Church of the Churchless

Small things can be the biggest

For me, one of the hallmarks of churchlessness is being content with the smaller side of life. Maybe this partly comes from aging, but not all of it.

Yes, I recall my 50th birthday, when a friend told me: “Now you won’t worry so much about accomplishing all that you set out to do.” What was unstated I took to be, “because you’ve passed your prime and don’t have much time left.”

Well, if that was true at 50, it’s even more so at 60.

Yet I don’t think age alone explains the increased pleasure I get from everyday life now -- as contrasted with my previous drive to know and do great things.

I used to want to write books that delved into the Big Questions of Life. Now I’m content to put up a daily blog post, frequently about a mundane subject.

I used to imagine that my meditation would lead me to a grasp of ultimate reality. Now I’m pleased if I can stay awake and semi-poised within my consciousness.

I used to feel that I was destined to significantly change the world. Now I get a lot of satisfaction from making a much tinier slice of reality a little bit better.

It’s been a dry fall so far here in Oregon. Rain is coming tomorrow. The forecast is that it’ll stay for a while. That’s been an incentive to get some good weather chores done. Like staining/sealing the railings and trim on a replacement deck.

I’m good at this.

Staining takes more care and concentration than painting. With the semi-transparent stain I’m using, mistakes aren’t easily rectified. A dried drip or brush mark is going to be with us for a long time.

I tried listening to the radio while I worked, but found this interfered with the simplicity of brush, brush, brush. I was endlessly fascinated by the unfinished wood changing color as I applied the cedar-toned stain.

At times I felt that if the next moment brought my last breath, I’d die content.

I’m doing something real ... making a difference. Look at that board now! Beautiful, how the darker knot holes contrast with the rest of the grain.

Much of my life has been marked by grandiosity. This period coincides, pretty much, with my churched phase. I’m not saying there’s a cause and effect connection between the two -- religiosity and grandiosity -- but there does seem to be a relationship.

Enlightenment. Salvation. Knowing God. Perfect love. Selfless service. These are big notions. Accomplish any of them, and you’ve done a heck of a lot.

I don’t seriously aspire to those sorts of lofty goals anymore. It’s hard to explain why. Probably there’s no need to figure out why I don’t have such a strong need to figure out the cosmos.

Yet...it’s fun to try.

I used to feel that there was (1) really real reality, and (2) where I am now. Blurring (or eliminating) the difference seems to be as good an explanation as any for my current appreciation of the ordinary.

Along with the above-mentioned recognition that -- while I’d dearly love it to be otherwise -- what I do or don’t do doesn’t mean squat to the universe.

I’m an infinitesimal cog in an infinitely large cosmic wheel. Staining deck railings has just about as much effect on a 100 billion galaxy universe as anything else, no matter how seemingly momentous, I might accomplish.

With that realization... the pressure is off. And William Blake is on.

To see a World in a Grain of Sand.
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

Thumbs up to naturalism, evolution, and Palin fading away

Today Pharyngula, a terrific science/ progressive/ anti-religion blog, hit the mark with links to stories on three of my favorite subjects.

Exposing Sarah Palin for the fool that she is. Palin is against science. She's for the teaching of creationism. She doesn't think humans have much to do with global warming. Picturing her as vice-president of the United States: too irrationally scary to contemplate.

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Evolution points to a reality incompatible with traditional religion. Some people claim that God could have created the universe in the big bang and then left it (including Earth, obviously) to evolve in accord with natural laws. But what's the point of religion if there's no evidence of anything godly in the physical world?

First, let's clear up the incoherence of the question. I understand it as, "Does understanding science [it's not just biologists who exhibit this phenomenon!] lead to an abandonment of religious beliefs?", and that's the question to which I think an affirmative is the correct answer. It ought to; scientific thinking is corrosive to religious belief.

...Thinking scientifically means that you question assumptions and that you ask epistemological questions and you try to rationally justify the acceptance of ideas, and that's the antithesis of religious thinking. If you apply scientific reasoning to even that moderate version of religion, it crumbles — there is simply no evidence for any of their claims.

The natural world is, naturally, all that is known to exist. "Materialists" are better termed "naturalists." Science knows that matter isn't just solid objects, stuff you can knock your fist on. It's also energy, space and time, quantum tremblings far beyond our ability to sense with even the most powerful instruments. There's plenty of room for pondering the Big Questions of Life in naturalism.

Science is dependent upon methodological naturalism because a necessary feature of any scientific hypothesis is that it is testable. Non-natural causes are by definition non-falsifiable, and therefore scientific methods cannot act upon them. It is like the now famous cartoon of the mathematician writing out a very complex equation, but in one part simply writes “and then a miracle happens.” His colleague points out that, “I think you need to be a little more explicit in this section.” (I may be paraphrasing.)

Science cannot say, “and then a miracle happens.” There is no way to do an experiment or make an observation that can test a miracle. Miracles, by definition, defy natural forces or explanations. They cannot be constrained, which is a necessary feature of any hypothesis that can be falsified.

Death can't be imagined

What do you think will happen to you after you die? If you're religious, many answers are possible. "I'll be in heaven." "My soul will exist without a body." "God and I will be a single consciousness."

But even if you're a non-believer, there's a good chance that you still harbor notions of your continued existence.

Seemingly it's super tough, if not impossible, for the human mind to conceive of nothingness. We're hard-wired to imagine that we'll always be something, rather than nothing.

This is the premise of a fascinating Scientific American article by Jesse Bering, "Never Say Die: Why We Can't Imagine Death." Read it. You'll gain a fresh perspective on belief in an afterlife.

Bering says that new research casts doubt on the common notion that fear of death is what drives religious conceptions of immortality.

According to proponents, you possess a secret arsenal of psychological defenses designed to keep your death anxiety at bay (and to keep you from ending up in the fetal position listening to Nick Drake on your iPod). My writing this article, for example, would be interpreted as an exercise in “symbolic immortality”; terror management theorists would likely tell you that I wrote it for posterity, to enable a concrete set of my ephemeral ideas to outlive me, the biological organism. (I would tell you that I’d be happy enough if a year from now it still had a faint pulse.)

Yet a small number of researchers, including me, are increasingly arguing that the evolution of self-consciousness has posed a different kind of problem altogether. This position holds that our ancestors suffered the unshakable illusion that their minds were immortal, and it’s this hiccup of gross irrationality that we have unmistakably inherited from them. Individual human beings, by virtue of their evolved cognitive architecture, had trouble conceptualizing their own psychological inexistence from the start.

