Posted inFundamentalism Politics

Texas dismisses Thomas Jefferson from schools

We didn't need more evidence that religious fundamentalists are dangerous wackos who seek to undermine American freedom and independence -- but, sadly, here it is:The Texas State Board of Education removed Thomas Jefferson from the school curriculum, replacing him with John Calvin, who, not surprisingly, also was a religious wacko.Jefferson, on the other hand, held unconventional Christian beliefs and strongly argued for the separation of church and state. He also, of course, was the third president of the United States, the principal author of the Declaration of Independence, and one of the most influential Founding Fathers of the United States.But…
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Posted inGod Spiritual practice/meditation

Life without God is more meaningful

Bart Ehrman once was a devout evangelical Christian. Now he's an agnostic scholar who debunks religious myths. Today on my car radio I heard a snippet of an NPR interview with him.Ehrman was asked how his life had changed now that he doesn't believe in heaven, hell, and life after death any more. He answered that it had become much more meaningful. Ehrman no longer expects to enjoy (or fear) another life after this one.This is it. One chance. Enjoy it while you can. Make the most of every moment.That's how I've come to feel also. But for a while,…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Become a better person first, a perfect divine being second

Often people attracted to spirituality want to skip the whole human being thing and jump directly into some supposed metaphysical realm. Christians base their lives on being saved and getting a pass to enter heaven after death; Buddhists, Hindus, and other "Eastern" practitioners envision enlightenment, nirvana, god realization, or whatever as being an escape from the illusions of the material universe.Well, there might be a transcendental reality, despite the lack of evidence. But for sure there is a physical world, which we all are living in now, doing our best to deal with the difficulties of being human.Sickness and health.…
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Posted inGod Universe

Best reason why God doesn’t exist

Does God exist? People have been trying to answer this question for thousands of years. As I wrote about in this post, a philosophical novel sets out 36 arguments for the existence of God (listed here; scroll down to read them).Arguments for the non-existence of God aren't as common. It's tough to prove that something doesn't exist, especially when that entity is supposed to be metaphysical, mysterious, and not particularly eager to reveal itself in an obvious fashion.I usually argue that it isn't possible to prove that God is non-existent. Instead, we agnostics and atheists are justified in asking for…
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Posted inGod

So many arguments for God’s existence; all flawed

Here's a mini-miracle that happened to me yesterday: I'm in a Barnes & Noble store and see a new hardcover book: "36 Arguments for the Existence of God -- a work of fiction."I'm attracted to buy it. Handing it to the checkout clerk, I hear him say: "Hey, a friend of mind is reading this. He loves it." Cosmic! What are the chances...Actually, quite good. I suspect that people who work in book stores tend to read more books than the average person. And it figures that their friends would also. I'm buying a philosophical novel whose central character is…
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Posted inBuddhism

If soul is real, we’ll never know

Lots of people believe in what philosophers call "mind-body dualism." Or if they're mystically or religiously inclined, they'll say that the soul is the non-physical side of who we are.Regardless, this is a dualistic view of life. It's nothing new. Plato was a dualist, as was Descartes. Nowadays, science has discredited the notion that human consciousness has a metaphysical aspect. Mind states clearly are related to brain states. There's no convincing evidence that consciousness exists separate from a body.Yet belief in an immaterial soul or mind that survives physical death is still widespread. Most Christians believe this. So do most…
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Posted inMystics Personal/Stories

The sheer strangeness of everything

Sanity is consensual. If there's someone else who sees the world in the same way I do, that gives me at least a little bit of confidence that I'm not way out in weirdo-world -- though I'm not saying that would be a bad thing.This morning I came across a passage in Stephen Bachelor's new book, "Confession of a Buddhist Atheist," that echoed sensations I have frequently these churchless days, and tried to describe at the end of my "Mysticism doesn't have to be mystical" post.Here's how Bachelor says it:One evening at dusk, as I was returning to my room…
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Posted inHumor

