Church of the Churchless

Spiritual illusions are as deceptive as worldly illusions

I enthusiastically embraced spiritual illusions for 35 years.

I believed in God. I believed that God could be found by following the teachings of divine incarnations, God in human form. I believed I'd live on after my death. I believed in an eternal heaven beyond time and earthly tribulations. I believed spirituality required following certain commandments.

This sounds like I was a Christian, right? No, wrong. I was a member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, an Eastern form of religion known as Sant Mat. Its headquarters were in India, and the organization was led by a guru.

Eventually I came to realize that what I believed was real actually was an illusion. I simply wanted to believe so badly, it took three and a half decades for the truth to break through the dogmas that I held on to so tightly. 

Today I finished reading "No Self, No Problem," a Buddhist book by Anam Thubten that talks a lot about illusions. My first post about the book is here.

I liked the book a lot. I don't agree with everything Thubten says, such as the supposed ability to go beyond pain and suffering by realizing that the notion of a permanent self is an illusion. But I agree with him that our sense of being, or having, a self that's independent of the goings-on in our brain is the most important illusion to come to grips with.

Why? Because our exaggerated sense of ego is the cause of many of our problems. (Thubten might say all of them, but I wouldn't go that far.)

A key reason I deconverted from religiosity to atheism is what Thubten speaks about in his book. Just because someone is on a supposedly "spiritual" path doesn't mean anything. They can still be ignorant, self-centered, and full of themselves. All that changes is that now they believe it is OK to be that way, because God is on their side.

Below are some additional excerpts from the last chapters of "No Self, No Problem." Like I said, I think most of what Thubten says is true. Meditation for me now is exactly what he speaks of: doing as little as possible so I can be in contact with what is true to the greatest degree possible.

I'm no longer aiming at self-realization, because along with modern neuroscience and Buddhism, I no longer believe that my self exists (at least, not as a detached conscious observer separate from the physical brain). And I no longer aim at God-realization, because I no longer believe in God.

This makes me a semi-Buddhist, I guess. But since Buddha himself wasn't a Buddhist -- Buddhism came along long after his death -- I suppose I'm in good company. 

Here's the excerpts from Thubten's book.

When we come to the spiritual path we have to be very cautious. We have to be certain that we are not adding another illusion on top of the illusions we already have. When we look into our consciousness we see that we have many illusions.

Everything is an illusion, especially this notion of "I."

The story of my life is an illusion, my birth, my relationships, and so forth. They are all a story just like a movie. If something happens to my brain, much of this story will be immediately forgotten. Therefore in the ultimate sense it is not truly existent. It is illusion.

We have to be careful when we come to the spiritual world so that we do not fall into the trap of accumulating new illusions. Believe it or not there are very beautiful illusions along the path, the journey, and the practices. Sometimes celebrating illusions can be very entertaining but the problem is that sooner or later illusions collapse.

...Here in the West many people like Eastern illusions because they have already become disillusioned with American illusions. Now they are going around trying to buy Eastern illusions. These new illusions may work for a while because we don't have any heartache associated with them, no bad memories.

But ultimately we must dissolve every illusion: American illusions, Eastern illusions, European illusions, and finally our own illusions.

What is our main illusion? The illusion is that I am real. I am truly existent. This final illusion is the one we want to hold on to.

...We are all carrying this imaginary self around day and night. We are trying to secure it at any cost. Sometimes, the spiritual path that we are on might be just another way to enforce it.

Obviously people have been using the notion of God or eternal life as a way to solidify this illusion. Eternal life in heaven somewhere means that this "I" never has to die.

The idea of surrender itself can be very beautiful. It is the direct doorway to the truth. It is the powerful art of dropping the self right away. 

People often have the tendency to surrender to something or someone outside of themselves. Surrendering to the guru is not true surrender, because then you become the surrenderer, which is another version of self. For that very reason, Buddha discouraged people from surrendering to his personality. Of course, we always surrender to his wisdom. 

The problem is that when we surrender to his personality we don't surrender to his wisdom. He told devotees not to take even his words on blind faith. He said we should question them before accepting them as such. 

...So meditation ultimately stops everything. We stop pushing that rolling snowball and we stop pedaling the bicycle. We don't do anything because there is nothing we can do. From that moment on, we are no longer in charge. The truth is in charge, From that moment on truth is going to voluntarily destroy the foundation, the basis of all sorrow, all misery. 

Truth does that work for us. All we have to do is stop everything. That is what meditation is all about. 

In the ancient times, spiritual seekers used various methods to practice meditation, Yet, there is only one meditation. That is a state of nondoing. When we stop trying to get somewhere and let go of all of our inner exertions, surprisingly the ineffable truth reveals itself to us.

Then that's it. There is nothing else to be found.

...We have a egoic mind that is trained and habituated to do something, to construct this world of illusion. Ego is working very hard. Ego is always talking. Ego is making up stories for the sake of perpetuating all of the stories of the notion of "I." "I" am meditating. "I" am truly existent. "I" am truly meditating and now "I" am getting somewhere. "I" am chasing enlightenment. 

This very thought is just ego's way of perpetuating itself.  

Why do religious people go on atheist sites?

Here's a positive review of my new comment policy on this blog, where I now moderate (approve) comments before they're published. One day in, I'm enjoying the lack of off-topic crazy comments from dogmatic religious believers. 

I regularly exchange emails with the person who wrote what follows. John used to be religious, but now, like me, he's seen the atheist light. 

John makes some good points. I don't know any atheists, which includes me, who go to religious sites and try to convert believers to atheism. But this churchless blog gets many visits and comments from religious people.

Why? Well, like John says, I agree that believers in God get a lot more defensive when someone questions their religion, than atheists do when someone questions their lack of belief in God.

Which makes sense.

I don't get upset when someone questions why I don't like country music. Since I don't have any attachment to that type of music, it doesn't bother me if a country music lover thinks I'm a fool for not being a fan of that genre.

Plus, atheists are used to being put down by religious people, while this is much less common for believers -- given that the vast majority of people in the world believe in some form of supernatural divinity.

This is the message I got from John today.

Hey Brian, I saw where you are moderating comments again.  Good for you!  I think I’ve talked about this before, but I can’t understand why religious folks go on sites like yours and try to convert people, or “prove” that others are wrong, or whatever.  It seems very common. 

I wonder if atheists go on religious sites and rant and rave and such?  I would think there are some, but my suspicion is that it’s less common.

I kind of understand why the religious folks like to argue their points.  I was never really zealous in my religious days.  I was very serious about my faith, but I didn’t argue with many people who didn’t believe like I did.  But I think it’s more threatening to have a believer’s beliefs questioned than it is for a non-believer to have their non-beliefs questioned.  LOL  If you know what I mean?

There were a few times that I got into a discussion with an intelligent atheist or agnostic and they would ask me questions that I just didn’t have the answers to.  That was very unsettling!

I thought the cartoon that you posted was great, as well.  Oh man, how accurate is that?  I remember, in my early days of walking away from religion, I read a lot of Wayne Jacobsen’s material.  At that time, he talked a lot about how religion always seems to have a hook in it. 

“Invite your non-churched friends to the church picnic!”  Why?  Just so you can get to know that and bless them and see that they have a good afternoon getting to know some great people?  NO!  It’s so we can get them to come back, and eventually get them saved.  And then they will tithe, of course. 

And inevitably, if they get worked on long enough without getting saved, then they are normally discarded and the believers move on to someone else.  Often with the attitude from your cartoon.  I’ve heard many a church member say something along the lines of, “well, I’m glad they are going to hell”.  Really?!?!? WTF?  Ugh.

I have yet to hear of a blogger whose mind was changed by the religious comments on their blog.  And vice versa. 

In my experience, and in others that I’ve talked to, any time a person makes a big change in their beliefs, it’s usually because something happened to make them start thinking and seeking answers.  Now, in that seeking they may come across someone who says something that will help them down the road a bit. 

But the classic knocking on someone’s door out of the blue and converting them to your beliefs, or flooding someone’s comment section, usually doesn’t have the desired result.  Most of the time, it actually works in the opposite direction!  The person being preached to normally walks away just that much more sure of their own beliefs.

Thanks, as always, for the great posts.

Talk to you again soon.
John

Comments are back to being moderated. Religious craziness is the reason.

I just turned comment moderation back on for this blog. That felt good. My experiment is over with allowing people to post comments on their own, saying whatever they like (pretty much; I did have my limits).

The breaking point came today when I scrolled through a bunch of comments on my most recent post, "Buddhist wisdom: pay attention to the breath until the self dissolves." 

Those comments surpassed the usual level of religious dogmatism, inanity, incomprehensibility, and plain gibberish that I'm used to seeing from a group of core commenters who have been using this blog basically as a message board to reinforce among themselves their faith in an Eastern form of mysticism known as Sant Mat.

Um, I kept reminding them that the name of this blog is Church of the Churchless, not the Church of Sant Mat. And the tag line is "preaching the gospel of spiritual independence," not "bowing down at the holy feet of the guru."

But those warnings fell on deaf ears, because religious craziness is an addiction, and addicts can't break their habit easily. 

I'm sympathetic to those addicts. I used to be one myself, back in the days when I too believed in the teachings of Sant Mat. But I  was nowhere near as fanatic as the above-mentioned commenters. I liked to give reasons for my belief, and I didn't consider that what I believed was 100%, for-sure, absolutely true.

So from now on I'll be moderating comments to see if they relate to the subject of a post and aren't filled with religious preachiness. It's bothered for me for quite a while that this blog was being used to spread religious craziness via comments, but I managed to stifle my feelings about this.

No more.

I'd rather have one intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful comment on a post I write than a hundred incoherent comments about how wonderful holy sound and light are, and how lucky the commenters consider themselves to have found the One True Way. Which is complete bullshit that I don't want contaminating this blog any longer.

Further, I know that normal human beings who want to express their opinion about a post get turned off by the mass of comments that have nothing to do with what I wrote, and often insult anyone who expresses a view that challenges their dogmatic religious sensibilities.

My commitment is to seeking truth and encouraging respectful discussions about that quest. I've allowed that commitment to be diluted by being overly accepting of wacko comments. Again, no more. 

Understand: I still very much welcome comments on my blog posts. What's unwelcome are off-topic comments that contain religious dogmatism unrelated to the subject of the post. Geez, I write a post about Buddhist meditation and virtually all of the comments are about how awareness of breathing is the Devil's workshop.

Why? Because Sant Mat fundamentalism says so. Not good enough. Not even close. If you can't think for yourself, don't even think of leaving a comment on this blog, because it won't be published. Like I said, intelligent, reasonable, thoughtful comments will be approved, whether or not I believe in them.

But if you want to use this blog to spread religious craziness, start your own blog or message board. I'm done with allowing this blog to be used that way.

Buddhist wisdom: pay attention to the breath until the self dissolves

My spiritual evolution has been a lot like my marital arts evolution. I'll explain.

For about nine years I practiced traditional Shotokan karate. I got to the brown belt level, and did quite well in tournaments where I sparred against black belts with considerably more experience, and who were much younger than me. But when it came to testing, I was stuck. I wasn't being advanced from the initial brown belt level.

Eventually it dawned on me that I was learning martial arts skills.

But what I was learning wasn't what the Shotokan higher-ups wanted to see when it came to testing. So I switched to a more flexible style of karate. It was a big relief to realize that for those nine years, I'd been learning about martial arts. What I was learning just wasn't what traditional Shotokan karate expected me to learn.

Likewise, for about 35 years I practiced a form of meditation that involved devotion to a supposedly "perfect guru." The technique involved repetition of a mantra with a focus on the center of the forehead, drawing attention away from the body and external world. The goal was to "go within" and experience realms of existence beyond the physical.

I learned a lot during those years of meditating from one to two-and-a-half hours a day.

Eventually, though, it dawned on me that what I was learning wasn't what this particular spiritual path of Radha Soami Satsang Beas wanted me to learn. So for quite a few years I've shifted to a Buddhist style of meditation centered on awareness of the breath -- along with whatever else is happening within me and without me.

There are various forms of Buddhism, of course. I don't have much use for the more religious forms. But I very much enjoy the forms that are either wholly secular, or keep the supernatural side of Buddhism to a minimum (such as rebirth).

I'm about halfway through a book that I saw mentioned in a comment on this blog, "No Self, No Problem," by Anam Thubten. I agree with the positive Amazon reviews. Even though Thubten appears to believe in rebirth, he puts very little emphasis on this. Rather, Thubten has an engaging, honest, direct way of speaking about spirituality and meditation.

What I most like about this book is that it reassures me that the meditation path I'm on is the path taught by the Buddha. Not that I revere the Buddha, since I don't know the guy, and one of my favorite Buddhist adages is "If you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him!" 

Not literally, of course. But in the sense of not being led astray by theological or religious concepts, or bowing down to an external authority, trusting instead in your own experience.

Here's excerpts from the first half of "No Self, No Problem" where Thubten talks about how a true spiritual path doesn't involve devotion to dogmas, concepts, complex belief systems. Rather, the Buddhist approach is to observe the breath, and everything else in this world, in a wonderfully simple fashion until the illusion of the self dissolves.

This opening, this receptivity, is basically related to our ability to resist arming the ego with concepts and ideas. A true spiritual path transcends all concepts and belief systems. It is not about reinforcing the mind's illusion of self as an identity. It is not about being a Buddhist, a saint, or a better person. It is really about deconstructing all of our illusions without any mercy.

...Sometimes our ego convinces us that we are realizing this sense of no fixed self at the same time we are holding on to another concept like trying to be sacred or spiritual. Holding on to conceptions such as "sacred" or "spiritual" while we are working toward transcending self-attachment is very subtle.

...Often we discover that we have been chasing illusions. Sometimes they are beautiful illusions like the illusion of enlightenment and spiritual transformation. Nevertheless, as long as we allow our mind to chase such illusions, there is no true liberation.

...On the spiritual path people sometimes get attached to all kinds of sacred and bizarre concepts to make sense out of their place in this giant mysterious universe. 

...Nirvana is not some kind of beautiful, celestial garden filled with peaches and mangoes, a place where everyone is walking around with beautiful halos... It's not a place, a destination we are going to travel to. It's not even a transcendent state of mind that we are going to achieve. It is not a beautiful, ecstatic, trancelike state of mind we can cherish. That's not really nirvana. Rather, nirvana is a great cessation of the separation between us and the truth. It is the mere acknowledgement of what has been the case all along. It is like waking up from a nightmare. It's a great relief to discover that nothing has to be done.

...Sometimes the spiritual search itself prevents us from seeing the truth that is always with us. We have to know when to stop the search. 

...When we meditate, when we sit and simply pay attention to our breath, we begin to see that there is an "I, a self, who is searching for enlightenment and liberation from suffering. But if we keep paying attention to our breath and body sensations, then eventually all of those ideas, concepts, and illusions begin to dissipate one after another and truth reveals itself.

...Nobody is there. "I" is completely nonexistent in that place. There is no separation between samsara, bad circumstances, and nirvana, good circumstances, and there is nobody pursuing the path or chasing after enlightenment. In that moment we realize the essence of the Buddha's teaching.

...Believe it or not, we often use the spiritual or religious path to construct ego identity, even when this is not conscious at the time.

...Sometimes the very self that is fighting ego is actually ego and that's even trickier. But sometimes we can just look directly into our consciousness and ask, "Who is fighting against ego?" Often everything collapses right there. Therefore the path of bliss is really not about declaring war on the ego in order to get rid of anything we see as a stumbling block on the road to our imagined final destination. Rather, it is about allowing the self to dissolve spontaneously by giving up nothing and going nowhere.

...Ego is trying to seduce us into chasing some beautiful exotic illusion. But if we just surrender and remain in that present awareness, paying attention to our breath, amazingly the self dies. There is no longer a self who says, "I don't like what is going on. I don't like this ordinary moment. I don't like just sitting here paying attention to breath." The "I" who doesn't like what is unfolding is completely gone and that is all that matters in the ultimate sense.

...When self dissolves, everything is already awakened. 

...The hindrances to inner awakening can be so subtle they are almost unperceivable, and usually they sneak in through the back door. Many spiritual traditions teach us that we cannot be free in this lifetime. But even if they teach us that it is possible, they make it sound like it is some kind of a super attainment unlikely for us to reach. Some even go to the extreme of saying that it can only be achieved by surrendering to an outer authority. As long as we believe those rumors, we're not going anywhere but in circles. Our practice won't amount to anything more than a dog chasing its tail.

...Therefore, the essence of all spiritual paths is about dissolving everything here and now without waiting. And again, how do we dissolve that self ecstatically? We are just present, paying attention to the breath, and then the self begins to dissolve. This sounds so simple.

...As long as we are building defense mechanisms, transformation will be exiled to the realm of improbability. And these defense mechanisms, wearing a spiritual mask now, comprise layers of denial, each one more subtle than the other. It is like finding a new cradle where we can be infantile again and have no responsibility for ourselves. Mommy and Daddy are projected onto an omnipotent god or guru who will take care of us eternally.

...True meditation is nothing but the art of abiding, without effort, where you don't try to get rid of anything. If you leave your mind as it is, you will see that nothing can bind you. 

...So whatever arises in your consciousness, bad thoughts, good thoughts, don't try to catch them. Watch them. It's like watching the waves on the surface of the ocean. They arise and they always go back. In the same way observe your mind without any effort. Remember that this is called the method of effortlessness. Don't try to alter or change the natural state of mind.

My "spiritual" Theory of Everything is coming along nicely

Once in a while I get a glimpse of how things really are, or ideally are, spiritually speaking.

Now, I put "spiritual" in quotation marks in the title of this post, because the way I use the word, it has nothing to do with God or the supernatural -- which in my view don't exist.

Rather, when I speak of spirituality, I mean a quest to understand how best to live life. The ancient Greeks called this philosophy, literally "love of wisdom." However, these days philosophy usually is considered to be not a way of life, but an academic discipline.

So for me spiritual points to an attempt to live life fully, happily, wisely, compassionately. And since I'm a lover of science, I enjoy thinking of my personal form of spirituality as a Theory of Everything that applies to me -- yet might have some appeal to others as well.

This post is just a first attempt at laying out an outline of how I'm seeing things. The pieces I'm trying to fit together include:

-- Reactivity
-- No-self
-- Responding to a totality of circumstances
-- Objectivism within subjectivity
-- Detachment
-- Nirvana

It probably is obvious (to some, at least) that my inspiration is a blend of Buddhism and Taoism, two philosophies that I have a lot of fondness for when they're stripped of supernatural mumbo-jumbo.

Rather than describe how those six notions listed above relate, which I'll try to do in another post, for now I'll simply describe an everyday event that's a broad-brush illustration of my personal Theory of Everything.

I'm driving along on the two-lane, curvy, hilly road that leads from our home in rural south Salem to the city limits about five miles away. The speed limit is 55 mph. I come up behind a car that's traveling much more slowly than I am, 35 mph.

There's no doubt about the objective reality here. My VW GTI is following another car. We're both going 35 mph, which is about 20 mph slower than what my car was traveling at before I caught up to the other car. However, my subjective reality could take several turns at this point.

One way it could go would be to get irritated at the person driving the car ahead of me. I'm late for my Tai Chi class, per usual, and I don't need a slow driver making me later. Irritation would be a form of reactivity that wouldn't change the objective situation, just my subjective feeling.

I could, though, simply observe, "That car is going quite slow."

I also could realize that the amount of time I'd save by driving a few miles at 55 mph rather than 35 mph is minimal. Coming to a bunch of red lights when I got to town, or not being able to find a parking space close to my Tai Chi class, would affect my arrival time much more.

Thus I could detach from a view that following a slow car is a bad thing.

Instead, it is just a thing, a happening, an event tossed up by a wide variety of circumstances that together, resulted in me ending up behind the car in front of me at this particular time, in this particular place. I wouldn't see this event as having any special significance.

This person driving the car ahead of me isn't trying to slow me down. They may not even be aware of me, if they fail to check their rear-view mirror. They're likely just driving as they typically do, slower than I like to drive. 

I could even try to imagine that I'm experiencing the vehicular version of a Taoist tale about a man rowing across a lake who becomes angry when he sees another boat coming right at him, as if he wasn't even there, forcing him to take evasive action to avoid a collision.

Then he sees that no one is in the other boat. It's drifting on its own. His anger subsides.

So I could envision that I and the driver of the other car are powerless to do anything than what we are actually doing. The universe has conjured up chains of causes and effects that have led each of us to be driving in a certain fashion on the stretch of road that leads to town.

Thus those six notions I listed above can lead me to a calm acceptance of the situation, rather than an irritated response. This may not seem like nirvana, but actually it is quite close to how Buddhists view this state of non-reactivity. 

Anyway, naturally there's more to say about my personal Theory of Everything. Being a wordy person, I'll probably be doing that saying before too long.

(By the way, even given what I said above, I could still calmly pass the slow-moving car when it was safe to do so. Which I do frequently, since my VW GTI is a joy to drive on hilly, twisty roads. And everywhere else, really.)

Christian missionary killed by remote tribe shows idiocy of religion

So, here's a quiz for you.

Someone learns about an island inhabited by about 50-100 members of a tribe that has had very little contact with civilization. The nation that the island is a part of has decreed that no outsiders are to set foot on the island. One reason is that the tribe members lack immunity to many diseases common in the outside world, so they could be decimated by contact with outsiders.

Should this person:
(A) Give up any idea of visiting the island. 
(B) Sneak onto the island with the intention of changing the tribe over to their way of thinking.

If you're a normal, rational, caring human being, almost certainly you will choose (A). But if you're an evangelical Christian, or another sort of religious believer committed to converting unbelievers, you'll be tempted to choose (B).

Which is just what Christian fanatic John Chau did. And he paid for that idiotic decision by losing his life after the tribe members shot arrows at him.

I rarely think he/she got what they deserved after learning of an untimely death. With Chau's death, though, I've got to admit that this thought has settled firmly in my mind.

Chau believed he was on a mission from God.

Of course, God doesn't exist, so that belief emanated from his own religiously-deluded mind. We know what transpired in that Jesus-soaked brain prior to his death, because he gave his diary to the fishermen who smuggled him onto the island. Several stories, here and here, describe some of his entries. 

"You guys [his family] might think I'm crazy in all this, but I think it's worth it to declare Jesus to these people."

"This is not a pointless thing. The eternal lives of this tribe is at hand."

"I love you all and I pray none of you love anything in this world more than Jesus Christ."

“Lord, is this island Satan’s last stronghold where none have heard or even had the chance to hear your name?”

This shows the danger of religion. It makes people do stupid things. Sure, people do stupid things without religion, but when you add supernatural fantasies into the mix, a person's Stupid Quotient soars to new heights.

Chau didn't speak the tribe's language. So far as I know, no one else does either, given how difficult it has been to study the tribe. So Chau couldn't tell them about Jesus, since they couldn't understand him.

I'm tempted to say, what was this guy thinking?

But that question is answered by Chau's diary entries. He wasn't thinking about what was best for the tribe on the isolated island. He was only thinking about his Christian delusion that it was up to him to save the tribe from an imaginary Satan who he fantasized was keeping the tribe from knowing his imaginary God.

There's one good thing that came from Chau's death, though. It makes atheism look really good in comparison to religious zealotry. 

Science touches reality. Religion only touches the human mind.

"We've got to get out of our own heads." I really liked this observation by Michael Shermer near the beginning of a podcast interview featuring him and Philip Goff.

Shermer was speaking about how Eben Alexander claimed he went to heaven while in a coma, but actually there's solid evidence that he didn't. Heaven was just a place he made up in his head.

Also, Shermer notes that Sam Harris, the noted atheist neuroscientist, writes in one of his books about taking MDMA (ecstasy) that led to a rather similar mystical experience. Except, Harris never claimed to have experienced a reality outside of his own head, which shows he's much more honest than Alexander.

What I love about science is that it is dedicated to understanding reality as it exists outside of our heads. Yes, science also studies what goes on inside the human brain, but almost always this occurs largely, or entirely, as an effort to comprehend reality as it is, not merely as the human mind considers it to be.

