Church of the Churchless

If God doesn't exist, what difference does this make?

If my wife didn't exist, that would make a huge difference in my life for the worse. Same goes if my daughter, her husband, and my granddaughter didn't exist. I'd feel the loss terribly.

But when it comes to God, so what? 

God has had absolutely zero influence on me during my 73 years of living. I've never had any sort of relationship with God. 

The only effect God has ever had on me came from my attitude toward God, my belief or lack thereof in God, my imaginings about God. 

So if God exists, or if God doesn't exist, that makes no difference to me. Or I'd say, to anyone else, for we all create God in our image, or non-image.

There's no evidence that God has ever had any effect on anybody. All we can say is that believing in God, or not believing in God, has effects on people.

This is much different from, say, gravity. Gravity, unlike God, clearly is real. I drop something and it falls to the floor. That's gravity at work.

If gravity didn't exist, that newfound lack would change life on Earth so dramatically, life wouldn't even be possible anymore.

With God, though, believers and unbelievers in God live their lives in the same way, because God has no evident causal influence on anything or anyone.

If you disagree, share in a comment exactly how you know God makes a difference in your life.

What would be different if God didn't exist? To atheists like me, that's a trick question, since we're virtually 100% certain that God is a fantasy, so God already doesn't exist in the lives of believers.

Again, only their belief in God exists, not God.

As noted in a recent blog post, Philip K. Dick said, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

When people stop believing in God, God goes away. This shows that God isn't real. By contrast, stop believing in gravity. You'll find that gravity is unaffected by belief.

Time for a summer blog post re-run

It's hot here in Oregon. Really hot. Hundred degree hot. Way hotter than normal. (Thank you for nothing, global warming.)

This evening my brain doesn't feel like composing a fresh blog post. Time to dig into my vast repository of Church of the Churchless posts, 3,225 over the past 18 years, and share a summer re-run.

I wrote this one in June 2005. It's one of my favorites. Of course, I probably shouldn't say that, since now the other 3,224 blog posts are going to feel bad. Oh, well, can't worry about that when it's this hot.

Did I see God in first class?

I may have seen God in first class. The first class section of an Alaska Airlines flight from San Francisco to Palm Springs, to be exact. Or, maybe I didn’t.

In the early ‘90s I was traveling from Portland to attend a “bhandara," or spiritual gathering, of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees in Palm Springs. After changing planes in San Francisco I found myself in a right side aisle seat in the coach row directly behind first class, idly watching other passengers board.

A middle-aged Indian gentleman caught my eye. Bearded, he was wearing a white turban and blue jeans. His first class seat was across the aisle and one row up from mine. Before sitting down he glanced around the rear of the plane and our eyes briefly met. Then he took his seat and I returned to perusing a magazine. Nothing special seemed to have happened.

But it had, to quite a few other people sitting near me. For they were Bay Area RSSB members who also were heading to Palm Springs for the bhandara where the satguru (true guru) was to speak. And that Indian gentleman sitting a few feet away from me was the satguru—Master Gurinder Singh.

I began to hear whispers. “That’s him.” “The master is sitting in first class.” “I don’t believe it.” I hadn’t recognized Gurinder Singh, even though I’d seen him before at a bhandara in Vancouver, B.C. Fervent RSSB devotees consider the satguru to be God in human form, much as Jesus is regarded by devout Christians.

The difference being, Jesus is dead and Gurinder Singh was sitting alive and well in an Alaska Airlines first class seat. Imagine that a Christian gets on a plane and sees Jesus seated a few rows ahead of him and you’ll have a pretty good idea of the atmosphere on the flight to Palm Springs—among the RSSB disciples, at least.

I got mildly caught up in the excitement. However, even back then, when I was much more involved—psychologically and otherwise—with RSSB than I am now, I didn’t consider that seeing the satguru was a big deal. And until I made the connection between “Indian man wearing a turban” and “Master Gurinder Singh,” seeing him wasn’t even a small deal.

For I didn’t feel a hint of anything special until the disciples around me started up the “It’s him!” whispering campaign. Wouldn’t you think that if a person truly is God in human form, such would be obvious? Not just to those who already believe in the person’s divinity, but to everyone—believer and unbeliever alike. Jesus, of course, suffered the same lack of recognition. If his purported godliness had been transparently apparent, impossible to deny, by the time he died Jesus would have had a lot more than a handful of followers.

Psychedelic researchers speak of the importance of set and setting in determining the nature of a LSD (or similar drug) experience. “Set” includes the personality of the individual; “setting” includes cultural views about what is real. If someone with a devotional frame of mind joins a group like RSSB that affirms the divinity of a guru, then this person may very well see God sitting in first class. I, on the other hand, just saw an Indian man.

My wife, Laurel, joined me in Palm Springs a few days later. She was more interested in shopping and sunshine than attending the bhandara, but I did talk her into going to two RSSB meetings. At one of them she got to sit in the front row, just a few feet away from the stage where Gurinder Singh spoke and answered questions—a highly favored spot to devotionally-minded disciples.

Afterwards Laurel said to me, “He just seemed like a regular person.” I couldn’t argue with her. I believed then, and still do, that Master Gurinder Singh is uncommonly intelligent, insightful, well-spoken, charismatic, and inspiring. But I had no reason then, nor any now, to assert that he is God in human form. I’ve stopped being concerned with the level of divinity someone else possesses, and now am almost exclusively focused on getting in touch with my own hypothesized higher self.

I understand the allure of what Hindus call bhakti marg, salvation through love and devotion. Though much more inclined to the spiritual path of jnana (knowledge through meditation), I’ve got my bhakti tendencies and have been known to shed a tear at the thought or sight of a guru. But that was then. I believe that I’m wiser now.

Wiser, because I’ve concluded that if I have to think or emote my way to reality, this isn’t a reality worth having. When I let loose of an object, gravity takes it to the ground regardless of whether I’m thinking “Gravity is great” or feeling “I love gravity so much!” Gravity, like all the other laws of nature, just does what it does—automatically.

If there is a spiritual dimension to reality, it makes sense to me that higher laws of the cosmos also will operate naturally and spontaneously. When my inner vision is clear, I’ll experience them without effort, just as I open my eyes in the morning and effortlessly see a world guided by physical laws.

As I quoted Philip K. Dick in the course of describing the Church of the Churchless symbol, “Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.” This probably is my favorite spiritual one-liner. In my opinion that single sentence, when properly understood, contains the entire essence of volumes of profound mystical literature that fills my bookcases.

If I have to believe in God in order to experience God, then that experience is of my own belief, not of God.

I’d be overjoyed to see God in human form. Heck, in any form. A formless form would be fine also. But I want this seeing to be unmistakable, crystal clear, impossible to be doubted. I don’t want to substitute imagination for the real thing.

Maybe I saw God in first class. Maybe. Maybe isn’t good enough. I want to be sure that God is more than, as the song goes, “just a slob like one of us.” Show me. Then I’ll believe, not before.

Selves only get in the way. That's why we are persons.

I'm sharing some final excepts from Jay Garfield's book, Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self, because I liked what he had to say near the end of his book so much.

What the world needs now is what the world has always needed: a recognition by people that we are interdependent, not independent. A belief in selves fosters a feeling of independence. A recognition that we are persons, not selves, fosters a feeling of interdependence.

Here's how Garfield puts it.

But there is a dark side to narrative as well. For one thing, as we saw in chapter 3, we are not the sole authors of the stories in which we participate, and some of these tales may be deeply destructive. For another, it is all too easy to take the characters in the narratives we coauthor to exist independently of the stories.

And just as we shouldn't ever think that Hamlet has any reality outside of the play, we shouldn't ever think that we as persons have any reality outside of the narratives in which we participate. 

In one sense, we are as fictional as Shakespeare's creations: we are constituted as characters through the telling of a story; we are absolutely real within the bounds of that story; we are created, not discovered; and we have no reality at all outside of the context of the stories in which we figure. 

This is why we are persons, and not selves. 

But we are real persons, and not imaginary persons. Therefore, in another sense, we are different from Hamlet and his cohort, and that difference is every bit as important as the similarity. Shakespeare's fiction is local, optional, and its roles need not be instantiated; the fiction in which we play our parts is global and mandatory.

...As we saw earlier, nobody believes that we just discover money; we create it. And we do so by interpreting various bits of paper, metal, and states of computing machinery as having monetary value. In virtue of that interpretation, those values become real.

