Church of the Churchless

Getting real is geniune spirituality

Spirit. Matter. Heaven. Hell. Soul. Body.

Words...

If they don't point to something real, they're interesting expressions of human cognition. But the mind can come up with all sorts of abstractions. If these aren't grounded in anything other than more concepts, clinging to them leads us into a airy-fairy world of our own imagining.

I love this quote from Thoreau's Walden.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position.

Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch."

His companion's prayer is forgotten.

On this blog I probably often come across as sounding unduly skeptical about spirituality. That is true, insofar as "spirit" is viewed as something detached from everyday existence, opposed to materiality, formless and invisible.

For sure, I'm not nearly as attracted to abstractions as I used to be.

If something that's supposedly "spiritual" isn't directly experienced by the average person, and no one can supply convincing evidence that doing X, Y and Z will produce such an experience, then I'd rather embrace the truth that is right before me, rather than chase after truth down a winding road of "around the next corner" promises.

Understand: I'm not reducing reality to only what is observable.

Inner experiences known only to the experiencer also are eminently real. But if there is no way for other people to reliably experience those experiences, they can't be considered more than subjective one-of-a-kind sensations.

Last night my wife and I had a West Coast Swing lesson. I've done enough ballroom dancing to recognize the familiar trajectory of learning a new dance move.

First, clumsiness. Then, mechanical competence. Finally, relaxed fluidity that allows my wife and me to finally feel what a dance style is all about, rather than merely going through the motions of it.

"West Coast Swing" is an abstraction. Leading a sugar push is wonderfully concrete. When our instructor demonstrated how to do it a few lessons ago, within several minutes, I could.

I enjoy similarly practical descriptions of how to meditate, or engage in other practices that are generally considered "spiritual" (an increasingly meaningless word to me). Yet it's amazing how often writers or speakers on spirituality will never get down to the nitty-gritty sort of Thoreau'ian make a knot in the thread statement.

Or they hedge their instruction with all sorts of disclaimers. "Results may not be apparent in this lifetime." "It all depends on the guru's (or God's) grace." "Expecting to achieve something means you won't."

Every morning I meditate for about twenty minutes. I keep my meditation pretty darn simple. Few abstractions. As down to earth as possible.

Most of the day I'm doing things. So I like to start off my day with a contrast: doing as little as possible. Sitting still on my meditation cushion. Closing off my seeing and hearing with shut eyelids, a dark sleep mask, and noise-reducing headphones.

And then shutting down what usually goes on inside my head -- thoughts, emotions, and such -- by repeating a one-word mantra when my attention wanders into my usual sorts of doings.

I'm alive. I'm conscious. I exist.

Usually I'm performing actions in a lively fashion. There is a lot going on in my consciousness. I'm aware of many existing things. It's refreshing, and unfailingly intriguing, to see what happens when I come closer to life, consciousness, and existence absent much of my usual doing.

Which leaves, being.

Of course, I'm still doing something concrete. There's just considerably less doing than what occurs in the rest of my day, which is what I mean by "being."

I don't expect that anyone else would find my meditation practice as fulfilling as I do. There isn't any grand philosophical system connected with it. I can't claim that my meditation leads to any profound insights into the nature of the cosmos, or even me.

It's just real. I can describe what I do almost as clearly and distinctly as I could describe the six steps in a West Coast Swing sugar push.

And that makes it satisfying for me. I feel grounded in here-and-now truth, rather than fantasizing about flying off in a there-and-then flight to enlightenment.

Religious mindset supports skepticism about science

Over on my other blog, where I've been writing about global warming recently (here, here, and here), someone commented that he was surprised I'm so accepting of the scientific consensus on climate change when I'm so skeptical of religious claims.

Well, I was surprised that he was surprised. It makes sense to me to have lots of faith in the scientific method, and virtually no faith in religious dogma.

Skepticism is a virtue.

I have no problem with people being skeptical of a purported scientific fact -- such as that our planet is warming and humans are responsible for it -- if, and note the IF, solid demonstrable evidence is provided to support an alternative hypothesis.

This is how science works: truth is sought for through open examination of evidence along with vigorous debate concerning the meaning and validity of that data.

