Church of the Churchless

Brilliant arguments in favor of "no free will"

I've got no problem with a scientifically and logically defensible conclusion: neither I, nor anyone else, has free will. 

(Of course, I had no choice but to write that sentence.)

The whole existentialist and religious thing -- most early existentialists were Christians -- puts way too much undeserved pressure on us to choose the right thing to do.

Maybe this made some sense when little was known about the brain, biology, genetics, systems theory, ecology, and such. 

But now it is clear that reality is a web of interdependencies, interelationships, cause and effect linkages. Demonstrable evidence for a non-material free-floating soul that freely decides what to do is precisely zero.

Which is fine with me.

See some of my previous blog posts on this subject here, here, here, here, and here.  I'm happier feeling like a part of a grand whole, rather than an isolated bit of freely choosing something-or-other.

Believers in free will don't have a coherent explanation of how such exists. Yet they do their best to buck up their subjective sense of freedom with slippery arguments like compatibilism. 

I do my best to understand compatibilist arguments. But fail. Just seems like the last gasp of die-hard philosophers who want to play some word games before being overwhelmed by scientific truth.

A few years ago Sam Harris wrote a book called "Free Will."

Compatibilist philosopher Daniel Dennett recently wrote a response to Harris' contention that we don't have any. After which Daniel Meissler demolished Dennett's attempted critique in a great piece, "Daniel Dennett is wrong about free will."

If you're interested in this subject, for reasons beyond your control, you need to read what Meissler wrote. Great stuff. Hard to believe how anyone could believe in free will after reading his piece. The comments are interesting also.

Here's a few excerpts to whet your reading appetite.

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"Seriously? Do you [Dennett] really think that, in a country where only half of the population believes in evolution, any significant percentage of people are going to have an advanced belief in free will?

No. They aren’t. Most believe that people make choices independently of causes, to a significant degree, and therefore deserve reward and punishment. This is the basis of the American justice system and of much of our culture. This highly nuanced dance that Dennett is doing isn’t on the radar because they don’t even have radar.

Ask someone why a murderer deserves to die. Ask 1,000 people in a scientifically valid poll. You’ll find that most people believe the following: The murderer had a choice. That means that despite their bad upbringing, despite their drugged out mom, despite whatever hardships, they had the concrete, tangible, and available OPTION to not commit that murder.

So they are 100% guilty. Period.

That’s the resolution that most people have in this country when it comes to considering free will. Not everyone, but most.

...None of these things get us to freedom unless you’re describing it in the loosest and most useless way possible. As I said in the opening, he’s basically saying that if it feels free then it is, and that’s the best you’re going to get.

Well, I don’t have to accept the best illusion I’m going to get and call it freedom. I’d rather, for the sake of human dignity and the respect for reason, acknowledge that it’s an illusion and work within that framework. It’s more true, which I think is generally more healthy.

...These things are not in your control. They happen to you. They trim your options down to the limited set that present themselves to you from, well…you don’t know where. That was Harris’ entire point. Whatever options get presented for you to choose from are labeled as your freedom, and you’re not even thinking about all the others that weren’t presented.

What’s free about that?

Oh, right, it’s as free as it can be, and we should be happy with that.

Sure, and a shackled slave is free to run from the plantation in lots of different ways:

1. In a straight line
2. In a zig-zag pattern
3. Towards the river

Picking from available options is illusory freedom because it ignores the fact that you were only presented a few choices, and you weren’t the one who chose them. This is true without even mentioning the uncomfortable bit that you’re also not the one picking afterwards.

...As I said at the start: Dennett’s argument reduces to this:

1. We have free will because we feel like we do
2. We have moral responsibility because it’s practical to behave as if we do

This is a reckless assault on truth in the name of wishful thinking."

"Let It Go." Great song. Great lyrics. Inspiring.

Almost 65 million people have watched the "Let It Go" song-scene from the animated movie Frozen. I came late to the You Tube party.

I'm sure glad I did. Found the video inspiring and uplifting, even though I didn't understand all of the lyrics. I suggest reading them before you watch the video, which I'll share after the lyrics.

The snow glows white on the mountain tonight,
not a footprint to be seen.
A kingdom of isolation and it looks like I'm the queen.
The wind is howling like this swirling storm inside.

Couldn't keep it in, Heaven knows I tried.
Don't let them in, don't let them see.
Be the good girl you always have to be.
Conceal don't feel, don't let them know.
Well, now they know!

Let it go, let it go!
Can't hold it back anymore.
Let it go, let it go!

Turn away and slam the door.
I don't care what they're going to say.
Let the storm rage on.
The cold never bothered me anyway.

It's funny how some distance,
makes everything seem small.
And the fears that once controlled me, can't get to me at all

It's time to see what I can do,
to test the limits and break through.
No right, no wrong, no rules for me.
I am free!

Let it go, let it go.
I am one with the wind and sky.
Let it go, let it go.
You'll never see me cry.
Here I stand, and here I'll stay.
Let the storm rage on.

My power flurries through the air into the ground.
My soul is spiraling in frozen fractals all around
And one thought crystallizes like an icy blast
I'm never going back; the past is in the past!

Let it go, let it go.
And I'll rise like the break of dawn.
Let it go, let it go
That perfect girl is gone
Here I stand, in the light of day.

Let the storm rage on!
The cold never bothered me anyway

 

I found fascinating the comment discussion on a perhaps purposely-provocative piece about the song/scene, "Let It Go."

It doesn’t veer into pole-dance territory until three minutes into the 3:38 video: that’s when the crown comes off, the hair gets taken down, and the queen transforms her perfectly lovely green gown into a sparkling, off-the-shoulders, breast-hugging confection that’s now got a slit up to her right thigh.

And Elsa works that skirt like a Victoria’s Secret Angel on the runway, swishing her hips with the exaggeration of a seasoned drag queen! Then comes the kicker, when we get a close-up of her formerly innocent face, now suddenly bearing a boatload of makeup — oddly jarring smears of bright rouge, deep-red lipstick and shocking-purple eye shadow.  

Why? Who’s it for? Why can’t Disney convey to its target audience of young girls the notion of female self-empowerment — even sexual strength, which I’m all for — without relying on the same tropes and trappings that it’s been using since forever?

