Church of the Churchless

Divided brain is root of our divided self

I'm fascinated by the human brain. It's a mini-universe. A mini-universe that is me. So what I'm fascinated by is the same entity that is doing the fascinating, which is to say...me.

Go figure. I can't.

There's no way I can get outside of my brain and look upon it objectively. Nobody can, not even supposedly elevated mystics and meditators. Show me someone without a working brain and you're showing me someone dead.

However, neuroscientists, psychologists, psychiatrists, and other scientifically-minded students of the human brain know a lot about its structure and functions. I've read quite a few books about the brain written by people expert in modern neuroscience.

But the book I'm reading now is appealingly different.

It was recommended in a comment on one of my posts. Whoever did so, thank you (I've forgotten who you are) because I'm really enjoying "The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World."  

Iain McGilchrist, the author, is described as an "experienced psychiatrist and a shrewd philosopher."

After reading just 60 pages of the 462 page book (plus lots of footnotes) I can tell that McGilchrist indeed knows his neuroscientific stuff, is an excellent writer, and has the ability to interpret brain research in a strikingly fresh fashion.

Right away I was struck by the author's repeated references to Western World. Since brains don't differ in humans (so far as I know, at least), why should the West have been affected differently than the East by the divided brain?

I don't know if McGilchrist will address this question, but he does spend eight pages in the back of the book talking about What we could learn from Oriental culture. Which is, basically, to not let the abstractions created by the left hemisphere of the brain overwhelm the concreteness of the right hemisphere. 

The pattern of psychological differences between Oriental people and Westerners suggests the possibility of a different relationship between the hemispheres. It is striking, for example, that the Japanese language does not have an established method for composing abstract nouns, and has no definite or indefinite articles, considered to be a crucial step in the emergence of abstract nouns in Greek.

The Japanese have nothing that corresponds to the Platonic Idea, and in fact no abstractions in general: they have never developed the dichotomy between the phenomenological world and the world of ideas. Nakamura writes:

The Japanese are willing to accept the phenomenal world as Absolute because of their disposition to lay a greater emphasis upon intuitive sensible concrete events, rather than upon universals. This way of thinking with emphasis upon the fluid, arresting character of observed events regards the phenomenal world itself as Absolute and rejects the recognition of anything existing over [and above] the phenomenal world.

The sharp dichotomy in our culture between the ways of being of the two hemispheres, which began in Ancient Greece, does not appear to exist, or, at any rate, to exist in the same way, in Oriental culture: their experience of the world is still effectively grounded in that of the right hemisphere.

I'm learning, though, that both hemispheres normally are involved in just about everything the brain does. So when people say "I'm a left brain person" (or a right brain person), this isn't literally true. It's the division of labor between the hemispheres that's key, not an absolute distinction between them.

McGilchrist has a lot to say about how the divided brain relates to the divisions we sense in both the world outside and inside of us. I've only scratched the surface of what is in his fascinating book.

But here's one insight I've gotten from what I've read so far that fits with a recent post: "Oneness" is an abstraction. "Manyness" is reality.

Often people look upon the right side of the brain as being the spiritual side, all intuitive, holistic, big picture'ish. That's sort of true, yet also largely false -- if "spiritual" is taken to refer to an other-worldly realm.

As noted in the passage above referring to how Japanese people view reality, a main mission of the right hemisphere is tuning in to concrete here-and-now'ness. Nature, in other words. Not abstractions like "God," "soul," "spirit," "morality," "love," and such.

These notions are the province of the left hemisphere. In this section McGilchrist points to how left-brained religious belief is:

The right hemisphere prioritises whatever actually is, and what concerns us. It prefers existing things, real scenes and stimuli that can be made sense of in terms of the lived world, whatever it is that has meaning and value for us as human beings. It is more able to assimilate information from the environment without automatically responding to it, and, posssibly as a result, the developing right hemisphere is more sensitive to environmental influences.

At the same time the left hemisphere is more at home dealing with distorted, non-realistic, fantastic -- ultimately artificial -- images. This may be because they invite analysis by parts, rather than as a whole. But it does appear that the left hemisphere has a positive bias towards whatever is bizarre, meaningless or non-existent, though the data here are particularly hard to interpret because most studies have not sufficiently distinguished confounding elements.

...The left hemisphere, because its thinking is decontextualised, tends toward slavish following of the internal logic of the situation, even if this is in contravention of everything experience tells us.

...The left hemisphere can only re-present, but the right hemisphere, for its part, can only give again what 'presences'. This is close to the core of what differentiates the hemispheres... Abstraction is necessary if the left hemisphere is to re-present the world

... The right hemisphere deals preferentially with actually existing things, as they are encountered in the real world.

Both hemispheres of the brain are vitally important. But we need to recognize when the left brain, through its re-presenting, is leading us astray from the real world. 

That's what religions, spiritual practices, and mystical paths do when they aren't focused on how life is actually lived, but veer off into those distorted, non-realistic, fantastic, artificial images McGilchrist spoke of in the passage above.

Then we get divided off from reality, because of the left-hemisphere dominance of our divided brains.

"Oneness" is an abstraction. "Manyness" is reality.

I like the idea of oneness. But I'd hate the reality of it, oneness plain and simple. Well, more accurately I couldn't hate absolute oneness if it existed, because there wouldn't be any me to feel hate.

Or anything else, since there's no room for two in One. Thus it's impossible for anyone to experience oneness. "Anyone" and "oneness" are two separate entities.

So whenever someone talks about how the cosmos is One, they're referring to an abstraction, not reality.

Nothing wrong with this. Abstractions can be fun to intellectually play around with. That's a big part of what philosophizing is all about: thinking about the nature of "good," "truth," and other high-flying abstract notions. (I consider "God" to be another abstraction.)

The world we all live in, though, clearly is composed of separate things. Manyness rules.

Yet also interconnectedness, which is the practical form of Oneness. You and I aren't completely distinct, nor are we completely unified. You're reading thoughts that I've typed out in the course of composing this blog post, which now are rattling around inside your own mind.

We've established a connection. A two-way street, because you could leave a comment on this post which I'd read, and then have your thoughts rattling around in my mind.

Neither of us dominates this connection. I can say what I want, and you can say what you want (if your comment isn't in accord with this blog's guidelines it may not be published, but you can still write whatever you choose).

Oneness, though, is much more authoritarian.

Meaning, religions or spiritual practices which claim to know the way to Oneness almost always are hierarchical. This is one of the core themes in a section I read recently in "The Guru Papers: Masks of Authoritarian Power," a book I've owned for several years but hadn't picked up until I discovered it sitting on a shelf on a few days ago. 

Here's some of what the authors, Joel Kramer and Diana Alstad, have to say about the manipulation of Oneness by gurus, masters, and the like.

Once a person has had a Oneness experience, it is not difficult to make being in that state more of the time, or all the time, the meaning and goal of life. This can also be true for those who have not had the experience, but have heard of it and give it credence.

Doing this is reinforced by presumed spiritual masters who not only claim to live in this exalted state, but also insinuate that this place of unity is more real and superior to ordinary reality where separation is experienced.

...So the way the mystical experience is experienced is not "pure" (nothing is) but is historically and culturally embedded. The concept of Oneness is an abstraction created by thought as a way of framing and attempting to describe the mystical experience. 

Insofar as Oneness is placed in a higher realm or plane than the world of separation and multiplicity (the Many), this is done by abstracting out and reifying a presumed quality or essence from life, and making that more important than the individual expressions of life itself.

...the concept of Oneness is used by spiritual authorities to make their pronouncements unchallengeable, and therefore authoritarian. 

...What should not be forgotten is that it takes an individual to experience unity. Oneness is an abstraction that presents itself as beyond dualism, but has within it a hidden dualism. Dividing the cosmos into two categories or levels of reality is dualistic by nature.

...One of the cheapest guru ploys is to make people feel inadequate by showing how their behaviors are tainted with self-centeredness -- always an easy task... The guru's "getting" and self-enhancement are masked by images of enlightenment and selflessness and thus are made unconscious. 

Once his purity and hence superiority are taken for granted, it is assumed that he deserves to be "getting" precisely because he is thought enlightened. He can thus reprimand the disciple for the very activity he was involved in on a far grander scale without it seeming hypocritical. 

...Once it is assumed that some people embody or express the true nature of reality more than others, an authoritarian hierarchy flows naturally from that basic assumption. This also lays the foundation for perpetuating the hierarchy, because the one who knows best can decide who is enlightened and thereby transfer the mantle of authority.

One person deciding when another is enlightened does seem a bit strange. [Note: this is my problem with traditional Zen Buddhism.] One would presume that if enlightened, one would know it without being told.

...Once unity or interconnectedness is made sacred, a category is created that is not sacred -- individuals and their individual concerns. Once the sacred was separated off into a special realm, religions became renunciate, with the religions defining both what to renounce and the perceived higher good that doing so brings.

...The spirituality embedded in the Oneness worldview creates lofty ideals of selfless moral purity that have worked well with authoritarian hierarchies. Hindu ashrams, Tibetan Buddhist monasteries, and Zen centers are all authoritarian hierarchies.

