Church of the Churchless

Godlessness is wrecking America (so says Glenn Beck)

Way to go, you churchless citizens of the United States. You're responsible for everything that's wrong in the country. So saith Glenn Beck.  (Fortunately, this means you don't have to take that crazy accusation seriously.)

God offers up whatever religions think will sell

God is a human invention. Notions about God evolve with the times, changing with cultural and societal circumstances.

These are some central themes of Robert Wright's "The Evolution of God," a fascinating book that I've about two-thirds through. He further illuminates a lot of misgivings I've had about religion.

Like, how religious leaders -- whether of East or West, a guru or the Pope -- basically are selling salvation. Not for money, usually, but in exchange for buying into a belief system.

For example, in his section on Christianity Wright talks about how the earliest descriptions of Jesus' teachings didn't say anything about Christians going to heaven.

The idea of followers of Jesus getting to join him in heaven upon dying probably didn't take shape until about a half century after he died. To be sure, his followers believed from early on that the faithful would be admitted to the "kingdom of heaven," as the New Testament calls it. But "kingdom of heaven" is just Matthew's term for what Mark had called the "kingdom of God" -- and, as we've seen, the kingdom of God was going to be on earth.

Problem was, years and decades passed with no earthly kingdom of God in evidence. What to do? Christianity was starting to look like a bait-and-switch con job. Jesus supposedly said that the kingdom of God was "at hand," but it never showed up.

So heaven had to wait.

People still wanted salvation. Happiness, bliss, eternal life -- all that good stuff. It wasn't appearing the way Christians orginally thought. No problem. Just change the thinking.

As the decades rolled by and the kingdom of God failed to materialize, there was growing concern among Jesus's followers over the state of the not-yet-resurrected dead....But by the time of Luke, more than a decade after Paul's death, that expectation was no longer operative.

Now the attentive Christian was concerned not just about whether dead friends and relatives would eventually be resurrected but about what death would feel like until resurrection, since it increasingly looked as if the Christian in question would join his or her friends and relatives in that state before Christ returned.

...Now the payoff from salvation wouldn't be expected within a person's lifetime, but it could come right after death -- the next best thing. Had Christian doctrine not made this turn, it would have lost credibility as the kingdom of God failed to show up on earth -- as generations and generations of Christians were seen to have died without getting their reward.

But now, with the kingdom of God relocated from earth to heaven, generations of Christians had presumably gotten their reward, and you could, too, if you accepted Christ as your savior.

It's no wonder religions are so successful at recruiting members. They've got the advantage of a sales pitch for salvation that would be illegal (or at least highly unethical) if used to market any other product.

Buy now and you'll see great results after you die! Guaranteed!

Of course, actually there's no guarantee, since the dead can't return and provide evidence that they didn't really die and are now happily hanging around with Jesus.

No matter. Since death is scary, gullible people will buy into a belief system that promises eternal life. Tell folks what they want to hear, and not surprisingly what you say will appeal to them.

Indian rationalist denies God on his death bed

Way to go, Mr. Premanand.

You're sticking with your non-faith and irreligion even though you're critically ill. I applauded your statement from a hospital bed in Podanur, India -- making clear that no, you're not having a death bed conversion to godliness. Here's an excerpt:

I wish to clarify that as on today the twentieth of September, 2009 I remain a staunch rationalist and wish to place on record the following:

a. I continue to be a rationalist of full conviction.

b. I do not believe in any supernatural power. All the powers that we encounter are in the realm of nature and nothing exists beyond that.

c. I do not believe in the existence of the soul or rebirth.

d. I have not turned to any religion, god or any sort of spiritual pursuits.

e. When I pass away I shall be leaving only my body which is to be donated to a medical college and no spirit or soul to cause problems for the living.

Basava Premanand apparently was one of the founders of Nirmukta ("liberated" in Sanskrit), a group dedicated to promoting the secularization movement in India and South Asia.

Good for them.

Judging from an interview with Premanand, it sounds like cutting through irrational, anti-scientific crap in India is even more difficult than it is in the United States and Europe.

Which figures. After all, India is home to a lot of weirdness (along with a lot of elevated philosophy).

Browsing around the web site, I found much interesting churchless material. "Why I Criticize Hinduism the Most" explained why a Nirmukta contributor tends to pick on the majority religion in India rather than other faiths.

Attracted to a "Deepak Chopra: A New Age Shaman" post, I loved a nicely-crafted video debunking Chopra's pseudo-science. They nailed him. Chopra does indeed take a inch of scientific fact and expand it into a mile of New Agey mumbo-jumbo.

Most people I know view India as a melting pot of spiritual beliefs where tolerance is the rule. But apparently Hindu fundamentalism is a growing problem there, just as Christian fundamentalism is in the United States.

In "Do We Need Yoga?" I read:

Not to be left behind, the Governments in India, in several states and even at the Centre, have decided to introduce yoga as a compulsory curriculum in physical training, right from the first standard. And the Hindutva Brigade, ever so eager to garner publicity from anything anciently Indian, has usurped yoga into its folds and posits itself at the vanguard of promoting yoga; any skepticism about yoga is branded by these forces as anti RSS, anti BJP, anti Hinduism, anti Indian and even anti national and unpatriotic.

Sure sounds like how Christian true believers treat people here, such as politicians, who choose to challenge the notion that God is on the side of the U.S. -- or that God even exists.

Christian has advice for atheists

Thanks to science blogger P.Z. Myers, I've read some advice for atheists from a Christian who wants unbelievers to be nicer and more reasonable.

Not surprisingly, the advice isn't reasonable. What a shock -- nonsense coming from someone religious.

I love Myers' feisty style. He makes me seem like a churchless wuss. 

1. Stop being so smug.

Make me.

Look, you start an argument, you don't get to whine at your opponent to be humble about his ideas before you've even taken a stab at criticizing them. Show me a reason not to be smug about atheism, and reason, and science, and the superiority of our beliefs over that pile of superstitious dogma you call faith. Don't simply instruct me to stop regarding atheism as possibly not superior to your cultish apologetics.

Primal awe: the mystery of existence

I don't need concepts like "religion," "spirituality," and "mysticism" to feel a sense of awe. All I need to do is contemplate the ultimate mystery these words point to.

Existence. The fact that the cosmos is. And I am. 

As I've noted before, the primal mystery of existence is the black hole of all knowledge, experience, understanding, and whatever. 

It makes notions like enlightenment, theory of everything, self-realization, ultimate reality, perfect truth, and the like go zap! -- sucked into a cosmic void of not-knowing that erases false claims of knowing-it-all.

How could it be possible to fathom the "it" of existence? Where is the vantage point from which existence can be examined?

Existence is. We are. End of story.

No matter what religious, philosophical, or scientific tales are told in an attempt to explain why or how the cosmos is, the final word always is a gigantic question mark.

I like what I said in my "Deepening the Mystery of Existence" a few years ago.

I could be sitting at the right hand of God, immersed in the glories of divine light and sound, being taught how the Almighty creates creation, and I'd still have questions: "God, who created you?" "God, how do I know this isn't an illusion?"

I could hear a booming, "I am the Lord, thy God, eternal, uncreated." That voice still would be part of existence. I'd still be clueless about whether there is a why? for the existence of the world, taking the "world" now to include spiritual as well as physical reality.

Or "God" could laugh and say, "Fooled you. You're right, everything I've shown you is an illusion—the Matrix, a computer simulation. It looks just like a real universe, doesn't it? I'll show you how the programming works."

Now I'm zapped into another dimension where I see God, and me, and universes being formed out of cyberspace and cyberenergy. But I still have no way of knowing whether there is a why? to that.

