Church of the Churchless

Why Radha Soami Satsang Beas initiates are so special

Recently I got an email message from someone who wanted to know why I felt so special when I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a Sant Mat organization headquartered in India.

In your posts, you often make mention of having felt special when you were in RS mode, and how you now feel relieved to have shed this sense of being special. It isn’t clear to me what was your basis for this feeling of being special.
 
The way I understand it, Sant Mat teachings and practice inculcate in the initiate an ever broadening and expanding perspective of all-that-there-is, while proportionately diminishing the relative significance of the self in this grand cosmos.
 
I do recall feeling special in the three months prior to initiation, but a few sessions in meditation after initiation quickly knocked any sense of special-ness out of me.
 
Maybe that has been my failing as a satsangi, that I was unable to sustain that attitude of being special. Or maybe the lack of special-ness is what keeps me in Sant Mat, because I can imagine that it would be an uncomfortable burden to carry year after year.
 
Perhaps you can remind me what there is to feel so special about as a satsangi? Sometimes it would be nice to feel a little bit special, just as a break from the sense of being nothing.

I was surprised that this person didn't understand why RSSB initiates are made to feel so special. The reasons are evident in the voluminous Radha Soami Satsang Beas literature, which I'm well acquainted with.

Here's some of the central specialness reasons that come to mind. I'm sure there are more.

(1) God's favored 1/10th. Supposedly God decided to populate his physical creation long ago, so souls had to leave the spiritual realm. Nine-tenths of them were eager to go -- yay! something new to do! -- while one-tenth were deeply reluctant to leave God. Those souls now get to go Home to heaven.

(2) RSSB initiates have been "marked" by God. The only way one of the lucky 10% can return to God is by being initiated by a perfect living guru, who is considered in Sant Mat to be God in human form.

The RSSB guru only initiates marked souls -- those who are destined to take the journey from materiality back to the highest spiritual region. How the guru recognizes his "sheep" is mysterious, but there are videos of him doing it. Nodding his head in one direction if an initiation applicant is marked, nodding in the other direction if the poor soul is unmarked and thus rejected.

(3) Sant Mat is the only way to know God. So if you're one of the unfortunate 90% of souls who aren't part of God's chosen people, what to do? Is there another way other than being initiated by a perfect living guru to return to God? Sorry, says Radha Soami Satsang Beas, there isn't. You're out of luck.

God has decreed that "no one comes to the Father but through me," and me means a guru who is God in human form. You can do all the meditation you want, and be a marvelously loving person, but unless you're initiated by a perfect guru, no god-realization for you.

So this is why RSSB books and speakers frequently emphasize how special members of the organization are. Numbering only a few million, at most, these are the only people on Earth who possess a ticket back to God. Everybody else is doomed to wander in delusion, apparently for eternity -- since the marking of souls only happened once.

Of course, I don't believe this any more. Which is refreshing.

As I've noted before, it's a burden to feel so special. For one thing, it divides you from other people, such as my wife -- who, because she wasn't a RSSB initiate, was looked upon with more than a little pity by many of the "chosen people."

(Other religions, such as Judaism, naturally would disagree with Sant Mat's conclusion about who is God's favorite, and who isn't.)

Maya is illusion: Alan Watts' good news

People are fond of saying to someone they disagree with, "get real!" It's a put down to be told that you're living an illusion.

So when Eastern religions tell us that this physical existence is maya, not really real reality, it's natural to feel concerned.

Even though life seems pleasant enough most of the time, what if I'm living a dream and a much better state -- nirvana, satori, enlightenment, god-realization, buddha nature -- awaits beyond my current consciousness horizon?

Not to worry, says Alan Watts in "Become What You Are," a book that belies its title because Watts tells us that it's impossible to be anything other that what we are. I quoted this passage in a previous blog post.

The idea of God is a finger pointing the way to Reality, but when people try to join God and Reality, to identify the one with the other, to find the former in the latter, they are trying to join together two things that were never in need of being joined. This is like trying to make the eyes see themselves.