He presents evidence to support this thesis, including the fact that the younger children are, the more difficulty they have imagining that someone who has died really is dead -- meaning that the deceased has no awareness of anything.

If religion was the primary cause of belief in an afterlife, then we'd expect to find that people with more exposure to religious dogma would be less inclined to say, "After death, there's nothing" (and really mean it).

However, the situation isn't that simple. Bering says that our innate psychological inability to imagine non-existence forms the floor upon which forms of religiosity are built:

In fact, exposure to the concept of an afterlife plays a crucial role in enriching and elaborating this natural cognitive stance; it’s sort of like an architectural scaffolding process, whereby culture develops and decorates the innate psychological building blocks of religious belief. The end product can be as ornate or austere as you like, from the headache-inducing reincarnation beliefs of Theravada Buddhists to the man on the street’s “I believe there’s something” brand of philosophy—but it’s made of the same brick and mortar just the same.

I've spent a lot of time pondering death. But there's one thing I can't conceive of: what's it like to be incapable of conceiving. Even the idea of "nothing" is much more of a something than nothingness actually is.

I liked this quote from philosopher Thomas W. Clark. I also found it deeply disturbing (guess I like to be disturbed).

Here ... is the view at issue: When we die, what’s next is nothing; death is an abyss, a black hole, the end of experience; it is eternal nothingness, the permanent extinction of being. And here, in a nutshell, is the error contained in that view: It is to reify nothingness—make it a positive condition or quality (for example, of “blackness”)—and then to place the individual in it after death, so that we somehow fall into nothingness, to remain there eternally.

There's a lot more to like in the article. It challenges some ideas I've accepted rather uncritically.

Like, that deep sleep gives us a foretaste of death. "Hey, I was asleep much of the night and wasn't aware of anything, so how bad could death be if it's just like a really long sleep?"

Some Eastern mystics liken enlightenment to the state of dreamless sleep. I've always wondered what's so great about not being conscious of an elevated consciousness. If I'm not aware of my expanded awareness, what's the point?

Bering points out that when you wake up and say to yourself, "I experienced dreamless deep sleep last night," you're not telling the truth.

For us extinctivists, it’s kind of like staring into a hallway of mirrors—but rather than confronting a visual trick, we’re dealing with cognitive reverberations of subjective experience. In Spanish philosopher Miguel de Unamuno’s 1913 existential screed, The Tragic Sense of Life, one can almost see the author tearing out his hair contemplating this very fact. “Try to fill your consciousness with the representation of no-consciousness,” he writes, “and you will see the impossibility of it. The effort to comprehend it causes the most tormenting dizziness.”

Wait, you say, isn’t Unamuno forgetting something? We certainly do have experience with nothingness. Every night, in fact, when we’re in dreamless sleep. But you’d be mistaken in this assumption. Clark puts it this way (emphasis mine): “We may occasionally have the impression of having experienced or ‘undergone’ a period of unconsciousness, but, of course, this is impossible. The ‘nothingness’ of unconsciousness cannot be an experienced actuality.”

So death is a mystery. We can't begin to imagine what not-existing would be like, because all we know is existence. Our imagination fills the can't begin to imagine void with beliefs about an afterlife.

Those ideas are comforting, and God knows, people need all the comfort they can get in a world that can be so harsh, painful, and cruel.

We just shouldn't fool ourselves: Nothing is the most likely non-something that we're going to be after death.

Since that is impossible to imagine, we should recognize our psychological blind spot for what it is -- and not mistake it for a grand spiritual vision.

Another reason to reject religion

I just got an email from someone who wanted to let me know about the dangerous immoralities of cults. He said this story left him speechless.

Me too. Except I wanted to use a few words to write this post.

The next time someone asks you, "Why are you so down on religion?" say "Oh, I don't know. Maybe it's because true believers make their children eat their own flesh."

Nobel Prize winner Steven Weinberg is right:

“Religion is an insult to human dignity. With or without it, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.”

If a satguru isn't God, what is he?

Regular readers of this blog may have noticed that I don't write as much about my experience with Radha Soami Satsang Beas anymore. My  of posts includes just about everything I want to say about my churchy phase. Still, there's always a bit more to say.

Today I answered an email from someone who wondered how to deal with unjust situations. I told him that keeping calm, cool, and collected is admirable, but there's a difference between not being unduly affected by an injustice and failing to deal with it.

Action is called for when someone is trying to screw you over. That's common sense. You don't have to get angry; you simply have to deal with them.

People who are still active in RSSB have left quite a few comments on my posts along the lines of: "Brian, you should get over your anger and disappointment with this spiritual path. Just because you didn't get the benefits you felt you deserved doesn't entitle you to criticize the guru."

Partly true, partly false. I'm not angry. And I no longer feel disappointed, because I've learned that what I expected wasn't reasonable.

So I admit that I'm responsible for embracing a delusion. So is every religious believer. But there's a difference between guru-centered faiths and traditional religions that justifies my criticisms of RSSB.

The guru (more accurately, "satguru" or true guru) is considered to be God in human form. Here's an explanation, in pseudo-spiritual science nomenclature. This is a more traditional perspective.

Now, let's consider what this means from the perspective of someone who signs up to be a satguru's disciple. Like me, who assiduously followed the guru's guidance for over thirty years.

Either the guru really is God, or he isn't.

If he isn't, then the alternative title I talked about in my "God-man or Asshole?" post holds true. Because someone would have to be a real jerk to pretend he or she is a divine being, accepting all the benefits that come with the satguru gig, leading devotees down an illusory enlightenment road.

On the other hand, if the guru is God, then he or she should act the part. Miracles should be forthcoming. Other-worldly wisdom should be evident. There shouldn't be any doubt that God has manifested in a human form.

However, there is. That's indisputable. Just as there is doubt that any religion based on belief in a personal God is true. John Loftus talks about this in his book, "Why I Became An Atheist: A Former Preacher Rejects Christianity."

He wonders, what sort of God would leave his creation in the lurch rather than revealing himself to humans? Not a loving God, given the other options.

God could reveal himself to us in every generation in a myriad of ways ... He could become incarnate in every generation and do miracles for all to see. He could spontaneously appear and heal people, or end a famine, or stop a war, or settle an important question like slavery.

He could raise up John F. Kennedy from the dead for all to see. He could restore an amputated limb in full sight of a crowd of people that would include all of the best magicians along with the myth-busters and James Randi, who would all find fault if fault could be found.

