Church of the Churchless

Once again, I praise a New Year's resolution of... nothing

I'm on a five-year nothing roll when it comes to New Year's resolutions. Of course, there's always something more to say about nothing, so I'll do just that after sharing links to my previous paeans to irresolution.

2010: "New Year's enlightenment resolution: nothing"
2011: "Don't make resolutions for the New Year -- just live it."
2012: "'Nothing' is my spiritual resolution for the New Year"
2013:  "Thanks, godless heathens, for a good blog year"
2014: "Brains are us: a fresh thought for a New Year"

(Yes, I managed to squeeze some thoughts about nothing into the 2013 and 2014 posts.)

This year one of my main sources of inspiration came early on, in January. That's when I belatedly discovered the magic of the "Let It Go" song in the movie Frozen. 

Today I fired up my post about the song and watched the video of that part from the movie again. I find it really inspiring.

 

Oh, yes. Let it go. Tell it like it is, Elsa. (Full lyrics are in my previous post.)

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!

Wouldn't it be wonderful if our inner Me and outer Me were much more in tune than, for most of us, they are now?

Especially when it comes to religiosity, spirituality, the meaning-of-it-all. 

When we feel something deep in our hearts, yet act outwardly in a different way, that creates the tension Elsa sings about.

Can't hold it back anymore.

She's talking about the joy of authenticity and naturalness. Watching the video again and re-reading the lyrics, I was struck by how Elsa bears more than a little resemblance to a Daoist sage. 

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.

No right, no wrong, no rules for me.
I am one with the wind and sky.

What if we could see that whatever we are, whatever we have become, whatever thoughts and feelings we have, all this is the natural result of what had to be, because it is?

This isn't a fatalistic attitude. Just a realistic one. 

Sure, if there is something we want to change or improve about ourselves, we should try to achieve that goal. But not because of a worry that we risk God's wrath by failing to live up to the standard of some religious commandment.

And the fears that once controlled me, can't get to me at all.

So, yeah, let it go in 2015. Even if you feel like you've discarded past beliefs that were holding you back from expressing your authentic self, usually there's more to let go of. 

Until nothing but truth remains. Happy New Year!

Free will believers like Eddy Nahmias make no sense

I firmly believe that free will doesn't exist. (See here, here, and here, among my many posts on this subject.)

To me, and many others who consider that any "free will" worthy of that name should be really free, articles like Eddy Nahmias' Why we have free will in the most recent issue of Scientific American rest on an absurd proposition. 

Namias basically argues that because conscious thinking affects our behavior, this points to free will. In other words, our actions aren't solely controlled by unconscious brain processes. He says:

A body of psychological research shows that conscious, purposeful processing of our thoughts really does make a difference to what we do.

OK. No argument there. But consider what Einstein said (quoted in another of my posts about the fiction of free will).

Honestly I cannot understand what people mean when they talk about the freedom of the human will. I have a feeling, for instance, that I will something or other; but what relation this has with freedom I cannot understand at all. I feel that I will to light my pipe and I do it; but how can I connect this up with the idea of freedom? 

What is behind the act of willing to light the pipe? Another act of willing? Schopenhauer once said, "Man can do what he wills but he cannot will what he wills."…When you mention people who speak of such a thing as free will in nature it is difficult for me to find a suitable reply. The idea is of course preposterous.

Now Nahmias would argue that feeling and thinking are different. A feeling comes from the unconscious; thinking is a conscious activity. 

But Einstein's point remains. Whatever we decide to do, for whatever reason, there is no reason to believe that the basis of the decision stands apart from the deterministic laws of nature that guide everything else in the universe.

And yes, I am familiar with the indeterminism of quantum mechanics.

However, as much wiser minds than mine have said, indeterminism doesn't support free will; rather, it implies the lack thereof, since random behavior is the opposite of intentional action.

What Nahmias has done is redefine free will to the much-diluted compatibilist definition. Compatibilism, Wikipedia tells us, "is the belief that free will and determinism are compatible ideas, and that it is possible to believe both without being logically inconsistent."

Well, I and many others disagree. 

This simply isn't how almost all people look upon free will. A compatibilist would say that a girl has free will if she can choose between two puppies without coercion by her father, or anyone else. One puppy is a blonde Labrador; the other is a black Labrador.

But as discussed in a quote in a previous post, the girl has a psychological condition that makes her incapable of touching a blonde dog. So she chooses the black Lab. Supposedly she exercised her free will according to Nahmias, because she consciously thought, "I like the black Lab much better." 

Part of the quote says:

The classical compatibilist analysis of ‘could have done otherwise’ fails. According to the analysis, when Danielle picked up the black Lab, she was able to pick up the blonde Lab, even though, due to her psychological condition, she was not able to do so in the relevant respect. Hence, the analysis yields the wrong result.