I flipped through "Become What You Are" this morning and found some references to a subject that both interests and confuses me: nonduality.

Writings on nonduality seem to imply, or even flat out state, that our ordinary perceptions of reality are off-base -- that the cosmos actually is much more of a oneness than a manyness, so if we see duality we aren't seeing truly.

Watts has a refreshing perspective on nonduality which I sum up as maya is illusion. After all, what's more dualistic than dividing reality into what seems to be, and what really is?

But one of the principal mistakes of Western interpretations of Asian thought is to equate Brahman with the infinite and the realization of one's identity with Brahman as a change from finite to infinite consciousness.

...But Brahman or Reality is beyond opposites, being that what does not require distinction for its existence. For Brahman is all things, this world we see around us, together with our consciousness and the thoughts in our minds and the feelings in our hearts.

To see Brahman we have just to look with our eyes, for Brahman is nothing other than what we are beholding at the moment.

For a long time I've wondered what the difference is between a enlightened being and someone unenlightened, if our ordinary vision already is beholding reality in all its glory. Watts, as he so often does, anticipates my question and addresses it.

In view of this it will also be asked what is the difference between a sage and an ordinary ignorant man. We are accustomed to believe that a sage or mystic is one who beholds God or Brahman in all things; but if Brahman is all things, surely an ordinary man in seeing them is doing no less than the sage?

This is perfectly true, but the difference between the sage and the ordinary man is that the latter fails to realize it.

...But [for the sage] this certainly does not mean that in place of himself, other people, houses, stars, hills, and trees he sees a formless all-pervasive and infinite luminosity, which seems to be some people's idea of the Divine Reality.

If such a state of consciousness were possible, it would still be dualistic, involving an utter difference between Reality and the ordinary world. It should rather be said that he feels Brahman, the force of the universe, at work in everything he does, thinks, and feels, and this gives a powerful and liberating impulse to his spirit.

In other words, wisdom is realizing that spiritually there is nothing to seek; mystically, there is nothing hidden. What we see is what there is. Illusion is the belief that this world, this moment, this state of consciousness is illusory.

That's good news. Even more: great news!

To Christians, the good news of the Bible is that we're saved through Jesus. To Watts, the good news of a proper understanding of Eastern philosophy is that there's nothing to be saved from.

But you are free to abandon yourself to actual life and to know that living in God is another name for this abandonment, for watching the snow and walking down the street.

...You say you do not feel this abandonment right now. What do you expect to feel? It is not a feeling; it is feeling. It is not a thought; it is thinking. If it were a particular thought or feeling there could be coming into it and going out of it; but God is One and all-inclusive, and here there can be neither coming nor going, inside or outside.

...It is your real self, that has no hiding-place. Destroy the universe and it remains. No, you can't feel it -- but then how can you know anything about it at all. Because you can use it and feel its use, just as "the wind bloweth where it listeth, and thou hearest the sound thereof but canst not tell whence it cometh nor whither it goeth."

Now I understand Jesus

Ah, finally it's clear what the difference is between Jesus, Dracula, Frankenstein, and a zombie.

Thanks, Pharyngula blog.

Become yourself before trying to be one with God

I started to practice yoga and meditation when I was 20 years old. Forty-one years later, I'm still at it: trying to find the real me and the truth at the heart of the cosmos.

Along the way, in 1990, I married a woman who has taught me as much, or more, about reality than meditation has.

Laurel is a psychotherapist (now retired). She helped me understand that attempting to transcend this world is crazy if you haven't first come to grips with yourself and how you relate to other people.

This is a central theme of John Welwood's essay, "Double Vision: Duality and Nonduality in Human Experience."

The tag line of Welwood's web site is Integrating Western Psychology & Eastern Spiritual Wisdom. A worthy goal.

During the decades I was an active member of a mystical/spiritual organization headquartered in India, I met many people who fell into a general diagnostic category of Seriously Screwed Up. 

