Posted inReality Religions

Imagined orders — like religions — depend on shaky myths

Today I hit a sweet spot in my reading of Yuval Noah Harari's book, "Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind." Harari is a historian who has a knack for explaining the past and present in some wonderfully fresh ways. In his Building Pyramids chapter Harari describes the Code of Hammurabi, circa 1776 BC, and the United States Declaration of Independence, which was created in 1776 AD. Each claimed to be founded on sacred principles. So how do we know which is right? Or more right? Harari says: The two texts present us with an obvious dilemma. Both the Code of…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth Mystics

DMT, a natural psychedelic chemical, could produce “spiritual” experiences

Someone sent me an email with a link to an article whose title was so intriguing, I was eager to read the piece: "The psychedelic drug that could explain our belief in life after death." DMT (Dimethyltryptamine) is the most powerful hallucinogenic drug around. The class A psychedelic is so potent that under the 1971 UN Convention on Psychotropic Substances its manufacture is strictly for scientific research and medical use and any international trade is very closely monitored. But it also naturally occurs in the human body. Now a Senior Psychologist at Greenwich University, Dr. David Luke, is trying to undercover a link…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Christian bullshit: “Living as exiles in our own country”

There's nothing so pathetic as a Christian who thinks his religion is becoming a pariah here in the United States. Fox News has made a journalistic career out of this, conjuring up absurdities like the War on Christmas. The plain fact is that this country is one of the most religious, and it is dominated by Christianity. There's no evidence that Christians are at risk of losing their super-majority status. Which makes this piece on Time.com by Rod Dreher, "Orthodox Christians Must Now Learn to Live as Exiles in Our Own Country," so absurd I thought at first that the title must…
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Posted inBuddhism Death/Rebirth

Idea of no-self doesn’t translate into no-fear-of-death

Over on Slate there's an interesting piece by Nina Strohminger, Jay Garfield, and Shaun Nichols, "Buddhism and the Loss of Self." I've copied it in below for easy reading. Surprisingly, research seems to show that Buddhists who don't believe they have (or are) a continuous self are more fearful of death than Hindus or adherents of the Abrahamic traditions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam). Buddhists also were less generous in a thought experiment about giving away a single dose of medicine that could extend either their own or someone else's life. But I guess this really isn't so surprising. After all, our sense of…
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Posted inReality Universe

Wow! Existence has always existed.

I've done a lot of pondering about the primal mystery of existence. As noted in the essay I wrote this month for the Spiritual Naturalist Society, I've gone from being blown away by the classic question Why is there something rather than nothing? to being awestruck at the amazing affirmation, There is something rather than nothing. Read on... --------------------------------------------------------------------------------Wow! Existence has always existed. Awe-inspiring. Spine-tingling. Vertigo-inducing. Something frequently produces these feelings in me. It isn’t a theme park ride. In fact, it isn’t even a thing. It is everything. Existence. Just typing that word produced a chill up my spine — a…
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Posted inReligions Science

Belief in design of the natural world runs deep in human brain

Here's another bit of scientific evidence showing that false religious belief comes easy, while true secular rationalism requires effort to attain. The title of the piece, "Even atheists intuitively believe in a creator, study finds" is a bit overblown. It's more, as you can read below, that humans have an innate bias toward finding design in the natural world, even when something like a tree obviously wasn't intentionally designed. This helps explain why the vast majority of people on Earth subscribe to religious beliefs. Psychologically, it's the easy way to go. What's difficult is to carefully assess the evidence of…
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Posted inReality

There’s no need for a “theology of atheism”

At one time I probably would have agreed with a call for a theology of atheism. But now this strikes me as both absurd and unneeded. Sure, I've got a blog called Church of the Churchless. That sort of sounds like the same thing. Aren't I trying to foster a belief system for people who don't believe in God or the supernatural? Not really.  This might have been part of my motivation when I started this blog back in 2004. Hard for me to say. I'm a considerably different person now than I was back then, just as I'm a…
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Posted inTaoism/Tai Chi

Between theism and atheism… Taoism?

Since I'm now a regular contributor of essays to the Spiritual Naturalist Society, I've been perusing the posts of other people who share their writings on the group's web site. Thomas Schenk's "Fertile Ground Between Theism and Atheism" is an interesting take on Taoism. Here's how the piece starts out. The two concepts, “God” and “Tao,” have much in common and significant differences. The concepts “Tao” and “Atheism” also have much in common and significant differences. By examining these commonalities and differences I hope to show that there is a fertile ground between theism and atheism.    In this fertile…
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Posted inReligions

Godly superstitions are what are dangerous, not disbelief in divinity

Here's three recent news items that fit together in my churchless mind. The first is a letter to the editor in my local newspaper, the Salem (Oregon) Statesman Journal. I have no idea why the paper publishes this crap. I doubt they would regularly fill up space on the editorial pages with letters praising Zeus and warning that failing to believe in the Greek Pantheon of gods will lead to this nation's cultural downfall, so why publish this religious gibberish? When the Ten Commandments were introduced to the world in about 1475 B.C., they were presented to a primitive theocratic society. …
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Posted inScience

