Church of the Churchless

Curse god freely. Then, laugh.

Praising god, what fun is there in that? But cursing god – or whatever higher power you don't believe in – this has a lot more entertainment value.

Over on the terrific science blog Pharyngula ("Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal"), I ran across a post about a Indian man who volunteered to be put to death by a Tantrik magician.

On live TV, no less.

The laughing fellow on the left is Sanal Edamaruku, president of Rationalist International and atheist. The cranky old man in the robes on the right is Pandit Surinder Sharma, a self-described Tantrik Magician. The scene is in a studio on Indian television, where the magician is trying to kill the atheist with sorcery. Sharma had said he could kill anyone with sympathetic magic inflicted on a doll made of dough, and that he could accomplish this in a mere three minutes … so Edamaruku confidently offered himself as a victim. The old fake went on for hours and failed.

You can watch this display of religious superstition demolished by reality on YouTube. The first attempt to kill Edamaruku is documented in two videos, here and here.

Then Sharma took a crack at plying his black magic at night, when it supposedly would be more effective. The result was the same.

A laughing Edamaruku. That's what I enjoyed the most about this show. The skeptic's laughter.

So many people are infected with a fear of god. Or of guru. Or of some other metaphysical power that they believe can raise you up or cast you down as it likes.

The best response to this nonsense is bring it on. I curse god a lot, along with the guru who initiated me thirty-seven years ago. Both have ignored me, so I figure they deserve more than a little profanity.

Try it yourself. It's liberating. Whatever religious entity, person, symbol, or such you used to have the highest regard for (or maybe still do), curse it to the limit.

Now, I suppose it could be argued that this negative attention to religiosity reflects a lingering belief. I don't go around cursing leprechauns, because I've never had any faith in them.

But I think it's healthy, and an interesting experiment in self-awareness, to see what happens when you call a previously revered divinity every obscene name in your vocabulary. If you feel any hesitation or anxiety, some belief is still mixed in with your faithlessness.

When my computer acts up, and I call it a fucking piece of shit, I don't worry that it's going to bite me back.

However, the first few times I said this to my long-dead guru, the thought came: What if this pisses him off and he really does have godlike powers?

Well, I'm still here. Just like Edamaruku.

I figure that if the supposed divinities I curse (sometimes I cast obscenities at Jesus, God, and Allah also) don't like how I'm talking to them, they can damn well make an appearance in my consciousness and tell me off in person.

So far nobody's showed up. Guess they're either pansies or non-existent.

I enjoyed the comments on the Pharyngula post. Here's some of my favorites (#15, #21, #27, #41).

If a thousand magicians tried this a thousand times each, and in a single demonstration the target suffered a sudden heart attack, this would become the event many declare to be proof that the magic works. Much like prayer really.

Wow - apparently I have this amazingly strong force called "atheism" protecting me, and I don't even have to worship it. All I have to do is NOT believe in any god at all. I feel powerful! The tide is turning...

This is true, you know - Sanal was protected by something, even though it isn't really a god and Sanal doesn't really worship it. I call it "reality".

We can all do the same, and I have a number of times. When a believer is assaulting my ear hole with the supposed power of god to bring down lightning bolts from the heavens on unbelievers, or some other load of bull, I've called on their god to do exactly that, right now, within that specific minute. And I stand there waiting smiling. Amazingly, they step back like they actually expect something to happen. Of course, nothing happens. I remind them that dying 20 years from now of a natural death does not count. Since it's demonstrated their god has no actual power when nothing happens, all they can do is bleat "blasphemy".

I abandon all hope in my book shelves

It's the only line from Dante's Divine Comedy that I know: "Abandon all hope, you who enter here." (one of various translations of what's inscribed on the gate of hell)

For me, it's what I feel nowadays when I peruse the spiritual, mystical, metaphysical, and religious volumes in my book collection.

I used to read these books voraciously, devouring them for insights into the Meaning of It All. I went through phases where I'd study a single subject for weeks or months.

Sant Mat. Rumi. Meister Eckhart. Other medieval Christian mystics. The "desert fathers." Zen. Taoism. Plotinus. Emerson. To name a few.

This morning I looked for an inspirational book to read before I meditated. My eyes ran up and down the shelves. I didn't feel inspired by any of them. At least, not in the way I used to be.

I feel this is a positive sign. Of what, I don't know. Let's just call it a positive sign that doesn't point in any particular direction.

Which is why I see it as positive. Every spiritual/religious book I've ever read, including the three that I've written myself, contains ideas that I don't agree with.

These discordances are like off-key musical notes, or stumbles in a dance. I used to be able to ignore them and enjoy the quasi-harmony of the rest of the composition. But now I look at a title and remember, "There's some ridiculous stuff in there."

Of course, what's ridiculous to me might strike you as perfectly reasonable. But I'm not you. All I can be is me.

Who, like you, is someone unique – when it comes to seeking an understanding of what life is about. This uniqueness makes it impossible to find a suit of spiritual clothes that will fit anyone perfectly. Each of us needs to do at least some mixing and matching, and maybe even sewing from scratch.

An example: I find Buddhism appealing, by and large. However, lurking in almost every Buddhist book are dogmas that turn me off.

Such as the need for a guru or master. It always surprises me when I'm reading along, enjoying a Buddhist discussion of how truth can only be found within through direct experience, and then the author adds that this can only happen if you submit yourself to another person.

Daisetz Teitaro (D.T.) Suzuki in "The Zen Koan as a Means of Attaining Enlightenment."

That the Zen experience takes place at all as such, and is formulated finally as a system of Zen intuitions, is principally due to the master's guiding, however enigmatical it may seem; for without it the experience itself is impossible.

Julia Lawless and Judith Allan in "Beyond Words: Dzogchen Made Simple."

The teacher is considered more important than the Buddha, Dharma, or Sangha, for without the teacher there would be no Buddha or access to the lineage of Buddhas, no Dharma, no teachings, and no Sangha, or community of practitioners, for these cannot exist in isolation without the master. The teacher in fact is the Buddha, Dharma and Sangha and the gateway to realization.

Clang! Stumble! Disharmonies. These words just don't ring true to me anymore.

I'll never find a perfect book. Or a perfect teacher, guru, or master. And this realization feels perfectly fine to me.

Magicians, gurus, and magical thinking

Magic is so, well, magical. We see, but we can't believe our eyes. A rabbit comes out of a hat. But I saw the hat was empty! And nothing could have been put into it!

Yet there's the rabbit, coming out of the hat. Go figure.

Which most of us can't, because magic tricks usually are closely guarded secrets – from non-magicians, at least.

Adam Gopnik wrote a fascinating piece for The New Yorker, "The Real Work," about the practice and philosophy of magic (the full story doesn't appear to be available online, just an abstract).

About all an outsider may say is that the surprising thing about most magical methods is not how ingeniously complex they are but how extremely stupid they are – stupid, that is, in the sense of being completely obvious once you grasp them.

…We will ourselves both to overlook the obvious chicanery and to overrate the apparent obstacles. Or we imagine that an elaborate bit of trickery couldn't be achieved by stupidly obvious means. People participate in their own illusions.

