Church of the Churchless

Universe may not be eternal, but existence is

Believers in God who follow modern science will be heartened by a recent article in New Scientist, "Why physicists can't avoid a creation event." 

While many of us may be OK with the idea of the big bang simply starting everything, physicists, including Hawking, tend to shy away from cosmic genesis. "A point of creation would be a place where science broke down. One would have to appeal to religion and the hand of God," Hawking told the meeting, at the University of Cambridge, in a pre-recorded speech.

For a while it looked like it might be possible to dodge this problem, by relying on models such as an eternally inflating or cyclic universe, both of which seemed to continue infinitely in the past as well as the future. Perhaps surprisingly, these were also both compatible with the big bang, the idea that the universe most likely burst forth from an extremely dense, hot state about 13.7 billion years ago.

However, as cosmologist Alexander Vilenkin of Tufts University in Boston explained last week, that hope has been gradually fading and may now be dead. He showed that all these theories still demand a beginning.

To me, though, I don't see why a beginning to the universe implies anything about the "hand of God" being the cause of creation.

If we didn't know that our galaxy is part of the vastly larger universe, it'd be easy to think that the formation of our solar system can be traced back to the mysterious formation of the Milky Way Galaxy, before which time and space supposedly couldn't exist.

Several decades into the twentieth century, there wasn't any firm evidence of other galaxies. Now, we know there are at least a hundred billion galaxies. So religious believers and unbelievers alike should be extremely cautious about assuming that what we now know about reality is anywhere close to the ultimate truth.

The big bang banged. Our universe came into being. How? From where? Why? When? Nobody knows. It's a mystery.

According to the article, some theories of modern physicists -- eternal inflation, cyclic universe, static cosmic egg -- seem to be on the ropes, inconsistent with mathematical models. What's surprising about that? What I find surprising is that we humans have been able to make as much progress as we have toward understanding the origin of the universe, and how it has evolved during its post-big bang history of 14 billion years.

Sure, us Homo sapiens are the most intelligent great apes.

We've come a long way over the past few million years, far surpassing what other primates are able to achieve, knowledge-wise. Yet it's important to keep in mind that in comparison with cosmic time, monkeys and humans shared a common ancestor just a blink of an eye ago.

I doubt we'll ever be able to comprehend what the cosmos as a whole is like, which probably includes much more than just the universe in which we find ourselves. I doubt even more that we'll ever be able to know, really know, how the origin of everything in existence came to be. 

When I say "we," I mean humans. Almost certainly, our species will die out one day. Perhaps more advanced earthly species will evolve capabilities of consciousness which will enable them to grok stuff we're utterly incapable of understanding. 

Let's suppose some conscious being, somewhere, some time, somehow, grasps (or is) the ultimate truth of the cosmos. This being knows. It groks. It's so attuned to the Absolute Truth of Existence there's not even a Planck length of distance between the being and that truth. This being does its best to communicate what it knows to us humans. And I wonder...

Would we have any chance of understanding? Of knowing what that being knows? Of fitting our repository of limited human truths into whatever lies at the heart of the entire cosmos, our unimaginably vast universe plus all that lies beyond what we know now?

I doubt that we could. I doubt that our great ape consciousness, no matter how evolved it is compared to our primate cousins, would be able to take in the Absolute Truth of Existence and make much sense of it. 

Reminds me of Douglas Adam's Total Perspective Vortex.

The Total Perspective Vortex derives its picture of the whole Universe on the principle of extrapolated matter analyses.

To explain — since every piece of matter in the Universe is in some way affected by every other piece of matter in the Universe, it is in theory possible to extrapolate the whole of creation — every sun, every planet, their orbits, their composition and their economic and social history from, say, one small piece of fairy cake.

The man who invented the Total Perspective Vortex did so basically in order to annoy his wife.
Trin Tragula — for that was his name — was a dreamer, a thinker, a speculative philosopher or, as his wife would have it, an idiot.

And she would nag him incessantly about the utterly inordinate amount of time he spent staring out into space, or mulling over the mechanics of safety pins, or doing spectrographic analyses of pieces of fairy cake.

"Have some sense of proportion!" she would say, sometimes as often as thirty-eight times in a single day.

And so he built the Total Perspective Vortex — just to show her.

And into one end he plugged the whole of reality as extrapolated from a piece of fairy cake, and into the other end he plugged his wife: so that when he turned it on she saw in one instant the whole infinity of creation and herself in relation to it.

To Trin Tragula's horror, the shock completely annihilated her brain; but to his satisfaction he realized that he had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion. 

Exactly.

I'd like to know what the cosmos is all about. But not at the cost of having my brain annihilated. I don't want to end up in a mental hospital muttering to anyone who'll listen, "The universe is... is... is..." Heck, that's akin to what I was up to back in the sixties. Been there, done that.

So I'm pretty much content to accept that I'll never know how or why our universe was created in the big bang. Nor will scientists, at least not in the foreseeable future. I can picture the big bang banging, yet what it banged from or what it is banging into... that's beyond my mind's pay grade.

Back when I wrote "Existence exists. Amazing!" I was more open to the possibility that somehow human consciousness could be the missing piece that completes the jigsaw puzzle of reality. Well, it's still a possibility. 

Now I enjoy contemplating the beauty of boundless existence without feeling that I'll ever understand it. Something always has been, even if the universe hasn't. Wow. Beautiful. 

There's no free will, so you're unable to believe me

I gave it my best try last night -- arguing that we humans don't have free will, though it seems ever so obvious that we do. (Of course, it also seems obvious that the sun goes around the Earth, which demolishes the "obviousness" argument for anything.)

My wife and I belong to a three-couple book/article discussion group. Yesterday the subject was the justice system. When it came time for me to share my thoughts, I started off by quoting from Jerry Coyne's column in USA Today, "Why you don't really have free will."

The issue of whether we have of free will is not an arcane academic debate about philosophy, but a critical question whose answer affects us in many ways: how we assign moral responsibility, how we punish criminals, how we feel about our religion, and, most important, how we see ourselves — as autonomous or automatons.

But before I explain this, let me define what I mean by "free will." I mean it simply as the way most people think of it: When faced with two or more alternatives, it's your ability to freely and consciously choose one, either on the spot or after some deliberation.

A practical test of free will would be this: If you were put in the same position twice — if the tape of your life could be rewound to the exact moment when you made a decision, with every circumstance leading up to that moment the same and all the molecules in the universe aligned in the same way — you could have chosen differently.

Well, it was a good choice to lead off my part of the discussion in this fashion. Because it stimulated some passionate exchanges between me and several free-will believers. 

I said that if the goals of the U.S. justice system basically are deterrence, punishment, rehabilitation, and restitution, one of these -- punishment -- should be taken off the table, since people don't have free will. Punishment (retribution) doesn't make sense if someone wasn't able to freely choose between committing a crime or not committing a crime.

Deter further crimes by putting them in jail, and serving as a warning to other potential criminals. Rehabilitate them through education, counseling, training, and such while in prison. Force them via restitution to pay back people they've harmed.

But don't believe that someone deserves to be punished out of a sense that he or she freely willed to commit a crime.

As Coyne implied above, this belief requires a supernatural, immaterial, non-physical source of our actions, a soul or free-floating consciousness unaffected by genetics, prior experiences, environmental factors, memories, unconscious influences, hormones, and so on.

At every moment, I argued, all we know is that what happened, did.

A belief in free will assumes that something other than what did happen, could have. That's an interesting philosophical notion which has inspired lots of fictional works. What if Hitler won the Second World War? What if John Kennedy hadn't been assassinated?

However, we never see those "what if's" in reality. There's only one path through time and space that we follow. Coyne says:

Now there's no way to rewind the tape of our lives to see if we can really make different choices in completely identical circumstances. But two lines of evidence suggest that such free will is an illusion.

The first is simple: we are biological creatures, collections of molecules that must obey the laws of physics. All the success of science rests on the regularity of those laws, which determine the behavior of every molecule in the universe. Those molecules, of course, also make up your brain — the organ that does the "choosing."

