Church of the Churchless

Physicist Sean Carroll debunks unscientific religious myth-making

My wife is a member of the Freedom From Religion Foundation, so we get the organization's excellent newsletter. On paper, even!

I just got around to reading the August 2015 issue. It had an excellent piece by physicist Sean Carroll -- the address he gave after winning FFRF's "Emperor Has No Clothes Award." 

You can read "Physicist Carroll: Atoms and Eve incompatible" on the FFRF web site. Or via this PDF file:
Download Physicist Carroll: Atoms and Eve incompatible - Freedom From Religion Foundation

Only the paper version had two interesting graphics. So I took photos of them to share here.

The first shows how the universe evolves from a state of simple order at the moment of the Big Bang to a state of complex disorder some 1 quadrillion years after the Big Bang (meaning, a really long time from now). That's the blue line.

The red line is emergent complexity in the universe. It shows how complexity -- life forms, star systems, etc. -- increases even as disorder/entropy also increases in the universe as a whole. But eventually emergent complexity declines to the simple order that marked the beginning of the universe.

Carroll has an easy-to-understand explanation of this in his acceptance address.

But complexity, the organization of the stuff that is going on, is a completely different thing from entropy. In the beginning, the universe was a very simple place, just hot and dense and smooth. And the end, a googol years from now, the universe will be a simple place once again. It will be empty space. It is between when the entropy is increasing from low to high that the universe became complex, forming planets and stars and galaxies and living organisms.

That behavior is not an accident. That is a universal way that complexity behaves. Entropy just goes up, but complexity first goes up and then fades away once you approach the final state, which we call thermal equilibrium. So the right answer to the creationists is that not only is it allowed by the second law of thermodynamics — that complex structures like living beings arose here on Earth — but the reason why is because of the second of thermodynamics. We are parasitic upon the increase of entropy of the universe.

We are little surfers riding a wave of entropy until we eventually scuttle up on shore, and it'll just be empty space forever. And again, the universe is not special, you can see this in a cup of coffee. You take a cup of coffee with the cream separate, that's low entropy. Highly organized but also very simple. If you mix them together, it is high entropy, everything mixed together but also very simple.

It's the "in between" when you see the tendrils of the cream reaching into the coffee and swirling in little complex patterns. That's when you get the complexity of the universe. These little swirls, these little ethereal bits of complexity that are caught between the simple beginning and the simple end. That's us. That's what we are, temporary eruptions of structure and organization as the universe goes from simplicity to simplicity.

So that explains how complex structure can (and indeed must) arise in a universe that has a simple beginning and simple end.

Carroll's other image is used to explain why life after death isn't possible. It's a nifty, though incomprehensible to most people, set of equations.

Here's what he says about the impossibility of life after death.

Why is that true? The argument is basically the following: The mind is the brain. That's what the mind is, there is nothing else other than the brain that is going on. And the brain is made of atoms. Here is the controversial part — even some of my friends get annoyed when I say this. But it's the truth so I will lay it on you.

We know how atoms work. They are not a mystery to us. And they work in such a way that when you die there is no way for the information that is "you" to persist after death. There is no way for that stuff, that knowledge, that set of beliefs and feelings that made up you, to leave your body. Because it is stuck there with the atoms that are decaying in your tomb or being cremated or whatever your favorite way to be after death is.

We don't know all of the laws of physics by any stretch of the imagination. But we know something about them, and we know enough to make a very powerful claim: there is no room for new laws of physics that would affect how the atoms in your brain actually work.

That's a very subtle statement. I think that Dan mentioned I have three hours to give this talk, so . . . I would get tired if that happened, but I would give the whole explanation for the laws of physics, how they came to be, why we are confident in them.

Instead I will just intimidate you into submission by showing you an equation. In this one equation are summarized all of the laws of physics necessary to understand the atoms in your brain at the energy mass and length scales relevant to your everyday lives. We have quantum mechanics, we have spacetime, we have gravity, we have the other forces, electromagnetism and the nuclear forces. We have matter, the electrons and the quarks you're made of, and we have of course the Higgs boson.

There are plenty of things physicists don't understand, but we know enough to say that if there are any other forces, particles, fields, phenomena, they can't affect the atoms in your brain. If there are new particles and fields that we haven't yet seen (which there probably are), either they're so weak or short-lived that they would not have any affect on what the atoms are doing, or we would have found them in experiments. Those are the only two options.

No one ever understands me when I say this, so I'm going to say the same thing over again. I'm not saying we understand all of physics. I'm not even saying we know how the fundamental laws come together to make complicated things like frogs and ecosystems and spiral galaxies. There are enormous amounts of work to be done in understanding how science works, including physics.

