Which experience has taught us to be true,… but that’s not your point is it?
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“Welcome to Olympus Captain James T. Kirk”
Experience has taught me the difference between evidence, anecdote and emotion. When someone makes the claim that they have evidence, but that are not going to show it to me, my first instinct is to believe that what they have is the the last two and not the first one.
right. Mine too.
Exactly this.
Good point, and I think there is nothing particularly wrong with having anecdote/emotion (both completely human and universal phenomenon) as long as we recognize they aren’t the same thing as evidence. Some people, when told they lack evidence, might take that as a personal insult when it’s just a fact. Others are more comfortable with not having all the facts all the time and just trusting their judgment for what works in their own life.
So athiests don’t generally have problem with mystical thinking as long as there isn’t a “God” involved? Its OK to think that there is a life force that survives death, that might not retain its identity but is recycled kind of like drops of an ocean form parts of one wave after another without any memory of the wave it was part of just moments ago but retaining some inertia (karma) from the wave it had just been a part of? I dunno much about I know a lot of Zen Buddhists and they definitely believe in something that I think athiests would have some trouble buying.
You have a point. Nonetheless I maintain that the tone of the atheist/theist debate here has shifted over time.
No, false. Your original characterization (nothing but praise is acceptable) properly applies to the mainstream electronic media, but not this board.
Well, this is quibbling, but I’ll stand by “Weak” and raise you a “Voluminous”. There are plenty of examples of this quality of evidence at the FSM website. Plus there’s tradition, another form of evidence considered weak by scientists.
This point deserves emphasis. The board establishes certain ground rules. The community that grows up around it will be shaped by both the strength of the underlying arguments and path dependency: those of similar persuasions attract others with similar temperaments.
That said, this a generalist board and not a specialist one. So highly technical argumentation is necessarily filtered out, whether it involve equations, statistics, the jargon of literary criticism, or foreign language. It’s conceivable that this sort of bias could play a role. That’s speculation by the way, not complaint.
Well, historically Buddhists believed in both gods and reincarnation. I agree that the core of Buddhist philosophy remains intact after the supernatural is stripped from it (though the doctrine of karma requires some commentary). But I never quite worked out how to think about the Buddhist religion per se.
I honestly don’t think it’s really a religion – at least, the Four Noble Truths and Eightfold Path are not. It does, and always has incorporated preexisting religious traditions (including the Hinduism from whence it arose), and one of the reasons that it was able to spread and survive was because it can cooexist with other traditions, but none of those beliefs are necessary.
Even the gods that get incorporated into Buddhism are not worshipped the same way as western gods, or even Hindu gods. They are seen (in the traditions which have them) as higher beings, even as beings which have power or can grant favors, but they are not seen as creators or authorities. They are more like angels, or the saints in Catholic tradition. They can help you, but they’re not in charge.
…and furthermore their exalted status is impermanent.
Ok, but the karma framework loses a lot of its force without reincarnation. Common sense says that habit formation can be pretty powerful and if you treat people unkindly, you won’t make friends. But common sense also says that not all wrongdoing will be punished, alas. The supernatural aspect negates this last bit of awkwardness, since the law of karma extends into the afterlife.
My understanding is that most native Asian Buddhists believe in a fair amount of the supernatural or legendary stuff. Buddhist monks really are angling for a better rebirth. That said, I agree that the core aspects of Buddhism are more philosophical than faith-based, but that’s MHO. At any rate, there are a fair number of westerners who practice Buddhism while treating some of the Bodhisattva stories as imaginative fiction.
In the same way one could practice the teachings of Jesus as a philosophical approach to life, one can practice Buddhism in a similar manner. How individuals view it is another matter.
This has got to be the mis-paraphrase of the century. Where did you get that from what I stated?
Did you mean to quote someone else?
I don’t understand why people have such a problem with the concept that atheism simply means not believing in any god, and does not preclude believing in some other damn stupid thing. It is nice if this lack of belief is motivated by logic, but it doesn’t have to be.
No one gets or loses any power or money by including or excluding people from atheism. No one has co-marketing deals with either astrology magazines or skeptic magazines. No one gets promoted for bringing new atheists into the flock. No one gets kickbacks from builders for new atheist temples. No one is saying that something horrible will happen to those who disbelieve in a way different from the way they do.
It is not a religion, folks.
I totally agree.
I have, however, had people on other forums insist that atheism is a religion and I haven’t been able to convince them otherwise.
I quit arguing after awhile.
tradition as evidence is considered nonexistent by scientists, as least when they’re doing their jobs right.
I can understand the initial mistake to catagorize it in your mind as another religion but once it’s been explained why insist it is so.
It’s one component of a belief system just as basic god belief is. Basic god belief is not a religion.
The phrase that’s been floated a million times still holds true: Atheism is a religion the way that ***not ***collecting stamps is a hobby.
People who only have basic god belief are scarcer than hen’s teeth, though - most of them also have some collection of beliefs about what their god is. (And isn’t. That toaster there? Not my god.) Which is to say, their collection of beliefs about god alone are arguably numerous and/or complex enough to constitute a ‘belief system’, in a way that is not the case for atheistic belief.
Of course, whether the theist’s system of beliefs about their god counts as a religion sort of depends on how you define “religion”.
It’s a little different actually as Buddha made proportionately few supernatural claims, in contrast to Jesus of Nazarath as portrayed in the gospels.
The key teachings of Hinayana Buddhism are indeed the 4 noble truths and the eightfold path. The core aspect of Christianity is the crucifixion. Buddhism is less dependent upon supernatural claims than Christianity is: your parallel is somewhat misleading. All religions are not the same.
Agreed. And Occam’s razor is held in esteem by scientists, despite its philosophical wooliness. Science excels in constructing a reliable edifice of knowledge: one of its virtues is its embrace of provisional truths. Whether that methodology is ideal when discussing metaphysics is another matter.
You’re painting Atheism with too broad of a brush. Atheism is simply the absence of belief in God. It doesn’t necessarily mean an absence of belief in the supernatural.
Have any Buddhists on this board positively asserted that Karma was true? Maybe the Straight Dope Buddhists are wise enough not to try, thus they don’t get any flak about it. 
For what it’s worth, all I will say on the matter is that it intuitively feels right to me, and if it’s true it’s an elegant way for the universe to be. But my Zen practice focuses on my present life, right here and now, so it’s not an issue I feel strongly enough about to argue for.
If we set aside the issue of Karma, our bodies are filled with atoms that were once part of dinosaurs, other people, other animals, etc in prior lives. The atoms that are in you now will inevitably go on to become part of other people in the future. So the ocean analogy is a pretty good one.