Church of the Churchless

"The God Equation" is about Einstein's impersonal god

I bought theoretical physicist Michio Kaku's latest book, The God Equation: The Quest for a Theory of Everything, after seeing him interviewed by Stephen Colbert. 

I enjoyed the book, though I agree with some Amazon reviewers that it doesn't really break new ground. But since my understanding of the old ground is shaky, I enjoyed Kaku's take on familiar topics.

Particle physics. Relativity theory. Quantum mechanics. Big bang. The search for common ground between how relativity and quantum theories view reality. String theory.

Spoiler alert: physicists haven't yet come up with a viable Theory of Everything. String theory is the leading candidate, but string theory suffers from not-so-minor drawbacks such as an almost complete lack of ability to test its validity.

To a theoretician, all these criticisms are troublesome but not fatal. But what does cause problems for a theoretician is that the [string theory] model seems to predict a multiverse of parallel universes, many of which are crazier than those in the imagination of a Hollywood scriptwriter.

...Some might argue that these alternate universes are only mathematical possibilities and are not real. But the problem is that the theory lacks predictive power, since it cannot tell you which of these alternate universes is the real one.

Still, there's a lot to like about string theory.

It could resolve the conflict between relativity theory (space-time is smooth) and quantum theory (the subatomic realm is lumpy) by positing that extremely tiny strings are the fundamental constituents of reality.

Mystics would resonate with that notion, a point I made in my first book, God's Whisper, Creation's Thunder. Here's how Kaku puts it.

As a result of the torrent of equations, a new picture was beginning to emerge. Why were there so many particles?

Like Pythagoras more than two thousand years ago, the theory said that each musical note -- each vibration of a string -- represented a particle. Electrons, quarks, and Yang-Mills particles were nothing but different notes on the same vibrating string.

What is so powerful and interesting about the theory is that gravity is necessarily included. Without any extra assumptions, the graviton emerges as one of the lowest vibrations of the string.

...As physicist Edward Witten once said, "String theory is extremely attractive because gravity is forced upon us. All known consistent string theories include gravity, so while gravity is impossible in quantum field theory as we have known it, it's obligatory in string theory."

So while a huge amount of work remains to be done on string theory, there's a possibility it could live up to the title of Kaku's book, The God Equation. 

However, this wouldn't be the God most people worship, but Einstein's God.

In this and other letters, Einstein despaired of answering questions concerning the meaning of life, but he was clear about his thinking concerning God.

One problem, he wrote, is that there are really two kinds of Gods, and we often confuse the two. 

First, there is the personal God, the God that you pray to, the God of the Bible who smites the Philistines and rewards the believers. He did not believe in that God. He did not believe that the God who created the universe interfered in the affairs of mere mortals.

However, he believed in the God of Spinoza -- that is, the God of order in a universe that is beautiful, simple, and elegant. The universe could have been ugly, random, chaotic, but instead it has a hidden order that is mysterious yet profound.

In his final chapter, Kaku speaks about meaning in a familiar fashion that resonates with me.

In the end, I believe that we create our own meaning in the universe.

It is too simple and easy to have some guru come down from the mountaintop, bearing the meaning of the universe. The meaning of life is something that we have to struggle to understand and appreciate.

Having it given to us defeats the whole purpose of meaning.

If the meaning of life were available for free, then it would lose its meaning. Everything that has meaning is the result of struggle and sacrifice, and is worth fighting for.

More thoughts about Tai Chi and martial arts

This is a follow-up to my previous post, "Internal martial arts have a lot to teach us." 

I probably should have been more explicit about what I meant by a lot to teach us. What I meant to focus on, with semi-success, was the general applicability of internal versus external approaches. 

Let me attempt a fuller explanation now.

A few commenters observed that when it comes to fighting ability, an Ultimate Fighting dude (or dudette) almost certainly would kick the ass of a Tai Chi practitioner, even one skilled in the martial side of Tai Chi.

I agree. But this gets at the difference between an art and whatever the opposite of art is, which is sort of hard to to come up with a word for.

Regardless, my 30 years of experience with several martial art styles leads me to confidently say that one goal of every martial art is to improve the character of the practitioner. 

That's an internal goal, by and large, though it should manifest in outward behavior also.

By contrast, I'm not aware that Ultimate Fighting practitioners put a lot of emphasis on their craft as an art. They're concerned with what works to win a fight. So it doesn't make a lot of sense to compare a martial art with a martial non-art.

Every martial arts instructor I've had emphasized that the #1 intent of the art is to not get into a fight. Fighting is a last resort, whereas for Ultimate Fighting people, it is the main thing. 

That said, I'm also a firm believer that physical action is the touchstone of any form of spirituality or art. 

If all we're engaged in is a purely internal exercise of supposed transformation, there's no way to tell whether we're really changing for the better. Someone could meditate in a dark room for several hours a day and come to believe that they've become enlightened.

OK.

But if there's no evidence of that transformation in their behavior, if enlightenment isn't something that others can distinguish from non-enlightenment, then someone can conjure up a fantasy that they're more spiritually advanced than they really are.

This is one purpose of the Tai Chi push hands exercise I spoke about in the previous post.

A Tai Chi practitioner may believe that they're able to stay rooted to the earth; defeat attempts to uproot them by flexibly rotating their core; use a small amount of force to deflect the movements of someone much more powerful; and so on.

The only way they can know if their belief is justified is to put their Tai Chi to a test with another practitioner. And the more skilled the other person is, the better is the test (and the more humbling).

Understand: in no way am I saying that Tai Chi students must do push hands or martial applications.

It's perfectly fine to look upon Tai Chi as a relaxing form of exercise, in somewhat the same way my wife and I took ballroom dancing lessons for quite a few years without having the slightest interest in dance competitions -- aside from watching them on TV.

Shifting gears, I do want to defend Tai Chi as a martial art, though. 

Until Covid changed things, I'd go to two regular Tai Chi classes a week and also a class made up of Tai Chi students with marital arts backgrounds who wanted to learn the fighting side of Tai Chi.

One of these guys was Jeremy. He's a big guy who moonlights as a bouncer at bars and a security guard at events. Muscular. Maybe 230 pounds. About six feet. In short, an imposing figure. When we'd be paired up to practice some move, I'd wonder if I could make it work on Jeremy.

Usually, if not always, I could -- once I used Tai Chi principles correctly. A key principle is that using your whole body will overcome even a strong person's stability, including their arms.

Meaning, my 180 pound body, used effectively, could lead me to move Jeremy around via forms of leverage. This is why jujitsu is so effective. A small person can apply a wrist lock or arm bar on a much bigger person and cause them to "tap out" quickly. 

