Posted inReligions

Give up feeling special. You’re not. Religions are lying.

People feel special for all sorts of reasons. For example... Ego. "I'm especially good-looking/intelligent/talented/etc. etc."Love of country. "I'm a citizen of the greatest nation in the world."Luck. "I won the lottery and now I'm set for life."Upbringing. "My parents always told me I was special." But religions are one of the biggest purveyors of specialness. Which makes them especially dangerous. Why? Because feeling special sets us apart from all of those other non-special people who are so obviously inferior. Of course, the weird thing is that most religions teach that their devotees have a special relationship with God or a…
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Posted inGod

Breaking news about God! (don’t get excited, there isn’t any)

If you listen to CNN for more than a few minutes, especially if Wolf Blitzer is the anchor, you're guaranteed to hear "Breaking news!"  Of course, usually it isn't genuine breaking news that hasn't been reported before, but rather fairly fresh news that I'd heard before, though not a whole lot. When was the last time, though, that you recall hearing breaking news about God?  I'll provide the answer: never. Not once in my lifetime, all 70 years of it, has there been a credible story about some new divine revelation from the Big Guy/Gal upstairs in heaven.  For some…
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Posted inBooks

Wabi Sabi shows us how to live a perfectly imperfect life

Chasing after perfection is a perfect way to drive yourself crazy. Or at least, to become deeply disappointed -- since perfection doesnt exist. Not in people, for sure. And likely nowhere else, either.  Yet religions hold up perfection as an attainable ideal. For example, they speak of having perfect faith, as if this was possible. And I'm well aware of Eastern religions that consider a perfect living guru is the next best thing to a perfect god. So when I heard about a book that describes the wisdom of embracing imperfection, I immediately ordered it. I'm just a short ways…
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Posted inFundamentalism Politics

Salem Women’s March 2019 had some crazy religious counter-protestors

Last Saturday there was another Women's March here in Salem, Oregon. As I did with the 2017 and 2018 marches, I took a bunch of photos, then shared them in an Adobe Spark web page that you can peruse by clicking on the image below.  There were some Christian fundamentalist counter-protestors at the event on the Capitol Mall. I'll share a photo of their signs, along with my commentary on one of the signs below the Adobe Spark link. Or you can view the photo and my comment on it by clicking on the Women's March Salem 2019 link. Caution:…
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Posted inFundamentalism India

More religious craziness, Hindu temple variety

Every religion has its own brand of craziness. None is exempt. Why? Because the very notion of supernaturalism is crazy, since there is zero, repeat zero, demonstrable evidence that gods, angels, souls, heaven, hell, or any other supernatural entity exists. When I was younger I used to believe that Hinduism was a bit more appealing than, say, Christianity, because it wasn't as dogmatic a religion. However, as I began reading about Hindu nationalism in India, I came to realize that many fundamentalist Hindus are just as crazy as their counterparts in other religions. Case in point: a New York Times…
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Posted inBooks Mystics

Mystical experiences aren’t objective reality. They’re experiences.

Following up on my previous post about John Dewey's marvelous little book, "A Common Faith," here's some of what Dewey has to say about mystical experiences. I've boldfaced some passages that particularly appeal to me. Dewey's main point, which I totally agree with, is that by themselves, mystical experiences prove nothing about God or the supernatural. The possible causes of those experiences must be carefully studied before any conclusions can be drawn about them, especially given the wide variety of mystical experiences, many or most of which have no commonality. Dewey writes: It is more to the point, however, to…
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Posted inReality Spiritual practice/meditation

Religions forget that we humans are animals

Calling someone animalistic isn't an insult. It is a fact. We humans are animals. Just unusual ones, since members of no other animal species can write articles (or blog posts) about the fact that they're animals. Thus our bodies do what other animal bodies do.  Pee. Poop. Breathe. Have sex. Play. Feel. Sleep. Eat. Drink. And so on.  Sure, we also think about all kinds of stuff. The structures we build are more impressive than a termite hill. Our social relationships are more complex than a wolf pack.  Yet the fact remains, we are animals. One reason I've come to…
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Posted inUncategorized

Psilocybin points to the “snow globe” theory of shaken-up consciousness

When is it good to be shaken up? Not physically. Psychologically.  It seems that being all shook up typically is viewed as something to be avoided, since it means "greatly disturbed or upset." As in, watching that scary movie left me all shook up (shaken is the proper word, with shook being slang). But I've been reading Michael Pollan's new book about psychedelics, "How to Change Your Mind: What the New Science of Psychedelics Teaches Us About Dying, Consciousness, Addiction, Depression, and Transcendence." In it he speaks of how sometimes our overly rigid psyche needs to be shaken up like…
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Posted inBuddhism

Sand mandalas are a symbol of impermanence, that nothing lasts

Today the Daily Calm guided meditation by Tamara Levitt on my iPhone app was about mandalas. I've transcribed the last portion of what Levitt said, because I found it inspiring.  It's so true. Nothing lasts. Everything is impermanent. Our wanting to make the impermanent permanent isn't the only source of suffering, but it certainly contributes to our dissatisfaction with life.  The image below came from a web page about sand mandalas. It describes the process used to create them in the Buddhist tradition. Here's the transcript: Today we’ll be discussing the transient nature of all things. In Buddhism there is…
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Posted inUncategorized

Life demands some judicious denial of reality

Today I stopped for lunch at Lifesource Natural Foods here in Salem, Oregon -- where a fairly healthy slice of pesto pizza captured my stomach's attention.  There was only one table unoccupied in the eating area, so I grabbed it. Not long after, a woman appeared, lunch plate in hand, and asked if she could sit with me. Naturally I said, "sure." At first both of us started to look at our phones, the usual way to pass time these days, since simply eating without any distraction would be too damn boring. But then she glanced at my pizza slice…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Each of us is much more than our religious beliefs (or lack thereof)

