Church of the Churchless

Space aliens are more likely than God

Driving home tonight, I listened to a BBC program about the search for extra-terrestrial intelligence (SETI). I never heard the name of the American scientist who was answering questions from a British audience, but his style and sense of humor were engaging.

He led me to think, "This is why I prefer science over religion; open-mindedness is so appealing."

Someone asked if he thought that aliens were visiting Earth. His reply: this is within the realm of possibility, because it wouldn't violate the laws of physics. If they were traveling at the speed of light, it could take aliens thousands of years to reach our planet. But if they had patience, the trip could be made.

He went on to say, though, that the evidence is lacking. Just because something is possible doesn't mean it is true, or real. 

The SETI scientist acknowledged that an amazingly large number of people believe that they are being transported to alien spaceships during the night, where experiments are conducted on them.

But he wondered why, if this really was happening, more spouses weren't waking up and calling authorities to report that their wife or husband had suddenly disappeared. He also noted that while claimed UFO sightings have been common for quite a few decades, they haven't made any difference to human life.

No new knowledge. No credible evidence. No effect on society.

By contrast, he said, no sixteenth century Aztec would have said "I wonder if those really were Spaniards I saw." At least, not for long. The effects of visitations by Spaniards quickly became evident.

Of course, it's possible that space aliens are nearby yet hiding themselves from view, just as it's possible that God is doing the same. There's that possible again. 

Open-mindedness embraces the prospect of possibilities, while demanding demonstrable evidence before considering that a possible deserves a promotion to probable.

It's nice to see that the Pope's chief astronomer says that aliens could exist. I wonder, though, if he's equally open to the possibility that God doesn't exist.

Personally, I'd be less surprised to learn that solid evidence has been found for advanced extra-terrestrial life than that solid evidence has been found for God. With hundreds of billions of stars in each of hundreds of billions of galaxies in the universe, it sure seems likely that Earth isn't alone in harboring living beings.

However, the scientist I heard on BBC offered up some convincing reasons why it's likely that if we ever do receive communications from an extra-terrestrial source, that alien intelligence will be mechanical, not natural.

His argument was that given how much more rapidly computers are progressing in intelligence than humans are, this probably holds true for an alien civilization as well.

So while biological life is necessary to create machine intelligence, it doesn't take long (on a cosmic time scale) before computers -- or devices we can't even conceive of -- become the dominant "life form" on a planet.

Of course, there's cinematic evidence that this has already occurred.

Andrew Cohen -- an abusive American guru

Outrage. Anger. Disgust. An overwhelming desire to cancel my subscription to the EnlightenNext magazine.

These were some of my reactions as I read through an expose of Andrew Cohen, a self-proclaimed "guru" who talks a good spirituality game but clearly plays by very different rules.

Earlier I shared some passages from Stephen Bachelor's excellent introduction to "American Guru," a book authored by William Yenner and other contributors who were long-time disciples of Cohen and experienced or saw his abuses first-hand.

As the events recounted in this book reveal, Cohen's demonization of his students' "egoic tendencies" -- tendencies which he himself has supposedly transcended -- extend far beyond instructive spiritual "lessons," providing him with a pretext for the administration of harsh discipline and punishment and the induction of soul-destroying intimidation and guilt.

Cohen coerced donations from disciples, in one case to the tune of $2 million. His students were slapped, ridiculed, made to do thousands of prostrations before his photo, forced to immerse themselves in a near-freezing lake for an hour, and other humiliations.

Regarding the lake immersion:

I had lost consciousness at about 50 or 55 minutes, just shy of the full hour... It took me two days to feel normal again. I do feel that this was one of the most dangerous things that Andrew had his students do.

...I find this one of Andrew's most ham-handed responses as a teacher, subjecting a large group of women to the same giant hammer without regard for what would be appropriate and useful for individuals. I also acknowledge how stupid and sheeplike it was for me to participate.

Yes, often I wondered "Why did these disciples put up with all of Cohen's crap?"

But it's unfair to judge people who are being abused by someone in a position of power for not asserting themselves strongly. My wife was a psychotherapist for quite a few years. She had many clients, mostly female, who found it very difficult to break away from someone who was severely mistreating them.

Andrew Cohen was (and is) a spiritual charmer. That's what unethical gurus do: use their charisma to lure disciples into their lair, then take advantage of them.

The What Enlightenment??! blog shows the seamy side of Andrew Cohen, including the disturbing story of how he conned the two million dollars from Jane O'Neil.

In the context of the world outside Andrew's community or cult, what he did was illegal, something called "undue influence." It is akin to a therapist seeking sexual company from a client or a priest who manipulates a parishioner into donating to the church. I imagine if it wasn’t me, there would be others like me who would have and I am sure continue to give away their money and soul to him as I did. If someone still within the community reads this and considers giving away their wealth, please reconsider. It was the greatest mistake of my life.

I'm sorry that I ever subscribed to EnlightenNext, a magazine that's devoted to singing the praises of Andrew Cohen and Ken Wilber -- who act as a mutual admiration society in their regular "The Guru and the Pandit" articles.

For sure, I won't be renewing my subsciption. I've got no desire to support anything associated with an American Abusive Guru (Cohen was the founder of EnlightenNext).

Kudos to William Yenner for blowing the whistle on Cohen. Yenner had to wait five years to publish his book after escaping Cohen's clutches, because Cohen's lawyer had him sign a gag order in exchange for refunding $80,000 Yenner had given to Cohen.

Disturbingly, many people are still being sucked into Cohen's "Evolutionary Enlightenment" and "Integral Vision" bullshit. As Yenner says:

This is where twenty years of preaching truth and freedom have gotten EnlightenNext and Andrew Cohen: banal infomericals calculated to attract the most innocent and idealistic among us, while what happens behind closed doors -- how he treats his subordinates and even those closest to him, his dismissive attitudes toward women, the physical and mental abuses he engages in, and in which he encourages others to participate -- are to remain shrouded in mystery.

Well, hopefully not any more.

I'd love my self if I had one

Proving, or not, that profound insights are found in the strangest places, I'll share some of the lyrics to an atonal song that I made up and love to "sing" (using that word in its absolutely loosest sense) in the shower.

I love my dog.
I love my cat.
Only problem is,
I don't have a cat.
It's hard to love
What you don't have.

This is how I also feel about loving God. Or, my self.