Eventually a general consensus emerges among scientists.

Because I'm not a scientist, my default attitude is that I trust the experts in a field. Similarly, I take our hybrid Toyotas to a dealer when they need servicing because the techs there know a whole lot more than I do about the cars.

Here's where I think skeptics about science go off track: they over-emphasize scientific individualism. This cartoon from xkcd.com nicely captures what I'm getting at.

There's a pop-up window that appears on the xkcd web site when you hover your mouse pointer over the cartoon. It says:

I mean, what's more likely -- that I have uncovered fundamental flaws in this field that no one in it has ever thought about, or that I need to read a little more? Hint: it's the one that involves less work.

Religions and spiritual/mystic paths often (if not usually) spring into being from the psyche of one person. Jesus. Buddha. Mohammed. Guru Nanak. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

No confirmations are required.

None of these guys had to submit their insights to a jury of their peers, such as scientists do when they publish in a peer-reviewed journal. There wasn't a systematic critical examination of the evidence supporting Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, or Transcendental Meditation after the founder claimed "this is the truth."

It seems to me that a similar uncritical attitude underlies most skepticism about global warming, as well as other areas where a scientific consensus exists: evolution, big bang cosmology, and such.

Obviously, just because someone challenges a prevailing scientific view, this doesn't mean they're correct. In fact, more than likely they're wrong, as the cartoon points out.

The scientific method isn't individualistic like the religious method is.

One person can found a religion or spiritual path. One person can't establish a scientific truth. A brilliant man or woman, such as Einstein, may come up with a theory or finding that ends up overturning a previous scientific consensus.

But this won't occur until a thorough "testing to destruction" has occurred via the scientific method.

For example, why were Einstein’s theories regarded as scientific, whilst a psychologist’s theories were regarded as pseudoscientific?

Popper postulated that science advances through a process of “conjecture and refutations;” that a theoretical scientist would develop a theory and an empirical scientist would attempt to test it to destruction. For this to happen, the theory had to be ‘falsifiable’.

If the theory could not be properly tested by science, then it could not be scientific.

For example, physics theory was open to empirical testing, and many scientists developed ways to empirically test relativity; therefore, it could be falsified and the scientific method applied.

Usually it takes a heck of a lot of work to get a significant new truth accepted into the knowledge base of modern science. It isn't going to happen by posting your personal ideas on a blog or web site and expecting that the experts in some scientific field are going to respond with a "Wow! We'd never thought of that!"

Almost certainly, they have.

So if you want to become acclaimed overnight, with countless (or at least a few) followers willing to accept your proclamations about reality unquestioningly, setting yourself up in the prophet, sage, or guru business is advisable.

One person's opinion about God or ultimate reality is pretty much as valid as anyone else's. But one person's opinion about global warming, evolution, or the big bang definitely isn't as valid as the current scientific consensus.

Not until it is put through the wringer of the scientific method and hung out to dry on the clothes line of peer-reviewed journals (note: this metaphor shows my age, since I remember when wringer washing machines were still used).

Thus I'll keep on being skeptical about religion and accepting of a scientific consensus until it is proven to be wrong.

Evolution shows the grandeur of life

This morning I finished Richard Dawkins "The Greatest Show on Earth," a fascinating book that demonstrates why evolution is almost certainly true and intelligent design /creationism is almost certainly false. (In science, there are no 100% certainties.)

I've been reading a few pages every day before I meditate. Now, I find more inspiration in science books than in spiritual books. Reality is uplifting.

Dawkins' final chapter was especially enjoyable. He goes through the last paragraph of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" (first edition) line by line.

Thus, from the point of view of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Yes, there's a beauty to natural selection.

Which isn't something far or distant, but as near to us as our current experience. Dawkins says there are four "memories" that provide information on how to handle the present so as to survive into the future.

One is our DNA repository. This shows how our ancestors dealt with ancestral environments.

Another is our immune system. It is a database of past diseases and how to survive them (this is how immunizations work, by tricking the immune system into "thinking" that it has suffered a disease, thereby producing the proper antibodies).

