Church of the Churchless

Marvelous mystery lies in the complexity of the world

Most of us want to believe in something greater than ourself. That's a worthy ambition. Problem is, religious believers head off in a misguided direction when they imagine that the something greater lies in a vertical direction.

Meaning, they fantasize that a heaven awaits above; or that higher supernatural regions of reality exist; or that their consciousness needs to be elevated beyond worldly concerns.

What these devotees of verticality fail to understand is this: the world right here and right now possesses all the majesty, mystery, and meaning that anyone could desire.

It just takes eyes to see, which, sadly, all too often religious believers lack -- because their attention is focused on mental concepts of a imagined vertical realm rather than the reality of what the world offers.

So what I'm encouraging people to do is extend their vision horizontally. Try to understand the marvelous nature of this world, all that extends in every direction from our own body/mind. 

Nature. Animals. Humans. Galaxies. Plants. Minerals. Science. Art. Culture. A limitless expanse that is partially known, yet mostly remains a mystery.

Not because it can't be known. Because it takes time and effort to unravel the mysteries of the cosmos, including the small portion we call Earth. 

It's a big mistake to think that scientists have a narrow, mechanistic perception of reality.

Sure, some do, but they're by far the exception. The prevailing view of modern science is strongly moving toward a systems approach that emphasizes complex interrelationships, not simple bits and pieces of matter/energy.

Jeremy Lent speaks of this in his book, "The Web of Meaning: Integrating Science and Traditional Wisdom to Find Our Place in the Universe." In the Introduction he says:

The Web of Meaning takes up where The Patterning Instinct [his previous book] left off, by laying out a framework for a worldview that could foster humanity's long-term flourishing on a healthy planet. It is a worldview of integration: one that identifies the unifying principles that flow through all things, while celebrating the differences that lead to the richness of our lived experience. 

It's a worldview that links together scientific findings in recent decades from such diverse fields as evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience and complexity theory, showing how they affirm profound insights from the world's great wisdom traditions, such as Buddhism, Taoism, and traditional knowledge from Indigenous peoples around the world.

This integrated worldview breaks down many of the barriers that tend to separate different forms of knowledge and activity in modern society. 

We're accustomed to thinking of science as existing in a different domain from spirituality. We generally view the intellect as distinct from emotion; the mind as separate from the body; humans as separate from nature; and spiritual insight as separate from political engagement.

In the integrated worldview laid out here, each one of these domains is intricately connected with the others in an extended web of meaning.

A complex web of meaning. But "complex" doesn't necessarily mean confusing, disturbing, undesirable. Complexity just is the way the world is. 

Yes, we humans like to imagine that the world is made of discrete entities. There is me, and there is you. Two things. I am me, you are you. Pretty damn simple. 

And yet... 

When I'm with my wife I'm a different person than when I'm by myself. Or with someone else. Every relationship is just that: a relation between two or more entities, in this case, people. That relationship is more than the sum of the parts of the entities. 

It is a process, give and take, a flowing dance that can't be understood by freezing motion into a static "me" and "you." In every relationship between two living beings, there is an astounding degree of mystery, of unpredictableness, of creativity.

We have no idea who our self is. Not really. Almost certainly the reason is that the self doesn't exist. At least not in the way most of us conceive of it.

We imagine an unchanging core at the center of our being. Consciousness. Soul. Ego. Self.

Whatever name it goes by, there's no evidence of it, even though it seems entirely real. So does a mirage, until we drive close to the shimmering pool of water in the middle of a road and realize that it only exists as ephemeral waves given off by a hot road. 

(When I was a child my mother lived in El Paso and drove to New Mexico regularly, so I became familiar with this sort of mirage.)

We have a lot of difficulty grasping that there's no enduring self -- just relationships between our body/mind and the world.

Zen masters are fond of asking their students to point to that supposed self, to their imagined Buddha-nature, to the "I" lurking in their cranium.

When all that pointing is shown to be illusory, they advise looking instead to eating a bowl of rice, or to sweeping the floor, or to carrying a pail of water. We find ourselves by losing ourselves in the greater world.

Jeremy Lent says in his book:

Along with other Buddhist schools, Zen recognizes that, of all the cognitive patterns blocking a deep realization of reality, the most insidious is the belief that "I" am an objective and fixed entity, rather than a mere abstraction. Philosopher Alan Watts illustrates this by comparing the "I" to the illusory circle of light created by a whirling torch or the flight path made by a bird in the sky.

It doesn't objectively exist, but we create the abstraction by weaving together a pattern of past and future.

The word for this Buddhist insight, anatman, which literally means 'no atman', is often confusingly translated as 'no-self', but it would be more accurate to translate it as 'no-fixed-I'. 

The meaning of the ancient Indian word atman correlates closely with the Greco-Christian idea of a fixed eternal soul that is freed from the body at death. When the Buddha renounced this core Vedic belief with the principle of anatman, it would have been as revolutionary as an early Christian claiming that the soul didn't exist.

Believers in God have the burden of proof, not atheists

My wife has organized an atheist group that meets every Sunday here in Salem. Recently I noted that someone had shared a link to a book on the group's Facebook page. 

It looked interesting, so I bought Why There is No God: Simple Responses to 20 Common Arguments for the Existence of God.

I'm enjoying Armin Navabi's book. Here's info about Navabi that's on the back cover and Amazon listing.

Armin Navabi is a former Muslim from Iran and the founder of Atheist Republic, a non-profit organization with over one million fans and followers worldwide that is dedicated to offering a safe community for atheists around the world to share their ideas and meet like-minded individuals.

Armin was born and raised in the Islamic Republic of Iran and was indoctrinated thoroughly in the Muslim tradition. After almost losing his life in the pursuit of God's grace, the devastation of that event motivated him to seek a better understanding of the nature and concept of God and religious belief.

Armin's journey led him to leaving Islam and becoming an atheist. Wanting to reach out to others like himself, Armin continues to examine religion as well as the notion of God and interact with others to engage in thought-provoking and educational discussion.

I liked what Navabi says in his Introduction about the burden of proof. He reminded me of me in how he argued this. Great atheist minds think alike, I guess. 

One concept you'll see come up repeatedly in this book is the idea of the burden of proof. During any debate, it's the job of the person making a claim to provide support, evidence and reasoning for that claim.

