Church of the Churchless

The absurdity of believing there is Sach Khand (heaven)

Here's a guest post from the always-interesting Osho Robbins. Plus, a video Robbins made to accompany what follows. It has a "69" joke, so that alone leads me to recommend it.

Robbins has an intriguing take on the Sant Mat version of spirituality. Since I wrote a book called Return to the One, I'm sympathetic to the notion of oneness. 

However, I'm also sympathetic to the notion of non-oneness, since as Robbins observes, if everything was really One, there wouldn't be anybody who could stand outside of the oneness and say, "This One is absolutely wonderful!" (or we might say, onederful)

Anyway, here's Robbins' thoughts on the absurdity of believing in Sach Khand. But when I Googled this term, I found that you can take a train there -- along with luggage. Cool. Who knew heaven was so close at hand?

How absurd! The absurdity of believing there is a Sach Khand

Many religions believe that the ‘soul’ (or some equivalent) goes to a certain ‘place’ after death; either a heaven or a hell. They also believe in the concept of a ‘being’ that is in charge of that place (God or the Devil, respectively).

However, they cannot see the absurdity of all this, until an actual example is put before them – then they will laugh and say something like, “Oh, it’s not a place and God is not a person.”

Oh, okay – so it’s in a non-place and the God and Devil are ‘non-persons’?  Now that makes sense? The God and devil are depicted as actual beings in the relevant holy books. Some examples are: 

Sar Bachan:  One hair on his body has the light of a thousand suns.

(that means you would get instantly blinded if you look at him, but of course, the soul has super-eyes that cannot be blinded)

The Bible: “Then God said….”  “And God was a jealous God.”

(so apparently God is just like us, made in OUR image: he speaks, he gets jealous, he gets angry and brings a flood to destroy his own creation, which incidentally means he also makes mistakes, he even tells lies when he told Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil because ‘you will surely die’ but it was a lie because he did not die, instead God cursed him).

The point I am making is that God appears to be like a human. He talks, he thinks, he has emotions. He makes decisions. So he must be a ‘noun’ (an entity that has a shape and a form). He cannot both have a shape and be formless, just as you cannot have a “Square Circle”.

So the video I have created goes into the belief of a Sach Khand and a Sat Purush (or Anami Purush) who apparently resides there. 

This belief is held by all followers of Radha Soami and Sant Mat; although they will say “But they are spiritual regions and not physical” but this is just a nonsensical get-out clause. “Spiritual” is just another concept to explain what you cannot explain. 

Non-Duality is different.

In non-duality you cannot have a God or a Devil and they cannot interact with you – there cannot be any transaction or communication. In fact there cannot be a YOU separate from the ONEness (non-duality) as that is no longer ONENESS. 

I remember having discussions with “Jim Sutherland” telling him to avoid meeting Anami, because the moment he meets him, he will merge him into himself and that will be the end of Jim!

Jim, like many followers of religions, don’t like the idea of non-existence. They want to know that they will continue to exist after death and also when they get to heaven or Sach Khand. Non-existence doesn’t seem to be a viable goal. 

After all, it seems absurd doesn’t it? 

Imagine the conversation:

“So why exactly are you meditating 2 hours a day?”

“Oh, so I can merge into the supreme being and stop existing.”

“You mean you just want to disappear into nothing?”

“No, I will still be there, just different from the way I am now.”

It’s fantasy land. You cannot become the ONE and remain separate. There cannot be more than one ONE!

Anyway – here’s the video:

The absurdity of the scenario in the video makes it obvious that it’s all nonsense; but then, the follower has to ask “If this is absurd, then what is the truth? What will actually happen when I get to the non-place called Sach Khand?”

 

Three comments show absurdity of "karmic blaming"

Karma can be a dangerous concept. It's harmless enough if we simply think of it as the laws of cause and effect that guide our universe. 

But when people extend this concept to include supernatural fantasies, such as that our actions in past lives have determined what happens to us in this life, then the notion of karma needs to be criticized harshly. The not-nice canine in the Dilbert comic strip, Dogbert, captured the essence of this nicely.

And it doesn't matter whether someone uses the term "karma" or some other word. It's the idea of karmic blaming that has to be fought.

Wikipedia describes Jewish deicide, the idea that because Jews were responsible for Jesus' death, they deserve horrible things being done to them. 

Jewish deicide is a historic belief among some in Christianity that Jewish people as a whole were responsible for the death of Jesus. The antisemitic slur "Christ-killer" was used by mobs to incite violence against Jews and contributed to many centuries of pogroms, the murder of Jews during the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.

Even more directly, India's highly discriminatory caste system, which persists to this day, is based on religious ideas about karma and reincarnation. 

There is a vital link between Karma theory and the caste system. Karma theory is based on Law of Karma, where an act or deed done by a human being, good or bad, accompany the dead soul and determine the soul’s destiny in its future births. A soul will get reincarnated as human being or animal or insect, according to the accumulated good deeds or bad deeds done in the previous lives.