But we have a basic underlying framework, which we call quantum field theory. This framework is either true or false. All the evidence says that it's true, and if it's true then there is no room for new physics that can in any way affect what goes on in the atoms in your brain. We understand what they do. There is therefore no room for the information that you persist after you die.

Read Sean Carroll's entire piece to get the full impact of his message. You may not agree with him, but you'll take a fascinating ride through basic principles of modern science.

In Buddhism, ultimate truth is an absence, not a presence

Yeah, I'm on an emptiness roll, Buddhism style. Three blog posts in a row on this fascinating subject (see here and here for #1 and #2).

Having finished Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness," I ordered a roughly similar Newland book, "Appearance & Reality." Both books are giving me new insights into what Buddhism is all about. 

There's very little religious supernaturalism in them, a big reason why they appeal to me. I'm fine with philosophical Buddhism, which by and large is compatible with modern scientific understandings of reality.

Once we get into rebirth, omniscience, and additional other-worldly stuff, though, I part company with Buddhism.

Newland makes a few references to "liberation from cyclic existence" and other religious'y aspects of Buddhism, but I just put a question mark in the page margin when I come across such mentions and move on.

To his core theme, emptiness. 

The normal meaning of that word is an absence. Same applies in Buddhism.

What we need to do to become enlightened as to the nature of reality is give up the notion that anything (including us) exists permanently, fixedly, unchangingly, independently.

Yes, we are real. A chair is real. Dogs are real. Everything in everyday existence is real. There isn't any reality beyond the conventional world, no hidden realms of existence in some far-off heaven or spiritual realm.

Our problem isn't that we aren't in touch with ultimate reality.

Our problem is that we fail to see it as it is -- empty of inherent existence. Actually, everything is interconnected, interdependent, interwoven. But we wrongly consider that things (including the human self) possess their own inherent nature.

In the book I'm reading now, Newland writes:

The Great Vehicle tenet systems teach that the subtle and profound emptiness realized on the bodhisattva path is an ultimate truth. This ultimate truth is a negative phenomenon -- the mere absence of a certain type of self (i.e., a certain kind of existence) in phenomena.

The various Great Vehicle systems disagree about the kind of existence that emptiness negates. The Mind Only system, for example, says that emptiness is the absence of a difference of entity between an object and the mind apprehending it, while the Middle Way Consequence system says that emptiness is the absence of inherent existence.

Still, however they define it, Great Vehicle tenet systems agree that the subtle emptiness is (1) an ultimate truth, and (2) a quality present in all phenomena. That is, everything that exists (including emptiness itself) is devoid of whatever type of existence emptiness negates.

Back in my mystical meditation days -- which lasted over thirty years -- I was super-fond of the term ultimate reality. But then I viewed ultimate reality, or ultimate truth, as something positive that could be known. 

So it's been a refreshing eye-opener to get exposed to a fuller and clearer explanation of how Buddhism views emptiness as ultimate truth. I really like the idea that what separates us from ultimate truth is the presence of a false notion: inherent existence.

Which Newland defines as "the existence of something by the power of its own intrinsic or essential character."

This is how soul, God, and other supernatural entities are viewed by most religions. And how everyday existence is viewed by almost everybody in the world. Meaning, we see things -- like a table and chairs -- as possessing inherent existence rather than being brought into being by dependent arising. 

Which Newland defines as:

The core teaching that "in dependence upon this, that arises," which is the heart of the Dharma. Since there is nothing that exists in and of itself, all existents are dependent arisings.

Reality, then, is "synonym for emptiness, the ultimate truth." And Newland says emptiness is...

The sheer nonexistence of intrinsic nature. For example, the table's emptiness is the table's lack of existence by way of an intrinsic nature.

For me, the beauty of this Buddhist philosophy is that it negates the search for a True Self.

In the Indian philosophy I previously embraced, but have now discarded, there was the notion of coverings of mind and matter that obscured the primal soul-consciousness of who we really are. Supposedly these coverings could be removed through spiritual practice, meditation, and God's/Guru's grace.

Mahayana Buddhism seems much closer to the truth. Here's a few more Newland definitions.

self -- sometimes refers to the person -- that is, to something that does conventionally exist. However, often refers to a reified nature that does not exist at all but is wrongly superimposed on persons and other things.

selflessness -- the nonexistence of a reified nature that ignorance wrongly superimposes on persons and other things. In Prasangika Madhyamaka, the nonexistence of intrinsic nature in a person or other existing things.

Beautiful!

Suffering, distress, unhappiness, and ignorance arise from adding an "extra" on to things that exist: unchangingness, permanence, independence. We worry about not knowing our True Self when, actually, the truth is that we don't have a self.

