Church of the Churchless

Brian Greene: "Behavior is fully governed by physical law"

I love the idea that free will is an illusion.

Sure, for each of us it feels like we can freely choose what to do. But as I've observed numerous times before, it also feels like the earth stands still and the sun sets, which is another illusion.

So if we want to know reality as it is, not as how we consider it to be, it's important to not overly trust our subjective perceptions, because that can lead us astray.

I've continued to enjoy my reading of Brian Greene's new book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe." Today I finished the Particles and Consciousness chapter, which has a section on free will that made great good sense to me.

Both rationally and emotionally. 

Emotionally, it just is so much more appealing to know that I, and you, and everybody, am not an isolated independent actor who writes my own lines in the play of life. Rather, we are parts of a unified whole, the universe. What we do isn't up to us, but to an amazingly vast interconnected web of causes and effects.

Here's how Greene cogently describes an argument that "knocks free will back on its heels."

Your experiences and mine appear to confirm that we influence the unfolding of reality through actions that reflect our freely willed thoughts, desires, and decisions. Yet, maintaining our physicalist stance, you and I are nothing but constellations of particles whose behavior is fully governed by physical law.

Our choices are the result of our particles coursing one way or another through our brains. Our actions are the results of our particles moving this way or that through our bodies. And all particle motion -- whether in a brain, a body, or a baseball -- is controlled by physics and so is fully dictated by mathematical decree.

The equations determine the state of our particles today based on their state yesterday, with no opportunity for any of us to end-run the mathematics and freely shape, or mold, or change the lawful unfolding.

Indeed, following this chain ever further back, the big bang is the ultimate source of all particles, and their behavior over cosmic history has been dictated by the nonnegotiable and insensate laws of physics, which determine the structure and function of everything that exists.

Our sense of individuality, value, and esteem rest on our autonomy. But faced with the intransigence of physical law, autonomy withdraws. We are no more than playthings knocked to and fro by the dispassionate rules of the cosmos. 

Sounds good to me. I've got no problem with being a cosmic plaything. But why does it seem otherwise to us? Greene has an answer.

Our choices seem free because we do not witness the operation of nature's laws in the world of particles. Our senses and our reasoning focus on everyday human scales and actions: we think about the future, compare courses of action, and weigh possibilities.

As a result, when our particles do act, it seems to us that their collective behaviors emerge from our autonomous choices.

However, if we had the superhuman vision invoked earlier and were able to analyze everyday reality at the level of its fundamental constituents, we would recognize that our thoughts and behaviors amount to complex processes of shifting particles that yield a powerful sense of free will but are fully governed by physical law.

So what's the difference between a human and a rock, given that each is fully governed by physical law? Here's how Greene addresses this important question in a persuasive fashion.

Within the rock there's just not a whole lot going on. What makes you special is that your sophisticated internal organization allows for a rich spectrum of behavioral responses. 

The point, then, is that when evaluating free will there is much to be gained by shifting attention from a narrow focus on ultimate cause to a broader perusal of human response. Our freedom is not from physical laws that are beyond our ability to affect. 

Our freedom is to exhibit behaviors -- leaping, thinking, imagining, observing, deliberating, explaining, and so on -- that are not available to most other collections of particles. Human freedom is not about willed choice. Everything science has so far revealed has only strengthened the case that such volitional intercession in the unfolding of reality does not exist.

Instead, human freedom is about being released from the bondage of an impoverished range of response that has long constrained the behavior of the inanimate world.

Open Thread 31 (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.

Brian Greene: "Nothing supersedes the laws of physics"

I've been needing some cosmic scientific perspective during my morning pre-meditation reading time, given how the coronavirus pandemic dominates the news and peoples' psyches.

Physicist Brian Greene's new book, "Until the End of Time: Mind, Matter, and Our Search for Meaning in an Evolving Universe," has been meeting that need nicely. He's an excellent writer, thinker, and popularizer of scientific truth. 

Here's an example of what appealed to me in the first four chapters. I'm sure I'll be sharing more from the book as I get deeper into it.

Nothing supersedes the laws of physics. I love this bold simple statement. It rings true to me. If you disagree, feel free to leave a comment on this post in which you provide specific, detailed, persuasive, demonstrable evidence of something that lies outside the laws of physics.

Here's passages from the Information and Vitality chapter where Greene makes this persuasive claim.

By this point you may have concluded that life's molecules must have aced their studies of organic chemistry. Otherwise, how in the world would they know what they are supposed to do? How does DNA know to split down the middle and attach complementary bases to the ones it has exposed, creating a duplicate molecule?

How does RNA know to make copies of sections of DNA, transport that information to the appropriate cellular structures where yet other distinct but related molecules know how to read the genetic code and link up appropriate sequences of amino acids into functioning proteins?

Of course, the molecules don't know anything. Their behavior is guided by the blind, mindless, unschooled laws of physics. But the question remains: How do they consistently and reliably carry out a stunningly intricate series of complex chemical processes?

It's a question that harks back to my paraphrasing of Schrodinger's primary query in What is Life?: The jostling and careening of molecules within a rock are governed by the laws of physics. The jostling and careening of molecules within a rabbit are also governed by the laws of physics.

How do they differ?

We have now seen that the rabbit's particles are guided by an additional influence -- the rabbit's internal archive of information, its cellular software. Importantly, critically, vitally: This information does not supersede the laws of physics. Nothing does.

