Posted inChristianity/Jesus

The “Christmas story” is just one of many stories, and not the best

Here's one way I celebrated Christmas this year -- by writing a blog post that critiques a "Message of Christmas still rings true in 2014" editorial in our local newspaper.  Enjoy, churchless. There's a better message than the "Christmas story" Excerpt: The editorial starts off this way: The Christmas story is one of joy, of celebration, of hope. Its message of peace on Earth and salvation for humankind is as powerful, as relevant and as needed today as it was on that silent, starlit night some 2,000 years ago. Well, some people feel this way. Lots don't. Those words, salvation for…
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Posted inMiscellaneous

South Africa: hello, hello? Can you access this blog?

A few days ago a regular Church of the Churchless visitor from South Africa emailed me, saying that she wasn't able to access this blog anymore.  She's been looking into possible reasons. Today I got another message from her: Hi Brian. So far I have ascertained that the site is blocked by 3 [Internet] service providers. My daughter who is with Telcom, our national telephone provider, government owned, is open. Would you know if anyone else in South Africa is having the same problem? I'm still investigating but I'm finding it very disturbing. I really miss going on to the…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Merry churchless Christmas. Here’s our non-Christmas Letter.

Through my religious-believing and atheistic days alike, I've always composed a Christmas letter to send with our cards. Well, my wife and I actually call it our Holiday Letter, since in many years I don't get around to writing it until after Christmas. So as long as it gets sent out before New Year's Day, hey, it qualifies as a holiday letter.  Yesterday I explained on my other blog why we don't have a 2014 Christmas/Holiday letter. Naturally it took quite a few words to do this, being as verbose as I am.  Here's a PDF file of my non-Christmas…
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Posted inReligions Science

Religion is what might remain after science explains

David Lane, a.k.a. the Neuralsurfer, has made another provocative short video. It's called "Remainder Conjecture: Driving Science to the Brink of an Epistemological Cul de Sac."   Here's my take on Lane's basic point, which seems unarguable to me. Assume that science can explain what currently is unexplainable. If significant mysteries eventually remain that science can't explain, this is where supernaturalism, or at least a radical restructuring of how we look upon reality, can be seriously explored. This is much different from the "god of the gaps" approach where whatever science can't currently explain is taken as proof of God's…
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Posted inReality Science

Imagination permeates waking, as well as dreaming

Imagination. We tend to think of this as something special, an activity we engage in when, say, we're trying to do something creative like paint a picture, write a novel, or compose a song. Or as what the brain does when it dreams -- which seemingly is markedly different from the clear perception of reality in our waking state. But Evan Thompson's book, "Waking, Dreaming, Being," has given me a different perspective on imagination. From both a Buddhist and neuroscientific perspective, he sees imagination as permeating every form of consciousness. Here's a passage from his Imagining: Are we real? chapter.…
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Posted inGod

It’s stupid to say “God is everything”

Everything is God. God is all there is. As soon as I got to those words in a piece I came across, "Why Your Version of God is the Right One...for YOU," I knew that I'd disagree with the rest of the article. Download Why Your Version of God is the Right One…for YOU – Fractal Enlightenment It's meaningless to say God is everything. That's the same as saying God is nothing. If there is no way to distinguish something called "God" from everything else in existence, then God doesn't exist. Just call everything by a more accurate name. Here's…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Does religious belief dilute our enjoyment of life?

To answer my own blog title question: Yes, I do believe that religiosity tends to dilute people's enjoyment of life. Having been religiously-minded for about 35 years, and churchless now, I consider myself well qualified to address this question. Even though I was a member of an India-based spiritual organization, my experience seems to be applicable to devotees of Western religions also -- including Christianity. I used to believe in life after death, God, and "heaven." I put that word in quotation marks to indicate the difference between an Eastern/mystical conception of an ultimate divine reality, and how heaven is…
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Posted inBooks God

Halfway through “Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart,” I love this book

With Christmas just a couple of weeks away, it's time to start thinking about what to get your atheist friend who, of course, doesn't believe in Christ (but still enjoys giving and receiving presents). Here's a book idea: Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century, by Lex Bayer and John Figdor.  Yeah, it's a bit spendy, even in the Kindle version. That didn't stop me from getting a copy, though, because I was fortunate to get a free one from a publicist who thought churchless me would enjoy the book and write a review of…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Step out of the separate self, and you’re spiritual

Thanks to a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, I was turned on to a short interesting piece in The Guardian, "Spiritual but not religious? You're not alone." Oliver Burkeman wrote the piece. Though he has mixed feelings about Sam Harris (I do also), he approvingly observes: What Harris means by spirituality stems from the realisation that the feeling of being a distinct self – “the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from you” – is an illusion, and can be altered, even extinguished. Meditation and magic mushrooms are among the ways…
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Posted inBuddhism Taoism/Tai Chi

Nothing special: lucid dreaming and mindfulness

I dream a lot, as we all do. Lucid dreaming, though -- very rarely. That's when you're aware that you're dreaming, while still in a dream. Maybe I've had a couple of lucid dreams in my entire life. Three years ago I blogged about a semi-lucid dream experience in "I dreamed within a dream. Felt a lot like reality." The title of that post points to a notion Evan Thompson talks about in his book, "Waking, Dreaming, Being." It's the familiar philosophical conundrum: how can we be sure that we're not dreaming in everyday life, since dreaming while we're asleep…
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Posted inReality

