Church of the Churchless

Embrace uncertainty, doubt, and open-minded faith

I'm an ardent worshipper of Amazon, because it brings me so much inspiration. My current object of literary worship is a compelling little (204 pages) book by Lesley Hazleton, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto.

Now, I don't see much difference between atheism and agnosticism, but Hazleton does, so I'm good with that. I'd still argue that at times she views atheism as excessively certain God doesn't exist, because every atheist I know (including myself) would be pleased to acknowledge the existence of God if there was good reason to do so. 

Which, there isn't.

But this is a minor quibble with the book. So far I've read three of the eight chapters and I'm liking it a lot. Hazleton is an excellent writer. And I agree with almost everything she says about the need to embrace mystery and the unknown, not a rigid fundamentalism marked by rigid conviction that the Truth about the cosmos already is known.

Here's some passages from the "In Doubt We Trust" chapter I read this morning. In the passage below Hazleton addresses why people are so fond of belief and so distrustful of uncertainty.

Sociobiologists have argued that humans have an innate bias toward belief as a matter of physical survival. A prehistoric hunter would have been wiser to take a rustling in the forest as ominous than to blithely trust it was not. Or, in more familiar terms, better safe than sorry. If this theory means that I would not have lasted long in a prehistoric forest, I can live with that.

But it may also go some way toward explaining why so many people long for certainty: why they experience uncertainty as an unpleasant state of being, as though a saber-toothed tiger were waiting to pounce, and why, despite the occasional criticism of someone as credulous and thus liable to believe anything at all, the idea that belief is good seems built into the way we think.

Someone may be praised as being true to his beliefs, for instance, as though the act of belief were a value in itself, a moral stance, no matter the content of the belief in question. In matters of religion, belief can even develop into something of a full-time occupation -- a profession, in both senses of the word.

You don't simply believe; you become a believer. You are defined by living in the state of belief, both in the eyes of others and in your own.

Belief can then develop into an impassioned state of being where the act of believing is more important than its content, which is why the most ardent fundamentalists can turn into the most vehement atheists, flaming red socialists into deep-blue conservatives, hedonists into ascetics (and all, by the same token, potentially vice versa).

Conviction is deadening, in Hazleton's view. No one should be certain of their convictions, because there's a reason "conviction" and "convict" are so similar. Rigid convictions keep us confined in a mental jail of fundamentalist self-righteousness.

The more firmly I hold a belief (and note that word hold, that sense of possession, of its being mine), the more liable it is to fossilize into conviction, as tightly constricted as that army cot, or as a convict in his cell. And when my belief is so adamantly held that it becomes central to my identity, your disbelief then undermines not only the assumed truth of what I believe, but me. 

This is no mere schoolyard "I am right and you are wrong."

Instead, it is "I am right and you are wrong, and your wrongness is a threat to my identity." Or even to my existence. As Samuel Johnson put it in rather more elegant terms: "Every man who attacks my belief diminishes in some degree my confidence in it, and therefore makes me uneasy; and I am angry with him who makes me uneasy." 

To be secure in one's convictions is thus to be absurdly oxymoronic, since conviction is really a state of insecurity. If you know something for a fact, you have no need to believe in it or to be convinced of it. You need belief only when you are not sure. Belief is thus the product not of knowledge, but of uncertainty. It contains within itself the possibility of disbelief.

If I gird myself in the psychic armor of righteousness, it is precisely because on some level, conscious or not, I am aware of my vulnerability. Why else would I need any kind of armor?

As with the stiff gait of an elderly arthritic person, the tenacious rigidity of conviction indicates not strength, but frailty. Or perhaps it is an evasion of a deeper, more complex, and far more challenging response to uncertainty, which is to embrace it. 

For Hazleton (as for Alan Watts), faith is an open-minded pursuit of understanding and knowledge that has no guarantee of success. Thus faith is founded on doubt, on unknowing, because without doubt there is no fuel to power the engine of faith.

Those I know of deepest faith are not convinced. "Perfect faith" is a cruel and absurd oxymoron so far as they are concerned. Their minds are not made up, and their faith offers anything but smug self-satisfaction. Indeed they have faith not only despite their doubts, but precisely because of them.

They have made a commitment to faith, not in the assurance that they are right and that they have found or possess the truth -- the consumerist approach to religion -- but in the acknowledgment of how much cannot be known, and how presumptuous it is to imagine that everything can be.

They do not claim to have all the answers, or worse, the answer. Instead, they have a deep sense of unknowability, of the ineffable mystery of existence referred to in metaphysical shorthand as God.

Here Hazleton says that doubt is what makes religion, or any other aspect of life, human. Indeed, people who lack doubt generally are insufferable: self-righteous, full of themselves, lacking in humility. The #1 criterion of spirituality is the willingness to honestly say, both to oneself and others, "I could be wrong."

As Graham Greene indicated in his novels of those struggling with faith, doubt is the heart of the matter. It is what keeps religion human, because when doubt is banished, faith is rendered moot. Abolish all doubt, and what's left is not faith but absolute, heartless conviction, a blind and blinding refuge from both thought and humanity.

You are certain that you possess "the Truth" -- inevitably offered with that that uppercase T -- and this certainty easily devolves into dogmatism and righteousness: a demonstrative, overweening pride in being so very right. You occupy this assumed truth, stake it out as your exclusive territory, and see all who live beyond its borders as a threat.

Then you add insult to injury by loudly insisting that in this, you and you alone are, as fundamentalists say, "the faithful."