Third is the memory that resides in our nervous system. At its simplest, Dawkins says, this works on a trial and error basis.

The nervous system has a rule that says, 'Any trial action that is followed by reward should be repeated. Any trial action that is followed by nothing, or worse, followed by punishment, for example pain, should not be repeated.'

This is how we evolve during the single life we're living here on Earth: by living and learning. I performed a lot of religious'y actions when I was an active member of an India-based spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

I experienced certain results from those actions: meditating, vegetarianism, giving up alcohol and drugs, providing service to the guru, and such. 

I've shared what I learned on this blog and in books that I've written. All that has become part of a fourth memory, culture.

The database in my brain contains more than just a record of the happenings and sensations of my personal life -- although that was the limit when brains originally evolved. Your brain includes collective memories inherited non-genetically from past generations, handed down by word of mouth, or in books, or, nowadays, on the internet. The world in which you and I live is richer by far because of those who went before us and inscribed their impacts on the database of human culture.

We're all connected. Not only with other humans, but with animals, plants, insects, bacteria, everything alive.

For me, this is the grandest grandeur of evolution: realizing, as Dawkins writes, that "today we are pretty certain that all living creatures on this planet are descended from a single ancestor."

Why? Because the genetic code is universal, "all but identical across animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaea and viruses." So when Darwin said into a few forms or into one, science now knows that one is most likely.

Meaning, there hasn't been two or more independent origins of life. Just one. But we don't know how that living entity arose.

Dawkins reviews various non-theological theories concerning the origin of life. He ends up arguing that given the seeming rareness of life in our corner of the universe (no alien beings have made an appearance so far), the probability of life arising on a planet is vanishingly small.

The theory that we seek, of the origin of life on this planet, should therefore positively not be a plausible theory! If it were, life should be common in the galaxy. Maybe it is common, in which case a plausible theory is what we want. But we have no evidence that life exists outside this planet, and at very least we are entitled to be satisfied with an implausible theory.

Nice.

I like this reasoning. It can be applied to other Big Questions also. How did the universe come into being? What is the essence of consciousness? From where did the laws of nature arise?

We look for explanations that are plausible to our human cognition. Yet when we venture into the deepest mysteries, is it plausible to expect that their secrets will seem plausible?

I'm probably going beyond what Dawkins meant. But that's OK. Meanings evolve. I just found the notion that our notions can't encompass ultimate truths of the cosmos to be strangely comforting.

For most of my life I've had a strong desire to know what lies at the heart of reality. Science is one way of trying to fulfill this desire. Mysticism and meditation are other ways.

Now I question, as Dawkins implied in the quotation above, whether ultimate questions ever can be answered. Increasingly it seems OK to me that they can't be.

Regardless, evolution is something that we can understand, albeit imperfectly (as is the case with all of our understandings).

The Darwinian world-view does not denigrate the higher human faculties, does not 'reduce' them to a plane of indignity. It doesn't even claim to explain them at the sort of level that will seem particularly satisfying, in the way that, say, the Darwinian explanation of a snake-mimicking caterpillar is satisfying.

It does, however, claim to have wiped out the impenetrable -- not even worth trying to penetrate -- mystery that must have dogged all pre-Darwinian efforts to understand life.

...When you think about it, our own existence, together with its post-Darwinian explicability, is a candidate for the most astonishing fact that any of us are called upon to contemplate.

I've got a death wish: not to die

Death isn't to die for. At least, that's how my churchless psyche looks at mortality. I like being alive. Being dead -- that has a disturbing ring of nothingness to it.

If it was up to me, I'd pass on the whole dying thing. And who wouldn't? Almost no one, aside from those who find life so painful, not existing seems preferable.

This is a big reason why religions, philosophies, and belief systems that promise continued life after death are so popular. The Bible says that Jesus removed the sting of death.

Hey, if there was convincing proof of this, I'd sign up for Christianity in a heartbeat. Or convert to any other faith that offered me eternal (or at least really lengthy) life.

A good life, of course. No hell. Or Fox News.

Dinesh D'Souza has written a book that purports to prove that the afterlife is real. "Life After Death: The Evidence" is an appealing title. Only problem is, D'Souza doesn't supply what he promises -- evidence.