Here's three You Tube videos that offer up a variety of examples of how Tai Chi can be a practical means of self-defense.

The second one is kind of lengthy, but you can skip the solitary demonstration of the Tai Chi move and head right to the two-person demonstration of the martial application. 

 

 

Internal martial arts have a lot to teach us

For about thirteen years I trained in the external martial art of karate. For the past seventeen years, since 2004, I've trained in the internal martial art of Tai Chi.

Yes, Tai Chi is a martial art. At least, it can be. Tai Chi Chuan is martial. (Chuan is translated as "fist" or "boxing.")

Most Tai Chi instructors aren't interested in the Chuan part, and don't understand it well.

I've been fortunate to learn Tai Chi from someone who started practicing it after many years of hard style martial arts experience, so he is expert in how Tai Chi can be a martial art.

Recently I've been re-reading Ron Sieh's book, "T'ai Chi Chuan: The Internal Tradition." (It wasn't published in 1842, no matter what the Amazon listing says.)

Here's how Sieh describes the external and internal martial arts.

Typically the martial arts are characterized by how they arrive at power: the external, by muscular effort; the internal, relaxed and effortlessly.

All "karates" are considered external, and most of the Chinese arts, plus Judo, Capoeira, and Kali, are lumped into the external category.

T'ai Chi Ch'uan, Hsing I Ch'uan, and Pa Kua are the Chinese internal arts and of course, Aikido is a Japanese art. There is a flow in the internal arts that is missing from the external ones.

In the external there is a quality of fighting, of pushing against the way things are, to change what is happening to better fit our "plan."

In the internal tradition a more inclusive approach is cultivated, a quality of non-interference, of using your opponents' strengths to your advantage without the struggle to change them.

It's much easier to learn an external martial art than an internal one.

Our usual inclination is to use force to accomplish something. Children naturally punch and kick. They don't naturally deflect a blow by smoothly moving their body.

Ron Sieh studied with Peter Ralston, an accomplished master of Tai Chi Chuan. He describes that experience in a Technique chapter.

When I used to box with Peter, he would quickly and impactfully fill any holes I would open. The reason was not necessarily his superior technique but his quality of presence and willingness to play the game.

This was a game in which, when the going got rough, the willingness to be there and deeply feel your own experience "as is" became increasingly hard to do.

Our tendency when "confronted" with pain -- either the pain of getting hit or the unwillingness to play (any game) -- is immediately to jump into our well-practiced and often entrenched sense of defending ourselves, our position, or to space out.

Boxing or playing push hands with Peter made it very clear to me, over and over, that at least in my relationship to Peter, denial didn't work and was a great hindrance. It was also simply bad strategy. 

...The centerline is a notion that is important in many martial arts. It is basically the line that runs down the center of our bodies.

...The centerline is that core of the body around which we rotate when we turn the pelvis, whether to dodge a punch, yield to a push, or whatever. In the game of two-person work the centerline is what we should seek out in our partner. 

It is often felt as a core which many people have a hard time yielding. Particularly in push hands it is the target.

...We can rotate around our centerline whether it is located centrally or on the left or right half of our body. It is the feeling of centerline that is important. 

If pushed in the center of the chest we can, with feeling, move the core around -- we rotate to the left or right of that and swing open like a door on our off-center centerline to accommodate the push.

Those words are difficult to follow if you haven't experienced what Sieh is talking about. This video of Peter Ralston playing at push hands is a much better way to grasp what an internal martial art is all about.

And, by implication, what taking a more flowing, less resistant approach to life as a whole is all about.

Push hands in Tai Chi isn't about winning or losing. It isn't a contest. It's a playful way of putting into practice what otherwise remains an abstraction. Until someone is trying to throw us off balance, we don't know how to respond in a way that, hopefully, enables us to keep our balance and composure.

Peter Ralston is the older guy in the light-colored cap. But you could figure that out just by watching the video, since his Tai Chi skill is considerably greater than the other guy's. 

It may not look like Ralston is doing much.

However, if you focus on his core, his centerline, you'll see that he is able to control the other guy with relatively small well-timed moves that look effortless, but take a heck of a lot of training to master.

In push hands a move is released before it becomes a full-on joint lock, takedown, strike, or whatever. So over and over you'll see Ralston releasing moves that, in an actual fight, would appear much more martial.

Have faith in the mystery of what we don't know

Today Spence Tepper, a frequent commenter on this blog who, pleasingly, uses his real name when commenting, left a marvelous comment on a recent post of mine. 

You can read it below. 

What Tepper said reminds me a lot of what Alan Watts wrote about faith in one of my favorite books, The Wisdom of Insecurity. 

Here's part of the Watts quotation from that book that I included in a 2008 post, "Real and false faith."

We must here make a clear distinction between belief and faith, because, in general practice, belief has come to mean a state of mind which is almost the opposite of faith. Belief, as I use it here, is the insistence that the truth is what one would "lief" or wish it to be.

The believer will open his mind to the truth on condition that it fits with his preconceived ideas and wishes. Faith, on the other hand, is an unreserved opening of the mind to the truth, whatever it may turn out to be.

Faith has no preconceptions; it is a plunge into the unknown. Belief clings, but faith lets go. In this sense of the word, faith is the essential virtue of science, and likewise of any religion that is not self-deception.

Tepper isn't Watts, obviously. But his attitude toward faith is very much in line with what Watts said above. 

Enjoy. I corrected one apparent typo and broke up some paragraphs for easier reading.

Belief and faith rest on qualities of personality. They do not depend upon proof. If you prove anything, there is no need of faith. Your proof ends the necessity, and possibly the romance of faith.

But it also ends the grounds for opinion.

Both faith and opinion thrive in the absence of information. They are the ways in which the human brain tries to bridge the gaps to create a clear picture.

Just as the brain fills in the blind spots in your visual field as best it can, just as it turns the image on your retina upside down, and takes curved lines and makes them straight before you see them, so too the brain fills in gaps of knowledge with its best guess and presents them to you as ideas that pop into your head.

It's a healthy process if you are going to test those ideas, and a harmful process if you are not.

The kinds of things your brain comes up with as explanations for what it doesn't know are opinion. And faith is largely in your own opinion.

But there is another kind of faith. Faith in the mystery of what we don't know.

Not faith in your version of God, science, or politics, or your certainty of a leader's strength or corruption on the basis of limited information, or their own claims, or even faith in your opinions about what is going on, or even your faith in someone else's opinion.

Because that isn't actually faith. It's just opinion.

