Buddhism and Atheism
4th July 2013
Is Buddhism a form of Atheism?
In this video I refer to texts you can find at http://www.accesstoinsight.org/ – you may want to look at the passage where Brahma asserts he is the supreme God, but.. http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/dn/dn.11.0.than.html#bigbrahma
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Staff from the Religion, Philosophy & Ethics course at University of Gloucestershire talking about Philosophy of Religion..
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Interesting. I’ve always liked Buddhism’s emphasis on practice over theory. “Don’t worry about what you do or don’t believe – try living in this way and see what you get from it”. And that seems to extend to the gods mentioned in various traditions; you can believe in them literally, metaphorically or not at all just so long as it doesn’t prevent you from undertaking the activity of being a Buddhist.
In past ages that emphasis was also to be found in Christianity but at least since the Renaissance it has more and more become a checklist of propositions to which one has to assent in order to be included within the faith. That, it seems to me, has turned out to be a huge mistake.
To put it another way: you could say that Buddhism marks the point where questions about “Theism” and “Atheism” break down – the point where it doesn’t particularly matter which side of the fence you put yourself on so long as you grasp the transcendent truths which form the heart of the faith. Again, a religion such as Christianity could learn a lot from this – and it has the resources to do so already contained within its history.