The Best Arguments for Gods

Are these the best arguments for the existence of gods?  If so, then the case for gods and goddesses is looking pretty bleak, to be honest.  These are the best arguments, such as they are, that I encounter from time to time from those who are determined to rescue my soul, and I have to say I am rather underwhelmed by their quality and persuasiveness.  I am fairly disappointed at how evidently ambivalent people are about the welfare of my soul, if these arguments are any reflection.

Keep in mind that an Argument is not Evidence.  It is merely the line that connects evidence to a conclusion. The biggest problem with most arguments in support of the existence of gods and goddesses is that even if the arguments were not fallacious or disjointed they still do not actually link back to or produce any good evidence.  But we will be lenient today and allow the advocates of gods to give me their best shots.  Let 'er rip!

"The Bible says so."  Many people when asked why they think gods exist will immediately turn to scriptural authority.  Why I am unmoved by this argument stems from the fact that by this logic we should also believe in Spiderman.  And why stop there: we should all be worshiping Gandalf, Frodo, and Bellatrix LeStrange too, if we admit this line of reasoning.

Flippancy aside, we are compelled to examine biblical authority more closely to determine if there is any reason whatsoever to take it seriously.  The evidence we have for biblical origins and authorship, both from contemporaneous independent historical records, from textual analysis of source documents and related historical documents, and from artifacts and physical archaeology is that many of the individual "books" of the bible are straight-up forgeries which are not at all what they pretend to be.  A few books are genuine and sincere stand-alone religious texts, but such things are not unique in the world and certainly not unique to the abrahamic gods.  More than enough of the bible is outright fraud to compel us in all honesty to reject the content as a whole as having a supernatural origin.  There is every reason to regard the bible as fraudulent, and no reason to take it seriously or at face value. It should be read and studied as the historical fabrication that it is.

Genesis and Exodus for example are not at all contemporaneous to the supposed events they portray, but instead date to about 450 BC.  Archaeology and contemporaneous historical documents and artifacts positively prove that the events described therein never occurred and the main characters were very definitely not historical figures.  Noah, Abraham, Moses, Joshua etc. were all just stories someone made up, often by plagiarizing much older fictional tales from different contexts entirely.

The New Testament is even worse: while there likely was a real Paul who helped unite a cluster of mystery sects in about 50 AD, about half of the Pauline Epistles found in today's bible are widely acknowledged as later forgeries, likely composed in order to strengthen one particular sect's claim to hegemony.  The Gospels date from at least 70 AD, and are contradicted by contemporaneous accounts, borrow from and rewrite each other, and belong to a genre of acknowledged fictionalized pretend histories of purely mythical figures.  They are not recorded oral histories but carefully crafted allegories fashioned by anonymous writers familiar with Greek literary devices, tropes, and constructs, but strangely unfamiliar with the language, peoples, religions, and customs of Palestine. By examining the bible, I am persuaded that Jesus Christ was an entirely mythical construct based on the older Angel Joshua of Judaism, and never an actual living historical person.  So, in other words, no.  The bible is provably factually wrong in countless instances, is very clearly and obviously a man-made  and ever-evolving fiction, and does not authoritatively prove that there ever were any gods at all, any more than comic books prove there is a Spiderman.

"People don't know how to be Moral until God decrees what is and is not Moral."  They call this the argument from Objective Morality, but it is neither objective nor moral.  What the believers in gods have is an arbitrary morality that is fundamentally immoral, as I explain here and again here.  The idea that morality and ethical behaviour in humans and human societies is entirely attributable to the existence of gods is a bad argument for gods precisely because it is false.  Godless humans and human societies somehow find their way to ethical standards of behaviour that often exceed those of religious societies.  Hell, even packs of chimpanzees and dogs have a basic moral sense that guides their behaviour.  You can't tell me they got that by reading the bible.

So let's look at that bible one more time.  The various gods described in the bible beginning with a minor actor in the Caananite pantheon of gods and goddesses are savage, sadistic, primitive assholes whom no one today would describe as "moral."   The jealous, overly-sensitive volcano god Yahweh seems to have a real inferiority complex and keeps trying to convince everyone through his bloodthirsty rage that he's the greatest of all the many, many gods.  And we're supposed to learn morality from that?   Later gods (or possibly the same god slightly grown-up) seem to care a little too deeply about provincial politics and is more than happy to spend the death and suffering of his people for short-term political or territorial gains.  Look, no thinking person takes the bible seriously, and if you actually read the thing you wouldn't be spouting off about how "moral" the utterly barbaric bible is.

Religious societies are more likely to abuse the human rights of its citizens, especially of women, ethnic minorities, religious minorities, political minorities, and  sexual minorities (e.g. transgender people, homosexuals, etc).  How do they justify the objectively immoral inflicting of suffering and abuse on the powerless?  Religion and the ridiculous arbitrary behavioural code they have confused with and substituted for actual morality.

The comeback argument usually sounds something like "If people didn't think there would be an ultimate justice, they wouldn't be afraid of doing whatever they wanted all the time - steal, kill, rape, and be atheist."  Really?  What "people" is that you're talking about?  Normal people don't need to be threatened with hell in order to want to do the right thing and create through their own acts the sort of world they'd like to live in.  If the fear of eternal torture in hell and a watchful, vengeful god is all that is keeping you from doing horrible things to your fellow humans, then what you are is a psychopath and I hope you never stop believing in hell.

"The Universe had to start somehow, and it could only be Gods."  Couldn't it though?  That is a bold assertion to make without evidence.  Why could not the universe posses entirely natural causes, origins, and workings?  Everything we know about this universe so far, after just a few centuries of serious investigation, is that it is entirely naturalistic and requires no universal intelligent agency or supernatural finnanglings in order to function as it does.  We also understand (or should - see my earlier series of posts beginning with this one) that the universe is not fully deterministic.  This fact ruins the deistic fancy that some god or goddess magically poofed the universe into existence for some obtuse purpose and then stood back and allowed it to carry on naturally in the fulfillment of a divine master-plan.  That plan would only work if the universe and nature were indeed fully deterministic.  But it is not, and your gods and goddesses would be compelled to constantly tweak and nudge the universe in its random wanderings back onto the divinely specified trajectory. We explicitly see this exact thing not happening, as well as the positive absence of a mechanism by which this could happen from outside the universe.  The only agency observed to marginally influence the course of Nature is that of Man, and that of a few other animals on this planet.

If you see a symmetric web hanging with dew in the morning, only determined willful ignorance could license you to assume it was the act of some supernatural agency.  Even a rustic innocent understands that it was the work of a spider, an animal fully competent to carry out such modifications to the environment. Sometimes designs have a designer, and sometimes designs emerge without one.

But the most damning flaw of this bad argument for gods, that everything that exists could only exist if it had an intelligent agent as its prime instigator, is this very argument itself.  If we were to foolishly be persuaded by this baseless assertion, accept it as valid and apply it evenly, then we would be in the awkward position of having to respond to the objection that if Gods exist, someone or something must have created them.

"Logic and Reason can only exist as a result of the Gods inventing them."  Oh for fuck's sake, not this puddle of donkey cack.  Really?  Have you never even seen a logic or a reason, much less used one?  OK - I may have to break it down to toddler level for the fundamentalists out there who are fond of this nonsense garbage argument and who (by straining hard enough) somehow find it persuasive.  But first it seems necessary to seize the narrative and talk about one of my favorite subjects - Mathematics.  Math means Quantitative Reasoning and encompasses the fields of Logic and Geometry.  Math is essentially the taxonomy of the properties of quantities and functions (identifiable groups of quantities, e.g. the points on an idealized circle or sphere).  The claim is that these properties and their relationships could somehow only exist if an invisible wizard casts a magic spell or something.  Could they really not exist simply on their own?