He could do any and all of the miracles he did in the Bible from time to time, including miraculously feeding five thousand men with their families. The list of things God could do in each generation is endless.

Yet in fact, they are non-existent. This is easier to understand when God is considered to be a transcendent being. Maybe he's busy taking care of another universe, or otherwise has better things to do.

However, when God is believed to be living right here on Earth as flesh and blood it becomes much more difficult to rationalize his failing to come out of the closet and reveal himself unambiguously.

The likely answer why this doesn't happen: God-men and God-women are fakes. That leaves them open to well-deserved criticism for pretending to be someone they aren't, and promising benefits they know can't be produced.

Loftus has a similar attitude toward the Christian God he once believed in:

I too am shaming God, if he exists. I am an atheist to protest the fact that even if he exists he has not revealed himself clearly to his creatures, or shown us divine compassion. Even if there is a God after all, I will shame him for not providing sufficient evidence and reasons to believe.

So a supposed satguru is deserving of criticism on both fronts.

If he really is God, then he should act like a divine being and not pussy-foot around as a normal human. And if he isn't God, then he should never have led people to believe that he is.

No one is perfect. That's what I remind myself when someone lets me down, or a product doesn't perform as promised. But the claim is that a satguru is perfect.

That's why it's appropriate to hold him to the highest standards. If he doesn't meet them, that's proof perfection lies elsewhere -- or nowhere.

Sarah Palin's Christianity is scarily senseless

Yesterday I thought I'd pushed the car radio button that brought up Oregon Public Broadcasting, so I wasn't all that surprised to hear Sarah Palin's distinctive voice.

It appeared that she was being interviewed by someone with a Christian bent. I figured that an excerpt from the interview was being played so it could be discussed from OPB's usual moderate perspective.

But Palin and the man she was speaking with kept on talking. I heard her refer to him as "Dr. Dobson." That spurred me to glance at the radio setting.

Oh my God! I had stumbled onto the dark side! Somehow I'd tuned in an FM station that carried Dobson's Focus on the Family brand of dogmatic fundamentalism.

I felt like a churchless eavesdropper, since I was getting an inside peek at how Palin describes her faith when she's on comfortable Christian media ground -- as contrasted with the godless mainstream reporters who have such unreasonable expectations for her.

Such as, that she be able to speak in coherent English sentences and make at least minimal sense.

You can listen to her conversation with Dobson here. I started to play the interview again, but I couldn't stomach hearing Palin and Dobson mangle rationality and reason in such an absurd fashion.

I recall that Dobson talked about how her detractors make fun of her Christianity.

Well, that's to be expected when someone expresses such ridiculous religious beliefs. If Palin or any other believer doesn't want to be mocked, they should keep their more bizarre notions to themselves.

Case in point: Palin and Dobson said that God is in charge of things here on Earth, but we also have free will. That's a big "but" which didn't come in for the serious philosophical discussion that it deserved.

So I got abjectly confused by how prayer was supposed to enter into the presidential election. On the one hand, Palin said the election is in God's hands and that however it turns out will be the right thing for America.

For a second I thought a miracle had happened. Palin's mind seemed to be on a halfway reasonable track.

In another interview I remember her trying to claim that she agreed with Abraham Lincoln when he said that God wasn't on either side in the Civil War, and that our job wasn't to tell God what to do but to accept His will.

Pretty clearly, though, this wasn't where she and Dobson wanted to head theologically. Because there was a lot of talk about how people are praying for her and McCain, which means that God should have a favorite in the election.

David Waters takes issue:

Last time I checked, Dr. Dobson, all four candidates on the major party presidential tickets are unabashed Christians. All four have had the "courage" to speak the name of Christ. Aren't all four deserving of our Christian prayers and appreciation?

Well, not in my view, since I don't see how a believer in an omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent personal God can justify telling the Big Guy/Gal Upstairs how to run a universe.

It seems obvious that Palin and Dobson are simply trying to use religion to justify their personal political preferences. And that isn't right. It's absolutely wrong.

A psychologist who used to be a fundamentalist, Valerie Tarico, has written a devastating "Open Letter to Sarah Palin."

She understands how deluded true believers like Palin are able to twist their minds into contorted knots and view anyone who doesn't share their dogmatism as a tool of the Devil.

You cannot affirm basic human decency or capability, because according to your dogma, we are sinful, weak, and dependent on God. And so, your decisions would not be based on expert advice or even your own reasoning, but on your gut-level, intuitive interpretation of God's will. This would allow you to do anything and claim you were led by God.

Your thinking necessarily is black or white. People and policies are either good or bad. After all, Jesus said, "He who is not with me is against me" (Matt. 12:30). Under your leadership, diplomacy and cultural nuance would be less important than not blinking. In a spiritual war, you don't negotiate with the devil.

Regarding social policy, as a believer in individual salvation, you would emphasize individual morality and responsibility, not a community approach with structural solutions. You would be judgmental and controlling of personal choices regarding sex, reproduction, and library books instead of addressing global warming, torture, poverty, and war.

Your belief in eternal hell-fire, your deference to a literal Bible despite its cruelties and vengeful god, and your indoctrination to disbelieve your own compassionate instincts, are likely to leave you numb at your moral core. You might recall the verse, "If a man will not work he shall not eat" (2 Thess. 3:10). However, faith-based initiatives would be okay because they would use caring to evangelize.

I can't begin to imagine how scary a McCain - Palin administration would be for this country -- and the world. Fortunately, polls show that Americans are putting their campaign on life support.

That's great. But on November 4 we've got to be sure to kill this angry, judgmental, ill-informed, unethical fundamentalist beast, the final gasp of George Bush's failed policies.

Turn around, if you feel like it

Yesterday I related the following story to my Tai Chi class. Our instructor had been talking about the importance of staying empty, keeping one foot unweighted so you can easily move it in a desired direction.

Being double-weighted is a no-no. That's when you're firmly planted on both feet, committed to where you are, which prevents you from fluidly being somewhere else if the situation demands it.

I came across this tale in "A Short History of Chinese Philosophy."

Wang Hui-Chih was living at Shan-Yin. One night he was awakened by a heavy snowfall. Opening the window he saw a gleaming whiteness all about him ... Suddenly he thought of his friend Tai K'uei. Immediately he took a boat and went to see Tai.

It required the whole night for him to reach Tai's house, but when he was just about to knock at the door, he stopped and returned home. When asked the reason for the act, he replied: "I came on the impulse of my pleasure, and now it is ended, so I go back. Why should I see Tai?"

