Church of the Churchless

Getting real at a coffeehouse Sunday “service”

I don't go to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas version of church (satsang) anymore. But in a way, I still attend a service. And it's a lot more real and satisfying than the one way "sermons" I used to listen to, and give, back in my true believing days.

Yesterday I got together, as usual, with my Sunday coffeehouse conversing bunch. Most have had, or still have, a connection with RSSB. We're not dogmatic, though, and that makes all the difference.

Most of the time it was just me, Lynette, and Hans huddled at a table, sipping expresso and munching on nachos, making tremendous progress at figuring out the mysteries of the cosmos.

Next week, we'll do it all over again.

That's the beauty of open, unstructured, respectful discussion. You feel good about where you're going, even though you know that the road has no end.

I was able to try out some arguments from a book that I've halfway through reading, which I can tell is going to become one of my all time favorites in the What's It All About? genre. It's "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality" by Andre Comte-Sponville, a French philosopher and professor at the Sorbonne.

It's wonderful. And not only because I agree with almost everything Comte-Sponville says. It's the way he says it that grabs me just as much.

He'd fit right in with our coffeehouse discussing. He's got one of those marvelous minds that cut through intellectual crap and focuses right in on the essence of a subject. In this case, the nature (or non-nature) of God, and how we relate to God's existence (or non-existence).

Later I'll share some specifics from Comte-Sponville's book. For now, I'll relate how immersing myself in some right on philosophical writing affected my talking with Lynette and Hans.

Without being obnoxious, or so I hope, I kept trying to bring us back to solid ground. Reality. Here and now, rather than there and then.

Concepts are mind frothings, like the top layer of a latte. It's enjoyable to sip, but underneath is the heart of the drink. Same with speculating about the nature of the cosmos and human existence. Sticking with what we directly experience makes for much better musings.

Like Comte-Sponville, we'd start talking about God and I'd say, "First, let's ask What is God?" If that word, "God," is just a concept with no substantive reality behind it, discussing divinity is like analyzing unicorn behavior.

It's all make believe – though taken with great seriousness by the world's religions. Leaving the purely conceptual froth aside, what we're left with is communing in a community of fellow believers or seekers.

That's what we were doing at the coffeehouse. And that's what billions of people do in their own religious gatherings: enjoy the presence of other people with whom they share a common bond.

OK, I can't resist sharing some Comte-Sponville quotes along these lines.

What binds believers together, as seen by an outside observer, is not God, whose existence is open to doubt; rather, it is their communion within the same faith. Such, according to Durkheim and most sociologists, is indeed the true content or primary function of religion – it favors social cohesion by reinforcing communion of thought and adhesion to the rules of the group.

…The question of faith should not obfuscate the more decisive question of fidelity. Do I really wish to subject my conscience to a belief (or unbelief) that cannot be verified? Do I really wish to derive my morals from my metaphysics and measure my duties against my faith? That would mean giving up a certainty for an uncertainty, an actually existing humanity for an only possibly existing God. This is why I sometimes like to describe myself as a faithful atheist.

…I had given a lecture, somewhere in the provinces, on the idea of a godless spirituality. Among the people who had come up to chat with me after the lecture was a rather elderly man who introduced himself as a Catholic priest (and I saw there was a small golden cross pinned to his lapel). "I came to thank you," he said. "I enjoyed your lecture very much." Then he added, "I agreed with everything you said."

I thanked him in turn, but could not help adding, "Still, Father, I must admit it surprises me to hear you say you agreed with everything I said. Surely you can't agree when I say I don't believe in either God or the immortality of the soul!"

"Oh," said the elderly priest with a benevolent smile, "those are such secondary matters."

Beautiful. And so true. That's why our coffeehouse conversing was so enjoyable yesterday.

We zeroed in on immediate human reality and left the secondary matters – God, guru, soul, life after death – for the conceptualizers.

Get real. Is there anything else to do?

“From Taoist to Infidel” – sounds like me

It's too damn hot here in Oregon today (100 degrees!) to slave over a hot laptop trying to cook up a blog post.

So, thanks to Marcel Cairo, my favorite after life medium (also, the only one I know), I've got a readymade Church of the Churchless sharing for this over-heated Saturday.

Marcel emailed me a link to Richard Carrier's "From Taoist to Infidel," titling his message It could be you.

Yes, indeed. I saw a lot of myself in this essay. And I'll bet a lot of visitors to this blog will see themselves similarly reflected in Richard's journey from Christianity to Taoism to whatever he calls his philosophical leaning now.

His essay was written in 2001. Amazon has a 2005 book by Carrier, "Sense and Goodness Without God: A Defense of Metaphysical Naturalism." Naturally, I just ordered it.

In his piece Richard says:

I still cherish the memory of seeing a picture of three holy men travelling a road together, all laughing with each other. One was a Buddhist, another a Taoist, and the third a Confucian. This image is in fact a regular motif in China. There, the three religions, despite being so doctrinally and intellectually at odds, get along peacefully, even happily, a friendship that is celebrated in such artwork everywhere.

A few years ago I also wrote about the "Three laughers at the tiger ravine." Great way to live – with laughter.

(Reading note: I don't like excessively wide web pages filled with text. Really tough to read. The human eye scans narrow columns much more easily, something newspapers know. So make your browser window smaller or narrower, and you'll be able to read Richard Carrier's essay quite a bit more easily.)

Platonic Zen exercises

Not many people find a connection between Zen and Platonism. I do, though these themes are more implicit than explicit in my book about the Neoplatonist philosopher, Plotinus.

So it was a pleasure to hear from someone who resonates with a Greek'ish blend of rationality and mysticism. That would be Nicholas Coleman, head of religious education at Wesley College in Melbourne, who wrote to me recently.

He had kind things to say about "Return to the One," which attracted me to him right off the bat.

Thank you very much for writing Return to the One. The margins of my copy are filling rapidly with affirmations of points well made. Admittedly I'm only up to p.249, but I can no longer resist jotting of this e-mail.

Nicholas went on to talk about his own spiritual approach.