Money, that is, gets its very existence as well as its value through our collective acts of interpretation, not through any preexisting reality on which we stumbled. It is fictional.

But this does not mean that there is no truth of the matter regarding whether a particular piece of paper is a dollar note, or what my bank balance is. There is fact within that fiction; the creation of the fiction, and its globality, mandatoriness, and use constitute its truth.

And the fact that in the United States we simply decided to drive on the right does not make it any less a fact that that is the correct side on which to drive; instead, that is what makes it a fact in the first place. That is, while the whole system is created, once created it in turn creates a context in which particular statements can be true or false in virtue of the interpretations already assigned to others.

That is how it is with us, when considered not as hominids, but as persons.

...For these reasons, there can be no "problem of other minds" any more than there can be a "problem of other dollars." To be a mind is not to house inner particulars that have their character independent of how we understand them, and that we somehow discover; it is to interpret and to be interpreted; to address and to be addressed; to participate in the complex human conversation, and to share a world with others like us.

So to know that others have minds is not to know that they have mysterious inner worlds, and to know that we have minds is to know that we are like others. We each know immediately that we are minds not through introspection, but through participation. We know that others are minds not through inference and not through clairvoyance, but through co-participation. 

To allow ourselves to be addressed by, or to address, another is to take her to be a person, to have a mind; it is at the same time to take ourselves to be persons.

This phenomenon of address requires neither reflexive self-consciousness, nor qualitative experience, nor interiority, nor autonomy, nor any of the other properties associated with selves. It only requires us to recognize each other as members of the same community, sharing the same world.

But what is it to recognize ourselves and others to be members of a community of persons? It is, we shall see, to see one another as valuable, as objects of care and respect. And the deepest reason to forego the myth of the self for the recognition of the reality of the person is that it is persons, not selves, that merit respect and care.

...We care about one another, take one another's desires and welfares seriously, respect one another's rights, and treat one another with consideration -- in short, we value one another -- to the degree that we embrace one another in a moral and social community.

That is, moral valuation depends on seeing one another as together in a shared world. 

This does not require that we agree about everything, or that our projects are the same. We can respect and honor those with whom we share little in the way of beliefs, values, or way of life. But this kind of moral respect and recognition does require that we see one another as potential fellows in a larger sense: as playing analogous roles in the human world, and so as potential addressees or addressors -- more simply, as conversation partners.

And conversation requires both a broadly shared background of concerns and presuppositions, and distinct vantage points or perspectives discernible against that shared background. As we have seen, it also presupposes that each party takes the other as one who can take seriously what the other says, and who has something to tell the other.

...When we recognize each other in this sense -- a kind of recognition absolutely fundamental to our collective lives -- we recognize our interdependence, not our independence; our roles and commitments, not our subjectivity; our participation in a shared world, not our spectatorship of a world of which we are independent. 

In short, this kind of moral and political recognition is the recognition of persons, not of selves. 

...This attitude of universal care is the foundation of genuine moral concern. When we adopt this attitude, we do not see ourselves and others as isolated, independent selves who happen to find one another in proximity in a featureless abstract landscape, and then have to figure out whether and how to relate to each other.

Instead, we see one another as persons who share a world pregnant with meaning -- meaning that we collectively create, and which in turn shapes our lives. In seeing one another in this way, we come to appreciate the way we co-constitute each other, and the ways in which we are responsive and responsible to one another.

Selves could never facilitate our moral or collective lives; they could only get in the way.

That is why Dogen writes that "To study the self is to forget the self; to forget the self is to cast off body and mind; to cast off body and mind is to be affirmed by all things." This affirmation is, and can only be, the affirmation of our shared personhood.

 

Morality comes from evolution, not God

There are lots of reasons to reject religion. Here at the Church of the Churchless we've been pointing them out since 2004, proudly deconverting people from blind faith and dogma one non-soul at a time.

One of those reasons is that contrary to what fundamentalists believe, morality, judging what is right and wrong, doesn't come from God or some other supernatural source. It's the result of evolution. 

Browsing through an old issue of Scientific American that I found languishing in a drawer of magazines, a special September 2018 issue about The Science of Being Human included an article by Michael Tomasello titled "How We Learned to Put Our Fate in One Another's Hands: The Origins of Morality."

Here's how the article was summarized in the In Brief section.

Seeds of human morality were planted some 400,000 years ago, when individuals began to collaborate in hunting-and-gathering exploits. Cooperative interaction cultivated respect and fairness for other group members. Later, growing population sizes cemented a sense of collective group identity that fostered a set of cultural practices and social norms. 

Here's a scan of an illustration in the article that shows how morality evolved. You also can download the PDF file.
Download Evolution of Modern Human Morality PDF

These excerpts from the article provide a good overview of it.

If evolution is about survival of the fittest, how did humans ever become moral creatures? If evolution is each individual maximizing their own fitness, how did humans come to feel that they really ought to help others and be fair to them?

There have traditionally been two answers to such questions. 

First, it makes sense for individuals to help their kin, with whom they share genes, a process known as inclusive fitness. Second, situations of reciprocity can arise in which I scratch your back and you scratch mine and we both benefit in the long run.

But morality is not just about being nice to kin in the manner that bees and ants cooperate in acts of inclusive fitness. And reciprocity is a risky proposition because at any point one individual can benefit and go home, leaving the other in the lurch.

Moreover, neither of these traditional explanations gets at what is arguably the essence of human morality -- the sense of obligation that human beings feel toward one another.

Recently a new approach to looking at the problem of morality has come to the fore.

The key insight is a recognition that individuals who live in a social group in which everyone depends on everyone else for their survival and well-being operate with a special kind of logic. In this logic of interdependence, as we may call it, if I depend on you, then it is in my interest to help ensure your well-being.

More generally, if we all depend on one another, then we must all take care of one another.

How did this situation come about? The answer has to do with the particular circumstances that forced humans into ever more cooperative ways of life, especially when they are acquiring food and other basic resources.

...Early humans needed new options. One alternative involved scavenging carcasses killed by other animals. But then, according to an account from anthropologist Mary C. Stiner of the University of Arizona, some early humans -- the best guess is Homo heidelbergensis some 400,000 years ago -- began obtaining most of their food through active collaboration in which individuals formed joint goals to work together in hunting and gathering.

Indeed, the collaboration became obligate (compulsory) in that it was essential to their survival. Individuals became interdependent with one another in immediate and urgent ways to obtain their daily sustenance.

An essential part of the process of obligate collaborative foraging involved partner choice. Individuals who were cognitively or otherwise incompetent at collaboration -- those incapable of forming joint goals or communicating effectively with others -- were not chosen as partners and so went without food.

Likewise, individuals who were socially or morally uncooperative in their interactions with others -- for example, those who tried to hog all the spoils -- were also shunned as partners and so doomed. The upshot: strong and active social selection emerged for competent and motivated individuals who cooperated well with others.

...In choosing a partner for a collaborative effort, early humans wanted to pick an individual who would live up to an expected role and divide the spoils fairly.

....Anyone who deviated from what was expected and wanted to stay in good cooperative standing would willingly engage in an act of self-condemnation -- internalized psychologically as a sense of guilt. A "we is greater than me" morality emerged. During a collaboration, the joint "we" operated beyond the selfish individual level to regulate the actions of the collaborative partners "I" and "you."

...In my 2016 book A Natural History of Human Morality, I proceed from the assumption that a major part of the explanation for human moral psychology comes from processes of evolution by means of natural selection.

More important, though, the selecting is done not by the physical environment but rather by the social environment. 

In contrast to evolutionary approaches that base their arguments on reciprocity and the managing of one's reputation in the community, I emphasize that early human individuals understood that moral norms made them both judger and judged.

The immediate concern for any individual was not just for what "they" think of me but rather for what "we," including "I," think of me. The essence of this account is thus a kind of "we is greater than me" psychological orientation, which gives moral notions their special powers of legitimacy in personal decision making.

The challenge in the contemporary world stems from an understanding that humans' biological adaptations for cooperation and morality are geared mainly  toward small group life or cultural groups that are internally homogeneous -- with out-groups not being part of the moral community.

Since the rise of agriculture some 10,000 years ago, human societies have consisted of individuals from diverse political, ethnic and religious lines.

As a consequence, it becomes less clear who constitutes a "we" and who is in the out-group. The resulting potential for divisiveness leads to both internal social tensions within a society and, at the level of nations, to outright war -- the ultimate example of in- and out-group conflicts. 