Yes, why?

We talked about this in class. I mentioned that standing firm, remaining true to a plan, honoring a commitment -- this is seen by most people as a good thing.

Shifting gears, changing direction, charting a new course -- this also is viewed as having its pluses, but there seems to be more wariness associated with a zig-zagger in contrast to a straight-liner. Can he be trusted?

But one isn't less dependable than the other. They just have different commitments.

Wang was committed to honoring his sense of what felt right. When he was drawn to visit his friend, he did. When he wasn't, he didn't, even though he was about to knock on the door. Wang wasn't bound by the rigid "should's" that most of us carry around in our mind, placed there by learned social conventions.

Such as, If you've journeyed all night to see someone, you should take the final step and cross the threshold.

Well, again the question arises: Why? Who is a better judge of what's the right thing to do than you? If you feel an urge to turn around at the last moment (or any other time), follow your instinct -- whether you're on a religious or any other sort of path.

After all, U-turns often lead to a better direction. So turn back, if you're on the wrong road.

Profitable spiritual investing

As the world financial crisis deepens, conversations tend to turn toward money rather than other subjects. Last night I was with a group of people who discussed the ins and outs (not to mention the ups and downs) of investing in tough times like these.

I didn't have a whole lot to say.

Briefly I held forth on the Buddha-like nature of index fund investing, where you don't try to beat the market through some clever scheme but rather rest content with rising and falling in concert with the overall financial tide.

I told my friends, "If the world and national economy go to hell, so will our investments. If things improve, so will our portfolio. It's a humble way to invest, since you're happy to be average."

This is pretty much the same way I feel about my spiritual investing strategy now.

For many years I thought I could beat the system. That is, find a way to salvation, God-realization, enlightenment, or whatever, that would lead to a better result than others would enjoy who weren't privy to the inside knowledge I possessed.

I've written about my shift from "active" to "passive" spiritual investing in previous posts:
"Running so fast to become motionless"
"Spiritual diversification, a sound investment strategy"
"Spiritual investing takes nothing"

In the last post, I said…

Here's some further thoughts about spiritual investing, a subject that I've enjoyed pondering since writing my post of a week ago. I advised that, just as it makes great financial sense to invest in index funds that mirror an entire market, a person's spiritual endeavors should be similarly widely diversified.

However, there's a difference between worldly and other-worldly markets that I neglected to address sufficiently before. When you buy a monetary index fund such as the Total U.S. Stock Market, you end up owning a piece of every single company stock in the United States. Thus diversification is accomplished in a manner that is easy to understand: own a little bit of everything.

But to invest one's soul in the Total Cosmic Spirit Market means taking an exactly opposite approach: owning nothing. You diversify widely into the One by not clinging to any part of the Many—anything that can be demarcated by name or form.

…So I'm convinced that spirituality is, purely and simply, the embrace of Nothing. Nothing, that is, of the world of illusion. Which means everything of the world of reality.

It's a damn good deal: Nothing for Everything. The only trick, and it's damn difficult to figure it out, is how to acquire that spiritual investment capital, Nothing. Seemingly you should be able to find it anywhere just by letting everything else go. Sounds easy enough.

But I've been looking for Nothing inside my head during more than thirty years of daily meditation. I always end up with something. The search continues. I'll keep you posted.

Well, I've done just that on this blog for the three and a half years since I wrote those words. Here's an up to the second update: no change. Nothing still hasn't made an appearance.

I am, though, starting to suspect why. The Nothing that I equated with God (since ultimate reality isn't like anything we know now) probably is much more of a nothing than I suspected. Or could begin to imagine.

So much of a nothing, there's no trace of it. Which leads to a question: "Is there any difference between non-existent and unknowable?"

Mystics and theologians often speak of God as unspeakable. They urge us to think of God as being beyond thought. Rather than seek a divine light, embracing darkness is recommended – the via negativa.

I'm no longer so big on embracing Nothing. I still love the notion of emptiness, of becoming a receptive vessel that can be filled with truth, happiness, knowledge, and other good stuff (including money).

However, the notion that there's a Nothing on the other side of Everything – Christians would call this "God," Taoists "Wu Chi" – maybe this is just a meaningless concept lacking any foundation in reality. People who want to make money don't ask, "What is the ineffable source of wealth?"

They just invest. Not in nothing, but in something. Hoping to get more of it: something.

This morning I read some intriguing passages in Fung Yu-Lan's "A Short History of Chinese Philosophy." I got a different impression of nothingness. Suddenly it seemed a lot more nothing'ish. So much so, there was nothing to it.

The Tao is "Nothing"

The Hsiang-Kuo interpretation made several most important revisions in the original Taoism of Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu. The first is that the Tao is really wu, i.e., "nothing" or "nothingness." Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu also had maintained that the Tao is Wu, but by Wu they meant having no name. That is, according to them, the Tao is not a thing; hence it is unnamable.

But according to the Hsiang-Kuo interpretation, the Tao is really literally nothing. "The Tao is everywhere, but everywhere it is nothing."

…Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu denied the existence of a personal Creator by substituting in His place an impersonal Tao, which is that by which all things come to be. Hsiang-Kuo went a step further by insisting that the Tao is really nothing.

According to them, the statement of the earlier Taoists that all things come into being from the Tao simply means that all things come to be by themselves.

…Likewise, the statement of the earlier Taoists that all things come into being from Being, and Being comes into being from Non-being, simply means that Being comes into being by itself.

Makes sense, in a wonderfully simple recursive fashion. The ultimate questions of life basically are answered (or ignored) by "Things are what they are; the universe is what it is."

That's real spiritual index investing.

Spirituality without God

Is an atheist or agnostic spirituality possible? Sure. And I've read a book that proves it: Andre Comte-Sponville's "The Little Book of Atheist Spirituality."

This morning I browsed through the final chapter again, liking it even more the second time through. My first post about the book was on the theme of desiring God isn't proof of God.

That's true, but sort of negative. Comte-Sponville ends his book with a positive flourish, arguing that not only is an atheist spirituality possible, but really it is the only authentic way to establish a loving, truthful connection with the cosmos.

First, what is spiritual? Is it something other-worldly, non-materialistic, transcendent? Or is it a term for the inner, aware, conscious side of being human?

Comte-Sponville argues for the latter, and I've come to agree with him.

