The incontovertible teaching

**Abandon** · 24-11-2007, 10:59 PM

Several of us have been reading/watching the apostles of Atheism namely:

Richard Dawkins - the God Delusion
Christopher Hitchens - God is not Great
Sam Harris - The End of Faith
Daniel Dennett - Breaking the spell

So is

?

In brief they claim that ALL religion is debunked, and if you put your belief in scriptures and not rational science, you are "Barking Mad" .

Putting aside the theistic religion's arguements, would Thai Buddhism be exempt from this attack ? It seems that having no creator God the Thai's would not argue with this, yet their society is hardly one of rationality and science ...

We'll be having a gathering/discussion on this in Bangkok next week, so it would be nice to get some advance consideration of the topic :-

Can a Buddhist be an Atheist?
Does Science necessitate Atheism?
Is the Scientific / Atheist world view something genuinely unique and worthy in its own right, or just a reaction against theism ?

**Silent Orchestra** · 25-11-2007, 12:41 AM

Anybody who believes in a God is in the grip of advanced mental illness.

**chinthee** · 25-11-2007, 01:52 AM

In my experience, a partial Buddhist can be an Agnostic, whilst being born and raised a Catholic!

**Frankenstein** · 09-01-2008, 12:43 AM

Short answers:

Can a Buddhist be an Atheist?

Yes, but there are probably some accepted supernatural aspects of Buddhism that he or she will be likely to ignore or try to rationalize in order to be able to practice without a serious inner conflict.

Does Science necessitate Atheism?

No. Einstein is often raised as an example of a scientist who believed in God. I still think dogmatic beliefs and viewpoints tend to hamper creative, free thinking because it can work as a strait-jacket, self-imposed or not, limiting where you allow yourself to go and not.

I've read somewhere that Einstein did want to accept quantum physics because it did not seem to ring with his vision of an ordered universe.

Is the Scientific / Atheist world view something genuinely unique and worthy in its own right, or just a reaction against theism ?

Interesting question. You do not mention unique and worthy in relation to what, and yet the question seems to carry a supposition that other viewpoints (religions?) ARE genuinely unique and worthy?

I think it is fair to say that atheism can be seen a reaction against theism. But I would not say science and scientific method is, since I do not think atheism and a scientific worldview are necessarily one and the same.

**Hootad Binky** · 09-01-2008, 01:37 AM

Originally Posted by Frankenstein

Yes, but there are probably some accepted supernatural aspects of Buddhism that he or she will be likely to ignore or try to rationalize in order to be able to practice without a serious inner conflict.

Not completely sure about every sect, but to be Buddhist requires a belief in reincarnation. How can one be Buddhist without a belief in karma and reincarnation?

Originally Posted by Frankenstein

I've read somewhere that Einstein did want to accept quantum physics because it did not seem to ring with his vision of an ordered universe.

True (you meant "did not" right?

) but Einstein was wrong. Particle cosmology is now an accepted branch of physics, since it's the only way to describe the first moments of the universe, and why it has its current properties.

Originally Posted by Frankenstein

I think it is fair to say that atheism can be seen a reaction against theism. But I would not say science and scientific method is, since I do not think atheism and a scientific worldview are necessarily one and the same.

What about agnosticism?

**Dalton** · 09-01-2008, 01:48 AM

People who are devoted to religion, in any extreme or radical form, belongs in rubber-cell.

**Ban Saray** · 09-01-2008, 02:02 AM

Lost too much of my life thanks to the religous beliefs of others.
Complete waste of time IMO

**Hootad Binky** · 09-01-2008, 03:09 AM

Why can't God be more like us?

Christopher Hitchens, the British-born contrarian and atheist, has written a best-selling book called God is Not Great in which he thumbs his nose at Allah, Yahweh and all religion for that matter.

I don't know if God is great or not but I 'm sure of one thing: He/She/It isn't a democrat.

Now, this isn't meant as a frivolous remark. Leaving our Western worldview aside for the moment, a vast literature exists on the subject of polytheism, the belief in many gods who jockey for power.

Ancient gods litter the historical landscape. Witness the huge statuary that oversaw once mighty empires like the Hittites and Assyrians.