I base this statement not on having read the book, but on some articles that summarize D'Souza's arguments. I read "Heaven Can Wait" in Newsweek, and "The Dead Are Dead" on the Pharyngula blog.

If I simply went by the Amazon product description, I'd probably have ordered a copy by now.

Unlike many books about the afterlife, Life after Death makes no appeal to religious faith, divine revelation, or sacred texts. Drawing on some of the most powerful theories and trends in physics, evolutionary biology, science, philosophy, and psychology, D Souza shows why the atheist critique of immortality is irrational and draws the striking conclusion that it is reasonable to believe in life after death.

That's false advertising. D'Souza is a fervent Christian. His web site says that he is a co-founder of the Y God Institute, "Fresh Arguments, Science, History and Reason to Support Christianity."

So he definitely does make an appeal to religious faith and sacred texts. In an interview, D'Souza makes the ridiculous claim that we should believe in the afterlife because Christian dogma says that Jesus was resurrected. Huh?

If the resurrection stands up to historical scrutiny, if it is an historical event by the standards of historical verification, then the Christian view of the afterlife rises above the pack. It is the one to take seriously.

Well, those are two big "if's."

If I had a hundred million dollars, I'd be sitting on the patio of my beachfront Maui mansion right now, enjoying the tropical warmth rather than a freaking cold day in Oregon.

If''s are easy to conjure up. I'm interested in afterlife evidence that has some substance to it.

The Newsweek piece reviews D'Souza's flimsy arguments (human goodness, quantum physics, multiverse notion in cosmology -- a bunch of if's) and ends with mention of what could be a genuinely solid reason to believe in the survival of consciousness after death.

The AWARE project, a scientifically rigorous study of near-death experiences in hospitals around the world. Some results are expected next year. (But believers in the afterlife are already offering up reasons why AWARE won't come up with evidence of non-bodily consciousness.)

Not surprisingly, it doesn't sound like D'Souza talks at all about the many anecdotal stories in Eastern faiths -- Buddhism, Hinduism, and such -- about mystic transport out of the body and into higher realms of reality.

I'm not saying that these are any more credible than the Christian tale of Jesus' resurrection. But they are a lot more recent, so have a higher potential of being verified in some fashion (or, not).

I've been there and done that -- embracing a belief in soul travel and survival of personal consciousness after death. I hope it's true. I also hope that the Maui mansion pops into my life. I've got lots of hopes.

Having practiced various meditation disciplines for about forty years, my current approach is this: do nothing and see what happens.

Meaning, make nothing my meditative mantra. And assume that nothing needs to be done to find out what happens after death. What will be, will be. And what won't, won't.

I'm open to other possibilities.

That's why I enjoy churchlessness, not embracing any particular faith. I'll roll in whatever direction the evidence (or lack thereof) for life after death takes me.

Cioran's "A Short History of Decay" -- existentially bracing

Some books are like last night's 20 degree dog walk, much of it facing into a brisk wind. I hated it and I loved it. My overriding perception during the two miles was: This is marvelously real. And fucking cold!

E.M. Cioran's "A Short History of Decay" struck me the same way -- like an icy splash of reality. A book that demolishes so thoroughly, it leaves you on firm ground. 

After coming across quotations from it, and being intrigued, I found a used copy of the first (1975) English translation online. Cioran, a Romanian philosopher, wrote "A Short History of Decay" in French. It was published in 1949.

The back flap captures my reaction to the book perfectly.

"I regarded A Short History of Decay," the author recently wrote, "as an experiment in annihilation; or perhaps more precisely, a negative approach to life. But to my surprise, the great majority of its readers apparently found it invigorating. This is what me aware of the vital quality of Destruction."

Yes, this is a bleak book. Yet also a strangely uplifting one. Many passages resonated with my churchlessness.

Cioran's style has been called aphoristic. So it's possible to get a good sense of "A Short History of Decay" from this selection of passages that made me grab my yellow highlighter after being shocked by the author's jolt of existentiality.