But to be fair, let us allow the question and conjecture an entirely godless universe - I know, rather inconceivable, but bear with me.  Suppose this utterly god-free universe contained an asteroid.  And then suppose there was a second asteroid, one that was not merely the first one all over again.  Now if we, who are not present (because this is a godless universe, remember) and thus cannot see this, but instead merely speculate that these asteroids exist, proceed to count the number of separate asteroids in the universe, do we not arrive at the result, being one asteroid plus another asteroid?  Do we not empirically see what we shall designate as Two asteroids?    Even in a godless universe one plus one makes two, an empirical fact which requires no proof, nor derivation from a priori axioms, nor magic, nor divine imprimatur.  Now let us imagine as a thought-experiment that the two asteroids crash into one another and each breaks into two pieces.  Is it not an empirical fact that if this
were to happen, then the asteroids now number two times two, and also two plus two, namely four?  What this demonstrates is that it is entirely possible for math to exist of its own accord, waiting only to be discovered by an animal at least as competent at counting as a Labrador Retriever.

Math (and by extension Logic and Reason) is not an invention, but a discovery.  While mathematical notations and methodologies are certainly invented, the properties and relationships of quantities and functions themselves can only be discovered.  While whiny post-modernists hipsters in their bourgeois parlors playing middle-class word games reassure themselves that math is just a subjective eurocentric cis-male construct, in the real world math exists whether we know about it or not, or are capable of using it or not.   A circle's circumference of unit diameter was 3.14159... long before pi was known to humans, and long before an oblate spheroid planet following a precessing elliptical orbit around an unremarkable sun formed on which people would eventually understand any of this.  The surface of a sphere has ever increased as the square of the radius, and the volume as the cube, even before the first stars and galaxies formed and light shone in concordance with these facts, and would have done so whether gods existed or not. 

Attributing the existence of logic and reason solely to either the existence of magical invisible sky people or to human culture is equally willfully ignorant of the true nature of any of those things.  In small words: this argument is bad, silly, and dumb. It does not work.

"The orderly universe is finely tuned to support human life and this proves that some Gods probably did it."  Ah the Fine Tuning argument.  This one backfires on the godologists rather spectacularly, which is why I quite enjoy getting this one.  Consider first the orderliness of nature - the sun rising, the tides and seasons coming and going in regular succession as though rehearsed by a master-orchestrator, the exact conditions by which we experience life, and so on.  This is sometimes floated as a separate, standalone argument.  Setting aside the fact that at large timescales the universe is nowhere near as orderly and predictable as this argument requires, this was once a compelling reason to suspect there may be gods about.  It was certainly one possible explanation for things, once upon a time.  Which gods, though ...?  That was always an open question.  But the fact that things were a little too orderly and predictable, like clockwork, should have been a clue that perhaps this was not an agency at work, but the result of some mechanistic system, like a clockwork.

However that all changed the moment we learned how gravity works and that all of this orbiting stuff is exactly what can and would occur whether gods existed or not; whether they intervened or not.  Astronomy including the true nature of the earth, sun, planets, stars, and other bodies detectable in the heavens are all understood well enough now that the presumption of some supernatural agency keeping it all going is no longer justified on this basis, and is indeed laughably unfounded.  This universe works exactly the way a completely god-free universe would work, and not at all the way a god-controlled universe should work, according to all the things godologists certify about their gods.

OK so the universe is doing nothing other than following physical laws.  But how do we know some gods didn't decree those very laws? How is it not fine-tuned just for us?  Nope - sorry, you're indulging in a "begging the question" fallacy, so let's step back from some of those built-in assumptions.  This universe is not necessarily fine tuned just for us - it may be an accident that we are here discussing this universe at all.  It may seem perfect for us, but is there any other way we could possibly be having this discussion?  I know how difficult it can be to understand the logic this objection, having once been strongly motivated to see it as good evidence for gods.  But bear with me:  If we accept that Life in our present form requires some very fortuitous initial conditions and some lucky breaks along the way, then by even having this discussion we presume that those conditions are factual.  It may not actually be the case that we or something like us could only be here under these exact conditions, but we'll allow this for the present.  So, what are the odds?  One in ... five?  How many planets and solar systems are out there that are just right for life?  How many universes are there or have there been?  We do not actually know, and so we cannot assert that this one is too improbable to have happened by chance.  So we are left with this: it either happened by chance, or by some natural cause which somehow favors these conditions, or by the design of some powerful supernatural agency.    The mere fact that we are here wondering which one it is neither presupposes nor precludes any one of these three possibilities, because these are the only conditions under which we could be wondering this in the first place.

If this universe is exquisitely fine tuned to favor anything, it favors (as we physicists now know) the production of as many Black Holes as possible.  But, however, there may be natural, physical reasons for this which we may learn eventually, so we are not justified in assuming the existence of some Black Hole God who crafted this universe purely based on His Holeyness' preferences.  So don't go throwing out all your action figures of a guy being murdered to death on a big "t" and replacing them with photos of Stephen Hawking, which is what the Fine Tuning argument would require if you were to absolutely insist upon its validity.

"Human beings and human societies are self-evidently the result of divine creation."  Again, at one time in the past this might have been a compelling reason to suspect the existence of some invisible magic man with a plan.  Even if one accepts divine creation as the best explanation, there is still an awfully long way to go before any one particular god or religion can be awarded the credit for it. But even in the pre-scientific age there were reasons to doubt this claim.  A lot of outlandish and ad hoc explanations had to be invented over time in order to account for facts about humans and their societies that did not fit the "gods did it" hypothesis.

Of course today there are well-tested and compelling hypotheses that account for everything we see in humanity without invoking the supernatural.  I will not present or argue here the oceans of evidence that support the fact and theory of human evolution, the indisputable facts from molecular biology that place homo sapiens sapiens squarely in the animal kingdom right in among the chimpanzees, the fact that nothing about humans is qualitatively outside the range of animal behaviour or competence, but only quantitative extensions of animal behaviour. The God Squad claims that gods are the only explanation for the existence of us.  To address that claim, all that is needed is one viable alternative theory that withstands every determined attempt at falsification.  I do not have to positively prove that the alternative explanation is true; I only have to point out that it exists and is not contradicted by any evidence we have in order to dismiss the claim that only gods could have done it.  It is demonstrably false that only some gods could have done it.  While perhaps gods might have done it, this is definitely not the only explanation, nor even the best explanation.

There is clear and unequivocal evidence - vast quantities of myopically coherent evidence - that humans and all other living things were not created in their present forms, but have evolved.  Therefore any explanation about the origins of life must account for the proven fact of past and present evolution of life to be considered at all.  Could gods have utilized evolution to manufacture us?  If they did, we must assume they are comfortable - sanguine even - with the evolutionary imperfections, useless vestigial structures, and mental and physical weaknesses and vulnerabilities of our species, as well as patient with the millions of years of pre-human primates and at least a hundred thousand years of modern but pre-monotheistic human beings.  It is not at all self-evident that some gods did this for any coherent purpose, and the gods hypothesis is very far from the best explanation while lacking any explanatory or predictive power.  In terms of testability, the creationist hypothesis fails again and again - fails to find evidence of intentional design, and fails to account for very un-design-like phenomena in biology.

A once-compelling subset of this argument is the argument of the human Self and conscious self-awareness.  For a long time it could not be understood how the thing we all experience could possibly emerge naturally from a wet and springy 1300-g blob of 90 billion neurons. However this bastion of magic has fallen in the path of Science.  Consciousness is no longer an unassailable mystery but is even now being unraveled and explored as an entirely natural phenomenon.  I often did and still sometimes do boggle at the fact of finding myself existing as a conscious being.  How did this happen?  Why am I me?  However there are now some very plausible, testable, and continually improving hypotheses about how the brain as a machine produces conscious experience and the illusion of a Self that do not involve, invoke, or rely on theology or the supernatural in any way.

"There was this one guy who was sick, and then he wasn't sick anymore, and so ... Ta Da! Gods!"  The argument from miracles is difficult to deal with because the claims are slippery.  The evidence of the actual events diffuse conveniently into obscurity, or the tale spins out to ever more fanciful variants.  Unexplained occurrences or healings are simply that: unexplained.  To make a Deistic much less a Theistic claim on this basis requires that you first produce incontrovertible evidence that the event actually took place, and then show precisely how all alternative ordinary explanations fail.  Then you have to show evidence of the proffered explanation - that some particular god and no other did it.  In most cases this is merely assumed.