Instead, much as a water slide doesn't supersede the laws of gravity but through its shape guides riders along a specific trajectory they would otherwise not follow, the rabbit's cellular software is carried by chemical arrangements that through their shape, structure, and constituents guide various molecules along trajectories that they, too, would otherwise not follow.

...The point, then, is that information in a cell is not abstract. It is not a free-floating set of instructions that molecules need to study, memorize, and execute. 

Instead, the information is encoded in the molecular arrangements themselves, arrangements that coax other molecules to bump or join or interact in a manner that carries out cellular processes like growth, repair, or reproduction. Even though the molecules inhabiting a cell lack intent or purpose, and even though they are thoroughly oblivious, their physical structure allows them to accomplish highly specialized tasks. 

In this sense, the processes of life are molecular meanderings fully described by physical law that simultaneously tell a higher-level, information-based story.

For the rock, there is no higher level story. When you use the laws of physics to describe the bumping and jostling of the rock's molecules, you're done. But when you use the very same laws of physics to describe the bumping and jostling of rabbit molecules, you are not done. Not by a long shot.

Overlaid on the reductionist story is a whole additional story that tells of the rabbit's unique molecular arrangements that choreograph an exquisite spectrum of organized molecular motions. And it is these molecular motions which carry out higher-level processes within the rabbit's cells.

Indeed, for the rabbit, and for us, too, such biological information is also organized on larger scales, guiding processes that act not just within individual cells but across collections of cells, yielding the hallmark quality of coordinated complexity. When you reach for a cup of coffee, the motion of every atom constituting every molecule in your hand, arm, body, and brain is fully governed by the laws of physics.

Again, with gusto: Life does not and cannot contravene physical law. Nothing can.

But the fact that a huge number of your molecules can act in concert, coordinating their overall motion to cause your arm to reach out across a table and your hand to clutch a mug, reflects the wealth of biological information, embodied in atomic and molecular arrangements, directing a profusion of complex molecular processes.

Life is physics orchestrated.

Be strong, India. Your 3-week coronavirus lockdown is a wise decision.

I'm no fan of Prime Minister Modi, because he reminds me of President Trump in some disturbing ways. But his decision to institute a strict lockdown of everybody in India for three weeks is the right thing to do -- even though this is going to create a lot of hardship. 

A New York Times story, "Modi Orders 3-Week Total Lockdown for all 1.3 Billion Indians," describes why the lockdown is needed.

NEW DELHI — India’s prime minister ordered all 1.3 billion people in the country to stay inside their homes for three weeks starting Wednesday — the biggest and most severe action undertaken anywhere to stop the spread of the coronavirus.

“There will be a total ban of coming out of your homes,” the prime minister, Narendra Modi, announced on television Tuesday night, giving Indians less than four hours’ notice before the order took effect at 12:01 a.m.

“Every state, every district, every lane, every village will be under lockdown,” Mr. Modi said.

The breadth and depth of such a challenge is staggering in a country where hundreds of millions of citizens are destitute and countless millions live in packed urban areas with poor sanitation and weak public health care.

Though India’s number of reported coronavirus infections remains relatively low — around 500 — the fear is that, should the virus hit as it has in the United States, Europe or China, the consequences would lead to a disaster far bigger than anywhere else.

...In his televised address, Mr. Modi basically said there was no choice.

“If you can’t handle these 21 days, this country and your family will go back 21 years,” Mr. Modi said. “The only option is social distancing, to remain away from each other. There is no way out to escape from coronavirus besides this.”

...India has some of Asia’s biggest slums, and experts fear what would happen if the coronavirus spreads in a city like Mumbai, home to 20 million people, where space is at a premium and many families squeeze six or even eight to a room.

Understand: I'm not minimizing the difficulties this is going to create in India. The New York Times story talks about this, which includes the fact that Modi only gave four hours notice of the lockdown. How many Indians have three weeks of food and other essential supplies in their homes?

But the alternative is even worse, allowing the coronavirus to spread unchecked. 

Here in Oregon, where I live, yesterday Governor Kate Brown announced a Stay Home, Save Lives executive order that is a much milder form of what is being imposed in India. This is a summary of that order.

We're free to leave our homes. We can visit groceries, pharmacies, restaurants (take-out only), gas stations, and other places. This afternoon I went to a UPS store to mail in a passport renewal, a pharmacy to pick up some prescriptions, and a Starbucks drive-through to cheer myself up with a decaf nonfat vanilla latte.

It felt good to get out and do some normal things, though the passenger seat of my car is filled with a N-95 mask, gloves, cleansing soap wipes, and hand sanitizer. (My wife has asthma, so we're being especially careful to avoid the coronavirus, since it attacks the lungs.)

Given that our daily life has been much different since the coronavirus outbreak in the United States became serious, I have a lot of sympathy for people in India.

The lockdown there is much more strict than what any place in this country has put into place. But again, now is the time to be as strict as possible. The longer governments wait to control an outbreak, the more lives will be lost and the more extensive economic damage will be.

Unfortunately, Donald Trump doesn't realize this, nor does Brazil's right-wing president. Trump wants to ease restrictions within a few weeks even though coronavirus cases in the United States have been rising rapidly, as have deaths. And Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro is echoing Trump's idiocy.

Yesterday I wrote about the horrible thing Trump wants to do in "Trump wants people to die so he can be re-elected." 

