# Atheists - What drives you? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [April 29, 2013, 6:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030 "2013-04-29T18:09:43Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 82
**Author:** ![bldysabba](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ecccb3/32.png) [@bldysabba](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bldysabba)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2013, 10:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030/82 "2013-04-30T10:23:43Z")
[Brief hijack] > [@Half\_Man\_Half\_Wit](#): > > You can be a Hindu, believing in the concept of Atman, i.e. the true, unchanging self, and a Buddhist, following the doctrine of Anatman, i.e. the non-existence of a true, unchanging self, only if you don’t really know anything about either. You seem to be postulating a far wider philosophical gap between Hinduism and Buddhism than I think exists. For instance, the ‘atman’ aspect of Hinduism exists to reconcile with the ‘Brahman’. Which is to say your true unchanging self is the same as everything else(which to me really says it doesn’t exist). And there are strains of Buddhist thought that also talk about ‘atman’. On the (very slightly) broader question of whether you can be both Hindu and Buddhist at the same time…I don’t know, but I think it’s quite possible. [/Brief hijack] --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/atheists-what-drives-you/657030)._