How Typical (II)
16 November 2006 by BobThe second “number-crunching” entry from The Cambridge Companion to Atheism is called, “Atheism: Contemporary Numbers and Contemporary Patterns,” and it ends with the following observations (organic atheism — atheistic societies that have no governmental requirement or coercion — is contrasted with coercive atheism — atheistic societies that do have governmental coercion):
16 November 2006, on 10:44 pm
I like how it doesn’t even list the European countries with high atheism. It just says “Europe”. Awesome- we have a continent! Well, in a way…
16 November 2006, on 11:45 pm
Boy, there are some inaccurate stats. Wouldn’t you think that China, which is 59% non-religous, has an officially atheist government, and who’s main “religions” like Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are really nothing more than godless philosiphies would have a pretty high rate of atheism? What about Vietnam, which has an atheist government and more than 80% of the population is non-religious, what about the Koreas, two extremely secular places….. Inaccurate list.
17 November 2006, on 12:19 am
There’s a big difference between atheism brought about by enlightment and atheism brought about by force.
I think China is enforced atheism. North Korea as well. The others, I don’t really know.
17 November 2006, on 5:51 am
I thought the conclusions in the first extract from the book were highly suspect, but this takes the biscuit and I would dearly love to see the statistics allegedly supporting their claims.
For example, the UK is not an atheistic society if the findings of the most recent Census (2001) are to be believed: 72% claim to be xtian, approx 14% atheist (the 3rd most frequent choice) and the remainder spread over judaism, muslim, sikh, hindu etc. And whilst it is correct to say that there is no government coercion to be either a believer or an atheist, the fact remains that the Church of England is de facto and de jure fundamentally embedded in our establishment, with the Bishops sitting by right in our Parliament ruling on legislation, and the monarch is the official head of that church and must be annointed by them to succeed to the throne.
Furthermore, as Steven has already said in the comment above, Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism are basically godless philosophies and are arguably atheistic, despite the fact that Western monotheistic believers like to describe them as ‘religions’, it is inaccurate to do so.
And to respond to Matt’s comment, my understanding is that atheism is not enforced by the State on the populace; Buddhism, Daoism and Confucianism all flourish there, as does Xtiantiy (provided it is organised in state-approved places of worship’).
In short, I’ve read too many so-called ‘academic works’ in my time that were simply unsupportable by the facts, and I am beginning to wonder if this work is just another one of those where the conclusions represent little more than the wishful thinking and prejudices of the authors.
17 November 2006, on 5:57 am
Incidentally, I found this re the official Chinese policy on religion:-
blockquote>In the Constitution of the People’s Republic of China freedom of religious belief is a basic right enjoyed by all citizens. Article 36 of the Constitution stipulates, “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China enjoy freedom of religious belief.” It also goes on to say, “No State organ, public organization or individual may compel citizens to believe in, or not to believe in, any religion; nor may they discriminate against citizens who believe in, or do not believe in, any religion.” Again, “the State protects normal religious activities,” and “No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the State.” In addition, “Religious bodies and religious affairs are not subject to any foreign domination.”
There’s lots more available here.
17 November 2006, on 11:32 am
“No one may make use of religion to engage in activities that disrupt public order, impair the health of citizens or interfere with the educational system of the State.”
OG, those are the operative words in China, essentially cancelling out the preceding, because they have identified Xinsanity, Falun Gong, and probably others as threats to public order, to the health of citizens, etc., and cracked down on them accordingly. Mind you, I’m all for the xians being handed out a taste of their own persecutory medicine but the ones who could really use a comeuppance are mostly here.
As to the rest, this categorization and definition of atheism smacks of busywork and, perhaps, the envy of academic atheists towards their prolific theological brethren. I’ve often encountered theists who want me- or some other individual atheist, to speak for all of us because, I suspect, they see our disbelief as a belief system in and of itself. They crow about our lack of an objective morality, our lack of cohesion as a group, about our meaningless, godless lives, hell, about our differing descriptions of just what “atheism” is.