Duty, obedience, and sacrifice are the key authoritarian virtues making such hierarchies work. When unity is valued over diversity, whether it be the One over the Many or the state over the individual, there are always those higher on the hierarchy to define for the lower just what that unity is and what must be sacrificed for it.

Here's what should be sacrificed for it: nothing. For several reasons.

First, as noted above it is impossible to become one with the One. If such a state exists, that's called death. Non-existence. You can't know you're one with the One if it ever happens, and neither could anyone else. So forget about it.

Second, achieving the lesser unified state of interconnectedness doesn't require a guru, master, or teacher. It's how the world already is. If you and I weren't connected to a larger reality, we wouldn't exist. Every atom in our bodies and every bit of energy that fuels our life existed before us, and will exist after us.

So love life. Live life happily. Seek unity wherever you can. Hold hands. Embrace. Reach out and touch something or someone. You don't need to follow any authority, adhere to any commandments, engage in any ritualistic practices. 

Discard the abstraction of absolute Oneness. Experience the reality of interconnected Manyness.

Everything will be OK when you are OK with everything

The title of this post isn't my own thought. It's from Michael Singer, author of "The Untethered Soul," a book I've been re-reading. Or re-re-reading (can't remember which). That's how much I like the book.

Which is sort of strange, because I don't believe we humans have, or are, a soul. And I also don't believe in the sort of pure awareness that Singer talks about in much the same way Ramana and other Advaita'ish teachers do.

Yet this is precisely one of Singer's main points: we can't make everything in life conform to our notions of how things should be. Including a book. Seems obvious, but it's an obviousness that isn't taken to heart by most people.

You just stop telling your mind that its job is to fix your personal problems. This job has broken the mind and disturbed the entire psyche. It has created fear, anxiety, and neurosis. Your mind has very little control over this world.

...Just relieve your mind of the job of making sure that everybody and everything will be the way you need them to be so that you can feel better inside. Your mind is not qualified for that job. Fire it, and let go of your inner problems instead.

You can have a different relationship with your mind. Whenever it starts up telling you what you should or shouldn't do in order to get the world to match your preconceived concepts, don't listen. 

...The truth is, everything will be okay as soon as you are okay with everything. And that's the only time everything will be okay.

Like I said, this isn't a new revelation.

Lots of psychology, self-help, and spiritual books have the same message. Singer, though, has an appealing writing style. He's brought me to look upon happiness, balance, and managing unproductive thoughts in a fresh way.

A non-religious way, because Singer is focused on the evident worldly here-and-now, not an imaginary heavenly there-and-then. Everything we need for our "spiritual" evolution is present in our everyday life.

It's all about becoming aware of energies, those emotions, impulses, reactions, and such in our psyche that push us off-balance. One moment life is good; the next, someone has said something or done something which makes us mad, irritated, anxious, pissed-off. 

How did we get from calm and collected, happily going about our day, to worked-up and scattered? How is it that a small comment or action can have such a big effect on our well-being? Isn't it crazy that we're so sensitive to the goings-on inside our own head?

Many spiritually-minded people try to get their lives in order through unproductive ways. One is to follow a set of rigid rules/commandments which restrict what they can and cannot do. Thou shalt not eat meat, drink alcohol, have sex outside of marriage, use profanity, dance dirty -- that sort of stuff.

Another is to seek control of the mind via some meditation or prayer technique. The assumption is that the mind is an unruly animal which has to be tamed through effort. Sitting still for hours, repeating a mantra, praying for God's or the guru's grace, envisioning one's compassionate Buddha nature -- that sort of stuff.

In my experience, spiritual or religious people can attempt these approaches for many years or even decades, yet still be as neurotic, anxious, unhappy, and hard to live with as they were before setting out on their journey of self/God-realization.

One reason is that they aren't focused on living real lives in the real world. Instead, they try to wall off the world, withdrawing into a fenced-off psychological realm where they subsist on a steady diet of dogma, beliefs, self-talk, and other so-called "inner work."

Which is bullshit, because they never get down to the nitty-gritty of dealing with the energies in their psyche stimulated by everyday events. Like having someone cut you off on the freeway, yell at you at work, or break up with you in a messy fashion.

Singer writes:

Begin with the little things. For example, somebody says something to you that you don't like, or worse yet, doesn't acknowledge you at all. You are walking along and you see a friend. You say hello to them but they just keep walking by. You don't know if they didn't hear you or if they actually ignored you. You aren't sure if they're mad at you or what's going on.

You mind starts going a mile a minute. Good time for a reality check! There are billions of people on this planet and one of them didn't say hello to you. Are you saying that you can't handle that? Is that reasonable?

Use those little things that happen in daily life to free yourself. In the above example, you simply choose not to get involved in the psyche. Does that mean that you stop your mind from going around in circles trying to figure out what's going on? No. It simply means that you are ready, willing, and able to watch your mind create its little melodrama.

Watch all its noise about how hurt you are, and how could anybody do that. Watch the mind try to figure out what to do about it. Just marvel at the fact that all of this is going on simply because someone didn't say hello to you. It's truly unbelievable. Just watch the mind talk, and keep relaxing and releasing. Fall behind the noise.

"Fall behind the noise." "Fall behind the energy." Singer has different ways of saying the same thing which resonate with me.

I can feel this happen when I start to be carried away by a wave of righteous indignation, or whatever, then take a breath, pause, slow down, and feel my psychological center return to a place of balance behind that emotional energy. 

It's still rushing on, and I'm aware of it, but I don't feel a strong need to surf along on top of it, being carried along by a breaking wave of impulse which often crashes onto an Unhappiness Reef. 

Here's more Singer:

Ultimately, every change in your energy flow, whether it's agitation of the mind or shifts in the heart, will be what reminds you that you are back there noticing. Now what used to hold you down becomes what wakes you up. But first you have to get quiet enough so that it's not so reactive in there.

These trigger points will help remind you to remain centered. Eventually it will become quiet enough so that you can simply watch the heart begin to react, and let go before the mind starts. At some point in the journey it all becomes heart, not mind. You will see that the mind follows the heart. 

...Would you like to go beyond? Would you like to feel no edges? Imagine a comfort zone that is so expanded that it can easily fit the entire day, no matter what happens. The day unfolds, and the mind doesn't say anything. You simply interact with the day with a peaceful, fully inspired heart. 

...You end up loving your edges because they point the way to freedom. All you have to do is constantly relax and lean into them. 

The human brain is a mini-universe. Trust it. Explore it.

I had a thought today...

Which came out of my brain...

The thought was about my brain...

My brain was thinking about itself, which is...

So cool!

The outer world entrances us. We spend most of our time and energy focused on what lies beyond the contents of our cranium. Yet the brain is indeed the most complex object in the universe. 

Aside from the universe itself.

The human brain is truly awesome.

A typical, healthy one houses some 200 billion nerve cells, which are connected to one another via hundreds of trillions of synapses. Each synapse functions like a microprocessor, and tens of thousands of them can connect a single neuron to other nerve cells. In the cerebral cortex alone, there are roughly 125 trillion synapses, which is about how many stars fill 1,500 Milky Way galaxies.

Anyway, back to my thought...

What if, whether we're religiously or scientifically or otherwise-minded, this amazingly complex mini-universe of the human brain, which really isn't part of us, but is us, contains The Secret we yearn to know, even though we don't really know what we're looking for, have no idea where this mystery can be found, and wouldn't recognize it even if we stumbled across it?

By which I mean to say, assuming this second saying is any more meaningful than my first attempt...

What if we simply relaxed, and told ourselves (who are our brains), "I trust you; show me; surprise me; bubble up into consciousness The Secret lurking inside those billions of nerve cells and trllions of synapses"?

What would happen? What could happen? What should happen?

I have no idea. I'm just a few neurons sitting on the surface of my brain's conscious awareness typing out some thoughts.

There's a lot more going on beneath the surface of the brain that is me. 

Show me, Me. Surprise me, Me. Just a thought...

Photos of my not-so-sacred meditation chamber

I figure it's time to prepare for my hoped-for veneration, exaltation, and worship as an enlightened godly being.

True, I don't believe in enlightenment or in God.

But why should this stop me from being worshipped? I founded this here Church of the Churchless. I preach about stuff all the time. I'm venerated in my own mind. Maybe the exaltation I feel toward myself will spread someday.

So in case someone ever builds a shrine to me, here's photos of the meditation chamber where my perfection becomes more perfect every morning.

I hereby give permission for it to be recreated in any artistic medium desired, including gold and other precious metals, so long as a large royalty check is delivered to me monthly. 

My not-so-sacred Meditation Chamber was hewed out of a (usually) unused shower in a part of our house that was designed by the previous owner for an invalid mother-in-law who never lived there. I have to move my stuff out when someone comes to visit, as my daughter and granddaughter did this week. 

I cover up the shower nozzle with a curtain. I like the metaphor: how my already pure/pristine consciousness is becoming cleansed of even the most minute imperfections through my meditative surroundings. Details follow...

I always bring in the sports page of the Oregonian to start off my contemplation of ultimate reality.

Today I learned that redshirt freshman Marcus Mariota's wait to be quarterback of the Oregon Ducks football team is over. When they beat USC in November and then win a national championship next year I will not only be even more divine, but also really happy.

