Church of the Churchless

Atheist middle-school girl gets preachy church official kicked out of Salem school

Here's some great churchless news from right here in Salem, Oregon. 

The Friendly Atheist blog picked up on a local newspaper story and described the beginning of what happened in "Young Atheist Gets Youth Pastor Banned from Middle School After He Preached to Her At Lunch."

Tim Saffeels volunteered at Straub Middle School in Salem, Oregon, meaning he supervised during lunch periods, reminded students to clean up after themselves, and served as a role model during his time there.

Last week, he sat near a group of students, including one who attended Salem Heights Church, where he serves as youth pastor. The subject naturally drifted to religion. He should’ve stopped the conversation there, but (of course) he kept it going.

Shit really hit the fan when a student told him she didn’t believe in God.

Unfortunately for Saffeels, he picked the absolutely worst lunch table for getting away with what wasn't allowed by school rules: preaching the Christian Gospel on school property, during school time, to an unwilling audience.

Notably, Shelby Conway, a courageous 14 year old girl who isn't shy about proclaiming her proud atheism. She sent an email to the school principal asking that Saffeels not be allowed to return.

It's a great letter. The Christian youth pastor comes off sounding like a dogmatic jerk, while Conway held her secular rational ground.

Dear Mrs. Perez,

My name is Shelby Conway, I am 14 years old, and an eighth grader at Straub. Today at lunch, our table was approached by a youth pastor who said he was from a Christian church out in South Salem. He then proceeded to preach to our entire table, several of whom are not Christians. When he finished, he asked us for our religious beliefs.

I replied that I am an atheist, which I am, and I am very firm in my beliefs, and that he should not try to convince me otherwise. He began insulting me, my beliefs, and my intelligence, saying that, "Any logical person would see that atheism is wrong" and telling me that I am "too young" to choose this belief and saying that he believes I am simply trying to "rebel".

I explained that it was quite the opposite, that I find religion itself illogical. He got upset here and started telling me that my belief was "bad," "stupid," and "evil," and that I was as well. I was already quite upset, so I told him to "leave me alone" and he simply continued, telling me that I needed to come to a church function to "cleanse my mind and soul of evil" and gave me a card for his youth group, because, as he said, which I promptly got rid of. I know there were other things he said, but some were not direct, and I don`t remember exact quotes.

I have no problem with religion, and I respect all peoples beliefs, even if they aren`t like mine. Some of my best friends are very strong Christians, and I have no problem with it. However, I am very willing to defend myself and others when they`re insulted, which they were. I was very uncomfortable and personally offended with the way he was speaking to both me and other non-Christians around the lunch room.

I request that we keep things like this, such as pastors and religious speeches, in places where they are welcomed, such as churches, or religious schools. It offends me, and several other non-Christians, that it was assumed that we were both a small minority, and unintelligent and easily convinced. There is a wide array of religious beliefs here at Straub, and we should not assume that all people believe the same.

The man refused to offer his name, but I assume that there is a way to contact him. I`m fairly certain that he was here because he was welcomed by the school. I ask that he does not return.

Thank you very much for your time and consideration, Shelby Conway

Way to go, Ms. Conway. You've warmed my soul. Or rather, the positive conscious feeling I have toward what you did which, in my true believing days, I would have considered to be soul-related. 

Our local newspaper's story about this, "Church official banned from Straub Middle School," has gotten almost 300 comments so far. They're interesting reading. Most are supportive of what Conway did, and critical of Tim Saffeels. 

Some, though, exhibit the same kind of Christian zealotry and preachiness that irritated Conway so much when Saffeels called her atheism bad, stupid, and evil. Here's an example.

Dawn Baker Hernandez 

Shelby Conway is a product of her parents teachings. Any non-believer is fearful of the truth being spoken! I pray for this young girl that has been blinded by lies and the intolerance of her heart. What a sad foothold Satan has on so many!

Wow. It always amazes me how hateful and intolerant fundamentalist Christians can be. Guess they haven't taken to heart all the sermons they must have heard about Jesus' loving kindness. Here's one of the responses to Hernandez.

Brian Jakob 

Your logic says if a child does not believe in unicorns, then the parents taught that child a-unicorn-ism. How about not believing that gnomes live in your shoes at night? Did your parents teach you a-shoegnome-ism? I think what you are trying to say is these parents taught their children critical thinking skills that helped them realize that the bible is just a book of fairy tale wizards and zombies. I think you need to chant an incantation to have your wizard take human form at the school and cast spells to prove his existence.

This guy left a couple of excellent comments. The second is a response to another commenter.

Alex Robbins

Sorry christians, but you're no longer a special class with special rights and privileges any more. You don't get to insert your mysticism into our public institutions and government. It's unfortunate that you're so used to always getting your way, that you think actually having to adhere to the law constitutes persecution and oppression. In reality, you're just terrified at no longer being a privileged class that always gets its way, and the fact that millenials and children are abandoning your fairytales in droves.

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

Renea Jones - Actually, you have been a privileged class. For over a century in this country. That you are entirely unaware of your privilege is demonstration enough. Christians, being the majority, have long gotten to do whatever they want to do in this country, with very little to no legal repercussions or restraint. Openly preaching in classrooms, religious symbols in public institutions, and a whole host of other things which until now you've taken completely for granted, and seen as commonplace.

But now, the non-religious are actually becoming a prominent segment of society. The "none's" (those who claim no religious affiliation) now make a full one-fifth of the country, and they're getting tired of your religiosity being pushed into our public institutions, on their tax dollar. Suddenly, you're getting opposition, and you don't like it. You're so used to getting your way, that when you suddenly don't get whatever you want without question, you think you're being oppressed.