Religion and mysticism, on the other hand, are thoroughly mental pursuits.

Believers in religion or mysticism never get outside of their own heads. They live in a world of concepts, imagination, and other forms of subjective experience. They're never able to demonstrate that they've contacted a reality which isn't the world in which we all live, yet they claim that such exists.

Which gets me to a passage from my new favorite book (until Amazon delivers another book I like even better).

"The Order of Time" by theoretical physicist Carlo Rovelli is both marvelously written and scientifically fascinating. I started reading it this morning and didn't want to put it down -- but had to so I could go to coffee with a friend, where, not surprisingly, I brought the book and talked about it with him.

Rovelli is an expert on time, which is one of the most mysterious subjects in science.

I'll write more blog posts about the book when I'm further into it. Rovelli does a better job of explaining relativity theory in a way that I can understand and remember than any other book I've read that addresses this subject. And I've read a lot of them.

Anyway, below is a passage from one of the first chapters that I liked a lot.

Rovelli speaks about how scientists often start by coming to an understanding of reality that can't yet be confirmed by observation. In other words -- Einstein is a great example of this -- an understanding begins within the scientist's own head, yet eventually is confirmed by objective reality.

He also observes how things that seem self-evident often are overturned by science. When was the last time, or heck, a first time, religion has done this? Answer: never.

Reading Rovelli's book this morning, I felt embraced by the warm glow of reality, a feeling that wasn't all due to the coffee I was drinking. I find it tough to read books about religion or mysticism these churchless days because they just seem so insubstantial. Like I said, they're all about ideas, concepts, fantasies, imagination. 

I love science because I love reality.

Science gets me out of my own head into the world that exists whether or not I do. Sure, I still meditate after I read for a while, and I enjoy the sense of exploring the nooks and crannies of my psyche. But science books like "The Order of Time" are where I find the most inspiration, mystery, and wonder -- not in so-called spiritual books.

Here's the Rovelli quotation: 

The ability to understand something before it's observed is at the heart of scientific thinking.

In antiquity, Anaximander understood that the sky continues beneath our feet long before ships had circumnavigated the Earth. At the beginning of the modern era, Copernicus understood that the Earth turns long before astronauts had seen it do so from the moon.

In a similar way, Einstein understood that time does not pass uniformly everywhere before the development of clocks accurate enough to measure the different speeds at which it passes.

In the course of making such strides, we learn that the things that seemed self-evident to us were really no more than prejudices.

It seemed obvious that the sky was above us and not below; otherwise, the Earth would fall down. It seemed self-evident that the Earth did not move; otherwise it would cause everything to crash. That time passed at the same speed everywhere seemed equally obvious to us... Children grow up and discover that the world is not as it seemed from within the four walls of their homes.

Humankind as a whole does the same.

Don't let illusory scarcity scare you into religion

I rarely read self-help books, but I saw a story in TIME magazine about Brene Brown and decided to get one of her books. After reading some Amazon reviews, I settled on "Daring Greatly." 

It's mainly about the courage to be vulnerable, to take chances even when the odds are against us, to reveal ourselves honestly without a guarantee that other people will like what they see.

Brown brings up scarcity in an introductory chapter.

Given the topics I study, I know I'm onto something when folks look away, quickly cover their faces with their hands, or respond with "ouch, "shut up," or "get out of my head." The last is normally how people respond when they hear or see the phrase: Never ___________ enough. It only takes a few seconds before people fill in the blanks with their own tapes:

-- Never good enough
-- Never perfect enough
-- Never thin enough
-- Never powerful enough
-- Never successful enough
-- Never smart enough
-- Never safe enough
-- Never extraordinary enough

...The counterapproach to living in scarcity is not about abundance. In fact, I think abundance and scarcity are two sides of the same coin. The opposite of "never enough" isn't "abundance" or "more than you could ever imagine." The opposite of scarcity is enough, or what I call Wholeheartedness.

As I explained in the Introduction, there are many tenets of Wholeheartedness, but at its very core is vulnerability and worthiness: facing uncertainty, exposure, and emotional risks, and knowing that I am enough.

Today is the Thanksgiving holiday in the United States. Many holidays are rather strange -- Christmas features Santa Claus, and Easter the Easter Bunny -- but Thanksgiving projects its own strong scent of strangeness.

This morning one of the two newspapers we get, the Salem and Portland papers, had to be put in our mailbox because each of the newspapers was super-thick, being filled with a large number of advertisements for post-Thanksgiving "Black Friday" sales. 

So while Thanksgiving Day itself is billed as a time to get together with friends and relatives over a tasty turkey dinner (being vegetarians, my wife and I get a meatless roast), with at least some of the talk being about what people are thankful for, the next day starts off a pre-Christmas shopping season in which buy, buy, buy and more, more more drowns out the we're thankful for what we've already got vibe of Thanksgiving.

Our consumer-driven economy is fed by more, not by enough. 

Now, I'm not saying that wanting more is a bad thing. It is very much a good thing when a lack prevents someone from being able to enjoy life.

We need more food when we're frequently hungry. We need more money when we're always broke. We need more friends when we're feeling lonely. We need more purpose when life seems meaningless. We need more health care when we're sick and can't get medical treatment.

The list goes on, and on, and on of important human needs that require more to make them right. However, as Brown observes, there's also many times when we feel that something is lacking in our life -- a scarcity -- though actually it is difficult, if not impossible, to point to a genuine lack.

The lack really isn't in ourselves, but in our response to a cultural or societal expectation. 

This is how, as an atheist who deconverted from religiosity after 35 years of believing that I lacked God (Eastern mystical variety), I've come to look upon religion. There are genuine human needs that religions fulfill. Yet there also are needs founded in a spurious sense of scarcity that require skepticism.

Here's some examples of what I consider to be spurious needs: requiring salvation; forgiveness of sins; protection from the Devil; having an afterlife in heaven rather than hell; feeling part of a "chosen people," being told what morality consists of; learning about the nature of reality from a holy book rather than science; having the Big Questions of Life answered by a religious authority figure rather than by ourselves.

On the positive side, and I'm basing what I say on those 35 years of mostly feel-good moments as a religious person, here's some examples of genuine needs that a religion can fulfill: feeling part of a caring community; celebrating together via rituals, ceremonies, and group meetings; opening ourselves up to the majestic mystery of existence; asking the Big Questions, even if persuasive answers are lacking.

I realize that many people are going to disagree with my take on spurious versus genuine reasons for being religious.

If someone considers that God is unquestionably an objective fact, rather than a subjective belief or unproven hypothesis, then they're going to look upon what I just said with decidedly skeptical eyes. I'm just speaking about how I see things, which is all any of us can do.

Thank God you know God doesn't exist

Here's some thoughts about Thanksgiving (holiday today in the United States) from "JB," a regular commenter on this blog. Can't disagree with anything he said. If God is in charge of this world, He/She/It would have to be a sadistic, uncaring psychopath. 

Much more likely alternative: God doesn't exist. Here's JB's comment on a recent post:

On this day of thanks, I also want to thank the precious lord God for all of his selfless care. I want to thank him for all of the children that are dying of cancer and all of the parents that spend every moment with that pain, telling their child that "it will be ok" when they know everything isn't ok.

I also want to thank him for all of the children that have been slaughtered in one of the many genocides that are happening right now. Hell, throw in those born with birth defects and strange syndromes. This person I know with spina bifida thanks God everyday that he made him in such a special way. God loves his special babies.

I want to thank God for watching over all of the families that got burned alive in this year's wildfires just as he has done on the last. Ditto for watching over the hurricane victims. I want to thank him for the 2004 tsunami and the 230,000 people that got wiped off the face of the earth in one fell swoop.

That just shows how much God values life. That was a good job. High-five buddy! Thank you for this sacred world, full of sacred agony. So, I want to thank God that I have the wherewithal to know that God doesn't exist.

 

Nirvana: the moment reactivity stops

I'm attracted to Buddhism, along with Taoism, because these are forms of spirituality that can be viewed without a lens of fantastical supernaturalism.

Sure, many Buddhists and Taoists do embrace mystical mumbo-jumbo, but it is entirely possible to be a Buddhist or Taoist who considers that this earthly existence is the one and only life each of us will ever live, and that's just fine.

Stephen Bachelor is a pleasingly secular Buddhist who has written several books from the standpoint of Buddhism as a practical way of living, not as a religion that demands belief in unbelievable stuff -- such as reincarnation and the survival of consciousness after death.

In his book "After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age," Bachelor has some interesting observations about nirvana. Prior to saying that nirvana can be understood in one of two ways, as either the ceasing of reactivity or as freedom and independence from reactivity, he gave this view of reactivity:

We tend to regard the appearance of such a fearful world as a projection of our mental state.

But this reading of the situation is based on the cultural habit of interpreting experience psychologically. No matter how much we tell ourselves that the fearfulness of the world is just a projection, such reassurance does not significantly alter either how the world appears to us or how we feel about it.

From the perspective of a dharma practitioner, the task of "letting go of what arises" entails releasing one's grip on the whole picture: angry-me-facing-hostile-situation. 

Letting go is not simply a question of breathing deeply to calm my rattled mind; I need to cleanse the doors of my perception. This requires suspending the default habit of seeing the world as being hostile, desirable, or boring. One of the most effective ways of suspending that habit is to train yourself to comprehend the world as an infinitely suffering world.

Now, I don't claim to fully understand what Bachelor means.

However, I have at least an indistinct grasp of what he's getting at, and that's good enough for me. The way I see it, Bachelor doesn't view life as ever being free of suffering. But it is possible to lessen the impact of suffering.

Channeling my inner Alan Watts, we don't have to find suffering insufferable; we don't have to be anxious about our anxieties; we don't have to worry about being worried; we don't have to be happy about our happiness. We can simply suffer, be anxious, worry, and be happy.

(To name but a few possible states of mind.)

In other words, we still react to what life brings us. But we understand the nature of this reactivity. Like everything else in life, it is changeable, ephemeral, something to be experienced before another experience comes along. Even if suffering always is with us, the form of that suffering changes shape continuously.

This seems to be in line with the second sort of nirvana Bachelor speaks of above: as freedom and independence from reactivity, as opposed to the ceasing of reactivity. Here's some additional quotes from his book.

The first sense of nirvana is traditionally understood as a quasi-mystical experience in which an accomplished meditator achieves sufficient calm and insight to bring his reactivity to a complete stop. But this interpretation makes nirvana accessible only to trained meditators, thus conflicting with the account of it as "immediate, clearly visible, inviting, uplifting, and personally sensed by the wise."

...For the second sense of nirvana as freedom from reactivity, we again need to turn to the dialogues with Mara. Here, one becomes aware of nirvana whenever one understands reactivity for what it is and thereby gains freedom from its control. In this case, the experience of nirvana becomes possible even while in the throes of reactivity itself. 

Along this line, I'm up to Day Forty Four in Sam Harris' fifty-day guided meditations in his Waking Up course that I listen to on my iPhone. So I'm damn close to graduating! 

So far I've been getting some fresh insights from Harris, even though most of what he says is familiar to me from other mindfulness exercises. However, Harris has some ways of putting things that are unique to his take on the mind, consciousness, and meditation.

Of late, he's been directing my attention to noticing whether there really is anybody paying attention within my mind. This is nicely Zen, of course. Who is the thinker of my thoughts? Who is the feeler of my feelings? Who is reacting to my reactivity? 

Answer: no one, since an unchanging self who sits in my cranium and observes what's going on in my consciousness doesn't exist. And naturally the same is true of you and everybody else.

Here's some notes that I've taken after listening to Harris' guided meditations.

-- Recognize that the sense of subject and object, that too is an appearance in consciousness.

-- Simply look for the subject. See if there is something to be found.

-- Look for the one who is seeing. Then rest your mind wide open.

-- Every goal, every regret, is nothing but this: consciousness and its content.

-- Look for the thinker of a thought. Is there anyone the thought is occurring to or coming from?

-- Contents of consciousness appear and disappear on their own; you can't choose them.

-- The self's struggle to control is itself an appearance in consciousness.

-- There's no inside or outside of consciousness; things are just appearing. 

-- Is there a hearer in addition to the fact of hearing?

-- Feeling there is a subject, a self, observing the screen of consciousness is just another experience on the screen.

-- Anything you can notice is not what consciousness is, since consciousness is doing the noticing.

These observations fit nicely with the Buddhist notion that while we continue to react to what we're experiencing, it is possible to diminish the sense that someone inside our head is responsible for those reactions.

This allows us to gain a wiser perspective on reactivity.  It isn't something to be done away with, but rather something to be accepted as simply as possible by lessening our reactions to our reactivity.

Nirvana! Without the pressure to achieve it.

 

The absurdity of believing there is Sach Khand (heaven)

Here's a guest post from the always-interesting Osho Robbins. Plus, a video Robbins made to accompany what follows. It has a "69" joke, so that alone leads me to recommend it.

Robbins has an intriguing take on the Sant Mat version of spirituality. Since I wrote a book called Return to the One, I'm sympathetic to the notion of oneness. 

However, I'm also sympathetic to the notion of non-oneness, since as Robbins observes, if everything was really One, there wouldn't be anybody who could stand outside of the oneness and say, "This One is absolutely wonderful!" (or we might say, onederful)

Anyway, here's Robbins' thoughts on the absurdity of believing in Sach Khand. But when I Googled this term, I found that you can take a train there -- along with luggage. Cool. Who knew heaven was so close at hand?

How absurd! The absurdity of believing there is a Sach Khand

Many religions believe that the ‘soul’ (or some equivalent) goes to a certain ‘place’ after death; either a heaven or a hell. They also believe in the concept of a ‘being’ that is in charge of that place (God or the Devil, respectively).

However, they cannot see the absurdity of all this, until an actual example is put before them – then they will laugh and say something like, “Oh, it’s not a place and God is not a person.”

Oh, okay – so it’s in a non-place and the God and Devil are ‘non-persons’?  Now that makes sense? The God and devil are depicted as actual beings in the relevant holy books. Some examples are: 

Sar Bachan:  One hair on his body has the light of a thousand suns.

(that means you would get instantly blinded if you look at him, but of course, the soul has super-eyes that cannot be blinded)

The Bible: “Then God said….”  “And God was a jealous God.”

(so apparently God is just like us, made in OUR image: he speaks, he gets jealous, he gets angry and brings a flood to destroy his own creation, which incidentally means he also makes mistakes, he even tells lies when he told Adam not to eat of the tree of knowledge of Good and Evil because ‘you will surely die’ but it was a lie because he did not die, instead God cursed him).

The point I am making is that God appears to be like a human. He talks, he thinks, he has emotions. He makes decisions. So he must be a ‘noun’ (an entity that has a shape and a form). He cannot both have a shape and be formless, just as you cannot have a “Square Circle”.

So the video I have created goes into the belief of a Sach Khand and a Sat Purush (or Anami Purush) who apparently resides there. 

This belief is held by all followers of Radha Soami and Sant Mat; although they will say “But they are spiritual regions and not physical” but this is just a nonsensical get-out clause. “Spiritual” is just another concept to explain what you cannot explain. 

Non-Duality is different.

In non-duality you cannot have a God or a Devil and they cannot interact with you – there cannot be any transaction or communication. In fact there cannot be a YOU separate from the ONEness (non-duality) as that is no longer ONENESS. 

I remember having discussions with “Jim Sutherland” telling him to avoid meeting Anami, because the moment he meets him, he will merge him into himself and that will be the end of Jim!

Jim, like many followers of religions, don’t like the idea of non-existence. They want to know that they will continue to exist after death and also when they get to heaven or Sach Khand. Non-existence doesn’t seem to be a viable goal. 

After all, it seems absurd doesn’t it? 

Imagine the conversation:

“So why exactly are you meditating 2 hours a day?”

“Oh, so I can merge into the supreme being and stop existing.”

“You mean you just want to disappear into nothing?”

“No, I will still be there, just different from the way I am now.”

It’s fantasy land. You cannot become the ONE and remain separate. There cannot be more than one ONE!

Anyway – here’s the video:

The absurdity of the scenario in the video makes it obvious that it’s all nonsense; but then, the follower has to ask “If this is absurd, then what is the truth? What will actually happen when I get to the non-place called Sach Khand?”

 

Three comments show absurdity of "karmic blaming"

Karma can be a dangerous concept. It's harmless enough if we simply think of it as the laws of cause and effect that guide our universe. 

But when people extend this concept to include supernatural fantasies, such as that our actions in past lives have determined what happens to us in this life, then the notion of karma needs to be criticized harshly. The not-nice canine in the Dilbert comic strip, Dogbert, captured the essence of this nicely.

And it doesn't matter whether someone uses the term "karma" or some other word. It's the idea of karmic blaming that has to be fought.

Wikipedia describes Jewish deicide, the idea that because Jews were responsible for Jesus' death, they deserve horrible things being done to them. 

Jewish deicide is a historic belief among some in Christianity that Jewish people as a whole were responsible for the death of Jesus. The antisemitic slur "Christ-killer" was used by mobs to incite violence against Jews and contributed to many centuries of pogroms, the murder of Jews during the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust.

Even more directly, India's highly discriminatory caste system, which persists to this day, is based on religious ideas about karma and reincarnation. 

There is a vital link between Karma theory and the caste system. Karma theory is based on Law of Karma, where an act or deed done by a human being, good or bad, accompany the dead soul and determine the soul’s destiny in its future births. A soul will get reincarnated as human being or animal or insect, according to the accumulated good deeds or bad deeds done in the previous lives.

The position a soul occupies in the hierarchy of the caste system closely correlates to the accumulated deeds of the past. A person of good deeds will be reborn in the higher caste, for eg., as a Brahmin, and a person of bad deeds, as a dog or a Chandala (a lower caste). Please refer to Kaushitaki Upanishad or Chandogya upanishad to get more information on this.

So today I was eager to squash the ravings of frequent commenter "777" to the illogical bits that they deserve when he strongly implied, if not outright said, that Steven Hawking's ALS disease was the result of bad karmas -- and that suffering people need to learn from their mistakes in past lives.

I found this so insulting to Hawking and other people who suffer that, as you can read below, I called out "777" on his lack of compassion and deluded religiosity. I forgot to add that if he's so convinced that he's right, he should be using his real name in comments rather than hiding behind a pseudonym.

Here's our comment exchange, plus a right-on comment from JB who further demolished the rantings of "777."

 

Stephen Hawking asks "Is there a God?" (Spoiler alert: No.)

Being a big fan of both science and Stephen Hawking, naturally I had to buy his last and most recent book, "Brief Answers to the Big Questions," which was published after he died this year.


So far I've only read up through the first two questions, "Is there a God?" and "How did it all begin?" Since Hawking was an atheist, you can predict what the answers are. But I'll save the details for later in this post.

First, I want to acknowledge Hawking's amazing courage and commitment to truth. He talks about the progression of his ALS (amyotrophic lateral sclerosis), which eventually left him only able to control his cheek movements -- but through technology he still was able to communicate via this means. 

I found this paragraph deeply moving.

My illness seemed to progress rapidly. Understandably, I became depressed and couldn't see the point of continuing to research my PhD, because I didn't know if I would live long enough to finish it. But then the progression slowed down and I had a renewed enthusiasm for my work. After my expectations had been reduced to zero, every new day became a bonus, and I began to appreciate everything I did have. While there's life, there is hope.

And in case you're wondering, yes, Hawking was an atheist until the moment he died. Apparently there are rumors to the contrary, but those are false. Like so many other atheists, Hawking found meaning in life without the fantasy of God. 

“Remember to look up at the stars and not down at your feet. Try to make sense of what you see and wonder about what makes the universe exist,” Hawking said of the meaning of life. “Be curious. And however difficult life may seem, there is always something you can do and succeed at.”

Here's how Hawking starts off the chapter in his book that addresses the Is there a God? question. 

Science is increasingly answering questions that used to be the province of religion. Religion was an early attempt to answer the questions we all ask: why are we here, where did we come from? Long ago, the answer was almost always the same: gods made everything.

The world was a scary place, so even people as tough as the Vikings believed in supernatural beings to make sense of natural phenomena like lightning, storms or eclipses. Nowadays, science provides better and more consistent answers, but people will always cling to religion, because it gives comfort, and they do not trust or understand science.

Hawking then makes clear what his overall attitude toward God is.

I do not want to give the impression that my work is about proving or disproving the existence of God. My work is about finding a rational framework to understand the universe around us. For centuries, it was believed that disabled people like me were living under a curse that was inflicted by God. Well, I suppose it's possible that I've upset someone up there, but I prefer to think that everything can be explained another way, by the laws of nature.

This is key.

The laws of nature are universal. So far, it appears that they operate the same way in every corner of the universe. Further, even though many religious people believe in miracles that supposedly defy the laws of nature, there is no demonstrable evidence that miracles exist, either now or in the past.

Thus where is the need for God, if the laws of nature are sufficient to understand the universe? (This understanding is incomplete, and likely always will be; however, science is by far our best means of comprehending the cosmos, since religion does a terrible job with this.)

Hawking then discusses scientific theories about the origin of the universe, as the Beginning of Everything appears to be the only area where religion might have something to say, since the laws of nature do a good job of explaining the current state of the universe.

He writes:

At the moment of the Big Bang, an entire universe came into existence, and with it space. It all inflated, just like a balloon being blown up. So where did all this energy and space come from? How did an entire universe full of energy, the awesome vastness of space and everything in it simply appear out of nothing?

Interestingly, because this was an idea that either I hadn't come across before, or failed to understand properly, Hawking describes how right now the universe is still "nothing" in terms of matter/energy. So nothing became another form of nothing via the Big Bang.

This is an easy to grasp metaphor.

Imagine a man wants to build a hill on a flat piece of land. The hill will represent the universe. To make this hill he digs a hole in the ground and uses that soil to dig his hill. But of course he's not just making a hill -- he's also making a hole, in effect a negative version of the hill. The stuff that was in the hole has now become the hill, so it all perfectly balances out.

That negative energy now is in space. The positive energy is in mass and energy that comprises stars, galaxies, us. Again, nothing has become nothing in a different form. Hawking says the only question is "What could cause the spontaneous appearance of a universe?"

Here's his answer, which is based on the laws of quantum mechanics and relativity theory.

The laws of nature tell us that not only could the universe have popped into existence without any assistance, like a proton, and have required nothing in terms of energy, but also that it is possible that nothing caused the Big Bang. Nothing.

The explanation lies back with the theories of Einstein, and his insights into how space and time in the universe are fundamentally intertwined. Something very wonderful happened to time at the instant of the Big Bang. Time itself began.

Hawking concludes his Is there a God? chapter with this:

When people ask me if a God created the universe, I tell them that the question itself makes no sense. Time didn't exist before the Big Bang so there is no time for God to make the universe in. It's like asking for directions to the edge of the Earth -- the Earth is a sphere that doesn't have an edge, so looking for it is a futile exercise.

Do I have faith? We are each free to believe what we want, and it's my view that the simplest explanation is that there is no God. No one created the universe and no one directs our fate.

This leads me to a profound realisation: there is probably no heaven and afterlife either. I think belief in an afterlife is just wishful thinking. There is no reliable evidence for it, and it flies in the face of everything we know in science. I think that when we die we return to dust.

But there's a sense in which we live on, in our influence, and in our genes that we pass on to our children. We have this one life to appreciate the grand design of the universe and for that I am extremely grateful.

Now, to my knowledge Hawking doesn't address a question that I love to ponder, but which I admit may be an artifact of the limited human mind: Why is there something rather than nothing?

As we've seen, Hawking says that actually there is still nothing, even though our universe sure appears to be something, since the positive mass/energy is balanced out by the negative energy of space.

However, seemingly there had to be laws of nature within this nothing to allow that balancing to occur. And laws of nature aren't nothing at all, but something within nothing.

I suspect that Hawking looked upon Why is there something rather than nothing? as an uninteresting philosophical question, since there doesn't appear to be any way to answer it, even in theory. The question boggles the mind, but this probably is because our human minds are used to causes and effects happening within time.

