At first I had the title of this post begin with "A real man..."
But I don't want to insult a friend (who would go nameless, if I didn't reveal that it is Hans) who demanded that our $10 bet on the giant University of Oregon - Oregon State [...]
While on a dog walk yesterday, I ran into a neighbor who I don't talk to very often. He started off our conversation in an appealing fashion:
"I read your blog regularly." Nice! But then he said, "Being a confirmed atheist, it's a bit too kind to religion for me. I'" [...]
Talk about un-compassionate conservatism.
A front-page story in today's Salem Statesman Journal reports that the group opposing modest increases in taxes on Oregon corporations and high-income individuals is blissfully unconcerned about...
Prisoners being released, teachers being fired, in-home care for seniors being slashed, newly hired state troopers being laid off, [...]
God. Just three letters in this word. But they sure pack a punch.
Countless people have died in the name of "God." Countless good works have been performed. Countless arguments have ensued over what this word signifies.
Dahlia Lithwick dives into this fascinating linguistic tangle in a Newsweek article, "Jesus" [...]
What makes life meaningful? How is it that we can wake up in the morning and feel like jumping out of bed, rather than hiding beneath the covers?
A sense of purpose. Our life seems like it has a direction. We have a reason for being. Goals, intentions, to-do's.
In the' [...]
It's Thanksgiving Day here in the United States. Almost everybody is into thankfulness, whether sincere or feigned.
Myself, I'm thankful that I was able to get a HP wireless printer working with my wife's new iMac this afternoon. It was touch and go for a while but I finally figured it' [...]
Guys, if you need a reason to take ballroom dance lessons, here it is: the woman has to do what you want. You lead. The woman follows. End of story.
Until you get off the dance floor.
Then your relationship goes back to normal. But as our instructor likes to say, [...]
Back in my true believing days, I used to enjoy feeling that what I was doing was an act of service to my guru.
This, of course, is a decidedly Eastern perspective. Western religions don't have living perfect masters, who often are considered to God in human form.
But Christians seem' [...]
It looks like the stolen emails from a climate research center at the University of East Anglia are a classic example of "the dog didn't bark."
That is, the big news from this peek into the private professional correspondence of climate scientists is that there is no big' [...]
Religion isn't all bad.
That was the not-so-surprising consensus at the monthly meeting of the Salon discussion group that my wife and I helped start up here in Salem about seventeen years ago.
The members are almost all godless Prius-driving, expresso-sipping, organic food-eating progressives like us.
Religiosity comes in for' [...]
You'd think that members of the Portland (Oregon) police force would be embarrassed that several of their brethren weren't able to handle a combative 12 year old girl.
An officer shot her at close-range with a beanbag gun, even though several men had her down on the ground and were [...]
You'd think that an omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent, and/or omnibenevolent being would leave some evident trace, given all this omni'ness.
Yet God, whether considered from an impersonal Eastern perspective or a personal Western viewpoint, has left no demonstrable signs of his/her/it's existence.
Why?
A theologian would answer, "It isn't possible to know'" [...]
Quack!
That's the sound of an offended Oregon Duck football fan, who's turned off by the Rose Bowl buzz kill inflicted by the university when it demanded that a great student-made video be removed from the Internets.
Of course, this heavy-handed attempt at censorship didn't succeed. I just watched the video' [...]
Einstein showed that we live in spacetime, a continuum comprised of the familiar three dimensions of space and the much more mysterious dimension of time.
Nobody knows what time is really all about. Not scientists, not philosophers, not mystics. And certainly not theologians.
We have a sense of it [...]
What good is a blog if you can't rant on it? Hearing no reply from the cosmos except a no good at all! from inside my head, I shall rant on.
Tuesday. It's grocery shopping day. I have a hyper-organized shopping list system. It soothes my left-brain soul to get [...]
I've got a love-hate thing going with Ken Wilber, a prolific writer and creative thinker who relentlessly preaches the marvels of an Integral approach to understanding reality.
Sometimes I like what Wilber says (see here and here). Sometimes I don't (see here and here).
His misunderstanding [...]
It was a win-win night at the Crag Law Center "Wild Shots" benefit auction in Portland. With the purchase of only one -- count 'em, one -- raffle ticket (albeit for $25), I scored a beautiful Mark Gamba photograph.
And Crag ended up raising quite a bit of' [...]
When I ponder what line spoken by a character in a movie has inspired me the most, here's my answer (share yours in a comment, if you like).
Jodie Foster, playing Ellie Arroway, a scientist searching for extra-terrestrial intelligence, in Contact -- a movie based on Carl Sagan's novel.
Strapped [...]
Last night I listened to a couple of Oregon physicians nail what this country needs to do to solve our health care problems. In short: a single payer system, Medicare for all.
They convinced me that in many ways the health care reform bills being considered by Congress are going [...]
Don't like facts? Hate science? There's a handy four-step guide to generating your very own scientific controversy. I think some religiously-minded commenters on this blog already know #3.
When people point out that the facts don’t back up your claim, ignore them. As those people get angry and shouty at' [...]
The natural world doesn't come with names attached.
Look up at the full moon. Do you see a label on it, "moon"? (Leaving aside the question of what language that word would be written in.)
Both religion and science make the mistake of confusing human thoughts about what is real with' [...]
Last month I bought myself a birthday present: front row center seats for Champions of the Dance, which we saw last night at the Hult Center in Eugene.