And the neurons and molecules in your brain are the product of both your genes and your environment, an environment including the other people we deal with. Memories, for example, are nothing more than structural and chemical changes in your brain cells. Everything that you think, say, or do, must come down to molecules and physics.

True "free will," then, would require us to somehow step outside of our brain's structure and modify how it works. Science hasn't shown any way we can do this because "we" are simply constructs of our brain. We can't impose a nebulous "will" on the inputs to our brain that can affect its output of decisions and actions, any more than a programmed computer can somehow reach inside itself and change its program.

And that's what neurobiology is telling us: Our brains are simply meat computers that, like real computers, are programmed by our genes and experiences to convert an array of inputs into a predetermined output. 

That word, "predetermined," came up often last night. Some of my fellow discussants were strongly opposed to the notion that everything we do, think, and feel was determined at the moment at the big bang, with events simply unfolding according to the laws of physics.

I understand. Again, almost everybody feels like they have free will. I certainly do. But feeling so doesn't make it so. 

Also, I pointed out that the "pre" part of predetermined usually is an abstraction when we're talking about people. Practically speaking, it's more accurate to say that our behavior is determined. Meaning, the human brain is so complex, as are the environmental influences acting upon us, there's no way to precisely predict what someone is going to do.

It's like chaos theory.

Chaotic systems, such as a turbulent river, are deterministic yet unpredictable. Throw a cork into the water above some rapids. You won't be able to predict where it will end up, but it will end up somewhere after innumerable causes and effects act upon it. The cork doesn't use its free will to decide "I'm going to head this way rather that way for no reason, just because I want to."

Yet us humans imagine that we can, the imagining being determined, of course, just as everything else is. 

Last night I was told that without free will, there can't be any morality. I don't get this argument. Other primates act in ways we'd call "moral." Apes demonstrate empathy, concern, sharing. Why is free will required for getting along with our fellow humans?

We respond to other people; we communicate with other people; we learn about their needs, and tell them our own; we do our best to act kindly, compassionately, honestly, generously. Why? Because we're drawn to. This is our nature. We aren't isolated individuals. We're connected with, and influenced by, everything and everyone we come in contact with.

To me, a belief in free will is horribly confining. It implies that I'm a tiny island rather than a vast continent, a free-standing part rather than an integrated whole, a fallen leaf rather than living foliage on the branches of a tree that, ultimately, is the entire cosmos.

Actions are determined. So justice should be determinate.

Within reasonable guidelines, judges should be able to determine sentences which fit with determining factors of the criminal and the crime. Since there's no such thing as a Free Will Fairy which floats above people's heads and makes decisions out of the blue, completely independent of brain functioning, heredity, environmental influences, or whatever, condemning a troubled 14 year old to a life sentence without parole after he shot his grandfather is absurd. 

When we give up belief in free will, genuine morality is possible. Otherwise we're trapped in cruel Old Testament "eye for an eye" vengeance, assuming that we can be as free to punish as a criminal was free to commit a crime.

Jerry Coyne responds to comments on his free will essay here. Interesting give and take. I feel like I understand his position, which makes a lot of sense, but other people are so invested in their free will'ness, they misinterpret Coyne's arguments and fuzzy-up the whole notion of free will.

LIke Massimo Pigliucci does. 

Indeed, it is not surprising at all that we make all sorts of unconscious decisions before we become aware of them... Incidentally, I find it strange when some people argue that “we” are not making decisions if our subconscious is operating, since presumably we all agree that our subconscious is just as defining of “us” as conscious thinking is.

Hmmmm. So an intuition pops into awareness from my subconscious, and when I follow it, that's "free will"? Even though I wasn't free to will it? That's a strange view of free will, not at all as Coyne describes it. 

Bad news: I'm going to die. Good news: I'll be nirvana!

Oh, the unfairness of it all. I really like being alive. Yet one day I'll be dead. Gone. Nonexistent. Forever unconscious. 

Damn it, damn it, damn it! Who the hell arranged the cosmos in this fucked-up fashion?! I want to live forever, or at least much longer than I'm going to, so where's the Complaint Department, Customer Service, Warranty Fulfillment? I need to talk to who's in charge, because this death deal is totally screwed-up.

That's basically how I think in my least harmonious, accepting, live-and-let-die moments. Which are quite frequent, because such thoughts enter my mind a lot.

I've learned, though, to not obsess over them as much as I used to. Yes, I still have a fear of non-existence. But it's not as strong as when I wrote "Death and the primal fear of non-existence." And I'm better able to recognize the ridiculousness in my petulant complaining about death bringing an end to my enjoyment of life.

Where did I get the idea that I'm entitled to anything else but one life here on Earth? What justifies my feeling that something is wrong with the fact that when I die, that's finis for me? 

Religions, mainly. Early on as a child I was told about salvation, life after death, heaven, hell, and such. Later, when I delved into Eastern religions, I learned about reincarnation, bardos, cosmic consciousness, higher realms of reality.

Those notions created the schism in my psyche between what is and what should be as regards death. Unlike an animal, such as our twelve year old family dog, I don't simply live every day as pleasantly as possible until one day I'm no longer alive. 

I, along with the vast majority of people on this planet, have been infected with the worst sort of deceptive advertising.

All those religions and supernatural belief systems have marketed after-life products which don't exist. Yet the sales job has been so successful, most of us are desperate to possess something we've never seen, have no proof of, and will never be able to tell if anyone else has.

Life after death.

In my saner moments, I tell myself, "Who promised you a rose garden? (without thorns)" Life is what it is. Death is all around us. It's impossible to ignore. Yes, I fear death. Yes, I"ve bought into promises of everlasting life and thereby raised my hopes beyond what is reasonable to hope for. But I can still focus on what is real for me here and now, not on illusory dreams of eternal immortality.

Us secular churchless irreligious non-believers enjoy a gift that the faithful lack: a vivid appreciation of how priceless every passing moment is. Heaven isn't a place we aspire to; for us it's the present moment, or it's nothing at all.

There's nothing more amazing, more awesome, more mysterious, I'd even say more divine, than realizing, really realizing with every fiber of one's being, that this present moment will never come again.

And more: that eventually there will be a moment which brings an end to all moments for me, you, everybody. The moment of death.

This morning, during one of my pre-meditation reading moments, I came across these passages in Owen Flanagan's "The Boddhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized." It made me look upon death in a somewhat different manner. Hey, I may be dead, but at least I'll be in nirvana.

Selfless persons are something we naturalists can believe in. Selfless persons whose consciousness continue after they die are not something we can believe in. The problem is that orthodox Buddhism is all about rebirth, sometimes gazillions of rebirths. One rebirth is too many for the naturalist and more is not merrier.

There is some consolation perhaps in the fact that virtually every description of nirvana, the ideal state achieved only by truly enlightened souls, Buddhas -- when they depart the earth -- makes it seem identical to what we would think of as the state of "just being dead," a state totally unaccompanied by the presence of any deity or communing with some heavenly host of (other) saved souls.

Personal consciousness ends, and one's body and spirit are taken to -- absorbed into -- Nature's bosom. gone altogether is me... the state in which you have achieved peace and tranquility because your consciousness is gone, your career as a person is over, and you are as dead as the proverbial doornail.

Buddhism says I'm a soul-less Heraclitean river. Cool!

Everybody wants to be something. That's so much better than being nothing. (Assuming "nothing" is something you can be.)

It seems like I'm some sort of self. After all, I'm fond of saying stuff like "Personally, I think..." and "When I look within myself, I feel..." But Buddhism, along with neuroscience, see here and here, deny that us humans have/are some sort of unchanging permanent self. 

Or soul. Which religions consider to be the same thing as a self, just spiritual, immaterial, divine, eternal.

Whatever we call it, self or soul, the big question is whether our essence is like a diamond, indestructible and unchanging, or like a river, flowing and everaltering. The scientific evidence points riverward. 

As does mainstream Buddhism, according to Owen Flanagan in his fascinating book, "The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized," where he seeks to understand what Buddhism is like without all the weird supernatural stuff.

