Lack of Religion moved from Religion

[Testy Calibrate]

That is why I am so skeptical to the view that Buddhists are seen as
atheists among atheists. Formally they don't have "gods" in same way
as Abramic faiths have but they seems to have "higher beings" on other
planes of existence. I mean to most atheistic atheists that are gods.

So to me it seems more like special pleading to see Buddhists as atheists.

As if we atheist are so few that we want to include all the Buddhists
to not be 0.5 percent of self confessed atheists and to include all
the Buddhists and Pantheists and Panentheists and Deists and New Age
believers in "Energy".

I'm even skeptical to if all the Transhumanists to be seen as atheists.
There are too many of them that behave very similar to any supernatural
faith they only have moved it to future science fiction like progress in technology.
Downloading of brains to silicon or other matter.

Such is in any way confirmed to be possible, only in the minds of these thinkers,
no physical evidence for it as far as I know, Pure wishful thinking.

Why should we see them as Naturalistic atheists. They behave as believers.

As long as you don't accept that you know something for sure (faith) speculation/investigation into woo doesn't seem to violate the atheist concept to me. Am I missing something?

[Worldly]

Am I missing something?

You missed my limited ability to parse several negations in same sentence?
I seldom know things. I go for what is most likely based on the evidence.

Woo is not likely or evidenced to me. Transhumanists to me use a lot of
wishful thinking and Buddhists use a misleading language. Enlighten they
sometimes claim to be or free from samsara or liberated they say or finding
true happiness or being in a state of nothingness and a lot of such wordings.

It is interpretations to me not evidence.

[yeshi]

Haiku for Wordy

Wordy like Yoda he speak,
but enemies around he see;
the path to understanding that not.

[Worldly]

wow he have noticed me

[Flying Buttress]

Agnostic with strong atheist leanings.

[Testy Calibrate]

You missed my limited ability to parse several negations in same sentence?
I seldom know things. I go for what is most likely based on the evidence.

Woo is not likely or evidenced to me. Transhumanists to me use a lot of
wishful thinking and Buddhists use a misleading language. Enlighten they
sometimes claim to be or free from samsara or liberated they say or finding
true happiness or being in a state of nothingness and a lot of such wordings.

It is interpretations to me not evidence.

Wordy, I love your posts. I understand your point but I'm asking is the pursuit of woo contrary to atheism as long as no claims are made?

[hecaterin]

Interesting question. How can you pursue woo, but make no claims? Even saying "it's good poetry" or "it's a helpful mental model" are claims.

BTW, Buddhisms vary hugely, from very ritual oriented versions with lots of gods, to very spare atheistic western adaptations of Zen philosophy. I wouldn't call the first lot atheist. There's no omni-god, but plenty of spirits, demons, boddhisattvas, what have you. More like pagan gods, limited but still supernatural.

[Worldly]

BWE, to say that all is impermanent is to make a claim?
To say that all is suffering and that nothingness or mindfulness
is the solution is to make very precise claims?

Could you confirm my notion that there is something very similar
about the Buddhist view on impermanence and postmodern relativism?

My wild guess is that we have postmodernism cause we first had
people like Schrödinger who wrote small books like "what is life" or
similar titles.
http://home.att.net/~p.caimi/schrodinger.html

you could read the book there I guess.

[Spherical Time]

I'd guess that we have postmodernism because first we had modernism, and we needed something to name what came after it.

BTW, Buddhisms vary hugely, from very ritual oriented versions with lots of gods, to very spare atheistic western adaptations of Zen philosophy. I wouldn't call the first lot atheist. There's no omni-god, but plenty of spirits, demons, boddhisattvas, what have you. More like pagan gods, limited but still supernatural.

I can agree with that.

[Testy Calibrate]

BWE, to say that all is impermanent is to make a claim?

Hmmm. I'm the one being unclear here.

The claim you could make (the way I'm looking at it) is that this is the way things appear subject to new information. That new information has the ability to change current assumptions should be a given.

To say that all is suffering and that nothingness or mindfulness
is the solution is to make very precise claims?

As before, subject to other information. We have to do something with our time. At least eat. Practicing mindfulness as a way to investigate your nature doesn't seem theistic to me.

Could you confirm my notion that there is something very similar
about the Buddhist view on impermanence and postmodern relativism?

I utterly disagree. However, I've had this conversation before and defining Buddhist appears to be a sticky issue for me. Impermanence is a simple observation. Woo-ish interpretations always seem to somehow negate the point for me so we may just have a semantic issue. Postmodernism is an interesting thought experiment but it always falls short for me at the interface between ideas and reality. Reality doesn't seem to vary. The general physical laws of the universe show no signs of being particularly mutable.