Archbishop of Portland should butt out of a woman's assisted suicide

As a long-time lapsed Catholic (I flamed out after first communion, when I was about ten), it feels really good to tell an Archbishop to "butt out" in the title of this post.

Especially since what the Archbishop of Portland, Oregon is butting in about is a decision by Brittany Maynard, a woman with terminal brain cancer, to choose assisted suicide rather than a horrible lingering death.

And on Nov. 1, Maynard, who in April was given six months to live, intends to end her own life with medication prescribed to her by her doctor – and she wants to make it clear it is NOT suicide. 

"There is not a cell in my body that is suicidal or that wants to die," she tells PEOPLE in an exclusive interview. "I want to live. I wish there was a cure for my disease but there's not." 

Maynard has a stage 4 glioblastoma, a malignant brain tumor. 

"My glioblastoma is going to kill me, and that's out of my control," she says. "I've discussed with many experts how I would die from it, and it's a terrible, terrible way to die. Being able to choose to go with dignity is less terrifying." 

Oregon, the state where I live, passed this nation's first Death With Dignity act in 1994. My wife and I strongly support it. As, obviously, does Maynard, who moved to Oregon so she could take advantage of the law.

Recently on the Portland evening news I saw Archbishop Alexander Sample blathering on about how wrong it was that Maynard had chosen to end her life on her own terms. As noted above, she has tentatively chosen November 1 as her dying day, but says she might change her mind about the date depending on how she feels then.

There's a lot about religiosity that bothers me now that I've embraced churchlessness. Preachiness and pontificating about morality is especially irritating. 

Even more so when no one is being affected by a person's actions except the person herself. For example, though I'm in favor of abortion rights, I can resonate with some right-to-life arguments. After all, a potential human, a fetus, is involved with the decision whether to have an abortion.

(Some, of course, would do away with that word, "potential.")

But when it comes to ending one's own life, I firmly believe this should be the right of every individual. Yet only after careful consideration. Suicide, whether assisted or not, shouldn't be taken lightly. Life is precious, since, almost certainly, this is the only life each of us will ever have.

Archbishop Sample, though, has issued a statement that includes some bizarre bits of theological reasoning, in addition to being a totally unwarranted intrusion into Maynard's private life, and death. The statement can be read in its entirety here. I'll also include it as a continuation to this post. 

Here's some excerpts I found particularly weird.

Killing oneself eliminates the freedom enjoyed in earthly life. True autonomy and true freedom come only when we accept death as a force beyond our control. Our lives and our deaths belong in the hands of God who created and sustains us.

Huh? Freedom is being able to end your life when it becomes unlivable.

There isn't any enjoyment in having your brain and body destroyed by a stage 4 tumor. Believe me. My wife's sister died from stage 4 breast cancer. We know what she went through. We dearly wished she lived in Oregon, rather than in Indiana, and had a choice about how her life would end. 

Death is not a force beyond our control. That's an absurd thing to say.

Modern medicine argues against it. Wars argue against it. The death penalty argues against it. It's ridiculous to argue that God is in control of everything, but then accept all the ways human beings either prevent death from happening or cause it to happen.

Through the suffering, death and Resurrection of His Son, Jesus, we know that death is not the final word. Eternal life awaits all those who entrust themselves to God.

This is subjective opinion, not objective fact. Most people in the world don't believe those two sentences. The Archbishop needs to realize that the Catholic Church can't control how they think, nor should it try to.

Assisted suicide sows confusion about the purpose of life and death. It suggests that a life can lose its purpose and that death has no meaning. Cutting life short is not the answer to death.

Of course, life can lose its purpose.

When life becomes unbearable, there is no reason to keep on living. Meaning is not something outside of us (the subject of a recent post). Meaning isn't given to us by God or any other entity. Meaning is a dynamic relationship, an ever-changing flow between ourselves and the world.

Our final days help us to prepare for our eternal destiny.

So you believe, Archbishop Sample. Lots of other people disagree with you. So butt out of their end-of-life decisions.

Meaning isn't outside or inside us. It is in-between.

I'm a fan of David Chapman's Meaningness site. I haven't read all of Chapman's writings, but what I've perused has impressed me. 

(See my 2011 post, "David Chapman's dizzying writings on Meaningness and Buddhism.")

Recently he sent out an email to those who have signed up to get updates on changes to his site. Chapman included a link to his page So how does Meaningness work? 

I may have read it before. Regardless, I enjoyed reading it again. The writing is clear; the reasoning persuasive. Here's an excerpt:

The natural human view is that meanings are inherent in external things. Thunder means the gods are angry, and that’s a fact about thunder and gods, not about people. So on this view, meanings are objective: external to us. They are the same for everyone.

When “same for everyone” ran into differences of opinion, monotheism moved all meanings into God instead. God gives everything ultimate meanings, that no one may disagree with. God is external, so monotheistic meaning is also objective.

Then God died, and the world was disenchanted, so objects all became inherently meaningless dead matter. That meant meanings can’t be objective. The obvious alternative—developed in the 1700s—was that meanings are subjective. They live in the minds of individual people.

250 years later, versions of this idea are still taken for granted by most sophisticated people. Unfortunately, the subjective theory of meaning doesn’t work. It verges on nihilism—outright denial of all meaning. Fortunately, the theory is also not true.

When you are hungry, the meaning of food is not subjective. You, personally, are hungry, but the meaning is shared with everyone else (and probably all other vertebrate animals). It’s not particularly “mental”; it’s as much in your sensory organs, and digestive system, as in your brain. And it’s in the actions of your hands and mouth as you eat.