But most of the miracle stories out there have serious authenticity problems.  It is possible to show in some cases that the event could never have occurred, and that key facts are contradicted by independent evidence.  In other cases it is simply impossible to verify any of the details.  And in the small number of verified, documented occurrences, there are easily other less marvelous, sadly banal, and vastly more probable explanations.

There will always be the unexplained in this world, however.  Just keep in mind that unexplained is merely unexplained - it no more justifies belief in gods than it justifies belief in Harry Potter.

"Life does not have any meaning without gods; so therefore the obvious fact that life must have meaning proves that gods exist."  Hey! great begging-the-question fallacy.  Well done.  But I have to ask, why must life have meaning?  How do you know that is an incontrovertible fact?  Or do you merely need it to be so?  Let's look at this another way.  You need life to have meaning.  You make up gods and you invent fancy stories that you tell yourself that puts human life in a cosmic context that makes it seem bigger and more important and lasting.  You make up a story in which this short existence is an epic critically important quest or test with infinitely bigly consequences.  And it feels really good.  But guess what - you did that.  You gave your life meaning.  You did it even though gods don't really exist and the stories aren't actually true, but there you are.  You have a meaningful life.  So why couldn't the story be something else closer to actual reality?  Your religion's very existence proves that it is possible for us to give our own lives meaning by ourselves.  That power is ours and does not require gods to be real.

"No! No good - if it isn't actually true then it's meaningless.  God gives my life meaning only because he actually exists for real!"  Ah - but gods do not exist and this fact does not stop people from feeling that their lives are meaningful.  However I take your meaning, and acknowledge that this route to meaning would not work if people knew it was fake.  What then do you do when you find out that it is?  Give up on life because that was the only possible meaning it could have had?  No.  It is possible to give your life a meaning that is more based on fact and reality.  But no one can do that for you.  Step One is to learn more facts.  A lot more facts. 

"I personally felt a feeling, saw a thing, &/or heard a voice, and gods are the only possible way this could ever happen."  OK - this is probably the only argument I take seriously because this was my own ultimate fallback once upon a time.  So, I get it.  "I know what I know, I saw what I saw, I felt what I felt."  As a believer my only concern about the argument from testimony was that other people who believed the wrong stuff about the wrong gods kept getting the wrong answers using this exact same methodology.  If God was sending these telepathic messages to my brain, then why were other people getting similar but factually incorrect or even directly contradictory messages?  Why was God gas-lighting me so hard in this really mean way?

There are field dressings and apologetics for this problem, but I found no real satisfactory answer until I learned that the brain basically works by hallucinating everything all the time.  Mostly the hallucinations should closely reflect what is going on in the real world around you, but this isn't strictly necessary.  It is not just possible, but quite common for a brain to produce hallucinations of sight, sound, voices, or feelings as required and at a moment's notice.  And the nature of hallucination as the normal mode of braining is that you cannot readily tell when the hallucination is tracking reality or when it has gone off the rails. You have to be constantly vigilant and always testing your experience to verify that it is tracking reality; and even then the brain can fool you for lengthy periods of time.

Personal "spiritual" experiences are not evidence of actual gods, but are evidence of belief in gods.  You can condition a human to believe in practically any absurd thing, and the person will have internal experiences that confirm the belief to him.  Some people talk to or even see ghosts, which are entirely an imaginary thing.  Some people see aliens, bigfoot, mermaids, fairies, or an endless array of phantasms limited only by imagination but strongly influenced by the memes to which the person had previous exposure.  If your proof of a particular god is by telepathy only, then you essentially have no proof.  And your hallucinations are inadmissible evidence that I too should infer anything from your claims. I've had hallucinations, too.  I know all about them. And people who were raised with entirely different beliefs have entirely different hallucinations.

The godophiles invent a lot of excuses for why the gods only communicate cryptically, through numerology or astrology, through obtuse word games, in ways that are completely identical to hallucinations, or through specific people with whom he/she/they/it insist on dealing exclusively.  But why must that be the case?  If there were real gods about, they would certainly be capable of revealing themselves in indisputable ways, and have no real need to be so evasive.  It turns out the only way we know anything at all about these gods is through humans making the claims without proof, evidence, or valid argument.


I reject the existence of gods and goddesses, and denounce their expounders as dishonest frauds.  There is no good reason to assume that such things are real or are anything other than bedtime stories for children.  If I am wrong, show me evidence that is concordant with no other explanation.  Better yet, produce specimens of your gods for examination.

Certainty or Self-Deception

Everybody wants proof for their beliefs.  They want it so much that consciously and unconsciously they fabricate all the proof they need.  Needless to say, this sort of self-deception does not lead anywhere good.

People with religious beliefs which they are unable to distinguish from objective fact become a real pain in the ass for the rest of humanity.  They see non-believers not as people who simply see things differently, but as people who maliciously deny self-evident facts for nefarious ends.  They see non-believers as the enemy in a war; and not always just an ideological war - all too often it is a real shooting, stabbing, kicking, punching, biting, hurting and killing kind of war.

"Oh, I would never do that," you say.  Really?

Many religious people see it as self-evident that humans have souls and are quite apart from the rest of Animalia or even Mammalia on this planet - this planet that is increasingly recognized as not unique at all in the galaxy.

Consciously or unconsciously, they accept as proof of their deistic beliefs a supernatural explanation for human existence, behavior, consciousness, emotions, and perceptions.  As long as there is currently no natural explanation for these things, then religion is unquestioned and unassailable.  And everyone has to do as they, the keepers of the religion, say.

Proof of the existence of Clouds.

However, this is exactly like saying, "there is certainly a God, because  - clouds!  How could there be clouds if not for God?"  And that very argument used to carry weight, before we figured out atmospheric thermo-hydrodynamics.  Today, the recipe for clouds, curiously, includes no supernatural forces at all.

So it is with human consciousness - the recipe no longer calls for anything beyond the reach of empirical science, experiment or observation.  Consciousness, self-awareness, the ability to solve complex logic problems (i.e. to reason), the ability to imagine, to create, to count, to be self-aware and to feel emotions are increasingly recognized as neither unique to humans nor in any way supernatural.

To continue to defend one's deistic beliefs by appealing to human uniqueness is a losing battle, and was never necessary to begin with.  Beliefs, unless they are to be misused for control, power, or economic advantage, do not ever have to be defended.  If you are not seeking any earthly advantage over your fellow Man, then you do not ever have to defend, justify or prove your personal beliefs.

However, many deists will fiercely defend beliefs about human uniqueness even in the face of mounting empirical evidence to the contrary.  The well-known refusal to even acknowledge the oceans of proof that exist for the principle of Evolution has its roots in people simply trying to hold onto their belief that the existence of humans is proof of the existence of God.  What other objection to it can they possibly have?

While some deists who style themselves as Enlightened will smugly accept a form of "guided evolution," they can still be heard issuing opinions on the uniqueness of humans.  "What separates us from the animals is ___;"  (fill in the blank with anything whatsoever - politics, penmanship, pornography, peritonitis, petroleum, or possibly even things not beginning with 'p'.)

And every time they do that, science comes along and wipes out the statement with an empirical result showing that in fact, no, humans are not unique in that particular respect.  Better at it, perhaps, than other organisms, but not fundamentally unique.

-          -           -

Love is an interesting example which I personally have had occasion to contemplate from time to time.  (Though no one has ever accused me of being a romantic.)

What exactly is it?  Is it uniquely human?  Is it God?  Is it my "soul" doing something detectable in the physical realm?  Probably not.  Do other animals love?  In all respects except for being able to tap into another organism's internal experience, the external markers have all been confirmed observationally.  If we say that a dog does not love simply because we cannot know what it is thinking or feeling internally, we must also conclude that other humans do not love.

