The heart of a mindfulness practice, we've been taught in our mindfulness class, is compassion. Kindness. Non-judgment.

In fact, "non-judgment" is one of the key attitudes of mindfulness practice, and one that we agreed in small-group discussion we're all using (where "all" means myself, Marina, Reese, and Rick, the participants in my small group - I can't speak for anybody else). When we realize that we've fallen asleep while practicing (as Rick mentioned) or been distracted by the cat (that was Reese, but I've experienced it as well) . . . what can you do except recognize that it happened and just move on? What good will it do to put yourself down for it?

We're encouraged to judge no one: not ourselves, not our fellow mindfulness practitioners, not people we meet along the way who we think of as jerks. After all, labelling those people just gets us riled up, and prevents us from viewing them with compassion.

Then I read some comments on my recent post about yoga that got me thinking: should I be non-judging here? When, if ever, is it appropriate to judge?

This commenter observed that Lululemon pants flatter the body and increase confidence, which can make yoga a more pleasant experience . . . not just for the person wearing the pants, who is more confident, but also for others in the room who might look at her in her flattering-pants glory. She went on to observe the following:

[J]ust because the pants come in an XL doesn't mean an XL person should be in spandex lol [. . .] For the sake of my eyes, I'd rather those XL's spend the money on cotton.

I know. I'm supposed to be practicing non-judgment. Today in my mindfulness class, we talked about how perspective is everything. Lara (the instructor) read us a vignette about a man who was annoyed by children misbehaving on the subway until he learned the reason for their out-of-control behaviour and their father's failure to discipline them: they were returning home from the hospital, where they'd just finished watching their mother die. The lesson? What you perceive as rudeness and insensitivity to others may be completely understandable once you know the surrounding circumstances.

But I keep thinking about the women who read my Facebook page. Some of them wear size XL . . . or larger. And what about having compassion for them? For how self-conscious they might feel next time they go to a yoga class? For the way they'll feel confronting yet another confirmation that only skinny women can be beautiful, that bigger ladies have no right to wear something that makes them feel attractive, the way Lululemon pants boost the commenter's confidence, all for the sake of someone else's eyes? What if that kind of shallow, judgmental attitude is hurtful enough to keep them out of yoga altogether?

Is it wrong to judge when we find ourselves faced with another's judgment? Can I be compassionate towards this commenter without betraying the women who her comments are going to hurt?

The fact is, I wrote about Yoga to the People because it was refreshing to think of a yoga centre embracing the non-judgmental, non-elitist values that make Eastern spiritual practices so attractive to many Westerners. They jettison the snobby idea that yoga requires the "right clothes", the "right money", and the "right teachers". It isn't explicit in the yoga creed I quoted, but there's also no "right body". This yoga is for everyone. Sorry if this is judgmental, but "everyone" includes women who wear size XL Lululemon pants.

I want to be careful not to throw the baby out with the bathwater: non-judgment is a useful attitude. It helps us to show compassion for people who irritate us, to ask ourselves whether our irritation is justified. It helps us to be compassionate with ourselves when we fail to live up to our highest ideals. It helps us to shake off our shortcomings and try again tomorrow. It makes us brave, loving, empathic, and wise. It helps us to accept and embrace our neighbours.

But when we see something that's hurting somebody else - on any scale, from a schoolyard bully to a slave-labour system - we have an obligation to judge. We can still show compassion: maybe the bully is abused by his parents, maybe the slave owners are blinded to their sins by social conventions. Fine. But we still must stand up for the people being wronged, non-judgment be damned.

Bottom line: if non-judgment makes us stop being compassionate, we're using it wrong. Compassion is the heart of the practice . . . and the heart of living as well.

So I try to understand why this commenter would say those hurtful things, and I try to have compassion. But also, I post this blog and I speak up. Because the women in those XL yoga pants, Lululemon or otherwise, have every right to feel beautiful and confident, and it's wrong to take that away from them, to try to tear it to shreds. It's wrong to tell them they're an eyesore in your yoga class. It's wrong to restrict them to cotton because big women in spandex offend you.

God made you, ladies. You're beautiful as you are.