Granted, they’re deluded morons but a lot of us seem obsessed with playing into their hands. As far as I’m concerned, atheism shouldn’t even be a word. “Atheist” pisses me off just because it implies that “theist” is the natural state and we are without it. Honestly, my disbelief in a god or gods, is no more significant to me than my disbelief in ghosts, guardian angels, sasquatch, UFOs, or a spaceship idling just behind the Hale-Bopp comet waiting to take me away. I do view it as somewhat of a badge of honor for an absence of credulousness, an intellectual curiousity, a propensity for rational thinking but it’s not a worldview.
I’m not sure what my problem is. I guess I just don’t want to see an Atheist credo, Atheist hymns, or, gawd forbid, Atheist services cropping up to match their lipsticked pig. Well, unless you’d consider this a hymn.
17 November 2006, on 12:52 pm
Since Canada still supports the British monarchy (Canadians pay taxes to keep the queen’s representative living in luxurious digs) separation of church and state is impossible. The Sovereign holds the title ‘Defender of the Faith and Supreme Governor of the Church of England’. Any time we are required to pay taxes to support a religious institution it is coercive. Organic atheism in Canada is almost as miraculous as changing water into wine.
When I first read (a few months ago) the constitutional rights of religious freedom in China, as Old Git quoted, I was shocked. Xians like to spread their malicious lies that Chinese are denied the freedom to choose Xianity.
The term “religion” does not exclude non-theistic belief systems. Buddhism has a set of beliefs about the spiritual or supernatural (Karma, rebirth, etc.) without a god. It is atheistic, but it is also religious. While Atheism is not a religion (making no claim to any beliefs), Buddhism is quite legitimately called a religion.
17 November 2006, on 12:58 pm
As to official government dictums regarding religious beliefs; as in the ‘former’ Soviet Union, religion simply goes underground when persecuted. Most Russians, for example were never really ‘official’ Communists. Once the breakup occurred, religion emerged again as a powerful force, ala the Russian Orthodoxy. In other words, religion simply goes underground, ‘til the mood changes…? “Whoop-de-frigin’-do!”
I think it boils down to: “Childhood religious programming [brainwashing] always trumps any outside, or official governmental policy.” Children are converted, in essence, by parentally programmed TRADITIONS from being godless to whatever the parents believe. This aspect would never really show up in any official statistics.
Richard Dawkins points out, so effectively, in his “Roots of All Evil” videos [See YouTube], the power of early childhood brainwashing.
Even before I ever heard it from Dawkins, I’ve long considered religious indoctrination a form of child abuse. Obviously the parents do it ignorantly, almost unconsciously,…and certainly ‘mean well’…but the effect is, to paraphrase the Catholic Jesuits: “Give us a child for the first seven years, and we have the man!” Of course, we GifSters have, many times, written about the indoctrination aspect of religion.
How many childhood friends do many of us have, that when encountered in later life [School Reunions?]; even though they may be educated and intelligent in many other ways; still cling to their original religious ‘programming’. [Especially those of us who went to religious schools!]
In my opinion…it takes real ‘guts’ to really personally evolve, changing oneself, so to speak, over time…shedding scary childhood notions…and as Dawkins similarly points out…to face REALITY in the light of scientific evidence.
Statistics, after all, are often biased even by the statistician’s point of view; not to mention the almost impossibility of real access to a huge portion of the more than Six Billion Homo Sapiens.
It IS, I think, rather strange that EVERYONE starts off life as a “born atheist”, and is…quite outrageously…turned into a believer by well meaning, but ignorant, adults, using absolutely…
NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER!
“…and now, if you will, dear brethren…please join me…
yes, it’s our favorite: Hymn #69…
in praising the almighty…
FLYING SPAGHETTI MONSTER!”