Like me, they'd spent countless hours on their meditation cushion. Yet all of this gazing inward hadn't made them either comfortable with themselves or capable of having warm, open, egalitarian relationships with other people.

Welwood does a good job of analyzing how a single-minded focus on transcending this world so Oneness can be revealed is more than a little contradictory.

On the human plane, our lives evolve and unfold through the relative play of duality — otherwise known as relationship. Indeed the central, defining feature of the human realm is relationship— the network of interactions with others that supports our life from the cradle to the grave. Relationship only happens when there are two— who engage in a dance that continually moves back and forth between twoness and oneness.

In this way, the human realm serves as a bridge linking samsara— the experience of separateness— and nirvana— nonseparateness. This is why being human is a living paradox, and also a field in which a vast range of feeling— from unbearable sorrow to unthinkable joy— is possible. 

However, there is a one-sided perspective circulating in the contemporary spiritual scene that uses the absolute truth of nonduality to disparage or belittle the relative play of duality in human experience. This perspective casts nonduality in a primarily transcendental light, regarding only absolute truth— the nonexistence of separate entities— as real, while seeing phenomenal existence — the play of duality— as unreal, illusion, untruth. 

...In the name of nonduality, it creates its own form of dualism by setting up a divide between absolute truth and relative human experience.   

This pretty much sums up Welwood's message, but he's got a lot more to say in the essay's twenty-one pages.

I don't claim to understand what nonduality is all about, though I hear the word used a lot.

I'm baffled by what an experience of nonduality would be like. Duality I get: it's the world of separate stuff that I know now. Oneness I sort of get, though I don't see how it'd be possible to be conscious of One, because then there would be two: One and an awareness of it.

Welwood doesn't do much to help me grasp what nonduality is, but I liked his warning about over-emphasizing it.

Nondual teachings that mainly emphasize the illusory quality of human experience can, unfortunately, serve as just another dehumanizing force in a world where our basic humanity is already under siege at every turn.

What is needed in these difficult times instead is a liberation spirituality that helps people recognize nondual presence as a basis for fully inhabiting their humanity, rather than as a rationale for disengaging from it. We need a spiritual vision that values and includes the central playing-field where our humanity expresses itself— relationship. 

"Oneness" or "nonduality" are concepts. The reality in which we live and breathe is dual. There's us, and there are others. Other things, other people, other living beings.

When we recognize and accept these differences, that's wisdom. And, truth. Whatever we're experiencing, that's what's true for us. Our notions about some transcendent ultimate reality -- God, nirvana, enlightenment, heaven -- are just that: notions.

This kind of perspective avoids two major pitfalls on the spiritual path — spiritual bypassing and the spiritual superego — which are ways of imposing on oneself a higher spiritual perspective that lies far beyond one's actual state, thus creating further inner division.

When people try to bypass, or prematurely transcend, their current psychological condition by trying to live up to some noble spiritual ideal, this does violence to where they are. And it strengthens the spiritual superego, the inner voice that tells them they should be something other than they are, thereby reinforcing their disconnection from themselves. 

I've always felt that for a man, being married is the surest and fastest route to losing his ego, because once the honeymoon is over it doesn't take long for him to realize that from this point forward, he must submit to a higher power. (One example among many: I hadn't realized that I'd been hanging up towels the wrong way, but Laurel has enlightened me.)

So I enjoyed this section of Welwood's piece.

Swami Prajnanpad recognized the significance of this discrepancy between people's spiritual practice and their ability to embody it in their relationships, often telling students who wanted to study with him to "bring a certificate from your wife."

He saw marriage as a particularly powerful litmus test of one's development, because in it one is "fully exposed...All one's peculiarities, all of one's so-called weaknesses are there in their naked form. This is why it is the testing ground." In solitary spiritual practice, the spiritual aspirant "may accomplish perfection and feel: 'Oh! I am at ease, oh, I can feel oneness.' "

But in marriage, "everything gets confounded." Yogis discover that their so-called realization "was only on the superficial level. It had not percolated deep within. It simply appeared to have gone deep. Unless you are tested on the ground where you are fully exposed, all those outward achievements are false. This is the point, and you have to grasp this completely."