It simply doesn't make sense to make an unfounded claim with no evidence to back it and demand that the other person to either agree with you or disprove your unfounded statement. 

...The burden of proof is a necessary part of any debate, regardless of the topic being discussed. Its utility in facilitating discussion is so well established that it's required in legal proceedings as well; the prosecution must prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant is guilty.

In the case of debates about God, the burden is on the believer to offer support for her position if she wishes it to be considered seriously. In reality, the only necessary argument against believing in God is simply that there is no evidence that any gods exist.

An atheist doesn't need to justify her lack of belief any further. This keeps the burden of proof on the side of the claimant where it belongs. The person making a claim has to provide the evidence for its validity.

Would you believe in the claim that flying pineapples exist until proven wrong without any evidence? Probably not. You would withhold belief until there is evidence to support such a claim. 

All the same, it's sometimes valuable to point out the fallacies in a claimant's argument. At the very least, this creates constructive discussion where all points are considered and examined. This can also introduce doubt, causing the other person to reconsider his or her position or consider searching for evidence before accepting a claim. 

Atheism exists on a spectrum. Some atheists claim absolute certainty in God's nonexistence. Others simply remain unconvinced and refuse to believe in a deity without compelling evidence. However, once one has a high enough level of certainty about something, they usually treat it as certain for the sake of practicality. 

After all, I cannot say with absolute certainty that my wife is not a professional assassin hired by the People's Republic of China to exterminate me. But I don't spend time worrying about the possibility because there is no evidence whatsoever to support it.

The same is true for the existence of God, although my wife being an assassin is actually more likely; that scenario, at least, would fall within the known scientific laws without contradicting the prevailing models explaining the universe. 

Open Thread 40 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread. 

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread.

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception, as is hate speech. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

I'm asked how to adjust to life after leaving RSSB

Here's a message I got recently from someone who has left the India-based religious organization I was an active member of for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). My reply to this person follows the message.

"baba ji" refers to the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. "Seva" means service, volunteering. "Satsangi" is a RSSB initiate. "Satsang" is a RSSB meeting.

Hi Brian,

I came across your blog a while ago and it has been instrumental in helping me question my beliefs. My family is satsangi and I was raised in it. I think you and I had a similar loyalty to the path.  I would attend seva every weekend and sometimes in the weeknights too and was heavily involved in the regional and national satsangs when baba ji would come.  I always considered myself a satsangi; however, for seven years I was very deeply entrenched in the satsangi way of life.  For those seven years, my life revolved around seva, satsang and satsangis to the point that I sacrificed my non-satsangi friendships for the sake of the rs path.

10 years ago, I moved to a different city where I didn’t have access to the teachings.  The sangat was small, I attended a few satsangs but I didn’t put in the same amount of effort.  Now, 10 years later, I am slowly realizing that the path isn’t for me.  The financial scandal pretty much ended any hope for reconciliation, especially when I read on your blog that baba ji said he has diabetes and can’t attend court yet was holding satsang on the same day.  It is always preached that we need to be the best representatives of the guru so we do not bring shame to him.  What about him bringing shame to us?  How is he being a good representative of us? He also preaches about ‘haq halal di kamai’ or earning an honest living.  It is all so hypocritical.  

The worst part is, the fear is still there.  I’m typing this, but will something horrible happen to me now?  Will I go blind because I’m rejecting the guru?  I know it’s ridiculous, I’m a rational person, yet these wayward thoughts that have been programmed into me since I was 5 years old keep popping up and I don’t know how to shut them up.  There isn’t any guilt, I’ve been freely telling my family and close friends that I’m not binding myself to arbitrary restrictions anymore and I do truly think it’s a sham centred around cashing in. I’m still a vegetarian since that’s my own morality but I’ve pretty much stopped asking about ingredients at restaurants and do have a drink when I feel like it.  By all outward appearances I am untangling myself from the situation but inwardly, there is a smidgeon of fear that I can’t seem to erase.

At the end of the day, I’m not overly angry but more so disappointed and very very sad.  It is just so sad, I can’t believe it.  I feel as though I’m in mourning.  I guess the reason I’m writing to you is because you are so far ahead of me in this journey.  Did this happen to you?  How did you ‘unlearn’ the programming?  It seems you bought into the teachings as much as I did, maybe you can give me some advice on how to deal with this.

Thanks for your blog Brian.  I know you get a lot of flack for it, but it was instrumental in helping spur my critical thinking of the path.

This was my reply.

Thanks for your message. It makes me feel good to hear from people like you who find some value in my Church of the Churchless blog. 

Yes, I was very loyal to Charan Singh, who initiated me. Gurinder Singh, not quite as much, though I certainly did a heck of a lot of seva after Gurinder became the RSSB guru. 

 

Here’s some thoughts about how to adjust to life after RSSB.

 

(1) It takes time. To me it’s a lot like going through a divorce, something I did after 18 years of marriage. I loved my first wife. But we grew apart. At first I thought about her a lot, wondering if there was anything we could have done to save our marriage. Now I’ve been remarried for 31 years to a woman I love even more. And my first wife is happy with the man she has found. 

 

Likewise, it’s natural to spend considerable time thinking about your RSSB years, since this path meant a lot to you for quite a few years. That isn’t time lost. It’s time gained, since you’ve learned a lot about yourself, how you view spirituality, and such. Now I rarely think about my first wife, since I’m happy with my current wife. I also rarely think about RSSB now, except when I use it as an example in one of my blog posts. 

 

So my advice is to let your adjustment to breaking away from RSSB happen naturally. As the days, weeks, and months pass, you’ll find yourself feeling more comfortable not being involved with RSSB.

 

(2) Regarding fear, I don’t think this can be a productive basis for spirituality. Isn’t love much more important? What kind of god or guru would punish you for deciding to deconvert from a belief system? Certainly not any god or guru deserving of devotion. 

 

Yes, the RSSB literature contains references to nasty stuff that happens to disciples who stray from RSSB after being initiated. But almost certainly these are superstitions, written by people who don’t know what they’re talking about. And I speak as someone who wrote several books for RSSB. I did a good job with the books. However, I didn’t have any special mystical knowledge. Nor do, in my opinion, the authors of other RSSB books.

