Because religions are just stories.
And bad stories at that. I was brought up as a Buddhist, and the canon was full of old, tired tropes. Reincarnation, supernatural powers, heaven and hell, the whole gamut. The story of other religions are no different. The heroes just have different powers and the miracles come in many varieties. To be honest, I fell for the Buddhist stories until I entered university, and this fact still embarrasses me to this day.
Some would say that religious stories teach us something about the good life. But the same can be said for other kinds of stories. You can learn a lot from Aesop’s fables, Harry Potter, and the Lord of the Rings. Also, consideration of the fact that other people are conscious beings capable of feeling pleasure and pain, the same as I am, helps many decisions. I don’t need to believe in fantasy stories in order to become moral.
Believing in stories do not give my life meaning. On the contrary, religions would have us believe that the present life means less than the hereafter. But all evidence shows that the present is all we have. I find meaning in family, friends, science, music, arts, and many other human endeavors. Throwing away religion would not deprive me of anything.
Religions are stories, and they should be treated as such. So that’s why I am an atheist.
anonymous
Well put indeed.
Wait a moment, aren’t Buddhists by definition atheists because they don’t believe in gods?
Well, at least the fans of “The Lord of the Rings” don’t go around carrying signs that say “Frodo hates fags”.
@saguhh00
from my limited research on the subject Buddha was more of a stance that the determining the existence of a prime mover is unknowable and irrelevant, or at least he was skeptical that there was some ultimate-being somewhere inflicting good and bad upon people. In fact, he might have considered such speculation as a roadblock to attaining enlightenment. some versions of Buddhism definitely do have gods, or at least god-like beings, but they are portrayed as suffering in samsara just like mortals rather than being some sort of absolute power.
then there are some versions where Buddha himself is portrayed as a divine being made flesh. some of them still consider him not to be the prime mover, and others ascribe him as being transcendant in a manner very similar to the Christian God.
basically, from what i’m reading (wikipedia, so… you know), the farther away Buddhism gets from the original school of thought, the more like a prime mover/supreme being he seems to become.
I “suffered” for a long time living with the understanding that science was very capable of understanding the “great mysteries” and how they came about and understand the vast time it all stretched out to be and at the same time listening to what religion in my case christian religion told me. I would continuously try to reconcile the different views of reality. One that matched all the testing that could be devised and one I was just supposed to accept as told.
I tried all kinds of ways to make them both true. What finally began to pry the two ideas apart was an introduction to Anthropology course and the other religious stories I began to study.
It took some time to make it complete but it was the realization that they are all just stories many with less reality than The Odyssey.
I still love stories and folk tales and “ferry tales” of all kinds particularly but maybe not bible stories.
uncle frogy
Re. saguhho @2 and lylelaw @3:
I spent some time talking with the Buddhist student group at UCLA. There seemed to be two partially-overlapping sub-populations: one people who had been raised Buddhist and one people who had taken up Buddhism later in life. The one difference between these groups was that the raised-Buddhist group seemed more likely to practice Buddhism-as-religion, with supernatural aspects, and the became-Buddhist group did more Buddhism-as-philosophy (or therapy or ethics) and were likely to be close to functionally atheistic. But this is not a representative sample of Buddhism around the world.
Bhavin, do you have a sense of what fraction of the time Buddhism is practiced with a supernatural component and fraction it is not, at least in Thailand if not elsewhere?
Thailand is one of the last holdouts for Theravada Buddhism, which is the closest sect to the original teachings of the historical Buddha. As such, they have much fewer godlike beings than say Tibetan Buddhism. Still, there has been enough years to build up a nice crust of the supernatural.
The interesting thing is that if you go back to the oldest sutras, the ones that describe the actual Buddha’s teachings and those of the elder nuns and monks, Buddha starts looking almost atheistic.
Pretty much the only supernatural thing central to his teachings is the concept of reincarnation that was kept from Hinduism. But the whole point of the eightfold path is to side step reincarnation and have a nice atheistic death where when you die, that’s it, you’re dead.
As for other supernatural stuff here is what the historical Buddha had to say:
It will be interesting to see how many apologists for Bhuddhism we get as a response to this one.