But if we are to solve our largest challenges as a species, which threaten all human societies alike, we had best be prepared to think of all humanity as a "we."

How minds change. It isn't by brute force.

Since I started this blog in 2004, I've been trying to change the minds of religious believers in the direction of being less dogmatic, judgmental, and rigid.

In this endeavor I've been guided mostly by my own experience and intuition. So when I saw a book review in the July 2 issue of New Scientist about "How Minds Change: The new science of belief, opinion, and persuasion" by David McRaney, I was interested to see what the book is all about.

After all, how many of us have changed our mind about something after someone started screaming in our face that we were wrong, they were right, and we needed to start thinking like them?

In my case, exactly never. So these passages from the review rang true to me.

McRaney spends time with former members of the Westboro Baptist Church in the US, described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as "arguably the most obnoxious and rabid hate group in America", learning how they came to disavow their vitriolic beliefs and become more beneficent to others.

The answer, he finds, isn't willing people to come around to your point of view, but letting them realise the folly of their ways.

...The concept -- that, with more knowledge, long-held hypotheses can be disproved -- isn't likely to be news to New Scientist readers. But it doesn't make McRaney's book any less interesting.

Indeed, his writing is a tonic for those who might scratch their head at how others could be so nonsensical as to distrust vaccines, believe the Earth is flat or subscribe to any other number of conspiracy theories.

It helps shift perceptions from the unhelpful attitude of "this person is stupid and beyond help" to "this person has a different frame of belief, and they can be encouraged to think more deeply about the issue."

Because that is the big discovery of those Californian campaigners and the neuroscientists behind them: simply shouting facts at disbelievers doesn't change their minds, rather it entrenches their belief -- as anyone who has tackled a tricky dinner table conversation will know.

Instead, to change minds, you have to not change minds at all. You have to let people come to their own conclusions -- though, of course, you can help them get there by posing the right questions.

Makes sense. 

When I got remarried in 1990, my second wife, Laurel, didn't share my belief at the time that the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) was God in Human Form. Though she made no attempt to dissuade me from belonging to this India-based religious organization, Laurel would ask good questions.

Such as, how can you be sure the guru is God in Human Form? I'd basically reiterate the RSSB teachings, which came down to an unconvincing "I have faith that this is true and by following the instructions I was given at initiation by the guru, hopefully one day I'll know for sure." 

If Laurel had been been confrontational, I would have become more defensive than I already was, hardening my religious conviction rather than softening it. 

Her questions, though, slowly seeped into my mind, along with other ways that gradually brought me to doubt that what I wanted to be true, actually was. So in the end I came to my own conclusion that I needed to distance myself from the organization that I'd been a devoted member of for 35 years.

That conclusion, though, was the result of all kinds of influences.

My meditation experiences. Books I'd read. Discussions with other RSSB members. Learning more about the guru. Giving talks on behalf of RSSB that required me to ponder which parts of the RSSB teachings seemed reasonable, and which were difficult to believe.

I think it's easier to help someone with changing their mind when you have a genuine relationship with them. This is why counseling can be effective at resolving a personal problem, while reading a book generally isn't. 

On this blog, as is the case with social media in general, most people only know each other as existing in cyberspace, not physical space. This makes it more difficult, though not impossible, to pose questions that will help the other person see things differently, and not be even more determined to look upon those things in the same way.

Appreciative Reader, a frequent commenter on this blog, is quite skilled at this. He's adept at questioning assumptions of other commenters without being excessively confrontational.

For example, recently someone claimed that consciousness has to exist after we die, because nothing existent can be destroyed. Sure, that's a tenet of matter/energy. It changes form, yet still exists. But Appreciative Reader pointed out the obvious.

Since consciousness almost certainly is a product of the brain, then when the brain and body die, changing form into the constituent atoms, consciousness, like life itself, no longer exists -- just atoms do, which become new entities. 

A few cogent questions and observations revealed the hollowness of a belief that consciousness is eternal. I'm not sure if any minds were changed, but they might have been.

Truth. A lovely word. I wish more people loved it.

These are tough times for truth. I speak as someone old enough (73) to remember the time when there was a general consensus about what was true. 

Here in the United States, the nightly news was widely watched. If you subscribed to TIME, Life, National Geographic, Saturday Review, and a daily newspaper, you'd be able to keep up on events in the world. 

It was relatively rare for there to be a widespread disagreement about facts. Sure, after John Kennedy was assassinated conspiracy theories about the "real killer" surfaced. But they didn't infect the minds of a large proportion of Americans.

Things are different now. 

With the rise of the internet, and the decline of mainstream media, people are able to fashion their own personalized take on reality. And almost certainly they'll be able to find a likeminded online community, no matter how outlandish the belief.

Moon landings were faked. Earth is flat. Alien abductions are happening. The Second Coming of Jesus is around the corner. Robert Kennedy Jr. is still alive.

The United States always has been a home for unconventional thinkers, rebels with or without a cause. However, nowadays it's possible for anyone to cobble together a view of reality that's far outside the mainstream without doing much thinking.

All they have to do is find the right web site, Facebook page, online discussion group, or whatever, and the craziest idea, totally unhinged from reality, can be found cloaked in pretensions of truth that can draw gullible individuals in like an alcoholic attracted to a liquor bottle.

Intoxicating. Yet decidedly unhealthy.

Tomorrow the January 6 committee is holding a primetime hearing where they'll detail Donald Trump's actions (more accurately, inactions) while the nation's capitol was being attacked by insurrectionists. I've watched every minute of each hearing so far.

They've been a marvelous lesson in how to go about telling the truth. Talk to people in the know. Crosscheck what they say, especially if there are contradictions. Seek tangible evidence. Weave known facts into a reason-based narrative.

Yet...

A disturbingly large percentage of Republicans continue to believe Trump's false claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen from him. And Trump hasn't stopped with his lie that those who invaded the Capitol were peaceful protesters, not violent insurrectionists.

Such is the power of untruth.

Truth can be uncomfortable. Truth can hurt. Truth can dismantle our most cherished beliefs. Truth can be difficult to discern. So many people prefer to cling to falsehoods. Rather than modify their understanding of reality to match the facts, they use fake facts to manufacture a made-to-order reality.

We all do this to some extent. Sometimes the cold truth of reality is too difficult to endure without putting a warm blanket of fantasy around ourselves. This can be fine. Fiction is a marvelous form of literature. It also can be an effective way of helping us get through tough times.

So long as we realize what we're doing. Research shows that a placebo can make us feel better even if a doctor tells us, "This is just a sugar pill." 

That's how I've come to view religion, mysticism, and supernatural forms of spirituality. They're sugar pills, almost certainly lacking any truly effective ingredients. But they can make us feel good. And in a world where so many people feel bad, finding a way to feel better is difficult for me to argue against.

I just don't like it when feeling good is equated with truth. Know the difference.

Like I said, sometimes truth can hurt. If you're a truth seeker, you're going to feel pain at times. But it can be a sweet sort of pain, because even when truth hurts, there's satisfaction in knowing that we're in touch with something real.

Dibloggenes explains the universe in a mere 1,070 words

Here's the second comment from Dibloggenes that I've elevated to the profound status of a Church of the Churchless blog post. (I can hear the typing of Dibloggenes as he redoes his resume to include this newfound honor; the first elevated blog post is here.)

I admire any and all attempts to explain the universe, especially when they clock in at a sparse 1,070 words. The Bible, Newton's Principia, and Darwin's Origin of Species are all much longer. And, without the occasional bursts of humor that make Dibloggenes' treatise more sparkly than it would otherwise be.

One reason I like what follows is that it mentions the One so often. If your interest in the One is stimulated by Dibloggenes, clearly your best move is to buy my book, "Return to the One: Plotinus's Guide to God-Realization." I can't guarantee that the One will be pleased with this, but I sure will be.

Enjoy...

And now, as previously threatened: The Universe Explained for Dummies. These are my own conclusions to date, subject to revision at any time. They have been abbreviated to allow the reader less of a commitment to follow along. I have placed these under four topic headings to make it easier to dismiss large chunks of my thinking at one fell swoop.

THE FUNDAMENTAL PROBLEM
1) In a universe that requires material (or attenuated material) bodies to manifest the limitless creative urge of the One, by necessity this involves conflict, i.e., the introduction of the no longer unitary awareness. This is a concomitant of the polarities we see everywhere, and that have been philosophized about for 3000 years, give or take.

