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Buddhism

vitorriq said:
It may even be difficult to find, because it is Buddhist matters that I modeled in my words. It may even be wrong and even incomplete but by the vague ideas of Buddhism this is how it seems
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In order to refute the errors of Buddhism, I think you need to understand what Buddhism is. The "difficult to find" parts are not the important parts, and might not even be parts at all.
 
Buddha avoided discussions about religion and God. His teachings were about a way of life. The Buddhist religion borrowed from Hinduism, and morphed as it spread, to blend in more with local beliefs.

http://www.letusreason.org/Buddh1.htm

Generally Buddhism does not believe in a personal God or a divine being, it does not have worship, praying to, or praising of a divine being (although some sects do.) It offers no form of redemption, forgiveness, no heavenly hope, or a final judgment to those practicing its system.

Buddhism is a moral philosophy, an ethical way to live for the here and now of this world to gain the ultimate state. It has more in common with humanism and atheism than its original religion Hinduism it separated from.

But Buddhism is not atheism just because they don’t believe in a personal God. It is more like pantheism, there is a impersonal force the void which is the ultimate.
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And the Dalai Lama is a self-serving politician who markets himself as some high holy man. Read Stephen Bachelor.
 
Hokulele said:
Well, you can't really include Taoism in Buddhism. They are completely separate religions with separate origins. It would be like including the Mac OS in a discussion of the faults of Linux. ;)
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I tend to agree. Their basic premise of what comprises the Universe has similarities.

BBC Religion
The Tao is not God and is not worshipped. Taoism does include many deities, but although these are worshipped in Taoist temples, they are part of the universe and depend, like everything, on the Tao.
The Tao includes several concepts in one word:
- the source of creation
- the ultimate
- the inexpressible and indefinable
- the unnameable
- the natural universe as a whole
- the way of nature as a whole
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Wiki- Brahman
In Hinduism, Brahman connotes the highest Universal Principle, the Ultimate Reality in the universe. In major schools of Hindu philosophy, it is the material, efficient, formal and final cause of all that exists. It is the pervasive, genderless, infinite, eternal truth and bliss which does not change, yet is the cause of all changes. Brahman as a metaphysical concept is the single binding unity behind the diversity in all that exists in the universe.
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I think they are on to something. Except I think the Tao and Brahman are a super intelligence, and we are but a dream of the entity.
 
vitorriq said:
Yes, there may even be a wide variety of branches of Buddhism but all share a basis.

In fact, Buddhism in its essence can even be atheistic but not scientific at all. The ideas are purely philosophical and idealistic, practically meaningless and developed in an era that obviously lived was suffering
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Buddhism is much closer to atheism than it is to theism. In the vast majority of variations and branches of Buddhism, there is no Universal Creator God... in fact, no God at all

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― The Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

You won't hear the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or any other leading God botherers making such statements any time soon

I am not a spiritual person, but if I were, I think Buddhism is probably what I would gravitate towards.
 
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PartSkeptic said:
I tend to agree. Their basic premise of what comprises the Universe has similarities.
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You are relying on a subjective interpretation of a translation, not the original source material. I would say their basic premises are wildly conflicting, but as always, I strongly suggest people read their core canon themselves before speculating as to what it all means.

In Taoism, gods are kind of there, but not very important, and have very little to do with day-to-day life. In Hinduism, gods are central to what happens to people, and are highly influential.

Personally, I believe that the one common principle all religions share boils down to this: Life isn't fair, but if I follow some magic recipe (prayer, for example), I can make it be fair, dammit!

Where they differ is in what magic recipe should be followed.
 
vitorriq said:
Hi everyone, my second post here.

I would like to open a new discussion, this time, as there are not many skeptical discussions debunking Buddhism, I would like to talk about it:
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Hello Searcg for the user Yrreg, you find plenty
:)
1- Buddhism has an idealistic psychology too. In which you blame the suffering of the person in the present for errors of the past (Karma)
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yes and no buddhism is syncreatic and adopted many strange beliefs not found in the Pali canon.

Kamma is more like the consequences of choices. There are many strains, types and versions of buddhism as well.
2- Buddhism has irrational and banal ideas: If the "I" is an illusion, what reincarnates? The Karma.
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this is one of the places where the mahayana traditions vary from the teachings of the alleged historic buddha.

Anatta, means 'no soul' no atman and therefore no reincarnation.

More later...
3- Buddhism has very dualistic concepts: All pleasure and attachment is the source of suffering, so is suffering

4- Buddhism may even be right about some types of suffering, but it generalizes ALL forms of suffering caused by attachment and pleasure. Yet it says that life is suffering and death is suffering.