Those were fighting words for a lot of women who had no problem with a strong (animated) woman being beautiful and rocking a tight dress.

Hey, neither do I. If a 65 year old man, moi, can be inspired by the movie along with 5 year old girls who have memorized all the words to the songs in "Frozen," seemingly Disney has a hit on its hands.

Check out the comments on the piece for a fascinating look into how passionate people can get about an imaginary character. Which, now that I think about it, isn't so different from a lot of comment conversations on this blog about religious topics.

Here's an example from commenter No Remorse:

Can I get a job writing articles for this place. I usually don't know what I'm talking about and apparently don't need to do any research.

She has makeup on in the first dress. The first dress does show a breast line, it's just that the dress goes up to the neck. Women and teen girls do have breasts. It's a biological fact. So why shouldn't a female cartoon character have breasts. Bugs Bunny had more pronounced ones when he dressed in drag.

Her hair is up in the first dress but then lets it down. Big whoop. It shows she is loosening up and becoming what she wants not what society thinks she should be (conservative). The second dress does have a lower neck line but is above her breasts. And the slit goes up to the knee. You can see her calf and knee. This is not the 1800's where anything above the ankle was obscene.

As for the makeup becoming darker she was the "villain" at that point and if you look at the history of female Disney villains they all had darker makeup to match their darker side. She was having an identity crisis at this point just like many young girls do trying to figure out where she belonged and who she was supposed to be.

As for her hips swaying in the second dress, prior to that she was running or spinning around. That is the first time you see her actually walk a straight line. Women's hips sway when they walk, that is another biological fact. They have wider hip bones then men do to allow for birth.

I wish I could get paid to write #$%$. I wrote this #$%$ for free.

Me too, No Remorse.

Spirituality should be based on reality

Since I bought it, my go-to book for reading prior to my morning meditation/quiet time has been David Barash's "Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom Meets Modern Western Science." 

My previous posts about the book are here and here. 

For me, it's a home run in the spirituality without supernaturalism ballpark. In the same genre of Stephen Bachelor's "Buddhism Without Beliefs," yet more satisfying in certain ways, being based on solid science. Albeit with a healthy dose of modern secular Buddhism viewpoints.

The core of Barash's book, which I've almost finished, is that three principles underly Buddhism in all of its varied forms. However, lots is added on to these principles that can't be defended scientifically.

But this much can. Definitions are from the book's glossary.

(1) Anatman -- not-self; denial that things, animals, or people have an independent, substantial nature. In particular, neither humans nor anything else have an eternal non-material soul. Neuroscience supports this.

(2) Anitya -- impermanence; a state of constantly becoming. Change happens. Everywhere. All the time. No exceptions. Except maybe the laws of nature that proclaim "change happens." Evolution is one example.

(3) Pratitya-Samutpada -- connectedness; the dependent co-arising of all phenomena; dependent origination; interdependence of all things. Fundamental premise of ecology, biology, systems thinking.

Here's a passage from the book that says a lot in a few sentences:

Evolutionary biologists typically attribute convergence among living things not to mere coincidences but to an underlying similarity in ecological niches. 

If two species -- say, whales and sharks -- appear very similar despite being unrelated, the likelihood is that both are adapted to a similar marine environment, which of course they are.

In the same way, we also have both placental mice and marsupial mice, and the wings of birds and those of bats.

The shape and structure of wings speaks eloquently about the physical properties of air and about how the experience of air is shared by flying birds and flying mammals, just as fins are eloquent about water. 

Likewise, the extraordinary parallels between Buddhism and biology, independently captured by seemingly disparate perspectives, may also be due to the nature of their shared reality.

Well, I'd change that "may" in the last sentence to "almost certainly." At least, this is the conclusion I've drawn after reading most of Barash's book.

Once Buddhism is stripped of its supernaturalism, such as a belief in transmigration or reincarnation (which is at odds with its not-self principle), it does indeed seem that Buddhist philosophy is a fairly accurate reflection of reality as modern science has come to know it.

Imperfectly and incompletely to be sure. But a heck of a lot more accurately than religions have been able to comprehend the cosmos. 

So why might someone want to overlay a reality-based philosophy like modern secular Buddhism over what science has learned about reality? Good question. I suspect Barash will answer it in the book's final chapters. 

My personal take on this is that we humans are complex creatures. We aren't just rational thinking machines, and we aren't just intuitive emotional beings. There is a multitude within us.

Those 100 billion neurons in the brain with trillions of connections produce some pretty weird shit, to put it crudely but accurately.

I love to read hard-core popular science books. But they leave me with a wanting for something more. That more is emotional, meaningful, quasi-poetic, uplifting. The sort of thing that, when I have it, makes me feel that life is good and I'm an integral part of a wonderful reality.

Barash does an excellent job of describing how the three principles above -- not-self, impermanence, connectedness -- do indeed lead to a understanding of how to live life happily, meaningfully, productively.

But that's the subject of another blog post, after I finish the book.  

Einstein talks about "spirit." But not in a religious sense.

Can you be spiritual without being religious? Can you be spiritual and also scientific? Of course. It depends on what is meant by spirit. 

A Google search produced this definition:

1. The nonphysical part of a person that is the seat of emotions and character; the soul.

2. Those qualities regarded as forming the definitive or typical elements in the character of a person, nation, or group or in the thought and attitudes of a particular period.

Obviously the first definition -- the non-physical part of a person, soul -- implies a religious sensibility. Or at least, a supernatural one. 

But the second definition -- the definitive elements of something -- allows for a broad range of interpretations about what spirit signifies. 

When I read Albert Einstein's letter to a girl who asked him if scientists pray, and if so, what they pray for, I sense that Einstein was thinking of spirit along the lines of "definitive elements." Read the letters, and see what you think.

In January of 1936, a young girl named Phyllis wrote to Albert Einstein on behalf of her Sunday school class, and asked, "Do scientists pray?" Her letter, and Einstein's reply, can be read below.

(Source: Dear Professor Einstein; Image: Albert Einstein in 1947, via Life.)

The Riverside Church

January 19, 1936

My dear Dr. Einstein, 

We have brought up the question: Do scientists pray? in our Sunday school class. It began by asking whether we could believe in both science and religion. We are writing to scientists and other important men, to try and have our own question answered. 