That is why a magician's technique must be invisible; if it became visible, we would be insulted by its obviousness. Magic is possible because magicians are smart. And what they're smart about is mainly how dumb we are, how limited in vision, how narrow in imagination, how resourceless in conjecture, how routinized in our theories of the world, how deadened to possibility.

Now, this may sound like the definition of a guru, someone who opens us up to a broader conception of reality, breaking down the barriers between mundane materiality and magical mystery.

However, few people (if any) believe that a magician is doing something truly magical. They know there's a trick involved. The magic lies in the invisibility of the magician's craft, much of which is founded on imperfection.

…the Too Perfect theory says, basically, that any trick that simply astounds will give itself away…What makes a trick work is not the inherent astoundingness of its effect but the magician's ability to suggest any number of possible explanations, none of them perfect, and none of them quite obvious.

…At the heart of the Too Perfect theory is the insight that magic works best when the illusions it creates are open-ended enough to invite the viewer into a credibly imperfect world. Magic is the dramatization of explanation more than it is the engineering of effects.

In every art, the Too Perfect theory helps explain why people are more convinced by an imperfect, "distressed" illusion than by a perfectly realized one…The magician teaches us that romance lies in an unstable contest of minds that leaves us knowing it's a trick but not which one it is, and being impressed by the other person's ability to let the trickery go on.

Frauds master our minds; magicians, like poets and lovers, engage them in a permanent maze of possibilities.

When you talk to people who have deep faith in a guru, which described me at one time, they won't admit that the guru is a magician. Rather, he or she is considered to be a miracle worker – someone who genuinely possesses supernatural powers.

Yet these powers are never displayed. At least, not in a fashion that would allow them to be scientifically assessed.

So the magician and the guru end up sharing the ambiguity spoken of above that keeps the onlooker enthralled. Illusion or reality? Fake or true? What's really going on here?

Disciples usually don't consciously think this way, of course. They're enthralled with the show, which, depending on how you look at it, consists either of spiritual sleight of hand or a display of genuine mystic realization.

I've been to India twice, in 1977 and 1998. Each time I saw an impressive presentation of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas guru. You have to see it to believe it. That's also the nature of magic.

During my first visit, I attended a bhandara (spiritual gathering) of maybe a hundred thousand people – I have no idea how many. (Some details are in my "God's here, but I've got to go" post.)

There's nothing like this in the West. A papal appearance doesn't come close to the fervent devotional atmosphere. Most Indians look upon the guru as god. Imagine Jesus giving a sermon in person to a gigantic throng of Christian believers, and you've got some idea of what a bhandara is like.

The energy is electric. The mystic magic palpable.

Yet here's the thing: with a skilled magician of the usual sort, the audience is led to believe that no trick is being performed, because the actions of the magician are so natural. Gopnik writes about a card trick:

The story, as usually told, emphasizes Vernon's search for "naturalness," for methods of card manipulation that would look entirely real, even under scrutiny. The deeper meaning of the myth, though, is that the magician is one of the few true artists left on earth, for whom the mastery of technique means more than anything that might be gained by it. He center-deals but makes no money – doesn't even win prestige points – because nobody knows he's doing it.

…We could watch Horowitz's fingers on the keyboard as we listened to the music; if we could admire Vernon's fingers on the deck as he did the trick, he wouldn't be doing it right.

But with a guru, the audience is being treated to a form of anti-magic. Onlookers are led to believe that a spiritual trick is being performed even though none is in evidence.

It's like an old joke that I remember from my high school days.

"Want to see a trick?"
"Sure."
"OK." (pause) "Want to see it again?"
"You didn't do anything!"
"So you think…want to see the trick again?"

On the school bus this got a laugh (the first couple of dozen times we told the joke to each other, at least). When people unreservedly embrace a guru's anti-magic, though, it isn't so funny, because the consequences of excessive guru worship can be serious.

Another blogger shared "Top Ten Myths About Gurus." Most involve magical thinking.

There's nothing wrong with magic. We just need to recognize what it is, and what it isn't; when we should look upon it as real, and when we shouldn't.

Like what you believe, believe what you like

On big religious days like Easter, the faithful get to hang out with other believers and enjoy a pleasing group validation of shared beliefs.

Today our local newspaper had a story about how 70 Christians turned out for a sunrise service in the Oregon rain and cold. A woman was quoted:

This is a good way to start Easter – with other believers.

Sure, why not?

If I could find 70 other people who agreed with whatever the heck it is I believe in – an amorphous faithless faith that changes frequently – I'd love to hear them tell me, "Brian, you're so absolutely right!"

Ah, music to my ears. But the reality is that I have to sing my own tune to myself if I want to enjoy a hymn that trumpets the power and glory of Brian'ism.

This can be a dilemma for the churchless.

Humans are social beings. We like to associate with people who validate us. Religions offer a time and place for the faithful to come together and tell each other, "We've got the truth that other deluded souls lack."

Problem is, on the next block there's another religious gathering taking place where the same thing is being said. And the truths contradict each other.

So I've concluded that spiritual truth isn't what we should be looking for. Rather, it is spiritual like. (In an earlier post I talked about the difference between "I'm right" and "I like.")

I like raspberries.

For breakfast today I had a bowl of oatmeal with some Oregon raspberries on top. I didn't need anyone else to tell me that I liked what I ate. And no one could have talked me out of my sensation of Yum, good.

Conversely, sometimes my wife – who believes I should be eating more different types of vegetables – will ask me, "Why don't you like brussels sprouts?" (or turnips, or cooked cabbage, or…)

I never know what to say, other than "Because I don't like them."

I like what I like because I like it. I don't like what I don't like. Sure, I like it when others like what I like. But if someone else doesn't like what I like, I still like it.

Yesterday a woman told me about an Easter service where mesh was put over a cross and members of the church brought flowers to stick into the display. "Sounds lovely," I said. "It was," she agreed.

Terrific. I've got no problem with people liking religion. There's a lot to like about the music, the atmosphere, the feeling of community, the volunteerism, the uplifting messages.

When it comes to like, no reasons are required. Everyone should feel free to like what they believe and to believe what they like, just as we all should like what we eat and eat what we like.

In "The Tao is Silent" (which I like a lot), Raymond Smullyan quotes some poems.

The fiddler plays.
Though no one listens,
The fiddler plays.

Although not consciously trying to guard
the rice field from intruders,
The scarecrow is not after all
standing to no purpose.

Most people hate egotists.
They remind them of themselves.
I love egotists.
They remind me of me.

You ask me why I live in
these blue hills.
I smile, but do not answer.

Admirable is he, who when he
sees lightning, does not say
"Life goes by like a flash."

Life, and religion, and relationships, and philosophy – everything becomes much simpler when we realize that I like what I like, and so do you.

Once we try to go beyond, into whys and wherefores, we enter complex territory. Stumbles abound. Stammering predominates. Explain yourself! bounces off a brick wall of What can I say?

I'm a defender of truth. But not of like, which doesn't need defending.

I consider that there's a shared reality, the province of science, where good reasons need to be given. Once religion crosses the border into "I know…" rather than "I like…" it needs to be prepared to justify its truth claims.