If the cosmos always has existed, this takes us outside of time. And also seemingly outside of eternity. We're into a realm of "is'ness" beyond our capacity to envision. As I've noted many times before on this blog, it appears that something must have always existed. 

Religious people typically term this something God. Scientific people typically term this something the laws of nature that allow things to come from nothing. Either way, we're left with mystery, awe, the grand design of the universe which was Stephen Hawking's life work.

"Seven Types of Atheism" is intellectually dishonest

Last month I shared a critical Amazon reader review of John Gray's book, Seven Types of Atheism, in a blog post: "Great review of 'Seven Types of Atheism' by someone who hasn't read the book."

I said in the post that I wasn't going to buy the book. Then I changed my mind. Not sure why. Maybe I wanted to see if the book was as bad as I thought it would be.

Now that I've read Seven Types of Atheism, I'm glad I did. Here's my own review.

The most glaring irritating thing I found in the book was that Gray defines atheism on page 2, then forgets his own definition on the following pages. Here's the early-on definition.

A provisional definition of atheism might still be useful, if only to indicate the drift of the book that follows. So I suggest that an atheist is anyone with no use for the idea of a divine mind that has fashioned the world. In this sense atheism does not amount to very much. It is simply the absence of the idea of a creator god.

OK, as an atheist I generally agree with this. There could be other types of gods than a creator god, but the major world religions -- Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism -- all teach that the world was created by a divine mind, or being.

So I figured that in the rest of his book, Gray would view atheism as how he defined it: the absence of the idea of a creator god. This fits with how I view my atheism. It also fits with how every atheist I know views atheism. Again, as the absence of a belief in god.

But in many places in Seven Types of Atheism, Gray speaks of a "religion of humanity," a "self-deifying humanity," "secular religion," and such. How could this be if atheism is the absence of the idea of a creator god? Wouldn't religion then be the presence of the idea of a creator god?

No, not according to Gray's twisted logic. 

Because on page 3 of his book, Gray offers up a decidedly strange definition of religion. It isn't a belief in god, creator-variety or otherwise. Nor is it an attempt to understand reality in terms of supernatural or divine phenomena. Rather, Gray says:

A provisional definition of religion may also be useful... Religion is an attempt to find meaning in events, not a theory that tries to explain the universe.

Wow. What a weird definition of religion. The Amazon reviewer who hadn't read the book nailed Gray on this, since he'd heard Gray speak in the same fashion in an interview. Here's part of what that reviewer said.

Gray said: If you asked an anthropologist or a sociologist or even a cultural historian about religion, not one of them nowadays, or very few of them, would think of religion as bodies of theories or beliefs or propositions which try to explain the world.

For starters, if we're talking about the three Abrahamic religions, they absolutely assert theories, beliefs and propositions for the purpose of explaining the world.

In a feeble attempt to support this claim, Gray uses a straw man. He says, "The myth about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden was never meant as an early theory of how life came about on this planet." Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact that the Abrahamic religions assert that God had a hand (direct or indirect) in the creation of the universe, which ultimately led to the creation of humans, with whom God has a special relationship.

Moreover, the Abrahamic religions assert that God has a hand in laying down morals. Clearly, these assertions are intended as theories, beliefs and propositions.

Thus what Gray does at the beginning of his book is intellectually dishonest. He defines atheism as the absence of the idea of a creator god. But he doesn't define religion as the presence of the idea of a creator god. Rather, Gray defines religion extremely broadly as "an attempt to find meaning in events."

Again, wow.

The day I got married was deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of marriage. The results of last Tuesday's midterm elections were deeply meaningful to me. So apparently I make a religion out of politics. 

But obviously every attempt by us humans to find meaning in events isn't religious in nature. But this obviousness isn't apparent to John Gray, because the bulk of his book is an attempt to paint atheism with the brush of religion, since atheists find meaning in events, history, humanity, and other non-godly entities.

Wait! Aren't atheists defined by Gray as lacking a belief in a creator god? Yes, but Gray says atheists are religious because they find meaning in events. Thus every person on Earth who finds meaning in events is religious by Gray's absurd logic. 

Here's some passages from Seven Types of Atheism that reflect this absurdity.

But it was Saint-Simon who first presented the religion of humanity in systematic form. In future, scientists would replace priests as the spiritual leaders of society. Government would be an easy matter of 'the administration of things.' Religion would become the self-worship of humankind.

...Having renounced the idea of any divine power outside the human world, human beings could not avoid claiming divine powers for themselves.

...A free-thinking atheist would begin by questioning the prevailing faith in humanity. But there is little prospect of contemporary atheists giving up their reverence for this phantom.

...Contemporary atheism is a continuation of monotheism by other means. Hence the unending succession of God-surrogates, such as humanity and science, technology, and the all-too-human visions of transhumanism.

Gray doesn't believe that "humanity" exists. Only individual humans do.

Fine, he's entitled to that belief. I don't agree with him, because our species, Homo sapiens, does have common characteristics, and the modern world has erased many of the borders that used to separate humans by geography, culture, and such. 

John Gray doesn't believe that our species advances. This is highly debatable. Witness how slavery, the subjugation of women, and world wars have faded away (though still existent, or possible) in the past several hundred years. 

But since Gray holds that belief, and he wanted to bash atheism in his book, he needed to define religion in such a way that anyone who finds meaning in human events or history is "religious." Hence, humanists are religious, and any atheist who finds meaning in a hope that humanity is progressing is also "religious."

I'm an atheist. I'm a progressive. I'm not religious. I don't believe in a creator god.

So Gray ignored the reality that the vast majority of atheists simply don't believe in god. But this fact doesn't fit with Gray's desire to make atheism into a secular "religion," so he ignored it.

We humans have selfhood without a self

Here's a big question, one of the biggest when it comes to understanding reality and how religions typically view what it means to be human:

Do we have a self? Or adding an (important) capital letter, Do we have a Self?

To kick off my discussion of these questions, here's some recent right-on comment observations from "JB."

Brian: "there is nobody having an experience. There is just experience, which usually includes an experience of being, or having, a self." Rather than no-body having an experience, I would argue that there is a body having an experience. More precisely, I would argue that the conscious brain is having the experience. That also seems obvious and rational.

Harding: "All you are is consciousness and its contents." Brian: "his insight also can be framed as a realization that there is no self..." If I am consciousness, then consciousness certainly seems like a good candidate for the self. Proclaiming no-self would be tantamount to proclaim no-consciousness, or no-conscious-being.

l agree with JB. And I also still hold that we don't have a self as it is commonly understood. It all comes down to what is meant by self. 

JB correctly observes that conscious beings have experiences. These experiences occur within a body. That could be a human body, a dog body, a whale body, a bird body, a bat body. 

Most neuroscientists and philosophers interested in consciousness say that the borderline between a conscious and unconscious being is that there is something like to be a conscious being. Thomas Nagel kicked off this train of thought with his famous, "What is it like to be a bat?" question. 

It sure seems like there is some answer to that question. It also seems like we will never know what the answer is, because only a bat can be a bat. Further, only a particular bat can know what it is like to be that particular bat. 

Maybe all bats have the same sort of conscious experience. But I doubt it. I'm virtually 100% certain that dogs have different conscious experiences, having been close friends with several of them. And I'm even more certain, basically 100%, that we human have different conscious experiences.

And when it comes to myself, I know for a fact that moment by moment, minute by minute, day by day, year by year, I have different conscious experiences. Sometimes -- as in deep sleep or under anesthesia -- I don't have any conscious experiences at all.

So it seems clear that if consciousness produces, or is, what we mean by "self," this self is changeable. It isn't anything constant, unchanging, imperturbable. That's why I suggested in the title of this post that we call it "selfhood," which has a more flexible and dynamic connotation than "self."

Yet, many, if not most, people have a very different idea of what "self" means. 

We often hear statements like, "I'm trying to find my true self," which implies that the self is like a buried treasure lurking somewhere under the obvious surface of consciousness. And religions look upon soul as being the spiritual or supernatural equivalent of a true self.

Meaning, soul is viewed as our eternal essence, while the body is viewed as temporary. (Christianity is ambiguous on this point, since bodily resurrection is part of Christian teaching; but ordinary Christians speak all of the time about soul and seem to believe that the soul survives bodily death.)

This certainly is the teaching of Hinduism and other Eastern forms of religion such as Sant Mat, since the soul (Atma) is supposed to be able to merge with God (Parmatma).

However, there is no evidence of a soul or Self -- with a capital "S" to indicate it's supposedly divine nature.

Further, there isn't even any evidence of an ordinary self, if "self" is construed to mean a permanent essence of ourselves that doesn't change. As JB indicated, the closest thing to something permanent in our psyche is consciousness, but this isn't what is generally considered to be a self.

The main reason we consider ourselves to be an enduring entity deserving of the title, "self," is memory. We have memories going back to early childhood. So when we think about ourselves, those memories are triggered, leading us to say things such as "It wasn't like me to have done something like that."

But if we had no memory of what we'd done in the past, we wouldn't be surprised at anything we did in the present, since that would simply be what we're doing now. 

So along with JB, I do believe that each of us is a self. (Note: is, not has.) Again, though, I think selfhood might be a better term, since this means individuality. Every person is undeniably unique. We just lack a permanent self, or Self/Soul.

"On Having No Head" has a few simple truths

On Having No Head is a book by D.E. Harding. I'd bought and read it quite a few years ago. Then, when I needed to weed out unwanted books to make room for more, On Having No Head was given away. 

Recently, though, I heard Sam Harris speak about the book in his Waking Up iPhone app, so I decided to re-buy and re-read it. Here's my review, which is of a second edition of the book that contains a "Bringing the story up to date" section that was written over forty years after Harding wrote the first edition.

My main problem with On Having No Head is the problem that I have with all books about personal spiritual breakthroughs or realizations. In the early days of my churchlessness, I was more interested in stories of how someone uncovered the Secret of the Universe. 

As late as 2006 I was recommending books that now I'm much more skeptical about. Why? Because I've got a better understanding of how the human mind works -- the result of both my own experiences with meditation, and a lot of reading about modern neuroscience and psychology. 

Here's the short version of what Harding experienced on a walk in the Himalayas, after he realized that he wasn't seeing his head (excerpt for a part of his nose).

It took me no time at all to notice that this nothing, this hole where a head should have been was no ordinary vacancy, no mere nothing. On the contrary, it was very much occupied. It was a vast emptiness vastly filled, a nothing that found room for everything - room for grass, trees, shadowy distant hills, and far above them snowpeaks like a row of angular clouds riding the blue sky. I had lost a head and gained a world.

It was all, quite literally, breathtaking. I seemed to stop breathing altogether, absorbed in the Given. Here it as, this superb scene, brightly shining in the clear air, alone and unsupported, mysteriously suspended in the void, and (and this was the real miracle, the wonder and delight) utterly free of "me," unstained by any observer. It's total presence was my total absence, body and soul. Lighter than air, clearer than glass, altogether released from myself, I was nowhere around.

Yet in spite of the magical and uncanny quality of this vision, it was no dream, no esoteric revelation. Quite the reverse: it felt like a sudden waking from the sleep of ordinary life, an end to dreaming. It was self-luminous reality for once swept clean of all obscuring mind. It was the revelation, at long last, of the perfectly obvious.

OK. I have no doubt that Harding had a breathtaking experience. But here's the thing: like he said, his revelation was of the perfectly obvious. Yesterday I jotted down a note about something Sam Harris said in lesson 28 of the guided meditations in his  Waking Up course.

You're the space in which everything appears. Everything is already happening. All you are is consciousness and its contents.

These three sentences are pretty much the gist of Harding's book. They indeed are perfectly obvious. Everything in the world, or indeed the entire universe, the Himalayas included, has to appear in our consciousness if we are to be aware of it. How else would we know anything?

But here's some facts about the human brain and mind (the mind is the brain in action, basically) that Harding doesn't address in On Having No Head, either because he wasn't aware of them, or chose not to mention them. 

(1) The brain has no feeling. This allows surgeons to operate on the brain while a patient is conscious. So we aren't aware of what our hundred billion or so brain cells are doing in the same way we feel our muscles contracting, our fingers touching something, or our stomach digesting a heavy meal. 

(2) In the quotation above, and elsewhere in his book, Harding speaks of a "vast emptiness" of consciousness. This may be how it feels to us, but that isn't reality. When Harding looked at the view of the Himalayas, his brain was busily piecing together data from his optic nerves, integrating it with past memories/experiences, and presenting him with what he calls a "superb scene." Visual perception isn't a passive mirroring of the world. It involves a lot of brain activity. 

In the updated part of his book, Harding does speak about some neuroscientific truths: there is no evidence for an independent "self" within the brain/mind, nor does it appear that we humans possess free will, which seemingly would require the aforementioned self that doesn't exist. 

Here's what Harding says in his Bringing the Story Up to Date section about his final stage of "The Eight Stages of the Headless Way." It's called (8) The Breakthrough.

This amounts to a profound declaration of intent. It is the realization at gut level (so to say) that one's deepest desire is that all shall be as it is -- seeing that it all flows from one's true Nature, the Aware Space here. 

How is this breakthrough actually made? What can one do to bring it nearer?

In a sense, nothing. It's not a doing, but an undoing, a giving up, an abandonment of the false belief that there's anyone here to abandon. What else is there to do?

After all, one's initial in-seeing -- no matter how "brief" and "shallow" -- was already total self-surrender: everything here went: or rather, it was clear there's nothing here to go. It was the essential quantum leap from the fiction of egocentricity to the fact of zerocentricity. 

And for sure the faithful day-to-day seeing put in since then -- the seeing that already one is Nothing and Everything -- is a most valuable preparation for the discovery that at the deepest level one already wills Nothing and Everything. 

Now, Harding goes on to talk about an unconditional surrender to God's will in which we welcome all that the world is bringing to us. But as noted above, his insight also can be framed as a realization that there is no self residing within our psyche, and there is no free will belonging to that nonexistent self.

Which is fully in accord with how Sam Harris understands the human brain/mind, which explains why Harris is a fan of Harding's book.

Let's explore the subtleties of determinism

This comment interchange on a recent post begs for further discussion. Which I'll start off below after sharing a screenshot of the interchange.

Taking JB's second comment first, I understand why he feels this way -- that this blog is the wrong place for discussing "these kinds of subtle, abstract notions."

Despite the name of this blog, many commenters are fervent believers in some form of religion, and they aren't very open to talking about ideas that challenge the tenets of their religion. But I started this blog 14 years ago with the intent of fostering just the sort of discussion that JB talks about.

So let's see if we can discuss the admittedly subtle, abstract notion of determinism without resorting to religious, philosophical, or supernatural platitudes.

I'd put Spence Tepper's comment in that category. Determinism doesn't make a case for God. Most religions that believe in some form of divine being believe in some form of human free will. And even if someone argues this point, the very notion of God is extremely arguable. 

Thus let's leave God out of this discussion of determinism.

Let's also dismiss Tepper's stark assertion that free will exists for humankind, which also is highly debatable, since most of the scientific evidence argues otherwise. Further, it is difficult to see how free will can coexist with determinism. Is Tepper really suggesting that the universe is deterministic, but humans have free will?

If so, where does that free will come from? God? A soul? But we're going to leave out God and other unproven supernatural entities, so that argument has zero credibility.

Let's return, then, to JB's provocative first comment.

I found it provocative because it makes me think, and that's a good thing. I've read and written a lot about free will and determinism. But this is a fresh idea for me: that determinism carries within it an inherent contradiction, because its apparent trueness can't be the reason someone holds that belief.

I look forward to JB speaking more about this, either in a comment or in an email message to me that I could share. Here's how I see what he said, which may or may not be close to what his understanding is. Because this indeed is subtle territory, I'll sort of circle around this issue in various ways.

(1) If determinism is true, and I believe it is, nothing exists outside of its bounds. This includes a belief in free will and a disbelief in determinism. Those also would be determined by prior causes and effects, as would a belief that determinism holds sway in the universe.

(2) Chance, to my understanding, is unknown determinism. "Chaos theory" isn't actually chaotic in the usual sense of the term. It simply refers to complex systems dominated by feedback loops in which small effects can have large causes, and it is impossible for humans to understand the dynamics of the system in sufficient detail to predict its behavior. But chaos theory is deterministic.

(3) Quantum mechanics may appear to be a refuge for genuine chance. However, as I've written about recently, no one knows the underlying meaning of quantum phenomena. Some theories (many worlds, for example) are deterministic. The Copenhagen interpretation isn't. Regardless, determinism seems to rule in the realm of everyday objects, which is where we live.

(4) I agree with JB that trueness alone can't be the reason someone accepts determinism. That would be only one among many different causes that lead to someone, like JB and me, embracing the idea of a deterministic universe. However, a longing for scientific objective truth is stronger in some people than in others. Even if this longing is determined, not freely willed, it still is a causative factor in how people look upon the world.

(5) Douglas Hofstadter wrote a book called "I Am a Strange Loop." I loved the title. I spent two years in a Systems Science Ph.D. program. Back then (1970's), and also now, feedback loops were recognized as a valid way of conceptualizing how the world works. 

(6) Loops can exist within loops. A belief or a feeling that free will is true can exist within a larger deterministic loop. For example, I believe in determinism, yet in my daily life I have a feeling that I act and choose freely. This is akin to me knowing that the Earth rotates around its axis, yet I feel "the sun is setting" when I see it sinking below the horizon. 

(7) Maybe this is what Tepper is referring to when he spoke of both determinism and free will existing. If so, I agree that we can have knowledge that X is true, yet wrongly have a feeling that Y is true. This is why science is our best way of knowing, since feelings and intuition can lead us astray.

(8) Many books I read accurately say that evolution and natural selection don't care about truth, they care about survival and passing on a being's genetic heritage. This might be part of what JB is getting at. Finding truth isn't an inherent stand-alone motivation for us humans. Even scientists (or especially scientists) acknowledge this.

(9) So again, science and reason are our best means of determining what is true about the world. Discussion, experimentation, hypothesis testing, skeptical questioning -- this is how we overcome human biases and blind spots. On our own, we always will be bound by our personal subjectivity. 

Well, this is a start toward a discussion of the subtleties of determinism.

Feel free to weigh in on what JB, Spence Tepper, and I have said on this subject. Just leave God and supernaturalism out of the comments. Think for yourself. Use reason and evidence to make your case, not faith or feelings.

Like God, there's also no evidence for a dragon in your garage

Good arguments against the existence of God and the supernatural are worth sharing twice. So here's what I shared a few years ago in "No dragon in the garage. Also, no God in heaven."

This morning I came across this excellent rebuttal to those who ask atheists like me to prove that God doesn't exist in the course of re-reading Paul Singh's book, "The Great Illusion."

As I repeatedly point out on this blog, the burden of proof is on those who claim that God does exist. This should be obvious, but sometimes obviousness needs to be conveyed via an analogy to those who refuse to see the obvious.

Since there's no evidence of a dragon in anybody's garage, fantasized garage-dwelling dragons have no effect on the world or any people other than those who believe they exist. They are a non-entity for everybody else who understands how crazy it is to believe that dragons can inhabit garages.

Likewise, since there's no evidence of God or the supernatural, a belief that these entities exist leads to absolutely no difference to the world or to anyone who doesn't believe in these fantasies. Meaning, a world without a belief in God looks exactly the same as a world with a belief in God.

Again, the only difference a false belief makes is in those whose mind holds the belief.

Sure, some people feel a need to point out the falsity of beliefs, just as fact checkers feel a need to point out the many lies of Donald Trump. But otherwise, a belief in something that doesn't exist has no effect on the world, since that thing doesn't exist except as a mental concept.

(Trump lies do exist, so they have an effect on the world.)

Here's how Singh explains this Carl Sagan analogy.

Carl Sagan's tale of "A fire breathing Dragon lives in my garage" is a perfect example of how those who make scientifically unfalsifiable claims try to shift the burden of proof to others by special pleading at every step of the way.

Someone tells you there is a dragon in his garage. So you take a look in the garage and you don't see any dragon. He tells you the dragon is invisible.

So you decide to spread some flour on the garage floor to detect the dragon's foot prints, but there are none. And so it goes. Your friend will always have an excuse as to why there is no evidence that there is a dragon in his garage.

You tell your friend that there is no evidence that there is a dragon in his garage. But he tells you that you can't prove there isn't. And he is right, you can't prove there isn't a dragon in the garage.

But that is precisely the point of Sagan's tale. The burden of proof is not on you to prove anything. The burden of proof is on the person who makes the claims about the dragon. It is his responsibility to provide evidence for the dragon.

And he can't provide any because there isn't any. And you can't prove his claim wrong because his claim is unfalsifiable. And it is unfalsifiable because it makes no predictions about what you will perceive when you look in the garage. 

Such unfalsifiable claims are nonsense.

This is how all superstition, pseudo-science, and religion works. Believers in such things make extraordinary claims that cannot be falsified. And when they are forced to admit that they don't have any evidence to support their claims, they respond by saying that you cannot prove that they are wrong.

But, again, the burden of proof is on the person making the extraordinary claim about miracles or UFOs or whatever to provide evidence for their claim. The burden of proof is not on the other person to prove them wrong -- something that is absolutely impossible to do given that their claim is unfalsifiable.

The take home lesson is that we should never believe a claim to be true simply because no one can prove it to be false. Theologians are experts at this kind of nonsense. 

Are delusional people making things up? Evidence shows that the human brain is universally delusional in many ways and therefore people who promote superstitions are not particularly more delusional than the rest of us.

It is just that examples of religious delusions are rather classic examples of how the brain creates illusions and delusions. The use of logic and scientific skepticism is a skill that can be used to overcome the limitations of our own brains. 

This skill is like any other skill such as learning to play the piano. It involves training in metacognition as well as basic education in all basic sciences.

Great review of "Seven Types of Atheism" by someone who hasn't read the book

When I first heard of John Gray's book, "Seven Types of Atheism," I thought I'd be interested in it. But after reading some reviews, I decided against buying it. (For example, see here and here.)

In another post I'll have more to say about an article in The New Yorker, Without a Prayer, which is partly about Gray's book. For now I'll just note a quotation from the book that illustrates how far off-base Gray's take on religiosity and atheism is:

"A godless world is as mysterious as one suffused with divinity, and the difference between the two may be less than you think."

Wrong. A godless world leads one to embrace modern science, which provides many answers to the questions that religious believers attribute to God. So there is considerably less mystery in a godless world.

To give one example, the theory of evolution does a much better job of explaining how us humans came to be than the countless creation myths put forth by religions. 

Now, I haven't read Gray's book. Neither has someone who wrote a scathing review on Amazon. But he listened to an interview of John Gray discussing "Seven Types of Atheism," which is the next best thing. 

Below is what Steven Mason says in his review. It seems right-on to me, given what is said about Gray's book in The New Yorker article. What Gray appears to ignore is what Mason zeroes in on: the fact that religions make truth claims about the world/universe.

This means that atheism has a much stronger leg to stand on than Gray admits to. I know lots of atheists. They all are fine moral people who are every bit as caring, virtuous, and loving as religious believers.

What they reject about religion is simple: it isn't true.

Put another way, there is no evidence that God or the supernatural exists. So again, this means there is a huge difference between (1) believing in a universe suffused with divinity, and (2) not believing in this sort of universe.

Here's Mason's review:

Amazon review by Steven Mason of John Gray's "Seven Types of Atheism."

I haven't read this book but I did listen to a long interview of the author discussing this book. I couldn't believe what I was hearing. This is a review of the author explaining his book.

If any defenders of Gray would like to have a discussion with me about the views expressed in this book, I encourage you to post a comment. I assume that the views expressed in the interview are also expressed in the book. Let's get started:

Gray said: The first thing that's wrong with the so-called New Atheism is that there's nothing in it which is new.

Even if this were true (it's not), it's irrelevant. The so-called New Atheists are responding to the current crop of theists who are using, or trying to use, the power of government to force their religious beliefs on everyone, and other theists who are using pseudoscience to "prove" that God exists. It could be said, slightly tongue-in-cheek, that New Atheists are a response to New Theists. Moreover, while religion is exempt from taxes, there's no reason it needs to be exempt from criticism.