We will feel greatly honored if you will answer our question: Do scientists pray, and what do they pray for?

We are in the sixth grade, Miss Ellis's class.

Respectfully yours, 

Phyllis

----------------------

January 24, 1936

Dear Phyllis, 

I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer:

Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science. 

But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive. 

With cordial greetings, 

your A. Einstein

 

 

A time for mindfulness, a time for mind wandering

Balance. Not going to extremes. Yin and yang. Goldilocks' (and Buddha's) middle way.

A New York Times essay, "Breathing In vs. Spacing Out," applies this to mindfulness and paying attention. There's a time to do this, and a time to let the mind scatter to the far corners of the cosmos. Or at least, to daydream about what we'll do when we win the lottery.

But one of the most surprising findings of recent mindfulness studies is that it could have unwanted side effects. Raising roadblocks to the mind’s peregrinations could, after all, prevent the very sort of mental vacations that lead to epiphanies.

In 2012, Jonathan Schooler, who runs a lab investigating mindfulness and creativity at the University of California, Santa Barbara, published a study titled “Inspired by Distraction: Mind Wandering Facilitates Creative Incubation.” In it, he found that having participants spend a brief period of time on an undemanding task that maximizes mind wandering improved their subsequent performance on a test of creativity. In a follow-up study, he reported that physicists and writers alike came up with their most insightful ideas while spacing out.

“A third of the creative ideas they had during a two-week period came when their minds were wandering,” Schooler said. “And those ideas were more likely to be characterized as ‘aha’ insights that overcame an impasse.”

The trick is knowing when mindfulness is called for and when it’s not.

“When you’re staring out the window, you may well be coming up with your next great idea,” he said. “But you’re not paying attention to the teacher. So the challenge is finding the balance between mindfulness and mind wandering. If you’re driving in a difficult situation, if you’re operating machinery, if you’re having a conversation, it’s useful to hold that focus. But that could be taken to an extreme, where one always holds their attention in the present and never lets it wander.”

During my intensely meditating years, when I'd spend about two hours a day in disciplined meditation, I also tried to repeat a mantra as much as possible during the rest of the day.

I'm not sure how to classify this activity, as mindfulness or mind wandering. Repeating a mantra while doing everyday activities like driving a car, washing dishes, or even talking to someone, seems to have characteristics of each.

For example, I started to do my mantra meditation thing seriously just after I graduated from college with a degree in psychology. While waiting to start in a master's of social work program, I had a job as a teacher's aide at Santa Clara High School.

Part of that job involved counseling students with behavioral problems. I didn't really know what I was doing when I talked with a student. Plus, I was so enthused about repeating my mantra as much as possible during the day, even at work, often I wouldn't be listening very attentively to what a student was telling me.

Looking back, I wasn't very mindful of the moment in which I found myself. My mind wasn't wandering, but it also wasn't paying full attention to the here-and-now of sensory/external reality. I was focused on repeating some words in my mind, my internal subjective reality.

So I can see the wisdom in the New York Times piece. It's good to let the mind wander, and it's good to let the mind be concentrated. No hard and fast rule here. Whatever seems appropriate at the time.

Not-self a teaching of Buddhism, not Hinduism

It is extremely simplistic to speak of "Eastern" religions as if they all are much the same. Actually, they aren't. For example, in some regards Hinduism is closer to Christian theology than to Buddhist teachings.

Case in point: not-self. Buddhists call this anatman. 

The doctrine of anatman (or anatta in Pali) is one of the central teachings of Buddhism. According to this doctrine, there is no "self" in the sense of a permanent, integral, autonomous being within an individual existence. What we think of as our self, our personality and ego, are temporary creations of the skandhas.

Hinduism also uses this term. But in this religion the word means something very different. 

Anātman (Sanskrit: अनात्मन्) in Sanskrit means not spiritual, corporeal, unreal, something different from spirit or soul, not self, another. In Advaita Vedanta this word is used to indicate Samsara i.e. the world - existence or the world phenomena, which is the unreal projected by ignorance on the real, that is, on Brahman who is the Absolute.

In other words, Buddhism doesn't consider there is any unchanging, permanent, foundational aspect to reality. Rather, everything is interconnected, "empty." 

Not empty in the sense of nothingness, a void. Empty in the sense that every seemingly separate entity lacks a distinct individuality, a quality unique to itself, an eternal aspect, a being-ness all to its own.

However, Hinduism and other like-minded faiths (including, as mentioned above, Christianity) posit the existence of Atman, or soul. Atman supposedly is an everlasting drop of the spiritual ocean, Brahman, our real self.

Here's how David Barash describes the contrast between Buddhism and HInduism in his fascinating book, "Buddhist Biology." 

Some of his [Buddha's] impatience was evoked by the ancient Brahmanical texts known as the Upanishads, which predated Buddhism by a thousand years or more, and against which the then-emerging tradition of Buddhism had to define itself -- not unlike Christianity struggling to distinguish itself from its ancestral Judaism.

The Upanishads promote a very different conception of the self, or atman, as an unchanging substance (not altogether different from the Christian sense of a soul) that is eternal and uniquely associated with each individual.

For Hindus, atman is not only indestructible but also beyond description as well as beyond suffering. 

...This atman, in classical HIndu thought, is connected to the underlying ground substance of all reality, namely brahman. For the Upanishads, it isn't too much of a stretch to suggest that atman = brahman. Buddhists, as we have seen, view things differently as reflected in the alternative designation, anatman or "not-self."

...Let us stipulate yet again that Buddhists are not fools. They realize that each of us experiences a degree of continuous memory as well as some continuity of body. They are not claiming that there is literally "no self," but rather that the various aggregates of personhood are not one's self. Buddhists certainly know the difference between the "you" who is reading these words and the "I" who has written them (or the other way around).

But when we introspect -- and also when we consider the objective biological facts -- neither you nor I can find a solid, unchanging "me" aside from the feelings, sense data, ideas, and so forth that are apparent to our selves at any given moment.

The great philosopher David Hume -- who, after all, was renowned as a hard-headed empiricist, not as a mystic or in any other way a devotee of Eastern thought -- described in A Treatise on Human Nature the following widely shared experience, one that could as well have come from a Buddhist master:

When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I can never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.