17 November 2006, on 3:29 pm
Lynda said
With respect, I disagree. First, the word ‘religion’ does not encompass non-theistic views per se. Second, Buddhism does not qualify to be described as a ‘religion’, since that word is generally held to mean: Action or conduct indicating a belief in, reverence for, and desire to please, a divine ruling power; the exercise or practice of rites or observances implying this.(O.E.D. 20 Volume 2nd Edition, Quarterly Updated), and Gautama himself recognised nothing superior to the immediacy and experiental thruths open to everyone - and based his whole philosophy on that which can be summed-up in the principle of ‘look to yourself’ [for englightenment - which is what buddhahood is]. However, to a Buddhist it is actually immaterial whether someone mistakenly describes Buddhism as a ‘religion’ since Buddhists recognise that word is part of the false world of discrimination and completely irrelevant per se. Thirdly, those who think that Buddhism is some kind of ‘religion’ have totally failed to ‘get it’ and are a complete mockery of what Gautama’s enlightenment .
Regarding Karma, or the law of cause and effect, that is no more than an early statement of fact that every scientist now accepts as undeniable truth - namely, that there is nothing which is a ‘prime-mover’ or ’cause without cause’, i.e. there is no creator god!. As for reincarnation, it is quite clear from Gautama’s lectures and all schools of Buddhism apart from the esoteric and primitive Tibetan, that this is a purely metaphorical reference, in that one is reborn from moment to moment as long as one lives, but not thereafter; there is, as Gautama said, no atman, or soul, and when one dies, one dies!
In short, one has only this life, there is no soul, god, heaven, hell, except of one’s own making, and it is up to one to live life in the fulness of these truths; that is what enlightenment, or Buddhahood is all about! Anyone who calls that a ‘religion’ is doing not only a great disservice to what Gautama stands for, but also the English language per se!
And for the avoidance of doubt, I am an atheist, and an anti-theist and misoclere, but I have studied Ch’an and Zen Buddhism for years and am qualified to teach it, so I do know a little about which I speak.
As the Tao Te Ching says: “He who speaks does not know; He who knows does not speak!”
And with that, I’ll shut up!
17 November 2006, on 4:25 pm
The Old Git wrote:
Is that what karma is really intended to be? My understanding of it is that karma entails some cosmic accountability program. Such that if you beat up kids smaller than you in grade school that somehow later in life you’ll be made to pay for it. To me that’s nothing more than conscience and guilt. I think it’s blatantly obvious that if you always do good things the universe still won’t treat you any better than it would a lump of clay or a neutrino.
17 November 2006, on 4:42 pm
Wouldn’t you think that China, which is 59% non-religous, has an officially atheist government, and who’s main “religions” like Buddhism, Taoism, and Confucianism are really nothing more than godless philosiphies would have a pretty high rate of atheism? What about Vietnam, which has an atheist government and more than 80% of the population is non-religious, what about the Koreas, two extremely secular places…
Concerning China and North Korea, the author claims:
If he’s wrong, and if there are reliable stats and sources for counter-claims, obviously I would find those interesting. And the comments on China (i.e., unreliability) are applied to stats about North Korea.
Concerning Vietnam, the author writes:
…Buddhism, Daoism, and Confucianism are basically godless philosophies and are arguably atheistic, despite the fact that Western monotheistic believers like to describe them as ‘religions’, it is inaccurate to do so.
I’m not exactly sure what to do with this — i.e., I don’t think the author would deny that they are arguably atheistic, but I’m not sure how that relates to the data, or how such data is obtained. That is, finding out beliefs is difficult enough as it is — and maybe he was just looking for a survey-type of search (or maybe that was just assumed). But I could see this as a shot against him, no doubt.
In short, I’ve read too many so-called ‘academic works’ in my time that were simply unsupportable by the facts, and I am beginning to wonder if this work is just another one of those where the conclusions represent little more than the wishful thinking and prejudices of the authors.
Do I think stats like these are suspect? Well, in one sense, sure, since the variables for stuff like this are incredibly complicated.