The classical compatibilist attempt to answer the incompatibilist objection failed. Even if an unencumbered agent does what she wants, if she is determined, at least as the incompatibilist maintains, she could not have done otherwise. Since, as the objection goes, freedom of will requires freedom involving alternative possibilities, classical compatibilist freedom falls.

Most people look upon free will in exactly that fashion: a choice that could have gone another way.

A robber points a gun at a bank teller. He can either pull the trigger, or fail to fire the gun. Upon that decision, if he is caught, rests a very different legal outcome: guilty of theft or guilty of murder?

This presumes, of course, that all of the deterministic causes and effects acting upon the robber at that moment -- genetics, upbringing, past experiences of all kinds, current state of mind, etc. etc. -- can be overcome in an act of unfettered free will which somehow is able to exist outside of the usual deterministic laws of cause and effect.

There is no evidence that this is possible. A simple thought experiment shows why. 

Imagine that the conditions existing in the universe, naturally including your own body and brain, are exactly the same in moment A as in moment B. In other words, every molecule, every atom, every subatomic particle, every quantum energy state, everything is exactly the same in these two moments.

If you made a decision at moment A to buy, say, a vanilla ice cream cone, what are the chances that you would decide differently, such as to buy a chocolate cone, at moment B? 

Remember: your state of mind is precisely the same as it was in moment A (since mind is the brain in motion, and your brain is in the exact same state). So is everything else in physical existence. Thus some sort of supernatural nonphysical entity must be responsible for altering your decision to buy a vanilla cone at moment B.

Soul. Spirit. God's will. Karma. Something like that.

Unless, again, we define "free will" as simply acting under deterministic influences that don't include obvious coercive factors like having somone point a gun at your head and say, "Buy a vanilla cone, or I'll shoot you."

That's how compatibilists like Nahmias think. We're "free" so long as our actions and choices are determined by non-blatant causes. Doesn't make sense, but the notion of free will is so appealing to them, they're deeply reluctant to surrender it.

Of course, they have no choice.

For someone else's knowledgeable critical take on Nahmias, check out Jerry Coyne's "Eddy Nahmias: apostle for free will."

The "Christmas story" is just one of many stories, and not the best

Here's one way I celebrated Christmas this year -- by writing a blog post that critiques a "Message of Christmas still rings true in 2014" editorial in our local newspaper. 

Enjoy, churchless.

There's a better message than the "Christmas story"

Excerpt:

The editorial starts off this way:

The Christmas story is one of joy, of celebration, of hope. Its message of peace on Earth and salvation for humankind is as powerful, as relevant and as needed today as it was on that silent, starlit night some 2,000 years ago.

Well, some people feel this way. Lots don't.

Those words, salvation for mankind, are utterly meaningless to billions of humans. And isn't that the central message of Christmas: "Christmas is all about the message of God and the coming of our Savior."

OK. For Christians, it is. Those of us who don't believe in God or the need for salvation look upon Christmas very differently. This likely ncludes tens of thousands in the Salem area, the Statesman Journal readership base.

We consider that religions divide more than they unite. We favor a more universal, inclusive, and scientifically defensible message, not a mythical, divisive, supernatural story limited to Christianity.

South Africa: hello, hello? Can you access this blog?

A few days ago a regular Church of the Churchless visitor from South Africa emailed me, saying that she wasn't able to access this blog anymore. 

She's been looking into possible reasons. Today I got another message from her:

Hi Brian. So far I have ascertained that the site is blocked by 3 [Internet] service providers. My daughter who is with Telcom, our national telephone provider, government owned, is open.

Would you know if anyone else in South Africa is having the same problem? I'm still investigating but I'm finding it very disturbing. I really miss going on to the site. It was a ritual for over a year now, and very comforting to be connected with you all.

So if you live in South Africa, and you're able to read this, please leave a comment on this post indicating what ISP (Internet Service Provider) you use. That could help in figuring out what's going on. Or email me using the link in the right sidebar.

Below is how I described one possibility in a response to the person from South Africa.

This seems plausible, especially given what the woman said about "blocking," since I can see in the recent visitors map at the bottom of the right sidebar that some people in South Africa are visiting this blog, but seemingly not as many as before.

After a bit of Googling, I found that, according to Wikipedia, in South Africa hate speech is excluded from freedom of expression laws. Interesting. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hate_speech#South_Africa

 

It’s unlikely my blog has been banned as being hurtful to religious sensibilities, but I suppose it is possible. The United States has very strong laws/constitution protecting free speech. I’ve been surprised when people from European countries have occasionally told me that something I’ve written wouldn’t be allowed in their country. So you should look into this possibility, as unlikely as it might be.

 

I also found this article about Internet censorship in South Africa.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_censorship_in_South_Africa

 

It says that ISPs (Internet Service Providers) might ban a site if they get a complaint about it, to avoid the possibility of facing a legal complaint if they leave it up. So you could consider contacting your ISP and ask why you aren’t able to access my blog. 