5- Buddhism uses very vague and groundless concepts in reality:
One test would be the five aggregates and their erroneous statements

6- Buddhism says that we only suffer because we have attachment to the world and the body, we should not hold on.

7-And yet the complete distrust and hatred before the human mind, even if it is not completely reliable, it has always been useful to us

8- And to conclude, the statement that our world is an illusion, the fruit of our ignorance

I have a little difficulty debunking some of these concepts, can you help me?
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smartcooky said:
Buddhism is much closer to atheism than it is to theism. In the vast majority of variations and branches of Buddhism, there is no Universal Creator God... in fact, no God at all

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― The Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

You won't hear the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or any other leading God botherers making such statements any time soon

I am not a spiritual person, but if I were, I think Buddhism is probably what I would gravitate towards.
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You reinforce my statement that the Dalai Lama blows with the political winds. He talks double speak in cutesy pidgin English.

Buddhism is closer to folk religion and pagan religion, and therefore further from atheism than Christianity.

The teachings of Buddha were not religious - the Buddhist religion only incorporates some of the teachings. Otherwise it is Hindu and local beliefs.

And what about all the shrines, the gods, the spirits that they worship and pray to for good luck? The Tibetan prayer wheels. You know not what you speak of when you think they are "spiritual". Go to Thailand and see the Buddhists there. They have little morality. They sell sex and their children. It strikes me as a dog-eat-dog society.

The Buddhists at the Tiger Temple were abusing the animals and breaking the laws. They have sour-looking monks drive around "blessing" people by spraying "holy water" on them with a whisk.

As in all societies, probably 80% are good folk by nature, and the 10% at the top and the 10% at the bottom are rotten.

From BBC on religion
Taoism is often taught in the West as an atheist or agnostic philosophy, but in China and Taiwan particularly, Taoism still functions like any conventional religion, and not like an abstract philosophy of life.
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The same is true the West's concept of Buddhism which ignores the many Gods and prayer rituals.
 
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Hokulele said:
You are relying on a subjective interpretation of a translation, not the original source material. I would say their basic premises are wildly conflicting, but as always, I strongly suggest people read their core canon themselves before speculating as to what it all means.

Snip
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So tell me where my research is wrong. It seems Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism believe that the underlying truth of the Universe it that it is unthinking "Spirit". Yes? No?

Their core canon? The Hindu (and by reference Buddhist) and Taoist religions are a collection of writings of various anonymous authors over centuries. Not only that, they wrote in a mysterious fashion about something they could only get spiritual help for in the way of intuitions and visions. Like the authors of the Bible, they are not free of error and contradiction.

I went to a talk by a Verdanta "guru". Double speak to seem mysterious and wise. Basically "It is, but it is not". Nonsense. "What is the sound of one hand clapping."

He could answer none of my questions plainly.
Example. "Do you believe in God?"
Answer. "God is what you believe him to be."
Wow. A deep meaningful side-step.

A number of the early Western gurus used Buddhism to get young impressionable girls in the sack. Read Stephen Bachelor.

I have stayed at a South African Buddhist retreat run by a married couple where the focus was on meditation and living right rather than the prayer and Gods part. Nice.
 
Meadmaker said:
Welcome to the forum.

"Buddhism" covers an awful lot of ground. Some of what you debunk about Buddhism only applies to some sects of Buddhism, while others apply to common folk beliefs of Buddhists in southeast Asia, but are not actually teachings of the Buddha.

For example, I fully agree that the denial of the self invalidates the concept of reincarnation. In fact, I think the Buddha said the same thing. Nevertheless, the Tibetans are very much into reincarnation. Other Buddhist sects, not as much, but individual Buddhists may be firmly convinced of the reality of reincarnation, as popularly perecieved and as taught by Hindus.

At its core, Buddhism can be quite rational and completely compatible with atheism and with a scientific worldview. The beliefs of individual Buddhists, and some sects of Buddhists, are not nearly so rational.
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Agree with most of your post but what have you identified as the "core"?
 
Dancing David said:
More words mean less, the tao is inexpressible
:)
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Try harder. Use analogies if you wish. We are talking about a thing, an entity, something that exists, and that some humans have experienced else they could not write about it.

You sound like a cosmologist saying "The time before time came into being at t=0".
 
smartcooky said:
Buddhism is much closer to atheism than it is to theism. In the vast majority of variations and branches of Buddhism, there is no Universal Creator God... in fact, no God at all

“If scientific analysis were conclusively to demonstrate certain claims in Buddhism to be false, then we must accept the findings of science and abandon those claims.”
― The Dalai Lama XIV, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality.