I can't believe how many times I've said, "Trump can't do anything worse than what he did today." But he does. And today was the latest example of appalling worstness.

During the daily White House coronavirus briefing, where Trump hogs the microphone while other officials cower in the background, doing their best to keep a poker face as Trump rambles on semi-coherently, our Idiot-in-Chief announced that he wants to make saving lives a distant second priority to resuming business as usual by the end of March.

Why? Well, because he doesn't want the country to be in a recession, or even depression, when the 2020 presidential election happens in November. 

Of course, if hundreds of thousands of Americans, or even millions, have died from the coronavirus by November 2020, it is extremely unlikely that Trump is going to win the election. People know that lives are hugely more important than money. Money can be recovered. But death is final.

So as India suffers through the next three weeks, I hope Indians keep in mind that as bad as things will be, they would be much worse if Prime Minister Modi hadn't ordered the lockdown.

Religion is bringing out the coronavirus stupid in people

Not surprisingly, the coronavirus pandemic is causing religious people around the world to turn to superstition, fantasy, and unproven remedies. 

Naturally they'd be much better off if they paid rapt attention to the public health experts who are using science and facts in their advice about how to keep from being infected by the COVID-19 virus.

But religion often brings out the stupid in people. Especially when they're afraid of an unseen menace. Like a virus. Or the devil. The difference being that a virus is real, and the devil isn't, along with God and other imaginary supernatural entities. 

Today the New York Times has an interesting story, "In a Pandemic, Religion Can Be a Balm and a Risk." Below are some passages that focus on the risk of believing untrue things.

As I've frequently said on this blog, I have no problem with religious people believing in crazy stuff -- so long as their craziness doesn't adversely affect others. In other words, keep your weird ideas to yourself.

Unfortunately, dealing with the coronavirus requires that everybody follow recommended public health practices that are based on sound science. Just as with immunizations, if too many people fail to do this, then COVID-19 will keep on infecting more people at an exponential rate. 

So this is a great example of religion being a danger to society. There's no way to pray yourself out of getting the coronavirus. But hand washing and social distancing will help. A lot. 

Here's excerpts from the New York Times story.

BEIRUT, Lebanon — Down on earth, the coronavirus outbreak was felling lives, livelihoods and normalcy. A nation-spanning blessing seemed called for. So up went a priest in a small airplane, rumbling overhead at an epidemiologically safe distance from the troubles below, wielding a sacred golden vessel from a cockpit-turned-pulpit.

Before his flight over Lebanon, a soldier at an airport checkpoint asked the Rev. Majdi Allawi if he had a mask and hand sanitizer.

“Jesus is my protection,” said Father Allawi, who belongs to the Maronite Catholic Church. “He is my sanitizer.”

Religion is the solace of first resort for billions of people grappling with a pandemic for which scientists, presidents and the secular world seem, so far, to have few answers. With both sanitizer and leadership in short supply, dread over the coronavirus has driven the globe’s faithful even closer to religion and ritual.

But what is good for the soul may not always be good for the body.

Believers worldwide are running afoul of public health authorities’ warnings that communal gatherings, the keystone of so much religious practice, must be limited to combat the virus’ spread. In some cases, religious fervor has led people toward cures that have no grounding in science; in others, it has drawn them to sacred places or rites that could increase the risk of infection.

In Myanmar, a prominent Buddhist monk announced that a dose of one lime and three palm seeds — no more, no less — would confer immunity. In Iran, a few pilgrims were filmed licking Shiite Muslim shrines to ward off infection. And in Texas, the preacher Kenneth Copeland braided televangelism with telemedicine, broadcasting himself, one trembling hand outstretched, as he claimed he could cure believers through their screens.

...People may have already unknowingly spread the virus in the name of piety.

Despite New York’s recent bans on large gatherings, several large weddings went ahead in Brooklyn’s Hasidic Jewish communities, which have reported a spike in confirmed cases in recent days.

Iran is home both to one of the world’s worst outbreaks and to dozens of major Shiite Muslim shrines, which have remained open to crowds for weeks even as the coronavirus left the country shellshocked.

...India has so far refused to call off an annual festival that starts Wednesday in honor of the god Ram, also known as Rama. In normal times, it draws as many as a million people to Ayodha, which some believe to be the birthplace of Ram, in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh.

The state has asked devotees to celebrate at home this year. Organizers, however, are carrying on.

“People are getting the opportunity to have glimpses of Lord Rama,” said Vinod Bansal, a national spokesman for the group, Vishva Hindu Parishad. “It’s not appropriate to deprive them of this opportunity.”

...Amid the coronavirus anxiety, it was perhaps inevitable that some would interpret the pandemic as a divine missive. What it said was less clear.

Some Egyptian Muslims expressed certainty on social media that God was smiting non-Muslim countries by giving them the virus, apparently unaware that Egypt has registered nearly 200 cases and may have many more uncounted. Some Islamists, especially supporters of the banned Muslim Brotherhood, cast the outbreak as punishment for the Egyptian public’s support of the military takeover that brought the country’s authoritarian leader, President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, to power in 2013.

Some sought earthly remedies inspired by higher powers.

Video emerged last week of Hindu activists in India drinking cow urine to stave off the coronavirus. At the Lebanese government hospital where infected patients are being treated, a woman recently arrived carrying a mixture of holy water and dirt dug from the mausoleum of Saint Charbel, who is revered among Lebanese Christians. Some Christians were said to be drinking similar solutions as a precaution.