Except seemingly there's more evidence for a "self" than for "God." Buddhism, though, seizes on that seemingly and runs with it to an intriguing, reasonable, and scientifically defensible conclusion.

I don't have a self. No one does. Meaning, as agnostic Buddhist Stephen Bachelor says in his wonderful book, "Buddhism Without Beliefs":

As a human being I am more complex than a pot or a daffodil, but I have also emerged from causes and am composed of diverse, changing features and traits. There is no essential me that exists apart from this unique configuration of biological and cultural processes.

...I cannot find the self by pointing my finger at any physical or mental trait and saying: "Yes, that's me." For such traits come and go, whereas the sense of "I" remains constant.

The self may not be something, but neither is it nothing. It is simply ungraspable, unfindable. I am who I am not because of an essential self hidden away in the core of my being but because of the unprecedented and unrepeatable matrix of conditions that have formed me.

Emptiness is Buddhism's shorthand term for this absence of intrinsic selfness or thingness. Living and lifeless entities are equally devoid of independent, free-standing, unchanging existence.

The world is interconnected, with never-ending matrices of causes and effects stretching back to the big bang, and likely beyond. Out of this creative ferment arises...

Me. You. Religious beliefs. Scientific discoveries. Blogs. Books. Life. Death. Joy. Pain. Questions. Answers. Everything.

It isn't exactly true that we are all one, because obviously there are lots of different things that have manifested as Everything. But it's clear that the cosmos is a whole, so now I worship at the altar of scientifically defensible wholeiness rather than imaginary holiness.

What's strange is that most religions ostensibly promote the sort of selflessness that Buddhism and science find already existent at the root of human reality.

That is, if there is no independent "self," there's nothing to get rid of. And there's also nothing self'y to attain: no self-realization, no self-actualization. Nothing soul'y, either, since "soul" is just a metaphysical version of "self," something permanent and unchanging within us.

Stephen Bachelor nicely captures the exhilarating freedom, mixed with a disturbing feeling of What now? that prisoners often have on being released from jail, that comes with this understanding.

To know emptiness is not just to understand the concept. It is more like stumbling into a clearing in the forest, where suddenly you can move freely and see clearly. To experience emptiness is to experience the shocking absence of what normally determines the sense of who you are and the kind of reality you inhabit.

This morning I woke up, made coffee, and went out to get the newspapers. All, as usual. But what is "usual"? Life is different at every moment. So am I.

It got down to the mid 20's last night. Frost was on the nearby trees. The rising sun was illuminating more distant large firs. My mind went Wow! and my body went back into the house to get my camera.

Not usual at all. I just needed to open my eyes to see what was new about this day, this moment, this intersection of me with what seemingly isn't me.

Ah, that word seemingly pops up again. Stephen Bachelor:

The denial of "self" challenges only the notion of a static self independent of body and mind -- not the ordinary sense of ourself as a person distinct from everyone else. The notion of a static self is the primary obstruction to the realization of our unique potential as a human being.

By dissolving this fiction through a centered vision of the transiency, ambiguity, and contingency of experience, we are freed to create ourself anew. The notion of the world as an alien reality composed of stubborn, discrete things is likewise the primary obstruction to world-creation.

In dissolving this view through a vision of the world as a dynamic and interrelated whole of which we are an integral part, we are likewise freed to engage with the world afresh.

(For a more humorous take on this, I refer you to The Onion. Plus here and here.)

Must be troll time

Merry Day after December 25. This must be Troll Day in the United Kingdom, where some nameless person (if I didn't name him BleedingObvious), is busily posting childish comments in my name, "Blogger Brian." 

I've deleted them and have turned on comment moderation. Sorry for the inconvenience. 

Merry whatever tomorrow means to you

It's December 24. Tomorrow, not surprisingly, is the 25th. Some people make a big deal out of the day.

Christmas! Presents! Baby Jesus!

Other people, like my wife and me, look upon it pretty much as any other day. Except, Laurel is taking the opportunity of a holiday to try out a new recipe for a walnut loaf.

At the moment I'm listening to Christmas songs being played on the sound system of my favorite blogging-friendly coffee house. The music is pleasant enough, though not what I choose to listen to myself.

Which basically sums up my evolving churchless attitude toward Christmas. I used to get aggravated by all the displays of religiosity here in the United States.

Even though I live in Oregon, which is one of the least religious states, there's still plenty of Jesusosity floating around this time of year. That's hard to avoid when a holiday is named after a religious figure.

But whereas I used to reply to a "Merry Christmas" with a "same to you" or "Happy Holidays," now I usually echo the greeting. Yes, Merry Christmas.

Naturally I don't believe Jesus Christ is the son of God, or anything else miraculous -- assuming he even existed. However, if people want to believe that he died for our sins and was resurrected to live on at the right hand of God, where he's waiting to welcome true believers to heaven, that's fine.

And an interesting cultural phenomenon.

Along with blow-up Santas and snowmen that I see on the front lawns of houses, manger scenes rather incongruously interspersed with elves, reindeer, and such, and all the other often weird trappings with which Christmas is celebrated in the United States.

NORAD, the North American Aerospace Defense Command, has a pretty elaborate web site showing Santa's progress around the world. I just hope they're also continuing to keep an eye out for rogue nuclear missiles.

Like everything else religious (or in the case of Christmas, semi-religious), manifestations of blind belief are a lot more palatable to me when I view them as just part of the strange stuff that we humans do.

For sure, much of what I do doesn't make sense to many other people, including my wife.

When I sit down in front of the TV, engrossed in watching two teams try to maneuver an oval ball across a goal line, her attitude is OK, whatever; when is this ridiculousness going to be over?

Of course, I don't try to convert people to the blessedness of watching college football. And I don't think the Oregon Ducks are especially favored by the sports gods (though if they beat Ohio State in the Rose Bowl by 40 points, I might change my mind).

So here's to celebrating tomorrow however you want. Including not at all. Merry Whatever!

I'll end by sharing our 2009 Holiday Greetings (a PDF file), which soon will take its place in the pantheon of our other Christmas letters. This year I focused on the string of disasters that befell us.
Download 2009 Christmas Letter

Stephen Bachelor's appealing agnostic Buddhism

Often people say that it's hard to tell whether Buddhism is a philosophy or a religion. This makes me give it a semi-enthusiastic churchless thumbs-up.