And opinion is not only a poor substitute for Truth, it gets in the way of seeing Truth. And then we can confuse opinion for Truth. And that makes letting go of a favored opinion difficult when facts prove otherwise. Then we just reject the facts as someone else's opinion.

Real Faith is not knowing. It's loving confidently in that place where we know we don't know everything.

And what we experience, we understand is just from our point in space. Faith that new information is actually there but we don't see it yet. Living that way, because it is the truth. Faith that the invisible truth yet to be discovered is greater than any opinion.

Faith enough in what is there that you don't know, to give up opinion and say, confidently, honestly, "I don't know, and I don't think having an opinion about something I haven't experienced, something I have no actual knowledge of, is of any help in learning about that, in finding what I don't yet know."

Real Faith is no faith if it is faith in a preconceived opinion.

Faith is valuing the unknown Truth higher than any opinion, with the maturity to know from experience the dangers of holding onto opinion.

If there is a God, they would like you to put aside your opinions as a first step to seeing them. Even about God. And when you see them, you won't say "I see God", because that is just your label, your opinion, for what you are seeing.

You will just enjoy seeing what you are seeing. That's a higher value than trying to fill in the gaps of what can never be known, but fully experienced. The cost? Faith in your opinion.

     -- Spence Tepper

India's worsening Covid crisis partly due to religion

Since for 35 years I was a member of a religious organization headquartered in India, I have a special interest in how that country has been doing during the Covid pandemic.

Recently I've been seeing dire stories about rapidly increasing Covid cases and deaths in India. 

The reasons for the deteriorating situation are complex, but a big part of the blame seems to be related to factors that have been evident here in the United States, especially during the time Trump was president.

Namely, poor leadership from those in charge of the country; declaring victory over Covid prematurely; allowing large religious and political gatherings in the midst of the pandemic; failing to communicate the importance of wearing masks and following other public health advice.

Here's excerpts from a Washington Post story today, "India's 1.6 million new covid-19 cases in the past week are breaking its health system."

Four months ago, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi declared victory over the coronavirus pandemic. Now the country is in a new covid-19 crisis, with more than 250,000 new confirmed infections daily. India has now overtaken Brazil, with the second-highest number of confirmed cases worldwide.

The actual number of cases may be much higher — testing lags are increasingly common, and some states have curtailed coronavirus testing. Similarly, official numbers report a seven-day average of around 1,300 deaths per day, but undercounting and misclassification of deaths is rampant. Long delays and price-gouging at crematoriums — amid reports of makeshift cremations on sidewalks — suggest the death counts are far higher than reported.

The Modi government faces public criticism for allowing political rallies and religious gatherings. There has been little official focus on further investments in either the country’s health infrastructure or vaccine production capacity. Domestic politics factor into India’s covid crisis in these ways.

...Last week, millions of Hindu pilgrims headed to the Maha Kumbh Mela for a five-day pilgrimage, held in the state of Uttarakhand. Over 1,700 devotees tested positive, and the festival itself lacked adequate coronavirus protocols.

Uttarakhand is seeing record-high covid cases, and 11 percent of devotees leaving the festival by train have tested positive. Many in India criticized the Modi government for permitting the festival and even facilitating travel for devotees from all across the country.

The lack of public health concern also stands in stark contrast to the government’s handling of a much smaller Muslim religious congregation last year, which resulted in several charges being brought against attendees. The incident led to increased communal backlash against Muslims across the country. This year’s court-mandated restrictions on Ramadan prayer congregations in Mumbai and Delhi also demonstrate inconsistent government guidance on religious gatherings.

And these are excerpts from a New York Times opinion piece, "India's Second Covid Wave is Completely Out of Control."

A lethal, fast-paced second wave of the coronavirus pandemic has brought India’s health care systems to the verge of collapse and is putting millions of lives and livelihoods at risk.

On Sunday and Monday, the country recorded more than 270,000 and 259,000 cases, respectively, of Covid-19, a staggering increase from about 11,000 cases per day in the second week of February. Reported coronavirus infections shot up from about 20,000 per day in mid-March to more than 200,000 by mid-April.

The newspapers and social media are scrolls of horror and failure of the health system. There are reports of lines of ambulances with patients waiting outside the largest Covid facility in Ahmedabad in the western state of Gujarat because ventilator beds and oxygen had run out.

...How did things change so dramatically between March and April?

India’s rapid slide into this unprecedented crisis is a direct result of complacency and lack of preparation by the government. As the number of cases dropped significantly in mid-February, the Indian government and various policymakers, cheered on by a pliant, triumphalist media, prematurely declared victory against the pandemic. By early March, senior government ministers were speaking about the endgame of the pandemic in India.

Cricket matches where tens of thousands of spectators filled stadiums were allowed, and movie theaters were opened. The government did nothing to prevent enormous religious gatherings such as the ongoing Kumbh Mela, a festival in Haridwar in the northern state of Uttarakhand, where millions of Hindus gathered for a dip in the River Ganges. Unsurprisingly, Covid-19 cases in Haridwar have soared.

...The mass political, religious and sporting events, which are extensively covered by the Indian media, sent mixed messages about the seriousness of the pandemic. Popular impatience to get back to earlier lives made things worse. Indians started mixing widely and playing down the threat also because there is an unfounded sense among a large number of Indians that exposure to pollution and microbes had endowed them with superior immunity.

...The risk of getting infected through exposure to someone with the coronavirus is no different in India. The proportion of people who died after a Covid-19 diagnosis is lower in India compared with many other countries. But that is simply because 65 percent of Indians are under 35 years old.

Indians with Covid-19 ages 40 to 70 were more likely to have died in India because of the high prevalence of comorbidities like hypertension, diabetes and respiratory disorders. Covid-19 patients in our study in their 40s in India were twice as likely to die as Covid-19 patients in the corresponding age group in the United States. The rate was 75 percent higher in India than in the United States when we compared patients in their 50s.

Dealing with Covid-19 is tough enough without politicians like Modi and Trump making things worse by failing to follow public health science. Hopefully India will find better ways to handle the current wave of Covid cases.

Ending the spiritual search

It's a bit difficult for me to tell when my spiritual searching began.

Was it when I tried to figure out in high school the deeper meaning of Bob Dylan's enigmatic song lyrics? Was it when I devoured Sartre, Camus, and other existentialists during my early college years? 

Maybe.

But for sure it started when, in 1969, my wife-to-be and I began learning hatha yoga and meditation from a crazed Greek guy who melded Christianity and Eastern philosophy in a decidedly weird fashion. 

Ever since, I've pursued some sort of spirituality. 