The photograph of an evergreen tree growing among golden aspens is a symbol of something or other. I could tell you, but you wouldn't understand, so figure it out yourself. 

I am a habitual highlighter and scribbler of profound thoughts in margins and bland end pages. These are my weapons. You can see my backups on the lower shelf. If an evil genius ever corners the market on highlighters, my unending spiritual evolution will be stalled, but not ended, for my upward (or downward?) progress is unstoppable. 

Lastly, we see here the true keys to my exalted state of being: coffee and books. Caffeine and the printed non-fiction page serve as booster rockets which propel my unsoul into profound regions of reality during my 20 minutes of so of perfected meditation each morning.

(Methamphetamine probably would work even better than coffee, but I also love naps, so have to strike a balance between a heightened and lowered consciousness.)

So...behold! My not-so-sacred Meditation Chamber.

Feel free to print copies of these photos and venerate them as you see fit. Or re-create my space in your own shower. I recommend an unused one, but each to his/her own.

Bart Marshall talks non-duality absurdity

I can't remember how I came across an interview with Bart Marshall in non-duality magazine.

I'm glad that I did, though, because the questions and answers encapsulate why the supposed state of enlightened "non-duality" strikes me as being almost as absurd as traditional religions are.

Now, I'm sure Bart Marshall is a nice guy. I'd probably like him if I met him.

But reading about his purported enlightenment, realization of pure awareness, and identity with God made me think, "There's as much evidence for Christianity or any other religion being true as there is for non-duality being true."

Meaning, none. Zilch. Nada.

Yet Marshall is convinced that Realization (with a capital "R") happened to him on a plane ride.

Well, the short answer is that what I’d always believed I was, vanished, and what I have always truly been appeared as self-evident.  All questions disappeared, along with the so called “person” who had been asking them.  What remained was pure Awareness—God consciousness, if you will—and life as I had known it came to an end. 

Actually, there is no such thing as pure awareness. (See my blog post, "My main gripe with Buddhist meditation" for reasons why.) Modern neuroscience has shown that so long as we have, or are, a brain, neurological processes outside our awareness inescapably shape how we view the world.

So almost certainly Marshall is wrong about that. However, it's equally certain that he was right about one thing: the "person" he thought he was doesn't exist. Neuroscience also recognizes the absence of any enduring self, pretty much as Buddhism teaches.

Yet why would somebody claim to be enlightened because they're realized a scientific truth? Marshall claims to have realized what is true for everybody: the self doesn't exist. What we are is what the physical brain experiences.

To me, this is true non-duality -- not perceiving ourselves as different from all the other forms of materiality. 

Marshall, though, sees himself as now experiencing life quite differently than unenlightened beings. This strikes me as self-centered, not exactly what you'd expect from someone who says he has achieved enlightened non-dual consciousness. From the interview:
----------------------- 

"NDM: You already mentioned some of these below. Do you also have any of these other traditional jivan mukta [realized being] traits listed below by Ramesam Vermuri?

1.	Universal “Love” (Maitri)
2.	Equipoise.
3.	Tranquility.
4.	Sense of happiness

5.	Absence of sense of “self”
6.	Absence of ‘Doership’
7	High levels of Gamma activity in the brain
8.	State of Deep Sleep with Awareness (Yoganidra)

9.	Fearlessness and Detachment
10.	Always in the “Now”

Bart Marshall:  I think that’s a pretty good list of some of what comes with the package, although I have no idea what my gamma activity might be, and the state of deep sleep with awareness is not something I experience very often, although I am occasionally aware of that."
----------------------- 

So it sounds like Marshall, as a realized/enlightened being, must be a pretty special guy. He possesses universal love, is detachedly fearless, is always in the now, tranquil, happy, and so on. However, he goes on to say...

One thing I might say, though, is that this list makes it all sound very grand and elevated, and there is the implication that possessing all these wonderful qualities produces a problem-free life and permanent state of euphoria, when in actuality it lives very ordinary.  One doesn’t really go around being aware of any of this—I don’t “feel” fearless or tranquil or loving at the moment, for instance.  I just experience What Is and do what gets done. 

Hmmmm.

Both outwardly and inwardly Bart Marshall appears very ordinary. Yet he wants us to believe that he is enlightened, and goes around teaching other people about a realized non-dual state which is somehow both marvelously special, and also entirely ordinary.

Marshall says there is no such thing as partial enlightenment. It's all or nothing.

As for the idea that someone can actually be “halfway up the mountain,” I don’t buy it.  Enlightenment is an all-or-nothing thing.  One can be very wise in spiritual ways, and very ripe for it to happen, but until the trap door opens and you free fall into the Absolute, you’ve got nothing.  As I mentioned earlier, Rose had a great quote in this regard:  “You don’t know anything until you know Everything.”  

So Bart Marshall supposedly has attained to the Ultimate. He knows Everything. However, he also admits that he isn't aware of being any different than he was before his enlightenment, and there are no outward signs of his enlightenment, so far as I can tell from the interview.

My conclusion: there is no such thing as enlightenment. Just claims about enlightenment, many of which come from people who make a living teaching others how to become enlightened. Sounds absurd and self-serving to me.

But then, I'm not enlightened. 

Sam Harris: "atheist" makes as much sense as "aunicornist"

Sam Harris, author of "The End of Faith," is a famous atheist. But he isn't fond of having that word describe him. After all, people who don't believe in unicorns aren't called "aunicornists."

They're just people who recognize that evidence is lacking for the existence of a mythical creature that resembles a horse, but has a single twisting horn on its forehead.

Likewise, what need is there for "atheist"? Why not simply call people who believe in God, "theists," while having no special word for those who don't?

So says Harris in a well-written and well-argued essay, The Problem With Atheism. (Thanks to blog post commenter "sgl" for sharing a link to this piece.)

I think that “atheist” is a term that we do not need, in the same way that we don’t need a word for someone who rejects astrology. We simply do not call people “non-astrologers.” All we need are words like “reason” and “evidence” and “common sense” and “bullshit” to put astrologers in their place, and so it could be with religion.

If the comparison with astrology seems too facile, consider the problem of racism. Racism was about as intractable a social problem as we have ever had in this country. We are talking about deeply held convictions.

...Of course, I’m not saying that racism is no longer a problem in this country, but anyone who thinks that the problem is as bad as it ever was has simply forgotten, or has never learned, how bad, in fact, it was.

So, we can now ask, how have people of good will and common sense gone about combating racism? There was a civil rights movement, of course. The KKK was gradually battered to the fringes of society. There have been important and, I think, irrevocable changes in the way we talk about race—our major newspapers no longer publish flagrantly racist articles and editorials as they did less than a century ago—but, ask yourself, how many people have had to identify themselves as “non-racists” to participate in this process? Is there a “non-racist alliance” somewhere for me to join?

Attaching a label to something carries real liabilities, especially if the thing you are naming isn’t really a thing at all. And atheism, I would argue, is not a thing. It is not a philosophy, just as “non-racism” is not one. Atheism is not a worldview—and yet most people imagine it to be one and attack it as such. We who do not believe in God are collaborating in this misunderstanding by consenting to be named and by even naming ourselves.

...rather than declare ourselves “atheists” in opposition to all religion, I think we should do nothing more than advocate reason and intellectual honesty—and where this advocacy causes us to collide with religion, as it inevitably will, we should observe that the points of impact are always with specific religious beliefs—not with religion in general. There is no religion in general.

...Nobody wants to believe things on bad evidence. The desire to know what is actually going on in world is very difficult to argue with. In so far as we represent that desire, we become difficult to argue with. And this desire is not reducible to an interest group. It’s not a club or an affiliation, and I think trying to make it one diminishes its power.

Good points.

I rarely call myself an atheist, because that word doesn't capture how I feel about my non-belief in God. I don't go around thinking to myself, "Oh, it is so satisfying to not believe in an imaginary God." 

I just don't believe in God. If I wasn't surrounded by many millions of people who do believe in God, I'd never think about God at all, just as I never think about unicorns unless I come across some mention of them.

Harris is correct. Those of us who don't believe in God shouldn't be drawn into ridiculous debates between "theists" and "atheists." Actually, as he says, the debate is between those who favor evidence and reason over faith and guesswork.

We will have won this war of ideas against religion when atheism is scarcely intelligible as a concept. We will simply find ourselves in a world in which people cease to praise one another for pretending to know things they do not know. This is certainly a future worth fighting for. It may be the only future compatible with our long-term survival as a species. But the only path between now and then, that I can see, is for us to be rigorously honest in the present. It seems to me that intellectual honesty is now, and will always be, deeper and more durable, and more easily spread, than “atheism.”

Open up to life, fearlessly, not leaning on religion

Openness. Could this be the key that unlocks the happiness door? And keeps it (no big surprise)... open! 

So says Michael Singer in his intriguing book, "The Untethered Soul," which I've blogged about here and here.

I re-read the chapter on transcending the tendency to close this morning. Liked it the second time as much as the first.

Singer says that us humans used to mostly worry about physical danger. With saber-toothed tigers safely extinct, psychological threats are our biggest concern now.

As a result, the protective energies have adapted toward defending the individual psychologically. rather than physiologically. We now experience the daily need to defend our self-concepts rather than our bodies.