Present-day Hindus worship a collection of deities. And at one not-so-distant time in the West even, many gods were the rule. I was reminded of this, in the run-up to Christmas, while watching HBO's epic series, Rome.

In between the conspiracies and casual brutality, Romans worshipped both big and little gods with enthusiasm and piety. You want your business to prosper (or an enemy killed), you pray to the right deity for help.

A parliament of dieties

I have heard it said that the Romans, or the Greeks before them, hardly believed in their gods: They were seen more as just mythic characters in the literature of the day.

But as the American classical scholar Mary Lefkowitz reminds us in a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, the ancient Greeks believed that their gods were real and that they constantly intervened in human affairs.

The Romans inherited their panoply of gods from the Greeks: Zeus, the head god, became Jupiter, and so on down the line.

Zeus did not communicate directly with humans but his children — Athena, Apollo and Dionysus — did so continually. A mortal could have the support of one god while angering another. Belief and obedience were, at heart, political.

The ancient Greeks and Romans were always bargaining, praying and beseeching their gods for favours. Their world was a place where human beings were courtiers to a veritable parliament of deities.

Smart operators like Odysseus (Ulysses to some) knew how to play the game. Others, like the suitors he slaughtered when he returned home from Troy, were not so cunning.

Divine limitations

The gods of the ancient Greeks and Romans weren't sweet and gentle. They were often bad tempered, lustful and petty.

But they had two characteristics that ordinary humans envied: They were powerful and they were immortal.

These gods fought among themselves just like we do. Living forever, it seems, gave them no monopoly on wisdom. Even Zeus was not all-powerful or completely wise. He lived within his divine limitations. He had his favourites and his dreadful temper.

Still, there are advantages to believing in a polytheistic universe, as Lefkowitz tells us.

For one, it eliminates the problem of theodicy: Why would a good god create evil?

The monotheistic religions of the world — such as Judaism, Christianity and Islam — have to explain to their followers why God created cyclones and blood thirsty murderers. (After four thousand years, there's hardly a good answer, except, perhaps, have faith and mind your own business.)

The Greeks didn't believe in sentimental, loving gods. (When their gods loved, mortals had to watch out for their daughters!)

As Lefkowitz tells us, the classical gods made life hard for humans. They weren't out to improve our condition. The only things they seemed to have a true interest in were valour and human achievement.

Understanding fallibility

The Greeks, and the Romans who followed them, understood human fallibility. They believed mortals could question their gods, who were as imperfect as they were. They believed that all beings — divine and human — were prone to error.

The second great advantage to polytheism is its openness. It gave the ancient world a modern virtue — diversity. The Greeks were the original multiculturalists. There was always room in the temple for a new god, as long as his or her highness didn't want to take over the place.

Judaism, Christianity and Islam are downright exclusive when it comes to sharing the limelight. Have no other gods before Me, say the opening commandments (depending on your Bible).

People nowadays talk about wanting to encounter God in nice little gardens and in the joys of nature. But the God of the Hebrew Bible was a jealous God. The ancient Hebrews were always running from Him. Indeed, He was something of a holy terror.

In search of a democratic deity

Of course, Christians have the benefit of a meeker intermediary, a deity (Christ) who suffers, like the rest of humankind.

Still, their God is a rather mysterious being, an omniscient deity with control over his dominion yet who has allowed bad things to flourish.

Then there is the God of Islamic radicals who wants His enemies to convert or be struck dead. He keeps His compassion strictly for His believers.

A Greek would be puzzled by monotheism. But the Greeks understood the world as a complicated, savage and less than perfect place. Even their democracy was imperfect: It excluded women, slaves and many working people.

I've always found it puzzling that democracy, with all its ragged, free-for-all imperfections, is heralded as the supreme political model while our Western religious traditions are so monotheistic and narrow.

God is a dictator, demanding perfection from his underlings. OK, He gives us free will to make ourselves miserable. But if political life should be democratic, why shouldn't religion? If we were created in God's image, why can't God be more like us?

The Greeks and the Romans that I see in Rome understand the world is a quixotic and perilous place. They make allegiances and hope to command a smidgen of honour for their family, friends and community.

The ancient world lived as if all creation was a permanent minority government. Life tottered on the edge of a no confidence vote by the powers that be.