I don't know whether I've reached really real reality, or even if there is such a thing, because I'm still stuck in existence. It's impossible to get outside of existence and learn about it objectively. Like everybody else, I'm always on the inside, looking in, even if I were able to reach a spiritual realm.

We humans abhor the vacuum of uncertainty.

If we don't know the whys and wherefores of something, there's a strong desire to pretend that we do. And when that something is everything -- existence -- the explanatory urge is intense.

Hence, religion. "God created the heavens and the earth." "God is, was, and always shall be." "In the beginning was the Word."

Religious believers feel comforted by these meaningless notions. The familiar phrases paper over the void of existential mystery: that anything is at all. Authentic awe of the ultimate unknown is replaced by a false feeling of this is the way things are.

The truth is that no one knows why or how anything is, or even whether "why" and "how" have any meaning when we speak of is.

Most of us have watched movies with a totally unexpected plot twist at the end, such as "The Sixth Sense." In a flash, we're forced to reinterpret everything previously shown in the film.

With the mystery of existence, there's no final credits, no "the end," no tidy wrap-up that answers all of our questions. So we can't know what sort of plot twist might unravel all of our understandings.

What is, is. As New Agey as this sounds, it's the most honest ultimate answer.

All we know is that something's happening here: existence. Those who are comfortable with leaving mystery mysterious remain churchless. Others need the warm blanket of religion, because not-knowing gives them a chill.

For me, awe is awesome. It fires me up. I enjoy contemplating the mystery of existence and knowing that I will never unravel it. To quote myself again:

Meditating this morning after reading Munitz' final chapters, I felt strangely peaceful. Looking into the darkness of my clueless consciousness, for a moment I was relieved of the "What's it all about?" that has gnawed at me for most of my life.

Some questions are unanswerable. Some questions are so questionable, we can't be sure they are valid questions. Such is the mystery of existence.

Floating free in perpetual ignorance—that struck me as not so bad. Maybe better than being lashed to a time-bound pseudo-truth.

Goatonapole is my new favorite revelation

Recently I got an email alerting me to a revelation: Goat on a Pole.

Praise Goat. And Pole.

For I have learned there is nothing else to know, no greater mystery to decipher, no image of reality better worth contemplating.

From the Holy Goatonapole web site:

"Goatonapole is the philosophy of being that holds that there is a Goat and a Pole and that the Goat is on the Pole. In the relation of Goat and Pole we Goatonapolists find an eternal thread of unfathomable cosmic significance, a point of reference in which all opposites dissolve into a unity of infinite breadth, a universal truth underlying the very fabric of existence. Upon contemplation of the Goat, the Pole, and their relative positions, one cannot help but realize that we've always been talking about Goatonapole. Whether we accept, reject, or live in ignorance of Goatonapole, we are all Goatonapolists."

I haven't absorbed all of the wisdom of Goatonapole yet. But already this passage has filled me with a marvelous sense of yesness.

We as conscious beings are the product of innumerably many acts of balance, new being arising out of extant being and perpetuating its improbable existence upon the substrate of its progenitors. To picture the place of your consciousness in the universe, one must imagine countless goats stacked one upon another, a new goat constantly replacing the uppermost goat as the height of the pole increases. As the Goat-raising progresses, the lower goats cease to be goats and become all one improbably tall pole on which sits a single goat. This is the Goat-raising in its essence.

Yes! Yes! Yes!

What could be more true? And...any more incomprehensible? Naturally it is the sense of huh? and what the fuck? stimulated in me by Goatonapology that leads me to believe in it so deeply.

Goat and Pole work in mysterious ways. That the teachings of Goatonapole are cryptic -- some would blaspheme and say "non-sensical" -- is the best evidence of their validity.

Further, I've received an indisputable sign from Goat and Pole to embrace their truth. This very morning, as I was pondering the possibility of writing this blog post, I was drawn to pick up a copy of "The Essential Teachings of Zen Master Hakuin" and found this verse:

Perched motionless at the tip of a hundred-foot pole
The man has attainment, but he hasn't made it real.
He must advance one more step beyond the tip,
Reveal his whole body in the ten directions.

Ah, is this not a foreshadowing of the most blessed Ten Goat Herding Pictures? Here's #7:

Interestingly, my email correspondent said:

"A couple of people whom I sent that website about the goat took it seriously.  Am I misinterpreting something?  I had found myself laughing out loud and really enjoying how the site was put together.  Is it possible that it's for real?  I guess in this day and age with so much wacko stuff out there, it could be for real. Yikes."

Yes, yikes. 

As for how real Goatonapole is, that's for you, Goat, and Pole to decide.

Open Thread 7

Here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. From now on comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free. Just observe the comment policies (click on "comment policy" above).

After God, a richer life awaits

So what's to be done after giving up a belief in God? (Or any other metaphysics founded on blind faith rather than demonstrable evidence.)

First, pat yourself on the back -- or any other place that feels good -- and offer up some congratulations from you to you.

"Great job, me. I've made the right choice: to embrace honesty rather than deception."

But just as smokers often need a nicotine patch to help them break an unhealthy habit, going cold turkey off of God can be tough. After all, believing in the Big Guy Upstairs has been fulfilling, perhaps for a long time.

How to replace that source of pleasure, meaning, and support? What's going to warm a true believer when the cold winds of reality start blowing around in his or her psyche?

In his wonderful book, "After God," Don Cupitt offers up some suggestions.

The theme of my previous post about this book was how much fun it can be to shake up our worldview. However, after the shaking, many escapees from the confines of a religion want to settle into another means of diving into the depths of what life is all about.

That includes me, for sure. This blog is called Church of the Churchless for a reason.

If I simply wanted to be churchless, I'd go do something completely unrelated from spirituality, philosophizing, and pondering ultimate cosmic questions. Instead, my goal is the same as before: to live life wisely and well. I'm just going about this in a different fashion. Hence, this "Church."

Cupitt says that we don't have to give up every trace of religiosity after we've realized that dogmatism isn't for us. Religion can be used as a toolkit from which we pick up practices that continue to seem appealing.

Now, though, we use them in the context of a non-realistic view of God. Cupitt uses Donald Duck as an example of what this means:

"Yes: but what then was the god? It is a mistake to suppose that the god was something over and above the image of wood or stone that was venerated in worship...Each and every Donald Duck image published by the Disney Studios really is Donald Duck himself; there is no superior original. Donald Duck is a vivid character to millions, maybe billions, but he simply doesn't need to have any existence outside his own iconography."

So each of us is free to create our own conception of what "God" means for us, using that word in the sense of what we feel life is all about -- our ultimate aspirations.

Cupitt suggests that three themes can be productively salvaged from the old outmoded way of religious believing.

We should learn to pursue our own personal growth by exploring and flipping among several different forms of selfhood and views of life. There is no One Great Truth anymore, and there never will be again. It is now better to maintain a small personal repertoire of different truths, paths, and goals, to be utilized ad lib.

The Eye of God

A Christian nonrealist like me may often find himself dropping back into the old type of God consciousness, praying or worshiping because he wants to or because it helps. And why not? I actually think I love God more now that I know God is voluntary. I still pray and love God, even though I fully acknowledge that no God actually exists.

...The old way of living coram Deo (as if before the face of God) was valuably consciousness-raising and morally stabilizing, and one may usefully continue to pray to God just as one may find oneself often talking to and thinking of a dead person.

The Blissful Void

Not only in Buddhism but also in other religious traditions, the final goal of meditation and contemplative prayer is a state in which all imagery, difference, and form have disappeared, and the subject too is emptied out into void bliss.