The position a soul occupies in the hierarchy of the caste system closely correlates to the accumulated deeds of the past. A person of good deeds will be reborn in the higher caste, for eg., as a Brahmin, and a person of bad deeds, as a dog or a Chandala (a lower caste). Please refer to Kaushitaki Upanishad or Chandogya upanishad to get more information on this.

So today I was eager to squash the ravings of frequent commenter "777" to the illogical bits that they deserve when he strongly implied, if not outright said, that Steven Hawking's ALS disease was the result of bad karmas -- and that suffering people need to learn from their mistakes in past lives.

I found this so insulting to Hawking and other people who suffer that, as you can read below, I called out "777" on his lack of compassion and deluded religiosity. I forgot to add that if he's so convinced that he's right, he should be using his real name in comments rather than hiding behind a pseudonym.

Here's our comment exchange, plus a right-on comment from JB who further demolished the rantings of "777."

 

Stephen Hawking asks "Is there a God?" (Spoiler alert: No.)

Being a big fan of both science and Stephen Hawking, naturally I had to buy his last and most recent book, "Brief Answers to the Big Questions," which was published after he died this year.


So far I've only read up through the first two questions, "Is there a God?" and "How did it all begin?" Since Hawking was an atheist, you can predict what the answers are. But I'll save the details for later in this post.

First, I want to acknowledge Hawking's amazing courage and commitment to truth. He talks about the progression of his ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which eventually left him only able to control his cheek movements -- but through technology he still was able to communicate via this means. 

I found this paragraph deeply moving.

My illness seemed to progress rapidly. Understandably, I became depressed and couldn't see the point of continuing to research my PhD, because I didn't know if I would live long enough to finish it. But then the progression slowed down and I had a renewed enthusiasm for my work. After my expectations had been reduced to zero, every new day became a bonus, and I began to appreciate everything I did have. While there's life, there is hope.

And in case you're wondering, yes, Hawking was an atheist until the moment he died. Apparently there are rumors to the contrary, but those are false. Like so many other atheists, Hawking found meaning in life without the fantasy of God. 

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist,” Hawking said of the meaning of life. “Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Here's how Hawking starts off the chapter in his book that addresses the Is there a God? question. 

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion. Religion was an early attempt to answer the questions we all ask: why are we here, where did we come from? Long ago, the answer was almost always the same: gods made everything.

The world was a scary place, so even people as tough as the Vikings believed in supernatural beings to make sense of natural phenomena like lightning, storms or eclipses. Nowadays, science provides better and more consistent answers, but people will always cling to religion, because it gives comfort, and they do not trust or understand science.

Hawking then makes clear what his overall attitude toward God is.

I do not want to give the impression that my work is about proving or disproving the existence of God. My work is about finding a rational framework to understand the universe around us. For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God. Well, I suppose it's possible that I've upset someone up there, but I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature.

This is key.

The laws of nature are universal. So far, it appears that they operate the same way in every corner of the universe. Further, even though many religious people believe in miracles that supposedly defy the laws of nature, there is no demonstrable evidence that miracles exist, either now or in the past.

Thus where is the need for God, if the laws of nature are sufficient to understand the universe? (This understanding is incomplete, and likely always will be; however, science is by far our best means of comprehending the cosmos, since religion does a terrible job with this.)

Hawking then discusses scientific theories about the origin of the universe, as the Beginning of Everything appears to be the only area where religion might have something to say, since the laws of nature do a good job of explaining the current state of the universe.

He writes:

At the moment of the Big Bang, an entire universe came into existence, and with it space. It all inflated, just like a balloon being blown up. So where did all this energy and space come from? How did an entire universe full of energy, the awesome vastness of space and everything in it simply appear out of nothing?

Interestingly, because this was an idea that either I hadn't come across before, or failed to understand properly, Hawking describes how right now the universe is still "nothing" in terms of matter/energy. So nothing became another form of nothing via the Big Bang.

This is an easy to grasp metaphor.

Imagine a man wants to build a hill on a flat piece of land. The hill will represent the universe. To make this hill he digs a hole in the ground and uses that soil to dig his hill. But of course he's not just making a hill -- he's also making a hole, in effect a negative version of the hill. The stuff that was in the hole has now become the hill, so it all perfectly balances out.

That negative energy now is in space. The positive energy is in mass and energy that comprises stars, galaxies, us. Again, nothing has become nothing in a different form. Hawking says the only question is "What could cause the spontaneous appearance of a universe?"

Here's his answer, which is based on the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

The laws of nature tell us that not only could the universe have popped into existence without any assistance, like a proton, and have required nothing in terms of energy, but also that it is possible that nothing caused the Big Bang. Nothing.

The explanation lies back with the theories of Einstein, and his insights into how space and time in the universe are fundamentally intertwined. Something very wonderful happened to time at the instant of the Big Bang. Time itself began.

Hawking concludes his Is there a God? chapter with this:

When people ask me if a God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth -- the Earth is a sphere that doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.

Do I have faith? We are each free to believe what we want, and it's my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.

This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science. I think that when we die we return to dust.

But there's a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in our genes that we pass on to our children. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that I am extremely grateful.

Now, to my knowledge Hawking doesn't address a question that I love to ponder, but which I admit may be an artifact of the limited human mind: Why is there something rather than nothing?