I should explain what a person^Buddha is and is not, and how a person^Buddha is possible given that there are no selves. Although Buddhists are said to deny that there are persons and selves or persons with selves, this is not really so. Or better, it is so, but the devil is in the details.

When properly interpreted, Buddhists believe that there are persons, and that talk of persons and selves is harmless so long as we recognize that person and self refer to something, a pattern that is conventionally useful but that does not name anything "ultimate" or "really real."

Some kinds of persons, eternal persons, and some kind of selves, indestructible transcendental egos or immortal souls, do not exist at all, but Heraclitean selves do exist. Heraclitean selves are like Heraclitean rivers where both subsist in a Heraclitean universe.

So everything is changing. Including me, you, beliefs, brains, selves, Mt. Everest, ants, galaxies, subatomic particles, who is ahead in the latest presidential poll. Heraclitus sure seems to have gotten that right.

If we hope to base our happiness, our well-being, our satisfaction, on something immutable, unchanging, and eternal -- that hope is going to be still unfulfilled on our death bed. Better to accept that we're all Heraclitean rivers in a Heraclitean universe. 

(Scholarly analysis follows)

Karmic causality -- believable and unbelievable

Karma... a word that both is eminently scientific, and also annoyingly religious. I've spent a lot of time exploring both meanings of karma. 

Ever since I was a kid I've enjoyed learning about science. In my childhood room I set up a card table that fit oh-so-perfectly inside a corner of my closet. I'd sit down at the table, slide the closet door shut, turn on a light that I'd strung over the clothes rod, and spend many happy hours performing experiments with science kits.

Then, as now, the essence of science for me was cause and effect. Do this, and observe that. (See my "Thanks for the chlorine gas, Mom" post.)

That's the believable side of karma: causes lead to effects which lead to more causes which lead... ad infinitum, back to the beginning of the universe. 

Karma, though, generally is viewed as having something particular to do with conscious beings. Usually billiard balls richocheting around a pool table aren't thought of as generating karma. But if a person risks her life to save a child about to step in front of a speeding truck, bystanders will say "that should get her some good karma."

Especially if they're Buddhist. 

Buddhism, like karma, comes in both scientific and religious guises. I'm enjoying Owen Flanagan's new book, "The Boddhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized," which aims to sort out the unbelievable supernatural aspect of Buddhism from the believable natural aspect.

This includes karma. Flanagan likes how the current Dalai Lama supports scientific inquiry and findings of modern science, albeit with some caveats which allow supernaturalism to remain part of his Buddhist teachings.

Flanagan says one form of karmic causality discussed by the Dalai Lama is eminently reasonable and scientific.

The idea can be understood straightforwardly as follows: once sentient beings exist they think, feel, and act in ways that have effects. These effects are of two kinds: personal -- both intrapersonal (on the person herself) and interpersonal (on those with whom the person interacts) -- and environmental, affecting the natural and built worlds. To these one should add social, economic, and political effects.

Karmic causation as depicted in this way is natural. It is not due to theistic intervention at the beginning of the process, say, in creating a Big Bang with a plan, nor is there intentional (intelligent) design along the way other than the effects of the sentient beings (human and nonhuman) who eventually emerged and are creating karmic effects = effects via their actions.

However, Buddhism, Hinduism, and other religious faiths which have karma as a central tenet don't only look upon karmic causality in this scientific fashion. If they did, karma would be an undeniable truth. Flanagan says that karmic causation then could just be called "sentient-being causation," a subtype of ordinary causation.

There's what he calls a less tame (meaning wilder, farther out, much more unbelievable) Buddhist interpretation of karma, though.

Karmic causation untame... names an ontologically unique kind of causation that accounts for how the psyches of future beings are determined by a set of causal processes that involve more than the environmental cum psycho-social-political-economic effects of previous occupants of the earth. 

What is meant by the idea of "the law of karma, by which an intentional act will reap certain fruits" [a Dalai Lama quote] is this: my consciousness does not die when my body does, it goes on and reaps in the next and possibly many (many) future lives what it sows in each antecedent life. 

The Dalai Lama, along with his Buddhist followers, admits there's no demonstrable scientific evidence of past lives. So the aforementioned caveat is brought in:

Science finds no evidence for rebirth, but it has not found its "nonexistence."

Well, science also hasn't found the nonexistence of the Tooth Fairy.

But once we get beyond a certain age, we realize that Mom and Dad are better explanations for why a quarter appears under our pillow after a tooth is put there than the Tooth Fairy. (Not sure what the going rate for a tooth is these days; back in olden times, when I was losing my teeth, I recall getting a quarter.)

So regular cause and effect, not involving karmic causality extending over past lives, now seems much more believable to me than Buddhism's karma untamed version. Religious believers, however, will keep on believing until the impetus for belief loses its energy. That's what happened to me, after I wrote a book which espoused the unbelievable aspect of karma.

Which is the essence of karma tame version. People do stuff; then they do different stuff, because causes keep happening, as do effects.

 

Puppetji on meaning of life

Via an email, someone just reminded me about a source of ageless wisdom that I'd tapped into some years ago, but had forgotten about: Puppetji.

His socksang on "Why Are We Here?" pretty much says it all. Certainly more entertainingly than my recent blog post about finding meaning in life. 

 

l can also recommend "What is Sacred?" as providing a meaningful answer to this oh-so-important question.

 

Finding meaning in the midst of life (not in God, not in "I")

What gives life meaning? Why do we get out of bed in the morning rather than pulling the covers over our head and curling up in existential despair? Where are we to look for purposes, goals, things to do?

God or the supernatural is one answer. Deeply religious people believe that meaning flows down from a divine above. The purpose of life isn't made; it is discovered -- via a holy book, holy person, holy revelation. 

The source doesn't have to be a personal higher power.

In Eastern religions, karma is considered to be the guiding force which leads us to do stuff: marry this person, choose this job, live in this place. As with God-believers, meaning is manufactured by a transcendent entity and delivered into our psyches, where we mistakenly believe our free will is in control.

Alternatively, thoroughly secular people view meaning as being in our hands. Or rather, minds. The meaning of life isn't given; it is created. What's right or wrong, good or bad, desirable or undesirable is up to each of us to decide.

Without an "I," meaning is absent. Only when the thought "I really enjoy writing blog posts" arises is meaning formed within the otherwise meaningless world that surrounds me.

Today, while exercising, I finished listening to a Philosophy Talk podcast of "Nihilism and Meaning." The guest philosopher was Hubert Dreyfus, author of "All Things Shining," a book I blogged about last year most positively.

So while some people surely are drifting aimlessly in a boundless ocean of godless choices, many others believe that they're being propelled along a straight and narrow sea lane with the Supreme Being guiding their course.

I'm familiar with both nautical analogies, which were very real to me when I held fast to them. In college I was an enthusiastic existentialist, devouring Sartre, Camus, and all that existence precedes essence stuff; meaning was to be made by me. Then I embraced an Indian guru; I had faith that my karma and the Master's grace jointly determined everything that happened to me.

Now, I resonate with how "All Things Shining" views a vibrant way of living. After discounting excessive self-confidence as a foundation for one's existence, the authors say:

In contrast with this, a genuine confidence of the sort that seems to have directed Mr. Autrey's actions is driven not by some internal set of thoughts or desires, nor by a calculated set of plans or principles.

Indeed, as in the case of Mr. Autrey, it is experienced as confidence drawn forth by something outside of oneself. It is grounded in the way things actually are, not in the confident person's perhaps self-serving characterization of them. The genuinely confident agent does not manufacture confidence, but receives it from the circumstances.

Listening to Dreyfus discuss his soon-to-be-published book (the podcast dates from January 2010) reminded me of how much sense it makes to follow a middle way between "my fate is in God's hands" and "I'm in total charge of my life."

Dreyfus talked about how the ancient Greeks believed that people could be taken over by a godly inspiration. For example, if Eros turns his attention to you, you're going to fall in love. For sure. Resistance is futile. Might as well embrace Eros and fall freely.

