Church of the Churchless

Science has a radical distrust of certainty. Me too.

If you're absolutely certain that you know what is true, this is a very good sign that you're wrong. Also, that you are religious rather than scientific.

This is one of the compelling insights theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli talks about in the concluding chapter of his book, "Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity."

In another post I'll describe why Rovelli views the as-yet-unproven theory of quantum gravity as the best approach to resolving the divide between relativity theory and quantum mechanics. For now, I liked what Rovelli had to say about the approach of science so much, I'm sharing portions of it below.

This really is brilliant. Nothing astoundingly new. Just stated in a fresh appealing fashion. Rovelli captures why I love science so much, and why I've come to dislike religiosity so much.

This acute awareness of our ignorance is the heart of scientific thinking. It is thanks to this awareness of the limits of our knowledge that we have learned so much. We are not certain of all that we suspect, just as Socrates was not sure of the spherical nature of Earth.

We are exploring at the borders of our knowledge.

Awareness of the limits of our knowledge is also awareness of the fact that what we know may turn out to be wrong, or inexact. Only by keeping in mind that our beliefs may turn out to be wrong is it possible to free ourselves from wrong ideas, and to learn.

To learn something, it is necessary to have the courage to accept that what we think we know, including our most rooted convictions, may be wrong, or at least naive: shadows on the walls of Plato's cave.

Science is born from this act of humility: not trusting blindly in our past knowledge and our intuition. Not believing in what everyone says. Not having absolute faith in the accumulated knowledge of our fathers and grandfathers.

We learn nothing if we think that we already know the essentials, if we assume that they were written in a book or known by the elders of the tribe. The centuries in which people had faith in what they believed were the centuries in which little new was learned.

Had they trusted the knowledge of their fathers, Einstein, Newton, and Copernicus would never have called things into question and would never have been able to move our knowledge forward. If no one had raised doubts, we would be still worshipping pharaohs and thinking that Earth is supported on the back of a giant turtle.

...A scientist is someone who lives immersed in the awareness of our deep ignorance, in direct contact with our own innumerable limits, with the limits of our understanding.

But if we are certain of nothing, how can we possibly rely on what science tells us? The answer is simple. Science is not reliable because it provides certainty. It is reliable because it provides us with the best answers we have at present. Science is the most we know so far about the problems confronting us.

It is precisely its openness, its constant putting of current knowledge in question, that guarantees that the answers it offers are the best so far available: if you find better answers, these new answers become science. 

When Einstein found better answers than Newton, he didn't question the capacity of science to give the best possible answers -- on the contrary, he confirmed it.

...The nature of scientific thinking is critical, rebellious, and dissatisfied with a priori conceptions, reverence, and sacred or untouchable truth. The search for knowledge is not nourished by certainty: it is nourished by a radical distrust in certainty. 

This means not giving credence to those who say they are in possession of the truth.

For this reason, science and religion frequently find themselves on a collision course. Not because science pretends to know ultimate answers, but precisely for the opposite reason: because the scientific spirit distrusts whoever claims to be the one having ultimate answers or privileged access to Truth.

This distrust is found to be disturbing in some religious quarters. It is not science that is disturbed by religion: there are certain religions that are disturbed by scientific thinking.

...To live with uncertainty may be difficult. There are those who prefer any certainty, even if unfounded, to the uncertainty that comes from recognizing our own limits. There are some who prefer to believe in a story just because it was believed by the tribe's ancestors, rather than bravely accept uncertainty.

Ignorance can be scary. Our of fear, we can tell ourselves calming stories: up there beyond the stars there is an enchanted garden, with a gentle father who will welcome us into his arms. It doesn't matter if this is true -- it is reassuring.

There is always, in this world, someone who pretends to tell us the ultimate answers. The world is full of people who say that they have The Truth. Because they have got it from the fathers; they have read it in a Great Book; they have received it directly from a god; they have found it in the depths of themselves.

There is always someone who has the presumption to be the depository of Truth, neglecting to notice that the world is full of other depositories of Truth, each one with his own real Truth, different from that of the others.

There is always some prophet dressed in white, uttering the words: "Follow me, I am the true way." 

...For my part, I prefer to look our ignorance in the face, accept it, and seek to look just a bit further: to try to understand that which we are able to understand.

Not just because accepting this ignorance is the way to avoid being entangled in superstitions and prejudices but because to accept our ignorance in the first place seems to me to be the truest, the most beautiful, and above all, the most honest way.

God can be an imaginary friend, even if you're an atheist

Recently I heard from a woman who has distanced herself from the Indian religious organization I was a member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

Her family is still very much into RSSB, so she asked me some questions about how I adjusted after being, like her, initiated by the RSSB guru and then coming to see that the RSSB teachings no longer made sense.