...I am suggesting that we should use the Discipline of the Void, meditation upon the underlying universal emptiness and nothingness, as a background against which to set and to see the flux of our life. The Blissful Void, sunyata, thus replaces the old metaphysical God, and gives -- to us Westerners in particular -- a new and much-needed way of getting our life in perspective.

Solar Living

It follows that we ourselves are the only makers of meaning and value. Such meaning and value as we can descry in our life must be value that we have ourselves ascribed to it and projected into it. All the colors and "feels" of things are our own feelings, projected out. Ethics therefore must be solar.

We no longer have any metaphysical reason or excuse for withholding ourselves. We should pour ourselves out as the sun does, identifying ourselves completely with the outpouring flux of all existence.

...Life can't be possessed or clutched at: we should pour ourselves out and pass on, without hesitation or regret. We can get ourselves together only by leaving ourselves behind. This is solarity -- to live by dying all the time, heedless, like the sun and in the spirit of the Sermon on the Mount. 

...We are no longer fearful about dying, or afraid to give ourselves away. we pour ourselves out recklessly into symbolic expression and then pass on, pass on, and pass away, without regret.

Shake up your unexamined worldview -- it's fun!

I used to cling to a quasi-fundamentalist view of the cosmos. Now, I don't.

I've come to enjoy a deliciously exciting sensation of feeling rigidly settled ways of looking at the world transform into a more naturally fluid vision of reality.

"Naturally," because if there's one thing we can be sure of, it's that we can't be sure we know everything about anything. So I love someone who comes along with a Paradigm Shaker which busts up worldviews that are widely accepted without good reason.

Don Cupitt, for example. I read his book "After God" a few years ago. I liked it then. Taking another look at it the past few days, I like it even more now.

It's tough to encapsulate Cupitt's take on religion and God briefly. He was a minister in the Church of England who lost faith in a "realist" view of God. (Non-realism basically says, "our understanding of the world helps produce the way it is." You can listen to Cupitt discussing this in an interview.)

This Library Journal review of his book that I found on Amazon does a pretty good job of summing it up.

Cupitt (philosophy, Emmanuel Coll., Cambridge) redefines what it means to believe in God while accepting that God does not exist. He argues that there is indeed an unseen intelligible, or spirit world, among us. But this world is made up of words and symbols. The world of religion is a mythical representation of the world of language.

Cupitt's is a postmodern religion that sees God not as a transcendent reality but as a reflection of human selfhood. According to Cupitt, this conception of religion frees one from the belief in absolutes, which, he says, spells the death of religion. Human beings themselves are the only source of meaning and value. Belief in God, Cupitt holds, is a valuable and interesting form of consciousness. While Cupitt's analysis will not be accepted by many, his book offers a well-wrought argument.

Below is part of his argument: a wonderful description of how most people, overtly religious or not, perceive reality. Largely, it's taken for granted as being the way things really are.

But when it comes to reality, taking things for granted isn't justified.

When you read the following excerpt from "After God," consider how easily someone -- perhaps you -- could agree with these propositions. And also how easily they could be refuted.

As I read each of the twenty-two brief assumptions, I experienced a increasingly pleasant sensation of vertigo, of falling from a belief-perch that previously seemed solid, but used to, and in some ways still was, preventing me from floating freely in the warm waters of reality.

Cupitt says that he came up with this schema after a senior Fellow in his college died. His successor said, "Well, he knows now, doesn't he?"

Those words are a window. I thought about them for a few days, analyzing them backward, and came up with this:

Life

1.  Truth is not manufactured by us; it is discovered by us, or dis-covers (the Latin vela, "veil," gives us the word re-veals or un-veils) itself to us.

2.  The answers to all properly framed questions, both questions of fact and questions of value, preexist out there, objectively.

3.  There is a great and final Answer to the mystery of our existence, out there, awaiting us.

4.  All these truths and answers (2, 3) are, so to say, tailored to our faculties and our requirements. They are in principle accessible and intelligible to us, so that we may reasonably hope and expect to discover them, or have them reveal themselves to us.

5.  There is then something quite dazzling, namely a preestablished harmony between thought and being, language and reality; between the questions we want to ask and the Answer that the nature of things is waiting to give us. (Notice that this most astonishing doctrine is also the one most profoundly taken for granted.)

6.  The final Answer will be revealed to us in or through death.

7.  Our life is a pilgrimage toward death, the moment of truth, the moment of absolute knowledge.

8.  Our life is a journey, then, from

(a) the relative to the absolute; from
(b) time to eternity; from
(c) the changing, sensuous world of becoming to the realm of pure timeless intelligible Being; from
(d) the particular to the universal; and from
(e) the mediated, discursive, through-a-glass-darkly sort of knowledge, to pure face-to-face unmistakable vision.

9.  Each person's life is a story scripted beforehand, and there is a great Story of Everything whose plot has been revealed to us in a Book.

The Binary Contrasts

10. The binary contrasts (in #8 a-e), and a number of other related contrasts, are all analogously asymmetrical.

11. In each of the cases cited, the second of the pair:

(a) is prior;
(b) is superior (that is, greater in both value and reality, and therefore standard-setting); and
(c) in some way governs or produces or brings about the first.

12. Thus the spiritual world above is in every way better and greater than this material world below.

Being and Value

13. There are degrees of reality, and of value.

14. The scale of degrees of being is also a scale of degrees of value, or goodness, or perfection.

15. The Most Real is therefore the Most Good, and vice versa: for the Highest Good is -- has to be -- the Supreme Reality.

16. To gain the highest knowledge, we must purify our souls and perfect ourselves; and one should, in particular, prepare for death.

Causality

17. Ex nihilo nihil fit ("Out of nothing, nothing comes to be").

18. Every change has a cause; or, every thing that is has a cause of its being.

19. The cause is prior to the effect; the cause is responsible for, or accounts for, the effect. 

20. The cause is superior in reality to the effect.

21. The qualities that are found in the effect preexist in a higher degree in the cause.

22. Our last end is the absolute knowledge of what is greatest, most real, and most perfect; a knowledge in which we shall enjoy perfect happiness.

This is brilliant stuff. Cupitt nailed me!

He managed to set down the core principles that used to prop up my worldview. And still does, in some respects, or I wouldn't have felt the previously-mentioned vertigo as I realized, "I've been holding tightly on to assumptions that are best grasped lightly."

But enough about me. How about you?

I bet most people who visit this blog, even many of the devoutly churchless, would still agree with a large share of the propositions Cupitt lists above.

Even more than agree, in this sense: these propositions tend to be unexamined and taken for granted, being part of a worldview that is so obviously true, few people stop to ponder how questionably true it is.

in my next post I'll talk about what Cupitt advises for an "After God" way of living happily and meaningfully.

"True Sant Mat" blog: a fresh look at mystic teachings

Sant Mat gets discussed quite a bit here because I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (a contemporary Sant Mat movement) for many years, along with other regular Church of the Churchless commenters.

I'm more familiar with Sant Mat than any other religion, spiritual system, or mystical path. So when Osho Robbins emailed me with news that he was starting a "True Sant Mat" blog, naturally I was curious.

And, upon request, gave him some advice about how to set the blog up, since we're both using the TypePad blogging service.

Osho's goal is to discuss the real teachings behind Sant Mat.

That's intriguing, since Sant Mat bills itself as the real spirituality behind organized religions. It's a never-ending undertaking, attempting to peel away the onion layers of untruth and arrive at the core of reality.

I just read through all of the True Sant Mat posts. (Here's the blog's short URL: www.tinyurl.com/SantMat)

A central theme, which makes a lot of sense to me, is that Sant Mat's Sach Khand ("heaven," basically) isn't some objectively real spiritual region where a seeker of God comes face to face with the highest divinity.