I enjoy the Buddhist way of looking at reality. It's the religious side of Buddhism that gives me pause. So whenever I come across a writer who is knowledgeable about subtracting religiosity from Buddhism, I'm eager to read what he or she has to say.

My favorite author in this genre is Stephen Bachelor. His "Buddhism Without Beliefs" is a terrific book. When I feel in the need of some godless inspiration, I pick it up.

As I mentioned in a recent post where I shared some Bachelor quotes, I was excited to come across a Master's thesis on his web site: "A Critical Examination of the Agnostic Buddhism of Stephen Bachelor."

This morning I carried my laptop into my meditation nook and read Marjorie Silverman's thoughtful, well-written analysis while sipping a strong cup of Zambian coffee.

Bliss.

She's an excellent thinker. And a fine writer. Silverman ends up concluding that while many Buddhists don't like how Bachelor strips religiosity out of their faith's teachings, this is very much in line with Buddhism.

This pared down and exposed Buddhism is perhaps less a Buddhism without beliefs, and more a Buddhism without baggage.

The introduction to her thesis is a nice short summary of Bachelor's bare bones Buddhism. 

Batchelor advocates a return to what he claims are the historically agnostic roots of Buddhism that were lost through institutionalization. He presents an agnosticism that he asserts is just as challenging as traditional belief systems.  To be an agnostic requires an enormous amount of commitment as it forces us to “confront the enormity of having been born”. It entails a “passionate recognition” that we don’t know the answers to why we were born or what we are doing on this planet.

Bachelor considers that traditional Buddhist notions of rebirth and karma need to be stripped of unfounded metaphysics that is a carryover from Buddhism's beginnings in Indian culture.

In Chapter 5 Silverman addresses the central critiques of Bachelor by several Buddhist scholars. One is that he is a "scientific materialist." (That doesn't sound like much of an epithet to my churchless ears, but I guess it's a putdown if you're into mainstream Buddhism.)

I'll share Silverman's treatment of this issue in its entirety because (1) Bachelor's attitude toward science and metaphysical phenomena is close to my own, and (2) I feel that he makes darn good sense -- not surprisingly.

Punnadhammo asserts that Batchelor’s agnosticism is equivalent to materialism because it does not accept as valid phenomena that are beyond rational explanation.  He also suggests that it upholds a self-view that is incompatible with the Buddhist doctrine of not-self.  Sangharakshita asserts that there are limits to human reason and that religious phenomena cannot be explained by science.  Is it true that Batchelor is denigrating the Dharma by upholding human reason and the scientific process?
           
While it is valid to say that Batchelor is an advocate of rational thought, he does not pedestalize human reason or science at the expense of metaphysical phenomena.  The main message of Batchelor’s agnosticism is the following: “I don’t know”.  This is extremely different from an outright “No”.  Batchelor is not denying that metaphysical phenomena exist; he is simply stating that it is not only difficult, but pointless, to try to prove their existence.  It is the questions, not the answers, that are meaningful.  According to Batchelor, when questioning is hindered, the whole goal of Buddhist practice dissolves.

Batchelor is not reifying human reason at the expense of the supernatural. On the contrary, Batchelor’s agnosticism expresses respect for the potential magnitude of the supernatural or other-worldly.  He is asserting that such phenomena, which cannot be explained by reason, also cannot be explained by uncritical belief.  They are too large and too multi-faceted to be placed into a narrow category of definition.  Defining as belief something that is completely beyond the human realm, such as rebirth, reduces the phenomena into something graspable, yet also safe and one-dimensional.  According to Batchelor, the only way to honour the magnitude and multi-dimensionality of a concept like rebirth is to conceptualize it as a question.

According to Batchelor, having the faith to surrender into this state of unknowing and perplexity is the very essence of not-self.  All the things that we cling to for identity, the things that normally make up what we regard as our “self”, come under scrutiny and questioning.  Thus, far from opposing the Buddhist doctrine of not-self, Batchelor claims that the only way to achieve such a realization of emptiness is to fully examine and to question all facets of one’s life.  It is when other-worldly phenomena are made into concrete beliefs for the sake of self-definition and security, that the self is upheld and pedestalized.  For example, a belief in rebirth provides a sense of self-definition and purpose.  It is this constant focus on the self, rather than its perplexed counterpart, that contradicts the Buddhist notion of not-self.

In this respect, Batchelor’s agnosticism is not, as the critics claim, the equivalent of materialism.  Materialism implies a complete denial of anything beyond rational comprehension.  Batchelor, however, only claims that we cannot make definitive statements about non-rational phenomena.  He does not deny their existence outright.  Batchelor writes: “In refusing to be drawn into the answers of ‘yes’ and ‘no’, ‘it is this’ and ‘it is not that’, it lets go of the extremes of affirmation and negation, something and nothing.”

Death is real. Religion shouldn't deny it.

My sister died yesterday. Unexpectedly. Shockingly. And really.

On my other blog I said what needed saying a few hours after I learned of Carol Ann's death. Now, I want to add on to how this experience has affected me.

Basically, it's made me more appreciative of genuineness. When my brother-in-law phoned with the news, he told it like it was: "Your sister is dead." I took it the same way.

Face to face with the truth, no turning away.

Deep into our conversation, Bob said that he knew Carol Ann wanted to be cremated. He wasn't sure, though, what to do with her ashes.

I told him, "I'm pretty sure that if she were alive, she'd say it doesn't matter to her. And I'm damn sure that now she's dead, it really doesn't matter to her, because almost certainly she doesn't exist any more, and if she does somehow, what happens to the remains of her body is immaterial to her."

Bob agreed. My sister and brother-in-law were/are as churchless as I am. Maybe more so. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. Atoms to atoms. That's how they look upon death.

When someone you love dies, grief is inevitable. Natural. Genuine.

Not for an instant (well, maybe one, which passed quickly) did I think, "Carol Ann has passed on." On to what? She's dead. That's what I know. To assume anything else is to deny reality.

That seems disrespectful. To my honest grief. Also to my sister's dying.

I understand why people want to deny the reality of death when a loved one dies. It hurts to know that you won't ever see them again. Imagining that this is possible, and/or that they are in a "better place" is a common way of pushing away the pain.

Inauthentic. But common.

Recently the Oregon (as well as national) news was filled with updates on the fate of three climbers who attempted a wintry climb of Mt. Hood. One was found dead; the other two are missing.