I teach a philosophy of life called "Platonic Zen" which draws together what I've learnt of Perennial Philosophy from combing through the traditions of the West (Plato, Philo, Plotinus (!), Ps-Dionysius, Eckhart, Cudworth, Jung, Schumacher, Schuon, etc) and the East (Gautama, Lao-Tzu, Nagajuna, Shankara, Padmasambhava, Ramana, Chogyam Trungpa, etc) in order to find ideas that help make sense of my own spiritual experience.

The goal of Platonic Zen is for practitioners to attain God-realisation themselves. To that end I've devised five spiritual exercises, the second of which I see clearly echoed in your notion from Sara Rappe (p.30) that a distinction can be realised between the transient contents of consciousness and the consistent container of consciousness (again, that's my adaption of what you actually write).

I asked him to tell me more about Platonic Zen. In a second message Nicholas said:

If I may speak on behalf of the whole of humanity, I think we've generally got the wrong idea about ourselves. Instead of realising what we are, we think we're something that we're not. The ordinary empirical ego convinces us that it's real and in charge of what's happening in the material world. We let it get away with that pretense, although it isn't real and isn't in charge.

Why do we believe its false claims? Because it's easy and attractive to believe them. For they're accompanied by the (equally false) promise of enduring life. We can feel that something unborn in us will live forever and the empirical ego claims to be that unborn something. By believing ourselves to be the ego we think we might live on, not physically but in some kind of essentially ego-centric after-life.

Interesting. And pretty close to how I see things. I asked Nicholas if he'd be willing to share his Platonic Zen exercises. He kindly sent me the first three.

Here they are, in a Word file. Download 123_platonic_zen_exercises.doc

Nicholas asked for feedback on them, so comment away if you feel the spirit. Usually I'm not big on exercises – always skip them when I come across them in a spiritual book – but these are more intriguing than most.

Dobson’s illogical attack on Obama

"Illogical" and "fundamentalist" are so closely associated, it isn't big news when a closed-minded evangelist says stuff that makes me go Huh?

But James Dobson has broken new ground in crazy ass theological reasoning, as described in a CNN story: "Evangelist accuses Obama of 'distorting' Bible."

Dobson is righteously pissed at Obama for making terrific religious sense.

In comments aired on his radio show Tuesday, Focus on the Family founder James Dobson criticized the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee for comments he made in a June 2006 speech to the liberal Christian group Call to Renewal.

In the speech, Obama suggested that it would be impractical to govern based solely on the word of the Bible, noting that some passages suggest slavery is permissible and eating shellfish is disgraceful.

Recently I wrote about Obama's speech, noting that he should get the churchless vote based on his well-reasoned sentiments.

Which, it turns out, also reflect the attitudes of most religious believers. Yesterday the Pew Research Center released more results from a major survey of Americans. Here's an excerpt from a summary, "Religion in America: Non-Dogmatic, Diverse and Politically Relevant."

A major survey by the Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life finds that most Americans have a non-dogmatic approach to faith. A majority of those who are affiliated with a religion, for instance, do not believe their religion is the only way to salvation. And almost the same number believes that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion. This openness to a range of religious viewpoints is in line with the great diversity of religious affiliation, belief and practice that exists in the United States, as documented in a survey of more than 35,000 Americans that comprehensively examines the country's religious landscape.

That's good news. Because it puts fundamentalists like Dobson in a decided minority, where, the great Tao willing, they'll remain.

Somehow Dobson isn't able to see the absurdity of his theological position. He faulted Obama for referring to Old Testament injunctions, saying they are no longer relevant to New Testament teachings.

OK. So Dobson is fine with picking and choosing what to believe in the Bible. Yet the CNN story goes on to quote Dobson as saying, ""I think he's deliberately distorting the traditional understanding of the Bible to fit his own world view, his own confused theology."

Well, Mr. Dobson, the traditional understanding of the Bible is that it is God's inerrant word, through and through – both the Old and New Testaments.

You just said that much of the Old Testament can be ignored. The stuff that's antiquated or irrelevant. Who decides what parts to ignore, Mr. Dobson? You've got your opinion. Other Christians and Jews would differ with you.

Where's the "fundamental" in your fundamentalism now? Gone. Except you won't recognize it. You should. Particularly if you want to appeal to the clear majority of religious believers.

Most Americans also have a non-dogmatic approach when it comes to interpreting the tenets of their own religion. For instance, more than two-thirds of adults affiliated with a religious tradition agree that there is more than one true way to interpret the teachings of their faith, a pattern that occurs in nearly all traditions. The exceptions are Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses, 54% and 77% of whom, respectively, say there is only one true way to interpret the teachings of their religion.

Well, what would you expect? Mormons and Jehovah's Witnesses are way out there, even when compared to normal unfounded religious speculation.

Here's more evidence of Dobson's illogical way of looking at the world: he completely misunderstood Obama's call to frame religious beliefs in a universal fashion when debating public policy. Obama has said:

I do make the argument that it's important for folks like myself, who think faith is important, that we try to translate some of our concerns into universal language so we can have open and vigorous debate rather than having religion divide us.

And Dobson mistakenly takes this to mean:

Am I required in a democracy to conform my efforts in the political arena to his bloody notion of what is right with regard to the lives of tiny babies? What he's trying to say here is, unless everybody agrees, we have no right to fight for what we believe.

No, Mr. Dobson, that isn't what Obama is saying. Like most zealots, you only hear what fits with your rigid preconceptions. Open your mind – just a crack. Let some reality in.

The Pew Survey shows that most Americans realize that ours is a pluralistic society, religiously and in many other ways. People believe all kinds of things. There's no unanimity of belief even among Christians.

So if we're going to talk and debate with each other, about abortion or any other sensitive social subject, we've got to go beyond narrow theological confines. As soon as you start citing Scripture, I'm going to tune you out. And so are countless other citizens who don't have the same view of the Bible as you do.

How would you like it if I demanded that you agree with the teachings of the Tao Te Ching, because they're obviously the way society should be governed. No debate possible. I'm a Taoist fundamentalist.

That would irk you no end, wouldn't it? "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you." Sound familiar, Mr. Dobson? Check out Matthew 7:12. Some parts of the Bible are worth taking seriously.

Lowering our spiritual center of gravity

I was walking along the Metolius river in central Oregon, semi-lost in thought. Which isn't unusual for me. Like most people, I spend a lot of my day focused on what's going on inside my head.