But what is love?  We know that to experience anything outside of ourselves, the mind has to model that object in order to project it onto the "screen" of our consciousness.  Sensory awareness alone is not sufficient - even a computer can do that much.  The mind collects sensory information about the object in order to build that model, which is essentially a simulation of the object held in the mind.  The mind draws on all past experience (indicative or not, relevant or not), beliefs, assumptions and desires in order to fill in whatever the senses are unable to provide.  It then associates that model with emotions that are the basis of all behavior.

A human is one object that the mind has evolved to model particularly well.  And this is no small feat - humans are particularly complex objects. Creating an internal simulation of another human in the mind - necessary in order to have any conscious awareness of the human - requires most of the brain's structures, and the same structures it requires to be aware of itself.

My hypothesis is that when the mind attempts to model a particular human which matches that mind's own, shall we say, patterns or parameters, then something unexpected happens.  These patterns or parameters, for lack of better language, may be in the form of unconscious values, beliefs, ideals, positive associations, positive recollections, or experiences.  And also the genetically-mandated urgent imperative need to propagate one's genes.  One cannot forget that.

The unexpected thing that happens when the mind models another human under those conditions is the following according to my hypothesis:  the mind experiences a pleasure response to the very act of modeling, i.e. thinking about or being aware of, that person.  In my experience at least, and that of others who have shared their experiences, even being aware of certain people causes a pleasure response within the brain (transmitted no doubt by various neurotransmitters and hormones, e.g. dopamine and endorphines) that I have usually interpreted, according to the cultural conditioning and language conditioning of my mind, as Love.

There are certain people that give me pleasure by doing absolutely nothing other than existing!

At the risk of rambling, I can't leave the topic without warning of the dark side of love: pathological love, upon which I hope to elaborate in the future.  The mind can sometimes fall in love with not a real person, but with the mind's own creation based loosely on a real person, much to the suffering of everyone involved.  Also, the ill-conditioned mind often connects love too closely with what I call its disreputable siblings, Need and Desire.

Many people mistakenly assume that the pleasure of love emanates from the person they love, and not from within their own brains as is actually the case.  This causes them to feel compelled to own, control, possess, and manipulate the person they love in a misguided attempt to secure the source of their pleasurable internal experience.  This is what I call Need, and it leads to all sorts of behavioral pathology and misery.

The other disreputable sibling of Love I call Desire.  But it's not all bad, really.  As long as one recognizes that it is not necessary to attempt to sexually reproduce with every human or object for whom one feels any sort of Love.  A well-conditioned mind can separate the two and be the master of desire.  It wasn't for naught that the Buddha declared Desire to be the author of Suffering.

In fact it is the mind that is the creator of both.  Fix the mind, and you fix everything.  Control the mind and you control your entire experience in this existence.

As for proof of the existence of God or a supernatural world:  stop looking.  It's both bad religion and bad science.

So It's Religion You Want?

In spite of the dire predictions of doomsayers about the inevitable effects of allowing things like Science, Democracy, Teaching Women to Read and Racial Integration to carry on, religion today seems more popular than ever.

Religion's greatest strength is the fact that notions about god and an existence outside the knowable physical universe (e.g. life after death) are unprovable, and therefore un-disprovable.  Many religious people don't seem to grasp the importance of that, and go around trying to generate proof for these notions by all sorts of means, some honest and some, hypocritically, less so.  Being unable to be proven and unable to be disproven are two sides of the same coin, and so making your god-hypothesis a provable concept also risks making it a disprovable concept.  Being disproven and discredited is what normally happens to it next.

The hypothesis of the existence of a transcendent being or beings not bound by ordinary natural constraints is in its essence an unfalsifiable hypothesis.  I prefer the word "untestable" since it provides a clue about what you're supposed to do with hypotheses generally.  When your proposition is untestable, then you do not have to listen to anyone who claims to know that your proposition is not strictly true.  You are free to believe in it implicitly, because for all practical purposes it is true, being indistinguishable from the truth by any means available.  Like Russell's Teapot, it is untestable.

If it's religion you want, then you really want your religious propositions to all be of the untestable sort.  That way you do not ever have to surrender them to the force of evidence, reason, proof, or fact.

A strict Empiricist such as myself might question the utility of even having such beliefs; but I am well aware that no human activity, science included, is possible without an irrational, unempirical, intuitive belief in the value of creative actions taken before evidence of their benefit can possibly be known.  Therefore we do not dismiss untestable religious beliefs out of sheer arrogance, but choose instead to "live and let live."

However (and you knew this was coming, didn't you) . . . religion is too frequently not content with untestable beliefs about their god.  They foolishly begin inventing doctrine, creeds, and stories with which to adorn their god and which are often quite readily testable.  It is these adulterations that I adjure you to accept only conditionally.

Many religious movements want you to accept god as Omnipotent, that is, possessing all power.  At the same time, they want you to feel obligated to certain performances, which this "omnipotent" god somehow "needs" you to perform.  Your skepticism of these requests is well-founded.

The only sort of god that needs you to fight, give money, vote a certain way, hate someone, commit crimes or generally make a nuisance of yourself is either a non-existent god invented by cynical humans to manipulate weaker-minded humans, or is not an all-powerful god at all.

For instance, politics is all about the acquisition of power.  An omnipotent god already has all power, and therefore has no use for politics.  Therefore anyone trying to get you to be political on behalf of an omnipotent god is obviously full of shit.

Any real god would not be in the least bit inconvenienced by the existence of infidels, their expressions of blasphemy or heresy, or by people not wearing the right clothes on the right day of the week.  The agenda of any real god, if he even has an agenda at all (being eternal, why would he need one?) would be impossible for any mere human to subvert by anything whatsoever that we could possibly do or not do.

But if religion is still what you are after, then consider this.  Wodan, Master of the Wild Hunt, God of the Saxons, God of Poetry, God of Wednesday (and god knows Wednesday needs one), God of Beards and the God of Men (meaning males specifically), does not care who you vote for or what you wear.  While he may not be omnipotent, omniscient or omni-anything (OK - we'll leave the door open for Omnivorous), Wodan is comfortable enough with his godhood to be rather amused by blasphemy, if he takes any notice of it at all.  Just a suggestion - do with it what you will.

A voice in my head objects, saying "It is a worthless religion that does not require something of you."  Fine - we'll address that.  Since Wodan or any other god will get on perfectly well with or without you, the question is not how you can help or serve god.  The real question is what you can do yourself.  The size of your vision limits the size of your actions, which limit the size of your life.  Your life is to be your religion, serving the vision that you create.  It isn't going to live itself; it needs you.  You are fully empowered and fully authorized by the consciousness with which the universe has endowed you, specifically, and you are the only means in existence through which the matter of this universe can experience what it would be like to live your life.

So get out there and start livin' it.

The Secret of Hovering

No, I said HOVERING.
As in "Levitating."

Not to be confused with the secret of Hoovering, which pretty much any idiot can figure out.


This is THE secret that has eluded humankind for thousands of years.  Transcendental meditationists, yogic flyers (aka butt-hoppers), ninja masters, medieval alchemists, druidic high elders, and Harry Potter fans have all searched in vain for this ONE THING you need to know about hovering.

This one essential truth is the finish-line in your life-long quest to float free of this planet's relentless downward pull.

This knowledge is the final cumulative result of mankind's thirst for hovering awareness and our ten-thousand year journey towards levitation enlightenment.

This fundamental fact has been painstakingly distilled from the fabric of the Cosmos, groped after between the cushions of Reality and plucked from the very sofa-crack of Existence.

Yet, here it is, free of charge, and your reward for doing nothing more than stumbling upon this humble blog from the far remote wastelands of Australia.

However, if this astonishing insight is going to be too much for you and cause you to have some kind of a spiritual break-down, embarrassing fit, or maybe a bladder control issue, then please read no further.


But for those of you who are worthy and have truly prepared yourselves:

Here is the ONE THING that tells you ALL THERE IS TO KNOW about levitating in the air without any technological assistance:






. . .








You can't.

The End of Neurosis

During days of quiet reflection at the Shed, one of the most powerful insights that comes back to me time and again is that you can never change other people.  They will stay crazy right up until they decide to change all by themselves.