Besides, if originality is the name of the game, Gray should criticize himself because he doesn't say anything new.

Gray said: None of the New Atheists knows anything about the history of ideas.

That's an ad hominem attack that has no evidence to support it. This remark reminds me of "the true Scotsman" fallacy. In this case, Gray gets to define "knows anything" in a way that makes his claim valid (in his own mind, at least).

Gray has advanced degrees in philosophy and politics, so it's quite possible that he has acquired more knowledge about the history of ideas than most of the New Atheists. But that doesn't mean that the New Atheists have "no knowledge." Nor does it mean that having less knowledge than Gray necessarily invalidates their criticisms of religion. This is elitism of the worst kind and it's also the fallacy of "appeal to authority."

Gray said: If you asked an anthropologist or a sociologist or even a cultural historian about religion, not one of them nowadays, or very few of them, would think of religion as bodies of theories or beliefs or propositions which try to explain the world.

For starters, if we're talking about the three Abrahamic religions, they absolutely assert theories, beliefs and propositions for the purpose of explaining the world.

In a feeble attempt to support this claim, Gray uses a straw man. He says, "The myth about Adam and Eve and the Garden of Eden was never meant as an early theory of how life came about on this planet." Even if that is true, it doesn't change the fact that the Abrahamic religions assert that God had a hand (direct or indirect) in the creation of the universe, which ultimately led to the creation of humans, with whom God has a special relationship.

Moreover, the Abrahamic religions assert that God has a hand in laying down morals. Clearly, these assertions are intended as theories, beliefs and propositions.

Gray said: What we now call Hinduism, a very bold body of beliefs, of practices associated with very sophisticated philosophies, has never been summed up in a single body of beliefs. The same goes for Taoism, or Taoism and Confucianism and Shinto. Judaism hasn't been embodied in any single list of propositions or creeds.

What is Gray's point here? Even if there are many varieties of religious beliefs within broad families of religions, each variety still asserts "theories, beliefs and propositions that try to explain the world."

Gray said: I seriously considered not discussing New Atheists at all because I do find them boring and feeble in their arguments. But I did in the end, because most readers, if we say the word 'atheism,' wouldn't nowadays be most familiar with figures like Dawkins and Sam Harris and the others that you mentioned. I did discuss them quite briefly.

One gets the impression that Gray "discusses" New Atheists mostly to point out that they are ignorant about atheism, ideas, and religion, and they are boring besides. But again, if New Atheists are responding to what some power-hungry and pseudoscientific theists are trying to do in the world today, why does Gray find this "boring"?

For example, does Gray want a world in which Creationism is taught in public school science classes, as if it were a valid theory supported by evidence? Doesn't Gray know that is exactly what some theists are trying to do?

I could respond to lots more quotes, but you get the idea. These few quotes are more than sufficient to convince me not to bother reading this book, or any other book by Gray. Even if I were receptive to his views, there is certainly nothing "new" about them.

Why atheist me isn't interested in religious views

Recently a regular commenter on this blog, Spence Tepper, proposed an experiment. Basically, it was a sort of "reflective listening" exercise, where before arguing for your own position, you state as clearly as possible how someone opposed to your position feels/thinks.

Here's what Tepper said:

In fact, Brian, I would like to offer a social psychology experiment for those of us participating here regularly. Let's all work with you to create a list of our names and our current position on matters of Atheism, Agnosticism, Theism etc. And the opposite position. Then, for one week, each day we comment on a blog post you provide talking the exact opposite point of view to our normal perspective.

For example, I would argue purely for Anti-theism and point to the amoral and corrupting influence of all forms of theistic belief, including RSSB. You might choose to adopt the role of a devout Catholic... Arjuna and One Initiated might assume the roles of Atheist and Sceptic. Etc... If any of us falters or appears not to make the best case of the role, anyone is free to call us on it.

And we will be bound to deepen our case for the opposite view, or to do some research on that view and return with a stronger argument for it. My hypothesis is that, after a week of doing this with full sincerity, we will change our position. It might only change a little, or we might actually be firmer in understanding why we actually believe what we do now. But I believe our post experiment position will change permanently.

I also believe that each of us will report an understanding and greater respect of the opposite view we don't have now, which we would be unable to develop without stepping into that role ourselves. Well? Any takers?

Here's why I'm not interested in the idea.

(1) Been there, done that. Not every atheist used to be a religious believer, and not every religious believer used to be an atheist. But often this is the case. When it is, the person who switched sides, so to speak, has a very good understanding of how the other side thinks, because they themselves used to think that way.

This applies to me.

In my teen and early college years, I was an atheist. Then for 35 years I was a devotee of an Eastern religion. And for the past 13 years or so I've reverted to atheism. So I understand the religious mentality because it used to be a core part of my psyche. Meaning, I don't need to put myself in the role of a religious person, since I played that role for many years.

(2) Objective reality doesn't have two sides. Reality isn't this and that. It simply is. 

Of course, when we aren't sure what reality is like, various hypotheses can be put forward, since no one knows which is true. For a long time people debated whether the sun revolved around the earth, or the earth revolved around the sun. Now that debate is over.

Ditto with whether human-caused global warming is happening. I have little or no interest in understanding how global warming deniers think, because their thinking is wrong. Likewise, I consider that anyone who believes in God or the supernatural is wrong, because there is no demonstrable evidence for those beliefs. 

Yes, I understand that lots of people feel that God and the supernatural are real. I used to feel that way myself. But I don't see any point in trying to understand a viewpoint that is almost certainly incorrect. 

(3) Facts would change my mind, not another mind. I love politics. I love discussions. I love newspaper opinion pages. So part of what Spence Tepper suggested appeals to me -- the part about examining the basis for opposing positions. In fact, in my blog posts I regularly ask religious believers to provide solid evidence that God or the supernatural exists. 

I'm very much open to changing my atheist mind, but so far no one has provided that evidence.

However, it isn't understanding a religious believer's mind that would cause this change. Like I said above, I used to have that sort of mind. I remember how I used to think, and now I don't think that way, since it no longer makes sense to me.

In some cases, knowing how another mind feels about something is instructive. I like to read Top Critic reviews on the Rotten Tomatoes web site when deciding whether to watch a certain movie. But when it comes to deciding whether God exists, or the supernatural exists, for me this isn't a matter of opinion, it is a matter of fact.

Again, I already understand why people believe in God and the supernatural. I'm sympathetic to those beliefs, since I used to have them myself. Yet I don't see any reason to restate them, as Tepper suggested. The facts are on the side of atheism, and that's much more important to me than the mental mindset of a religious believer. 

Commenters, please, don't lie and don't preach

I just added another Open Thread post so commenters who want to share something preachy, off-topic, or untrue have a place to do so. It's this blog's free speech zone, where anything goes. 

Also, I've been loose about off-topic and untrue comments on regular Church of the Churchless posts, but there are limits -- and I hope commenters will do better about staying on topic and being truthful. 

As I've noted before, I enjoy reading comments on blog posts and newspaper stories. However, if I'm reading a Washington Post story about Jamal Khashoggi's murder by the Saudi Arabia hit squad, I don't want to see comments that, say, proclaim "It's a George Soros plot!"

In fact, I don't see such comments, because newspapers typically moderate comments in accord with pretty strict comment guidelines. 

Likewise, if I'm having a conversation with a group of people, and we're talking about climate change, it is both impolite and jarring if someone interjects with, "I'm a Christian. Praise Jesus!" Yet this is akin to what some commenters do on this blog, albeit not about Christianity or Jesus.

(I'm thinking mainly of you, "777.")

I delete those sorts of comments unless they are in an Open Thread. I also delete comments about me deleting those sorts of comments.

Here's another problem regarding truthfulness. Today a couple of commenters said stuff that is so obviously untrue, it took me just a couple of minutes to debunk the falsehoods. 

Look, if I can do this in a couple of minutes, so can every commenter. Before you publish a comment that makes a wild claim, do some research to confirm that it is true.

Where I live, the United States, we have a president who lies constantly. I and a great many others are fed up with this. I don't want this blog to be a platform for lies. Or, if you like, untruths. (A lie is an untruth that someone knows to be untrue; often it is difficult to tell the difference between a lie or an untruth.)

Here's the first untruth, a comment posted by Spence Tepper on a recent blog post.

No, the brain doesn't send radio waves. The link Tepper shared in the comment doesn't say that. It says that the brain can emit weak electrical fields which may propagate between nearby layers of neurons. These aren't radio waves, which are only one form of many types of electromagnetic waves.

The MIT School of Engineering answered a question, "Can brain waves interfere with radio waves?" Here's part of the answer. 

Radio waves and brain waves are both forms of electromagnetic radiation — waves of energy that travel at the speed of light. The difference between brain waves, radio waves, and other electromagnetic waves (such as visible light, X-rays, and Gamma rays) lies in their frequency — that is, how often the waves peak and trough in a second. 

Radio waves, which include radio and other wireless transmission signals, as well as other natural signals in the same frequency, peak and trough at between 50 and 1000 megahertz — that’s between 50 million and one billion oscillations per second.

The human brain also emits waves, like when a person focuses her attention or remembers something.  This activity fires thousands of neurons simultaneously at the same frequency generating a wave — but at a rate closer to 10 to 100 cycles per second.

Interference happens when two waves of the same or very similar frequencies bump into each other. This might happen when the signals from two radio stations, both broadcasting at 89.7 megahertz from different cities, bump into one another. “The shape of the waves changes linearly, they add to and subtract from one another,” says Dimitrios Pantazis, director of the Magnetoencephalography (MEG) Laboratory at MIT’s McGovern Institute. As a result, songs become static.

But, says Pantazis, since their frequencies are so wildly different, brain waves don’t interfere with radio waves. Even if that was the case, brain waves are so weak, they are hardly measurable at all. For comparison, says Pantazis, “the magnetic field of the earth is just strong enough to move the needle of a compass. Signals from the brain are a billionth of that strength.”

Here's an even more obvious untruth from commenter Vinny:

Yeah, Vinny, this atheist is going to provide what you consider a "lame argument" to refute what you said. In other words, TRUTH.

Again, it took me about one minute to find a Snopes piece that debunks the ridiculous idea that people can survive only on sunlight. Actually, people have died because they held this belief, so it is no joke to further promulgate this dangerous falsehood. And just as obviously it is impossible to live only on water. Excerpt:

Although claims of “breatharians” surviving and thriving pop up every few years, we were unable to find any evidence contradicting the body of science demonstrating humans require water and food to stay alive. It’s possible the couple profiled by The Sun in June 2017 both genuinely made and believed their own claims, but we found no proof the impossible assertion was actually true. When tested, purported breatharians such as Jasmuheen failed to last more than a few days without food and water. 

Sungazers are closely akin to Breatharians. Again, there is no evidence that people can live on either only sunlight or water, or sunlight and air.

Vinny, next time you feel like posting a crazy comment, head to Google and check out what the reality-based community has to say about your notion -- especially if you're advocating something that can kill people.

Open Thread 17 (free speech for comments)

Leave a comment on this post about anything you want to talk about. 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.

Modern science is more mystical than ancient mysticism

For many years, about 37, I was deeply attracted to mysticism. One of the reasons was that I loved how mystic teachings taught the self was an illusion and our sense of free will masked God's overarching control over all things, including human actions.

But gradually I realized the downsides of mysticism. There was no demonstrable evidence that God or anything supernatural existed. And my love of science eventually led me to embrace reality, rather than religion -- of which mysticism is an offshoot.

Now, though, I've come to a pleasing conclusion: modern science actually is more mystical than ancient mysticism, so scientific reality contains a big part of what I found so appealing in supernaturalism.

I've started re-reading Paul Singh's fascinating book, "The Great Illusion: The Myth of Free Will, Consciousness, and the Self." I was drawn to do this after seeing a mention of the book in a recent comment on one of my posts,  which caused me to order a copy from Amazon.

When the book arrived, it looked familiar.

Indeed, it didn't take me long to find a highly highlighted copy on a bookshelf. So I'm going to give the new Amazon copy to my wife for sharing with members of an atheist/freethinkers discussion group she's organized here in Salem, Oregon.

I decided to re-read the book even though I'd written several blog posts about it in 2016:
No dragon in the garage. Also, no God in heaven.
Free will exists. Freedom of the will doesn't.

I've found that because my views on science, the world, and reality keep evolving (good thing!), often I'll get fresh insights from a book I've enjoyed even if I read it fairly recently. 

Such is happening already with The Great Illusion after re-reading only the Preface and the first chapter, Only God's Will. What struck me today is how modern science is able to dispel illusions (maya, if you like) in a much more powerful and convincing way than mysticism.

Here's how Paul Singh describes himself:

Paul Singh is a biochemist, mathematician, surgeon-physician, and a urogynecologist. He is a scholar of eastern and western intellectual traditions. He is a professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology in the College of Medicine at the University of Science, Arts and Technology at Montserrat, British West Indies.

And here's some excerpts from his book about how us humans are deceived about the true nature of free will and the self:

My lifelong research has confirmed what modern science has shown -- that free will, consciousness, and the self are illusions... Consciousness is any qualitative first-person experience. The feelings that you get when you pinch yourself, drink a glass of water, or feel bored are examples of consciousness.

Consciousness is certainly a fact (you who are reading this sentence are obviously conscious at this moment), but modern brain research suggests very strongly that consciousness cannot exist without a brain.

...Although it is correct to say that we have barely touched upon the perplexing complexity of the human brain, we have come far enough in our understanding that we can declare with confidence that these three entities -- free will, consciousness, and the self -- do not have any independent existence of their own independent of the human brain. 

Their illusory existence is dependent upon the brain just like a mirage is dependent upon the brain and possesses no independent reality of its own. 

Singh then talks about how evolution has given rise to our sense of individual identity, which includes the false notion of "souls" or "spirits" that supposedly enable our identity to live on even after the death of the physical body. Of course, religious and mystical beliefs also are products of the brain. So the brain generates the illusion that consciousness can exist without the brain.

It's impossible to escape from this hall of mirrors by any means other than modern science. Singh writes:

First, the beliefs, that have been found to be illusions by science, are essential for human survival. Since we cannot think any other way than to believe that we are, somehow, independent of our bodies, such a belief must have played an important role in our evolutionary past.

We don't know where the "I" or "self" resides, but we all feel there is such a self. That is what led philosophers for thousands of years to think there is a "ghost in the machine." Ancient Hindus wrote thousands of treatises on this subject and they are still writing them today. But science has demonstrated that these philosophers and religious thinkers were all wrong.

What scientists discover through the scientific method is often counter-intuitive. In the absence of science, we often draw unwarranted conclusions, based on simple observations, frequently mixing our emotions with our observations... The brain determines subjective experience in exactly the same way it determines all other bodily functions. 

...We like to think of ourselves as being something other than our bodies, but actually, as modern science has shown, we are our bodies, You are your body; you wouldn't be you without your body wired together with your brain. Without your brain, you wouldn't be you. 

Everything about you as a person can be explained by what goes on in your brain. Who you are and what you are like, all of your emotions and every one of your ideas, how you think and what you think about, and our own personal story, come from your brain. You would have no idea of your own existence without your brain.

The body you will leave behind when you die will carry your name, because it was your body, and not someone else's. The very possibility of imagining that you can float free of your body is conceivable only because it is your brain that thinks these things. 

...Your inner self, your soul, and the god you worship are nothing else but your own brain interconnected with the rest of your body.

So what's the way out of this brain maze, which sometimes leads us to a correct understanding of reality, yet also leads us astray when it comes to believing in God, soul, spirit, free will, life after death, and the nature of consciousness? Science!

The brain doesn't have the job of "speaking up" and revealing what it does, and the conscious awareness that the brain does produce cannot automatically seem organic or even physical. Only through studying the brain scientifically can we explain why we aren't normally alerted to innumerable details about what our brains are doing as we go about living our lives.

In a way, projecting what is sensed and thought into an alternative sort of reality was something that the human brain had to do as intelligence grew. 

...Because science arrived late to the human scene, non-scientific explanations had plenty of time to get entrenched in so many stories that humans have been telling themselves, and the concepts in these stories got embedded in the languages we all learn to speak as children,

...For people, "mind" has most of the same meanings that "spirit' had millennia ago, and most people today expect mind to share in the same destiny as spirit. 

But what seems like undeniable common sense, confirmed by our intuitions and assumed by the ordinary words we speak, is really just a built-up web of imaginative notions that developed over the long course of ordinary human events, hardened by regular use as people lived out their mundane paths in life.

Those notions and fabulous stories conveying them have made many people feel extremely special, perhaps so special that it can seem as if the whole of creation is really about them.

Your brain is quite real. What the brain is busily doing in so many special ways must be largely hidden from awareness. Our innate curiosity can raise good questions about what is going on. After that, however, only science can responsibly investigate what the brain actually does and how it accomplishes all the special things it can do.

The true story of the human brain is more amazing than anything imagined before.

Nicely said, Dr. Singh.

What Singh talks about in his book isn't all that different from what I've read in many other books about neuroscience, the illusion of free will, and how consciousness arises in the brain. 

But reading the excerpts I've shared led to a more solid realization in my own brain that all of mysticism, all of meditation, all of religion, all of everything, is the product of nerve cells firing in the marvelously complex cranium of us Homo sapiens. 

Our clear understanding of reality, along with the illusions that confuse us -- all this arises from a single source: the human brain. There is no way a brain can understand itself, since most of what transpires in the brain occurs outside of conscious awareness.

So modern science is the only way to reveal the secrets that lie hidden within us. Not mysticism, because mystics are subject to the same illusions regarding free will, consciousness, and the self that everyone else is. Yes, meditation can result in different brain states. 

But so can drugs, extreme sports, a walk under the night sky, loving someone deeply, and so much else. There's no way out of the maze of the brain except through the collaboration of many brains working together to cut through illusion and reveal reality.

Which is a damn good description of modern science. 

Join the godly, supernatural, mystical "I Don't Know For Sure" club

It gives me great pleasure to invite not only visitors to this blog, but everybody in the whole freaking world, to join a non-exclusive club I've just formed:

The I Don't Know For Sure club. 

Admission is free. There are no dues. Also, no meetings. Nor any sort of organization. This club exists only in the minds of those who answer "no" to a simple question.

Are you 100%, completely, absolutely, without-a-doubt confident that what you believe about god, the supernatural, and mystical experiences is objectively true?

Now, though this question is simple, I still feel a need to explain it.

What I'm after here is getting people to consider whether there is at least the tiniest sliver of doubt that their spiritual/religious beliefs, or lack thereof, are true.

And I've used "objectively" to define true.

Meaning, I'm not asking about whether someone has an absolutely firm belief that, for example, God either exists or doesn't exist; that life after death either exists or doesn't exist; or that it is possible or impossible to experience a supernatural realm.

A belief is subjective. I'm asking about objective reality. For it sure seems that either God exists, or God doesn't exist, no matter whether humans believe or don't believe in God. 

I've become an atheist. I no longer believe in God, life after death, or supernatural mystical experiences. Yet here's the thing: 

I don't know this with absolute certainty. So I'm a non-card-carrying member of the I Don't Know for Sure club, with a membership number of #1 (which, as noted above, only exists in my own mind).

If you also want to join this club, leave a comment on this post to that effect.

And if you like, mention whether you're (1) a religious/spiritual believer who isn't 100% sure that what you believe is objectively true, (2) if you're an atheist who isn't 100% sure that your non-belief is objectively true, or (3) someone in-between who isn't sure whether whatever it is you believe or don't believe is objectively true. 

My theory, which admittedly may not hold up, is that despite the obvious great divide between religious believers and atheists, there's a thin bridge that unites most of them: a recognition that what they consider to be objectively true, may not be.

In my case, I see atheism as being much more probable.

But this means there's a chance I could be wrong. I readily admit this, and have done so frequently in my churchless blog posts. That said, I don't think there's a high probability I'm going to live on in some ethereal form after my bodily death.

However, if this happens I'll be overjoyed to tell whatever loving divine being I meet on the "other side," Wow, I sure was wrong. (If it's a hateful devilish being, I won't be as enthusiastic about this.)

Admitting that no one knows for sure strikes me as a wonderful way to bridge the gap between religious belief and atheism. Sure, it isn't a wide bridge, given that I suspect many, if not most, people would say they're at least 99% sure that, say, God either exists or doesn't exist.

But any admission of "I don't know for sure" leaves open the door to looking upon those with different views with a kinder, gentler, less dogmatic eye.

And this is a very good thing in our current world where people are increasingly divided into opposing tribes that find little or nothing good to say about the other side, or see little or nothing they have in common.

"I' is consciousness itself, not a conscious being

I'm pleased to share another email message from JB, a frequent commenter on this blog who has an outstanding ability to write cogently about profound topics. 

I was tempted to say "philosophical topics," but as you will read below, JB's thoughts about consciousness really have little to do with philosophy -- at least, as most people regard this field. The ancient Greeks considered philosophy (literally, love of wisdom) to be a way of life, not an academic exercise.

So in that sense, what JB writes about is indeed philosophical, since there is nothing more intimately connected with life than our consciousness. No consciousness, no life.

Enjoy.

Hi Brian,

 

I noticed that you haven't taken part in much of the discussion about volition. On a separate but related topic, I notice that there is much talk about the term "I" supposedly representing something nonexistent. 

 

Years ago I spent some time examining this term and its usage and came to the conclusion that it does represent something real, at least as real as anything else in an existence where everything is temporary, relative, and conditional. Arriving at this conclusion seems logical but please correct me if there is something deficient with this use of logic.

 

I came to understand that the term "I" simply represents consciousness itself, not even a conscious entity per se, but consciousness itself. 

 

It should be noted at the outset that the assertion "I am consciousness" is not a spiritual or religious claim. I do not contend that consciousness is immaterial, will survive death, or can exist in any way apart from the brain. 

 

We use the term "I" and, rather than simply being a conventional artifact, it denotes a function.

 

Thus, it helps to examine and isolate the referent of this signifier. At first blush, one might conflate the term "I" with the totality of each individual being or an entity, but this would be a mistake. The symbol "I" ultimately refers to the seat of subjectivity, the seat of experience. "I" am the receiver-of-experience, the experiencer, or more to the point—experience itself. The seat of subjectivity is consciousness.

 

Experience necessarily entails consciousness.

 

There is no experience without consciousness, no consciousness without experience. They are at minimum coexisting and inextricable, if not identical (I presume the latter out of parsimony). Therefore, consciousness, subjectivity, and experience are all interchangeable terms and essentially synonymous.  

 

Why do I contend that consciousness itself is the referent of the "I" signifier?

 

I take the radical empirical and phenomenological route to arrive at this answer. I have had anesthesia twice in my life and I utterly disappeared during that time. I also entirely vanish each night in deep, dreamless sleep. I reemerge in dreams because a form of consciousness (dream-consciousness) emerges. 

 

The term "I" does not refer to one's body (save their brain) because one could have their arms and legs amputated and "I" would remain intact. "I" have nothing to do with almost all of my physiological processes. My heart circulates blood, food is digested, my hair grows—all without "I".

 

"I" is, quantitatively speaking, an infinitesimally small aspect of this organism. "I" is also a mere fragment of my mental processes.

 

But qualitatively speaking, "I" is vital.

 

The very term "quality" itself necessarily implies experience/consciousness. Without consciousness, there is no experience. Without experience, there is subjective nonexistence. While consciousness may be a quantitative minority in terms of the totality of mental activities, it is absolutely imperative for experience and therefore, the awareness of existence. Experiential existence is entirely contingent upon consciousness.

 

Ask yourself this question: Do I have consciousness or am I conscious? It may seem like variations on the same question, but it isn't.

 

Having consciousness requires an entity that possesses consciousness, the corollary being that it could functionally exist in the absence of this capacity. If "I" have consciousness, "I" must be both prior to consciousness and able to be detached from consciousness and still functionally exist.

 

This doesn't hold up either under the phenomenological evidence. "I" doesn't appear without consciousness or apart from consciousness, so there is no basis for the argument that "I" is referring to anything other than consciousness. "I" doesn't have consciousness; "I" is conscious. "I" is consciousness itself.