Here's one of her questions, along with my response. "Babaji" refers to the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

Question for me: I find myself saying when I need help (to myself) Babaji help me- and then I realise that I don’t believe in him anymore and I don’t believe in god either- do you think there’s some sort of universal energy around us? 

My response: I wish there was, but I don’t think there is. But I could be wrong. Like you, I don’t believe in the RSSB gurus or in God. But I still talk to my guru, Charan Singh, and also to God. Life can be difficult. I like having imaginary friends.

To me it’s like watching a compelling TV show or reading a good novel. I can believe the show or novel is real and get all excited about what’s happening, even though I know that both are made up and aren’t real.

In the same way, I like to pretend at times that I believe in guru/God, just because it makes me feel better to do that, and I enjoy telling my problems to my imaginary friends, since my wife can get tired of hearing me complain about the same things after so many years of marriage (32 years).

Like I said, I don't find anything unusual in talking to someone who isn't real as if they could actually hear you. This isn't so different from sports fans yelling at the TV in a bar, exhorting their team to win the game.

 

Or me getting so nervous about what's going to happen in the Israeli spy thriller "Tehran" that I'm watching on AppleTV+. I realize that Tehran features actors, not real spies. But when there's a cliffhanger at the end of an episode, I can hardly wait to see if the woman who plays an undercover agent in Iran is going to succeed in her mission.

 

So it's no big deal for atheist me to lie in bed and say to myself, as I'm drifting off to sleep, "Hey, God, how are you doing? I doubt very much that you exist. However, if you do, it'd be great to get to know you. Feel free to pay me a visit, either while I'm awake or in a dream. And if you could do something to fix the sciatica in my right leg, that'd be great. Good night."

 

I talk in a similar fashion to Charan Singh, the RSSB guru who initiated me (by proxy) in 1971. I used to carry on a one-sided conversation with Charan Singh when I was a RSSB believer and thought it likely that the guru actually did reside within a corner of my consciousness, where he could guide me as need be.

 

Now I find that to be extremely unlikely.

 

However, occasionally I still have some things to say to Charan Singh, just because it makes me feel good to have him as an imaginary friend, along with God. This seems absolutely fine to me, since I'm well aware that an imaginary friend is much different from a real friend. 

 

 

Christian nationalism a threat to American democracy

Most Christians are normal people who happen to believe in Jesus as their savior. I've got no problem with that, though I think they're wrong about Jesus, plus the rest of their Christian dogma.

Religions can be false (all are, in my atheist opinion) but not dangerous.

However, Christian nationalists are a distinct threat to American democracy, as evidenced by Doug Mastriano winning the Republican nomination for Pennsylvania governor in last Tuesday's primary election.

A day after the election, Greg Sargent, a columnist for the Washington Post, wrote "Say it clearly: Republicans just nominated a pro-Trump insurrectionist." In his piece Sargent describes how Mastriano views himself as doing God's will by overturning election results where a Democrat wins.

This is exceedingly dangerous. Mix right-wing political fanaticism with Christian nationalist religious fanaticism, and you've got a double-dose of zealotry devoted to overturning democracy.

Here's excerpts from Sargent's column pertaining to Mastriano's twisted worldview.

For the love of democracy, please stop using the phrase “election denier.”

Now that Doug Mastriano has won the GOP nomination for governor in Pennsylvania, countless news accounts are describing him with that phrase. This is meant to convey the idea that Mastriano won’t accept Donald Trump’s 2020 presidential reelection loss.

That’s true, but it’s insufficient. Let’s state this plainly: Pennsylvania Republicans just nominated a full-blown insurrectionist who intends to use the power of the office to ensure that, as long as he is governor, no Democratic presidential candidate wins his state again.

Mastriano’s victory also highlights another story that’s bigger than this one contest: The role of Christian nationalism in fueling the growing insurrectionist streak on the right. This nexus underscores the danger this movement poses in a way that also demands more clarity about the worldview of candidates like Mastriano.

...Mastriano is running on what is functionally an open vow to use the power of the governor’s office to nullify future election losses, even if they are procedurally legitimate, and even if he knows this to be the case.

This becomes unavoidable once you look closely at Mastriano’s own conduct. And his Christian nationalist sympathies underscore the point.

...As governor, Mastriano would likely handpick a secretary of state who would resist certifying a razor-thin legitimate Democratic victory. And Mastriano would likely try to certify sham electors for Trump or another GOP candidate.

