Posted inReligions

What’s churchlessly cool about Judaism (and, not)

I've never rank-ordered the major world religions on how appealing they are to me. Maybe I'll do that after finishing Stephen Prothero's "God is Not One," a book I've blogged about here and here.Prothero's clear descriptions of Islam, Christianity, Judaism, et.al. are helping me to better understand what turns me on, and off, about them. There's something to like in every religion, even if only a little (so far, Islam is my least favorite).This morning I finished the chapter on Judaism. I've always been intrigued by this religion, in large part because, as Prothero points out, Jews are exceedingly brilliant…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Why God can’t be found

The shortest, simplest, and likely most accurate answer to the question, "Why can't God be found?," is: because God doesn't exist. We also can't find unicorns, leprechauns, or the Tooth Fairy (hope my granddaughter isn't reading this post) for what almost certainly is the same reason.They don't exist.But for the sake of argument let's assume that some entity which reasonably could be called "God" does exist. Don't ask me to define that term, "God," because it isn't possible. An understanding of God comes at the end of the search for him/her/it, not before.And that brings us to the biggest problem…
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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 inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Sant Mat’s close connection with Hinduism

Sant Mat is a spiritual system historically centered in northern India, but which now has spread internationally, with initiates of various Sant Mat gurus scattered around the world. It often is billed as a "science of the soul" that transcends religious boundaries and distinctions. For example, the branch of Sant Mat that I was a member of for thirty-five years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), has published books that show the purported connection between Sant Mat and Christianity, as well as Sant Mat and Judaism.This requires considerable leaps of faith, though, and some creative reinterpreting of Bible verses. The commonalities…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

The spirituality of my sickness

I don't get sick very often. So the past five days -- during which I've been suffering through a feverish flu/cold gifted to me by my three year old granddaughter, who, as you can see below, doesn't look capable of such a dastardly deed -- have cast me into an unfamiliar state of consciousness. Ever eager to suck some philosophical insights out of any sort of experience, I wanted to share a few thoughts from the not-quite-well side of my psyche while I was still doing some serious coughing.What I've found most interesting about being sick is this: in many…
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Posted inPolitics

“Saint” Sarah Palin shows danger of mixing religion & politics

Often people say, "What's the harm if people believe in whatever religion they want to, no matter how weird it might seem to others?" Well, here's a good example of some harm: the June 21, 2010 cover of Newsweek. The caption under the photo of Palin with a halo and hands prayerfully folded reads:Saint SarahWhat Palin's appeal to conservative Christian women says about feminism and the future of the religious right.I've been told by a friend who was born in Germany, visits Europe regularly, and keeps up on European goings-on directly via reading online news sources that politicians in Europe…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Be as little as you can be…and real

"Be All You Can Be" was a longstanding slogan of the United States Army. I like it, though the big question is what that all consists of. (In part, clearly, a soldier.) Compared to the cosmos, "not much."I used to be pretty darn grandiose in my spiritual goals. The organization I was a member of, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, taught that it was possible -- indeed, imperative -- to experience God as a living inner presence.At the core of the RSSB philosophy is a belief that there is a spiritual purpose to human life – to experience the divinity of…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Why we’re all Muslims (a teeny, tiny bit)

I'm making my way through Stephen Prothero's "God is Not One," a book about how the eight major religions of the world are not at all the same -- much more like roads that head off in different directions than paths leading to the same summit.In my first post about "God is Not One" after only reading the introduction, I predicted that I'd like Prothero's book. I was right. The next chapter on Islam was clearly written and offered up some fresh insights on what the author considers to be the world's most influential religion.Here's what struck me the most…
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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 inBooks God

“God is Not One” shows how different religions are

A few days ago I was drawn to buy "God is Not One" by Stephen Prothero after seeing Stephen Colbert interview him in Colbert's always entertaining fashion. Prothero gives his take on the interview here, and you can watch it below.The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30cStephen Protherowww.colbertnation.comColbert Report Full EpisodesPolitical HumorFox NewsI liked how Prothero emphasized how different are the problems religions attempt to solve. Christianity is all about being saved from sin; Buddhism aims to eliminate suffering; Hinduism seeks freedom from reincarnation's rounds of birth and death; Daoism teaches how to live life naturally and freely.(If you're…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

If I’m a guru, where are my devotees?

