February 2nd is Candlemas Day
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| Candlemas Pagan Origins |
This article has now been updated here
Saturday, 28 January 2012
Sunday, 22 January 2012
Creationism Crisis for Christianity = Opportunity for Buddhism?
From the rationalist's point of view, Christianity is deteriorating rapidly, with a headlong retreat into obscurantism, anti-science and general dumbing-down.
Quotes from a recent article at The Huffington Post: New Survey of Protestant Pastors Shows Rejection of Human Evolution by Brandon G. Withrow
"In a new survey of American Protestant pastors by Lifeway, 73 percent of ministers disagree with the statement "I believe God used evolution to create people." Of that large number, 64 percent strongly disagreed. As you might expect, the numbers were close to the same for the question, "I believe Adam and Eve were literal people," with 74 percent strongly agreeing and only 1 percent not sure."
"The survey of 1,000 ... also found that ministers are almost evenly split on whether the earth is thousands of years old." - In other words, 50% of pastors reject the entire science of geology, instead they believe that the earth was created according to the Biblical timescale within the last 10,000 years - a Christian doctrine known as 'Young Earth."
"Evangelicals tend to be the least likely category for embracing evolution, and here's why: The acceptance of evolution and potential rejection of Adam and Eve can require more changes than just how one reads Genesis 1; it could result in a rewriting of the idea of original sin. It can affect the evangelical narrative. Without the sinful nature acquired by a real Adam, how does one engage the problem of evil and the necessity of the work of Jesus? Does this nullify the evangelium or "good news" of the Bible?
"But is this slippery-slope warning the only way to approach the conversation? Not all are convinced that past evangelical approaches to the Bible are always the best.
"Peter Enns, author of "The Evolution of Adam: What the Bible Does and Doesn't Say about Human Origins," recently wrote on his blog that "Evolution threatens the evangelical narrative. And it's not a joke. The threat is real." [Full disclosure: I am a personal friend of Peter Enns]
"He continued: "It really does come down to the ... Bible: what is it and what does it mean to read it well? The evangelical movement has invested a lot of energy in building thick walls around the Bible, ready to defend it against challenges, real or perceived, that threaten its safety."
"Enns' solution, however, is not to flee the threat, but to learn how to write "new narratives ... where openness to theological change is warranted." Enns believes that Evangelicals need to work on, and improve upon, how they read their Bibles, not reject evolution.
"Young Earth Creationist Ken Ham sees it differently. In reacting to the survey by Lifeway on his blog at Answers in Genesis, he sees the main problem (in terms of priority) as that of an old earth instead of evolution. "For the secularists," writes Ham on his blog, "they have to have millions of years -- without this they can't postulate enough time for evolution." The slippery-slope does not start with Adam; for Ham, it starts with the geological timeline.
"Bottom line - -evolution is really not the problem as much as the age of the earth," says Ham. "Millions of years is the problem in today's world that has resulted in a loss of biblical authority in the church and culture and has led to an increasing loss of generations from the church." The belief that the world is millions of years old is, according to Ham, a "lie of Satan in this present world" that "permeates the church."
Shackled to a corpse?
This insistence on the Biblical creation myth is shackling Christianity to a corpse. The widespread anti-evolution, anti-geology, anti-rationalism attitudes within the churches will alienate an increasing number of intelligent people. The Young Earth doctrine also requires believers to reject...
Plate tectonics is the scientific study of earth movements, which proposes that the continents have not always had their present shapes and locations, but have gradually drifted over the course of millions of years. Many of these movements are still continuing. Where plates slide past one another they give rise to seismically active faults such as the San Andreas fault in California and the Great Glen of Scotland.
- Dating by radioactive decay
When the current isotopic composition and rate of decay of radioactive isotopes in rocks is extrapolated backwards, many samples appear to be hundreds of millions of years old. The fundamentalist counter-argument is that the rate of decay was much higher in the early days of the earth. However, this implies that the background radiation immediately post-creation was hundreds of thousands of times what it is now, which would be severely damaging to the reproductive abilities of all creatures. Living in the Garden of Eden would be equivalent to sitting on top of Chernobyl.
- Cosmology
Many of the galaxies in the Universe are so far away that light has taken millions of years to travel from them. But according to Genesis, God created the stars after the earth, so in theory we shouldn't be able to see them. The Fundamentalist explanation is that God has constructed a vast planetarium surrounding the solar system, from which He projects the appearance of an old universe towards us in order to tempt sinners into disbelieving the Bible.
- Genetic code
Humans and our nearest primate relatives such as chimpanzees have over 98% of the 'text' of our genetic code in common. The 'alphabet' of the code is identical. This is totally unacceptable to Christian Fundamentalists and is explained as being a lie spread by secular humanists.
A Teachable Moment for Buddhism?
As Christianity dumbs down, could Buddhism become more attractive to rational people in search of a religion? Buddhism does not rely on any particular creation myth, and is philosophically more predisposed to evolution than to creationism.
Special Creation and essentialism
Creationists believe that species are unchanging and
derive their forms by reference to a divine blueprint. Theology
has long been dominated by the ideas of the Greek philosopher
Plato, who taught that the species were invariant, deriving their
characteristics from reference to 'essences' or 'ideal forms'
which were fixed, eternal and inherently existent.
To a Creationist a rose is a rose is a rose, and would smell as sweet by any other name. There is no way a rose bush could fade into a strawberry plant, or a cherry tree, or a tangle of brambles, or a mountain ash, or a raspberry cane, or a hawthorn bush, or an apple tree. These are all totally distinct and immediately recognisable species - separate types of plant with nothing in between. Theologians base their time reckoning on the chronology of the Bible which states that the world and all its species were created in six days of a single week around 4004 BC .
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| Burnet rose |
Evolution and impermanence
Evolutionists believe that species arose by gradual change from simpler forms. Strawberry plants, cherry trees, blackberries, raspberries, hawthorns and apples all have a family likeness because they all arose from a common ancestor, which resembled a primitive rose. Hence botanists call this plant family the Rosaceae.
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| Strawberry |
Similarly,
all primates (including humans and apes) have a common ancestor.
Going back further, all species of mammals diverged from a common
ancestor, and so on into the dim and distant past until we reach
one common ancestor of all lifeforms, which originated the DNA
coding which is universal for all plants, animals, fungi and
bacteria on earth.
Consequently, to evolutionists the biological species concept does not reflect any underlying reality. A species is purely a snapshot of an interbreeding population of organisms at a particular epoch in time, and as time progresses the characteristics of that population will gradually change in response to selective pressures.
Consequently, to evolutionists the biological species concept does not reflect any underlying reality. A species is purely a snapshot of an interbreeding population of organisms at a particular epoch in time, and as time progresses the characteristics of that population will gradually change in response to selective pressures.
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| From 'Evolution' in Buddhism A to Z |
Buddhist philosophy
Buddhist philosophy is evolutionary and thus agrees with the scientists rather than the theologians. Buddha taught that all things are impermanent, constantly arising, becoming, changing and fading . Buddhist philosophers consequently rejected the Platonic idea of production from 'ideal forms' as being the fallacy of 'production from inherently existent other'.
According to most schools of Buddhism
there is nothing whatsoever that is inherently or independently existent.
The two main creationist objections to evolution are:
1 Disagreement with Genesis
2 Blurring of the theological distinction between human and animal
Neither of these pose any threat to Buddhist philosophy. The first objection is based on the need to maintain the truth of a particular creation story in order to preserve the underlying basis for all Biblical truth. This is not a worry to Buddhists because there is no corresponding Buddhist creation myth, and Buddhist philosophers have always accepted that the universe is many hundreds of millions of years old.
The second theological objection is that evolution states that there is a continuum between ape and man, i.e. human and animal.(A favourite anti-evolutionary slogan is 'Don't let them make a Monkey of You!).