So what happens when someone criticizes us, yells at us, talks about an uncomfortable subject?

Since it's not socially acceptable to run into the woods and hide like a deer you hide inside. You withdraw, close down, and pull back behind your protective shield.

...The problem is that the part of you that gets disturbed is way out of balance. It's so sensitive that the slightest little thing causes it to overrreact. You are living on a planet spinning around the middle of outer space, and you're either worrying about your blemishes, the scratch on your new car, or the fact that you burped in public. 

It's not healthy. If your physical body were that sensitive, you would say you were sick. But our society considers psychological sensitivities normal. Because most of us don't have to worry about food, clothing, or shelter, we have the luxury of worrying about a spot on our pants, or laughing too loud, or saying something wrong.

The more we try to protect ourselves from all of those scary monsters threatening our psychological well-being, the more we enclose ourselves in walls of our own making. We feel like we're in prison. Yet we're the jailer.

You will get to a point in your growth where you understand that if you protect yourself, you will never be free. It's that simple. Because you're scared, you have locked yourself within your house and pulled down all the shades. Now it's dark and you want to feel the sunlight, but you can't.

...Ultimately, if you protect yourself perfectly, you will never grow. All your habits and idiosyncrasies will stay the same. 

...There are all these rules about things that are not supposed to happen outside because they could cause disturbance inside. Living like this allows for very little spontaneous joy, enthusiasm, and excitement for life. Most people just go from day to day protecting themselves and making sure nothing goes wrong.

Religions exacerbate this tendency to close ourselves off from life. They promulgate commandments, vows, rituals, "thou shalt's" and "thou shalt not's."

Religious believers are afraid, so afraid. God, karma, divine justice -- something is going to punish them if they transgress. God forbid, I should do what I feel like doing. It could be the Devil impelling me to enjoy myself!

Here in Oregon recently, some Republican state legislators spent a night in a topless bar. No taxpayer funds were involved. They partied on their own time. 

My reaction was, what's the big deal?

I lean strongly Democratic, but I felt more positively about these guys after I read about their night out. I've been to topless bars, both in person and from watching every episode of The Sopranos, since much of the Mafia gang's business was conducted in the Bada-Bing club.

Yet the legislators apologized. For nothing, in my opinion. They should have said, "Hey, I love my wife, and I also love to watch young attractive women dance topless. What's the big deal?" Michael Singer writes:

The reward for not protecting your psyche is liberation. You are free to walk through this world without a problem on your mind. You are just having fun experiencing whatever happens next. Because you got rid of that scared part of you, you don't have to worry about getting hurt or disturbed. 

You no longer listen to "What will they think of me?" or, "Oh God, I wish I hadn't said that. It sounded so stupid." You just go about your business and put your whole being into whatever's happening, instead of putting your whole being into your personal sensitivity.

Last night I read a New Yorker story about Mormonism. This reminded me of my super-strict eggless vegetarian days when I was a devoted member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Indian spiritual group, whose guru taught that eating even a speck of forbidden fruit egg-meat-fish was wrong, wrong, wrong.

The Osmond family was the Mormon family: too many kids and too many teeth, maybe, but always solid, always smiling, always temperate -- no alcohol, no tobacco, not even caffeine. In an entertaining new autobiography, "The Book of Mormon Girl: A Memoir of an American Faith" (Free Press) Joanna Brooks recalls ecumencial birthday parties as a young Mormon in California, and the anxiety she felt about simply seeing a bottle of Coke; Mormon parties featured (non-caffeinated) root beer.

That sort of anxiety is crazy. But I used to be crazy in this way myself. So I understand how easy it is to fall under the spell of a rigid, closed, holier-than-thou, fundamentalist ideology.

If someone challenges the wisdom of remaining within the confines of a illogical, unworkable, repressive moral code, you immediately raise your defenses, holding aloft whatever is equivalent in your faith to the crucifix or holy water that keeps vampires at bay.

Except... vampires don't really exist.

Likewise, Singer says there is no need to protect ourselves from judgments, criticism, ridicule, controversy, argumentation, slights to our self-image.

Let it go. Rocks can't break your ego-window if it is fully open.

A wise person remains centered enough to let go every time the energy shifts into a defensive mode. The moment the energy moves and you feel your consciousness start to get drawn into it, you relax and release.

Letting go means falling behind the energy instead of going into it. It just takes a moment of conscious effort to decide that you're not going there. You just let go. It's simply a matter of taking the risk that you are better off letting go than going with the energy. 

When you're free from the hold the energy has on you, you will be free to experience the joy and expansiveness that exists within you.

...Real spiritual growth happens when there is only one of you inside. There's not a part that's scared and another part that's protecting the part that's scared.

...What you'll find is that the only thing you really want from life is to feel enthusiasm, joy, and love. If you can feel that all the time, then who cares what happens outside? If you can always feel up, if you can always feel excited about the experience of the moment, then it doesn't make any difference what the experience is.

...If you really want to stay open, pay attention when you feel love and enthusiasm. Then ask yourself why you can't feel this all the time. Why does it have to go away? The answer is obvious: it only goes away if you choose to close.

By closing, you are actually making the choice not to feel openness and love. You throw love away all the time. You feel love until someone says something you don't like, and then you give up the love. You feel enthused about your job until someone criticizes something, and then you want to quit.

It's your choice. 

...As long as you are defining what you like and what you don't like, you will open and close. You are actually defining your limits. You are allowing your mind to create triggers that open and close you.

Let go of that. Dare to be different. Enjoy all of life.

Babbling about God like a baby: what else can we do?

Recently a comment conversation on one of this blog's posts brought up "babbling." Someone used the word to describe another commenter who was describing how God, spirituality, and such seemed to her.

She didn't like being called a babbler.

But I don't see this as an insult, at least not when what's being babbled about, such as God or the supernatural, is purely personal -- subjective, intuitive, emotional, experiential, non-symbolic. 

Babies babble.

Babbling is the first sign of human language. These vocalizations do not generally contain meaning or refer to anything specific.

People who have had an ineffable experience of something that seems spiritual also babble. There are many varieties of babbling, of course. The Buddha supposedly held up a flower. Did he have a point to get across? Nobody knows. Sounds like spiritual babbling to me.

Mystics often resort to poetry when they try to describe what can't be described. Poetry is a form of adult babbling that directs our attention to what can be felt, yet not tied down in words. 

Wow! Far out! Unbelievable! I'm speechless! Mind-blowing! 

Once we grow into word-using beings, forsaking concept-less baby babbling, we're less prone to express our wonderment at what the world offers with meaningless sounds. So we substitute words that don't really convey any meaning to others other than "I'm incapable of conveying any meaning."

This is how I feel when I read or hear descriptions of someone's spiritual experience.

I have little or no idea what they're talking about, because I'm not them. Likewise, if I tried to describe an experience that was deeply meaningful to me, yet was purely subjective (or at least didn't involve any objectively observable entities), other people would react as if I was speaking about a dream.

In this case "You had to be there (inside my head)" is the only response to "I don't understand what you're trying to say."

Dreams, though, are more describable than visions of God or any other supposed supernatural reality. If a dream is based on worldly people, objects, and events, we can find words which come close to validly conveying the essence of our subjective experience.

But most religious believers view God as other-worldly, beyond description, transcending reason.

OK. I'm fine with someone claiming to have had an experience of God which can't be put into words. If they want to simply ooh and ah as a babbling baby would, I'll view their meaningless vocalizations just as positively as I do an infant's coo'ing. 

So cute! Delightful! 

It's natural to express ourselves when an intense experience causes us to feel joy, love, pleasure, awe, or some other overflowing emotion (of course, the feeling also could also be despair, hate, pain, apathy).

Thus babbling away about God if you've experienced something that strikes you as Godly... go for it. Just realize that what seemed so real to you won't be perceived the same way by others. 

This is the nature of personal experiences. They're personal.

Babies don't worry if anyone else agrees with their babbling. They just babble away. Naturally, unself-consciously, uncontrollably. LIkewise, I love listening to spiritually-minded people who don't care at all whether anyone else agrees with them. They say what they say because they feel like saying it.

Take it or leave it; both are equally fine to a babbler.

Such is my advice to those who leave comments on this blog. Say how you feel. Just don't expect anyone else to agree with you or even understand what you're trying to convey. And if they call you a babbler, respond with thank you!

Does an objective non-symbolic world exist?

It's mid-August. It's hot. I'm in a living is easy frame of mind. I haven't had a caffeine fix for quite a few hours. Not the best time to address the question I set out in the title of this post. "Does an objective non-symbolic world exist?"

But philosophizing can't wait. This subject has popped up in some blog post comments. Here's a sampling of what's been said (with a few spelling errors corrected).

Janya: I know, it is hard to digest, because after all its all personal experience, and what objectivity does ANY purely personal experience hold? We have dreams and sometimes, enthusiastically describe them to family and friends, but it doesn't hold the the same meaning to them that it does to the dreamer.

Janya: Because, strangely but so simply so, GOD cannot be reached merely by "going in" is because the objective fullness of GOD is outside! What is inside is our own stuff and IT'S relation to GOD, Karmic Lords etc. It is purely subjective in the sense its personal to us.