2) We are steeped in the appearance of “individuation.” This is prior to individuality, which is a showing forth of those tendencies we associate with personality. Individuation is simply the atomizing of everyone and everything into constituent parts. Our senses report at a level in normal consciousness that what we perceive is real, but actually it is an abstraction. If we could see at the energetic level ( more than a few claim this ability) we would understand foreground and background, player and play are really all just one.

3) Human beings have truly made God in man’s own image. Believers are so wedded to the idea of a personal God that they are horrified at the suggestion this may not be true. Test it yourself: you’ll find folks are more gracious to quiet atheism than they are to a quiet belief in an impersonal deity. And what is that, but no more than the One, the unitary consciousness, that which precedes any individuation at any level, conceivable or not.

FROM THAT FLOWS
A personal God is a god...

1) Who is free to pick winners and losers; 2) to have chosen people and nations as His main squeeze; 3) to appeal to as if He were deaf and dumb to our needs; 4) who will remain forever an enigma to us as the problem of the origin of evil is one that monotheism never has been able to satisfactorily scrape from the bottom of its shoe.

Instead, think Universal/Unchangeable/Immutable Law. This Law subsumes all lesser laws, known and unknown, on all levels of manifested existence. Magic is the conscious or unconscious understanding and application of the Law, either in white (selfless) or black (selfish) flavors. The vast majority of humankind practice gray magic throughout their life, alternating between white and black as their lower faculties buffet them.

The One IS the Law; the One is A collective dynamic, for lack of a better term, that is inexorable in its workings. All justice, all mercy, all vengeance, all indifference are contained within it in exquisite balance. Appealing to It is pointless, as it already has done the math and set in motion the sequence of events most conducive to the ends of the One. When miracles happen after prayers are made, it is because the faithful harnessed the Law, albeit without their knowing it.

WHAT IS THE PURPOSE OF EARTH LIFE?
Assuming there IS a purpose, I propose it is the conscious re-integration of the faux individual personality into a unfettered experience of unity with the One, an oceanic immersion that overwhelms our sense of isolated individuality. Sound familiar? Sure it does; it’s been preached by esoteric schools and natural mystics for thousands of years. It also dovetails nicely with the idea if we are looking for the anchor that keeps us in the world’s harbor, look to individuation. Examine it, turn it to and fro and really understand what it is...and what it is not.

Our individuality, from life to life, seems to be as substantial as leaves, twigs and grass that are swirled together in a stream by the various eddies and vortexes. This flotsam comes together due to obeying certain laws of fluid dynamics, but there is no substantial reality to this observed instance. It may drift downstream, or break up before our eyes.

Was it real? Yes. What was the purpose? None we may discern. What happened to the wreckage when it dissolved? Went their separate ways, perhaps to reunite, perhaps never to be in contact again. Why would we care if “we” don’t continue since the vast majority of humanity have no recollection of anything more than early childhood. The cases of seeming recall of a previous life is more interesting as it brings into focus the question, “What is doing the remembering here?”

TORA! TORA! TORA! DERA! DERA! DERA!
How do the above conclusions pertain to the value of participating in Sant Mat, and RSS Beas flavor? I believe the Audible Lifestream is an authentic account of how humans may experience a direct connection with the Law, that foundation and organizing principle of all creation.

For anyone who cares to spend the time assaying the world’s esoteric literature and reports of mystics, it appears to me to be a foregone conclusion that concept is a more or less accurate representation of a phenomenon foreign to all but a relative few.

However, for those few, I do not doubt the authenticity of that experience. In fact, how we choose to engage with this Word—when once we are made aware of it—is the crux of the question of participation in the most important activity we will ever undertake in this life.

Do we need a guru to connect us to it? Some gurus say yes, some gurus say no. What is the appropriate response if we believe our Contact may not be of the caliber we assumed was required? The truth is, each one of us by necessity must own our beliefs. Who calls us, who is worthy, what sect or branch do we trust, why am I feeling shaky on this path?

We can’t escape the need to erect a superstructure of beliefs, whether they originate within ourselves, are influenced by the thinking of others, or blindly follow someone who claims insights that we don’t possess. Those who claim no religious beliefs have expressed their own beliefs. This is an unavoidable and inevitable outcome. The question is, what will be our response to it?

If you’ve read this far, please use the code VISINE 2022 upon checkout to help with the eyestrain you are probably experiencing. Have a great Sunday!

I'm re-reading the book I wrote about Plotinus with a fresh eye

Recently I started re-reading the book I wrote about Plotinus' teachings, Return to the One, because someone had told me they'd ordered it, and I wanted to see if I still agreed with what I said about this Neoplatonist Greek mystic philosopher.

After all, I hadn't taken a look at the book for several years. It brings in a modest amount of Amazon royalties each month, but when I'm occasionally asked about the book, my typical response is along the line of "I still agree with much of it, but my views have changed quite a bit since I wrote it."

So the game I've been playing with myself these past few days is to find what still resonates with me in Return to the One. 

One rule of that game is this: taking the advice I offered to readers in the "Preliminaries" section of the book, I'm trying to take a Big Picture view of Plotinus and what I wrote about his teachings, rather than a literal view where every word means just what it says and nothing more.

Be more concerned with grasping the broad outlines of Plotinus's philosophy than the specifics. It is better to comprehend the treatises in the Enneads as a whole, in an almost intuitive fashion, than to try to assemble a logical understanding bit by bit.

Having finished re-reading that Preliminaries section, I was struck by some passages relating to the self, a subject I'm fascinated by, because I'm convinced that neither I nor anyone else has an enduring self or soul, in line with Buddhism and modern neuroscience.

Plotinus said this, according to his student Porphyry, quoting from my book.

In like fashion, we're told that Plotinus refused a request made by one of his students to have a portrait made of him, explaining: "Isn't it enough that I have to bear this image with which Nature has covered us? Must I also consent to leaving behind me an image of that image -- this one even longer-lasting -- as if it were an image of something worth seeing?"

Thus Plotinus viewed his genuine being as something other than his physical form. This wasn't a self, though. Here's how I put it.

The primary goal of the mystic philosopher, as Plotinus teaches in the Enneads, is to bring the movable center of his or her consciousness into alignment with the unmoving center of existence, the One. A person's illusory and shifting sense of individuality thus must be distinguished from a true sense of self. If one traces his or her I-ness back to its source, as one would trace a line (or radius) back to the center of the circle from which it emanates, then the core of one's self will be found to be identical with the core of everything.

That's a nondual sort of philosophy, which makes sense, since Plotinus viewed the One as the essence of existence. 

But it struck me that since Plotinus was writing in a pre-scientific age (the 3rd century), he had no idea of how the brain functioned. So in reclaiming Plotinus' teachings for our modern age, I took a look at what I said about the self in the initial part of Return to the One, viewing those statements as a neuroscientist or secular Buddhist might.

Here's the passages I came across.

Thus something can exist, yet barely be. And this, of course, includes one's own self.

Our goal is to be one, not many. In reality, for each of us there is only one being thinking thoughts and acting our actions. So whenever someone thinks one way and acts another a division is created that is at odds with the true nature of both the self and the cosmos. Truth is One, not multiple.

Whatever I am, I am not an object that I can look upon, separate from the consciousness doing the looking.

In the Enneads, Plotinus points us toward the only way of unmasking the deepest mysteries of life: become the mystery you wish to unmask and be nothing else. If you want to know what the essence of life is, simply be alive. If you want to know what the essence of consciousness is, simply be conscious. If you want to know what the essence of the One is, simply be the One.

Sam Harris, echoing Buddhist teachings that he is intimately familiar with, likes to say in the guided meditations on his Waking Up app, things such as:

Look at something. Be aware of that perception. Then briefly look for an entity that is doing the looking which is separate from the perception. In the moment where you don't find such an entity, that not-finding is what you're looking for.

Which sure sounds similar to the nondual Oneness at the core of Plotinus' teachings. Anyway, I'm going to continue re-reading my book, looking for more connections to my current atheist frame of mind in Return to the One.

Behold the early universe as revealed by the Webb Space Telescope

Science rocks! The Hubble Space Telescope was a scientific marvel. Now it has been surpassed by the James Webb Space Telescope, whose first images were released by NASA a few days ago. 