Watching reports on local television when all hope for the climbers had been lost, I heard their relatives say what Christians so often do in situations like this. Lie.

Perhaps "lie" sounds harsh. But when I'd hear someone say, "We know that Katie is with God now," I'd yell at the TV screen, 'No you don't! You believe it!" Big difference.

For ten years my niece, Cathy Ferguson (my sister and brother-in-law's only child), refused to allow Carol Ann and Bob to see their two grandchildren. Or Cathy. This deeply hurt my sister and brother-in-law. Their house is in Walnut Creek, California, just a few miles from Concord, where Cathy and her family live.

As I said in a blog post about this craziness, religion played a big role in Cathy's obstinate and cruel refusal to reconcile with her mother -- who now is dead, and died without having seen her beloved grandchildren for a decade, ever since they were eight and ten.

Cathy and her husband were (and I assume, still are) fundamentalist Christians. They saw my sister as part of the "dark side." Meaning, everyone who doesn't accept Jesus as lord and savior.

This bullshit belief system supported them in a ten year crusade to keep their children from being exposed to the influence of godless grandparents. They professed other reasons too, of course, but this clearly was a major factor in their cruel and unusual grandparent abuse.

The reality of a fairly minor family disagreement became engulfed in an overlay of religious fantasy -- another example of how genuine human emotion ("I'm mad at my mother") can get turned into fake dogmatism ("She's an evil ungodly influence.")

Life is complicated. It's full of pain and suffering. Facing this reality head-on is the best way to deal with it.

Cry. Laugh. Then cry and laugh again. But for non-God's sake, let's make our crying and laughing genuine.

Have it flow naturally from the heart, unblocked by a rigid artificial religious belief system that stifles our authentic humanity.

Liberation: freedom from craving to be perfect

Authoritarian religion draws its power from an understandable desire: for perfection.

This craving leads people to bow down before supposedly holy books, holy people, and holy dogmas that, they believe, will give them what they can't find in this imperfect world.

Such is the central theme of Stephen Bachelor's terrific foreword to "American Guru," a book about Andrew Cohen's abuse of his students/disciples. (I'll have more to say about this book when I've finished it; it's a disturbing tale of guru worship gone bad.)

I like Stephen Bachelor a lot. He's a secular Buddhist who does a great job of sifting the religious crap from Buddhism's otherwise generally appealing outlook on life. I've enjoyed his "Buddhism Without Beliefs" and shared a few quotes here.

(On Bachelor's web site I just came across an M.A. thesis about his agnostic Buddhism  that I'm looking forward to reading.)

Below are excerpts from Stephen Bachelor's foreword. He starts off by describing the first time he went to see Andrew Cohen, after he'd been told that "a great guru, a world teacher comparable to the Buddha, had appeared."

Not really. Not even close.

That's obvious to me after reading about half of "American Guru." Unless the Buddha was a jerk who enjoyed hurting people emotionally and physically, and was addicted to being idolized by uncritical disciples.

Bachelor writes:

I squeezed into a poorly lit room, packed with people, many of whom I knew, sitting in silence, eyes closed, cross-legged on the floor. Then Andrew appeared, radiant and smiling, and sat on an old armchair in one corner. It was one of the most tedious evenings I can remember.

...While the students experienced some sort of ecstasy by collectively projecting their spiritual longings and ideals onto Andrew, Andrew seemed to need the adulation of others to endorse the sense of being the enlightened guru he and his students wanted him to be.

The more this interchange of mutually reinforcing desires went on, the greater became the certainty that Andrew really was the savior of our age and the students his first blessed circle of disciples. As long as this bubble of shared conviction remained intact, everyone got what they wanted.

...The only way I can describe what I witnessed in Devon in the 1980s was the formation of a cult: a closed system of millenarian belief exclusively focused on a single person who claimed absolute authority.

...Authoritarian religion is one of the greatest dangers facing humankind in our world today. Whether that authoritarianism be Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or Buddhist makes no difference. In each case, an elite group claims absolute authority on the basis of a text or a mystical revelation, then seeks to impose that authority on others as the only way to achieve personal and collective salvation.

...All belief in an unconditioned reality that transcends the contingent, painful flux of this world is, I suspect, an understandable but dangerous delusion. Rather than directing our longing and energy towards the Absolute and the spiritual freedom it promises, we need to turn our attention back to the world with all its messiness and suffering.

For if there is any liberation to be found, it will be found here, in the midst of ordinary life, as a freedom from the grasping and craving for the self or the world to be perfect.

Getting real is geniune spirituality

Spirit. Matter. Heaven. Hell. Soul. Body.

Words...

If they don't point to something real, they're interesting expressions of human cognition. But the mind can come up with all sorts of abstractions. If these aren't grounded in anything other than more concepts, clinging to them leads us into a airy-fairy world of our own imagining.

I love this quote from Thoreau's Walden.

No face which we can give to a matter will stead us so well at last as the truth. This alone wears well. For the most part, we are not where we are, but in a false position.

Through an infirmity of our natures, we suppose a case, and put ourselves into it, and hence are in two cases at the same time, and it is doubly difficult to get out.

In sane moments we regard only the facts, the case that is. Say what you have to say, not what you ought. Any truth is better than make-believe.

Tom Hyde, the tinker, standing on the gallows, was asked if he had anything to say. "Tell the tailors," said he, "to remember to make a knot in their thread before they take the first stitch."

His companion's prayer is forgotten.

On this blog I probably often come across as sounding unduly skeptical about spirituality. That is true, insofar as "spirit" is viewed as something detached from everyday existence, opposed to materiality, formless and invisible.

For sure, I'm not nearly as attracted to abstractions as I used to be.

If something that's supposedly "spiritual" isn't directly experienced by the average person, and no one can supply convincing evidence that doing X, Y and Z will produce such an experience, then I'd rather embrace the truth that is right before me, rather than chase after truth down a winding road of "around the next corner" promises.

Understand: I'm not reducing reality to only what is observable.

Inner experiences known only to the experiencer also are eminently real. But if there is no way for other people to reliably experience those experiences, they can't be considered more than subjective one-of-a-kind sensations.

Last night my wife and I had a West Coast Swing lesson. I've done enough ballroom dancing to recognize the familiar trajectory of learning a new dance move.