How are you coping with the coronavirus outbreak?

Since this blog attracts people from many countries, I'm curious to learn how you are coping with the coronavirus, or COVID-19, outbreak. 

Leave a comment on this post, if you like.

It'd be good to know both how people in your part of the world are handling the disruption in everyday life that, likely, has been imposed by government authorities, and also how you yourself have been affected. 

What disturbs you the most about what's going on? What bright spots can you find in this otherwise dark and distressing situation?

All I ask is that you keep religion out of your comment. This is a time when everybody should be coming together to fight a common enemy, the COVID-19 virus. Religion and politics shouldn't play a role in this. 

Our common humanity, and susceptibility to getting sick or even dying from the virus, is what binds us together. The coronavirus doesn't care if you are a Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, or whatever. Nor should the medical professionals we're counting on to guide us through the COVID-19 outbreak.

Here in Oregon, where I live, there are 88 reported cases and one death out of a population of about 4.2 million. But testing for the virus has been very limited, so the actually number of cases must be far greater.

A few days ago Governor Brown issued an order to close bars and restaurants, including coffee houses. Only take-out food can be ordered from restaurants. This afternoon I got a latte from a drive-up window of the French Press coffee house in south Salem. I left a generous tip and told the barista, "You deserve this. I know this is a tough time for you and other employees."

After that, my wife and I took Mooka, our dog, to the Minto Brown dog park. The sun was out. Temperature was in the 60s. Lots of people were at the park, since schools are closed until the end of April and many businesses have either cut back on employees or closed temporarily (hopefully not permanently).

While we were watching dogs running around playing with each other, and walking around with other people (keeping six feet apart, naturally), it was easy to forget that a deadly disease is wreaking havoc on the world. It also was nice to get away from the news for a while and simply experience a pleasant outing in great weather.

My Tai Chi classes have been cancelled until further notice. My wife and I no longer go to our athletic club, which I'm unsure is even open. The monthly Salon discussion group that we're a part of isn't going to meet in person, though we might try conversing through video conferencing.

Grocery stores shelves are mostly bare of toilet paper, paper towels, hand sanitizer, and disinfecting cleaning supplies. I couldn't find bread when I went shopping on Monday. But on Tuesday our natural food store had some. Joy! I felt like someone in World War II must have when food in short supply was available.

I've been writing about the coronavirus on my other two blogs. Here's links.

My thoughts about the coronavirus outbreak
I'm not wearing gloves because of cold, but of old (COVID-19)
Salem's city officials need to WAKE UP about the COVID-19 outbreak
My daughter clues me in to why small businesses need help fast
Progressive policies will win the war against COVID-19

Don't spread false information about coronavirus

Science can be trusted. Though it isn't 100% perfect, science is way better than other ways of knowing -- especially when it comes to the coronavirus, COVID-19. 

I just discovered that a frequent commenter on this blog left several comments on my HinesSight blog that referenced false information from mythical "Stanford board" advice about dealing with the coronavirus. 

That information has been deleted by me. 

Please, COVID-19 is tough enough to fight without people spreading false information about it. Here's the truth.

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CNN) — Contrary to what some may think, not everything on social media is rooted in fact.

Case in point: A recent viral coronavirus "simple self-check test," which medical experts say is completely inaccurate.

Written on what appears to be the iPhone notes app, the three-part post falsely claims that people can find out whether they have coronavirus simply by holding their breath for more than 10 seconds. If they can hold their breath without coughing, the test claims they don't have the virus.

The post, which began circulating Twitter, Facebook, and emails last week, was falsely credited to a member of the "Stanford Hospital board." Stanford Health Care spokeswoman Lisa Kim told CNN the "dangerous" post is not affiliated with Stanford Medicine and "contains inaccurate information."

Misinformation about COVID-19 symptoms and treatment falsely attributed to Stanford is circulating on social media and in email forwards. It is not from Stanford. Official information from Stanford is available at http://healthalerts.stanford.edu .

To debunk all the false information included in the post, CNN spoke to Dr. Robert Legare Atmar, an infectious disease specialist at Baylor College of Medicine.

Myth: Drinking water will protect you from the coronavirus

CLAIM: "If you don't drink enough water more regularly, the virus can enter your windpipe and into lungs."

Whoever penned the post also wrote that people should drink water "every 15 minutes at least" to wash the virus down through the throat and into the stomach, where the acid will supposedly kill the virus.

REALITY: Atmar said there is no evidence from any other respiratory viruses that proves this approach works.

"Even if it worked at all, which it doesn't, people still breathe in from their nose, not just their mouths," Atmar told CNN. "This would still only protect the mouth and not the nose."

Myth: Gurgling water and salt will prevent the coronavirus

CLAIM: "A simple solution of salt in warm water will suffice."

Along with gurgling a water and salt solution, the post also suggested drinking warm water can kill the virus.

REALITY: Based on data from other respiratory viruses, saltwater "would not be expected to work," Atmar said.

By recommending people to drink warm water, the post implies the temperature of the water inactivates the virus, which Atmar said is entirely incorrect.

Myth: If you can hold your breath for 10 seconds, you're OK

CLAIM: "Take a deep breath and hold your breath for more than 10 seconds. If you complete it successfully without coughing, without discomfort, stiffness or tightness, it proves there is no fibrosis in the lungs, basically indicates no infection."