The two main creationist objections to evolution are:
1 Disagreement with Genesis
2 Blurring of the theological distinction between human and animal
Neither of these pose any threat to Buddhist philosophy. The first objection is based on the need to maintain the truth of a particular creation story in order to preserve the underlying basis for all Biblical truth. This is not a worry to Buddhists because there is no corresponding Buddhist creation myth, and Buddhist philosophers have always accepted that the universe is many hundreds of millions of years old.
The second theological objection is that evolution states that there is a continuum between ape and man, i.e. human and animal.(A favourite anti-evolutionary slogan is 'Don't let them make a Monkey of You!).
This is not a problem for Buddhists, who believe that both humans and animals possess sentient minds which survive death. However, it is a major problem for theologians. The church has always
taught that only humans have immortal souls, whereas animals are
automata whose minds cease at death.
Christians believe that humans and animals were
created separately and hence are totally different types of
being. But if there was a gradual transition between animal and
man, as the evolutionists claim, then such theological beliefs fall
apart.
The theologians are left with three alternative unpalatable viewpoints:
- Both humans and animals are and always have been automata (the materialist's position).
- Both humans and animals are sentient beings whose minds survive death (the Buddhist position)
- At some arbitrary date in the past, the apemen were suddenly equipped with souls.
The undermining of the doctrine of the
distinction of human from animals is probably an even greater
threat to the theological viewpoint than doubt about the literal
truth of Genesis.
The theologians are left with three alternative unpalatable viewpoints:
- Both humans and animals are and always have been automata (the materialist's position).
- Both humans and animals are sentient beings whose minds survive death (the Buddhist position)
- At some arbitrary date in the past, the apemen were suddenly equipped with souls.
Conclusion
Buddhism could attract increasing numbers of adherents by emphasizing its compatibility with science, in contrast with the increasing irrationalism and intellectual degeneracy of both Christianity and Islam.
Read more at Buddhist Philosophy
Monday, 16 January 2012
Geek week - nurturing your inner nerd.
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| Can computer analogies help with understanding Buddhist Philosophy? |
Rational Buddhism is celebrating Geek Week, with three articles dedicated to all dharma dweebs, nerds, techies and code-freaks. The common theme is how computer analogies can be used to illustrate the more obscure aspects of Buddhist philosophy.
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| Celebrating Geek Week |
'Algorithmic compression and the three modes of existential dependence in Buddhism' (how's that for a catchy title!) looks at how the way things exist can, up to a point, be modelled by algorithms and datastructures. But the model breaks down when it comes to understanding the meaning of computer variables, and we are left to contemplate that ultimate Geek Goddess, the mysterious Mother of all Algorithms...
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| Homage to the Mother of All Algorithms |
'Mereology and Buddhism: Mereological Dependence in Buddhist Philosophy '
This article introduces the word 'Mereology', which every dweeb should use frequently to maximize geek-cred. As well as that, the article looks at how relational database concepts can more accurately reflect the 'basis of designation' than traditional western philosophical terminology. Bonus topics include isomers, enantiomers, engineering subcomponents and hierarchical bills of materials.
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| This guy's got Geek-cred |
'The dumbing down of computer literacy and decline of programming in education' examines how the removal of programming from the school curriculum in favor of the Micro Soft-option is making the traditional code-freak into an endangered geek subspecies.
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| Endangered species |
The replacement of coding skills by 'applications' such as MS Word and Excel has the knock-on effects of general dumbing down, and in particular in reducing the relevance of computer illustrations of dharma topics for the generation currently passing through college.
However the situation may change thanks to a $25 raspberry pi.
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| Contemplating interconnectedness |
- Sean Robsville
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Prayer versus meditation? They’re more alike than we realize
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| Tao Hong's Lofty Mountains and Flowing Water |
From the Vancouver Sun
'You could call it a religious war of words, with the West Coast serving as one of its most intense battlegrounds.
The bid to win hearts and minds pits Buddhist meditation against Christian prayer, with meditation, especially so-called “mindfulness,” seeming to be gaining ground.
It’s been the focus of more than 60 recent scholarly studies. It’s being embraced by hundreds of psychotherapists, who increasingly offer Buddhist mindfulness to clients dealing with depression and anxiety. It’s been on the cover of Time magazine.
Even though polls show there are 10 times more Christians in the Pacific Northwest than Buddhists, the forms of meditation associated with those on the opposite side of the Pacific Ocean are rising to the fore in North America.
Buddhist meditators, who tend to think of themselves as “spiritual but not religious,” claim what they do is not “religious.” That’s part of the appeal of mindfulness. Such meditators complain that Christian (as well as Jewish and Muslim) prayer over-emphasizes pleading with, confessing to or praising a God.
But meditation, Western Buddhists maintain, is simply a “practice.” It’s “secular,” with no traditional God, even while it may also be “spiritual.”
It turns out, however, that the gap between Buddhist meditation and Christian prayer might not be so huge. Indeed, some forms seem almost identical.
Still, the many well-educated, well-off Westerners who have been drawn to Buddhism, including famous Vancouver spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle, have scored some important points when they criticize Christian prayer for being too busy, too noisy and too focused on soliciting otherworldly aid.
Indeed, Rev. Ellen Clark-King, the archdeacon of Christ Church (Anglican) Cathedral in downtown Vancouver, is among many who acknowledge Western Buddhists may have been doing Christians an indirect favour.
She does, however, go out of her way to cite the dangers inherent in claiming one form of spiritual practice is superior. There are many paths to the holy, she points out.
In her new book, The Path to Our Door: Approaches to Christian Spirituality (Continuum), she suggests the popularity of Buddhist meditation has prodded many Christians to re-discover some of the tradition’s less well-known meditative and contemplative methods.
“When considering silence as prayer many people’s first thought is of the Eastern, especially the Buddhist, tradition rather than the Christian,” writes Clark-King.
“Buddhism is seen as the natural home of contemplation while Christian prayer is believed by many to focus almost exclusively on intercession, confession and praise – all three very wordy ways of praying. However, this is to ignore a crucial – and central – component of the Christian spiritual path.”
Why has it taken so long for many Christians to seize on to their tradition’s contemplative practices? Clark-King speculates it is hard for anyone, whether Christian or Buddhist, to face the “emptiness” of solitude, which many equate with loneliness. It takes away our distractions and leaves us with only ourselves and, as she says, God.
SIMILARITIES BETWEEN MEDITATION AND PRAYER
Silent Christian prayer is closer to Buddhist meditation than many realize
It can be revealing to discover the similarities of Buddhist mindfulness and Christian prayer. The noted Buddhist magazine, The Shambhala Sun, is just one of thousands of sources on mindfulness.
In a how-to article, Sakyong Mipham Rinpoche tells those who want to learn mindfulness to first get into a comfortable position and then note when thoughts arise.
Just monitor your thoughts and feelings without getting stuck on them, teaches Sakyong Mipham. “Say to yourself: ‘That may be a really important issue in my life, but right now is not the time to think about it. Now I’m practising meditation.’”
By labelling one’s “wild” thoughts and feelings, Sakyong Mipham says, mindfulness practitioners begin to recognize the mind’s discursiveness. “We notice that we have been lost in thought, we mentally label it . without judgment.” The ultimate goal, Sakyong Mipham says, is to keep noticing one’s breath, to reach tranquillity.
Even though Clark-King is not arguing that Buddhist mindfulness and Christian prayer are exactly the same, it is fascinating to note how similar her language is to that of Sakyong Mipham when she describes at least two forms of Christian contemplation.
The first form is set out in The Cloud of Unknowing, a classic book writ-ten anonymously in the 14th century, probably by an English monk.
The Cloud of Unknowing calls for a kind of contemplation that requires radical “openness” to a non-controlling God, Clark-King writes. “All that the pray-er does is keep silence as far as is possible, surrendering every thought as soon as it occurs without paying any attention to it whatsoever...
Read it all at http://blogs.vancouversun.com/2012/01/15/prayer-versus-meditation-theyre-closer-than-most-realize/
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Saturday, 16 July 2011
Jihad against Buddhism
A chilling article from American Thinker.