Or 'high-performance' yoga gear? Or pricey Pure Yoga classes? Or the shame of showing up in plain jogging pants (or, my own most likely faux pas, ten-year-old Adidas tearaways) instead of the sexy modern yoga pants the truly fashionable seeker would select?

I don't think about it often, but I know I'll be called upon to sample yoga as part of my mindfulness course (in which Lululemon pants are not exactly ubiquitous, but certainly present). Now I'm starting to consider. If the popularity of yoga practice has led to a smorgasbord of consumer products for the trendy, does that limit the spiritual value of the practice.

Yes and no, I suppose.

On the one hand, it's certainly possible to go inside yourself and put aside all those earthly, shallow considerations. You can choose not to spend a ton of money on your yoga practice, picking inexpensive community courses and eschewing all those products they're trying to push on you. But statistics (from a well-worth-reading article in the New York Times) show that we're not:

A 2008 poll, commissioned by Yoga Journal, concluded that the number of people doing yoga had declined from 16.5 million in 2004 to 15.8 million almost four years later. But the poll also estimated that the actual spending on yoga classes and products had almost doubled in that same period, from $2.95 billion to $5.7 billion.

And in some ways it's no wonder. If you're going to a yoga class to find peace, you're not going to find it if those uppity airheads giggling in the back are making quips about your drab yoga getup. You could go over to them and ask them to leave junior high behind for a while, but they probably won't do it, and in the end it's just easier to give in to your embarrassment and make the switch to sexy Groove pants (assuming you can afford the $100 price tag).

So what's sapping the spiritual value isn't the products per se. It's the sense that people who have them are better than people who don't. Chalk it up to advertising, which uses the ideals of yoga to actually reverse its values. The whole world is one, but people who have Lululemon pants are a little more one than the ones in the decade-old Adidas. (Don't laugh. I love those pants.)

It's a breath of fresh air, then, to find this new approach to yoga in a world gone commercially out-of-control: Yoga to the People, a New York yoga centre that insists on the ideals of yoga for everyone, whether or not you're wearing the right gear, or the right body shape, whether or not you're learning from the right celebrity master. At Yoga to the People, it's about the practice, whether you're doing it for spiritual benefit, for fitness, or just for fun - or any combination of the three. There are no right or wrong reasons or approaches, just a bunch of people on different paths through different lives, who want to make yoga a part of their journey, sans Groove pants.

Check out the site. Learn more about how the idea evolved from the NY Times article. It's hard not to be inspired by the Yoga to the People creed:

There will be no correct clothes
There will be no proper payment
There will be no right answers
No glorified teachers
No ego no scripts no pedestals
No you're not good enough or rich enough
This yoga is for everyone . . .

Words to live by. Now that's a spiritual practice I can get behind.

Browsing Windows and Doors, Rabbi Brad Hirschfield's blog on Jewish culture, I found this article on Judaism and sex, in which Hirschfield makes the claim that Jewish culture, by and large, has always been pretty sex-positive. For instance, he cites rabbinic tradition:

Perhaps most notable is the rabbis' preference that if one is to make love only once a week (the prescribed MINIMUM for sages), the lovemaking be on the Sabbath. While most religious groups in the ancient world were figuring out how to make sure that holy days were NOT for sex, the Rabbis of early Judaism insisted that sex was so sacred, the Sabbath was the optimal time for it. Truthfully, they were simply putting into law what most of us already intuit. After all, how many other things do couples do together which culminate in their screaming, "Oh my God"?

(Salcia notes that arguing might in some cases apply, but usually it's not uttered very praisefully in that context - more like, "Oh my God, make him make some sense for once!")

More from the good rabbi:

It was Rabbi Emden who wrote, in the commentary to the prayer book which edited that when a husband and wife make love on Friday night, the presence of God is in the bed with them. I guess that gave a new meaning to King-sized bed for Medieval Jews!

[. . .] at the end of the day, from the time of the Bible to Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the basic approach to sex has been to celebrate its beauty within the context of what one understood to be a genuine, sincere and appropriate relationship. And while there is not always agreement about what such relationships are, can anyone doubt that the both the sex and the relationship will be better when that is the measure applied to whatever is deemed to fit one's definition of such a relationship?