 

If it gives you some comfort, I broke away from RSSB around 2004. Seventeen years later, I haven’t noticed any bad things that have happened to me beyond what happens to everyone, like health problems as I’ve aged. 

 

(3) Keep in mind that nothing is 100% certain. That’s a scientific perspective, since science always is open to having hypotheses or theories revised or even overturned. Thus there’s a chance RSSB is correct in how it views reality, just as there’s a chance that any of the other thousands of world religions and mystical paths is correct. 

 

What you and I have done is increase our chances of learning the truth about God, life after death, and all that. Speaking for myself, what I do every day is spend a minute or two talking to God and the guru who initiated me, Charan Singh. 

 

I say something like, “Hey God/guru, I’d like to know you. I’d like to learn from you. I don’t know how to find you, assuming you exist. So it’s up to you to reach out to me. I’m here. Pay me a visit in my consciousness. Or if you want to prove that you exist in a physical manner, feel free to manifest a new Tesla in my driveway. Then I’ll really believe in you.” (I’m hoping God/guru have a sense of humor.)

 

Just because you have given up on RSSB doesn’t mean you have given up on searching for meaning, or on opening yourself to a possible supernatural reality. When I got divorced, I didn’t give up on women. I just gave up on a particular woman, and then found a different woman who was a better fit for me.

 

Likewise, the only reason you might feel like you’ve lost something is the strong devotion you had to RSSB still lingering in your mind. As I said, this is natural. You should feel good about that devotion. Just turn it in other directions now.

 

There are lots of things, people, causes, and such to be devoted to. Or to love. There’s nothing special about the devotion you gave to RSSB. What matters is devotion itself, not where it is directed. Every religion wants its followers to put the religion first, or at least above most other stuff in life. That’s crazy. Only you can decide what is most important to you now. Trust yourself.

 

Hope this helps at least a little bit. 

 

     — Brian

Capitol police are speaking the truth right now

As I write this I'm listening to televised testimony of four police officers who are appearing at the first meeting of the Select Committee on the January 6 insurrection at the nation's capitol.

Watch it, Church of the Churchless commenters who think truth is relative, that what experts and professionals say can't be trusted, that everyone is free to create their own reality, that this physical realm is an illusion, that objectivity isn't possible, and other blather spewed from your religious sensibilities.

Watch it, because the truth is being spoken by four brave men who put their lives on the line. One truthful sentence from them is worth more than a thousand bullshit comments about the relativity of truth.

Truth isn't relative. Truth is truth. It is the most important thing in life, because without truth we're living a lie. Me, I choose not to do that. Those four police officers also have chosen not to do that. 

Take some time to watch this testimony. I'm sure it will be available on You Tube.

Those commenters who consider that truth is something to play word games with, that it doesn't matter if people embrace falsehoods -- watch the four police officers talk about how a dangerous mob of thousands of Trump supporters invaded the capitol because they believed a lie, that the election was stolen from Trump.

Lies matter. Falsehoods matter.

They lead to assaults on law enforcement officers who are still recovering from their many injuries. So think about this, commenters on this blog, next time you want to defend a "everyone creates their own reality" bullshit philosophy. That's an insult to the truth-telling police officers.

None of you would have had the courage to defend the capitol. You don't even have the courage to defend the truth, which requires no physical bravery, just moral strength. So learn from the four police officers. They have a lot to teach you.

I'm enjoying my Mendi neurofeedback device

Recently I got the Mendi brain exercise (neurofeedback) device that I'd ordered early last year via a Kickstarter campaign. Repeated delays kept pushing back the estimated time us backers would get our Mendi.

Finally it came, from Sweden. Here I am modeling my Mendi. I took the photo in front of several katana swords and a fan in my office, because the Mendi has a certain Japanese/samurai look to it.

The Mendi web site describes what the device does.

An iPhone app connects with the Mendi via bluetooth. You train your brain by playing a game. You focus on a ball, with the goal to have the ball rise vertically. This video shows an early version of the app. The current version is a bit slicker, but works in the same way.

I've only been using the Mendi for a short time and need to do more exploring with it. This is my initial impression of what works best to get the ball moving upward.

My first try with the Mendi produced a pretty good score. I think this was because I simply focused on the ball and didn't try to make the ball go up.

The next few Mendi sessions didn't go so well, probably because I was trying to get a better score. From what I can tell so far -- and my experience likely is different from other Mendi users -- trying isn't the best way to train the brain.

Not trying is. 

Meaning, I do best when I simply look at the ball with a sense of open curiosity. This is hard to put into words. My best scores come when I'm alert and aware of the ball, yet am looking at it with no motivation to control it, just to observe it.

Which, of course, is what mindfulness is all about: nonjudgemental awareness of what is happening in the present moment. 

I started meditating in 1970 when I was 21. Now I'm 72 and have only missed a day or two of meditation in the past 51 years. So I have a lot of experience with various forms of meditation: mantra, open awareness, mindfulness, counting breaths.

But I've never used a neurofeedback device like Mendi. I'm seeing the benefits of it. When I enter a certain relaxed state of mind, the ball moves upward. If I'm tense or trying too hard, the ball jumps around or goes down.

I'm already able to visualize the ball going up and thereby approach the same state of mind I'm in when using the Mendi device. Can't say my life has markedly changed, just that I see the potential of this form of brain training. 

Here's a screenshot of my most recent session. 

This is what the three scores mean.

The app keeps track of all of your sessions. I was definitely in a zone during the 3-minute session at 8:24 pm yesterday. Focusing on the ball seemed quite effortless. I was sitting on the floor for that session, rather than in a chair.

A few times the app has told me that something was wrong, like I was moving too much (I wasn't) or light was shining directly on my head (yes, I was facing a bright window). It's advised to use the Mendi in a dim room.

This might explain whey I did better when I used my Mendi in the evening when it was almost dark here in Oregon. I also could have been in a more relaxed frame of mind.

Testimonials on the Mendi web site are impressive. But that's to be expected of testimonials on a web site. I'll keep experimenting with the device and report on how that goes in a subsequent blog post. Some early reviews are here, here, and here.

Truth isn't personal, but institutional

This morning I finished reading The Constitution of Knowledge, a book by Jonathan Rauch whose subtitle is "In Defense of Truth." 

As noted in a previous blog post about this book, Rauch persuasively argues that truth isn't personal, but institutional. Or social, if you have a dislike of institutions and prefer another word.