So if you enjoyed the love of Jesus yesterday, bless you. If you didn't, bless you. More importantly, bless yourself, whatever your religious inclination (or lack thereof) may be.

If the only thing we like is to like what others like, will we ever like anything for longer than the time it takes to move from one other to another other?

A better approach is to like what we like just to like it. Especially when it comes to religion and spirituality, because there aren't any reasons to be found here – just likes disguised as "because's."

What, it’s Easter?

After I bought a cup of coffee and some muffins this afternoon, the clerk said "Have a nice Easter." I thought, What, it's Easter?

I'd completely lost track of what tomorrow was. I started to say, "I'd forgotten about it. Guess that shows how religious I am."

But I decided to bite my tongue and simply say, "Thanks."

Easter means absolutely nothing to me. Probably somebody in the world celebrates a memorable day in Zeus' existence. The two celebrations are equally senseless to my churchless self.

Yet I realize that other people find religious rituals and holidays deeply meaningful. They're welcome to their beliefs, as unfounded as they are to me.

We all need something to help us cope with life – which is full of uncertainty, pain, suffering, distress, unhappiness.

Coffee picks me up when I feel down. Others go to church, read the Bible, pray, or visualize Jesus' love for them. Personally, I think a latte is a better choice.

The Jehovah's Witnesses who knocked on our door this morning don't agree, though. I was in the midst of doing something important: eating a pancake and surfing the Internet. When I saw who was standing on our front porch, I felt a quiver of faithless indignation.

A woman handed me a leaflet, while a much older man in a suit stood to one side. "Hello, we'd like to invite you to a celebration of Jesus tomorrow."

I began rehearsing putdowns in my mind.

If she says one thing more…If she asks me if I've found Jesus…I'll tell her what she can do with her brochure…Yeah, bring it on sister…Just one more word…You knocked on the wrong door this Easter eve.

But she just smiled. Said, "thank you." And walked away.

Good move. The Jehovah's Witnesses have learned something. Or maybe they have a notation next to our address: "Tread lightly with these pagans."

Whatever, I went back to my pancake and laptop wishing them well. They were spending the day acting on their beliefs. Not in a pushy fashion, at least not with me. They simply wanted to spread the Good Word.

Which isn't so different from what I do on this blog, except I don't search people out.

Fresh from seeing Barack Obama yesterday, I'm in a pretty mellow mood. I agree with him that we need to do a much better job of breaking down the distinctions that plague this country.

Red states, blue states. Conservative, progressive. Faithful, faithless. Moral, immoral. Right, wrong. Patriotic, unpatriotic.

It isn't that we have to blend into some sort of featureless amorphous mass of oneness, losing our individuality.

It's more that believers need to do their best to look through the eyes of unbelievers, and vice versa. Ditto for blacks and whites, rich and poor, Republicans and Democrats, young and old, men and woman, etc. etc. etc.

In the bread store I paused before I blurted out what was going to be an impulsive rejoinder from my perspective. I realized that I had no idea how the clerk viewed Easter.

Maybe it meant a lot to her. Or maybe nothing, like me. Regardless, there was no need to say anything but "thank you." That's what I told the Jehovah's Witnesses also.

Have a nice Easter. Whatever it means to you.

Brains vs. the universe

So who would come out on top in this contest? Might as well put it on pay per view, for more dramatic effect. Brains vs. the Universe – ultimate smackdown!

My bet is on the universe. It's a lot bigger.

And, when you think about it, smarter than brains. Because brains are part of the universe, and the universe is the whole deal (that's why it's called a universe).

I got to pondering this in the course of leafing through a book I'd already read, "Creation Revisited" by Peter Atkins.

Atkins is a chemistry professor at Oxford University. So his take on a scientific explanation of the universe is pleasingly different from that of physicists who write Big Picture books like this one.

But that really isn't my point here.

I was inserting post-it notes by passages that I might summarize in a future blog post, when I came across a thought that stood out so much for its stimulating provocativeness, I honored the page's post-it with an asterisk.

Previous to that page, Atkins was pondering why mathematics is so successful in describing physical reality. Does mathematics merely mirror physical reality? Or are they actually the same?

By weak deep structuralism I shall mean that mathematics and physical reality merely share the same logical structure and mathematics is a mirror that can be held up to nature. By strong deep structuralism I shall mean that mathematics and physical reality do not merely share the same logical structure but are actually the same. In other words, according to the hypothesis of strong deep structuralism, physical reality is mathematics and mathematics is physical reality.

Now, readers who are deep into spirituality should keep in mind that Atkins keeps referring to "physical reality." True, his overall thesis is that God or any other supernatural force isn't necessary to explain the universe.

I just want us to focus on an evident reality: you and I are physical beings in a physical world. We may be something more than that also. Maybe.

What isn't to be doubted is that, crudely speaking, brains are made of meat. And brains are what we think with – about God, spirituality, the universe, what brains are made of, and lots of other stuff.

Including, mathematics.

Getting to my asterisked, post-it noted page, Atkins observes that we (meaning mathematicians, not me) "can write down the Pythagoras theorem for a space of 1000 spatial dimensions."

But as we do not appear to live in a space of 1000 spatial dimensions, this expression does not seem to have a counterpart in reality…So at first sight it looks as though strong deep structuralism cannot work.

Here's where things got most interesting for me.

Because just as people can envision mathematical propositions that make some sense, but have no apparent counterpart in really real reality, so can they envision religious or spiritual beliefs of the same sort.

Ideas that are self-consistent. Just not consistent with how the universe seems to be.

Atkins suggests one way of reviving deep structuralism: by weakening it.

We could resort to weak deep structuralism, assume that mathematics can throw up a froth of many classes of object, and then accept that only some of those objects have their physical counterparts. That is weak-weak deep structuralism.

He presses on, coming up with another alternative that produced an intuitive oh yeah! in me. Not because I totally understand what Atkins is saying, or what he's saying is right.

Just that it merits an oh yeah! since it's got a ring of rightness to me.

We may have to distinguish between the universe, which must presumably be self-consistent globally, and a local entity, a brain, which can generate mathematical structures free of the constraint that they need to be consistent with the structure of every electron and the motion of every planet.

The mathematical structure we call the universe may have to be simultaneously, globally, and perhaps nonlocally self-consistent. Our mathematics, the statements we make on paper, need in some sense be only locally self-consistent.

Yeah, I know. This sounds so scientist'ish, so intellectual. But really, what Atkins is saying is deeply mystical and Taoist.

What you can say about the universe, that isn't It. The universe has its Way, and then there's our way. The two are linked, obviously, because we're part and parcel of the universe.

However, all of our theorizing, our hypothesizing, our speaking to ourselves and others, our theologies, our metaphysical systems, our mathematics – all that only has to be consistent with our limited view of the universe to win a stamp of approval.

Meanwhile, I picture the Universe As A Whole sitting in its corner (not that it has a corner, because it's everything, including my imaginary smackdown), smiling.

