"Don't you believe in love?"
Whenever I see a comment like this on one of my blog posts from a religious believer, I'm dumbfounded. it's a ridiculous thing to say.
For one thing, I don't believe in love. I experience love. There's a big difference between believing and experiencing.
Likewise, I don't believe in consciousness; I experience consciousness. Nor do I believe in life; I experience being alive.
Same is true for everybody. Atheists. Agnostics. Religious people. Scientists. Musicians. Farmers. Young. Old. Men. Women. Everybody.
The only way any one of us knows anything about reality is through experiencing.
It's important to recognize that arguably every experience is "inner," since it is ours alone, unfathomable to anyone else except through indirect means of communication: written words, speech, gestures, facial expressions.
As Sam Harris says in a video discussion of his "Waking Up" book, any experience, no matter how profound to the person having it, by itself tells us nothing about the nature of the cosmos -- or perhaps even this world.
After all, even when someone's experience is of the outside world, mistakes commonly happen. Eyewitness accounts are notoriously unreliable. Memories are faulty. Mirages and illusions confound our understanding.
Even more so when the experiences are totally mental, as is the case with dreams, mystical visions, emotions, thoughts, hallucinations, and such.
Once a relative of mine said to me, "I'm a Christian because I feel the loving presence of Jesus throughout my day." To which I thought, "Well, that's nice. But a loving feeling is just a loving feeling. It doesn't prove that Jesus actually exists outside the minds of those who believe in him."
Likewise, commenters on this blog will say things like, "When I see my guru, I feel overwhelming love for him." Again... that's nice.
But religious believers need to keep in mind that parents feel the same way about their children, as animal-lovers do about their pets, as nature-lovers do about mountains, trees, and rivers. Like I said, everybody has profound experiences that are clearly known to them, while being ineffable to others.
What makes a personal experience more than subjective is when it relates to something objectively real. "I hear a bird singing in that tree. Can you hear it also?" If the bird is really there, and your friend's ears are working well, he or she will confirm the bird song.
Love, though, like other purely mental experiences, isn't confirmable by others. We have to take someone's word that love is felt by them. Further, we can't know whether their feeling of love is akin to our own.
So this points to what I feel is a misconception by many religious believers.
They wrongly consider that a personal experience of something supposedly divine proves that divinity actually exists objectively. Then they jump to an additional error: considering that other people should agree about the objective existence of that felt divinity.
It'd be much better if people simply said "I experienced such-and such," rather than "Such-and-such exists because I experienced it."
Sure, it exists for you. But not necessarily for anyone else. Your love, your dream, your mystical vision, your belief -- they are yours, not mine.
A mountain, a tree, a river, though -- they are part of the reality we all share. Such is the big difference between experiences of purely mental phenomena, and things that exist in the outside world.
Religion focuses on the former, science on the latter. Which helps explain why I love science more than religion.
...I love science more than religion.
I love science and deplore religion...but that's just my experience.
Posted by: cc | January 29, 2015 at 09:38 PM
What I find most interesting about this blog is that, for all of Brian's advocacy of science over religion, nearly all of those who comment on his "sermons" are believers. Once in a blue moon, Jon pipes up, but apart from him, I can't think of any commenter (other than me), who isn't delusional or religiously inclined. Can anyone explain why this is?
Posted by: x | January 30, 2015 at 04:41 PM
x, you ask a good question -- why most current commenters seem to be religious believers of one sort or another.
Here's some overall perspective. In the lifetime of this blog, which I started in 2004, there have been 2,380,382 page views. That's the number of people who clicked/looked at a page of this blog. Basically, I assume, a post.
During that time, there have been 29,551 comments. That's 1.2% of the page views. So roughly, for every 100 page views, 1 comment is left. Yesterday there were 1,117 page views. How many comments? A handful.
Thus as is typical with blogs, most people visit but don't leave a comment. I follow quite a few national, state, and local blogs -- most of them "political" (broadly speaking) in nature. Most days I don't leave a comment on any of them.
I find many posts interesting. But unless I feel strongly about some subject, and want to share a response with the blog author and/or other readers, I'll remain a silent observer.
Those who comment almost certainly aren't representative of a blog's entire readership. They are the people who have the most intense feelings about some subject.
It makes sense that religious believers would do the most commenting here, since they have the most emotional investment. A lack of belief in God usually isn't held with the same fervent passion as a belief in God, or some other divinity, is.
I suspect that most non-believers read a post and simply think, "That makes sense." (Since I do the writing, of course I'd think that!) Religious believers, though, might find themselves filled with indignation that their dogmas are being challenged.
That's my theory, at least. It makes sense to me, not surprisingly.
Posted by: Brian Hines | January 30, 2015 at 07:17 PM
Brain, the only reason I post here, is because i consider you as my Brother, an Elder Brother, because both of us are Charan Singh Initiates, and not only did he say there are no failures in Sant Mat, but he said that if you fall back, the Bull Dozer will keep pulling you forward! So, in spite of you and I never meeting in the flesh, we are Spiritual Brothers who will eventually hang out together in the Hear After, some where? I even read your Book that RSSB still has on their Web Site and sells. Your present status of claimi ng to be A theist,.......indicates that you belive in one or more gods.
