Comments by "Winston Smith" (@kryts27) on "Is Buddhism an Atheistic Religion?" video.

  1. Buddhism is the oldest "universal" belief and is the least annoying of any religion to modern day. It is a religion because it proclaims other avatars of existance (heavens, earth, hells although not as conceptualized as by the Christians), has ethical teachings and believes in the spirit-flesh duality; which is almost a universal belief among all main religions, including paganism. God specifically, is not needed in this paradigm; so Buddhism teaches us that it is possible to have a belief without needing gods or a god; a nasty shock for monotheists. It is not a philosophy per se either as it wills you to accept supernatural entities as part of it's theology. Entities are not necessarily beings. Enlightenment is a state of mind (which is pure Bhudda teaching), as is impermanence (also true, also godless; the universe eventually dies from heat-death) but there is "rebirth" which is a fundamental theological paradigm of Buddhism. A person dies and then is later reborn. This is not just in thought or belief. I am putting my athiest hat on now; since there is no evidence for rebirth, as there is for a god or gods. Bhuddism thus is a religion, not a modern philosophy. I carefully state "modern philosophy" here because Socrates, Plato, Aristotle etc. (many ancient Greek philosophers beleived in gods or were at least agnostic about their beliefs in them). As a athiest, non-belief is not a belief. God either exists or "he" doesn't. Even if god could exist in more than one place (like an electron) than "he" is existing. If he flashes in and out of existance (like a particle collision) then by leaving a trace, he exists. This is a tricky space-time conundrum of pure physics, but if doesn't still prove the existance of god. To conflate god with nature is probably a mistake.
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