Nothing does. 

Including emptiness, because emptiness isn't something that exists; it is the absence of inherent existence.

So what we need to be fulfilled isn't something; it is giving up a belief in "things," understanding that, as Newland puts it, "there is nothing that is truly or ultimately existent."

 

Buddhism: the illusion of life is believing in a fixed reality

For many years -- decades, really -- I believed that the everyday world in which we live was an illusion. Meaning, there was an unseen truly real realm beyond the bounds of ordinary consciousness. 

Changeable matter and mind weren't part of this ultimate reality. Only the eternal unchanging soul, our true self, was able to be aware of it. 

Now, I understand that I had things completely backward. Such is how science comprehends the world. Also, Buddhism.

As noted in my previous post, the Buddhist notion of "emptiness" is that nothing -- including us, and even emptiness itself -- has an intrinsic unchanging nature.

So while the idea of an unchanging eternal soul is appealing (most people find the prospect of dying and being gone forever extremely bothersome), it is a purely human concept, not reality. 

Here's some additional quotes from Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness" which point to the illusion of believing in an unchanging essence that underlies our ever-changing body and mind.

Tsong-kha-pa notes that non-Buddhist philosophies about an eternal and essential self arise when their proponents realize that the essential self really cannot be identical to the flux of mental and physical aggregates.

Reaching the wrong inference, they then teach about the existence of a metaphysical self that is essentially different from the mind and body. 

However, their own ordinary and conventionally valid consciousnesses never perceive any essence or intrinsic self that is different from the mind and body. This is simply an imaginary construct. 

Instead of assuming that there must be a permanent self and then locating it as an essence distinct from the mind and body, they should realize that since an intrinsically existing self can be found neither as one with nor as different from the mind and body, it simply does not exist.

...A person appears very vividly to have intrinsic nature, just as the reflection of a face may appear very vividly to be a face. If we come upon a reflection of ourselves unexpectedly, in a very clean mirror, we may for a moment be startled. We may feel strongly that we are seeing another person.

While this appearance as a person is completely false, the reflection does exist and does function effectively as what it actually is. It arises, functions, and passes away depending upon conditions. 

Likewise, the person is completely devoid of any shred of the intrinsically existent nature that vividly appears to our minds. Such a nature is unfindable because of being utterly nonexistent, just as there is no actual person in the mirror.

On the other hand, just as a reflection does exist as a mere reflection, a person does exist as a mere person. And, as it turns out, that is exactly the kind of person one needs to be in order to make choices, to act and to change, and to bring help to the world.

...The Buddha is not a God issuing the great commandment: Do not grasp. Nor is he a judge who stands ready to condemn those who violate this commandment. Rather, the Buddha is our spiritual physician, giving us healthy advice.

If happiness could be attained by grasping things, there would be no need for Buddhism. All of our needless miseries arise because we continue to grasp after things that are in fact completely ungraspable -- because they have no pith, no innermost core, no fixed essence. 

...Because they have no ability to set themselves up and exist on their own, we and the things around us are in flux, changing as conditions change. 

With no essential nature, neither our own selves nor the things around us have any inner handle by which we can grab and hold them. We are afraid to face this lack, this emptiness.

Our fear arises from and feeds our grasping, and in this way we build a prison for ourselves, moment by moment. Yet by bravely facing the reality of emptiness, we can let go of our fear, anger, and greed.

We can be free.

Emptiness is ultimate reality: nothing, including us, has an intrinsic nature

I run hot and cold about Buddhism, depending on what sort of Buddhist writing I'm reading. Religious Buddhism turns me off, but I like philosophical Buddhism that doesn't fall prey to unfounded supernaturalism. 

Recently I've been re-reading Guy Newland's "Introduction to Emptiness." It's a clear and persuasive description of the core notion in Mahayana Buddhism, emptiness. 

In the first few pages of his book, Newland explains what emptiness is all about. First, he speaks of the suffering that arises because we wrongly believe that we are something we're not.

We suffer unnecessarily because we do not know ourselves. Like addicts fiercely clinging to a drug, we cannot let go of the sense that we are substantial, solid, independent, and autonomous... Like an addict's drug, the false notion of an independently existing self is the source of great misery for ourselves and others.

For example, humans make up myths about an eternally existing soul. Religions tell us that when we die, we aren't really dead, but live on as some sort of indestructible essence. Newland says:

To be real, to be alive, we feel that we must deep down somehow exist in a solid and independent way. Death tells us a very different story, but for that very reason we find a million ways to avoid hearing the message of death. That message is that we are impermanent. 