I've been having an interesting comment conversation over on this blog post, which has quite a few comments (scroll in the comment section down to the January 2014 interchanges between "devpaul" and me). 

At first I thought that devpaul's commitment to one wife, one car, one bicycle, one job, one religious belief, and such throughout one's life was based on Indian culture. He is critical of my contention that it is normal to change all of these things, and so much more, during one's lifetime. 

Or, if not exactly critical, devpaul contends that it really isn't possible to make spiritual progress without an enduring commitment to a single religious perspective, sticking with it through thick and thin, good times and hard times. 

Like marriage, I guess. Of which I have had two. And he, one (an arranged marriage).

There are undoubtedly cultural factors influencing how devpaul and I look upon the world. I'm pretty sure there also are philosophical differences impacting our worldviews. Though I'm not a Buddhist, I resonate with the "not-self" perspective. 

As Barash argues in his book, it is pleasingly scientific, being in tune with modern neuroscience, biology, and psychology. Not to mention common sense, as Hume pointed out. Where is the "me" separate from my experiences?

So I have no problem embracing all the changes I've experienced in my life, including changing my religious perspective from believer to churchless. After all, I don't consider there is any "me" or "I" other than those experiences.

Thus there is no self that I can be untrue to, or let down. If I change my mind, I realize there was no enduring me which possessed a mind. I'm just my mind, my body, my experiences, my sensations, my thoughts, my feelings.

In fact, I could have left out all the "my's" in that last sentence. Force of habit to write it the way I did.

I like this passage in "Buddhist Biology."

Ambrose Bierce, incidentally, modified Descartes's dictum to cogito cogito ergo cogito sum -- "I think I think, therefore I think I am" -- arguing that this was as close to certainty as philosophy was likely to get.

Buddhism without supernaturalism leaves reality

For me, giving up religious addiction isn't done "cold turkey," all at once. It's a gradual process. I discarded the most ridiculous notions early on, but afterwards I find myself letting go of faith-based beliefs bit by bit.

Buddhism and Taoism are examples of this. 

I've given away quite a few of my books in these genres that I couldn't bear to read any more. Even Zen books. Just because spirituality comes in an "Eastern" guise doesn't mean it is free of the dogmatism and supernaturalism that infects Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. 

So now I'm only able to enjoy Buddhist and Taoist writings that make scientific sense. Or at least aren't opposed to a rational, experiential understanding of everyday reality.

Which explains why I've started reading "Buddhist Biology: Ancient Eastern Wisdom meets Modern Western Science." I read a review of David Barash's book in New Scientist. 

(In case the review disappears from the New Scientist web site, I'll include it as a continuation to this post.)

Here's some excerpts from the first chapter that I resonate with.

Full disclosure: I have been a practicing biologist for more than four decades and an aspiring Buddhist (or "Buddhist sympathizer") for about as long, but I am definitely more the former than the latter. I have no religious "faith," if faith is taken to mean belief without evidence. 

Indeed, I have a powerful distrust of organized religion and a deep aversion to anything -- anything -- that smacks of the supernatural. Give me the natural, the real, the material, every time.

...I am a Buddhist atheist, a phrase that may seem contradictory but that has legitimacy not only in my case, but as a description of many others, of whom the former Buddhist monk and current scholar and author Stephen Bachelor is best-known.

...By contrast, it is hard to imagine a Muslim or Christian atheist, since the terms are oxymoronic: they contradict each other.

...a "Christian" who doesn't believe in the divinity of Jesus would seem not only a poor Christian but no Christian at all. Interestingly, Jewish atheists are comparatively abundant, probably because unlike Islam and Christianity, whose followers are defined as those who espouse the tenets of their religion, Jews are defined as much by their ethnicity as their religious beliefs. There are also many "Jew-Boos," people who identify both as Jewish and as Buddhist.

...High on the list of Buddhist absurdities are the phenomenon of iddhi, supernatural events that are supposed to be generated by extremely skillful and committed meditation. They appear often in Buddhist texts and I don't believe a word of them.

...The traditional Buddhist cosmology is, however, very specific, and more than a little weird, with the world composed of thirty-one levels. 

...A final example in which I (and many other Buddhist sympathizers) part company with traditional Buddhist beliefs concerns the doctrine of reincarnation.... For those of us interested in reconciling Buddhism with science in general and biology in particular, traditional reincarnation remains a pronounced and irreconcilable outlier.

...the present book will likely trouble those otherwise gentle Buddhist souls who so revere Tenzin Gyatso that they append to his name the honorific "HH," His Holiness. "The Dalai Lama" is okay with me, since that is how this particular gentleman is widely known, but even though I greatly admire him for his kindness as well as his wisdom, I cannot swallow the notion that he is any holier than thou, or me, or Charles Darwin, or anyone else. Either we are all holy (whatever that means), or no one is.

...I hold to the position that Buddhism in its most useful, user-friendly, and indeed meaningful form is not in fact a religion in the standard Western sense of the term. Rather, it is a perspective, a philosophical tradition of inquiry and wisdom, a way of looking at the world that is often perverted into a kind of "sky-god" faith complete with other nonsensical rigamarole, but, in its more genuine form, is anything but that.

Here's the New Scientist review:

Science isn't separate from the rest of human rationality

Sam Harris has written a terrific response to this year's Edge question: "What scientific idea is ready for retirement?" 

He proposes that we discard the notion that science is only something that physicists, biologists, chemists, and other obviously science'y types do. Rather...

We must abandon the idea that science is distinct from the rest of human rationality. When you are adhering to the highest standards of logic and evidence, you are thinking scientifically. And when you’re not, you’re not.  

I don't want to quote much more of the piece, because you really should read the whole thing. It isn't very long. I'll include it below in case it ever disappears from Harris' web site and Edge. 

Great ideas here. The second time I read it, I got even more out of Harris' essay.

He has helped me better understand what is meant by a scientific worldview. This extends way beyond what most people consider to be in the domain of science. To all of life, really.

(I've added some paragraph breaks to make the essay easier to read.)