...But faith -- and the vulnerability and humility that come with it -- is the most important thing lacking in fundamentalists of all religious stripes. Indeed, their absolutism is the opposite of faith, and this makes them the real infidels. By insisting on absolute belief, they have found the perfect antidote to thought, and the ideal refuge from the hard demands of faith.

They don't have to struggle with it like Jacob wrestling through the night with the angel, or like Jesus in his forty days and nights in the wilderness, or like Muhammad -- not only that night on the mountain but throughout his years as a prophet, with the Quran constantly urging him not to despair, and condemning those who most loudly proclaim that they know everything there is to know, and that they and they alone are right.

Terrified of what existentialist philosopher Soren Kierkegaard famously called "the leap of faith," fundamentalists cling to conviction. 

Physicist Brian Greene talks about the cold, cruel, wondrous universe

Here's an excerpt from a story in the most recent issue of TIME magazine about physicist Brian Greene and his new book, Until the End of Time. (I've ordered it, naturally.)

I get hugely more inspiration from science books like this one, because they're founded in reality, not fantasy, as religious writings are. I've been there and done that. Now, like Greene, I embrace the cold, cruel, wondrous universe.

There's a lot of satisfaction in such neat solutions to head-cracking problems. But there is an equivalent neatness to the ostensibly dispiriting conclusions Greene reaches in his books and in his research: that unhappy business of a cold universe, an insentient universe, of the individual as just a quantum contraption, behaving as a product not of choice but of probabilities and randomness.

It's where the free-will thing comes in: the universe is guided by quantum probabilities, and your "choices" are simply a part of that, the way a local breeze is part of the global weather system.

"My feeling is that the reductionist, materialist, physicalist approach to the world is the right one," Greene says. "There isn't anything else; these grand mysteries will evaporate over time."

But despite such empirical bravado, Greene says more too -- and whether he likes it or not, it's not reductionist, and if it's written in a book like Until the End of Time, it could be written in the Vedas as well.

"Rather than feeling, 'Damn, there's no universal morality,' 'Damn, there's no universal consciousness,'" he says, "how wondrous is it that I am able to have this conscious experience and it's nothing more than stuff? That stuff can produce Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, that stuff can produce the Mona Lisa, that stuff can produce Romeo and Juliet? Holy smokes, that's wondrous."

The rational physicist with the deeply spiritual brother surely meant the holy as just a figure of speech -- but if so, he picked an apt one.

John Oliver shows how bad India's Narendra Modi is

I'm not a fan of political leaders who base their policies on religious fundamentalism. Since the Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, is doing just that, I enjoyed John Oliver's humorous takedown of Modi on last weekend's "Last Week Tonight with John Oliver." 

Here it is, for your own enjoyment.

 

Open Thread 30 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread. 

This hasn't been happening recently, as some commenters have been using blog posts as a "chat room," basically, so from now on I'm going to vow to do better at not approving comments submitted on a regular blog post if the comment doesn't deal with the subject of the post. 

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread.

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Religious people, why do you believe in God?

This blog attracts quite a few religious people, probably because my rational, reasonable, intelligent posts appeal to their subconscious mind, given how much of their conscious awareness is filled with faith-based religious dogma.

So I'd like to offer an opportunity to religious people to explain why they believe in God or some other divine entity. This includes the notion that there's such a thing as "God in human form," which is the basis of Christianity and some other forms of religion.

Leave a comment with you best explanation of why you believe in a higher supernatural power. I'm curious whether any explanations would make sense to an open-minded atheist like me. 

I'd love to see a reason for believing in God that's based on sound demonstrable evidence or a convincing argument. I'm doubtful that any religious believer who visits this blog can supply such a reason, but I'm waiting for it.

Still waiting...

Religious belief is an untrue concept

So why do so many people, billions really, believe untruths about God, heaven, spirit, soul, angels, devils, and other unseen entities of which there is zero proof of their existence?

Because of the Cognitive Revolution, according to Yuval Noah Harari, a historian who has written three compelling books, Sapiens, Homo Deus, and 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (I've read all of them).

The February 17/24 issue of The New Yorker has a lengthy story by Ian Parker about Harari. Here's an excerpt from "The Really Big Picture." 

I think Harari is absolutely correct about religious belief being an example of how the evolved brains of humans enabled us to begin communicating untruths, which helped people to cooperate by binding them together in a shared fantasy.

in Chapter 2 of "Sapiens," Harari describes how, about seventy thousand years ago, Homo sapiens began to develop nuanced language, and thereby began to dominate other Homo species, and the world. 

Harari's discussion reflects standard scholarly arguments, but he adds this gloss: during what he calls the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens became uniquely able to communicate untruths.

"As far as we know, only Sapiens can talk about entire kinds of entities that they have never seen, touched, or smelled," he writes, referring to myths and gods.

"Many animals and human species could previously say 'Careful! A lion!' Thanks to the Cognitive Revolution, Homo sapiens acquired the ability to say, 'The lion is the guardian spirit of our tribe.'"

This mental leap enabled cooperation among strangers: "Two Catholics who have never met can nevertheless go together on crusade or pool funds to build a hospital because they both believe that God was incarnated in human flesh and allowed Himself to be crucified to redeem our sins."

Here's another passage from The New Yorker story that I liked. Harari is a big believer in meditation of the Buddhist Vipassana variety. He frequently goes on retreats that last from 10 days to as much as a month.

Harari is correct: there's no such thing as an eternal essence. Belief in such a thing is another example of a mental concept that religious believers embrace because it makes them feel good. But truth is something different from feeling good.

"21 Lessons" includes extended commentary on the life of the Buddha, who "taught that the three basic realities of the universe are that everything is constantly changing, nothing has any enduring essence, and nothing is completely satisfying." 