Today, us churchless folk believe as little in the Greek gods as we believe in the God of monotheistic Christianity, Judaism, or Islam. Yet Dreyfus still sees a place for a sort of godliness in the meaning of our lives. The "gods" are naturalistic circumstances, though, not supernatural divinities.

Meaning is made continuously through our experiencing of what is happening all around us. As we respond to those circumstances, opening ourselves up to the realities of the present moment, embracing the desires, urges, wants, intentions, and passions bubbling up into our consciousness, we find that meaning is neither given to us, nor produced by us. 

It arises naturally when we simply attend to where we are, what is happening, how we feel. Dreyfus and his co-author wrote about a heroic action:

Greatness of this sort is nearly mystical to apprehend. It is characterized by the kind of sustained responsiveness to the situation that the Subway Hero embodied when he leapt onto the tracks. It is unflinching, unhesitating, and unwavering, and it has these certain qualities precisely because the activity flows not from the agent but through him.

(Someone has put a recording of the "Nihilism and Meaning" podcast onto You Tube in three pieces, here, here, and here. It's an interesting discussion. I'll embed the videos; audios, actually.)

 

 

 

Are all religions essentially the same?

I used to believe that underneath all the obvious differences between religions, there was a difficult-to-discern common core. Mysticism was what united Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Sikhism, and other faiths.

God is One. Humans have, or rather are, a soul. It is possible for this soul-drop to merge into the One god-ocean.

There. Three simple sentences. Forget all the complex divisive theologies. That's the oft-forgotten genuine essence of every religion: realizing that our true Self is, basically, the same as God. 

It was a nice belief. Warm and fuzzy.

The Indian spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, that I was an active member of for over thirty years promulgated this creed in books that purported to show how Christianity, Judaism, Islam, and Sikhism really were the same once the common mystical essence of each religion was recognized.

And who was the recognizer of this amazing truth? As the old saying goes, you only get three guesses, and the first two don't count. 

Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

That common mystical essence just happened to be exactly what the RSSB gurus and high-ranking devotees taught. If you were a Christian and thought you knew what Christianity is all about, you were mistaken. You needed to buy the RSSB books which explained what Jesus really meant in the New Testament.

Ditto for Judaism, Islam, and Sikhism. To my knowledge Radha Soami Satsang Beas never has gotten around to showing how Buddhism and Taoism are akin to the RSSB teachings, probably because this would be such a stretch.

In a fascinating piece, "Preventing holy wars, by consensus," David Chapman convincingly argues that this all religions are one notion is a load of crap. He focuses on how Consensus Buddhism gets this wrong, but his analysis pertains equally to anyone, including RSSB, who claims to know the common essence of all religions.

If all religions are essentially the same, what is it that is the same about them?

This is a question advocates of the “brotherhood of all religions” would rather skate over. When pressed, they usually produce one of two answers:

• All religions say everyone should be nice to everyone else.
• The essence of all religions is the mystical insight that your True Self is the same as God.

Both of these are factually false.

...Almost no one agrees that your True Self is God

The only major religion that says your True Self is God is Hinduism—and only some Hindu sects.

Nevertheless, the idea that this is the essence of all religions—which are therefore all really the same—is increasingly popular in the West. This is called “Perennialism” by religious scholars.

Perennialism is rejected by most prominent spokespeople for most religions. Perennialists need to argue that all these authorities are deluded about the nature of their own religions. A Perennialist knows The Truth about Islam, that it is really one path among many to becoming God. Most imams consider that the worst idea imaginable, but they don’t really know anything about Islam. Since the essence of Islam is the mystical experience of becoming God, which the imams have lost, they are idiots and should be ignored.

...The third problem with “all religions are essentially the same” is that it has been, from its invention, a tool for totalitarian domination. Whoever gets to say what the “essence” is holds all religious power.

This has been the strategy of American Consensus Buddhism: to define all alternatives out of existence by insisting on sameness.

Read Chapman's entire essay. The comments on his piece also are interesting, including Chapman's responses to some criticisms.

I'm a big fan of his open-minded, intelligent take on both Buddhism and religiosity in general. Check out my previous Chapman-related blog posts here, here, here, and here.

Is my "Life is Fair" book really crap?

A few days ago I got an email from someone who pointed out that, in a recent blog post comment, I'd said: "Karma, reincarnation, rebirth -- no, not solid at all, as evidence is lacking for these ideas."

My correspondent thought that a retraction of sorts was in order, given that in 1998 I'd written a book for an Indian spiritual organization, Radha Soami Satsang Beas, called Life is Fair. The book is a karmic justification for vegetarianism (complete with cartoons!).

I replied to the emailer by saying that, hey, minds change. Today, I don't look upon karma and reincarnation as I did thirteen years ago. 

A reply to my reply then hit my inbox:

Perhaps you might consider publicizing what may - now - be your "retraction" (so to speak) of your previous "views" - as the crap which I saw them to be when I looked at your book years ago.

That struck me as a reasonable request. At first. Then I did some additional thinking about when it makes sense to publicly retract previous views that currently seem like "crap" to both me and other people.

I talked about this question in regards to Life is Fair in a 2009 blog post: "Shocked at my own beliefs, should I disown me?" Conclusion: no.

Back in the late 90's I thought differently. In the future, who knows?

The only thing I can be certain about is that from this moment until the day I die, I'm not going to be absolutely certain about anything. Probably, I should add, to be consistent.

So after a few days of pondering my emotional reaction to re-reading what I wrote a dozen or so years ago, I've concluded that I was too hard on myself.

Yes, I was disturbed that my beliefs back then fell into a "religiously mentally ill" diagnosis. And when I read how the Brian of that time looked upon evolution, it bothered me that I was less scientific than I'd remembered myself being.

But here's the thing: I changed. And I'm still changing. As are we all.Thankfully.

Because change only stops when we're dead. Until then, living leads us in largely unpredictable ways. Our relationships with other people change; our bodies change; our lifestyles change; our physical activities change; our personalities change; our philosophical and religious beliefs change.

Which is unavoidable. And largely to the good, even though many of life's changes are objectionable to us.

So I don't feel like retracting what I said in Life is Fair. I'm glad I wrote the book. It pleases me to think that some people have become vegetarians as a result of reading it, or were strengthened in their commitment to remain meatless.

I still believe that life is fair.

Just not for the same reasons I offered up back in 1998. Now I'm much more skeptical about the reality of reincarnation. If we haven't had past lives then "karma" is limited to our experiences in this life, plus the genetic heritage in our DNA of ancestors' lives.

But often it isn't possible to prove the non-existence of something, especially when that thing is hypothesized to be beyond the bounds of materiality. I'm not 100% sure that karma and reincarnation aren't real, just as I'm not 100% sure that God doesn't exist.

To me, retractions are justified when a factual error has been made.

If a newspaper story gets someone's age or occupation wrong, or misquotes them, a retraction/ correction is called for. However, opinion writers don't issue retractions. If a columnist changes her mind, she says "I look upon this issue differently now." No apology is required; no mea culpa. 

Recalling my state of mind when I wrote Life is Fair, I don't see how I could have done anything differently. Life is what it is, a cliche that nonetheless is true. 

As I've noted before, my relationship with Radha Soami Satsang Beas and the guru (Charan Singh) who led the organization when I joined up in 1971 strikes me as being a lot like my first marriage. Both began with love, followed by many years of happiness, and ended with a divorce.

Have I ever felt about "retracting" my attraction to my first wife? Of course not. What I felt for her at the time was real. I still feel a lot of fondness for her. We grew apart, but the eighteen years we were married never will leave either of us. Our marriage changed us, led us to grow, albeit in different directions.

Likewise, writing Life is Fair meant a lot to me. I agree with the person who emailed me that some parts of the book aren't scientifically defensible. I'd write it differently today, but yesterday isn't today. 

More "Apatheists" and "So what's?" saying no to God

Here's some encouraging churchless news: USA Today reports "For many, 'Losing my religion' isn't just a song: it's life." 