Religious believers' inferences about God are egocentric

Wow, what a non-surprise! Religious believers consider that God favors whatever moral positions they do. Egocentricity rules.

Such is the finding of research conducted at the University of Chicago. 

The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God’s standards. “The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing,” they conclude. “This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.”

Well, this seems obvious.

It's difficult to see how the situation could be otherwise given that (1) there is no demonstrable evidence that God exists, and (2) supposedly holy books and people neither agree about what God favors, nor provide guidance on many contemporary ethical issues.

Even if someone is a devout fundamentalist Christian, believing the Bible is the inerrant word of God, how do they decide whether embryonic stem cell research gets a "good" or "bad" from the Big Man Upstairs?

Solution: God is made in our own moral image.

God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.

"Intuiting God's beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one's own beliefs," writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Yesterday our local newspaper reported that Oleksandr and Lyudmila Kozlov were found guilty of abusing three of their children with wires, cords, belts, and sticks, leaving bruises that lasted up to a week.

The story shows how religious zealots (the Kozlovs go to an evangelical Baptist church) can justify their own criminality by believing it is what God wants.

The couple relied on their faith throughout the four-day trial and represented themselves, citing God as their attorney.

...Lyudmila Kozlova read a Bible as Deputy District Attorney Nicole Theobald delivered the prosecution's closing argument Friday evening and asked the jury to find the defendants guilty on all counts.

...In their closing arguments, the Kozlovs cited their religion as the reason for their actions. They each took the stand to testify in their own defense.

...They read several Bible verses to the jury, and Kozlova compared their situation to that of Daniel in the Bible.

"He wasn't afraid of the king's decree" to worship only the king and not God, earning persecution and risking death, Kozlova said.

"Our law is the Bible which is above all law," she said. The Kozlovs punished their children according Scripture, they said.

"If we were not fulfilling this, we would have answered before God," Kozlova said.

Religious bullshit like this -- justifying child abuse in the name of God -- is another reason why New Age beliefs are much preferred to fundamentalism, even if both lack supportive evidence.

I don't recall ever hearing a believer in astrology say, "My chart said that I had to whip my child with a belt."

But when my wife was a psychotherapist in private practice, she'd regularly encounter Christian families where spousal and child abuse was considered to be divinely sanctioned since the husband was third in the line of command over his family after God and Jesus.

As the research shows, religion makes enlarged human egos even bigger. People go from saying "I believe X" to "God believes X and so do I."

Problem is, the God speaking to them is them.

New Age beliefs aren't as bad as fundamentalism

I like Roger Ebert's take on religion. He has a nuanced, properly skeptical attitude toward God and matters metaphysical.

During in all the endless discussions on several threads of this blog about evolution, intelligent design, God and the afterworld, now numbering altogether around 3,500 comments, I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist--which I am. If I were to say I don't believe God exists, that wouldn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know.

Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. I do not believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general evidently has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn't make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social.

But when I read Ebert's recent post that essentially equates New Age beliefs and fundamentalist creationism, I can't quite agree with him.

New Age beliefs are the Creationism of the Progressives. I move in circles where most people would find it absurd to believe that humans didn't evolve from prehistoric ancestors, yet many of these same people quite happily believe in astrology, psychics, reincarnation, the Tarot deck, the i Ching, and sooth-saying. Palmistry and phrenology have pretty much blown over.

If you were attending a dinner party of community leaders in Dallas, Atlanta, Omaha or Colorado Springs and the conversation turned to religion, a chill might fall on the room if you confessed yourself an atheist. Yet at a dinner party of the nicest and brightest in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and (especially) Los Angeles, if the hostess began to confide about past lives, her Sign and yours, and her healing crystals, it might not go over so well if you confessed you thought she was full of it.

Well, he's right about the last part.

I've ruffled some New Age feathers myself when someone notices my barely concealed smirk as he or she extols the virtues of an unproven homeopathic nostrum or makes some other claim that violates both common sense and current scientific understanding.

So I entirely concur with Ebert that non-religious claims about supernatural phenomena should be looked upon with the same skeptical eye as fundamentalist dogma.