The 2024 election in Pennsylvania might not be close; either the Republican or the Democrat might win easily. Alternatively, such an effort by Mastriano might fail. But let’s be clear: He’s telegraphing a willingness to attempt such a thing, and that he’d likely see it as a righteous act as well, even if there’s little actual voter fraud, and even if he knows this.

This may seem like a leap, but to experts in Christian nationalism, it makes perfect sense. Sarah Posner, a scholar of the religious right, has extensively demonstrated that Mastriano’s efforts for Trump were infused with Christian nationalist fervor, which holds that Trump was installed in the White House by God as “restorer of America’s white Christian heritage.”

Mastriano hinted at this in his victory speech Tuesday night. “God is good,” Mastriano said. “He uses people like you and me to change history.”

The idea that Mastriano’s victory shows God using him to “change history” is a textbook Christian nationalist trope, notes Posner. As she says, this worldview holds that the United States was founded as a Christian nation, and that this is being subverted by satanic and secular forces that Christian nationalists are duty-bound to resist.

“It’s their patriotic duty as believers to fight for that Christian nation,” Posner told me. That’s been “orthodoxy” for a long time, Posner says, but the new ingredient is the eagerness to overturn elections in service of that higher end.

Mastriano is saying he’s “empowered as a believer to overturn election results to achieve God’s will,” Posner said. To prevent the subversion of the “Christian nation,” Posner added, he hopes to take “the God-given power to change election results” to the governor’s mansion.

In this telling, liberal democratic proceduralism is inherently nonbinding. Even procedurally legitimate electoral outcomes can be deemed out of step with God’s plan and subject to nullification. Vox’s Zack Beauchamp describes these tendencies as “American Orbanism,” after Hungarian leader Viktor Orban: It relies on religiously inspired culture-warring to energize and justify the curtailment or abandonment of democracy.

It should be obvious that phrases like “election denialist” and “election conspiracist” don’t do justice to what we’re really seeing here. Getting it right on what’s at stake in places like Pennsylvania is truly urgent.

RSSB training produces zero results in satsangis

I always enjoy getting emails from people who used to be churched, and now are churchless.

Usually I hear from initiates of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), as that was the "church," Eastern religion variety, I belonged to for 35 years.

Recently I've gotten two messages from former satsangis, as RSSB initiates often are called, using an Indian term. Each warmed my heart, since the emails described how the people realized that the RSSB dogma didn't match up with truth.

One person included a nicely caustic observation about RSSB satsangis.

I have pointed out that you could compare Satsangis to Navy Seals. They train every day by meditating, they eat only certain things. Eventually, you should see some form of result. All I have seen are fat lazy Navy Seals. That training produces zero results. In fact I think it creates more psychological disorder.

You won't get much of an argument from me about that. My main caveat regarding the Navy Seal analogy is that members of this elite American military group actually do train hard every day. 

But RSSB initiates, not nearly as much, especially when it comes to meditation, which is supposed to be done for 2 1/2 hours a day. 

However, most satsangis do seem to stick to a vegetarian diet, along with not drinking alcohol or using recreational drugs. And quite a few attend the equivalent of RSSB church services every week, satsangs.

So you'd think all this religious activity would produce some positive changes in RSSB initiates, even if their meditation didn't match up to the ideal. I agree that those changes often aren't apparent, which makes the "fat lazy Navy Seals" analogy an apt one.

I also agree that many satsangis end up more psychologically screwed-up after years of RSSB practice. My theory about why this happens is that the RSSB teachings are highly dualistic. 

Satsangis are supposed to make their top priority leaving this physical world behind and supposedly rising to higher regions of reality. This fosters an over-attachment to the RSSB guru, and under-attachment to family members, friends, and other loved ones. 

Thus rather than being of service to people in your immediate surroundings, many satsangis prefer to travel long distances to perform "seva" (volunteering) for RSSB, such as building or maintaining the centers where RSSB meetings are held.

Often this leads to an unhealthy attraction to their chosen religion, RSSB, since that focus takes time and energy away from being a good spouse, parent, friend, companion, or whatever to people who previously were near and dear to the satsangi.

In December 1977 I went to India for two weeks around Christmas. I'd been initiated into RSSB in 1971 and had never seen my guru, Charan Singh, in person. I was married with a five year old daughter. I'd gotten a temporary appointment as a manager with Oregon's State Health Planning and Development Agency and was waiting for it to become permanent.

My wife, Sue, wasn't happy with me going to India, given our circumstances. It cost quite a bit to get there. We'd gotten Celeste, my daughter, her first real bicycle. Sue wanted me to be home for Christmas. But I chose to put my devotion to RSSB above my devotion to family.