As coarse and politically incorrect as those ancient people were, at least to our way of thinking today, their many gods prepared them for a steely-eyed life without illusion.

We have progressed in many ways since then, especially in our science and technology. But perhaps those ancient peoples were wiser than us.

Today, we seem to live in a world of fierce moralists and one-God believers. Maybe we should take a lesson from the Greeks and Romans and allow more democracy into our modern religions. Then we might all rest a little more easily.

CBC News: Analysis & Viewpoint: Richard Handler

CBCnews.ca - Where is God Today?

**barbaro** · 09-01-2008, 03:18 AM

Metaphysics & religious beliefs room?

**Hootad Binky** · 09-01-2008, 03:24 AM

“Religion is the most important argument there’s ever been, because it’s about the meaning of life,” says Hitchens, rather serenely, in a recent phone interview from a tour stop in New York. “It’s much more necessary to understand this argument than anything else. It touches on all the other great matters of science and medicine and, indeed, literature, ethics and morality. Therefore, it’s the progenitor of very strong passions.”

Hitchens’s resistance to religion began when he was a nine-year-old schoolboy in Dartmoor, England. One day, his teacher informed his class that God made all the trees and grass green because that was the colour most restful to human eyes. “My little ankle-strap sandals curled with embarrassment for her,” Hitchens writes. “The eyes were adjusted to nature, not the other way around.” From this halcyon remembrance, Hitchens moves to the furor over The Satanic Verses (1989), the novel by his friend Salman Rushdie that explores the less savoury side of the Prophet Muhammad. The death warrant issued by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini was outrageous enough, but what appalled Hitchens was how many observers, pious or not, seemed to side with the ayatollah. The implication was that Rushdie had somehow asked for it. “It is impossible to imagine a greater affront to every value of free expression,” Hitchens writes.

Hitchens says we continue to be plagued by “religious bullying, whether it’s the attempt to murder cartoonists in tiny, democratic Denmark, or the way that the parties of God are destroying Iraqi society, or the attempt to teach nonsense in our schools under the guise of ‘intelligent design,’ or the belief in many churches that AIDS is bad but condoms are worse, or to retard research into stem cells in the name of God. Enough already with this.”

(McClelland & Stewart)

Hitchens concedes god is not Great is “the beneficiary of a coat-tail effect” in the current surge of atheist literature, which includes Sam Harris’s The End of Faith, Richard Dawkins’s The God Delusion and Daniel Dennett’s Breaking the Spell. Hitchens claims he’s not an atheist, but in fact an “antitheist.”

“You could be an atheist and wish that the belief was true. You could; I know some people who do,” he says. “An antitheist, a term I’m trying to get into circulation, is someone who’s very relieved that there’s no evidence for this proposition.”

Journalist and provocateur Christopher Hitchens picks a fight with God - CBC Arts | Books

The World This Weekend, Jan. 6 Richard Dawkins, Eat Pray Love, and the spirituality boom at the bookstore. (Runs 5:58) Listen

**sabang** · 09-01-2008, 05:12 AM

The author Yann Martel (the Life of Pi) points out that Atheism is another religion, a belief system. It is the Agnostic or Humanist position he dislikes- the fence sitter if you like.

Well, as a Humanist Agnostic myself, you might say my religion is my ethical/moral code- which is a good deal less elastic than most religious types I know, because I do not have a benign Deity who will forgive anything if I say I'm sorry, neither do I have faith in an amoral social Darwinism.

I am quite content 'not knowing' and accepting that I will never 'know' whilst being surrounded by a world in which every belief system is 'right' in the eyes of it's followers, and every other belief system 'wrong'. As long as I remain true to my moral precepts.

I see the Need for Faith as just another manifestation of human insecurity within a universe infinitely too complex to fathom. A function of higher intelligence actually.

**Hootad Binky** · 09-01-2008, 05:22 AM

Originally Posted by sabang

human insecurity within a universe infinitely too complex to fathom

At least the scientific method attempts to address the complexities of the universe in an accountable manner while not demanding blind adherence, as religions invariably do.

**sabang** · 09-01-2008, 05:30 AM

^ Perhaps HB, but without succeeding.