Do I think they’re highly suspect? I’m not sure. Maybe we should just reject all studies like this, since none of them have any merit. I don’t know.
In the end, though, I think the studies (even with their inaccuracies) are trying to counter claims made by theists, i.e., that theism “makes things better overall,” etc. At least in the sense of showing that those studies aren’t what they seem to be, these studies just might work.
17 November 2006, on 4:52 pm
Raindogzilla said:
I agree with you, the only thing we have in common is that we do not believe in a supernatural object called god or gods, that’s why I think this book is just another piece of academic wallpaper that’s not worth the waste of the trees that it’s printed on.
Quite frankly, much of the crap that’s published outwith the hard sciences or mathematics is just a crock of shit written by guys whose main motivation is to keep their publication requirement (and continued hopes of promotion, or employment tenure)up to scratch.
However, what I find really disturbing in the so-called ’social sciences’or ‘humaities’ is that much of this verbiage is passed off as groundbreaking and its authors claimed to be ‘authorities’ on the strength of it or similar vacuous unsubstantiatable waffle.
If I want to read nonsense, I can simply confine myself to the so-called ‘holy books’ of the worlds monotheistic religions or the apologias for them written by their respective theologians. What I don’t need is some execrable piece of ‘research’ making a case for atheism that even an intellectually challenged ‘fundie’ could blow holes in without taxing their intellect.
Incidentally, there is a great deal of hard evidence to suggest that the following claim which is quoted from the book is untenable, intrinsically and extrinsically, viz: “Between 500 and 750 million humans do not believe in God. Such figures render any suggestion that theism is innate or neurologiaclly based is untenable.” Clearly these guys never heard of the work of Micheal Persinger and others, and such a statement indicates only that their reading, in a number of subjects, is not up to snuff!
And I don’t give a damn about their academic credentials; valid logic and evidence are what matters!
17 November 2006, on 5:14 pm
Hi Revenant, re your comment no. 10 (forgive me not trying to quote bits here).
The law of karma is really just that, nothing happens without prior cause. Whilst it may be used as a reason for living one’s life by ‘doing no harm’ it is not some cosmic force waiting to zap those who do. Gautama was quite clear in his instructions on how to obtain enlightenment or buddhahood, namely the Four Noble Truths (of which Dukkha - often translated as suffering - was the main human condition), and the Eightfold Path which was the way to achieve freedom from Dukkha. Essentially this involved lining as decent a life as one could with regard to the physical world around one and all the things (animals, plants, people) that inhabited it. The law of karma recognised that nothing happens as a prior cause, but that it is impossible to name what that prior cause is, simply because one cannot regress enough (the metaphysics of Nagarjuna go into this in greater depth, but essentially what they are saying is that before the Big Bang there was something else, and before that something else, something else again, ad infinitum; the image is that of the wheel, complete in itself with no beginning or end), but Gautama exhorted people to live a decent life for their own sakes and to set themselves free from Dukkha.
Furthermore, Gautama made it absolutely clear that the cosmos didn’t give a gnat’s fart about you, the individual; you simply came from the void and would return there - the void being a metaphor for ‘there is no reason for your existence per se’ - and both Daoism and Ch’an/Zen acknowledge this too.
In other words, whether you live a shit life or a good life, the end is the same for you, but as a moral man Gautama believed that it was better to live as decently as humanly possible and exhorted others to do the same, for their own sake and also for others.
17 November 2006, on 5:21 pm
Bob,
Read what you say, and empathise with your position, however you conclude:
I just cannot accept that, I’m afraid. I expect rigorous intellectual honesty and substantive statistical/emprical evidence in academic papers - sadly so frequently missing.
Whilst I have some sympathy with your conclusion, I cannot accept that some third-rate ‘research’ is either acceptable or justifiable, since all it does is enable theists and their apologists to demolish it with simplex arguments that culminate in making their feeeble case for theism look, to the ignorant or non-discerning, even more plausible.