The meaning of a handshake is partly arbitrary, but it is not subjective. You can’t redefine it to make it mean what you want. When you shake hands, the meaning depends on a huge amount of cultural background, involving millions of people. It probably also depends on evolved biological functions we don’t know much about.

The subjective theory of meaning is not full-blown nihilism, but tends to slide into it. That’s because we actually can’t mean anything much by ourselves; meaning is mostly a social and cultural activity. Narrowing one’s focus to supposedly personal meanings leads to social and cultural alienation, and then to nihilistic depression.

A meaning is neither objective nor subjective; it is not inside your mind, nor outside. It requires both subjects and objects, and it doesn’t dwell in either. It takes time and space, but it is not precisely located.

Especially, a meaning does not live in your brain. That popular pseudoscientific idea is the “representational theory of mind.” It is internally contradictory and unworkable. Meaning may require a brain, but usually many brains, and also non-brain stuff.

Meaningness is a dynamic, interactive process. Any particular meaning involves a complicated history of many creatures and things; a network of involvement that we only ever partly understand.

This seems to fit with an interesting New York TImes article, "Does Everything Happen for a Reason?" Along with Chapman's piece, it also is well worth reading in its entirety. Here's a sample:

ON April 15, 2013, James Costello was cheering on a friend near the finish line at the Boston Marathon when the bombs exploded, severely burning his arms and legs and sending shrapnel into his flesh. During the months of surgery and rehabilitation that followed, Mr. Costello developed a relationship with one of his nurses, Krista D’Agostino, and they soon became engaged. Mr. Costello posted a picture of the ring on Facebook. “I now realize why I was involved in the tragedy,” he wrote. “It was to meet my best friend, and the love of my life.”

Mr. Costello is not alone in finding meaning in life events. People regularly do so for both terrible incidents, such as being injured in an explosion, and positive ones, like being cured of a serious disease. As the phrase goes, everything happens for a reason.

Where does this belief come from? One theory is that it reflects religious teachings — we think that events have meaning because we believe in a God that plans for us, sends us messages, rewards the good and punishes the bad.

But research from the Yale Mind and Development Lab, where we work, suggests that this can’t be the whole story. In one series of studies, recently published in the journal Cognition, we asked people to reflect on significant events from their own lives, such as graduations, the births of children, falling in love, the deaths of loved ones and serious illnesses.

Unsurprisingly, a majority of religious believers said they thought that these events happened for a reason and that they had been purposefully designed (presumably by God). But many atheists did so as well, and a majority of atheists in a related study also said that they believed in fate — defined as the view that life events happen for a reason and that there is an underlying order to life that determines how events turn out.

...WHATEVER the origin of our belief in life’s meaning, it might seem to be a blessing. Some people find it reassuring to think that there really are no accidents, that what happens to us — including the most terrible of events — reflects an unfolding plan. But the belief also has some ugly consequences.

It tilts us toward the view that the world is a fundamentally fair place, where goodness is rewarded and badness punished. It can lead us to blame those who suffer from disease and who are victims of crimes, and it can motivate a reflexive bias in favor of the status quo — seeing poverty, inequality and oppression as reflecting the workings of a deep and meaningful plan.

Not everyone would go as far as the atheist Richard Dawkins, who has written that the universe exhibits “precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”

But even those who are devout should agree that, at least here on Earth, things just don’t naturally work out so that people get what they deserve. If there is such a thing as divine justice or karmic retribution, the world we live in is not the place to find it. Instead, the events of human life unfold in a fair and just manner only when individuals and society work hard to make this happen.

My achieving Buddha-nature starts tomorrow

Tomorrow my wife, Laurel, is having shoulder (rotator cuff) surgery on her right shoulder. She's right handed, so for the six weeks she'll be wearing a sling, I will be her right arm. 

Being (1) a woman, (2) a wife, and (3) someone who knows me well after our 24 years of marriage, this is pretty much Laurel's worst nightmare.

Meaning, the surgery to repair a detached tendon is bad enough.

Having to depend on my housekeeping, health care-giving, cooking, dog wiping (it's rainy season; we live in the country; trails are muddy), laundry, and other domestic "talents" for six weeks -- scary! For Laurel is a woman who likes this stuff done in a certain way.

Optimistic me -- hey, I'm not having the surgery -- sees this experience as an opportunity for each of us to grow in different ways. Laurel, perhaps, might learn to relax a bit if (when?) she sees that my way of handling things isn't the same as hers, but works fairly well.

As for me, I'm grandiosely expecting that these six weeks will, if not cement my Buddha-nature into enlightened stone, get me well on the way to perfected realization.

Not me. I just like the photo.

(I understand that grandiosity and fixed views of enlightenment are not exactly part of Buddhist teachings. But since I'm only a pretend Buddhist, only desiring to achieve Buddha-nature because that sounds cool, I don't really worry about the purity of my dharma practice.)

Leaving aside pseudo-spirituality, my fallback position for the next six weeks is to visualize myself as a highly paid personal aide to a movie star. Laurel is damn good looking for her age, or any age, so this isn't all that difficult for me to imagine.

I've started doing this already, since Laurel can't use her right arm for certain tasks and her left arm has been sore from overuse.

It does seem to help me achieve more of a compassionate, caring attitude than my habitual self-centered personality is normally capable of. I just have to keep the uncomfortable fact that I'm not going to be paid lavishly for my six weeks of being a substitute right-arm from rising too far into reality-consciousness.