From Edge.org:

Science advances by discovering new things and developing new ideas. Few truly new ideas are developed without abandoning old ones first. As theoretical physicist Max Planck (1858-1947) noted, “A new scientific truth does not triumph by convincing its opponents and making them see the light, but rather because its opponents eventually die, and a new generation grows up that is familiar with it.” In other words, science advances by a series of funerals. Why wait that long?

WHAT SCIENTIFIC IDEA IS READY FOR RETIREMENT?

Ideas change, and the times we live in change. Perhaps the biggest change today is the rate of change. What established scientific idea is ready to be moved aside so that science can advance?

*  *  *

Our Narrow Definition of “Science”

Search your mind, or pay attention to the conversations you have with other people, and you will discover that there are no real boundaries between science and philosophy—or between those disciplines and any other that attempts to make valid claims about the world on the basis of evidence and logic.

When such claims and their methods of verification admit of experiment and/or mathematical description, we tend to say that our concerns are “scientific”; when they relate to matters more abstract, or to the consistency of our thinking itself, we often say that we are being “philosophical”; when we merely want to know how people behaved in the past, we dub our interests “historical” or “journalistic”; and when a person’s commitment to evidence and logic grows dangerously thin or simply snaps under the burden of fear, wishful thinking, tribalism, or ecstasy, we recognize that he is being “religious.”

The boundaries between true intellectual disciplines are currently enforced by little more than university budgets and architecture. Is the Shroud of Turin a medieval forgery? This is a question of history, of course, and of archaeology, but the techniques of radiocarbon dating make it a question of chemistry and physics as well.

The real distinction we should care about—the observation of which is the sine qua non of the scientific attitude—is between demanding good reasons for what one believes and being satisfied with bad ones.

The scientific attitude can handle whatever happens to be the case.

Indeed, if the evidence for the inerrancy of the Bible and the resurrection of Jesus Christ were good, one could embrace the doctrine of fundamentalist Christianity scientifically. The problem, of course, is that the evidence is either terrible or nonexistent—hence the partition we have erected (in practice, never in principle) between science and religion.

Confusion on this point has spawned many strange ideas about the nature of human knowledge and the limits of “science.” People who fear the encroachment of the scientific attitude—especially those who insist upon the dignity of believing in one or another Iron Age god—will often make derogatory use of words such as materialism, neo-Darwinism, and reductionism, as if those doctrines had some necessary connection to science itself.

There are, of course, good reasons for scientists to be materialist, neo-Darwinian, and reductionist. However, science entails none of those commitments, nor do they entail one another.

If there were evidence for dualism (immaterial souls, reincarnation), one could be a scientist without being a materialist. As it happens, the evidence here is extraordinarily thin, so virtually all scientists are materialists of some sort.

If there were evidence against evolution by natural selection, one could be a scientific materialist without being a neo-Darwinist. But as it happens, the general framework put forward by Darwin is as well established as any other in science. 

If there were evidence that complex systems produced phenomena that cannot be understood in terms of their constituent parts, it would be possible to be a neo-Darwinist without being a reductionist. For all practical purposes, that is where most scientists find themselves, because every branch of science beyond physics must resort to concepts that cannot be understood merely in terms of particles and fields.

Many of us have had “philosophical” debates about what to make of this explanatory impasse. Does the fact that we cannot predict the behavior of chickens or fledgling democracies on the basis of quantum mechanics mean that those higher-level phenomena are something other than their underlying physics? I would vote “no” here, but that doesn’t mean I envision a time when we will use only the nouns and verbs of physics to describe the world. 

But even if one thinks that the human mind is entirely the product of physics, the reality of consciousness becomes no less wondrous, and the difference between happiness and suffering no less important.

Nor does such a view suggest that we will ever find the emergence of mind from matter fully intelligible; consciousness may always seem like a miracle. In philosophical circles, this is known as “the hard problem of consciousness”—some of us agree that this problem exists, some of us don’t. Should consciousness prove conceptually irreducible, remaining the mysterious ground for all we can conceivably experience or value, the rest of the scientific worldview would remain perfectly intact.

The remedy for all this confusion is simple: We must abandon the idea that science is distinct from the rest of human rationality. When you are adhering to the highest standards of logic and evidence, you are thinking scientifically. And when you’re not, you’re not. 

*  *  *

Read 170 other responses on Edge.org.

Religious believers, what if you're wrong?

I"ve mused about this subject before, including in "You're religious, but are you right?" and "Anti-Pascal's wager bets on life."

The question is: what if religious believers are wrong about God, afterlife, ultimate reality? Usually the consequences of being wrong are thrown in the face of atheists and infidels.

You'll spend eternity in hell if you're wrong! So you should believe. Running the risk of sacrificing eternal joy for transient earthly pleasure is stupid.

Well, not really. 

It comes down to probabilities. As I've noted before, the existence or non-existence of God isn't a 50-50 proposition. Virtually all of the demonstrable evidence points to no-God, no-afterlife.

In fact, mathematician and religious skeptic James Lindsay argues in his book "God Doesn't, We Do" that the probability of God being real is as close to zero as it is possible to get.

Here's what Lindsay says in a God doesn't exist, almost surely section.

First, when considering the claim that titles this chapter and section, observe that making it is not lost to philosophical indefensibility because it does not flatly deny the possibility of the existence of God. It claims only that the probability that God exists is zero, almost surely.

Second, notice that it serves as the perfect default position in dealing with any existence claim before evidence is provided for it. 

In every situation where there is a question about a positive claim that is not settled, the only honest point in investigating the matter is one that assigns the lowest possible philosophically defensible probability for the truth of that claim.

...Since it is not the case that assuming "probability zero" means "no possibility," the severe lack of satisfactory evidence that we see in the world concerning every question about God renders probability zero, almost surely, as the only acceptable starting guess that is philosophically defensible. 

Later Lindsay asks religious believers some tough questions in a "What if you're wrong?" section. Here's a sampling.

-- What if you, believer, are right about there being a God but picked the wrong one? 

-- What if you're right about God but picked the wrong religion to worship Him, as Muslims, Jews, and Christians mutually claim about each other?

-- What if you're right about God and your religion but wrong about which denomination, sect, or church has it right?

-- What if no demomination or person has figured it out correctly yet?

