Soul, and Legacy.) Cave related the familiar Biblical tale of Christian-hating Saul becoming Jesus-loving…
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Posted inGod

Jet crash “miracle” shows absurdity of religion

Last night my wife and I couldn't believe what we heard while watching the evening news. "It's a miracle," several people said, referring to the Navy jet that crashed into Virginia Beach apartment buildings without killing anybody. A U.S. Navy admiral said Saturday that the fiery crash of a fighter jet into apartment buildings in the military community of Virginia Beach matches his definition of a miracle. No one was killed and everyone was accounted for one day after the accident. "I don't speak for anybody's religious beliefs, but the mayor and I both agreed that if you want to…
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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 inReality

Everything is appearance in mind

"Tucson" is a frequent commenter on this blog. I like his style. Which doesn't mean that I always understand what he is saying.  That might mean that I do understand it. Because if I understand anything about Tucson's way of looking at the world, it's that every attempt to divide reality into (1) an understander, and (2) what is understood, results in a human conception of the cosmos which misses (3) what's really going on. Not that (3) ever can be known. There's actually no knower and nothing to be known. And now I've probably demonstrated that I don't know anything…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

Catholic woman is offended by McDonald’s

Recently our local newspaper here in Salem, Oregon had a column by Carol McAlice Currie that resonated with my long-time experience of being a vegetarian.  Download Fast food offends religious woman  Since I've shunned meat and fish since 1970, and raised a daughter born in 1972 as a vegetarian, I know what it's like to ask servers in a restaurant to substitute something animal'ish for something vegetable'ish.  Many times I walked into a McDonald's with my daughter and said to the person behind the counter, "Could you make us a Big Mac without the hamburger?" Or at Taco Bell, "We'd…
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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 inPersonal/Stories Radha Soami Satsang Beas

How I deprogrammed fundamentalism out of my brain

I got some great questions in an email today, boldfaced below. Brian, out of curiosity.... I was wondering after you left RS [Radha Soami Satsang Beas]... How did you deprogram all the fundamentalism out of your brain? The whole "The world is a bad place, don't get "involved" in worldly things....  and pursuing things in the world to find happiness is bad... How did you start to finally pursue your own happiness, without the fundamental programming snake coming in and poisoning your progress? I told the person who wrote me I'd reply via a blog post tonight, adding that I'd been planning to write…
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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 inTaoism/Tai Chi Wu Project

Zhuangzi’s (Chuang Tzu’s) delicious weightlessness

I like the idea of floating free, weightless, able to move here, there, in any direction, with little or no effort, unbound. Even better... for this not to be an idea, but experience. Which helps explain, as I blogged about before, why Daoism/Taoism resonates with me. There's a freedom, a playfulness, a whatever in Daoist philosophy that mirrors the difference between relaxed Tai Chi and the hard-edged traditional Shotokan karate I spent nine years training in before I switched to what can be called Daoism-in-motion. Daoism is difficult to put a conceptual finger on. I've been reading and re-reading various…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Taoism isn’t mystical. It is natural.

Life is a mystery. Such, for me, is a given. Don't try to argue me out of it. Hopeless task. For about forty years I believed this meant the cosmos must have mystical underpinnings, some transcendental Absoluteness which, though hidden from everyday experience, held clues -- if not the answer -- to what life, the cosmos, birth and death, heck, everything, was all about. Now, I'm not into that belief very much. In fact, very little. Mysticism has come to strike me as just another way of saying "life is a mystery."  Question is: can the mystery be unraveled, understood,…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A fresh look at Seth Shiv Dayal Singh (Soami Ji)

Those who are interested in the history of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a contemporary Sant Mat movement headquartered in India, will want to read the following message I received from "SM Dass" (a pseudonym). Others won't understand much about what is being talked about, yet will be able to follow the gist of the arguments. Since I was a member of RSSB for over thirty years, I told SM Dass that his analysis was intriguing and I'd like to share it on my blog. I've added a few explanatory terms in [brackets], and some links. By "intriguing" I don't mean that…
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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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Posted inReligions Science

New Scientist looks at the science of religion

Why do so many people believe in God or in other sorts of supernatural beings? Most religious folks would have no trouble answering that question. "Because God is real," they'd say.  Well, that's highly debatable. And I'm being generous to religion. That's ridiculous is closer to how I really feel. The most recent issue of New Scientist dives into these "Why believe?" waters. An editorial does a good job of summarizing core themes in the following articles. It ends with: Secularists would also do well to recognise the distinction between the "popular religion" that comes easily to people's minds and…
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