Sort of how, when I go to the dog park, I see a Mastiff looking at a big bad Chihuahua when it runs up to the much larger animal with a Woof, Woof, I can kick your butt!

Yeah, right.

Brains aren't the universe. We've got to reminding ourselves of that. That way lies humility. And a reverence for mystery, rather than premature explanation.

 

 

 

Obama paints a pleasing shade of religious gray

There's too much black and white in the world. Especially when it comes to religion.

Believers adore crisp, clean demarcations between right and wrong, faith and faithlessness, truth and falsity, sacred and profane.

Me, I'm increasingly into gray. Not that there's anything wrong with black and white. After all, their mixture produces the subtle shades that I like.

Politicians, though, are under a lot of pressure to stake firm positions. "You're either with us, or against us" is a simplistic example.

So this morning I was eager to read Barack Obama's speech on race and religion to see how he handled the controversy over inflammatory remarks made by his spiritual mentor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright.

Since Obama has known Wright for more than twenty years, he couldn't claim ignorance of the pastor's America bashing. If Obama rejected Wright now, he'd look hypocritical. But if he accepted him, he'd look unpatriotic.

Solution: paint those shades of gray. Which is the color of the real world, mostly (as contrasted with the fictional black and white domain inhabited by dogmatic fundamentalists and rabid politicians).

I have already condemned, in unequivocal terms, the statements of Reverend Wright that have caused such controversy. For some, nagging questions remain. Did I know him to be an occasionally fierce critic of American domestic and foreign policy? Of course. Did I ever hear him make remarks that could be considered controversial while I sat in church? Yes. Did I strongly disagree with many of his political views? Absolutely - just as I'm sure many of you have heard remarks from your pastors, priests, or rabbis with which you strongly disagreed.

… But the truth is, that isn't all that I know of the man. The man I met more than twenty years ago is a man who helped introduce me to my Christian faith, a man who spoke to me about our obligations to love one another; to care for the sick and lift up the poor. He is a man who served his country as a U.S. Marine; who has studied and lectured at some of the finest universities and seminaries in the country, and who for over thirty years led a church that serves the community by doing God's work here on Earth - by housing the homeless, ministering to the needy, providing day care services and scholarships and prison ministries, and reaching out to those suffering from HIV/AIDS.

I was a member of a "church" (loosely speaking) for thirty-five years. Every Sunday I'd sit and listen to speakers say things that I didn't agree with, or believe in.

Yet I stayed involved with the organization, because for a long time the pluses outweighed the minuses. Then, the equation changed. That was a personal calculation, not anything mathematically objective.

Understand: this isn't a post about how marvelous Barack Obama is, though I support him. I simply want to point out how Obama managed to steer clear of the this or that, my way or the highway fallacy.

Reverend Wright isn't all good or all bad. Neither is his Trinity United Church of Christ, Christianity, and religion as a whole. Or, the United States, Barack Obama, me, you, and everything and everyone else in the world.

It was refreshing to read a speech by a politician that recognized this so clearly.

And this helps explain, perhaps, my relationship with Reverend Wright. As imperfect as he may be, he has been like family to me. He strengthened my faith, officiated my wedding, and baptized my children. Not once in my conversations with him have I heard him talk about any ethnic group in derogatory terms, or treat whites with whom he interacted with anything but courtesy and respect. He contains within him the contradictions - the good and the bad - of the community that he has served diligently for so many years.

I can no more disown him than I can disown the black community. I can no more disown him than I can my white grandmother - a woman who helped raise me, a woman who sacrificed again and again for me, a woman who loves me as much as she loves anything in this world, but a woman who once confessed her fear of black men who passed by her on the street, and who on more than one occasion has uttered racial or ethnic stereotypes that made me cringe.

These people are a part of me. And they are a part of America, this country that I love.

I don't know how Obama's speech will play across America. I liked it, but I enjoy nuance. As a New York Times story said, Obama took a gamble on trying to bridge a divide when so many voters want a politician to stand on one side or the other of an issue.

Presidential politics usually requires candidates to either wholly adopt or reject positions and people. Mr. Obama did neither with his pastor, rejecting his most divisive statements but also filling in the picture of Mr. Wright and his church.

"The church contains in full the kindness and cruelty, the fierce intelligence and the shocking ignorance, the struggles and successes, the love and, yes, the bitterness and biases that make up the black experience in America," Mr. Obama said.

It was one of several times that Mr. Obama seemed to be quite purposefully arguing two ideas at once — another dangerous tactic in presidential politics, in which statements are sifted for hints of contradiction and every speech is an attack ad waiting to happen. He admitted that his pastor is both a divisive figure and an inspiring one. He said that his candidacy should not be viewed through a merely racial lens, though racial reconciliation is one of the reasons he ran.

Like I said back in 2005, "Reality is shades of gray." I sounded a bit like Obama with my talk of black and white, red states and blue states, rich and poor.

I hope he'll be our next president. But if he isn't, may whoever leads the United States share his understanding that nothing is wholly this, or wholly that.

Subtle gradations make the world go world, not firm divisions.

The Mystical Mind of God

Last week I got a present: an email from someone who attached a wonderfully written essay, "The Mystical Mind of God."

I asked for permission to share it. Whatever you wish, came the reply, though please, if you do decide to do something, leave no footprints to my door.

So the author is anonymous. Here's the piece in Word and PDF formats. It's thoughtful and well worth reading.

Download the_mystical_mind_of_god.doc
Download the_mystical_mind_of_god.pdf

I enjoyed…

--the emphasis on Western mystics and thinkers, who tend to get short shrift in mystically-inclined writings

--how the author weaves together insights from theology, philosophy, psychology, and science

--the nicely fashioned prose, reflecting a pleasing blend of seriousness and "lightness of being"

--the observation that The Cloud of Unknowing was "written anonymously by a late fourteenth century monk (anonymous because his skin wasn't fireproof)."

--that the path to God begins and ends at an accessible point: now

Regarding the last point, I don't know if it's true. But it sure seems more plausible to me than all the religious teachings that would have us wend our way to God through time and space.

What do you think?

A critique of Ken Wilber and “Integral Spirituality”

I've got to keep my churchless credibility intact. I don't want to sound like I've become a Ken Wilber groupie after speaking favorably about his "Integral Spirituality" in some recent posts – here, here, and here.

So now that I've finished the book, and visited (or re-visited) some web sites that criticize Wilber's Integral "theory of everything," I'll share what I don't like about Wilber's take on reality.

Main objection: his complex theories about how everything in existence fits together strike me as much more reflective of the inside of Ken Wilber's head than of how the universe really works.

That might explain why too much Wilberian reading leaves me with a metaphorical headache. I find his writings hugely interesting and provocative, but taken as a whole they seem disconnected from the living, breathing world.

Given that the Integral Approach purports to have discovered the links between subjective and objective reality, spirituality and science, metaphysics and physics, and other seeming opposites, the discordant feeling I get from his writings is an intuitive clue that something is wrong in Wilberland.

Last night I gave a presentation on Taoism to a community college Comparative Religion class. I read some excerpts from the introduction to Eva Wong's "Lieh-Tzu" (a great book).