This Is It. Great movie. Terrific philosophy.

"This Is It." My wife and I saw the movie last night. Marvelous. Michael Jackson as never known before.

I mean, I knew he was a supremely talented dancer and singer.

But as a person... I threw him into my weird tortured artist category. Watching him in real life as he rehearsed his "This Is It" show reveals a Michael Jackson who comes off first and foremost as a supremely nice guy.

Courteous, soft-spoken, gentle, harmonious, humorous, balanced.

That's my take on the movie. Then there's This Is It, the philosophy. Which is reflected throughout the film. Jackson and the other people in the film obviously are into It full bore. 

At the beginning of the movie, one of the male dancers chosen for the production talked about how Michael Jackson had been a lifelong role model, how he dreamed of meeting up with him one day. And now, he had.

"This is it," he said.

Religions would have us believe otherwise. This world, this moment, this here-and-now, supposedly is an illusion (Eastern view) or a way stop before the final destination of heaven/hell (Western view).

Well, maybe.

But if we're always looking to be some place other than where we are, how are we ever going to feel at home? If we're continually seeking different food from what is right in front of us, won't we always be hungry?

Before we left for the movie theater I went on an early November Oregon dog walk around a nearby lake. 

I hadn't seen "This Is It" yet. But all the way around the lake I kept feeling, this is it. There's nothing more wonderful than this. I'm rooted in reality, right here, right now.

Some large oaks are along the shore. This one likely is over 200 years old.

It's said a lot, wordlessly, even when no one was around to get the message.

Seeing it silhouetted against the darkening sky, I felt like I heard the tree.

Or maybe it was me.

No matter.

"This is it" sounds the same, no matter who speaks it. Silently or in words.

Walking a little further, some other trees had more to say.

There's the sun. And there is us.

Aren't we beautiful together? We obscure some of the sunset. The sunset illuminates us.

We're partners in reality. Background and foreground. Near and far. Energy and matter. Light and dark.

 Turning a lake corner, I saw two "It's." One was a reflection of the other.

I guess you could say one was more real.

Or, not.

Sometimes our saying doesn't have much to do with reality, though sometimes it does.

I don't like the idea of dying. Life is so lively for me, I want it to keep on doing what it does best: living.

But this fallen leaf seemed just fine with how things are.

It was just a speck in the big lake picture. Yet it had a great view of the water.

By the time I got to the dock and picnic area, the light was fading from the sky.

One day it's going to fade from me also.

At that moment, that seemed OK.

Fading, I mean.

There's a beauty to brightness. But sunsets are appealing as well.

 

"Yes, this is it," I thought. Time to head home and get ready to go to "This Is It."

Of course, I was already there.

Religions are wrong: in the cosmos, humans aren't special

It's a burden to believe that you're special.

Especially when it isn't true. Feeling special places you in a starring role. You're at the center of a script that has a marvelous ending -- with you at center stage taking bows.

Religions appeal to people because dogma leads them to feel special.

God has a plan, for you. Enlightenment is going to happen, for you. The heavens and earth were created, for you. A guru will appear, for you. Jesus died on the cross, for you. 

Christianity likes to speak of the "good news."

The Christian message of good news is described in the Bible. It relates to the saving acts of God, centred upon the person of Jesus and his substitutionary death on the cross and resurrection from the dead. Its context is the storyline of the Christian Bible as a whole, which tells of the creation of humanity, humanity's rebellion against God, and how people from all nations are restored to relationship with God through the person of Jesus. A key theme of the Christian good news is that God offers a new life and forgiveness through Jesus.

Hmmmm.