Merry churchless Christmas. Here's our non-Christmas Letter.

Through my religious-believing and atheistic days alike, I've always composed a Christmas letter to send with our cards.

Well, my wife and I actually call it our Holiday Letter, since in many years I don't get around to writing it until after Christmas. So as long as it gets sent out before New Year's Day, hey, it qualifies as a holiday letter. 

Yesterday I explained on my other blog why we don't have a 2014 Christmas/Holiday letter. Naturally it took quite a few words to do this, being as verbose as I am. 

Here's a PDF file of my non-Christmas letter.
Download 2014 non-Christmas Letter PDF

I do mention Jesus once. Just not in any sort of Christian way.

If you're into ironic humorous Christmas letters -- and I hope that you are -- check out my 2012 blog post, "My favorite dark, twisted (and funny!) Christmas letter." It came from an old friend of my wife's. Brilliant!

Lastly, if you get really bored over the holidays, or the drugs/alcohol you imbibe to get through this time of year put you in a certain bizarre mood, my Collected Christmas Letters (1995-2014) await your reading.

Religion is what might remain after science explains

David Lane, a.k.a. the Neuralsurfer, has made another provocative short video. It's called "Remainder Conjecture: Driving Science to the Brink of an Epistemological Cul de Sac."

 

Here's my take on Lane's basic point, which seems unarguable to me.

Assume that science can explain what currently is unexplainable. If significant mysteries eventually remain that science can't explain, this is where supernaturalism, or at least a radical restructuring of how we look upon reality, can be seriously explored.

This is much different from the "god of the gaps" approach where whatever science can't currently explain is taken as proof of God's existence.

Meaning, a scientific gap is simply a present-moment deficiency in understanding. A scientific remainder is what is left after a lengthy process of research, study, theorizing, testing, debating, hypothesizing. 

For example, the ultimate nature of consciousness is still largely unexplained by modern science.

It's unclear whether this is a philosophical/conceptual problem -- maybe there is nothing to explain since consciousness is just what a highly evolved physical brain produces -- or whether consciousness stands apart from neurons, brain chemicals, and such.

Either way, it would be a mistake to embrace mystical notions of soul or whatever just because science is still working on understanding how it is we are able to consciously understand reality.

History is filled with examples of how people believed in supernatural causes of worldly phenomena which later could be persuasively explained via material laws of nature. There may indeed be explanatory "remainders" after modern science has done its thing in an exhaustive manner.

But we're nowhere near the end of scientific progress. The best bet is on science, not religion, as humanity's best guide to knowing reality.

Imagination permeates waking, as well as dreaming

Imagination.

We tend to think of this as something special, an activity we engage in when, say, we're trying to do something creative like paint a picture, write a novel, or compose a song.

Or as what the brain does when it dreams -- which seemingly is markedly different from the clear perception of reality in our waking state.

But Evan Thompson's book, "Waking, Dreaming, Being," has given me a different perspective on imagination. From both a Buddhist and neuroscientific perspective, he sees imagination as permeating every form of consciousness.

Here's a passage from his Imagining: Are we real? chapter.

These ancient Indian and modern neuroscience views share a deep insight: sense impressions don't produce consciousness; they modulate it in the waking state. Sense impressions change the tone, pitch, or volume of consciousness, as do memories and emotions in the waking and dream states, but they don't create the vibration of consciousness itself.

We perceive the world thanks to our senses and our ability to move around, but sensing and moving don't fashion consciousness anew each time we wake up; they affect an already existing consciousness present also when we dream.

To get these ancient and modern ideas right, however, we need to understand dreaming as imagination, not false perception. Wakefulness isn't a hallucinatory state constrained by sensory inputs; it's an imaginative state fed by sense perception. Dreaming isn't a hallucinatory state cut off from sensory inputs; it's an imaginative state fed by memory and emotion.

As we've seen, imagination permeates waking and dreaming consciousness; in both states it underlies how we experience the ego or the "I-Me-Mine."

The religiously- and supernatural-minded shouldn't jump to the conclusion that Thompson believes there is any alternative to imagination being part and parcel of consciousness.

Meaning, he doesn't consider that consciousness is fundamental, immaterial, or capable of observing reality "as it is" (whatever that might mean). He writes:

The upshot is that there's no way to stand outside consciousness and look at it, in order to see how it fits into the rest of reality. Science always moves within the field of what consciousness reveals; it can enlarge this field and open up new vistas, but it can never get beyond the horizon set by consciousness. In this way, direct experience is primary and science secondary.

The primacy of direct experience requires that we reevaluate how we think about the project of relating consciousness and the brain. We can never step outside consciousness to see how it measures up to something else, and consciousness never appears or shows up apart from some context of embodiment.