Rather, Sach Khand is a state of consciousness, right here and right now.

Now the truth is YOU WILL NEVER GET THERE. Why? because it is impossible. There is no such place - except in your mind. Of course you CAN get there IN YOUR MIND - just as you create dreams every night. The dreams APPEAR to be REAL. So Sach Khand or the inner flight of the soul will APPEAR to be real.

...SATGURU means one who has realized the TRUTH (ie. the ONENESS). Metaphorically speaking we say he lives in Sach Khand. This simply means that he lives in TRUTH (ONENESS). He is not ALL-KNOWING and he has not traversed any inner regions, since there are none.

...The ONE is ALL THERE IS. You can also call it the NOTHINGNESS. Because there is nothing there. It is not even a place - it does not exist within TIME and SPACE. It is the ABSOLUTE NOTHINGNESS - there is not even any EMPTY SPACE there. There is also NO TIME there.

You cannot ARRIVE there because (1) it is not a PLACE and (2) there is NO TIME and (3) there is NO YOU to arrive. As long as you think in terms of YOU and GOD - you are in DUALITY.

Take a look at Osho's blog. Leave some comments over there. Even if you don't know much about Sant Mat, I think you'll find his non-dual take on reality interesting.

Metaphors can't prove God is real

Religious people are fond of metaphors. Which isn't surprising. A metaphor compares or describes one thing in terms of something else.

"God's love is like that of a mother for her child."

OK, nice sentiment. But this is a different type of logical statement from the example Wikipedia cites for a metaphor, Shakespeare's "All the world's a stage..."

We know the world exists. We also know what a stage is. We also know about mothers and children. "God's love," though, where the heck is it?

Non-existent, at least in terms of any sort of objective reality supported by demonstrable evidence. So something unreal is being described in terms of something real.

Religion can't be blamed for this. What else can it do? If true believers couldn't use metaphors, they'd be severely limited in what they could say about their beliefs.

"Her lips are as red as cherries, and twice as sweet."

If a man was accused of wild hyperbole, he could take a color photo of his lover's lips. Or invite skeptics to meet the woman. Even kiss her for themselves. All this would connect the two parts of the metaphor.

With metaphysical matters, obviously this isn't possible. Religious metaphors pertaining to an unseen divinity straddle the known and unknown.

So while they may be wonderfully poetic -- "Jesus is the lamb of God" -- we've got to remember that poetry isn't reality. (In this case, only lamb is clearly existent; Jesus and God are hypotheticals.)

Religiosity specializes in "irreducible metaphors." I'm not crystal clear about what an irreducible metaphor is, but it seems to refer to the fact that religious metaphors can't  be reduced to literal statements.

A woman's lips may be called "as red as cherries." Or, just red lips. You can wend your way from the symbolism of the metaphor to something really existent.

If the wending comes to a halt at the metaphor, this is a sign that flowery language is being used to disguise the non-reality of what's being metaphorized.

In a recent post I referred to a related sort of dubious concept comparison use by true believers.

Likewise, this blog often gets comments from devotees of a guru who argue that a teacher is needed in the "science" of spirituality, just as one is needed to learn physics or chemistry. This is another abuse of analogy.

Worldly science has a vast amount of demonstrable evidence backing it up. Spirituality and religion don't. The precepts of worldly science can be tested for truth or falsity. Almost always, spiritual or religious dogmas can't. Worldly science is founded on open debate and discussion, plus a healthy dose of skepticism. Spiritual "science" isn't.

Analogies and metaphors are the refuge of those who don't have a firm footing in reality.

When a god or guru has to be likened to something known to be true, that "liken" testifies to how flimsy the evidence is for a purported metaphysical truth.  A rose is a rose is a rose. But almost always religion is about something that isn't an obvious "is."

Another take on the inappropriate use of metaphors can be found in "Metaphors on Trial." This article discusses how creationists and intelligent design advocates misuse metaphors in attempts to discredit the theory of evolution.

Arguments by analogy or metaphor, when used correctly, are both valid and illuminating. For example, a crucial argument made by Charles Darwin in support of evolution was the analogy between 'artificial selection' by breeders and 'natural selection' by the environment. But such arguments must be internally valid and consistent, as well as carefully crafted so that the analogy truly corresponds to the points purportedly being made.

Bottom line: religious metaphors can be admired as creative uses of language. But as pointers toward reality, they are decidedly lacking.

Religion related to social dysfunction

Many religious people believe that faith in God (or some other divine entity) makes for a better society -- more moral, law-abiding, productive, and so on.

Well, like lots of beliefs, this one is highly questionable. In a recent issue of Newsweek, Sharon Begley wrote in her "(Un)wired for God" article:

In brief, the number of American non-believers has doubled since 1990, a 2008 Pew survey found, and increased even more in some other advanced democracies. What's curious is not so much the overall decline of belief (which has caused the Vatican to lament the de-Christianization of Europe) as the pattern.

In a paper last month in the online journal Evolutionary Psychology, Gregory Paul finds that countries with the lowest rates of social dysfunction—based on 25 measures, including rates of homicide, abortion, teen pregnancy, sexually transmitted disease, unemployment, and poverty—have become the most secular. Those with the most dysfunction, such as Portugal and the U.S., are the most religious, as measured by self-professed belief, church attendance, habits of prayer, and the like.

Download Gregory Paul paper

The exact cause and effect relationship isn't known. Does religion lead to social dysfunction, or does a higher rate of social dysfunction lead to more people turning to religion?

I lean toward the latter hypothesis.

It makes sense that if someone is living in a society where life is uncertain and difficult, embracing religious dogma would offer a sense of security in an otherwise insecure world.

This morning I finished Robert Wright's "From Polytheism to Monolatry" chapter in his book, The Evolution of God. 

His overall thesis is that there is no evidence that the God of Christianity, Islam, and Judaism exists as an objective reality. But there is plenty of evidence for the evolution of the idea of God in human history.

The Israelites, for example, moved from polytheism (many gods, essentially equal), to monolatry (many gods, but one favored), to monotheism (only one god).

Most Christians and Jews seem to think that a revelation of One True God popped into the heads of prophets straight from a divine source. But Wright persuasively shows that political and social factors had a strong influence on Israel's movement from polytheism to monolatry to monotheism.

For example:

Even before the Yahweh-alonists had triumphed, Yahweh was the divine focus of king and court, the master of state affairs. If there was any single god you could get the king to tie his fate to, it was Yahweh.

...In ancient Israel some of the king's most important advisers were prophets. Their advice emanated from the divine. If they argued for or against launching a war, they didn't just talk about enemy troop levels; they talked about Yahweh's will, which they'd fathomed firsthand, perhaps by actually watching the divine council in action.

...In short, supernatural pluralism was an enemy of royal power. If every prophet of every god went around broadcasting divine decrees, and every clan in Israel consulted the spirit of its most revered ancestor on policy matters, the king would have trouble staying on message.

...One of the most reliable laws of political science is the "rally-round-the-flag" effect. When a nation faces a crisis, whether the outbreak of war or a shocking terrorist attack, support for the nation's leader grows. In ancient times -- before separation of church and state, back when a nation's ultimate political and military leader was a god -- this rule presumably worked at the level of divine allegiance.

...From the earliest times of Israelite history, Yahweh had been the god of foreign affairs, the god who could authorize and guide his people through it (or, instead, could counsel restraint); he was the commander-in-chief god. So Yahweh would naturally draw popular allegiance from international turmoil. And because divine devotion is a finite resource, some of this attention would naturally come at the expense of other gods, including those with domestic pedigrees.