First, clumsiness. Then, mechanical competence. Finally, relaxed fluidity that allows my wife and me to finally feel what a dance style is all about, rather than merely going through the motions of it.

"West Coast Swing" is an abstraction. Leading a sugar push is wonderfully concrete. When our instructor demonstrated how to do it a few lessons ago, within several minutes, I could.

I enjoy similarly practical descriptions of how to meditate, or engage in other practices that are generally considered "spiritual" (an increasingly meaningless word to me). Yet it's amazing how often writers or speakers on spirituality will never get down to the nitty-gritty sort of Thoreau'ian make a knot in the thread statement.

Or they hedge their instruction with all sorts of disclaimers. "Results may not be apparent in this lifetime." "It all depends on the guru's (or God's) grace." "Expecting to achieve something means you won't."

Every morning I meditate for about twenty minutes. I keep my meditation pretty darn simple. Few abstractions. As down to earth as possible.

Most of the day I'm doing things. So I like to start off my day with a contrast: doing as little as possible. Sitting still on my meditation cushion. Closing off my seeing and hearing with shut eyelids, a dark sleep mask, and noise-reducing headphones.

And then shutting down what usually goes on inside my head -- thoughts, emotions, and such -- by repeating a one-word mantra when my attention wanders into my usual sorts of doings.

I'm alive. I'm conscious. I exist.

Usually I'm performing actions in a lively fashion. There is a lot going on in my consciousness. I'm aware of many existing things. It's refreshing, and unfailingly intriguing, to see what happens when I come closer to life, consciousness, and existence absent much of my usual doing.

Which leaves, being.

Of course, I'm still doing something concrete. There's just considerably less doing than what occurs in the rest of my day, which is what I mean by "being."

I don't expect that anyone else would find my meditation practice as fulfilling as I do. There isn't any grand philosophical system connected with it. I can't claim that my meditation leads to any profound insights into the nature of the cosmos, or even me.

It's just real. I can describe what I do almost as clearly and distinctly as I could describe the six steps in a West Coast Swing sugar push.

And that makes it satisfying for me. I feel grounded in here-and-now truth, rather than fantasizing about flying off in a there-and-then flight to enlightenment.

Religious mindset supports skepticism about science

Over on my other blog, where I've been writing about global warming recently (here, here, and here), someone commented that he was surprised I'm so accepting of the scientific consensus on climate change when I'm so skeptical of religious claims.

Well, I was surprised that he was surprised. It makes sense to me to have lots of faith in the scientific method, and virtually no faith in religious dogma.

Skepticism is a virtue.

I have no problem with people being skeptical of a purported scientific fact -- such as that our planet is warming and humans are responsible for it -- if, and note the IF, solid demonstrable evidence is provided to support an alternative hypothesis.

This is how science works: truth is sought for through open examination of evidence along with vigorous debate concerning the meaning and validity of that data.

Eventually a general consensus emerges among scientists.

Because I'm not a scientist, my default attitude is that I trust the experts in a field. Similarly, I take our hybrid Toyotas to a dealer when they need servicing because the techs there know a whole lot more than I do about the cars.

Here's where I think skeptics about science go off track: they over-emphasize scientific individualism. This cartoon from xkcd.com nicely captures what I'm getting at.

There's a pop-up window that appears on the xkcd web site when you hover your mouse pointer over the cartoon. It says:

I mean, what's more likely -- that I have uncovered fundamental flaws in this field that no one in it has ever thought about, or that I need to read a little more? Hint: it's the one that involves less work.

Religions and spiritual/mystic paths often (if not usually) spring into being from the psyche of one person. Jesus. Buddha. Mohammed. Guru Nanak. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi.

No confirmations are required.

None of these guys had to submit their insights to a jury of their peers, such as scientists do when they publish in a peer-reviewed journal. There wasn't a systematic critical examination of the evidence supporting Christianity, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, or Transcendental Meditation after the founder claimed "this is the truth."

It seems to me that a similar uncritical attitude underlies most skepticism about global warming, as well as other areas where a scientific consensus exists: evolution, big bang cosmology, and such.

Obviously, just because someone challenges a prevailing scientific view, this doesn't mean they're correct. In fact, more than likely they're wrong, as the cartoon points out.

The scientific method isn't individualistic like the religious method is.

One person can found a religion or spiritual path. One person can't establish a scientific truth. A brilliant man or woman, such as Einstein, may come up with a theory or finding that ends up overturning a previous scientific consensus.

But this won't occur until a thorough "testing to destruction" has occurred via the scientific method.

For example, why were Einstein’s theories regarded as scientific, whilst a psychologist’s theories were regarded as pseudoscientific?

Popper postulated that science advances through a process of “conjecture and refutations;” that a theoretical scientist would develop a theory and an empirical scientist would attempt to test it to destruction. For this to happen, the theory had to be ‘falsifiable’.

If the theory could not be properly tested by science, then it could not be scientific.

For example, physics theory was open to empirical testing, and many scientists developed ways to empirically test relativity; therefore, it could be falsified and the scientific method applied.

Usually it takes a heck of a lot of work to get a significant new truth accepted into the knowledge base of modern science. It isn't going to happen by posting your personal ideas on a blog or web site and expecting that the experts in some scientific field are going to respond with a "Wow! We'd never thought of that!"

Almost certainly, they have.

So if you want to become acclaimed overnight, with countless (or at least a few) followers willing to accept your proclamations about reality unquestioningly, setting yourself up in the prophet, sage, or guru business is advisable.

One person's opinion about God or ultimate reality is pretty much as valid as anyone else's. But one person's opinion about global warming, evolution, or the big bang definitely isn't as valid as the current scientific consensus.

Not until it is put through the wringer of the scientific method and hung out to dry on the clothes line of peer-reviewed journals (note: this metaphor shows my age, since I remember when wringer washing machines were still used).

Thus I'll keep on being skeptical about religion and accepting of a scientific consensus until it is proven to be wrong.

Evolution shows the grandeur of life

This morning I finished Richard Dawkins "The Greatest Show on Earth," a fascinating book that demonstrates why evolution is almost certainly true and intelligent design /creationism is almost certainly false. (In science, there are no 100% certainties.)

I've been reading a few pages every day before I meditate. Now, I find more inspiration in science books than in spiritual books. Reality is uplifting.