That's as far from earth level as my six foot bodily consciousness can rise.

Since I've been reading "Tajiquan Theory" in the morning before I meditate, some Taoist lessons came to mind.

Breathe. Focus on your abdominal center, the lower dan tian. Simply be aware. Without thought.

I've heard this in each of the Tai Chi classes that I've been taking for three and a half years. "Rise from above. Sink from below."

Where does that leave you? Centered. Often we carry a lot of tension in our upper arms and shoulders. Letting it go, relaxing the elbows, softening the knees, we settle into a comfortable wu chi stance, rooted.

As in the Tai Chi dojo, so on the riverside trail.

Attention to a few breaths, feeling my abdomen expand on the inhale, contract on the exhale, and my psyche was several feet lower, seemingly. I wasn't teetering along inside wobbly mental confines any longer. Nature and me were much more intimately connected.

That's how I've been feeling ever since I entered my churchless phase: more attuned to the world that exists outside of conceptual thought.

Or at least, on the far edges of it – since I'm not sure that it's possible to completely separate sensation from cognition. The human brain isn't wired in such a dualistic fashion.

It's strange that I hear so frequently, "Brian, you think too much." This advice (or criticism) usually comes from true believers who question my leaving a religious fold. They view themselves as having gone beyond thought into pure spiritual experience.

Yeah, right. I don't see it this way at all. And I feel like I know whereof I speak, because I've been there and done that – the true believing thing.

Belief involves thought. So does faith. Each adds on something to direct experience that isn't naturally there. A complex conceptual superstructure is constructed on top of simple sensation, leaving the psyche top-weighted.

Christians believe in the presence of Jesus. But there's no Jesus actually there in prayer or a church service. Without all the dogma and theology of Christianity, Jesus wouldn't exist. He's only evident when the thought of a believer is active.

Same with guru worship in Eastern faiths, something I know a lot about. The elevation devotees feel in the presence of the guru comes from believing in his (or, rarely, her) divinity. No belief, no elevation.

It's all in the head, another example of top-weighted experiencing. This was the point of my "Did I see God in first class?" post. The ahhhhh from being a few feet away from a purported God-man erupted only from those who believed in him.

By contrast, when I walk along the Metolius there's no believing involved in recognizing the river's beauty. My thoughts keep me from fully experiencing what's really there, rather than being essential ingredients of the experience – as is the case with Jesus or guru worship.

There's nothing wrong with thinking. But when it's the foundation of religious or spiritual faith, we're out of balance, way up there in our own head, not grounded in natural reality.

I'll end with some Alan Watts.

The first element of Chinese Taoist yoga is to stop talking to yourself. Don't explain the world…So one has to get to the nameless state, the nonthinking state, which is called in Chinese wu nien. Wu means "not" and nien means "the heart-mind."

…Now, you will find, if you try, that it is a very difficult thing indeed to stop thinking. "Stopping thinking" doesn't mean to stop using your eyes and your ears and your hands and all your senses. It means that when you see a dog, you don't say "dog" to yourself; you just see what is there. The Buddhists call this the state of suchness.

…When in ancient texts of mysticism you read that it is necessary to go beyond the senses, that necessity can very easily be misunderstood. The texts are not saying that it is the senses – the eyes, the ears, and so on – that falsify.

It is our conceptions of what the eyes and the ears bring to us that cause the falsification…The splendor of a river is that it is the meaning and has none, and there is about it a quality of meaninglessness, of having no meaning and yet being meaning to all nature.

Are you God? Take the test.

Lots of people believe that God can manifest in a human form.

So, why not yours or mine? Speaking for myself (though if I'm God, I'm really speaking for everybody), I'm hugely attracted to the notion that I'm worthy of worship.

Unfortunately, other people aren't as attuned to my potential divinity. Notably, my wife. For eighteen years I've been trying to convince her that the way I load the dishwasher is The Way It Should Be, by divine decree.

For some reason she can't recognize my husbandly perfection. So today I was excited to see a post on the Radhasoami Studies forum, "How to Tell Whether You Are God," anticipating that it could convince my wife that I am.

Big letdown. I scored zero. Here's the test.

Some individuals on this forum may have difficulty discerning whether
or not they are God in Human Form. The following easy test should
help you determine this.

1. Can you fly through the air, without an aircraft? Tornadoes don't
count. If you feel you can do this, try flying from home to New York
City to Los Angeles and back home, to confirm your capability in this
regard.

2. Can you dematerialize and rematerialize at any location, at will,
instantly? Try hopping to Istanbul, Belfast, Moscow, Toronto,
Auckland, Delhi and Ulan Bator.

3. Are you omniscient? Get the closing prices for all stocks on the
major US exchanges for the coming week, and post them on an
investment web site, in advance. Ask the readers to see whether you
are God in Human Form.

4. Can you resurrect the dead? Try resurrecting 14 famous people who
have died in the past year, and while you're at it, cure the medical
conditions (including old age) that caused their death. Then hold a
press conference in which you present them. Make sure to have a
medical doctor present to take DNA samples to confirm their identity.

5. Can you post to the Internet without using a computer? Try it.

6. Can you time-travel? Bring back some extinct species for the
perusal of scientists.

7. Can you materialize objects at will? Go to a homeless shelter, and
materialize one million dollars in $20 bills for each resident.

8. Are you perfect in mind and body? Take an IQ test and see whether
you get the highest possible score. Time how long it takes for you to
run a mile.

9. Are you invulnerable, like Superman? Try going through a wood
chipper.

Scoring: If you pass all the tests, if you are not God, at least you
are a contender. If you missed any questions, sorry!

Though this test is humorous, it's got a serious side. There really are people walking around today who believe that they are God. Many others revere a living human being who is considered to be an incarnation of God.

Yet godly characteristics or abilities are nowhere to be found. That's why I enjoyed this post by ratnagarrao. If God has come down to our level, shouldn't there be something miraculous in the air?

Of course, we can redefine "God" so that the meaning is equivalent to the qualities of whoever claims this title. I've been taking this approach when I tell my wife that how I load the dishwasher is the ideal way it should be loaded.