...Consciousness is something we live, not something we have. We don't have consciousness in any sense that would allow us to lose it without ceasing to be what we are. Consciousness is our way of being, and it cannot be objectified, that is, treated as just another kind of object out there in the world, because it is that by which any object shows up for us at all.

Hard to argue with.

Science is a way of confirming direct experience, which on its own can be decidedly faulty, in the sense of mistakenly taking an act of imagination to reflect something that is actually there in an objective sense, observable and knowable by others.

Much of our everyday life, of course, is marked by states of consciousness which we don't usually take to be imaginative. Memories and anticipations, for example. We imagine what the past has been like, and what the future will be. 

Neither of which reflects reality. (For example, here's a New York Times piece, "Why Our Memory Fails Us.")

So imagination is everpresent in human consciousness. It's just a matter of degree, and how it is expressed.

It's stupid to say "God is everything"

Everything is God. God is all there is.

As soon as I got to those words in a piece I came across, "Why Your Version of God is the Right One...for YOU," I knew that I'd disagree with the rest of the article.
Download Why Your Version of God is the Right One…for YOU – Fractal Enlightenment

It's meaningless to say God is everything. That's the same as saying God is nothing. If there is no way to distinguish something called "God" from everything else in existence, then God doesn't exist.

Just call everything by a more accurate name. Here's one good idea: everything. Or existence. Or reality. 

There's no need to add an empty conceptual layer by callling everything, or all there is, by another name: God. 

The author of the piece, Nikki Sapp, says:

Everything is God. God is all there is. Just let that sink in for a second. There is no other material or fabric to make anything in this universe out of other than the fabric of God. Every person, every leaf on a tree, every planet, it’s all God. Nothing can exist independently of God since it would be impossible for something to exist that is not made from the only material there is to make anything out of.

I have no idea what Sapp is talking about. But whatever it is, I'm sure it appeals to many New Age types who aren't bothered by empty ideas.

Let's substitute two of my suggested words for Sapp's "God." Nothing can exist independently of reality. Hard to argue with. Ditto for Nothing can exist independently of everything.

The bullshit arises when an extra extraneous word, "God," is introduced as a synonym for reality and everything.

Sapp's God has no attributes, because for her there is no difference between God and everything in existence. This allows her to argue that, since everybody looks upon the world in a unique way, there are 7 billion ways of looking upon God -- one for each person on Earth.

There is no “right” way or “wrong” way to experience God. Even if a person chooses to exist in a reality where God does not exist, such as an atheist, this is not wrong either. They are just choosing to experience God in a “non-God” way. Another person may choose to experience God in a way that their God punishes them for sinning and blesses them for resisting temptation, this is also not wrong.

,,,Since there are over 7 billion people living on the planet, there is 7 billion different ways to experience God. And even though there are groups of people that may experience or see their God in a similar fashion, no one person will experience God in the EXACT same way as the next person, because God is a completely personal experience.

Well, it is more accurate to say, Every person has personal experiences. Again, there's no need to bring a notion of God into it.

Strangely, Sapp contradicts what she said above just a few paragraphs further on. After telling us that there is no right or wrong way to experience God, she reverses course by describing some wrong ways.

It doesn’t really matter which spiritual teacher we choose but almost all say the same thing. God is within us. God is not separate from us. This isn’t something that we just can know and that’s it, but it is a level of consciousness that we must reach.

This is why so many of us can intellectually know this, but we still seem to get caught up in the trivialities of everyday life. We still get angry when someone cuts us off on the road, we still worry about getting our bills paid on time, and we still get slightly perturbed when someone tries to push their version of God on to us.

If we TRULY were existing at the level of consciousness that we KNEW we were God, things like traffic jams and bills and hearing other people’s views on religion probably wouldn’t have the power to upset us in the slightest way.

Hmmmm. If God is a completely personal experience, I should be able to experience God by getting pissed off by bad drivers, having to pay bills, and reading ridiculous stuff like Sapp's views about God.

How does Sapp know what truly knowing God is like? Didn't she just say that each of us was free to have our own unique way of knowing God, since God is everything?

Religions are ridiculous. New Age crap like this piece -- also ridiculous.

Does religious belief dilute our enjoyment of life?

To answer my own blog title question: Yes, I do believe that religiosity tends to dilute people's enjoyment of life.

Having been religiously-minded for about 35 years, and churchless now, I consider myself well qualified to address this question. Even though I was a member of an India-based spiritual organization, my experience seems to be applicable to devotees of Western religions also -- including Christianity.

I used to believe in life after death, God, and "heaven."

I put that word in quotation marks to indicate the difference between an Eastern/mystical conception of an ultimate divine reality, and how heaven is viewed by Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. However, the basic notion of a Better Place true believers enjoy for eternity is common to most religions.

Eternity. Therein lies the dilution problem.