Here's a quote from the second to last page of the book that ends with a reflection of this point: "...and outsource reality to a global network of strangers."

As I wrote in chapter 1, the Constitution of Knowledge is the most successful social design in human history, but also the most counterintuitive.

In exchange for knowledge, freedom, and peace, it asks us to mistrust our senses and our tribes, question our sacred beliefs, and relinquish the comfort of certitude. 

It insists that we embrace our fallibility, subject ourselves to criticism, tolerate the reprehensible, and outsource reality to a global network of strangers.

For me, this was a fresh idea. Not that I wasn't aware of it. I just hadn't thought of how we humans go about arriving at a shared conception of reality in the clear way that Rauch speaks of. 

Understand: he isn't talking about subjective reality, personal experience. It doesn't take a global network of strangers for me to know that I like raspberries. That's a personal truth of mine which requires no one other than me and my taste buds to confirm.

But otherwise, I agree with Rauch that truth has to be social/institutional in order for it to be objective rather than subjective. 

Yesterday I went into the south Salem Ace Hardware store to buy some polycarbonate cutting blades for my Stihl trimmer. (I've found they work much better than the usual cutting line for tall grass and brush.) 

I told the Stihl specialist that in using the trimmer a few days ago, the poly blades got trashed when I was cutting thin brush. He was surprised. "Have you been storing the blades in water?" he asked. "No, I've seen reviews of the blades that say this is a good idea, but other users say it isn't necessary."

He was adamant that storing the blades in water would harden them. Indeed, when I got home and looked at the back of an old package of blades that I had lying around, I read that Stihl advises just that: storing them in water.

Institutional knowledge. When I looked at comments from people like me who simply use the poly blades, there was a diversity of opinion about storing them in water. But experts, and the Stihl company itself, said to do this. So now I've got a bunch of poly blades soaking in a plastic container. 

When you think about it, this is how knowledge passes from a potential truth to a very likely or certain truth. There has to be a community of truth-seekers who assess the validity of a potential truth. An individual can't do this on their own. 

Hillary Clinton correctly said that it takes a village to raise a child. And it takes institutions to arrive at shared truths.

Consider the 2020 presidential election in the United States. Even though Trump and much of the Republican Party did their best to overturn Joe Biden's victory, they didn't succeed. As was repeated often, "the institutions held."

County and state election officials. Secretaries of State in swing states. Courts, including the Supreme Court. Congress. Journalists.

These institutions stood up for the truth that Joe Biden beat Donald Trump. If individuals had to argue about who won, we'd still be debating this question. (Indeed, Trump and his cronies continue to refuse to admit that he lost.)

Here's a few more passages from the final pages of the book.

The young Lincoln held that reverence for the law is the true north of America's constitutional culture. Reverence for facts is the true north of the reality-based community. 

Sometimes we get facts wrong. Of course. But we do not cheat. We do not cut corners. We hold ourselves accountable -- to others, to our community -- for rejecting convenient fictions and half-truths.

Because factuality anchors our integrity and defines our community, we renounce propaganda and truthiness even if we are the only person in the vicinity who is doing so. And just by doing that, we make a difference. 

As the great Soviet writer and dissident Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn wrote in his masterpiece, The Gulag Archipelago, "You can resolve to live your life with integrity. Let your credo be this: Let the lie come into the world, let it even triumph. But not through me. The simple step of a courageous individual is not to take part in the lie. One word of truth outweighs the world."

...My biggest worry is Lincoln's biggest worry: "If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher."

By themselves, the forces of chaos and coercion lack the strength to unseat the Constitution of Knowledge, and if they did unseat it, they would have nothing to replace it with except a Hobbesian war of each of millions of personal and tribal realities against all the others.

What propagandists and social-media bullies and emotional safetyists and subjectivists and all the rest might succeed in doing, however, is to demoralize and confuse and intimidate, so that the reality-based community will lose heart and give ground.

...Yet the reality-based community has withstood much worse. It beat back the inquisitors who imprisoned Galileo, the dictators whose gulags spanned continents, and the racists and homophobes who sought to silence voices of freedom.

"Tomorrow morning," said Socrates, "let us meet here again." The conversation he and his young protege began 2,500 years ago continues, now spanning the world instead of just Athens, despite countless efforts to squash it.

Thanks to Appreciative Reader for defending the scientific worldview

There are three thousand word comments that deserve trashing. Then there are comments of the same length that deserve fervent applause from those of us who respect reality, truth, evidence, reason, and the scientific worldview.

That's why I'm sharing another lengthy comment from "Appreciative Reader" below. 

As you'll see if you read the following comment published on my Why neither unicorns nor God are to be believed in post, Appreciative Reader absolutely demolishes the religious perspective of another commenter, Spence Tepper.

If this were a boxing fight, it'd be called after the second or third round because too much damage is being done to the weaker opponent. 

Or, as Appreciative Reader points out below, the referee would warn Tepper to stop constantly retreating and refusing to engage in a fair fight. I share the frustration of Appreciative Reader, because I frequently encounter the same tactic by religious believers.

You point out the absurdity of a belief. You ask for evidence in support of it. You question why anyone should take that belief seriously when there's no reason to do this. You say that if this religious tenet is to be accepted, then why not accept every other unproven notion offered up by the thousands of world religions.

And the response is... ducking and weaving. Running away. Failing to engage. Spouting nonsense words that mean nothing but are filled with the fire and fury of a threatened religious believer.

So I'm grateful for what Appreciative Reader has done in his repeated attempts to get Tepper, and others, to respond in a reasonable fashion to the nonsensical world view of those who cling to beliefs that have no foundation in reality, yet comfort the believer and so are very difficult for the religious person to give up.

Hey, I've been there and done that. I spent many years, decades actually, clinging to a religious worldview. It met needs that I had at the time, so my mind wouldn't allow me to see the many contradictions, absurdities, and plain weird ideas promulgated by the teachings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

It's a lonely task, doing what Appreciative Reader has done in his comment exchanges with Spence Tepper. Religiosity is the dominant worldview of most people in the world. Science, reason, open debate -- these are under challenge. 

Recently I read that about 50% of people in the United States either believe that President Biden wasn't elected in a free and fair election, and/or believe that Covid vaccines aren't effective. Both beliefs are false. The evidence is overwhelming that Biden won fairly and that Covid vaccines are effective.