This reminds me of a sleazy con artist who preys on gullible homeowners by knocking on their door, telling them he can see their roof is in terrible shape, and if they don't hire him to do the repairs right away terrible things are going to happen the next time it rains hard.

Except, the roof is fine.

Similarly, religions tell people that their soul is endangered by sin, maya, karma, or whatever, and if they don't sign up for some salvation, they're heading for a lousy afterlife (and presentlife).

Except, where's the evidence that any salvation is needed? Yes, every human being has problems. Life isn't perfect.

But those imperfections are hugely magnified when we perceive them as unjust, unwarranted, or unnecessary because we are meant for much better: heaven, eternal life, satori, enlightenment, sitting at the right hand of God.

Those are nice stories that contain a lot of good news. However, stories aren't reality. Fiction isn't factual.

Here's the real overarching story. It doesn't put us human beings at the center of the tale. I much prefer it to the religious fables, though. Because it is true, to the best of science's current knowledge (which is pretty darn persuasive).

Some 14 billion years ago the big bang brought the universe into existence. A whole lot has gone on since; none of which bears the mark of anyone or anything supernatural.

Some 4.5 billion years ago the Earth formed. It didn't take very long for life to appear -- simple cells about 3.9 billion years ago. Evolution took care of the rest of the story. 

Looking at our place in the cosmos from this vast perspective, it's difficult for this human to feel special. And that makes me happy. I experienced enough sensations of specialness during my thirty-five years of religiosity.

Now, it's relaxing to simply be part of a universe that is vastly beyond my, or anybody else's, comprehension.

Earth orbits the Sun, which is one of 200 to 400 billion stars in the Milky Way galaxy. There are an estimated 100 billion to 200 billion galaxies in the universe, each with an average of hundreds of billions of stars.

If this isn't mind-blowing enough, the multiverse notion is gaining increasing credibility among scientists. It posits that our universe may be only one of countless universes in an essentially infinite physical reality.

Yet earthly religions tell us things like, "You're special. God created the cosmos for the benefit of people. The divine plan is for human souls to return to divinity." Yeah, right. All the evidence points to us being a infinitesimal speck of the cosmos, with no specialness attached to Homo sapiens.

I've become comfortable with this seeming fact. If we're so special, why did God take 14 billion years to get around to us? If we're so special, why did God create such an unimaginably vast universe, almost all of which has nothing to do with us?

Life is what it is. Why pretend that it is something else? We are born; we live; we die. Just like stars do. Just like galaxies do. Just like the entire universe may do. We aren't special.

Recognizing this, we can feel ourselves as part and parcel of the cosmos. And that sensation of non-specialness is pretty damn special.

Halloween churchless cheers and jeers

Well, I've got to start off my Halloween cheering with a big shout-out to the Oregon Ducks football team, who crushed fifth-ranked USC tonight in Eugene -- an hour's drive away from Church of the Churchless headquarters here in south Salem.

Next, praise for Halloween itself, a nice mostly-pagan/secular holiday, albeit with some mildly Christian overtones, which are barely recognizable beneath all those sexy costumes.

It's interesting, but not all that surprising, that so many adults (and children also) choose to express their darker, sensuous, slutty, or sinister side on Halloween.

You don't see many Compassionate Buddhist Monk or Charitable Giving Tree costumes. When given an opportunity to let their inner whatever out, wild and crazy is more likely to make an appearance than tame and sensible.

My wife and I rarely dress up on Halloween. Mostly because we usually don't venture out on this day. With my two year old granddaughter living way down in southern California, and us not being party animals, there isn't much reason to costume up.

Yesterday, though, we decided to go to a Halloween dance at the RJ Dance Studio. Costumes, the notice said, were optional. My wife said, "let's do it." She likes to shop, so it was a pleasant and rather easy task for her to put together a cool blue outfit.

The feather boa was a nice touch, something Laurel had hanging around the house for an occasion like this.

After parking downtown we had to walk a few blocks to the dance studio. As we passed a hipster hangout, I couldn't help thinking that a lot of young people wouldn't look upon Laurel's get-up as a costume at all, but as normal attire.