Helton, 28, and Dohm, 54, aren't atheists, either. They simply shrug off God, religion, heaven or the ever-trendy search-for-meaning and/or purpose.

Their attitude could be summed up as "So what?"

"The real dirty little secret of religiosity in America is that there are so many people for whom spiritual interest, thinking about ultimate questions, is minimal," says Mark Silk, professor of religion and public life at Trinity College, Hartford, Conn.

...Only now, however, are they turning up in the statistical stream. Researchers have begun asking the kind of nuanced questions that reveal just how big the So What set might be:

• 44% told the 2011 Baylor University Religion Survey they spend no time seeking "eternal wisdom," and 19% said "it's useless to search for meaning."

• 46% told a 2011 survey by Nashville-based evangelical research agency, LifeWay Research, they never wonder whether they will go to heaven.

• 28% told LifeWay "it's not a major priority in my life to find my deeper purpose." And 18% scoffed at the idea that God has a purpose or plan for everyone.

• 6.3% of Americans turned up on Pew Forum's 2007 Religious Landscape Survey as totally secular — unconnected to God or a higher power or any religious identity and willing to say religion is not important in their lives.

Hemant Mehta, who blogs as The Friendly Atheist, calls them the "apatheists"

Mariann Edgar Budde, Episcopal Bishop of Washington D.C., calls them honest.

Why isn't a movie as appealing in HD?

Last night I took advantage of my wife being out of town to stream, through Amazon, an action movie that I've wanted to see for a long time: The Bourne Identity (2002).

My wife isn't big on action flicks and wouldn't have appreciated the way-cool Mini chase through the streets, alleys, and walkways of Paris nearly as much as I did. But what irritated me through the entire two-hour movie experience was watching it on our television in HD (high definition).

I paid an extra dollar to get the HD version. Then, almost as soon as I started watching amnesiac Matt Damon try to figure out his CIA-provided identity, quite a few of them, actually, a sense of this looks way too real popped up in my mind. 

And never left.

I kept being bothered by the fact that when Damon entered an American embassy or a Swiss bank, he looked exactly like Matt Damon entering an American embassy or a Swiss bank. The "movie look" had left The Bourne Identity. 

I've seen previews of this movie, and it looked much different in non-HD. So I'm trying to get some philosophical mileage out of the two hours I spent watching a highly entertaining movie, which would have been quite a bit more enjoyable for me if I could have immersed myself deeper in its unreality.

My wife and I watch a lot of television shows in high definition. Reality shows like Survivor look just fine. Sports events look just fine. Scientific shows like Cosmos look just fine. But The Bourne Identity didn't.

Having just blogged about our differing "narrative" and "experiential" ways of experiencing reality, my theory is that I wanted to be immersed in a fictional movie story, a narrative, for those two escapist hours -- not something that looks like my everyday experience of life. Cinematographers have ways of doing this.

Watching the movie in HD took away a lot of that magic.

I was watching the scenes as filmed, but I couldn't get away from the thought "this is a movie." The actors looked so real, so lifelike, so sharp, so crisp, it was like I was watching The Bourne Identity being made. I could picture the actors on a sound stage, or on location, with the director looking on outside of camera range.

Here's my Big Philosophical Conclusion: We want our stories about life to be fuzzy around the edges. Too much detail reveals the flaws in them. Reality isn't what we desire; it's a narrative that's more appealing than here-and-now reality.

Religions, of course, are all about story-telling.

They do a great job of entertaining us with narratives about God, salvation, heaven, hell, spiritual ascent, enlightenment, and such without leaving themselves open to questions about nitty-gritty verifiable details, because usually there aren't any such details in the stories.

There's two more films in the Bourne series that I want to see. For sure, next time I won't choose HD. I want my escapism to be different from reality. However, I wish religious fables could be communicated in high definition. Then their reality-escaping nature would be crisply apparent.

[Technical note: partway through The Bourne Identity I considered fiddling with our TV's display settings. But it was late, and I didn't want to interrupt the flow of my movie-watching. Reading some online discussions of this subject, here, here, and here, complaints similar to mine sometimes are met with a "dude, you need to adjust your set by doing X, Y, Z." Well, I doubt it. Anyway, those suggestions are aimed at degrading the lifelike look of an HD movie, so I stand by my Big Philosophical Conclusion.]

Atheists, pray for the Patriots to beat Tim Tebow

Today is apocalyptic. God-loving quarterback Tim Tebow and his Denver Broncos play Tom Brady's New England Patriots in an important NFL playoff game. 

This isn't only a football game. It's a battle with cosmic significance. Will in-your-face, obnoxious, Christian "Tebowing" win out, leading fundamentalists to believe that, indeed, God is on the Nuggets' side?

Will a quarterback who says he's still a virgin (Tebow) triumph over a guy (Brady) who fathered a love child with another woman and now is married to supermodel Gisele Bundchen?

God, I hope not! Like some of the Patriots, I'm tired of Tebow talk.

So fellow atheists, agnostics, unbelievers, infidels, pagans, and other irreligionists, we've got to start praying intensely for Tebow to not only lose today's game, but to be crushed, humiliated, blown off of the gridiron in an embarassing fashion.

Except...wait...let me think for a moment...

Shit! We don't believe in prayer. We don't believe in supernatural interventions. Damn.

OK, then just watch the game; enjoy it; accept the reality of the final score. Then go on to other things of life, not making more or less of an AFC playoff game than it deserves. Yeah, the Broncos are 13 1/2 point underdogs.

But upsets frequently happen, without God.

Sant Mat and Sikhism basically are the same

I used to think that the Sant Mat spirituality I followed for many years (in the guise of Radha Soami Satsang Beas) was truly a "science of the soul." Sure, I knew that Sant Mat and Sikhism were similar, but I attributed that more to culture than to religion.

For example, the Sant Mat gurus let their hair grow and wear turbans, just as Sikhs do. However, the party line of Sant Mat was that it's a universal spiritual practice, a way back to God which transcends geography, nationality, historical religiosity, and such.

Not really. In fact, not at all. As this analysis of Sikh/Sant Mat groups points out:

In the 19th century, a new spiritual current emerged in the Punjab, that part of India in which Sikhism enjoyed its greatest strength. Param Guru Shri Shiv Dayal Singh Sahib began to gather followers, and in 1861 formed the Radhasoami Satsang. It drew upon the Sikh tradition of repeating the name of God, and practiced a spiritual discipline called surat shabd yoga. It differed most radically from Sikhism in that it was led by a "living" guru.

Two important Sant Mat groups were transplanted to America, the Radhasoami Satsang early in the twentieth century and the Ruhani Satsang after 1965. Both have found a following, but the Sant Mat tradition has found its greatest success in several Westernized versions, ECKANKAR and the Church for the Movement of Spiritual Awareness.

So Sant Mat basically is Sikhism with a living guru taking the place of the Sikh holy book, the Adi Granth Sahib. Except, not really. Because chanting from the Adi Granth was a big part of Sant Mat gatherings when I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). 

A guy in my Tai Chi class loaned me a copy of "The Pocket Guide to the Afterlife."

It's cleverly and interestingly written, complete with handy two page illustrated flow charts that show what 40 belief systems consider will happen after death. (It's also currently on sale for a good price at Amazon; I just bought my own copy for $6.24, including shipping, since I have Amazon Prime.)

Yesterday I reached Sikhism in the Asatru to Zoroastrianism alphabetical order of the book. What I learned in the two pages was how similar in many ways Sikh teachings are to Sant Mat.

Sikhism is focused on freeing you from the cycle of reincarnation and getting you to commune directly with God. 

...There are four stages of a Sikh's spiritual evolution, starting on the ground floor and ending with Gurmukh, as close to heaven as the Sikhs get, embodying what others might call "total enlightenment."

...If you can get over your addiction to the five cardinal vices -- lust, anger, greed, attachment, and pride -- you can start moving down that pathway toward salvation. 