Here’s what you actually know…

Hey, I can find quasi-philosophical churchless inspiration in all kinds of places. Yesterday it was in Carolyn Hax's advice column that appeared in the Sunday Oregonian.  Hax responded to a woman who was "feeling shaken in my own marriage" after learning that the husband of a friend of hers has been having an affair. The woman said, "My husband has never given me a reason to suspect he is anything less than a loving and devoted spouse and father, but I feel myself looking at our relationship with a more critical eye." I thought Hax's advice was well spoken and…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation

Meditation comes in two forms: “focused attention” and “open monitoring”

It's easy to be distracted by the seemingly many forms of meditative practices. Wikipedia offers a pretty good rundown of them.  Naturally, devotees of the various practices almost always believe that theirs is the best. I fell into this delusion during the 35 years or so when I meditated every day for one to two-and-a-half hours. After all, my meditation practice was based on a secret mantra -- the Five Holy Names! Which, actually, weren't so secret. But no matter. The power of the mantra supposedly came from the divine energy of the guru who initiated me. So even if some…
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Posted inPersonal/Stories

Ten years of Church of the Churchless blogging. I’m thankful.

With the Thanksgiving holiday coming up here in the United States tomorrow, I was trying to decide whether to write something thanks giving'ly for today's blog post.  Problem is, I don't like forced or expected expressions of any sentiment, including thankfulness. If it isn't spontaneous and natural, an emotion isn't truly genuine. At least, that's the way I feel. Telling someone, "Say that you love me" -- pointless. But then I thought about the month and year, November 2014, and realized that it's been almost exactly ten years since I started this Church of the Churchless blog. My first post…
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Posted inDeath/Rebirth

There are no believers in God at funerals

I really like Julian Baggini's retort to the oft-heard saying, "There are no atheists in foxholes." (Meaning, in desperate situations.) Which, by the way, isn't true. I can also affirm that there are atheists/agnostics in dentist's chairs.  Here's what Baggini said in his book, The Ego Trick. But third, it seems that the charge can be turned around: there are no theists at funerals. Many people say that they believe that death is not the end, but the way people behave at graveyards and crematoria suggests that they don't really believe it. You may cry and be upset at the…
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Posted inBuddhism Science

Genuine enlightenment is a simple intellectual understanding

Ooh! I bet the title of this blog post will irk spiritual types who believe that enlightenment is some sort  of mystical transformation of consciousness requiring lots of meditation and/or other practices to achieve. I certainly would have felt that way myself prior to my enlightenment about enlightenment. But as noted in this recent post, I've come to the understanding that spiritual realization (if this term really means anything) involves seeing through the illusion of a soul/self that is separate and distinct from the body and brain. In short, there is no self. No soul. No person sitting inside our…
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Posted inReligions

No special rights for religion: three churchless thumbs-up

Here's three godless good news pieces that popped into my web browser recently.  I liked Russ Belville's (a.k.a. Radical Russ) "No More Special Rights for Religion" a lot. I learned about Belville, who lives in Portland, via our shared interest in supporting Measure 91 -- which was passed by voters this month, leading to legalized recreational marijuana in Oregon. Along with him, I've also wondered why religious reasons for doing this or that should get more legal standing than personal reasons for doing this or that. After all, holding a religious belief is a personal decision. Why should it be treated…
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Posted inSpiritual practice/meditation Wu Project

Who do you want to be? Someone, Anyone, or Nobody?

The existential alternatives in the title of this post were named by brain researcher Susan Greenfield. I came across a mention of them in Julian Baggini's intriguing book, "The Ego Trick: What Does It Mean to be You?" Here's how Baggini describes the alternatives, based on an interview he did with Greenfield at the 2009 Bristol Festival of Ideas. After sharing these excerpts from his book, I'll add some observations of my own. Where Greenfield gets a little more speculative is when she imagines the variations in types of selves which might emerge if different types of connections become dominant.…
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Posted inHumor

South Park’s “Grounded Vindaloop” holds key to reality (or…not)

I'm a big fan of getting my cosmic inspiration from the comic pages and Comedy Central. This week has been a bonanza in that regard.  Here's what today's Pearls Before Swine had to say about the meaning of existence. In three panels, it nicely encapsulated the human condition. (click to enlarge) Even more profound was the most recent South Park episode, "Grounded Vindaloop." It blew my mind, and I wasn't even under the influence of any psychoactive or hallucinogenic substances.  If you watch the episode after taking LSD, I predict that instant enlightenment will be yours. Or insanity. Or both. …
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Posted inReligions Spiritual practice/meditation

Why atheists are more “spiritual” than religious believers

Maybe this statement seems paradoxical to you: I feel more genuinely spiritual now that I've stopped believing in God.  But it makes good sense to me. Here's the main reason why. I no longer feel special. Virtually every religion and spiritual path considers that its adherents have a special relationship with God or whatever other supernatural entity they believe in.  There are so many chosen people on Earth, they vastly outnumber the unchosen, the non-special group I'm pleased to be a part of. I understand that feeling special has its own delights. In my case, I was a member of…
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Posted inReality Science

“Spiritual oneness” is embracing your bodily being

Having written a well-received book called "Return to the One," I've obviously thought a lot about oneness. My views have changed considerably since I wrote the book. I used to believe that the goal of a spiritual or self-realized life was to merge the soul's immaterial consciousness with universal consciousness, which often is termed God or The One.  Now, I've got another view of oneness. A simpler one. A more easily achieved one. A considerably more scientific one. What I am, what we all are, what everything in the universe is -- its the stuff of physics. Julian Baggini puts…
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