My wild guess is that we have postmodernism cause we first had
people like Schrödinger who wrote small books like "what is life" or
similar titles.
http://home.att.net/~p.caimi/schrodinger.html

you could read the book there I guess.

Or maybe at the end of the romantic period, the entire underpinnings of rationalism were turned upside down by the counter-intuitive discoveries of elemental properties and relativity. I don't know. Post-modernism, like I said, doesn't seem to offer much when it comes to applications.

[Worldly]

Buddhisms vary hugely, from very ritual oriented versions with lots of gods, to very spare atheistic western adaptations of Zen philosophy. I wouldn't call the first lot atheist. There's no omni-god, but plenty of spirits, demons, boddhisattvas, what have you. More like pagan gods, limited but still supernatural.

Is it fair to say that 90% of the current pagan community take these pagan gods metaphorically while 90% except a few "Western" buddhists see the buddhists boddhistawahs as really existing?

Or are they just careless in the way they use texts?

When I looked at the Documentary about Dalai Lama the way they treated him
looked like they saw him as something special. Contradicting what "Western" buddhists
claims about authorities and do it yourself enlightenment.

[teeth!]

Is it fair to say that 90% of the current pagan community take these pagan gods metaphorically while 90% except a few "Western" buddhists see the buddhists boddhistawahs as really existing?

99.999% of Western "pagans" and 99.999% of Western "buddhists" attach those names to post-enlightenment Christian concepts to give an appearance of age and validity to their beliefs. Very, very few Western Pagans actually understand paganism, and very, very few Western Buddhists understand Buddhism.

Paganism is more extensively misrepresented, though, especially "druidic" celtic paganism. I know a few people with significant Celtic heritage who take real offense at the idea of Anglo-Saxons claiming insight into "mystical Celtic wisdom."

[Rathpig]

I thought "western pagan" was another name for chubby-chick bi-curious humanities major with an herb garden in her dorm window.

[teeth!]

I thought "western pagan" was another name for chubby-chick bi-curious humanities major with an herb garden in her dorm window.

I think there are a lot of people who were raised in Christian-normative society who want a more culturally fulfilling religious experience, whatever the hell that means. So, they grab onto the only other "religious" thing they can think of, a set of fairy tales and myths they read as kids, and read a bunch of books interpreting these subjects as an essentially Christian belief structure with a little more woman (err...wombyn) friendliness. It's total bullshit and has nothing to do with actual pagan practices or beliefs.

But yes, in practice, that's exactly what it amounts to.

[yeshi]

BTW, Buddhisms vary hugely, from very ritual oriented versions with lots of gods, to very spare atheistic western adaptations of Zen philosophy. I wouldn't call the first lot atheist. There's no omni-god, but plenty of spirits, demons, boddhisattvas, what have you. More like pagan gods, limited but still supernatural.

but the demons, spirits, kami, lokapalas, protectors, etc are remnants of previous beleifs that are a part of folk culture in Asia. They got incorporated into Buddhism, similar to christmas tree or easter egg etc - with no basic relation to the religion.

[Rathpig]

Much like "the occult" in practice equates to the greasy-haired kid with a Slipknot shirt and a bad attitude toward "conformity". The uniform and the attitude is as much a form of conformity as the badly-knotted tie and 9-to-5 cubicle he will be wearing in a few short years.

All of these alternative forms of modern extra-cultural religious re-interpretation are not metaphysics; these are sociophysics. Pseudo-religious expression becomes social commentary. Atheism can be used as another common form of this phenomena. In my opinion this is decidedly a postmodernist ideology with some pivotal changes created by each step of social evolution in western society over the last two centuries.

In modern western society one can be a neopagan, a satanist, or even an fundamentalist atheist activist and the vast majority of your fellow citizens will ignore you. Extracultural religious adaptation by individual choice is a recent concept. It's often damn silly from an external viewpoint, but when examined without serious metaphysical implications, it is rather harmless in most cases. Designer-religion may be the wave of the future.

ETA: posted in response to Dlx2, but it still applies to yeshi's post. In the majority of cases, western "Buddhist" adaptations are not metaphysics as much as sociophysics. These are merely more intellectual or cerebreal than the neo-pagan or the neo-occultist.

[yeshi]

Designer-religion may be the wave of the future.

you mean like Scientology?

but indians do it for thousands of years, each guru makes a new direction.

[teeth!]