Thus the Appreciative Reader - Spence Tepper debate isn't just about religious belief. It also is about the danger of large numbers of people believing stuff that clearly isn't true, going so far as to stage an insurrection at our nation's capitol in an effort to keep Trump as president, and Republicans urging people to not get a Covid vaccine, thereby causing needless illness and death.

Reality is too important to discard. Thank you, Appreciative Reader, for standing up for truth and the scientific worldview. I've been inspired by your comments and I know that others have been also, even if you mostly get responses from religious believers.

Here's the comment from Appreciative Reader.

Spence, I’m sorry to say our discussion has devolved to bizarre levels now. I really hadn’t expected you of all people to descend to desperately clutching at straws in this manner.

You keep ignoring the points I raise, and insist on straddling your soapbox instead. You keep conflating the actual conduct of scientific experiments with a scientific worldview. You keep ignoring the implications of the burden of proof. You betray (or at least, you project) zero understanding of the entire discussion around the functional equivalence of “accepting” and “not-rejecting”.

In discussing the dragon/unicorn thought experiment, you keep repeating you will try to find out more about the beast, despite having been told at the outset that it is impervious to all means of detection available to today’s science and technology; and you keep veering off into non sequiturs, like saying you’ll try to test whether the person making the (dragon/unicorn/religious/mystical) claim is of sound mind.

I don’t see this discussion really going anywhere, what it is doing is lurchingly retracing its own already trod steps, but still, I’ll try to address here, in one single post, the issues you raise in your last three or four posts that you addressed to me. The result is likely to be a lengthy post, I’m afraid, and so as not to make it even longer I’ll simply title out the main themes that you’ve written on (and that I’ll respond to), rather than actually quoting your words.

DISPROVING SPECIFIC GOD IDEAS : YOUR CHALLENGE

This is the part that I find truly bizarre. The part where you keep insisting, in the face of all rationality and reason, that no god ideas have ever been disproved by science, despite clear instances of such having been promptly presented.

Recall two of the most conspicuous contortions you had to resort to in the course of your last few comments.

First, when in response to your challenge I presented you with two specific examples of God ideas having been disproven, you turned around to demand of me how I know those are real Gods. Can you really, even now, not see the absurdity of even asking that question?

Some theist has presented very specific God ideas, and I have shown how a scientific worldview clearly refutes those ideas; whereupon what do you do? You demand of ME how I can be sure those are valid God ideas!! (And, when the entirely bizarre nature of the thought process that can think up this objection is pointed out to you, what do you do? You simply ignore it, and move on to talk of other things.)

And second, you then do the typical goalpost-shifting thing that theists seem to specialize in.

I’m going to address your “challenge” one more time now. Despite the fact that I’ve done it twice already, and despite having little real hope of piercing through any better this time. (And all we have on wager is your clear admission that your challenge has been met.)

ONE: The thurder-and-lightning producing Gods, Thor, and Odin, and Zeus, and Indra, and Varun, and whoever and whatever else that specializes in this superpower. Modern science has shown us the exact mechanism of these phenomena, and that mechanism has no need at all for any God entities.

(That is, to spell it out, we have no need to resort to hypothesize Gods in order to understand those phenomena as well as we do, ergo following Occam's Razor we have no need to posit any Gods, and we can safely not accept, or reject, the God hypothesis as superfluous and unnecessary in respect of those specific phenomena, and therefore those specific Gods.)

Further, we do have a means of directly falsifying the god claim as well. Believers in these Gods claimed that propitiating them by praying to them and sacrificing to them can help turn these elements in one’s favor, and angering them attracts their wrath.

No one does that these days, and yet we are not visited by some terrible wrath of these Gods, as represented by these elements wreaking some terrible disaster on us. To not see this as debunking is, I’m sorry to say, to harbor, despite an education in science, a decidedly irrational and anti-scientific worldview.

TWO: The God of the Bible, that people did believe in literally in vast numbers in times past, and in not negligible numbers even today. Showing that the creation myth presented in the Bible is erroneous, by showing that the mechanism of how the universe arose has no need of invoking a God, is enough to debunk this claim. Directly showing that the age of the universe is far older than claimed by the alleged Word of God, as recorded in the Bible, is direct falsification as well.

THREE: The sun-god in Norse legends that is driven in a chariot by two horses (or, in other versions, by one horse, whatever). As well as the sun-god of the Aztecs, that, unless propitiated with human sacrifice, will not appear to us again and will abandon us to eternal darkness and death. The "how" of the sun apparently going around the earth has been explained clearly enough by science, and none of that has need to invoke either Gods or chariots or horses.

And the claim has been directly falsified as well, because no one sacrifices human hearts to the sun-god any more, and yet the sun rises in the east every single day..

Spence, you aren’t by any chance spoofing me, are you? Pulling my leg, playing a trick on me, by putting me in the distinctly ridiculous position of solemnly holding forth on these elementary things in all earnest like this? If that is the case, then I applaud you, because you did take me in completely so far, and even now I have no more than a very tentative suspicion that your arguments might be no more than a practical joke. So that if the idea was to play a practical joke on me, you’ve been entirely successful.

To claim in all seriousness that your challenge hasn’t been met, despite these clear examples having been presented (and plenty more can easily be thought of), is to either be completely oblivious of the implications of a scientific worldview, or, if that is not the case, then it is to be literally delusional. Unless of course this is all a joke.

In claiming that your challenge hasn't been met satisfactorily, the arguments you employ are the equivalent of asserting that science cannot debunk the claim that the moon is made of cheese. Sure, you won’t find actual peer-reviewed papers, describing elaborate experiments conducted, that clearly tell you that the moon isn’t made of cheese.

But to latch on to that as some kind of justification for a worldview that claims that science does not directly refute clearly and DEMONSTRABLY absurd claims like that the moon is made of cheese (or that the sun is drawn around the earth by horses, and will abandon us unless we sacrifice to it; or that lightning and storms are caused by gods who will wreak destruction on us unless they are propitiated; or that the world was created six thousand years ago by a psychotic but immensely powerful god that will annihilate us and/or consign us to hell if we don’t abide by his commandments and his prophets’ and son’s instructions) is to have simply seen and maybe even to have participated in science, but to have come away with no more than a cargo-cult impression of what science actually is and what a scientific worldview actually entails.