Our bodies are disintegrating moment by moment, right now. And though we desperately wish to believe otherwise, the truth is that beneath our ever-changing minds and aging bodies there is no eternal and essential self. We have no natural existence, no independent way of existing.

So how do we exist?

Well, as natural beings who are part and parcel of everything in the world. Our existence is the result of previous causes and conditions, all of which are equally interdependent and without a permanent essence.

We exist contingently, interdependently. We exist, but only in dependence on our ancestors, our body parts, our food, air, and water, and the other members of our society. We could not and do not exist otherwise. Devoid of any independent or substantial nature, our existence is possible only because it is far less rigid, less concrete, than what we imagine it to be.

This leads Newland to a description of what emptiness is... and isn't.

Rather than seeing things as they are, we superimpose upon ourselves -- and on things around us -- a false existence, a self-existence or essential reality that actually does not exist at all. In the Buddhist philosophy explained here, the ultimate truth is the sheer absence, the lack, of any such essence.

This is emptiness (stong pa nyid, shunyata). While this may sound bleak, disappointing, or frightening, it is the very nature of reality. And it is reality -- not fantasy -- that is our final hope and our refuge. The path to freedom from needless misery, for ourselves and others, is through profound realization of this fundamental reality.

...The Tibetan and Sanskrit words that we translate as "emptiness" do, in fact, literally mean "emptiness." They refer specifically to some sort of lack or absence in things. But it is not a lack of meaning or hope or existence. 

It is the lack of the exaggerated and distorted kind of existence that we have projected onto things and onto ourselves. It is the absence of a false essential nature with which we have unconsciously invested everything. It can be quite frightening as we start to have doubts about this "heavy duty" kind of reality. We will feel that things cannot exist at all if they do not exist in the solid way we are accustomed to seeing them.

Jumping to another chapter in the book, here Newland explains that conventional reality is the only reality there is. This explains the Zen Buddhist emphasis on "chop wood, carry water." 

There is no supernatural world. There is no true self that we need to find. There is no hidden soul or state of consciousness we have to realize. 

What we are aware of here and now is ultimate reality: emptiness. Newland writes:

Because it is the final nature of every existent, emptiness that is the sheer absence of intrinsic nature is the ultimate reality. While this reality is very important -- because we all suffer immeasurably through clinging to intrinsic nature -- it is not something rare that we have to look for far away.

This ultimate reality is always immediately present as the final nature of every thing in every moment. What is very rare and very precious is the wisdom consciousness that understands this reality.

...When the mind of ultimate analysis looks at a cup, it finds only the emptiness of the cup. When it looks at this emptiness, it does not find some essentially real thing called emptiness as the basis of all. Emptiness, like all other existents, lacks intrinsic nature.

This is a profound point in Madhyamaka Buddhism. It is not that everything else is unreal as compared to the one real thing, which is real in and of itself. There are other philosophies which teach this.

But in Madhyamaka there is only one level of existence or type of existence: conventional existence. One particular conventionally existing phenomenon -- emptiness -- is the utter absence of any other level or type of existence.

Among all the things that exist conventionally, things' lack of existing on their own, in and of themselves, is called the ultimate truth because it is the truth realized by a mind that analyzes how thing ultimately exist.

Beautiful!

Difficult to understand. Also, easy to understand. 

"Imagine" is the solace I needed today

After hearing about today's attacks in Paris, I considered writing a blog post about religious fundamentalism. But then I realized that John Lennon had already said everything I wanted to say.

And in a much better way.
-------------------------------

Imagine

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one

 

 

 

Asked to say something about love, I'm pretty much speechless

Yesterday I got an email message:

Dear Mr. Hines ,

Your blog is very honest and nothing is more beautiful save love itself. Please tell us more about self-less and mutual love  and your views on the subject.

Sincerely, __________

Reading those words, I realized that I haven't written much explicitly about love during the eleven years this blog has existed.

This will be post # 2,140. When I used the search box in the right sidebar to see what popped up when I put in "love," almost all of the Google results for my two blogs were on my more personal and political HinesSight blog.

I've written about loving my iPhone, a Salem outdoor store, taxes, the "24" TV show, and other things. On this churchless blog, the most relevant post seemed to be "I'd love my self if I had one."

Which started out...

Proving, or not, that profound insights are found in the strangest places, I'll share some of the lyrics to an atonal song that I made up and love to "sing" (using that word in its absolutely loosest sense) in the shower.

I love my dog.
I love my cat.
Only problem is, 
I don't have a cat.
It's hard to love
What you don't have.

This is how I also feel about loving God. Or, my self. 