She talks about the three main traditional Taoist writings in a fashion that I could never apply to Wilber's prose.

Thus, while the Lao-tzu is the voice of serious wisdom and the Chuang-tzu is the voice of crazy wisdom, the Lieh-tzu is the voice of humorous wisdom.

The philosophy in the Lao-tzu comes from above us; we can admire it and hope to follow it, but it is hard to reach. The philosophy in the Chuang-tzu comes from a world that is very different from our own; we may try to grasp it, but it is too elusive to catch. The philosophy in the Lieh-tzu comes from where we are. It speaks to us at our level and talks about experiences we can relate to and understand.

When I read Wilber, I don't feel like his writing is serious, crazy, or humorous. Nor does it reflect a lofty, elusive, or everyday perspective.

It's abstract, conceptual, intellectual. Even though Wilber tries to mix in attempts at poetic mysticism, inevitably it comes off sounding fake to me. Here's a long-winded example from the final chapter.

Throw the circle as wide as you can, find a view from 50,000 feet, be inclusive using an integral pluralism and not just a pluralism (which soon fractures, fragments, and falls apart, leaving only the ego to rule), extend your compassionate embrace to the men and women doing the extraordinarily wonderful work in all of those fields and disciplines (covered by the 8 methodologies), reach out and bring their phenomenal worlds into the map of your own world, stretch your mind until it touches infinity and begins to radiate with the brilliance of the overmind, expand the beating of your heart to unleash its inherent desire to love every single thing and person and event in the entire Kosmos, so that you love all the way to infinity and all the way back, smiling when you actually, finally, amazingly see the radiant Face of God in the 2^nd –person (or the ultimate Thou as infinite love, arising then as the ultimate We), even as your own Original Face is God in the 1^st -person (or the ultimate I-I as this moment's pure nondual Witnessing-Emptiness), knowing too that the entire manifest universe – the Great Holarchy of beings all the way up, all the way down – is God in the 3^rd –Person (or the ultimate It as the entire Kosmos): I and Thou and We and It, all brought together in the radiant contours of the simple Suchness of this and every moment, as you feel into the texture of the Kosmos and find your very Self in every warp and woof of a universe now arising as the radiance of the Spirit that can never be denied, any more than you can deny the awareness of this page, knowing, too, that Spirit and the awareness of this page are one and the same, and certainly not-two, so that you realize – with the great sages East and West, Lao Tzu to Asanga to Shankara to Paul to Augustine to Parmenides to Plotinus to Descartes to Schelling to Teresa and Lady Tsogyal – the ultimate secret of the spiritual world, namely, that fully enlightened and ever-present divine awareness is not hard to attain but impossible to avoid.

Whew. Wilber's editor should be ashamed of letting that single sentence into the book. Stream of consciousness writing is a poor substitute for a genuinely elevated vision.

Or at least, a vision that sounds elevated to me. Such as Lao Tzu's considerably briefer description of ultimate reality.

Know That which is beyond all beginnings
and you will know everything here and now

Know everything in this moment
and you will know the Eternal Tao

I think this is what Wilber is trying to say. But Lao Tzu shows you can say it simply, not complexly.

There's a lot not to like in Wilber's Integral Vision, as summarized in the run-on sentence above. I've written an essay about what he gets wrong about Plotinus, one of the "sages" he cites as supporting his integral philosophy.

Actually, Plotinus doesn't. Nor does Lao Tzu, in my opinion. Or Teresa, Augustine, Descartes, Parmenides , or almost all of the other people he mentions.

Wilber has a notoriously shallow understanding of the sources he cites in his books.

He implies to the reader that scholars share his take on a certain domain of human knowledge, but this frequently isn't true. So how is it possible to integrate the world's wisdom in many different areas when you don't really understand those separate domains of knowledge?

Again, what rubbed me most the wrong way in "Integral Spirituality" is that Wilber's description of the ideal spiritual practitioner sounds remarkably like…prepare for no big surprise…Ken Wilber.

Often people say that Wilber wants to be a guru, with all that this entails (fawning followers, unquestioning loyalty, and so on). I don't know if that's true, but his book does nothing to dispel that impression.

It's filled with mentions of his other writings, his Integral Institute, his efforts to show how other spiritual leaders/authors lack the all-encompassing vision of How-Things-Really-Are that Wilber possesses.

Now, part of me – maybe all of me – wishes that Ken Wilber possesses the keys to the universe that he believes he has. Because he and I are similar in many ways: long-time meditators, with an intellectual bent. I like his thesis that thinking about the cosmos (or Kosmos) is a significant aspect of spiritual practice, since I do a lot of that.

Indeed, perusing his Integral Life Practice Matrix, it sure seems like I should be enlightened by now. I'm doing a bunch of the core things that Wilber says lead to integral understanding.

Weightlifting. T'ai Chi. Qi Gong. Yoga. Reading & Study. Taking Multiple Perspectives. Centering Prayer. Therapy (well, I'm married to a psychotherapist, so maybe that counts).

But you know, somehow I suspect that I can keep on doing these things for the rest of my life, including studying more Ken Wilber books, and I'm still going to be clueless about the nature of the cosmos.

Though Lao Tzu offers me a bit of hope.

To rule the state, have a known plan
To win a battle, have an unknown plan
To gain the universe, have no plan at all

I enjoyed "Integral Spirituality." There's a lot of food for thought in the 300 or so pages. However, I liked various pieces of the book much more than the whole Integral Vision. That leaves me lukewarm, if not cold.

In this month's issue of Scientific American there's an article about how the accelerating universe is wiping out traces of its own origins. Eventually the big bang is going to be a mystery to future civilizations. The article ends with:

Most important, although we are certainly fortunate to live at a time when the observational pillars of the big bang are all detectable, we can easily envisage that other fundamental aspects of the universe are unobservable today.

What have we already lost? Rather than being self-satisfied, we should feel humble. Perhaps someday we will find that our current careful and apparently complete understanding of the universe is seriously wanting.

Ken Wilber, are you listening?

Here's some Wilber-critiquing web sites that I found today. Some of the ideas in this post were stimulated by the generally thoughtful writings available on these links.

"Ken Wilber is losing it," Michel Bauwens
Integral World (home page)
"Telling the Story As If It Were True," Frank Visser
"The Wild West Wilber Report," Frank Visser
"Critique of Ken Wilber," David Christopher Lane
"Critiques of Ken Wilber"
"The Age of Wilberius," Geoffrey Falk
"Norman Einstein: The Dis-Integration of Ken Wilber," Geoffrey Falk
"A Critique of Ken Wilber's Integral Method," M. Alan Kazlev
" Bald Ambition," Jeff Meyerhoff
"The Intersubjective Meditator," Andrew P. Smith

(Just noticed that all of the critiquers, and Wilber himself, are men. Is believing that you've uncovered the secrets of the spiritual universe, or that you're capable of criticizing the uncoverer, a male thing? Seemingly.)

“How could you stop believing?”

I get asked that question a lot. Not often so explicitly, but implicitly. People wonder how, when I used to believe so strongly in certain religious teachings, now I don't.