But here's the thing:

There never has been a New Age holy war. I've never met a believer in astrology, reincarnation, channeling, and such who was out to convert others. The New Age types I know are much more open, non-dogmatic, and flexible than religious true believers.

Plus, almost everybody has some irrational (or non-rational) views of the world. My mother was highly intellectual. Yet when she talked about something she hoped would happen, often she'd add "knock on wood."

And then look around for some wood to rap her knuckles on. As a kid, I never thought much about this. It seemed natural and harmless enough. Which, it was.

For a long time I avoided walking under ladders -- another childhood superstition that I was exposed to. Even now I pause for a split second before doing this, a holdover behavior from my youth.

It doesn't bother me if someone believes in "weird" stuff. If you could see what goes on inside my head on any given day, there's no doubt that you'd say about much of it, "Wow. That's really weird."

To me, of course, what transpires in my psyche is normal. Because my thoughts, emotions, and whatnot are part of me, just as yours are part of you. Familiarity breeds non-weirdness.

Roger Ebert doesn't want a New Age believer or a creationist to be President.

My only purpose today is to state early and often that if a Presidential candidate believes early humans used saddles to ride on the backs of dinosaurs, as they are depicted at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, that candidate should not be elected President.

And if a candidate counts among close friends and advisors anyone in communication with the spirit world, that candidate should not be elected President.

And if a candidate accounts for the fact that humanoid and dinosaur bones are never found at the same level in the fossil record by evoking the action of sediment after the Great Flood, that candidate should not be President.

And if a candidate has a spirit guide, consults his or her Chart and takes more than a passing amusement in the horoscope, that candidate should not be elected President.

Personally, I'd be considerably happier with a candidate holding the second and fourth paragraph views, rather than the first and third.

Ebert correctly calls upon the mass media to "fact check" a politician's unfounded metaphysical beliefs just as strongly as his or her worldly statements.

But there's a difference between believing something that is opposed to scientific knowledge, and believing something that is outside the bounds of what is known to science.

Creationism is wrong, because evolution is correct. However, communicating with spirits is unproven, not wrong, because science hasn't shown that human consciousness doesn't continue to exist after a person dies.

I'd be more attracted to a Presidential candidate who has a bit of a wild and crazy side, than someone thoroughly rational, hard-headed, and tightly-controlled.

It's human to be weird. We've just got to keep it within bounds. And not demand that others share our weirdness.

Religion isn't horrible, just horribly misguided

While on a dog walk yesterday, I ran into a neighbor who I don't talk to very often. He started off our conversation in an appealing fashion:

"I read your blog regularly." Nice! But then he said, "Being a confirmed atheist, it's a bit too kind to religion for me. I prefer PZ Myers' blog."

Well, I told him that I also enjoy Pharyngula. Every day I take a look at Myers' posts that attack religion and support science. Hopefully without sounding too defensive, I did some defending of my own attitude toward spirituality.

"Yes, I'm not as rabid toward religion as Myers is. Partly that's because I used to be a true believer, and now I'm not, so I can understand the mindset of religious people. I mean, it's tough for me to say that blind faith is utterly ridiculous when I can remember how easily I embraced it."

I told my neighbor that when I got married to my second wife, Laurel, she would regularly ask me how I could believe such-and-such (that my guru was God in human form, for example).

I didn't have an answer for her that made much sense.

Yet that didn't affect my commitment to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings. I wasn't ready to release my attachment to the organization, and no amount of outside questioning was going to penetrate the illusory answers I'd embraced inside my head.

So I told my neighbor this was one reason I don't write as aggressively about the ridiculousness of religion as PZ Myers does.

People who are beginning to question their religious beliefs usually are turned off (or at least unaffected) by strong attacks on their faith. Similarly, an alcoholic isn't going to turn sober simply by someone screaming at him, "Drinking is ruining your life!"

My neighbor and I did agree on this: There is plenty of mystery left in the cosmos, notwithstanding the advances of science.

Recognizing how little we know about the essence of life, consciousness, and existence, a primal sense of awe is an authentic "spiritual" awareness (I don't like that word -- spiritual -- very much any more, but it's hard to come up with a good substitute).

