Posted inBooks Buddhism

“Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind” is a classic that I like a lot

Recently I wrote about how always trying to improve yourself is foolish. Since this makes a lot of sense to me, I'm attracted to Zen Buddhism because it shares that perspective, by and large. This attraction is long-standing.  One of my favorite Zen books, The Supreme Doctrine, has been in my hands since 1969, when I couldn't bear to return it to the San Jose Public Library while I was going to San Jose State College. Another favorite is Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind. I have the 1973 first paperback edition. A few days ago I started re-reading it after a long…
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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 inBooks Miracles

A Bayesian argument against miracles

For quite a while I've been interested in Bayesian reasoning/statistics, even though I've never understood this subject very well. Now I'm reading Steven Pinker's new book, "Rationality." It has a chapter on Beliefs and Evidence that focuses on Bayesian reasoning. Which is, basically (this is an introduction to an online tutorial): Bayes' rule or Bayes' theorem is the law of probability governing the strength of evidence -- the rule saying how much to revise our probabilities (change our minds) when we learn a new fact or observe new evidence. "Prior probability" in the Bayesian perspective is our credence in an…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

Always trying to improve yourself is foolish

This morning I meditated, as I always do. Via my iPhone I also listened to a Buddhist speak about Buddhist teachings, as I sometimes do.  What surprised me, sort of, is that afterwards I felt somewhat worse. It was as if trying to improve myself led to me feeling like I'd temporarily gone backward on the improvement front.  As soon as I went back to simply living my life -- having lunch, going grocery shopping, listening to CNN and MSNBC as I drove around in my car -- my mood improved. For quite a while I've been toying with the…
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Posted inAtheism

Why atheism makes sense even if theism doesn’t

Even though it's true that usually people aren't described by their unwillingness to believe in imaginary things -- there aren't afairyists who proclaim their skepticism about the existence of fairies -- the situation is different in regard to God. Below I've shared an excellent comment from Appreciative Reader that was left today on a recent post of mine. The comment explains why even if the notion of God is incoherent, which of course it is, there's still good reason for atheists to object to the belief in God held by billions of people.  After all, believers in fairies don't try…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 41 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread. Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.  If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread. As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Happy birthday to me, from me

It's my birthday tomorrow. I'll be a super-young 73, using my personal definition of super-young. (I'm reading a humorous book about growing older -- Stupid Things I Won't Do When I Get Old --  that says two answers to the question "When does old begin?" are "Old age is my current age +4" and "Tomorrow. Always tomorrow. Never today.) At any rate, I'm in pretty good shape. As evidence I present this photo of me in the Big Meadow at Black Butte Ranch in central Oregon, where my wife and I own a 1/4 share in a vacation home. That's…
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Posted inAtheism God

Why it makes no sense to ask for evidence that God doesn’t exist

Over the years I've written numerous blog posts about the near-impossibility of proving a negative such as God doesn't exist.  This isn't the way both science and common sense work. We don't ask for evidence that invisible fairies aren't making our cars move. Since cars have engines, or motors if they're electric, there's lots of evidence in favor of engines/motors, so no need to deal with the invisible fairy hypothesis. Same is the case with God. Or at least how atheists look upon God.  Below is how Armin Navabi addresses this issue in his book, "Why There Is No God:…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Thoughts on a good death

Over on my HinesSight blog, yesterday I wrote "My wife's sister died today. It was a good death." I'll copy it in here. We're all going to die. That's 100% certain. Death follows life with a cosmic inevitability. The big question is: Will we die a good death? This morning my wife, Laurel, learned that her older sister, Lynn, had died last night. Naturally there were tears. But not much sorrow. Because Lynn died a good death.  In fact, a very good death. Exactly the way most of us would want to go, Laurel and I definitely included. Lynn and…
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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 inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A message from a disillusioned RSSB initiate

UPDATE: I should have noted in the original post that I strongly support Covid vaccine mandates, so have no problem with a religious group having vaccinated and non-vaccinated people sit in different locations. That protects the vaccinated, who are still at a small risk of getting Covid, from those who aren't vaccinated.  It always makes me feel good to hear from someone who has come to see the downside of belonging to a religious organization. Today I got this message regarding the organization I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), which is headquartered in India. Gurinder Singh…
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Posted inFundamentalism Politics