The implication is that my "losing faith" was a betrayal of some sort – that I discarded the spiritual system that I once clung to so tightly for no good reason, like a spouse dumping his or her partner on a whim.

Well, what these people don't understand is that we all grow. Or at least, we should. Not in height and, disturbingly, girth, but in spiritual maturity.

Which relates to stages of human development, a subject of a previous post. I shared a diagram of Ken Wilber's compendium of developmental stages.

This is an abbreviated version, ten stages rather than twelve, that I came across today while reading Wilber's "Integral Spirituality." (He uses colors to identify the levels.)

1. Infrared – archaic, sensorimotor
2. Magenta – magical-animistic
3. Red – egocentric, power, magic-mythic
4. Amber – mythic, ethnocentric, traditional
5. Orange – rational, worldcentric, pragmatic, modern
6. Green – pluralistic, multicultural, postmodern
7. Teal – beginning integral, low vision-logic, systemic
8. Turquoise -- global mind, high vision-logic, higher mind
9. Indigo – para-mind, trans-global, illumined mind
10. Violet – meta-mind and overmind

Now, I don't know what all of these levels mean. And this isn't just because I'm unfamiliar with the terminology.

A bigger problem is that you have to actually be at a stage to really know what that level is like. Sort of like describing higher mathematics to a toddler. The child may nod when you explain calculus, but they haven't actually gotten it.

When we move to a higher stage, the same phenomena appear different to us. It isn't so much a question of losing faith in them as it is seeing them from a fresh perspective.

Do you remember what it was like to realize there's no Santa Claus? I do. I learned to read early. I distinctly recall holding a plastic toy and reading "Made in Japan" in small letters at the bottom of it.

I told my mother, "How could this be made in Japan when Santa Claus brought it?" Without hesitation she told me the truth. "There's no Santa Claus."

Wilber says that Santa Claus is a reality at the Magenta level. Above that, Santa Claus doesn't exist in the same fashion. A child has to be above the Magenta level to figure out Santa Claus.

Similarly, religious beliefs take on a different color, so to speak, as we mature and reach higher stages of consciousness. These are distinct from states of consciousness, as noted in the previous post.

You can meditate like crazy and have mystical experiences at any of Wilber's color-coded stages. You'll interpret those experiences in the light of what your consciousness is capable of.

I haven't stopped believing in anything that I experienced during my thirty-five years as a believer. All that's changed is my understanding of what I thought, felt, perceived, and imagined.

I don't know where I am on the 1-10 stage list. But Amber used to describe my spiritual devotion quite well. I bought into religious myths. I accepted the traditions of my chosen faith. I toed the theological line. I didn't question what I was taught. At least, not much.

It's easy for me to remember how I used to be. I know that if I'd met someone like who I am now, back then, I'd have said to him: "My friend, you need to rekindle your lost faith. Your skepticism is blinding you to spiritual truth."

But here I am, doing what the previous me would have found abhorrent. Just as when I believed in Santa Claus, the prospect of having that belief balloon burst would have filled me with tears – if I could even have envisioned it.

Yet when I read, "Made in Japan," it was with a calm sense of Yes, this is the way things are. No disappointment.

Just a sensation of having left a belief behind that didn't belong to who I'd become.

RSSB cartoons show lighter side of Sant Mat

While perusing a Christian web site that pokes fun at evangelical fundamentalism, today I suddenly thought Cartoons!

Back in 1999 I'd worked with a talented artist, Bart Goldman, on cartoons aimed at deflating the balloon of Radha Soami Satsang Beas seriousness (RSSB is a branch of Sant Mat).

Bart and I both were RSSB initiates. We met at a RSSB bhandara (large get-together), introduced by a mutual friend: Victoria, also an artist.

Several times Victoria leaned over to me and whispered, in a decided stage whisper, so Bart could hear, "He's very talented."

Since spiritual cartooning ideas had been running through my head, and my own artistic talent is limited to stick figures, I was eager to chat with Bart.

After some post-bhandara back and forth emailing, here's what Bart produced. I sent them off to RSSB headquarters in India but so far as I know, they haven't been published. At least, not all of them.

I give Bart most of the credit for the cartoons – unless you really like one of them, in which case it must have been my idea.

I've added some explanations for the benefit of those unfamiliar with the Radha Soami Satsang Beas ideology and culture.

RSSB is big on detaching from the material world and attaching to spirit. But as you can see, detachment tends to be selective.

The prescribed vegetarian diet is meatless, eggless, and rennet-less. Many initiates ("satsangis") are petrified of eating a speck of forbidden food, which makes for a waiter's nightmare.

Unmarried sex also is a no-no, leading to uncomfortable dating situations. And lots of pondering about what sex means.

Initiates are supposed to practice mantra meditation, repeating "five holy names," for an hour or two a day. Loving concentration is the ideal. Bart portrays the real.

As recollected in bladder-clenching detail in my "God's here, but I've got to go" post, RSSB gatherings in India, where the guru may hold forth for hours and jumping up to exit is highly discouraged, are notorious for stimulating thoughts of a bathroom rather than spirituality.

Bart threw in a metaphysical cartoon with meaning. Hope he's right. I'd like to keep laughing beyond the grave.

After meditating for 20 years, why no change?

Here's a good question for anyone who's been involved with a spiritual, mystical, or religious group for a long time. Do members of the group change and become better people, or do they get stuck at a certain level?

In my experience – which consisted of thirty-five years of intimate contact with Radha Soami Satsang Beas disciples – I found that "stuck" was much more common than "change."

I didn't expect this. When I got initiated by the organization's guru in 1971 (basically the equivalent of a Christian being born again and accepting Jesus as his savior), I looked upon the senior RSSB members reverentially.

They had decades of meditation under their belt. They'd spent lots of time at the RSSB headquarters in India. They were able to have close regular contact with the guru, who was considered to be God.

So for many years I figured that obviously they were exemplary human beings, having had the opportunity to develop beyond what normal people were capable of.

However, when I began to work more closely with these senior disciples it became clear that they were just as humanly flawed as anybody else. Maybe more so, because they considered themselves as being on a flawless spiritual path.

Some of my eventual disillusionment with Radha Soami Satsang Beas stemmed from this realization that twenty, thirty, or forty years of meditation didn't make someone a better person.

I began to wonder, "If these high-ranking disciples haven't changed, what are my chances?"

Reading Ken Wilber's "Integral Spirituality" has given me some insights into why lots of spiritual practice doesn't necessarily produce lots of personal change.

Wilber says that no system of meditation, Eastern or Western, encompasses modern understanding of how humans move between developmental stages or levels of consciousness.

This diagram is similar to one in the book. It's complicated. But the basic notion is simple. The vertical axis shows the stages (denoted by colors) and the horizontal axis shows several conceptual schemas, which Wilber has integrated.

Basically, the higher stages are more all-encompassing. You identify with more and more of reality, what Wilber likes to call the Kosmos. You become less parochial in your outlook, able to see alternative points of view.

States of consciousness are different. Through meditation or other means, you can enter into "mystical" conscious states no matter what stage of development you're at, as this diagram shows.

