Posted inReligions Science

All statements about the material world are subject to science

"Spirituality" is a word that's difficult to pin down. In my current atheist frame of mind, I consider that the term refers to an attempt to find meaning in life -- this material life, this physical life, this life here on Earth.  Such is how Daniele Bolelli speaks of the need to rekindle our appreciation of what the senses bring to us. In his book, "On the Warrior's Path," he writes: Our bodies are the kingdom of lost continents and unknown lands. Columbus, Livingstone, Stanley, Marco Polo, and Neil Armstrong are just Boy Scouts compared to the explorers of the…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Story of an intriguing LSD experience where Jesus appears

Can LSD reveal the nature of God? Here's the story of someone who took LSD and had an amazing experience of both the "beast" (Satan?) and Jesus. This person didn't want their name to be known, so I've left that out. Otherwise I've shared what was sent to me unaltered. Our correspondence started with this message from the person. Brian, I've read Return to the One, am working through God's Whisper and have ordered Life is Fair.  I read most of the Sant Mat books also.   I thought you might be interested in a mystical experience I had in 1968. …
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Taking a risk, like sky diving, can be a shortcut to mindfulness

There's nothing like doing something that could kill you to concentrate one's mind. Many years ago I remember reading an article in Parade magazine that contained a quote from an Iraq war veteran that said something similar: "Everybody needs something in their life that can kill them."  For three years, 2009 to 2012, I rode a maxi-scooter -- a Burgman 650 Executive. I loved it. (My wife, not so much, as noted in a blog post, "USA Today story about older motorcycle riders mentions...ME!") Riding the Burgman 650, as is the case with all motorcycles/scooters, focused my attention on the…
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Posted inBooks Science

A quest for spiritual liberation can lead to new illusions

Some scientific findings contained in an article in the April 2 issue of The New Yorker, "Are We Already Living In Virtual Reality?" bear on the question of what meditation is all about, and the extent to which meditation liberates us from anything. The article is about Thomas Metzinger, a philosophically-minded neuroscientist. As you can read in the excerpt below, Metzinger speaks about our inability to recognize the unconscious mental models that determine how we experience reality. In his book, The Ego Tunnel, which I've read and enjoyed, Metzinger speaks of the walls of the tunnel as being transparent to…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Here’s what this atheist has written about Easter

It's the day after Easter, and I didn't write a irreligious blog post yesterday. But, hey, Monday is another day! So here goes.  The best pithy comment I saw yesterday was on Twitter: Nicely said. This sums up my attitude toward Easter, which celebrates the supposed resurrection of Jesus. For further delving into how I view Easter, here's links to my previous blog posts about this religious holiday, with an excerpt from each. Before Easter, I escape death. I feel sort of Jesus'y. If I believed in reincarnation (I don't), then it would be easy for me to imagine that…
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Posted inOpen Threads

Open Thread 13 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. So you can always find an Open Thread that way.
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Posted inBooks Science

Steven Pinker defends Enlightenment values

My wife, Laurel, belongs to the Freedom From Religion Foundation, which publishes an excellent publication, Free Thought Today. The most recent issue has an edited version of Steven Pinker's speech to the FFRF convention in 2017 where he talks about the message of his new book, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. You can read the Free Thought Today story, "Knowledge has enhanced human flourishing," online. Here's how it starts out: It is an honor to speak about my forthcoming book in public for the first time in front of this audience. We’re going to begin…
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Posted inScience

Small causes can have big effects

Somebody emailed me some questions and observations about karma, and the notion of "equal and opposite reactions." Here's what they said, followed by my reply. Hi Brian, Thank you for your reply and further insights. A follow up question then. Keeping reincarnation issue aside and following the thread of vegetarianism and law of karma, with your new understanding, insights do you still believe that that aspect of law of karma is a valid postulate.   Meaning on a physical, mental, and thought level do you still believe what we sow that we reap, our actions good or bad invite an…
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Posted inReligions

Here’s a good definition of religion

Most people are religious. But sometimes it's hard to tell what is a religion, and what isn't. Is Christianity a religion? Is Buddhism a religion? Is being devoted to your favorite sports team a religion? (I'd answer "yes," "probably," and "no" to those three questions.) The Patheos site has a story, What is Religion, Anyway?, that contains a definition that makes a lot of sense. Here's how it starts out: Christian Smith is the Notre Dame sociologist who identified the religion of America’s youth as Moralistic Therapeutic Deism and who exposed the bias in the field of sociology.  Now he attempts…
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Posted inRadha Soami Satsang Beas Religions

Keep the feeling of religion, and discard the theology

I don't believe in God. But I believe in the feelings that accompany belief.  So now that I've realized the falsity of religion, I've discarded the theological aspects of my former belief system and kept the positive feelings. Here's some examples. I used to enjoy the feeling that God was looking out for me, managing my life in such a way that even bad experiences were aimed at bettering my long-term salvation chances. This made me feel hopeful about the future, since I considered there was a trajectory to my life that would end with me becoming familiar with divinity,…
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Posted inGod Humor