17 November 2006, on 5:30 pm
Old Git: “Quite frankly, much of the crap that’s published outwith the hard sciences or mathematics is just a crock of shit written by guys whose main motivation is to keep their publication requirement (and continued hopes of promotion, or employment tenure)up to scratch.”
In my capacity as a linguist involved in the study of the evolutionary origins of language, I’d like to register my extreme protest. Not *ALL* of it is “a crock of shit”; just 75% of it and anything with the name “steven Pinker” attached to it.
Thank you.
17 November 2006, on 5:31 pm
The Old Git wrote:
Which is the only way to go, obviously.
I still don’t buy the concept of karma, or else I’m just not grasping your explanation. To me, as I explained my understanding of it, it’s too much like gawd. And of course, I don’t see it happening.
17 November 2006, on 5:37 pm
BTW, people, I am not proselytising on behalf of Ch’an/Zen Buddhism - it’s a crock of shit, as the Master said!
17 November 2006, on 5:56 pm
Revenant,
Apologies for my feeble explanation.
Apply lighted match to kindling wood a fire starts; that is karma.
There is no god or supernatural force involved.
Be nasty to others in your life, and you simply fill your life with meanness and nastiness. Furthermore, being nasty to others encourages them to be nasty to you. That is karma, but nothing supernatural.
Repeat, there is no god or supernatural force involved.
Treat your pet dog badly and one day it will bite you. That is karma.
There is no god or supernatural force involved.
Conclusion: there is no god, no supernatural forces, no heaven above, no hell below (where do you think John Lennon got those words?).
If you liken the law of karma to god, or gawd, then you fall into the theist’s argument that ‘you cannnot be moral, good, ethical etc’., unless there is some divine supernatural bogey-man threatening punishment; not true, and completely contrary to Gautama’s teaching - or any mainstream Buddhist philosophy since!
To explain in more detail would require explaining what Gautama meant by the Four Noble Truths, and this is not the forum for that. Suffice to say that Gautama believed that human suffering was caused by human activity alone, and that hurting others hurt oneself, which was sufficient reason for not doing that. It has nothing, repeat nothing, to do with god or other supernatural cosmic forces! However, any modern psychiatrist/psychologist will confirm Gautama’s beliefs in this respect, as will any scientist confirm that nothing happens without a prior cause, karma, in effect.
17 November 2006, on 6:27 pm
Thank you for the explanation, brief as it may be, of the basics of Buddhism, Old Git; eastern philosophy is an area with which I’m barely familiar, so almost everything about it is new to me, anyway.
I lean with you in the direction of being scrupulously detailed and specific, and rigorously scientific in any non-fictional study or scholarly work. Anything other than that can only work against the writers’ aims, lofty or not.
17 November 2006, on 6:39 pm
Incidentally, Revenant, “conscience” and “guilt” (comment No 10) are words which are meaningless in Buddhist philosophy since they only exist in the false discriminatory world which to Buddhists is entirely illusory and irrelevant. Enlightenment is that realisation and complete freedom from such constraints.
17 November 2006, on 6:51 pm
Thanks for your kind word, Eve.
17 November 2006, on 6:52 pm
Words, not word, sorry!
17 November 2006, on 7:16 pm
Old Git,
Okay, after checking a host of dictionaries on-line and leaving my Merriam-Webster behind, it appears the definition of religion is generally accepted to include god or some other supernatural being. So Buddhism is a belief system more appropriately defined as philosophy.
It appears you have a good background in the philosophy of Buddhism, so I will pick your brain if you don’t mind. What scientific evidence did Gautama put forth to substantiate his beliefs and teachings? How did the evidence stand up to review by other scientists?
17 November 2006, on 8:14 pm
Lynda,
I did not speak to put you down in any way, and I hoped that my comments came across as respectful - forgive me if they did not.