Ditto for my considerably less creative outfit. I started with a black mullet wig that I got at WalMart for $8. Sadly, it isn't much in evidence in this photo.

I then accessorized with the very t-shirt that I'd been wearing normally all day, my dearly beloved Harley-Davidson "there are no rules" shirt. I capped it off with a Sportsman's Outfitter hunting cap and some blue shades to match Laurel.

Pondering what I'd say if someone asked me what I was, "Mill City meth lab operator" came to mind. (Mill City is a small nearby  town; Oregon meth labs have been relocating to rural areas, but in fairness to my state's reputation, we've pioneered in reducing the available supply of meth ingredients.)

It was fun to become someone else for an evening. A guy I know quite well came to the dance and didn't recognize me. Just as with Laurel's costume, of course, mine looked a lot like how many people dress all the time.

Laurel and I danced better than usual. We felt more relaxed, having cast off our usual dressing conventions in the whatever Halloween spirit. 

For two hours blue hair and mullet hair danced away, until our 60-something legs and feet got tired. We got some good tips from a more accomplished dancer on timing, rhythm, and moving to the music.

Someone left a comment on this blog today that talked about the joy of letting go in the presence in a guru. I responded that there are many ways of letting go of our usual overly self-conscious selves, dancing certainly being among them.

Putting on a Halloween costume also. Which is an outward act that reflects an inward transformation always available to us: choosing to be someone different from who we've always been.

Halloween is a reminder that we can be whoever we want, religious dogma and convention be damned. If we can do this one day of the year, why not every day? 

That's the positive side of this holiday. On the negative side, seeing all the witches around recently made me recall an email I got a while back from Alex, a Unitarian in Hong Kong.

He told me about children being murdered in Nigeria because they'd been branded as witches and blamed for various catastrophes.

Who is mostly responsible? Christian pastors, not surprisingly. Another example of how horribly fundamentalists can behave in the name of their imaginary God.

Don't worry about yourself. You don't have one (a self).

Ah, I love instant enlightenment.

OK -- not exactly instant, because I had to watch 54 minutes of a You Tube video before I got to Thomas Metzinger's philosophical "money shot" right at the end.

But I had enjoyed Metzinger's book, "The Ego Tunnel," which I blogged about here, here, and here.

So when I saw a mention of the video on my Twitter feed, I figured that it would be worth watching. I'm a sucker for a Zen-titled talk, "Being No One," from someone who specializes in scientific perspectives on the philosophy of mind.

Most of Metzinger's presentation is pretty darn boring. I listened to it more than I watched it, dividing my attention between his ideas and browsing my habitual morning web sites.

One of his basic notions is that our self-model, our sense of "me," is a simulation. I don't claim to completely understand Metzinger's explanation of how this comes about, which is rather complicated.

However, I could grasp his point that evolution, via natural selection, favored humans who could simply recognize the presence of a wolf -- no need to also know how the brain processes sensory and cognitive data behind the scenes of conscious awareness.

So we have a naive realism. Metzinger said, "We didn't need to distance ourselves from ourselves." And...

We are systems, which are not able to recognize their own sub-symbolic self-model as a model. Therefore we operate under the condition of a naive-realistic self-misunderstanding.

We necessarily experience ourselves as being in direct and immediate epistemic contact with ourselves.

Metaphorically speaking, you are a system that continually confuses itself with the content of its own self-model.

This avatar doesn't know it has a visual cortex; it just sees with its eyes. It doesn't know it has a motor cortex; it just acts with its hands.

Meaning, I think, that it just seems so obvious "I" am the center of my "self."

That there is an ethereal being I call "me" who seemingly is separate and distinct from all of the crude physical goings-on in my body, neurons firing chemically/electrically, food being digested and crapped out, etc., etc., etc.

Given this assumption, which is almost universal among human beings, the quest for our true self becomes all-important.