Check out the images on the NASA web site. My favorite is this one. Not because it is the most beautiful or most dramatic. I love it because it reveals how the universe appeared less than a billion years after the big bang set things in motion about 13.8 billion years ago.

This is part of how NASA described the image.

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope has delivered the deepest and sharpest infrared image of the distant universe so far. Webb’s First Deep Field is galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, and it is teeming with thousands of galaxies – including the faintest objects ever observed in the infrared.

Webb’s image is approximately the size of a grain of sand held at arm’s length, a tiny sliver of the vast universe. The combined mass of this galaxy cluster acts as a gravitational lens, magnifying more distant galaxies, including some seen when the universe was less than a billion years old.

This deep field, taken by Webb’s Near-Infrared Camera (NIRCam), is a composite made from images at different wavelengths, totaling 12.5 hours – achieving depths at infrared wavelengths beyond the Hubble Space Telescope’s deepest fields, which took weeks. And this is only the beginning. Researchers will continue to use Webb to take longer exposures, revealing more of our vast universe.

This image shows the galaxy cluster SMACS 0723 as it appeared 4.6 billion years ago, with many more galaxies in front of and behind the cluster. Much more about this cluster will be revealed as researchers begin digging into Webb’s data. This field was also imaged by Webb’s Mid-Infrared Instrument (MIRI), which observes mid-infrared light.

Webb’s NIRCam has brought distant galaxies into sharp focus – they have tiny, faint structures that have never been seen before, including star clusters and diffuse features.

Light from these galaxies took billions of years to reach us. We are looking back in time to within a billion years after the big bang when viewing the youngest galaxies in this field. The light was stretched by the expansion of the universe to infrared wavelengths that Webb was designed to observe. Researchers will soon begin to learn more about the galaxies’ masses, ages, histories, and compositions.

Other features include the prominent arcs in this field. The powerful gravitational field of a galaxy cluster can bend the light rays from more distant galaxies behind it, just as a magnifying glass bends and warps images. Stars are also captured with prominent diffraction spikes, as they appear brighter at shorter wavelengths.

Since nothing can travel faster than the speed of light, looking out into space is looking back into time. We don't see the sun as it is now, but as it was about eight minutes ago. 

The Webb Space Telescope is a much vaster time machine, revealing the early universe as it was about thirteen billion years ago. Mind-boggling. And scientists say that much more is to come, since the Webb Space Telescope has a long life span ahead of it. 

Vox has a story that describes the image in somewhat more flowery language than that used by NASA. 

What makes this image so mind-blowing is how small it is, and how large it is, at the same time.

It’s small in the sense that this image represents only a teensy tiny portion of the night sky. Imagine you are holding out a grain of sand at arm’s length. The area of sky that grain covers — that’s the size of the area captured in the above image.

But it’s huge in the sense that nearly every object in this image is a galaxy (besides the bright spiky starbursts, which are stars in the foreground). Think about that: In every pinprick of sky, there are thousands and thousands of galaxies, at least.

And while it appears to us as a flat image, this image reveals the depths of the universe, and is a window through time. The very faintest, smallest blips of light in this photos are images of galaxies as they existed more than 13 billion years ago, near the very beginning of time(that light has been traveling through space ever since). And not only can Webb capture images of galaxies this old; the space telescope can make measurements about what elements those early galaxies are composed of.

An image like this is akin to a core sample of a sedimentary rock. It shows the evolution of the universe over time in its many layers.

And it represents a huge improvement over the capabilities of the Hubble Space Telescope, which, until the launch of the Webb, was the largest observatory in space. Hubble’s mirror is an impressive 7.8 feet in diameter. Webb’s beautiful, gold-hued mirrors combine for a diameter of 21.3 feet. Overall, that amounts to more than six times the light-collecting area, and when it comes to telescopes, more light collecting equals more detail.

This image fills me with way more awe than any religious scripture could. Science tells us about reality. Religions tell us about fantasy. I like my awe to be fact-based, which is why I adore science so much.

An entertaining message about RSSB from Dibloggenes

I love to get emails from people who are having doubts about the religious organization I belonged to for 35 years, Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). When a message is written in an entertaining fashion, I doubly love that email.

Here's what someone who wants to be known as Dibloggenes had to say to me, along with my response.

For those who aren't familiar with some terms in the message, Gurinder Singh Dhillon is the current RSSB guru who has been in a lot of controversy. Tara was a frequent commenter on this blog some years back who was a well-informed and eloquent critic of RSSB and Dhillon. Kal is how RSSB refers to the Devil, or Negative Power. Charan Singh appointed Dhillon to be the successor guru before Charan died.

Hello, Brian:

As these things are wont to do, I came across your Church of the Churchless blog re Gurinder Singh Dhillon one day after I decided to try reconnecting with satsang after 20+ years of non-involvement. Does the Lord loveth a cheerful heart or what?

 

I think if I had read material like this when I was still participating it would have been shattering, but at this stage, I am 100% on-board with the Theosophists: "There is no religion higher than Truth."

 

I am fine with discovering my inclination to return either was 1) a blinding flash of spiritual illumination that you, Tara and Kal are trying hard to derail, or, 2) a wholly unproductive idea that confirms the value of my long-ago separation from the fold.

 

A couple of questions, if you would indulge me:

• • Is there a page that covers your journey away from RSSB?
  • What are your thoughts now, if any change from the blog posts I saw of a couple of years ago?
  • Do you think it is worthwhile for others to still post and respond on your blog re these topics or do you feel everything has been said that is germane, and one either stays or bails?

I immersed myself in all the back and forth chatter that your blog offered and I will say, at this point, my default position is this is not a case of the guru picking his nose/huddling in a hut with a nubile young woman/asking a disciple to eat a corpse, all to dissuade the unworthy lukewarm.

 

My draft opinion is that, as those in this lineage predicted, RSS Beas has become a religious institution, heir to all the foibles that entails, and that it no longer should be looked to for spiritual guidance or comfort.

 

Not to excavate everything now, but the most troubling thing to me that a rogue guru calls into question is an almost infinite regression of perfect saints and their judgement/insight.

 

If Gurinder is not kosher, so to speak, that means Charan didn't have insight re a worthy successor, and if that's the case, you just keep running back in the hall of mirrors for the whole line. If you're going to claim an uninterrupted line of perfect gurus, you can't have this kind of seeming corruption of the teachings in the leader. Who's guarding the gurus?

 

My thinking is now to continue as I have in the intervening decades and simply chart my own course, reflect on the words of the best who have come before, and avoid the third-party risk that trusting someone who claims spiritual intermediation brings along with the promises made.

 

A sincere thanks for posting your thoughts on this, at least to me, important topic...and also to Tara, in absentia. Like Jamie Dimon, you're doing God's work : ))

 

Well, I really like the idea that I'm doing God's work by promoting an atheist point of view on this blog, since that would show what I've always suspected -- that God doesn't believe in herself. 

 

But after consulting another form of divinity, the Great God Google, it appears to me that I shouldn't be compared to Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JP Morgan, but to Lloyd Blankfein, the CEO of Goldman Sachs.

 

LONDON (Reuters) - The chief executive of Goldman Sachs, which has attracted widespread media attention over the size of its staff bonuses, believes banks serve a social purpose and are doing “God’s work.”

Regarding the questions I was asked by Dibloggenes, this was my response.

 

I’ve written a lot about my journey away from RSSB. One attempt is here, which includes some links to previous attempts:

 

https://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2019/03/my-definitive-answer-to-why-i-left-radha-soami-satsang-beas.html

 

My attitude toward RSSB hasn’t changed in the past few years. I give RSSB little thought, writing about it mostly only when someone else brings it up, or there’s some news in the Indian press about Gurinder’s financial and other troubles. 

 

As I sometimes observe, if I was a lapsed Mormon, I’d be writing about what I didn’t like about the Mormon Church. Since I spent 35 years as an active RSSB member, I use RSSB as an example of what can go wrong with religion.

 

Good question, whether everything has been said on my blog that is germane. Probably. But since I’m addicted to blogging, and I enjoy sharing my thoughts about philosophy, science, neuroscience, and all that, I keep on with this blog, which I started in 2004 — about a thousand years in blog years.

 

The cast of characters keeps changing, meaning the frequent commenters. Strangely, or maybe not, many of those commenters are fervent RSSB devotees. I’ve stopped trying to understand why.