Then, after I see her shake her head, I step back and let her rearrange the plates, cups, and wine glasses.

Faith healing is child abuse

Religions are dangerous. Nowhere is this more obvious than in cases of child abuse. The Catholic Church is #1 in this area, but to me killing children in the name of faith healing is even more abhorrent.

You can recover from sexual abuse. You can't recover from dying.

Yesterday an Oregon boy died of a urinary tract blockage. A radio news report I heard this afternoon said it's an exceedingly painful way to die. A catheter probably would have saved him.

I hope his Followers of Christ parents rot in hell. I don't believe in hell, but if it exists, parents who kill their children deserve priority admission.

The crazy thing is that Oregon law allows anyone 14 years or older to deny medical treatment. So if the boy had been sufficiently infected with Followers of Christ insanity and refused the catheter, his parents may not be able to be criminally charged.

But they should be, as the parents of a 15 month old girl – members of the same Followers of Christ congregation – have been (also yesterday, coincidentally).

Ava Worthington died March 2 at home from bacterial bronchial pneumonia and infection, according to Dr. Christopher Young, a deputy state medical examiner. He said both conditions could have been prevented or treated with antibiotics.

The child's breathing was further compromised by a benign cyst that had never been medically addressed and could have been removed from her neck, Young said.

That's outrageous. Equally outrageous is how legislators in this country allow ignorant religious loonies to kill their children in the name of their imaginary God.

If people were sacrificing children in the name of an Aztec deity, they'd be punished. But if they do it in the name of Jesus, the law generally looks the other way.

As reported in "A child's death and a crisis of faith," most states give some sort of free pass to religious child abuse.

In all, 45 states offer some legal accommodations in child-protection laws for parents who use spiritual healing, according to the Christian Science church. The laws vary widely, with some states protecting parents or guardians from felony abuse or murder prosecutions, while others exempt prayer practice only in misdemeanor cases, according to Children's Healthcare Is a Legal Duty Inc., a nonprofit group based in Sioux City, Iowa, that opposes such laws.

Wisconsin has three statutes providing religious healing exceptions: one in the child-abuse laws, one in the laws concerning crimes against children, and one that bars the state from forcing medical care on someone who chooses Christian Science prayer. The state's child-abuse laws were amended in 1987 to say: "A person is not guilty of an offense ... solely because he or she provides a child with treatment by spiritual means through prayer alone for healing." The wording was requested by the local Christian Science government-relations office, according to the Wisconsin Legislative Council, a state agency.

Ridiculous.

Whenever I hear someone say "What's wrong with believing in God?" I think of all the children who have died in the name of faith. Not to mention the countless others who have otherwise suffered at the hands of religious believers.

Feeling the spirit…via body or soul?

Here I am, someone who's pursued spiritual practices for almost forty years, and I can't tell you what "spirit" is. Go figure.

But seemingly such figuring is impossible, because whatever spirit is (assuming that word means anything at all), there's general consensus among mystics, meditators, and metaphysicians that it's something beyond the bounds of rationality, explanation, experimentation.

Just like life, consciousness, and existence – which to me are pretty much synonymous with spirit. Meaning, the foundational aspect of the cosmos, that which there is no deeper which'er. Or, that'er.

For those inclined to going off the deep end, a club I'm proud to belong to, a central question is: Where's the diving board?

The two basic answers are: body and soul.

Some believe that spirit is realized only by going beyond physicality into a more ethereal realm of reality. Meditative exercises are aimed at drawing one's consciousness away from material sensations so that the soul can escape from the cage of the body.

Bad body! Bad body! That's the essential attitude of the soul'arians, though usually the big problem is considered to be one's attachment to the physical frame, not the flesh and bones themselves.

Regardless, spirituality is viewed as an ascent from the crudity of matter into airy skies where the soul can soar freely, unencumbered by bodily ties.

I used to march to the beat of this philosophical drummer. Big time. That was how the Sant Mat cosmology of Radha Soami Satsang Beas viewed reality. And it also was the Neoplatonic teaching of Plotinus, about whom I wrote a book.

Now, though, I lean toward beginning (and maybe ending) with the body. From my social work graduate school days, I remember a central adage: "Start where the client is at."

Well, where I'm at right now is being a body.

Yes, maybe I'm something else also. Soul, spirit, whatever you want to call it. But what I'm aware of currently is physicality (along with recollections of it, which form my dreaming and imaginative realities).

This helps explain why I'm so attracted to Taoism and Tai Chi, which I've been practicing regularly for almost four years. Tai Chi is the bodily expression of some ethereal Taoist philosophy.

But Taoism doesn't find any conflict between spirituality and physicality, since they blend seamlessly into each other. That's the goal of Tai Chi, as described in Yang Jwing-Ming's "Taijiquan Theory."

Taijiqiuan [or Tai Chi Chuan] was created in Daoist monasteries and is a Qigong practice for enlightenment. The only difference is that this Qigong practice can also be applied in martial arts.

The author translates a Tai Chi song or poem:

The purpose of learning Taijiquan is to aim for the comprehension of Taiji and Yin-Yang so (we) are able to reach the Dao [Tao], therefore (allow us) to protect (our body), strengthen (our body), and enjoy longevity. Furthermore, by nourishing and cultivating (our) human nature, (we are) able to reach the final goal of unification of heaven and human spirit.

If spirit is the essence of life (again, assuming "spirit" is something more than a human concept), it makes sense to get in touch with it through the life we're living now.

Thus Tai Chi finds a resonance between heaven and earth, spirit and body, mind and matter, subtle and gross energy. I don't know to what extent this is true, but the notion that reality has gradations rather than sharp distinctions strikes me as pleasingly scientific.

Most religions would have us believe that spirituality is other-worldly, a state to be achieved by denying physical desires, ignoring physical sensations, eschewing physical wisdom.

Well, like I frequently say, maybe. It's just not the way I choose to pursue now.

[Here's the first thirteen pages of "Taijiquan Theory," courtesy of the YMAA website. It's a fine summary of Taoist philosophy, including how Wu Chi, Tai Chi, and Yin-Yang relate.]

Obama recognizes limits of faith

This is a great speech by Barack Obama on the proper place of religion and faith in public policy. He should get the churchless vote with these sentiments. Obama certainly has mine.