As we've seen, Hawking says that actually there is still nothing, even though our universe sure appears to be something, since the positive mass/energy is balanced out by the negative energy of space.

However, seemingly there had to be laws of nature within this nothing to allow that balancing to occur. And laws of nature aren't nothing at all, but something within nothing.

I suspect that Hawking looked upon Why is there something rather than nothing? as an uninteresting philosophical question, since there doesn't appear to be any way to answer it, even in theory. The question boggles the mind, but this probably is because our human minds are used to causes and effects happening within time.

If the cosmos always has existed, this takes us outside of time. And also seemingly outside of eternity. We're into a realm of "is'ness" beyond our capacity to envision. As I've noted many times before on this blog, it appears that something must have always existed. 

Religious people typically term this something God. Scientific people typically term this something the laws of nature that allow things to come from nothing. Either way, we're left with mystery, awe, the grand design of the universe which was Stephen Hawking's life work.

"Seven Types of Atheism" is intellectually dishonest

Last month I shared a critical Amazon reader review of John Gray's book, Seven Types of Atheism, in a blog post: "Great review of 'Seven Types of Atheism' by someone who hasn't read the book."

I said in the post that I wasn't going to buy the book. Then I changed my mind. Not sure why. Maybe I wanted to see if the book was as bad as I thought it would be.

Now that I've read Seven Types of Atheism, I'm glad I did. Here's my own review.

The most glaring irritating thing I found in the book was that Gray defines atheism on page 2, then forgets his own definition on the following pages. Here's the early-on definition.

A provisional definition of atheism might still be useful, if only to indicate the drift of the book that follows. So I suggest that an atheist is anyone with no use for the idea of a divine mind that has fashioned the world. In this sense atheism does not amount to very much. It is simply the absence of the idea of a creator god.

OK, as an atheist I generally agree with this. There could be other types of gods than a creator god, but the major world religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism -- all teach that the world was created by a divine mind, or being.

So I figured that in the rest of his book, Gray would view atheism as how he defined it: the absence of the idea of a creator god. This fits with how I view my atheism. It also fits with how every atheist I know views atheism. Again, as the absence of a belief in god.

But in many places in Seven Types of Atheism, Gray speaks of a "religion of humanity," a "self-deifying humanity," "secular religion," and such. How could this be if atheism is the absence of the idea of a creator god? Wouldn't religion then be the presence of the idea of a creator god?

No, not according to Gray's twisted logic. 

Because on page 3 of his book, Gray offers up a decidedly strange definition of religion. It isn't a belief in god, creator-variety or otherwise. Nor is it an attempt to understand reality in terms of supernatural or divine phenomena. Rather, Gray says:

A provisional definition of religion may also be useful... Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.

Wow. What a weird definition of religion. The Amazon reviewer who hadn't read the book nailed Gray on this, since he'd heard Gray speak in the same fashion in an interview. Here's part of what that reviewer said.

Gray said: If you asked an anthropologist or a sociologist or even a cultural historian about religion, not one of them nowadays, or very few of them, would think of religion as bodies of theories or beliefs or propositions which try to explain the world.

For starters, if we're talking about the three Abrahamic religions, they absolutely assert theories, beliefs and propositions for the purpose of explaining the world.

In a feeble attempt to support this claim, Gray uses a straw man. He says, "The myth about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden was never meant as an early theory of how life came about on this planet." Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact that the Abrahamic religions assert that God had a hand (direct or indirect) in the creation of the universe, which ultimately led to the creation of humans, with whom God has a special relationship.

Moreover, the Abrahamic religions assert that God has a hand in laying down morals. Clearly, these assertions are intended as theories, beliefs and propositions.

Thus what Gray does at the beginning of his book is intellectually dishonest. He defines atheism as the absence of the idea of a creator god. But he doesn't define religion as the presence of the idea of a creator god. Rather, Gray defines religion extremely broadly as "an attempt to find meaning in events."

Again, wow.

The day I got married was deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of marriage. The results of last Tuesday's midterm elections were deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of politics. 

But obviously every attempt by us humans to find meaning in events isn't religious in nature. But this obviousness isn't apparent to John Gray, because the bulk of his book is an attempt to paint atheism with the brush of religion, since atheists find meaning in events, history, humanity, and other non-godly entities.

Wait! Aren't atheists defined by Gray as lacking a belief in a creator god? Yes, but Gray says atheists are religious because they find meaning in events. Thus every person on Earth who finds meaning in events is religious by Gray's absurd logic. 

Here's some passages from Seven Types of Atheism that reflect this absurdity.

But it was Saint-Simon who first presented the religion of humanity in systematic form. In future, scientists would replace priests as the spiritual leaders of society. Government would be an easy matter of 'the administration of things.' Religion would become the self-worship of humankind.

...Having renounced the idea of any divine power outside the human world, human beings could not avoid claiming divine powers for themselves.

...A free-thinking atheist would begin by questioning the prevailing faith in humanity. But there is little prospect of contemporary atheists giving up their reverence for this phantom.

...Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence the unending succession of God-surrogates, such as humanity and science, technology, and the all-too-human visions of transhumanism.

Gray doesn't believe that "humanity" exists. Only individual humans do.

Fine, he's entitled to that belief. I don't agree with him, because our species, Homo sapiens, does have common characteristics, and the modern world has erased many of the borders that used to separate humans by geography, culture, and such. 

John Gray doesn't believe that our species advances. This is highly debatable. Witness how slavery, the subjugation of women, and world wars have faded away (though still existent, or possible) in the past several hundred years. 

But since Gray holds that belief, and he wanted to bash atheism in his book, he needed to define religion in such a way that anyone who finds meaning in human events or history is "religious." Hence, humanists are religious, and any atheist who finds meaning in a hope that humanity is progressing is also "religious."

I'm an atheist. I'm a progressive. I'm not religious. I don't believe in a creator god.

So Gray ignored the reality that the vast majority of atheists simply don't believe in god. But this fact doesn't fit with Gray's desire to make atheism into a secular "religion," so he ignored it.

We humans have selfhood without a self

Here's a big question, one of the biggest when it comes to understanding reality and how religions typically view what it means to be human:

Do we have a self? Or adding an (important) capital letter, Do we have a Self?

To kick off my discussion of these questions, here's some recent right-on comment observations from "JB."

Brian: "there is nobody having an experience. There is just experience, which usually includes an experience of being, or having, a self." Rather than no-body having an experience, I would argue that there is a body having an experience. More precisely, I would argue that the conscious brain is having the experience. That also seems obvious and rational.

Harding: "All you are is consciousness and its contents." Brian: "his insight also can be framed as a realization that there is no self..." If I am consciousness, then consciousness certainly seems like a good candidate for the self. Proclaiming no-self would be tantamount to proclaim no-consciousness, or no-conscious-being.

l agree with JB. And I also still hold that we don't have a self as it is commonly understood. It all comes down to what is meant by self. 

JB correctly observes that conscious beings have experiences. These experiences occur within a body. That could be a human body, a dog body, a whale body, a bird body, a bat body. 

Most neuroscientists and philosophers interested in consciousness say that the borderline between a conscious and unconscious being is that there is something like to be a conscious being. Thomas Nagel kicked off this train of thought with his famous, "What is it like to be a bat?" question. 

It sure seems like there is some answer to that question. It also seems like we will never know what the answer is, because only a bat can be a bat. Further, only a particular bat can know what it is like to be that particular bat. 

Maybe all bats have the same sort of conscious experience. But I doubt it. I'm virtually 100% certain that dogs have different conscious experiences, having been close friends with several of them. And I'm even more certain, basically 100%, that we human have different conscious experiences.

And when it comes to myself, I know for a fact that moment by moment, minute by minute, day by day, year by year, I have different conscious experiences. Sometimes -- as in deep sleep or under anesthesia -- I don't have any conscious experiences at all.

So it seems clear that if consciousness produces, or is, what we mean by "self," this self is changeable. It isn't anything constant, unchanging, imperturbable. That's why I suggested in the title of this post that we call it "selfhood," which has a more flexible and dynamic connotation than "self."

Yet, many, if not most, people have a very different idea of what "self" means. 

We often hear statements like, "I'm trying to find my true self," which implies that the self is like a buried treasure lurking somewhere under the obvious surface of consciousness. And religions look upon soul as being the spiritual or supernatural equivalent of a true self.

Meaning, soul is viewed as our eternal essence, while the body is viewed as temporary. (Christianity is ambiguous on this point, since bodily resurrection is part of Christian teaching; but ordinary Christians speak all of the time about soul and seem to believe that the soul survives bodily death.)

This certainly is the teaching of Hinduism and other Eastern forms of religion such as Sant Mat, since the soul (Atma) is supposed to be able to merge with God (Parmatma).

However, there is no evidence of a soul or Self -- with a capital "S" to indicate it's supposedly divine nature.

Further, there isn't even any evidence of an ordinary self, if "self" is construed to mean a permanent essence of ourselves that doesn't change. As JB indicated, the closest thing to something permanent in our psyche is consciousness, but this isn't what is generally considered to be a self.

The main reason we consider ourselves to be an enduring entity deserving of the title, "self," is memory. We have memories going back to early childhood. So when we think about ourselves, those memories are triggered, leading us to say things such as "It wasn't like me to have done something like that."

But if we had no memory of what we'd done in the past, we wouldn't be surprised at anything we did in the present, since that would simply be what we're doing now. 

So along with JB, I do believe that each of us is a self. (Note: is, not has.) Again, though, I think selfhood might be a better term, since this means individuality. Every person is undeniably unique. We just lack a permanent self, or Self/Soul.

"On Having No Head" has a few simple truths

On Having No Head is a book by D.E. Harding. I'd bought and read it quite a few years ago. Then, when I needed to weed out unwanted books to make room for more, On Having No Head was given away. 

Recently, though, I heard Sam Harris speak about the book in his Waking Up iPhone app, so I decided to re-buy and re-read it. Here's my review, which is of a second edition of the book that contains a "Bringing the story up to date" section that was written over forty years after Harding wrote the first edition.