Back to basics: our faithless faith and commenting policies

It never hurts to return to the basics. So in this easy-to-write post I'm going to copy in one of the first posts I wrote after I started this blog in 2004, "Our Creedless Creed," plus this blog's commenting policies.

Regarding the latter, note that comments are supposed to stick to the subject matter of a post. I'm flexible about this, but today two commenters (UM and Nimfa) engaged in an almost entirely irrelevant series of eleven chat comments on a post about the RSSB guru's authoritarianism. 

That's unacceptable.

As you can read in the commenting policies, off-topic comment conversations should go in an Open Thread, which I call "free speech for comments." When people read a blog post, a newspaper story, or such, then click on the comments, they expect to find comments about the subject that's been written about.

Hijacking comments for purely personal purposes is a form of spam. Again, I'm fine with an occasional off-topic comment, and admit that I haven't been consistent in enforcing this rule, but don't be surprised if your comment is deleted if it doesn't pertain to the topic of a blog post.

Here's Our Creedless Creed. It's in the category of  "Basics of our faithless faith." I'm impressed that after 18 years of blogging, during which I've become steadily more atheistic, there's nothing that I would change in the creedless creed other than the last item. Currently I don't think it is likely that death provides any final answers. 

If you think that any of these statements are inaccurate, make your case in a comment on this post. That will be totally on-topic! I'll add numbers to the items to make it easier to comment on them.

UPDATE: I decided to add "any possible" before "immaterial reality" to make clear that currently there is no evidence of an immaterial reality separate from our universe. And I added "may" in the final item of the creed to make clear that if consciousness ends with death, as is very likely, getting any answer after death is low probability but still possible.

Our Creedless Creed

Note: to make this Creed more readable, some qualifiers have been omitted. So "God" signifies God/ultimate reality/final truth, not just a personal divinity. And "religion" signifies religion/spiritual path/philosophy, not just a mainstream theology.

(1) There is no objective proof that any religion knows the truth about God. If there were such proof, most people on Earth would have converted to that faith long ago and all scientists would be believers.

(2) Spirituality thus is an individual affair. Proof of any metaphysical realities that exist will be subjective, not demonstrable to others.

(3) Every person has the right to pursue their own spiritual quest without interference, so long as he or she doesn't interfere with the rights of others.

(4) Since the veracity of each and every religion is unprovable, equally unprovable are the moral and ethical tenets derived from any and all religious teachings.

(5) Thus morality also is an individual affair. There are no absolute laws of right and wrong as there are absolute laws of physics. Subjectivity rules in ethics.

(6) Individual ethical decisions may be formed into a collective codification of societal norms, or laws. These are purely human, not divine.

(7) Science is the surest means of finding truth. Theory, experiment, analysis of data: such are the tools of science, whether directed toward knowing material or any possible immaterial reality.

(8) Religious teachings are hypotheses to be confirmed through individual research. As such, they must not be taken as gospel truth by adherents of a particular faith.

(9) Religious doubters, skeptics, and heretics should be honored for their efforts to assure that unproven assertions about God are not put forward as solid truth.

(10) Every adherent of a particular religion should say to himself or herself, "I could be wrong." If he or she won't do this, other people can say it for them: "You could be wrong."

(11) This creedless creed of the Church of the Churchless also could be wrong. It needs to be reexamined and revised regularly.

(12) Death may provide the final answers (if only momentarily). The spiritual quest is to get answers ahead of time. But the big question is, "What are the questions?"

And here's this blog's commenting policies.

You're welcome -- even more, encouraged -- to leave comments on Church of the Churchless posts. Some of the most interesting writing on this blog comes from other people, not me, Brian the Blogger.

All I ask is that comments be in accord with the following policies. Otherwise a comment probably will be deleted or edited.

(1) No personal attacks on me or other commenters. Challenge the message, not the messenger. Best: You're wrong, because... Semi-OK: You're a fool, because... Not-OK: You're a fool.

(2) No extreme obscenity. Write as if you were in a congenial coffeehouse discussion group, not a high school locker room after your team lost the game in the final seconds. Mild swear words are fine. But goddamn it, don't go over the top.

(3) No rants about the uselessness of this blog. If you're a religious believer, I can understand why this blog could make you angry. Solution: don't read it. If you need to vent, leave a comment on my "I Hate Church of the Churchless" anti-site, not here.

(4) No commercial or religious spam. Advertising, in a comment or a URL, obviously isn't acceptable. Neither are lengthy quotations from a religious scripture, or preachiness. See #5 below.

(5) No irrelevant comments. Please stick to the subject matter of a post in your comment. If you want to talk about something else, leave your comment in an Open Thread, email me with a blog post suggestion, or use the Google search box in the right sidebar to find a previous post on this blog concerning your "something else." (Note: Open Thread comments also should adhere to the policies above.)

(6) No trolling. On the Internet a "troll" is someone who tries to disrupt normal discussions through various annoying behaviors. Here's some ways to recognize a troll. Best response to them: no response. Their sad lives thrive on attention, so ignore them.

(7) No false "facts" about critical issues. As the saying goes, everyone is entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. This applies to this blog, especially about COVID-19 and other critical issues. Blatantly false comments won't be published if they're about life and death or other critical topics such as global warming.

Lastly, one of my pet peeves is how uncourteously many people behave on the Internet. "Flame wars" aren't productive, so try to keep your cool if you disagree with what somebody has said.

I agree with Wikipedia's take on Flaming: 

An Internet user typically generates a flame response to other posts or users posting on a site, and such a response is usually not constructive, does not clarify a discussion, and does not persuade others. Sometimes, flamers attempt to assert their authority, or establish a position of superiority over other users. Other times, a flamer is simply an individual who believes he or she carries the only valid opinion. This leads him or her to personally attack those who disagree. In some cases, flamers wish to upset and offend other members of the forum, in which case they can be called "trolls".

Examples of RSSB guru's authoritarianism

Since there's currently some comment discussion about whether the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is an authoritarian who believes he can do whatever he wants, being considered God in Human Form by devotees, here's links to some blog posts I've written about questionable activities during the reign of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current RSSB guru. There's more posts, but this is a good sample.

(I keep adding to the list as I think of additional blog posts I've written over the years that pertain to this subject.)

Malvinder's criminal complaint casts light on RSSB guru's role in financial fraud
Devastating criticism of Gurinder Singh Dhillon by a RSSB insider
Delhi Police financial fraud charges point to RSSB guru's involvement
Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru, accused of making death threats
Sheetal Talwar talks about death threat made from RSSB satsang office
Sheena's "Memoirs of a Seeker" throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon
Bloomberg story shows Gurinder Singh Dhillon's shady business dealings
RSSB guru appears to have lied about his financial problems
Shocking tale of a punch in the face at a RSSB meeting
RSSB guru and his family ordered to repay up to $842 million
RSSB fined $484,000 after Haynes Park death
Gurinder Singh Dhillon ignores sexual abuse of a child

Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the RSSB guru

Two big ideas about the cosmos and the self

As I frequently say here on the Church of the Churchless, and will undoubtedly be saying again and again, religions are notable for basically being stuck in the Dark Ages, with fresh theologies being very rare, while science and reason continually make strides in casting more light upon the unknown.

Recently I've been blogging about a couple of books that I've finished reading, and want to get off my active-reading bookshelf to make room for new titles.

So here's what probably are my final observations about Life is Simple: How Occam's Razor Set Science Free and Shapes the Universe and Losing Ourselves: Learning to Live Without a Self.

Well, now that I think about it, there could be more for me to say about the latter book. But that remains to be seen. Anyway, here's a Big Idea from each of the books that I found to be both fascinating and a decent chance of being correct. 

In Life is Simple, Johnjoe McFadden discusses how the universe came to be. This is the "Big Idea" approach of physicist Lee Smolin. I'm going to leave out quite a few details, focusing just on the natural selection aspect.

He proposes that our universe is the product of a cosmological evolutionary process, roughly analogous to natural selection, which he calls cosmological natural selection (CNS).

Currently, the most accepted scenario for the universe's origin starts with a random quantum fluctuation. Most likely this tiny universe was not interesting as the randomly selected values of its fundamental constants were incompatible with even the existence of matter.

As quickly as it popped into existence, the positive and negative energy of this matter-infeasible universe wold have recombined to vanish into nothingness. Yet further quantum fluctuations would have continued to generate universes out of the cosmological nothingness until, after maybe many trillions of searches through parameter space, a universe was born with values that promoted the formation of matter, stars, planets and, at least a few, black holes. 