REALITY: Atmar said this is simply "not correct."

"When someone has an acute viral infection it can be difficult to take a deep breath and not cough because the airways are irritated. That's all it means. It doesn't say anything about fibrosis, even though people with fibrosis might struggle doing it. Being able to hold your breath for 10 seconds also doesn't mean someone doesn't have coronavirus."

Myth: If you have a runny nose, it's just a cold

CLAIM: "If you have a runny nose and sputum, you have a common cold. Coronavirus pneumonia is a dry cough with no runny nose."

REALITY: This isn't completely true, Atmar said. A runny nose can be a symptom of the flu, allergies and other illnesses.

And while many patients of the coronavirus do have a dry cough, those with coronavirus pneumonia also have had or could have a productive, or "wet," cough which produces phlegm (sputum), according to Atmar.

Myth: If you have the coronavirus, you'll get pneumonia

CLAIM: "The virus then blends into a nasal fluid that enters the trachea and then the lungs, causing pneumonia." The post also said the virus first infects the throat, which would give patients a sore throat for three to four days before blending into a nasal fluid.

REALITY: This is also not entirely accurate.

The time sequence for coronavirus symptoms vary from patient to patient, and not all patients will have a sore throat, Atmar said. Not everyone with a sore throat has coronavirus, either, and not all coronavirus patients will develop pneumonia.

Myth: Coronavirus patients will experience a drowning sensation

CLAIM: "The nasal congestion is not like the normal kind. You feel like you're drowning.

REALITY: This isn't true.

"That does not sound like any other respiratory virus people are infected with and many patients with coronavirus have not had nasal infection at all," Atmar told CNN.

Myth: By the time a person with coronavirus is hospitalized, their lungs will have experienced fibrosis

CLAIM: "By the time they have fever and/or cough and go to the hospital, the lung is usually 50% fibrosis and it's too late."

Fibrosis is the irreversible scarring of the lung which can lead to respiratory failure.

REALITY: This is totally incorrect.

"This information is extremely alarmist," Atmar said. "Fibrosis only develops in the minority of patients and 80 percent of coronavirus patients experience only the mild symptoms of the disease, so this is incorrect."

The incubation period for coronavirus, Atmar said, is two to 14 days. Symptoms usually begin with five to six days of exposure, with the first week including a cough, sore throat, fever, and muscle aches. Only the minority of patients will experience the second week of severe respiratory symptoms and may be at risk of fibrosis.

While the coronavirus is an issue everyone in the world should be taking seriously, the spread of false information can be both dangerous and deadly.

If you aren't sure if something you are reading about the coronavirus is correct, the best thing to do to is to check with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention or your local health department -- not social media.

Excellent comments about RSSB guru's failure to be honest

Here's three comments by "j" on the post I wrote yesterday, RSSB guru wants to keep his tax returns secret. 

They're excellent. Reasonable. Factual. Well-written.

I heartily agree that Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, isn't living up to the ethical standard of even an average person, much less a religious leader who supposedly is God in Human Form.

Enjoy. I've corrected a few typos and added some paragraph breaks to make the comments easier to read.

Not "the appropriate stage" to reveal his tax returns? How many more of Gurinder's followers need to go to prison while he remains mum on using them for shady financial deals? Anyway, I thought Gurinder has retired from business life long ago and, as he told us, was just "living off the money his family gave him."

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What happened to RSSB's much-trumpeted heritage of being the most ethical religion on the planet? For decades RSSB has portrayed itself as the religion known for "honest living."

Almost every RSSB book points out that the RSSB guru isn't like all the other gurus and religious leaders. He doesn't live off his followers. He doesn't receive gifts. He's in all ways a solid, peerlessly honest, straight dealing, law-abiding citizen.

Speaking of honesty, let's all examine our motives for taking initiation. How many of us took RSSB initiation in part because we were impressed by the claims it made for the guru's integrity? I'm not an RSSB initiate myself, but I have to admit that the rhetoric about the guru's impeccable honesty did have a significant effect on my opinion of him and this religion.

RSSB advertised itself as the only ethical religion left on the planet. I don't think that's an exaggeration. Charan's talks and RSSB books had nothing good to say about any other religions or even other sant mat gurus, and everything good to say about the other gurus in his line, and by extension, himself.

And the biggest claim that the RSSB gurus make, aside from being God? That they "live off their own earnings." That may have been true in the days of Sawan and Jagat Singh, but since they departed this world 70 years ago, the odds that the RSSB guru is self-supporting seem thinner than a 2 cent chapati.

Now we come to this financial scandal. I've given Gurinder the benefit of the doubt and have waited a long time for him to do or say something that suggests he's above suspicion of chicanery. But every time Gurinder is called upon to help straighten this matter out...he comes up with a flimsy excuse.

When he's called upon by the Sangat to say something to clarify matters, he is said to make smart remarks. Moreover, Gurinder refuses to go to court because he says his diabetes prevents him from leaving home. Gurinder refuses to let the court see his tax records, even though he stated that the only income he has is money his family gives him.

Gurinder is being sued for borrowing over 1M from a non-satsangi and not paying it back. Three of Gurinder's followers are in prison right now for a scheme that involved moving money through accounts connected to Dhillion family members -- who btw were paid a salary for taking part in money laundering, but are apparently getting off scot-free.