For several decades I spent about two hours a day meditating in accord with a mystical practice that aimed at uniting my soul with God.

Eventually I came to doubt whether soul and God even existed, which understandably deflated my interest in trying to join them together.

In my early 40s martial arts became a sort of spiritual search.

After earning a black belt in a karate style that was pleasingly eclectic, I switched to Tai Chi in 2004, which I've practiced ever since.

Taoism and Buddhism became my favorite spiritual philosophies. I made mindfulness my meditation.  

Now, at the age of 72, I've started to ponder the pros and cons of ending my spiritual searching -- with a emphasis on the pros. 

Always looking for more from life than what life already is giving me is beginning to seem unwise. 

More meaning. More happiness. More purpose. More depth. All that more, more, more seems to lead to a hamster-wheel sort of existence.

Spiritual seeking can become such a habit, the seeker doesn't realize that they're going around and around without really getting anywhere.

If we're in an endless loop of seek-find-seek-find, the way out is to either stop seeking or find that which satisfies completely. 

Since I'm not completely satisfied with life (who is?), it seems to me that giving up a quest to make life into something that it isn't already is the best way to go.

Understand: in no way do I see this as embracing fatalism or not trying to make my life better.

But I want to do this in a natural fashion. I want to just be an average person living life as it is, not as some imagined Spiritual Life with capital letters. 

Three weeks ago an inguinal (groin) hernia came into my life, an unexpected guest. 

About a quarter of men will get a hernia at some point. So what I'm dealing with is common. Last week I had a consultation with a surgeon, which went well. 

My old spiritual self would have tried to find some deeper meaning in the hernia. Working off karma? A way to test my equanimity? The universe sending me a message of some sort?

My new not-so-spiritual self just wants to handle the hernia as smoothly as I can and to get it surgically repaired ASAP.

In other words, I'm viewing myself realistically. I'm just a guy who, like lots of other guys, has a hernia that he wants fixed. End of story.

This is, of course, the way lots of people look upon problems in their life. 

Not as an opportunity to evolve into a more refined spiritual being. Just as a damn problem that needs attention. 

I can't say that I've totally given up my addiction to spiritual seeking. I just see the light at the end of the seeking tunnel. 

Or maybe more accurately, the lack of extra light. 

Life already has plenty of light. That's how I'm able to write this blog post. An LED bulb is shining on my desk. My laptop's screen is aglow. 

Where's the need to be spiritually enlightened when the world already has so much light?

Open Thread 37 (free speech for comments)

Here's a new Open Thread.

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

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, as is hate speech. 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.

How animals navigate would be a "miracle" if people did it

After thirty-five years of believing in weird mystical stuff, I've become a naturalist.

I'm still open to the possibility that there's more to reality than what's evident in the natural world, but lacking solid evidence of that possibility, my bet is that it doesn't exist.

Yet in no way do I feel a diminishment of cosmic awe. There's plenty to be amazed at without imagining a realm beyond the physical.

A story by Kathryn Schulz in the April 5, 2021 issue of The New Yorker provides a good example of this. My mind was blown by "Where the Wild Things Go: How animals navigate the world."

(The online version has a different title.)

Consider how we humans would look upon a member of our species who could do what a rock lobster  is capable of.

You can cover a rock lobster’s eyes, put it in an opaque container filled with seawater from its native environment, line the container with magnets suspended from strings so they swing in all directions, put the container in a truck, drive the truck in circles on the way to a boat, steer the boat in circles on the way to a distant location, drop the lobster back in the water, and—voilà—it will strike off confidently in the direction of home.

Scientists have done these things to rock lobsters in order to eliminate the most obvious mechanisms a lobster could use to navigate, such as using the earth's magnetic field to track its location.

We'd be amazed if a person could do what a rock lobster does, as the New Yorker story says in the next paragraph.

Needless to say, you and I cannot do this. If you blindfold human subjects, take them on a disorienting bus ride, let them off in a field, remove the blindfolds, and ask them to head back toward where they started, they will promptly wander off in all directions. If you forgo the bus and the blindfolds, ask them to walk across a field toward a target, and then conceal the target after they start moving, they will stray off course in approximately eight seconds.

Of course, humans also are capable of amazing navigation feats. But we've done this largely through learning, not instinct.

The Polynesians were able to move from island to island in vast reaches of the south Pacific through careful observation of currents, clouds, birds, and such, then pass on that knowledge to another generation.

Some animals also learn from members of their species -- geese learn a migration route from their elders -- but much of animal navigation is based on talents we're mostly clueless about.

Cats, bats, elephant seals, red-tailed hawks, wildebeests, gypsy moths, cuttlefish, slime mold, emperor penguins: to one degree or another, every animal on earth knows how to navigate—and, to one degree or another, scientists remain perplexed by how they do so.

Yet even though what animals are capable of seems miraculous, no reputable scientist claims that animals possess some supernatural power. We don't know how they navigate, but almost certainly some day we will.

So in the realm of animal navigation there's agreement that natural causes are producing amazing effects. Why would the mystery of human consciousness be any different? Just because something is astonishing doesn't mean it stems from a supernatural source.

More generally, the astonishment is that any physiology can contain a navigational system capable of such journeys. A bird that migrates over long distances must maintain its trajectory by day and by night, in every kind of weather, often with no landmarks in sight.

If its travels take more than a few days, it must compensate for the fact that virtually everything it could use to stay oriented will change, from the elevation of the sun to the length of the day and the constellations overhead at night.

Most bewildering of all, it must know where it is going—even the first time, when it has never been there before—and it must know where that destination lies compared with its current position.

Other species making other journeys face additional difficulties: how to navigate entirely underground, or how to navigate beneath the waters of a vast and seemingly undifferentiated ocean.

The New Yorker story describes various mechanisms animals use to find their way around. I don't want to give the impression that scientists are clueless about how animal navigation works.

My point is that astounding capabilities require careful research to understand what is going on. This applies to exceptional human feats, whether mental or physical. There's a huge amount to learn about the natural world.

None of that learning needs to be based on supernatural fantasies.

QAnon, like religion, doesn't care about truth

Last night my wife and I finished watching the sixth and last episode of HBO's "QAnon: Into the Storm." 

I've written two previous posts about how QAnon bears a lot of resemblance to religion. (See here and here.) 

QAnon devotees are like religious believers. Neither cares about actual truth, while both pretend that they understand reality in a deep sense that eludes ordinary people.

I found the HBO series fascinating.

It shows us the people behind QAnon -- the computer geeks who administer the sites where Q posted his "drops," often enigmatic and usually totally wrong observations about politics and what-not.