My main problem with On Having No Head is the problem that I have with all books about personal spiritual breakthroughs or realizations. In the early days of my churchlessness, I was more interested in stories of how someone uncovered the Secret of the Universe. 

As late as 2006 I was recommending books that now I'm much more skeptical about. Why? Because I've got a better understanding of how the human mind works -- the result of both my own experiences with meditation, and a lot of reading about modern neuroscience and psychology. 

Here's the short version of what Harding experienced on a walk in the Himalayas, after he realized that he wasn't seeing his head (excerpt for a part of his nose).

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything - room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it as, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of "me," unstained by any observer. It's total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision, it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious.

OK. I have no doubt that Harding had a breathtaking experience. But here's the thing: like he said, his revelation was of the perfectly obvious. Yesterday I jotted down a note about something Sam Harris said in lesson 28 of the guided meditations in his  Waking Up course.

You're the space in which everything appears. Everything is already happening. All you are is consciousness and its contents.

These three sentences are pretty much the gist of Harding's book. They indeed are perfectly obvious. Everything in the world, or indeed the entire universe, the Himalayas included, has to appear in our consciousness if we are to be aware of it. How else would we know anything?

But here's some facts about the human brain and mind (the mind is the brain in action, basically) that Harding doesn't address in On Having No Head, either because he wasn't aware of them, or chose not to mention them. 

(1) The brain has no feeling. This allows surgeons to operate on the brain while a patient is conscious. So we aren't aware of what our hundred billion or so brain cells are doing in the same way we feel our muscles contracting, our fingers touching something, or our stomach digesting a heavy meal. 

(2) In the quotation above, and elsewhere in his book, Harding speaks of a "vast emptiness" of consciousness. This may be how it feels to us, but that isn't reality. When Harding looked at the view of the Himalayas, his brain was busily piecing together data from his optic nerves, integrating it with past memories/experiences, and presenting him with what he calls a "superb scene." Visual perception isn't a passive mirroring of the world. It involves a lot of brain activity. 

In the updated part of his book, Harding does speak about some neuroscientific truths: there is no evidence for an independent "self" within the brain/mind, nor does it appear that we humans possess free will, which seemingly would require the aforementioned self that doesn't exist. 

Here's what Harding says in his Bringing the Story Up to Date section about his final stage of "The Eight Stages of the Headless Way." It's called (8) The Breakthrough.

This amounts to a profound declaration of intent. It is the realization at gut level (so to say) that one's deepest desire is that all shall be as it is -- seeing that it all flows from one's true Nature, the Aware Space here. 

How is this breakthrough actually made? What can one do to bring it nearer?

In a sense, nothing. It's not a doing, but an undoing, a giving up, an abandonment of the false belief that there's anyone here to abandon. What else is there to do?

After all, one's initial in-seeing -- no matter how "brief" and "shallow" -- was already total self-surrender: everything here went: or rather, it was clear there's nothing here to go. It was the essential quantum leap from the fiction of egocentricity to the fact of zerocentricity. 

And for sure the faithful day-to-day seeing put in since then -- the seeing that already one is Nothing and Everything -- is a most valuable preparation for the discovery that at the deepest level one already wills Nothing and Everything. 

Now, Harding goes on to talk about an unconditional surrender to God's will in which we welcome all that the world is bringing to us. But as noted above, his insight also can be framed as a realization that there is no self residing within our psyche, and there is no free will belonging to that nonexistent self.

Which is fully in accord with how Sam Harris understands the human brain/mind, which explains why Harris is a fan of Harding's book.

Let's explore the subtleties of determinism

This comment interchange on a recent post begs for further discussion. Which I'll start off below after sharing a screenshot of the interchange.

Taking JB's second comment first, I understand why he feels this way -- that this blog is the wrong place for discussing "these kinds of subtle, abstract notions."

Despite the name of this blog, many commenters are fervent believers in some form of religion, and they aren't very open to talking about ideas that challenge the tenets of their religion. But I started this blog 14 years ago with the intent of fostering just the sort of discussion that JB talks about.

So let's see if we can discuss the admittedly subtle, abstract notion of determinism without resorting to religious, philosophical, or supernatural platitudes.

I'd put Spence Tepper's comment in that category. Determinism doesn't make a case for God. Most religions that believe in some form of divine being believe in some form of human free will. And even if someone argues this point, the very notion of God is extremely arguable. 

Thus let's leave God out of this discussion of determinism.

Let's also dismiss Tepper's stark assertion that free will exists for humankind, which also is highly debatable, since most of the scientific evidence argues otherwise. Further, it is difficult to see how free will can coexist with determinism. Is Tepper really suggesting that the universe is deterministic, but humans have free will?

If so, where does that free will come from? God? A soul? But we're going to leave out God and other unproven supernatural entities, so that argument has zero credibility.

Let's return, then, to JB's provocative first comment.

I found it provocative because it makes me think, and that's a good thing. I've read and written a lot about free will and determinism. But this is a fresh idea for me: that determinism carries within it an inherent contradiction, because its apparent trueness can't be the reason someone holds that belief.