-- Can you, in your little corner of faith, in your tiny denominational box, shaded by your own personal perception, interests, likes, and dislikes, really be so sure that all of these billions of others have it wrong and that you have it right?

-- What if you are wrong about God's existence?

-- What, then, are you doing with some or much of your life?

-- How much time and effort are you wasting chasing fairy tales out of a book that is ancient literature turned social-control manual?

-- What are you doing to yourself, to your psychological well-being, when you must constantly lie to yourself about your worldview, which does not match your view of the world anywhere you look without relying on rationalizations and contortions of facts?

-- What are you ignoring or failing to learn about the world or yourself because you think you already have answers or because you want them less than your cherished beliefs?

-- What are you doing when you support inhuman social policies, hold back education, suppress healthy expressions of sexuality, oppose beneficial measures in regards to sexual health, deny others their basic human rights, curse the names and lives of your enemies or go to war with them, vote for idiotic politicians because you like their beliefs, held without evidence, enough to act without regard of their backwards ideas on key matters of policy?

-- What are you asking from those of your friends, your family, and your community who do not believe and yet are currently all but forced to listen to and to pretend to respect your religious beliefs, delusional rambling, misplaced thanksgiving, and unflattering solipsism?

-- What actions and thoughts do you deny or attempt to deny yourself on the grounds of your faith, activities and mindsets that might bring enjoyment, pleasure, meaning, or fulfillment to your life?

-- Which of those do you do anyway, needlessly hating yourself for it even while you do it?

-- What do you do only because you hope for bonus points with your imagined creator, selfishly trying to improve the chances that you will get your reward?

Beautiful thoughts: why teacher David Menasche isn't afraid to die

Wow. What a moving story. David Menasche's "Why I'm not afraid of dying."

When I saw the title mentioned in a tweet, I will confess that my first thought was, "Oh, please, don't let the reason be I know that God loves me and I'll be going to heaven.

Thankfully, it wasn't.

Menasche is a teacher with apparently incurable brain cancer. Here's some of what he says in his piece.

The cancer had finally succeeded in taking me out of the classroom, but I wasn't ready to let it take me out of the game. I wasn't afraid to die. I was afraid of living without a purpose.

To paraphrase Nietzsche, a person who has a why to live can always find a how. My "why" had always been my students. I just needed to find a new "how." Since I no longer had a classroom for them to come to me, I decided that I would go to them.

...What I learned from my travels was that my students had grown up to be kind and caring people.

People who picked me up when I fell over curbs, read to me from books I could no longer see, and cut my food when I could not grasp a knife. They shared with me their deepest secrets, introduced me to their families and friends, sang to me my favorite songs and recited my favorite poetry.

...And it was through them I realized that those very human moments, when we connected on a deep and personal level, were what made my life feel so rich, then and now. My students had taught me the greatest lesson of all. They taught me that what matters is not so much about what we learn in class, but what we feel in our hearts.

I am a pragmatic man. I know there is no reason I should still be alive. The cancer never lets me forget that it and not I will ultimately win this battle of wills. I know the disease will have its way with me, and sooner, rather than later.

My limbs are withering and my memory is fading. Yet as my world dims from the tumor growing in my head, I see ever more clearly the gifts the promise of an early death has brought.

I've ordered Menasche's book, to be released tomorrow.

Partly because "The Priority List: A Teacher's Final Quest to Discover Life's Greatest Lessons" looks to be an inspiring read. And in part because I wanted my Amazon order to be an (inadequate) reaching-out and thank-you to a courageous guy who has a lot to teach us all.

Where do good feelings and spiritual inspiration come from?

You go to a cathedral. Or a rock concert. You stand on the ocean shore watching a sunset. Or in St. Peter's Square as the Pope speaks. 

If you feel uplifted, where does that sensation come from? The setting, what lies outside you? Your mind, what lies within you? Some combination of the two? 

Good questions. 

Most of us tend to speak rather simplistically about this. We'll say something like, "Disneyland was so much fun!" Or "I loved the movie I saw last night." 

That is, we either ascribe a good feeling to some external entity or to ourselves. Both views are incorrect, in my experience. I am indeed affected by my outside environment. Yet my mind determines what i feel at any given moment.

I got to musing about this after reading some comments on a recent Church of the Churchless blog post. Someone spoke about the how the bliss and intoxicaton of a spiritual experience comes from within, not without.

Which I agree is true. 

Just as a tree falling in the forest doesn't make any sound unless someone with ears is around, there is no bliss and intoxication without someone capable of experiencing a good feeling.

It seems fair to say that "outside" and "inside" blend within the human brain. Though we are affected by our objective environment, how this occurs is determined by our subjective state of mind -- which obviously is intensely personal. 

Religious believers often mistakenly assume that when they feel uplifted in the presence of some supposedly holy entity, that feeling is produced by the entity. 

Early on in my churchless blogging, I wrote about this sort of thing in "Did I see God in first class?"

I may have seen God in first class. The first class section of an Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco to Palm Springs, to be exact. Or, maybe I didn’t.

In the early ‘90s I was traveling from Portland to attend a “bhandara," or spiritual gathering, of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees in Palm Springs. After changing planes in San Francisco I found myself in a right side aisle seat in the coach row directly behind first class, idly watching other passengers board.

A middle-aged Indian gentleman caught my eye. Bearded, he was wearing a white turban and blue jeans. His first class seat was across the aisle and one row up from mine. Before sitting down he glanced around the rear of the plane and our eyes briefly met. Then he took his seat and I returned to perusing a magazine. Nothing special seemed to have happened.

But it had, to quite a few other people sitting near me. For they were Bay Area RSSB members who also were heading to Palm Springs for the bhandara where the satguru (true guru) was to speak. And that Indian gentleman sitting a few feet away from me was the satguru—Master Gurinder Singh.

I began to hear whispers. “That’s him.” “The master is sitting in first class.” “I don’t believe it.” I hadn’t recognized Gurinder Singh, even though I’d seen him before at a bhandara in Vancouver, B.C. Fervent RSSB devotees consider the satguru to be God in human form, much as Jesus is regarded by devout Christians.