Is The Fate of the Infidels Tied to the Buddhas?
By Janet Levy
"No fanfare and little notice marked the 10th anniversary earlier this year of the destruction of the 1,500-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas. These 6th-century stately statues carved into sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan included one of the tallest standing Buddhas in the world. On March 12, 2001, the 180- and 121-foot Buddhas crumpled under dynamite set off by the Taliban -- the Islamist militia group ruling Afghanistan from 1996 through late 2001. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Al Qaeda-supported movement, deemed the statutes idolatrous graven images insulting to Islam and ordered their destruction. Other Buddhist images, including statues and relief carvings as well as ancient Sikh gurdwaras and Hindu temples, were also destroyed by the Islamic terrorists belonging to the Taliban Movement.
This kind of cultural destruction has been part and parcel of Islam since its inception. According to Dr. Bill Warner, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, "Political Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated to by destroying the host culture."
Dr. Warner cites the extinction of a once-Christian Middle East, Turkey, and North Africa, and a Zoroastrian Persia, as a result of Islamic jihad. He also includes the decimation of Hindus and Buddhists as well. All told, he totals more than 270 million "nonbelievers," including Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Africans, and Jews, who have died in Islamic massacres since the birth of Islam 1400 years ago.
Prior to the Islamic conquests, which began in the 7th century, Afghanistan was primarily Hindu with significant minorities of Buddhists and Jains...
...By the 11th century, the region that includes modern-day Afghanistan had been Islamized and the remaining Hindus and Buddhists were stripped of their legal and social rights and relegated to dhimmi status. This meant they were required to exist under shariah or Islamic doctrine and forced to pay the jizya, a tax payable to Muslims to guarantee protection against forced conversion or death.
When the Taliban came to power in 1996, Hindu and Buddhist minorities were forced to identify themselves by wearing yellow badges and the women were required to wear burkas. The destruction of the Buddhas was yet another attempt to demoralize and humiliate Hindus and Buddhists and destroy their culture...
Read it all here
Understanding Sharia and Jihadist attitudes towards Buddhists
To put this cultural destruction in context, we need to remember that Jihadism, by its very nature, is obsessed with hatred against non-believers and their culture.
Sharia law states that non-believers must either be converted, or enslaved and humiliated as second-class citizens (dhimmis), or exterminated.
Christians and Jews are the only people eligible for dhimmi status, being allowed to live under Sharia laws provided they pay the extortionate jizya 'protection' money and suffer institutionalised humiliation uncomplainingly. However they may not build new places of worship nor repair existing ones.
Jews and Christians are classed as 'people of the book', and supremacist propagandists use this phrase to claim that Sharia treats them favorably by allowing them to live.
Buddhists are often given no such option. They are 'mushrikūn' (singular: mushrik) - idolators whose religion should not be tolerated in any form.
According to the strictest interpretations of Sharia, Buddhists must either convert to Jihadism or be exterminated, and their places of worship must be obliterated. It is therefore very much in Western Buddhists' interests to resist the creeping Sharia that is slowly being imposed on the United States and Europe, even if this involves getting more involved in politics than many of us would like, and making some unusual alliances.
Why dhimmis and mushrikūn must ally against Sharia (from Jihad watch)
See No future for Buddhism in a Dhimmified World
Is The Fate of the Infidels Tied to the Buddhas?
By Janet Levy
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| One of the ancient Buddhas destroyed as 'idols' |
"No fanfare and little notice marked the 10th anniversary earlier this year of the destruction of the 1,500-year-old Bamiyan Buddhas. These 6th-century stately statues carved into sandstone cliffs in central Afghanistan included one of the tallest standing Buddhas in the world. On March 12, 2001, the 180- and 121-foot Buddhas crumpled under dynamite set off by the Taliban -- the Islamist militia group ruling Afghanistan from 1996 through late 2001. Mullah Omar, the leader of the Al Qaeda-supported movement, deemed the statutes idolatrous graven images insulting to Islam and ordered their destruction. Other Buddhist images, including statues and relief carvings as well as ancient Sikh gurdwaras and Hindu temples, were also destroyed by the Islamic terrorists belonging to the Taliban Movement.
This kind of cultural destruction has been part and parcel of Islam since its inception. According to Dr. Bill Warner, founder of the Center for the Study of Political Islam, "Political Islam has annihilated every culture it has invaded or immigrated to by destroying the host culture."
Dr. Warner cites the extinction of a once-Christian Middle East, Turkey, and North Africa, and a Zoroastrian Persia, as a result of Islamic jihad. He also includes the decimation of Hindus and Buddhists as well. All told, he totals more than 270 million "nonbelievers," including Christians, Buddhists, Hindus, Africans, and Jews, who have died in Islamic massacres since the birth of Islam 1400 years ago.
Prior to the Islamic conquests, which began in the 7th century, Afghanistan was primarily Hindu with significant minorities of Buddhists and Jains...
...By the 11th century, the region that includes modern-day Afghanistan had been Islamized and the remaining Hindus and Buddhists were stripped of their legal and social rights and relegated to dhimmi status. This meant they were required to exist under shariah or Islamic doctrine and forced to pay the jizya, a tax payable to Muslims to guarantee protection against forced conversion or death.
When the Taliban came to power in 1996, Hindu and Buddhist minorities were forced to identify themselves by wearing yellow badges and the women were required to wear burkas. The destruction of the Buddhas was yet another attempt to demoralize and humiliate Hindus and Buddhists and destroy their culture...
Read it all here
Understanding Sharia and Jihadist attitudes towards Buddhists
To put this cultural destruction in context, we need to remember that Jihadism, by its very nature, is obsessed with hatred against non-believers and their culture.
Sharia law states that non-believers must either be converted, or enslaved and humiliated as second-class citizens (dhimmis), or exterminated.
Christians and Jews are the only people eligible for dhimmi status, being allowed to live under Sharia laws provided they pay the extortionate jizya 'protection' money and suffer institutionalised humiliation uncomplainingly. However they may not build new places of worship nor repair existing ones.
Jews and Christians are classed as 'people of the book', and supremacist propagandists use this phrase to claim that Sharia treats them favorably by allowing them to live.
Buddhists are often given no such option. They are 'mushrikūn' (singular: mushrik) - idolators whose religion should not be tolerated in any form.
According to the strictest interpretations of Sharia, Buddhists must either convert to Jihadism or be exterminated, and their places of worship must be obliterated. It is therefore very much in Western Buddhists' interests to resist the creeping Sharia that is slowly being imposed on the United States and Europe, even if this involves getting more involved in politics than many of us would like, and making some unusual alliances.
Why dhimmis and mushrikūn must ally against Sharia (from Jihad watch)
'Dhimmitude is the status that supremacist law, the Sharia, mandates for non-believers, primarily Jews and Christians. Dhimmis, "protected people," are free to practice their religion in a Sharia regime, but are made subject to a number of humiliating regulations designed to enforce the Qur'an's command that they "feel themselves subdued" (Sura 9:29). This denial of equality of rights and dignity remains part of the Sharia, and, as such, are part of the legal superstructure that global jihadists are laboring to restore everywhere in the third world, and wish ultimately to impose on the entire human race.
If dhimmis complained about their inferior status, institutionalized humiliation, or poverty, their masters voided their contract and regarded them as enemies of Jihadism, fair game as objects of violence. Consequently, dhimmis were generally cowed into silence and worse. It was almost unheard-of to find dhimmis speaking out against their oppressors; to do so would have been suicide. For centuries dhimmi communities in the third world learned to live in peace with their supremacist overlords by acquiescing to their subservience. Some even actively identified with the dominant class, and became strenuous advocates for it.