...Sure, you can't drink anymore, and you'll need to toss those Marlboros in the trash, but doing seva (community service) and honest labor isn't the worst way to spend your time. [Note: Sant Mat doesn't prohibit cigarette smoking; at least the RSSB version didn't.]

...You're on your way to communing with Godhead, and, much like a good Buddhist, a Khalsa (which means "pure") has shed his or her ego and individual personality and is totally committed to righteous deeds.

...You have achieved total salvation, or mukhti. Eschewing all those base material objects -- your iPhone, Prada jacket, your Reidel stemware -- you are totally God-focused now. Merging with God is the sole goal of human life, and can be achieved by following the teachings of the Sikh holy text, performing acts of service and charity, and meditation.

A big reason why I've come to doubt the reality of religion is this amazing coincidence: virtually without fail, when some mystic, guru, prophet or other sort of sage delves deeply into the mysteries of the cosmos, what he or she discovers is...

Almost precisely what the dominant religion/spirituality in his or her corner of the globe considers to be divine truth.

For example, Param Guru Shri Shiv Dayal Singh Sahib (supposedly humble gurus in India usually don't have humble names) meditates away intensively, seeking the essence of God, and concludes that, wonder of wonders, the very religion practiced in his part of the world, Sikhism, just happens to be the absolute truth he was looking for.

It just needed a few tweakings to become Sant Mat.

Which, conveniently, included the revelation that a perfect living guru was needed for God-realization, the first one of which would be -- no big surprise -- himself! And thus Sant Mat was born out of Sikhism. 

Two peas, in the same religious pod.

Mindfulness 101: separate your senses from your stories

Oh, the stories I tell myself. As do you. As does everybody. We wouldn't be human if we weren't story tellers. 

I wake up in the morning. Almost immediately I recollect the basic narrative of my life.

I live in Oregon. I'm married to the woman in bed next to me. I need to get up, raise the thermostat to 69 degrees, and let our dog out of the downstairs room where she spends the night. Then... make coffee, take the dog outside, get the newspapers.

If I simply was aware of what my senses were telling me, I'd be unable to function. Even if I remembered my past, without being able to envision a plot-line for how the morning would go I'd be pretty much stuck in a meaningless present moment.

So what neuroscientists call the "narrative network" is vital, important, and essential. It's easy, though, to let all those narratives rambling through the brain in a monkey mind fashion overwhelm another way of being in the world: experiencing it sensorily. 

I first learned about these brain networks in Jon Kabat-Zinn's "Mindfulness for Beginners." 

It turns out that a recent scientific study from the University of Toronto has shown that there are different networks in the brain for different kinds of self-referencing of experience. One network, termed the Narrative Focus (NF), is active when we build a story based on our experience. It involves a great deal of thinking, often coupled with rumination and worry.

A second network, termed the Experiential Focus (EF), is active when we are grounded in what is being experienced in the present moment, when we are very much in the body and in unfolding sensory experience -- without all the evaluation of the narrative network.

Religions, of course, are almost entirely about the Narrative Focus. So are organized spiritual faiths and mystical teachings. They all involve stories about the purpose of life, God, supernatural entities, salvation, enlightenment, and so much more.

Thinking, praying, meditating, contemplating, introspection, self-improvement, devotion, rituals -- these are dependent on narratives. "If I do X, then Y will happen." "I came from here, and my goal is to reach there." "There's a plan for my life."

But it doesn't take religion to get our minds rocking and rolling to the almost non-stop music of Story, which tends to play inside our heads whenever there's some silence. David Rock talks about this in an interesting Psychology Today piece about the narrative and experiential networks.

One network for experiencing your experience involves what is called the "default network," which includes regions of the medial prefrontal cortex, along with memory regions such as the hippocampus. This network is called default because it becomes active when not much else is happening, and you think about yourself.

If you are sitting on the edge of a jetty in summer, a nice breeze blowing in your hair and a cold beer in your hand, instead of taking in the beautiful day you might find yourself thinking about what to cook for dinner tonight, and whether you will make a mess of the meal to the amusement of your partner. This is your default network in action. It's the network involved in planning, daydreaming and ruminating.

This default network also become active when you think about yourself or other people, it holds together a "narrative". A narrative is a story line with characters interacting with each other over time. The brain holds vast stores of information about your own and other people's history. When the default network is active, you are thinking about your history and future and all the people you know, including yourself, and how this giant tapestry of information weaves together. In this way, in the Farb study they like to call the default network the ‘narrative' circuitry.

Like I said, this is the foundation of almost all religiosity, spirituality, and mysticism. A rose isn't just a rose. A chance meeting isn't just a chance meeting. Finding a parking spot on a busy street isn't just finding a parking spot on a busy street.

To a follower of Jesus, or a devotee of a guru (as I was for many years), events in everyday life aren't simply as they seem. They're filled with meaning, deep significance, cosmic import. Our lives are being guided. There's a story arc, a plot line, leading to a super-happy ending. 

Salvation! Enlightenment! God-realization!

True believers, even more than other people, have their minds filled with narratives about the past and future. Every action, every happening, every encounter -- they're potentially acts of God, messages from the divine. Life supposedly is to be lived in accord with the oft-cited adage: "We aren't human beings having spiritual experiences; we are spiritual beings having human experiences."

This attitude feeds the brain's narrative network, leaving the experiential side of us deprived. Yes, we need stories. But we also need to be in touch with, well, touch. Along with sight, hearing, taste, and smell.

Our senses ground us. Sensuality connects us with the world of not-us, thereby naturally bringing about the ego-loss and humility that organized forms of spirituality artificially strive for, yet typically fail to achieve. Rock goes on to say:

When you experience the world using this narrative network, you take in information from the outside world, process it through a filter of what everything means, and add your interpretations. Sitting on the dock with your narrative circuit active, a cool breeze isn't a cool breeze, it's a sign than summer will be over soon, which starts you thinking about where to go skiing, and whether your ski suit needs a dry clean.

...The Farb study shows there is a whole other way of experiencing experience. Scientists call this type of experience one of direct experience.

...When this direct experience network is activated, you are not thinking intently about the past or future, other people, or yourself, or considering much at all. Rather, you are experiencing information coming into your senses in real time. Sitting on the jetty, your attention is on the warmth of the sun on your skin, the cool breeze in your hair, and the cold beer in your hand.

...Experiencing the world through the direct experience network allows you to get closer to the reality of any event. You perceive more information about events occurring around you, as well as more accurate information about these events. Noticing more real-time information makes you more flexible in how you respond to the world. You also become less imprisoned by the past, your habits, expectations or assumptions, and more able to respond to events as they unfold.

Here we are. Where else could we be?

Unfortunately, often we're somewhere else: within the stories we tell inside our heads. At every moment we have a choice. Be here in directly experienced reality, or drift off into a mental realm of our own making. 

There's a balance to be struck between narrative and experiential living. Both are important. Both are essential. We just should be aware when we've gotten stuck in the plot-lines of our stories.

Taking a deep breath. Feeling the grass between the toes of bare feet. Patting the fur of a family pet. There are lots of ways to bring ourselves back into direct experience, leaving our stories behind.

Including, especially including, our religious story-telling.

[Here's a link to the 2007 study that forms the basis for popularized accounts of the research. It's fairly heavy reading, but, hey, it's science.]

What would a new scientific religion look like?

The world needs a new religion. The ones we have are outdated. Every major religion -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism -- dates from prescientific days.

Apple comes up with a new and improved iPhone every year or so. Why should we be content with ancient forms of spirituality concocted by people who didn't even know that the Earth revolves around the Sun, much less about quantum theory, relativity, the big bang, and evolution?

Our old religions are deeply problematic. A short piece from the National Academy of Sciences on "Compatibility of Science and Religion" pinpoints the problem.

Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In science, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the natural world. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with an explanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of that explanation.

Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evidence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typically involves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, supernatural entities cannot be investigated by science.

I don't find much to disagree with here, though I have a quibble with the phrase "only on empirical evidence."

This implies that religious faith is founded largely, or at least a lot, on empirical evidence. Huh? Most religious people consider that a leap of faith requires leaving behind solid factual ground and trusting in the reality of things unknown.