It's essentially the flip side of Pascal's Wager, the flawed argument that logically we should believe in God, since the downside of not-believing could be missing out on eternal bliss, while the earthly loss of believing is minimal, a few brief pleasures foregone.

I've argued that it is better to bet on an Anti-Pascal's Wager. 

A big benefit of living life without religion is that it commits you to living in the here and now, rather than the there and then. You don't have one mental foot in an imaginary after life, which causes believers to be unbalanced in earthly reality.

...Pascal's Wager is founded on a belief that we can know God's payoff. The anti-Wager is a more honest bet: nobody knows what will occur in the next life, so we need to make the most of this one.

I wrote that post a bit over six years ago. Now, older (if questionably wiser), I feel even more confident that what I said is correct.

Because with every passing year, my astonishment and gratitude at being alive grow stronger. I'm pretty sure that I wouldn't feel this so intensely if I still believed that the life I'm experiencing now is just a passing moment compared to what awaits me, lifewise, after I die.

Meaning, I used to think "I'll have another chance." Either in another incarnation here on Earth, or in another form of existing on a higher realm of reality. 

So my attention and interest was split. While going through physical experiences (child-raising, work, marriage, travel, whatever) I'd also be envisioning how the spiritual teachings I accepted looked upon this world.

Which basically was as a lower form of creation, a temporary resting place for the soul before it makes a journey back to God.

Looking back from my current perspective, this belief definitely diluted my enjoyment. I couldn't throw myself wholeheartedly into life here-and-now, because I also was concerned about how those experiences could affect my life there-and-then.

This isn't exactly like "spiritual bypassing," but it is close. The author of that piece says:

...I am spreading the news about spiritual bypass as a reminder that we are not supposed to rise above it all. We can't out-run our own feet. We can't out-think our own brains. We can't override this human operating system that we live and breathe in every hour of every day, freeing ourselves of pain and problems. Not perpetually anyway.

We need to remember that spiritual practice and emotional growth are not about achieving a particular quality of feeling ("good"). Being a human being on a spiritual journey isn't about getting cash and prizes all the time, it is about being in the present moment, whatever it happens to look like. What are you experiencing right now? And how about now? Can you be present to all of your feelings without any one of them defining you?

We should be living life vividly now, not imagining that this black and white world, spiritually speaking, is just a pale reflection of the technicolor realm we'll be enjoying after death. What if that fantasy never happens, as it almost certainly won't?

Diluting our enjoyment of life as it is by pouring in excessive thoughts of what might be, that's crazy. Assume that this moment will never come again. And that one day, all moments will cease for us.

If eternity exists at all, it is in recognizing that each and every experience we have in life is infinitely precious -- being finite.

Halfway through "Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart," I love this book

With Christmas just a couple of weeks away, it's time to start thinking about what to get your atheist friend who, of course, doesn't believe in Christ (but still enjoys giving and receiving presents).

Here's a book idea: Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart: Rewriting the Ten Commandments for the Twenty-first Century, by Lex Bayer and John Figdor. 

Yeah, it's a bit spendy, even in the Kindle version.

That didn't stop me from getting a copy, though, because I was fortunate to get a free one from a publicist who thought churchless me would enjoy the book and write a review of it.

I am indeed liking the book. A lot. Here's a down payment on a full review.

I've read about half of it -- the introduction and Part 1: A Framework for Facts. Part II: A Framework for Ethics awaits my next morning pre-meditation reading sessions. Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart is one of the best-written explanations for why atheism makes sense I've ever come across. 

And believe me, my bookshelves are filled with a lot of other books in this genre.

The notion of writing some "ten commandments" for atheists is genius. Bayer and Figdor correctly say that while atheists are notorious for not believing in something most people do believe in, God, many people think that atheists are amoral, with an anything-goes who-gives-a-shit view of ethics.

This isn't true, of course. As the book's title says, an atheist mind usually goes along with a humanist heart. Which brings to mind an anecdote from my college days.

In 1968 I spent the second semester of my sophomore year at San Jose State College with a small group of students and professors in Zadar, Yugoslavia. I was a long-haired existentialist hippie at the time (well, I still am, just a old one now).

I remember being invited to talk to some local students with a good grasp of English. They asked me some questions about how I looked upon the world, and indeed the cosmos. After I'd held forth for a while, the group's leader said, "So it sounds like you are a humanist, yes?"

Rather embarassingly, I didn't really know what a humanist was. But I recall saying "yes," since humanist sounded like something I certainly could be. After all, I didn't believe in God, but I did believe in humanity.

Most people have about as good a grasp of what "humanism" means as I did back then.

So this book fills a void by systematically laying out an approach for deciding what is important to those for whom religion isn't. These folks are called atheists and agnostics. I agree with the authors that these terms essentially are synonymous.