It turned out that I had an amazing two weeks in India, a time with Charan Singh I'll never forget. And after I got home, I ended up getting a permanent appointment to the manager position. But I readily admit that perhaps spending Christmas with my wife and daughter would have been as memorable as going to India, though I doubt it. Regardless, I put my relationship with RSSB above my family duties.

I also believe that the RSSB teachings lead initiates awry by emphasizing the Five Deadly Sins of lust, anger, greed, attachment, and egotism -- which actually are normal aspects of being a human, so long as they aren't engaged in to an extreme.

This causes many satsangis to be hyper-conscious of engaging in "bad" thoughts and actions, sort of like Christians who fear the Devil leading them astray. Not mentally healthy, for sure.

Cliché but true: death is what makes life precious

I'm no poet, but I admire poetry.

Some evidence is that after my wife got tired of watching Dickinson on Apple TV+, a streaming series about the poet Emily Dickinson, I continued on until I'd seen every episode of the first three seasons.

I loved how Dickinson looked at life in such a fresh and creative fashion, even taking into account how loosely the series probably adhered to the literal facts of Emily Dickinson. 

For example, she spent quite a bit of time in a carriage with Death, a cool Black guy who was overworked, particularly after the Civil War started. Did Dickinson fantasize those meetings? Was she mentally ill? 

Or was her fascination with Death a reflection of her poetic sensibilities? That rings most true to me. Reality is a slippery notion when it comes to poets and their poetry. 

Which really is no different than how slippery each of us becomes when we try to describe to someone else how we feel about something. There always is a gap between our intuitive experience and whatever means we use to convey that ineffable something to another person.

Poetry is one way of narrowing that gap. So is music, art, dance, tears, laughter, facial expressions, writing, hugs, plus so much more.

I'm toying with the idea of finding ways of writing blog posts for the Church of the Churchless that do a better job of capturing how I look upon various subjects. This wouldn't be poetry as such, but words with more of a poetic feeling tone.

Might as well start with death.

I'll be going about my day, doing routine stuff, when suddenly a message pops into my mind, surprising me.

"One day you won't be doing this. Or anything else. Because you'll be dead."

It's a message that rings true. No big surprise. It is true. 

We can make up stories about an afterlife. I've done that. Most people do. It's a foundation that religion rests on.

A very shaky foundation. Because no one knows if there is life after death. All we know is there is death after life. The proof is all around us. 

A million deaths in the United States from COVID-19. Deaths of friends, family, famous people, ordinary people, cats, dogs, cows, chickens, fish. 

Everything that lives, dies. But we humans, me certainly included for much of my life, we can visualize ourselves living on forever.

Kind of takes the sting out of death. Or so it seems. Because actually the stinger is still attached to the scorpion of death.

It has to be. Death is inevitable. 

And if we're honest, we say to ourselves, "I'm going to die, and I have no idea if there's any living after my death."

That honesty is what breaks through my ordinary mind from time to time. 

I'll be washing the dishes and suddenly realize, not for that much longer. Like I said, the realizing is a sudden burst of nothing else also for that much longer.

So it doesn't do me any good to vow that from this death-realizing moment onward I'll only do what is so deeply meaningful, in that way I will cheat death by living life so fully, I'll die satisfied. 

Fine. But I'll still die. Which will bring to an end satisfaction, dissatisfaction, and everything else.

There's a stark divide between existing and not-existing. We try to use our well-honed techniques for dealing with life's problems to handle our knowledge that death is the end of life.

But they don't work. They can't work. Something, anything, is utterly incapable of dealing with nothing.

I'm left, then, with a simple feeling of gratitude when I have one of my meetings with death. The encounter wakes me up. For a while it stops me from taking my life for granted. Also, my wife's life. Our dog's life. All lives.

No matter if I'm having a good day, a bad day, or a so-so day, I'm having a day. Yay! I'm alive. Who knows for how long. I sure don't. No one does. 

Whatever I do, at least I'm doing something. Which is a heck of a lot better than being nothing. If I could always realize this, I guess I'd be a Zen master. Or at least, a Zen student who does the dishes.

My response to someone wanting to know how my views on Plotinus have changed

I hate to let an interesting question emailed to me and my (hopefully) interesting response go unused, so here they are as a blog post. 

Greg, my correspondent, said in his message that he had been initiated into a different form of Sant Mat than the RSSB version I was a member of for 35 years. That explains why my response mentions Sant Mat. 

He also said that he lives in Ashland, a town in Oregon close to the California border, so I figured he would recognize my mention of the 2021 ice storm, even though it didn't affect southern Oregon. I added a couple of links to the portion of Greg's message pertaining to Plotinus.