Along this line, my second fallback position is to keep Laurel so drugged up on her oxycodone prescription and other pain pills that she either won't be able to tell how well I'm taking care of the house, or she won't care.

However, my wife doesn't like to take more pain-killers than is necessary, and tends to get side effects from prescription medication, so this scheme probably is doomed for failure.

Which leaves me with my initial inclination: to be so caring, selfless, and compassionate for the six weeks, whoever or whatever hands out Buddha-nature certificates drops mine in the cosmic mail without question. My new-found humility may not allow me to tell people directly that I've attained enlightenment through Laurel's shoulder surgery, but for sure I'll brag about it on this blog.

Sounds good. 

I do have this regret, though. My wife and I should have followed up on her periodic observation, after watching episodes of HBO"s "Big Love" (about a modern-day Mormon polygymous family), that having "sister wives" spreads out the household chores quite a bit and gives the women live-in best friends.

This struck me as a fine idea also, especially if we brought into our home, just to offer up one example off the top of my head, a beautiful, young Thai woman skilled in both domestic arts and, um, other skills. If we had done this, Laurel would have had more competent help on hand during her recovery from the shoulder surgery.

Oh, well. She's left with just me now. A soon-to-be Buddha-naturized guy.

More weird news from the world of Radha Soami Satsang Beas

Back in the days when I followed an Indian guru, Charan Singh, the guru business was a lot more appealing than it is now. 

Charan Singh almost cerainly wasn't "god in human form" as devotees of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) mystical teachings believed.

But undeniably he was a fine human being: humble, compassionate, intelligent, and utterly determined to keep RSSB's form of spirituality as untainted by materialism as possible.

Charan Singh was scrupulous about keeping his family business separate from his duties as guru. He also said that RSSB shouldn't have overseas centers, as this would distract from the true duty of the disciple to meditate and realize divine reality.

After Charan Singh's death, his nephew, Gurinder Singh, became guru. A lot has changed with Radha Soami Satsang Beas since. Gurinder Singh has no problem with making hundreds of millions of dollars while serving as guru. (See here, here, here, and here.)

Understand: I have no problem with a guru, or anyone else, becoming rich.

I'm just pointing out that back in the 1970's and 80's when the guru who initiated me, Charan Singh, was head of RSSB, this organization had a vibe that was considerably more spiritual and less materialistic than it is now.

Below is some info that recently was pointed out to me. Since quite a few readers of this blog are interested in RSSB goings-on, I wanted to share -- without much comment -- links that can be read directly if anyone wants to learn more.

Religare Health Trust buys RSSB hospital property. Religare, an Indian company with close ties to guru Gurinder Singh and his family, has paid $43 million for hospital property owned by Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Religare Health Trust, a Singapore-listed business trust housing physical assets and some businesses of healthcare services firm Fortis, is buying the Mohali hospital property from religious trust Radha Soami Satsang Beas for Rs 270 crore ($43.2 million), as per a stock market disclosure. It is also buying the clinical establishment unit of the hospital from Fortis Healthcare for Rs 15 crore ($2.3 million), as part of a larger deal.

Gurpreet Singh Dhillon, the guru's son, was named CEO of Religare Health Trust. A few months after the above-mentioned purchase by Religare of RSSB hospital property, the guru's son got a promotion from being Religare Health Trust's chief operating officer to become chief executive officer. 

Religare Health Trust (RHT), a wholly owned subsidiary of Delhi-based Religare Enterprise Ltd (REL), has named Gurpreet Dhillon as CEO of the company. Earlier, Dhillon was working as the executive director and COO of RHT.

...Gurpreet Dhillon is also a second cousin of the billionaire brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh who are the promoters of Religare and Fortis Group. Moreover, Gurpreet is one of the two sons of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, leader of the spiritual group Radha Soami Satsang Beas. The Singh brothers are followers of the spiritual group and their maternal grandfather had previously served as one of the gurus of the group.

RSSB Australia wants to build a large center in a "green wedge" agricultural zone. Some people in Melbourne aren't thrilled about part of the city's green space being turned into a RSSB religious center where the cars of up to 2,000 people may be parked if a waiver to planning/zoning rules is granted. Some excerpts from comments on this story:

Green wedges are our city's "lungs" to protect us from the heat island effect, and over-development. Trees and vegetation absorb heat, water and cool our city when it's needed, and allows birds to feed and nest.  Once the green wedges are gone, our city will be a concrete, sprawling, hotbed of wall to wall houses and infrastructure.  The green wedges have a purpose and should be left alone.

...This cannot be allowed. This is green wedge land and no organisation should be allowed to build here.

...NO.  Are they really suggesting that a group of up to 2000 people is 'unlikely to cause any disturbance to the surrounding community'?

Just how will they ensure that "that a practitioner be at least 24-years-old, lead a moral life, abstain from alcohol and mind-altering drugs, maintain a lacto-vegetarian diet, and give time to daily spiritual practice?

Who gains financially from this proposal?  I sincerely hope the council is not looking at this as revenue.

No, a green wedge is for all.

...This is an encroachment on a green wedge that's meant to be kept "green" and safe from any developments.  This is taking over by stealth, then it will be open slather "vacant" land for open-ended usage!  The Green wedges were preserved by the forward-thinking Hamer government, to protect Melbourne from becoming a sprawling mono-lith of concrete, infrastructure and housing!  Once this is opened, for worship even if only on Sundays, it will mean car parking and then set a precedent for more developments!  

