Posted inBooks Religions Science

The iron rule of science is empirical evidence

For thirty-five years I belonged to a religious organization that called itself, among other names, the "science of the soul." I liked this name at first, but eventually I began to wonder if the organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), really understood what science was all about. After breaking away from RSSB in 2005, I kept asking on this blog if religious believers could provide demonstrable evidence of God, spirit, soul, heaven,  higher realms of reality, or any other supernatural entity. So far, I've gotten no such evidence.  Which isn't surprising, because if there was solid evidence of anything supernatural,…
5
Posted inPersonal/Stories

Here’s some churchless do’s and don’ts for the new year

I don't believe in New Year's resolutions. They are easy to say and difficult to do. I figure that if there was something I should change about my life, it would have been obvious before the arbitrary date of January 1, 2021. But I do believe in taking stock of, well, what I believe.  So here's a run-down of some of my personal do's and don'ts for the coming year -- which aren't different from what I did in 2020. I'm sharing them because others might find them useful. Or entertaining. Or useless.  If you have your own do's and…
30
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Mindfulness isn’t a fad. It’s awareness of present experience.

After discovering the great writing of Domyo Burk on her Zen Studies Podcast episodes, I was eager to buy the Idiot's Guide to Zen Living that she wrote. But that book is out of print, with only expensive used copies available, other than the Kindle version (I like my books on paper, not a screen). However, I found another book by Burk, the Idiot's Guide to Mindfulness.  It arrived yesterday, and I already can tell that I'm going to enjoy it a lot. Below is the Introduction, which is a great short summary of what mindfulness is all about. In…
2
Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Great meditation advice: relax, do less, let go

After writing a few days ago about what a great resource the Zen Studies Podcast is, every morning I've been reading one of the 131 episodes in the order they were published.  Today I tried to also read a book I have about Shikantaza, the Zen approach to meditation that involves not doing anything special. I did my best to absorb a chapter consisting of the words of an 8th or 9th century Zen teacher, but they didn't make much sense to me. Too poetic, too meandering, too unclear. So I closed that book and happily read another podcast by…
34
Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

Another RSSB follower sees the light and leaves

I love getting deconversion stories from people who feel that this blog helped them in breaking free of religious dogmatism. Here's a message I got recently from someone who belonged to the organization I was a member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). Maharaji refers to the previous RSSB guru, Charan Singh. Gurinder refers to the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, who is enmeshed in a financial scandal. Sant Mat refers to the teachings of RSSB. Satsangs are RSSB meetings where the teachings are discussed. I've taken out some personal identifying information. Hi Brian, I wish…
60
Posted inBuddhism

Zen Studies Podcast is a great Buddhist resource

A few days ago I wrote a post about me embracing Shikantaza, the Zen Buddhist approach to meditation where you let go and do nothing other than remain aware of what's present without you doing anything. The next day I checked out a post on the Zen Studies Podcast that I'd linked to, Shikantaza: Having the Guts to Just Sit and Let Go of Doing Anything  First I listened to Domyo Burk, who narrates the podcasts. Then I read the transcript of the podcast -- a great feature for those of us who like a choice of the written word or…
3
Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

My meditation evolves to an exalted state of doing nothing

I've got some amazing news to report about how I meditate. I toyed with the idea of issuing a press release in case the New York Times and Washington Post want to cover this breaking news (CNN also, since everything is breaking news on CNN), but I decided that readers of this blog deserved to be clued in first. Today, before I meditated, I decided that what I'm going to do from now on -- unless I change my mind -- is... drumroll, please... a little longer drumroll to let the anticipation build...  Absolutely nothing.  OK, take some deep breaths.…
9
Posted inDeath/Rebirth Science

Christof Koch presents a good analysis of near-death experiences

Are near-death experiences purely physical, or do they provide a glimpse into a mystical realm beyond ordinary awareness?  The June 2020 issue of Scientific American has an article by Christof Koch that delves into this question. "Tales of the Dying Brain" is well worth a read regardless of how you look upon near-death experiences. Koch makes clear his basic stance on this subject, one that I heartily agree with. I accept the reality of these intensely felt experiences. They are as authentic as any other subjective feeling or perception. As a scientist, however, I operate under the hypothesis that all…
6
Posted inBooks Meaning of life

Cats have no need of philosophy or religion

John Gray is an author who is sometimes irritating (to me, at least) but always interesting. He provokes in intelligent, witty, well-reasoned ways. My main gripe about Gray is that he often uses a sort of "straw man" argument where he selects the writings of one person to represent a much more diverse way of thinking. He did this in Seven Types of Atheism, which I thought I'd enjoy but instead found annoying for that reason. But after seeing a mention of his new book in The New Yorker, I eagerly bought a copy of Feline Philosophy: Cats and the…
6
Posted inPersonal/Stories

2020 sucked, but our Christmas letter finds some humor in Covid

This wasn't a great year, to put it mildly.  At first I wondered if I should even write our usual Christmas letter, which Laurel, my wife, and I call a Holiday Letter since we don't believe in Christ or any other imaginary god/supernatural being. (I share it as a "Christmas letter" because that's how most people refer to these things.) Laurel convinced me that finding some humor in tough times is a good thing. So after writing a serious first draft of the letter, I started over last night and composed a lighter version.  Here it is, in PDF and…
No Comments
Posted inBuddhism Reality

