Posted inReligions Science

Evolution, like other laws of nature, is logical and largely mathematical

As I said in the title of a blog post about a month ago, biologist Mark Vellend has a Provocative idea: there are only two branches of science, physics and evolution. His book, Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More than We Think, from Proteins to Politics, is making good on that idea, now that I've been able to read about half of it. While Vellend is writing for a general audience, as well as scientists interested in looking at evolution through a broader lens than just biological evolution, which was Darwin's primary focus, his book still is fairly dense -- which…
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Posted inAwareness Neuroscience

“Myself” is a thought, just like other thoughts. Impermanent. Everchanging.

Most of us feel like sometimes, or often, we're at the mercy of thoughts. They arise when we don't want them to, like when we're trying to silence the mind in meditation. They fail to show up when we need them to, like when we're trying to remember where we put our reading glasses. But there's a basic assumption here that could be mistaken: that the "we" in the two sentences I just wrote isn't separable from "they" -- thoughts. This puts the problem of thoughts in a different perspective. Not as something that happens to us, but is us.…
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Posted inReality Religions Science

Maybe we humans are smart enough to ask ultimate questions, but not smart enough to answer them

Peter Zapffe was called "the bleakest philosopher of all time" in a Reddit post dealing with existentialism. That didn't make me eager to learn more about him. But I still wanted to, having come across several mentions of Zapffe in Robert Saltzman's book, Depending on no-thing. That title may sound depressing as well, but actually I feel energized when I read Saltzman's writings. While he rejects philosophical, metaphysical, and religious attempts to make life seem more appealing that it actually is, Saltzman's emphasis on direct experience of here and now is wonderfully simple. It's difficult, if not impossible, to question…
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Posted inBuddhism

As an atheist, this is what I like about Buddhism’s Pure Land Tradition

Surprisingly, even to me, I've enjoyed learning about the Pure Land Tradition of Buddhism after buying a book by Taitetsu Unno four years ago. From time to time I pick up River of Fire, River of Water, liking the parts that resonate with me, downplaying the parts that don't. As I said in a title of a blog post earlier this year, "I enjoy Buddhism's Pure Land tradition, but I don't believe in it." This is common among atheists like myself. It's possible to be moved by religious devotion without accepting the teachings of a religion. When I see a…
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Posted inFundamentalism Gay rights

Conversion therapy shows the danger of trying to be someone other than who you actually are

I don't believe that we humans have an enduring self, or soul. We're too changeable and impermanent for that to be true. However, each of us certainly is something unique, a person unlike any other on this planet. In other words, we possess an individuality without being an Individual -- the capital "I" pointing to an unfounded conception that there is some inner essence within each of us that, if not divine, is our True Self. Narrow-minded people who subscribe to this rigid outmoded view of humanity claim that (1) there are only two sexes, male and female; (2) at…
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Posted inFree will God

Thinking “It had to be” is my atheist way of saying, “God’s will”

Back in my believing days, before 2005, as that is when I stopped being an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas -- an India-based religious organization headed up by a guru considered to be God in Human form -- for quite a few years I was the secretary of our local sangat, as RSSB groups are called. I had the keys to a a school room that we were able to use for our satsang meetings every Sunday. So if I was late opening up, it was a problem, as chairs and tables had to be set up. Some…
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Posted inDelusions Religions Universe

Our dog is more attuned to reality than religious believers are

I've become a big fan of Robert Saltzman. So much so, after reading his The Ten Thousand Things and The 21st Century Self, I ordered what must be his longest book, Depending on no-thing -- which is 607 pages long. But the 107 chapters are short, so I'm reading one a day. This morning I read "The Milky Way." Saltzman is interested in many of the same things I am, which made the chapter enjoyable. He started off with some mind-boggling about the size of the universe. Our solar system is about 25,000 light years from the center of our…
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Posted inDelusions

A death on Diamond Mountain shows the danger of religious fanaticism

A friend gave me Scott Carney's book, The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond Mountain. My previous posts about the book are here, here, here, and here. The book is interesting, but if it wasn't a gift, I probably wouldn't have read it. Once I'd started it, I wanted to see what the death on Diamond Mountain was all about, since that is described in a final chapter. Lama Christie McNally and Ian Thorson were heavily involved with Geshe Michael Roach, the supreme spiritual leader of Diamond Mountain University -- a strange blend of Tibetan Buddhism and Roach's…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

If a religion tries to coerce you into staying, you’re in a cult, so run away from it!

Here's another right-on message from the person who shared thoughts with me that became a blog post, "A message for those thinking of leaving RSSB, Radha Soami Satsang Beas." It's on the same theme, though the focus now is on religions in general. I heartily agree with these sentiments. I'll explain why after the message. Letter from the outside world... Everyone has the right to believe what they want to believe. It is called freedom of religion. Nobody should be pressuring you, forcing you, coercing you, yelling at you, bullying you, or trying to influence or persuade or convince you,…
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Posted inBuddhism Mindfulness

Just this — a simple yet profound Zen saying

Zen Buddhism is known for focusing on the natural world rather than abstract concepts. Chopping wood and carrying water are favored over devotion to God and similar thoughts divorced from everyday reality. Just this. A simple yet profound Zen saying. Just this breath in meditation. Just this step in walking the dog. Just this seeing of the full moon. Just this sensation of a hot bath. There's nothing lacking in just this, nothing to strive for, nothing to hope for, nothing to pray for. The present moment is complete. Undeniable. Impossible to argue with. Beyond doubt. Religious notions of faith…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas

A message for those thinking of leaving RSSB, Radha Soami Satsang Beas

I just received this message via the Contact form for this blog. It was so well said, I'm sharing it as a blog post. It relates to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an India-based religious organization headed by a guru that I belonged to for 35 years. This is for anyone who is unhappy and is thinking of leaving RSSB. If you are here to attack free speech, this is NOT for you. This is mainly for the Indian kids born and raised in the western world who inherited this from their family from Day 1. Just remember your ancestors…
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Posted inAtheism Reality Science

Why keeping an open mind on the divine is a stupid idea

Sometimes intelligent people can say some really stupid things. I know this as an experiential fact, because I'm intelligent and I've said some really stupid things. In conversations. In books I've written. In my blog posts. When I do this, it's entirely fair for other people to criticize what I've said. That's why I feel equally justified in calling an essay in the Atlantic by Arthur C. Brooks, "Why You Should Keep an Open Mind on the Divine," a stupid idea. Brooks starts off by quoting Russian cosmonaut Gherman Titov, the second man to orbit the Earth: “Sometimes people are…
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Posted inFree will

If hurricanes, trees, lions, and brain-damaged people don’t have free will, why believe that most humans do?

A massive hurricane just struck the Caribbean island of Jamaica. Aside perhaps from a few extreme pantheists who consider that consciousness exists in every part of the universe, nobody believes that the hurricane could have freely chosen to head in a different direction, at a different strength. A tree falls in a forest, crushing a family enjoying a picnic. Only those who take the Lord of the Rings movies literally, where trees have the ability to talk and walk, would argue that the tree bears responsibility for it falling, because it could have decided to remain standing. On a nature…
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Posted inArtificial intelligence Neuroscience

The real danger of A.I. isn’t that it becomes like a human mind, but that the human mind already is like A.I.

Artificial Intelligence, A.I., is a big deal nowadays. I just heard a financial expert say that if the burgeoning investments in A.I. are subtracted from growth in the United States, that growth would be flat. Meaning, A.I. is driving the upturn in the stock market, as well as capturing the public's imagination. Much of that imagining involves fears that before too long, A.I. will surpass the human mind in general intelligence. And not by a little. By a lot. Then, who knows how super-intelligent A.I. systems will behave? Will they turn on their human creators once they attain a mind…
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Posted inIndia Spiritual practice/meditation

Spiritual sickness arises from meditating too assiduously. Or viewing India as a promised land.

Most people view spirituality and meditation as a good thing. Often, it is. But almost always, too much of a good thing can become a bad thing. Too much eating leads to obesity. Too much exercising leads to muscle/joint problems. Likewise, too much meditating, or meditating in the wrong way, can lead to ill effects. That's one of the messages in the "Spiritual Sickness" chapter in Scott Carney's book, The Enlightenment Trap: Obsession, Madness and Death on Diamond Mountain. I'd never heard of lung, the meditator's disease, until I read this passage in that chapter. In 2002, she recited mantras…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

No free will brings great news: You are innocent of your past mistakes

There's plenty of reasons not to believe in free will. The most important and basic reason is that free will is an illusion. Robert Sapolsky made strong arguments for this in his book, Determined. I wrote quite a few posts about this wonderful book. A summary of his arguments in Sapolsky's own words can be found here. But once we accept the reality that free will doesn't exist, a question arises: What does this mean for how we live? In one sense, not much. For the illusion of free will is so strong, even Sapolsky admits that almost always, he feels…
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Posted inFree will Neuroscience

Regret seems useless to me, especially if there’s no free will

I regret quite a few things that I've done in my life. Everybody does. At least, everybody that I know. But recently it dawned on me that regret is almost always a useless emotion, whether or not we possess free will. (I'm convinced that free will is an illusion.) I'll illustrate why I feel this way with a simple example. This afternoon I left home a bit later than usual for the drive to our athletic club, where I exercise on Monday before going to my Tai Chi class in downtown Salem. I mildly regretted not leaving on time, since…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

To look at life and deeply feeling one day it will end — for me that’s the essence of spirituality

Everyone has their own personal approach to spirituality, even if it is to say, "Spirituality is a load of crap, I have no interest in it." I'm sympathetic with that attitude, because I've become increasingly reluctant to use that term, spirituality. It's difficult to find substitutes, given that the word is so commonly used to denote looking for meaning in life in some sort of non-materialistic fashion. I mean, an avid gambler finds meaning in placing bets, but few people would consider that a spiritual pursuit. I suppose it doesn't really matter if there isn't a coherent widely-agreed upon definition…
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Posted inScience

Provocative idea: there are only two branches of science, physics and evolution

Science is our best way of learning what is true about the world. Those truths, obviously, include us humans, since we are part of the world. So this makes science not something to be admired from the outside of the human condition, but as something that points to the essence of you, me, and everybody else on our planet. This is one reason why I ordered Mark Vellend's book, Everything Evolves: Why Evolution Explains More than We Think, from Proteins to Politics, soon after I saw a mention of it in one of the science magazines I subscribe to. Evolution…
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Posted inMindfulness Spiritual practice/meditation

The dry clarity of one who no longer lies

This morning I felt in love. With a chapter in Robert Saltzman's book, The 21st Century Self: Belief, Illusion, and the Machinery of Meaning. I knew that I wanted to share it in a blog post tonight. But it was a long chapter. I doubted I could type all of it into a post. So I started typing, figuring that at some point my fingers would tire, the time would grow late, and I'd have to pick and choose what to share, and what to leave out. Yet as I got into the rhythm of Saltzman's writing, needing to pay…
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