Harari continues, "You can explore the furthest reaches of the galaxy, of your body, or of your mind, but you will never encounter something that does not change, that has an eternal essence, and that completely satisfied you... 'What should I do' ask people, and the Buddha advises, 'Do nothing. Absolutely nothing.'"

Evolution shows how we are a small twig on the tree of life

Evolution is a scientific fact. Sure, all facts are subject to being proven wrong. But the chance of that happening to evolution is very slim, because the evidence for evolution is so strong.

Since I love to learn about true things, this is why my pre-meditation reading each morning often consists of a science book. I see no reason to pick up a religious book any more, because my eyes have been opened to the falsity of believing in God or other supernatural entities.

A few weeks ago I finished reading Joseph LeDoux's book, "The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains." 

I'm a habitual highlighter of non-fiction books. I supplement my highlighting with notes in the back blank pages found in most books, where I write down the page numbers of subjects I found most interesting, along with a highly personal system of underlining, circles, question marks, arrows, and other notations that remind me of portions of the book that I considered significant.

Here's some passages from the 432 pages in LeDoux's meaty/tofuy book that garnered significant markings. Before each one I'll briefly explain why I liked them.

I heartily agree with LeDoux that conscious awareness is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to goings-on within the human brain, and likely every other kind of brain. We simply have no clue about what most of our 100 billion neurons with their trillions of connections are up to. He writes:

Behavior did not arise to serve the subjective mind. It came about and persists to enhance fitness -- to keep organisms alive and well so that reproduction can occur. 

This perspective puts the behavior of humans and bacteria, and all organisms in between, on a level playing field, one in which consciousness, in the sense that humans mean by the term in everyday life, has a peripheral role in most of the history of life.

If we commit to the very reasonable assumption that over the long course of evolution behavior has mostly been generated by nonconscious systems, and that behavior, even in humans, should be assumed to be nonconsciously controlled unless proven otherwise, the science of behavior would advance much more smoothly.

And, by the same token, so would the science of consciousness. This is the perspective I will take as I guide you on our ascent of the tree of life in the remainder of this book.

One of the most ridiculous things about religions is that they usually consider humans to have been created by God in God's image. This is clearly not true, given the fact of evolution. Like every species, Homo sapiens is different from other forms of life, but not better or worse than those other forms.

Evolution does not create superior or inferior organs or tissues; it created diversity through divergence (not by accumulation of features).

What works in a given environmental situation is determined by natural selection, but as the environment changes, or the group moves to a new niche, new traits become important and previously useful traits can become detriments.

In trying to understand how changes in brains over the course of vertebrate evolution gave rise to our own behavioral and mental capacities, we thus have to take care to climb the vertebrate tree of life without using Edinger's ladder, and also to be cautious not to overinterpret the differences we encounter.

We are newer and different, but not better.

As I have pointed out, we have to guard against anthropocentric tendencies, but also against anthropomorphic ones. In other words, we sometimes attribute too much to other animals, and sometimes to ourselves. We have to find the right balance, which I strive to do in the coming chapters.

However, we humans do possess a marvelously capable brain that has impressive cognitive powers. Yet as LeDoux notes at the end of this passage, human cognition is an outgrowth of capabilities that our evolutionary ancestors possessed.

Our species has survived and thrived not by being bigger, faster, or stronger, but by being clever. We haven't, like most organisms, simply evolved by adapting our Bauplan to the world as it changes; we have used our cognitive abilities to change the world. We do so because we think it might be advantageous to our bodies and way of life, or that it might simply be interesting to tinker with nature.

No other animal, not even our closest primate relatives, can have an idea like building a skyscraper, finding a cure for a disease, composing an opera, or writing a novel, then describe it to a colleague, plan how to execute it, and carry it out.

That human cognition is unique in no way means we are better or more entitled than our ancestors or animals with which we currently share the planet. It just means we are different. Unique though it may be, human cognition emerged by building on cognitive capabilities possessed by our mammalian ancestors.

There's zero evidence to support the idea of a conscious soul separate from the physical brain. Consciousness is one aspect of the brain in action, not something ethereal or supernatural. Research on split-brain patients proves this, since basically their consciousness is divided into two parts -- which couldn't happen if a unitary soul was the source of consciousness.

Because language is usually controlled by the left hemisphere, split-brain patients are able to give verbal reports about information presented to the right half of visual space, which is preferentially seen by the left hemisphere, but cannot name stimuli in the left half of visual space, which is seen by the right hemisphere

They can, however, respond nonverbally to the stimuli seen by the right hemisphere, by pointing toward or grabbing objects with the left hand, which is preferentially connected to the right hemisphere. Similarly, when blindfolded, these subjects can name objects placed in their right hand, but not objects placed in their left hand.

Such findings showing that conscious experience can be isolated in a specific part of the brain by cutting axonal connections provided compelling evidence for something that scientists long believed but could not prove: namely, that consciousness depends on the brain's neural circuits, and is not, as Descartes had said, associated with a separate, nonphysical, soul.

I'm completely open to the fact that people have religious and mystical experiences, in part because I've had those experiences myself. (This doesn't make those experiences objectively true, of course.) But science teaches us that it is wise to be cautious about trusting the accuracy of accounts of any experience recounted by memory, since the brain engages in top-down reformulations of the memory every time it is remembered.

As Gerald Clore, Daniel Kahneman, and others have noted, the closest we ever come to the truth of experience is when we are in the experience. Everything that happens later is a top-down reinterpretation of the memory of the original experience.