So it seems that Sharon Begley and Robert Wright are pointing toward the same phenomenon: whether in ancient times, or today, people are more likely to hold strong religious beliefs when their society is in turmoil and they feel a need to have god on their side.

I'll end with a mention of Begley's central theme in her article. That religiosity doesn't appear to be a "hard-wired" part of the human brain, but rather is stimulated by various external factors -- such as social dysfunction.

Before we decide that a behavior is innate and wired into our neurons, it would be a good idea to examine whether it withstands changes in our circumstances. If the new neuroscience has taught us anything, it's that the lives we lead can reach into, and change, our very brain circuitry.

Commenting policies

I've put together a page describing Church of the Churchless commenting policies. (Link also at left of top bar above). Please read, and have fun in the comment playground -- just obey the rules.

With religion and the Internet, be skeptical

Sometimes I wonder whether, as a churchless blogger, it makes sense for me to spend so much time in comment conversations about posts that I've written.

Recently I came to a fuller realization that yes, it does make sense, and why this is so.

There's an interesting correlation between religion and the Internet: both are full of often-anonymous sources making claims that lack persuasive supporting evidence.

So when someone leaves a comment on a web site or blog -- such as this one -- it's an opportunity to practice bullshit detection skills that will come in handy when assessing the validity of a religious belief.

Also in other areas of life, such as deciding whether to respond to an enticing email offer that just arrived from someone in Nigeria who is offering you lots of money in exchange for helping them deal with an inheritance problem.

Anonymity is both a blessing and a curse.

Sometimes it's nice to be able to communicate without anyone knowing who you are, like when you need to blow the whistle on a boss who is doing something wrong and you're worried about getting fired.

But when the person on the other end of the communication doesn't know who the source is, skepticism about what's being said is justified.

Most holy books are full of purported statements from people who are either long gone and may not even have existed (such as Jesus), or are conveniently amorphously identified (such as "ascended masters").

Similarly, most comments left on this blog's posts -- and this is typical on the Internet -- can't be linked to an actual person whose background and credentials can be verified.

So communications in both the religious sphere, and the blogosphere, need to be read with a properly skeptical mind. By "properly," I mean balanced between excessive open- and closed-mindedness.

In the scientific method, as in everyday life, it's necessary to be open-minded enough to let truth in but also closed-minded enough to keep falsities out.

Michael Shermer has a Boundary Detection Kit that helps differentiate between Science, Semi-science, and Nonsense. The first three items are:

(1) How reliable is the source of the claim?
(2) Has the source often made similar claims?
(3) Have the claims been verified by another source?

And the first three items in Carl Sagan's Baloney Detection Kit are:

(1) Wherever possible there must be independent confirmation of the facts.
(2) Encourage substantive debate on the evidence by knowledgeable proponents of all points of view.
(3) Arguments from authority carry little weight (in science there are no "authorities").

In other words, don't believe something just because someone says it is true. Especially if you don't know who that someone is.

Many people take on false identities for one reason or another. Hiding behind a curtain of anonymity, like the "Wizard of Oz," they attempt to convince others to trust their authority.

But if the author can't be identified, how can his or her authority? As Carl Sagan said above, only by giving arguments from authority little weight.

Whether the purported authority is a religious personage, or a guy who left a note on your door claiming he knows how to re-roof your house for an amazingly low price, the guiding principle is: prove it.

The proof needs to be stronger if the known background of the supposed authority is weaker.

By and large I trust the auto mechanics at the Toyota dealership where we take our cars for service. I know that they have certain qualifications, which could be verified if I had any doubts about their competence.

However, whenever my wife and I don't know much about the person or firm we're considering hiring, we do some checking into their qualifications.

Amazingly, many people don't do this either when they embrace a religion, or some "fact" they've come across on the Internet. I can't tell you how often I get emails from people who breathlessly share a Did you hear that... sort of message.

Usually, two minutes of Googling turns up solid evidence that "that" isn't true. 

So skepticism is a virtue.

Don't believe anything you read in a holy book or on the Internet (particularly from an anonymous source) unless there's other convincing demonstrable evidence of its truthfulness.

Here's the exception, though: this only applies to the "common ground" that I talked about in my previous post -- not to "private ground."

People often confuse these two areas where truth can reside. The common ground is public, the domain of the scientific method, objective reality that we all can observe and, ideally, agree upon.

The private ground is personal, inside each of our heads, where imagination, emotion, intuition, and direct experience hold sway.

Nobody has the right to claim knowledge of someone else's private ground. Have you ever had someone say to you, "You don't feel that way!" And replied, "How the hell could you know that?" (I have.)

On this blog I see both types of mistakes being made in comment conversations.

I see people uncritically accepting "public ground" statements that should be questioned skeptically. I also see people over-critically rejecting "private ground" statements that should be taken on face value.

For example, if a religious believer says "I feel wonderful when I think of Jesus," it isn't possible to argue with that. Usually I'll respond with "That's great."

And it is. There's nothing wrong with feeling wonderful.

However, if someone tells me, "Jesus died for our sins, and you need to accept him in order to avoid hellfire," my attitude is You don't know that, and No, I don't.

Once you make a public ground statement about a supposed objective truth, you're treading onto the territory we all inhabit. If that statement doesn't make sense, or lacks demonstrable evidence, expect skepticism. 

But if you just want to share how you feel, go right ahead. That's your private ground, not mine.

Science is real -- you are too (but in a different way)

Thanks to Pharyngula, I got turned on to a "Science is Real" video by They Might be Giants. l love it when cartoonish characters make so much sense -- more than a lot of real people.

"What's real?" is a terrific question. There's no end to possible answers. It seems to me, though, that some things almost certainly are really real about reality.

For us human beings -- every species is different in this regard -- there's a shared reality. If there wasn't you woudn't be able to read these words that I've written, and I wouldn't be sitting in a downtown Salem coffeehouse writing them.

Science studies this shared reality. This "common ground" isn't comprised of isolated dusty dry facts, but of life's interwoven verdant richness.

What would existence be like if there was no one to share it with? If we were solipsistic creatures who only knew the reality of me, not we? Whenever science uncovers a publicly demonstrable truth about the cosmos, it adds to the common ground of humanity.

Here is love. Here is hate. Here is togetherness. Here is separateness.

Here is everything real that exists outside of our individual psyches. Here -- on this common ground -- is where we become more than ourselves, because we imbibe the richness of reality that is other than us.

Yet...you and I also are real.

We think, we dream, we feel, we imagine, we sense, we are conscious of all sorts of happenings that are ours alone, incapable of being displayed on the common ground of reality.

On this private ground lie the roots of art, music, poetry, religion, spirituality, mysticism, and so much else. When visible sprouts grow, some become organized belief systems that can be studied in a scientific (or quasi-scientific) fashion.

However, public isn't private. Common ground isn't private ground. Objectivity isn't subjectivity.

Each requires the other. But neither one is the other. Life, both individual and collective, requires both perspectives -- the outer and the inner, the scientific and the personal. We should honor both.

Unfortunately, religious fundamentalists often try to elevate the private ground of personal belief to a status it doesn't deserve, and can't be allowed to assume.

Believe what you want. Just don't expect me to share your view of reality. If I say, "there's a coffee cup on this table," we can determine whether I'm telling the truth. Coffeehouse tables are part of humanity's common ground.

But if you consider that Jesus saves, or your guru is God, that's private territory. Feel free to occupy it -- it's yours. Not mine, though. So don't try to drag me into your belief system.

A respectful invitation to explore what you find so wonderful is fine. Just accept my "no thank you" if that's how I choose to respond, as I need to accept your rejection of my own private reality.