From what I’ve been told by “Bhuddhists” that I know, you can be an Atheist and Bhuddsit at the same time, that it’s more of a philosophy than a religion, that it’s all about being at one with the Cosmos, etc.
This is fine, but these same people believe in reincarnation – it’s a great big deal in Bhuddhism, and when you think about it, it spins the same yarn as Western religions and the idea of Heaven – tow the line in this life and you will be rewarded in the next.
I’m sure Bhuddist thinkers, like their Christian, Jewish and Muslim counterparts, have some interesting, even wise ideas, but the central tenet of all these religions is pure speculation, and has been used over the centuries by the powerful to keep the weak and ignorant in their place.
We in the West have a very romantic idea of societies like Tibet and Nepal, but the reality for millions of people living in these places is poverty, superstition and repression.
Don’t get bamboozled by the kindly smile on the Dalai Lama’s face – just take a look at how women are treated in traditional Bhuddist societies. It’s really no different from the Pope, the Mormons or the Ayatollahs, just kinda sounds cool when you smoke a spliff or two.
The central tenets of Buddhism are the four noble truths and the eight-fold path (buddhists seem to like their numbered lists more than cracked.com)
The four noble truths:
1. Life sucks.
2. Life sucks because people want what they cannot have.
3. Life doesn’t have to suck.
4. To make life not suck, follow the eight-fold path.
The eight fold path:
1. Right View: see things for how they are not how you want them to be
2 – 6. Right Intention, Speech, Action, Livelihood, Effort: Don’t be a douche.
7. Right Mindfulness: pay attention to the here and now.
8. Right Concentration: use your brain.
Nothing outlandish or dependent on the supernatural.
Now give a movement a few thousand years to organize, and it will wind up ignoring any founding principles in lieu of collecting and maintaining power and money.
Just because some Buddhist monks are douches doesn’t mean Buddha’s advice to not be a douche is erroneous.
Oh and for the record I am not and never have been a Buddhist.
The embarrassment felt by the writer is an emotion that most afflicted jesus etc followers must be familiar with. It seems to be something that is more often expressed by people who really know it’s all nonsense, but due to cultural or family issues have chosen to follow the delusion. It is embarrassingly silly and those affected should expect to feel uncomfortable when confronted.
I get the uncomfortable feeling that when we try to view Buddhism (through the lens of what is appealing to Westerners) as a philosophy independent from superstitious & supernatural baggage, we’re likely to be committing the same mistake as the liberal theologians declaring to find benefit in a “true core” of Christianity that has in the same way been stripped back of the features which characterise it for mainstream adherents (perhaps reduced to just love-thy-neighbour/don’t-be-a-douche, dismissing heaven/reincarnation, and perhaps picking out another element to give undue prominence like anti-authority/meditation).
Christopher, I take it you are citing the parable (koan?) of the arrow to support your view that the supernatural elements are unimportant in Buddhism. However, the main message I interpret from that same story is something different: that the Buddhist should do whatever their teacher instructs and not question it. (Anathema to our approach-everything-critically.)
Actually, no. The original sutras took care of that too, in the rather famous Kalama Sutta. It is easy to find articles by modern Buddhist monks trying to somehow spin the rather clear words of the Sutta so as to make Buddha appear less of a proto-rationalist (after all, any kind of rationalism is anathema to any organized religion). One of them, Bhikku Bodhi, is quoted in the article too, trying to argue by assertion that the Sutta does not say what it clearly says. Here is the text of the Sutta:
I also think I should make my stance on this clear. I am not saying that Buddhism is or was a perfect religion. Buddha’s own teachings about nuns for example leave a lot to be desired to be for example.
But I do think we should give Siddhartha Gautama (or perhaps the original group of people who compiled the teachings in his name) credit where it is due. In the milieu of their times, these people were very progressive social reformers, arguing against such religious evils as the caste system and the expensive and often inhumane religious sacrifices prevalent in India at that time. That their descendants later fell prey to the same religious evils (for example, the rise of a caste system in Tibetan and Japanese Buddhism) is perhaps more of a historical irony than the fault of the original founders.
*ahegm*