You won't hear the Pope or the Archbishop of Canterbury or any other leading God botherers making such statements any time soon

I am not a spiritual person, but if I were, I think Buddhism is probably what I would gravitate towards.
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Popes have been saying that for quite some time, as have Archbishops of Canterbury.

Plus of course he obviously doesn't actually believe that - else he would have to repudiate the basis of his position.
 
Hokulele said:
...snip...

Personally, I believe that the one common principle all religions share boils down to this: Life isn't fair, but if I follow some magic recipe (prayer, for example), I can make it be fair, dammit!

Where they differ is in what magic recipe should be followed.
Click to expand...

I would say it is more that "Life isn't fair, but if we add in something else we can make it seem fair".
 
PartSkeptic said:
So tell me where my research is wrong. It seems Buddhism, Hinduism and Taoism believe that the underlying truth of the Universe it that it is unthinking "Spirit". Yes? No?
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No.

Their core canon? The Hindu (and by reference Buddhist) and Taoist religions are a collection of writings of various anonymous authors over centuries. Not only that, they wrote in a mysterious fashion about something they could only get spiritual help for in the way of intuitions and visions. Like the authors of the Bible, they are not free of error and contradiction.
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Good grief, no. Lao Tsu was most certainly not an anonymous author, and, although most self-proclaimed mystics like to gloss over the fact, the Tao de Ching contains a good amount of practical advice. Taoism was a deliberate and measured reaction to Confucianism, much more than it was some sort of codification of folk religions.

Again, have you read the Bhagavad Gita? The Pali Canon? The Tao de Ching?

I went to a talk by a Verdanta "guru". Double speak to seem mysterious and wise. Basically "It is, but it is not". Nonsense. "What is the sound of one hand clapping."

He could answer none of my questions plainly.
Example. "Do you believe in God?"
Answer. "God is what you believe him to be."
Wow. A deep meaningful side-step.

A number of the early Western gurus used Buddhism to get young impressionable girls in the sack. Read Stephen Bachelor.

I have stayed at a South African Buddhist retreat run by a married couple where the focus was on meditation and living right rather than the prayer and Gods part. Nice.
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All religion have their idiotic gurus, and all religions have people who abuse them for money, political power, or getting girls/boys/barnyard animals in the sack.

And honestly, most woos do their best to avoid giving concrete answers to questions about their beliefs. They like to make up answers, and never seem to be able to support them with anything other than waffle, bluster, or mere assertion. "It is because I say so!" isn't restricted to Buddhism by any means.
 
Darat said:
Agree with most of your post but what have you identified as the "core"?
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I would say that the "core" of Buddhism is what is embodied in the Four Noble Truths.

i.e. that there is no way to avoid sickness, old age, and death, along with other varieties of bad things that can happen, but that you can learn to deal with it and be happy anyway.
 
The Great Zaganza said:
Not sure what you think there is to "debunk".
It's a philosophy, not a scientific theory.

The easiest approach to show how dangerous Buddhism is would be to look at it the way a Kantian would.
If everyone came to accept the teachings of Buddhism, innovation would cease, political systems would no longer change, people would no longer plan for the future and sooner rather than later catastrophes would destroy most civilizations.
But at least no one would get upset about it.
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I like that last bit! :D :D
 
Hokulele said:
No.

Good grief, no. Lao Tsu was most certainly not an anonymous author, and, although most self-proclaimed mystics like to gloss over the fact, the Tao de Ching contains a good amount of practical advice. Taoism was a deliberate and measured reaction to Confucianism, much more than it was some sort of codification of folk religions.

Again, have you read the Bhagavad Gita? The Pali Canon? The Tao de Ching?

All religion have their idiotic gurus, and all religions have people who abuse them for money, political power, or getting girls/boys/barnyard animals in the sack.

And honestly, most woos do their best to avoid giving concrete answers to questions about their beliefs. They like to make up answers, and never seem to be able to support them with anything other than waffle, bluster, or mere assertion. "It is because I say so!" isn't restricted to Buddhism by any means.
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At least we are on the same page with many of your comments.

Let us stick with Hinduism since it underpins Buddhism. (Or do you disagree with this statement?)

Is Brahman the Ultimate Reality?
Is Brahman the Supreme Consciousness?
Is Brahman the Universal Spirit?
Is Brahman the Creator?
Is Brahman all of the above?

Is Brahman intelligent (can think, reason and remember?)
Is Brahman "God"? (anthropomorphic entity)

I thought the Vedas were the basic religious texts and the Gita an inspirational story?
 
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