As I've said before (quite a few times), I absolutely adore Philip K. Dick's marvelous single sentence encapsulation of a whole lot of philosophy:

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

That's because the sort of reality Dick is speaking about isn't ours. The coffee cup on this table isn't produced by me. It isn't held in existence by me. It's part of shared reality -- common ground.

However, reality has another side. A belief side. A private side. Our beliefs, whether religious or otherwise, are real.

Only for us, though. Only for us.

Erotic dream stimulates philosophical thoughts

In the almost-five-year history of this churchless blog, erotic dreams is a subject that hasn't come up for much discussion. Time to make up for the omission.

I don't have erotic dreams very often. But last night featured an interesting and pleasurable brief one -- nicely PG rated for open sharing.

I was walking down the side of a road. Glancing down, I saw an youngish attractive dark-haired woman lying on her back, arms by her sides, eyes open, completely relaxed.

Moment of decision.

In a flash my mind chose between (1) continuing on my way, and (2) stopping to kiss her. A whole lot went on in that millisecond of choosing, but the outcome felt absolutely clear and correct.

Kiss.

At first she was passively receptive. Then, actively inviting. The vibe was "zipless fuck." Except sadly, the dream ended with the kiss.

Now, on to the philosophizing. The most interesting aspect of dreams is that they take place entirely within one's own mind. My brain was producing both characters in the fantasy: me and the woman.

In a way (and I don't want to think about this too much or it will creep me out) I was kissing myself.

In the "real" world outside our heads, people interact with other people -- not just themselves. This makes moral and other sorts of decision-making more involved. We can't always go with our snap intuitions, as I did in my erotic dream. (Or if we do, we have to accept cause and effect consequences that aren't usually present in a dream.)

I've enjoyed pondering the notion of desert island morality. However, we don't live on desert islands where, like the "Lost" TV series, we can forge new identities with little or no connection to the life we've lived before.

Except...in some ways we can. Which is one of the messages of "The Untethered Soul," a book I wrote about in a previous post.

The author, Michael A. Singer, talks about the teachings of Taoism in a final chapter, noting that "it discusses that which is very difficult to discuss" -- namely, the Way that enables us to live life most pleasurably and productively.

There aren't any rigid rules regarding the Way, or Tao.

You can't say, "When heading down a road, never stop to kiss a desirable person." Or, "always stop." It depends on the circumstances. You want to avoid the extremes of being hit with a sexual assault charge or losing out on unexpected joy.

In his chapter, "The Secret of the Middle Way," Singer says:

In the Tao of sailing, the balance point is not static; it's a dynamic equilibrium. You move from balance point to balance point, from center to center. You can't have any concepts or preferences; you have to let the forces move you. In the Way, nothing is personal. You are merely an instrument in the hands of the forces, participating in the harmony of balance.

You must reach the point where your whole interest lies in the balance and not in any personal preference for how things should be. It's that way with all of life. The more you can work with the balance, the more you can just sail through life.

Effortless action [wu wei] is what happens when you come into the Tao. Life happens, you're there, but you don't make it happen. There is no burden; there is no stress. The forces take care of themselves as you sit in the center. That is the Tao. It's the most beautiful place in all of life. You can't touch it, but you can be at one with it.

Eventually you will see that in the way of the Tao you're not going to wake up, see what to do, and then go do it. In the Tao, you are blind, and you have to learn how to be blind. You can never see where the Tao is going; you can only be there with it.

... If you cannot see the way, all you can do is feel for the edges. But if you feel the edges, and don't go there, you will stay in the Way. That's how you live in the Tao.

The edges are extremes.

Extreme emotion and feeling nothing. Activity and passivity. Masculine taking charge and feminine letting go. Talking incessantly and listening all the time. Continually stopping for a kiss and never doing so.

During the churched phase of my life, I enjoyed the feeling of surrender that came with accepting a set of moral and lifestyle rules. What my spiritual guide or guru commanded, I tried my best to do.

Now I realize that this same sensation of surrendering to a higher power can be had without personalizing the entity to which you're deferring. Life itself can be that entity, that power.

Singer writes:

Deep inner release is a spiritual path in and of itself. It is the path of nonresistance, the path of acceptance, the path of surrender. It's about not resisting energies as they pass through you. If you have difficulty doing this, don't get down on yourself. Just keep working with it. It's the work of a lifetime to become that open, that complete, and that whole.

The key is to just relax and release, and deal only with what's left in front of you. You do not need to worry about the rest.

...You truly can reach a state in which you never have any more stress, tension, or problems for the rest of your life. You just have to realize that life is giving you a gift, and that gift is the flow of events that takes place between your birth and your death.

To comfortably handle this flow of life, your heart and mind must be open and expansive enough to encompass reality. The only reason they're not is because you resist. Learn to stop resisting reality, and what used to look like stressful problems will begin to look like the stepping-stones of your spiritual journey.

Open Thread 6

Here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about. From now on comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free. No personal attacks on other commenters (or me), please: criticize a message, not the messenger.

God will fuck you up...or maybe not

Hey, it's Labor Day.

Which, rather paradoxically, is a national holiday in the United States where the goal for most people is to do as little as possible -- since the long hot lazy days of summer are coming to an end.

So I'm going to take it easy on my churchless blogging today, simply sharing some multimedia that tackles in cartoonish and musical fashion an important question:

WIll God fuck you up?

One of my favorite comic strips, Pearls Before Swine, seems to argue in the negative in this August 30 offering (I say "seems" because it's tough to tie down a philosophical position in seven cartoon panels).

On the other hand, it might be wise to keep in mind the Biblical alternative: God will fuck you up.

So saith the Postmodern Honky Blasphemy of John R. Butler, whose song "The Hand of the Almighty" is on his Surprise! album. (Lyrics here; YouTube version here)

I like the guy's sense of humor. Here's part of his self-written bio:

John R. Butler is a Southwest Florida musician/singer/songwriter/forward-slash user.  Gross Exaggeration Monthly magazine called him "perhaps the most important songsmith of his--and any other--generation."

Butler has played on stages before thousands of audience members all over the country...just before having been ejected by security, in order that the scheduled acts could get started. 


"The Untethered Soul" gets a 3/4 churchless thumbs up

Let's start mildly negative with this book review so I can end up strongly positive. I can understand why the author, Michael A. Singer, wanted this blurb prominently displayed on the cover, but I was turned off by it:

"Read this book carefully and you will get more than a glimpse of eternity."
     --Deepak Chopra

I haven't been impressed by Chopra's own writings, though some of what he says resonates with me. So I was afraid that "The Untethered Soul" was going to be as New Age'y as Chopra's blurb implied.

More than a glimpse of eternity? Gag me with a skeptical spoon.

However, once I started reading the book I didn't find a whole lot else to complain about. Singer stays down to earth for the most part. My first marginal question mark wasn't highlighted in until page 50, after I read:

The heart controls the energy flow by opening and closing.

Singer speaks quite a bit about chakras and subtle energies. He also uses "soul" a lot, which I find equally unnecessary.

HIs book would make just as much sense, but probably appeal to a less extensive readership, if he'd stuck with "mind," "brain," "mental patterns," "thoughts," and such. Singer's central message seems almost unarguable to me, and it doesn't require any non-scientific or metaphysical assumptions.

Our minds chatter away like crazed monkeys. That mostly mindless inner talk screws up our happiness, big time. Singer says:

There is nothing more important to true growth than realizing that you are not the voice of the mind -- you are the one who hears it. If you don't understand this, you will try to figure out which of the many things the voice says is really you. People go through so many changes in the name of "trying to find myself." They want to discover which of these voices, which of these aspects of their personality, is who they really are. The answer is simple: none of them.