I'm Catholic, and my faith has one of the most tangled relationships with sex you could possibly imagine. At one point I believe it was forbidden for Catholics to have sex on the Sabbath. Probably during Lent, too. Or really any time you weren't planning to make a little baby Catholic. Throw in the failings of a celibate priesthood, condemn homosexuality, and add altar boys - now you've got a really complicated mix.

But in spite of all the negative ways Catholicism relates to sexuality, I think it has a positive edge over the way sex appears in our popular culture - all too often as an emotionally neutral transaction between two physical bodies without any broader connection. In other words, you and me, baby, ain't nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do on the Discovery Channel.

And I don't think that's an honest way of seeing it.

It's easy to see that you can hardly call us "nothing but mammals"; there's a reason why my cat isn't contributing her own thoughts to this blog. We're meaning-making mammals, and we have feelings, philosophies, goals, and beliefs, to which sex could be either helpful or detrimental. Never mind the selfish gene, because we're more than willing to put it aside for all kinds of reasons that even the most sex-positive person could embrace - fixing a relationship, being considerate of a partner, studying for a big exam, or pulling together a big project. Saying no to sex doesn't automatically translate into anti-sex.

And yes, people know that. But still, there's a pervasive cultural attitude that "if it feels good, do it". Want to be promiscuous? Go for it. Free love - why not? Open relationships? Well, if the relationship isn't going to survive a little bit of casual sex, maybe it was the wrong relationship to begin with. Some of my readers will know people like this, and others will be shocked to learn that anybody actually thinks that way. But attitudes to sex cross a broad spectrum, and this is definitely part of it.

My personal belief is that casual sex creates havoc in relationships because we are more than our material being; we are emotional, psychological, and spiritual creatures as well. But our cultural attitude has become so highly materialistic, we don't recognize those 'unmeasurables', and we think that our biological responses are all that matters. Those feelings and spiritual leanings are just generated by the brain; they're not really real. (I recommend The Spiritual Brain to anybody who wants to learn more about materialism as a fundamentally flawed way of seeing the human person. Actually, let me slip into librarian mode and make another recommendation - The Score by Faye Flam - for anybody who's interested in seeing this perspective applied directly to sexuality.)

Because we live in a culture that ignores our emotional, psychological, and spiritual selves - the selves that can't really be measured except as functions of electrical activity in the brain - the temptation to view sex in a similar way just gets stronger and stronger. I would argue that an overly permissive view of sex - "if it feels good, do it" - comes from that materialist culture. Because after all, there's no reason not to have sex if there are no consequences. And if emotional, psychological, or spiritual consequences don't count, there really can be sex without consequences, any time, with any partner, and in any way you please.

But do we really want to give up our emotional, psychological, and spiritual selves so easily?

I'm not talking about staying a virgin until the wedding night or banning homosexuality or anything like that. Of course I'm not. But I do think that we need to recognize the potential interior costs of casual sex, sex without relationship. It's isolating, keeping people at arm's length while sharing such intimate human closeness with them. And numbed people aren't experiencing their full humanity. They're not living the vibrant life they could if they didn't have to protect themselves from the heartache of emotional involvement.

But like I said, a numb, half-deafened life is a consequence of that materialist perspective, where emotions don't count and physical sensations do. How could sex be sacred in that worldview? You can't measure sacred in a science lab, so there must be no such thing.

I've joined up with a Mindfulness class, hoping it will help me have a more emotionally stable existence, and yesterday evening was the first session. Very interesting! We're told not to expect miracles, signs, and wonders . . . actually, not to expect anything. Mindfulness originates from Buddhist roots, and getting attached to an outcome can result in distress if you fail to achieve it, or if it's not what's right for you at that moment. The proper attitude is to just see what comes and accept it for what it is.

But so far, the experience has been a little bit mind-blowing.

One of the first mindful exercises we were asked to do was a "mindful eating" exercise, in which each of us were given a few raisins to eat. Now at this point I should mention that I am not a fan of raisins. Any sort of dried fruit seems unpleasant to me. They're so wrinkly and sticky and just . . . ugh. Not my style. But for the purpose of the exercise, it doesn't matter whether you like or dislike raisins, whether you're hungry or full-to-bursting, as long as you're aware of it all.