Greetings Brian,

I wanted to reach out to say I’m really enjoying your book on Plotinus. So much so that I went to your site to know more about you, especially given that so many other books on him seem to be deeply academic while yours has a different flavor- sharing a research of a different kind.

I was wondering about a statement on your site regarding your work- “Given the reality of evolution, it isn't surprising that my views on science, spirituality, and philosophy have changed quite a bit over the years. Which doesn't definitely mean that some of what I said in these books isn't true. I just feel that it isn't true for me any more, or that likely it isn't scientifically true given humanity's current understanding of reality.”

I was hoping to know what of this relates to your work on Plotinus- given I am reading it and I read things like this to learn and generally only those things I feel are worth reading. Are there critical pieces of this work you now see differently ?

This was my reply.

Greg, nice to hear from you. As a good start at answering your question about how my views have changed since writing Return to the One, you could take a look at the “Plotinus” category of my Church of the Churchless blog. The most recent entries are at the top, so if you want to see how my attitudes have changed, you could scroll to the bottom and work your way up. Or the reverse. Up to you.

 

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/plotinus

 

A brief overall answer is that Plotinus, sort of like capitalism if I remember Marx correctly, contained the seed of his own destruction. Meaning, I immersed myself in Plotinus at about the same time I was having increasing doubts about RSSB, the branch of Sant Mat I was a member of for 35 years.

 

I’d always had a decidedly scientific and non-religious approach toward Sant Mat, not being a big fan of strong guru-worship, which many initiates practiced. That became stronger as I absorbed Plotinus’ blend of Greek rationality and mysticism. Yes, reason and science can tell us a great deal about the universe, our world, and ourselves. But mysteries inevitably remain.

 

Notably, the whole Why is There Something Rather Than Nothing thing. My human mind can’t grasp the possibility that nothing could produce something. So it sure seems like something must always have existed. I used to think this was God, spirit, cosmic energy, whatever you want to call it. But the obvious alternative is that the cosmos always has existed. After all, if something always has existed, why not assume that it is what we can sense, rather than something other-worldly?

 

So the appeal Platonic dualism once held for me, which Plotinus shared, gradually diminished. The idea that this physical world is the dregs of creation, though the best it could be (a Plotinian idea) came to seem less appealing. If this world is all there is, a very real possibility, aren’t I diminishing my appreciation of what likely is my one and only life by spending so much of my attention in meditation and elsewhere trying to rise above this world to a supposedly better one?

 

I came to answer “Yes” to that question. I more strongly embraced Buddhism, especially the Zen variety. Taking up Tai Chi practice in 2004 after many years of hard style/karate martial arts, I fell more in love withTaoism (Tai Chi basically is Taoism in motion).

 

Sure, some people take a dualistic attitude toward both Buddhism and Taoism, but I liked the simple chop wood, carry water side — maybe in part because we live on ten acres outside of Salem and there’s a lot of wood and water to deal with (especially after the 2021 ice storm, and the recent very wet spring that is stopping me from mowing some grassy areas until the standing water disappears).

 

Anyway, this is a start at addressing your comments and questions. I still agree with a lot in Return to the One. It’s the idea that the One is separate from and less positive than the Many that I’ve pretty much let go, though who knows, I might come full circle and embrace that view again. Of course, being 73, I don’t have a heck of a lot of time left to do that circling.

 

— Brian

A believer in Putin's propaganda reminds me of religious dogmatism

Proving that I'm able to tolerate people who embrace absurd conspiracy theories, for several weeks I've been engaged in an exchange of emails with an acquaintance who also lives in Salem, Oregon.

His name is Jack. 

In the past Jack and I have corresponded about subjects we agreed on, both of us being on the left side of the political spectrum. But Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine revealed another side to Jack.

He buys in almost 100% to Putin propaganda about the war. Jack's sources for this disinformation are web sites biased toward Russia, if not controlled by them.

When he started sending me links about how Ukraine is led by a bunch of Nazis, it took me just a minute of Googling to learn how those stories emanated from Russian sympathizers or agents. I figured that Jack would be grateful when I pointed this out to him.

I was wrong. 

In the same way that religious fundamentalists often view an attack on their faith as a sign to redouble their commitment to God, the more I showed Jack the error of his Ukraine ways, the more adamant he became that he was right.

It didn't matter that reputable scholars, journalists, and intelligence experts all debunked Putin's lie that he needed to invade Ukraine to "de-Nazify" the country. Each time I pointed out the truth to Jack, he replied with more evidence from his unreliable sources.