We also see the people who interpret Q's communications via podcasts, You Tube channels, and the like. They're akin to high priests who mediate between the Almighty and the mass of believers.

The final episode doesn't definitively say who Q is, but a lot of evidence points to Ron Watkins, including Watkins' own words. 

Ron Watkins

Watkins was the administrator of 8Chan, which morphed into 8Kun, the places that Q chose to host his posts/drops. His father, Jim Watkins, also plays a large role in the HBO series.

Both Ron and Jim are intelligent schemers. They're highly watchable, along with being highly irritating at times. 

When the closing credits of the final episode appeared, I said to my wife, "I wonder if the faith of QAnon followers would be shaken if they knew that probably Q is a computer geek who wears a green baseball cap, not a high level government official with a super secret Q security clearance."

She replied, "It wouldn't matter to them. They'd continue to believe what they want to believe and wouldn't trust that Ron Watkins likely is Q."

My wife is right. 

After all, there's no demonstrable evidence that the founder of any religion actually knew anything about God, nor that God even exists. Yet billions of people worship that non-existent entity regardless.

A FiveThirtyEight review of the HBO series made the same point. (Cullen Hoback is the director of QAnon: Into the Storm.)

But even if Hoback had managed to elicit a full confession, it likely wouldn’t have much impact on QAnon as a movement. Q followers would do what they always do when confronted with conflicting evidence to their belief system: they would either dismiss it or find a way to fold the information into their worldview.

Even if someone admitted that Q’s posts were a complete fabrication, it would not be enough to penetrate the hard outer shell of belief for many followers. Q, after all, has gone underground. He (or she or they) hasn’t posted since Dec. 8, 2020, the longest stretch of silence since Q first began posting in 2017.

It's interesting that Q's postings started in the first year of Trump's presidency and ended when it became clear that Trump had lost to Joe Biden.

These were dark years for truth-telling, in Washington D.C., at least. Now truth is making a comeback, since the Biden administration is hugely more committed to honesty, science, and transparency. 

The final episode of the HBO series ends with footage of the January 6 attempted insurrection at the nation's Capitol, where  Biden's electoral college victory was being finalized. 

QAnon believers were convinced that somehow Trump would stage a "storm" of a comeback, arresting his enemies, including leading Democratic politicians, and remaining president. When this didn't happen, the QAnon faithful were deeply shaken.

Just like religious believers when, say, the predicted second coming of Christ comes and goes with no appearance by Jesus. 

However, the power of mass delusion is very strong. QAnon still has lots of adherents, as does Christianity, obviously. Inconvenient truths aren't going to dissuade people who believe in falsehood that's immune to disproof.

In a brilliant move, Episode 6 of QAnon: Into the Storm shows the Trump rioters breaking into the Capitol as the Jefferson Airplane song, "White Rabbit," plays. 

This musical paean to going down the rabbit hole, psychedelic variety, made the attempted insurrection look like the bizarre fantasy that it actually was. Sadly, I couldn't find any clips of the final episode with White Rabbit playing.

But you can hear this classic song by Grace Slick via You Tube video. I'll also share the trailer for the HBO series and a CNN interview with Hoback where he talks about his strong suspicion that Ron Watkins is Q.

A message from someone who woke up to RSSB deception

Getting a message like this one makes me feel like all the work I put into this Church of the Churchless blog is worthwhile. 

RS stands for Radha Soami. RSSB stands for Radha Soami Satsang Beas, the India-based religious group I belonged to for 35 years. Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the current RSSB guru.

         Dear Brian

I pondered upon your website quite a few years ago, and I thought this guy has lost it. He has lost the 1 valuable thing in life, the guru...

 

Fast forward to now.  I have been RS follower and initiate of gs dhillon for over 20 years.

Rssb is such a net, that once inside, its very hard to escape...and luckily I have realised that this large establishment is not going to get me God realisation. 

 

Never in history has any saints had large institutions and millions of followers and they achieved God.

 

I was attached to GS dhillon and thought guru knows best.  The teachings are good, but how can anyone teach and not have practiced or experienced anything, have any effect on us.

 

I am really sad that I wasted 20 years of my life thinking I was special, the chosen one...and its still very hard to get the establishment out of my head.

 

I wonder how you feel, you also left after a long time, and up till now, what thoughts or attachments crop up in your mind? How do you overcome them?

 

One thing i told my parents is that don't worry, study other things, if this is the true real master, then we have no worry, apparently he will fulfil his duty and come at death....

I tell the above to my mum, so that she can wake up, and understand that she has nothing to lose by exploring other ideas.

 

It's very difficult for a rs follower to come out of this.

I don't criticise the current guru or the following, just upset and sad that nothing was achieved.

 

I feel something went wrong long time ago, after the first 2 gurus, the first 2 had no large establishment or large monies involved, and from sawan singh, a large institution was created....what I am saying is maybe the path started of correct and got corrupted later on.

 

Thanks for reading my story.

Behold... my uncluttered office. Miracles do happen!

I wish I'd taken a "before" photo of my office before I was forced to move everything out so it could be painted after wallpaper was removed.

Just believe me when I say that while some people might consider that I have too much stuff in it now, the post-painting makeover is an astounding de-clutterization.

Which makes my wife happy.

You can marvel at the New Look via a post on my HinesSight blog, "My office looks more Zen after painting forced it on me."

Truth is all-important, in mysticism and everywhere else

Sometimes a comment is left on one of my blog posts that leaves me with a WTF (what the fuck) feeling. Meaning, I can't begin to understand where the commenter is coming from.

Here's a recent example that starts off with a quote from a post of mine.

>>If mystics claim to find a new reality, they need to prove it<< WHY? WHY do they need to prove it? No mystic owes anything to anybody.

Wow. The answer to that all caps Why is one-word obvious. Truth.

Truth is why a mystic needs to back up their claim of finding a new reality with solid proof. Reality belongs to everyone. Reality is the home of everyone.

No one gets to spread falsehoods about my home, which is your home, which is everybody's home -- reality.

Now, I understand that truth is taking a beating these days.

Here in the United States, a majority of people who belong to one of our two major parties, the Republican Party, have shown they don't give a shit about truth.

They wrongly claim that election fraud is widespread. They wrongly claim that the Capitol insurrection on January 6 wasn't carried out by Trump supporters. They wrongly claim that Georgia's new election laws are intended to expand voter turnout rather than suppress it.

Obviously I don't claim to always speak the truth or live the truth. Like everybody else, I make mistakes all the time when it comes to understanding things. 