So I looked down at my handful of raisins thoughtfully, trying not to judge them for being raisins, noticing for the first time that each one contained the ghost of a grape in its shape. I could actually perceive what the grape would've looked like, the echo of grape-ness in the shrivelled-down version that was the raisin. Which is logical, of course, but I'd never really looked at a raisin that way before.

Our course director - we'll call her Lara, with all names changed to protect people's privacy, of course - had us feel the raisins between our fingers, become aware of their weight, even hold them next to our ears to see if they made a sound. (Mine didn't.) Then she had us slowly bring them to our mouths, feel them against our lips, and then place them on our tongues.

The raisin on my tongue didn't really taste like anything; it just had that leathery sort of dried-fruit texture I don't much like. But when I bit into it - an explosion of flavour! Sweetness! It was actually a very pleasant experience. Raisins will probably never be my favourite food, but I doubt I'll be as averse to them as I've been in the past.

But here is the part that's really interesting: as Lara asked us to consider the raisin we were eating, chewing and swallowing, she described the nutrients in the raisin becoming part of our bodies, and the way the raisin must have grown so far away and how it came to be here with us that evening. And I actually started to feel an emotional connection with the raisin. It was as if the raisin was my friend, and its nutrients were a gift it wanted to give me. I was grateful to the raisin for the nutrients that were its gift to me, and I felt good about everything involved in bringing the raisin into my hand, and then to my mouth. And I don't even really care for raisins, but this raisin was nice! I ended up eating the rest of the raisins in my hand.

When I got home, my husband observed that it's another example of my tendency to personalize and humanize everything - the raisin is my friend, or the last M&M will have hurt feelings if it's left alone in the bowl, or whatever. Maybe it is. But it's also an interesting message, especially in light of Earth Day: what we have is a gift. We're connected to the things around us, whether they're the vegetables in our kitchen, or the cow who died so I could make hamburgers for dinner, or the bread that used to be wheat growing in a field. Everything we have is contributing something to our lives, our bodies, our being . . . and therefore what do we have that doesn't deserve our gratitude? Not a bad way to live, at any rate.

As we discussed the experience in a follow-up conversation, a classmate I'll call Brant said to me, "I love raisins. I eat them all the time, and I just couldn't wait to eat these. But you know what? I've never really tasted a raisin before today. I didn't even know what raisins tasted like." I'm not so sure I did either, actually. I knew the texture, that they were chewy and had a particular mouth-feel, but I never really got a sense of a raisin's flavour before I really paid attention while I ate one.

So, how about you? Maybe you've eaten raisins before, but I wonder. Have you ever tasted a raisin?

Mark Biltz thinks that the constellations can give us vital information about the Second Coming - which, predictably, is coming soon. As it has been for the last two thousand years.

Check out his diagram here at World News Daily, a right-wing news site favoured by people who expect to be raptured any day now. Biltz explains that the star Arcturus, mentioned by name in the Book of Job, appears in a constellation called "Boötes" or "The Coming One", a man coming to collect the harvest. This matches verses in the Book of Revelation predicting the Second Coming. Therefore, they assume, the constellation is a sign of the Second Coming that has existed since the beginning of space. (Probably six thousand years ago, and fashioned within a six-day time frame by the efforts of a loving Creator.) Moreover, a record-setting gamma ray burst appeared in that constellation in 2008, which leads some Christian thinkers to suggest that the celestial event was a sign from God that Jesus will be returning soon.

(An aside: compare the description of the gamma ray event on WND, about halfway down the page, to the description given by NASA in the first few paragraphs of their "Science News" bulletin. Note to right wing news guys: just because you've linked to a page doesn't give you license to plagiarize word for word. It just increases the likelihood of getting caught.)

Biltz has a fairly well-reasoned explanation for why astrology is forbidden in Christianity - not because it's witchcraft or divination, but because it has a selfish focus: it's all about you. He may be onto something there. But when he explains that this is a completely different animal - "biblical astronomy", with a proper heavenly focus to glorify God by reading his message in natural cosmic phenomena - that's when he loses me.