Me: Janya, that makes sense to me -- that our relation to God (I prefer the term "ultimate reality") is purely subjective. No one else can know what we feel, not really. Not about God, not about food, not about music, not about anything. Feeling is us, our own, our private subjective world.

Like you said, outside is where objectivity lies. Not perfect objectivity, because our attempts to understand the world objectively are made by people with those above-mentioned subjective feelings. But on the whole, it seems true that there's an objective shared world, and a subjective personal world.

Janya: Indeed, thinking, feeling and willing are all three, private states of being. And just like the external, objective world is shared, the internal subjective world is also sharable, even across time and space. Such is the case with my description in the controversial post; a descriptive in common with Heraclitus and Faqir Chand; personalities who I knew absolutely nothing decades ago,when this occurred.

The point is, that this is evidence of an objective, verifiable, shared inner/subjective experience/world even across time and space.

Roger: "The point is, that this is evidence of an objective, verifiable, shared inner/subjective experience/world even across time and space."

---explain in detail, the evidence that you are claiming. How would one know that there is sharing? Sounds like more honest sincere babble. Janya, you seem OK. All this is No Big Deal.

Roger: Brian, could you write something on a mental image of an objective reality, say a chevy pickup truck. We can all visually picture and subjectively experience such a truck at a Chevrolet dealership. Then, what would be a shared objective, INNER, subjective experience? Why any better than an outer subjective experience?

Now, I'm not going to be able to clear up this whole question of subjectivity and objectivity, because no one ever has, and I'm certainly not capable of being the first to do so. 

I just find the question deeply interesting.

It goes to the heart of what it means to be human; how "science" relates to "art," using those words broadly; whether consciousness is an independent attribute of the cosmos or an artifact of physical brain functions; and many other issues.

Back in the early 1990s I'd started to work on a book about mysticism and the new physics, which later became "God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder" (now out of print; I'm working on a revised version). I was struggling to figure out how to organize my thoughts. 

Then it hit me. In a Victoria B.C. hotel room, during a vacation with my wife. I'd been pondering the nature of subjectivity and objectivity. Suddenly I knew how I'd approach this. A two by two matrix, four possibilities, popped into my mind. (Indented excerpts are from the revised book manuscript.)

First, there's a subjective and objective reality.

Is there a reality independent of ourselves? If so, it is objective. Is there a reality that only exists within our own personal consciousness? If so, it is subjective. 

This produces a distinction between the objective domain of science and the subjective domain of art. A scientific truth exists whether or not any particular individual does, while a work of art springs from a personal rather than universal consciousness. 

Second, there's a symbolic and non-symbolic reality.

In human consciousness there are private and public domains. The public part is what can be shared with other people through symbols. The private part is what remains essentially incommunicable, known only to the person experiencing it.

...Not everything that is experienced is expressible. Further, there never is an exact correspondence between a symbol and reality. Something always is missing from the description. For example, even though the symbolic language of mathematics is extraordinarily effective in describing the laws of nature, a mathematical description of how nature operates is far removed from the reality of nature itself.

I argued that this produces four states of being, which I pithily described with the italicized words: (1) subjective and non-symbolic, feeling; (2) subjective and symbolic, thinking; (3) objective and symbolic, observing; (4) objective and non-symbolic, contemplating.

The last state of being is by far the most controversial. I still consider it to be a possibility, but I no longer believe in it as strongly as I did when I wrote the book. 

Referring to the comment conversation mentioned above, Tanya appears to believe that contemplating (or whatever other word you want to give to this state) can put us in touch with an objective, non-symbolic world. 

In other words, a sort of real dream. Or a real feeling. 

It isn't possible to provide any evidence of that reality. No photograph, mathematical formula, precise description, audio recording, scientific experiment, or such. Yet if there truly is something objective yet non-symbolic, it is as real as anything observable. It's just inexpressible, incommunicable, ineffable.

Which raises the Big Question: how could anyone know whether his/her non-symbolic experience is of something objective, or subjective? Tanya argues that if several people describe an "inner" experience in similar ways, then this points to it being objectively real.

However, in this case the experience would be of something symbolic, because the reality can be captured by words. The various people can agree that they experienced the same thing, because their descriptions of it are so similar.

In this case, the reality seems to fall into the area of science, not religion, spirituality, or mysticism. Seemingly there should be objective signs of it, since the reality can be reliably observed and described by a number of people.

So in my current way of thinking, any objective non-symbolic reality is always going to be definitively known by only one person: whoever experiences that reality.

There's no way for him or her to know whether anyone else has also experienced it, because it is non-symbolic, incapable of being described in any way.

Open Thread 10

It's been a while, but Open Thread has been resurrected. I've been getting comments that didn't fit with an existing post, so further off-topic comments should go in this post.

So here's another Open Thread (previous OTs are still open, of course). Leave a comment about anything you want to talk about.

I've put some recent off-topic comments here, to start it off, instead of the posts they were left on.

Comments on other posts need to be related to the subject of the post, or they will be candidates for deletion. So an Open Thread is the place for miscellany and whatever. Feel free. Just observe the comment policies (click on "comment policy" above).

Pay attention to your life as if you had to testify about it

It's strange how some things stick with me, and so many don't. I've forgotten so much about what happened to me during my childhood, while remembering surprising details.

LIke my mother, an avid reader, telling me about what a noted novelist of the times (can't remember his name) said he did when he heard something unexpected late at night.

He'd glance at his watch to see what time it was. He'd listen for other sounds. He'd focus on anything else that seemed out of the ordinary. The novelist wanted to be prepared in case what he heard was connected with a serious crime, like a murder.

He was making sure that his testimony at the trial would be as accurate as possible.

I've thought about this many times over the years, especially after I started meditating every day after I took up yoga my senior year in college (1969-70; wow, a long time ago). What to focus on in my life, which naturally includes the part of my life when I meditate, has been a fascinating question.

For many years, well over thirty, I believed in repeating a mantra. It concentrated my mind during meditation. It kept me from engaging in a lot of unnecessary "monkey mind" thoughts during the rest of my day. 

And I always had something to do when I was otherwise unoccupied. Repeat that mantra.

Which changed from time to time; my first yoga teacher taught a different mantra than the second guru I followed. Later I shortened that mantra on my own, when I became more independent of spiritual dogmatism.

But now I'm much more into mindfulness. Paying attention to what is going on right here, right now.

Mantra meditation focuses attention. Mindfulness also can be concentrative, if someone centers awareness on his/her breath, for example. Yet by and large mindfulness is about being expansively aware, just as the novelist was.

In a murder trial, details are important. I learned this from my almost-obsessive following of the O.J. Simpson trial. The position of a piece of evidence. A speck of blood in a certain location. The exact timing of when a witness saw or heard something.

I'm not saying we should live our lives with the attitude that whatever we're experiencing, we should pay attention to it as closely as we would if we knew we'd have to testify at a murder trial. However, it sure seems like I should know whether I turned the burner off on a stove before I drove into town, or if I locked the front door before heading off to bed.

Increasingly, my attitude is that everything is important to pay attention to.

In my religious days I was focused on BIg Important Stuff. Meditation. Teachings of the guru. Meaning of life. State of my karma-ridden soul. Nature of ultimate reality. Now, cutting an onion to put in the pan where I'm cooking a veggie burger seems as important as anything else. 

How do I know what's important, anyway?

What criteria do I have for distinguishing "important" and "unimportant"? If I'm paying attention to what's happening at the moment as if this was evidence that could be used in a murder trial, how can I tell which details are significant, and which aren't?

Here's some excerpts from a book I'm enjoying, Charlotte Joko Beck's "Nothing Special: Living Zen." 

There's an old Zen story: a student said to Master Ichu, "Please write for me something of great wisdom." Master Ichu picked up his brush and wrote one word: "Attention." The student said, "Is that all?" The master wrote, "Attention. Attention."

The student became irritable. "That doesn't seem profound to me." In response, Master Ichu wrote simply, "Attention. Attention. Attention." In frustration, the student demanded, "What does this word attention mean?" Master Ichu replied, "Attention means attention."

...We don't want to bother with the "little" things, like how we hold our chopsticks or where we place our spoon. Yet these acts are the stuff of our life, moment to moment. It's not a question of importance; it's a question of paying attention, being aware. 

Why? Because every moment in life is absolute in itself. That's all there is. There is nothing other than this present moment; there is no past, there is no future, there is nothing but this. So when we don't pay attention to each little this, we miss the whole thing. 

And the contents of this can be anything. This can be straightening our sitting mats, chopping an onion, visiting someone we don't want to visit. It doesn't matter what the contents of the moment are; each moment is absolute.

 

 

Arguments for God aren't convincing. So is "I feel Him."

Resurrected! Glory be! 

That's how my churchless self reacted when I opened a drawer full of forgotten books and re-discovered "Irreligion" by John Allen Paulos. I'd read this short book before, as evidenced by my highlighting, but decided to read it again after flipping through a few pages and thinking Oh, my God! So true!

Paulos, a mathematics professor, demolishes the most common arguments for God. His logic is impeccable, so far as I can tell. And his writing is entertaining, often simultaneously amusing and thought-provoking.