Taken in its broadest sense, spirituality can be said to include virtually all aspects of human life and spiritual is more or less synonymous with "mental" or "psychic." Today, this sense of the word has pretty much gone out of use, and when people talk about spirituality, they are usually referring to a rather limited part of our inner life (though it may contemplate limitlessness) – the part that involves the absolute, the infinite and the eternal. It is, in a sense, the spirit's farthermost point and its greatest amplitude.

Mystery surrounds us. It is us. The far out also is close at hand.

Spirit, says Comte-Sponville, is part of nature. Adding on abstract concepts such as "God" or "soul" distances us from an immediate intuitive spiritual experience of enchantment, awe, wonder, humble not-knowing.

I feel like I've experienced what he's talking about. Often I'm simply blown away by a wordless sensation that I can best try to describe as …

The universe is. So am I. We have so much in common. I'm alive for a while, aware of being. Being something, someone, somewhere. But also (and more importantly), simply being. Existing within existence. I've got no idea what all this means. Never will. I'm just grateful to be an infinitesimal part of it, experiencing a speck of time within the vast expanse of eternity.

Comte-Sponville puts it better than I can. Here he's describing an oceanic sense of connectedness with It All that doesn't involve any sort of conventional religious sense of a detached divinity.

Firstly, there is the suspension of familiarity, banality, repetition, "been there done that" – the spurious self-evidence of ordinary awareness. All at once, it is as if everything were new, singular and astonishing – not irrational, perhaps, but inexplicable or incomprehensible, beyond all forms of reason. Given that reason is a part of it, how could reason possibly contain it? This is what I call mystery.

Secondly, or rather at the same time, there is the suspension of questions and problems – not because they have all been resolved, but because they are no longer raised. Why is there something rather than nothing? The question vanishes and all that remains is the answer, which is no longer an answer, since there is no longer a question.

All that remains is being, reality, what I have called self-evidence. Woody Allen comes close to it in one of his aphorisms: "The answer is yes. But what is the question?" There is no question, which is why the answer is always yes.

… Wittgenstein put it most aptly: "For an answer which cannot be expressed, the question too cannot be expressed … The solution to the problem of life is seen in the vanishing of the problem."

I can't say that I've stopped searching for the meaning of life. But I'm becoming more aware of the games that I play with myself along the way.

I like to ponder the mystery of existence. I enjoy exploring mystical paths that point to a void, nothingness, mind-blowing incomprehensibility. And yet, in the back of my blown mind is an expectation: someday it'll be clear.

Hey! Who says?! Where the hell did I get that notion, someday it'll be clear? What vestige of religiosity is clinging in my supposedly churchless mind that assures me of my eventual salvation from cluelessness?

Comte-Sponville says:

Yet there are the occasional moments of grace, when we cease hoping for anything other than what is (and this is no longer hope; it is love) or what we are doing (and this is no longer hope; it is will). Moments when nothing is missing, when there is nothing to either wish for or regret and when the question of possession is irrelevant (because having is replaced by being and doing) – this is what I call plenitude.

…While we are living it, it is neither a concept, a reflection nor a comprehension. It is an experience. It is a fact. It is a bedazzlement. The present is here, and it is all there is. It never vanishes; it continues. It changes ceaselessly; therefore it is unceasing. All is present; the present is all. All is true. All is eternal, here and now!

I have no idea what these words mean. Yet I know that they're absolutely true.

Just as I have no idea what the meaning of the universe is. Yet I know that the existence within which I'm existing is absolutely true. How could it not be?

Try not to be what you are or to be what you are not!

…Instead of looking at yourself, you can see. Instead of pretending, you can act. Instead of waiting, you can pay attention. What could be simpler than simplicity? And what could be rarer? It means being one with yourself, so much so that the self vanishes, and all that remains is oneness – the act itself, awareness itself.

You were taking a walk? All that remains is the walk. You were making love? All that remains is desire or love. You were meditating? All that remains is meditation. You were acting? All that remains is action – such is the secret of martial arts, which is why they involve spirituality.

You were being? All that remains is being itself.

Meet a young, beautiful, thoughtful, charming atheist

There's long-term hope for America, churchless-wise, if 18 year olds like Laci (a.k.a. "gogreen18") are in plentiful supply.

I learned about Laci via a blog post that featured her "Why atheists care about YOUR religion" You Tube video. She lays out the case against religion persuasively in five entertaining minutes.

Have a watch (guys, do your best to keep looking in her eyes – you'll fail, as I did, but try just for the futile fun of it).

I also enjoyed Laci's "I'm going to hell," in no small part because I've also condemned myself to hell (for a free DVD) and it makes me feel good to know that I'll have such attractive company.

This is one of her points: that if the interesting people who think for themselves and don't accept religion are hell bound, she'd rather be part of that club than have to endure eternity in heaven with boring stick-in-the-muds.

In addition, Laci offers a tip to Christians who try to get her on the faith track. It doesn't do any good to threaten her with hell, because she doesn't believe in it. Try persuading her with something that isn't a fairy tale, says Laci.

Great stuff.

Lastly, I was curious to learn "Richard Dawkins' Brutal Sentence." In two minutes, I did.

And also found out that Laci can pronounce megalomaniacal (sure, it was after a few attempts, but hey, how many eighteen year olds can do it at all?).

Pray for McCain-Palin (they need it)

Thanks to Pharyngula, I learned about a Pray for McCain-Palin web site, which I was pleased to visit, adding my voice to a poll about whether McCain's pick of Palin made me more or less likely to vote for him.

I'm totally supportive of this site. It's hard to think of anyone who needs prayer more than John McCain and Sarah Palin. (Proof, here and here.)

In case you're not sure about how to pray, the site provides some helpful specific prayer requests. My favorite is:

Pray for the peace of mind of the candidates & their families and that they will be able to weather Satan's attacks

Why, what could they mean by this? Hmmmm, maybe this.

Well, I see this as a lot more Satanic. Maybe McCain and Palin need to look at their own campaign rallies for evidence of Satan's attacks.

God, the Big Bang, and a Big Bounce

It's well accepted that our universe came into being about 13.7 billion years ago with a bang. A big bang, in fact. So big, and yet so small.

Because the energy which became at least 100 billion galaxies each containing about 100 billion stars, supposedly was contained within a singularity of infinite density and temperature that wasn't even a point in time and space – since a singularity is where the laws of nature (including general relativity) break down.

This helps explain why the Catholic Church has looked with favor on the big bang theory, as have theologians of other faiths.

Time is considering to come into existence with the big bang. Before it, there was nothing. So it's easy to consider that God was behind the big bang, kicking creation into existence in a "let there be light" fashion.