There's nothing natural about the constellations. They are pictures in the sky that our early human ancestors created to help them map the stars. The fact that Boötes is a reaper depends entirely on what was familiar and symbolic to the people of the time. The symbol of a reaper probably appears in the Bible for the same reason it appears in the sky. I don't know - to me it looks more like a robot, or maybe a priest offering a chalice (except without a head). Maybe a guy catching a Frisbee. Check it out: what do you see?

It's culturally context-dependent, too. In India, for instance, the constellation that contains Arcturus is called Svātī, which translates as "sword" or "independence". What does that do for the interpretation of this particular Biblical sign? The Chinese also had their own constellations that don't correspond directly to the ones we know. Different people across time and space might have connected the dots in any number of different ways.

And while we're at it, the Bible isn't necessarily unanimous in pointing to Arcturus either. The King James Version mentions it, as does the Douay-Rheims. But the NIV, the New American Standard, the Amplified Bible, the English Standard Bible, and the New Living Translation all reference "the Bear" instead. "The Message" and the Contemporary English Bible point to the Big Dipper. That changes things somewhat. There are no bears in the Book of Revelation.

I believe that the skies and stars tell of God's glory . . . but it's through their vastness and brightness, their distance, that they inspire our awe. It's not because of some pictures we've imagined we saw up there, nor because those pictures prophesy. But I guess we're so busy looking for answers to our questions - or for evidence to bolster what we believe - we're losing sight of the Big Picture, the Truth we're supposed to be able to find by exploring instead of being dogmatic.

I think that's the real story to be told here.

Yes, I chose that title just in case Richard Dawkins should ever read it, because I know it would get under his skin. He rather has that effect on me, and turnabout is fair play.

But it's a question worth asking - and one that nobody's asked - now that Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins have started a campaign to have Pope Benedict arrested.

Now it's entirely possible for totally reasonable people to feel that, yes, the Pope should be held accountable for the actions of the Church he's leading. And if the Pope himself participated in cover-ups, as Christopher Hitchens alleges, it's certainly reasonable to call for justice, even if that means arresting the Pope.

But Hitchens and Dawkins are not reasonable. For all that they've insisted that religious people are stupid and they're "bright", their anti-religion rhetoric definitely managed to convince a large swath of the population NOT to take them seriously. So when they call for the arrest of the Pope, even if they're sincere in their conviction that he deserves to be held accountable for the paedophelia in the Church or for the ensuing cover-ups, it doesn't come across as sincere concern for the victims. It comes across as the rabble-rousing of two religion-hating ideologues who have seen an opportunity to destabilize a major world religion.

But here's a thought: maybe what the Catholic Church needs is a good destabilizing.

Right now the Catholic Church's global credibility is, frankly, not much better than Hitchens' and Dawkins': it's an ideological institution more concerned with pushing its beliefs than with actual justice. Stories about past cover-ups, whether true or false, make the ordinary faithful wary about even the most upfront pastoral teams. If your priest was a child molester, would you know it? Past precedent suggests not. And with no accountability built into the hierarchy, many Catholics are losing trust in an institution they thought was a gift from God. Catholics have generally been instructed to claim, "The Pope said it, I believe it, that settles it". But that only works if you have a pope you can trust as a moral leader. As a result, there's tension between what the Vatican says and how far the faithful can follow it . . . and the gap is only going to get wider.

So maybe the dogma of the untouchable pope has got to go. The Church keeps on claiming that the Holy Spirit protects the Pope from teaching error, but that's not enough in a mass-media age where acting erroneously is not so different from teaching erroneously. A seventh-century "bad pope" could get away with all manner of sins. Today's popes can't. And maybe that's not a bad thing if it will lead the faith in a better direction.

So let's take a close look at the history of Joseph Ratzinger. If he participated in concealing child molestation, he should be prosecuted - not because he's the Pope, but because he did something wrong that enabled sick priests to harm more children. He should not be arrested for the crimes of others in his flock, particularly the molesting priests (and we have no evidence that he was ever one of them). But he should be held accountable for his own crimes and any role he played in covering up criminal behaviour within the Church.