For example:

To the question "What will any of my concerns matter in one thousand years" we might, of course, react with stoic resignation. Instead, however, we might turn the situation around. Maybe nothing we do now will matter in a thousand years, but if so, then it also would seem that nothing that will matter in a thousand years makes a difference now, either. In particular, it doesn't make a difference now that in a thousand years, what we do now won't matter.

Some of the classic arguments for the existence of God are so flimsy, it doesn't take much to tear them apart. 

The Argument from First Cause, the first taken up in the book, runs in this fashion according to Paulos.

1. Everything has a cause, or perhaps many causes.
2. Nothing is its own cause.
3. Causal chains can't go on forever.
4. So there has to be a first cause.
5. That first cause is God, who therefore exists. 

But Paulos says that assumption 1 is better put as "Either everything has a cause or there's something that doesn't."

Such as existence. Perhaps physical existence simply is. Always has been, always will be. Just like God supposedly is. So why can't physical existence be the first cause?

A related objection to the argument is that the uncaused first cause needn't have any traditional God-like qualities. It's simply first, and as we know from other realms, being first doesn't mean being best. No one brags about still using the first personal computers to come on the market. Even if the first cause existed, it might simply be a brute fact -- or even worse, an actual brute.

And this is just one of the arguments for God persuasively rendered unpersuasive by Paulos. Just about any argument someone could come up with for why they believe in God is so full of leaky logic, that belief is rendered unbelievable.

Including the "I just know..." or "I just feel..." argument. I get this all the time in blog comments. Brian, spirituality isn't a matter of logic, thinking, analyzing. It's all about direct experience.

OK, so what?

I've got direct experience of my life. You've got direct experience of your life. We each could claim to have known or felt something supernatural as part of our experiencing. Yet why should someone else accept that claim as being anything other than a subjective personal experience? 

Paulos acknowledges the seeming validity of subjectivity arguments.

One response which can't be summarily dismissed is simply the example of their belief and its effect on their lives. This effect can be impressive, but certainly doesn't compel assent. Still, one shouldn't reject the insights and feelings of those with perfect pitch because one is tone-deaf. Or, to vary the analogy, it wouldn't be wise for the blind to reject the counsel of sighted people.

But he then continues to a counter-analogy.

The undermining disanalogy in this response is that a sighted person's observations can be corroborated by the blind. A sighted person's directions, for example, to take eleven steps and then to turn left for eight more steps to reach the door of a building can be checked by a blind person. How can an agnostic or atheist learn anything from someone who simply claims to know there is a God?

Unlike the situation with sighted people, whose visions and directions are more or less the same, the "knowledge" that different religious people and groups claim to possess is quite contradictory. Blind people might wonder about the worth of being sighted were different sighted people to give inconsistent directions to get to the door.

Instead of the directions just mentioned, say a different sighted person directed someone to take four steps, turn left for seventeen more steps and right for six more steps to get to the same door.

This is exactly the case with religions, spiritual systems, mystic practices, and meditation approaches. They're all over the map when it comes to finding God, nirvana, satori, Brahman, Tao, Allah, enlightenment, or whatever other goal is espoused.

(Some even counsel against having any goal, or taking any steps, offering another alternative to the ultimate reality-seeker.)

So feel free to have your feelings about God.

Just don't expect me, or anyone else, to regard those feelings as being anything other than subjectively personal absent demonstrable evidence that you've experienced some sort of objective shared reality.

Linking religious faith and Romney's tax returns

Ever since I started following the controversy over Harry Reid's claim that Mitt Romney didn't pay any taxes for ten years, I've had a feeling that deep philosophical issues relating to the validity of religious faith are involved.

Here's my attempt to explain why. 

It's fascinating, really. Reid and Romney are both Mormons, which is a weird variety of Christianity. Or to some, Mormonism is an independently weird religion.

Regardless, Christians and Mormons believe in the Bible. The New Testament gospels were written by guys -- Matthew, Mark, Luke, John -- with no direct knowledge of Jesus. So what they said about Jesus' life and teachings is hearsay.

Just like Reid's claim about Romney failing to pay federal income taxes for a decade. He won't reveal his source. Attention is being focused on moderate Republican Jon Huntsman (a fellow Mormon and Reid supporter).

So Reid got information from somebody who supposedly knows what's in the tax returns.

Thus Reid's knowledge has pretty much the same ontological validity as the Gospels. Anonymous sources reported they know Jesus died on the cross and was resurrected. Likewise, an anonymous source reports he/she knows Romney's tax returns show no income tax paid for ten years.

Why, then, does PolitiFact give Reid's claim a Pants on Fire rating?

To be consistent, shouldn't PolitiFact give every Christian politician who refers to Jesus and the New Testament a Pants on Fire rating? If faith in anonymous sources is an admirable trait in religious believers, what's wrong with Harry Reid having faith in whoever told him about Romney's tax returns?

There's no independent demonstrable evidence that Jesus is the Son of God, other than what is written in the Gospels by people who claimed to know other people with direct knowledge of Jesus. There's also no independent demonstrable evidence that Romney failed to pay income taxes for ten years, other than Reid's statement that he talked with someone with direct knowledge of Romney's tax returns.

PolitiFact shouldn't give a Pants on Fire rating, which amounts to "you lie!", when there isn't any demonstable evidence on either side of a claim. Reid says Romney didn't pay any taxes. Romney says he did. 

Why should either Reid or Romney be believed without evidence? What basis is there for calling Reid a liar, and not Romney? Neither has brought forward any firm facts to back up their claims. 

Ah, you might be thinking, but Romney does know what is in his tax returns, because he filed them.

Yes, that's true. But this is analogous to someone knowing what happened in Jesus' last days. Why should what they say be believed without confirming evidence? There are good reasons for them to make up stories about Jesus' resurrection and other miracles. 

The big difference between Christianity's truth claims and Reid/Romney's truth claims is that evidence does exist for the latter: Romney's tax returns. Romney has said he doesn't want to release any more returns because the Obama campaign would use information in them against him.

Which is more reason to be as skeptical about Romney's "I did pay taxes" as Reid's "He didn't pay taxes." Without demonstrable evidence, both statements have to be accepted on faith, just like religious claims are.

This morning I saw that PolitiFact had put out a Twitter Tweet on this subject:

We're hearing suggestions to create a new Truth-O-Meter rating for something like "unsubstantiated." Let us know what you think.

l think it's an excellent idea.

At the moment neither Reid nor Romney can substantiate their claims about Romney's tax returns. So it's a draw.

Both should get an "unsubstantiated" on the issue of whether Romney paid income taxes for ten years. It's unfair to give Reid a Pants on Fire for saying he heard that he didn't, when all Romney has done is say that he did.

I'd also like to see PolitiFact rate faith-based statements by politicians which bear on social policy. For example, if a politician says that an embryo or fetus has a soul, assess the evidence for this. Is that statement true or false?

Most likely, it would be unsubstantiated.

Usually religious claims rest on supernatural assumptions which can neither be proven, nor definitively rejected. The probability is just very high that those claims are false, based on the lack of evidence which seemingly should be evident but isn't (like miracles, which somehow stopped happening with the advent of scientific ways of studying them).

Personally, what I find most probable about Romney's tax returns is that he did pay income taxes most years, but at an embarassingly low rate.

For that reason -- and others like Swiss bank accounts, IRA gimmicks, high-priced dressage horse expenses, and such -- Romney doesn't want the truth about his finances to come out. Similarly, if religious believers knew everything that goes on behind the scenes of their favorite faith, my bet is that the truth also would shock them.

Respect reality, not religion, if you love the Ultimate

I'm no longer religious. But I still embrace the notion of Ultimate Reality. I love those words, "ultimate reality." They point toward... something. Or perhaps... someone.

(I think it's much more likely that something rather than someone resides at the root of reality, but since I wrote a book called Return to the One, and continue to believe in much of Plotinus' philosophy, I'm very much open to the possibility of some sort of universal impersonal consciousness that could be called One.)

Ultimate doesn't mean far off, even though religions, spiritual teachings, and mystical practices often assume that Really Real Reality is over the horizon in some sort of supernatural realm, not right here, right now.

Personally, I like to envision ultimate reality being close at hand. It may be hidden, disguised, imperfectly revealed. Yet the notion that reality is cleanly divided into "ultimate" and "non-ultimate" strikes me as absurd. 

I respect reality. Period. Which doesn't mean that I always like reality.

I don't like wasps (we've got a bothersome nest in our eaves at the moment). I don't like disease, disability, and death. I don't like black beans and red peppers. However, I accept that these things exist. I accept the evident evidence of their presence.

Likewise, I accept that many people don't respect reality.

I wish they did. Yet wishes and beliefs unsupported by evidence aren't part of objective reality, by which I mean the aspect of reality which exists whether or not a particular human brain conceives of it. 

Browsing through my Twitter feed this morning I came across a Tweet that said:

Faith is to believe what you do not see; the reward of this faith is to see what you believe. Saint Augustine

This strikes me as an incredibly stupid notion, notwithstanding St. Augustine's well-deserved reputation as a smart guy. There are so many things I can believe in, yet can't see, including countless objects which exist only in my own imagination.

Sure, if I believe I can see a thousand-headed hippopotamus, really, really believe it, it's possible that the "reward of this faith" will be to actually see such a creature. However, "actually" will be a subjective, not objective, phenomenon. 