The formation of black holes is, in Smolin's scenario, the cosmological equivalent of the origin of life: it made universes self-replicative. The early primordial universes would probably have generated few black holes and thereby produced only a handful of descendants. 

However, so long as that handful was greater than one, then the number of universes would increase.

...However, all universes would not be created equal. Some would be more fecund than others. Those that inherited parameter values that led to the greatest concentration of matter inside stars that collapsed into black holes would leave many descendants. Conversely, any universe that failed to produce stars or black holes would eventually blink out of existence to become extinct.

...Just as natural selection guided the evolution of life towards improbable creatures like dinosaurs, elephants or humans, so that same process, cosmological natural selection, fine-tuned the fundamental constants of physics towards the highly improbable values needed to make stars, planets, black holes, and us.

...Smolin's theory, with or without its Occamist tweak [which I haven't mentioned], has one final and startling implication. It suggests that the fundamental law of the universe is not quantum mechanics, or general relativity or even the laws of mathematics. 

It is the law of natural selection discovered by Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. As the philosopher Daniel Dennett insisted, it is 'The single best idea that anyone has ever had.' It may also be the simplest idea that any universe has ever had.

Jay Garfield's "Big Idea" in Losing Ourselves is related to the seeming fact that our self actually isn't an internal subjective fact, but an interdependent construction involving us and the world. Here's how he ends his book. I'll keep this fairly brief, since likely I'll be writing another blog post about Losing Ourselves. 

We are not isolated individuals who happen to choose to live together; we are social animals who only become the individuals we do in social contexts that scaffold our flourishing. We can only make sense of our lives and see them as meaningful when we understand our personhood and when we give up the fantasy of independence encoded in the idea of a self.

When people hear about the idea of selflessness, they often find it disturbing. They think that this is the nihilistic idea that we don't really exist. But that only makes sense if you think that to exist is to be a self. Once we see that the self is illusory, we see that that can't be right.

The fact that a dollar is not a piece of paper does not mean that dollars don't exist, and the fact that we are not selves doesn't mean that we do not exist. 

Instead, for beings like us, to exist is to be a person -- a socially constituted being embedded in a rich and meaningful world -- just as for things like dollars, to exist is to be a unit of currency embedded in an economic system. 

To deny that we are persons would be to deny that we exist. So, the self illusion, although it seems to confer a greater reality on us than would mere conventional personhood, in fact undermines the very reality that makes us who we are.

To accept that you have no self is not to reject your identity; it is to reclaim your humanity. 

A compassionate perspective on Sant Mat and the spiritual pursuit

Here's a guest blog post from someone who writes well, thinks clearly, and has an interesting perspective on the spiritual pursuit. Kinder and gentler than my own attitude toward cults and religions. I added a couple of links to the person's post.

Dear Brian,

I was searching the internet for Sant Mat history and I found your blog.

As I was reading it, back and forth, there have been quite a few entries of people over the years, I felt glad that I found some answers that clarified my own thinking.

So then I wanted to , you know, say something too (^__^)

But I couldn’t post my ramblings directly from the comment section of the blog, so I registered with Typepad and tried to sign in, but that didn’t work either, so now I am sending my waffle to you directly.

Maybe you could be so kind and post it on my behalf. If not, no worries.

All I can do is say, Brian, nice of you to be so engaged with the world, I am glad you are lighting up the world you live in and are making a difference. You and me live far apart from one another, another world, another life, another reality and here and now we are. How wonderful. Thank you!

Love and Light. [name not shared at person's request]

Here is what I was going to post:
-------------------------------------------------
Ramblings:

I am from the the SOS [Science of Spirituality] branch, I knew nothing of the other branches of Sant Mat, indeed was unaware of this there is so much more to Sant Mat, it was a good eye opener to get some history on this here blog.

I’ve never really bought into the whole thing but grew up with it. I am doing my own thing though. I am just me. My conclusion after reading many people’s thoughts on this topic for me are:

At least Sant Mat is promoting a peaceful mind. Joy of inner self. Ok, so I think that Rajinder is fully engaged in the guru game, he has too many followers for it to be. I remember when it was Darshan one could still go and personally speak with 'the master’, he was available for talks for long into the morning hours to answer all questions his followers had.

And the Kirpal crowd even more so, small and intimate. I am speaking Westerner here.  Small gatherings. The group recognition one found, the validation through the other followers. It was a time of newness, hope and joy.

And yes, it can become a slog and a chore, but I think that would happen to the person anyway if that’s the blueprint of the person. We are what we are. Sometimes we can change. Often we get stuck. I think we all get drawn to something or other.

I mean look at these most ridiculous cults out there, the gullibility of human beings is just mind boggling. But there is all sorts out there. Before we patronise others' opinion, have we not all fallen for something or other at some point? And do we not understand how when one is convinced of something how one becomes zealous?

So when we meet a zealous person, do we need to throw stones at them?

Anyway the game is (joy, pain, love, hate, devotion, insert your own thing here), and we play it wholeheartedly. And pain is part of how we experience existence. Some people play seriously and for a long time, decades, and it is beautiful to watch, or painful; and then they find: nope, that’s not it.

And go away from it with things learned. Things experienced. Things understood and things misunderstood. And being the person that they are.

Not every human is the same but there are a variety of maybe self fabricated realities, some handed down generations to generation in human history, available to everyone, and we all chose that which is akin to us.

It is already perfect. And yes, the game is a trap, that is what Ram Dass said, and everything is a game, a play, and yes the cult prays on the gullible and enhances guilt. But it also encourages choice of goodness and positivity.

Maybe then we have the choice of recognition. We can try to understand the essence of any of these teachings and live it, understand our motivations and try to be a good person and incidentally Love is a thing. It’s ok to change ones mind, and its ok to be imperfect. Its already perfect.

A lot, I think, is just filler. With intuition and imagination we seem to be able to experience many things in life. Together with other people who experience something similar.

If not a cult, a religion then possessions, or philosophy, or intellectualism, or art, or shamanism, or hedonism, or trance; anything that we use as a template to fill our need, or to fill the void, or just to make us happy for a moment and then relive this moment with the help of that which has found us on our way and offers itself to us  - its good and right and real, and then it becomes a trap if we play it for real, if we play it to the detriment which is addiction. (Ram Dass said)

We can argue till the cows come home about that these are an impossibility these guru teachings, whether these mystics and sages are but power hungry ego trippers with their old old tales and so on, argue about the reality of all these things that are supposedly happen in other spheres, the existence of angels, ghosts, demons, gods, spirits and all that, but there is such a thing as a shared reality.

Many people together experiencing one reality. And it’s real for them. How important is it to be right if we deem it to be wrong?

And yes, it is up to us to question the things that we are told, when we are out of ecstatic state and in the light of day. And then use that which seems right to us at that moment in time. And it is up to us to be open to things that are improbable. And it is also up to us not to judge others too harshly.

I guess that the addiction to the cult is just like any other addiction. There will come a point when we say, yay or nay. And either just be, or move on to fit the raster of existence to our picture of how things should be. Hypnotised, enticed, duped or otherwise.

As Osho said: play it, play it with all your heart.

I think that we need not warn others overly much or with such vehemence, because no one will be swayed who believes, by what they then feel are naysayers and attackers. It is right to point things out, to offer another point of view, like for instance the fact that some of these people selling religion are also selling themselves on top of the religion.

Isn’t it that masters and priests have had their knowledge handed down to them, hearsay from the past, plus their own garnish of experience.  And sometimes people need these other people that point this out to them as a reminder that they can ask questions, but on the whole it seems to me the people have to change their minds from within, by themselves, alone, when they are ready. And some will never be ready till its over.

People can tune into time itself, one hears, but I don’t think this applies to everyone, or else we would all be geniuses and holy men and woman. I think for most of us we are just part of the Mandelbrot pattern of the universe.

It is. And it is already perfect. And isn’t it all exciting really?

I love all these different ideas that are floating around. And one can embrace it all. And the guilt thing, well, my mum made me feel so guilty over everything all my life, really the Master had nothing on me. I don’t think that we can really really overcome our blueprint, (free choice, you’re having a laugh, right?)

But there is so much variety of experiences. And there is so much goodness and Love along the way. And also there is so much pain and anguish of those that are it.