WHAT YOU SEE AS THE FUNDAMENTAL FLAWS IN ATHEISM (OR AT LEAST, IN THIS PARTICULAR VERSION OF ATHEISM)

Let me quote you first on this, before likewise enumerating my response :

“Here is the fundamental flaw. I'll state it in three ways.
1. What science hasn't tested science cannot comment upon.
2. Evidence that has not been gathered is not non-existent.
3. The unknown is not non - existent. It is the basis of scientific inquiry.”

(1.) “Science” does not comment on anything. People do.

The scientific method is a tool that people use to suss out what is reasonable to believe, and what not. Thereafter, it is people who arrive at positions on different claims and issues.

We’ve been through this already, the difference between the scientific method and a scientific worldview. You’ve ignored that last discussion, and gone on with your inner monologue without referencing our past discussion on this.

To imagine that a scientific worldview entails referencing the scientific method only in such instances where there has been some formal scientific study, and in everything else either believing any random thing that one likes, or else not taking any position at all, is to arrive at some cargo-cult version of “science”.

The core of the scientific method is that one will not accept any hypothesis that one cannot back up with evidence. Any position --- and that includes the God question as well (or at least, some versions of it, that is to say, some specific abstract God-ideas) --- that cannot admit of direct evidence, it is simply not “scientific” to believe at all.

It is not that no evidence equals we have carte blanche to believe whatever we want, or that we must necessarily suspend any conclusion at all (which suspension of all conclusion is in practice sometimes/often simply not even feasible, in any case). It is that no evidence equals we have no reason to hold that position as true, no reason to accept it.

(2) “Evidence” refers to some support for some proposition or some hypothesis. Therefore, if evidence has not been “gathered”, it is literally not evidence at all.

Sure, whether we self-important humans catalog something or cogitate on something does not in any way impact the underlying reality. That is understood, obviously. Not once have I suggested otherwise.

The point is, in as much as evidence has not been “gathered”, it may perhaps exist, but in as much as we do not yet know of it, it is entirely and wholly fallacious to base any conclusion on such evidence. In as much as some conclusion that you seek to support via such not-yet-gathered evidence is fallacious, such conclusion we are constrained to not accept, that is to say, we reject such conclusion.

This is entirely straightforward. And your views on this are entirely mistaken.

(3) Similar to above. Agreed, the unknown is not non-existent, and, rather than saying “it is the basis of scientific enquiry”, I think it may be more precise to phrase it thus, “It can be the basis of scientific enquiry if we should choose to make it so.”

Anyway, minor nitpicking aside, I have not once suggested otherwise. But the question isn’t what does exist; the question is what do we believe, what belief or claim do we accept. If something is unknown then we can’t go around believing random things about it.

(Which, mind you, is what you are doing. You’re claiming there are no grounds to do science on God. And you take that as carte blanche to go ahead and believe in God --- which you have every right to --- but where you err is in claiming that such an attitude comports with a scientific worldview. The fact is it doesn’t.)

Nor is it that what is technically unknown, as far as formal science, we will necessarily suspend all judgment on. That science hasn’t explicitly considered and tested whether the moon is made of cheese, or whether the sun is drawn by horses around the earth, or whether the sun will not rise unless propitiated with sacrifice, does not mean that we will necessarily suspend all judgment on such.

(And I don’t mean idiosyncratic personal judgment, I mean a conclusion that comports with a scientific worldview.)

We know the approximate composition of the moon, so we can certainly conclude that it isn’t made of cheese. And what is more such conclusion will be fully in agreement with a scientific worldview, even though there are no papers published specifically on the subject, “Is the moon made of cheese?” Ditto questions about whether the sun is a God that is drawn by horses around the sun, or whether the universe was created by a psychotic and decidedly unpleasant God six thousand years ago.

Those aren’t flaws in atheism, as you claim they are. They are flaws in your reasoning and your own POV.

YOUR POST ON THE FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENCE OF “NOT ACCEPTING” VIS-À-VIS REJECTING A CLAIM

What you argue here is no more than yet more contortions, Spence.

That the hypothesis is not accepted (and, for that matter, not rejected either) by the people carrying on the experiment and for the duration of the experiment and analysis, that hardly needs pointing out. In any case, it *has* already been pointed out, more than once, in a separate context, which would be the context of distinguishing between the POV appropriate to the scientist researching some specific hypothesis, vis-à-vis the POV appropriate for everyone else. That is an out and out non sequitur as far as this particular discussion.

Should the experiment not bear the results the hypothesis predicts, then in the setting aside of the hypothesis there is no universal distinction between “not accepting” and “rejecting”, as you suggest. To speak of this in the context that you do is to not understand what was said at all, not even a little bit (hint, repeated for the third or fourth time already: refer back to Osho Robbins’s analogy of “Not guilty” vis-à-vis “Innocent”); or else it is to resort to deliberate disingenuity.

Here’s a concrete example that will make the distinction clear, using the overtly formal scientific setting that you seem to imagine imparts some especial sanctity that everyday examples don’t.

(It doesn’t, actually, and everyday examples are equally as effective, provided you grok the actual underlying implications of the scientific method. Nevertheless, I’ll try to accommodate your apparent fetish for examples from formal science.)

Contrast the Ether theory with the String Theory. The former is an example of a hypothesis rejected, while the latter is an example of a hypothesis not (yet) accepted. The experimental results in the case of the former clearly refuted the prediction that the ether theory had thrown up. It clearly showed that, rather than there showing up a difference in the speed of light, instead the speed of light remained the same.

That is direct refutation, leading to rejection. As far as the latter, there has been no direct refutation, at all, so far. But nor has there been any evidence that bears it out, no evidence that justifies bypassing Occam’s Razor. In as much as no evidence has been found, the theory is not accepted.

(Disclaimer: This example focuses only on the difference between “not accepting” and “rejecting”, and not on the actual promise that string theory holds out, or the fact that people are still working on string theory while no one works on ether theory. Don’t focus on that part of it, I clearly recognize that in that specific respect this analogy/example is imperfect. That string theory is not, as a result of yielding no evidence, tossed right out the window as the ether theory has been, is because it is early days still, and because it otherwise explains our observations so very completely. No doubt if in another fifty or seventy years string theory still does not bear out any evidence [that isn’t explained equally well by other, simpler hypotheses], so as to justify its far more complex structure, then it might be relegated to the museum or the trashcan as well, conceivably.)