**Hootad Binky** · 09-01-2008, 05:33 AM

I think I know what you're getting at, but give us an example

**sabang** · 09-01-2008, 05:48 AM

The usual stuff really- consciousness, Creation, life, selfless as opposed to selfish behaviour, even Heisenberg's Theory of Uncertainty.

**Hootad Binky** · 09-01-2008, 06:50 AM

It's not a theory, it's a principle! Anyone, anywhere, can reproduce the same results; can't say that for any religion.

Uncertainty principle - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Further, in terms of inconvertibility, the principles of quantum mechanics have long been verified and observed:

Quantum mechanics is the foundation of several related disciplines including nanotechnology, condensed matter physics, quantum chemistry, structural biology, particle physics, and electronics.

Introduction to quantum mechanics - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

I've yet to see a blender powered by the Holy Spirit

**Marmite the Dog** · 09-01-2008, 10:13 AM

Originally Posted by Milkman

Metaphysics & religious beliefs room?

Of course...

**stroller** · 09-01-2008, 11:52 AM

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

Not completely sure about every sect, but to be Buddhist requires a belief in reincarnation. How can one be Buddhist without a belief in karma and reincarnation?

A belief in reincarnation does not require a belief in 'god'.

Originally Posted by Frankenstein

I think it is fair to say that atheism can be seen a reaction against theism. But I would not say science and scientific method is, since I do not think atheism and a scientific worldview are necessarily one and the same.

What about agnosticism?

What about it?

A historic account:
"Typically, agnostics bore no grudge against those who did retain faith in God. Although agnostics tended to see themselves as clearer thinkers and more rigorous moralists, they rarely trumpeted their unbelief or publicly attacked the churches. In this, agnosticism was unlike atheism, actively denying God. Atheism in both the United States and Europe flowed from dislike of organized religion, and atheists—their outrage at "priestcraft" often stoked by class resentment—were usually anticlericals." agnosticism: Definition and Much More from Answers.com

At least the scientific method attempts to address the complexities of the universe in an accountable manner while not demanding blind adherence, as religions invariably do.

The scientific method is of limited use when exploring the 'supernatural', and if you believe only that which is scientifically verifiable is 'true', you imply science to be more than a method, and subscribe to an ideology.
Religions do not demand "blind adherence", but require faith in their premises and organised religions demand adherence to their doctrines.

**Hootad Binky** · 10-01-2008, 01:44 AM

Originally Posted by stroller

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

Not completely sure about every sect, but to be Buddhist requires a belief in reincarnation. How can one be Buddhist without a belief in karma and reincarnation?

A belief in reincarnation does not require a belief in 'god'.

It's still a religious belief system, with no basis in reality and no way of verifying it (just like "God").

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

Originally Posted by stroller

At least the scientific method attempts to address the complexities of the universe in an accountable manner while not demanding blind adherence, as religions invariably do.

The scientific method is of limited use when exploring the 'supernatural'

What does "supernatural" mean?

Originally Posted by stroller

and if you believe only that which is scientifically verifiable is 'true', you imply science to be more than a method, and subscribe to an ideology.

I believe a scientific method, with a strict emphasis on testable hypotheses, provides the most reasonable consensus as to what constitutes the phenomena of the real world. Ideologies and religions do not do that.

Originally Posted by stroller

Religions do not demand "blind adherence", but require faith in their premises and organised religions demand adherence to their doctrines.

What about apostasy?

**stroller** · 10-01-2008, 11:01 AM

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

It's still a religious belief system, with no basis in reality and no way of verifying it (just like "God").

No, not necessarily a religious belief system - it does not require a 'god' to preside over the universe. There is plenty of evidence for reincarnation, alas the scientific method is not adequate to verify it.
One cannot prove that consciousness ceases to exist with death and that we are nothing but biochemical matter, either.

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

What does "supernatural" mean?

# Of, coming from, or relating to forces or beings that exist outside the natural world
# Greatly exceeding or departing from the normal course of nature

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

I believe a scientific method, with a strict emphasis on testable hypotheses, provides the most reasonable consensus as to what constitutes the phenomena of the real world. Ideologies and religions do not do that.

That's fine, so do I. I would not mistake it for the absolute truth, though.

Originally Posted by Hootad Binky

What about apostasy?

What about it?

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