I just wish he'd repeat it now, saying the same things he did in 2006, since he has a much bigger audience as the Democratic presidential candidate.

For the broadband impaired (I'm not aware of a transcript of this video), here's some of what Obama said in the five minutes. These aren't quotes, just a summary of main points.

--This is a nation not only of Christians, but also of Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, many faiths. It's also a nation of unbelievers.

--In the public arena, we need to focus on universal rather than religion-specific values. Values that everyone can understand and accept, no matter a person's variety of belief or unbelief.

--Arguments about public policy have to be based on reason, not faith. Religion doesn't allow for compromise, but in the public sphere compromise is essential.

--People are tired of seeing faith being used as a tool to attack.

I enjoyed the comments on the Pharyngula post containing the video. Steve liked it, but didn't want any compromising on faith.

Pretty good, up until the end, when he says, "they don't want faith to belittle, they don't want faith to divide."

Faith is inherently belittling and divisive. It belittles the intellect of those who subscribe to it -- "don't think, just believe." It divides, because those who subscribe to faith invariably see their subscription as a virtue, and thus, those who don't subscribe, as lacking that virtue.

Faith sucks completely and utterly and is without a single redeeming feature.

But to hope for a politician to say as much, and remain a viable politician, is to hope for too much, too soon.

So, good enough, and far better than what we've had recently.

For sure. Probably he's referring to Bush, but here's John McCain blathering on about the United States being established as a Christian nation.

I'm praying that he loses. Big time.

Hope I don’t have a brain tumor

That was the thought that went through my mind as I exited Border's bookstore today, hands empty, after browsing through the religion and metaphysics sections for quite a while.

Because this was unusual behavior for me, notwithstanding my periodic bursts of fasting from spiritual reading (see "I abandon all hope in my book shelves").

Today, though, whatever title I touched felt lifeless, hypothetical, detached from reality. I couldn't even muster up much interest in the Atheism, Taoism, and Buddhism sections, where something usually turns me on.

What struck me after fifteen minutes or so of half-hearted page-thumbing was the same insight that I talked about in "I'm becoming my favorite book." I knew what I was looking for. And I also knew why it was so difficult to find it.

I wanted to read words that echoed my own intuitions. I wanted to buy a book that could have been written by me. The question is, "Why?"

Why do I feel the need to have someone else affirm what I consider to be true (and untrue), when part of my personal truth-telling is There's no demonstrable evidence about what, if anything, lies beyond the physical?

Today, that need wasn't very strong. Tomorrow, who knows? I'm quite sure my spiritual book-buying days aren't over. But more and more, I expect less and less from other people's words.

I hadn't been to the Border's in Salem for years. After I parked, I walked past an SUV emblazoned with "RJ Dance Studio," where my wife and I take lessons.

Lora, our instructor, was looking at some books in the vestibule. I said hello. We ended up chatting for quite a while about matters danceish.

Near the end of our conversation Lora told a story about a couple who were engaged to be married and had decided to take some dance lessons. The woman was incapable of letting her fiancée lead. She couldn't let go of the need to be in control.

Finally Lora went up to her and asked, "Do you trust him?" She said, "No."

The guy looked shocked. Lora couldn't believe it herself. Here they were, a week before their wedding, and the bride-to-be didn't trust her man to lead her around the dance floor.

"He might run into another couple. He might bump into the wall." She had all sorts of reasons for not letting him take the lead. Lora told her, "So? if this is the worst that can happen, no big deal."

Maybe this story had an effect on me when we parted and I went book-browsing. Today I felt like I trusted myself more than what authors had written. I was willing to let my own knowing, imperfect as it is, lead me through the Border's shelves.

Just as it did a few years ago.

The voluminous shelves of Christian books, ugh. Judaism, no interest. Islam and Sufism, too preachy. So I was reduced to pawing through a few square feet of Buddhist and Taoist writings, and even here I found myself replacing possible purchases almost as soon as I glanced at the front and back covers.

Dogmatic. Too personal. A rehash. Superficial. Overly intellectual.

Life is short. It's crazy to spend the few years we have on earth believing other people's spiritual beliefs, thinking other people's spiritual thoughts, commanding ourselves to follow other people's spiritual commandments.

With dancing, it makes sense to learn from instructors more skilled than yourself, because you can see the difference between what you and they can do. With religion and spirituality, though, there are few signs of accomplishment.

It's almost entirely blah, blah, blah, words, words, words. So why choose someone else's over your own?

Doubt, darkness, digging deep

I keep thinking about John Shanley's lines from my previous post.

Each of us is like a planet. There's the crust, which seems eternal. We are confident about who we are. If you ask, we can readily describe our current state…Your answers are your current topography, seemingly permanent, but deceptively so.

Doubt is a recognition that personal earthquakes happen. Magma can erupt at any moment. Continents shift. Fast, not requiring eons to reshuffle the contours of our existence.

Yet each of us erects belief structures upon this unstable ground. We're drawn to do so by the same natural forces that cause the tectonic shifts.

Such is the universe's yin and yang. Creation and destruction. Light and darkness. Order and chaos.

To only doubt…that way lies madness, indecision, depression, suicide. To only believe…that way lies fundamentalism, rigidity, closed-mindedness, unreality.

There must be a middle way. Not in the Buddhist sense, necessarily. But something like that. A way of living that melds confidence in what we know and experience now with a sense, This could change in the next instant.

Not only "could." Will. This will change in the next instant. Life is constantly demolishing my expectations, my understandings, my supremely confident belief that I've got things figured out.

Last night I realized that Outlook wasn't keeping up with my email message typing. I had to repeatedly press the space bar to make distinct words ratherthanrunonletterslikethis.

Amazingly (in retrospect), I jumped to the conclusion that it was an Outlook 2007 problem. I fired up Google, typed in "Outlook slow typing" and found countless complaints about this Microsoft offering not keeping up with fingers on a keyboard.

It was so obvious.

And became more obvious the more I thought about it. Until, after I'd tried some of the suggested software fixes, finding no effect, a disturbance broke through my encrusted mind: "It's the spacebar, stupid."

And so it was.