 

Another example: When one says, "I feel nauseated", one could just as well say "the experience of nausea is happening." The differences are due to grammatical convention. The term "I" denotes something that is never divorced from experience. Consciousness is the only function that can never be divorced from experience. To be conscious is to be experiencing.

 

Consciousness is experience. Consciousness/experience and "I" utterly disappears with a blow to the head, with deep sleep, with anesthesia, and will permanently disappear with death. Death is the "deep sleep" from which one never reemerges.

 

Now, what about those that claim that "I" cannot refer to anything because there is no self? Proponents of this belief claim that there must be no self because there is no self that can be found. Coincidentally, or not, consciousness is also something that cannot be found. Consciousness is self-disclosing but cannot be directly apprehended by itself.

 

The author Douglas Harding's so-called awakening experience involved the perception of having "no head." The "no head" experience is strikingly analogous to the seemingly earth-shattering experience of "anatman," wherein the experience leaves one with the sense that they, and everyone else, have "no self."

 

As Walter Truett Anderson wrote, "You know you have a head, of course, but you do not have a head for yourself, in your own field of vision." Likewise, I would contend that you have a self of course, but you do not have a self for yourself. Just as one's head can never see itself and is sensed as either nonexistent or a "vast emptiness," people go looking for the self and find nothing.

 

They have concluded that the self is either nonexistent or is a vast emptiness/nothingness (read: Nagarjuna).

 

Just as one cannot directly see their head, one likewise cannot directly see their self, as the self is the "seeing" (is consciousness itself). This inability to directly apprehend consciousness has led some in the academic community to conclude that it too is not existent, but a rather persistent illusion (more on that below).

 

But to conclude that consciousness and the self are illusory and ultimately nonexistent would be as silly as believing that you literally have no head.

 

The moral of the story is: just because you cannot sense the self doesn't necessarily imply that there is no self, any more than not being able to see your head means that you have no head. If it is true, as Francis of Assisi said, that "what you are looking for is that which is looking," then of course it will never see itself.

 

Alan Watts said, "You don’t know yourself, because you never can. [Yourself is] never an object of its own knowledge. Just as a knife doesn’t cut itself, fire doesn’t burn itself, light doesn’t illumine itself. It’s always an endless mystery to itself."

 

Some theoreticians have, at one time or another, attempted to construct an argument postulating that consciousness is an illusion (read: Blackmore, Dennett, et al.). Most have retreated from this position due to its untenability,  as the argument quickly unravels itself when subjected to scrutiny. 

 

If it is the interaction of material structures that create the illusion of consciousness (and that consciousness is, in fact, non-existent), then it is by and through a non-existent faculty that we have come to discover and study these very structures that are said to be generating the illusion. Therefore, it would follow that these material structures (particles, molecules, neuro-chemicals, the brain) are also non-existent if they were apprehended via a non-existent function. 

Simply out, if consciousness is non-existent, then all information/experience gleaned by and through said non-existent phenomenon is, by logical necessity, also non-existent.

 

If consciousness does not exist, then the content of consciousness (sensory experience, for instance) must not exist. Thus, all sensory phenomena presumably experienced by and through consciousness (including any and all features of the material world) would not, in fact, exist. The universe does not exist. The earth does not exist. You and I don't exist. Neither do these theoreticians, their books or any of the ideas contained within these books.

If consciousness does not exist, then all mental phenomena -- thought, observation, analyzation, reason, logic, etc. do not exist, including the very thought that consciousness doesn't exist. The notion of something supposedly without existence making an assertion regarding the existence of anything, especially itself, would be the zenith of irony. 

 

Consciousness is self-disclosing and yet thoroughly and unequivocally indemonstrable. Ironically, that which makes all knowledge and experience possible can itself only be known or experienced "indirectly." It can never be a direct object of itself. 

 

And furthermore, while consciousness can never become its own object, the existence of consciousness in any experience is the only thing that can be known with certainly due to its self-disclosing and self-validating nature.

 

All of reality may be a "holographic projection" or a simulation, yet this wouldn't alter the fact there is consciousness of the projection. With the consciousness of reality or the consciousness of an illusion, consciousnes is the common denominator. While all of the objects of consciousness may in fact just be illusions, if one is conscious of these appearances, one can know that consciousness itself exists and is therefore not an illusion. 

 

Thanks for taking the time to read this. Let me know what you think if you have the time.

 

Here's what I emailed back to JB. His responses are shown in italics.

 

I agree with pretty much everything you said. The rest isn’t something I disagree with. I just need to ponder it more. Mostly I’m referring to the notion that if consciousness doesn’t exist, then nothing else does either. Maybe you’re right. It’s just a subtle, slippery argument.

 

Are you referring to this: "Experiential existence is entirely contingent upon consciousness." No, I certainly don't think that whatever exists is dependent upon consciousness for its existence. I just mean that the experiential component of life depends on being conscious. If we existed but were unconscious (like zombies), we wouldn't experience anything at all. It would be a black out - unconsciousness. 

 

I don’t think you’re saying that before consciousness existed in the universe, there wasn’t a universe. That’s a different issue. At least, maybe it is. Things exist even if no conscious being is aware of them, I’m quite confident of that. What you’re getting at seems to be how confident we humans can be about our take on the world if our consciousness is an illusion.

 

The way I see it, a masterful alien programmer seemingly could produce a sense of consciousness in the actors within the simulation we might be in. I don’t see how this would make a difference in the reality of the simulation. It would still exist even if, as is the case with human simulations/computer games, the actors had no consciousness. 

 

I'm not sure because, as I've said, I equate consciousness with experience. In my understanding, one necessarily implies the other. Can a character in a computer game actually internally experience that world? Each character would be having its own internal felt-experience, unknown to any of the other characters who would be having their own? 

 

I sort of agree that our sense of being conscious is its own validation.

 

But as noted in a previous post, and you seem to agree with this, what we’re talking about is “consciousness of” things, not consciousness as an independent entity. My question just is about the need for consciousness as a validation of what is real. I see the possibility of an advanced computer/robot being able to determine what exists in the world through its simulated senses (vision, touch, etc), even though it lacks consciousness.

I think such a robot could certainly compile data through simulated senses, but it would be a strain for me to submit to the notion that such objective data would be subjectively experienced. You could program the robot so that it was as if it experienced, but I don't  think it would. Maybe it's a question of the degree of advancement needed to reach that level of complexity.

 

We are like robots in every way except for one: experience.

 

 

 

Can there be consciousness without conscious content?

In regard to the question I asked in the title of this post, I'd say "No." For one thing, how could someone know that they are conscious without an extra something-or-other besides supposedly pure consciousness? 

I talked about this in "My (only) big problem with Sam Harris' 'Waking Up' book."

Let's be clear: Sam Harris considers that the brain produces consciousness. He doesn't show any sign of believing in a transcendent non-physical consciousness (like soul or spirit) which exists apart from the brain. So I have no problem with this aspect of Harris' view of consciousness.

But as I said in the previous post, I can't grasp what Harris is getting at when he writes about what he experienced while meditating:

There were periods during which all thought subsided, and any sense of having a body disappeared. What remained was a blissful expanse of conscious peace that had no reference point in any of the usual sensory channels. 

Many scientists and philosophers believe that consciousness is always tied to one of the five senses -- and that the idea of a "pure consciousness" apart from seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, and touching is a category error and a spiritual fantasy. I am confident that they are mistaken.

Hmmmm. I'm just as confident that they are not mistaken.  It seems obvious that everyday consciousness isn't limited to sense experiences. Dreaming is a conscious act. It doesn't involve seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, or touching via the five senses. 

Likewise, I can believe that in a state of deep meditation, Sam Harris did indeed lose any sense of having a body, and wasn't thinking in any ordinary sense. But Harris was still conscious of something, right? He speaks of this as "a blissful expanse of conscious peace." 

That doesn't sound like "pure consciousness." It sounds like consciousness of a blissful expanse of conscious peace. No thought. No sensory impressions. But there were contents within Harris' consciousness: bliss, an expanse, peace.

A letter in the September 22, 2018 issue of New Scientist rings true to me.

From Ed Subitzky
New York, US

I much enjoy the ongoing discussion of consciousness in your pages (for exampled, Letters, 21 July). It seems to me that one cannot just be conscious: you have to be conscious of something, whether it is the scent of a rose, the internal feeling of being happy or sad, or the words you are reading now.

Consciousness, whatever it is, must have content in order to exist. Substituting the phrase "consciousness" with the phrase "consciousness of" makes the entire issue seem more tractable.

Good point. This still leaves open the possibility that consciousness is an actual thing, distinct from what consciousness is aware of. 

However, it also opens the door to consciousness being awareness of something, not a self-existent entity. It's sort of like saying that there is something termed "life" that is separate from every living thing. 

What would this "life" be like? Similarly, what would consciousness absent being conscious of something be like? Even if someone is only aware that they are conscious, that awareness is something, not pure consciousness devoid of any conscious content.

So it isn't all that crazy to say that consciousness doesn't exist in and of itself. Only consciousness of some content exists.

Reality pushes back. This is how science succeeds.

It's taken me a while to write another blog post about Adam Becker's fascinating book, "What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics." 

My first post was "Reality requires a broad scientific look, not narrow mystic visions." This reflects the central theme of Becker's book: observations require an interpretation to make them truly meaningful. 

The "shut up and calculate" view of quantum physics, which is embraced by many, if not most, of those working in this field, is roundly criticized by Becker -- and other like-minded scientists. As you'll read below in a lengthy excerpt from the final pages of What is Real?, science seeks meaningful interpretations, not simply accurate predictions.

A common example is the Ptolemaic versus Copernican view of the solar system. Ptolemy had the Earth at the center, and managed to predict the motions of the planets quite accurately through a complicated system of epicycles (basically, circles within circles). 

Copernicus put the Sun at the center, which turned out to be the accurate conception. But predictions alone weren't able to resolve the question of what entity was at the center of the solar system.

Quantum physics is in a roughly similar situation, as noted in my first post.

It isn't at all true that scientists fully subscribe to the New Age'y view that consciousness creates reality at the quantum level. There are several other theories that predict quantum phenomena equally well as the Copenhagen interpretation, which is known for both "shut up and calculate" and "a measurement brings a single reality into being."

As Becker says below, there are various interpretations competing for ascendancy in quantum physics. One of them may turn out to be correct. Or a currently unknown interpretation may turn out to be correct.

What I liked about Becker's book is how clearly he describes both the strengths and weaknesses of science. While it is our best means of understanding reality, hugely better than religion, scientists are prone to the same biases, emotional flaws, and contorted thinking as everyone else is.

Science, though, has self-correcting mechanisms built into it. As Becker notes, reality pushes back against scientific theories. And scientists want reality to do this, as powerfully as possible. 

This is why science steadily progresses, while religion, mysticism, and other forms of supernaturalism don't. There's no demonstrable reality to push back on various dogmas, because there is no evidence that a supernatural realm even exists, much less what it might be like.

So there are thousands of different religions in the world, each claiming that it knows more about a divine reality than the others. They all coexist because there is no way to tell which comes closest to the truth. 

Someone claims to have a vision of God, or of supposedly divine light or sound. OK, fine. Psychotics have similar experiences. So do users of psychedelic drugs. So do people in conditions of sensory deprivation. There's no way to tell if a vision of God reflects some objective reality, or just a purely subjective reality.

Admittedly, currently quantum physics is in a somewhat similar situation, since various interpretations of what quantum reality consists of (or means) are competing with each other. But likely scientists will find a way to determine which interpretation deserves to win out. 

Again, this might well be a fresh interpretation that is totally unknown at the moment. This isn't a weakness of science, though, but rather a strength. Unlike religion, science is willing to discard a cherished theory in favor of one that meshes better with reality.

And that's why I love science, while rejecting religion. Read on for the excerpt from Becker's book.

Prejudices against certain kinds of people as well as certain kinds of ideas, are pervasive throughout science. But the mere existence of these biases doesn't mean that science is identical to all those other spheres of human endeavor or that scientific truth isn't different from ill-informed opinions with no connection to experiment or reality.

Our biases don't fully determine the content of our best scientific theories -- reality pushes back, and we want it to push back as hard as we can allow it.

That pushback constrains the possible hypotheses we entertain as scientists. There's a wide middle ground between "science is Pure and Perfectly Rational" and "science is just some bullshit somebody made up."

There's still plenty of room for humans to interfere in that middle ground, as we've seen throughout the book. But that doesn't mean science isn't to be trusted -- that's as naive as the Sherlock Holmes view of science.

That being said, the story of quantum foundations does seem to call into question how science works.

We've seen how it doesn't work -- it's not about verification or purely empirical statements, as the positivists thought; it's not about falsifiability, as Popper thought; nor is it about being completely independent from the complex historical forces that have buffeted and buoyed the characters we've met over the course of this book.

So how does science work? Echoing the end of Chapter 11, that's a fabulously complex question. The long answer would take another book. 

But the short answer is that science involves a combination of experiment, mathematical and logical reasoning, unifying explanations, and biases that scientists bring to the table from their own lives and the cultures they live in. 

We work to reduce those biases; we don't always succeed, but the explicit attempt to account for and reduce those biases is an important part of the process, properly conducted. The whole edifice of science is geared toward this goal. 

And, given the phenomenal explanatory power and predictive success of science, it would be foolish to the extreme to give scientific truths no more credence than idle speculation, religious articles of faith, or deeply held cultural values. Science, done right, works hard to respect absolutely no authority at all other than experience and empirical data.

It never succeeds entirely, but it comes closer and has a better track record than any other method we apes have found for learning about the world around us, a world we never made.

...So what is real? Pilot waves? Many worlds? Spontaneous collapse? Which interpretation of quantum physics is the right one? I don't know. Every interpretation has its critics (though the proponents of basically every non-Copenhagen interpretation are usually agreed that Copenhagen is the worst of the lot).

Somehow, something is going on in the world that is related to the mathematics of quantum physics. There is a correct interpretation, though it may not be any of the ones that we have yet.

Simply dismissing the quantum world as a convenient mathematical fiction means we aren't taking our best theories of the world seriously enough, and we are hobbling ourselves in the search for a new theory. Stating that the conclusions of the Copenhagen interpretation are "inevitable" or "forced upon us by the mathematics of the theory" is simply wrong.

It is not true that it's meaningless to talk about reality existing independently of our perceptions, that we must think of the world solely as the subject of our observations. Solipsism and idealism are not the messages of quantum physics. 

Instead, we physicists should learn the different interpretations available and keep them all in mind while working. Hold on to them loosely, not dogmatically, and keep a fresh perspective on the work we do. 

...We have a wildly successful theory, an embarrassment of interpretations, and a major challenge in moving past our theory to the next one. Pluralism about interpretations might be the right answer, pragmatically, while we face that challenge. Or, if not pluralism, at least humility.

Quantum physics is at least approximately correct. There is something real, out in the world, that somehow resembles the quantum. We just don't know what that means yet. And it's the job of physics to find out.  

Free will is a religious delusion, not an atheist one

After writing a recent post about the illusion of free will, "Simple task shows why free will is an illusion," a comment on the post included this:

Mind blown because I assumed atheists believed in free will too. Thought the whole notion of not having free will was part of a mystical “everything is karma” sort of ideology.

Sam Harris, who thought up the simple task I described in the post, is both a noted atheist and a strong advocate for free will being an illusion. Or delusion.

Harris published "The End of Faith" in 2005. In 2012 he published "Free Will," which argues for its illusory nature. I've read and enjoyed both books, so to me it is perfectly natural that atheists don't believe in free will, since that describes me also -- an atheist who rejects the illusion of free will.

Today I listened to Part 2 of Harris' talk about free will on his Waking Up iPhone app. In it he describes a conversation he had with a rabbi. 

The rabbi told Harris that free must exist so humans can choose between doing good and evil. Plus, I assume, between believing in God and not believing in God. Here's a Judaic take on free will:

Free will in Judaism is the capacity to choose between different courses of actions, words or thoughts—not due to outside influence, internal nature or any sort of personal preference. Just a balanced choice between right and wrong.

This notion that human beings can exercise their own free will when making moral decisions is axiomatic to Judaism. And the conflict between human free will and the omnipotence of his Creator is a pervasive theme in the Jewish narrative of history.

...The Hebrew Bible is a story of G‑d’s interaction with man. G‑d rewards those who listen to His will and help perfect His world; He chastises those who disobey and destroy it. The choice to do one or the other is clearly in our hands. “Behold,” G‑d says, “I have placed before you good and evil, life and death. Choose life! Without a belief in free will, none of this would make sense. There could be no instructions, no reward, and no chastisement.

But as with all things relating to religiosity, there's a lot of confusion about how free will relates to God or the divine. Just scroll through the Wikipedia article, "Free will in theology," and you'll see what I mean. 

In both Western and Eastern religions there's much debate about how free will can coexist with God's omniscience/omnipotence, destiny, and such. Of course, this isn't surprising, since there is no evidence that God or a supernatural divinity even exists, so obviously this makes it tough to figure out how free will relates to a nonexistent entity.

With regard to atheism, I'm sure many atheists do believe in free will, since this is the default human condition.

Meaning, unless someone studies neuroscience and psychology, and carefully observes their own mind in the way Sam Harris describes in his "think of a movie" exercise, they're going to continue to believe they have free will, since this is how it seems to us (much as it seems the Sun rises and sets, while actually the Earth is rotating).

But as Harris observes in his Waking Up talks about free will, determinism is more compatible with an atheist view of reality. We don't choose our parents, and thus our genetic heritage. We don't choose the culture we grow up in. We don't choose the laws of nature. We don't choose the structure and functioning of our brain.

Yet all of these things, and so much more, affects how we think, feel, decide, and in general, look upon the world. Thus free will seems to require a dualistic conception of reality. 

This is reflected in the Wikipedia article mentioned above, which says that in Hinduism, Advaita (which is monistic) generally believes in a fate-based approach, while Dvaita (dualistic) schools are proponents of free will.

By and large, atheists view humans as being an integral part of nature, and of the universe. Whatever forces operate upon other entities in the world, these same forces impact human beings. I love this conception, because it points toward an inherent oneness and interdependency. 

In contrast, most religions view this world as a pale shadow of heavenly realms, and humanity as being "fallen" or sinful, and thus needing redemption by a savior, guru, spiritual guide, or whatever. Free will serves as a rationale for why a good God would leave humans in such a sorry state: we chose to distance ourselves from God, so now we're reaping the consequences of this bad decision.

This doesn't make sense, along with other aspects of religion. But religious believers accept a lot of theological nonsense, with a belief in free will being part of that dogma.

Just think about it: how could our will truly be free?

Meaning, not under the influence of our prior experiences, knowledge, values, desires, etc., etc. There would have to be some sort of free will fairy dust floating around inside our head that somehow stood completely apart from all of the causes both inside and outside of us that otherwise affect our thoughts and actions.

This is why dualism is the only refuge of those who believe in free will, because the human brain clearly operates under the dictates of the laws of nature. So religious believers imagine that a soul or spirit magically is responsible for our free will. Of course, as Sam Harris notes in his talks, we don't choose this soul. 

Thus as ridiculous as a belief in soul is, even this doesn't support a belief in free will. Nothing does, which is why most of us who embrace reality, rather than religion, consider free will to be an illusion.

Simple task shows why free will is an illusion

Just to polish up my enlightened state of being, which already was at a very high stage after listening to a guided "Daily Calm" meditation on my iPhone's Calm app for the last couple of years, about a week ago I decided to download Sam Harris' "Waking Up" app.

But after listening to the Free Will - Part One talk, I'm now convinced that the reason I just gave for getting the Waking Up app almost certainly isn't what caused me to do this. 

Which isn't really a surprise, since I've been fascinated by the notion of free will, especially the lack thereof, for a long time. You can use the Google search box in this blog's right sidebar to find my many posts on this subject (just type in "free will" and choose the HinesSight button).

Harris started out by saying that the illusion of free will is itself an illusion. Meaning, while it often is said that we humans have the illusion of free will, Harris claims that we really have no reason to believe in that illusion.

To provide some experiential evidence of this, in his Waking Up talk Harris asked the listener (me, in this case) to think of a movie that I'd seen. Almost instantly, "Crazy Rich Asians" popped into my head. My wife and I had seen this movie recently. I'd liked it a lot. 

Then Harris asked the listener to think of two additional movies, one at a time, which I did. One was "Goldfinger," a movie I saw four times when I was in high school. Guess I had James Bond fantasies back then.

The operative word in what I just said is "guess," because Harris then correctly said that when the thought of a movie title appeared in my mind, there wasn't any conscious volition involved. I didn't think, "Now, what movie should I pick, and how should I go about picking it?"

Instead, the names of three movies simply appeared. Which shows that my brain was coming up with the movie titles on its own, outside of my conscious awareness, not via free will. 

I found a You Tube video where Sam Harris has an audience he's speaking to go through this exercise, with a similar sort of commentary as in the Waking Up app. See:

Now, what has this to do with religion, mysticism, or spirituality? That's a great question I just asked of myself. Here's some brief responses.

For one thing, it shows that when people try to explain why they believe in God, follow a certain religion, or whatever, there's little reason to accept that their answer is the true explanation. In fact, it's probably impossible to ever accurately determine why somebody did something, or believed something, or thought something. 

The human brain is hugely complex, and way beyond our capacity to comprehend.

Especially our own brain, since that brain is us, and we have no vantage point to study it from the outside. Harris seems to be on the right track when he says that all we're capable of is being aware of what arises in our consciousness -- not how it came to be there.

At the end of the video above, Harris (a philosophical neuroscientist) says that one of the best-proven facts in psychology is that people are terrible at offering up reasons for why they did something. We're addicted to explanations, so give reasons for our actions even when those reasons are demonstrably wrong.

This is humbling.

Which is great, since most of can use an extra dose of humility. Sure, we're not going to stop explaining to ourselves and others why we do what we do, but we can take ourselves less seriously (and less surely) once we understand how our brain works, and why free will is an illusion.

Lastly, and I've talked about this in previous blog posts, giving up a belief in free will should make us more compassionate and less judgmental. 

When we believe that someone (which includes ourself) could have done something other than what they actually did, this lays a foundation for negativity: anger, resentment, desire for punishment or retribution, disdain, disgust (I'm assuming here that what was done wasn't good, or at least didn't appear to be good).

Understand: giving up a belief in free will doesn't mean that we accept murder, rape, and other sorts of bad behavior. It simply means that just as we aren't able to control what pops into our head when asked to think of a movie we've seen, people also aren't able to control how they act toward others.

So we need to protect society from criminals, while not viewing them as "evil." That word makes no sense if free will is an illusion. (It also makes no sense if free will isn't an illusion.)

More Zen-like talk from Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Even though I no longer belong to Radha Soami Satsang Beas, I know that many people who visit this blog are still interested in the RSSB philosophy, and how the current RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, is taking that philosophy in a new direction.

Here's a message I got today from Osho Robbins, who enjoys speaking with Gurinder Singh, a.k.a. "Baba Gurinder," about subjects few, if any, people raise at RSSB meetings, or satsangs.

As I've noted in previous posts, it's good that Gurinder Singh is acting less like a traditional RSSB guru and more like a Zen master. However, even the new slant he's putting on the RSSB teachings is still way too religious for me.

This is what Robbins sent to me, suggesting it could be a blog post. Which, it now is.

There are two distinct “paths” in Sant Mat.

The path of karni (doing).

The path of surrender.

So last Sunday, I asked Baba Gurinder a question at Haynes Park Sunday satsang.

This was my question:

It is said there are TWO ways on the path. One is KARNI and the other SURRENDER.

You are famous for saying……

“My way or the highway” – he says, interrupting me, but quite accurately, as that was exactly what I was about to say.

Yes, exactly. Which means there is only “my way” because “highway” is not a way. 

Would you agree that actually there is only ONE way, which is surrender  and that karni is just a means to arrive at surrender, since you also say that “your efforts will not succeed, but keep on doing anyway.”