Dawkins' final chapter was especially enjoyable. He goes through the last paragraph of Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" (first edition) line by line.

Thus, from the point of view of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone on cycling according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved.

Yes, there's a beauty to natural selection.

Which isn't something far or distant, but as near to us as our current experience. Dawkins says there are four "memories" that provide information on how to handle the present so as to survive into the future.

One is our DNA repository. This shows how our ancestors dealt with ancestral environments.

Another is our immune system. It is a database of past diseases and how to survive them (this is how immunizations work, by tricking the immune system into "thinking" that it has suffered a disease, thereby producing the proper antibodies).

Third is the memory that resides in our nervous system. At its simplest, Dawkins says, this works on a trial and error basis.

The nervous system has a rule that says, 'Any trial action that is followed by reward should be repeated. Any trial action that is followed by nothing, or worse, followed by punishment, for example pain, should not be repeated.'

This is how we evolve during the single life we're living here on Earth: by living and learning. I performed a lot of religious'y actions when I was an active member of an India-based spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

I experienced certain results from those actions: meditating, vegetarianism, giving up alcohol and drugs, providing service to the guru, and such. 

I've shared what I learned on this blog and in books that I've written. All that has become part of a fourth memory, culture.

The database in my brain contains more than just a record of the happenings and sensations of my personal life -- although that was the limit when brains originally evolved. Your brain includes collective memories inherited non-genetically from past generations, handed down by word of mouth, or in books, or, nowadays, on the internet. The world in which you and I live is richer by far because of those who went before us and inscribed their impacts on the database of human culture.

We're all connected. Not only with other humans, but with animals, plants, insects, bacteria, everything alive.

For me, this is the grandest grandeur of evolution: realizing, as Dawkins writes, that "today we are pretty certain that all living creatures on this planet are descended from a single ancestor."

Why? Because the genetic code is universal, "all but identical across animals, plants, fungi, bacteria, archaea and viruses." So when Darwin said into a few forms or into one, science now knows that one is most likely.

Meaning, there hasn't been two or more independent origins of life. Just one. But we don't know how that living entity arose.

Dawkins reviews various non-theological theories concerning the origin of life. He ends up arguing that given the seeming rareness of life in our corner of the universe (no alien beings have made an appearance so far), the probability of life arising on a planet is vanishingly small.

The theory that we seek, of the origin of life on this planet, should therefore positively not be a plausible theory! If it were, life should be common in the galaxy. Maybe it is common, in which case a plausible theory is what we want. But we have no evidence that life exists outside this planet, and at very least we are entitled to be satisfied with an implausible theory.

Nice.

I like this reasoning. It can be applied to other Big Questions also. How did the universe come into being? What is the essence of consciousness? From where did the laws of nature arise?

We look for explanations that are plausible to our human cognition. Yet when we venture into the deepest mysteries, is it plausible to expect that their secrets will seem plausible?

I'm probably going beyond what Dawkins meant. But that's OK. Meanings evolve. I just found the notion that our notions can't encompass ultimate truths of the cosmos to be strangely comforting.

For most of my life I've had a strong desire to know what lies at the heart of reality. Science is one way of trying to fulfill this desire. Mysticism and meditation are other ways.

Now I question, as Dawkins implied in the quotation above, whether ultimate questions ever can be answered. Increasingly it seems OK to me that they can't be.

Regardless, evolution is something that we can understand, albeit imperfectly (as is the case with all of our understandings).

The Darwinian world-view does not denigrate the higher human faculties, does not 'reduce' them to a plane of indignity. It doesn't even claim to explain them at the sort of level that will seem particularly satisfying, in the way that, say, the Darwinian explanation of a snake-mimicking caterpillar is satisfying.

It does, however, claim to have wiped out the impenetrable -- not even worth trying to penetrate -- mystery that must have dogged all pre-Darwinian efforts to understand life.

...When you think about it, our own existence, together with its post-Darwinian explicability, is a candidate for the most astonishing fact that any of us are called upon to contemplate.

I've got a death wish: not to die

Death isn't to die for. At least, that's how my churchless psyche looks at mortality. I like being alive. Being dead -- that has a disturbing ring of nothingness to it.

If it was up to me, I'd pass on the whole dying thing. And who wouldn't? Almost no one, aside from those who find life so painful, not existing seems preferable.

This is a big reason why religions, philosophies, and belief systems that promise continued life after death are so popular. The Bible says that Jesus removed the sting of death.

Hey, if there was convincing proof of this, I'd sign up for Christianity in a heartbeat. Or convert to any other faith that offered me eternal (or at least really lengthy) life.

A good life, of course. No hell. Or Fox News.

Dinesh D'Souza has written a book that purports to prove that the afterlife is real. "Life After Death: The Evidence" is an appealing title. Only problem is, D'Souza doesn't supply what he promises -- evidence.

I base this statement not on having read the book, but on some articles that summarize D'Souza's arguments. I read "Heaven Can Wait" in Newsweek, and "The Dead Are Dead" on the Pharyngula blog.

If I simply went by the Amazon product description, I'd probably have ordered a copy by now.

Unlike many books about the afterlife, Life after Death makes no appeal to religious faith, divine revelation, or sacred texts. Drawing on some of the most powerful theories and trends in physics, evolutionary biology, science, philosophy, and psychology, D Souza shows why the atheist critique of immortality is irrational and draws the striking conclusion that it is reasonable to believe in life after death.

That's false advertising. D'Souza is a fervent Christian. His web site says that he is a co-founder of the Y God Institute, "Fresh Arguments, Science, History and Reason to Support Christianity."

So he definitely does make an appeal to religious faith and sacred texts. In an interview, D'Souza makes the ridiculous claim that we should believe in the afterlife because Christian dogma says that Jesus was resurrected. Huh?

If the resurrection stands up to historical scrutiny, if it is an historical event by the standards of historical verification, then the Christian view of the afterlife rises above the pack. It is the one to take seriously.

Well, those are two big "if's."

If I had a hundred million dollars, I'd be sitting on the patio of my beachfront Maui mansion right now, enjoying the tropical warmth rather than a freaking cold day in Oregon.

If''s are easy to conjure up. I'm interested in afterlife evidence that has some substance to it.

The Newsweek piece reviews D'Souza's flimsy arguments (human goodness, quantum physics, multiverse notion in cosmology -- a bunch of if's) and ends with mention of what could be a genuinely solid reason to believe in the survival of consciousness after death.