Spearheaded by dhimmi academics and self-serving advocacy groups, that same attitude of chastened subservience has entered into Western academic study of Jihadism, and from there into journalism, school textbooks, and the popular discourse. One must not point out the depredations of jihad and dhimmitude; to do so would offend the multiculturalist ethos that prevails everywhere today. To do so would endanger chances for peace and rapprochement between civilizations all too ready to clash.
But in this era of global terrorism it must be said: this silence, this distortion, has become deadly. Before 9/11 it was easy to ignore and whitewash dhimmitude, but the atrocities changed the situation forever. In jihads throughout history, untold millions have died. Tens of millions have been uprooted from their homes. Tens of millions have been stripped of their cultural identity. To continue to gloss over the destruction wrought by jihad ideology and its attendant evil of dhimmitude is today to play into the hands of jihadists, who have repeatedly vowed to dhimmify the West and destroy any recalcitrant elements.
While jihadist groups, even with their global diffusion, are not strong enough to realize this goal by themselves, they have a potent and destructive ally, a genuine fifth column, in the dhimmi academics and dhimmi journalists they have recruited in the West. They have succeeded in confusing millions in the West into mistaking honesty and truthfulness for bigotry, and self-defense for oppression"
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The Fate of the Infidels
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| Gouging and disembowelment |
"There is no liquid loved by Allah more than the liquid of blood. Whether you do it by the lamb, or you do it by a Serb, you do it by a Jew, you do it by any enemies of Allah, that drop of blood is very dear."- Jihadist Sermon
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Coercion, intimidation, thuggery
and outright terrorism are
intrinsic and essential features
of Jihadism.
and outright terrorism are
intrinsic and essential features
of Jihadism.
Jihadism is so intellectually moribund
and ethically repulsive
and ethically repulsive
that it cannot compete for followers
in a free marketplace of ideas,
but must eliminate its competitors
in a free marketplace of ideas,
but must eliminate its competitors
by whatever means may be necessary.
See No future for Buddhism in a Dhimmified World
Sunday, 19 June 2011
Metarationalism versus Irrationalism in Religion
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| Metarationality - the mental landscape beyond the end of the tracks |
'Metarationality deals with valid phenomena which lie beyond the limits of discursive thought. Qualia are prime examples, and much meditational practice deals with the deliberate invocation of qualia.
Also, some types of meditation seek to go beyond conceptual thought in order to reach nonconceptual awareness.
Other metarational phenomena are those paradoxes that lie at, or just beyond, the limits of logical thought, and which have been investigated by Buddhist philosophers such a Nagarjuna.
According to Hume, the entire field of ethics may be metarational, since reasoned and logical arguments are incapable of going from an 'is' to an 'ought'. Ethics cannot be rationally derived either from knowledge based on logic and definitions, or from observation.
The difference between metarationality and irrationality, is that with metarationality you attempt to explore the landscape beyond the end of the tracks of logical thought, whereas with irrationality you come off the rails long before you reach the end of the line.
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| Irrationality - coming off the track before you reach the end of the line |
Buddhist philosophy is rational until it reaches the limits of logic, wherupon it goes metarational, whereas some religions are just plain irrational from the very start of the journey.
More here
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A Glimpse of Non-conceptual Awareness
Jim recently left this comment at an old post on Inherent Existence . Rather than leave it in the obscurity of the archives, I thought it was sufficiently interesting to repost here...
"Inherent Existence" as a concept does not inherently exist. So when you try to pin down the definition of the *concept* of inherent existence, you can't come up with a "clean, clear" definition.
Garfield's translation of Nagarjuna's Mulamadyhamakakarika (Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way) posits the equivalence of "empty of inherent existence", "dependently originated" and "conceptually designated".
I like the shorthand of "no essence" for "empty of inherent existence". That helps me understand, when I perceive at any phenomenon that there is in no way any particle, energy, quality or category exists as an essence, a standalone existent in that phenomenon. That then leads to "dependently originated", meaning that the phenomenon appears before my perceptions due to an endlessly divisible network of elements and causes. Then "conceptually designated" tells me that principle among those elements and causes is my being here to cast a (perhaps sub or unconscious) conceptual designation onto that "thing", delineating it in space and time as "separate and distinct" in the network.
This puts me on the doorstep of "what is producing the conceptual designation", which points to the concept of a self. That becomes the next target of analysis, as in "no essence to this self", "this self is dependently originated", "this self is conceptually designated". These taken together point to to the "conceptual designator" in the self, the "model of self" in the self and the "observing awareness" in the self. These become the next targets of the three-part "emptiness analysis" described above.
This can be repeated again, and again, and again, until the neuro-pschological nexus of model of self, conceptualizing engine, and observing awareness is sufficiently weakened that there's a break in the conceptualizing, and a glimpse of non-conceptual awareness. I find that this gets more effective the more it is practiced.
Regarding the opening statement "Inherent Existence" as a concept does not inherently exist", and the reference to Garfield, see Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought by Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest.
Related Posts
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Essentialism in Physics, Chemistry and Biology
Existence, Impermanence and Emptiness in Buddhism
"Inherent Existence" as a concept does not inherently exist. So when you try to pin down the definition of the *concept* of inherent existence, you can't come up with a "clean, clear" definition.
Garfield's translation of Nagarjuna's Mulamadyhamakakarika (Fundamental Wisdom of the Middle Way) posits the equivalence of "empty of inherent existence", "dependently originated" and "conceptually designated".
I like the shorthand of "no essence" for "empty of inherent existence". That helps me understand, when I perceive at any phenomenon that there is in no way any particle, energy, quality or category exists as an essence, a standalone existent in that phenomenon. That then leads to "dependently originated", meaning that the phenomenon appears before my perceptions due to an endlessly divisible network of elements and causes. Then "conceptually designated" tells me that principle among those elements and causes is my being here to cast a (perhaps sub or unconscious) conceptual designation onto that "thing", delineating it in space and time as "separate and distinct" in the network.
This puts me on the doorstep of "what is producing the conceptual designation", which points to the concept of a self. That becomes the next target of analysis, as in "no essence to this self", "this self is dependently originated", "this self is conceptually designated". These taken together point to to the "conceptual designator" in the self, the "model of self" in the self and the "observing awareness" in the self. These become the next targets of the three-part "emptiness analysis" described above.
This can be repeated again, and again, and again, until the neuro-pschological nexus of model of self, conceptualizing engine, and observing awareness is sufficiently weakened that there's a break in the conceptualizing, and a glimpse of non-conceptual awareness. I find that this gets more effective the more it is practiced.
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Regarding the opening statement "Inherent Existence" as a concept does not inherently exist", and the reference to Garfield, see Nagarjuna and the Limits of Thought by Jay L. Garfield and Graham Priest.
Related Posts
Generic Images in Buddhism
Reification in Buddhism - Ultimate and Conventional Truths.
Buddhism versus Materialism
Essentialism in Physics, Chemistry and Biology
Existence, Impermanence and Emptiness in Buddhism
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Is Richard Dawkins a Buddhist?
"Anyone who accepts these four seals, even independently of Buddha’s teachings, even never having heard the name Shakyamuni Buddha, can be considered to be on the same path as he."
- Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche
According to the fundamental tenets of Buddhism, all phenomena derive their existence from causes, structures and mental designation. They do not have any defining essence, or inherently existing nature that determines what they are from within themselves. Ultimately, their identity resides solely in the arbitrary judgement of the observer.
In Buddhist philosophy, most teachings on the of lack of inherent existence and absence of essential nature refer to non-living structures. Milinda's Chariot is the classical example. However, our modern knowledge of evolution allows us to apply the same line of reasoning to living creatures, in particular refuting the reification of the species. The best illustration of Buddhist teachings on lack of inherent existence of the species is the essay 'Gaps in the Mind' by Richard Dawkins:
The discontinuous mind.