Excellent ticket-buying decision.
There's a time to be at least a few rows back in a large auditorium, so you can get [...]
Recently I got an email message from someone who wanted to know why I felt so special when I was an active member of Radha Soami Satsang Beas, a Sant Mat organization headquartered in India.
In your posts, you often make mention of having felt special when you were [...]
Ridiculous.
The health care reform bill passed by the House last weekend doesn't allow an abortion to be part of a benefit package bought by anyone who gets a government tax credit to help pay for the insurance.
Put another way:
Abortion would not be paid for in plans offered' [...]
People are fond of saying to someone they disagree with, "get real!" It's a put down to be told that you're living an illusion.
So when Eastern religions tell us that this physical existence is maya, not really real reality, it's natural to feel concerned.
Even though life seems pleasant' [...]
Time keeps marching on. When I wrote my previous blog post, "How to make time slow down," I was 59. Now, I'm 61.
Obviously I haven't been able to stop chronological time. Every year, on my birthday, my age meter advances a click. But we all know how time seems [...]
I started to practice yoga and meditation when I was 20 years old. Forty-one years later, I'm still at it: trying to find the real me and the truth at the heart of the cosmos.
Along the way, in 1990, I married a woman who has taught me as much, or' [...]
Whether or not someone has a philosophical bone in their body, he or she likely will enjoy "This Is It" -- a documentary featuring rehearsal footage of Michael Jackson preparing for a monumental concert tour.
I do have philosophical bones. And they loved this well-reviewed movie as much as [...]
It's another election day, albeit a rather low-key off-year one. I'm getting flashbacks to 2008, when it seemed like everything was going to be just fine now.
With Obama our president for the next four years, wouldn't we get the change that we'd be wanting for the past eight? The' [...]
It's a burden to believe that you're special.
Especially when it isn't true. Feeling special places you in a starring role. You're at the center of a script that has a marvelous ending -- with you at center stage taking bows.
Religions appeal to people because dogma leads them to feel' [...]
Some would say that nothing is less fun than pondering the question, "What is fun?" However, I'm the sort of person who enjoys ponders, and fun is about enjoyment, so I'll press on.
I got to thinking about fun recently by -- no big surprise -- having fun!
This year [...]
Well, I've got to start off my Halloween cheering with a big shout-out to the Oregon Ducks football team, who crushed fifth-ranked USC tonight in Eugene -- an hour's drive away from Church of the Churchless headquarters here in south Salem.
Next, praise' [...]
What could CNN be thinking?
It's in last place among cable news networks. Yet CNN changes the look of its web site to make it painful to look at and almost impossible to find any real news on.
I used to spend quite a bit of time on CNN.com. [...]
Ah, I love instant enlightenment.
OK -- not exactly instant, because I had to watch 54 minutes of a You Tube video before I got to Thomas Metzinger's philosophical "money shot" right at the end.
But I had enjoyed Metzinger's book, "The Ego Tunnel," which I blogged about here, [...]
So, what does a guy do when his wife says, "The kitchen faucet is dripping. Can you fix it?"
I took a look at it. Yup. It was dripping, no matter how I turned the Kohler single handle faucet.
I vaguely remembered that the faucet used a cartridge. And that the [...]
Some people think that science and religion operate in two different spheres, with never the twain meeting.
This often is called NOMA, non-overlapping magisteria -- a term coined by biologist Stephen Jay Gould, who said:
The magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the Universe is made of (fact) and [...]
Wrong, wrong, wrong. That mantra kept being repeated in my increasingly irritated mind as I read Bill Monroe's call to kill more cougars in last Sunday's Oregonian.
Monroe is an outdoors writer. But it's obvious that he doesn't know much about cougars, including their beneficial effect on ecosystems and how [...]
I picked up the book. Thumbed through the pages and located the right chapter. Scanned a few paragraphs. Then found the lines I was looking for:
Mysticism has little quarrel with the theory of evolution -- as long as it is recognized that life evolves not randomly, but under the guidance [...]
It's a tough job, being charitable.
Yesterday I had to stand unmoving for a whole four minutes, leaving my vanilla latte unsipped for a while, as I video'd the Artemis Tribal Belly Dancers at a benefit for the Elizabeth Bowers Zambia Education Fund.
Actually, I could have stood there' [...]
Problematic symptoms can have many different causes. Differential diagnosis aids mental health experts like me*** to tell what you're suffering from.
(*** I have a Master's Degree in Social Work. I had field placements in a Community Mental Health Clinic and a Family Counseling Agency. The fact that I never' [...]
Damn. I want a Nook, Barnes & Noble's new well-reviewed eBook reader. Just like I wanted Amazon's Kindle.
I love high-tech gadgets. Heck, I just got a computerized (sort of) flashlight, the marvelous Fenix LD 20. It's terrific.
But last February I returned a Kindle 2 [...]
Reality is so much more attractive than illusion. This is why science is so much more beautiful than religion.
It just takes an open (and humble) mind's eye to see. Science places us within an interconnected cosmos where we are part and parcel of everything in existence.
This is akin to the [...]
Since I love my iPhone, and it can reliably guide me to earthly destinations, I figured that spiritual enlightenment also would be available via one of the many downloadable applications for this marvelous device.
And yes, it was. In the form of Guided Insight Meditation.
Buddha must have been [...]