But I've always pointed myself toward truth, even if I fail to reach it much of the time. Intention is all important when it comes to truth. Much can be forgiven if someone sincerely aims to embrace truth, rather than pushing it away.

One of the first posts I wrote when I started this blog in 2004 was called "Just have faith." Here's an excerpt that I still heartily agree with.

Here's how to tell the difference between true faith and false faith: Imagine that you are standing in the middle of a bare windowless room. Two doors lead out of the room. Both are closed, but can be opened with a turn of the doorknob. The doors are marked with signs that describe what awaits on the other side: (A) Reality, (B) Belief

After you open a door, you have to walk through it. The door then will shut and you never will be able to leave the place you have entered.

Choose Reality and you will know things as they really are, from top to bottom of the cosmos. You will know whether or not God exists and, if so, the nature of this ultimate divinity. You will know whether death is the final end of your existence or if it is the beginning of another form of life. You will know whether there is a meaning to the universe beyond what human beings ascribe to it.

Or, choose Belief and you will know only what lies within the confines of your current suppositions about the nature of the cosmos. For the rest of your life you will be confident that what you believe to be true, really is. Any evidence to the contrary will not make an impact on your mind. You will remain doubt-free, faithful to the beliefs you now hold about God, creation, life, death, and the purpose of human existence.

Which door would you choose to walk through?

Before answering, consider carefully the potential ramifications of your choice. Reality is an unknown, a mystery. It could be frightening or fabulous, painful or pleasurable, warmly loving or coldly uncaring. Do you want to embrace absolutely real reality? Or would you rather hold on to your beliefs about what is real?

Someone with the type of faith extolled by the Church of the Churchless would unhesitatingly choose Door A and boldly stride into Reality. For their faith is not in anything particular, but is a faith that truth can be known, should be known, and, indeed, must be known.

Getting back to the comment about mystics not owing anything to anybody when it comes to making a claim about having found a new reality, back in 2006 I talked about the need for questioning such claims in "With God, from 'I believe' to 'I know' is a huge step."

Here's the core of that blog post. The A.H. Armstrong quote comes from my book, "Return to the One."

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I don’t know,” we’re comrades in unknowing. Grab a chair and belly up with me to the clueless bar.

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I believe…,” we can have an interesting conversation. I probably won’t agree with you, but I enjoy learning about other people beliefs, or lack thereof, in a higher power.

If you say to me, “When it comes to God, I know…,” we are going to have a really interesting conversation. For once you say “know” rather than “believe,” my skeptical radar sets off a Dogma alert! Dogma alert! siren inside my psyche.

I don’t expect reasons for beliefs. They’re your business. Just like sex, whatever turns you on. Go for it. But also just like sex, beliefs need to remain personal if they are to be unquestioned.

As soon as you say, “I believe _____, and you should too,” there’s going to be a stiffening of my argumentative spine. I’m pleased to be given advice by someone who is more knowledgeable about something than I am. However, that something needs to be objectively real, not imaginary.

And beliefs aren’t real, even though lots of religious people seem to think that they are.

Going further, some people actually claim that they know the nature of God or ultimate reality. Now, this requires some serious questioning. A claim like that, why, it’s amazing. I mean, in the entire span of recorded history there hasn’t been a single clearly evident, unquestionable, plain-as-day revelation about God or the divine.

So if you tell me that you know for a fact that God exists, or that God is such and such, or that God is realized in this particular fashion, then I’m going to be super-duper interested in how you’re able to back up that astounding assertion.

I want you to lay your cards on the table. Face up. All of them. Show me your four aces. And let me know in detail, exactly, precisely, how you were able to come up with that winning hand.

Of course, I know that this won’t be possible. If you’re just bluffing, and don’t really know about God, then you’ll be empty-handed. But even if by some miracle you truly are God’s bosom buddy, you still won’t be able to lay any material proof on the table.

I’m pretty confident about that, because nobody else ever has been able to do so, and I’m willing to bet that this run of “busts” will continue.

So, please, please, please. Pretty please with blind faith crumbs on top. If you write or talk to me and go beyond “I believe…” when speaking about God, bring your best stuff. Show me the money, as the saying goes. The proof.

I’ve shared this quotation before, but it’s worth sharing again. To my mind, classics scholar A.H. Armstrong hits just the right tone.

When claims to possess an exclusive revelation of God or to speak his word are made by human beings (and it is always human beings who make them), they must be examined particularly fiercely and hypercritically for the honor of God, to avoid the blasphemy and sacrilege of deifying a human opinion.

Or, to put it less ferociously, the Hellenic (and, as it seems to me, still proper) answer to “Thus saith the Lord” is “Does he?,” asked in a distinctly skeptical tone, followed by a courteous but drastic “testing to destruction” of the claims and credentials of the person or person making this enormous statement.

If mystics claim to find a new reality, they need to prove it

I've been enjoying the recent comment conversations between some of the Church of the Churchless regulars. Meaning, frequent visitors to this blog.

Having featured a comment from "Appreciative Reader" in a blog post a few days ago, I generally find myself agreeing with this person's perspective.

Which I'm not going to attempt to summarize, since that perspective is nuanced.

Instead, here's my take on a theme that features in the above-mentioned comment conversations: how someone can tell the difference between genuine and spurious mystical experiences.

My first assumption -- which seems inarguable to me -- is that while mystics and mystic-sympathizers like to say that mystical experiences can't be put into words, that's the case with all experiences.

Every experience is had by a subjective consciousness. I have my experiences. You have yours. Other people have theirs.

None of us has direct access to anyone else's experiences. They are directly experienced by the experiencer alone. This direct experience means there's a huge difference between saying "I ate a raspberry" and experiencing the sensation of eating a raspberry. 

No amount of words ever add up to a direct experience. I can feel happy and say to myself, "I'm happy today," but those three words don't begin to capture my experience of happiness.

So let's put to rest any notion that mystical experiences are special in regards to their ineffability, their inability to be described to others in anything but an abstract manner. Again, this is the case with all personal experiences, without exception.

Further, I don't consider these sorts of experiences to be genuinely mystical:

Feeling at one with the universe; being awestruck at the wonder of existence; having a sense that all is right with the world; intuiting that death is not the end of the road, but a turn in a never-ending journey.

Lots of people have profound experiences that alter how they look upon life. Heck, probably most people do. We humans are meaning-making creatures. Finding meaning is a favorite thing to do.

Let's turn then to the question of what distinguishes a genuine from a spurious mystical experience. 

The way I see it, mysticism rests on this hypothesis: there's a realm of reality apart from this physical universe, or if you will, the physical cosmos -- since there could be much more to physical reality than our single universe, as unimaginably vast as it is.