It's the end of the National Academy of Sciences piece that bothers me the most.

In this sense, science and religion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in different ways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist.

Well, that's an idealistic attitude. Unfortunately, religion doesn't restrict itself to supernatural entities. Other-worldly forces such as God, spirit, the Devil, karma, and such are believed to affect this physical universe.

So science and religion inevitably will butt heads when believers in the supernatural claim that they know more than scientists do about some physical phenomenon, yet can't prove this divine knowledge is true because it isn't based on empirical evidence.

Hey, religion: you can't have it both ways! 

Feel free to play around with the supernatural, claiming that religiosity offers an enhanced faith-based perspective on reality. But if you want to venture onto the ground of science, be prepared to bring some demonstrable evidence to back up your claims.

That scientific ground is, of course, this world. It's where each of us is born, lives, and dies. It's where we breathe, eat, work, love, explore, theorize, laugh, cry, create, talk, walk.

I'm very much open to the possibility that there's more to reality than materiality, this universe. However, in my current churchless state of mind I'm no longer willing to surrender the reality of this world for a promise of a supernatural realm. I want my religion (if I ever find a suitable one) to be completely compatible with modern science.

Perhaps I'll have to create my own religion. As the above quote noted, science continually grows, expands, and changes as more is learned about the natural world. Religions, though, mostly stay stuck on the theological foundations established by their founders (Jesus, Muhammed, Buddha, etc.).

Today, through science, we know that...

The universe came into being about 14 billion years ago; life on Earth got started around 3.5 billion years ago; humans evolved from primitive life forms, so we are related to every currently living entity, even bacteria; the brain is a "meat computer" without which bodily consciousness is impossible; there are several hundred billion galaxies, each containing on average hundreds of billions of stars. 

...and so much more.

Is there room for the supernatural in a scientific view of the world and ourselves? Sure. But a modern religion can't ignore facts about the natural side of reality.

Remaining true to science while embracing some form of supernaturalism is difficult.

I know, because I've tried (and am still trying) to come up with a scientifically-compatible conception of the cosmos that offers some of the reassuring cool belief-stuff that traditional religions provide: assurance of life after death, objective meaning, continuation of consciousness without a physical brain.

There's a good reason why religions were born in pre-scientific times: it's damn hard, perhaps impossible, to believe in supernatural dogmas which seem to be ruled out by solid findings of modern science.

Like I said, it's possible that a new religion could say Yes! to all of science while also affirming the truth of a non-material realm of reality. I await the revelation. 

Tim Tebow's "Tebowing" is religious obnoxiousness

I like Tim Tebow.

Never met the Denver Bronco's quarterback, but when I've seen him interviewed on TV (Jon Stewart talked with him on The Daily Show fairly recently) Tebow comes across as humble and unassuming.

But that's when he isn't "Tebowing," an irritating in-your-face display of his Christianity, where Tebow gets down on one knee, with his elbow resting on his other knee, head bowed in a prayerful stance. This has become a craze, with a web site devoted to Tebowing (including a Top Ten, naturally; the dog doing a modified version of the posture was the only photo that appealed to me).

So I don't like Tim Tebow's overt religiosity.

It would be obnoxious to me anywhere. Displays of God-praise on the athletic field strike me as particularly inappropriate. Seven years ago I pleaded, "Please, God, no more sky-pointing."

The worst example I saw featured an individual sky-pointing as a Red Sox “idiot” (in this case, a term richly deserved) rounded the bases after a home run, followed by a communal sky-pointing after he reached the dugout. He and a few other Christian teammates crouched, bent their heads together, and then pointed a bunch of index fingers at, presumably, where they think heaven lies.

I never saw God similarly thanked after a Red Sox player struck out or made an error. The idea that God is aiding the fortunes of one team, and not the other, is obviously ridiculous. Given that, in the big scheme of things, major league sports also is ridiculous, this sky-pointing business wouldn’t be a big deal for me except…it reflects an overall attitude among a disturbingly large number of Christians that God plays favorites.

George Bush clearly feels that God has chosen him to bring freedom to the Middle East, and that the United States has a special God-given mission in the world. This is no different in kind from a baseball player believing that God wanted and enabled him to hit a baseball out of the park, or to strike out an opposing player. Yet if God has the power to bring things that people consider “good,” then God also has the power to bring “bad” things.

A few weeks ago I was walking by a bigscreen TV in our athletic club just as TIm Tebow fumbled and the other team recovered the football. I watched for a bit longer to see whether Tebow made any overt praise of God at that moment. 

Nope. Apparently God is only worth praising when good things happen, mistakes aren't made, hopes come true. Which is horrible theology.

Don't Tim Tebow and his Tebowing buddies realize how egotistical their Christian faith is? It's all about them. Life revolves around them. If what they wanted to have happen actually does, then God picked them to be winners of the good fortune lottery. 

This sounds nastily divisive. That's because it is.

When an athlete thanks God for catching a touchdown pass, or hitting a home run, he believes that the highest divinity wanted him to triumph over those bozos on the other team. "God plays favorites, and I'm the Favored One!"

Such is, of course, exactly how Christianity looks upon non-believers. So I guess it isn't surprising that Tebowers are so egotistically judgmental, because that's the core attribute of their entire religion. Thus saith Tim Tebow: 

Tebow once told a group of prisoners: “If you have Jesus Christ in your heart, you are going to spend eternity in heaven. If you don’t, you’re going to spend eternity in hell.”

I don't watch much pro football. So my viewing of Tim Tebow's quarterbacking mostly comes from highlights shown on the evening news sports segment. Recently Tebow was shown throwing some interceptions that lost an important game (though the Broncos still backed into the playoffs).

As noted above, I turned to my wife and said, "I'd feel a lot better about Tim Tebow if he pointed to the sky or knelt down in thankful prayer every time something really bad happens to him on the football field, rather than him doing his Tebowing only when God supposedly gives him what he wants."

Even better, though, would be for Tebow to just act like a normal human being. Do your best. Accept what happens, win or lose, with as much balance, grace, and equanimity as possible. Get mad when you feel angry. Then get over it. Be happy when you feel good. Then get over it. 

Making a cosmic happening out of a freaking football play is absurd. I'll quote myself again:

In one of his sermons Meister Eckhart put it nicely: “Now I hear you ask, ‘How do I know that it is God’s will? My answer is that if it were not God’s will even for a moment, then it would not exist. Whatever is must be his will. If God’s will is pleasing to you, then whatever happens to you, or does not happen to you, will be heaven.”

Last night I found Johnny Damon’s first inning home run to be the epitome of genuine athletic good character. The long-haired Damon didn’t raise a finger, or even display much emotion. He simply ran around the bases with his head down. When he got to the dugout he exchanged a few hugs and high-fives with his teammates, but he looked like a calm, centered man who knew that all he had done was hit a first-inning home run in a baseball game that was a long way from being decided. And it is a game for God’s sake, not the Second Coming.

Thank you, Johnny, for acting like a real Christian, whether or not you are one. I hope your attitude rubs off on your ebullient sky-pointing brethren. 

Utterly unconvincing God experience

Wow, I've just wasted ten minutes of my life watching this ridiculousness.

It's called Man dies, comes back to life, what he saw. Watch it at your peril. Somehow 2,931,978 people have, likely being sucked into doing so by a "check out this youtube video of a man who had what seems to be an NDE" like I got.

No, he didn't have a near-death-experience. I didn't hear any mention of that. The guy suffered horrible injuries in a plane accident. He's lying in a hospital bed, probably drugged out of his mind, after going through a hugely traumatic event.

So he dreams about going to heaven, seeing the light, avoiding a massive darkness that he takes to be hell. What's the big deal? I've had some pretty amazing dreams myself. I don't claim that as a result I'm best buddies with God.

He doesn't bring back any profound insights into the nature of the universe. He doesn't even see God. He just has a feeling that this is how reality really is, and that how he looked upon life before was mistaken.