Using medical marijuana is a no-no, even when legal. The Australia RSSB newsletter explains that no initiate, or applicant for initiation, should use medical marijuana even if it is legal where they live (as it is in Oregon, where I am, along with many other states).
Download Australian Sept 2014 No 015 Newsletter

However, the newsletter says that sometimes medicines have to be taken for pain, and these will affect the mind and ability to concentrate. Also, "if we are serious in our resolve, we will seek out the medicines that have the least effect in this regard and do our best to use them for the shortest duration possible."

Well, it's a fact that medical marijuana is much less addictive or harmful than other pain relievers such as opiates. And a research study found that the opiates are more effective when used on conjunction with marijuana. 

So if the goal is to "feel better fast" and reduce dependency on opiates, using medical marijuana arguably is the way to go. Here again, an irrational religious dogma supplants science. RSSB devotees are supposed to follow whatever rules are handed down by the guru, even when they don't make sense.

The brain tricks us into believing something is real, when it is not

Ah, I love it when I see one of my thoughts reflected in someone else's brain. This helps me keep in mind that we humans are wonderfully alike, as well as wonderfully different.

I write a regular Strange Up Salem column in our town's alternative paper, Salem Weekly. (Feel free to give this effort to lift the blah-curse on my home town a Facebook like.)

With marijuana legalization on the ballot in Oregon, in the most recent issue my theme was "A Strange Reason to Legalize Marijuana." Here's how I started off the piece:

Here’s a news flash from the front page of modern neuroscience: “You don’t exist.” At least, not in the way most people believe they do.

We feel as if we look out upon the world as a detached ethereal consciousness floating behind our eyes, inside our head. We feel as if we’re a weightless self or soul inhabiting a body.

These feelings are wrong. The sense of self is an illusion. You, me, and everyone else are billions of neurons woven together via trillions of electrochemical connections.

Marvelously, the brain tells itself stories about how it is other than it is.

Then, not long after, I watched a new video by Andrea Diem-Lane and David Lane, "Near-Death Experiences: Neural Projections and Staying Alive." The first line of narration is...

The brain tricks us into believing something is real, when it is not, provided that such trickery gives it a survival advantage.

Absolutely! 

If I believe that I am a separate unique self, precious beyond compare, I'm going to fight harder to defend myself when attacked. Physically or psychologically, doesn't matter. Nobody messes with valuable Me.

Likewise, the short video convincingly argues that many (or most?) near-death experiences are the brain's way of telling itself, "Dude, life is really worth living. Fight to stay alive!"

The Lane's have a strong connection with India, so some of the examples are from that sub-continent. I liked how one woman devoted to her guru didn't see a vision of him when she nearly died, but rather was wowed by a Holy Chapati. 

It reminded her that she had cooking duties to attend to back on Earth.

Have a look.

 

I'll share my entire Strange Up Salem column as a continuation to this post.

A physicist talks about how likely supernaturalism is wrong

I like how physicist Lawrence Krauss speaks about "more likely" and "less likely" in a short video than "true" and "false." 

Our knowledge about reality is on a fuzzy continuum, not a sharp dividing line. Rarely, if ever, can we say that this is absolutely 100% true, and that is absolutely 100% false. 

Still, I don't totally understand Krauss' statement that "Science doesn't prove anything... science can only prove things to be wrong, not right... the Earth isn't flat, we can go around it, so that's wrong."

This might have to do with one popular view of the scientific method, that of falsifiability. To refute a claim that all swans are white, it would only be necessary to find one black swan. So scientific truths are provisional, since they always are open to falsification.

But if something is 99% likely, that makes it a hell of a lot more truthy than something that's only 1% likely.

In life we've got to play the odds. Sure, it's possible I'm hallucinating that the traffic light I'm coming to is red, while it really is green. Yet if it looks like it is red, I'm well-advised to stop before I enter the intersection. 

Same logic applies to supernaturalism. Sure, it's possible there are godly unseen realms beyond the physical. How likely is this, though?

Here's the two and a half minute video, along with the description that accompanies it. 

 

Can spiritual experience be proven? No, things can only be falsified... validated? well... 

Lawrence Maxwell Krauss (born May 27, 1954) is an American theoretical physicist and cosmologist who is Foundation Professor of the School of Earth and Space Exploration at Arizona State University and director of its Origins Project. He is known as an advocate of the public understanding of science, of public policy based on sound empirical data, of scientific skepticism and of science education and works to reduce the impact of superstition and religious dogma in pop culture. He is also the author of several bestselling books, including The Physics of Star Trek and A Universe from Nothing.

Recorded at Vic Skeptics event late August 2014 : http://vicskeptics.wordpress.com/even...

Video picked up by 'The Raw Story' - Physicist Lawrence Krauss: God is a byproduct of your hard-wired narcissism: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/la...

At the Melbourne skeptic’s meeting in Australia last month, theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss was asked whether spiritual experiences could ever be scientifically validated.

“The spiritual things — the exotic phenomena people experience — in general violate the things we know to be correct on the basis of experiment, so they’re highly likely to be wrong,” Krauss answered.

“I can’t say to someone who’s heard God in their ears that they’re not hearing God,” he continued. “But I can say that it’s much more likely that they’re hallucinating, based on what we know.”

As for the existence of extraterrestrial life, he said that accounts of alien encounters are “much more likely to be due to the irrationality of humans than the rationality of aliens.”

“When you think about the likelihood that a space-craft would come here,” Krauss said, “almost anything you can think about is more likely. And what science deals with is not ‘true’ and ‘false,’ it’s ‘likely’ and ‘less likely.’ And some things are so unlikely, you just chop them off.”

“So I can’t tell someone that what they’ve heard, or what they’ve seen, or [have had] some mystical experience — I can only say that it’s likely a coincidence,” he concluded.