Thus a genuine mystical experience would occur through contact with a realm of reality separate from the physical universe. 

If mysticism simply led to an experience of a different aspect of physical reality, this would mean little or no difference between mysticism and science.

For example, if it were possible for a human mind to have ESP, Extra Sensory Perception, this capacity wouldn't be mystical, since it would occur via the physical brain and operate in this physical world.

That discovery of ESP would be groundbreaking, really big news. However, it would add to the store of knowledge of how humans experience the physical world, not a non-physical "spiritual" realm.

So based on my own personal experience of pursuing a mystical approach to meditation for thirty-five years (an approach I now have discarded), I can confidently say that the goal of mysticism is to experience a new reality, a reality beyond the confines of physical existence.

The question then becomes, how is it possible to tell whether such a "spiritual" reality exists, and if it does, whether someone has experienced it?

Words such as "I saw and heard God" aren't enough, obviously. Even if those words are uttered sincerely, people can be mistaken about what they experience -- the familiar "mistaking a stick for a snake" analogy.

Further, psychotic people can see and hear God. People who have taken LSD or some other psychedelic can see and hear God. People who are deeply religious can see and hear God. 

This doesn't prove that God exists. It proves that people have experiences that lead then to believe God exists. 

Similarly, people have experiences of a realm of reality beyond the physical. This doesn't prove that such a realm exists. It proves that people have experiences that lead them to believe the realm exists.

Thus it seems to me that if a mystic claims to have found a new reality, that person needs to provide some solid proof of that discovery before it can be taken seriously. Otherwise, that person is just one more of countless humans who have claimed to experience a realm beyond this physical universe.

Excuses won't cut it. 

"Impossible to put into words." Again, all experiences are impossible to put into words. So not being able to describe a mystical experience doesn't make it genuine.

"Can't bring anything back from that reality." OK, I can't bring anything back from the dreams I have at night either. That doesn't make dreams anything more than my subjective experience.

"It's a matter of faith, not of proof." Fine, have as much faith as you want, tons of it. Just know that I have no faith in your faith as a guide to reality. Faith leads people widely astray when it comes to knowing what is real.

I'll end by saying that I'm absolutely fine with people trying to have mystical experiences. I've been there and done that -- for thirty-five years. 

I'm also absolutely fine with people talking about their mystical experiences. I've read countless (almost) books along this line, enjoying each one. 

Just know that talk is much different from proof.

In my first book about relating the new physics with ancient mysticism, I observed that the Nobel prize committee would laugh at someone who wrote to them saying something like:

"I've discovered the Theory of Everything that others have sought for but never found. I'm unable to provide proof of my discovery, so you'll just to believe me. Nobel Prize, please!"

Narratives and cognitive structures aren't "traps"

What never fails to amaze me is how religious believers and mystical enthusiasts will use the power of their human mind to criticize other people who use their human mind to criticize religion and mysticism.

The plain fact is that there's no way to communicate with other people except through mental capabilities such as language, reason, and such.

So unless someone wants to remain in their own private internal world -- and everyone who comments on this blog has indicated this isn't what they want to do -- narratives and cognitive structures are the only way to interact with others.

That doesn't have to be done through language, of course, though words are a powerful means of communication. Paint a picture. Dance. Perform music. 

There are lots of ways to communicate a narrative. But underlying all of them is a message to be shared, and someone else to share it with. Absent that, each of us lives in an isolated subjective realm.

Below is a comment on a recent post from "Appreciative Reader." I liked it so much, I felt it deserved to be featured in a blog post.

One of the points made by Appreciative Reader is what I restated ahove: if a person wants to communicate with others, it makes no sense for them to denigrate language, narratives, and cognitive structures.

After all, that denigration is occurring by means of -- no big surprise -- language, narratives, and cognitive structures. This is like someone standing on a sidewalk, yelling at passers-by, "No one should be standing on the sidewalk!"

Dude, you really should practice what you preach before you do your preaching. Here's the comment from Appreciative Reader.

Hello, Dungeness. Long time!

I’m afraid I’m hogging the comments section of this thread. But I’m going to permit myself one more longish comment, because I disagree in the strongest possible terms with your POV, and I would like to articulate my disagreement clearly, and invite you to see if you wouldn’t, in light of what I’m going to say, like to revise your view.

-------

Now at one level, obviously, I agree with um, and with you as well, as I’ve already said earlier on. If personally you don’t care to engage with narratives as far as some particular field, or even more generally, then that is, at one level, merely a question of your personal predilections, and as such your business and no one else’s. No question of “disagreement” with an essentially personal choice of that nature.

-------

But the part where you generalize that kind of approach, when it comes to mysticism? The part where you seem to see narratives and cognitive structures as “traps”? I’m sorry, that’s something I find entirely nonsensical. Here’s why.

The beauty of the scientific method is this, that it helps us navigate through, and discover more and more about, and make use of, reality as we find it. Irrespective of the nature of that reality.

What you’re resorting to is basically magical thinking. Faced with any and every thing, the closed-minded God-believer will say, “…because God!”, without thinking through what that means. What you are doing is the exact equivalent of that, except instead of “…because God!”, you’re using the more sophisticated but essentially similar “…because mysticism!”.

And you know what, even in a world of actual magic, that kind of magical thinking is …I’m sorry, nonsensical.

What is Rowling’s Hogwarts after all? It’s a system of understanding, and cataloging, and analyzing, and then channelizing the magical forces in a (fictional) magical world. No real magician (as in, real magician in a hypothetical or fictional world where magic reigns) would simply put up his hands and say “…because magic!” and leave it at that.

The real magician will find out how exactly the magic operates, essentially use the scientific method and empiricism on that magical world, much as we apply the scientific method to QM [quantum mechanics, I assume] for instance. Unless he is able to do that, he can never even become a magician.

So, I’d say your view, that narrative-building as far as mysticism—even granted, for the sake of argument, that mysticism is a thing (which after all in a larger context is by no means a given)—as something that is essentially beyond cognitive understanding, is …well, blinkered, not clearly thought through.

-------

Of course, in a mystical world, or in a magical world, or in our everyday mundane world, whether you personally engage with some particular narrative, or any narrative, that like I said is a whole different matter. That is your business and yours alone.

I can choose to live in this world without having formulated any detailed narrative, any detailed personal worldview, about the nature of QM, or for that matter even gravity, or the universe, and still manage to live a full enough life, as long as those aspects are not important to my everyday functioning.

But to see all narratives as “traps”, and to see mysticism, should mysticism be a thing (or for that magic, should magic exist) as something essentially beyond cognitive understanding, that kind of POV simply does not hold up to examination.