Cult of Trump shows danger of blind faith

Here in the United States we're facing a scary prospect in upcoming elections, especially the next presidential election in November 2024. A recent Forbes story captures the problem in its headline: "Poll Finds Most Americans Think An Election Will Be Overturned Because Of Partisan Sour Grapes." In a CNN/SRSS poll of 2,119 U.S. adults released Wednesday, 51% of respondents said it is somewhat or very likely that some elected officials will “successfully overturn the results of an election” in the U.S. in the future “because their party did not win.” That belief was held by 49% of Democratic respondents and…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Right in the middle is where life really happens

I really liked today's guided meditation by Jeff Warren, which I regularly listen to on the Calm iPhone app. So much so, I made a transcript of what Warren had to say. The ellipsis (...) in the transcript below indicate a marked pause in the guided meditation.  This afternoon I shared some copies of the transcript with my Tai Chi class. There's a close connection between the notion of staying in the center of a movement and basic principles of Tai Chi.  More philosophically, I enjoyed Warren's observation that when we're right in the middle, we have the greatest ability…
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Posted inMeaning of life

Let’s agree: life is difficult

With so many divisions in the world -- political, religious, nationalistic, plus many others -- sometimes it seems like there's nothing all of us can agree on. I suggest this as a foundation for finding common ground: life is difficult.  Not all of the time. Much of the time. And for some, most of the time. The degree of difficulty varies for each person, sort of akin to a gymnastics routine where a score is based in part on the degree of difficulty of the various moves. Yet no matter who we are or what circumstances we find ourselves in,…
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Posted inBooks Delusions Reality

Presumptions are necessary for reasoning to work

Almost everybody who has had a child -- that includes me -- knows how annoying it can be when they learn how to make "Why?" into a way to drive a parent crazy. You need to turn the TV off and go to bed.Why?Because it's late and you need to go to school tomorrow.Why do I need to go to school?So you can learn things.Why should I learn things? And so it goes, until the parent gets fed up and ends the discussion with "Because I said so! Go brush your teeth!" Andy Norman uses this sort of Why? reasoning…
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Posted inBooks Religions

How religions disable our reasoning practices

Here's a marvelous excerpt from Andy Norman's book, "Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think."  I read it this morning and realized it's a terrific way to explain what's wrong with the irrationality of religion. Norman imagines that someone wants to figure out how to best undermine human reasoning that enables us to distinguish truth from falsehoods, what's real from what's illusory.  As you'll read below, what results is... (no big surprise) religion.  Imagine yourself part of a team charged with stress-testing civilization's all-important reasoning practices. The team has an initial meeting, and the…
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Posted inBooks Religions

Religious beliefs can be false, yet useful

My wife turned me on to Andy Norman's book, "Mental Immunity: Infectious Ideas, Mind-Parasites, and the Search for a Better Way to Think." She's listening to it via the audiobook. I'm reading the print edition. The Covid pandemic has taught us all a lot about immunity against viruses. Vaccines help us fight off a Covid infection by strengthening our defenses against the viral invader. Likewise, Norman argues, minds are prone to being infected by bad ideas.  Unfortunately, there is no way to get a shot that wards off bad ideas. Instead, his book describes ways we can protect our mind…
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Posted inCoronavirus

I’m tired of our nation’s 9/11 obsession

Over on my Salem Political Snark blog, I just finished "On 9/11, let's remember the 659,556 Covid deaths."  Here's how I introduced that post on Facebook. I have to be honest. I'm tired of our nation's obsession with 9/11. Yes, it was a tragedy. But 9/11 pales in comparison to the tragedy of the Covid pandemic, which has killed 220 times as many people than died on 9/11. Radical Islam was responsible for 2,996 deaths. Radical Trumpism is responsible for the hundreds of thousands of Covid deaths that experts say could have been prevented. I refuse to mourn the deaths…
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