Except seemingly there's more evidence for a "self" than for "God." Buddhism, though, seizes on that seemingly and runs with it to an intriguing, reasonable, and scientifically defensible conclusion.

I don't have a self. No one does. Meaning, as agnostic Buddhist Stephen Bachelor says in his wonderful book, "Buddhism Without Beliefs":

As a human being I am more complex than a pot or a daffodil, but I have also emerged from causes and am composed of diverse, changing features and traits. There is no essential me that exists apart from this unique configuration of biological and cultural processes.

This helps to explain why I haven't written much about love. I agree with my email correspondent that love is beautiful. But I have no idea what those three words, love is beautiful, really mean. 

Nor would it help to delete "beautiful" and substitute any other word after love is...

Love, like me or you (as Stephen Bachelor said), isn't something separate and distinct from the beings who feel this ineffable emotion. Whatever love is, it is an ever-changing process, not a static entity. Especially, it isn't an other-worldly entity.

So my feeling is, the less we analyze and speak about love itself -- as contrasted with talking about what we love -- the better. Abstracting love diminishes this way of experiencing reality.

Meaning, I don't believe that love exists without a lover and an object of adoration.

How could love exist as a free floating something-or-other? This would be like being angry, yet not being angry about anything. At the least, an angry person would be angry about being angry, which counts as being angry about something.  

I'm not really a Buddhist, but I resonate with certain Buddhist principles -- such as the selflessness and mutuality mentioned in the email message I got.

As was noted in the above-linked post, we don't have to do anything to be selfless. This, it seems from both a Buddhist and neuroscientific perspective, is how we are: without an enduring changeless self. Such is the Buddhist notion of "emptiness."

Here's another quote from that post:

Emptiness is Buddhism's shorthand term for this absence of intrinsic selfness or thingness. Living and lifeless entities are equally devoid of independent, free-standing, unchanging existence.

The world is interconnected, with never-ending matrices of causes and effects stretching back to the big bang, and likely beyond. Out of this creative ferment arises...

Me. You. Religious beliefs. Scientific discoveries. Blogs. Books. Life. Death. Joy. Pain. Questions. Answers. Everything.

It isn't exactly true that we are all one, because obviously there are lots of different things that have manifested as Everything. But it's clear that the cosmos is a whole, so now I worship at the altar of scientifically defensible wholeiness rather than imaginary holiness.

Everything is interconnected. Everything is dependent on other things for its existence. No thing and no one is an island, compete unto itself. Reality is an interwoven web with no dangling threads. 

So the way I see it, love is an integral aspect of the way things are.

Meaning, reality (including us human beings) is bound together by unbreakable connections. We can't escape being attracted to this and that, because such is the way of the world, of the universe, of the cosmos.

And so is hate: lack of attraction, disengagement, disinterest. It isn't possible to have love without hate, just as there is no such thing as up without down, or hot without cold. 

We can't be equally connected or attracted to everything in existence. Neither can unconscious entities. If this were the case, reality would be a featureless blob. Life is a flux, a flow, an ever-changing dance. 

We come closer; we grow apart. We smile; we frown. We feel at peace; we feel at war.

For me, "love" points to all of this.

It is the way things are: interconnected, in relationships, yet with no fixed essence or state of being. There's no way to put words to this, because it's what reality is, was, and always will be absent human conceptions.

That said (or unsaid), maybe it makes sense to say, "love is acceptance of everything that really exists." I used the word love in the title of my post, "Respect reality, not religion, if you love the Ultimate."

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

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

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

Beauty is enhanced by science, not diminished

Here's a great video of physicist Richard Feynman speaking about science and beauty, combined with some gorgeous images. 

Feynman makes some excellent points. 

I've never understood why some wrongly believe that scientists, and the scientifically-minded (I include myself in this group), don't appreciate the beauty in life as much as other people do. 

Feynman points out that scientists look upon the world in the same way as everybody else.

But they also have a deeper factual understanding of certain aspects of reality. This enhances, rather than diminishes, the scientific appreciation of beauty.

Death is scary. How we deal with the fear... often even scarier.

I've got no problem admitting that I'm afraid of dying.

I've grappled with a primal fear of nonexistence. I've asked our attorney, when drawing up our wills (or living trusts) to substitute the word "gerbils" for "dies" when speaking about me, as in When Brian gerbils, his possessions will go to... 

But my fear of death has moderated quite a bit as I've grown older. (I'm 67 now.) I'm still more than a little interested in the subject of death, though. So when I heard about a book called "The Worm at the Core: On the Role of Death in Life," I couldn't resist asking Amazon to send me a copy.

After reading a few chapters, I wrote Afterlife myths enabled humans to cope with fear of death. Today I finished the whole book, having learned more about how we Homo sapiens handle death.