“This Too Shall Pass” could be secret of universe

I can't explain why, but I'm pretty sure this You Tube video contains the secret of the universe. Watching it, I had an overwhelming feeling of "Yes! That's exactly what life is all about!" However, I still have no idea what life is all about. Just that whatever it is, this is how it works.
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Posted inMystics

Mysticism doesn’t have to be mystical

For most of my life -- age 18 to 55, or thereabouts -- I've been an avid embracer of mysticism. During my psychedelic period, I wasn't only aiming at getting high via LSD, mescaline, and such. Along with many other flower children, I also was trying to experience a higher form of consciousness. We'd ponder the Tibetan Book of the Dead, then see if we could experience some of the bardos via a pill rather than meditation. After a few years I stopped using drugs and devoted myself to meditating several hours a day with the same intent: learning whether…
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Posted inMystics

Mystic atheism is a cool non-belief

I've found a new way to describe myself philosophically: mystic atheist. Along with agnostic, humanist,Taoist, and existentialist. 

Maybe I'll make up a non-business card with this title, since it fits with my non-belief system. The card would stimulate some interesting conversations when I handed it out, I bet.

Thanks for discovering mystic atheist go to two people: one guy who emailed me about another guy. The first wanted to tell me about "Kissing Hank's Ass," a marvelous irreligious fable that I'd already blogged about several years ago.

The second is James Huber, who wrote the piece. When I followed the email link to his web site, I noticed a couple of other writings that looked interesting. "Mystic Atheism" then led me to "Materialistic Enlightenment."

Interestingly, I'd mentioned "Mystic Atheism" in my 2006 blog post about "Kissing Hank's Ass." But I guess I wasn't ready to appreciate it's profundity back then.

Now that I've reached a higher stage of mystic atheist materialistic enlightenment, I'm better able to resonate with Huber's insights — an excerpt from which you can read a few paragraphs down in a continuation to this post.

I love how he speaks about a "presence" that he sensed when he was experiencing some form of religiosity or spirituality. Eventually he realized that this presence was the common denominator between all religions and spiritual paths:

Everyday physical reality.

What I understood in that shining moment were that all the mystic
experiences I had ever had could easily be unified with a single,
simple principle: they're all 99.9% bullshit. What truth they hold is
simple, ordinary, reality. They look exotic and mysterious because they
go to great lengths to hide reality. The truth at the center of all
religion shines through despite the metaphysical trappings, not because
of them.

Read on, and you'll find out that God spoke to Huber, revealing that God doesn't exist. Ah, that's my kind of enlightenment.

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Posted inReligions

Religious belief, Dumbo, and the placebo effect

After reading a fascinating article in Newsweek about how antidepressants appear to be no more effective than a placebo, I got to wondering whether religions operate the same way.Patients on a placebo improved about 75 percent as much as those on drugs. Put another way, three quarters of the benefit from antidepressants seems to be a placebo effect.When people believe that a placebo -- a sham medical intervention -- is an effective treatment, that belief often is self-fulfilling. Meaning, they get better because they believed they should get better.How this happens is largely a mystery. But there are some promising…
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Posted inGod

If “God” is mystery, there’s no pointing to God

Religion is strange. Most faiths teach that God, or whatever the highest divinity is called, is transcendent, mysterious, ineffable, incapable of being described in words.Yet these faiths also aren't shy about using a whole lot of words, concepts, dogmas, and such to tell us what God is like and why it is so important to believe in Him, Her, or It. They want to have their cake of mystery and eat it too.Obviously there are degrees to which something can be precisely described. We can analyze the chemical composition of a strawberry, measure it, photograph it, write reams about it.But…
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Posted inScience Spiritual practice/meditation

I want my “spirituality” to be physical

I had an interesting experience this morning. Sitting in my meditation area, sipping a strong cup of coffee, I settled down to enjoy reading a spiritual book.I'd already read about half of Scott Kiloby's "Love's Quiet Revolution." My churchless psyche was enjoying his subtitle theme, the end of the spiritual search. I wasn't agreeing with everything Kiloby said, but his general stance seemed agreeable enough.Until... it didn't.I started using my highlighter to pen in yellow question marks in the margins. Lots of them. I skipped through pages that now struck me as ridiculous. Why? Because scientific reality had caused me…
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Posted inScience