The difference being, Jesus is dead and Gurinder Singh was sitting alive and well in an Alaska Airlines first class seat. Imagine that a Christian gets on a plane and sees Jesus seated a few rows ahead of him and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the atmosphere on the flight to Palm Springs—among the RSSB disciples, at least.

I got mildly caught up in the excitement. However, even back then, when I was much more involved—psychologically and otherwise—with RSSB than I am now, I didn’t consider that seeing the satguru was a big deal. And until I made the connection between “Indian man wearing a turban” and “Master Gurinder Singh,” seeing him wasn’t even a small deal.

For I didn’t feel a hint of anything special until the disciples around me started up the “It’s him!” whispering campaign. Wouldn’t you think that if a person truly is God in human form, such would be obvious?

Not just to those who already believe in the person’s divinity, but to everyone—believer and unbeliever alike. Jesus, of course, suffered the same lack of recognition. If his purported godliness had been transparently apparent, impossible to deny, by the time he died Jesus would have had a lot more than a handful of followers.

Psychedelic researchers speak of the importance of set and setting in determining the nature of a LSD (or similar drug) experience.

“Set” includes the personality of the individual; “setting” includes cultural views about what is real. If someone with a devotional frame of mind joins a group like RSSB that affirms the divinity of a guru, then this person may very well see God sitting in first class. I, on the other hand, just saw an Indian man.

Some people go to a Lady Gaga concert and feel it was a life-changing event. Others, that it was merely a cause of hearing loss. Likewise, some people feel marvelously uplifted in the presence of a religious leader. Others feel nothing special.

This shows that good feelings, spiritual or otherwise, aren't produced by anything outside of us.

It takes a resonance between outside and inside, physical and mental, objective and subjective, to fashion a positive experience. Or any sort of experience.

The various delusions of Sant Mat belief

Below is a recent comment left by Osho Robbins on this post. Though it concerns the specific beliefs of the India-based Sant Mat religious philosophy, Robbins makes some points that apply to all forms of religiosity.

Such as mistaking subjectivity for objectivity; faith for facts; wishful thinking for actual reality.

I agree with almost everything Robbins says. I do, however, look upon "I don't know" a bit differently than he does.

It seems to me that a don't-know attitude is justified in situations akin to a coin flip -- where the actual outcome is close to 50-50: could be this, or could be that. Odds are about even that each is true.

When it comes to the existence of God or life after death, though, the odds appear tilted considerably toward the unbelieving side. There are many reasons to doubt that God is real or human consciousness survives in a non-bodily form, and few to support these beliefs.

Something that has a high probability of being true deserves more than a "I don't know." 

Still, if we take "I don't know" to mean "I don't know for sure," then this fits with the scientific method: knowledge is always subject to falsification and change as new evidence becomes available.

I made some minor grammatical edits to Robbins' comment and added bracketed explanations of some terms that will be unfamiliar to many readers. Here it is:

When a seeker initially comes across Sant Mat - it seems like a great idea: 

1. Get initiated.
2. Meditate.
3. Leave the body.
4. Transcend death - by discovering you are a SOUL and do not die and have a life independent of the body.
5. Meet the master within - become good friends with him as he personally escorts you through the inner regions in his Radiant Form [akin to Astral Form].
6. Become all knowing and all powerful as you become a 'saint' and arrive at Sach Khand [heaven, basically].
7. Become immortal and reside in Sach Khand forever. 
8. Spend the rest of your life here on earth guiding other souls on the path to Sach Khand.

Once you believe this is possible (which you do if you attend satsangs [spiritual meetings], read the books and listen to the stories of others who have achieved this), you are pretty much hooked.

You will now do whatever it takes to get initiated and become a disciple.

You know it's going to be hard work and involve lots of meditation - but you are sure you will succeed - with the grace of the master.

So you get initiated. The meditation is tough because you are just sitting there - repeating the five holy names [a mantra] and nothing is happening. years go by. Decades go by. You eventually accept that it's not going to happen - but by now you are a believer.

So you decide to do seva [volunteer work] instead. Become a speaker, or a secretary, or a treasurer. The other satsangis [initiates] have become part of your social circle and your friends.

You are 100% convinced that this path is the truth and the real way to God. You can logically see it makes total sense.

If you personally have failed to make progress - it's because you have failed to live up to the high standards demanded by the masters. You know you need to work on yourself. But at least you know the master will come and save you at the time of death.

This becomes the fall-back position. This is every disciple's insurance policy.

When a broker offers you life insurance - you laugh in his face and tell him he is selling death insurance and that you already have the best life insurance policy in the universe.

The disciple has this feeling of superiority and it is unavoidable because he knows he is part of the chosen few in this world.

What the disciple cannot see is that all religions are the same. The Muslim believes he is special because he is a believer. The Christian believes the same.

The reason the Sant Mat follower believes so strongly is because the books and satsangs explain that the only path is through a living master and there have been past masters but they cannot help you now. It makes perfect sense, and that is the point.

Once you believe this is the only real path - there is no way you can ever leave. After all, where will you go? All other religions are false.

So the satsangi has a hard time with these churchless folk. All they can see is that these unfortunate people have had no results in meditation and have now turned their back on the master. They consider this to be 'really bad' because the master is God's representative on earth.

Just because they personally have no results doesn't matter because they KNOW they are on the RIGHT path.

This is the disciple's BELIEF and all beliefs appear to be the absolute truth - they are not considered opinions - but TRUTH. That is why the disciple cannot avoid being dogmatic.

Humans are very good at taking a belief and making it appear to be the truth.

The person who does not believe in God does exactly the same. He takes a belief and makes it appear to be the truth.

An honest person can only say "I don't know." He is neither a believer nor a dis-believer.

He takes no sides because all sides are beliefs.

In religious beliefs - you never get 100% proof. The attraction of Sant Mat is that you can do the 'experiment' and get to Sach Khand. If you arrive - you can finally say "I KNOW" rather than "I believe."

Of course there is still the question of delusion. Perhaps you are just deluded and have not arrived anywhere. Or maybe you get a mental shift and realise the journey is not literal and that Sach Khand is not a place so nobody arrives.

There will never be any objective proof. If someone claims to be enlightened, it is personal to them. They cannot hand it on a plate for someone else to examine. And when you can't define exactly what it is - it becomes even more impossible to prove to others.