In therapeutic situations, such revisionist histories can be revealing of one's psychological tendencies and proclivities, but they can never be as true to a past experience as the experience itself was in real time. The mere act of retrieving a memory can, through the process of memory reconsolidation, change the nature of the memory (this is a natural process through which memories are changed after retrieval, requiring restorage).

The longer the amount of time that passes between the actual experience and the memory of it, the greater opportunity to revise and reconsolidate it upon retrieval of the remembered narrative.

Here LeDoux repeats his contention that we humans are different, not special. We are part of a four-billion-year process of evolution that continues to this day, and will keep on for as long as life exists on Earth. 

Our survival circuits connect us to the survival history of organisms with nervous systems. And the universal survival strategies that survival circuits and behaviors tactically implement connect us to the entire history of life. Separation of the history of emotions and other states of consciousness from the deep history of survival circuits allows us to see our place in this ancient story.

Like all other species, we are special because we are different. Our differences are important to us because they are ours. But they are mere footnotes in a four-billion-year-old saga. Only by knowing the whole story can we truly understand who we are, and how we came to be that way.

Maybe it's time to give up on hope

I'm conflicted about hope, the desire for something to happen. It certainly seems like a good thing, a shoulder to lean on in tough times, a positive compass heading when happenings in your life are going in the wrong direction.

I've relied on hope a lot, as have we all, most likely. I've dreamed of better times, of bouncing back from a disappointment, of finding a way to accomplish something difficult.

For most of us, it's difficult to imagine not living without hope. 

If we get sick, we hope we'll soon be well. If a romantic relationship falls apart, we hope that love will return to our life in a different guise. If we're fired from our job, we hope that our next employment opportunity will be better.

So hope appears to be a psychological drug with no negative side effects. It lifts us up when we're down, a mood elevator that doesn't require a doctor's prescription. 

However...

There's also something to be said for giving up on hope. It's unclear to me whether that saying, whatever it might consist of, outweighs the benefits of hope. I simply have a feeling, based on my own experience, that hope isn't always a good thing.

One drawback is that it contains the seed of disappointment. Whether that seed sprouts depends on the outcome of our hoping. If we fill our mind with a strong desire that X will occur, the appearance of Y with no sign of X is going to cause us to feel letdown. 

Now, would it be better if there was no hope for X? I don't know. Perhaps.

That way, if X comes to be, it would strike us as a wonderful surprise, not the fulfillment of an expectation. And if X never happens, the disappointment caused by a gap between hope and reality wouldn't exist. 

Another potential drawback is that hope can prevent us from living in the here-and-now. It's tempting to fill our mind with visions of what might be, rather than what is. Taken to extremes, this can prevent us from fully appreciating the life we actually have, because it is so different from the life we hope for.

Still, I find it difficult to recommend giving up on hope, which is why the title of this blog post starts with "Maybe." Hope can be the only thing that stands between us and despair. Yes, hope can be a crutch. But when we're limping along, a crutch can be what we most need.

Since I've become a fan of mindfulness, a middle ground strikes me as a good way to go. Keep on hoping, yet be aware of what you're doing.

Sometimes I say aloud, "Yes, I hope that..."

This helps me realize that I've got an expectation that might be fulfilled, or it might not. There's no guarantee, just a hope. It's when a hope becomes an obsession that problems arise. If we can't stop thinking, "It would be so wonderful if...", perhaps we've allowed hope to occupy too large of a place in our life.

Or, maybe not. There's certainly an argument for letting hope become as grand as possible, bigger than a mountain, more enduring than a diamond.

Like I said, I'm conflicted about hope.

Near-death experiences are "real" only because people have them

A New York Times opinion piece makes an excellent point about near-death experiences that applies equally to all kinds of spiritual, mystical, and religious experiences.

There's plenty of evidence that people have these sorts of experiences. So that makes them real in a limited sense.

It's the same sort of reality that arises when someone goes to a country music concert and absolutely loves it. Their mind produces a feeling of subjective pleasure from being at the concert. 

However, this doesn't mean that the concert was objectively lovable. Someone who doesn't like country music could be sitting right next to the "loves it" person and have an experience of "hates it."

Likewise, John Fischer, the author of this opinion piece who has written several books about near-death experiences, says that while there's no doubt that people have them, there's no solid evidence that they prove the reality of life after death, heaven, and such.

Being similarly scientifically-minded, I keep this in mind whenever I hear about someone's claim that they've had some sort of supernatural experience. I'm perfectly wiling to accept that they believe they had a supernatural experience, while being deeply skeptical that the experience actually was of a supernatural reality.

Here's the opinion piece. I've boldfaced passages that refer to the "real" question.

Owen Gent

“Have you stood at the gates of doom? Or looked through the gates of death? Have you been to the edge of the universe?” In the Old Testament, The Voice from the Whirlwind poses these questions to Job.

The implied answer is no, for these seem to be divine prerogatives. For humans, heaven is a gated community, and we typically can’t even peer through. This is one reason (among many) near-death experiences inspire awe: They seem to give us a “God’s eye” view of what really lies beyond. They take us to the edge of the universe.

While it’s not exactly a scientific term, most of us have an agreed understanding of what “near-death experience” means. Obviously, an N.D.E. takes place in a “near-death context” — a situation in which one’s life is in jeopardy.

Most who have studied or discussed them agree that to count as an N.D.E., the experience must occur while the individual is not wakefully conscious and have a significant number of these aspects: an “out of body” experience in which one seems to be floating above one’s physical form and can see it and its surroundings; a life review; guidance by deceased loved ones or revered religious figures toward a “guarded” realm (a light in the darkness, a gated or fenced domain, the other side of a river).