His reply was,

“Well, yes, ultimately the path of doing leads to surrender and very few of us can surrender without the struggle. Hence most people are on the path of karni.”

He then explained in detail that surrender means to let go of the mind and to accept everything the master says, without fighting it.

His reply was interesting for a few reasons:

He is making it very clear that ultimately it’s about going beyond the “trying to do it your way”.

He is in effect saying that the whole path of doing is about tiring the ego, until it gives in.

The previous path was about seriously achieving and attaining exact regions and making progress was a specific task. You had to meditate for 2.5 hours a day, in order to take your soul upwards and inwards to the Astral Region and meet the Radiant Form of the Master. As far as I am aware it was not about tiring the ego out.

The point I am making is that these are two very different and distinct paths.

Trying to get to a certain region, meditating to leave the body, struggling to get somewhere, seeing light, getting to the radiant form, traversing inner regions, meeting Sat Purush, having tea with him, while chatting about old times.

That was the old path.

The new one is very different: just realize the ONE. You already ARE the one, you just need to realise it, not attain or merge in it.

Merging means you are now separate and have to do something to merge.

Now this is the really interesting part:

He plays to both audiences, and now I know why.

Those who are on the old path, he lets them carry on, but more than that, he actively encourages them to continue on the old path.

He only engages in a discussion on the new path, if the person conversing with him is clearly on the same page. 

So, WHY does he do this?

He told me exactly why.

If someone is unable to understand the new path, why bother to explain?

Let them carry on and when they finally get tired, they will begin to see what the truth is. Telling them prematurely does not help as it just becomes an idea to them, not a reality.

So he lets them believe what they want to believe.

So he clearly says one thing to me and the opposite to another just a few minutes later. 

Unless the other person questions it – he just carries on.

He plays both sides, because it is up to the seeker to fathom what the fuck is going on here.

What becomes very clear is that there are no seekers of truth in the audience, as any true seeker will raise this point.

For what it's worth, this is the basic schema of the old path referred to above, which I found with the grace of the Great God Google. Since I experience darkness when I close my eyes and meditate, it looks like I've reached a pretty damn high region of the divine cosmos, Maha Sunn, the Great Void.

Feel free to worship me, since neither our dog nor my wife does. (Well, our dog does a pretty good imitation when it's time for me to take her for a walk, or feed her, but I strongly suspect that worship is highly conditional.)

Atheism has made me more comfortable with death

Often religious people wrongly consider that atheists are more afraid of dying than believers in God, which usually entails a belief in an afterlife.

That hasn't been the case with me. And it isn't the case with the many atheists I know.

In fact, I've found that actually the opposite has occurred. During the 35 years I was a devotee of an Eastern religion that taught the soul survives one's death, I was more afraid of dying than I am now. 

Here's an excerpt from a previous post, "We'll die the way we have lived." My wife and I prepared our wills many years ago, so my request to our attorney was during my true-believing phase. 

When my wife and I went to get our wills made, I asked the attorney to say "gerbiled" rather than "died" whenever she needed to refer to my death.

Yeah, it sounded sort of ridiculous when the attorney told us, "So upon Brian's gerbiling, his estate will pass to..." But I was fine with ridiculousness so long as I could lessen the probability that I'd have to seriously envision my, um, eventual gerbiling.

No, I can say it now: eventual death.

As noted in the post, likely growing older (something I've been unable to prevent, damn it) has something to do with becoming more comfortable with the inevitability of death. Observing changes in the body -- wrinkles, age/sun spots, assorted aches and pains -- clues us in to the fact that we're getting closer to the Big Change of death.

But I don't think this is the entire explanation for why I'm more comfortable with dying now that I've embraced atheism. The way it feels to me is that I've learned how to relax into reality. 

After all, atheism isn't a belief. It is an absence of belief -- of God, the supernatural, life after death, heaven, and such. Everything that religious people believe in requires a lot of effort to maintain. That's why there are holy books, preachers, sermons, worship, rituals, and so much else that supports religious belief.

By contrast, us atheists live much simpler lives based on some obvious facts about reality.

Obviously there is a physical world. 
Obviously everything that lives, dies.
Obviously human consciousness doesn't exist without a brain.

So atheism doesn't require any work, since all atheists need to do is observe reality as it is. Religious believers, though, have to exert considerable effort in attempts to convince themselves, and others, that there is a supernatural realm, there's life after death, and consciousness is separable from the body/brain.

I know this, because after 14 years of reading comments from religious people on this blog, I'm very familiar with the tortuous reasoning necessary to support beliefs such as the survival of something-or-other after a person dies.

I said something-or-other, because there's no evidence that anything non-material survives a person's death. And some religions, such as Christianity to my understanding, actually don't believe in a soul (Jesus' second coming is a physical event, when bodies come to life again, right?).

Thus it's been comforting for me to relax into a simple acceptance of what actually is, after those 35 years of attempting to convince myself that there was more to reality than the physical cosmos. 

Nobody, repeat nobody, knows if they will enjoy a life after death, because everybody who believes this is still alive. Even if someone has a supposed out-of- body experience, or visions of a heavenly realm, this is taking place while they have a functioning physical body and brain.

There is zero, repeat zero, demonstrable evidence of God, life after death, heaven, or consciousness without a brain. Anyone who believes in these things is forced to say stuff like, "But there's a possibility they exist!"

Well, sure.

There's also a possibility that nothing in the universe is truly real, because it could be a simulation of some advanced civilization that puts our computer games to shame. Just about anything we can imagine has some probability of actually existing, albeit extremely small.

Is it possible that death isn't the end, but the beginning of a new life? Yes. Is this at all likely? No. And that makes me feel good, because I find reality more comfortable than fantasy, even if I'd prefer that a fantasy be real. 

Tomorrow I'll be 70. Tonight I wrote a blog post about what I've learned.

It freaks me out to think that tomorrow I'll be 70.

So tonight I rummaged though my aging brain, looking for some (possible) wisdom to share with a (possible) waiting world. I came up with this post that I wrote for my HinesSight blog: "Regret and hope are luxuries for the young." 

Hey, at least the title sounds kind of philosophically profound. I readily admit my "live for the moment" advice is cliched. But sometimes cliches are wonderfully true.

Here's an excerpt from the post:

In fact, I'm becoming increasingly convinced that after a certain age, and I feel that I've passed it, both hope for the future and regret about the past are luxuries for the young. 

Why?

Because most young people have many more years to live. They have plenty of time to learn from their mistakes and to plan for a better future. So it makes sense for their psyche to do the sort of "ego feasting" Pollon speaks of.

What made this relationship fail? How did I end up in such a crappy job? Where do I want to live when I'm tired of this town? Should I have children, and if so, how many? Why doesn't my life seem truly meaningful? How can I make friends with people I really care about? How great will it be after I lose 20 pounds?

There's so many questions. Good questions. Great questions.

Our past and future are filled with them. As Pollon said, it is easy, and often fun, to time travel our way into regrets about the past and hopes for the future. Or other sorts of thoughts about what was and what may come to be. 

There's nothing wrong with doing this. But there's a cost.

We can't be here and now when we're in there and then. Now, actually we're always here and now, because there's no other possible place to be. But our present moment attention can be doing the time traveling thing, leaving us less aware of what exists in the reality that's staring right at us, as opposed to a memory of the past or an envisioning of the future.

Radha Soami Satsang Beas admits it is a religion

Religions often come in for well-deserved criticism. They're dogmatic, judgmental, holier-than-thou, and divisive -- since every religion considers that it knows the truth about God, while all those other religions are false. 

(This is why atheists like to say, as Ricky Gervais put it to Stephen Colbert: "There are about 3,000 gods to choose from… Basically, you deny one less God than I do. You don’t believe in 2,999 gods. And I don’t believe in just one more.")

Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) is an Indian group that traditionally has denied it is a religion, but rather a "science of the soul." During the 35 years I belonged to RSSB I went along with this, because I liked to think of myself as a spiritual but not religious sort of guy. 

And during the 14 years that I've had this Church of the Churchless blog, I've typically called RSSB a spiritual organization, which is how RSSB refers to itself. See:

But thanks to good research by Sarah, who shared some links in comments on my posts, it now is clear that Radha Soami Satsang Beas officially considers itself a religion. Here's proof. 

As shown above, an application by RSSB for development of land in Melbourne, Australia for a "place of worship" says that Radha Soami Satsang Beas is a worldwide religious organization. 

And a newspaper story about the development describes the thoroughly religious activities that will occur at the Melbourne center: spiritual discourses, devotional songs/hymns, meditation areas.

Lastly, Michael Cooke, the RSSB head in Australia, said that he was happy the Supreme Court ruled that Radha Soami Satsang Beas truly was a religion, not a philosophical organization. 

So now it can be confidently said that RSSB is a religion like Christianity, Islam, Judaism, etc. etc. It is based on faith, not science; blind belief, not evidence; communal rituals/worship, not individual experience. 

In the past, including during the days of the previous guru, Charan Singh, RSSB didn't have so many religious tendencies. But the current guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, has put a lot of emphasis on building centers around the world, and expanding the RSSB headquarters in the Punjab. 

Dhillon also has spent a lot of time and effort enriching himself and his family through highly dubious financial schemes, to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars. Thus it is entirely fitting that during his reign as guru, RSSB has openly become a religion.

It's well-known that religions are money-making machines. 

RSSB book shows why there's no such thing as a "perfect" master

Thanks to the Great God Amazon, who answers my prayers by delivering to my doorstep pretty much whatever I desire, I'm the possessor of two books published in 2016 by Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB):

"A Wake Up Call: Beyond Concepts and Illusions" by Sabina Oberoi and Beverly Chapman, and a similar book by Sabina Oberoi, "Concepts and Illusions: A Perspective."

Since I no longer believe in the RSSB teachings, after being a devotee of this Indian spiritual organization for 35 years, I figured that I wouldn't agree with much in these books. Still, since I'm interested in the general subject of concepts and illusions, I also anticipated that the books would be food for thought.

I was right about that, having finished reading "A Wake Up Call" this morning. Here's some impressions of the book, focusing on what Oberoi and Chapman say about the notion of a perfect master -- which is a central concept in the RSSB philosophy.

Oops! I just used the word "concept," and the book argues that we're supposed to go beyond concepts. 

But here's the thing: there are a great many concepts in the book's 152 pages. It isn't possible to write or speak without using concepts. And it also isn't possible to be a member of a spiritual organization such as RSSB without embracing concepts such as "God," "guru," "meditation," "perfect master," "enlightenment," and such.

If Oberoi and Chapman had really wanted to go beyond concepts, they wouldn't have written a word. However, then they couldn't have urged RSSB initiates to go beyond concepts. 

I do agree, though, that the authors make some good points about how RSSB initiates have a lot of crazy ideas about karma, meditation, seva (volunteer service), satsang (spiritual meetings), the guru, and other subjects.

If they had simply argued that all a disciple should do is meditate assiduously and experience what happens with an open mind, then I think the content of their book would have matched up with the title.

Yet this isn't what is in the book. There are several key concepts that Oberoi and Chapman accept without giving any reasons for why they are true, or why it is necessary to accept them on faith. 

Chief among these is the core concept of a "perfect master." The photo above is of Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the current RSSB guru, who is viewed by most RSSB devotees as just that -- a perfect master.

But here's what Oberoi and Chapman say at the beginning of their About the Master chapter:

It has been said that if all the seas were ink and all the land were paper and all the trees in the world were pens, you still couldn't write a description of the master. To understand who the master is and what he does for us is beyond the ability of words to describe.

Whether we call him a friend, a teacher, a saint or God himself -- these are all concepts. We can discuss them, we can heap long lists of adjectives on them, we can even argue heatedly about them -- but the fact remains they're only concepts. If we want to understand the master and his role in our lives we will have to go to a higher level of consciousness.

OK. I'm doubtful this higher level of consciousness exists.

Yet if the chapter had ended at this point, I couldn't argue much with it. Meaning, let's leave aside any and all concepts of who Gurinder Singh Dhillon is in his role of RSSB guru, and simply meditate to understand the wordless nature of the guru.

However, there's a lot more words in the About the Master chapter. And some of those words speak about a key concept, that of a "perfect master." For example...

(1) "When we assume we know how a perfect living master should dress, how he should speak, move, gesticulate and behave, we should pause and reflect for a moment -- what on earth are we doing?"

(2) "What if the master behaves differently from our expectations? Do we then get shaken? Do we find ourselves doubting whether he's a perfect master after all because he doesn't conform to our idea of the perfect master?"

(3) "Let us approach the challenge of being disciples of a perfect master with open minds -- as clean slates -- and allow the master to reveal himself to us, to show his real self, one facet at at time."

(4) "The delusion that we know what a perfect master should be like could derive from the word 'perfect'. The Indian term 'puran sant satguru' is generally translated into English as 'perfect master'. The literal meaning of 'puran' is complete, nothing lacking. He is a 'complete' master because his realization is complete instead of partial."

Well, who says? And who knows that Gurinder Singh Dhillon is perfect, or complete? Aren't "perfect" and "complete" concepts that, earlier in the chapter, Oberoi and Chapman said can't help us understand who the master is? 

Yet they presume that Gurinder Singh Dhillon is a perfect master, as evidenced by the numerous times they use this concept without expressing any doubts about it. 

Look: you can't have it both ways.

If the nature of the RSSB guru is beyond concepts, then the authors of "A Wake Up Call" should have simply said something like, Only meditation can lead us to a true understanding of the guru, and this can never be expressed in words, being ineffable.

But they didn't do that. They repeatedly talked about the concept of a "perfect master" as if this was an unarguable reality, which belied the key goal of their book -- to go beyond concepts and illusions.

Since I consider that the notion of a perfect master is both a concept and an illusion, I was disappointed in the book for several reasons.

First, it didn't live up to its title, since it presumed certain concepts to be true. Second, even if someone is a RSSB devotee, the book confuses the issue of a "perfect master," since it argues both that the guru is beyond concepts, while presuming that the RSSB guru is deserving of the concept, perfect master.

So as I said in the title of this post, there's no way a guru can be a perfect master. Either such doesn't exist (my view), or there is no way to tell that someone is a perfect master other than experiencing an ineffable understanding in meditation (the RSSB view).

Either way, the words "perfect master" are meaningless.

Wise observations about spiritual experiences and religious craziness

One of the pleasures of having this blog is being able to read comments from blog visitors that make me think, "Wow! That was beautifully and wisely said."

Sometimes when this happens I share a comment in a blog post so it will be more visible. Such is the case with two comments from "JB" that you can read below. Each was left on a recent post, "Meaning comes from us, not God."

This comment by JB relates to the supposed truthfulness of spiritual/mystical experiences. I agree with what JB says, though these experiences often have more to them than simply emotionality. JB does address this in an interesting way, saying that an impression of cosmic unity, for example, derives from the emotional state, rather than the other way around.

Spence wrote: "Whatever it is it is built into the human frame, the healthy and functioning human frame, at least for some of us. The fact that the details are found in spiritual writings of the Word and the Light down through the ages give confirmation to those of us who have experienced these things repeatedly since early childhood that they are truthful..."

I think you are right that these experiences are "built in". The capacity for "mystical" experiences are "built into the human frame" as much as the capacity for any psychological experience is built into the human frame.

I don't think anyone is disputing that these experiences occur. It is true that they occur, yet one must question whether they are truthful in terms of the interpretations typically ascribed to them.

All manner of human emotional experiences have repeatedly occurred throughout the ages and all have been documented since the birth of written language. That they have repeatedly occurred and have been written about cannot be construed as constituting evidence attesting to their truthfulness.

I think these experiences certainly can be healthy, yet they can also be unhealthy as evidenced by all of the mystic-gurus that become abusive and exploitative. The experience of seemingly becoming "one" with the universe apparently has different effects on different people. For some, the ego apparently expands to the size of the universe.

Speaking more about mystical experience: these consist of intensely positive emotions coupled with a sense of ultimate existential unity, the "rightness" of everything, and an underlying impression of love and benevolence embracing everything. I think that the impressions are secondary to and derive from the immediate emotional state.

Simply put, the world appears perfect because you feel so damn good.

This is analogous to the experience of falling in love with a person, where the world itself seems to become brighter and more beautiful. This is a well-known and documented experience of people falling in love. The positive emotion seems to generate an attendant change in perception. Of course the world hasn't changed from what it was before, it just feels different.

If you have ever read any case histories of people experiencing extreme negative emotions, there is often an attendant alteration of their perception. The world becomes disjointed, everything seems "wrong", and everything seems imbued with doom or malevolence. For some, these experiences repeatedly occur.

The point is, the emotional state seems to inform the perception. I think it would be as wrong to assert that mystical experience provides a true window into the essence of existence any more than the diametrically opposed emotional state. The positive experience is certainly healthier, as it is conducive to survival, but I think it would be wrong to call it truthful.

And this JB comment briefly discusses something I've also wondered about: how religious tales (I'd call them fables) would be viewed if they emanated from a single human mind, rather than being embraced by a collection of people that often numbers in the many millions, or even billions.

Brian wrote: "Wouldn't it be bizarre if, say, someone dressed in a Wonder Woman costume kept proclaiming, 'You've got to believe in Wonder Woman! She's real, not a fantasy!' Likely this person would be viewed as having some sort of mental illness."

I've often asked believers to take a particular religion and imagine what it would be like if these beliefs had not been institutionalized and spread like a contagion throughout civilization, but rather were proclaimed by one single person.

Take Christianity as an example. Imagine none of the teachings of Christianity existed and one person started uttering statements like:

"There is a male creator God who has a son, whom he sent down to be killed by being nailed to a piece of wood so that humanity could be forgiven for a disease passed down from a woman who listened to a talking snake with wings and ate a piece of fruit from the wrong magical tree."

This person would be considered to have a mental illness with psychotic features. Yet there are literally millions of people that believe this. Thus, beliefs that would clearly be categorized as mental illness when exhibited by one person, are categorized as religion when they are embraced by millions.

It's just a numbers game. Religion is culturally sanctioned mental illness. Fill in the blank with Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Islam, Sikhism, or any of the sub-cults (Kabbalah, Sufism, Gnosticism, Vedanta, etc). The result is the same.

Absolutely. One of my favorite crazy stories from the Sikh/Sant Mat tradition is that of Kal, the ruler of the lower realms of creation, earning his exalted position from God after standing on one leg, and one foot, for many yugas -- which is a really long time. Who knew that lower gods have legs and feet just like us?

Forbes story about Singh brothers and RSSB guru shows danger of "honor cultures"

Someone sent me another story about the long-running Indian financial drama involving the Singh brothers and the Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB)  guru -- Gurinder Singh Dhillon, a relative of Shivinder and Malvinder Singh.

Malvinder and Shivinder Singh

What's interesting about this Forbes story, "How To Lose a $2 Billion Family Inheritance: The Tale of the Singh Brothers of India," is that it is written by an American, Dennis Jaffe.
Download How To Lose A $2 Billion Family Inheritance: The Tale Of The Singh Brothers Of India

So Jaffe looks upon the tangled web of the Singh brothers' business dealings from a different perspective than the numerous stories on this subject that have appeared in Indian business publications. Plus, Jaffe specializes in "family enterprise consulting" that aims at helping families manage multi-generational businesses.

Before sharing some quotes from the story, and my own take on it, here's what the person who emailed me a link to the Forbes piece said about it. "Satsangis" means initiates of RSSB.

Hi Brian,

Yes, the $2B question has been covered numerous times already, but this one is my favorite. I could highlight so many observations made in this new coverage... points 1, 2, and 3 at the end of this article are excellent.

Another thing I really like is that this is an Editor’s pick from Forbes (about as credible and reputable as we’re going to get) focusing on the ethics of what transpired.

I really hope you’ll be able to share this in a post at some point on your blog. People need to see this from a Western business perspective. That alone shows how incredibly unethical this whole mess was.

 

Seems that a lot of Satsangis and non-Satsangis are disputing facts when from an American perspective it’s beyond just individual facts—it’s a story of gross unethical conduct leading to the point of criminal investigations.

 

Today’s “gurus” need to start adhering to the principals of transparency, especially if they’re going to be getting involved with other people’s money (unfortunately not likely to happen as most view themselves above the law).
Does Dhillon view himself as above the law since he’s “GIHF”? [GIHF means God In Human Form]

Sadly, a lot of his followers do. One of GSD’s favorite sayings is “it’s my way or the highway”. Wow. Glad I’m not on that road anymore.

Not enough has been said about how much damage has been done to the non Singh/Dhillon shareholders of the public companies in question. GSD’s lack of good business practices, secrecy and poor advice cheated many people invested in these companies. That should alarm everyone. The lack of transparency and the honor system among India’s gurus make them the perfect “offshore-banking-system-for-greed”, so to speak.

If you haven’t read this piece yet I think you’ll really appreciate it.

Yes, I did appreciate it. I invite you to read the entire story. Here's some excerpts regarding the RSSB guru and the notion of "honor cultures."

In just a few years since inheriting a fortune from a company founded by their grandfather, brothers Malvinder and Shivinder Singh have managed to lose almost everything — including control over two public companies. Their story seems to affirm the axiom of “shirtsleeves to shirtsleeves in three generations,” a curse that plagues too many inherited family businesses.

Reflecting on their recent history (and recognizing the lack of public information available), there are lessons to deduce on how to avoid this sad, but common, occurrence.

The Singh brothers were heirs to Ranbaxy Laboratories, which was then India’s foremost pharmaceutical company, founded by their grandfather Bhai Mohan Singh and stewarded by their father, Dr. Parvinder Singh, who died in 1999. The brothers, who each inherited one-third of the company, engineered its sale in 2008.

After that, they heavily invested the proceeds into the fast expansion of Fortis Healthcare and Religare Enterprises, two other public companies they owned.

They also loaned vast amounts of money to companies owned by a family headed by a spiritual leader whom they followed and who was a relative of theirs — Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Dhillon was a businessman as well, and he and members of his sect were central to investments made with loans from the brothers, including investments in a wide-ranging real-estate portfolio.

...The story of their decline and their web of investments is very complex and very opaque. What seems clear is that the brothers made loans and commitments to many different entities. What is also clear is that their spiritual and personal relationships led them to make business decisions that in hindsight appear to be extremely ill advised.

...While many aspects of this story are uniquely Indian — such as the deep connection to a family spiritual leader, moving funds among family ventures, and opaque business structures — similar situations can be seen in many cultures when family enterprises pass to the third generation.

India is an example of a type of culture that has been called an “honor culture.” Such cultures, common in South Asia, South America, Africa and southern Europe, are characterized by a strong family hierarchy with a single family leader, intense loyalty within the family and to a close network of long-term allies, and little trust of anyone outside the family and its network.

These cultures are oriented around power, loyalty, secrecy and distrust of external powers. They take root in societies where there is little long-term stability and limited or developing rule of law.

...Honor cultures emphasize secrecy and reliance on a strong — and often unquestioned — leader. Today, this time-honored secrecy and lack of transparency is giving way to global agreements that emphasize transparency. Secret agreements with governments are being questioned, and businesses, even those owned and controlled by a single family, are becoming regulated.

But it seems that the Singh family businesses were caught midstream in this evolution. The Singh brothers’ trust of the Dhillon family that led to their no-interest loans with little accountability have little place in an arena of more open dealings with greater accountability. And while family members tend to be satisfied with secrecy when they receive predictable profits and wealth, when things go south, conflict erupts.

What's particularly interesting here is that the Singh brothers' family relationships were intimately mingled with their spiritual relationship with the RSSB guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. Dhillon, who is the Singh brothers cousin (I used to think he was their uncle, but I've been corrected about this).

Thus Malvinder and Shivinder Singh both respected Gurinder Singh's authority as a familial father figure, but also looked upon him in the guru's God In Human Form guise -- someone with divine wisdom and mystical powers. So it's no wonder they went along with questionable business decisions involving the Dhillon family and Sunil Godhwani, who reportedly was the guru's "right hand man."

Bottom line: question authority. Especially when the authority is a single person, or just a few people. As Jaffe points out in his Forbes piece, it is vitally important to have an independent board of directors overseeing the decisions of a CEO. 