Oh, sorry, did I use a non-PC word there?  Crazy?  You are correct: therapists strongly dislike the word "crazy."  It makes it sound like any fool can become a therapist without years of medical, scientific and psychiatric study and training.  Now, that actually is the situation, but they still don't like it to be generally known.  That is why they prefer to call crazy people by a another name that makes it sound as though they knew something meaningful about it:

Borderline Personality Disorder

Therapists also do not like to work with crazy - uh, I mean individuals exhibiting Borderline Personality Disorder, because they know that there is nothing they can do to "cure" them.  Because you can't change other people; people can only change themselves when they decide to.

Stop Whining about the noise and sparks,
and let Angle Grinder Man cut your chains off.

And crazy people (just get over it, ok?  It takes less time to write and amounts to the same thing) never, ever change because part of being crazy is that they are utterly convinced that they are not the ones with the problem.

I don't have to define crazy (or BPD) because you know it when you see it.  Everyone knows someone with wild swings of emotion, likely to bite the head off of anyone at the slightest whiff of what they believe to be an attack on their self image, or people that get mad at you and sulk for weeks over something you don't remember doing or saying.  We label them drama queens, rage-a-holics,  people with issues, narcissistic, co-dependent and so forth.  But really, they're just plain-old straight-up Crazy.

(I'd like you to immediately, right now, buy and read this book: Stop Walking on Eggshells: Taking Your Life Back When Someone You Care About Has Borderline Personality Disorder.  Do it now.)

The most important thing you can do now to ensure that your life is not infected with crazy is to stop hanging around crazy people.  You'll be glad you took this step, and the sooner, the better.  (I know a good divorce attorney if you need one.)

The next step is to swallow the bitter pill and look in the mirror.  How does a person who consciously chooses to no longer be crazy actually make the change?  Perhaps you're not full-on bat-shit crazy, but just, say, a little on the neurotic side.  Maybe there's just a touch of some social phobia, anxiety, anger, brooding over past bullying or trauma, or a wee bout of addictive tendency.  If that's the case, then you're actually pretty normal.  Therapists love people like you!

Crazy people never question for a moment the existence or meaning of their emotions.  They have intense emotions set to explode on a hair-trigger.  Ordinary neurotics have less intense emotions that underpin their various behaviors, and the trigger isn't as sensitive, but in principle, it's all one of a muchness.

The whole thing, the entire spectrum of human irrationality, suffering, self-sabotage and discontent, hangs on just one thing.

The one thing that allows all of this stuff to exist is your unquestioning belief in and unwavering devotion to the illusion of consciousness.

Break that illusion, that spell, that waking, life-long trance of the mind, and all forms of neurosis vanish like smoke.  If you can crack that facade even just a little, you can begin to do things that make an enormous difference to your happiness, success, suitability as a marriage partner, sense of fulfillment in life and rankings on Google.

For example, you can begin to understand that emotions are not actually real.  This admits the possibility of questioning your emotions.  As the observer of the mind, whenever you discover an emotion forming within you, always ask this question:

"What would a person have to believe in order to actually choose this emotion?"

You can also begin to question the validity of your experiences and the people that inhabit them.  Your mind, based on what it senses and what it unconsciously believes and assumes, pieces together the objective world around you and the people within it and projects a simulation of this onto your consciousness.  That is in fact the only possible way for a conscious being to experience anything at all.  While there most definitely is an underlying objective reality outside you, you only ever experience a subjective, carefully-filtered and not-100%-accurate simulation of that reality.  That is why people in your reality sometimes say, do or think things that they did not actually say, do or think.  Crazy people fly off at shadows and imagined threats; non-crazy people discipline their mind not to make those assumptions without first considering the illusory nature of consciousness.

When people moan and say they can't change, that means they are still 100% convinced by the illusion of their own mind. Pain still exists, insults still cut deep, fear and past trauma keep the unformed future and the unchanging past alive within them at all times. Suffering goes marching on.

But as soon as you know how the magic trick is done, the show is over.  The veil is lifted and it is the End of All Neuroses.

Why Religious Equality Doesn't Exist

Freedom to practice the religion of one's choice (or none) rather than having a religion chosen for you by the government is one of the central guarantees made in the US constitution. But religious equality isn't guaranteed for one simple reason:

People of all religions are finally united . . .
in their abhorrence of South Park.  

It doesn't exist.


Religions are not all equal.  A person cannot legally be discriminated against on the basis of his religion, and correctly so.  However, it is not necessary to afford all religious organizations and religious ideas the same level of respect or privilege.  Some religions are worthy of general praise and respect, while others deserve all the public derision and general disregard that we can muster.   Religion can be a useful thing, but some religions harm people, harm the environment, oppress people, even abuse people.  And sometimes they tell lies.

Catholicism, for example, has been institutionally abusing children for probably hundreds of years, and has used its organization, political power and wealth to protect kiddiefiddlers.  In places where a robust secular judicial system exists over which the Catholic church has no power or sway, things are starting to get cleaned up.  But wherever it still holds significant civic and political power, you can bet that the Catholic church will continue to abuse that power and the people within its reach.

Also, any religion that makes testable claims is simply not the equal of the good religions.  When a claim is testable using any objective means, including making measurements of physical quantities, repeatable observations or experiments, mathematical or numerical analysis, then those claims are no longer the property of religion, but now belong entirely to science.  Science will decide whether the claims are true or not.  It may take a few decades and scientists may argue vociferously about it for a while, but that's how it works.  Eventually, the irrefutable truth emerges through persistent unrelenting empirical testing.  If a claim can be proved or disproved,  it has nothing to do with religion.

Examples of testable claims that are sometimes made by sub-par religions:

• the nature of disease, both physical and mental;
• the age of the earth, its size, shape, and position in the cosmos;
• the nature, size, origin and location of objects that can be seen in the sky;
• the nature, size, origin and age of the universe;
• how living things function, live, reproduce, and die;
• how living populations respond genetically to environmental or competitive pressures over very long periods;
• anything to do with the weather;
• anything to do with geology, paleontology, archaeology or politics;
• anything to do with probability, statistics, chance or randomness; 
• the meaning or nature of numbers and mathematics;
• the properties of information, sound, light, minerals, M&Ms, geometry, or language.

Not to pick on Catholics too much, but they used to make testable claims about the earth in relation to its shape (flat), age (young) and location (center of universe).  Even the most rudimentary observations were able to show that these claims were false.  The church was able through the abuse of its power to suppress this information for a while, but was eventually forced to change its religious claims.  The religion either had to disband, or change beliefs to accommodate verifiable objective facts.  It chose to continue to exist.

Many prominent religions today make claims about the age of the earth and how living things operate that have been proven false, yet they continue to insist upon them.  They are bad religions, and you should feel free to ignore anything else they may say.  If a religion can be proven, it's not a religion. If a religion can be proven false, then it is a false religion.  Either way it can't help you, and it should either change its beliefs, or disband forthwith.

Many other religions make testable claims about their god which turn out to be false.  Generally, claims about god are un-testable and therefore religions are free to make any claim they wish (e.g. his name is Gary, he has a mustache and likes Mountain Dew and cow smoke, and other such claims which are inherently impossible to test empirically).  But religions that claim that god has a property they refer to as Omniscience are making a claim that CAN be tested.  

Basically, for information storage or "knowledge" to exist, a persistent means of encoding information is mandatory.  The persistent means provided by this universe is matter.  To encode all information about all matter in the universe using matter in the universe would require more matter than the universe contains, with nothing left over for the information to be about.  Therefore the concept generally understood to be "omniscience" or "knowing all things" must be dismissed as containing its own falsification, and is therefore meaningless nonsense.  Unless the universe and everything in it IS this god person . . . but that usually isn't what is claimed. 