Now, though, a big bounce theory is gaining adherents. Last night I read a Scientific American article, "Big Bang or Big Bounce?: New Theory on the Universe's Birth," by Martin Bojowald.

Here's the Key Concepts summary of the article:

• Einstein's general theory of relativity says that the universe began with the big bang singularity, a moment when all the matter we see was concentrated at a single point of infinite density. But the theory does not capture the fine, quantum structure of spacetime, which limits how tightly matter can be concentrated and how strong gravity can become. To figure out what really happened, physicists need a quantum theory of gravity.
• According to one candidate for such a theory, loop quantum gravity, space is subdivided into "atoms" of volume and has a finite capacity to store matter and energy, thereby preventing true singularities from existing.
• If so, time may have extended before the bang. The prebang universe may have undergone a catastrophic implosion that reached a point of maximum density and then reversed. In short, a big crunch may have led to a big bounce and then to the big bang.

Cool. There still was a big bang, but it probably wasn't the first. In fact, there could be an infinity of universe-creating moments, since the big bounce theory suggests that the beginning of time is a myth.

The cosmos always has existed. It just bounces around, oscillating between big bangs and big crunches, wiping out all traces of what came before each seemingly one-of-a-kind creation of a universe.

I like (but don't claim to understand) the loop gravity theory. What's not to like about a notion that makes you think "loopy"? And, "far out."

In the quantum theory of gravity, a vacuum is the absence of spacetime – an emptiness so thorough we can scarcely imagine it. Loop gravity describes how each increment of energy added to this vacuum generates a new atom of spacetime.

The spacetime atoms form a dense, ever shifting mesh. Over large distances, their dynamism gives rise to the evolving universe of classical general relativity. Under ordinary conditions, we never notice the existence of these spacetime atoms; the mesh spacing is so tight that it looks like a continuum. But when spacetime is packed with energy, as it was at the big bang, the fine structure of spacetime becomes a factor, and the predictions of loop gravity diverge from those of general relativity.

… Because of the quantum-gravitational change in the balance of forces, no singularity—no state of infinite density—can ever arise. According to this model, matter in the early universe had a very high but finite density, the equivalent of a trillion suns in every proton-size region. At such extremes, gravity acted as a repulsive force, causing space to expand; as densities moderated, gravity switched to being the attractive force we all know. Inertia has kept the expansion going to the present day.

Who can fathom infinity? But the mass of a trillion suns shrunk to the size of a proton … that's mind-boggling, yet at least minimally comprehensible.

Lying in bed after reading the article, musing about the mystery of the universe before falling asleep, I pondered a cosmos that has always been, and just keeps banging/bouncing away, forever.

My ponder ran up against what it always does in such speculating: awe, pure and simple. My train of thought falls over an abyss of mystery. I'm left with nothing but Wow.

I'm pretty sure this is the same feeling religious believers have when they contemplate an omnipresent, omniscient, omnipotent God. They and I fall on our non-comprehending knees before the ultimate.

The thing is, science points the way to the mystery of always was, always is, always shall be with a lot more believability than religion does.

So if you want to feel cosmic awe, there's no need to pick up a holy book. Just Scientific American.

McCain campaign says God wants Obama to lose

Reason number 439,816 to not vote for John McCain (don't have time to list rest of them):

A minister delivering the invocation at a McCain rally asked that God protect His reputation by orchestrating an Obama loss – since non-Christians are rooting for McCain's opponent.

"There are millions of people around this world praying to their god—whether it's Hindu, Buddha, Allah—that his opponent wins, for a variety of reasons. And Lord, I pray that you will guard your own reputation, because they're going to think that their God is bigger than you, if that happens," said Arnold Conrad, the former pastor of Grace Evangelical Free Church in Davenport.

Well, I'm not a Christian and I support Obama. And it's true that most of the world wants to see Obama become president.

But Rev. Conrad shows the sort of narrow-mindedness that is driving independents, moderates, and the churchless away from McCain.

I'm sure right-wing fundamentalists love God is on our side talk, but to other voters it sounds as ridiculous as it is.

Is the economic crisis God’s will?

I've been spending a lot of time recently staring at computer or television screens that show the current depressing state of the United States stock market, which reflects a global financial crisis.

I'm not a masochist.

I just find this whole meltdown fascinating on all sorts of levels: personal, societal, philosophical. My core emotional reaction to the 40% decline in the Dow Jones Industrial Average this year has mirrored my descent into churchlessness.

At first, I felt uncomfortable.

But now I'm feeling a sort of strange bliss that's akin to the sensation of being strapped into a roller coaster. All you can do is hang on for the ride and hope that after a bunch of wild ups and downs, you'll step out onto the platform in one piece.

The first day the stock market dropped precipitously I was anxious. After that, I realized there was nothing I could do about it – and nobody else could either.

Not the Treasury Secretary. Not the Federal Reserve chairman. Not the presidential candidates. Not Congress. And especially not George Bush. Nobody was in control.

Pretty much like the way life always is.

We just like to pretend, when things are fairly stable, that we know what's going on and can chart a desired course. This illusion dissolves when calamity strikes, as it inevitably must (death, for individuals; recessions/depressions, for countries).

Actually, I find this comforting. If somebody's in control, me or anyone else, I'm prone to worry about where they're heading. But when stuff just happens I can relax and say whatever… .

I decided to fire up Google and see if anyone thinks the economic crisis is God's will (not counting the God of Chaos). I like to think that it is, since the monetary meltdown has done wonders for Barack Obama's presidential campaign and it'd be nice if God was on Obama's side.

I found that Neale Donald Walsch had been pondering this question last month as part of his regular, and highly profitable, conversations with God.

There are those who say we are on the verge of a major, major economic collapse in this country and around the world. Today's events with one-time financial giant Lehman Brothers declaring bankruptcy, together with last month's government bailout of Fanny and Freddy, make it clear that the world is teetering at the edge of such a collapse.

And so once more we have to ask, as we did on Friday with regard to Hurricane Ike….Is this the will of God?

His answer, which came in another blog post, was deliciously ambiguous. Or to put it more cynically, typical Walschian blather. It seems that both God and humanity are in charge of the crisis, since God has willed that we do God's will.

Is all of this God's Will?

I believe not. Not in the classic sense that people understand the use of that term "God's Will." In the larger sense of the term, it IS God's Will...because God's Will is our will -- that is, the will of humanity, expressed collectively and individually through all of our thoughts, words, and actions.