In short: as best we can, yet often not very well. 

Here's the basic problem, as described by the authors in their final chapter, "Living With Death."

From a biblical standpoint, the knowledge Adam and Eve gained by partaking of the apple made them mortal. From a scientific standpoint, the development of the human neocortex spawned symbolic thought, self-awareness, the capacity to reflect on the past and anticipate the future, and the knowledge of our mortality.

In this way, the "fall of man," the allegorical foundation of Western religion, converges with contemporary science: with increasing knowledge came the awareness of death -- and that changed everything.

The knowledge of death, rather than death per se, is the worm at the core of the biblical apple. It is that knowledge that made us human and initiated our unrelenting quest for immortality -- a quest that profoundly influenced the course of human history and persists to this day.

Now, this book is unique in that the authors are psychology professors who have conducted a lot of original research into attitudes toward death, and how reminders of death affect behavior.

So their conclusions are based on a lot more than philosophy (though philosophers such as Epicurus, they say, have echoed modern understandings of how humans deal with the fear of death). Here's how they speak in the final chapter about the work of a pioneer in this area, Ernest Becker, who wrote the classic The Denial of Death.

Once we formalized Becker's analysis of the human condition into terror management theory, we began fashioning experiments to test the many hypotheses that spilled readily out of the theory. 

Some thirty years and more than five hundred studies later, there is now overwhelming evidence confirming Becker's central claim that the awareness of death gives rise to potentially debilitating terror that humans manage by perceiving themselves to be significant contributors to an ongoing cultural drama.

We found, as Becker posited, that self-esteem buffers anxiety in general and anxiety about death in particular. We discovered that subtle, and even subliminal, reminders of death increase devotion to one's cultural scheme of things, support for charismatic leaders, and confidence in the existence of God and belief in the efficacy of prayer. 

They amplify our disdain toward people who do not share our beliefs even to the point of taking solace in their demise. They drive us to compulsively smoke, drink, eat, and shop. They make us uncomfortable with our bodies and our sexuality. They impel us to drive recklessly and fry ourselves in tanning booths to bolster our self-esteem. They magnify our phobias, obsessions, and social anxieties.

Regarding the last point, the idea is that instead of being afraid of one Big Unmanageable Thing -- death -- people are afraid of smaller things, as when someone who doesn't like public speaking says after a talk, "I felt like I was going to die on stage." 

Of course, the most direct way to deal with a fear of death is to convince yourself that you won't really die. This is why religious beliefs about the afterlife provide so much solace. Though almost certainly untrue, those myths prosper because they assuage peoples' anxiety about dying and being gone forever.

To someone with a religious mentality, physical death is real, but not the "gone forever" part. 

Since for a long time I believed in an Eastern/Indian view of immortality, my soul consciousness could merge with a universal cosmic consciousness, I understand the appeal of a belief system that views death as a crossing over into a form of life even better than what we enjoy now.

This fantasy would be fine, even if untrue, if it didn't typically come with serious side effects. As the quote above says, our fear of death leads us to cling to beliefs that keep this fear at a comfortable distance. 

It is rare to come across a religious or philosophical belief system which posits that everybody is equally likely to enjoy an eternally appealing afterlife. Usually there are conditions attached: one must have faith in such-and-such, or do this-and-that, in order to be saved from either existential obliteration or consignment to a nasty hell that is worse than death.

(Reincarnation arguably is an applies to all philosophy, but here too the teaching is that it is in our power to have a better or worse next-life depending on what we do in this one. So there still are winners and losers.)

There's no easy or clear answer to the problem of dealing with death in "The Worm at the Core." A concluding section says:

These modes of death transcendence are all grounded within a culturally constructed scheme of things, and some cultural worldviews guide us toward more constructive paths of transcendence than others. The question then becomes, as Ernest Becker put it, "What is life-enhancing illusion?"

It may sound harsh to call all forms of transcendence illusory. However, the authors did a good job of convincing me that they are. 

In this sense, bluntly put: The universe doesn't give a shit. It really doesn't. There's no objective meaning to life or death out there. The only meaning exists in here, in individual human minds. 

When we try to bolster our death-defying attempt at transcendence (biosocial, theological, creative, natural) -- which can be a secular sort, such as feeling that our actions in life have helped create a better world that will live on after us -- we're giving ourselves more credit than, most likely, we really deserve.

First, little of what we do during our life is going to make much of a long-term difference. Second, there's no guarantee that what we value so highly while alive will be a benefit to the world after we're dead. 

This is tough to admit.