“But none of us like to believe that things that happen to us are coincidences. We’re all hard-wired to believe that things that happen to us are significant.”

Are you a spiritual wanderer, or traveler?

As I become more and more churchless, the notion of wandering seems more appealing than traveling. So I guess I could be called a spiritual wanderer, though I don't like the word "spiritual" any more.

So even though I put it in the title of this post, let's drop it. I'm a wanderer, not a traveler. 

Meaning, I used to believe in paths. For over thirty-five years I considered myself to be on a spiritual path. For most of that time I also thought I was on a career path. Ditto with a marriage and family path. 

I liked the idea of paths because they are well-defined. They start here, and end there. You can usually tell  whether you are on or off a path, even if it is conceptual or abstract.

For example, members of my India-based spiritual organization would gossip about a fellow member: "I hear he is off the path!"

In other words, he wasn't meditating as instructed, had started eating meat or drinking alcohol, or -- heaven forbid -- was having sex outside of marriage (a frequently broken rule, yet not usually admitted to others).

Now, I readily admit that sticking to a path makes sense when (1) there actually is one, (2) it can be discerned, and (3) it demonstrably leads to somewhere you're sure you want to go. 

When my wife and I go on a hike in one of Oregon's wilderness areas, we always stick to a path. It's the quickest and safest way of enjoying ourselves. We have a specific destination in mind, and there is a well defined way to get there.

Thus traveling is fine in certain circumstances.

I look on this as setting out to do something with both a path and outcome firmly in mind. You know what you want to do and/or where to go. So you pack a bag, literally or metaphorically, and start to travel. 

"Wanderer 10"

However, wandering is another option. Here, you are very much open to changing plans or direction. Because you don't have a firm destination or goal, no itinerary to follow, acceding to an impulse to head elsewhere doesn't involve much thought. 

You just do it. Here today. There tomorrow.

I guess this is akin to being a hitchhiker rather than a bus driver with a set route. You can get into any vehicle and go where you want, though you can also have a temporary destination in mind -- knowing you might well change your mind at any moment.

Philosophically, for me traveling implies either free will or (paradoxically) destiny of some sort.

I either freely choose a definite place I want to go, or that place is fated for me. The latter is how many religions and spiritual teachings look upon their "path" -- as leading to a goal that either must be freely chosen as an act of faith, or has been destined by God to be followed.

This used to appeal to me. Now it doesn't. There is rigidity in traveling, in being on a set path, in believing that getting from here to there is so important, failing to do so means your life is seriously lacking.

By contrast, wanderers are unpredictably blown by the world's myriad winds. They are part and parcel of their territory. That is, they aren't so much seeking to move through a location to get somewhere else, as to enjoy the movement that comes with being within a place.

To borrow a turn of phrase I recall Alan Watts using frequently, this is akin to the difference between dancing and hiking. When dancing, you enjoy movement for its own sake. Going around in circles is just fine. When hiking, though, you want to get somewhere, usually by following a path.

After pondering this wandering vs. traveling notion before meditating this morning, I found myself driving into town on our two lane rural road. As often happens, I came up behind a car that was moving more slowly than I had been going.

Generally this produces at least a mild sense of irritation in me. I'd been keeping my speedometer at 50 or 55. Now I had to slow down to 40. Bummer! It was going to take me longer than expected to get into Salem. 

Today, though, "wanderer" instantly popped into my mind when I put my foot on the brake to stay a safe distance behind the slower car. I'd been going at one speed; now I was going another speed. No big deal. The world had set me on a different course. No problem.

This probably sounds mundane, and it is. Which is partly my point. 

When you're wandering, there isn't a whole lot of concern about where you are, what you're doing, how the scenery appears. The wandering, the dance, is the thing, not the traveling, the hiking.

Different ways of moving. Different ways of living.

I'm not saying one is better than the other. That's something a traveler would do, not a wanderer. And I'm more attracted to wandering now. Of course, I suppose I might wander into a place where traveling looks appealing. 

That's what so great about wandering. You never know. Surprises abound. 

"Self" is a confabulating part of the body

After buying the new book by noted biologist Edward O. Wilson, "The Meaning of Human Existence" (can't pass up a book with this title, so long as it isn't written by someone religious), I couldn't resist jumping this morning to the Free Will chapter. 

The excerpts below, in bold, are some of the clearest writing about how the brain/mind works I've ever come across. And I've read a lot of books about modern neuroscience. 

I've taken the liberty of commenting, in italics, on Wilson's words.

Conscious mental life is built entirely from confabulation.

Ooh, I love that word, confabulation: "to fill in gaps in memory by fabrication." So true. Many years ago my ex-wife launched into a detailed description of how our divorce transpired. Funny. I hadn't remembered it that way at all. Not so funny -- I'm pretty sure she was right. But since, I've forgotten what she said and gone back to my pleasing confabulations of that event.

It is a constant review of stories experienced in the past and competing stories invented for the future. By necessity most conform to the present real world as best it can be processed by our paltry senses. 

Wilson had just talked about how pitifully limited our sense of sight, hearing, smell, and such are. We aren't aware of most of the electromagnetic or auditory spectrum. Other animals put us to shame, a fact I'm reminded of on every dog walk, where our family canine seems perplexed by how clueless I am about the scents that surround us.

Memories of past episodes are repeated for pleasure, for rehearsal, for planning, or for various combinations of the three.

Without such, we wouldn't be human. In fact, likely we wouldn't be at all. Along with other animals, learning from past experiences and anticipating possible futures is indispensable for survival. Those who literally preach "live in the now" either don't know what they are saying, or aren't aware that this is neither possible nor desirable.