People want to be self-fulfilled. They seek self-realization. They wonder what happens to the self after death. They yearn for enlightenment, which often is considered to involve ego-loss or becoming selfless.

Metzinger, however, dissolves these notions in some wonderfully intriguing closing remarks.

Given all this, isn't it true that the self is an illusion? I think it is not true, because it contains a logical mistake.

On the level on which we are talking, there is no such thing as truth or falsity yet. There is nobody who could have an illusion in this system.

So if you really wanted to stay with the idea that the self is an illusion, you would have to say that it is an illusion which is no one's illusion.

Then he addresses the big question: immortality of the soul.

If it is true that the self is not a thing, but a process, as I have described it, then it is also true that the tragedy of the ego dissolves. Because strictly speaking, nobody is every born and nobody ever dies.

Good news. I guess. Not that there is an "I" who guesses. But I'm still guessing.

Here's the video:

Should science have an opinion on the supernatural?

Some people think that science and religion operate in two different spheres, with never the twain meeting.

This often is called NOMA, non-overlapping magisteria -- a term coined by biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who said:

The magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and why does it work in this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value. These two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for example, the magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty).

I disagree, unless "religion" is defined so broadly as to include philosophy in both the scholarly and commonsense meanings of this word. People can ponder the ultimate meaning of the cosmos, and what is right or wrong within it, without being traditionally religious.

Also, science seems to have a role to play in evaluating certain religious claims. If God or some other supernatural power produces effects in the physical universe, these should be observable. And thus testable.

However, movie critic Roger Ebert disagreed in his essay, "Darwin survives as the fittest," written in commemoration of Darwin's two hundredth birthday last February. Even though Ebert is strongly pro-science, he said:

Science has no opinion on the supernatural. It cannot. Science deals with that which can be studied or inferred by observation, measurement, and experiment. Supernatural belief is outside its purview, except in such social sciences as sociology, anthropology, and psychology, where even then not the validity of the beliefs but their effects are studied.

Ebert's piece is interesting for what he says about evolution and the varieties of responses to the Theory (better termed Fact) of Evolution. These include "species" such as the True Believers, Reasonables, Metaphysicians, and New Agers.

But what got science blogger P.Z. Myer's attention was Ebert's contention that science can't invade religion's supernatural turf. Otherwise he mostly approved of what Ebert had to say.

In "Effectively non-existent" Myers wrote:

The premise that science can't have a stance on the validity of a religion is like the tranquilizer dart of the debates with religion; someone is thinking and questioning, and suddenly, swooosh, thock, ouch…they hear this argument that you can't question the premises of religion, they get all sleepy and soporified, nod a few times, and piously agree. Gould succumbed to this, too, and here's Roger Ebert, hit by the same dart.

WAKE UP.

Think about it. Why can't science address the existence of gods? Why should we simply sit back and accept the claim of apologists that what they believe in is not subject to "observation, measurement, and experiment"?

Good question.

Myers correctly points out that religious believers make all sorts of statements about who or what God is, how God acts in the world, what God approves of, and so on. Many of these claims have implications that are amenable to observation (such as whether prayer produces the outcomes asked for).

Yet when scientists ask for demonstrable evidence of religious claims, suddenly this God that was so well understood is said to "work in mysterious ways" and is beyond knowledge as we know it.

Well, which is it? Either a religion can say something true about God and the supernatural, or it can't. If nothing can be said, then why do all the saying? Just shut up.

However, if some truths can be spoken, then they should be able to be tested. Myers gets it right:

So where did these confident promoters of god-business get their information? Shouldn't they be admitting that their knowledge of this elusive cosmic beast is nonexistent? It seems to me that if you're going to declare scientists helpless before the absence and irrelevance of the gods, you ought to declare likewise for all of god's translators and interpreters. Be consistent when you announce who has purview over all religious belief, because making god unobservable and immeasurable makes everyone incapable of saying anything at all about it.