"...We would all agree that a six-foot woman is tall, and a five-foot woman is not. Words like 'tall' and 'short' tempt us to force the world into qualitative classes, but this doesn't mean that the world really is discontinuously distributed. Were you to tell me that a woman is five feet nine inches tall, and ask me to decide whether she should therefore be called tall or not, I'd shrug and say 'She's five foot nine, doesn't that tell you what you need to know?' But the discontinuous mind, to caricature it a little, would go to court (probably at great expense) to decide whether the woman was tall or short. Indeed, I hardly need to say caricature. For years, South African courts have done a brisk trade adjudicating whether particular individuals of mixed parentage count as white, black or coloured.
The discontinuous mind is ubiquitous. It is especially influential when it afflicts lawyers and the religious (not only are all judges lawyers; a high proportion of politicians are too, and all politicians have to woo the religious vote). Recently, after giving a public lecture, I was cross-examined by a lawyer in the audience. He brought the full weight of his legal acumen to bear on a nice point of evolution. If species A evolves into a later species B, he reasoned closely, there must come a point when a mother belongs to the old species A and her child belongs to the new species B. Members of different species cannot interbreed with one another. I put it to you, he went on, that a child could hardly be so different from its parents that it could not interbreed with their kind. So, he wound up triumphantly, isn't this a fatal flaw in the theory of evolution?
Mental designation
But it is we that choose to divide animals up into discontinuous species. On the evolutionary view of life there must have been intermediates, even though, conveniently for our naming rituals, they are usually extinct: usually, but not always. The lawyer would be surprised and, I hope, intrigued by so-called 'ring species'. The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull.
In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The 'herring gulls' gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls.
At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world. The only thing that is special about ring species like these gulls is that the intermediates are still alive. All pairs of related species are potentially ring species. The intermediates must have lived once. It is just that in most cases they are now dead.
Arbitrary Designation
The lawyer, with his trained discontinuous mind, insists on placing individuals firmly in this species or that. He does not allow for the possibility that an individual might lie half-way between two species, or a tenth of the way from species A to species B...
Artificial categories
...The word 'apes' usually means chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans, gibbons and siamangs. We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes — the gibbons and orang-utans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans but excludes humans. The artificiality of the category 'apes', as conventionally taken to exclude humans, is demonstrated by Figure 7.1. This family tree shows humans to be in the thick of the ape cluster; the artificiality of the conventional category 'ape' is shown by the stippling.
No essential differences between species
Happenings are sometimes organised at which thousands of people hold hands and form a human chain, say from coast to coast of the United States, in aid of some cause or charity. Let us imagine setting one up along the equator, across the width of our home continent of Africa. It is a special kind of chain, involving parents and children, and we will have to play tricks with time in order to imagine it. You stand on the shore of the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia, facing north, and in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on. The chain wends its way up the beach, into the arid scrubland and westwards on towards the Kenya border.
How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles. We have hardly started to cross the continent; we are still not half way to the Great Rift Valley. The ancestor is standing well to the east of Mount Kenya, and holding in her hand an entire chain of her lineal descendants, culminating in you standing on the Somali beach.
The daughter that she is holding in her right hand is the one from whom we are descended. Now the arch-ancestress turns eastward to face the coast, and with her left hand grasps her other daughter, the one from whom the chimpanzees are descended (or son, of course, but let's stick to females for convenience). The two sisters are facing one another, and each holding their mother by the hand. Now the second daughter, the chimpanzee ancestress, holds her daughter's hand, and a new chain is formed, proceeding back towards the coast. First cousin faces first cousin, second cousin faces second cousin, and so on.
By the time the folded-back chain has reached the coast again, it consists of modern chimpanzees. You are face to face with your chimpanzee cousin, and you are joined to her by an unbroken chain of mothers holding hands with daughters. If you walked up the line like an inspecting general -past Homo erectus, Homo habilis, perhaps Australopithecus afarensis -and down again the other side (the intermediates on the chimpanzee side are unnamed because, as it happens, no fossils have been found), you would nowhere find any sharp discontinuity. Daughters would resemble mothers just as much (or as little) as they always do. Mothers would love daughters, and feel affinity with them, just as they always And this hand-in-hand continuum, joining us seamlessly to chimpanzees, is so short that it barely makes it past the hinterland of Africa, the mother continent.
Our chain of African apes, doubling back on itself, is in miniature like the ring of gulls round the pole, except that the intermediates happen to be dead. The point I want to make is that, as far as morality is concerned, it should be incidental that the intermediates are dead. What if they were not? What if a clutch of intermediate types had survived, enough to link us to modern chimpanzees by a chain, not just of hand-holders, but of interbreeders? Remember the song, 'I've danced with a man, who's danced with a girl, who's danced with the Prince of Wales'? We can't (quite) interbreed with modern chimpanzees, but we'd need only a handful of intermediate types to be able to sing: 'I've bred with a man, who's bred with a girl, who's bred with a chimpanzee.'
Moral dilemmas
It is sheer luck that this handful of intermediates no longer exists. ('Luck' from some points of view: for myself, I should love to meet them.) But for this chance, our laws and our morals would be very different. We need only discover a single survivor, say a relict Australopithecus in the Budongo Forest, and our precious system of norms and ethics would come crashing about our ears. The boundaries with which we segregate our world would be all shot to pieces. Racism would blur with speciesism in obdurate and vicious confusion. Apartheid, for those that believe in it, would assume a new and perhaps a more urgent import.
But why, a moral philosopher might ask, should this matter to us? Isn't it only the discontinuous mind that wants to erect barriers anyway? So what if, in the continuum of all apes that have lived in Africa, the survivors happen to leave a convenient gap between Homo and Pan? Surely we should, in any case, not base our treatment of animals on whether or not we can interbreed with them. If we want to justify double standards - if society agrees that people should be treated better than, say, cows (cows may be cooked and eaten, people may not) - there must be better reasons than cousinship. Humans may be taxonomically distant from cows, but isn't it more important that we are brainier? Or better, following Jeremy Bentham, that humans can suffer more - that cows, even if they hate pain as much as humans do (and why on earth should we suppose otherwise?), do not know what is coming to them? Suppose that the octopus lineage had happened to evolve brains and feelings to rival ours; they easily might have done. The mere possibility shows the incidental nature of cousinship. So, the moral philosopher asks, why emphasise the human/chimp continuity?
Yes, in an ideal world we probably should come up with a better reason than cousinship for, say, preferring carnivory to cannibalism. But the melancholy fact is that, at present, society's moral attitudes rest almost entirely on the discontinuous, speciesist imperative.
This arresting picture is hypothetical. But I can assert, without fear of contradiction, that if somebody succeeded in breeding a chimpanzee/ human hybrid the news would be earth-shattering. Bishops would bleat, lawyers would gloat in anticipation, conservative politicians would thunder, socialists wouldn't know where to put their barricades. The scientist that achieved the feat would be drummed out of politically correct common-rooms; denounced in pulpit and gutter press; condemned, perhaps, by an Ayatollah's fatwah. Politics would never be the same again, nor would theology, sociology, psychology or most branches of philosophy. The world that would be so shaken, by such an incidental event as a hybridisation, is a speciesist world indeed, dominated by the discontinuous mind.
I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and ‘apes’ that we erect in our minds is regrettable. I have also argued that, in any case, the present position of the hallowed gap is arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident. If the contingencies of survival and extinction had been different, the gap would be in a different place. Ethical principles that are based upon accidental caprice should not be respected as if cast in stone.
Nevertheless, it must be conceded that this book's proposal to admit great apes to the charmed circle of human privilege stands square in the discontinuous tradition. Albeit the gap has moved, the fundamental question is still 'Which side of the gap?' Regrettable as this is, as long as our social mores are governed by discontinuously minded lawyers and theologians, it is premature to advocate a quantitative, continuously distributed morality. Accordingly, I support the proposal for which this book stands."
So is Richard Dawkins a Buddhist?
So is Richard Dawkins a Buddhist without perhaps realising it? According to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, acceptance of the Four Seals -
Dawkins shows an excellent understanding of Lack of Inherent existence in the essay quoted, and as a Darwinist he is obviously well aware of the related seal of Impermance.