Sort of like a Christian quoting from the Bible to show that the Bible is true. 

Given how much crap exists on the internet, it almost always is possible to find a web page, or many pages, that supports whatever crazy idea someone has. One way to avoid this trap is to cast your intellectual net as widely as possible, so you aren't taken in by some barely-true specifics that can masquerade as truth.

For example, it's true that Ukraine has some Nazis. But so does the United States. So does Russia.

I sent Jack a FactCheck piece about "The Facts on De-Nazifying Ukraine." It quoted experts on this who said there's a higher percentage of right-wing extremists in the United States and Russia than in Ukraine. So if Putin wanted to de-Nazify a nation, he should have started with his own.

However, when someone is more attached to an incorrect view of an aspect of the world that, for whatever reason, they find more satisfying than learning the truth about that aspect, it's really difficult for them to admit that they're wrong.

So I'm about ready to give up on my email correspondence with Jack. There's just little value in communicating with someone whose mind is closed.

I'm not saying that my own mind always is open to the truth. Like everybody, I've got my biases and blind spots. However, in my religious-believing days, which went on for about 35 years, I wasn't so much denying evidence as embracing a lack of evidence.

Meaning, to offer one example, I couldn't prove that the guru I followed was God in Human Form, as his teachings proclaimed. But nobody could prove that the guru wasn't God in Human Form, which allowed my blind faith to rush in where evidence to the contrary was lacking.

What's much more problematic is when, say, a religious believer denies evolution, since there's lots of evidence that evolution is true.

Similarly, I've told Jack that the atrocities and war crimes committed by Russian forces in Ukraine really bother me, citing Bucha as one example. Today I got this bizarre message from Jack.

Now, about Bucha. The Russians were gone by the time those bodies were getting scattered about. It was either two or three days after the Russians left that the mayor himself publicly noted that all was well in the town.  No bodies were visible. But subsequent to that Ukies then began going house-to-house looking for evidence of residents who had been friendly with the Russians, killing them, and arranging their bodies neatly along the side of the street to make it handy for the photographers and to please Zelensky when he came to visit.

I have no idea where Jack got these totally false ideas. It seems almost too absurd for even the Kremlin to promulgate. though likely Jack's source was Russian propaganda. Because I can't stand lies that ignore the Russian war crimes committed in Bucha, I sent this reply to Jack.

Jack, you truly have bought into Russian propaganda 100%. The New York Times proved that bodies in Bucha were there weeks before the Russians left. The Times also did an in-depth investigation of the Russian atrocities in Bucha. Read and believe:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/04/world/europe/bucha-ukraine-bodies.html

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/11/world/europe/bucha-terror.html

Unfortunately, Jack won't believe the New York Times, or the many other journalists who have reported on the horrors that the Russian military brought upon residents of Bucha.

Once a truth-denying mental virus has infected someone, it can be extremely difficult for them to heal themselves and be in touch with reality. At first I felt a duty to help Jack see the light of Ukraine truth. But I've come to realize that if someone is addicted to conspiracy theories, they have to want to be free of their addiction.

No one else can do that for them.

"Reality is Not What It Seems," a book by Carlo Rovelli

My new favorite book, until a fresh one arrives from Amazon, is Carlo Rovelli's Reality is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity.

Rovelli is an Italian theoretical physicist who, not surprisingly given the title of his book, is focused on resolving the mismatch between relativity theory and quantum mechanics. The key to doing this is to find a theory of gravity that is more fundamental than Einstein's general relativity, which describes gravity as the warping of space-time and isn't compatible with quantum mechanics.

That's a fascinating subject, made more fascinating by Rovelli's impressive writing ability, albeit in an English translation.

I've only just begun the book but am already liking it a lot. Rovelli starts off with a chapter about the atomic theory of ancient Greek thinkers such as Democritus. They broke away from the superstitions and religions of their time by extolling the ability of reason and observation to lay bare the secrets of the universe, which is still the basic scientific approach.

I found Rovelli's description of how Democritus concluded that reality had to be composed of discrete parts enlightening, having never heard it put this way before.

Democritus observed that matter could not be a continuous whole, because there is something contradictory in the proposition that it should be so. We know of Democritus's reasoning because Aristotle reports it.

Imagine, says Democritus, that matter is infinitely divisible, that is to say, that it may be broken down an infinite number of times. Imagine then that you break up a piece of matter ad infinitum. What would be left?

Could small particles of extended dimension remain? No, because if this were the case, the piece of matter would not yet be broken up to infinity. Therefore, only points without extension would remain. 