A few minutes of "sticky spacebar" Googling later, I'd pried off the plastic cover and finished cleaning the mechanism with some WD 40 soaked Q-tips. Back to normal now. Thank you, doubt, for breaking up my unsupported certainty.

Last week, while vacationing in central Oregon, I bought "The Ruins" at the Paulina Springs Bookstore. I felt like reading a good horror story, and the cover of the book featured a to-die-for (if you're the author) blurb from Stephen King:

"The best horror novel of the new century."

From the first page I struggled to put the book down. I was sucked into an unrelenting tale of good intentions gone awry, of people making choices that seem utterly right to them and turn out to be utterly wrong, of young people who had their lives ahead of them until a sinister force appears with a different notion.

I was surprised by how much I liked entering a fictional realm where you know (or at least deeply suspect) that nothing is going to turn out to be likable.

Scott Smith, the author, skillfully led me into the psyches of the characters. Along with them, in my imagination I struggled to deal with a situation that starts off as worrisome, evolves into something bad, and goes steeply downhill from there.

"The Ruins" was an antithesis to the spiritual books that are my usual reading fare. I found myself resonating with a worldview in which no matter how deep a person digs for courage, compassion, understanding, and truth, that effort is going to be undercut by an uncaring corner of the cosmos.

Well, not just uncaring. Evil. Uncaring would have been a godsend for these visitors to a Mayan jungle. They had to deal with an actively malevolent force.

Which I don't believe exists. My bet is that the universe has a "humans, shumans" non-attitude towards us. It doesn't give a shit about our existence because it doesn't give a shit about anything. Including itself.

So when those tectonic shifts happen, there's no reason for me to take them personally. They shake up my certainty with a powerful earthquake of doubt, but I can't assume there's any purpose behind it all – though I'd like it if I were the epicenter of some divinity's concern.

In "The Ruins," meaning (or meaninglessness) comes from within. Nobody or nothing is going to save you. What you make of the horrifying and horrible situation is up to you. A paragraph from near the end:

She thought briefly about praying – for what, forgiveness? – only to realize she had no one to pray to. She didn't believe in God. All her life she'd been saying that, instinctively, unthinkingly, but now, for the first time – about to do what she was about to do – she could look inside and claim the words with total assurance. She didn't believe.

Doubt shall set you free

I just came across a nice paean to doubt. Certainly, I like it.

I took part of the doubt quiz, then jumped to the study guide for "Doubt," the play. The playwright, John Patrick Shanley, says:

Each of us is like a planet. There's the crust, which seems eternal. We are confident about who we are. If you ask, we can readily describe our current state. I know my answers to so many questions, as do you. What was your father like? Do you believe in God? Who's your best friend? What do you want?

Your answers are your current topography, seemingly permanent, but deceptively so. Because under that face of easy response, there is another You. And this wordless Being moves just as the instant moves; it presses upward without explanation, fluid and wordless, until the resisting consciousness has no choice but to give way.

Read on for more from Shanley about embracing tectonic shifts.

Artifacts of my non-heretical heresy

My wife found some note cards when she was cleaning out a drawer. "Here," she said, handing them to me. "They're yours."

No doubt. My handwriting is distinctive, in the sense of unreadable.

But I can decipher my own scribblings. Most of the time, at least. (I've been known to hand a store clerk my grocery list and ask, "Can you tell me what I wrote down here?")

I thumbed through the cards and realized what they were: an initial attempt to organize themes for the talks that I used to give regularly at meetings of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees.

After I'd jotted down some thoughts on a handful of cards I gave up, realizing that my unorganized speaking approach was something that I'd never be able to cast off.

Still, there was some benefit to writing down these ideas. Now they serve as a window into my past true believing mind. Which, not so surprisingly, turns out to be quite similar to my current skeptical mind.

Do we ever really change our personality spots? I don't think so. We just make up different stories about them.

Here's what I said back then, whenever "then" was. Ten years or so, probably.

I'm considered a RSSB heretic now. But reading the cards, I realized that whatever I think today isn't so different from what I thought then. That's why I consider my heresy non-heretical.

Non-existence would be proof that God doesn't exist. Hence, it is terrifying. Of course, no one has experienced it. But prospect is dreadful, depressing, scary.

God is existence [Meister Eckhart]. All beings thirst for existence. This thirst is infinite, because existence is infinite. A longing that never lessens. With spirituality, eating causes hunger. Love…love, a circle with no end.

God is one. We need to look through everything and see God within. A single great chain of being. If Master [the guru] lies along that chain, our attachment to him is beneficial. If not, then it isn't.

Why do we not see God? Why is he missing? Perhaps, because the One is everything and so is everywhere. All is spirit, so spirituality is omnipresent. But we see only the crudest side of spirit.

Satsang [sermon, basically]. No truth in satsang, none at all. The true word can't be spoken. So, no heresy. Heresy is a matter of will, not intellect. Even the Master never says anything that is true.

Brain has no sensation at all, so we may sense all things. Likewise, when our non-material consciousness is empty of all self-induced sensation, it perceives what is beyond the self.

What is the most amazing thing we can say about God? How little, if anything, we can say about God. Same with Master; same with us.

Knowing. Do I know what I am talking about? No. But I know that I am talking. And this is the only true knowing: immediate and intuitive. Meister Eckhart: "To know God is to know that He causes us to know."

What you know of yourself is what you know of God. Self can't be known; it is lived.

Beautiful blonde at end of bar. "Buy a girl a drink?" We're accustomed to "but's" accompanying fulfillment of desire. Can't throw ourselves completely into anything, which is wise with worldly desires. But with spirit – need to boldly embrace.

Many words, less truth. No agreement. Even "holy names" not holy.

Having a revival by yourself

I used to go to an Indian mystic meditation group's version of "church" every Sunday to have my faith renewed. Well, sort of.

Actually, what I enjoyed the most was getting together with friends after the service (a.k.a. satsang) was over. We'd go out for coffee and talk about all sorts of stuff, including how unsure we were about what we supposedly believed in.

Now on Sundays I skip the service and head right for the coffee klatsch. But some days I still have a lingering longing for a revival. Problem is, I don't know what I'm trying to bring back to life.