...This is where the "Science has no opinion on religion" argument leads us: to an atheist's world, where there are no activities by a god that matter, where at best people can claim that their god is aloof and unknowable, admitting in their own premises that they have no knowledge at all of him.

I can accept that, as long as these people are aware of the import of what they are actually saying.

Shocked at my past beliefs, should I disown me?

I picked up the book. Thumbed through the pages and located the right chapter. Scanned a few paragraphs. Then found the lines I was looking for:

Mysticism has little quarrel with the theory of evolution -- as long as it is recognized that life evolves not randomly, but under the guidance of an intelligence which is far beyond our ability to fathom. All that is evident are the results of a divine will reflected most imperfectly in the fossil record and the current diversity of species.

Oh no!, I thought. The author is an intelligent design advocate. He believes in bullshit!

I threw the book down on my office floor in disgust.

I'd been looking for a quote to use in a blog post about evolution. But I wasn't about to use anything written by a guy who obviously didn't understand the difference between real science and mystical mumbo jumbo. 

Here's the funny thing: I was that guy. I was disgusted at myself. The book whose content I disagreed with was "Life is Fair" (now back in print over at the Science of the Soul Research Centre).

Now, I still believe in much, if not most, of what I wrote in Life is Fair. After all, life is. Fair.

But as I blogged about a few years ago, for different reasons that I argued in that book. That's how I see things presently, at least. Back in the late 90's I thought differently. In the future, who knows?

The only thing I can be certain about is that from this moment until the day I die, I'm not going to be absolutely certain about anything. Probably, I should add, to be consistent.

So after a few days of pondering my emotional reaction to re-reading what I wrote a dozen or so years ago, I've concluded that I was too hard on myself.

Yes, I was disturbed that my beliefs back then fell into a "religiously mentally ill" diagnosis. And when I read how the Brian of that time looked upon evolution, it bothered me that I was less scientific than I'd remembered myself being.

But here's the thing: I changed. And I'm still changing. As are we all. Thankfully.

Because change only stops when we're dead. Until then, living leads us in largely unpredictable ways. Our relationships with other people change; our bodies change; our lifestyles change; our physical activities change; our personalities change; our philosophical and religious beliefs change.

Which is unavoidable. And largely to the good, even though many of life's changes are objectionable to us.

Here in the United States, as likely is true elsewhere in the world, people like to play a "gotcha" game. Politicians and other public officials come in for special gotcha treatment. 

Opponents will drag up a quote from a speech someone made a decade ago, showing how that person believed in such-and-such back then and now holds a different view.

Gotcha!

Oh, really? Is there something wrong with a person changing his or her mind, arriving at a different conclusion, evolving into a more nuanced conception of reality?

No, there isn't. That's what I believe.

But still, if I really believed this, I wouldn't have had the throw-the-book-on-the-floor reaction that occurred when I was presented with evidence of how my notions about evolution have changed.

Which seems to point to some sort of lingering attraction toward a self that is more constant than I really am. Cognitive dissonance probably is at play here -- me wanting to resolve the conflicts between what I believe now and what I believed then by forgetting how different "now" and "then" were.

At any rate, this experience has reminded me not to judge other people's seemingly deluded beliefs overly harshly. One of my favorite blog post titles is "I've become the person I warned myself about."

Or reversing the arrow of time, "I used to be the person I now warn myself about."

I've got no clue who I really am, assuming there is an "I" at all. But the fact that I can be aware of how much I've changed shows that some aspect of me stands apart from being and becoming.

What we believe -- religiously or otherwise --  is important. However, re-reading "Life is Fair" reminded me that who I was deeper down, beneath my beliefs, when I wrote the book is pretty much the same person I am now.

If that's the case, doesn't it follow that we're all much more similar than alike? That what separates us all too often is our focus on beliefs. Political, religious, philosophical, moral, and so on.

We forget how easy it is to trade one belief system for another. How interchangeable ideas can be, while the person doing the mental changing is someone quite different from his or her thoughts.