I like to think that supporting progressive/liberal/environmental causes is a good thing. I can come up with persuasive reasons (to me, at least) why this is true. But who knows for sure? Maybe history will conclude that electing Hillary Clinton in 2016 was a terrible thing for the United States and the world. 

Yet here I am today, feeling that working for her election is a meaningful way to make the Earth a better place for future generations after I'm gone. 

It's helpful to distinguish, say the authors, between "rock" and "hard place" worldviews. As noted in these quotes, rock-type worldviews aren't as good for the Earth, though they're undeniably appealing to people who hold onto them. (I've added the boldface.)

The rock is a black-and-white scheme of things, with explicit prescriptions for attaining literal and symbolic immortality. Unfortunately, many people who subscribe to rock views fervently proclaim their beliefs to be absolute truth, and they insist that they can unambiguously differentiate between good and evil. 

"Isms" -- fundamentalism, fascism, communism, and some forms of free-market capitalism, are rock views. According to Protestant theologian Paul Tillich, the fundamental problem with all "isms" is confusing their way with The Way: "It makes its myths and doctrines, its rites and laws into ultimates and persecutes those who do not subject themselves to it."

Because rock worldviews provide clear and simple bases of meaning, self-worth, and immortality, they afford seductive psychological security for those who sustain faith in, and feel valued within, them.

...Such gritty acknowledgment of our mortal fate has its appeal, but serving the ashes of ancestors and the temples of one's deities has perhaps led to more atrocities and killing than all other human motives combined. Why? Because the rock-type worldview tends to foster an us vs. them tribal mentality that, as we have seen, breeds hatred and inflames intergroup conflicts.

The alternative to rock worldviews is the hard place: conceptions of life that accept ambiguity and acknowledge that all beliefs are held with some measure of uncertainty. Hard place worldviews are malleable. Although adherents of the hard place take their beliefs and values seriously, they are open to other ideas and refuse to claim sole ownership of the truth. 

They recognize that right and wrong, and good and evil, cannot always be disentangled. Consequently, they tend to be more tolerant of those who are different. 

The hard place means accepting that meaning and values are human creations. We each combine bits and pieces of our experiences with the ideas and "truths" that we encounter to construct the reality in which we live and to become the kind of people who can make the best of that world. 

Perhaps there is an ultimate meaning and truth out there, but we can never fully grasp it, because our awareness is constrained by the limits of our sense organs, our mental capacities, and our cultural blinders. This can be a disturbing realization, but it can be a liberating one as well. 

We do not have to accept the vision of reality that others have given us. Rather, we can strive to fashion meanings that maximize what we can get out of life and minimize the harm we do to others. 

...So we are caught. The rock provides psychological security but takes a terrible toll on those victimized by angry and self-righteous crusades to rid the world of evil. The hard place yields perhaps a more compassionate view of the world but is less effective at buffering death anxiety. 

Somehow we need to fashion worldviews that yield psychological security, like the rock, but also promote tolerance and acceptance of ambiguity, like the hard place.

Why we believe in things we know aren't true

It's a well-worn saying here in the United States: "Denial isn't just a river in Egypt." 

We all deny reality. We all prefer to feel good about a falsity rather than embrace a harsh truth.

But some people struggle against our human inclination to believe in things that aren't true, while others make little or no effort to resist the lure of denial. 

A piece in the New York Times, "Believing What You Don't Believe," casts light on what's going on here. 

How is it that people can believe something that they know is not true?

For example, Kansas City Royals fans, sitting in front of their television sets in Kansas City, surely know that there is no possible connection between their lucky hats (or socks, or jerseys) and the outcome of a World Series game at Citi Field in New York, 1,200 miles away. Yet it would be impossible to persuade many of them to watch the game without those lucky charms.

It’s not that people don’t understand that it’s scientifically impossible for their lucky hats to help their team hit a home run or turn a double play — all but the most superstitious would acknowledge that. It’s that they have a powerful intuition and, despite its utter implausibility, they just can’t shake it.

So our quick intuitions can lead us astray. The role of slower reason, logic, and deliberate consideration of evidence is to correct those intuitive errors. 

Psychologists who study decision making and its shortcomings often rely on the idea, popularized by the psychologist Daniel Kahneman in his book “Thinking, Fast and Slow,” that there are two modes of processing information.

There is a “fast system” that is intuitive and quickly generates impressions and judgments, and a “slow system” that operates in a deliberate and effortful manner, and is responsible for overriding the output of the fast system when the slow system detects an error.

However, often this doesn't happen. So people continue to believe in things they know aren't true.

Strange? Yes. Weird? Yes. But the human mind is undeniably strange and weird. If it wasn't, religions wouldn't have the fertile mental soil in which superstition and dogmatism establish such deep roots.