Atheists do not believe in a God or gods. Agnostics say they don't know whether a God or gods exist, and many go further to say that the existence of a deity or deities is unknowable. On first glance, it may seem as if these are two distinct categories, but it is actually possible for one person to be both an atheist and an agnostic. In fact, it's extremely common.

The reason relates to an oft-repeated adage on this blog: nothing is 100% certain (basic message of my blog post, "Keep open a crack in your belief system"). The authors go on to say that even about something so seemingly certain as your age, how old you are:

...you would probably have to admit that, yes, there was a tiny chance that you were wrong, a chance that's so small that it wasn't worth mentioning.

That is how most atheists feel about God.

Most agnostics have views that are impossible to distinguish from most atheists, but they choose to emphasize the doubt, while the atheists choose to emphasize their confidence. That is why it is possible and common for an atheist to also be an agnostic and an agnostic to also be an atheist. Each has simply chosen to emphasize a different aspect of his or her belief.

The commonality between the beliefs of atheists and agnostics is much greater than the differences. Both groups recognize that extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and both agree that there isn't extraordinary evidence for the existence of God. 

The difference is that the atheist moves from the recognition that extraordinary evidence for the existence of God hasn't been presented to the confident (but not certain) belief that God probably doesn't exist.

Exactly. 

How, though, can the atheist be so confident in his or her belief that God likely doesn't exist? There's considerable truth in the religious retort, "Science and religion are both belief systems," which God-believers assume puts both on the same rung of the epistemological ladder. 

Bayer and Figdor spend the first part of their book showing why this assumption is wrong.

Yet, they say, we do need assumptions. Not source beliefs that are taken as givens ("God exists"), but provisional, alterable, evaluatable assumptions.

The approach of treating starting beliefs as assumptions removes the predicament of not knowing how to pick and choose between unjustifiable beliefs. If these beliefs are going to be rudimentary enough to form the basis of any belief system, no other system can be used to pick them because such a system would then become a core belief itself.

By adopting the notion of starting assumptions, there's no need to be forced to choose source beliefs. Rather, different combinations of these beliefs can be evaluated in light of the results they yield. 

As you will see, the heuristic of this book is that we need to be willing to reassess our lives with empirical checks. We need to continually test our assumptions rather than presuppose them. We must look at everything with fresh eyes and not adopt the biases of others.

There's a lot to unpack in that passage. The authors are Stanford guys. They don't talk down to the reader. In line with their theory of knowledge, they keep things as simple as possible, but no simpler than is necessary to cover all of the factual bases.

One reason for the principle of simplicity (a.k.a. Ockham's Razor) is that when probabilities are multiplied, the resulting "certainty number" gets smaller. For example, if the probability of the next person coming through a door being a female is 50%, the probability of her being a black female is lower.

Likewise, they say, if the probability of God existing is low, then the probability of the Christian God (or any other specific God) existing is lower. As is the probability of God having certain specific attributes such as omnipotence, omnipresence, or omnibenevolence.

So Bayer and Figdor build up their assumptions -- Ten Non-commandments -- in a simple yet rigorous fashion.

Here's the first six, which comprise the part of their book that I've read. I'll share the other four in another post after I've finished Atheist Mind, Humanist Heart.

1.  The world is real, and our desire to understand the world is the basis for belief.

2.  We can perceive the world only through our human senses.

3.  We use rational thought and language as tools for understanding the world.

4.  All truth is proportional to the evidence.

5.  There is no God.

6.  We all strive to live a happy life. We pursue things that make us happy and avoid things that do not.

Step out of the separate self, and you're spiritual

Thanks to a regular Church of the Churchless visitor, I was turned on to a short interesting piece in The Guardian, "Spiritual but not religious? You're not alone."

Oliver Burkeman wrote the piece. Though he has mixed feelings about Sam Harris (I do also), he approvingly observes:

What Harris means by spirituality stems from the realisation that the feeling of being a distinct self – “the sense of being perched somewhere behind your eyes, looking out at a world that is separate from you” – is an illusion, and can be altered, even extinguished.

Meditation and magic mushrooms are among the ways of achieving that. But why bother? Because not realising this truth is what keeps us trapped in the endless quest to acquire the things we think will make us happy: relationships, money, power.

That quest locates happiness in the future, yet “the reality of your life is always now”. Step out of the self, even briefly, and you step into the present – and a kind of happiness that doesn’t depend on certain criteria being met. “Is it possible to be happy before anything happens, before one’s desires are gratified‚ in the very midst of physical pain, old age, disease and death?” Harris’s answer is yes.

After reading Harris' new book, "Waking Up," I wrote a blog post along this same line, Real spirituality is realizing you aren't a soul, or self. Excerpt:

So it sure seems like those who claim that this world is an illusion, with soul-realms being true reality, are the ones who have gotten it wrong. 