As a family enterprise passes across generations and becomes truly immense, its governance and oversight cannot be limited to the skills of a single leader, especially one who only trusts old alliances and does not seek new talent.

I can't resist pointing out that while Radha Soami Satsang Beas is a charitable spiritual organization, not a profit-making business, it's my understanding that RSSB is basically under the control of a single person, the guru, Gurinder Singh Dhillon. RSSB is secretive and mistrustful of outsiders, so it also operates much like an "honor culture." 

Which is dangerous. Both for family businesses, and for spiritual groups.

Meaning comes from us, not God

Many religious people wrongly believe that atheists, secular humanists, and others who don't believe in a personal God (most Buddhists and Taoists fit this category) lack meaning in their lives. Actually, we do.

Most of my friends and relatives are atheists. They live deeply meaningful lives. 

In his book, "Finding Purpose in a Godless World," psychiatrist Ralph Lewis explains how an unguided universe contains people who lives caring, loving, purpose-driven lives. Below is a summary of key themes in his book from the final chapter.

I've written a couple of other blog posts about Lewis' book:
"Why God is an illusion, along with other supernatural stuff"
"Why God is a psychological illusion"

Here's the excerpt from Finding Purpose in a Godless World. I want to point out that while Lewis calls our world "random," "unguided" is a better term for the world. Obviously laws of nature aren't random, or they wouldn't be laws. They just don't proceed from the guidance of a God.

A random world -- which according to all the scientific evidence and despite our intuitions is the actual world we live in -- is too often misconstrued as nihilistic, demotivating, or devoid of morality and meaning. My hope is that this book will help people to see the scientific worldview of an unguided, spontaneous universe as awe-inspiring and foundational to building a more compassionate society.

Nonbelievers and doubters of religion, as well as those who remain believers, can be reassured that the increasing trend toward loss of religious faith that is occurring in modern societies is not leading to a generalized loss of morality or to an alienated feeling of purposelessness and meaninglessness.

Far from being nihilistic, the fully naturalist worldview of secular humanism empowers us and liberates us from our irrational fears. With its emphasis on humans having to rely on ourselves and each other, it motivates us to live with a sense of interdependent humanistic purpose. This deepens our feelings of value, engagement, and relatedness.

The secular humanist worldview reminds us that while the universe doesn't care, people do.

We have seen in this book that biological, evolutionary factors can explain how it is that we are inclined toward generally prosocial, cooperative, and motivated behavior. Biological evolution enabled morality and purposive, meaning-oriented human behavior; cultural evolution refined it. We will need to continue to work actively toward this collective goal of more caring societies in order to further strengthen the progress of our species.

If, like me, you started out on this journey with a vague sense that our lives and the universe are somehow directed, then I hope you have experienced this book as a gentle invitation to move beyond the naive, soothing stories we have been telling ourselves about a purposeful universe. I truth you have encountered in its place a solidly science-based, yet deeply humanistic worldview, freed by rationality from neurotic torment.

In countering fears of societal nihilism, this book has walked a fine line, just as I try to do every day with my patients -- a line between cautious optimism and realism.

Societal progress in our increasingly secular modern era has been uneven and faltering; catastrophic derailments have occurred along the way and will always be a risk. But the long-term positive trend toward more compassionate, purpose-driven societies has been strong and unmistakable. Developing more caring societies is a realistic, far from naive project for humanity.

Those who have embraced science, not only as a profession but also as a worldview, tend to be among the most inspired and purpose-driven members of society. It is my hope that the worldview presented in this book might motivate you, valued reader, to become just such a person.

Here's a message from Sheena for RSSB devotees

Sheena (a pen name) wrote a compelling book, "Memoirs of a Seeker."

Though Sheena describes the guru to whom she was once devoted only as "Guruji," and doesn't name the center headed up by Guruji, it is clear that the guru is Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the leader of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organization headquartered in India at a place commonly known as the Dera.

I've written several blog posts about Sheena's book. I liked how she wrote so honestly about losing faith in Gurinder Singh after coming to the Dera and doing volunteer work that brought her into close contact with the guru. You can read excerpts from her book, and my defense of Sheena, in these posts:

"Sheena's 'Memoirs of a Seeker' throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon"
"My response to someone who doubts 'Sheena's' stories about Gurinder Singh Dhillon"

Sheena has been reading the posts and related comments on this blog. Today she sent me this message. I'll share some thoughts about what Sheena says after the message. "Satsangis" refers to RSSB initiates. "Hukm" means command or divine order.

Hello Brian

I deeply appreciate your mature, fair reviews and comments, for respecting others need for anonymity and staying with the subject instead of playing Sherlock Holmes as some are doing.  Makes you a trustworthy and honourable man!   My comments/questions to satsangis who constantly have debates on your blog:

1.  Who Sheena is, is inconsequential.  If Sheena wants to remain anonymous, she must have good reason and the constitutional right to stay anonymous.
   
   
2. Why do they spend time reading your blogs and then spend even more energy and time arguing when their faith and belief are supposedly intact?  Sense of insecurity, doubts?
   
   
3. Why do they react to criticism so ferociously when RSSB declares "Critics are our best friends?"  Is their faithlessness coupled with lack of following Master's 'hukm'?  Doesn't reflect well on both the disciple or teacher.
   
   
4. They claim that the teachings are important.  Yes, teachings are important when following a religion or a spiritual path.  But isn't it equally important for the teacher to follow 'his' teachings too? Or are the teachings only for disciples?

           Sheena

I agree with everything Sheena says.

Regarding her first point, the message of her book is indeed much more important than the messenger. So far I haven't heard any commenter take issue with the accuracy of her disturbing stories about Gurinder Singh, including that he ignored a report of sexual molestation at the Dera.

Regarding her second point, I also find it strange, and amusing, that many RSSB devotees spend a lot of time reading my churchless posts and commenting on them.

I've become an atheist after belonging to RSSB for 35 years. I spend zero time on blogs, websites, or discussion groups praising the glory of the RSSB guru and the RSSB teachings, because I'm confident in what I believe and don't believe. So I think Sheena is right. Arguing on this blog does seem to show a sense of insecurity and doubts among RSSB initiates.

Regarding her third point, I've heard that the critics quote is indeed what Gurinder Singh has said to his audiences. Yet the attacks, insults, and threats I get regularly from supposedly "spiritual" RSSB devotees does go against their guru's words about viewing critics as our best friends.

Regarding her fourth point, Sheena directs our attention to a crucial difference between the teachings of RSSB (a branch of Sant Mat), and traditional religions like Catholicism. Here's how Wikipedia describes Sant Mat:

The expression Sant Mat literally means "Teachings of the Saints" – the "Path of Sants (Saints)", "Path of Truth", "Right or Positive Path". As "point of view of the Sants", the term Sant is pivotal. Derived from the Sanskrit sat (सत) and has overlapping usages (true, real, honest, right). Its root meaning is "one who knows(is) the truth" or "one who has experienced (merged into) Ultimate Reality." The term sant has taken on the general meaning of "a good person" but is properly assigned to the poet-sants of medieval India.

According to the RSSB teachings, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, like previous RSSB gurus, is considered to be a modern living saint. As such, supposedly he has taken on the godly qualities of someone who has directly experienced, or merged with, an ultimate divine reality.

So if the guru acts like a normal flawed human being, which includes being desirous of making lots of money, enjoying the company of pretty women, and ignoring reports of sexual misconduct at the organization he oversees, this is a much bigger deal than if Catholic priests, or even the Pope himself, exhibit immoral behavior.

Jesus is a long-dead "saint" to Catholic believers. Nothing a living Catholic can do affects their belief that Jesus is the Son of God who came to earth to redeem a sinful humanity. 

On the other hand, Gurinder Singh Dhillon is a living "saint," so his actions do reflect on the validity of the RSSB teachings. As Sheena aptly said, "Yes, teachings are important when following a religion or a spiritual path. But isn't it equally important for the teacher to follow 'his' teachings too? Or are the teachings only for disciples?"

This goes a long way toward explaining why so many RSSB devotees are unwilling to face unwelcome facts about Gurinder Singh's business dealings and the stories about him that Sheena relates in her book. They attack the messengers -- such as the Indian business press, Sheena, and me -- rather than admit that the guru they believe in is a flawed human being, just as we all are.

Gurinder Singh Dhillon 

Update on reported September 17 meeting of Indian RSSB secretaries

UPDATE: Well, now I've heard from somebody in India that the meeting did happen on September 17, and that it happens every year around this time. It's strange that, if I recall correctly, only one commenter on this blog said it was an annual meeting. Just goes to show that when it comes to RSSB, it's difficult to get straight answers about what is happening with this rather secretive spiritual organization. Anyway, it's good to have a confirmation that my original blog post on this subject wasn't "fake news."

-----------------------

Juan just left the comment below, indicating that the September 17 meeting of 1500-2000 Indian RSSB secretaries I reported on in this post was indeed scheduled, then cancelled.

I've also heard that Gurinder Singh Dhillon's scheduled initiation ceremony in New Delhi, which was last weekend, I believe, was cancelled. So it still seems to me that something is up. We just don't know what.

In line with what Juan said in his comment, I feel that if a notice of a meeting, along with a churchless blogger's guesses about what the meeting might be about, shake up someone's spiritual faith, then that faith is resting on a very insubstantial foundation. 

A pleasing message about me, and honesty about RSSB

Some people like this blog. Some people don't like it. After 14 years of regularly writing here on the Church of the Churchless, I've come to expect both praise and criticism. 

Not surprisingly, I prefer hearing good things about me and this blog. So when I got the following email message today from someone in India I've been corresponding with, it made me feel good. 

I'll explain why after the message.

I've corrected some typos and made the formatting easier to read. Otherwise the message is as written. "Sewa" means service, or volunteer work. The Dera is the Indian headquarters of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), a spiritual organization I was a member of for 35 years. 

Here's the message, minus an introductory part related to a subject this person and I have been discussing.

And I would like to mention and please mention the following in your blog too (of course only if you wish to ) :  

 

I have been reading your blog since last year Feb, after I was of course suggested by an important member of RSSB committee and I was still doing sewa in Dera. And I must admit after reading each of your blog I thought you must be a very arrogant man. Or you didn't make much efforts in meditation and are a coward to quit early.

 

But knowing that people living in Dera in fact people running that place as incharges are equally unsure of the path as the people who criticise it, my thinking changed and then of course seeing the condition there by my own eyes, a place lacking love, the very foundation it was supposed to be built on.

 

I don't know if the path is true or not. I haven't really made complete effort in meditation to comment. But talking to you personally on emails and listening to your reply it is my understanding that you are a very humble and an understanding man.

 

You have a blog, there are many things i told you personally and you know my real name, you could have written those things on your blog if you had to be aggressive towards your critics. You kept your word, a quality that is rarely found today. Your view point comes from experience and logic and deep thinking.

 

At the end of the day you might  be wrong or the people who criticise you might be, in reference to this path. But the truth is none of us are aware for sure. But at least you support logic and see what's written on the wall.

 

And for the people coming to your blog and trying to defend RSSB, if they were enlightened they wouldn't care for your blog or try to protect the image. They wouldn't waste energy on that. What I have learned from the limited conversation we have had is whether you are right or not but you are a man with right intentions. 

Like the person who wrote this message, I also can't be sure about what the ultimate truth regarding reality is. None of us can be. We all make educated guesses, or assumptions, that are founded in our experience, upbringing, culture, education, and so on. 

All we can do is keep facing toward the truth as we have come to understand it, while being open to fresh ideas, new facts, different ways of looking upon the world. 

It is difficult to admit, "I don't know." So I liked this person's willingness to say about the RSSB teachings, "I don't know if the path is true or not." 

But what this person does know is how they were treated while doing "sewa" (again, volunteering) at the Dera. Just as I've heard from other people, this person says that the Dera lacks love -- which is a sad commentary on a spiritual community. 

I liked how this person said that my viewpoint comes from "experience and logic and deep thinking." That's what I aspire to, though sometimes I fall short. Now, I realize that some spiritually-minded people believe that love and devotion is all that counts.

I disagree -- strongly. 

History is full of examples of individuals, or masses of people, who were fervently devoted to destructive causes and leaders. It makes no sense to be devoted to some unworthy person or entity. Going down that route leads to authoritarianism, being taken advantage of, dangerous blind obedience.

My wife was a psychotherapist in private practice for quite a few years. One of her specialities was domestic violence. Most of her clients were women being abused by men. Without giving their names, she'd explain to me how many women stay in an abusive relationship, even when they're being hit, yelled at, threatened. 

Why? Many reasons.

Some are that the women didn't know what to do if they left the relationship, or they were afraid of what the man would do if they stood up for themselves. So my wife would give them options, and help the women recognize that they had more strength than they thought they possessed.

Likewise, one of the reasons I started this blog in 2004 was to encourage people to realize that when it comes to religion, spirituality, mysticism, and philosophy, independence is a virtue, not a vice. I haven't changed this blog's slogan over all those years: Preaching the gospel of spiritual independence. 

Sometimes it makes sense to stay in a relationship with another person "til death do us part," as wedding vows in the United States often say. Yet sometimes it doesn't. 

And sometimes it makes sense to remain a member of a religion or spiritual path for the rest of your life. Yet sometimes it doesn't. Think for yourself. Nobody else can do that for you. Nor should they.

My death is prematurely celebrated

This is one of the pleasures of blogging -- being celebrated.

Since I'm writing a blog post about this comment, obviously the commenter was celebrating prematurely. Naturally I was curious about where my fan lives, so I looked up the IP address of the commenter. It came from the Punjab, in India. 

Nice! I'm being celebrated from halfway around the world!

The meaning of this pithy comment is open to discussion, of course. Another commenter was a bit generous in this regard, given the historical comparisons, but I did agree with the remark about the need for us to connect with reality.

My response to someone who doubts "Sheena's" stories about Gurinder Singh Dhillon

It's fitting that yesterday I heard from someone who had skeptical questions about a book I wrote about last month, "Memoirs of a Seeker," by Sheena (a pen name, not her real name).

Fitting, because the United States, where I live, currently is embroiled in a fierce debate about a reported sexual assault by a Supreme Court nominee, whose female victim has said she is willing to testify at an open hearing next week. 

Christine Blasey Ford kept silent about the attack for many years. Now she's being criticized for waiting so long to speak out. But it is widely recognized that women have excellent reasons for remaining silent, especially when there is a large power imbalance between the woman and the man involved.

In Sheena's case, the man she refers to as "Guruji" was Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB). In her book Sheena speaks about several sexual-related encounters involving Gurinder Singh. They weren't anything close to sexual assault, but they disturbed her nonetheless. 

And Sheena also describes a case of sexual molestation at the Dera, which is the RSSB headquarters in India. She told Gurinder Singh about this, but then realized he already knew about it and had ignored the molestation. She also realized that this wasn't a one-off incident.

You can read excerpt's from Sheena's book in my blog post, "Sheena's 'Memoirs of a Seeker' throws light on Gurinder Singh Dhillon." Because I applaud her courage in writing the book, I'm pleased to defend Sheena against the questions raised by Catherine Muller in an email to me.

As you can read below, Muller invited me to post her message on my blog, which I've done. Muller's message is shown in red, and my interspersed responses are in black. (Sorry for the italics; seems to be related to me copying Muller's message from her email; couldn't find a way to undo the italics in HTML, which I'm not expert in).

Brian,

 

Having read your review on Amazon of Memoirs of a Seeker, I have three comments:

 

1. You say in your review that you haven't read all of 'Memoirs of a Seeker.' Do you usually write reviews for books that you have not engaged with in their entirety? (If it was such a good read, as you claim it was, why did you not finish it?)

Yes, I've written Amazon reader reviews before finishing a book. Can't remember how many, but at least one other. Here's a link to that review. 

Regarding Sheena's book, I was told about it in an email from someone who knows Sheena and thought I'd enjoy her book. I paid $9.95 for the Kindle edition. I looked through it fairly quickly, zeroing in on the parts of the book that describe her interactions with a guru, and the "seva" (volunteer work) she did for the guru.

 

I'd heard that the guru was Gurinder Singh Dhillon, and the seva was done at the Dera. However, I didn't see any mentions of the guru's name in the book, so at first this perplexed me. Which gets us to Muller's next question.

 

2. Secondly, you write in your review: "From what I have been told, the guru Sheena writes about is..."  Who told you this exactly? Or are you repeating hearsay? Why don't you acknowledge who your unattributed source is? (Or sources are?) As a man who purports to love science and truth, are you aware that under many legal systems around the world hearsay is inadmissible as evidence in a court proceeding?

After I looked through all of Sheena's book, and read closely the portions that were of most interest to me, I had several email communications with the person who knew Sheena and could forward questions to her. This was my first way of confirming that the guru in her book was indeed Gurinder Singh Dhillon.

 

After I published my blog post about the book, and defended Sheena against commenters who were challenging her truthfulness, I got a relayed message from Sheena saying, "Hi again .... just heard from her and she wants me to thank you for fiercely defending her!" That made me feel really good.

It also was another confirmation that the guru in her book is Gurinder Singh, since I had said this in the blog post, and one would expect that if I'd gotten the guru's identity wrong, Sheena would have corrected me. Finally, I've also heard from a RSSB insider who knows Sheena's real name, and is familiar with who she is, and what she did at the Dera. 

So there's plenty of confirmation that the guru Sheena writes about is Gurinder Singh, and that Sheena is a real person who did seva at the Dera. This isn't at all hearsay.

 

3. Thirdly, you praise Sheena for 'displaying that brave commitment to the truth'. Well, how brave is it to write under a book under a moniker? Need I remind you of a contemporary example - a man like Edward Snowden who was truly heroic enough to take on the NSA and flee into exile when he exposed his story? And should I remind you of the whistleblower who broke the Cambridge Analytica story, Chris Wylie? Pick any social justice hero of significance in recent times, Brian. Nobody of any real credibility and clout does anything radically brave by writing under a moniker. 

 

As noted above, there are good reasons why women are reluctant to reveal their true identity when they are speaking "truth to power," as a familiar saying goes in my country. And in general, anonymous sources often are used by journalists in the United States and elsewhere.

"Deep Throat" in the Watergate scandal is a good example. It took many years before this person's identify was exposed. So I don't agree with you that speaking anonymously under an assumed name shows that a person lacks credibility. 

Over the 14 years I've been blogging on the Church of the Churchless, I've received many emails from people who wanted to share information about RSSB or some other religious entity, but didn't want their name revealed. I've always honored their request, because I know from personal experience how vicious true believers can be when their beliefs are challenged.

 

If you doubt this, check out my recent post, "Nasty criticisms of me from some 'spiritual' RSSB defenders."

 

Unlike those folks on 'Church of the Churchless' who seems to be 'inside experts' on RSSB and the goings on of the guru, I can't comment about the voracity of what 'Sheena-who-will-not-be-named' writes in her book. I'm no maven. 

 

Then you should pay more attention to, and trust more, people who have direct knowledge of Gurinder Singh, his business dealings, and goings-on at the Dera. I frequently hear from people who have such knowledge, and relate disturbing stories to me, but aren't willing to go public with what they know, even anonymously.

 

There's no doubt that there is a largely unreported dark side to Radha Soami Satsang Beas, along with the public reports of this dark side. People in the know who live in India are justifiably worried about what could happen to them if RSSB zealots learn their identity and seek retribution for their truth-telling. 

 

Believe me, RSSB is no longer the warm, fuzzy, loving spiritual organization that I remember from most of my 35 years as a RSSB devotee. Of course, maybe it never was such, and RSSB officials were just more adept at covering up the bad stuff. Regardless, it's good that the truth now is coming out, thanks in part to people like Sheena.

(Also, to journalists with Indian business publications.)

 

All I will say is that as a member of the book buying public your Amazon review read as trading in gossip. And that's really unfortunate.  

Again, a book written by a real person, whose true identity is known to quite a few people, about her experience with Gurinder Singh Dhillon and the Dera is absolutely NOT "trading in gossip." Those words are insulting to Sheena and to truth-tellers everywhere. 

 

Feel free to post this to your site/blog.

Hey, I've been pleased to do this, because it gives me another opportunity to speak the truth.

 

Regards, 

Catherine Muller

Now, Muller sent me some additional emails where she questioned why Sheena's book was selling for $9.95 (Kindle edition) and  $17.25 (paperback edition) on the U.S. Amazon site.

Having written several books that are for sale on Amazon, all I can say is that these prices aren't unusual. And I can confidently say that almost certainly, Sheena isn't even getting paid minimum wage for all the hours she spent writing her book, and then finding a way to get it published in both paperback and Kindle formats.

For almost every author, writing and publishing a book is a labor of love, not of money. 

Lastly, I'll note that I asked Catherine Muller if she had bought and read Sheena's book. This was Muller's response:

Yes, I have indeed bought the book - I got the Kindle edition for $11.49. I’ll get around to reading it one day. It’s not high priority. 

To which I thought, "Wow! You're criticizing the veracity of a book you haven't read, and you're criticizing the motivation of a woman who you know nothing about." 

Believable "gossip" about RSSB, Singh brothers, and Gurinder Singh Dhillon

Gossip can be interesting. Also, it can be true. Here's a comment that was left today on a Church of the Churchless post. GSD stands for Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB).

I have a bit of “gossip” – I was talking to a relative, in India, earlier today, regarding RSSB/Singh Brother controversy. His boss is the ex-Director of the Board of Directors for Fortis hospitals.

Here is what he had to share –

1) There is truth about the deal between GSD and Singh Brothers. GSD’s son gets the money and RSSB guruship goes to Shivinder Singh.

2) Money was siphoned off to Singapore where GSD’s son lives.

3) In February 2017, GSD was sick and was given 3 months to live.

Here is what was reported at that time – “Babaji Don Gurinder Singh Dhillon was admitted in Fortis Hospital, Mohali because of Food Poisoning. The doctors have advised him One week rest, so his programme of satsang of 12th Feb. 2017 is cancelled. There are rumors that he will be leaving for Singapore. Posted by: Juan | February 10, 2017 at 07:39 AM”

http://hinessight.blogs.com/church_of_the_churchless/2013/12/when-a-supposedly-godly-guru-gets-sick-what-does-this-mean.html

http://punjabnewsexpress.com/punjab/news/radha-soami-sect-chief-gurinder-singh-dhillon-returns-from-singapore-hale-and-hearty-58108.aspx

4) He nominated Shivinder Singh to succeed [They probably prepared/updated the “will” to ensure a smooth succession]. They were quite close to announcing it publicly.

5) Obviously, GSD survived [Divine Intervention? GSD is God?]

6) When Singh Brothers were in charge of the Fortis hospitals and GSD was getting treated regularly for his medical conditions at Fortis Mohali, GSD was charged a token amount (Rs 5K/10K) for treatments that would cost around Rs 200K for a normal patient at the same hospital.

7) After Singh Brothers were out of the picture, GSD was treated again at the same Fortis hospital in Mohali and was charged the normal patient bill of Rs 200k. He was quite upset about it. Take it for what it’s worth. It comes from a reliable source.

On a different note – “Dhillon has been given Z-Plus Security Cover and his security was enhanced significantly when ADGP Security of Punjab Government visited the Dera Radha Soami Beas town to review the security arrangements. “

http://punjabnewsexpress.com/punjab/news/radha-soami-sect-chief-gurinder-singh-dhillon-returns-from-singapore-hale-and-hearty-58108.aspx

I wonder if such a situation existed in the US, would FBI provide special security to a Guru.

Reality requires a broad scientific look, not narrow mystic visions

Put on your philosophical wading boots. I'm about to jump into the deep end of some interesting, but sort of complex, questions about the nature of reality as seen through the eyes of quantum physics.

But rest assured that, in accord with the focus of this Church of the Churchless blog, I'll be drawing some inferences about what makes sense, and what doesn't, when it comes to religious, mystical, and spiritual claims about reality.

This might take a few blog posts, so I'll do my best to keep this initial post as short and simple as possible.

(Which means, it is going to seem lengthy and complex to many readers; sorry about that, it's the nature of the philosophical beast we're trying to come to grips with.)