Many things amuse me when I peruse comments on this Church of the Churchless blog by religiously-minded people. One class of comments that generates an especially large smile is Brian, you spend all of your time bashing religion, so you're obviously obsessed.  When I see someone saying this, I know that just as they're prone to drawing inaccurate conclusions about the cosmos from biased beliefs, they also draw false conclusions about me from a very limited body of evidence -- my posts on this blog.  Actually, almost everybody is a complex mix of varied interests that include much more than…
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Posted inBooks

Why John Dewey likes the notion of “religious,” but not religions

Often finding books is akin to a secular miracle for me. I'll be reading a book, then see a minor mention of another book in it, pass that mention by, then decide to flip back a few pages and revisit the mention again -- which sometimes leads me to a literary gem I never would have discovered on my own.  Such was the case with John Dewey's "A Common Faith." It's  a short (80 pages, plus an introduction by someone else) sharing of lectures Dewey gave at Yale in 1934 on the subject of religion. We tend to think of…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Sam Harris on not finding a center of consciousness

Some time ago, can't remember exactly when, I added guided meditations via Sam Harris' Waking Up iPhone app to my morning meditation routine. (I also enjoy listening to the daily guided meditations by Tamara Levitt on the Calm app.) Sam Harris Here's a transcript I made of part of one of Harris' guided meditations. It followed an exercise where Harris asked the listener to breathe in a vision of the world on an inbreath, and to breathe out themselves into the world on the outbreath.  Well, the point of that exercise is to notice, once again, how much the sense…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Here’s my 12 favorite churchless blog posts of 2018

Why, this is almost like the Twelve Days of Christmas -- aside from the Days and Christmas part. It's my Twelve Favorite Blog Posts of 2018 here on the Church of the Churchless. (Image below came from here.) I picked one post from each month, because that was easier. And I generally chose posts that I'd written mostly by myself, rather than posts where I quoted a lot from someone else. But since rules are made to be broken, a few posts don't contain mostly my own words. So here they are, the decidedly non-sacred Twelve Favorite Blog Posts of…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Great message from someone who doubts dogma about Gurinder Singh and RSSB

Getting an email like the one below makes me feel good about what I've been able to accomplish through this blog from its founding in 2004 to the present.  Every person who comes to recognize the downside of religiosity -- whether this be in an Eastern or Western guise -- contributes to an upswing in the world's respect for truth.  And truth-telling is in danger right now, as evidenced by TIME magazine choosing the 2018 Person of the Year to be journalists, guardians of the war on truth. But really, we all need to take on that job, guarding truth.…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Here’s our irreligious 2018 Hines Christmas letter

Trigger alert: if you're religious or conservative (i.e. a Donald Trump lover), or worse, religious and conservative, you may find the 2018 Christmas letter fashioned by my wife and me -- well, actually, just me -- to be not your cup of Holiday tea. Anyway, here it is in all its semi-dark glory. Enjoy.  And Merry Christmas to all, churchless of the world and religious believers of the world alike. Deep down, there's more that binds us than what divides us, even though this is difficult to discern if you spend a lot of time on Facebook, or watch cable…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Jesus without Christianity makes a lot of sense

Wow. Atheist me is sharing a USA Today opinion piece about Jesus. That's because the only problem I have with Jesus is his connection with Christianity. Take that away, and we're left with the teachings of a regular human being. This assumes, of course, that Jesus actually existed, and the New Testament contains at least a somewhat accurate description of what Jesus said and did -- two debatable assumptions. Nonetheless, I like the general thrust of this opinion piece. I've added some comments on it in red.  Jesus doesn't need Christianity. His example is powerful without any religion at all.Tom Krattenmaker, Opinion columnist…
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Posted inMeaning of life

If this life is all there is, what should we do during it?

Poet Mary Oliver asked a great question in the last two lines of "The Summer Day." The poem ends with: I don't know exactly what a prayer is.I do know how to pay attention, how to fall downinto the grass, how to kneel down in the grass,how to be idle and blessed, how to stroll through the fields,which is what I have been doing all day.Tell me, what else should I have done?Doesn't everything die at last, and too soon?Tell me, what is it you plan to dowith your one wild and precious life? Obviously the question isn't for others…
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Posted inBuddhism Spiritual practice/meditation

Attention isn’t what meditation is all about

I'm in book bliss. Someone emailed me with a book recommendation, "The Mind Illuminated: A Complete Meditation Guide Integrating Buddhist Wisdom and Brain Science for Greater Mindfulness," and I'm loving what I've read so far -- the first couple of chapters. Here's a few early thoughts about the book. First, it confirms my belief, which isn't shared by some religious fundamentalists (Eastern mysticism variety) who've been frequent commenters on this blog, that there are many forms of useful meditation.  In fact, the inward looking, world-denying, mantra-focused type of meditation favored by Sant Mat/Radha Soami Satsang Beas, which I embraced for…
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Posted inReligions

The danger of religious abstractions

Here's an interesting letter in the October 6, 2018 issue of New Scientist: From Steve Brewer,St. Ives, Cornwall, UK Sofia Deleniv describes self-awareness as an illusion, and on your cover you call it a "delusion" (8 September, p 28). What wasn't discussed was its power to turn the whole world as we view it into "illusions" by the process of forming abstract concepts and ideas about it. By developing and interconnecting these abstractions, we have produced our various sciences. Through them we have achieved enormous power over ourselves and the natural world. Self-awareness may yield this great power, but it…
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