Awe, of course, doesn't require religion.

As I told my neighbor, it only takes looking up at the star-filled sky on a cold, clear night to feel how right the world is, no matter how wrong it seems, so often.

I understand why passionate atheists and agnostics are so anti-religion. Reality is much better than make-believe, which is what religions offer.

The neighbor and I agreed that "whatever turns you on" is a fine guide to getting along. If someone is happier by believing he or she has been saved through the grace of God, Jesus, or a guru, that's fine.

However, there shouldn't be any attempt to coerce other people to share that blind faith. And "I feel," "I believe," "I hope," and similar expressions of uncertainty should be used when talking about a religion's teachings rather than "I know."

That's what makes religiosity so misguided: the unfounded assumption that an ultimate truth about reality has been revealed to the true believer. No, it hasn't. Without evidence all we can say is "no one knows."

You. Me. Scientists. Priests. Gurus. Saints. Sages. Everyone is in the dark about the answers to the Big Questions of the Cosmos.

Of course, you're free to disagree. Just don't ask me to agree with you without supplying some darn good reasons.

Bad news for this blog

Uh, oh. I could be in big trouble.

"God" isn't the best name for God

God. Just three letters in this word. But they sure pack a punch.

Countless people have died in the name of "God." Countless good works have been performed. Countless arguments have ensued over what this word signifies.

Dahlia Lithwick dives into this fascinating linguistic tangle in a Newsweek article, "Jesus vs. Allah -- the fight over God's secular title."

Pop quiz: which of the following names represents a non-sectarian, universal deity? Allah, Dios, Gott, Dieu, Elohim, Gud, or Jesus?

If you answered "none of the above," you are right as a matter of fact but not law. If you answered "Allah," you are right as a matter of law but not fact. And if you answered "Jesus," you might have been trying to filibuster David Hamilton, Barack Obama's first judicial nominee.

Hamilton ruled that prayer in the Indiana House of Representatives shouldn't use Christ's name because it favored a particular religion instead of being nonsectarian.

(For those, like me, who get confused about the difference between secular and sectarian: "secular" means worldly rather spiritual, "sectarian" means relating to a sect. So nonsectarian refers to a generalized religiosity, while secular is non-religious.)

It's hard to see how anyone could disagree with Hamilton's point: that "Jesus" is less universal than "God" or "Allah."

But Hamilton's ruling got him into a lot of trouble with fundamentalist Christians, even though he pointed out that the Arabic word "Allah" is used for "God" in Arabic translations of Jewish and Christian scriptures.

I face sort of a similar problem frequently on this blog. How do I refer to whatever (if anything) lies at the heart of the mystery of existence? "God" often sounds just fine to me.

However, the meaning I have in mind when I use this word is fairly close to how Spinoza and Einstein saw "God" -- as the sum total of the laws of nature, not a personal being who intervenes in the world from time to time.

Given this confusion between the various ways "God" can be used, the "One" is a word that has pluses to it. My favorite Greek philosopher, Plotinus, favored it. Along with "the Good." In his Enneads, he wrote:

But if the One -- name and reality expressed -- was to be taken positively it would be less clear than if we did not give it a name at all... Therefore, when you have said "The Good" do not add anything to it in your mind, for if you add anything, you will make it deficient by whatever you have added.

Meister Eckhart, a medieval Christian mystic, had much the same attitude. He preferred "Godhead" to "God," being a word that points to universality rather particularity.

God has many names in Scripture. But I say that if someone perceives something in God and gives it a name, then that is not God. God is above names and nature. We read of a good man who turned to God in his prayer and wished to give him a name. Then a brother said to him, "Be silent! You are dishonoring God!" There is no name we can devise for God.

For sure, since It seems that nothing is a lot closer to "God" than something.

Existence...what is it? Can't be something that exists within existence. Can't be the creator of stuff that exists. Existence is the root, existent things the branches.

That's why I like "the One" as a description of ultimacy. "Emptiness" is a pretty good word also, notwithstanding its Buddhist connotations. Also, "Wu." These terms are not only nonsectarian, they're also arguably secular. So, about as universal as you can get.