Cheers,
Brother Jim
Posted by: Jim Sutherland | January 30, 2015 at 07:51 PM
Thanks, Brian, for the information.
We know why the Gurinder people come here and comment, but why do you think other believers do?
Posted by: x | January 30, 2015 at 09:16 PM
It'd be much better if people simply said "I experienced such-and such," rather than "Such-and-such exists because I experienced it." .
Including scientists? The claim that some particular thing exists just because it is experienced is naive and easily defeated, but behind it stand more serious problems.
One is that science relies on conscious experience as much as anything else. Instrument readings appear in the consciousness of the scientist, as does public confirmation from other scientists,
Another is the continuing absence of an explanation for consciousness itself.
Posted by: TheAncientGeek | January 31, 2015 at 07:51 AM
Maybe there are some things that cannot be described or experienced. Neither science nor religion can catch it..Maybe, even that we can never ever know about it. And that it is truly Unreachable..
And thus all our quest is in utter vain. All these meditations, reading etc cannot capture it.
Even sitting in Silence may not be a bait to catch it.
Who knows? Scientists?Religious people?God?Ha.
Posted by: satya | January 31, 2015 at 09:14 AM
I agree with the post, although I do agree that science can be quite influenced by subjectivity, assumptions of a paradigm etc, but at least there is the possibility of replication. For me there is one gray area, that is coincidence -- when spiritually inclined folks experience coincidences that others can also see. I must admit some pretty freaky ones have happened to me. Now they might just be coincidences and it's impossible to prove otherwise except maybe through the science of probability, but some people can become pretty good at materializing their desires. Your thoughts? All phooey? Some scientific explanation about energy and vibration alignment!
Posted by: Skeptic | January 31, 2015 at 10:19 AM
"... I can't think of any commenter (other than me), who isn't delusional or religiously inclined. Can anyone explain why this is? "
"We know why the Gurinder people come here and comment, but why do you think other believers do? "
Something you still haven't grasped - Mr x / cc - is that satsangis (both Charan and Gurinder initiates) read and sometimes comment here on this blog because Brian is an ex-satsangi. There are also some who follow the other breakaway RS sects who comment here.
Sorry to burst your bubble Brian but I think that the majority of your viewers are just checking in to see what the ex-satsangis are talking about. And we can all see that when the comments start to dry up, you then post a critique on Sant Mat to get things going again.
After all, what do atheists talk about if they have no-one to criticise? They need people to judge, just put anyone who isn't an atheist into the religious category and then take on a superior attitude and put them down.
Posted by: observer | February 01, 2015 at 01:19 PM
what do atheists talk about if they have no-one to criticise?
Atheism is not the problem - religion is - and atheists address the problem by talking about it.
They need people to judge, just put anyone who isn't an atheist into the religious category and then take on a superior attitude and put them down.
That's an emotional view of the matter. Atheists draw attention to the irrational beliefs and grotesque/ridiculous behavior of believers because that's what needs to be examined and questioned.
Posted by: x | February 01, 2015 at 03:37 PM
One other thing Mr x man you are also not grasping, is that most of us here share very common experiences, most of us have been to similar places, Dera, Malaga, Hines Park etc and read the same books..Its called History, and that is something we all share and it is very precious, so don't knock it.
Posted by: june schlebusch | February 01, 2015 at 09:55 PM
June, I've been to the Dera twice. I've seen the gurus quite a few times (Charan and Gurinder). I've read the books, and even written one. I followed the teachings for 35 years. I've shared what you mention, yet...
I don't think it is precious at all. I'm fine with people "knocking it," including myself. After all, this is a Church of the Churchless blog, not a Church of the Churched blog.
Criticism, ridicule, skepticism -- it's all good. If something makes sense, those who believe it does can defend it. Personal experiences and feelings belong to the person having them. No one can take those away.
But if people make claims about their religious experiences that supposedly reflect objective reality (rather than subjective experience), then certainly other people can comment on those claims.
Posted by: Brian Hines | February 01, 2015 at 10:22 PM
Skeptic, I think almost everybody experiences coincidences, some more than others but it is a stretch to go from that to "the law of attraction" which is essentially the same as what you speak of as people manifesting desires. I have found that such phenomena really have no value or meaning in the larger scheme of things and I am not in control of the thoughts I have in such a way that I could deliberately think of something and have it turn up in the outside world somewhere, sometime later. It's usually just random thoughts I have had that re-appear, but sometimes it seems as though if there is something I wonder about that I don't know of, I will learn about it in a coincidence later.
Then, of course, there could be another explanation, the demon one. But I'm sure this isn't the place to talk about that.
Posted by: David R | February 02, 2015 at 07:40 AM