Many people who have had an N.D.E. report being profoundly transformed — less anxious about death, more spiritual and more “prosocial” (including more concerned with morality).

These sorts of experiences have been reported throughout history and across cultures. Plato described one in “The Republic” — the Myth of Er. They are partly dependent upon the particulars of an individual’s life situation, religion and culture, but there are common elements as well.

For instance, the religious figures may be different — a Christian would see Christian figures, a Buddhist would see Buddhist figures, Hindu gods and goddesses would appear in a Hindu’s N.D.E., and so forth. Yet at a deeper level there is guidance by respected figures, a voyage led by trusted mentors from the known to the unknown. This time it is perhaps the most daunting journey, from life to death. Loving guidance on our last journey, or the last leg of our journey, is deeply resonant.

In popular literature, N.D.E.s are almost always interpreted “supernaturalistically.” They are interpreted as showing (or “proving”) that the mind is not the same as the brain and can continue after the brain stops functioning, and also that the mind has contact of some sort with a “heavenly” or nonphysical realm.

The titles of popular books about N.D.E.s proclaim that “heaven is for real” or that we have a “proof of heaven.” Medical doctors and neuroscientists writing about these issues claim that N.D.E.s offer “evidence for the afterlife” and “consciousness beyond life.” They think of them as round-trip tickets to the Good Place — the trip of an afterlifetime.

The proponents of a supernaturalistic interpretation of N.D.E.s insist that they are “real.” The neurosurgeon Eban Alexander’s “Proof of Heaven” even includes a chapter titled “The Ultra-Real.” I do not deny that people — many people — really have N.D.E.s, with their reported contents. They really have these experiences, just like people really dream.

So N.D.E.s are real in the sense of “authentic” — they really occur. No one should deny this; to do so is to disrespect a vast majority of those who sincerely report them.

There is, however, another sense of “real”: accurate. Are N.D.E.s, interpreted literally, accurate depictions of an external reality? This is an importantly different question. It is crucial not to slide from “real” in the first sense to “real” in the second, but this is precisely what many of the supernaturalists do. N.D.E.s really occur. But we cannot infer from this that they accurately depict guidance by deceased loved ones to a nonphysical realm.

The big question is: Do N.D.E.s provide a proof of heaven? Or hell? I don’t think so. None of the arguments is persuasive. There are clear, vivid dreams and hallucinations. There are deeply profound and transformative experiences caused by the ingestion of psychedelic substances. All of these experiences present their contents as “ultra-real.”

This is a known feature of any spiritual experience, and N.D.E.s are a kind of spiritual experience. People throughout the world have sincere and absolutely certain belief in their religions, but it does not follow from this sincerity and certainty that the religious beliefs are true, literally interpreted. How could they all be, given their radical differences? So too with N.D.E.s.

The arguments for supernaturalistic interpretations of N.D.E.s are glaringly problematic. Many of the most visible proponents of the idea that N.D.E.s prove the existence of an afterlife are doctors. They include Eben Alexander, a neurosurgeon; the cardiologist Pim van Lommel; and the oncologist Jeffrey Long.

It is important to emphasize that their conclusions are not medical but philosophical. The ideas that the mind can separate from the body and have contact with a heavenly realm are clearly not medical conclusions, and physicians have no special authority here. After all, they are physicians, not metaphysicians.

I trust my physician to interpret my blood work, but not to let me know that my soul left my body when I was under general anesthesia. It is striking that some doctors employ such homeopathic doses of logic. They are trapped in a kind of tunnel vision.

It would be desirable to have a more plausible interpretation of N.D.E.s which they are real in both senses: They really occur and they are accurate. I propose that we interpret N.D.E.s as fundamentally and primarily about our journeys from life to death — dying.

Most N.D.E.s depict a journey toward an imagined guarded realm, but not a successful passage to it. Just as in the literature on living forever, such as the ancient “Epic of Gilgamesh” or myth of Tantalus or the quixotic search for the Fountain of Youth, we come ever so close, but in the end we don’t quite make it. In N.D.E.s we get right to the gates, but we don’t go through; we get right to the edge of the universe, but we stop there.

N.D.E.s show not that there is an afterlife, but that it is possible to die well, surrounded by loving companionship. We can die in sterile, cold hospitals — alone. (There are negative N.D.E.s.) Or we can die in a more humane setting, surrounded by loved ones. N.D.E.s are thus real in both senses: They really occur, and they accurately portray these possibilities.

They are important because they remind us of the possibility of dying well. We don’t have to accept either extreme: that N.D.E.s do not really occur or that they prove that heaven exists. They point us to something profound and beautiful about dying. They give us real hope, not false hope, in facing the next part of our journey, whatever that will bring.

John Martin Fischer is a professor of philosophy at the University of California, Riverside, and the author of “Near-Death Experiences: Understanding Visions of the Afterlife” and “Death, Immortality, and Meaning in Life.”

Every religious person is wrong, almost certainly

One of the strangest things about this Church of the Churchless blog is how many thoroughly "churched" people visit here. I'm glad that they do, because a diversity of opinions in comments is a lot more interesting than a comment monoculture.

But as I've observed before, it's sort of like a bunch of confirmed carnivores frequenting a vegetarian web site, where they leave lots of comments about how wonderful meat-eating is. 

Anyway, I understand that devotees of the religious group that I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), don't have many places on the Internet to discuss the RSSB teachings and the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, so I'm pleased to offer them this.

It's just that since I've been a happy atheist for so many years, seeing discussions of God, karma, divine regions of reality, the guru's miraculous powers, and such feels decidedly weird.