I look forward to JB speaking more about this, either in a comment or in an email message to me that I could share. Here's how I see what he said, which may or may not be close to what his understanding is. Because this indeed is subtle territory, I'll sort of circle around this issue in various ways.

(1) If determinism is true, and I believe it is, nothing exists outside of its bounds. This includes a belief in free will and a disbelief in determinism. Those also would be determined by prior causes and effects, as would a belief that determinism holds sway in the universe.

(2) Chance, to my understanding, is unknown determinism. "Chaos theory" isn't actually chaotic in the usual sense of the term. It simply refers to complex systems dominated by feedback loops in which small effects can have large causes, and it is impossible for humans to understand the dynamics of the system in sufficient detail to predict its behavior. But chaos theory is deterministic.

(3) Quantum mechanics may appear to be a refuge for genuine chance. However, as I've written about recently, no one knows the underlying meaning of quantum phenomena. Some theories (many worlds, for example) are deterministic. The Copenhagen interpretation isn't. Regardless, determinism seems to rule in the realm of everyday objects, which is where we live.

(4) I agree with JB that trueness alone can't be the reason someone accepts determinism. That would be only one among many different causes that lead to someone, like JB and me, embracing the idea of a deterministic universe. However, a longing for scientific objective truth is stronger in some people than in others. Even if this longing is determined, not freely willed, it still is a causative factor in how people look upon the world.

(5) Douglas Hofstadter wrote a book called "I Am a Strange Loop." I loved the title. I spent two years in a Systems Science Ph.D. program. Back then (1970's), and also now, feedback loops were recognized as a valid way of conceptualizing how the world works. 

(6) Loops can exist within loops. A belief or a feeling that free will is true can exist within a larger deterministic loop. For example, I believe in determinism, yet in my daily life I have a feeling that I act and choose freely. This is akin to me knowing that the Earth rotates around its axis, yet I feel "the sun is setting" when I see it sinking below the horizon. 

(7) Maybe this is what Tepper is referring to when he spoke of both determinism and free will existing. If so, I agree that we can have knowledge that X is true, yet wrongly have a feeling that Y is true. This is why science is our best way of knowing, since feelings and intuition can lead us astray.

(8) Many books I read accurately say that evolution and natural selection don't care about truth, they care about survival and passing on a being's genetic heritage. This might be part of what JB is getting at. Finding truth isn't an inherent stand-alone motivation for us humans. Even scientists (or especially scientists) acknowledge this.

(9) So again, science and reason are our best means of determining what is true about the world. Discussion, experimentation, hypothesis testing, skeptical questioning -- this is how we overcome human biases and blind spots. On our own, we always will be bound by our personal subjectivity. 

Well, this is a start toward a discussion of the subtleties of determinism.

Feel free to weigh in on what JB, Spence Tepper, and I have said on this subject. Just leave God and supernaturalism out of the comments. Think for yourself. Use reason and evidence to make your case, not faith or feelings.

Like God, there's also no evidence for a dragon in your garage

Good arguments against the existence of God and the supernatural are worth sharing twice. So here's what I shared a few years ago in "No dragon in the garage. Also, no God in heaven."

This morning I came across this excellent rebuttal to those who ask atheists like me to prove that God doesn't exist in the course of re-reading Paul Singh's book, "The Great Illusion."

As I repeatedly point out on this blog, the burden of proof is on those who claim that God does exist. This should be obvious, but sometimes obviousness needs to be conveyed via an analogy to those who refuse to see the obvious.

Since there's no evidence of a dragon in anybody's garage, fantasized garage-dwelling dragons have no effect on the world or any people other than those who believe they exist. They are a non-entity for everybody else who understands how crazy it is to believe that dragons can inhabit garages.

Likewise, since there's no evidence of God or the supernatural, a belief that these entities exist leads to absolutely no difference to the world or to anyone who doesn't believe in these fantasies. Meaning, a world without a belief in God looks exactly the same as a world with a belief in God.

Again, the only difference a false belief makes is in those whose mind holds the belief.

Sure, some people feel a need to point out the falsity of beliefs, just as fact checkers feel a need to point out the many lies of Donald Trump. But otherwise, a belief in something that doesn't exist has no effect on the world, since that thing doesn't exist except as a mental concept.

(Trump lies do exist, so they have an effect on the world.)

Here's how Singh explains this Carl Sagan analogy.

Carl Sagan's tale of "A fire breathing Dragon lives in my garage" is a perfect example of how those who make scientifically unfalsifiable claims try to shift the burden of proof to others by special pleading at every step of the way.

Someone tells you there is a dragon in his garage. So you take a look in the garage and you don't see any dragon. He tells you the dragon is invisible.

So you decide to spread some flour on the garage floor to detect the dragon's foot prints, but there are none. And so it goes. Your friend will always have an excuse as to why there is no evidence that there is a dragon in his garage.

You tell your friend that there is no evidence that there is a dragon in his garage. But he tells you that you can't prove there isn't. And he is right, you can't prove there isn't a dragon in the garage.