Anything subjective is, by it's very nature, impossible to prove objectively.

There is the domain of "objective things" and the domain of "subjective things".

If you draw each of them as a circle - they will be separate circles - with no overlap.

They are separate worlds and cannot meet. Neither is any more real than the other.

They are different. Some people give greater credence to the objective and some to the subjective. When you are dying - the objective becomes irrelevant and the subjective becomes all important.

Any 'spiritual' journey is subjective and this is why the objective person will necessarily doubt and ask for proof. Proof cannot be given.

When a Radha Soami follower leaves 'the path' it simply means he has changed his focus from subjective to objective. Objectively speaking - Sant Mat appears to be nonsense. However to the believer it makes perfect sense because he is not concerned with the objective world.

Contraception coverage dispute shows absurdity of religious belief

Beliefs are not equal under the law. At least, not in the United States. Religious beliefs have an edge over non-religious beliefs, even when the believer holds the same belief. 

Which is absurd. 

By their nature, beliefs are a matter of opinion. Otherwise we'd call them "facts." Gravity is a fact. God is a belief. 

Favoring insurance coverage for contraceptives (birth control pills and other means of preventing pregnancy) is a belief. It can be founded on facts as well as ethical principles. But in the end, it is a belief.

Most, if not all, governmental social policy decisions in this country come down to a matter of democratically elected public officials choosing one alternative over others -- again, based on beliefs (hopefully factually founded).

The Affordable Care Act mandates that contraception coverage be included in health insurance policies.

There are good reasons for doing this. Preventing unwanted pregnancies is the best way of reducing the number of abortions. Women should be able to choose if they want to become pregnant, rather than leaving this largely to reproductive chance.

Yet the Affordable Care Act carved out an exception for those organizations which have a religious objection to providing contraception coverage for employees. 

This is ridiculous. Again, why should someone with a religious belief be able to ignore a law, while someone who holds the same belief for non-religious reasons has to abide by the law? 

If a woman-hater believed that females should be barefoot, pregnant, and obedient to men, he couldn't use that misogynist belief as a basis for getting out of the Affordable Care Act's contraceptive coverage mandate.

But if a devout Catholic believes that females shouldn't be able to use contraceptives, our political and legal system says "You don't have follow the law like other people do." 

Two beliefs, each at odds with a broad cultural consensus about what constitutes good social policy, yet only one gets to ignore the law. 

I don't think religious believers should be able to get any special treatment under the law. However, since they do, the question at hand is whether requiring an order of Colorado nuns to sign a simple form saying they have a religious objection to contraception coverage puts an undue burden on them.  

Of course not.

Probably The Little Sisters of the Poor doesn't have to file tax returns. If they did, they'd realize that if anything is an undue burden, it is complying with IRS requirements. For a religious organization, getting out of the Affordable Care Act's contraception coverage mandate is super-easy.

"They need only self-certify that they are a non-profit organization that hold themselves out as religious and have religious objections to providing coverage for contraceptive services, and then provide a copy of their self-certification to the third-party administrator of their self-insured group health plan," argued Solicitor General Donald Verrilli Jr. in the government's filing.

But in a reply filed by the Little Sisters lead counsel Mark Rienzi late Friday, the nuns' attorney countered that the government is "simply blind to the religious exercise at issue" and that "minimizing someone's religious beliefs does not make them disappear."

That's right, unfortunately. I wish the absurd relgious beliefs of The Little Sisters of the Poor would disappear, particularly the ones that go against the grain of sound ethical social policy decisions. 

This great Matt Wuerker cartoon shows how crazy it would be if someone's personal beliefs were able to determine what sort of health insurance coverage his or her employees could get.

Great news! You are your brain.

My brain is following up on a previous blog post, "Brains are us: a fresh thought for a New Year." Now, I almost just wrote My brain is causing me to follow up...

This shows how difficult it is to break the habit of assuming that there is a "me" and also "my brain." Slice my head open or put me in a MRI machine: evidence of the brain's existence will be clear.

But evidence of a "me" existing -- where is it? Really, nowhere to be found.

If you doubt this, pick up just about any Zen book. Or Buddhism book. The existence of a separate self is a widespread assumption, yet by no means universal.

The thought, "You are your brain," used to bother me. A lot.

Because I hated the idea that when my brain died, so did I. Meaning, the sense of "me." If consciousness is physical, when the material brain stops working, so does the consciousness of the body to which the brain is attached.

Now, though, I find this notion entirely acceptable, if not downright pleasing. It's hard to put this positive feeling into words, but I'll give it a try.

For most of my life I've loved the thought of oneness. Even wrote a book about it.

The One I longed for, though, was immaterial. Supernatural. Spiritual. Other-worldly. It was a unitary reality beyond the physical; the foundation of this world that wasn't really a part of it (because it is the One, partless).

This put unity far away, a goal to be reached rather than a reality to be immediately embraced.

Realizing that, almost certainly, the brain is me and I am the brain brings the One close to hand. No distance at all, really.

Materiality is everywhere evident. I am material. We are one. There is no difference between me/brain and other/world. All is the same substance.

There is something beautiful about this thought. Again, difficult to put into words.

I feel like a weight has been lifted from my psyche. I no longer feel the need to become anything other than what I already am: a brain experiencing itself; a strange loop of consciousness; matter becoming aware of materiality.

It's akin to the feeling I have when I wonder what it would be like to be a character in an alien computer simulation. Which, of course, could be true. 

I could be wrong, but if I discovered that I was just a bunch of computer code constructed by a bored teenager from a super-advanced civilization in another galaxy, I think I'd feel a sense of relief.

Maybe you could call this "enlightenment."

Everything I believed to be solidly real, actually wasn't. At least, not real in the sense that I used to consider it was. So now the pressure is off. No need to figure out what reality is all about, because this is impossible for me to do.

I'm just a bunch of electrons configured in a temporary special way. In other words, pretty much what neuroscience tells me I am in this earthly reality: neurons doing their thing as a human brain.

Hope this makes some sense. If not, that's understandable. I am me (albeit not really) and you are you. Our brains are quite different, yet also very much the same. 

For another perspective on this fascinating subject, check out "The brain... it makes you think. Doesn't it?"