-------

I’m reminded here of the fable, parable, whatever, of someone-or-other finding a piece of truth on the way. And the Devil looks on at what’s happening, smiling. The Devil’s minions are super worried, and grovel their miserable way up to their horned scarlet master, asking him in wheedling tones why he’s not worried, because that piece of truth can take that man forever out of the Devil’s reach.

And the Devil smiles knowingly, and says, This has happened before, and this will happen again, and all that poor fool will do is go cataloging that piece of truth, and never actually leave my dominion.

I guess the message within that fable, parable, whatever, is what you’re channeling here, right? Well, okay, at a personal level that message does make some kind of sense. If I wish to live in this world, using things like computers and GPS and computers and whatnot, then, if I get caught up in compulsively understanding the mechanism of each and every thing I see and would use, then that bottomless rabbit hole would end up being what my entire life will devolve into.

I’ll never actually use those things, I’ll never find the time to live my life. Which is clearly dysfunctional, unless that kind of inquisitiveness is, A, somehow limited and focused, and B, somehow channelized, into a profession perhaps, such that I draw some kind of personal benefit from it.

To that extent, and also to the extent that it is, like I’d said earlier, a matter of one’s own predilections, this kind of attitude, of not wanting to get into cognitive structures and narratives, might work, at a personal level, as long as one doesn’t get too deep into whatever-it-is, and as long as one is …well, lucky enough to get by despite one’s ignorance. The channelizing of one’s energies away from cognitive understanding might then even be beneficial, at a personal level.

But to generalize that argument, as you are doing, and to think of cognitive structures and narratives as “traps” is, …I’m sorry, that makes no sense at all.

UPDATE: Here's a response from Dungeness.

Brian, since my name is invoked in your commentary, I hope you'll include my
response to this off-point screed about my remarks. I certainly didn't generalize
any attack on cognitive structures and narratives at all. Gosh, I didn't build up
or advance any "narrative" except that it's entirely dubious to opine that
an inner transcendent experience can be "proven" hallucinatory or bonafide
through cognitive means either by skeptic or believer.

Here's my full response:

@ But to generalize that argument, as you are doing, and to think of cognitive structures and narratives
@ as “traps” is, …I’m sorry, that makes no sense at all.

Wow, that's quite an indictment AR. I was responding to your targeted question
of whether a transcendent inner experience was a "hallucination or bona fide". I
only asserted that the cognitive trap was trying to make sense of a transcendent
experience in an attempt to validate it as "hallucination or bona fide". Language and
logic as we know them fall short in that Solomon-esque endeavor to validate an
transcendent experience. I only suggested a different lens and a mystic's discipline
were needed. Perhaps in lieu of "needed", "helpful" would be a more acceptably
non-denominational term.

I never "generalized" this to "cognitive structures and narratives". That's overreach.
By the way, I explicitly lauded scientific rigor and never suggested we abandon it
either. At a practical level, the clarity, heightened awareness, and health benefits
of a mindfulness discipline only enhance science and its path of discovery.

@ Faced with any and every thing, the closed-minded God-believer will say, “…because God!”, without
@ thinking through what that means. What you are doing the exact equivalent of that, except instead of
@ “…because God!”, you’re using the more sophisticated but essentially similar “…because mysticism!”.

To equate mysticism with magical thinking and close-mindedness is dismissive and
misses the mark also. Ironically, mysticism, in contrast to the blind faith of religion,
insists that you confirm premises experientially within via a disciplined practice of
mindfulness. Mysticism acts collaboratively and complementarily with science.
There's no place for magical thinking.

"We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive
where we started And know the place for the first time." --T.S. Eliot

QAnon is the religion of right-wing crazies

My wife and I have watched the first two episodes of HBO's "Q: Into the Storm" because we find QAnon both ridiculous and dangerous.

Ridiculous, because QAnon faithful believe in absolutely crazy stuff -- such as Hillary Clinton and other Democrats operating a pedophile ring out of the basement of a Washington D.C. pizza restaurant.

Dangerous, because so many followers of Trump in this country accept the QAnon insanity, including that mass arrests of Democrats will take place and the Orange One (Trump) will become president again.

I can't recommend the HBO series because it is much more boring than it should be, given its subject matter. 

As a review correctly points out, the makers of this documentary went overboard on filming the people involved in the web sites Q posts on in excruciating detail. Their disputes, eccentricities, and such are mildly interesting, but what gets lost are the larger questions.

Notably, how can so many people be so infatuated with the QAnon conspiracy theories that have no basis in fact?

I don't have an answer. All I can say is that the first two episodes show how closely related QAnon is to religiosity, a subject of a previous post, "QAnon and religion are both mass delusions." 

No one knows who Q is.

However, posts from Q appear on the Internet. Likewise, no one knows if God even exists, much less what the probably non-existent God is like -- since there is no real evidence of any communications from God.

Yet QAnon believers and religious devotees spend a huge amount of time conjuring up theories about their chosen faith.

Every detail of Q's posts is examined for hidden meanings, in much the same way religious writings and utterances of religious leaders considered to have a direct connection with God are studied by the faithful.

QAnon followers wrongly consider that they're part of a truth-seeking movement.

Even when predictions by Q fail to come to pass, his acolytes are spurred to dig deeper and find the reality hidden from everyone else -- you know, the people who accept facts and reason, a group I'm proud to belong to.

This bears a lot of resemblance to religious fantasies such as the Second Coming of Christ, the Christian version of QAnon's "storm." 

A new conspiracy theory called “The Storm” has taken the grimiest parts of the internet by, well, storm. Like Pizzagate, the Storm conspiracy features secret cabals, a child sex-trafficking ring led (in part) by the satanic Democratic Party, and of course, countless logical leaps and paranoid assumptions that fail to hold up under the slightest fact-based scrutiny. However, unlike Pizzagate, the Storm isn’t focused on a single block of shops in D.C., or John Podesta’s emails. It’s much, much bigger than that.

I'm bothered by the fact that so many otherwise normal people are so easily sucked into the fact-free whirlpool of QAnon. Sure, religions have been doing this sort of sucking for thousands of years, preying upon the gullibility of humans who enjoy a good story, even if it is made up.

QAnon, though, lacks the moral foundation that most religions have, which tends to limit how destructive they can be. So far as I can tell, QAnon has no ethical standards, no commitment to caring and compassion, no respect for open debate into the nature of reality.

QAnon, like the worst of the world's religions, only cares about spreading lies. Flee from it, if you're ever tempted to embrace some aspect of QAnon craziness.