For example, someone with a magical way of looking at the world may have a profound mystical experience. Not surprisingly, Wilber says they'll interpret it magically.

The point is that a person can have a profound peak, religious, spiritual, or meditative experience of, say, a subtle light or causal emptiness, but they will interpret that experience with the only equipment they have, namely, the tools of the stage of development they are at.

So if you have a magical or mythic belief that a guru is God, and can produce divine revelations through meditation in accord with his instructions, then whatever meditative experiences you have will be viewed as the guru's grace.

A Zen practitioner may have the same experience, yet interpret it much differently. Wilber's point (if I understand him correctly) is that meditative states may loosen up your consciousness and help you achieve a more evolved stage of development, but this isn't at all guaranteed.

In fact, attachment to a defined religion or spiritual path can work to keep you stuck at a lower stage, because organizations almost always operate on a conventional or conformist level (the amber stage in the diagram above).

You're expected to toe the line, do what you're told, keep the faith, hold to the commandments, respect authority, identify with the group.

Problem is, evolving to a higher stage of consciousness or personal development involves a broader angle of vision. You don't see yourself as a Christian, Buddhist, or satsangi. Your focus isn't on a narrow set of beliefs and moral injunctions.

So moving to a higher stage means leaving behind some of the attitudes that served you well (or at least, served you) at a lower stage.

Concomitantly, Wilber says that you need to integrate aspects of yourself that often get shunted off into a "shadow self." I don't have time to go into this in much detail here, but I saw this happening in RSSB disciples – including myself.

Supposedly negative emotions, RSSB's litany of "lust, anger, greed, attachment, egotism," were seen as products of the Negative Power, a.k.a. the devil. They weren't part of the disciple, but something to be pushed away.

This also keeps people stuck.

The anger, starting as an "I," is now an "it" in my awareness, and I can practice vipassana meditation on that it-anger as long as I want, where I use "bare attention" in my meditation and simply notice that "there is anger arising, there is anger arising, there is anger arising" – but all that will do is refine and heighten my awareness of anger as an it.

…Amidst all the wonderful benefits of meditation and contemplation, it is still hard to miss the fact that even long-time meditators still have considerable shadow elements. And after 20 years of meditation, they still have those shadow elements. Maybe it is, as they claim, that they just haven't meditated enough. Perhaps another 20 years? Maybe it's that meditation just doesn't get at this problem…

Try something different. Open up. Let the sunshine in and dissolve the shadow.

Say “yes” to reality, denying nothing

I'm surprised to find myself saying yes! so enthusiastically to a book by Ken Wilber. Though I'm just four chapters into "Integral Spirituality," it's producing more positivity in me than irritation – a big change.

If you aren't familiar with Ken Wilber, his life work is to figure out how everything fits together. And I do mean everything.

His personal and institute web sites point to a dazzling intellectual and philosophical production. The guy is undeniably brilliant and creative. Also, provocative and full of himself.

I've read quite a few of Wilber's previous books. I've written an article, "What Wilber Gets Wrong About Plotinus," that's slated to be published as part of a collection of essays exploring his integral vision. Here's the article in Word and PDF formats; it'll be edited somewhat for publication.

Download wilber_and_plotinus_article2.doc

Download wilber_and_plotinus_article2.pdf

I didn't like how Wilber tried to cram Plotinus' Greek Neoplatonism into a Buddhist/Advaitist/nondual understanding of reality.

I got the sense that Wilber wasn't so much honestly positioning Plotinus' philosophy in his own integral framework, as bending Plotinus' teachings to fit into a favored Wilberian mold.

There's a different slant in "Integral Spirituality," though. It's almost disturbing how much I've enjoying the book. I don't know whether I'm becoming more like Ken Wilber (scary!) or if Wilber has softened his over zealous trumpeting of his conceptual schemas.

Regardless, I've gotten quite a few intuitive flashes of Oh, yeah; right on! in just the first 100 pages. Wilber is saying pretty much the same thing as in his previous books, but I'm hearing his message more clearly now.

What I like most about his all-encompassing vision of physical, mental, and spiritual reality is this: it doesn't exclude anything. Which makes great sense. Why throw out obvious aspects of existence?

Yet lots of people do this. As noted in my previous post, they unjustifiably elevate one or the other of the "I," "It," and "We" perspectives.

Subjective, communal, or objective reality – the domains of beauty, goodness, and truth (art, morals, and science) – aren't recognized as co-equal. So extremist positions are taken: Truth is relative. Science doesn't know anything. Mysticism is just imagination. What can't be observed isn't real.

Wilber, bless his integral soul, is trying to show that nothing needs to be excluded from human knowledge and experience. What we need to do is figure out how it all fits together.

What if we took literally everything that all the various cultures have to tell us about human potential – about spiritual growth, psychological growth, social growth – and put it all on the table? What if we attempted to find the critically essential keys to human growth, based on the sum total of human knowledge now open to us?

What if we attempted, based on extensive cross-cultural study, to use all of the world's great traditions to create a composite map, a comprehensive map, an all-inclusive or integral map that included the best elements from all of them?

Whew! The pressure would be off. No need to agonize over whether to embrace modern science or ancient religion, matter or spirit, body or mind, break dancing or meditation, whiskey or herb tea.

It's all a part of life. It. I. We. Objective. Subjective. Communal. Different ways of experiencing existence. All just as it/I/we should be.

Wilber asks, "Where is Spirit located?"

Here's a simple thought experiment. Picture the following men (or make them women if you like), and then tell me which you think are probably the most spiritual?

1. A man in an Armani suit.
2. A man driving a red Ferrari.
3. A man pitching baseball in the major leagues.
4. A professional comedian.
5. A mathematician.
6. A man in a tank top lifting weights.
7. An Olympic swimmer.
8. A college professor.
9. A model.
10. A sexual surrogate.

Which do you think is the most spiritual? Which do you think is the least spiritual?

It's funny, isn't it, the things we think are not spiritual? Why do we picture most of these people as not being very spiritual? Or conversely, why do we have such a hard time seeing them as being spiritual? Aren't we actually just giving our own prejudices about where we think spirit is or is not to be found?

Or worse: aren't we really just announcing how old and fragmented and NOT INTEGRAL our ideas about spirit are? Why is telling jokes not spiritual? Why is something beautiful – a car, a suit – not spiritual? Why is physical excellence not spiritual? Why is sex not spiritual? Why is…

It's a new world, it's a new spirituality, it's a new time, it's a new man, it's a new woman. All of the above categories are deeply spiritual. Mostly all that list is, is a list of things we are afraid to allow spirituality to touch.

Dead from the neck down, with no humor, no sex, no aesthetic sensibility whatsoever, wasting away, spending one's days and nights ignoring the world and lost in prayer…what a strange God, that.

SF Gate columnist Mark Morford has the same message, expressed in a more earthy fashion. I liked his "How to abandon your God."

And what of the other big question, the one no one really talks much about and certainly no one really teaches you? It is this: How does one actually abandon a religion? How do you dump your God and choose another, or none, or the one deep inside yourself? I mean, besides lots of wine and Yeats and education, open-throated sex and experimental drugs and sitting on the lap of the Buddha sipping absinthe and reading old Tom Robbins books and meditating on the nature of stillness and the divine feminine and Cate Blanchett?