I believe that there is no separation between Divinity and Humanity; that God and we are One. I believe that we are all Divine, and that some of us do not know it, do not experience it, do not believe it, do not accept it.

Well, if we are God, then there's no need for talk about two entities. Why not leave "God" out of the picture if what's happening in the world is entirely our own creation?

(First answer that comes to mind: because then it'd be a lot tougher to sell books purporting to describe conversations with God.)

Make your own path

It isn't often that I get inspired by a bank ad. More accurately, it's been never. Until last Sunday, when I noticed the big bold print in an Umpqua Bank advertisement in the Salem newspaper.

If you make your own path,
you can't lose your way.

Ooh! So Zen.

As was one of the questions in last night's presidential debate between Obama and McCain.

What don't you know and how will you learn it?

Terrific question. The answers were just OK, something about expecting the unexpected. Which fits with the Umpqua Bank philosophy.

Many spiritual and religious faiths stress the need for a guide. I used to believe that such was necessary, that without a guru to show you the Truth Path and how to stay on it, you'd wander aimlessly in a maze of karmic illusion.

Now, I feel that one word in the sentence I just wrote above makes all the difference. Should it be "the Truth Path" or "a Truth Path"?

If there's only one way, you'd better try to make sure you're on it.

However, if there's no evidence that ultimate reality is reached in this fashion rather than that fashion (or, more cynically, in any fashion at all), then choosing your own path makes good sense.

Self-doubt is a confidence killer. And a happiness destroyer.

When I was a kid the small town I grew up in would show movies outside on summer Friday nights. I saw the Walt Disney flick where Davy Crockett dies at the Alamo many times. One of Crockett's lines got burned into my psyche.

Be sure you're right, then go ahead.

(check out the poster of Crockett riding a couple of crocodiles; that's confidence)

Religions offer up ready-made spiritual paths, complete with dogmatic and moralistic curbs designed to keep believers from steering off the purported way.

Problem is, all the paths are different. So anybody choosing one religious way necessarily has to reject countless others.

Why not follow the Umpqua Bank approach? Reject every way except your own. Then you won't have to worry about getting off-course, since wherever you go will be the place you want to be.

Say your spirituality in one sentence

If you were cast away on a mental desert island and could only bring one spiritual sentence along, what would it be?

Tough choice.

I like words. I read a lot. I write a lot. I enjoy pondering what lies beyond the ponderable. My shelves are filled with many favorite books, each containing favorite lines.

In the end, though, I'd have to stick with what I've called the best one-sentence metaphysics ever written (by Philip K. Dick):

Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away.

Now, I'm not saying that I believe this sentence. What I like about it is how some great questions are raised in its confident simplicity. That's more important than any answer.

It might be that when belief stops, so does reality – if "belief" is taken to be subjective consciousness, the whole kit and caboodle of thoughts, feelings, sensations, imaginings, and such.

Thus maybe reality amounts to nothing in the absence of belief.

However, experience argues otherwise. The universe seemed to do just fine on its own for the 13+ billion years humans weren't around to believe anything (of course, I wasn't around back then, so can't say for sure).

Anyway, I'd like to know other peoples' favorite spiritual sentence. I use "spiritual" in a broad sense, as encompassing philosophy, religion, metaphysics, mysticism, and meaning of life musings in general.

Comment away, if you like.

Just before I wrote this, I read a comment from Rain on another post. Sounds like her sentence might be, "It's all about love."

Interesting thoughts. It reminds me of many years ago sitting in a Christian church and listening to the pastor say it's all about love. I thought that's too simple. It can't just be that simple. Now, many years later, I would say the same thing. It's all about love. Learning to love in the truest sense, learning what love is, experiencing it and letting it experience me. Understanding that love isn't always giving someone else what they want. It's not ignoring justice but it's loving through it all. Truly learning and experiencing real love is the simplest and hardest thing anyone will ever do.

Sink down to heaven

Rise up! Elevate your consciousness! Soar to the heavens!

Spirituality usually is viewed as involving some sort of ascent. Earthly concerns supposedly hold us down, while divinity lies on a more ethereal plane of reality.

I used to believe this.

I've spent countless (almost) hours in meditation seeking to focus all of my attention at a point inside my forehead – the Third Eye, or eye center – after which, I was told, my soul consciousness would be transported into higher spiritual regions.

Writing a book about Plotinus, a Greek mystic philosopher, helped move me to a different viewpoint. Plotinus taught that the One, or God, is both everywhere and nowhere.

The One is all things and not a single one of them… It is because there is nothing in it that all things come from it: in order that being may exist, the One is not being, but the generator of being.

After my book was published, I engaged in some back and forth email discussion with a philosophy professor who had started to read it. This ended after he told me that I'd placed too much emphasis on ascending to the One, rather than finding the center.

At the time I disagreed with him. Now, I don't.

Four years of Tai Chi practice likely has a lot to do with my newfound appreciation for sinking down. My instructor frequently reminds us, as we're beginning a Tai Chi form, "Sink down from below, rise up from above."

Which leaves you centered. Movement in Tai Chi flows from the body's midsection, the waist and hips. Being rooted to the floor brings speed, power, flexibility, spontaneity (sounds paradoxical, but it isn't).

This morning I finished reading Peter Ralston's "Cheng Hsin: The Principles of Effortless Power." Ralston is a martial artist with a philosophical bent. His focus is on allowing action to flow from being. As Plotinus said, being isn't the ultimate, but it's darn close.

Being always is, not surprisingly. So there's no need to strain to find it. Ralston says:

If I had to choose a single principle to follow, it would probably be the principle that manifests itself as the state of being relaxed. Taken as its broadest meaning, this principle permeates every aspect of what we do. The principle here seems to evoke being at rest, or the "unused state."

It is what is so about anything before self's activity uses the thing for a purpose other than simply being and performing its natural function. Therefore our alignment to this principle requires us to remain and/or to return constantly to the unused or open state, the position of rest or natural function, allowing things to "sit on the floor" rather than "holding them up."

Cheng Hsin (roughly translated as source of being) principles apply to all aspects of ourselves, both body and psyche. From my Tai Chi and dance experience, I can testify that relaxing and sinking is key to success in these activities.

And I'm learning the benefits of doing the same in meditation – plus life in general. Basically, what I do during my morning meditation period now is relax, sink, and say "hello."

This also is what's done in Tai Chi push hands and partner dancing (particularly Tango). You ground yourself, connect to the other person in a tension-free manner, and have a non-verbal conversation.