The power and benefit of religion comes from having beliefs that, while unable to be proved or disproved, often cause a person to act and live in a happier, more beneficial way to themselves and to those around them. In that sense they are testable, but only in the context of application by each individual.  I can test my beliefs for me, and you can test your beliefs for you, but my test of my beliefs proves nothing to you, and your test of your beliefs proves nothing to me.  Unless your beliefs are testable by objective means.  And in that case you do not have beliefs at all; you have hypotheses.  

Objective, verifiable facts all belong to science, which is just our name for the systematic process of determining the status of objective facts.  Religion is our name for claims that cannot be tested by any objective means whatsoever, but which improve one's mortal experience subjectively.  Religions that fail to do that are bad religions and should be ignored.  

Substandard religions DO NOT need to be physically fought or persecuted, because evolution will eventually take care of them for us.  On the other hand, there is no need for society to give equal space, equal respect or equal status to religions that are demonstrably either harmful or false.

But if you absolutely insist on believing in and practicing a bad religion (in other words, practicing a failed Science), then for heaven's sake make sure you tell everyone about it!  The internet is running out of cat pictures.

Pernicious Lies Masquerading as Enlightened Whiz-Dumb

We've all seen them on the social networking sites:  feel-good aphorisms written on attractive pictures of kittens and little children.  They are the kinds of statements with which on the surface no one would ever directly disagree.  Few people realize how destructive these lies can be.

Much of their destructive power arises exactly because they seem so sweet on the outside that polite people dare not disagree with them for fear of being labeled an ogre, anti-social, or simply a grouch.  We swallow them without a thought and repeat them whenever seems appropriate, thus spreading the brain viruses and fanning the current  epidemic of unconsciousness.

To misquote the late Richard Feynman, "What do I care what other people think?"  Call me a grouch if you must, but I'm going to take on these pernicious lies and expose them for what they are:  flaxen shackles of the Victimhood Mentality that enslaves most of Mankind.

First up:

While this may seem like a reminder to always bend over backwards to avoid any misunderstandings, that may be exactly what's wrong with this picture.  Oh, there are so many errors here I'll have to start a list!

1. If someone misunderstands you in a poisonous, negative way, it is because they have filters that are tuned to see things in the worst possible way. It's their stuff, NOT YOURS!
2. If you believe that a misunderstanding is poisonous, then it will be for you.  It's just a belief, just a thought! It's not real.  
3. It is possible, and actually almost a certainty, that you have unconscious beliefs of which you are not even aware.  These beliefs can cause your Meaning-Making Machine (i.e. your brain) to create the most negative possible meaning out of any event or statement that is even slightly ambiguous.
4. You cannot avoid all misunderstandings, because they are not all your fault.  Understanding is a thing that your listener does with your help, but in the end it is entirely the listener's responsibility.  They will make whatever meaning of your messages that they will, and there's not one thing you can do about it. 
5. If YOU do not consciously choose to reprogram your unconscious mind to always seek the most positive possible meaning, then the world (our culture, the TV, your parents, etc) will program your unconscious for you, and odds are that your unconscious will be programmed to find the most negative, poisonous possible meaning out of everything that anyone says or does.  Next stop: advanced Paranoia and total isolation from every living being.  It's epidemic, but it's also your choice as long as you know that it is.

Next, 

Again, there are so many pernicious lies embedded in this particular glurgefest, I scarcely know where to begin.  While it's hard to argue with the sentiment to always be nice to children, I will anyways.  One of the things wrong with the world are the existence of too many children to whom no one has ever said, "No."

The premise is that we can unknowingly cripple a child for life by saying the wrong thing, and so we tiptoe around the child and give them all the power in the relationship.  This causes two things: it makes insecure children who always feel like victims thus crippling them for life, and it makes weak adults who shirk their responsibilities to the child and fail to take the opportunity for spiritual advancement that parenthood affords.

What about the adult who feels crippled by some wrong word that someone said to them as a child?  The adult who, according to this picture, is in need of "repair?" There are two lies sneaking in to your brain within that little premise.  One is that you can repair a person, or if it's you, that you need someone other than yourself to fix you.  The truth is that you can't save anyone.  They have to do it themselves.  Similarly, you have within you everything necessary to "fix" yourself.  Everything, except possibly the awareness of that fact.

A child younger than about age seven can not critically dismiss any of the things it hears, and unconsciously accepts them as true.  But as an adult, you do have the ability and responsibility to seek out and replace any of the false, disempowering beliefs you picked up as a child.  You have the opportunity and duty to gain awareness.

The order of operation is not as suggested by the picture - make sure the children aren't damaged because there's no longer any hope for us.  The correct order is 1) to become more conscious as an adult and with volition to chose our beliefs; 2) THEN we will be able to raise children who will know that they must do the same as we, and will not live their lives as the victims of other's words.

Hopefully one more example will be enough for you to be able to identify and actively resist the lies that keep people living small:

The underhanded, undermining premise here is that "other people" are the source of the "wonderful things" in life.  By corollary, the only thing coming out of ourselves is shit.  Of course this is complete bollocks - utter nonsense.

Rather than planting the lie in your mind that "(without some special person, we) are without a source of wonderful things," this belief should be actively refuted using the truth that each of us is the source of many wonderful things.  Each of us is our own source of Divinity, goodness, strength, power, love, and peace. It is only that disease called co-dependency that "needs" other people. But if we are awake to the truth, then we do not "need" other people at all.  We can choose or choose not to share a part of our life with another person.

To live as a victim means to blame any of your woes on another person, on circumstances, or on any excuse so carefully crafted as to be completely beyond your control or influence.  What is your big excuse?  If you examine it closely and objectively, looking under the surface, you will discover that it is a fabrication of your own manufacture.

To throw off the culture of Victimhood means to take full responsibility for everything in your life, and to re-gain the control over your mortal experience that you forgot you had.

"But John, isn't it insane to pretend that the situation you're in isn't very bad if it actually is?"

Insanity is a symptom of resisting reality.  I'm suggesting just the opposite: accept reality and surrender to it; either reserve judgement on it as good or bad, or else seek and find a way to judge it as potentially positive in the long run.  We can change our thoughts, but only if we know it and believe it.  When we change our thoughts, our circumstances gradually (or sometimes rapidly) adjust to our way of thinking.

"How is that even physically possible?"

All behavior has its roots in thought.  All actions were first a mental impulse, either one we chose or one that was chosen for us - someone else's script we are unwittingly acting out.  Throw off the slavery of other people's thoughts, scripts, and judgments.  Throw off the shackles of Victimhood and begin to think your own thoughts!  Choose ones that will empower you and cause you to take the actions that will inexorably lead you into better circumstances: better relationships, better finances, better mental and physical health.


Sometimes all you need to know is that a thing is possible before you find a way to make it happen.

How Religion Works

Please don't assume I'm anti-religion or anything.  I'm not!  I think religion is a fine thing and that everyone should have some in moderation.  I would only not wish you to labor under any misapprehension about where religion comes from or what it means.   Or to assume that religion somehow endows you with extra rights and privileges, such as the "right" to blow up women, children and gynecologists with whom you do not agree.   Or the "right" to get your special religion passed into legislation.  Consider this post a sort of "getting started" user's manual for your experience with religion.

If your religion has been transmitted to you through the spoken words of another human, or in the form of printed material utilizing any sort of written language or "book," then you should be aware that the religion has been extensively filtered, shaped and influenced by humans (if not entirely fabricated by one, as in the case of Scientology).  Do not let this fact deter you, however.

But if your religion has been transmitted to your mind directly from the mind of God, you do not need to worry about the intervening influence of other humans.  In this case you only need to wrestle with the question of why God doesn't let others in on the secret also.  He may have a very good reason for keeping everyone but you out of the loop, or you could even have imagined the whole thing from the start. Just something to think about the next time you find yourself shouting and waving a big sign in public, or the next time you're mixing up chemicals for some new bomb "god" told you to build.

For example, you might just want to ask this "god" person why, if he's so powerful, he couldn't just miraculously make an explosion appear, and leave you out of it.  And if he is so just, why he would blame you for having qualms about the whole bomb project in the first place.  If you ever find yourself in such a predicament, I implore you to give these questions some serious thought, preferably while following all of your doctor's instructions regarding the use of various medications.