I'm about two-thirds of the way through a fascinating book, "What is Real? The Unfinished Quest for the Meaning of Quantum Physics," by Adam Becker. Becker is a science writer with a Ph.D. in astrophysics.

The key word in the title is meaning. Here's why.

Historically, the prevailing view of quantum physics is known as the Copenhagen Interpretation, which often is pithily summed up as "shut up and calculate!" In other words, most physicists don't worry about the underlying meaning of what is known about the quantum world.

They're content with the fact that the mathematics of quantum mechanics are amazingly accurate and precise, which is why we've experienced such fantastic accomplishments in fields such as computer technology, lasers, medical imaging, and so much else.

Now, I'm going to quickly jump into the religious/mystical side of life, to avoid readers of this post heading off to another corner of the World Wide Web. 

In Becker's "More Things in Heaven and Earth" chapter, he discusses a useful analogy to illustrate the core philosophical debate between the "shut up and calculate" folks, and the "let's dig deeper for underlying meaning" folks. This is basically the distinction between logical positivism and realism.

Before we get into that analogy, I need to say that I'm not arguing for a simplistic direct connection between logical positivism and mystical ways of thinking, versus realism and scientific ways of thinking, because the situation is murkier than that. Here's some quotes from Becker:

The logical positivists were understandably opposed to philosophical castles in the sky and the tortuous prose they were often defended with. But the logical positivists weren't merely against metaphysics -- they believed they could actually dismiss metaphysical claims as meaningless.

Meaning, they held, was a matter of verification: knowing what a statement means is equivalent to knowing how to specify it using your senses. According to the positivists, when you say "it's hotter outside that it is in here," you really mean "if you go outside you will feel hotter than you do in here."

The statement's meaning is the method of verifying it empirically -- and if there's no way of verifying a statement against your senses, then that statement has no meaning.

...But idealist and theological claims aren't the only kinds of statements that make no contact with the senses.

There are also more straightforward claims like "the couch is in the living room even when nobody's there," that can't be confirmed directly. Statements like these about the existence and persistence of material objects independent of perception are realist claims -- they're statements about a real world that exists whether or not there are any humans around,

These statements are fundamental to science. Yet some of the positivists, throwing the baby out with the bathwater, dismissed realist claims as meaningless too, because they can't be verified by experience. All that is meaningful, on the positivists' account, are statements about perceptions, along with the purely logical statements of mathematics. 

Obviously mysticism isn't a mathematical enterprise. But leaving that aside, over the fourteen years I've been writing on this blog I've heard countless (more or less) stories of how someone had a vision of God, or of Jesus, or of a guru, or of divine light and sound, or whatever. 

When I and other skeptics would ask for evidence that those mystical experiences were real, typically the response would be along this line: "I know what I experienced, and it felt genuine to me, so you should believe that it was real."

This is basically a positivist argument.

Of course, unlike scientific positivism, there really isn't any way for other people to reproduce that experience -- though believers in mystic visions like to say things like, "You just need to meditate in this fashion for a long time, and have faith in God/guru/angelic beings/whatever."

I'm going to turn now to Becker's analogy, which hopefully will make my point more clear. He uses something most of us are familiar with, a TV remote control that has stopped working, to illustrate the distinction between positivism and realism.

Quine's paper, "Two Dogmas of Empiricism," took aim at the core of the positivist program, the verification theory of meaning. Quine pointed out that there was no way to verify single statements -- all attempts to verify a statement inevitably involve the assumed truth of other statements, which are themselves subject to the same problem.

For example, say the remote control for your TV isn't working, and you can't turn the TV on. You suspect that the batteries in the remote are dead. You can verify this by replacing the batteries and trying to turn on the TV with the remote again. You do this, and the TV turns on.

Does that mean you were right? No.

It's entirely possible that the batteries in the remote control weren't dead at all. Maybe the remote had a short and will only work intermittently, no matter what batteries you use. Or maybe the old batteries were in backward, and you didn't notice; you just popped them out and put in new ones pointing the right way.

Or maybe something more exotic is going on: maybe the remote always worked, but when you tried it before, the TV mysteriously shifted its picture to the infrared and its sound to the ultrasonic, so you couldn't see or hear it; the TV happened to go back to normal after you changed the batteries, but not because you changed them. 

The last idea is clearly preposterous -- how could that happen? -- but the point remains that in testing out the new batteries in the remote, you've assumed a wide variety of basic facts about the world, all based on previous experience, and any of which could, in principle, be wrong.

This isn't merely true of suppositions about batteries in remote controls; verification of any statement behaves this way 

Looking out the window and saying, "It's raining outside," assumes that your view through the window's glass gives you an accurate picture of the outside world, and that your eyes are functioning property, and that the dimmed light and falling droplets  are in fact caused by a rain cloud and not an alien spaceship blotting out the Sun and dropping some exotic substance onto your front lawn.

So you can never verify a single statement: you're always stuck verifying the entirety of your knowledge about the world, or at least a very large fraction of it. As Quine put it, "Our statements about the external world face the tribunal of sense experience not individually but only as a corporate body."

With the verification theory of meaning left gasping for air, Quine dismissed the idea that it's meaningless to talk about unobservable things. Unverifiable statements must have meaning, because no individual statement is verifiable.

Thus the "metaphysics" so dreaded by the positivists came roaring  back: rather than speaking simply of sensations, Quine contended that it was perfectly intelligible to speak of physical objects with existence independent of the speaker.

So this gets me back to the title of this post: reality requires a broad scientific look, not narrow mystic visions.

I'll talk about this more in another blog post, because this one is plenty long already. For now I'll simply observe that without using these terms, for quite a few years I've been engaged with positivist believers in mystical experiences who don't want to take a broad realistic view of the cosmos.

For example, a supernatural experience typically demands that someone assume that human consciousness can function outside of the physical brain; that there are spiritual realms of existence beyond the physical universe; that there are "laws of nature" unknown to science, and so on. This sort of worldview requires a very different understanding of reality than is known either to science or everyday experience.

Which is why I no longer believe in it.   

Roles of Indian women reflected in Singh brothers saga

I readily admit that, not suprisingly, I'm much more familiar with the roles of women here in the United States than in India, a country I've only visited twice for brief periods. 

My impression (and please correct me if I'm wrong, something many commenters on my posts love to do) is that just as India is transitioning to a modern advanced economy, Indian women are likewise moving from traditional roles to more empowered and co-equal roles in relation to men.

A couple of stories in the Indian business press caught my eye in this regard.

Here's excerpts from a September 7 India Today story, "Singh brothers case: Shivinder's lawsuit exposes widespread forgery, fake documentation, corporate governance issues."

In a serious allegation, the petition says Shivinder's wife Aditi, other directors and Shivinder himself were documented as discussing and approving the bulk of proposals when in fact, the requisite meetings did not take place.

...In fact, (Aditi) Petitioner No. 3 was usually sent a thick stack of minutes and papers to sign at her residence, with a short notice along with a note to sign and return immediately with no further explanation, says the petition which also says there was an understanding between the brothers that ladies in the family were not supposed to ask any questions regarding business dealings.

It was always the understanding between the families of Respondent No. 2 (Malvinder) and Petitioner No. 2 (Shivinder) that ladies from the families are not supposed to ask any questions with regard to the business activities as the same were supposed to be handled by male members of the families, as was the age old tradition and family values. Therefore, the ladies were expected to follow the instructions given to them for signing the papers, says the petition.

"Age old tradition and family values."

Wow. I can pretty much guarantee that if a newspaper in the United States used those words to describe why some American women were supposed to do what their male relatives instructed, the outcry by outraged women would be so loud, it would reach the ears of the Great Goddess who rules heaven and earth. 

A September 14 Bloomberg story, "Ex-Billionaire Drops Lawsuit Against Brother After Mom Steps In,"  shows another side of Indian female empowerment.

A public rupture between the heirs to one of India’s most storied business houses looks to be healing after the mother of the two Singh brothers -- synonymous with each other for decades -- convinced her younger son to withdraw a lawsuit against the elder.

Shivinder Singh withdrew a suit alleging “oppression and mismanagement” against his brother Malvinder and a senior manager in their corporate group after their mother requested they engage in mediation led by family elders instead, according to an order Friday by Justice M.M. Kumar of India’s National Company Law Tribunal.

So this tells me that ex-billionaires in India listen to their mothers, notwithstanding the assertion in the India Today story that business activities traditionally are handled by the men in a family. 

I hope the Indian business press reports on the mediation between the Singh brothers "led by family elders," because I'm curious how many women are going to be part of that process. My guess: few, if any. 

To stimulate some comment discussion by Indian readers of this blog, I'm sharing a provocative April 2018 story from The Guardian, "India's abuse of women is the greatest human rights violation on Earth." Here's how the story starts out:

India is at war with its girls and women.

The planned rape of eight-year-old Asifa in a temple by several men, including a policeman who later washed the clothes she was wearing to destroy evidence, was particularly horrific. Asifa’s rape has outraged and shaken the entire country. Yet sexual abuse in India remains widespread despite tightening of rape laws in 2013.

According to the National Crimes Records Bureau, in 2016 the rape of minor girls increased by 82% compared with the previous year. Chillingly, across all rape cases, 95% of rapists were not strangers but family, friends and neighbours.

The culturally sanctioned degradation of women is so complete that the prime minister of India, Narendra Modi, launched a national programme called Beti Bachao (Save Our Girls).

India can arguably be accused of the largest-scale human rights violation on Earth: the persistent degradation of the vast majority of its 650 million girls and women. And this includes the middle classes, as I found when interviewing 600 women and men in India’s cities.

India’s women are traumatised in less obvious ways than by tanks in the streets, bombs and warlords. Our oppression starts innocuously: it occurs in private life, within families, with girls being locked up in their own homes. This everyday violence is the product of a culture that bestows all power on men, and that does not even want women to exist.

This is evident in the unbalanced sex ratios at birth, even in wealthy families. But India also kills its women slowly. This violence is buried in the training of women in some deadly habits that invite human rights violations, but that are considered the essence of good womanhood.

Women protest against violence against women and children in Bangalore, April 2018.

Advice for RSSB believers about how to deal with news about their guru

Yesterday this comment was left on a Church of the Churchless post, "Great BusinessToday video about RSSB guru and Singh brothers." The commenter wondered how to break the news about Gurinder Singh Dhillon's financial misdeeds to Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB) devotees who had put a lot of faith in their guru.

Dear Brian Thanks for your blog and exposing the truths!! It is really sad to learn all the truths of recent events. I had a feeling somethiing is corrupt but it still came as a shock when my intuition was confirmed with facts.

I am not part of Sant mat myself but do know people that I love that is. They don’t know yet and I just don’t have the heart to break this news. I can just imagine that if your whole belief system was based on the idea of a perfect living master and to found out he is not so perfect after all, will pull the rug underneath you.

Especially this path’s standards are so high in terms of diet and moral life. How do you break such news to somebody you love while you know their world will be shattered? How have other Satsangis took the news? Is it best to just keep quiet and wait till truth be revealed? Ruth

Ruth asked some good questions.

Since I was a member of RSSB for 35 years, and embraced the Sant Mat teachings for almost all of that time before I stopped believing in them, I've had to deal with the same difficult process of breaking away from a spiritual philosophy that used to mean so much to me.

All I can do is suggest the following advice, which I've shared in a "laundry list" form -- because everybody is different, and I want to give people a variety of ways to deal with disillusionment in a spiritual path or religious dogma. So I'm going to list these ideas as they come to me, without trying to arrange them in a particular fashion.

(1) Truth, Sat in an Indian language, has to be our primary concern. Without truth, we're lost in a maze of falsehoods. So whenever truths are revealed about a guru, master, religious leader, or whoever, those truths should be embraced, not pushed away.

(2) Truths can be painful. But the pain of living a lie, or living in illusion, is greater. Yes, fantasies can be fun. But eventually fantasies are revealed to be much less substantial than truth, since truth always wins out in the end. Why? Because reality is hugely more powerful than illusion.

(3) This is one of my all-time favorite sayings. When I used to give talks at RSSB meetings (satsangs), I'd often cite this quote from Philip K. Dick: "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away." So if a spiritual or religious belief is given up, nothing is lost, because reality is beyond beliefs.

(4) When we expect someone to be perfect, we're bound to be disappointed. So don't expect perfection. Not of your spouse, friend, relative, co-worker, boss, political figure, or... a guru. Everybody makes mistakes. Some are innocent mistakes. Some are willful mistakes. Regardless, expect imperfection, not perfection.

(5) Taoism, which I'm drawn to as a philosophy, says that the world is made up of yin and yang, light and darkness, positive and negative, substantial and insubstantial, embracing and rejecting, and so on. Opposites are what make the world go 'round. If we welcome only one side of a pair of opposites, we're ignoring a big part of reality.

(6) Often people think, "If such-and-such happened, my life wouldn't be worth living." But usually, when that thing does happen, life is still very much worth living. We humans are resilient creatures. Don't underestimate your capacity to adapt to a difficult situation, and then move on from there.

(7) It's natural to want to feel special, which includes being part of a special group, one especially favored or beloved by God. However, what if God, or the cosmos, actually doesn't play favorites? What if it doesn't matter whether someone believes in this or that, but simply does their best to be a good human being? (As you can guess, this is how I consider reality operates.)

(8) Consider: out of all the religions, spiritual paths, and mystical teachings in the world, what is the chance that you have come across the Only One that is objectively true? Very small, right? Yet almost every believer feels that they have found that Only One. Isn't this more than a little egotistical or self-centered? 

(9) What people often find most satisfying about a religion or form of spirituality isn't so much the concepts that make up that teaching, but the good feeling they have from being part of a group that accepts them, welcomes them, supports them. Yet it is possible to have that same good feeling after someone leaves a certain group, because there are countless groups that accept, welcome, and support.

(10) Think about how many changes have occurred in your life. Most likely you've changed homes, friends, jobs, cars, lovers, pets, hairstyles, clothes, sports, and so much else. So it isn't strange that people also change their religion, spiritual path, or mystic teaching. This is normal.

(11) Doubts also are normal. Often people who belong to a certain religion or spiritual group wrongly believe that everybody else in the group but them has perfect faith, because usually expressing doubts isn't welcomed. Believe me, almost everyone has doubts, whether they admit this or not.

(12) Trust yourself. If you trusted yourself when you decided to join a religion or form of spirituality, also trust yourself if you decide to leave it. Don't be led astray by a group's teaching that leaving it will bring horrible consequences, such as a nasty afterlife. Almost every group has ways to keep members from leaving. Know that you are stronger than those ways.

(In case you're wondering, yes, this 1976 cartoon really was drawn by Charles Schulz. Read the comments on that post.)

It hurts to argue with reality

This is a great simple explanation of why it makes sense to love science, to love truth, to love reasoned fact-based discussions of what is happening in the world. Fantasies can be fun, but reality has a way of biting us in the butt when we ignore what is.

"Atheist Experience" guys demolish arguments of a supernatural believer

I've come to the conclusion that a big part of being a spiritual person is thinking clearly.

(When I say "spiritual," I don't mean religious or supernatural; I mean finding meaning in life, the underlying spirit of one's life, so to speak.)

If we don't think clearly, there's a danger that our emotions, feelings, desires, intuitions, and such will lead us astray. I'm certainly not saying that thoughts are more important than other aspects of our psyche -- just that we need to find a balance between the rational and non-rational parts of ourselves.

Case in point: this You Tube video is a 24-minute example of how a deist caller to the Atheist Experience TV show is utterly unable to discuss in any sort of coherent fashion why he believes God, or any other supernatural entity, exists. 

I watched the whole video, but in the first 5-10 minutes you can get a good feel for the discussion between the atheist guys and Jeff from Aptos, California. 

The person who emailed me a link to the video yesterday said:

Hi Brian, I just listened to this call on the call-in program called The Atheist Experience. What is so unbelievably fascinating about this call is that the caller has absolutely no clue about what's being said.

I would go further and say he is unable to comprehend or make sense of what the hosts of the show are saying so clearly. It is like they are speaking a foreign language.

 

The caller is so fixated on his own viewpoint that it is impossible to have a normal conversation with him. It is the same with many of the people who comment on your blog.

I agree that many Church of the Churchless commenters display the same lack of understanding of what it means to believe in the supernatural, and not to believe in the supernatural.

Over and over, the caller, Jeff, is asked to explain why he is a deist, a believer in God. He's repeatedly asked to provide reasons, or evidence, to support his belief in God. But all of his explanations are either circular, or unresponsive.

Of course, there's no demonstrable evidence of God, or I and almost every other atheist in the world would believe in God. After all, us atheists typically are open-minded, as Don and Matt, the Atheist Experience guys, are. 

As noted regularly on this blog, most recently in this post, atheism isn't a belief; it is the absence of a belief in theism, in God. Don and Matt keep pointing out that they aren't saying there is no God. Rather, they consider that because of insufficient evidence that God exists, they assume that not-believing in God is the wisest choice.

I liked how they interrupted the caller when he tried to answer their question about why he is a deist by starting out with, "But you..." They correctly said that when someone begins to answer a question about themselves with "But you...", it's clear that they aren't intent on providing an answer.

Asking an atheist to prove that there is no God is an example of how religious believers fail to think clearly. The burden of proof is on a believer, not a skeptic.

In a trial, the prosecution has to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that someone committed a crime. Fairly frequently, the defense won't call a single witness. Why? Because they don't have to prove that the defendant didn't commit a crime.  

Likewise, an atheist doesn't have to prove that God doesn't exist. Atheists like me, and like Don and Matt, leave open the possibility that God or some other supernatural entity might exist. If there is sufficient evidence of this, we would believe. Because there isn't, we don't.

Of course, there are good reasons to believe in God, even if God doesn't exist. Here's some of them:

(1) It feels good to believe that death isn't the end of us, but the beginning of an afterlife.
(2) It feels good to be part of a religious community, given the social support that comes with this.
(3) It feels good to be provided a moral code, rather than having to decide what is right and wrong on our own.
(4) It feels good to consider that we're part of a "chosen people," instead of just being an ordinary person.
(5) It feels good to believe that a divine power is guiding your life.

Here's the thing though: just because something makes us feel good doesn't mean it is true. Fantasies can be fun. 

I regularly get comments on this blog along the lines of, "Brian, why are you trying to take away an important source of support for people, their belief in God?" My answer: "I'm not trying to do this. What I'm trying to do is learn the truth about God and supernaturalism in general."

For me, the arguments in favor of believing in God or the supernatural are weak, too weak for me to accept. Yes, I used to believe in not only God, but in the existence of living masters, or gurus, who essentially were God in human form. Now I don't believe in either.

However, since I used to believe, I understand the appeal of believing. Life is hard. The Buddha got it right when he taught that life is suffering. We all need shoulders to lean on. I get why most people in the world believe in God and the supernatural. This feels good.

There's nothing wrong, and a lot right, with feeling good. I'm simply saying that feeling good because of a belief in God is one thing, and that belief being true is a very different thing.

Science was mentioned in the Atheist Experience video as being our best way of determining what is true. For sure. Here's a 4-minute video in praise of science that's well worth watching.

Great BusinessToday video about RSSB guru and Singh brothers

Here's a clear and compelling video that's based on a Business Today (India) story, "The Baba, Singh Brothers, and the Squandered Rs 225,00,00,00,000," which is $3.2 billion in U.S. dollars.

I've read numerous complicated stories about the problematic financial dealings of the RSSB guru, Baba Gurinder Singh Dhillon, his family, and the Singh brothers. But this video keeps things clear and simple in just a bit over 6 minutes.

This is the You Tube description:

"An influential 'Baba' and his family with a weakness for materialism; two young businessmen loaded with nearly Rs 10,000 crore from an asset sale; and a family confidante have together cooked a cauldron that Bollywood potboilers are made of. Their machinations wrecked a flourishing empire and vapourised nearly $3.2 billion (Rs 22,500 crore then) into thin air. Watch BusinessToday.In Editor Rajeev Dubey discuss the fall of the Singh brothers' empire."

I'll use this post as an opportunity to address the many new visitors to this blog from India and other places around the world who are either devotees of Radha Soami Satsang Beas (RSSB), or sympathetic to the RSSB teachings.

I was a dedicated follower of RSSB for 35 years, 1970 to 2005. I was initiated by Charan Singh in 1971 and did a lot of seva (volunteer work) for RSSB following the succession of Gurinder Singh Dhillon as guru in 1990.

So I know how important the RSSB teachings, also known as Sant Mat, are to those who believe in them. Those teachings were a foundation of my life for over three decades. It was very difficult for me to pull away from them, but I did so after I concluded that I needed to pursue a different spiritual path that made more sense to me.

Here's how I see the current situation with the RSSB guru and the financial dealings involving the Dhillon family. 

There are two main issues with Gurinder Singh Dhillon, One is whether the Sant Mat/RSSB philosophy he teaches is true. The other issue concerns the controversial financial dealings he's been a part of since he became the RSSB guru.

I'd like this blog to be a welcoming place for people who are interested in, and worried about, the second issue, even though they still believe in the RSSB teachings. And I see these as separate issues.

Recently l've been focused on the guru's financial dealings, because this is what's being reported on by Indian business publications. I've written a lot about why I don't believe in the Sant Mat/RSSB philosophy any more, but again, this is a different issue from whether Gurinder Singh Dhillon has violated ethical, and possibly legal, norms with the Dhillon family financial entanglements.

Likewise, some people who visit this blog are supporters of Donald Trump. I'm not. But hopefully we could all agree that if the Mueller investigation finds that Trump was engaged in legal wrongdoing, there should be consequences for this.

It doesn't matter whether someone likes Trump, or endorses his policies. Wrongdoing is a separate issue from Trump's policy positions. Likewise, I'm trying to differentiate between the RSSB guru's position as a religious leader, and his involvement in questionable financial dealings.

Lastly, I hope visitors to this blog from India and other countries keep in mind that the United States, where I live, has a strong commitment to free speech embedded in our Constitution as the First Amendment. 

So in my country, we're free to criticize or praise religions with few, if any, restrictions. My understanding is that other countries, including India, have different laws.

I mention this because I can tell from comments left on this blog along the lines of, "You can't say that about Baba Gurinder Singh!", that some visitors to this Church of the Churchless are viewing things from their own cultural perspective, rather than from how free speech is viewed in the United States.

But we all live in the same world, and we all are human beings. So what unites us is, really, greater than what divides us. Open discussion and debate is a wonderful thing, because it helps us to understand each other better. That's what I'm trying to accomplish on this blog.

We may disagree at times, but we always can respect our differences. If everybody was alike, this would be a hugely boring world.

Another story about the Singh brothers, RSSB, and the Dhillon family

Going through some fairly old email messages, I came across an July 23, 2018 ET Prime story that someone sent to me, "How the Singh brothers became victims of a realty play."


It takes a subscription to read the full story, so my correspondent sent a file that I converted to PDF. Here it is:
Download Singh brothers story

Like other stories about the Singh brothers and their relationship with the guru of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, Gurinder Singh Dhillon, the details are astoundingly complex. 

Here's some easy to understand excerpts from the beginning of the story.

ET Prime pieced together this triangular love-hate story between the Godhwanis, Singh brothers, and Dhillons by speaking with several insiders, going through public disclosures, and poring over numerous corporate filings. 



It is a story of a win-win association turning into a nightmare, an unending downward spiral.

...The transactions and movement of money and the multiple roles played by the individuals involved raise questions of corporate governance and conflict of interest. They show how Indian promoters continue to consider listed companies their private fiefdoms. 


They also make one wonder about the Radha Soami sect's principles, including that the master "does not accept gifts or money for himself or his family from the sangat; all the money donated in seva is channelled into supporting the sangat".

I'll repeat what I said in a blog post about a Business Today story about this same subject -- the tangled web of highly suspicious financial deals involving the RSSB guru, his family, and RSSB insiders.

If you read the Bloomberg and Business Today stories, you'll learn that whatever we might call the financial schemes the guru is deeply involved with, it's very difficult to call them honest living.  
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Here's an excerpt from that RSSB book.