Tai Chi speaks of "listening skills." In dance, there's leading and following. Each requires sensitivity to what's really going on with the other person, and responding appropriately. That's what I mean by hello: reaching out and touching someone, communicating openly.

It is only a lack of conscious awareness, experience in and from the source of the moment, that cramps appropriate changeability; and changeability is the demand of life, not holding a position or structure.

Listening is an openness to feeling the condition of the world around and inside us… Even in the middle of activity involving what is actually occurring, we must continue to listen to that which is not yet manifest. This requires a real freedom and nonattachment, and a complete openness and willingness to change.

…In a sense, listening is letting things be exactly the way they are, and interpreting is noticing that they are that way.

When I begin to meditate, I like to say "hello." I don't know if any consciousness other than my own can hear me. It's sort of like picking up the phone before I've heard it ring. On the chance that someone might be on the other end of the line, I say "hello."

If there's no answer – and so far I haven't gotten one in my meditation – I have to assume that I'm talking to myself. But hey, I'm someone! So a conversation still is happening.

And silence, the voice of sunken stillness, may be the most eloquent speech of all.

What is the "form" of your mind? What shape is it? What color, size, or qualities does it have? Experience it. Become conscious of whatever may be the case. It may not exist at all!

Not-Knowing is the original or fundamental condition of Being.

…We must also refer to the priority given to those things unseen: Nothing (wu chi), or the source of Being, is given priority over anything appearing. Being takes precedence over the activity that is mind, so emptiness and openness are held requisite for any thought or feeling to occur.

I like. The Cheng Hsin system is too organized for my taste (but that's what organizations do, not surprisingly). The basic philosophy, though, appeals to my Taoist soul. Here's some good advice for both meditation and life:

Be open: to any possibility. Since you don't already have a direct experience of your subject, you cannot rule out anything.

In order to create such openness, and so true questioning, you must allow yourself to experience actually and deeply that you do not know.

Allow not-knowing in this moment to bring you to an authentic emptiness – free from pre-conceptions, programming, and assumptions – In relation to your subject of contemplation.

What?! The universe isn’t all about me?!

Warning: if you're comfortable feeling that the cosmos is designed around you, or humanity in general, what you're about to read runs the risk of putting some leaks in your belief bubble.

I'm not only speaking to the religious, even though theology and metaphysics is where you'll find the most egregious examples of Homo sapiens centeredness. The churchless also are prone to self-centered grandiosity.

I know, because I am one.

For me, faithlessness came down the track of my psyche long before humility. Understand, I'm not claiming any sort of ego-loss now. I'm still as full of myself as ever.

The difference is that I'm increasingly able to recognize how much I want to believe that the universe has a special concern for me, or is fashioned in a way that makes its ultimate reality potentially comprehensible to my consciousness.

Here's a seeming paradox: the less religious I become, the more I feel like I'm approaching the central goals of religiosity – and without the nasty side effects of ingesting dogmatism.

Namely, I'm coming to see myself as a humble part of a marvelously grand whole. I bow down before this imaginably vast cosmos, recognizing that little me can do nothing other than accept the oft-heard adage, Man proposes, God disposes (except I like to substitute Nature for "God"). I do my best to embrace what comes to me as the result of forces far beyond my control – which will include whatever happens after I die.

So the aforementioned paradox really isn't one at all.

What religion seeks, union with a greater reality beyond that known to our limited mind and senses, is contradicted by the privileged position almost every faith claims for its followers.

I've had a lot of experience with this, since for over thirty years I was a member of an organization that held out the goal of a soul "drop" merging with God's "ocean," while simultaneously proclaiming that believers were chosen people on a unique path that couldn't be traveled by others less fortunate (such as my wife).

Eventually this disconnect – how could I be on the road to losing my ego while continually being told how special I was? – led me to recognize that if I wanted what led me to sign on the religious dotted line, I'd have to tear up the contract.

I want to be in harmony with the universe and other people. I'd like to be content with what I have, not desiring something always beyond my grasp. I yearn to live happily and die content, not worrying about what will happen in the next moment.

For a long time I thought that expanding my consciousness until it was co-equal with the cosmos was the way to achieve this. Now, this strikes me as both an exceedingly unlikely eventuality and also disturbingly focused on me, me, me.

What's the matter with the cosmos doing what it wants, and me adjusting myself to it the best I can? The universe is a lot bigger and more powerful than I am, so I don't have any choice in the matter anyway.

I've got a lot more faith now that I'm churchless – faith that everything has been fashioned just fine, without any existential blunders.

In this regard I've got more trust in the rightness of creation than John McCain, who said today that life isn't fair (because Obama is rising in the polls after McCain put his campaign on hold to supposedly work on the financial bailout plan).

Last year I explained why life is fair, saying:

By "fair," I mean there's a reason for things. They don't pop out of nowhere, miraculously or randomly. Even the laws of quantum physics, where randomness is an integral aspect of the subatomic world, have a foundation in well-formed mathematics.

When people say, "life isn't fair," they're speaking anthropomorphically or personally. What they usually mean is that stuff happens that shouldn't, in their opinion. Babies are born blind. Tsunamis strike villages without warning. Bad things happen to good people.

But unfairness doesn't exist without a privileged position, either human or divine.

Religion demands a privileged position: a special relationship with God, a favored understanding of metaphysical reality, a unique method of merging with the divine.

This presupposes that human beings in general, and people belonging to a certain faith in particular, are centrally located in the cosmic sphere of things. Naturally this is a comforting feeling, which goes a long way toward explaining why religions are so popular.

In "Wanted: Intelligent Aliens for a Research Project," Olivia Judson points out how biased toward us is our view of the cosmos.

On the overestimation side, we only need to look at history to see that humans tend to have any number of self-aggrandizing beliefs — we have a long tradition of believing ourselves to be the center of the universe, for example, or to think the planet was created especially for us. We often forget that for the first two billion years of its existence, the planet was home only to bacteria, and that bacteria make all other lifeforms possible: we are as dependent on the bacteria in our guts as a termite or cow.

She finds a bright spot in our increasing recognition of how un-special we are. Still, it's likely that we'll never be able to fully illuminate the blind areas of human consciousness. If you can be comfortable with this, you won't mind giving up the illusory enlightenment of religion.

As we continue to learn about the inherent human tendencies towards bias, and the flattering illusions we like to maintain, it may get easier to guard against the problem, and to assess ourselves more clearly. Yet perhaps — probably — there are some biases that our brains have that we simply can't see at all, blind spots that we, as a species, can never discover we have.