I should point out that not every "direct transmission" religious experience leads to atrocities. There are good reasons why we seldom see a Buddhist Zen Master being detained and strip-searched at the airport.  Usually the worst crime that results from this form of religion is excessive smiling and periodically emitting obscure statements.  Mormons, too, are known for smiling far more than common decency permits.  The next time you see one, . . . ask him where his companion has got to.  Ha, ha!  Just some harmless mormon humor there, because you never see just one, they're always in pairs.  Stop them as they pedal down your street, and if they are smiling indecently ask them about the direct Revelation that they personally have received from God.  Go on, I dare you.

Back to the main topic, if you have the ordinary kind of religion based on a book, TV show or Hollywood blockbuster movie, then it is important that you discuss religion only with people of your exact same religion.  Because every group has its own definitions for key words, its own hierarchy of values in order of importance, and because these things are often unspoken and implicit, a conversation about religion with someone of another faith can have disastrous consequences.  You might say something like, "Rhubarb is nice," but your listener might instead hear, "your church is like a pasture - loaded with sheep and full of . . ."

It is important in a multicultural world not to assume that your definitions or your values and their relative priorities are the same as everyone else's, even though that is the assumption upon which every major church, nation, school, or any level-4 structure is built.  Some people's religion is to believe in a God, while others' is to believe that there is no God.  If there were a way to objectively prove that one or the other is right, then it wouldn't be religion any more, it would be called Science and believing in it would have no purpose. Therefore it is vital that you not try to pass laws or elect candidates that mainly appeal to you on religious grounds.  If this were to happen often enough, you might wake up one morning and find that your religion has been taken from you and replaced with US Government Standard Issue All-Purpose Belief System Revision 2.1.d, by which point it will have long since lost all meaning or purpose.

And what, pray, is that purpose?  Well, I tend to look at it this way.  If one takes the bleak view of life as being like a sermon on Superbowl Sunday - rather pointless and short - then one is likely to be miserable in the world and unmotivated to even try to make a difference.  But if, on the other hand, one firmly believes he is a part of a greater divine scheme or plan, then that same person living in that same miserable world can have a totally different sort of experience with it.  For it to work, however, you have to be totally, completely, unquestioningly convinced of your special, unique, divine place in the universe.  The incredibly, unimaginably vast universe.

Thomas Jefferson is remembered to have said words to the effect that the purpose and goal of every life is to minimize pain.  If there were an ounce of truth to that curiously unenlightened example of "enlightenment" thought, then clearly the only logical course would be immediate universal suicide of the entire human species.  That is the only way of assuring that pain is in any way minimized.  What Jefferson got wrong were the words "pain" and "minimize."  If there is such a thing as a universal purpose and goal of every life, it would not be to minimize anything, and it wouldn't be at all interested in pain.  Instead, why not maximize your joy.

Therefore if someone has a religion that brings him joy and purposefulness, whatever you do don't try to talk him out of it and don't pity him.  Instead you should maybe try to find out what time the meeting starts.

A Horrid Thing To Say

"That is a horrid thing to say, and you had no right to say it.  You don't know what it's like to lose a child!"

That's what the woman would have said if she had not been giving me "The Silent Treatment."

Girls, I'm going to let you in on a little secret:  IT DOESN'T WORK!

The "Silent Treatment" amuses and confuses, but it never has the intended effect, which presumably is to punish a man into recognition that whatever he did was wrong.  See, we're not actually all that put out when you ladies don't talk to us, and it is a decidedly ineffective means of giving us any new information or insights.

In this case, the woman who was not speaking to me (well, one of them) was a work acquaintance whom I barely know.  The conversation was about a friend of hers who had recently lost two children, one of whom went into a river and never came out again, and the other, her unborn baby, miscarried when the mother was confronted with the surprising and unexpected mortality of her first son.

Yes, it's a terrible, tragic event.  Yes, we all feel sadness at that mother's loss.  My mistake was not joining the pity-party, as I was expected to do, and taking a little piece of the pain into my own life.  As though that would help matters.

Instead, what I did which I shouldn't have done was to say:

"It's possible this could be the greatest thing to ever happen to her."

-     -      - 

Now, I recognize it was wrong for me to say this.  It was wrong for me to make a suggestion that the listener was not at all prepared to hear.  Is this what is meant by the somewhat unfortunate parable, "Cast not thy pearls before swine?"  Unfortunate because I would in no way wish to associate this essentially decent person with "swine." But the meaning is fairly clear.  Don't give people things, even precious things, that might do them more harm than good.

Of course I had no sure way of knowing beforehand what level this individual's state of personal growth and awareness would be.  I know now.

Was she correct in thinking the things she didn't say?  Was that a "horrid" thing to say and am I devoid of human empathy?  My assertion is, "No" and my reasons are twofold.

First of all, empathy.  I feel real compassion for the mother whom I don't know from a bar of soap.  As a matter of fact I do know what it's like to lose a child.  My own son was taken from me without good cause, legally, against my wishes and in spite of my every assertion and exertion.  I was forced to say goodbye to a child I would never see again, in the sense that he would be inches taller and a person I would not know anything about the next time I saw him.

I see my son about once a year for a couple of weeks.  That means I have basically no relationship with him at all, because he does not phone or write me.  His mother has neatly excised me out of his life, and I grieve my loss as much as any parent who loses a child.

Not only that, but I go through that grieving, months and months of soul-wrenching agony, all over again every time I say goodbye to him.  I will never see that child at that age and stage of development again.  Ever.  I will have no hand in raising him, helping him, enjoying his life with him, facing problems with him, or anything with him.  In another year I will be awkwardly introduced to a completely different young man who knows as little about me as I do of him, and with whom I have no connection.

Do I know what it might feel like to lose a child?  You're welcome to disagree, but I think I do know a thing or two about it.

Secondly, I have some reason for predicting a possible Divine outcome from this mother's experience.  We can run and we can sometimes hide from ordinary everyday setbacks, we can even take them in stride.  But something of this magnitude forces a person to ask some serious questions about life.  While I would never want anyone to suffer as I have, it is after all pretty much inevitable that many people will.  But suffering doesn't have to be in vain.  If the mother is an intelligent person as I assume she is, she will quickly recognize three things.

That this is way more than she ever thought she could handle.

That this amount of grief can't be ignored or just swept aside.  You don't just "get over it."

That barring something miraculous, she is about to serve a life sentence of grief and pain.

When someone realizes this, faces reality, does not run from life, run into drugs or alcohol, or escape through some other means, then that is the opportunity that a few lucky, blessed people have in life. This is their chance, because no other option is left, to look for that elusive door to the next level.

And when they have found that door, to open it.

And when the door is open, if she has the courage, she may even go through it.

She will enter a plane beyond sorrow, suffering, grief, conflict or pain.  A realm of light and knowledge, a place of pure understanding.  Just for a visit, you know.  Because the search for that door is one we can never be entirely finished with.

Some teachers explain this event as "dying before you die," and is one of the keys to really living.

When I heard that a mother experienced an inescapably tragic event, I felt a little rejoicing in my heart on her behalf.  My reflex reaction to the terrible news was one of hope for her.  This just might be the blessing that propels her to discover the door to her own personal End of Suffering.

As for the children, well, their problems are clearly over.  I like to imagine that they would gladly have given their lives for their mother to gain something that is worth far, far more than mere flesh and bone, mere matter and form. Infinitely more, and infinitely longer lasting besides.

Dear reader, if anything I wrote here offends you, feel free to give me all the silence you can muster. I think I can take it.  And if you broke a tooth on any of these pearls, I am sorry about that.  Really.




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Are You Your Brain?

Brent Spiner as Data.
© Paramount Pictures, "Fair Use"
under critical commentary. 

The 20th century TV show "Star Trek: The Next Revenue Generation" featured a walking talking iphone named Lieutenant Commander Data.  Ignoring for the moment that the noun "data" is a plural while there was (initially at least) only one android, a lot of airtime that would otherwise have been dead air was filled up exploring the question of whether Commander "Datum" was really a person, or just an invention.

