Posted inReality

Rules for Reality — which religious believers ignore

I'm a proud member of the reality-based community. This is a big reason why I no longer believe in God or supernatural phenomena.  It'd be nice if these things actually existed. But "nice" is irrelevant when it comes to learning the truth about reality. Reality is what it is, not what individuals want it to be. When I learned about Jonathan Rauch's book, "The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth," the title alone made me want to buy it. I've only read two of the eight chapters, but I skipped ahead and read the passages that I've shared below.…
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Posted inReality Universe

Mystery of existence is a chill up the spine, not a concept

For many years I've gotten a thrill out of the mystery of existence.  This has nothing to do with what exists. It's all about the brute fact that something exists. Now, that something might well be infinite. For sure it's huge -- countless billions of light years huge. And it's old -- at least 13.8 billion years old and possibly infinitely old. All that is irrelevant when talking about the mystery of existence.  What blows my mind with marvelous regularity is the chill-up-the-spine realization that all this, no matter what it consists of -- is equally present at the tips…
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Posted inComments Reality Spiritual practice/meditation

Is a mechanism required for realizing Oneness?

Below I've shared a lengthy comment from "Appreciative Reader" that deserved to be made into a blog post. Why? Because the comment is nicely thought out and well written. It addresses an interesting question: whether someone's experience of Oneness just happened, and can't be described in a step-by-step fashion, or whether a mechanism that leads to an experience like this can be communicated to others. I tend to agree with Appreciative Reader that in general, someone's spiritual realization is capable of being analyzed and critiqued to a significant degree. As I've noted before, dreams are highly personal and unlike everyday…
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Posted inBooks Taoism/Tai Chi

I love the natural concreteness of Daoism

Abstractions are fine. We humans have evolved to be able to conceive of abstract ideas such as love, justice, infinity, God, and so much else. But it's possible to get lost in a maze of abstractions where each idea leads to another idea, and then another... no exit in sight.  Daoism (or Taoism) is my favorite philosophy, along with non-religious Buddhism, because it's wonderfully concrete. I've practiced Tai Chi for seventeen years, which can be viewed as Daoism made physical.  Yin and yang aren't abstractions in Tai Chi. They are directly experienced realities as a yin move flows into a…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus Radha Soami Satsang Beas

No, communion isn’t about the body and blood of Jesus

I speak from experience as a lapsed Catholic when I say that communion involves swallowing a wafer and some wine, not the body and blood of Jesus. OK, that experience was brief, since after I had my first communion, thankfully my mother let me decide whether to continue on to be confirmed as a Catholic -- which I definitely didn't want to do, since the black-clad nuns were scary, the mass was in Latin, the wood we had to kneel on was damn hard, and my Presbyterian boyhood friends got to enjoy their more pleasant Sunday School while I was…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 39 (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 inGay rights

Salem Gay Pride speaker has a lesson for atheists

Last Friday my wife and I went to a Pride gathering in Salem's Riverfront Park. I wrote about it in "Scott Hosner speaks at 2021 Salem Gay Pride event."  The seven-minute video I made of Hosner can be viewed below. It's worth watching for several reasons. One is that Hosner's description of what it was like to grow up queer in the last part of the previous century shows how much progress has been made in LGBTQ rights since that time. That's really encouraging given the many social problems we face now. (My daughter graduated from South Salem high school in…
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Posted inAtheism

There is indeed a presumption of atheism

Yesterday someone  left this comment on my post, "Sorry. No winner in 'Tell me why you believe in God contest.'" There are arguments for theism. There are arguments for atheism. The failure of arguments for one side, does not mean that the other position is true by default. There is no "presumption of atheism" or "presumption of theism." The commenter is completely wrong. What they said lacks any foundation in logic, reason, or direct experience. I talk about this a lot on this blog. Almost always there's no way to prove the non-existence of something. What we do in both…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Shivinder Singh’s bail revoked to uncover conspiracy hatched by him

It's been quite a while since there's been any news about the financial scandal involving the Singh brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder), their relative Gurinder Singh Dhillon (guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas), Sunil Godhwani (who used to be the guru's close advisor), and others. But a few days ago this story appeared in The Economic Times. Similar stories ran in some other publications.  It's good to see that the Delhi High Court revoked the bail that allowed Shivinder Singh to stay out of detention, a goal being to uncover the conspiracy hatched by Shivinder and to trace the funds that were…
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Posted inGod

Sorry. No winner in “Tell me why you believe in God” contest.