Samsara's pleasures are deceptive, bring no contentment only torment
He also shows an awareness of the third seal, the inevitable nature of Samsaric suffering, in the following quote from River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored."
The True Nature of the Mind
Dawkins also understands the way that delusions afflict the mind,and how these can be transcended:
''We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators." See further discussion at Accepting our Evolutionary History does not Mean Rejecting our Spirituality .
Nearly but not quite
Where Richard Dawkins differs from Buddhism is that he appears to accept the default physicalist view of the mind. The difference between the Buddhist and the physicalist (materialist) view of reality can be stated quite simply:
The Buddhist believes that all functioning phenomena are dependent upon
- Causality
- Structure
- Designation by mind
The physicalist believes that all functioning phenomena are dependent upon
- Causality
- Structure
...with the mind being reducible to the operations of causality on structure in the same way that the activities of a computer are reducible to the operation of algorithms on datastructures.
To the Buddhist, in contrast, the mind is an irreducible foundation of reality.
See All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace - The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey for a detailed discussion of this topic.
Convergence
Although Richard Dawkins is not quite a Buddhist, his philosophy, derived by completely independent reasoning and within a non-Buddhist culture and intellectual environment, comes very close indeed to the four fundamental tenets of Buddhism.
This convergence has also been note by Buddhist commentator Ed Halliwell:
Dawkins strips away religion's dead wood
"Dawkins is doing religion a favour – by exposing faith and spirituality to criticism, he paves the way for their renewal.
"I doubt it was his intention, but in 100 years time Richard Dawkins could be hailed as a prime architect of 21st-century religion. Though strident to the point of comic fundamentalism, the New Atheist diatribe has not only laid bare the irrationalities of believers, but forced those of us who favour scientific-spiritual accommodation to sharpen our arguments. And that can only aid the development of spiritual forms fit for the modern world.
When I first picked up The God Delusion, I was a bit disappointed to find it was rather polite about my own tradition. Right up there in chapter one, Dawkins sensibly suggests that Buddhism might be seen as an ethical or philosophical system rather than a religion, and so not a major focus for his ire. We've got off lightly from other anti-religionists too – Sam Harris even goes on Buddhist meditation retreats.
The International Buddhist Film Festival, which opened in London last week, has at least provoked a bit of poking at our flabby underbelly. On Radio 3, Martin Palmer accused western Buddhists of creating their own version based on "the religion we don't want, which is Judeo-Christian, and the religion we would love to have, which isn't quite religion, which … doesn't have too many rules, and the rules it does have, like the Tibetan ban on homosexuality, are conveniently forgotten." Mark Vernon, relaying Palmer's comments on his blog, agreed, describing western Buddhism as "deeply partial, a pick 'n' mix religion". Their criticisms would appear to be supported by a glance at the IBFF schedule, which includes films – such as Donnie Darko and Hamlet – for which the label Buddhist seems pretty tenuous.
But Buddhism has always changed shape according to place and time. Impermanence, as one of the three marks of existence, must apply also to Buddhism itself. It accepts, even demands, that every culture must find its own unique expressions of awakening. To prevent them becoming pieces of stale ideology, its discoveries must be tested anew by each practitioner, rather than being swallowed from scripture. Whenever Buddhism is embraced in a new location, it has mixed with pre-existing wisdom – hence, for example, why Zen looks so different from Tibetan Vajrayana.
In Buddhism there should be no room for dogma – the ultimate criteria for performing an action is its role in alleviating the suffering of oneself and others. A course of action could reduce suffering in one circumstance and magnify it in another, so the rules are there to be broken and the traditions are there to be changed, provided, of course, you can do it skilfully. When asked to sum up the essence of Buddhism, Japanese teacher Shunyru Susuki replied "Not always so". The pliability of the teachings means that mistakes can be learned from, and culturally created doctrines or codes of behaviour that are unwise, outdated or harmful – the aforementioned approach to homosexuality for example – can be freely consigned to the bin.
Does that make western Buddhism a pick 'n' mix religion? Perhaps it does – but if we pick and mix well, we might create something good. Indeed, if we pick wise insights from the past and mix them with the ever-accumulating knowledge from our own cultural heritage, then what we might have a viable model for 21st-century spirituality. It needn't even be called Buddhism, which is, after all, just a word.
As a path that simultaneously emphasises both constant change and a relentless search for truth, perhaps Buddhism is in a good position to develop more mature forms. However, the rational onslaught must inevitably spur other traditions to self-question and adapt too. And this is where Richard Dawkins may well be one of religion's greatest allies. The old code that sacred beliefs cannot be challenged for fear of causing offence has been shattered – and it needed shattering. If the sacred dimension just means articles of faith that provoke outrage when assaulted, then religion and the religious would be better off without them. Dawkins and his ilk may have their sights trained on eliminating religion, but what they are actually doing is exposing its dead wood, the anachronisms that have been protected from critical thinking, and that needed cutting away.
Claims to special privilege in society, indoctrination of belief as fact, repressive or violent acts as a means of evangelism, and the upholding of outdated worldviews on scriptural grounds – all these and many other examples of the misuse of spiritual traditions do them no favours and should be dropped. If that is pick 'n' mix religion, can I be first in the queue at the sweet counter?"
Hinduism and Buddhism offer much more sophisticated worldviews (or philosophies) and I see nothing wrong with these religions. - The Richard Dawkins Foundation
Comment by Yinyangnature:
"Why does Professor Dawkins claim Hinduism and Buddhism offer much more sophisticated world-views? I believe it is due to the fundamental differences that are found when comparing Western religions with those of Asia.
The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) model the cosmos on the politics of the ancient Middle East. God is viewed as a monarch who rules and controls everything. Just as a tyrant king of this period, God is able to severely punish or reward his subjects as he sees fit.
The Dharmic religions (Buddhism, Zen, Taoism and Hinduism) don't see the cosmos as something that is responding to a ruler or controller. They believe the Universe is a self perpetuating unity.
The Western faiths also repel and distance themselves from Nature. Whereas the Asian philosophies are firmly rooted in the natural world and see all of Nature as divine.
Unquestioning faith is paramount in the Abrahamic religions and everything else is seen as secondary to the holy dogma. Yet in the Asian religions the very opposite is true. Acts of compassion are always foremost and adherents are free to believe whatever they choose. Buddha is quoted as saying "Do not believe anything unless it agrees with your own experiences and common sense; even if it is said to have come from me."
Conclusion
Although Richard Dawkins may be unlikely to go for refuge to the Three Jewels anytime soon, his worldview shows a strong 'convergent evolution' towards Buddhist philosophy. The major difference would seem to be the nature of the mind.
In Buddhist philosophy the mind is not reducible to physical causality and structure, but is a fundamental foundation of reality. Since he hasn't, to my knowledge, stated otherwise, I would guess that Richard Dawkins holds the scientifically orthodox physicalist/computationalist point of view.
Mental designation
But it is we that choose to divide animals up into discontinuous species. On the evolutionary view of life there must have been intermediates, even though, conveniently for our naming rituals, they are usually extinct: usually, but not always. The lawyer would be surprised and, I hope, intrigued by so-called 'ring species'. The best-known case is herring gull versus lesser black-backed gull.
In Britain these are clearly distinct species, quite different in colour. Anybody can tell them apart. But if you follow the population of herring gulls westward round the North Pole to North America, then via Alaska across Siberia and back to Europe again, you will notice a curious fact. The 'herring gulls' gradually become less and less like herring gulls and more and more like lesser black-backed gulls until it turns out that our European lesser black-backed gulls actually are the other end of a ring that started out as herring gulls.
At every stage around the ring, the birds are sufficiently similar to their neighbours to interbreed with them. Until, that is, the ends of the continuum are reached, in Europe. At this point the herring gull and the lesser black-backed gull never interbreed, although they are linked by a continuous series of interbreeding colleagues all the way round the world. The only thing that is special about ring species like these gulls is that the intermediates are still alive. All pairs of related species are potentially ring species. The intermediates must have lived once. It is just that in most cases they are now dead.