I find it difficult to believe that the true believers who comment on this blog actually consider that they have discovered the truth about ultimate religious reality that is hidden from the billions of other people in the world who believe otherwise.

After all, elsewhere on the Internet there are countless web sites, blogs, and discussion groups where believers in other faiths, mystical paths, and spiritual philosophies are talking in the same fashion about how fortunate it is that they know the truth about what supposedly lies beyond the physical.

Earlier this month I shared a post about what Ricky Gervais said in his most recent interview with Stephen Colbert. It bears repeating, because Gervais made so much sense.

GERVAIS: … Atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a god. Atheism isn’t a belief system. So this is atheism in a nutshell. You say there’s a God. I say, “Can you prove that?” You say no. I say, “I don’t believe you then.” So you believe in one God, I assume?

COLBERT: Uhh…. in three persons, but go ahead.

GERVAIS: Okay. But there are about 3,000 to choose from… Basically, you deny one less God than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more.

So what are the chances that any religious believer is correct about what, if anything, exists in the realm of the supernatural? Very, very, very small.

First, something supernatural has to exist, and there's no demonstrable proof of that. Second, a particular religion (or religious person) has to have learned the truth about the supernatural realm that there's no proof of, and there's also no proof of that. 

But you wouldn't know this by listening to religious believers of all persuasions discussing the finer points of their chosen faith as if it was absolutely, positively, undeniably true. 

And that's just freaking strange. Of course, I've been there and done that, so I understand the appeal of considering that somehow, against all odds, the secrets of the universe have been revealed to a very special person, ME!

The fact that billions of other people around the world believe the same thing rarely enters the mind of religious believers. However, it sure enters my mind, which has been opened up now that I'm an atheist who doesn't feel special at all.

"Trying Not to Try" -- I'm still trying to digest this book

Some books are meant to be read, re-read, and then re-re-read. I think I'm on my re-re-reading of Edward Slingerland's marvelous Trying Not to Try: The Art and Science of Spontaneity.

I've written a couple of previous blog posts about the book:
The social value of getting wasted
"Trying Not to Try" is a great book about wu-wei, spontaneous action

I love this book because I love Taoism. Or Daoism, if you prefer that spelling. I also love modern neuroscience. Since Slingerland combines ancient Taoist philosophy and cutting edge psychological research in his book, Trying Not to Try hits a literary sweet spot for me.

Here's some passages that illustrate key themes in the book.

The psychologist Daniel Wegner has spent a good deal of his career exploring what he terms the "ironic effects" of conscious, intentional effort. In words that sound like they could have come straight from the Laozi, he observes: 

"Many of our favorite goals, when pursued consciously, can be undermined by distractions and stressors to yield not just failure of goal achievement but the ironic opposite of that attainment. We achieve exactly what we most desired not to do."

He and his colleagues have amassed a large body of evidence suggesting that we get depressed when we're consciously trying to be happy, anxious when we're trying to relax, and distracted when we're trying to concentrate. When we try to consciously forget something, we remember it more clearly; when we try to make ourselves sleep, it makes our insomnia worse.

Trying to stop thinking of sex is the best way to think of sex. If you want to make someone overshoot when they are attempting a putt in golf, tell them to try as hard as they can to not overshoot. 

In a wonderful study entitled "The Putt and the Pendulum: Ironic Effects of the Mental Control of Action," Wegner and colleagues not only documented the pernicious effect of golfing instructions but also showed that asking someone not to move a pendulum suspended from their hand causes them to move it even more, and specifically in the direction they were told to avoid.

...Ironic effects are not confined to physical movements, emotions, or physiological processes like trying to fall asleep -- they extend to the moral realm as well. Subjects who are explicitly instructed to be fair and unprejudiced actually become more prejudiced. 

...Thinking that you are good can make you bad. Talking about positive behavior can encourage negative behavior. Laozi is clearly on to something when he warns us that consciously trying to be righteous will, in fact, turn us into insufferable hypocrites and that anyone striving to attain virtue is destined to fail.

Now, the fact that I'm reading Trying Not to Try for the third time, or maybe the fourth, shows how subtle and difficult to grasp is the distinction between trying, not trying, not trying to not try, and any other way of looking at spontaneity. You either have it, or you don't. 

Maybe. Perhaps you can both have it and not have it. Or partly have it and partly not have it. 

What I do know, both by observing myself and others over my 71 years of living, is that the last paragraph in the quotations above is right-on. Trying to be righteous does indeed turn us into insufferable hypocrites. 

Which is one reason I'm pleased to have discarded religious belief. Almost always, religions have rigid moral codes. Thou shalt do such and such. Thou shalt not do this and that. Religious believers feel proud of their humility, while often failing to act with as much kindness and concern as a young child.

They try so hard, they fall flat on their hypocritical butts. They're so concerned with doing something wrong, they're incapable of naturally acting rightly. 

Here's another passage from the book regarding Chan/Zen Buddhism.

One famous koan story, for instance, begins like this: "A monk said to the Zen master: 'I have just entered the monastery. I beg you, teacher, to provide me with instruction.'"

This monk sounds a lot like the pre-fast Yan Hui, an eager Boy Scout, with clear expectations about what he is to learn, and probably a subtle desire to demonstrate his ambition. A keener, as we would say in Canada.

The master asked, "Have you eaten your rice porridge?"
The monk replied, "Yes, sir. I have."
The master said, "Then go wash your bowl."
At that moment the monk was enlightened.

The key to enlightened wu-wei is not learning more about doctrine but seeing and responding appropriately to what is in front of you.