I might dream of my dearly believed thousand-headed hippopotamus. I might have a vision of it while under the influence of some psycho-active substance. (Or even in my normal state of consciousness.) I might transform my oft-repeated belief that this creature exists into a sense of Yes, it truly does!

I don't find these "might's" worthy of being proud of, though.

Especially if I'm the sort of person -- which I am -- who wants to see reality as clearly as possible, while accepting that every perception, observation, and experience is necessarily a blend of an individual's subjective consciousness and a universal objective presence.

What strikes me as deeply disrespectful to objective reality is considering human belief to be more important than the nature of existence. Religious believers should feel this way also. And many did, back in the days when the Book of Nature was considered to reveal the Creator of nature.

If God created the world, then seemingly it is blasphemous to believe in something that isn't true about physical reality. Since the big bang, evolution, global warming, quantum mechanics, and other solid scientific theories are almost certainly true, to deny them is to deny God's creation.

Disrespectful! Assuming God exists.

But even if God doesn't exist, I still feel that we should respect reality as it actually is, rather than as how we'd like it to be, or believe it to be.

Religiosity, spirituality, mysticism -- I used to think these could be avenues to ultimate reality. Now, though, I'm struck by how abstract and conceptual they are. Believers in some hypothetical realm beyond the physical immerse themselves in ideas about reality, not reality itself.

Yes, there is more than meets the eye.

Science enables us to know about objects billions of light years away and events that happened billions of years ago. Science gives us knowledge about the subatomic world which otherwise would be hidden from usual human perceptions. 

But there is demonstrable evidence for the amazing phenomena scientific research reveals to be present beyond the bounds of everyday experience, whereas religiosity, spirituality, and mysticism only deal with beliefs, opinions, hopes, desires, and other concepts of human minds.

At every moment, each of us is enjoying a great gift: reality.

Sights, sounds, smells, tastes, and touches connect us with a world that exists independent of our subjective consciousness. The proof of this is that we can say to someone else, "Do you see that? Do you hear that? Doesn't this taste great?", and learn that what we consider to be real, actually is.

For me, mindfulness of the present moment has become my religion (speaking loosely; mindfulness is far removed from traditional religiosity). I try to separate my senses from my stories. Reality is different from our beliefs. 

Believe that, religious believers.  

Extreme is good. Be spacious in your extremeness.

Often we're advised to embrace moderation. Don't be extreme. Stick to the safe middle ground. Edges are dangerous; cliffs await. 

Most religions, forms of spirituality, mystic practices -- they like boxiness.

Commandments keep devotees' actions within certain bounds. Rituals are well-defined and repetititve. Prayers, meditative practices, worship... stay in control, sit in your seats, listen and don't talk back. For God's sake, don't yell, scream, object, or in any other way do your own unfettered thing.

Here's some countervailing thoughts about going to extremes. Two personal stories, one link to a Tantra-related blog post.

I'd almost forgotten about the Groupon massage deal that I'd bought months ago. Just before it was going to expire I made an appointment. It'd been quite a few years since I'd had a massage. Felt that I deserved one.

My masseuse turned out to be female, young, blonde, tattooed, and attractive. Nice.

Equally nice was her response when, in the conversational course of the massage, our talk turned to what I do for exercise and keeping fit. "Well, in addition to what I usually do, I've just gotten a longboard skateboard. Some people think that's crazy for a 63 year old guy to do. Including me at times."

"No, that's great," she said. "I recently got a longboard myself. My daughter rides her bike at the park, and I go along with her on my longboard."

As our conversing meandered on, my masseuse spoke about how different she is from some siblings, both of whom are averse to taking risks. They analyze a lot before making decisions. "I'm not like them," she told me.

"I'm much more immediately intuitive. So I make more mistakes than they do because I make more decisions."

Wow. I really liked that line. I make more mistakes because I make more decisions.

Beautiful. No pain, no gain. No mistakes, no correctness.

A stone sitting motionless is mistake free. Also, dead to life. I told her that I was a lot like that myself. But probably more of a blend of analytical and intuitive. I educated myself about longboards before I bought mine, pondered the pros and cons, evaluated the risks.

Then my mind simply said, Do it. And I did. I'm still happily alive. No broken bones. Not even a bruise.

Yes, it's crazy for a senior citizen to take up skateboarding on a longboard. However, like my wise-beyond-her years masseuse said, if we don't decide to do what we feel like doing, we'll limit our living. "Crazy" isn't an objective law of nature; it's a subjective human judgment.

A few days ago I learned another lesson from another attractive twenty-something girl. (Must be in a good karma zone.) My wife and I have embraced West Coast Swing as our new dancing thing. I love the music, the feel-good style, the creative expressiveness.

We've had some private lessons, a four-week beginning class, one session of an intermediate class. I know some basics, but in no way feel like I'm much more than a mildly advanced beginner. 

Last Friday night we went to a half hour lesson, followed by several hours of West Coast Swing open dancing. A young people who I hadn't seen before at our dance studio caught my eye. They could dance. Freely, smoothly, in and out of hold, spontaneously.

I thought, "Maybe... someday... it'd be so great to be half, heck, a quarter that good." 

My wife and I were sitting out a song when the Great Dancer Girl walked over and stood in front of me. She held out her hand. "Come on," she said, looking me in the eyes. My first reaction: panic. "You're kidding," I told her.

"No, come on." Must obey. My almost instant second reaction: do it. Excellent choice. Not that it really was a choice.

The girl's unexpected invitation to dance thrust me into an expanded psychological state perhaps somewhat akin to the spaciousness of Tantric teachings alluded to below. One moment I was thinking "That girl and her partner are great dancers." A few moments later I was her partner, dancing West Coast Swing, having fun, feeling like a better dancer because the girl was so skillful and followed my sometimes clumsy leads so well.

Her "Come on" propelled me out of my comfort zone into an extremity. Instantly I realized that I could either retreat into my previous view, I'm not good enough to dance with someone like her, or flow with her invitation into the unknown, experiencing what would happen.

Why not? was my unspoken intuitive feeling.

I don't want to live my life within excessively constrained boundaries, especially those of my own making. What rule, what commandment, what law prevented me from taking an accomplished dancer's hand when she wants to lead me onto the dance floor?

None. 

Near the end of the song, I had to ask her. "How long have you been dancing? You're really good." "A year," she told me. "I dance every weekend. And I dance with as many different people as possible. That's how I learn."

Great advice. For dancing. For life as a whole. Expand your horizons. Explore new territory. Take risks. Relax into the joy of trying something new. 

Lastly... 

Over on David Chapman's always-interesting blog there's a new post: "Our Buddhism goes to eleven." 

I've learned quite a bit about Tantra from reading Chapman's writings. I still don't really understand Tantric Buddhism, but at least I've gotten away from the idea that it's just about kinky sex (though it could be, I guess).

Here's how the post starts out. But for the full taste, read the whole thing.

Nigel Tufnel, guitarist in the decreasingly-fictional heavy metal band Spinal Tap, explained that they could play louder than anyone else because their amplifiers went to eleven.

Tantra has a similar approach. It is not the polite Middle Way between extremes. It is the way of glorious, ridiculous excess.

Most tantric practices crank it.

Tantra has a gonzo, over-the-top attitude. Increasing passion motivates extreme action.Increasing spaciousness gives room for extreme weirdness. Increasing energy fuels extreme emotion.

Intensification is not a goal for its own sake. Deliberately creating intensity is not natural, and extremes have no particular value.

Instead, this is a method: an exercise, an aspect of the path. It prepares you for the culmination of tantra—fluid, effective action—by developing spaciousness.

Sutra (mainstream Buddhism) develops spaciousness in almost exactly the opposite way: through self-restraint. This is also a valuable method, and also not particularly natural; there’s nothing particularly enlightened about self-restraint itself.

It’s funny that sutra and tantra take opposite approaches to developing spaciousness—and they both work! You can use both methods—although not at the same time. With practice, you learn which is the best approach for you in particular situations.

Tantra is extreme because reality is extreme. One way or another, you are going to have to deal with sex, love, loss, conflict, failure, and our good friends “old age, sickness, and death.”

Sutra recommends that you minimize your exposure to such emotionally provocative situations. It recommends that you develop equanimity to meet them without passion when you cannot avoid them.

Tantra recommends that you gradually increase your ability to act effectively in extreme situations, by developing spaciousness and passion together. You can do that relatively safely by deliberately creating intensity, in a controlled situation. There you practice meeting strong feelings with accommodating space.

Nice line: Tantra is extreme because reality is extreme. Can't disagree with that. Otherwise, as noted above I can't claim to grasp what Tantra is all about. I just like its embrace of extreme-ness.   

There's no answer to "Why does the world exist?"

Here's the sort of spoiler alert that irritates me when it pops up in a movie review -- a warning about a giving away of the key plot element that's so close to the spoiler itself, I can't help but see what I'm not supposed to see if I want to keep the movie's meaning a surprise.

Ha-ha! If you read the title of this blog post, it's too late. You know. There's no answer to "Why does the world exist?"

Hope this doesn't ruin your day.

Probably it will, if you're a religious devotee, because likely you think that God is the reason the world exists. It might also be a bummer of an answer if you're a fervent believer in science, because some cosmologists hold out hope that a Theory of Everything could explain, well, everything. Including why the universe exists.