If you watch it objectively, you will come to see that much of what the voice says is meaningless. Most of the talking is just a waste of time and energy. The truth is that most of life will unfold in accordance with forces far outside your control, regardless of what your mind says about it.

It's like sitting down at night and deciding whether you want the sun to come up in the morning. The bottom line is that the sun will come up and the sun will go down. Billions of things are going on in this world. You can think about it all you want, but life is still going to keep on happening.

So for Singer, "spirituality" (another unnecessary word, in my opinion) basically is about shutting down the chatter. Or at least not letting the mind-talk, where, strangely, we're speaking to ourselves inside our own head, upset our psyche's balance.

Makes sense.

This brings spirituality, or self-development, right into the here and now -- not a there and then of some fantasized Shangri-La where everything will be perfect, all the time.

On the book's website, there's an excerpt from the chapter on unconditional happiness. This isn't dependent on external conditions, such as rising into some heavenly realm or plopping down on the lap of God, but of realizing that no matter what happens in our life, we're free to be happy.

The key to staying happy is really very simple. Begin by understanding your inner energies. If you look inside, you will see that when you're happy, your heart feels open and the energy rushes up inside of you. When you aren't happy, your heart feels closed and no energy comes up inside. So to stay happy, just don't close your heart. No matter what happens, even if your wife leaves you or your husband dies, you don't close.

...The key is to learn to keep your mind disciplined enough so that it doesn't trick you into thinking that this time it's worth closing. If you slip, get back up. The minute you slip, the minute you open your mouth, the minute you start to close and defend yourself, get back up. Just pick what happens.

Affirm that all you want is to be at peace and to appreciate life. You don't want your happiness to be conditional upon the behavior of other people. It's bad enough that your happiness is conditional upon your own behavior. When you start making it conditional upon other people's behavior, you're in serious trouble.

Today I went to a feed store to get some bales of hay. My goal is to become a fearsome ground squirrel killer. But first I need to become a better shot with my new air rifle. Hence, the bales of hay are going to be a backstop for some practice targets.

I stuck some plastic in the car to cover the upholstery when I laid down the rear seat of our SUV. The not-so-minor flaws in my plan, however, revolved around several aspects of my hay-buying ignorance (this being the first time in my life I'd ever tried to bring home some bales).

(1) A bale of hay is bigger than I thought. Three bales of hay are even bigger than that. They just barely fit, and had to be crammed up against both the front seat and the top of the car.

(2) Bales of hay are tied together with cord. But "tied together" gives a false impression of firm connectivity. There's a reason farmers and ranchers carry bales of hay in pickups rather than the back compartment of their SUV: hay is freaking messy.

I realized this as soon as the feed store hay-loading guy had shoved the bales into our Toyota Highlander and said to me, "Sorry. You're going to need a vacuum."

For sure.

But having just read the chapter on unconditional happiness this morning before I meditated, while driving home I tried to clear my mind of unnecessary self-talk ("Why didn't you bring a large tarp, you idiot?") and focus on the simple reality of the situation.

I had successfully bought three bales of hay. They smelled good. To passers-by I looked like a hybrid-driving gentleman farmer. I'd learned a lot about hay. Such as, bales are messy. Live and learn. That's what life is all about.

However, just as Singer alluded to above, controlling one's own mental chatter is one thing. Backing your SUV down your driveway, dragging the bales out, and having your wife stare at a whole lot of wheat straw remaining in the car is a whole other thing.

Laurel wasn't as enthusiastic about this being a hay bale-buying learning experience as I was. Her comments were more along the lines of the unnecessary critical self-talk that I'd pretty much managed to stop in my own mind, but in no way could stop coming out of my wife's mouth.

I didn't do a great job on maintaining my unconditional happiness. I got irritated. Mostly at myself, because after Laurel fetched our vacuum, it took quite a while to de-wheat straw the luggage compartment.

(Realization #3: hay bales, when pushed against a car's ceiling or floor liner, embed small pieces of straw in the soft fabric that can't be vacuumed out, because they've worked their way in between threads.)

And also at my wife, because I wanted her to be perfectly accepting of what I'd done, and "perfect" isn't a word that fits a marriage relationship, or any other aspect of life. Singer says:

If you mistreat an animal, it becomes afraid. This is what has happened to your psyche. You have mistreated it by giving it a responsibility that is incomprehensible. Just stop for a moment and see what you have given your mind to do.

You said to your mind, "I want everybody to like me. I don't want anyone to speak badly of me. I want everything I say and do to be acceptable and pleasing to everyone. I don't want anyone to hurt me. I don't want anything to happen that I don't like. And I want everything to happen that I do like."

Then you said, "Now, mind, figure out how to make every one of these things a reality, even if you have to think about it day and night." And of course your mind said, "I'm on the job. I will work on it constantly."

Religious believers expect that eventually they'll enter some sort of paradise where good things happen to good people (namely, them) all of the time. Or if they're in eternity, all of no-time.

Non-religious people expect the same, says Singer, since they also consider that the flow of events in life can be controlled so that only what they want to have happen, will happen.

And of all the things that can happen in life, that, we can be certain, won't happen.

"The Untethered Soul" concludes with a paean to a Taoist view of reality that emphasizes letting go of rigid belief structures and expectations. I'll share more about this in another post.

Ex-Mormon blasts blind faith...wonderfully

Proving that my ego loss has quite a ways to go, one of my greatest compliments is "Hey, that guy is brilliant. He sounds just like me!" Or, in this case, even more me that I am.

Because I aspire to some of the great writing and thinking that Jonathan Montgomery churns out as the "Salt Lake City Freethinking Examiner," but I've got to bow down before some of the posts that I just read.

Example: in Why praying for confirmation of truth cannot work, he throws in a flowchart of faith-based belief. Two big churchless thumbs-up, Jonathan!

You moved away from a Western religion, while I distanced myself from an Eastern faith, but your take on blind belief is the same as mine.

Like the Emperor's New Clothes, the religious test presumes its answer, and then blames the individual if their conclusion is different.

The Emperor's clothes are presumed to exist and are magical, just as God and the Holy Ghost are presumed to exist and can confirm truth.  Anyone who can't see the clothes is stupid or incompetent, just as anyone who doesn't realize the truth of the Book of Mormon is insincere, sinning, being tested, or didn't listen the first time when God did provide the answer.

I found Montgomery via a Twitter tweet from one of the people I follow. It pointed me to an essay on How religion abuses language and analogy to sound reasonable. Right on.

I frequently hear this same argument from true believers who try to claim that religious faith is just like the confidence we have in everyday life that something will happen as expected:

"Faith" becomes interchanged with "realistic expectation based on experience and evidence" in this substitution of terms:

Faith is knowing the sun will rise, lighting each new day.  Faith is knowing the Lord will hear my prayers each time I pray.

These are two different levels of "faith."  One is built upon a lifetime of experience and an understanding of the physical sciences of the rotation of the earth, the position of the sun, and so on.  The moment the sun rises can be predicted to the second.  Barring some abrupt change to the planet, we can be reasonably confident that the sun will rise again.  That's not a leap of faith.  Suggesting the sun will NOT rise tomorrow is the unproven and unlikely scenario, something that would require either a leap of faith or an overwhelming body of new evidence.

The existence of an uncreated supreme being who builds universes is, likewise, an unproven and unlikely scenario.  As is the existence of a man-god who walked on water and rose from the dead.  But with a subtle shift of the meaning of words, it is implied that the existence of God is as reasonable as the sun rising.  Faith in a Savior who died for my sins 2,000 years before I committed them so I can go to heaven is the same kind of faith as expecting my car to start in the morning.