But as one of us, Professor Risen, discusses in a paper just published in Psychological Review, many instances of superstition and magical thinking indicate that the slow system doesn’t always behave this way.

When people pause to reflect on the fact that their superstitious intuitions are irrational, the slow system, which is supposed to fix things, very often doesn’t do so.

People can simultaneously recognize that, rationally, their superstitious belief is impossible, but persist in their belief, and their behavior, regardless. Detecting an error does not necessarily lead people to correct it.

Coach's praying on field deserved a Satanic response

When religious fundamentalism runs amok, I love it when the overly-righteous get an unwelcome reflection of their own dogmatism.

Here in the Pacific Northwest (I live in Oregon), local newspapers have been running stories about a high school football coach in Washington state, Joe Kennedy, who likes to overtly pray on the field. 

Pleasingly, he was sacked on the Unconstitutional Goal Line.

An assistant football coach at a Washington high school who prayed at games after he was told to stop praying was placed on paid administrative leave Wednesday night.

The Bremerton School District placed Bremerton High School assistant football coach Joe Kennedy on leave after he refused to comply with district regulations regarding "engaging in overt, public religious displays on the football field while on duty as a coach."

Kennedy has vocally prayed before and after games, sometimes joined by students, at the 50-yard line since 2008. But the practice recently came to the district's attention after complaints and the district directed him to stop praying on the field Sept. 17th. He was also ordered to avoid kneeling, bowing his head or doing anything that could remotely be seen as religious.

Kennedy initially agreed to the ban, but then, with support from the Texas-based Liberty Institute, a religious-freedom organization, he resumed the postgame prayers, silently taking a knee for 15 to 20 seconds at midfield. His lawyers insist he is not leading students in prayer, just praying himself.

District officials acknowledged that Kennedy, a devout Christian, wasn't forcing or leading students in prayer. However, they said Kennedy's actions are a violation of federal and state constitutional rights of students or others and places the district at risk of legal challenges or lawsuits.

I have no idea why some Christians think that God is pleased by such ridiculous displays of public devotion. Sure, God almost certainly doesn't exist, and the Bible is almost certainly a purely human fabrication. 

But even if we unjustifiably take the Bible as a guide to divinity, it says...

When you pray, you are not to be like the hypocrites; for they love to stand and pray in the synagogues and on the street corners so that they may be seen by men. Truly I say to you, they have their reward in full. But you, when you pray, go into your inner room, close your door and pray to your Father who is in secret, and your Father who sees what is done in secret will reward you.

Well, Coach Kennedy has gotten part of his "reward in full" for being a praying hypocrite.

His actions spurred the Seattle Chapter of The Satanic Temple to make an entirely reasonable demand that they also be allowed to do their thing on the football field. 

In permitting school-sponsored prayer, the district has created a de facto open forum for religious expression in accordance to the Establishment Clause of the federal constitution which prohibits the government from preferring one religion over another.  Therefore, the Satanic Temple wishes to ensure their belief system has equal access to the football field.

The Satanic Temple of Seattle invites any staff or student of Bremerton High School to contact them to perform a post-game Satanic invocation Thursday, Oct 29th on the Bremerton high school football field.

Some students did. Which, predictably, led to some firey Christian-Satanic interactions. 

About a dozen members of the Satanic Temple of Seattle, most dressed in hooded black robes and some masked, left Bremerton High School shortly after their arrival at a varsity-football game Thursday night. They came in response to the controversy surrounding coach Joe Kennedy, who was placed on leave this week for praying on the field after games but attended the game in the stands.

Students swarmed the fence where the Satanists stood outside. The group climbed the fence, shook it, held up crosses, threw liquid, and chanted “Jesus.” Some yelled at the Satanists to go away.

A few of the half-dozen students and teachers who invited the Satanists to attend the game in the spirit of free expression were allowed outside the fence, where they spoke with members of the atheist and agnostic group and thanked them for coming.

Temple spokeswoman Lilith Starr said the group was invited to protest Kennedy’s ritual of kneeling on the 50-yard line after games and praying. “We want equality for everyone,” she said. “If one group is allowed to pray, everyone should be.”

Absolutely. This isn't a Christian nation, thankfully.

I'd prefer that all expressions of religiosity and supernaturalism be kept behind closed doors. But if society is going to allow them in public settings, every sort of spiritual belief should have an equal opportunity to display its rituals, prayers, and such.

As we devotees of the Flying Spaghetti Monster like to say, "He boiled for your sins" and "Have you been touched by his noodly appendage?" This uplifting theology certainly deserves a place on the Bremerton High football field after games.

Accompanied by some tasty tomato sauce.