But now let us try to put together the piece of matter starting from these points: by putting together two points without extension, you cannot obtain a thing with extension, nor can you with three, or even with four. No matter how many points you put together, in fact, you never have extension, because points have no extension.

Therefore we cannot think that matter is made of points without extension, because no matter how many of these we manage to put together, we never obtain something with an extended dimension.

The only possibility, Democritus concludes, is that any piece of matter is made up of a finite number of discrete pieces that are indivisible, each one having a finite size: the atoms. 

Pretty damn brilliant. Just through clear thinking, around 450 BCE Democritus was able to come up with an atomic theory of what matter consists of that has stood the test of time. Sadly, all of Democritus' writings were destroyed by Christian emperors who didn't like that his ideas conflicted with Christian dogma.

So we're left with indirect mentions of Democritus' teachings. A Latin poet, Lucretius, says Rovelli, "adheres to the philosophy of Epicurus, a pupil of a pupil of Democritus." Here's how Rovelli describes how Lucretius viewed reality, comparing it to medieval notions that were much farther removed from modern science,

The medieval cosmos so marvelously sung by Dante was interpreted on the basis of a hierarchical organization of the universe that reflected the hierarchical organization of European society: a spherical cosmic structure with Earth at its center; the irreducible separation between Earth and heavens; finalistic and metaphorical explanations of natural phenomena; fear of God, fear of death; little attention to nature; the idea that forms preceding things determine the structure of the world; the idea that the source of knowledge could only be the past, in revelation and tradition.

There is none of this in the world of Democritus as sung by Lucretius. There is no fear of the gods; no ends or purposes in the world; no cosmic hierarchy; no distinction between Earth and heavens. There is a deep love of nature, a serene immersion within it; a recognition that we are profoundly part of it; that men, women, animals, plants, and clouds are organic threads of a marvelous whole, without hierarchies. There is a feeling of deep universalism, in the wake of the splendid words of Democritus: "To a wise man, the whole earth is one, because the true country of a virtuous soul is the entire universe."

There is, too, the ambition of being able to think about the world in simple terms. Of being able to investigate and understand the secrets of nature. To know more than our parents. And there are extraordinary conceptual tools on which Galileo, Kepler, and Newton will build: the idea of free and rectilinear motion in space; the idea of elementary bodies and their interactions, out of which the world is constructed; the idea of space as a container of the world.

And there is the simple idea of the finite divisibility of things. The granular quality of the world The idea that stops the infinite between our fingers. This idea is at the root of the atomic hypothesis, but it will also return with augmented force with quantum mechanics, and today is revealing itself to be powerful again -- as the keystone of quantum gravity.

Life is Simple, a fascinating book about Occam's razor

I've been making my way through Johnjoe McFadden's book Life is Simple:How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe. It traces the history of science through the lens of Occam's razor.

William of Occam, who was born in the late 13th century, is famous for favoring the simplest solutions in theology, science, and other areas of life.

The book says, "Three centuries after his death, the French theologian Libert Froidmont coined the term "Occam's razor" to refer to William's preference for shaving away excess complexity."

But contrary to how many people look upon Occam's razor, this doesn't mean that reality is simple. McFadden says:

Kepler's next step was, albeit reluctantly, to add more complexity. This is of course perfectly compatible with Occam's razor, which, contrary to many of its detractors, does not insist that the world is simple, only that in reasoning about it we should not multiply entities beyond necessity.

If the existing entities cannot do the job then the razor gives you free rein to add as many entities as needed, so long as they are not 'beyond necessity'.

...'Entities' refers to the parts of an hypothesis, explanation or model of any particular system.

Models come in for a lot of attention in the book.

The most familiar example is the numerous epicycles in the Ptolemaic model of the solar system, which assumed Earth sits at the center of it. In order to match observations of the sun and planets, smaller circles had to keep being added on to the large circles that was wrongly assumed to be how the planets moved. 

(Now we know it is an ellipse, and the sun is the center of the universe.)

What's interesting is that very different models can each be a reasonable-sounding explanation for some aspect of reality. Thus a good model is one that can be used to steadily improve our knowledge of reality, something that religious models, theologies, are utterly incapable of doing.

Our scientific model remains, not in the world, as Aristotle insisted, or in some mystical realm, as Plato proposed, but, according to Occam, in our head. The ultimate reality of what is really out there in the world will always be beyond our reach, as unknowable as Occam's omnipotent God.

...Models instantiate knowledge. They model the structure, dynamics and function of machines [among other things], usually in the language of geometry and mathematics. They can be as simple as the drawing of a steam engine, such as Newcomen's in 1712 that refers to Boyle's 'weight of air' to account for the motion of the piston.