What scientific evidence does a modern day sociologist, anthropologist, ethnographer etc.,put forward to substantiate their claims?
Nothing much more than human observation and reflection.
Admittedly there is often a reliance on some statistics, but the methodology of obtaining them and the conclusions drawn from them are frequently dubious if not downright unsustainable.
Gautama spent years studying and reflecting before he set out teaching.
Having said that, I am neither an explainer nor an apologist for him. The fact of the matter is that he maintained that nothing happens without a cause, and that there is no ‘first-cause’; no scholar or knowledgeable person would doubt this, and neither does any scientist.
The earliest recorded words of Gautama are the original Pali texts, and the most accessible translation of them - and most accurate too - is by Walpole Sri Rahula in his book ‘What Buddha Taught’, which was first published in the 1950s but is still available I believe.
When Buddha’s teaching were taken to China they were melded with the native philosophy of Daoism to become Ch’an Buddism. Subsequently this was taken to Japan, where it was again adapted and became known as Zen.
It was the great Ch’an/Zen Master Yun men (Jap: Ummon) whom I paraphrased when I described Buddhism as a crock of shit!
There are many works on Zen available to Western readers, but a good introduction is Alan Watt’s perennial classic ‘The Way of Zen’.
In conclusion, neither Zen nor I have anything to teach you.
As Lao Tzu said in the ‘Tao Te Ching’: “He who speaks does not know; He who knows does not speak!”
17 November 2006, on 9:55 pm
I just cannot accept that, I’m afraid. I expect rigorous intellectual honesty and substantive statistical/emprical evidence in academic papers - sadly so frequently missing.
Yes, maybe you’re right. I guess my problem with all this is that I’m going back and forth between two attitudes.
First, there’s the attitude that one can do research on this kind of stuff, it’s just that this particular study sucks. (I don’t know if you’ve read the entire entry, or if you have the book, or if it matters.) The second is that you just can’t do research on this kind of stuff, because the type of rigor that’s involved is just way too beyond the subject matter and the variables involved. (You know, sort of like Aristotle on ethics.)
With your later comments, such as…
What scientific evidence does a modern day sociologist, anthropologist, ethnographer etc.,put forward to substantiate their claims?
Nothing much more than human observation and reflection.
Admittedly there is often a reliance on some statistics, but the methodology of obtaining them and the conclusions drawn from them are frequently dubious if not downright unsustainable.
…I’m wondering on which side of the fence you find yourself. It seems you’d reject just about any study of this type, since it wouldn’t reach the level of rigor you’d require. But would any study of this type (with these variables) satisfy your demand — i.e., could you provide an example of a good study in this sense?
17 November 2006, on 10:04 pm
Thanks, Old Git. Please don’t worry that I might have been offended by your correction. I have found throughout my life that I learn more from correction than from “getting it right”.(Whatever “right” is.) I recognize that I possess but a thimble-full of knowledge.
I did a little investigation while I was awaiting your response and came across this from
http://www.friesian.com:
“The Buddha himself probably would have been irritated with the doctrines that created these difficulties, since he rejected theorizing (it did not “tend to edification”), and he would have expected no less than that such theories would lead to tangled and merely theoretical disputes.”
This suggests Gautama would have no interest in the activities of science. Science is full of theorizing leading to experiment leading to evidence leading back to theorizing. So I gather I asked a silly question.
17 November 2006, on 10:09 pm
Sorry, the quote ends at “disputes”. Forgot to end the italics.
17 November 2006, on 10:50 pm
Sorry, the quote ends at “disputes”. Forgot to end the italics.
Hey, Lynda…
Fixed it…
Go Canada…
18 November 2006, on 4:23 am
Lynda,
The only silly question is the one that isn’t asked. Socrates used the questioning technique to great effect, after all.
As you correctly say, Gautama was more interested in addressing the human condition directly and he developed a successful method for doing so, but the later Chinese and Japanese Masters built on his legacy, as it were, and distilled Buddhism into its very essence. However, none of them, and no practitioner is really interested in explaining or theorising about it, since it is up to the individual to experience the truth directly, and for themselves.