Tentative answer: Maybe you don't. Maybe it's not about abandoning God at all, and instead merely broadening your definition of the divine so as to encapsulate and swallow it all, every God, every dogma, every attempt to corner the market on belief and parse it and put it into cute little boxes and break us all up into angry tribes who stomp our feet and wave our little gilded books and launch screaming bloody wars over promised lands and chosen peoples and crucifixes and crusades and witches and pagans and gays.

In other words, maybe you abandon God by realizing it's all God, it's all divine, all hot, thrumming, vibrating connection in all places in all things at all times. And hence, to try and parse it and restrict it and beat it into submission and claim it for one people, one history, one country or church or authoritarian body, is actually the highest form of divine insult.

Or, you know, grand cosmic joke. Same thing, really.

Science unites, religion divides

I've enjoyed the big bang discussion that took off in the comments on my previous post.

In the course of defending science and the scientific method against a man, Rhawn Joseph, who believes the big bang, evolution, relativity, and the laws of thermodynamics are all myths, I've had an opportunity to reflect on why science appeals so much to me.

Pretty simple: it produces common ground on which we all can stand – reality. Religion divides people, because there's no agreement about the nature of what, if anything, lies beyond the physical universe.

So dogmatic arguments over God, soul, life after death, and such continue interminably. There's no way of resolving them.

Science, however, proceeds steadily (though with many changes in direction) toward a unified understanding of what reality is all about. There's no Western science or Eastern science, no American science or Chinese science. There's just shared scientific knowledge.

And that's beautiful.

Which leads to an important point that's so obvious, it shouldn't need saying. But we often forget it, and this leads to unnecessary confusion, arguments, and emotionality.

"I" is different from "It." Subjective reality is different from objective reality. Yet they're both equally real.

Here's how Ken Wilber describes the reality situation. "I" is the realm of the interior individual – me as I know myself. "It" and "Its" (plural) is the exterior side of reality – an objective realm that we all can know communally.

Traditionally, philosophical types talked about the Beautiful, the Good, and the True. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. It's also in the realm of "I," subjective.

So when someone commented that they enjoyed Joseph's You Tube video, "God & the Myth of the Big Bang," I thought That's fine. Personally, I found it so obnoxious I could only watch five minutes of it. But hey, vive le difference.

If we all liked the same movies, there'd be no point to the Academy Awards. Each of us has different subjective likes and dislikes. That's as it should be, since our interiors are different.

But what about exterior reality, the domain that science investigates? Now we're into a much more objective state of affairs, which is why scientists can come to a consensus about the laws of nature.

Here, truth rules, not beauty. So I asked people who had seen Joseph's Big Bang video to tell me what evidence he had that big bang cosmology, which is accepted by almost all scientists, is wrong and Joseph is right.

I didn't get an answer. I really didn't expect one.

I've read quite a few books about the big bang, quantum theory, relativity theory, and other aspects of what's often called the "new physics." I subscribe to Scientific American and New Scientist. I read all three weekly newsmagazines (TIME, Newsweek, US News & World Report, and two daily newspapers.

If some guy had overturned a big chunk of science through a You Tube video, I figured I'd have heard about it. However, he hasn't. He's presented some imaginative ideas in an artsy fashion, expressing his "I." This doesn't change the reality of "It" though.

The scientific method is an intriguing blend of friendly openness and harsh skepticism. Scientists are open to new ideas, but if you throw out a fresh hypothesis – particularly if it purports to be an improvement over settled science – you'd better bring your best game.

In "The Demon-Haunted World," Carl Sagan wrote:

Again, the reason science works so well is partly that built-in error-correcting machinery. There are no forbidden questions in science, no matters too sensitive or sacred to be probed, no sacred truths. That openness to new ideas, combined with the most rigorous, skeptical scrutiny of all ideas, sifts the wheat from the chaff.

It makes no difference how smart, august, or beloved you are. You must prove your case in the face of determined, expert criticism. Diversity and debate are valued. Opinions are encouraged to contend – substantively and in depth.

The process of science may sound messy and disorderly. In a way, it is. If you examine science in its everyday aspect, of course you find that scientists run the gamut of human emotion, personality, and character. But there's one facet that is really striking to the outsider, and that is the gauntlet of criticism considered acceptable or even desirable.

That's as it should be. Objective reality belongs to all of us. Human knowledge about the universe is our most precious asset, one which must be passed on to future generations intact – not diluted with subjective drivel, religious or otherwise.

So I hope this helps explain why I defend science so strongly. When I see it trashed, I feel the same way as when I see litter along the rural Oregon road that leads to our house. Hey, that's public property! You've got no right to leave your crap there!

If someone wants to mess up their own home, that's their business. Just as what transpires in your "I" is up to you. But when someone ventures into the realm of "it," staking a claim to the nature of objective reality – that's everybody's business.

Our common ground, truth, is too precious to be left undefended. As Sagan said, openness and skepticism are our bulwarks against pseudo-science.

(Here's another post of mine on this subject).

Churchless on the rise in United States

Praise the non-Lord! The faithless are on the march! The ranks of the religiously unaffiliated have risen from 5-8% in the 1980s to 16.1% today.

So says a survey of religious affiliation by the Pew Forum on Religious and Public Life. This is great news. It shows that the Question Mark God, a.k.a. Who knows?, has a plan for America: ever-increasing uncertainty.

A USA Today story on the Pew Forum report is titled, "Survey: Americans freely change, or drop, their religions." More good news.

A new map of faith in the USA shows a nation constantly shifting amid religious choices, unaware or unconcerned with doctrinal distinctions. Unbelief is on the rise.

The story quotes one of the report's co-authors, John Green.

"Fluidity is the rule today, not the exception. There's greater diversity and greater movement — a quantum leap in the rate of change."

"It will become increasingly difficult to find people who share a love for distinct doctrine," he adds.

"But there are always niches in the marketplace. There will always be a place for religions that are strict. They just may cater to smaller numbers."

We can only hope. Like eventually, zero.

Of course, I'm biased. I've tried the strict thing and found it wanting. Since religiosity is aimed at finding ultimate truth that's currently unknown, I now consider that flexible openness is the hallmark of genuine spiritual inquiry – not clinging rigidly to preconceived dogmas.

Today a friend sent me a Science vs. Faith Flowchart.

You can see that science is about examining evidence to see if it supports an idea. Then getting more evidence and/or changing the idea. It's full of feedback loops that produce changes in direction, homing in on truth.

Faith, on the other hand, is linear. It sticks with what it believes, ignoring discordant evidence.

Fortunately, Americans are coming around to the benefits of a more scientific approach to answering the big questions of life. They're increasingly willing to discard the faith they grew up with for something that makes more sense.

I'm proud to point out that nowhere is this more true than in Oregon, where I live. I perused the maps page on the Pew Forum web site and found that Oregon has the highest proportion of religiously unaffiliated adults, 27%.

We're #1! We're #1! Still, that's 73% remaining to be converted to faithlessness.