One of those followers is adamant that Gurinder was involved in ordering these movements of funds. OK, let's take all that together: Is it really unreasonable to suggest that Gurinder is less than honest?

Some of us have been saying from the outset that the truth behind this scandal, and Gurinder's guilt or innocence, will be discerned by the courts. I said that and still believe it.

But when I said it, I kind of expected for Gurinder to at least cooperate with the courts. I didn't expect him to embark on a strategy of stonewalling India's legal system with BS excuses, and that's exactly what the present Guru of Beas is doing.

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"So is the concern for his health... unless you've now chosen to ascribe perfect health and 'superpowers' to him." From what I understand from the official RSSB website, Gurinder is still actively participating in giving public satsangs not only in Beas, but in Mumbai, Raipur, Indore, etc.

https://www.rssb.org/satsang_schedules.html

But according to Gurinder's lawyer, the Guru is far too frail to attend court and explain his part in a financial scandal. After all, the lawyer says, diabetics need their special meals. Does a diabetic's need for special meals mean they can't show up for court? That's what Gurinder is claiming through his lawyer.

Is that really true? I know of a diabetic who had his leg cut off and still got around town with riding the bus and a wheelchair. Perhaps he was a perfect master.

This is a financial scandal where we know considerable sums of money went into accounts controlled by the guru's family members and accounts associated with the guru himself. Yet the guru is refusing to step up in the most basic of ways to clear things up.

No, I'm sure not suggesting that Gurinder is Perfect. Far from it. I'm suggesting he's far from perfect. That is, far from being as honest as the average person.

As for Gurinder's personal finances and his tax statements, RSSB says right there on its website that Gurinder is retired and living off the money his family gives him. According to people who attend Gurinder events, Gurinder also says, boasts really, that he is innocent of any financial skullduggery because he only gets money his family gives him.

In other words, Gurinder has chosen to make his financial status public. He's claimed that his financial affairs are an open book. He's declared he's not a businessman and is simply living off the charity given him by his apparently wealthy family.

But now that Gurinder is called to prove that precious contention, he balks before the court with another empty excuse. All while the people he'd "advised" molder in prison. This makes twice that Gurinder has refused to cooperate with India's legal system.

On both occasions, his justifications for non-cooperation are transparently bogus. I think it's indefensible.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

RSSB guru wants to keep his tax returns secret

Here's the latest development in the financial fraud saga involving the Singh brothers (Malvinder and Shivinder) and their relative, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas.

Today a story in India's The Economic Times says that Dhillon has told the Delhi High Court that he wants to be exempted from producing his personal income tax returns.

Since Malvinder Singh has said that the RSSB guru and his family ended up with most, or all, of the money illegally siphoned from Religare, a public corporation, obviously it is important for investigators to see the Dhillon tax returns.

If Dhillon truly is innocent, as he claims, why doesn't he make his tax returns available to the High Court? His secrecy points to guilt, not innocence.

Or maybe the RSSB guru considers that he is God in Human Form and doesn't have to comply with worldly laws.

Gosh, I wonder where he could have gotten that idea. Oh, yes, that is a fundamental part of the Radha Soami Satsang Beas teachings. So that's how Dhillon would have come to think he is godly.

RSSB chief seeks not to put ITR on record

The chief of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon, has sought exception from filing income tax returns (ITR), telling the Delhi High Court that it contained 'personal information' and that this was not an 'appropriate stage' to produce such documents.

Teena Thacker

New Delhi: The chief of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), Gurinder Singh Dhillon, has sought exception from filing income tax returns (ITR), telling the Delhi High Court that it contained 'personal information' and that this was not an 'appropriate stage' to produce such documents.

The court had earlier asked Dhillon and his family members to file ITRs, after he denied of having any liability towards RHC Holdings, a company promoted by Malvinder and Shivinder Singh. The Singh brothers, who had previously controlled Religare Enterprises and Ranbaxy LaboratoriesNSE 5.63 %, are facing probes by various agencies for alleged financial irregularities.

They were also ordered to pay Rs 3,500 crore to Daiichi Sankyo under an arbitration award over the sale of Ranbaxy to the Japanese company. In an affidavit filed before the court, Dhillon said being individuals, his family members and he did not “maintain balance sheets” and filing ITR would cause “severe prejudice” to them. Dhillon had earlier admitted of his financial dealings with the Singh brothers by annexing copies of bank statements.

UPDATE: Someone just sent me a photo the print version of the story. It has some content that wasn't in the online story.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Zen circle reminds me that perfection is a fantasy

Here's my new piece of art, courtesy of Amazon and a 8X10 frame that I put the print in. It doesn't really have an up or down. I just like it oriented this way, though I might change my mind. 

(I don't keep it on a rug. That was for a photography purpose. Normally it sits next to a bathroom sink where I can peruse it when I wash my hands, which is frequently, given the coronavirus scare the world is going through.)

I got the print, which admittedly isn't traditional, given its color, after reading a paragraph in Lesley Hazleton's book, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto. I like how it reminds me that perfection is an abstract idea, not anything that actually exists

Here's the passage, which was in her "Imperfect Soul" chapter.

The great Zen Buddhist masters knew what those who seek perfection do not: it leaves us cold. A classic Zen exercise is the ensō, the circle hand-drawn in a single fluid brushstroke. It is close to perfect, but never there.