Brain’s “dark energy” casts doubt on pure awareness

I like my spirituality (if there is such a thing) to be as scientific as possible. Fantasy, imagination, and speculative philosophizing are fun, but when it comes to understanding myself and my place in the cosmos, getting real is more appealing to me.So an article in the March 2010 issue of Scientific American struck me as having important implications for an oft-heard assumption of meditation-based spiritual and mystical paths:That it's possible to arrive at a state of pure, or mostly pure, awareness. Meaning, basically, that one's consciousness isn't contaminated by thoughts, emotions, and other egocentric manifestations of me, me, me.For…
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Posted inHumor

Nice Duhism

A recent Duh of the Day explained how to make money from a spiritual belief.A Hindu yogi told me, "I have never been born so I can never die." So, I made myself the beneficiary on his life insurance. Thanks for the Lexus, dude-ji!
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Posted inBooks

Dan Barker’s “Godless” is marvelous

There's atheists, and then there's Atheists! Dan Barker is one of the latter, an activist, in-your-face, eloquent promoter of "Who knows?" over "I have faith that..."I've mentioned Barker's book, "Godless," in quite a few previous posts. (To find them, scroll down and use the Great Genuine God Google search box in the right column of this blog; type in "Dan Barker.")Barker speaks of what he knows when he writes about religiosity, because he used to be an ardent evangelical Christian preacher. Eventually he saw the light and became an atheist agnostic.If that sounds funny, Barker explains:People are invariably surprised to…
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Posted inMystics

Why be shy about sharing mystical experiences?

I'm an admirer of Taoism. I resonate with these lines in the Tao Te Ching:The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.Those who know do not talk.Those who talk do not know.Makes sense. How could the essence of the cosmos be encompassed by words? The human mind wasn't around at the big bang some 14 billion years ago, so it's difficult to see how a verbal explanation could capture the fullness of ultimate reality.But silence has another side: speaking. Yin and yang are manifestations of the Tao. Too much of anything, for too long, is unnatural. We've…
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Why every religion and spiritual path is wrong

I've just finished reading my bajillionth (more or less) spiritual, mystical, religious, or philosophical book. You could call me a slow learner, but today I had a mini-enlightenment. It dawned on me -- more clearly than ever before -- why every religion and spiritual path is wrong. More precisely, wrong for everybody but one person: the guy or gal who had the initial religious or spiritual experience that led to a claim that it is right for everybody. A personal experience is just that: one person's experience. End of story. But if that person shares his or her tale with…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories Spiritual practice/meditation

The sweet taste of imperfection

Religions and most forms of spirituality strive for perfection. Or at least, improvement. They teach that we're fallen, sinful, deluded, enmeshed in maya/karma, ego-ridden, desirous, lustful, selfish.In short, imperfect. Well, yeah. That's what being human is. That's what being alive is. Perfection is an abstraction, a concept, an idea. Maybe it exists. Maybe it doesn't. Perfection is a state of mind. Sometimes we're filled with a sense of everything is just as it should be. Then that moment passes.And we're left with life in its everchangingness. Ups and downs. Happiness and sorrow. Good news and bad news. Smiles and frowns.This afternoon…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Deconversion is as natural as conversion

I enjoy hearing deconversion stories -- how people changed from being religious believers into atheists or agnostics. But "conversion" and "deconversion" are two sides of the same coin. Everybody who is converted to a faith, such as Christianity, was simultaneously deconverted from some other philosophy, belief system, religion, or point of view.Our lives are ever-changing. When change stops, we're dead. So it's natural to convert, deconvert, convert, deconvert... for as long as we're alive. I converted to mueslix for a while, then deconverted to granola. Now I've converted to raisin bran. (Leaving out many other earlier cereal choices, such as…
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