The feature that makes them so useful is that improvements can be fed back into the model as a positive feedback loop that leads to exponential increases in performance. Yet models are useless without Occam's razor.

Imagine trying to build a steam engine if your model of how it works was based on More's 'knowing spirit'. How would you improve it? Perhaps you might pray to its spirit?

When this approach failed, your only recourse would have been the geologically slow process of trial and error that has been responsible for most innovations on our planet, including life itself, since the dawn of time. 

This all changed when scientists and engineers shifted to using models that instantiated their knowledge and their scientific laws and, as Boyle had urged, were 'the Simplest it must be: at least from all that is superfluous, free'.

With razored models in hand, scientists and engineers could predict modifications that would improve performance. If their prediction was realised, then the engineer knew their model was good; if not, the engineer would modify their model until their predictions held true and they obtained the desired improvement.

Their improved model would then be a starting point for further advances. With this positive feedback loop in place, technological development went from the linear rate of improvement delivered by trial and error to the exponential advances that characterise the modern age.

Well, religious and mystical beliefs don't even improve at a linear rate. They never improve at all, at least not in regard to explaining the nature of reality. 

One big reason for this is that dogmatism and blind faith prevail in religions.

So a religion isn't even capable of proving itself wrong -- with logically must be the case for nearly every religion given that religions contradict each other (or indeed every religion) -- because theological models don't include a capacity to test how well they match up against reality, with feedback providing a way to improve the theology.

Such as by discarding it as totally false. 

Instead, the same old dogmas are preached year after year, decade after decade, century after century. This is why science constantly progresses and religions remain the same insofar as their capacity to explain reality.

"Under the Banner of Heaven" a compelling story of religion gone bad

Having just written the title of this of this blog post, the question that comes to mind is whether there's ever a compelling story of religion gone good. 

In my current atheist frame of mind, the answer is no. But during the 35 years I was a believer, Eastern religion variety, I would have said, "Of course there is, my chosen faith."

Problem is, everyone who buys into a religion thinks the same way. Their faith is absolutely great, almost faultless. It's those other faiths who give religions a bad name.

My wife and I have started watching Under the Banner of Heaven on Hulu, which is based on a true crime story involving the Mormon religion. The first episode shows the grisly murder of a woman and her child.

At first the husband is the prime suspect. But it doesn't take long for the Utah detectives on the case to realize that a lot more is going on involving a very large Mormon family. (Is there any other kind? Mormon tend to have many children.)

Several things struck me about what we've watched so far.

One is how religion does bind people together strongly. This can be good or bad, depending on the nature of the religion. When Allen, I think his name is, brings his girlfriend to a gathering of his Lafferty family, everybody there greets her warmly in a decidedly Mormon fashion.

They do so because she's introduced as a devout Mormon.

That makes her part of the religious club to which they all belong. So there's much talk of Heavenly Father this and Heavenly Father that. (So far, it appears Mormons don't use "God" very much, preferring "Heavenly Father.")

I used to enjoy this feeling of belonging when I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), an Indian religious organization headed up by a guru. I knew that I could go anywhere in the world and be warmly welcomed at a meeting of the group, especially if I said some magic words.

Not "Heavenly Father." Rather, "Radha Soami." That was an all-purpose greeting of the group. Also, a way of saying thank you with hands folded. Or a way of ending a talk. Kind of like Aloha, I guess. 

During the many years I was the secretary/leader of our local RSSB group, my phone number was listed as a contact person for the organization. My wife, Laurel, wasn't a satsangi, as members of RSSB were called. 

Often when the phone rang and it was a RSSB initiate on the other end, Laurel would hear "Radha Soami." She'd then say, "Hello." Typically the other person would repeat, "Radha Soami." Laurel would keep saying "Hello" until she heard "Hello" in reply.

I thought this was great.

Every religion has some cult-like aspects. Radha Soami was used as a phrase in much the same way the Mormons in the show we're watching would say Heavenly Father. It marked you as part of the in-group.

But my wife wasn't part of RSSB, though she supported me during the time I was a member of RSSB. So people didn't know what to think when they'd phone my number and hear "Hello" rather than "Radha Soami."

Of course, this wasn't a big deal. It just indicated how every religion has ways to tell the difference between those who belong to that faith and those who don't. Mostly those ways don't cause any real problems.

It'll be interesting to learn, as we get further into Under the Banner of Heaven, what caused some members of the Mormon religion to murder the woman and her child.

I suspect those who did this ghastly deed were under the sway of an extreme cult-like frame of mind, as opposed to the usual "normal" religious cult-like attitude.