Some of the memories are altered into abstractions and metaphors, the higher generic units that increase the speed and effectiveness of the conscious process.

Also true. I've read books with an Eastern philosophical/religious tone that decry conceptualizing. Of course, the authors use lots of concepts in their moralizing against abstract thought. What do they think we should do as humans? Not use our thinking ability? But again, they're doing just that.

...Sophisticated stories at this level require a big brain housing vast memory banks. In the human world that capacity evolved long ago as an aid to survival.

Ah, a subject dear to me. Being named "Brian," my name frequently comes out "Brain" in documents written by other people. Even by me, sometimes. I am one big Brian, or Brain. Which was a sometimes irritating nickname of mine in elementary school, especially when spoken in an ironic tone of voice.

If consciousness has a material basis, can the same be true for free will?

Um... YES.

Put another way, what if anything in the manifold activities of the brain could possibly pull away from the brain's machinery in order to create scenarios and make decisions of its own?

That's easy: the soul! Immaterial consciousness. The part of us that is eternal, destined to return to God, survives bodily death, has no connection with the crude physical body. Or so the religious/spiritual story goes.

The answer is of course the self. And what would that be? And where is it?

Damn. That's the tough question. Back in my true believing days I was always puzzled by how, if the Self or Soul is the true essential aspect of us, the freaking thing was so difficult to discern. Eventually it dawned on me that almost certainlly the reason I couldn't find my Self was because it didn't exist in the way that I thought it did, or as the theology I believed in taught it did.

The self cannot exist as a paranormal being living on its own within the brain. It is instead the central dramatic character of its confabulated scenarios. 

Makes sense. Somehow I always turn out to be the lead actor in the theatrical productions my brain conjures up: "The Truthteller!" "Gray-haired but still sexy!" "Politically Correct -- all the time!" Along with so many others. 

In these stories it is always on center stage, if not as participant then as observer and commentator, because that is where all of the sensory information arrives and is integrated.

My self loves to observe and comment on what I'm experiencing. Heck, this is its favorite activity. It's marvelous how I'll be washing the dishes and I'll hear a familiar voice inside my head telling me, "You're doing a great job washing the dishes, dude." I know the voice is within, not without, because often my wife comes along and says the exact opposite.

The stories that comprise the conscious mind cannot be taken away from the mind's physical neurobiological system, which serves as script writer, director, and cast combined.

Talented neurobiological system! And we've all got one with these abilities.

The self, despite the illusion of its independence created in the scenarios, is part of the anatomy and physiology of the body.

Yikes! So evident. So true. Yet also a statement that challenges my sense of myself as a non-material entity inhabiting my body. Oh, no... I AM my body!? My self is an illusion of the physical brain? At first this seems scary. But the more I ponder this almost-certain reality, I begin to relax into it. Janis Joplin's words come to mind: "Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose." I can't be afraid of losing my self, or my soul, if I don't have one.

Without religion, no need to try to transcend the natural world

As I've observed before, for me churchlessness isn't an event but a process. Meaning, it isn't a sudden jump from being religious to being non-religious.

It is a lengthy path with many twists and turns. I keep recognizing shadows of my former religiosity where, at first glance, I thought there was only secular light now.

For example, I still have a tendency to believe in some transcendent truth. Not God. Not divinity. But a power or presence that stands apart from the natural world.

This may sound religious, yet really it isn't.

After all, Platonism and its philosophical offshoots consider that there are "forms" which undergird material reality. Most mathematicians, I've heard, go along with this view. They see mathematical truths as existing in some sort of abstract realm separate from the physical universe.

Somewhat similarly, it's hard for me to shake the notion that, as the X-Files put it, "The Truth is Out There." Not simply everyday truth, scientific truth, approximate truth.

Really Real Truth, Ultimate Truth, Objective Truth.

This belief manifests in various ways, some quite mundane.

I'll be musing about a subject that's been on the mind of me and my wife recently: whether we should move from our non-easy-care house on ten rural acres, now that we're in our mid-60's. I've started to notice that I tend to feel there is a Right Answer to this question.

Not just a good answer, an answer that feels right to us.

Rather, an objectively true best answer, the Answer That Transcends All Other Possible Answers, the answer we should be seeking if we want to optimize our chances for future happiness.

Yet where is there any evidence that a Right Answer like this exists? Everything I know about the world, and about myself, tells me that it doesn't exist. Still, the lure of "The Truth is Out There" in a transcendent sense persists.

I'm attracted to Taoism/Daoism because it provides a coherent philosophical antidote to this. In non-religious Daoism, the natural world is all there is. The goal is to flow with the everchanging waters of life, not to find a peak above them where one can stand above it all.

There's something peacefully reassuring about this Daoist perspective. The best I can do is be aware of what's happening around and within me, responding to external and internal events as I am drawn to do.

In Tai Chi, my instructor calls this sort of thing "sensing skills."

Feeling pushes, pulls, pressures, intentions, movement, stillness, and all that without being thrown off balance much. Spontaneously dancing with life rather than trying to choreograph it.

Here's some quotes from "Daoism Explained" by Hans-Georg Moeller.

Early "Western" prejudices about Daoism have been removed: the Dao is now rarely described in the "Godlike" fashion of an absolute origin or ultimate principle, but rather as the smooth way of nature, as the ongoing process of fertility and production, of living and dying.

...Still, I believe, the process of unearthing Daoist philosophy out of the metaphysical ballast from which it had been covered by earlier "Westernizations" (not only by Western interpreters) is not yet complete.