If perfection is what you want, you can produce it anytime by using a compass or computer, but the ensō defies such mechanistic precision; indeed, it is often incomplete, left slightly open as though in invitation to everything beyond it.

And each one is different, never the same circle twice. You can see the hairs of the brush in the drag of the ink on the paper; trace the fluidity of the moment when the stillness of meditation was released in one rapid stroke; sense the calm grace of the artist.

The beauty of the Zen circle lies precisely (or more precisely, imprecisely) in its imperfection. That is what speaks to us and draws us in.

A perfect circle is uninteresting, a closed system containing nothing, while an imperfect one vibrates with warmth. It invites us into the moment of its creation, into that single deep exhalation as the hand arced through the air, the brush over the paper. 

It is open, human, fallible -- an expression, that is, of soul.

Perfection is an imaginary ideal, a lifeless dead end

This morning I finished the book I've been blogging about recently, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto, by Lesley Hazleton. It's a wonderfully thoughtful and well-written description of what it means to be an open-minded agnostic (or atheist), rather than a closed-minded religious believer.

Below are some passages that I liked in the concluding chapter, "Imperfect Soul." 

Hazleton starts out by debunking the notion of perfection. There's no such thing. Perfection, she says, is an idea, not a fact. This rings true for me, based on my 35 years of experience with an Indian religious organization whose teachings wrongly proclaim that there is such a thing as a "perfect living master."

Actually, there's no evidence that the Radha Soami Satsang Beas organization is led by a guru, or master, who is perfect. Far from it. RSSB gurus make mistakes. Their knowledge is incomplete. They are as clueless as anyone else about what will happen in the future.

In other words, the gurus are flawed human beings, as are we all. Yet their disciples cling to the idea of perfection as a concept with no grounding in reality. Hazleton writes:

Perfection may be an ideal, but whether it's a desirable one is another question. Ideals are by definition products of the imagination rather than of reality; they exist, that is, as ideas, not as facts.

The perfect truths of theology, claimed as "absolute truths," are thus inherently self-contradictory, because as William James noted, truth is always an evolving idea.

"It is temporary and constructed from our own experience..." he wrote. "The 'absolutely' true, meaning what no farther experience will ever alter, is that ideal vanishing-point towards which we imagine all our temporary truths will some day converge." It is, in short, imaginary.

Then Hazleton explores the unappealing rigidity of perfection. The rigidity arises because the imaginary ideal of perfection doesn't tolerate anything other than 100% perfectness. Again, not in reality, but in the religious theology. That produces a dead-end, since there is no way forward once someone or something is viewed as perfect.

There's an icy starkness to perfection, a kind of echoing emptiness. Perfection, that is, is soulless. And lifeless. It's real meaning is right there in its origin: the Latin perficere, to finish or to conclude. A perfect life would thus be one that is completed, and there is only one way that can happen.

Perfection is literally a dead end. And to be alive is necessarily to be incomplete and thus imperfect, each person in his or her own particular way.

This is why the idea of perfectibility seems so hollow to me. The definiteness, the absolutism, the dead-endness of it -- all these leave no room for life.

The perfect tomato in the store turns out to be tasteless, genetically engineered fo shelf appeal, not for the palette. A flawless face seems blankly unapproachable, leaving me unable to do anything but puzzle at its unnatural symmetry. Complete agreement with whatever I might say leaves me gasping for intellectual air, longing for something more than a mirror of my own thoughts.

In the latter part of the chapter, Hazleton speaks about soul. It's a difficult word to define, since people use "soul" in so many different ways. The one thing we know soul is not, of course, is a supernatural something-or-other separate and distinct from the body, since there's no demonstrable evidence of this.

Perhaps you have to be slightly crazy to even try to talk about soul in secular terms. The more you try -- the more I try, in any case -- the greater the risk of falling into cliche, into the trite generalizations and warm fuzziness too often mistaken for spiritual insight.

...A strong whiff of sanctimony hovers over the word, burdened as it has been with such modifiers as blessed and immortal. That tyranny of the definite article -- the soul -- reasserts itself with impeccable conviction, and conventional theology again becomes more hindrance than help.

...Yet I persist, because I sense -- and sense is the only word I can use here -- that it's important to reclaim soul from those who still conceive of it as a thing with an immortal life of its own, independent of the body. 

However vague we may be about it, I think most of us recognize soul not as a thing, but as a dimension of being that defies the narrow lens of dogma, going far beyond traditional religious ideas such as those I grew up with.

Here Hazleton does her best to point toward what soul means to her agnostic self. It's a quality of being. It's an emphatic openness to reality, the opposite of walling ourselves behind dogmas of one variety or another. This takes courage, since it is easier to embrace  some form of religious absolutism where no doubts or questions are tolerated. 

Soul as a matter of courage? If so, it's not the obvious courage of a lauded hero, but the quieter, everyday kind of courage it takes to be open to the world. 

It's not that some people have no soul, but that the quality of soul in them seems to have shriveled, turned in on itself as though in retreat. They have taken a defensive position, and built a wall around themselves.

...You wall yourself off when you expect the worst. Better the devil you know, you tell yourself, than the unpredictability of the unknown; better to be ruled by the past than by hope for a different future. 

You try to persuade yourself you are strong because you have made yourself impregnable, but you live nonetheless in a state of fear. Your view is blocked. You have closed the gates and walled yourself off from the world -- even, at the extreme, against the world.

And if the gates remain open? 