True to the form of classic Science Fiction, the writers took a strongly Materialist view that if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it must be someone's cell phone ringing.

No! Sorry - I meant it is therefore indistinguishable from a real duck.  In the early 20th century before handheld digital devices and their apps were even thought possible, this logic was irrefutable.  But by the time TV producers realized that there was money to be made in SciFi again, the question of what made us "us" was further muddied by at least the possibility of some very convincing technology.

Alan Turing, mathematician,
pioneer of Artificial Intelligence,
and an uncanny likeness of Brent Spiner.
No?  Well, you humans all look alike
to me. (oops!)

In Geekspeak, Lt Cmdr Data could pass the famous "Turing Test."  Ask some questions of an indeterminate entity and see if you can tell by its responses whether that entity is artificial or human. The argument was strongly put forward by Star Trek TNG that if someone's thoughts, reasoning, creativity, relationships, originality, memories and experiences doesn't make him a real person, then what does?

Fair enough.  If it works for Cmdr Data, then it should be good enough for you, too.  Are you your brain? Is your reasoning the real you?  Your past, kept alive in your memory, defines who you are? Limits you and encircles you, and forms the boundary conditions of your future?  Is who you are the sum of the opinions that you hold, the information that you can recall, the relationships you have and the people that you know or think you know?

A good number of my readers will answer, "Yes, that is who I am."  A minority will answer, "No, I am those things but also much more."  And a very small minority, if any, will say, "No, John.  I am not my brain, I am not my thoughts, I am not my past or my future.  I am ME."

"My brain is just something I use, unless it gets out of control and starts using me, assuming my identity, and asserting control."

"My thoughts and ideas are things I created, so how could they be who I am?  '... for shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not? or shall the thing framed say of him that framed it, He had no understanding?'"

"My past is just some things that happened.  I am not limited or defined by them unless I choose to be.  And I realize that I have that choice."

"Pull harder! Never - stop resisting what is!"

To be mind-identified is in some ways to be trapped in thought.  Yes, there are worse things to be trapped in. Or are there?  Thinking can get you unstuck from a hole, a net or financial difficulty.  But how do you get free of thought?  By more thinking?

The ability to do so takes some searching and effort on your part.  I do not recommend pharmaceutical shortcuts, which in the end do nothing at all.  A starting point for you could be to forgive the day.  Every morning and every night, forgive the day. For everything that did or might go wrong, forgive the day. For everything that should have been but wasn't, forgive the day. For everything you are or aren't, and for what others are or ought to be but aren't, forgive the day. Forgive the past and forgive the future too, but make sure to forgive the only thing you ever really have. This day.  This is the beginning of what some teachers call "surrender," which is not the same as acquiescing to suffering or negativity.  It is merely accepting a situation as it is, as the first step towards changing it.

But to be free of mind-identification is to be able to use thought, memory, forecasting and reason with volition rather than to be controlled by them.  To be free of your past painful memories is the freedom to create a new future as well as to create new, liberating and empowering meanings for past events.  To be free of fretting about the future is the freedom from fear, worry, stress, and from the almost certain failure that those compulsive mental activities bring.

Being free from your mind's control is the freedom to chose happiness at any time, in any circumstances, while  still being able to respond to situations as necessary, plan as necessary, anticipate with pleasure the future, and enjoy the wonderful memories of the past. Freedom from the mind means peace.

It also means being able to learn, to grow, to be teachable like a child again, and to experience the wonder of discovery again. Being free from the mind's control means freedom from old thought patterns, assumptions, opinions, cemented old dogma, and ideas that no longer serve you so well.  It means your future is yours to create, and is not cast in rigid stone.

Freedom is the end of suffering, the end of worry, and the beginning of peace.  You can have this without giving up any of the good that your mind can do.

I am not my mind.  You are not your mind.  And that is a wonderful thing.





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Do You Need Brains to Have Faith?

Bogus Religion and Bogus Science are remarkably similar.  Both are as easy to do as peeing on your shoe.  All it takes is to not pay much attention to what you are doing.

Make shit up, talk a bunch of crap, do whatever you feel like, and Presto!  Hypocrisy galore.  Or Pseudoscience galore.  Your choice.

Meanwhile, effective Religion, by which I mean a truly transformative, elevating experience both to the internal and the external life of the Human, requires far more brains than is popularly believed.  For example, to both a brainless god-botherer and a brainless atheist, the idea of Faith means just sitting around wishing for something to be.  It is held by those having no real understanding of Religion to be an entirely mental exercise.

I have always rejected this notion.  To me, when someone has the conviction of an untestable belief, rather than squint real hard while trying to think about it (or worse, try to convert someone else to your belief in order to feel validated), real Faith means going out and taking action.

Faith is entrepreneurial.  If your convictions don't drive you to innovate, then you don't really believe in them.  Faith means positive, decisive activity.  Do you think someone else going to do it?

Faith is adventurous and willing to try new things in pursuit of making the world a better place according to you.  You have as much right as anyone to decide what that means.

Faith is relentlessly creative, full of ideas, and free-thinking.  Faith is sometimes revolutionary, even radical, the voice in the wilderness hollering for change. Faith is the very Enemy of Conservatism.

Faith does not seek a return to an imaginary world that never existed to begin with.  Nor does it attempt to insinuate itself into the State.  It doesn't take a prophet to see that state-enforced religion leads to theocracy, tyranny, fundamentalism, eradication of freedom, slavery and descent into tribalism.

I happen to hold an untestable conviction that the democratic freedoms we now enjoy are a once-in-the-Universe opportunity for us to demonstrate through our choices just exactly what our real values are.  The choices must be between real, available alternatives rather than between complying with a law versus breaking a law.  If something is a sin to you, pray that it never becomes illegal!!!  Because then your non-sin will no longer reflect your deeper values, but will be little more than a lack of opportunity or a shallow desire not to be fined or imprisoned.  The future must therefore have far fewer laws, instead of the current trend we are following, a love-affair with laws as the purported solution to any problem, and an accelerating increase in their number, reach and restrictiveness. Where will it end?

If you think abortion is bad, then don't have one.  If you disapprove of marriage between two or more people conditional on what equipment they possess, then don't enter such a marriage.  The fact that other people have these choices available to them makes your personal choice infinitely more meaningful.  And remember, the purpose of life isn't for everyone born or unborn to have a perfect, long and painless existence, to never make a mistake, and to all be the same.  That of course is nonsense.  We are here to learn.  Specifically, we are learning to transcend opposition.  That purpose would clearly be futile in the absence of opposition.

Faith has confidence in its convictions and is not threatened by other people having different convictions.  In fact, it can only be strengthened when challenged.  Just like you or me.

Faith is scientific in its search for solutions to problems, sorting and testing them sometimes methodically, sometimes following a flash of insight.  Faith is also egoistic.  It does not fatalistically accept circumstances as "god's will."  If you believe that your talents are divine in origin, why not expand them and use them to combat disease, poverty, war, unconsciousness, enslavement of the human race, barbarism, cruelty, ignorance, suffering or contempt for life?  Assuming of course that these things are contrary to your values.  Everything is ultimately divine in origin, but the Divine really wants to know what YOU think.  It is awaiting your response to everything it has created!

Is Faith only relevant to deism?  The belief in a god?  Of course not.  Scientists constantly rely on their Faith to get them through the hard work of unraveling entirely natural and testable questions that are far removed from anything supernatural.  Recall that belief in the worthwhile-ness of doing Science is itself an untestable conviction.  There's plenty of evidence that in the past Science has been hands down and by about a million country miles the most useful thing we have ever done, but no proof or guarantee can be offered that it will continue to be so in the future.  We do it because we believe that it will be.  Our scientific actions are very much acts of Faith.

If you want to have a real experience with religion, then turn on your brain.  Explore the inner world of your convictions, and then put them to the test through action.  What will happen?  No one knows.  Living your life and testing your convictions is something nobody in the history of the universe has ever done before.  Good luck!




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