Posted inBooks Buddhism

“Nothing special” explains a lot about human nature

A few days ago I'd woken up in the middle of the night. In the course of lying in bed, waiting to get back to sleep, the thought of "nothing special" suddenly came to mind. I then pondered the fact that I'm nothing special; that all of humanity is nothing special given the vastness of the cosmos; that, nonetheless, religions try to make their followers feel very special by supposedly enjoying a special relationship with God; that if people could somehow have a sense that they're nothing special, along with everybody else, the world would be a better place. Since,…
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Posted inBooks Free will Science

“Unique” — fascinating book about the science of human individuality

I love science. So I love scientific books. Since I'm also fascinated by what makes us into the person that we are, David Linden's "Unique: The New Science of Human Individuality" hits the sweet spot for me of reading pleasure.  Linden is a professor of neuroscience at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine and the Kavli Neuroscience Discovery Institute. Impressive credentials. Plus, Linden is an excellent writer with a sense of humor.  Here's some excerpts from the three-fourths of the book that I've read so far. These will give you a flavor of the fascinating facts that Linden shares…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I get a flash of churchless insight: “Stop. Just stop.”

For many years, at least seventeen, but really even longer, I've been steadily discarding bits and pieces of the religious beliefs (Eastern variety) that held sway in my mind for thirty-five years. I've done away with overt religiosity, but subtle remnants remain.  For example, at times during the day for a short period I like to repeat a Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu.  And while mindfulness doesn't strike me as being at all religious, sometimes I go beyond simply paying close attention to what I'm doing and imagine that mindfulness can lead to benefits such as fewer problems in my…
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Posted inDelusions Personal/Stories

I talk chakras and meridians with a churchless visitor

Following on the heels of a previous email exchange of views that I fashioned into a blog post, here's another one. This time I was asked about a relative of a Church of the Churchless reader who surprised this person by embracing a yogic view of chakras that was "woo-woo."  Here's the message that I got, followed by my response. Dear Brian,   You might remember, a while back, you were kind enough to send me that lovely killer list of books that I'd requested for a cousin of mine who was working on her thesis.   Well, she finished…
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Posted inReligions

A message from someone finding purpose in Judaism, and my response

Recently I found a message from someone in the depths of my email inbox that I had ignored for a long time. I wrote back to them. A few days ago I got a reply, which I'm sharing below.  It's a well-written honest explanation of how they went from being non-religious to finding a sense of purpose and belonging in Judaism.  I can understand why someone would embrace the commandments/rules of a religion rather than struggling to find their own moral code, even though this doesn't make sense to me any more. After this person's message, minus their name, I've…
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Posted inFree will Personal/Stories

We don’t know what we don’t know until it’s too late

My mind, like God, works in mysterious ways. Of course, the big difference between my mind and God is that I, along with my mind, actually can be shown to exist. At any rate, this morning I found myself thinking along this line. If you consider that this shows I'm questionably sane, I'd be the first to agree with you. I've made a lot of mistakes in my life. So have you, I'm confident. But from here on I'm going to use "I" to refer to myself as an example that applies to almost everybody. The problem is, those mistakes…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Escaping from the need to escape

My wife and I have been without electricity for 11 days during the aftermath of the worst ice storm to hit Oregon in a long time. In fact, it might have been the worst ice storm ever to hit the state. Today, while I was on a dog walk around our rural south Salem neighborhood, I heard someone scream in delight. Then I noticed lights on in houses.  For the rest of my walk home I visualized coming back to a house with electricity. I pictured myself taking a hot bath for the first time in over a week and…
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Posted inMeaning of life Personal/Stories

What we pay attention to depends on what demands attention

At the moment it's hard for me to write about anything other than the ice storm aftermath here in Oregon, the subject of my last churchless blog post, "Being without power for a week shows what's important."  Well, it's now been nine days since our electricity went out. All of our neighbors are in the same power outage situation, along with 38,000 other Oregonians.  Last night my wife and I hosted a Zoom meeting of our monthly Salon discussion group. Our generator powers a Starlink satellite internet connection, which worked great all through the 100 minute meeting. After the meeting I…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Being without power for a week shows what’s important

My wife, Laurel, and I, along with all of our neighbors, plus over a hundred thousand other Oregonians, have been without electricity since last Friday night, February 12. That's when a massive ice storm hit Northwest Oregon, powered by cold air from the polar vortex that afflicted much of the United States and a moisture-laden storm coming in from the Pacific.  The result was snow in areas to the north of us, including Portland, but freezing rain in our area. Which, believe me, is way worse than snow. I shared photos of the damage to our property in a Saturday…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Satan and Kal