It is, for instance, still often held that the Dao is some profound idea that is almost beyond comprehension, or that it is something so mystical that it renders all language futile. But if the Dao is not a transcendent principle, if it is not beyond, but rather natural and simple and this-worldly -- why should it be such a complicated idea, why should it be an idea at all?

...The "observation" of nature is thus not the observation of something external -- it is the observation of the ongoing scenario of which the observer is a part. This observation does not lead -- as in modern science -- to the establishment of static rules or laws, but rather to the self-positioning of the observer within the dynamic scenario.

It resembles the observation of a dance in order to participate in it -- not in order to note down an analysis of its steps. 

Sam Harris talks about mindfulness without religion

One great thing about being churchless is that you don't have to sit through long boring sermons. You can pick and choose your sources of inspiration and information. 

Here's a recommendation. Watch a new 7-minute talk by Sam Harris, atheist author of "Waking Up: A Guide to Spirituality Without Religion." (See my posts about this book, here, here, and here.)

 

Harris makes some great points about mindfulness and meditation. He says that religiosity, whether Buddhist or any other kind, shouldn't be mixed up with understanding how the mind works.

Just as there is no Christian physics, just physics, neither is there a Buddhist science of consciousness, just a science of consciousness.

From the partial transcript on You Tube:

The enemy of mindfulness and really of any meditation practice is being lost in thought, is to be thinking without knowing that you’re thinking. Now the problem is not thoughts themselves. We need to think. We need to think to do almost anything that makes us human – to reason, to plan, to have social relationships, to do science.

Thinking is indispensable to us but most of us spend every moment of our waking lives thinking without knowing that we’re thinking. And this automaticity is a kind of scrim thrown over at the present moment through which we view everything. And it’s distorting of our lives. It’s distorting of our emotions. It engineers our unhappiness in every moment because most of what we think is quite unpleasant.

We’re judging ourselves, we’re judging others, we’re worrying about the future, we’re regretting the past, we’re at war with our experience in subtle or coarse ways. And much of this self-talk is unpleasant and diminishing our happiness in every moment. And so meditation is a tool for cutting through that.

It’s interrupting this continuous conversation we’re having with ourselves. So that is – that in and of itself is beneficial. But there are features of our experience that we don’t notice when we’re lost in thought. So, for instance, every experience you’ve ever had, every emotion, the anger you felt yesterday or a year ago isn’t here anymore. It arises and it passes away.

And if it comes back in the present moment by virtue of your thinking about it again, it will subside again when you’re no longer thinking about it. Now this is something that people tend not to notice because we rather than merely feel an emotion like anger, we spend our time thinking of all the reasons why we have every right to be angry. And so the conversation keeps this emotion in play for much, much longer than its natural half-life.

And if you’re able, through mindfulness to interrupt this conversation and simply witness the feeling of anger as it arises you’ll find that you can’t be angry for more than a few moments at a time.

If you think you can be angry for a day or even an hour without continually manufacturing this emotion by thinking without knowing that you’re thinking, you’re mistaken. And this is something you can just witness for yourself. This is – again this is an objective truth claim about the nature of subjective experience. And it’s testable. And mindfulness is the tool that you would use to test it.

If I'm not the one inside my head, then who is?

I enjoy Zen.

But I have no desire to actually practice Zen. Not formally. Too much work. Too much discipline. Too much bowing before a master who, you eventually realize, doesn't deserve veneration.

I prefer the idea of being my own Zen teacher. That way, I can do as much Zen-stuff as I want, in the way I want to, when and how I want. 

Which includes giving myself koans to solve. This is my new one:

If I'm not the one inside my head, then who is?

l really like this koan. I'm SO happy I thought of it. Or rather, that someone inside my head thought of it. If I was sure who it was, I wouldn't have gotten this koan, would I?

It sends a pleasing tickle up my psychological spine when I try to grok it. Kind of like when you're at the top of the first big hill on a roller-coaster ride, and you know that the bottom is going to drop out of your gut soon.

I come to this koan after spending thirty-five years devoted to an Eastern form of mystical meditation. Then spending the past ten years in a churchless de-conversion from a bunch of stuff I no longer believe in.

Such as the existence of a self or soul.

The Sant Mat faith I used to follow, being based on Hindu and Sikh sorts of teachings, posited the existence of an eternal soul. The goal was to merge the drop of the soul in the ocean of God. Which only makes sense if there is such a thing as a soul.

I talked about this in "Not-self a teaching of Buddhism, not HInduism."

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.

Modern neuroscience, of course, agrees that we don't have, or are, an enduring self.

Sam Harris hammers on this theme in his new book, "Waking Up." For him, real spirituality (and also science) is knowing that you aren't a soul or self. (Along this line, see also here, here, and here.) 

But the illusion persists, likely for good evolutionary reasons.

Our marvelous human capacity for abstraction, creativity, envisioning alternative futures, and such requires a splitting-off from the evident here-and-now to ponder a possible there-and-then. Other animals probably don't consider they have a self or soul. 

They also don't consider much of anything, compared to humans. 

So I roll that koan around inside my head, where, almost certainly, there is actually nothing like the sense of "I" that seems so real to me. 

My favorite aspect of the koan is the concluding then who is? 

If I'm not the one inside my head, then who is? 

Best I can tell, nobody. There's something like 100 billion neurons in the human brain, each connected to many others -- maybe 100 trillion connections in all. Wow. That's a hell of a lot.

More than enough to make a who is? 

And more than enough to fashion a form of consciousness able to wonder who is doing the wondering about who is?

When my koan reveals more about itself, readers of this blog will be the second (or maybe the first) to know.