Now, why am I so confident in saying there's no answer? Because I've finished reading Jim Holt's book, "Why Does the World Exist?"

I recommend it highly.

Holt fulfills the promise of his subtitle, an existential detective story. There's lots of twists and turns as Holt travels around, interviewing scientists, religious types, philosophers, and others who have deeply pondered the classic question, "Why is there something rather than nothing?"

As I said recently in a post about Holt's book, I find an exclamatory statement much more interesting. "There is something rather than nothing." I feel this way partly because it seems obvious that no answer is possible to the question why existence?

Who the hell do we puny humans think we are? What makes us think we're capable of fathoming the ultimate mystery of existence? Assuming there's any mystery to fathom, which is another aspect of the mystery: Is there really any mystery involving existence?

Holt doesn't just listen to the people he interviews. Holt challenges them, questions their assumptions, tests the solidity of the foundation their existential theories rest on. In the end, he doesn't find any satisfying answers to "Why does the world exist?" 

But it's an entertaining ride to nowhere.

In an epilogue Holt describes a televised book chat show (hosted by Bernard Pivot) he watched while in Paris. The guests were a Dominican priest, a theoretical physicist, and a Buddhist monk. The subject was Why is there Something rather than Nothing?

Holt seems to reveal where his sympathies lie, even if he isn't convinced that any of the answers given is true. I also resonate with the Buddhist monk -- though not completely. (French punctuation marks are omitted in some passages below; deal with it, French speakers.)

The monk, attired in crimson and saffron robes, with bare shoulders and a freshly shaved head, has the most interesting line on the question. He also has the most pleasant demeanor. In contrast to the prim-mouthed Jesuit priest and the irritable old physicist, the monk beams happiness. A smile continuously plays about his lips.

As a Buddhist, he says, he believes that the universe had no beginning. Il n'ya pas de debut. Nothingness -- le neant -- could never give way to being, he says, because it is defined in opposition to that which exists. 

A billion causes could not make a universe come into existence out of what does not exist. That is why, the monk says, the Buddhist doctrine of a beginningless-less universe makes the most metaphysical sense. C'est encore plus simple.

Vous trouvez? interjects Bernard Pivot, eyebrow arched.

The Buddhist monk genially protests that he is not evading the question of origins. Rather, he is using it to explore the nature of reality. What is the universe, after all? C'est n'est pas bien sur le neant. It is not nothingness. Yet it is somehting very close: an emptiness -- une vacuite. 

Things don't really have the solidity we attribute to them. The world is like a dream, an illusion. But in our thinking, we transform its fluidity into something fixed and solid seeming. This engenders le desir, l'orgueil, la jalousie. 

Buddhism, by correcting our metaphysical error, thus has a therapeutic purpose. It offers un chemin vers l'eveil -- a path to enlightenment. And it also resolves the mystery of being. When Leibniz asked, Pourquoi quelque chose plutot que rien? his question presupposed that something really and truly exists. And that's an illusion.

Ah oui? says Pivot, again skeptically arching an eyebrow.

Oui! replies the monk, smiling radiantly.

I'm pretty sure that Christopher Hitchens had little sympathy for Buddhism, being not only an atheist, but an antitheist. So the philosophical/intellectual credibility of the Buddhist monk's views are bolstered by the blurb Jim Holt got from Hitchens, which is featured on the cover of "Why Does the World Exist?"

What makes you so sure that there's anything?

Somehow I doubt there ever will be a convincing answer to that question, just as Why is there something rather than nothing? likely will remain an eternal enigma. 

Holt talks about how some philosophers are repelled by the notion of a Brute Fact. Me, I'm not bothered. Existence is. Nothing more to say. Which reminds me of the ending quotation in Holt's book.

Philosophy, n. A route of many roads leading from nowhere to nothing.
    -- Ambrose Bierce, The Devil's Dictionary 

David Lane on "Why Science Works"

Check out David Lane's response to Don Salmon, who disagreed with some central points Lane and his wife made in their essay, "Mysticism's Version of Intelligent Design: A Critique of John Davidson's Projective Creationism."

I liked the essay a lot. Praised it in a blog post, "Devastating Critique of Radha Soami Satsang Beas lies." After Don Salmon left a comment on my post, I responded in my own fashion. 

Don Salmon: I think David wrote a very interesting article, which quite accurately (though unintentionally) reveals most of modern "science" to be a thoroughly metaphysical belief system. This is most clearly stated when he talks about "evidence" that consciousness is the result of material processes. When, as Alan Wallace tirelessly points out, there is not a single scientific method (since most cognitive scientists barely accept introspection as a valid method) to even detect consciousness (and even with introspection as currently practiced, its presence can only be detected directly in humans - which is why for more than a century scientists adhered to the truly bizarre claim that an animals - and for some, babies!! - were not conscious) anywhere in the universe.

The religiousity of David's "fundamaterialism" (philosopher Neal Grossman's marvelous phrase) comes out on almost every line of the article. I suspect the intense emotion behind the article has to do with David's past association with the same group that Davidson belonged (belongs?) to.

By the way, I did acknowledge in the IW forum that personally, at least for me at least, David always comes across in his writings as a really curious, caring fellow; so i hope nobody thinks I'm comparing him too closely to religious fundamentalists.

(you can find more discussion of this at the integral world forum; or write me at [email protected])

Me: don salmon, I don't get your point. There is plenty of evidence that consciousness is the result of material/physical processes. This could easily be demonstrated on you, or anyone else, including the most proficient guru/meditator/yogi in the world.

First, they are conscious. Then they're given anesthesia. Now they're unconscious. Dead to the world. Unresponsive. Ditto if they were hit over the head forcefully. Or suffered serious brain trauma.

Physical changes to the material brain result in clear alterations in consciousness, or the loss of consciousness. This isn't a "metaphysical" speculation. It is scientific fact.

By contrast, there is essentially zero evidence that human consciousness exists apart from the human brain, or survives bodily death. Even ESP studies, which sometimes show some positive results (to my understanding; I'm not an expert on this) are dealing with living subjects who have operating physical brains.

Maybe the brain has some super capabilities science currently doesn't know about. OK, this still would be the capability of the physical brain, operating in the material world. So your attempted putdown of David Lane has nothing behind it, in my opinion.

Why didn't you cite the parts of David's essay that you disagreed with, and offer up reasons for your disagreement? This would be a better approach than simply dismissing the entire essay for reasons that make no sense.

David Lane's own response to Don Salmon is much more sophisticated, detailed, and carefully reasoned.

But we seem to agree on a central issue: while scientific investigations of reality never can be 100% sure about anything, evidence can be gathered and considered which point toward the most probable explanations. Lane writes:

Science works (and advances) because it is rooted in trying to spot weaknesses or flaws or insufficiencies. It is in a way conscious map making, where the would-be cartographer is constantly surveying possible gaps in the best up to date topographies.

Undoubtedly there will be those who claim to be scientists who will try to cheat or pass off their results as scientific. But the great thing about science (and why it has had such a successful run) is that it is constantly open to correction. Nothing is sacred, not even the most cherished of ideas. No authority is beyond questioning. Einstein or Darwin or Hawking or Witten or whomever can be and has been wrong.

...And, interestingly, one of the reasons there can be progress in science is because researchers do hold certain positions and certain assumptions, but then they are required to “hang those out to dry” so that others may see where their particular ideas hold true and where they do not.

Science only works to the degree that it can withstand an onslaught of competition, where eventually (by trial and by error) the best explanations--even if only tentatively held--hold court until another and better theory emerges. Newton’s understanding of gravity was quite a breakthrough for its time, but Einstein’s theory was more comprehensive and explained hitherto inexplicable problems that Newtonian physics could not. Such is science and how it works over time.

At the end of his essay, David shares some related YouTube videos. Here's one where noted physicist Richard Feynman talks about the probability that the best explanation for "flying saucers" is aliens visiting Earth.

 

Sure, this is possible. But is it probable? Just about anything anyone can think of possibly could exist in the unimaginably vast cosmos. The question we have to keep asking, though, is where the evidence points. 

Some directions are much more probable than others. So if someone says, "God, soul, spirit -- they are that way!", I'll respond, "Yes, possibly. However I have to ask, what makes you so confident you're right?"

Now we're in the realm of science. Discussion. Debate. Consideration of competing explanations. Challenging of dogmas. 

Mysteries abound.

We humans are nowhere close to knowing everything about anything, and much,much further from what is likely a dream which will never be fulfilled: knowing everything about everything. Searching is our nature. It's a large part of what defines us as Homo sapiens.

There's nothing wrong with dreaming, wondering what lies hidden over the horizon, exploring far-out possibilities. We just need to remember that science is the best way to distinguish facts from fantasies, reality from a wish.

Snoop Dogg (now Lion) finds his true inner self

Congratulations to the former Snoop Dogg, who now raps as Snoop Lion. He has found his true inner Rastafarian self. 

Details are lacking as to whether his true self was discovered in a psycho-active smoky haze.

Snoop Lion has not only found himself, he's discovered that he's the reincarnation of Bob Marley.

Finally, a religious awakening that has a ring of truth to it.