Here's a guest blog post from Bob Russo, who sent this essay to me a while back. I recently discovered it in the depths of my email inbox, liked it, and asked Russo if it would be OK to share it on Church of the Churchless. He said, "sure." Enjoy some thoughts about Satan and Kal. "Kal" is how the so-called Negative Power is viewed by an Eastern religion, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a branch of Sant Mat. Growing up within the crystalline and dualistic (heaven and hell; Jesus and Satan) landscape of Catholicism and having the Pope to…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Too much mindfulness can increase anxiety

Someone sent me a link to an interesting BBC story, "How too much mindfulness can spike anxiety." It describes research about the downside of mindfulness and meditation in general.  In any discussion of mindfulness, it’s important to remember that there are many different techniques that train particular types of thinking and being. The best-known strategies are mindful breathing, in which you focus on the feelings of respiration, and the body scan, in which you pass your attention from head to toe, noting any physical sensations that arise in the course of the session. These kinds of practices are meant to…
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Posted inBooks Science

Final thoughts on the wonderful irrationality of modern science

Having finished Michael Strevens book, 'The Knowledge Machine: How Irrationality Created Modern Science," I wanted to close the book on this book, so to speak, by sharing some further ideas about how Strevens' Big Idea applies to us in everyday life. (My three previous posts about The Knowledge Machine are here, here, and here.) The Big Idea that makes modern science a highly effective way of generating knowledge is restricting scientific communications -- journal articles, research reports, and the like -- to only empirical evidence.  So if a scientist wants to argue some point, they must do so on the…
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Posted inBooks Meaning of life

The good life is the life you already have

lt took me a few months, but today I finished reading John Gray's provocative little book, "Feline Philosophy: Cats and the Meaning of Life." (Other books took priority in my morning reading time; my first post about this book is here.) The final chapter contained some nice observations about our search for meaning, and what cats can teach us in this regard. Here's some excerpts. If cats could understand the human search for meaning they would purr with delight at its absurdity. Life as the cat they happen to be is meaning enough for them. Humans, on the other hand,…
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Posted inHumor Politics

QAnon and religion are both mass delusions

The Real Time With Bill Maher show always ends with a feature called New Rules. Most of the rules are brief and humorous, while the last takes longer to explain and is more serious, though still funny in a different way. I just finished watching our recording of the February 5 episode.  Maher's closing New Rule was a right-on discussion of how the craziness of QAnon relates to religious belief. Probably you're familiar with this cult, but if you aren't, a BBC story describes what QAnon is about. At its heart, QAnon is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded theory that says…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Have a listen to my Everyone’s Autonomous podcast interview

Today my rather lengthy interview with Marie D'Elephant's Everyone's Autonomous podcast interview appeared on her web site. The episode starts off with about 35 minutes of Marie talking before our interview starts. So click your way to the 35 minute mark if you're mainly interested in the interview with me. There's a few gaps in the recording, but they don't last long, so stick with the silence and it will soon end. https://everyonesautonomous.com We covered a lot of spiritual, philosophical, and religious ground. The focus of Everyone's Autonomous is on recovering from dogmatic religiosity. Mostly Marie speaks with Christians who…
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Posted inBooks Buddhism

Compassion, like other good qualities, is in us, not the cosmos

As noted in a recent post, I've been playing around with using the Buddhist mantra, Namu Amida Butsu. I like the way it sounds. I'm attracted to Buddhism, so long as it is stripped of extraneous supernaturalism. I don't believe that Namu Amida Butsu is anything special. It's simply a way for me to focus and calm my mind. That mantra is part of the Shin aspect of Buddhism.  I have some familiarity with Shin, also known as the Pure Land tradition. In 2005 I talked about Namu Amida Butsu in "Mantra meditation: what's in a word?"  In 2013 I…
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Posted inPolitics Religions

Religious nationalism must be fought, no matter the religion

Nationalism is dumb. Religious nationalism is dumber. Believing that your country is superior to all others makes no sense, since lots of people in many countries, maybe most countries, consider that they're fortunate to live in the best country on Earth. But at least there's no doubt that these countries exist. They have governments. They have boundaries. They can be photographed. So nationalism, as misguided as it is, has a foundation in objective reality. Religious nationalism, though, adds a fantasy -- the unproven belief that Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Sikhism, Buddhism, or some other religion is rooted in a supernatural…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

There are pros and cons to repeating a mantra

On this blog I've done a lot of writing about mantras. I just used the Google search box in the right sidebar to locate posts dealing with "mantra." The results went on for 10 pages, all of most of the posts being written for Church of the Churchless rather than my other two blogs. I assiduously repeated a mantra silently both in meditation and during some of the rest of my day for thirty-five years.  That was the meditation method I first was taught, though it had a component of open awareness to go along with the focused attention of…
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