Could having soul be a matter of being brave enough to be vulnerable -- to acknowledge the risks of being vulnerable, that is, and to willingly embrace them nonetheless? Because risks they are. Those I think of as brave souls know this.

In a way, they're the personification of soul music: they often bear the scars of bitter experience, and yet are not ruled by fear or resentment. Not that they are saints; they are as deeply flawed as you or I, but they accept their own flaws, and thus those of others.

And if they seem to have gained a certain ease with the world, it is a hard-earned one. It's as though they have persevered and come out the other end of hardship worn and weathered, but with a deeper appreciation of what it is to be alive.

They welcome both the unknown and the unknowable, explore without preconceptions, and place their faith in trust, preferring the chance of being proved wrong to the illusory certainty of always being right.

Open and closed: perhaps these are the terms in which we need to think. Not soulful or soulless, nor brave souls or timid ones, but open-souled and closed-souled. Where the latter contracts and retreats from others, the former expands, reaches out, is open to the world instead of guarded against it.

Few people are entirely one way or the other, of course. Most of us can open up on occasion, yet are still tempted to close ourselves off when under stress. 

We struggle with trust, and uncertainty, and doubt, and find ourselves searching for the security of conviction even as we recognize its falseness. We're brave at times, fearful at others; we're contradictory, and paradoxical, and fallible. Which is to say, we're human.

But at our best, we respond to soul with soul, as happened with someone whose real name I don't even know posted a comment on an earlier attempt of mine to puzzle out what we mean when we say that someone has soul.

"I'm not sure I understand," she wrote (a gentle way of saying that I hadn't been very clear), "but I think I recognize it. It's what makes my heart swell -- what makes me glad to be alive." And then: "Is this it?"

We make our own meaning in an indifferent universe

Here's a great question that Lesley Hazleton asks at the start of the Making Meaning chapter in her book, Agnostic: A Spirited Manifesto.

What do you do when someone tells you about a treasured experience that you know is in all probability untrue? True to that person that is, but not objectively true.

Since people share all kinds of religious and mystical experiences in comments on my blog posts, I'm confronted with this question often. Usually I have the same answer Hazleton chose when a woman told her about orca whales lining up and singing to her as she stood on a low cliff overlooking the ocean.

I chose discretion over honesty because I had no desire to hurt this person by questioning what was clearly so meaningful to her. There can be great beauty in the enterprise of making meaning, that very human desire to find significance in the world. But it seems to me essential that we be aware that this is what we are doing, and that we retain a certain sense of bemusement, even amusement, at our proclivity to translate the world into human terms. Aware, that is, of our own subjectivity.

Life is difficult.

Whatever helps us get through the day, the week, the month, the year, the lifetime -- that's to be embraced, even if it is based on a fantasy. I have no problems with fantasy, nor does Hazleton. But I heartily agree with her that it's important to recognize that the meanings we ascribe to the world are our meanings, not an objective meaning inherent in the universe.

Here's some additional passages from the Making Meaning chapter about how the absence of objective meaning creates a wonderful space for us to fashion our own subjective meaning.

The absence of an "ultimate" meaning of life -- a grand, over-arching explanation of everything -- does not render life empty of relevance. On the contrary, it makes it all the more relevant. 

It means we can no longer use divine intent as an excuse, in the same way fatalists talk of fate. It places responsibility directly on us -- responsibility for how we act, for what we do, for our relations with others, with our society, with our planet. 

It is we who determine meaning by what we do. And part of that meaning is the awareness that we are not and cannot always be in control, that we are indeed subject to chance, to serendipity, to the unforeseen, the unanticipated, the fortuitous. 

I see no reason why meaning and significance should be any less for knowing how vast the universe is, and how small I am in it. Far from being appalled by this, I am excited by it. It allows for life as an adventure, and for the unexpected and under-appreciated value of misadventure -- for wrong turns and dead ends, chance discoveries and unintended turns.

It makes life a matter of open-ended exploration instead of a predetermined slog along a straight line from birth to death.

Instead of what's the meaning of life, then, I'd rather ask what makes my life meaningful. Instead of mission, I'm happy to wake up in anticipation of a new day, with work I want to return to, people I want to walk and talk with. Happy, that is, to wake up with desire, with appetite, and with the bemused acceptance of being human, fallible, and imperfectly rational.

I rejoice in there being no single meaning -- in there being instead a multitude of meanings, an infinite number of ways in which we exercise our subjectivity and imagination, rendering meaningful what is objectively meaningless. Meaning is ours to make, and to choose.

The search for meaning, then, is itself a choice. It offers the hope of a consoling narrative that will stave off the awareness of an indifferent universe. 

It's the go-to defense against the fear of insignificance, against the realization that there's nothing personal in nature -- that it's not about me, or you, or us -- and that whatever narrative we detect in it is entirely of our own making. We make ourselves significant. We persuade ourselves that whales sing to us. Even, as happened to me, that a snow-covered mountain speaks to us.

...I may like to think that I have no illusions about the terms of my existence on this planet, but that itself is merely an illusion: my own pathetic fallacy. Romanticism lingers, a sop to my vanity, to my sense of the centrality of my own existence.

However clearly I think I accept the case with which I could, at any moment, cease to exist, some part of me stubbornly refuses to accept my own insignificance, and sees personal meaning in impersonal forces. I shamelessly insist, despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, on my own significance.