As the saying has it: do not confuse the pointing finger for the moon.
But it wasn’t a silly question!
18 November 2006, on 5:02 am
Bob said:
It’s not that I reject,per se, most studies of this type, Bob, but I’ve seen so many that appear initially to be sound but, for example, when one investigates the questions asked they are so loaded or imprecise that any responses are almost guaranteed to be skewed. Either that, or the sample population was so small that the conclusions draw from it were unlikely to be applicable to a larger population (an example of the former is the ‘world-leading research’ from the Cambridge Institute of Penology as to why people commit crime - it addressed itself to 400 convicted criminals and suggested to them that it was poor parental upbringing that caused their subsequent criminality and almost to a man they agreed; then presented as ‘proof’ that it is nurture which causes crime! Or the ‘rigorous’ research into the nurture/nature debate by Christiansen who studied zygotic and monozygotic twins before producing his paper - there were only 9 sets of twins studied in total, but on that basis he made definite claims which were allegedly applicable to the rest of us!)
But then there’s the other side of the coin, the meticulously accurate papers by Professors of Finance which prove definitively that if, say, one purchased stock with the letter ‘Q’ in their name, but only on a Tuesday in March, one’s portfolio would have outperformed the Dow-Jones by 324 basis points! Completely worthless, though strictly accurate in so far as ‘back-mining’ allows one to be (and happily ignoring transaction costs!).
In short, I think that the motives of the researchers often have to be taken into consideration when addressing their findings, since frequently, it seems to me, that they allow these to influence their methodology and conclusions drawn from it. And apart from the influences which are peculiar to the researchers per se, there are often other factors at work, such as the requirement to publish ‘x’ number of papers per annum in order to retain one’s tenure etc. All too frequently this results in poor quality work, but which on face value seems credible.
You ask me if I can provide any good examples, but I’m afraid not - I have been retired for some 30 years and rarely do any reading nowadays.
18 November 2006, on 2:28 pm
Thanks, Bob, for being so helpful! Isn’t is amazing how helpful atheists are? And you don’t even have a gawd hanging over your shoulder telling you to be that way. That’s what I love about atheists!
18 November 2006, on 2:34 pm
This is an interesting statement you make, Old Git:“since it is up to the individual to experience the truth directly, and for themselves.”
I’m thinking about all those folks who are mentally ill (as previously discussed) and their inability to experience truth directly for themselves. What does Buddhism teach about mental illness? Or maybe it doesn’t believe such a thing exists?
18 November 2006, on 3:10 pm
Lynda,
Buddhism teaches nothing about mental illness per se and is completely silent of the subject, however, there are a number of psychotherapists who use Buddha’s insights into the human condition as an aid to helping their patients come to terms with the real world - some of them have even written books on the subject, and a Google search should provide you with some titles to investigate.
19 November 2006, on 8:49 pm
The Old Git wrote:
Lol, I’m sure it’s my understanding which is feeble, and not your explanation.
I understand now. So it’s not what the current pop culture likes to call “karma”, where if you mistreat your dog, some OTHER dog will attack you, or you’ll get hit by a bus because of it.
I also understand there is no such thing as good or bad karma, just karma.
20 November 2006, on 2:55 pm
Revenant,
You ‘got it’; well done!
20 November 2006, on 3:19 pm
Thanks TOG! I guess now it’s time to grab my robes, and goat, and find that cave in the mountainside. Oh, and I need my laptop, and sprite, and….
20 November 2006, on 4:36 pm
See you there, Master!
21 November 2006, on 7:07 pm
The thing is, if you dont count forced atheism and shaky atheism figures, then why do you count people living in countries that sponsor and force Islam on their people as Muslims? I’m sure that not 100% of the people in say, Afghanistan are Muslims, but that’s what they would tell you.