Come on, man. Do I really need to spell this out like this all over again in words of one syllable? Have my many posts on this, already presented in this thread, as well as the many discussions elsewhere (including one whole thread we’d both participated in that was on this very subject) not made the distinction between the two amply clear, that you should compose the post you did just preceding, that betrays zero understanding of the difference between the two (and indeed between soft atheism and hard atheism)?

You know what it looks like to me? You’re not actually reading my posts. You’re basically focused on your soapboxing, while going through the motions of responding to my posts, all with the aim of somehow passing off your theistic worldview as somehow not anti-scientific.

Otherwise you wouldn’t so blatantly misread and/or misrepresent this part so completely so late into this discussion; and you wouldn’t keep on repeatedly and totally missing the point of the unicorn/dragon thought experiment (and keep raising tangential non sequiturs around it rather than actually addressing the meat of the argument presented via that construct); and you wouldn’t keep raising these wild objections to these very obvious and simplistic God-ideas having been clearly debunked by science (even as some more subtle God-ideas admittedly remain beyond the reach of such easy and direct debunking).

Apologies, Spence, if some of what I’ve said here seems rude. I really truly hope this thread will not sour the general regard we have for each other.

But … how do you even begin to hold a coherent conversation with someone who insists, in the teeth of all reasonable argument, that such blatant irrationalities like the Olympian Gods and the Aztec Sun God and Biblical God and the Norse Gods as literally depicted --- as well as, presumably, the moon made of cheese --- are not ruled out by a scientific worldview?

With someone who, at the end of a detailed discussion (indeed, more than one detailed discussion) around “rejecting” and “not accepting” (and soft atheism and hard atheism) comes out with an elaborate post that betrays either zero understanding of what was being said all along, either that or else it deliberately seeks to misdirect?

I’m going to walk away now from this discussion, but without the hope that I’d held yesterday of arriving in future at closer agreement and better understanding, because how on earth do you even address this bizarre state of affairs, where on one hand there is familiarity with (some of) the techniques of science, but on the other hand there is complete cluelessness as to its implications?

And I’m going to walk away more resolutely this time than I was able to yesterday, because although it started out promisingly enough, what this discussion has now devolved into is an apparently endless exchange of comments that is neither illuminating nor, at this point, particularly pleasurable. Again, my apologies.

Why neither unicorns nor God are to be believed in

Once again, I'm sharing a marvelous comment from "Appreciative Reader" on a recent post of mine.

I especially liked the Shadowfax part near the end. Shadowfax is an invisible unicorn impervious to detection by all means, yet lives in Appreciative Reader's spare garage.

Or at least, this is what Appreciative Reader claims. 

Should other people assign Shadowfax a 50-50 probability of actually existing? Of course not. They should consider that perhaps one day there will be evidence of Shadowfax, since anything is possible.

But until that day arrives, there's no reason to believe in this invisible unicorn. Just as there's no reason to believe in God, since there's exactly as much demonstrable evidence of God's existence as there is of Shadowfax's existence.

The difference between them, of course, is that billions of people believe in God, while only Appreciative Reader believes in Shadowfax -- and only to make a point about the scientific approach to understanding reality.

Here's the comment.

"Can we agree that personal choices, personal logic may be our best effort to be scientific, but do not actually constitute actual objective science?"

.......Sure, Spence. But with the qualification that that personal choice isn't a free-for-all, but follows the broad guidelines of what I'd referred to as a scientific worldview.

That is, to describe that worldview as an agglomeration of essentially personal choices is to add precision to what I'd earlier on termed "scientific worldview", but is not to actually change what that actually amounts to.

In other words, to state that this is a personal worldview, is not to let open the floodgates to accepting whatever some individual person happens to find likely or reasonable, not unless they can rationally defend it with reference to the scientific method and per the terms we've already discussed.

With those qualifications, sure, absolutely, agreed to that much.

But I was hoping for broader agreement than just that much. Let me have one more go at trying to arrive at it.

Following on what I'd just said, in my comment above, Spence, let me quote, and comment on, what you'd said in your previous post:

"... to claim science hasn't proved God exists and therefore God doesn't exist is a false statement."

To recognize that science hasn't proved God exists, and therefore, for all practical purposes, to hold that God doesn't exist, is the rational worldview that is in keeping with a scientific outlook.

Happy now, with that rephrasing? And taken in conjunction with my last two comments addressed to you, do you, finally, agree with my larger point?

For perspective, let me introduce you to Shadowfax.

There is, beyond my front garden, a spare garage that now is a store (a dump, more like) for sundry gardening equipment and supplies.

I claim that that garage houses a unicorn. A real unicorn. His name is Shadowfax.

Except he is invisible, and impervious to detection by all means, all technology, that are thus far known to man. Might some means be invented to detect Shadowfax in future? One day, maybe, why not? But not so far.

So what are you to make of this unicorn? Your science has no means to return a clear resounding “No” when asked if this unicorn exists. And of course, a “Yes” answer is out of the question too.

So then will you spend your days honestly believing that perhaps in Appreciative Reader’s garden there lives a unicorn, maybe yes, maybe no, with more or less equal probability of either?

That’s patently ridiculous, that approach.

If in the years to come science does come up with some means to show you that that unicorn is in fact real, then you will certainly start believing in it. But until then, it makes sense to simply reject the claim of the existence of that unicorn.

That, in brief, is what soft atheism is all about. That is the sane approach to arriving at a scientific worldview.

Otherwise you’ll spend your days half-sure and half-unsure about the existence of Olympus and the gaggle of gods and half-gods of ancient Greece, and of Shangri-La and Tibetan mystics with what are effectively superpowers, and of the literal rendering of all the tall tales in the Bible, and of the Hindu pantheon, and the (Vajrayana) Buddhist deities, and the Yeti and the bigfoot, and the Loch Ness monster, the world as simulation, the world as projection of a brain in a vat, in fact any and every fanciful concoction of man’s fertile brain that hasn’t explicitly and directly been ruled out by science so far (and indeed even such things as science has actually rejected, because after all such rejection is tentative and may yet, in future, be reversed, given adequate evidence).