But that is precisely the point of Sagan's tale. The burden of proof is not on you to prove anything. The burden of proof is on the person who makes the claims about the dragon. It is his responsibility to provide evidence for the dragon.

And he can't provide any because there isn't any. And you can't prove his claim wrong because his claim is unfalsifiable. And it is unfalsifiable because it makes no predictions about what you will perceive when you look in the garage. 

Such unfalsifiable claims are nonsense.

This is how all superstition, pseudo-science, and religion works. Believers in such things make extraordinary claims that cannot be falsified. And when they are forced to admit that they don't have any evidence to support their claims, they respond by saying that you cannot prove that they are wrong.

But, again, the burden of proof is on the person making the extraordinary claim about miracles or UFOs or whatever to provide evidence for their claim. The burden of proof is not on the other person to prove them wrong -- something that is absolutely impossible to do given that their claim is unfalsifiable.

The take home lesson is that we should never believe a claim to be true simply because no one can prove it to be false. Theologians are experts at this kind of nonsense. 

Are delusional people making things up? Evidence shows that the human brain is universally delusional in many ways and therefore people who promote superstitions are not particularly more delusional than the rest of us.

It is just that examples of religious delusions are rather classic examples of how the brain creates illusions and delusions. The use of logic and scientific skepticism is a skill that can be used to overcome the limitations of our own brains. 

This skill is like any other skill such as learning to play the piano. It involves training in metacognition as well as basic education in all basic sciences.

Great review of "Seven Types of Atheism" by someone who hasn't read the book

When I first heard of John Gray's book, "Seven Types of Atheism," I thought I'd be interested in it. But after reading some reviews, I decided against buying it. (For example, see here and here.)

In another post I'll have more to say about an article in The New Yorker, Without a Prayer, which is partly about Gray's book. For now I'll just note a quotation from the book that illustrates how far off-base Gray's take on religiosity and atheism is:

"A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think."

Wrong. A godless world leads one to embrace modern science, which provides many answers to the questions that religious believers attribute to God. So there is considerably less mystery in a godless world.

To give one example, the theory of evolution does a much better job of explaining how us humans came to be than the countless creation myths put forth by religions. 

Now, I haven't read Gray's book. Neither has someone who wrote a scathing review on Amazon. But he listened to an interview of John Gray discussing "Seven Types of Atheism," which is the next best thing. 

Below is what Steven Mason says in his review. It seems right-on to me, given what is said about Gray's book in The New Yorker article. What Gray appears to ignore is what Mason zeroes in on: the fact that religions make truth claims about the world/universe.

This means that atheism has a much stronger leg to stand on than Gray admits to. I know lots of atheists. They all are fine moral people who are every bit as caring, virtuous, and loving as religious believers.

What they reject about religion is simple: it isn't true.

Put another way, there is no evidence that God or the supernatural exists. So again, this means there is a huge difference between (1) believing in a universe suffused with divinity, and (2) not believing in this sort of universe.

Here's Mason's review:

Amazon review by Steven Mason of John Gray's "Seven Types of Atheism."

I haven't read this book but I did listen to a long interview of the author discussing this book. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This is a review of the author explaining his book.

If any defenders of Gray would like to have a discussion with me about the views expressed in this book, I encourage you to post a comment. I assume that the views expressed in the interview are also expressed in the book. Let's get started:

Gray said: The first thing that's wrong with the so-called New Atheism is that there's nothing in it which is new.

Even if this were true (it's not), it's irrelevant. The so-called New Atheists are responding to the current crop of theists who are using, or trying to use, the power of government to force their religious beliefs on everyone, and other theists who are using pseudoscience to "prove" that God exists. It could be said, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that New Atheists are a response to New Theists. Moreover, while religion is exempt from taxes, there's no reason it needs to be exempt from criticism.

Besides, if originality is the name of the game, Gray should criticize himself because he doesn't say anything new.

Gray said: None of the New Atheists knows anything about the history of ideas.

That's an ad hominem attack that has no evidence to support it. This remark reminds me of "the true Scotsman" fallacy. In this case, Gray gets to define "knows anything" in a way that makes his claim valid (in his own mind, at least).

Gray has advanced degrees in philosophy and politics, so it's quite possible that he has acquired more knowledge about the history of ideas than most of the New Atheists. But that doesn't mean that the New Atheists have "no knowledge." Nor does it mean that having less knowledge than Gray necessarily invalidates their criticisms of religion. This is elitism of the worst kind and it's also the fallacy of "appeal to authority."

Gray said: If you asked an anthropologist or a sociologist or even a cultural historian about religion, not one of them nowadays, or very few of them, would think of religion as bodies of theories or beliefs or propositions which try to explain the world.

For starters, if we're talking about the three Abrahamic religions, they absolutely assert theories, beliefs and propositions for the purpose of explaining the world.

In a feeble attempt to support this claim, Gray uses a straw man. He says, "The myth about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden was never meant as an early theory of how life came about on this planet." Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact that the Abrahamic religions assert that God had a hand (direct or indirect) in the creation of the universe, which ultimately led to the creation of humans, with whom God has a special relationship.