I have seen young, wonderful earnest and committed beauty of belief. Young men and woman, almost aglow with the effort to please the universe, the master and god. Lovingly applied and with such strong energy. And I have seen them fall into the maelstrom of despair. But I have also seen growth and letting go and moving on to the next thing that illuminated these friends from within.

Really, it doesn’t matter what the thing is that has replaced it, the person remains the same.

I love the tarot traditions too, more of an ego tool really, and also I love the ‘energy is a thing’ thing. And mumbo jumbo. What fun!

And biology is amazing too, how everything works in harmony (or doesn’t), how hormones work and how emotion is influenced by it, and one can try to influence ones body and bio rhythms with breathing techniques, pretty cool stuff floating around - and very, very old traditions at that. Yoga. Looking after ones body - well, it’s a good thing!

All the stuff that happens to us humans, to the microbes, to the plants, to the animals, to the planets, to the universe. It’s all pretty awesome.

And also it isn’t. It just is, we are experiencing it, we are judging it, we are playing it. So I hear.

I’m off to work now. I work in care. I found that all people just want Love in the End, we all have a need to be loved. Why not love one another more? People are filling their minds with gurus because they have a need. Let them be. And when they are disillusioned, be kind. It’s a thing: kindness. Do good. Have compassion. Get off the me, me ride. Well, this kinda works for me anyway.

Thanks for listening and thanks for sharing your experiences here on this blog.

Love and Light. Sincerely, the Fool.

How to reply to 14 crazy things religious believers say

Since it's July 4, Independence Day, here in the United States, I thought I'd mark the occasion by composing 14 replies to some crazy stuff religious believers might say. This is in line with my commitment to spiritual independence. And also because, as I said in a post on my HinesSight blog, I'm not feeling good about our political independence these days.

Enjoy...

If someone says, God must exist eternally, because the cosmos couldn't create itself, reply: If nothing created an eternal God, then nothing could have created an eternal cosmos, the difference being that the cosmos clearly is real, and there's no demonstrable evidence of God.

If someone says, Consciousness is immaterial, unrelated to the physical brain, reply: Then if I hit you over the head with this baseball bat, really hard, you'll still be normally conscious. I'm ready to try this experiment after you sign a form releasing me of all liability. Are you up for this?

If someone says, I have complete faith in life after death being better than this life, reply: Then why haven't you committed suicide yet?

If someone says, Atheists are immoral because only God and His messengers know the difference between right and wrong, reply: I double-dare you to tell this to the Dalai Lama, face-to-face, since Buddhism doesn't believe in God.

If someone says, I've had a personal experience of God, reply: And I've had a personal experience of Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny, and the Tooth Fairy, so I win, 3 to 1!

If someone says, God has given humans dominion over all creatures great and small, reply: Excellent! Don't you have a dog and cat? I've been having a craving for a canine/feline stew, so crate them up and I won't have to shop for dinner.

If someone says, Anyone who rejects God is doomed to hell, reply: I'm sorry to hear of your impending horrific afterlife. Since there are thousands of different gods, you've rejected all but your single chosen god, so all those other gods are going to be super-pissed at you.

If someone says, My guru is God in Human Form and he deserves my selfless service, reply: What a coincidence! I'm also God in Human Form and have a lot of household chores that need doing. Here's my address. Look forward to seeing you soon. 

If someone says, God is real because I feel blissful when I think of Him, reply: It sounds just like how I feel whenever I think of Trump being convicted of a conspiracy to defraud Congress by plotting the January 6 insurrection, and thereby prevented from ever holding public office again.

If someone says, Words are powerless to describe the Almighty Lord, reply: Then why don't you shut the fuck up.

If someone says, Science is a pitifully poor way to know reality compared to mystical wisdom, reply: I look forward to getting your smartphone, computer, car, television, microwave, and all the other devices you own that are founded on modern science, since you're so dismissive of scientific knowledge. 

If someone says, Atheism is a belief system just as much as religions are, reply: Guess you also consider that people who have no interest in golf are believers in not-playing-golf, even though they never think about golf except when someone asks why they don't play that game. 

If someone says, There are no atheists in foxholes, reply: How do you know? Can you speak the language of foxes?

If someone says, Near-death experiences prove there's life after death, reply: Do you understand the difference between "near-death" and "death"?

Open Thread 43 (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 might be 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. 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 the heck could God create humans in her own image?

Today I was planning to write about another subject, but after responding to a commenter who embraces the idea that humans are made in the image of God (who I prefer to view as a nonexistent female, hence this blog post title), I went with that notion.

I'm not sure why Andrew Stephens shared the links in his comment. I'm assuming he uses Musk and Harari as examples of godless secularists, which probably is accurate. Personally, I admire both of these men, being a happy user of Musk's groundbreaking Starlink satellite internet system and having enjoyed each of Harari's brilliantly written books.

Brian, you will be pleased to know that Elon Musk wants to start human trials with Neuralink this year. https://www.wired.com/video/watch/wired-news-and-science-the-science-behind-elon-musks-neuralink-brain-chip

Also, Yuval Noah Harari describes humans as 'hackable animals' and 'useless eaters'. https://www.indiatoday.in/world/story/hope-people-believe-in-scientists-instead-of-religious-leaders-yuval-noah-harari-on-covid-19-pandemic-1666859-2020-04-14

Some of us prefer to believe that humans are made in the image of God.

This was my reply.

Andrew, there's also some of us who prefer to believe that humans are made in the image of humans, and that dogs are made in the image of dogs, and that giraffes... you get the idea.

Do you actually think that God, the supposed creator of this vast universe, looks like a human? I realize that this is how God typically is depicted, an old white guy rocking a cool long beard, but this notion seems really dubious.

So what is it about humans that makes you believe we are the image of God? When I see the news each day, this strikes us as exceedingly unlikely. To offer a couple of examples, what is it about Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump you find godlike?

If God is good with invading Ukraine and trying to overturn an election, I'm pleased to be an atheist.

I should also mention that it's as certain as anything in science that humans evolved into our present Homo sapiens species over millions of years. Billions, actually, if we go back to the first cellular life on Earth. Given your theory, at what point did humans become made in the image of God?

Was it only when Homo sapiens appeared on the planet? If so, what changed in the nature of Homo sapiens that wasn't godlike before our species evolved into its current form? Or do you believe other species in our evolutionary family tree, like the Neanderthals, also were made in the image of God?

I'm curious, because this whole "made in the image of God" thing has never made sense to me. It just seems way too anthropomorphic, aside from the fact there's no demonstrable evidence for God. If God exists, a big "if," I don't see how humans would be made in the image of God but not, say, alien beings in a galaxy far, far away.

Or do you consider that all conscious beings are made in the image of God? If so, I'll tell our dog the good news.

Proving how clueless I am about Christian theology, I had to Google "how are humans made in the image of God" before composing this post to learn that the image of God idea comes from Genesis in the Old Testament, so it is a tenet of Christianity and Judaism.

Then God said, “Let us make mankind in our image, in our likeness, so that they may rule over the fish in the sea and the birds in the sky, over the livestock and all the wild animals, and over all the creatures that move along the ground.” So God created mankind in his own image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them (Genesis 1:26-27).

Not surprisingly, there's no agreement about what it means for God to have created humans in her own image. As I said in my reply to Andrew, the Genesis passage predates our modern understanding of evolution, so the idea that God created Adam and Eve is, of course, ridiculous.

However, one website I came across asks, How could humans have evolved and still be in the "Image of God"? I was curious to know the answer, but it wasn't very persuasive.

How might these models of the image of God fit with evolution? At BioLogos we believe that God created humans in biological continuity with all life on earth; the distinct cognitive abilities we have were given to us by God through this gradual process. We also believe that God created us as spiritual beings; God established a unique relationship with humanity by endowing us with his image and calling us to an elevated position within the created order. Science cannot judge our spiritual capacities or divine calling, so there is no contradiction. These various views are affirmed by individuals in the BioLogos community, and in fact the views are not mutually exclusive.

Good try, though this approach goes against the plain language in Genesis that God created humans, not  that God set up a gradual billions-of-years-long process for Darwinian natural selection to come up with us Homo sapiens. 

I took a glance at some other Google search results, but my head started to hurt from reading Christian gobbledygook, so I didn't get very far with this. If you have a greater tolerance for that than I do, some links are here, here, here, here, here, and here.