Shh, quiet now. Yes, Shadowfax? Oh, ok, I'll ask him.

Spence, Shadowfax instructs me to ask you if his refulgent being has impressed you with the splendor and the simplicity that is the scientific worldview.

(Which is the short form for "the personal worldview that is appropriate for the individual, arrived at basis regard for the scientific method as *the* most efficacious means devised thus far for arriving at the truth".)

What should I tell him?

Science embraces the unknown, but wants evidence of it

I'm a huge fan of the comments "Appreciative Reader" leaves on my blog posts. Which means, I agree with almost everything this person says.

I only wish that I could express myself as clearly and reasonably as Appreciative Reader does. He writes so expertly, I enjoy sharing his top performing comments in a blog post.

That's what I've done here. 

I don't mean to disparage the views expressed by other commenters. No doubt some other people would find their arguments more impressive than Appreciative Reader's -- because they resonate more with the mystical/religious worldview of some of the other commenters.

I just find Appreciative Reader's description below of how science looks upon the unknown to be right-on. Scientists absolutely love the unknown.

That's what powers science: a passion to find new knowledge by expanding the borders of the known.

But here's the thing. As Appreciative Reader argues, it isn't possible to specify what lies in unknown territory. If that could be done, some of the unknown would have become known. 

We can speculate and hypothesize about what lies in the darkness beyond the light of knowledge.

However, until that light illuminates a previously unknown entity, which enables people to assess the evidence for that thing and possibly admit it into the realm of the known, it makes no sense to speak of what's unknown as if it were demonstrably real.

Sure, God could exist. Sure, consciousness could exist apart from the brain. Sure, life after death could be true. These and many other "could's" are speculations that can't be accepted as fact until there's good reason to do so.

That doesn't stop individuals from claiming to have an experience of something unknown. It just prevents science-minded people from accepting those claims as being anything other than a personal experience. People claim all sorts of things that are highly unlikely, like alien abductions.

Saying so doesn't make it so. Evidence makes it so. Here's Appreciative Reader's comment.

Hello, Spence.

In your last two comments you quoted these words of mine, ""Until such time, as we do know such exists substantially, we'll treat is as not existing. Be it consciousness, or be it fairies."

And you started out your comments with these words, developing this theme further in the rest of your two comments addressed to me :

Quoting you this time: "That system of belief would put an end to all science. Science is based on exactly the opposite. That the unknown exist, and that to understand reality we must investigate and learn. Many things do exist that are unknown. Your statement is tantamount to claiming the unknown doesn't exist."
-------
This is exactly the kind of apparent ignorance about the nature and the implications of the scientific method that I'd spoken of on the other thread, that one sometimes comes across from people one would certainly expect to know better.

Not only that, this entirely misrepresents my own words, part of which you'd yourself quoted, to attempt to argue against a blatantly strawman version of my comments. The whys and the wherefores of this I'd rather not get into, but the 'what' of it is incontrovertible.
-------
The latter portion of what I've just now said, first, as that is so much easier to establish.

Here's what I'd said in my own comment, that you've quoted from (and I quote these extracts verbatim):

"This isn't in any way to shut oneself off from the possibility of what might be. Nor is it to shut oneself into unreasonable closed-minded certainty that nothing beyond what is known might ever be known. All the possibilities of Mystery, with a capital M, are acknowledged, and indeed honored. But not accepted, until one has reason to."

"Nor does it stop one from performing one's own researches. Into science, or into technology. Into fairies, on into mystic realities. Into whatever appears promising to one, into whatever appeals to one."

"I don't see we can do any more than accept things as they are. Which does not stop us from striving to find out more, in such ways as we are able and willing."

It is astonishing that you should apparently parse the above so as to conclude, as you do here, that "That system of belief would put an end to all science. ... Science is based on exactly the opposite. That the unknown exist, and that to understand reality we must investigate and learn. ... Many things do exist that are unknown. Your statement is tantamount to claiming the unknown doesn't exist." (etc)

You've read exactly the opposite of what I'd very clearly said in my post. I wonder why that is?
-------
Moving beyond these I-said-you-said inconsequentialities, let us turn to the more consequential part of your comment, that betrays a confusion about the implications of the scientific method, that is surprising coming from you.

Cue, at this time, Carl Sagan: “It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brains fall out.” Because what you're advocating here is clearly the equivalent of having one's brains fall right out.

There are many things we don't know. The domain of what we don't know is far more vast, infinitely more vast, than what we do know. Further, what little we do know is tentative, and always subject to correction in future. But what are the implications of this?

It is reasonable to accept and treat as known what we do know thus far, no far how little and no far how tentative. The rest it is reasonable to reject.

And to reject something is neither to claim that it shall forever remain rejected, nor to turn away from exploration of it; to reject some hypothesis is no more than to not accept such at this time, and such rejection is always tentative and always subject to correction in future.

Like I'd said in the other thread, it is surprising that this obvious thing should need to be spelt out in this manner to those whom one would have expected would know better.

Let's take an actual example to make this clear.

There's this real-life hypothesis that our universe is a simulation. We don't know enough to incontrovertibly reject the hypothesis. Indeed there are actual physicists who are researching this very issue. But as far as actually accepting this claim, what is the reasonable stance?

The reasonable thing to do is to not accept this hypothesis, for now, to clearly reject this hypothesis, for now. Such rejection is not to say that one will not research this subject, nor to claim that one has shut oneself off from ever accepting this hypothesis; it is only to state that one does not have justification, at this time, to rationally accept this hypothesis.

For all practical everyday purposes, one rejects this hypothesis. (To emphasize again, that does not preclude people who are interested in the subject from exploring and researching it further.)

Thus with consciousness and mystical realities and the God question, which is clearly what this discussion is all about at bottom. Until the day we have reasonable rational grounds to accept such, we will not accept such. That is a perfectly sound position.

That does not stop us from speculating. Nor does that stop us from actually exploring and researching the issue. That also does not stop us from realizing the essentially tentative nature of our rejection --- which tentativeness is an intrinsic part of the scientific worldview --- and it does not stop us from promptly changing our mind in future should circumstances so warrant.

To see in this clearly stated position the antithesis of science, as you do, is to completely misunderstand one's clearly written words, as well as to profoundly misunderstand the nature of a scientific worldview.