When Pope John XXIII called for the Second Vatican Council, he said he wanted to "throw open the windows of the Church so that we can see out and the people can see in". That Council came and went, but the windows still remain shut . . . and what's more, they're filthy. What if Richard Dawkins' and Christopher Hitchens' proposal to arrest the Pope amount to a call to clean house? After all, the victims of those cover-ups are still suffering - those who were molested above all, but also the millions of Catholics around the world who are losing their religion as the crimes within the Church come to light. It's a struggle to keep connected to God when the language of faith that you've spoken all your life has become corrupted.

So what if these "new atheists" - who, after all, are still children of the God they choose not to embrace - are unintentionally doing the work of the angels? By calling for justice to finally reach Vatican City, they're calling for a renewal of the Church, a new direction that could reverse the fortunes of a fading, mouldering institution that's currently on course to self-destruct through its inability to adapt to a very new world. An interesting twist on "survival of the fittest".

But I guess, for God, anything is possible.

Hey, give it a chance. Is it an off-the-wall idea? Of course it is! But even if you categorically reject the possibility, it makes for an extremely interesting story.

The idea comes from Zecharia Sitchin, though I read about it in Vine Deloria, Jr.'s book, Evolution, Creation, and Other Modern Myths. It posits that alien visitors to the planet Earth are behind human existence on this planet, and behind at least some of the stories that appear in our most famous holy book.

The story goes like this: an expedition of alien astronauts come to Earth to mine gold, and eventually decide to create a slave race so they don't have to do the mining themselves. They create several strange creatures (which might explain some of the strange creatures we see in ancient myth) but finally settle on a hybrid creature that combines alien characteristics with some local creature - let's say primates, since we seem pretty closely related to that bunch.

The new slave creatures are what we would call humans today, but they may not necessarily be as docile as the alien colonists would prefer, so the aliens invent a fiction to keep the humans in line. They call themselves gods and demand absolute obedience from their human captors. This accounts for the jealous nature of the Old-Testament God, who demands His people's total allegiance. Sitchin suggests that maybe the ancient temples were actually mansions where the colonists lived, and the offerings we see in the Bible were what they ate, burned because the colonists preferred their food well-done.

In this version of history, the alien colonists learn of a physical catastrophe that will cause a planet-wide flood; a giant meteor strike is the most likely candidate. Anyway, the colonists decide it's time to back out from this planet, and they elect to keep the flood a secret to exterminate their slave race. But one sympathetic alien - or maybe he was just a blabbermouth - tells a slave called Noah. (In some traditions he goes by a different name, but that's the one I know.) Noah builds a boat and saves as many people and domestic animals as he can.

Time goes by, and the human race grows again, eventually large enough to build their own cities. One particular citizen, a shepherd called Abraham, leaves his city and takes with him some knowledge of the history that has been passed down. But he's not an educated man, and only some of the details get passed down and recorded. Vine Deloria refers to the Book of Genesis "a Reader's Digest condensed version of Sumerian history".

Other aspects of Judeo-Christian religion seem to echo this story as well. For instance, take the virgin birth. Deloria suggests that hybrids were born through in-vitro technology, at least at first; slaves might not have known the technological mechanism behind it, but they could have believed it quite possible for a woman to give birth without conceiving through sexual intercourse. The concept made its way into a bunch of myths from different cultures, including the story of how Jesus was conceived. The idea of heaven, too, hints at possible alien "gods". There's really no reason why the gods should live above us in the sky, instead of at the bottom of the ocean or within the Earth's core. But the aliens would have come down from the sky.

Do I believe in this? No, not really. But I think it makes a fascinating story. And there's nothing I love quite so much as a really good story.

Fulton J. Sheen once said that nobody actually hates the Catholic Church for what it teaches; they hate it for what they think it teaches. The implication is that if they would just do a little bit of investigating to see if the picture in their minds matches reality, they'd find reality very different from what they've been taught. In the case of Catholicism, that may or may not be true, but that's really not the point. What Sheen is saying is that we carry ideas in our heads that don't always match the real world.

I've been reading a book that makes the same point, only it's not about Catholicism: it's about the evolution-creationism debate. The author, Vine Deloria Jr., argues that the entire debate is predicated on a Western understanding of the world. Western thought is binary; it exists in either/or terms and doesn't easily allow for synthesis or third options. It understands time and history as linear, which restricts possible interpretations of the facts. And it doesn't do very well with subjectivity and fuzzy logic; it can't understand that what it considers true and obvious may actually be very subjective and culturally-biased.