My podcast interview with Marie D’Elephant was enjoyable

Yesterday I spent 1 hour and 48 minutes talking with Marie D'Elephant for a podcast that's scheduled to be released on February 4 via her Everyone's Autonomous Podcast site.  Here's the description of what D'Elephant is up to. During the Everyone's Agnostic podcast from 2015-2019, we shared our stories of religious trauma and the pain of deconversion.  When that podcast went on a hiatus, a beautiful child was born: Everyone's Autonomous by Marie D'Elephant. She picks up the discussion by talking with guests and subject matter experts about how we can begin to move forward after having processed our toxic…
2
Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

I never was, so I always will be

Profound? Obvious? Confusing? Meaningless?  No matter what you might think of this blog post title, I reply: Yes, Yes, Yes, and...Yes. In other words, I agree with you. I take this stance because I like the one-sentence statement that popped into my head a week or so ago, stimulated, I suspect, by the Buddhist books I've been re-reading lately. So it doesn't really matter how anyone else looks upon I never was, so I always will be. Those words resonate with me, because they seem absolutely true. Let's examine why I say this. I never was points to the absence…
5
Posted inUncategorized

Well stated criticism of RSSB guru and satsangi behavior

Here at the Church of the Churchless we love it when someone speaks their truth about how followers of a religion, or a religious leader, are acting badly.  So when I read a recent comment from "Miss Judy", I knew it deserved to be shared in a blog post. Which I've done. I've corrected a few typos. "Babi ji" refers to Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a religious organization based in India. "Sindhis," according to Wikipedia, are a socio-ethnic group in India originating from Sindh, a province of modern-day Pakistan. "Satsangis" are members of RSSB.…
64
Posted inBooks God

Humans create God, not the other way around

Since there is no demonstrable evidence that God exists, where does the concept of "God" come from? Obviously, from the minds of humans. We create the idea of God, which includes the fantasy that God created us. The November 9, 2020 issue of The New Yorker has an interesting review of a book by a Stanford anthropologist, T.M. Luhrmann, "How God Becomes Real." Basically, by people doing things that conjure up their imagined God, in somewhat the same way as the reader of a novel throws themself into the story line to such a degree, the fictional creation can seem…
3
Posted inMeaning of life

I share a guest post from myself about loving the life you’re with

Thank you, me, for giving permission to myself to share on this blog a post I wrote for my HinesSight blog on Thanksgiving Day. I truly am thankful that I am so generous with myself. So check out "If you can't be with the life you love, love the life you're with." You get extra credit if you're able to identify the source of the saying that I adapted for the blog post title. Here's an excerpt from the post. Sure, it's wonderful to be thankful. However, life is difficult. And I hate to break this news to you younger…
5
Posted inPolitics Reality

Political and religious delusions have a lot in common

Reality only comes in one flavor: real. But humans aren't in direct touch with reality, so we have to struggle to make sense of the world, the universe, the cosmos. Thus the flavor of reality for us Homo sapiens has many varieties. Really, as many as there are people in the world, since everybody looks upon life in a unique way. Science is our most powerful means of coming to a consensus on the nature of reality. By and large, scientists the world over agree on core scientific tenets -- which is far different from the widely divergent ways politicians and…
4
Posted inCoronavirus Death/Rebirth

Religion is anti-life when an afterlife is fantasized

I want to get some facts straight. (1) Every living entity dies.(2) This includes humans.(3) So you, I, and everybody else will die.(4) There is no solid evidence of life after death.(5) Yet religions claim there's an afterlife. It's difficult to see how anybody could disagree with 1-3 and 5. Plus, 4 is almost indisputable, since any evidence of life after death is extremely tenuous, unscientific, and open to dispute. Given these facts, I can't understand why so many Americans look upon our current COVID-19 death count, of 266,000, Washington Post screenshot shown above, and shrug off the astounding number.…
30
Posted inGod

What God might say, according to Spinoza

The following post turned up in my Facebook feed yesterday. Based on my understanding of Spinoza, I have some doubts that this really reflects his perspective on God, but it might.  Regardless, I liked what Jillenne Moore shared in her post. (I'm assuming that Moore wrote it.) When Einstein gave lectures at U.S. universities, the question students asked him most was: Do you believe in God? And he always answered: I believe in the God of Spinoza. Baruch de Spinoza was a Dutch philosopher considered one of the great rationalists of 17th century philosophy, along with Descartes. According to Spinoza,…
10
Posted inBooks Morality Science

Humans are animals. Religions should accept this fact.

Frans de Waal has written a fascinating book about animal intelligence, "Are We Smart Enough to Know How Smart Animals Are?" I'm only a little ways into the book, but what I've read so far has gotten me to thinking about how religions view humans -- as animals, or as a non-animal species? Here's a passage from the prologue that makes clear how de Waal looks upon this question. In all this, we love to compare and contrast animal and human intelligence, taking ourselves as the touchstone. It is good to realize, though, that this is an outdated way of…
9
Posted inBooks Buddhism

Your soul can’t be found because it doesn’t exist

I'm enjoying my re-reading, or re-re-reading, given the highlighting I've done to this book, of Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness: Tsong-Kha-Pa's Great Treatise on the Stages of the Path." It's a brilliant discussion of a core Buddhist notion, defined as the sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature. In other words, nothing is intrinsically itself. Everything depends on other things for its existence, us naturally included. Nothing stands on its own, an island unto itself. Interconnectedness and interdependency is how the cosmos works. So Buddhism is unique among the world's major religions in not positing an eternal soul. (Because it isn't really…
5