Moreover, the Abrahamic religions assert that God has a hand in laying down morals. Clearly, these assertions are intended as theories, beliefs and propositions.

Gray said: What we now call Hinduism, a very bold body of beliefs, of practices associated with very sophisticated philosophies, has never been summed up in a single body of beliefs. The same goes for Taoism, or Taoism and Confucianism and Shinto. Judaism hasn't been embodied in any single list of propositions or creeds.

What is Gray's point here? Even if there are many varieties of religious beliefs within broad families of religions, each variety still asserts "theories, beliefs and propositions that try to explain the world."

Gray said: I seriously considered not discussing New Atheists at all because I do find them boring and feeble in their arguments. But I did in the end, because most readers, if we say the word 'atheism,' wouldn't nowadays be most familiar with figures like Dawkins and Sam Harris and the others that you mentioned. I did discuss them quite briefly.

One gets the impression that Gray "discusses" New Atheists mostly to point out that they are ignorant about atheism, ideas, and religion, and they are boring besides. But again, if New Atheists are responding to what some power-hungry and pseudoscientific theists are trying to do in the world today, why does Gray find this "boring"?

For example, does Gray want a world in which Creationism is taught in public school science classes, as if it were a valid theory supported by evidence? Doesn't Gray know that is exactly what some theists are trying to do?

I could respond to lots more quotes, but you get the idea. These few quotes are more than sufficient to convince me not to bother reading this book, or any other book by Gray. Even if I were receptive to his views, there is certainly nothing "new" about them.

Why atheist me isn't interested in religious views

Recently a regular commenter on this blog, Spence Tepper, proposed an experiment. Basically, it was a sort of "reflective listening" exercise, where before arguing for your own position, you state as clearly as possible how someone opposed to your position feels/thinks.

Here's what Tepper said:

In fact, Brian, I would like to offer a social psychology experiment for those of us participating here regularly. Let's all work with you to create a list of our names and our current position on matters of Atheism, Agnosticism, Theism etc. And the opposite position. Then, for one week, each day we comment on a blog post you provide talking the exact opposite point of view to our normal perspective.

For example, I would argue purely for Anti-theism and point to the amoral and corrupting influence of all forms of theistic belief, including RSSB. You might choose to adopt the role of a devout Catholic... Arjuna and One Initiated might assume the roles of Atheist and Sceptic. Etc... If any of us falters or appears not to make the best case of the role, anyone is free to call us on it.

And we will be bound to deepen our case for the opposite view, or to do some research on that view and return with a stronger argument for it. My hypothesis is that, after a week of doing this with full sincerity, we will change our position. It might only change a little, or we might actually be firmer in understanding why we actually believe what we do now. But I believe our post experiment position will change permanently.

I also believe that each of us will report an understanding and greater respect of the opposite view we don't have now, which we would be unable to develop without stepping into that role ourselves. Well? Any takers?

Here's why I'm not interested in the idea.

(1) Been there, done that. Not every atheist used to be a religious believer, and not every religious believer used to be an atheist. But often this is the case. When it is, the person who switched sides, so to speak, has a very good understanding of how the other side thinks, because they themselves used to think that way.

This applies to me.

In my teen and early college years, I was an atheist. Then for 35 years I was a devotee of an Eastern religion. And for the past 13 years or so I've reverted to atheism. So I understand the religious mentality because it used to be a core part of my psyche. Meaning, I don't need to put myself in the role of a religious person, since I played that role for many years.

(2) Objective reality doesn't have two sides. Reality isn't this and that. It simply is. 

Of course, when we aren't sure what reality is like, various hypotheses can be put forward, since no one knows which is true. For a long time people debated whether the sun revolved around the earth, or the earth revolved around the sun. Now that debate is over.

Ditto with whether human-caused global warming is happening. I have little or no interest in understanding how global warming deniers think, because their thinking is wrong. Likewise, I consider that anyone who believes in God or the supernatural is wrong, because there is no demonstrable evidence for those beliefs. 

Yes, I understand that lots of people feel that God and the supernatural are real. I used to feel that way myself. But I don't see any point in trying to understand a viewpoint that is almost certainly incorrect. 

(3) Facts would change my mind, not another mind. I love politics. I love discussions. I love newspaper opinion pages. So part of what Spence Tepper suggested appeals to me -- the part about examining the basis for opposing positions. In fact, in my blog posts I regularly ask religious believers to provide solid evidence that God or the supernatural exists. 

I'm very much open to changing my atheist mind, but so far no one has provided that evidence.

However, it isn't understanding a religious believer's mind that would cause this change. Like I said above, I used to have that sort of mind. I remember how I used to think, and now I don't think that way, since it no longer makes sense to me.

In some cases, knowing how another mind feels about something is instructive. I like to read Top Critic reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes web site when deciding whether to watch a certain movie. But when it comes to deciding whether God exists, or the supernatural exists, for me this isn't a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact.

Again, I already understand why people believe in God and the supernatural. I'm sympathetic to those beliefs, since I used to have them myself. Yet I don't see any reason to restate them, as Tepper suggested. The facts are on the side of atheism, and that's much more important to me than the mental mindset of a religious believer.