There is no enduring soul or self to be liberated. As Harris says in his book, genuine spirituality is realizing this. Thus a belief in the existence of soul leads one farther away from the truth, not closer. This is basic Buddhism, yet even many Buddhists still harbor fantasies of living on after death as... something or other.

This view of spirituality is, of course, far removed from the faith-based, dogmatic, supernatural religious conception. It's more akin to something that might be termed, "truly human." Burkeman says:

Yet Harris is equally firm that he’s not using “spirituality” as a fancy synonym for wonder – for “awe at the beauty of the night sky”, as some scientists do. It’s a far more basic shift in one’s experience of reality. And meditation needn’t be thought of as some far-out practice; it’s just a way of being present. You could even argue it’s not meditating that’s weird.

I agree, though more and more I think it isn't really possible to realize that the self is an illusion. Because, it isn't.

The "self," as noted here, definitely exists. But not as an independent, eternal, immaterial entity. Evan Thomspon says it is just the feeling that we are the subject of our experience and an agent of action.

So if spirituality is recognizing that the separateness of the self is the illusion, fine. This is just a recognition of how reality really is. Whether this deserves to be termed "spiritual," I don't know. 

Nothing special: lucid dreaming and mindfulness

I dream a lot, as we all do. Lucid dreaming, though -- very rarely. That's when you're aware that you're dreaming, while still in a dream.

Maybe I've had a couple of lucid dreams in my entire life. Three years ago I blogged about a semi-lucid dream experience in "I dreamed within a dream. Felt a lot like reality."

The title of that post points to a notion Evan Thompson talks about in his book, "Waking, Dreaming, Being." It's the familiar philosophical conundrum: how can we be sure that we're not dreaming in everyday life, since dreaming while we're asleep seems real while we're in that state of consciousness?

(See another post, "On waking up twice," for more along this line.)

Thompson writes about how being mindful while awake can be viewed as akin to lucid dreaming. In each case, a part of us becomes aware of what and how is being experienced.

How the world shows up for us depends on how we imaginatively perceive and conceptualize things. What we experience cannot be separated from how we experience. 

The thoughts, images, and emotions we bring to whatever we encounter, as well as the meanings we mentally impose, condition what "reality" can mean to us. In this way, the waking world is mind-involving and mind-dependent. 

Realizing this fact -- waking up to our participation in the creation of our world -- resembles becoming lucid in a dream. Dream yoga encourages us to cultivate this critical mindfulness in waking life and to carry  it into dreaming.

Well, I'm sure this approach works for some people. I'm just not one of them. Not so much because I feel that I can't be mindful while awake and learn how to dream lucidly; it's more that I don't want to.

Seems like too much work.

Also, habitually looking upon myself looking upon the world strikes me as unnatural, unnecessary, and unappealing. How about if I just experience things, and not worry about being aware of how I'm experiencing?

For me, I'm happiest when I lose myself in doing something.

This is the feeling of flow that's prized by athletes, musicians, dancers, and ordinary folks. Raking leaves here in leaf-strewn Oregon this time of year is much more pleasant when, as the saying goes, I just do it, rather than observing myself being the raker.

Taoism seems to have the edge over Buddhism in this regard. I resonate with the non-religious side of both philosophies. But Taoist writings urge naturalness and letting go, whereas Buddhist teachings usually strike me as being overly serious and disciplined.

Thus I was pleased when I got to a part in Thompson's Imagining: Are We Real? chapter where he says:

The view that lucid dreams are better than nonlucid dreams, however, isn't empirical; it's evaluative or normative. It places different values on different kinds of human experience. I find myself unable to accept this. It seem to diminish the worth of something natural in our experience; it seems to go against the grain.

He then relates the famous Butterfly Dream parable of the classical Taoist/Daoist philosopher Zhuang Zi, also known as Chuang Tzu.

Once Zhuang Zhou dreamt -- and then he was a butterfly, a fluttering butterfly, self-content and in accord with its intentions. The butterfly did not know about Zhou. Suddenly it awoke -- and then it was fully and completely Zhou.

One does not know whether there is a Zhou becoming a butterfly in a dream or whether there is a butterfly becoming a Zhou in a dream. There is a Zhou and there is a butterfly, so there is necessarily a distinction between them. This is called: the changing of things.

See, Taoists are fine with being one thing, then being another thing, without being continuously mindful or lucid about the transitions between the experiences of "one thing" and "another thing." 

Now I'm awake. Now I'm dreaming. Now I'm mindful of being awake. Now I'm lucidly dreaming. To a Taoist, there's no higher or lower here. It's just the changing of things. A Buddhist, though, would be inclined to look upon mindful awareness or lucid dreaming as a more elevated state of consciousness.

I like how Thompson puts it:

In this Daoist version, accepting each phase as equally real, along with accepting the natural distinction between waking and dreaming, is what enables one to be fully present in the here and now.