Arbitrary Designation
The lawyer, with his trained discontinuous mind, insists on placing individuals firmly in this species or that. He does not allow for the possibility that an individual might lie half-way between two species, or a tenth of the way from species A to species B...
Artificial categories
...The word 'apes' usually means chimpanzees, gorillas, orang-utans, gibbons and siamangs. We admit that we are like apes, but we seldom realise that we are apes. Our common ancestor with the chimpanzees and gorillas is much more recent than their common ancestor with the Asian apes — the gibbons and orang-utans. There is no natural category that includes chimpanzees, gorillas and orang-utans but excludes humans. The artificiality of the category 'apes', as conventionally taken to exclude humans, is demonstrated by Figure 7.1. This family tree shows humans to be in the thick of the ape cluster; the artificiality of the conventional category 'ape' is shown by the stippling.
Figure 7.1
In truth, not only are we apes, we are African apes. The category 'African apes', if you don't arbitrarily exclude humans, is a natural one. The stippled area in Figure 7.2 doesn't have any artificial 'bites' taken out of it.
Figure 7.2
'Great apes', too, is a natural category only so long as it includes humans. We are great apes. All the great apes that have ever lived including ourselves, are linked to one another by an unbroken chain of parent-child bonds. The same is true of all animals and plants that have ever lived, but there the distances involved are much greater. Molecular evidence suggests that our common ancestor with chimpanzees lived, in Africa, between five and seven million years ago, say half a million generations ago. This is not long by evolutionary standards.No essential differences between species
Happenings are sometimes organised at which thousands of people hold hands and form a human chain, say from coast to coast of the United States, in aid of some cause or charity. Let us imagine setting one up along the equator, across the width of our home continent of Africa. It is a special kind of chain, involving parents and children, and we will have to play tricks with time in order to imagine it. You stand on the shore of the Indian Ocean in southern Somalia, facing north, and in your left hand you hold the right hand of your mother. In turn she holds the hand of her mother, your grandmother. Your grandmother holds her mother's hand, and so on. The chain wends its way up the beach, into the arid scrubland and westwards on towards the Kenya border.
How far do we have to go until we reach our common ancestor with the chimpanzees? It is a surprisingly short way. Allowing one yard per person, we arrive at the ancestor we share with chimpanzees in under 300 miles. We have hardly started to cross the continent; we are still not half way to the Great Rift Valley. The ancestor is standing well to the east of Mount Kenya, and holding in her hand an entire chain of her lineal descendants, culminating in you standing on the Somali beach.
The daughter that she is holding in her right hand is the one from whom we are descended. Now the arch-ancestress turns eastward to face the coast, and with her left hand grasps her other daughter, the one from whom the chimpanzees are descended (or son, of course, but let's stick to females for convenience). The two sisters are facing one another, and each holding their mother by the hand. Now the second daughter, the chimpanzee ancestress, holds her daughter's hand, and a new chain is formed, proceeding back towards the coast. First cousin faces first cousin, second cousin faces second cousin, and so on.
By the time the folded-back chain has reached the coast again, it consists of modern chimpanzees. You are face to face with your chimpanzee cousin, and you are joined to her by an unbroken chain of mothers holding hands with daughters. If you walked up the line like an inspecting general -past Homo erectus, Homo habilis, perhaps Australopithecus afarensis -and down again the other side (the intermediates on the chimpanzee side are unnamed because, as it happens, no fossils have been found), you would nowhere find any sharp discontinuity. Daughters would resemble mothers just as much (or as little) as they always do. Mothers would love daughters, and feel affinity with them, just as they always And this hand-in-hand continuum, joining us seamlessly to chimpanzees, is so short that it barely makes it past the hinterland of Africa, the mother continent.
Our chain of African apes, doubling back on itself, is in miniature like the ring of gulls round the pole, except that the intermediates happen to be dead. The point I want to make is that, as far as morality is concerned, it should be incidental that the intermediates are dead. What if they were not? What if a clutch of intermediate types had survived, enough to link us to modern chimpanzees by a chain, not just of hand-holders, but of interbreeders? Remember the song, 'I've danced with a man, who's danced with a girl, who's danced with the Prince of Wales'? We can't (quite) interbreed with modern chimpanzees, but we'd need only a handful of intermediate types to be able to sing: 'I've bred with a man, who's bred with a girl, who's bred with a chimpanzee.'
Moral dilemmas
It is sheer luck that this handful of intermediates no longer exists. ('Luck' from some points of view: for myself, I should love to meet them.) But for this chance, our laws and our morals would be very different. We need only discover a single survivor, say a relict Australopithecus in the Budongo Forest, and our precious system of norms and ethics would come crashing about our ears. The boundaries with which we segregate our world would be all shot to pieces. Racism would blur with speciesism in obdurate and vicious confusion. Apartheid, for those that believe in it, would assume a new and perhaps a more urgent import.
But why, a moral philosopher might ask, should this matter to us? Isn't it only the discontinuous mind that wants to erect barriers anyway? So what if, in the continuum of all apes that have lived in Africa, the survivors happen to leave a convenient gap between Homo and Pan? Surely we should, in any case, not base our treatment of animals on whether or not we can interbreed with them. If we want to justify double standards - if society agrees that people should be treated better than, say, cows (cows may be cooked and eaten, people may not) - there must be better reasons than cousinship. Humans may be taxonomically distant from cows, but isn't it more important that we are brainier? Or better, following Jeremy Bentham, that humans can suffer more - that cows, even if they hate pain as much as humans do (and why on earth should we suppose otherwise?), do not know what is coming to them? Suppose that the octopus lineage had happened to evolve brains and feelings to rival ours; they easily might have done. The mere possibility shows the incidental nature of cousinship. So, the moral philosopher asks, why emphasise the human/chimp continuity?
Yes, in an ideal world we probably should come up with a better reason than cousinship for, say, preferring carnivory to cannibalism. But the melancholy fact is that, at present, society's moral attitudes rest almost entirely on the discontinuous, speciesist imperative.
Figure 7.3 Hypothetical computer-generated image of what an intermediate between a human and a chimpanzee face might look like. (After Nancy Burston and David Kramlich, from C. A. Pickover, Computers and the Imagination: Visual Adventures Beyond the Edge (Alan Sutton, Stroud, 1991).)
This arresting picture is hypothetical. But I can assert, without fear of contradiction, that if somebody succeeded in breeding a chimpanzee/ human hybrid the news would be earth-shattering. Bishops would bleat, lawyers would gloat in anticipation, conservative politicians would thunder, socialists wouldn't know where to put their barricades. The scientist that achieved the feat would be drummed out of politically correct common-rooms; denounced in pulpit and gutter press; condemned, perhaps, by an Ayatollah's fatwah. Politics would never be the same again, nor would theology, sociology, psychology or most branches of philosophy. The world that would be so shaken, by such an incidental event as a hybridisation, is a speciesist world indeed, dominated by the discontinuous mind.
I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and ‘apes’ that we erect in our minds is regrettable. I have also argued that, in any case, the present position of the hallowed gap is arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident. If the contingencies of survival and extinction had been different, the gap would be in a different place. Ethical principles that are based upon accidental caprice should not be respected as if cast in stone.
Nevertheless, it must be conceded that this book's proposal to admit great apes to the charmed circle of human privilege stands square in the discontinuous tradition. Albeit the gap has moved, the fundamental question is still 'Which side of the gap?' Regrettable as this is, as long as our social mores are governed by discontinuously minded lawyers and theologians, it is premature to advocate a quantitative, continuously distributed morality. Accordingly, I support the proposal for which this book stands."
So is Richard Dawkins a Buddhist?