A few days ago I got an email from someone who thinks that I've become a guru. That struck me as a strange thing to say. After all, I'm not aware of anyone in the world who views me that way (certainly not my wife, and definitely not my dog -- except when she wants to go on a walk or get her favorite chew stick treat, when she'll temporarily get a look of absolute devotion to manipulate me into doing her canine bidding).My correspondent asked for a blog response, so here it is. I've interspersed my comments in regular…
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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 inPersonal/Stories

Yeah, I’m enlightened. Deal with it.

After writing a couple of recent posts about boundless existence (see here and here), I've decided that it's time to reveal a truth that I've been reluctant to even tell myself.So let's learn it together: I'm enlightened. Ah, it feels so good to say those two words, "I'm enlightened." I don't know why its taken me so long to do this -- to embrace the realization that I know what's really real.For me. Which brings me to another truth that we need to acknowledge together: You're also enlightened, if you also know what's really real. For you.I have no idea what…
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Posted inBooks Wu Project

Boundless Existence — meaningless backdrop to a meaningful life

As I said in my previous post about Milton Munitz' marvelous book, "Does Life Have a Meaning," the notion of boundless existence sends a chill up my churchless spine. This isn't really a "notion," though. Munitz makes clear that the awareness of That -- That existence exists -- can never be anything more than exactly That: simple awareness, without any cognitive content of What boundless existence is.At best, all we can have is an awareness of Boundless Existence. But this awareness is not an exercise in understanding, of making possible a kind of intelligibility. Nor is it a case of…
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Posted inFundamentalism Spiritual practice/meditation

Integral egos gone wild: Wilber and Cohen relish worship

As I said in this post, I used to have a love-hate thing going on with Ken Wilber and his Integral philosophy. (Click on that link and you'll be led to examples of what I liked and disliked.)Last night, though, I got around to reading the September - November 2009 issue of EnlightenNext, a magazine devoted to uncritical lauding of Wilber's work, along with that of his Integral comrade, Andrew Cohen.When I got through reading "The Second Face of God," I'd reached a clear conclusion: Wilber and Cohen aren't aiming to go beyond the limitations of religiosity in their quest…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

The beauty of boundless existence

"Existence" is one of my favorite things to ponder, mostly because existence (the boundless variety) is imponderable. It's just what it is: Isness, Thatness, whatever you want to call primal That -- which isn't a What.A few months after I started this blog, I wrote "Existence exists. Amazing!" And said in that post:My head hurts when I think too much about existence. But I get an enjoyable chill up my spiritual spine when I simply try to wrap my psyche around existence. Not in a wordy way. In, well, an existential way. This happens when I try to let the…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Religion should be seen as an art from

Lately I've been surprising myself. My churchless psyche isn't nearly as down on religion as it was a few years ago, when I was closer to my saying "goodbye" to an organized spiritual, mystical, and metaphysical belief system.This is natural. Right after I got divorced from my first wife some twenty-one years ago, I thought about her much more, and considerably differently, than I do now. We've each moved on to other relationships. Emotions and attachments, whether positive or negative, almost always fade with time.It still bothers me when fundamentalists expect other people to accept their view of reality on…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Reality is real, but brains construct knowledge

When Amazon delivered Paul Thagard's "The Brain and the Meaning of Life," I knew I was going to enjoy the book after I perused some chapter titles -- the first four being We All Need Wisdom, Evidence Beats Faith, Minds are Brains, and How Brains Know Reality.  Ah, inspiration for my churchless non-soul. I'm one chapter away from finishing the book. Probably I'll write another post about it after I read Making Sense of It All. (I can only hope; that's a pretty confident claim for a chapter.)Here I'll focus on some key concepts in How Brains Know Reality. This subject…
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