Misanthropic Principle: Universe is fine-tuned against life

I like this guy's way of thinking. He has a letter in the most recent issue of New Scientist where he points out how ill-suited the universe is for life.  This is, he says, the Misanthropic Principle -- as contrasted with the Anthropic Principle. It doesn't appear to be his original idea. Googling this term, I found a post by a Jewish astrophysicist, Howard Smith, who says that he coined the term.  Here's the New Scientist letter: From Nathaniel Hellerstein Michael Slezak says that the universe is fine-tuned for life (2 May, p. 32). Balderdash.  Inspection of the night sky…
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Posted inBooks Religions Science

Knowledge must be based on facts

Recently I wrote about "Five criteria for a 'God Theory' that religions fail." One of philosopher L.R. Hamelin's criteria related to private knowledge. If her theory can be tested only by private revelation, not by observations available to everyone, she unjustifiably claims private knowledge. Someone left a comment on this post, wondering why private knowledge wasn't justifiable. This was my reply: Here's how I see the issue of "private revelation" and "private knowledge." Can knowledge be private? Only if we define knowledge in a way that makes it virtually (or completely) synonymous with subjective experience. But then it isn't really knowledge…
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Posted inReality

Replace beliefs with working hypotheses

Here's a great letter to the editor that I came across in the May 9, 2015 issue of New Scientist. From Ray NorrisAccording to Graham Lawton, "Beliefs, more than anything else, are what make us human" (4 April, p 28). I guess I'm not human, then, since I decided as a geeky astrophysics student many years ago to live in an evidence-based world in which beliefs are replaced by working hypotheses. At least, I think I did, unless somebody produces strong evidence to the contrary. Once you renounce beliefs, life seems very straightforward, and totally self-consistent. I don't believe in global…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Taoism/Tai Chi

Directionless, I feel like I’ve found my way

Nice title of this post, if I do say so myself. Which I did about a week ago -- choosing to use those words, "Directionless, I'm feel like I've found my way," as the name for my first essay written for the Spiritual Naturalist Society, where I'm now a contributing writer. You can check it out on a Society page. Or read it below. Directionless, I feel like I’ve found my way For thirty-five years I was on a spiritual path.  I felt like I knew where I was going: back to God. I felt like I knew how to…
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Posted inChristianity/Jesus

Without the Adam and Eve myth, there’s no basis for believing in Jesus

I don't feel like I'm any sort of expert about Christianity, since I've never been very interested in this religion. No religion appeals to me now, but in the past I've been drawn more to Eastern mystical varieties than Western theistic types. Still, reading evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne's new book, "Faith Versus Fact," today, I was surprised by how ignorant I've been of a basic Christian fact: Without the Adam and Eve myth, there's no basis for believing in Jesus Since the whole notion of Adam and Eve is impossible to accept, this means the same is true of the…
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Posted inFundamentalism

Religious fundamentalists kill bloggers and other secular activists

There are plenty of reasons to reject religion. A big one is that fundamentalism makes people so crazy, they not only want to kill people who criticize religiosity, sometimes they actually do kill them.  Below is a piece by Sanal Edamaruku that I came across in New Scientist. Ananta Bijoy Das likely was killed by Muslim extremists. Edamaruku also writes about other secular activists who were killed by Hindu extremists. He himself was threatened by Christian extremists.  It isn't just one religion that produces murderous true believers. They all do. Lesson: stay away from religion.  Here's the opinion piece by…
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Posted inBooks God

Five criteria for a “God theory” that religions fail

Science rocks. Religion sucks.  I'm only a few chapters into a new book by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, "Faith vs. Fact: Why Science and Religion are Incompatible." But it's pretty darn clear that those four words are a good summary of his thesis. Which I totally agree with.  Coyne has no patience for accommodationists who believe that science and religion are somehow complementary, offering up different ways of understanding the cosmos that, when combined, produce more knowledge than either science can alone. In a summary of what the book is about, Coyne writes: I also take up the notion of…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Agnosticism: knowledge comes via experience and evidence

I came across the Spiritual Naturalism web site a few years ago, then blogged about it in "Spiritual Naturalism appeals to my churchless non-soul." Their definitions of "naturalism" and "spirituality" rang true to me. Naturalism is a view of the world that includes those things which we can observe or directly conclude from observations. Naturalists’ conception of reality consists of the natural world as outlined by the latest scientific understanding.  As for claims for which we have no evidence, we do not hold any beliefs in these and do not make any other claims about them. It is quite possible, even…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Praise no-God: Andrew Cohen has been revealed as a fraud

It's always a pleasure to see a "guru" revealed as a flawed human being. This has finally happened to Andrew Cohen, who for a long time played pretend-guru along with Ken Wilber.  David Lane has written an interesting piece about Cohen's much-deserved downfall, "The Liberation of Andrew Cohen: How Devoted Disciples Can Enlighten Their Guru." (By enlighten, Lane means "bringing to light," as noted in a comment.) Andrew Cohen didn’t resign on his own terms, nor did he come to the realization that he was a lousy master who created more harm than good. More remarkably, it was Cohen’s devoted…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Yah, man! I’m featured in the Jamaica Gleaner

A couple of firsts for me today: first time I've used Yah, man in a blog post, and first time I've read a piece about me in the Jamaica Gleaner.  Thank you, Glenville Ashby for making both possible.  Dr. Ashby is a columnist for the Gleaner who came across my Church of the Churchless blog somehow or other (i've forgotten the how that he told me).  He got in touch with me by email. Then, a few weeks ago, we talked by phone about my religious past and non-religious present.  Here's a link to the Gleaner story, "Church of the…
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