So is Richard Dawkins a Buddhist without perhaps realising it? According to Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse Rinpoche, acceptance of the Four Seals -
- Lack of Essence or Inherent Existence of Functioning Phenomena
- Impermanence of Functioning Phenomena
- Inevitability of Samsaric Suffering
- The True Nature of the Mind
Dawkins shows an excellent understanding of Lack of Inherent existence in the essay quoted, and as a Darwinist he is obviously well aware of the related seal of Impermance.
Samsara's pleasures are deceptive, bring no contentment only torment
He also shows an awareness of the third seal, the inevitable nature of Samsaric suffering, in the following quote from River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
"The total amount of suffering per year in the natural world is beyond all decent contemplation. During the minute that it takes me to compose this sentence, thousands of animals are being eaten alive, many others are running for their lives, whimpering with fear, others are slowly being devoured from within by rasping parasites, thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst, and disease. It must be so. If there ever is a time of plenty, this very fact will automatically lead to an increase in the population until the natural state of starvation and misery is restored."
The True Nature of the Mind
Dawkins also understands the way that delusions afflict the mind,and how these can be transcended:
''We have the power to defy the selfish genes of our birth and, if necessary, the selfish memes of our indoctrination. We can even discuss ways of deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism - something that has no place in nature, something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world. We are built as gene machines and cultured as meme machines, but we have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators." See further discussion at Accepting our Evolutionary History does not Mean Rejecting our Spirituality .
Nearly but not quite
Where Richard Dawkins differs from Buddhism is that he appears to accept the default physicalist view of the mind. The difference between the Buddhist and the physicalist (materialist) view of reality can be stated quite simply:
The Buddhist believes that all functioning phenomena are dependent upon
- Causality
- Structure
- Designation by mind
The physicalist believes that all functioning phenomena are dependent upon
- Causality
- Structure
...with the mind being reducible to the operations of causality on structure in the same way that the activities of a computer are reducible to the operation of algorithms on datastructures.
To the Buddhist, in contrast, the mind is an irreducible foundation of reality.
See All Watched over by Machines of Loving Grace - The Monkey in the Machine and the Machine in the Monkey for a detailed discussion of this topic.
Convergence
Although Richard Dawkins is not quite a Buddhist, his philosophy, derived by completely independent reasoning and within a non-Buddhist culture and intellectual environment, comes very close indeed to the four fundamental tenets of Buddhism.
This convergence has also been note by Buddhist commentator Ed Halliwell:
Dawkins strips away religion's dead wood
"Dawkins is doing religion a favour – by exposing faith and spirituality to criticism, he paves the way for their renewal.
"I doubt it was his intention, but in 100 years time Richard Dawkins could be hailed as a prime architect of 21st-century religion. Though strident to the point of comic fundamentalism, the New Atheist diatribe has not only laid bare the irrationalities of believers, but forced those of us who favour scientific-spiritual accommodation to sharpen our arguments. And that can only aid the development of spiritual forms fit for the modern world.
When I first picked up The God Delusion, I was a bit disappointed to find it was rather polite about my own tradition. Right up there in chapter one, Dawkins sensibly suggests that Buddhism might be seen as an ethical or philosophical system rather than a religion, and so not a major focus for his ire. We've got off lightly from other anti-religionists too – Sam Harris even goes on Buddhist meditation retreats.
The International Buddhist Film Festival, which opened in London last week, has at least provoked a bit of poking at our flabby underbelly. On Radio 3, Martin Palmer accused western Buddhists of creating their own version based on "the religion we don't want, which is Judeo-Christian, and the religion we would love to have, which isn't quite religion, which … doesn't have too many rules, and the rules it does have, like the Tibetan ban on homosexuality, are conveniently forgotten." Mark Vernon, relaying Palmer's comments on his blog, agreed, describing western Buddhism as "deeply partial, a pick 'n' mix religion". Their criticisms would appear to be supported by a glance at the IBFF schedule, which includes films – such as Donnie Darko and Hamlet – for which the label Buddhist seems pretty tenuous.
But Buddhism has always changed shape according to place and time. Impermanence, as one of the three marks of existence, must apply also to Buddhism itself. It accepts, even demands, that every culture must find its own unique expressions of awakening. To prevent them becoming pieces of stale ideology, its discoveries must be tested anew by each practitioner, rather than being swallowed from scripture. Whenever Buddhism is embraced in a new location, it has mixed with pre-existing wisdom – hence, for example, why Zen looks so different from Tibetan Vajrayana.
In Buddhism there should be no room for dogma – the ultimate criteria for performing an action is its role in alleviating the suffering of oneself and others. A course of action could reduce suffering in one circumstance and magnify it in another, so the rules are there to be broken and the traditions are there to be changed, provided, of course, you can do it skilfully. When asked to sum up the essence of Buddhism, Japanese teacher Shunyru Susuki replied "Not always so". The pliability of the teachings means that mistakes can be learned from, and culturally created doctrines or codes of behaviour that are unwise, outdated or harmful – the aforementioned approach to homosexuality for example – can be freely consigned to the bin.
Does that make western Buddhism a pick 'n' mix religion? Perhaps it does – but if we pick and mix well, we might create something good. Indeed, if we pick wise insights from the past and mix them with the ever-accumulating knowledge from our own cultural heritage, then what we might have a viable model for 21st-century spirituality. It needn't even be called Buddhism, which is, after all, just a word.
As a path that simultaneously emphasises both constant change and a relentless search for truth, perhaps Buddhism is in a good position to develop more mature forms. However, the rational onslaught must inevitably spur other traditions to self-question and adapt too. And this is where Richard Dawkins may well be one of religion's greatest allies. The old code that sacred beliefs cannot be challenged for fear of causing offence has been shattered – and it needed shattering. If the sacred dimension just means articles of faith that provoke outrage when assaulted, then religion and the religious would be better off without them. Dawkins and his ilk may have their sights trained on eliminating religion, but what they are actually doing is exposing its dead wood, the anachronisms that have been protected from critical thinking, and that needed cutting away.
Claims to special privilege in society, indoctrination of belief as fact, repressive or violent acts as a means of evangelism, and the upholding of outdated worldviews on scriptural grounds – all these and many other examples of the misuse of spiritual traditions do them no favours and should be dropped. If that is pick 'n' mix religion, can I be first in the queue at the sweet counter?"
Hinduism and Buddhism offer much more sophisticated worldviews (or philosophies) and I see nothing wrong with these religions. - The Richard Dawkins Foundation
Comment by Yinyangnature:
"Why does Professor Dawkins claim Hinduism and Buddhism offer much more sophisticated world-views? I believe it is due to the fundamental differences that are found when comparing Western religions with those of Asia.
The Abrahamic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) model the cosmos on the politics of the ancient Middle East. God is viewed as a monarch who rules and controls everything. Just as a tyrant king of this period, God is able to severely punish or reward his subjects as he sees fit.
The Dharmic religions (Buddhism, Zen, Taoism and Hinduism) don't see the cosmos as something that is responding to a ruler or controller. They believe the Universe is a self perpetuating unity.
The Western faiths also repel and distance themselves from Nature. Whereas the Asian philosophies are firmly rooted in the natural world and see all of Nature as divine.
Unquestioning faith is paramount in the Abrahamic religions and everything else is seen as secondary to the holy dogma. Yet in the Asian religions the very opposite is true. Acts of compassion are always foremost and adherents are free to believe whatever they choose. Buddha is quoted as saying "Do not believe anything unless it agrees with your own experiences and common sense; even if it is said to have come from me."
Conclusion
Although Richard Dawkins may be unlikely to go for refuge to the Three Jewels anytime soon, his worldview shows a strong 'convergent evolution' towards Buddhist philosophy. The major difference would seem to be the nature of the mind.
In Buddhist philosophy the mind is not reducible to physical causality and structure, but is a fundamental foundation of reality. Since he hasn't, to my knowledge, stated otherwise, I would guess that Richard Dawkins holds the scientifically orthodox physicalist/computationalist point of view.
Read more at Buddhist Philosophy
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