Dude, that's exactly how lots of people feel after they take LSD or some other psychedelic. Feeling so doesn't make it so. 

Brian Greene shows why science surpasses religion

Physicist Brian Greene has ably taken on Carl Sagan's role as TV's best popularizer of science. My wife and I thoroughly enjoyed his recent "Fabric of the Cosmos" series on PBS. I've read his book by the same name, as well as his recent "The Hidden Reality." 

This afternoon, while exercising at an athletic club, I listened to an interview with Greene on a Point of Inquiry podcast. (I've discovered a bunch of interesting new podcasts to supplement my Philosophy Talk listening after spending $1.99 on the terrific Instacast iPhone app; highly recommended.)

Listening to Greene talk with Chris Mooney, the interviewer, I wished that every religious true believer could be exposed to the reality of science. 

Not the cartoon version that fundamentalists and science-deniers see, because that's a caricature of the scientific method. You know, the notion that scientists are dedicated to eliminating love, mystery, intuitions, and faith from life; that science is all about cold, hard calculations of a mechanical universe's clockwork nature; that scientists are arrogant, claiming that what can't be captured by their equations isn't worth knowing.

Here's some of what I recall from the interview that belies these ridiculous assertions. 

Greene talked about how science has found that reality in the atomic micro-world, as in the cosmic macro-world, is far different from how we experience the everyday world. So if you believe there's more to reality than meets the eye, embrace modern science.

Reality, though, may not appear as you'd like it to be. This is where many there must be more believers get off the science train. Scientists are dedicated to exploring the farther reaches of reality. However, the scientific method aims to discover what is actually there, not what we human beings wish was there.

For example, Greene described how the search for the Higgs boson is going. He doesn't like the media terming it the "God particle." In fact, it was pretty clear he detests that nickname. Yes, he said, the Higgs field is theorized to permeate all of space. It's omnipresent. So, supposedly, is God.

But the HIggs field, or particle, bears no resemblance to the entity people call "God." The Higgs field, if it exists, is how objects acquire mass. Thus it would be responsible for the thing-ness of the universe, which otherwise would be massless.

Greene explained that the HIggs field is sort of like an invisible vat of molasses that is all around us. When particles are pushed through the resistance of this field, they acquire mass. (If anything, then, I see the Higgs field as an "anti-God particle," because it converts the ethereality of reality into something much more material and substantial.)

The Large Hadron Collider is trying to knock a chunk of nothingness out of the Higgs field, thereby revealing the Higgs boson, a particle, through inspection of what the boson decays into. 

This is complicated stuff, but there's a lot of beauty in it. Mooney and Greene talked about how evolution caused humans to be adapted for survival and reproduction, not for understanding the secrets of the cosmos. It was important for our ancestors to be able to throw a spear so it hit a running antelope; coming up with the mathematics of relativity theory wasn't a priority back then.

In many ways, modern science goes against the grain of traditional human nature. Religiosity doesn't. This helps explain why it is easy for people to believe in God, soul, spirit, heaven, life after death, and such, while descriptions of the quantum realm and the big bang are tough for our brains to grasp.

Greene, a string theory researcher, was asked about the value of considering other competitors for a Theory of Everything such as quantum gravity. I liked his answer:

In terms of whether alterative approaches should be tried, absolutely. The health of a science, to my mind, is partly reflected in the independent lines of investigation that are trying to solve the same problem. If everybody is marching in lockstep, that's deadly.

You want to have a range of approaches that may be complementary, that may be contradictory; one may help another, one may knock off another. You know, this is great for science. I think string theory is our best approach for putting gravity and quantum mechanics together, but others think other approaches may be better. And I'm thrilled they're pursuing those approaches.

Science is open, creative, experimental. Unlike religion, science doesn't say "this is the Absolute Truth; you must not consider other truths." If someone can come up with persuasive evidence that theory Y is a better reflection of reality than theory X, then X takes a back seat to Y.

"Back seat," though, almost always doesn't mean being tossed out of the car.

This is another misconception that religious fundamentalists and other anti-science types are prone to. They wrongly believe that fundamental understandings of science are regularly overthrown, so why accept what scientists currently are claiming to be true?

Greene demolished this point of view, using Newtonian and Einsteinian physics as an example. Newton's laws of motion weren't shown to be wrong by Einstein. He just showed how they don't apply in realms far distant from what we experience in everyday life, such as at near light-speed.

Science progresses. It learns. It changes. It builds upon current knowledge. 

By contrast, almost universally religions are stuck. They talk about ageless revelations that were as true several thousand years ago as they are now. They claim that a holy book or holy person has revealed all that can be known about the ultimate reality of the cosmos, so take it or leave it.

Thanks for the choice, religion. I'll leave it. Science is much more appealing.

"Nothing" is my spiritual resolution for the New Year

Yesterday some friends and I talked about our New Year's resolutions. The conversation didn't last long. We agreed there wasn't any point to making resolutions, since we never followed them. 

That partly explains why my resolution for making spiritual progress in 2012 is pithy: nothing. No resolution, guaranteed success. I'm really great at doing nothing. Some days that's my primary accomplishment.

But I also have some semi-serious reasons for recommending nothing as a spiritual goal. See here and here. As quoted in the first-linked "here," this saying on a Japanese Zen scroll makes a lot of non-sensical sense.

There is really nothing you must be.
And there is nothing you must do.
There is really nothing you must have.
And there is nothing you must know.
There is really nothing you must become.

However, it helps to understand that fire burns,
and when it rains, the earth gets wet.

Recently I got an email from someone who wanted to know my opinion of an Indian guru. The guy is an initiate of the guru (Charan Singh) I was devoted to for about thirty years. Now he's got some doubts about his chosen spiritual path and is considering switching to a different guru.

The guy said that he still believes a guru is needed for spiritual progress. I can sympathize with that attitude, since I felt that way myself for a long time.

Now, though, I've arrived at a metaphysically sophisticated, yet wonderfully simple, approach to spirituality which is cogently and completely described by that single marvelous word: nothing.

It's natural to aspire to understand reality more fully, to seek to improve ourselves, to yearn after cosmic truth. Problem is, there's no way to know what sort of truths, if any, lie outside of the laws of this physical universe.

Religions, mystical practices, and spiritual teachings are all over the map in this regard. Monotheism. Polytheism. Dualism. Monism. Personal gods. Impersonal gods. Grace. Effort. Meditation. Prayer. Ritual. Devotion. Theology. Direct experience. 

So many ways. So little agreement between them.

There's twenty major religions and thousands of discrete faiths. Who has the time or inclination to check out all of them? And how would someone know which are true and which are false. So I say, take the lazy way.

Leave it up to Possible Spiritual Truth to find you, rather than you it. I do this every day. This is my spiritual practice: nothing.

Every morning before I meditate I speak to Possible Spiritual Truth, even though I have no idea (1) whether such exists, (2) if it exists, whether it is conscious of me, and (3) if it is conscious of me, whether it is capable or desirous of communicating with me. 

"Hey, Possible Spiritual Truth, whoever or whatever you might be. Howz'it going? This is Brian. I'd like to know you, experience you, communicate with you. Assuming, of course, that you aren't an evil malevolent cruel force who wants to painfully put me in your soul-crushing grinder (assuming I have a soul). Since I have no idea where you are, what you are, or even if you are, you're going to have to do the reaching out. All I can do is say, hello, I'm here, ready for a visit."

Then... I do nothing.

I figure that if I lean in any direction, metaphysically speaking, I'm much more likely to head away from my potential good buddy, Possible Spiritual Truth, than toward him/her/it. So I try to stay centered on a comfortable cushion of nothing, "Nowhere to go, nothing to do, no one to become."

Have I gotten any response from Possible Spiritual Truth? Can't tell. Probably never will.

If I don't know anything about this supernatural dude (or dudette), how could I know how that entity might communicate with me? It could be screaming in my ear right now, dictating every word of this blog post, controlling every movement of my typing fingers, and I wouldn't know it.

I just like the notion that nothing could be the most spiritually significant something I'll ever not-do.