Hence, Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths - the only book I've yet read that says neither Darwinian evolution nor Biblical creationism are the answer, because even though they seem like polar opposites to us, they're actually two different manifestations of a very narrow view of the world. The way we're asking the question - "creation or evolution?" - necessarily excludes any answers other than what comes out of this Western way of thinking. Certain ideas are off-limits. They're considered impossible because "the world just isn't like that". But how do you know what the world is like? Have you investigated any possibilities outside of what other people have taught you about "the real world"? Did you question it, or did you just accept what you were told?

The problem of evolution and creation, or of what Catholicism really teaches, is the same problem that we see in questions of the paranormal. Many people dismiss paranormal ideas as fantasies because "the world just isn't like that". And if they're understanding the world from a Western, scientific, rational, materialist perspective, they're right. But many people in our culture are chock-full of assumptions they take for granted, and those unexamined assumptions are what keeps the paranormal looking impossible. And those assumptions might be wrong.

It's an issue Deloria takes up in Evolution, Creationism, and Other Modern Myths. Most of the book stays right on point with its discussion of evolution and creationism, but in discussing religion and history, Deloria wanders a little bit to consider some paranormal ideas. (As well he might: the fields can go together quite handily.) He talks about the theory that human beings were transplanted here by aliens, for example. Now, right there, many people will stop reading. Even I was tempted - aliens, Vine? Really?

But wait a second: what do I really know about the idea? Nothing, that's what. I just know that ideas about ancient space-faring people populating the Earth are supposed to be regarded as fiction. I know what I'm supposed to think without looking at the evidence . . . so I don't bother to look.

Among the Sumerians' accomplishments are the first wheels, kilns, bricks, high-rise buildings, commercial agriculture, metallurgy, medicine, irrigation, and city planning, [. . .] the first schools, courts, temples, legislatures, priests, kings, administrators, librarians and library catalog systems, historians, literary debates, poetry, music, and art.

[. . .] All these different disciplines come together in Sumer as one interwoven cultural/social complex that raises questions of origin that cannot be answered by allocating the various 'firsts' to other peoples. If this complex did arrive together, then we might give serious thought to the possibility that an extraterrestrial civilization brought it to the Sumerians, that the Sumerians inherited this knowledge from the survivors of a previous world, or that they themselves were a different people than we have imagined. When we broach the subject of ancient astronauts, many scholars automatically turn their backs and return to their fictional speculations about caveman paintings. Our intent here, however, is not to prove the existence of ancient astronauts, but to examine the idea. (Emphasis is from the original, but if it hadn't been I probably would've added it.)

Deloria doesn't really give the evidence for extraterrestrial origins, because that's not the point he's trying to make in his book. He's not arguing for a specific theory of origin so much as asking why we're dismissing so many potential theories in favour of these two prevailing orthodoxies. And in that, he's made his point spot-on, because on reading the words "ancient astronauts", the reader experiences exactly what Deloria is talking about - that knee-jerk rejection of an idea without all the information.

Isn't that the essence of the problem of the supernatural, that shadow side of religious belief that no one seems to want to acknowledge? Whether society is examining the origins of life on Earth or some other unknown, it uses its assumptions about the nature of the universe to draw a careful line around acceptable beliefs. Then it refuses to examine any proposals or ideas that step across that (somewhat arbitrary) boundary, never acknowledging that the boundary could validly be drawn in a completely different way or even that the boundary's parameters might be objectively wrong. So ideas like "ancient astronauts", conspiracy theories, and paranormal occurences are often summarily dismissed - not on the merits of carefully-considered evidence, but because of the a priori assumption that they aren't suitable topics for sane folks to consider seriously.

No idea should ever be off-limits. Think about every possibility, and trust yourself to weed out the nonsense. But - extending the garden metaphor - weed it out after you've given it a fair hearing, never before, lest you find yourself pulling up rare and beautiful exotic flowers . . . or, worse, herbs with tremendous healing properties that could have saved your children's lives. 