I suspect, life. The times I feel unsure of myself are when I sense that need for an external bolstering of my What's Life All About? confidence. Meaning, when the question mark gets larger.

However, those times don't come as often as when I was a true believer in an organized spiritual system.

Makes sense. You don't need to be renewed when you don't have a faith that's grown old and stale. Every day is new and fresh for me now, because I don't cling to rigid patterns of acting and thinking nearly as much.

In short, you can't feel like you're off the path if you're not on one.

I do have my own way, though. We all do. There's no way to go through life without your own manner of making sense of it – which I called finding your own meaning in meaninglessness.

Churchless types like me have reached a point where we've accepted that there's no demonstrable proof of one religion, philosophy, or meditation approach being superior to any other. The ultimate truth may be out there, but it does a damn good job of hiding itself.

Some people find comfort in numbers. They enjoy belonging to a faith with adherents in the millions or billions. However, even if 100% of people believe in something that's wrong, this doesn't make it right.

So there's good reason to add one more belief system to the countless varieties already extant: your own. That way you don't need to go anywhere for a revival. You can renew your faith from right inside your own head.

I don't have any general advice about how to do this. All I know is what I find helpful, which might only work for me. It's pretty much the same as what makes my dancing go better, a subject I've written about quite a bit in the Tango/Dance section of my other blog.

Confidence. Trust in yourself. Leading decisively.

Or, following. Because while dancing with a partner involves separate roles, a leader and a follower, when you're dancing life with yourself you're both a leader and a follower. (See "I'm learning to Tango with life.")

Patterns are a big part of ballroom dancing. But patterns are made to be broken. Then we get into a higher form of dance, with a lot more spontaneity and creativity. I'm not there yet. I can see the promised land, though.

In the form of accomplished dancers, like the woman my wife and I took an Argentine Tango workshop from last Saturday. Rachel, like some spiritual teachers, has the ability to inspire her students to expand their horizons. What she can't do, though, is dance for them.

One of the points Rachel emphasized at the workshop is that Argentine Tango, unlike any other dance style (and she knows most of them), can be danced to just about any music.

Why? Because Tango is spontaneous, fully led and fully followed.

Its patterns are linked in a patternless fashion, once you get beyond the beginner's necessary repetition of basic movements. The follower can't anticipate what move is coming next, because the leader can go in many different directions, following his (or her) own sense of rhythm.

I pretty much said it all in "Dancing Tango with myself." Of course, I'm still needing to say it. That's part of dancing with life.

One of the central themes of The Tango Lesson, a great movie, is the tension between leading and following. In a climactic scene Pablo Veron tells Sally Potter, his partner: "You should do nothing. When you dance—just follow! Otherwise you destroy my freedom to move."

Is Pablo right? Wrong? Both right and wrong? Neither? Only Tango knows. And Tango isn't telling.

All I know is that based on my dancing with myself throughout my waking hours, I sympathize with Pablo. Sometimes I'm a terrible follower. I lead myself in a certain direction, then feel resistance. From me.

"Is this the correct thing to do?" "Maybe there's a better way." "Are you sure?" "Shouldn't you think some more before jumping into this?" "How will it look if you make a wrong step?"

Just follow, Brian! Be an empty vessel. Fill yourself with your self.

Blast the religious loonies into oblivion

Passion. Religious believers consider that they're the only ones with it. For example, they have "The Passion of the Christ." It fills Christians with energy, conviction, determination, zeal.

Well, there's also "The Passion of Reality." It fills me with exactly the same feelings. Just as fundamentalists are driven to rid the world of Satanic influences (including pagans like me), when I come across nonsensical dogmatic blathering my reality-loving blood begins to boil.

I get fired up to defend the ramparts of truth against the neo-barbarian hordes who want to substitute superstition for science (and a scientifically founded spirituality).

This morning, on Pharyngula, I came across a well-deserved rant about another blithering apologist.

I read these lame exercises in making excuses by theologians, and I don't understand how anyone can be foolish enough to fall for them. The latest example is by Edward Tingley, who babbles on painfully about how believers are the true skeptics, the true scientists, while claiming that the believers have a deeper, stronger knowledge than mere atheists.

Yet nowhere in his ramble does Tingley ever give any evidence or rational reason to believe in his god or any god — in fact, he triumphantly declares that there is no evidence — god exists, but (I can scarcely believe he makes this argument seriously) he's hiding…hiding in such a way that only someone "muscled up with virtues" can see him. It's the Emperor's New Clothes argument all over again.

Exactly. I muscled up with the virtue of reading crap that I don't believe in and headed over to Tingley's Christian web site to inspect "The Skeptical Inquirer: If Only Atheists Were the Skeptics They Think They Are."

It was painful to peruse. I confess that I didn't read every word. But only a small proportion of the words made any sense, so I'm pretty sure I didn't miss anything important.

These sentences seem to capture the essence of Tingley's argument:

A seeker of truth has to go where the truth can be found, and to go on until it is found, and both the atheist and the agnostic are early quitters… Maybe, if he exists, God would show himself directly to our senses. But maybe he wouldn't. Maybe he would hide from us—maybe he is a Deus absconditus.

… We now have evidence for a conclusion that all our fellow seekers of truth ought to draw: Either God does not exist or he exists but does not show himself to our senses.

… When the smart scientist of the seventeenth century was asked, "Is clear water pure?" he did not go with his gut and answer "yes" or "no." "The naked eye says yes," he answered, "but is there an instrument better than the naked eye with which to see?" We need to listen to the scientist who claims that there is, and that scientist is Pascal.

That instrument is the heart. "It is the heart which perceives God, and not the reason"… In a world in which God both exists and hides, relying upon conclusive evidence is the way to be wrong about God.

Wow! What an amazing load of bullshit.

Tingley says that since there is no evidence for God, either (1) God doesn't exist or (2) God wants to hide from us. The simplest explanation obviously is (1), in the same sense that since there is no evidence of gnomes who live under flowers in our garden, either (1) they don't exist or (2) they want to hide from my wife and me.

Now, someone else could move into our house and have a deep sense of conviction in his or her heart that there really are gnomes under our flowers. They just want to hide, and don't want to leave any demonstrable evidence of their existence other than that heartfelt sense.