All of these alternative forms of modern extra-cultural religious re-interpretation are not metaphysics; these are sociophysics. Pseudo-religious expression becomes social commentary. Atheism can be used as another common form of this phenomena. In my opinion this is decidedly a postmodernist ideology with some pivotal changes created by each step of social evolution in western society over the last two centuries.

Indeed, although I think it's less social commentary and more fashion. The actual substance is the same; the same shit that Anthony LeVay proposes for Satanism is found in much of enlightenment-era Christianity; it shares the same traditions and values, but experiences different branding. It's like the fact that Coca-Cola rebrands itself when selling its product in India or South America or the Middle East or China. It's the same damned soda, but it's being sold differently to different audiences.

[Rathpig]

... although I think it's less social commentary and more fashion.

This is where the anthropologists, sociologists, and historians will all find a different interpretations. It is a good question to ask: at what point does fashion become social commentary? And more importantly is calling fashion "social commentary" a meaningful expression.

"Punk" rock would be a good non-religious example for these questions. What was merely "fashion", ie. Malcolm McLaren, and what was "social commentary", ie. Wattie of The Exploited.

Now where does religion as fashion fit into this picture, and is alternative religion as social commentary really possible?


There is probably an interesting dissertation in this topic, but not mine.

[teeth!]

It is a good question to ask: at what point does fashion become social commentary? And more importantly is calling fashion "social commentary" a meaningful expression.

Well, what you see here is one of the few cases where the concept of memes is actually relevant. Initiation of a fashion trend may be done for social commentary reasons, but quickly those commentary reasons are lost and the entire thing becomes a follow-the-leader game. I have no doubt that the original goth scene had a social commentary angle, and was making a point about gender, clothing, etc. At the same time, there is no reason to believe that Hot Topic is an ideological extension of that initial seed from whence the rest of it has sprouted

"Punk" rock would be a good non-religious example for these questions. What was merely "fashion", ie. Malcolm McLaren, and what was "social commentary", ie. Wattie of The Exploited.

Indeed, and punk rock has become more and more "meta" in terms of this, due to the awareness of punk as a fashion accessory. So you have fashion punks (e.g. Anti-Flag) writing songs haranguing fashion punks, and then you have fashion punk bands writing songs about how, hey, it's okay to be a fashion punk because punk is dead anyways, and then you have bands like Fugazi which attempted to escape the punk scene mess and get back to the message, and founded the post-hardcore movement, which was really successful for a while until it got hijacked by the third-wave emo movement, and, well, that leads us up to today's mess where any band who so much as records an album has to face charges by fans that they've "sold out."

Now where does religion as fashion fit into this picture, and is alternative religion as social commentary really possible?


There is probably an interesting dissertation in this topic, but not mine.

Indeed. Not mine, either.

[Matty]

Now where does religion as fashion fit into this picture,

Common amogst the new age type for sure. Much of teh woo and especialy the full on yoga are a mix of buddhist and hindu philosophies of course, and i lost count of the number of them who have adopted "yoga names" and then are gobsmacked when i ask them when they turned hindu.

my yoga teacher friend was quite put out when the local school wouldnt allow her to do a kiddie yoga class on site on the basis of the religious content. of course the (very much brit hippy) instructer uses her hindu "yoga name when asking, and even if the stretching class itself is exactly that, it still makes the old school Xtian type nervous. she liked it even less when i said i tohugtht that was wrong and that they should have disallowed it on the basis of it being bullshit and chock full of mystical woo energy bullshit,

managed to sneak the religious indoctrination in uder the rader so people didnt even realise it WAS religious. gullible people that is.

[Plant Woman]

I voted nontheist, I don't know what I am, and don't want to know, at this moment anyway.

[Testy Calibrate]

99.999% of Western "pagans" and 99.999% of Western "buddhists" attach those names to post-enlightenment Christian concepts to give an appearance of age and validity to their beliefs. Very, very few Western Pagans actually understand paganism, and very, very few Western Buddhists understand Buddhism.

Paganism is more extensively misrepresented, though, especially "druidic" celtic paganism. I know a few people with significant Celtic heritage who take real offense at the idea of Anglo-Saxons claiming insight into "mystical Celtic wisdom."

Having made an effort to learn a bit of Buddhism, I'm not sure that very many people period understand Buddhism. (except me of course)

[Oolon Colluphid]

Strong atheist here. I assert that there are no gods, for exactly the same reasons that I assert there are no fairies. Or to flip it around, I am agnostic, but only to the extent that I am agnostic about leprachauns. (Nialler doesn't count.)

Yours, Richard Dawkins

[Worldly]

Oolon, was that your inner Richard Dawkins
or did you ask him and he wrote it in an email
or did you copy something he wrote in RDF
or are you RD?