Young Sheldon beats a pastor at the God game

Young Sheldon is the precursor to Older Sheldon in the popular TV series, The Big Bang Theory. So says Wikipedia. Here's a video of Young Sheldon showing his scientific and logical skills as he gets the best of a church pastor. This clip gets Einstein wrong. He didn't believe in the Christian God. Einstein believed in Spinoza's god, which is Nature.
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

Lousy reasons to believe in an afterlife

A post on the Why Evolution is True site, "Dennis Prager explains why he believes in the afterlife," contains some really bad reasons for such a belief. I'll copy in the post below for easier reading. Click on the link if you want to see the video in which Prager presents his reasons for believing. Here’s a five-minute video by conservative Jewish “pundit” Dennis Prager; it’s part of his “Prager University” series of short videos, some of which are okay but most of which are dire. In this one, Prager himself explains why he believes in an afterlife.  The reasons boil…
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Posted inBooks

Great advice from Alan Watts: wisdom lies in letting go

I'm a big fan of Alan Watts' "The Wisdom of Insecurity." I've read this book several times and have written about it in numerous blog posts.  (You can search for the posts via the Google box in the right sidebar.) Here's an article about a core message in that book, letting go: "Alan Watts: Anxiety, Enlightenment, and the Wisdom of Insecurity." Thanks to a Church of the Churchless visitor for sending me a link to the piece. Excerpts to whet your appetite for reading it: Throughout the history of civilization individuals have had access to myths which conveyed the sense…
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Posted inGod Personal/Stories

My atheist interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer

Sometimes I feel like praying, even though I don't believe in God. The only prayer that I remember from my brief time in Catholicism as a child is the Lord's Prayer. So I enjoy interpreting the familiar words from a scientific atheist point of view.  Our Father who art in heaven, The laws of nature aren't bound by time and space, being both universal and responsible for the space-time continuum of our universe. These laws are our father, mother, sister, brother, and every other sort of familial relationship we might consider ourselves having with them. Hallowed be thy name. We humans…
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Posted inGod Religions

If God is real, why do religions disagree so much about God?

One of the best arguments against believing in God is that there so many varieties of religious belief. This doesn't happen in science, where there isn't an Eastern or Western science. Nor is there a Chinese or American science. Because modern science deals with entities that are real, there's agreement on, say, how subatomic particles behave, or the equations needed to put a satellite into orbit. A friend of ours recently overheard a conversation between two men sitting behind her while she was on a plane. It started with one of the men asking the other, "Are you a believer?"…
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Posted inReligions

Life is suffering. The opioid crisis is one proof of that.

Kudos to TIME magazine for devoting an entire issue to a special report on the opioid crisis in the United States, "The Opioid Diaries." The photographs and accompanying text were disturbing, but that was the point. To show life as it is, not as how we might like it to be.  I wish there was an easy answer to suffering. But there isn't. It is hard, impossible really, to judge people who, in their quest to relieve their suffering, turn to drugs. Here's an example from the TIME story. "I got in a car accident and was in the hospital…
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Posted inReality Religions

Religion is a warm bath. Atheism is a cold shower.

I love not only warm baths, but hot ones. It feels good to be immersed in water close to my body temperature. It relaxes me, makes me feel comfortable, sometimes puts me to sleep. When I want to wake up, though, a cold shower is much better. Now, I don't actually take cold showers unless our water heater is broken and I'm desperate to get clean. However, I have taken a cold shower of truth, which is why I chose atheism over religion after some 35 years of being an ardent believer in God, soul, spirit, and heaven. (Eastern religion…
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Posted inComments Religions

“Your mind is the perfect epitome of religious fanaticism”

I admire thoughtful, rational, well-reasoned put-downs of religious fanatics. That's why I'm sharing a marvelous comment on a recent post by "Appreciative Reader" that totally destroys the credibility of another commenter, "D.r."The whole comment is well worth reading as a great example of how to respond to religious bullshit. But my favorite part of Appreciative Reader's comment begins with the one-sentence paragraph, It occurs to me that you may be wondering why I’m wasting so much time with you.I really resonate with the last part of the comment. It makes so much sense, I'll repeat it here: But I come now…
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Posted inBooks

Clean up your life. Be left with the bare tragedies.

I'm enjoying Jordan Peterson's book, "12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos." Peterson is a psychologist who became a celebrated professor through his lectures and You Tube videos. Below is an excerpt that I liked from his chapter on Rule 6: Set Your House in Perfect Order Before You Criticize the World.I don't actually believe that this is either necessary or a good thing -- to get one's life all perfect before criticizing the world. Hey, I'm not about to give up my criticisms of Trump just because I have some failings. But in general what Peterson says makes…
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Posted inBooks Personal/Stories

Pay attention to the small things of life, because they’re the important things

Walking back to our rural home after a dog walk, I was struck by how a leafless oak tree at the edge of our yard looked against the late afternoon sky. It was a lesson in fractals, those amazing shapes that repeat at many levels. Each twig was a reflection of each branch which was a reflection of the entire tree. Which got me to thinking about how the small things in life are a reflection of the big things in life. To put it another way, the meaning we get from small things is the same meaning we get…
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