Following the natural instinct of a trained librarian - which she is - from time to time Salcia will use this blog as a vehicle to share a book she's just read and enjoyed, one that she finds related to the twin themes of the supernatural and the spiritual. She welcomes your feedback, discussion, and suggestions for further reading, and she'd be thrilled if you opened up your own bookshelves and shared some of your favourites, too!

No spoilers, please! (Or at least warn us first . . . )

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Title: The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul

Author: Mario Beauregard and Denyse O'Leary

Year of Publication: 2007

Plot Synopsis: Most scientists tend to look at the world from a materialist perspective: if it can't be counted, measured, or otherwise filtered through your senses, it's not real. Mario Beauregard is a neuroscientist who uses his knowledge about the human brain to show that materialist science just can't explain some parts of human life, and there must be more to the world than materialism ever thought possible.

Why it's a Shadow Book: Beauregard uses examples like telepathy, psychic abilities, and near-death experiences to question the idea that all life's experiences really just amount to a bunch of electrical impulses in the brain. For instance, how can a near-death experience be a by-product of random brain activity when there isn't any brain activity happening? And if a patient who is clinically dead can have experiences in spite of the lack of brain waves, there must be some aspect of human consciousness not created by brain activity. Beyond these paranormal-sounding examples, though, the entire tone of the book takes a satisfyingly anti-materialist view of life in general, a refreshing antidote to the usual perspective of our jaded society: not everything that counts can be counted.

Read It When: You're in the mood for science without the philosophical baggage.

"What would you be left with if you accepted the materialists' explanation of you? Would you recognize yourself?"

For years, former magician James Randi has done all he can as a skeptic to disprove psychic phenomena and paranormal activity. He's even offered a million dollars to anybody who can prove a paranormal claim. Apparently he's been holding an ace in the hole all these years, and nobody's been able to see beyond the veil and figure it out. But his dramatic confession appeared on his blog last weekend.

At the age of eighty-one, James Randi came out of the closet. He's gay.

In one article, Randi was quoted as saying, “Of all the people I have investigated — people like John Edward, Sylvia Brown and Miss Cleo — not one of these self-deluded clairvoyants could figure out I was gay? Hell, Uri Geller still hasn’t figured out that Clay Aiken fancies men. You’ve got to wonder.”

Okay, he's got a point. And to be frank, I've never really been impressed by those particular big-name psychics anyway. But does this prove that psychic powers are impossible? Well, not necessarily. Maybe it proves that Sylvia Brown isn't psychic, but if you ask me, that's some low-hanging fruit.

It could be that perhaps psychic powers come from God, and He doesn't let anybody know everything there is to know. Maybe He chooses not to share Randi's sexual orientation through psychics because it's quite frankly not their business. Or because it's Randi's secret to tell.

And perhaps professional ethics aren't a big thing for your average big-money huckster, but I wonder about the ethics of a psychic revealing someone's sexual orientation if it's been kept in the closet. Let's suppose, just for argument's sake, that I'm a psychic who figured out Randi's orientation years ago. (Full disclosure: I'm not.) I imagine I'd be fairly reluctant to broadcast that insight, knowing that a) if it's not true, I could be accused of slander, and b) if it is true, he's presumably kept the secret for his own reasons. And, like I said, it's Randi's secret to tell.

Sure, the million-dollar prize might give me pause . . . but I'm not convinced that one psychic's ability to identify Randi as gay would constitute evidence anyway. Maybe their gaydar is just really sharp. Maybe it's not extra-sensory perception, but just ordinary perception. Hell, maybe it's a stereotype about performance artists and people who make a living from stage magic.

The failure of specific psychics who have given specific readings on Randi might say something about those individual psychics, but I don't think this settles the debate conclusively. Maybe it's not supposed to be settled conclusively. Maybe we're supposed to wonder.

But, like the people at Bad Astronomy, what strikes me as most important in Randi's announcement is the message it sends about "the many flavors humans come in" - straight or gay, male or female, skeptic or believer. Possibly psychic or not psychic. Who's to say?

I can't say I've ever been a huge James Randi follower. But I do hope Randi's announcement lends encouragement to people of all kinds to stand up for what they believe and, at the heart of it, who they are. You can never have too many different kinds of role models for something like that - something the whole world needs to know.