Being aware of the butterfly dream as only a dream would prevent its being an experience of being fully and completely a butterfly, "self-content and in accord with its intentions." Remembering the dream -- thinking back to it -- would prevent the waking state from being an experience of being fully and completely human.

The fullness of each experience requires not violating the natural borders between dreaming and waking, not supplanting forgetting with remembering. Transgressing these borders means fighting against change ("the change of things") -- a losing battle that detracts from reality rather than bringing about a higher reality.

Detracting from reality inevitably leads to suffering, not happiness. Thus the Daoist, in a gesture of radical acceptance, embraces dreaming and forgetfulness without judgment or qualification.

...Lucid dreaming belongs to human experience, so for the Daoist, it's something we should embrace too. Instead, the moral is that our experience necessarily includes forgetting as well as remembering, dreaming as well as lucid dreaming, and so we devalue our experience and distort our nature if we set one kind of experience above the other.

...We need to be able to let go of lucidity and release ourselves to the full presence of the dream. If we can't, then we deprive ourselves of certain natural and valuable experiences. The point isn't to make a forced choice between lucidity or nonlucidity according to some imposed standard; it's to be able to move flexibly between them without attachment.

The Daoist sage embodies this flexibility. The sage doesn't go against the grain and make distinctions between high and low; he responds fluidly and effortlessly according to the circumstances and what's appropriate.

Along this line...

My Tai Chi class is made up of people with a Taoist mentality. Tai Chi, after all, basically is Taoism in motion. This is a big reason why I've enjoyed Tai Chi so much during the ten years I've been practicing it: we don't take ourselves or Tai Chi seriously, neither the students nor our instructor.

Yesterday we were doing the Yang Long Form.

I was on the far left side, so when we headed to the left I couldn't see everyone else very well. Since I know the form quite well, I just assumed that I was doing the correct moves when the rest of the class was out of my vision, and they were doing the same -- per usual.

But when I got to an early three-kick sequence, I realized that "usual" had turned into "unusual." I was doing one thing; the rest of the class was following the instructor (who was behind me) and was doing a different thing.

No problem. This happens occasionally. I just gave up my idea of the Long Form and went with what everybody else was doing.

When we finished the form, our instructor light-heartedly said that he'd had a brain freeze at that point in the form and left out the sequence that I'd started doing. Again, no big deal. This led to a discussion about how there's no right or wrong in Tai Chi, and how doing a form differently can lead to fresh insights.

Meaning, the 108 moves in the Long Form weren't given by God on stone tablets.

They were made up by human beings. The moves can be changed, as we did yesterday via some forgetfulness. My instructor encourages us to play around with the traditional forms on our own -- adding new moves, leaving out old ones, since the goal of Tai Chi is flexibility, openness, flow.

There wasn't any sense that we'd done anything wrong by screwing up part of the Long Form. It was just something that happened, a new experience. A few minutes later we did the form again. Correctly this time. 

But it wasn't a better or higher form the second time around. Just a different form.   

Here's what you actually know...

Hey, I can find quasi-philosophical churchless inspiration in all kinds of places. Yesterday it was in Carolyn Hax's advice column that appeared in the Sunday Oregonian. 

Hax responded to a woman who was "feeling shaken in my own marriage" after learning that the husband of a friend of hers has been having an affair.

The woman said, "My husband has never given me a reason to suspect he is anything less than a loving and devoted spouse and father, but I feel myself looking at our relationship with a more critical eye."

I thought Hax's advice was well spoken and made a lot of sense. Here's an excerpt. I've boldfaced the part I like most.

The natural response is to reassure yourself out of this existential crisis, but I suggest you do the opposite and push yourself into it even more broadly. 

Since you've already questioned what, exactly, you can know for sure about a spouse, I suggest you keep going and finish off the whole concept of certainty. With a (hypothetical) baseball bat.

Here's what you actually know, at any given time, more or less: who and what surrounds you, what you're doing, and how you feel. The rest is speculation that ranges from highly informed to completely beyond your reach.

You can also know for sure that change is a constant and plans are not guarantees.

"Speculation" may sound like like a tenuous word to describe what we know about the vast reality that isn't within our immediate sphere of knowledge.

But Hax reminds us that speculation ranges from highly informed (proven facts, well-established scientific laws of nature) to completely beyond one's reach (why existence exists, universes beyond our own).

In the latter category I'd also add knowledge of God and what happens after death. Religious believers would want to say these things are usually beyond our reach, but some holy people/books have revealed the truth about them.

Highly doubtful. Regardless, Hax's central point is indisputable.

Once we get away from direct sensory perceptions and intuitive experiencing of our subjective inner state, imagining "what if's" can lead us anywhere. Which usually isn't in a truthful direction. 

There's nothing wrong with engaging in speculating, imagining, fantasizing, and such. We just need to keep in mind the knowledge spectrum between "highly informed" and "completely beyond your reach."