Which, of course, it isn't.

Likewise, this blog often gets comments from devotees of a guru who argue that a teacher is needed in the "science" of spirituality, just as one is needed to learn physics or chemistry. This is another abuse of analogy.

Worldly science has a vast amount of demonstrable evidence backing it up. Spirituality and religion don't. The precepts of worldly science can be tested for truth or falsity. Almost always, spiritual or religious dogmas can't. Worldly science is founded on open debate and discussion, plus a healthy dose of skepticism. Spiritual "science" isn't.

Analogies and metaphors are the refuge of those who don't have a firm footing in reality.

When a god or guru has to be likened to something known to be true, that "liken" testifies to how flimsy the evidence is for a purported metaphysical truth. A rose is a rose is a rose. But almost always religion is about something that isn't an obvious "is."

Here's a couple of other Jonathan Montgomery posts that I enjoyed.

A scientist's evidence for belief in God.
What's to be gained by criticizing faith?

From the latter:

We criticize faith because we believe we can reach a greater potential without it.  Eliminating faith rids us of an unnecessary conflict between what the real world looks like, and what we wish it were.  Eliminating faith frees us from a questionable moral authority who makes unusual demands, and lets us be good just for the sake of being good.  Eliminating faith permits us to tackle the world on its own terms, without preconceptions.  Where would we be today if the Catholic Church hadn't tried so hard for so long to force reality to fit it's presumptions about the universe?

We stand to gain authentic morality, intellectual integrity, useful knowledge, and humbling wonder as we learn about the universe.  Dealing with reality resonates.  It sings.  Eliminating faith may well let us fully embrace that.

I answer questions about the once-churched me

I was planning to write a blog post about another subject tonight.

But, hey, when someone leaves a comment on an Open Thread that focuses on me, wanting me to answer some questions about me, suddenly I found this topic a lot more interesting.

I'll put "Cell's" words in italics and my response in normal type.
------------------------------

Brian, may I ask a few questions of you? I would just send you an email, but I think that some external input could be helpful, too.

No problem. I love questions. Especially ones I can answer.

Since they're about me, that's a subject I have quite a bit of familiarity with. Concerning "external input," you've already gotten some responses from a few of the churchless regulars. I agree with most of what they said, but will answer you in my own words here.

Might I ask you what your intent was when going into Sant Mat? Were you looking for God, or were you looking for the spiritual experiences associated with Sant Mat? I mean, the whole point of RSSB is to merge back with God; was that what you were looking for? Some of your posts confuse me about this. You seemed to have expected to ascend to the higher regions, to have out-of-body experiences, and to achieve God-realization within this lifetime.

Yes, your last sentence sums it up pretty well. This is what Sant Mat, Radha Soami Satsang Beas version, is all about.

One of the first books I read way back in 1970 was Julian Johnson's "Path of the Masters." I loved his descriptions of how it was possible, supposedly, to zip around in the astral and causal regions, learning the secrets of creation, one's own nature, and eventually God.

In the Sant Mat philosophy, spiritual experiences are necessary before merging with God. It isn't like Buddhism, Taoism, or Hinduism, where enlightenment can be (or is) a shift in consciousness that doesn't necessarily (or usually) entail mind-blowing mystical sights, sounds, and such.

Not everyone is so lucky. I've met several people that are spiritually realized, and I wish that you had the chance to speak with them. For some reason you've only come across those poor people that, for some reason, haven't had success in their meditation.

How could you tell that these several people were "spiritually realized"?

I've talked with lots of people who are on a path that is claimed to lead to spiritual realization. I've had a number of face-to-face meetings with gurus who were/are considered to be perfectly god-realized (Charan Singh and Gurinder Singh).

I can't tell the difference between a spiritually realized person, and someone who isn't. In fact, I don't even know what "spiritually realized" means. What do you think it means?

Regarding your statement about poor people who haven't had success in their meditation, I also don't know what you mean by "poor." I'm one of these people, if you define success as soaring into higher regions of reality and coming face to face with God. But I don't feel poor, lacking, or disappointed.

Again, I don't know anyone who has had the sort of success in meditation as defined above. Do you? And how would I know if I did come across such a person? Do they have some sort of identifying mark?

Also, on the point of meditation; did you love the Master when you where following the Path? Did you have faith? I question this because your critical thoughts have to have been brewing for a long time. Perhaps you went into initiation before your intellect was truly satisfied.

I'd say, "yes, absolutely." In thirty-five years or so of devotion to my guru and Radha Soami Satsang Beas, I shed a lot of tears that sure felt like they sprang from love; and I engaged in a lot of voluntary service that sure felt like it sprang from love. 

I had almost complete confidence, or faith, that I was on the right path until... I didn't. Getting initiated by a guru and getting married have a lot in common. For me, the two events happened about the same time (1971 and 1970, respectively).

When I got married, I thought it would be for forever. Ditto when I signed on to follow the Sant Mat path. With my first marriage, I got divorced after nineteen years. With Sant Mat, it took quite a bit longer. In each case, the love was genuine. Until it wasn't. People change. My wife and I grew out of love. Ditto with Sant Mat and me.

I wasn't critical of Sant Mat for at least thirty years. For sure, I was a true believer during that time, circa 1970 to 2000. When I met Laurel, who I married in 1990, she tried to raise questions about the perfection of the "perfect guru" and other Sant Mat truisms. I was unshakable. Until... I started shaking.

One more question; why do you even have this website? You know that the only resistance that you shall receive will be from initiates that haven't gotten very far (no offense, folks. I'm not even initiated m'self). People that are actual sants won't reply to you; they don't care.

I started this blog after George Bush won re-election in November 2004. The rise of the fundamentalist religious right in the United States bothered me, big-time. I wanted to strike a blow for open-minded, non-judgmental, science-centered spirituality. After almost five years I'm still blogging along.

I no longer know what "spirituality" means, though, which I consider to be progress rather than retrogression.

I don't worry a whole lot about who likes this blog, and who doesn't. Having written several books, I've learned that if I try to cleverly write for other people, rather than from the honest core of myself, both my writing and my enjoyment suffer.

Okay, just one more question; how can you deny the spiritual experiences of tens of thousands of people? There are satsangis that have had success, you're just not looking for them, are you?

Who are these people? What experiences have they had that you call "spiritual"?

I met countless satsangis (RSSB initiates) during the thirty-plus years I was an active member of the organization. I'm not sure what you mean about "not looking for them" -- those who supposedly have had success, spiritual experience-wise.

By the end of those years I was interacting with some of the highest of the higher-ups in the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization, including the guru himself. Don't you think that I would have encountered spiritually elevated people through these interactions?

What I found, though, was that those who had spent the most time around the guru, and had done the most meditation, seemed to be just as human, flawed, and imperfect as I was. I don't know whether they had any marvelous mystical experiences. How would I?

What I do know is that I couldn't see any sign that they'd become more warm, loving, generous, happier, or compassionate. This helped lead me to question the wisdom of sticking with spiritual practices that didn't seem to produce positive effects in people, even after a long time.

I submit these questions with the utmost respect, Brian. Your choices are just that; your own.

On that we agree. And on other things too, I'm sure.

I'm convinced that people are much more alike than different. Religion, like other "isms," tends to divide us -- since religious believers cling to ideas and concepts rather than directly experienced reality.

Since I've embraced churchlessness, I feel quite a bit closer to other people. I no longer think of myself as belonging to any special group.

Except those who live in Oregon -- which obviously is the best state (except to those in other parts of the country who have a different view of obviousness).