The AWARE project, a scientifically rigorous study of near-death experiences in hospitals around the world. Some results are expected next year. (But believers in the afterlife are already offering up reasons why AWARE won't come up with evidence of non-bodily consciousness.)

Not surprisingly, it doesn't sound like D'Souza talks at all about the many anecdotal stories in Eastern faiths -- Buddhism, Hinduism, and such -- about mystic transport out of the body and into higher realms of reality.

I'm not saying that these are any more credible than the Christian tale of Jesus' resurrection. But they are a lot more recent, so have a higher potential of being verified in some fashion (or, not).

I've been there and done that -- embracing a belief in soul travel and survival of personal consciousness after death. I hope it's true. I also hope that the Maui mansion pops into my life. I've got lots of hopes.

Having practiced various meditation disciplines for about forty years, my current approach is this: do nothing and see what happens.

Meaning, make nothing my meditative mantra. And assume that nothing needs to be done to find out what happens after death. What will be, will be. And what won't, won't.

I'm open to other possibilities.

That's why I enjoy churchlessness, not embracing any particular faith. I'll roll in whatever direction the evidence (or lack thereof) for life after death takes me.

Cioran's "A Short History of Decay" -- existentially bracing

Some books are like last night's 20 degree dog walk, much of it facing into a brisk wind. I hated it and I loved it. My overriding perception during the two miles was: This is marvelously real. And fucking cold!

E.M. Cioran's "A Short History of Decay" struck me the same way -- like an icy splash of reality. A book that demolishes so thoroughly, it leaves you on firm ground. 

After coming across quotations from it, and being intrigued, I found a used copy of the first (1975) English translation online. Cioran, a Romanian philosopher, wrote "A Short History of Decay" in French. It was published in 1949.

The back flap captures my reaction to the book perfectly.

"I regarded A Short History of Decay," the author recently wrote, "as an experiment in annihilation; or perhaps more precisely, a negative approach to life. But to my surprise, the great majority of its readers apparently found it invigorating. This is what me aware of the vital quality of Destruction."

Yes, this is a bleak book. Yet also a strangely uplifting one. Many passages resonated with my churchlessness.

Cioran's style has been called aphoristic. So it's possible to get a good sense of "A Short History of Decay" from this selection of passages that made me grab my yellow highlighter after being shocked by the author's jolt of existentiality.

Religious believers' inferences about God are egocentric

Wow, what a non-surprise! Religious believers consider that God favors whatever moral positions they do. Egocentricity rules.

Such is the finding of research conducted at the University of Chicago. 

The researchers noted that people often set their moral compasses according to what they presume to be God’s standards. “The central feature of a compass, however, is that it points north no matter what direction a person is facing,” they conclude. “This research suggests that, unlike an actual compass, inferences about God’s beliefs may instead point people further in whatever direction they are already facing.”

Well, this seems obvious.

It's difficult to see how the situation could be otherwise given that (1) there is no demonstrable evidence that God exists, and (2) supposedly holy books and people neither agree about what God favors, nor provide guidance on many contemporary ethical issues.

Even if someone is a devout fundamentalist Christian, believing the Bible is the inerrant word of God, how do they decide whether embryonic stem cell research gets a "good" or "bad" from the Big Man Upstairs?

Solution: God is made in our own moral image.

God may have created man in his image, but it seems we return the favour. Believers subconsciously endow God with their own beliefs on controversial issues.

"Intuiting God's beliefs on important issues may not produce an independent guide, but may instead serve as an echo chamber to validate and justify one's own beliefs," writes a team led by Nicholas Epley of the University of Chicago in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Yesterday our local newspaper reported that Oleksandr and Lyudmila Kozlov were found guilty of abusing three of their children with wires, cords, belts, and sticks, leaving bruises that lasted up to a week.

The story shows how religious zealots (the Kozlovs go to an evangelical Baptist church) can justify their own criminality by believing it is what God wants.

The couple relied on their faith throughout the four-day trial and represented themselves, citing God as their attorney.

...Lyudmila Kozlova read a Bible as Deputy District Attorney Nicole Theobald delivered the prosecution's closing argument Friday evening and asked the jury to find the defendants guilty on all counts.

...In their closing arguments, the Kozlovs cited their religion as the reason for their actions. They each took the stand to testify in their own defense.

...They read several Bible verses to the jury, and Kozlova compared their situation to that of Daniel in the Bible.

"He wasn't afraid of the king's decree" to worship only the king and not God, earning persecution and risking death, Kozlova said.

"Our law is the Bible which is above all law," she said. The Kozlovs punished their children according Scripture, they said.

"If we were not fulfilling this, we would have answered before God," Kozlova said.

Religious bullshit like this -- justifying child abuse in the name of God -- is another reason why New Age beliefs are much preferred to fundamentalism, even if both lack supportive evidence.

I don't recall ever hearing a believer in astrology say, "My chart said that I had to whip my child with a belt."

But when my wife was a psychotherapist in private practice, she'd regularly encounter Christian families where spousal and child abuse was considered to be divinely sanctioned since the husband was third in the line of command over his family after God and Jesus.

As the research shows, religion makes enlarged human egos even bigger. People go from saying "I believe X" to "God believes X and so do I."

Problem is, the God speaking to them is them.

New Age beliefs aren't as bad as fundamentalism

I like Roger Ebert's take on religion. He has a nuanced, properly skeptical attitude toward God and matters metaphysical.

During in all the endless discussions on several threads of this blog about evolution, intelligent design, God and the afterworld, now numbering altogether around 3,500 comments, I have never said, although readers have freely informed me I am an atheist, an agnostic, or at the very least a secular humanist--which I am. If I were to say I don't believe God exists, that wouldn't mean I believe God doesn't exist. Nor does it mean I don't know, which implies that I could know.

Let me rule out at once any God who has personally spoken to anyone or issued instructions to men. That some men believe they have been spoken to by God, I am certain. I do not believe Moses came down from the mountain with any tablets he did not go up with. I believe mankind in general evidently has a need to believe in higher powers and an existence not limited to the physical duration of the body. But these needs are hopes, and believing them doesn't make them true. I believe mankind feels a need to gather in churches, whether physical or social.

But when I read Ebert's recent post that essentially equates New Age beliefs and fundamentalist creationism, I can't quite agree with him.