The Chinese Zen master who compiled the collection in which this koan appears comments, "It is only because it is so clear that it is so hard to see. People go looking for fire using a lighted lamp; if they only realized that the lamp itself was fire, they'd be able to cook their rice much sooner."

Open Threads are now going to be insult-free

Some religiously-minded people have been using the Open Threads on this blog (free speech for commenters) to insult other commenters in a nasty way.

I apologize for allowing this to go on, though I have been disapproving some of the extra nasty comments.

My rationale, for what its worth, was that allowing religious people to show how hateful and mean they are demonstrates why it makes sense to either be an atheist, or to be a religious person who is a normal nice human being who respects the views of others.

But now I've decided to adhere to the rule I've stated in every Open Thread post.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception. Argue with ideas, not insults.

A commenter who doesn't use his real name, but goes by "Georgy Porgy," has been one of the worst offenders. So from now on Georgy Porgy is no more. He, or she, can take their hateful comments and spew them somewhere else. 

And if he or she tries to comment under another fake name, Georgy Porgy will have to behave himself or herself, unlike the little boy in the namesake children's rhyme. 

Georgie Porgie, Puddin’ and Pie,
Kissed the girls and made them cry,
When the boys came out to play
Georgie Porgie ran away

So Open Threads are now safe for people to leave comments on. Like I said, the worst offenders have been religiously-minded people, mostly followers of a guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, who heads up the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) religious group. 

Why they think it reflects well on Dhillon and RSSB to be so nasty is beyond me. But it does show that religiosity can bring out the worst in people, not the best.

Malvinder Singh accuses RSSB guru of conspiring in financial fraud

Here's a more interesting story from the Indian Financial Press, as compared to the rather blah story I shared yesterday about the financial fraud saga involving the Singh brothers and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Below is a The Economic Times piece that echoes a point I made yesterday.

Investigators and courts in India appear to be doing their best to avoid taking a close look at the role Dhillon and his family may have played in conspiring to benefit from the money that was fraudulently siphoned from Religare, a company once controlled by Sunil Godhwani, the guru's personal financial advisor.

I could be wrong -- an ever-present possibility -- but it looks to me that if the RSSB guru pays back the money that he got (he's claiming he owes nothing; Malvinder Singh disagrees), then he won't face further investigation and possible charges.

This would be disappointing, both legally and morally. However, the justice system sometimes works in mysterious ways, and likely the Indian justice system is more mysterious than many systems.

I've boldfaced passages that refer to Dhillon.

NEW DELHI: Former Fortis HealthcareNSE 1.26 % promoter Malvinder Singh, arrested in a case related to alleged misappropriation of funds at Religare Finvest Ltd (RFL), told a Delhi court Tuesday he has paid back the money to the entities concerned. The submission was made before Chief Metropolitan Magistrate Gurmohina Kaur during hearing of arguments on the bail plea moved by Singh in the case lodged by the Economic Offences Wing (EOW) of Delhi Police.

The court has put up the matter for further hearing on February 6.

Advocate Manu Sharma, appearing for Singh, further said that the probe agency “cherry picked” him because of his affiliation with the family of spiritual head of the Radha Soami Satsang Gurinder Singh Dhillon, who allegedly conspired with other co-accused in the case in carrying out financial fraud.

He added Singh, who is in judicial custody, claimed that he has paid back the alleged laundered money to 14 entities through which he had received it.

“The probe agency is not investigating the Dhillon family. Singh has paid the money back to 14 entities. The probe agency need to investigate why the money has not been paid back to Religare yet,” the counsel said.

“Also, the promoter does not have any direct shareholding with any of these entities. If these entities do not return the money to RFL, it is not his fault,” he said.

Sexy Super Bowl halftime show wasn't liked by Christian fundamentalist

Over on my HinesSight blog I addressed the all-important question of whether last Sunday's Super Bowl halftime show was too sexualized.

Check out my post, "Sexy Super Bowl halftime show by J. Lo and Shakira offends some, but not me." Here's how it starts out:

Call me courageous -- Brian, you're so brave! -- but I've got to take an outspoken stand on yesterday's Super Bowl halftime show featuring Jennifer Lopez, a.k.a. J. Lo, and Shakira.

I am unabashedly in favor of beautiful women wearing as little as possible during a musical performance, and dancing in a sexually provocative manner.

There. I said it.

Let the .000001% of men who disagree with me take me to task, along with the almost equally small percentage of women who believe that female performers should cover themselves demurely on stage, and dance as if a Puritan God was watching.

If you didn't see the halftime show, you're in luck. Here's a video of the whole performance, which my wife and I thought was fantastic. 

However, this morning someone on my Twitter feed shared a tweet by conservative religious nut-job Franklin Graham, with this right-on comment: 

Imagine if your church were less worried about women displaying their sexuality and more worried about your president trying to rape them.

More of the same in Singh brothers/RSSB guru financial fraud case

There's not much noteworthy in yesterday's Business Today story about the latest development in the (seemingly) never-ending saga of the Singh brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder), their guru relative (Gurinder Singh Dhillon), and a supporting cast that includes the guru's personal financial advisor, Sunil Godhwani. 

The Supreme Court of India is once again telling the Singh brothers that they need to come up with the money to pay a $500 million settlement award to Daiichi Sankyo. And once again, Malvinder Singh is telling the court that he doesn't have the money, after which, once again, the court is saying that all those who owe money to a company once controlled by the Singh brothers need to repay the money.