Well, the first entries are in, and I'm not impressed.  Four days ago I invited visitors to this blog to leave a comment on my "Tell me why you believe in God" post.  I said: I'm defining "God" as a conscious supernatural being with miraculous powers. If you're a believer with a markedly different definition, include that definition in your comment. The responses were decidedly underwhelming. Some were interesting, but none were directly related to what I wanted. Why someone believes in God. This is surprising, since it sure seems like quite a few regular readers of this blog do believe…
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Posted inBooks Spiritual practice/meditation

Bruce Lee’s daughter writes about her father’s philosophy

A fellow Tai Chi student and friend mentioned "Be Water, My Friend" a while back. This is a book by Shannon Lee, Bruce Lee's daughter. I'm enjoying it.  My favorite Tai Chi form is called in English, Water Boxing. It's very long, difficult to learn, not known by very many, and involves a lot of subtleties.  I probably should call it a Tai Chi'ish form, because few of the hundreds of moves look like traditional Tai Chi. But that's the way of water. It can take on an infinity of forms, because water is fluid, flexible, formless. Which is the…
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Posted inGod

Tell me why you believe in God

I'm a curious guy. I enjoy learning how people view the Big Questions of Life, including one of the biggest, Does God exist? I used to answer "Yes." Now I'm an atheist who says, "Almost certainly, no." But I'm well aware that many of those who visit this blog and leave comments on the posts here are believers in God. So I'm inviting you to leave a comment on this post that explains why you believe that God exists. Or, if you have some doubts about this, why you're almost certain that God exists. I'm defining "God" as a conscious…
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Posted inBooks Science

Each of us isn’t a thing, but a web of connections

Before moving on to subjects other than quantum theory, which I've written about here and here recently, I want to talk in my own words regarding what I like about Carlo Rovelli's book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The previous posts consisted mostly of excerpts from the book. So here's my attempt to describe what appealed to me the most about Helgoland. (That's an island in the North Sea where Heisenberg came up with his key concepts about the quantum world.) Rovelli is an exceptionally clear writer. He also has a poetic sense that isn't unique among physicists, but…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

I’m re-sharing my post about my sister’s memorial service

Back in 2010 I wrote a blog post soon after my sister died, "Memorial service shows sad side of religion."  I'm re-sharing that link for the reason I expressed on Facebook just now. Carol Ann, my sister, died in December 2009. For ten years before her death, starting in 2000, her only daughter (Cathy) refused to let Carol Ann or her husband, Bob, have any contact with their two grandchildren. This hurt Carol Ann and Bob immensely. It was a source of great pain for them.   A primary reason for this sad estrangement was the fundamentalist religion embraced by…
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Posted inBooks Consciousness Science

Mind and consciousness through the eye of quantum physics

Here's additional excerpts from physicist Carlo Rovelli's wonderful new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution." (See here for my first post about the book.) The passages below are from final chapters where Rovelli focuses on the nature of mind and consciousness in light of quantum physics.  Rovelli's take on this subject is very much in line with a post I wrote in 2018, "Awareness is a process, not a thing."  Consciousness isn't a thing. It is a process. Thinking of it as a thing makes us wonder what kind of a thing it is, whereas we should be…
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Posted inBooks Science

Relational view of quantum theory reeks of truth

If you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. Well, whether or not you're into quantum physics, prepare to have your mind blown. At least a little bit. Because below I've shared an excerpt from physicist Carlo Rovelli's amazing new book, "Helgoland: Making Sense of the Quantum Revolution."  The excerpt doesn't do justice to the entire book, but it will give you a feel for Rovelli's relational take on quantum physics -- which makes so much sense, it's hard to understand how anyone could disagree with it (though I'm sure many do). I'll have more to say about…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Reactivity amplifies our suffering in the moment

I'm an admirer of Jeff Warren's guided meditations on my iPhone's Calm app. Here's how a recent offering from Warren starts out. I liked it a lot. His tar metaphor is great. When I react to a problem in my life with a strong negative emotion, it does indeed feel like I'm covered in a black sticky substance that makes it difficult to see what's going on with any sort of clarity.  But notice that Warren says we shouldn't fight what's happening. Rather, we need to accept everything both inside and outside of us.  The less we fight, and simply…
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Posted inBooks Reality Science

Be born again through science

Frank Wilczek, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physics in 2004, has written a compelling book about the universe: Fundamentals: Ten Keys to Reality. Here's a passage from his Afterword chapter that I like a lot. It is indeed strange that we make such a division between internal and external worlds, when in truth there is only one thing going on. The child of our introduction, now an adult, may come to understand the fundamental conclusions that science, following its radically conservative method, reaches about the physical world.  Then she is prepared to revisit the starting point of her adventure…
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Posted inReality

Radical embrace of reality

I like the sound of it: radical embrace of reality.  I'm not entirely sure what those words mean to me. They just popped into my head recently, and I've given them a home in my cranium until they decide to pop out and head somewhere else. As long as this notion is rumbling around in my mind, I figure I might as well try to describe why I find it so appealing.  Reality is a close relative of truth. I admire both -- reality and truth. When I used to give talks to fellow devotees of the Eastern form of…
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Posted inBooks Reality

Wear your identity lightly if you value truth

This morning I finished reading Julia Galef's The Scout Mindset: Why Some People See Things Clearly and Others Don't, the subject of three previous posts (here, here, and here). Her final chapters were great. Two had to do with how we sometimes hold on to beliefs so tightly, they become part of our identity. This is especially true of religious and political beliefs. Here's an excerpt  from the "How Beliefs Become Identities" chapter. The problem with our tendency to turn beliefs into identities isn't that it pits us against each other. At least, that's not the problem I'm concerned with here.…
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