New Age beliefs are the Creationism of the Progressives. I move in circles where most people would find it absurd to believe that humans didn't evolve from prehistoric ancestors, yet many of these same people quite happily believe in astrology, psychics, reincarnation, the Tarot deck, the i Ching, and sooth-saying. Palmistry and phrenology have pretty much blown over.

If you were attending a dinner party of community leaders in Dallas, Atlanta, Omaha or Colorado Springs and the conversation turned to religion, a chill might fall on the room if you confessed yourself an atheist. Yet at a dinner party of the nicest and brightest in New York, Chicago, San Francisco and (especially) Los Angeles, if the hostess began to confide about past lives, her Sign and yours, and her healing crystals, it might not go over so well if you confessed you thought she was full of it.

Well, he's right about the last part.

I've ruffled some New Age feathers myself when someone notices my barely concealed smirk as he or she extols the virtues of an unproven homeopathic nostrum or makes some other claim that violates both common sense and current scientific understanding.

So I entirely concur with Ebert that non-religious claims about supernatural phenomena should be looked upon with the same skeptical eye as fundamentalist dogma.

But here's the thing:

There never has been a New Age holy war. I've never met a believer in astrology, reincarnation, channeling, and such who was out to convert others. The New Age types I know are much more open, non-dogmatic, and flexible than religious true believers.

Plus, almost everybody has some irrational (or non-rational) views of the world. My mother was highly intellectual. Yet when she talked about something she hoped would happen, often she'd add "knock on wood."

And then look around for some wood to rap her knuckles on. As a kid, I never thought much about this. It seemed natural and harmless enough. Which, it was.

For a long time I avoided walking under ladders -- another childhood superstition that I was exposed to. Even now I pause for a split second before doing this, a holdover behavior from my youth.

It doesn't bother me if someone believes in "weird" stuff. If you could see what goes on inside my head on any given day, there's no doubt that you'd say about much of it, "Wow. That's really weird."

To me, of course, what transpires in my psyche is normal. Because my thoughts, emotions, and whatnot are part of me, just as yours are part of you. Familiarity breeds non-weirdness.

Roger Ebert doesn't want a New Age believer or a creationist to be President.

My only purpose today is to state early and often that if a Presidential candidate believes early humans used saddles to ride on the backs of dinosaurs, as they are depicted at the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky, that candidate should not be elected President.

And if a candidate counts among close friends and advisors anyone in communication with the spirit world, that candidate should not be elected President.

And if a candidate accounts for the fact that humanoid and dinosaur bones are never found at the same level in the fossil record by evoking the action of sediment after the Great Flood, that candidate should not be President.

And if a candidate has a spirit guide, consults his or her Chart and takes more than a passing amusement in the horoscope, that candidate should not be elected President.

Personally, I'd be considerably happier with a candidate holding the second and fourth paragraph views, rather than the first and third.

Ebert correctly calls upon the mass media to "fact check" a politician's unfounded metaphysical beliefs just as strongly as his or her worldly statements.

But there's a difference between believing something that is opposed to scientific knowledge, and believing something that is outside the bounds of what is known to science.

Creationism is wrong, because evolution is correct. However, communicating with spirits is unproven, not wrong, because science hasn't shown that human consciousness doesn't continue to exist after a person dies.

I'd be more attracted to a Presidential candidate who has a bit of a wild and crazy side, than someone thoroughly rational, hard-headed, and tightly-controlled.

It's human to be weird. We've just got to keep it within bounds. And not demand that others share our weirdness.

Religion isn't horrible, just horribly misguided

While on a dog walk yesterday, I ran into a neighbor who I don't talk to very often. He started off our conversation in an appealing fashion:

"I read your blog regularly." Nice! But then he said, "Being a confirmed atheist, it's a bit too kind to religion for me. I prefer PZ Myers' blog."

Well, I told him that I also enjoy Pharyngula. Every day I take a look at Myers' posts that attack religion and support science. Hopefully without sounding too defensive, I did some defending of my own attitude toward spirituality.

"Yes, I'm not as rabid toward religion as Myers is. Partly that's because I used to be a true believer, and now I'm not, so I can understand the mindset of religious people. I mean, it's tough for me to say that blind faith is utterly ridiculous when I can remember how easily I embraced it."

I told my neighbor that when I got married to my second wife, Laurel, she would regularly ask me how I could believe such-and-such (that my guru was God in human form, for example).

I didn't have an answer for her that made much sense.

Yet that didn't affect my commitment to the Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings. I wasn't ready to release my attachment to the organization, and no amount of outside questioning was going to penetrate the illusory answers I'd embraced inside my head.

So I told my neighbor this was one reason I don't write as aggressively about the ridiculousness of religion as PZ Myers does.

People who are beginning to question their religious beliefs usually are turned off (or at least unaffected) by strong attacks on their faith. Similarly, an alcoholic isn't going to turn sober simply by someone screaming at him, "Drinking is ruining your life!"

My neighbor and I did agree on this: There is plenty of mystery left in the cosmos, notwithstanding the advances of science.

Recognizing how little we know about the essence of life, consciousness, and existence, a primal sense of awe is an authentic "spiritual" awareness (I don't like that word -- spiritual -- very much any more, but it's hard to come up with a good substitute).

Awe, of course, doesn't require religion.

As I told my neighbor, it only takes looking up at the star-filled sky on a cold, clear night to feel how right the world is, no matter how wrong it seems, so often.

I understand why passionate atheists and agnostics are so anti-religion. Reality is much better than make-believe, which is what religions offer.

The neighbor and I agreed that "whatever turns you on" is a fine guide to getting along. If someone is happier by believing he or she has been saved through the grace of God, Jesus, or a guru, that's fine.

However, there shouldn't be any attempt to coerce other people to share that blind faith. And "I feel," "I believe," "I hope," and similar expressions of uncertainty should be used when talking about a religion's teachings rather than "I know."

That's what makes religiosity so misguided: the unfounded assumption that an ultimate truth about reality has been revealed to the true believer. No, it hasn't. Without evidence all we can say is "no one knows."

You. Me. Scientists. Priests. Gurus. Saints. Sages. Everyone is in the dark about the answers to the Big Questions of the Cosmos.

Of course, you're free to disagree. Just don't ask me to agree with you without supplying some darn good reasons.