Which may include Dhillon and his family, according to a previous order by the court. Or, it may not, since Dhillon has denied owing any money. Anyway, here's the copied Business Today story, which for some reason has yellow highlighting where links are included in the original online story. 

I've boldfaced two passages that I found interesting. The Supreme Court appears to be doing its best to not punish those involved in the purported financial fraud involving large amounts of money siphoned from the RHC Group once controlled by the Singh brothers. But if that money isn't repaid, perhaps punishment follows.

Hearing a case filed by Japanese firm Daiichi Sankyo, the Supreme Court on Monday asked former Fortis promoters Malvinder and Shivinder Singh to submit a plan to refund Rs 1,175 crore each by February 24.

Malvinder, through his lawyer senior advocate Dushyant Dave, told court he need more time to pay the amount. To which, the court asked him to issue notices to all those who owe money to RHC group.

The bench, headed by Justice Deepak Gupta, also granted two sessions of four hours each for Malvinder and Shivinder Singh to visit their lawyer's office and do the meetings. The Singh brothers are lodged in Tihar jail under judicial custody.

The bench also said they don't want to punish people if there is a scope for recovery and that every opportunity should be provided for recovery.

In the last hearing, the apex Court had held Malvinder and Shivinder Singh guilty of contempt of court for violating its order to not divert their stakes in Fortis Healthcare.

In March 2019, the Japanese firm had filed a contempt plea against the Singh brothers for disposing of their assets in violation of the court order. Daiichi Sankyo had alleged that the execution of the arbitrary award of Rs 3,500 crore was in jeopardy as the promoters disposed their controlling stakes in Fortis Group.

Daiichi Sankyo is locked in a legal battle to enforce a Rs 3,500 crore arbitration award against Singh Brothers, accusing them of concealing information after they sold Ranbaxy in 2008.

The apex court also asked Daiichi and Fortis Healthcare to reply to Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) plea on allowing Malaysia's IHH Healthcare Bhd open offer to take over the hospital chain. The court will hear the case on March 16.

Last month, market regulator Securities and Exchange Board of India (Sebi) had filed special leave petition (SLP) in the Supreme Court to allow IHH Healthcare to proceed with an open offer for Fortis Healthcare, arguing that the Malaysian operator had completed the transaction before a court's decision freezing deal in December 2018.

The court's December 2018 decision came after Japanese drugmaker Daiichi Sankyo argued that certain transaction between Fortis Healthcare and IHH Healthcare violated the court's directions. It also alleged that the change in control of the hospital chain had been orchestrated by Singh brothers.

The Singh brothers sold Ranbaxy to Daiichi Sankyo in 2008 for Rs 10,000 crore. In 2013, Daiichi paid $500 as felony charges in the US for selling adulterated medicines, following which it filed an arbitration case against the Singh brothers.

By Chitranjan Kumar

Open Thread 29 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

Remember, off-topic comments should go in an Open Thread.

This hasn't been happening recently, as some commenters have been using blog posts as a "chat room," basically, so from now on I'm going to vow to do better at not approving comments submitted on a regular blog post if the comment doesn't deal with the subject of the post. 

If you don't see a recent comment, or comments, posted, it's because you've failed to follow the above rule. Keep to the subject of a blog post if you leave a comment on it. And if you want to use this blog as a "chat room," do that in an open thread.

As noted before, it's good to have comments in a regular blog post related to its subject, and it's also good to have a place where almost anything goes in regard to sharing ideas, feelings, experiences, and such. That place is an Open Thread.

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. Remember that I'm moderating comments, so it could take a while for your comment to be published. Almost every comment submitted to an Open Thread will be approved. Personal attacks on someone are an exception. Argue with ideas, not insults.

Though I haven't been doing too well on this, I'll try to remember to always have an Open Thread showing in the Recent Posts section in the right sidebar. If one isn't showing, I've added an Open Threads category in, naturally, the Categories section. You can always find an Open Thread that way.

So if you're a believer in some form of religion, mysticism, or spirituality, this is where you can put your "praise God," "praise Guru," or "praise _______" comments.

Ricky Gervais nails the ridiculousness of religion

It's Super Bowl Sunday here in the United States, so I've got to save my time and energy to watch grown men try to give each other brain injuries in front of a national audience. 

(Soccer, which the rest of the world calls "football" for some reason, is less crazy, though its fans are even more fanatical.)

So today I'm sharing a great post from the Friendly Atheist blog, Ricky Gervais to Stephen Colbert: "You Don't Believe in 2,999 Gods. I Don't Believe in Just One More."

Hard to argue with Gervais' argument.

GERVAIS: … Atheism is only rejecting the claim that there is a god. Atheism isn’t a belief system. So this is atheism in a nutshell. You say there’s a God. I say, “Can you prove that?” You say no. I say, “I don’t believe you then.” So you believe in one God, I assume?

COLBERT: Uhh…. in three persons, but go ahead.

GERVAIS: Okay. But there are about 3,000 to choose from… Basically, you deny one less God than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more.

And when Colbert said that Gervais' belief in science was a form of faith, he had a comeback.

...GERVAIS: … Science is constantly proved all the time. You see, if we take something like any fiction, any holy book… and destroyed it, in a thousand years’ time, that wouldn’t come back just as it was. Whereas if we took every science book, and every fact, and destroyed them all, in a thousand years they’d all be back, because all the same tests would [produce] the same result.

COLBERT: That’s good. That’s really good.

GERVAIS: So I don’t need faith in science. I don’t need faith to know that, probably, if I jump out of a window, every other time somebody jumps out of the window, they smash to the ground because of this thing called gravity.

Here's a video of the conversation between Gervais and Colbert.