Great. Each to his own. I've got no problem with gnome-lovers or with God-lovers. Just call your devotion what it is: a purely personal vision that has no foundation in objective reality.

Don't try to conflate what you feel in your heart with genuine knowledge. Don't insult truth by equating your subjective conviction that gnomes, God, Big Foot, the Tooth Fairy, or Santa Claus is real with how the cosmos truly is.

Just say, "I don't know, but I'm pretending that I do because it feels good." That's honest.

There's various ways to respond to those who, like Tingley, want to foist their medieval faith-based claptrap onto those of us in the 21^st century who are just fine with what the Renaissance brought us. Physicist Brian Greene takes the high road in his "Put a Little Science in Your Life."

He correctly sees science as more than just an activity pursued by white-coated nerds off in their own little experimental worlds.

The reason science really matters runs deeper still. Science is a way of life. Science is a perspective. Science is the process that takes us from confusion to understanding in a manner that's precise, predictive and reliable — a transformation, for those lucky enough to experience it, that is empowering and emotional. To be able to think through and grasp explanations — for everything from why the sky is blue to how life formed on earth — not because they are declared dogma but rather because they reveal patterns confirmed by experiment and observation, is one of the most precious of human experiences.

Then there's the low road, which attracts me more after having my heart tell me that Tingley and his fundamentalist friends need to be stopped with some shots across the bow before they kill civilization. This is the path taken by "Carnival of the Elitist Bastards."

Here she stands in dry-dock, awaiting launch: a ship of the line, cannon gleaming, masts straight and strong: the H.M.S. Elitist Bastard, built to withstand the endless assaults of ignorance. Her mission is to seek and destroy stupidity and make the world safe for knowledge once more. Where she sails, no IDiot is safe, no ignoramus secure: she's armed to the teeth and filled with a feisty crew begging for battle.

Only when necessary, though. Since I'm an ignoramus in so many ways, you're my comrade in not-knowing if you're similarly willing to admit your ignoramusness.

Notice the if. It's important. Like Socrates said, those who believe they know when really they don't are disadvantaged compared to those who know that they don't know.

Worse, they disadvantage the rest of us when they try to found social or educational policies on their religious ignorance – such as teaching creationism/intelligent design in public schools or not supporting embryonic stem cell research.

When Tingley and his band of "I feel God in my heart" no-nothings who believe they do set themselves up as superior to us genuine godly ignoramuses, that's a call to arms.

Time to unfurl the sails of the H.M.S. Elitist Bastard and show them who really rules the roost of ultimate reality: Mystery.

Uh-oh. I'm in trouble.

Good news: I scored over 50%.
Bad news: I'm going to hell.

Death is a marvelous backdrop for life

First, kudos to Edward for his comment on my "Finding Meaning in Meaninglessness" post. Like follow kudo'er Adam, I love the line, I have found that my life is none of my business. A comment excerpt:

There is no reason to be sure of anything. My certainty changes nothing of how I engage the world. Even being sure that I know nothing actually impedes my effective participation.

I have found that my life is none of my business. I get that there are (at least) two things going on: what I think is happening; and what is happening. These coincide most when I let the thinking happen, and give it the same valence as dreaming.

This makes a lot of sense to me, which probably shows that I don't understand it. Regardless, all I have to work with is what's at hand. Me.

Who would like to genuinely feel that life is none of my business, because that would mean that death isn't my business either. As it stands, I envision death often – not my favorite subject, especially when I'm being tested on it.

Which I'm not right now, or I wouldn't be sitting here typing on my laptop. But every indication, sadly, points to the fact that one day I'll be taking the final exam.

A Barna Group survey found that about 8 out of 10 Americans believe in an afterlife of some sort. One out of 10 believe that there is no form of life after one dies on earth. And one out of 10 (9%, actually) said life after death may exist, but they weren't certain.

Count me in the uncertain 9%. A percentage that really should be 100%, since neither the 81% of afterlife believers nor the 10% of afterlife deniers can be sure what's going to happen after they die.

The question for me is, what attitude toward death fosters the most living while I'm alive?

Often religious believers say that believing Jesus, Buddha, Allah, God, Krishna, Guru, or whoever will meet them after death gives them peace of mind, contentment, happiness. Well, I'm sure it does.

So does cocaine, amphetamines, ecstasy (the drug), alcohol, marijuana, and other ways of coating one's consciousness with a layer of Ah, everything's all right.

Nothing wrong with this. Nothing at all. Echoing Marx, I just see religious belief as another feel-good "opium." And the problem with most addictive substances is their long-term side effects, not their immediate gift of Ah…

More and more often I've been going along through my day and getting hit with an intuitive out-of-nowhere smack on the psyche: "Life isn't going to last. This could be your one and only living, guy. Not only isn't this moment ever going to come again, after death no moment may ever come again."

Strangely (or not) that smack ends up feeling more like a caress. I'm grateful for it. It's a wake-up call. Brian, don't sleep walk through life like you so often do. Pay attention!

Life shows up most clearly against a well-defined backdrop. Death. Non-life.

So do white clouds coursing across clear blue sky. Out here in Oregon we get a lot of gray clouds hanging below gray overcast. Not nearly so attractive.

When people believe they'll enjoy an afterlife while they're in the midst of this life, the imagined "to come" blends with the actual "this is." Their attention is split between immediate and anticipated experience.

"Ooh, I'd like to do that. But God won't be happy with me when I get to the Pearly Gates, so I'd better not."

Uncertainty about what will happen after death provides a pleasing neutral backdrop to life. It's a lot easier to make out the details of a piece of art when it's been painted on a blank canvas, not one that's already been drawn on.

It's a matter of taste. Some people enjoy the baroque. Dogmas fastened upon theologies attached to beliefs suspended on anticipations.

I'm more into simplicity (though often you couldn't tell this by looking at the top of my desk). A few flowers in an unadorned vase on a mostly bare shelf.

A few minutes ago I was reading the weekly Sisters, Oregon newspaper and came across a realtor's ad. She said, in bold letters:

I like living here. I do it all the time.

Nicely said.

Some people, though, live here and there – earth and heaven, reality and fantasy – simultaneously. Not advisable, if you really want to enjoy the neighborhood.