OK. I'm an agnostic Buddhist. Lately I've been re-examining the God question and looking for evidence proving the existence of God from different religions. Right now I'm looking at Hinduism's view of God since Hinduism is very closely related to Buddhism. Can anyone give me any evidence or point me in a direction for proving the existence of God? "Try not. Do or do not, there is no try."
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Re:The God Question...
Date: 2007/10/16 20:12
By: MooYak
Status:
Fascinating idea to be certain. I myself am an atheistic buddhist, which greatly influences my status as a secular humanist as well. I came from a greatly religious Christian family, and accepted up until only about 2 years ago all the doctrines that came with it. After I started taking a psychology class as well as a class on religions though, I began to understand religious doctrines from a more objective viewpoint.
I think that god is really no more than a very sincerely believed tradition. I'm sure you yourself can attest to the great peace and wonder that fills us when we do certain meditations, or when we look up into the night sky, and I have come to be convinced that it is from these sort of responses that the origin of god can be derived. When we are filled with a sense of awe of some natural force, if we do not understand the science involved in what is happening, we may be tempted to attribute things like natural disasters and forces as being due to divine providence. However, when I look at these beliefs from an impartial mind, I am forced to understand that there is simply no true evidence for any divinity. What I see is instead the natural beauty of the world, which in no way reduces its grand scale or my wonder.
While I was struggling with these beliefs, I came upon the epiphany that my sense of God was what had been instilled in me from my parents and the culture/society I grew up around. A Muslim has a different sense of god, as do all other beliefs, but this in no way reduces the sense of what they interpret as divine presence in their lives, and yet they all claim to have a particular hold on the truth. After coming on this notion, I realized that my sense of God was explainable not through divinity, but rather psychologically.
My God had been a creation of my imagination. When He was speaking to me (and I always suspected that I was half mad ) it was no different from simply speaking to myself in my head. The sense of awe comes from the sincere belief that what one believes to be happening is real, and this can be proven in psychology. A man can be convinced that he is speaking to someone else through a wall for instance, only to find out through evidence that that individual is not there. It is no different with God, except we simply cannot prove without a shadow of a doubt that he is not there. We cannot go into the other room to check, and there are no windows.
This is where others come up with the idea of faith. But as a Buddhist and an atheist, I cannot accept this as a legitimate argument. We are called to question our world and to accept what is there to see. Now, you might argue that karma and reincarnation are based upon the same idea of faith, and the thing is, I would agree with you completely. Where we diverge is likely going to be our definition of these things. To me, karma is not something that carries over into our next life per se, but rather the results of our actions each moment determine the next moments, days, years of this life. I don't think it should even be important to Buddhists to believe in a future life, as that is simply something carried over from Hinduism, but that we should work for this life and focus on improving it. When one takes into account the powerful illusions the mind is capable of creating, it is possible to understand that there is no evidence for reincarnation. In my opinion, reincarnation comes from the knowledge that after we die, everything ceases to be from our perspective. Therefore, any future sentience will be from another creature. This is not to say that our "soul" passes onto that, in fact Buddhism doesn't support the idea of a soul in many cases, and nor is there any legitimate evidence for the existance of such an entity (in fact there is evidence against it), but that consciousness itself goes to another creature. But I have strayed someone. Regardless, faith itself is no true argument except that it stops all intelligent debate in its tracks.
I would like to apologize for the length, it is a subject I have become fascinated with recently. So to sum all that up, I believe that the evidence and probability all points to the idea that the concept of god or any supernatural divinity is the result of imagination and an uneducated view of the world around us. (not to say those who believe in god are necessarily uneducated, but I believe the original creation of god/divinity stems from our ancestors who really had no way of knowing what we know now) "Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves." - Carl Sagan
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Re:The God Question...
Date: 2007/10/17 17:15
By: titojtd
Status:
First off, I love your long responses! They're like candy for my brain .
I agree with everything you said. I believe that karma is basically cause and effect (aka the butterfly effect). As far as reincarnation goes...I don't believe in a soul, so I think that what is reincarnated is the emptiness that is everything, since all is one. But I'm not concerned with reincarnation because the moment is the important thing. Also, like you said, reincarnation is based off of speculation, so why spend a lot of attention on it?
That got off track, but I agree with you when you say that people create God to explain that natural awe-filled experience that we all go through at some point or another. The only reason why I'm agnostic and not atheist is because of the thought "If God isn't real, then why are there so many people who believe in God?". But that also goes back to the point that God is a strongly believed tradition.
I don't know . But as far as I'm concerned, even if God is real, it doesn't really matter since God would be us and vice versa since everything is one. "Try not. Do or do not, there is no try."
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Re:The God Question...
Date: 2007/10/17 19:51
By: MooYak
Status:
Hmmm... well I think the idea that so many people believe in god can be fairly well explained. It has really been up until scientists and explorers proved otherwise that the world was considered flat by the vast majority of the population, and the same goes with the idea that most considered the earth to be the centre of the universe. God on the other hand is a bit trickier, in that it is impossible thus far to prove his existance or lack thereof, thus many continue to believe in his existance despite contrary opinions and evidence that other beliefs they have held to be incorrect.
If god is real, I think that no organized religion can claim it as their own. (I intentionally switch from masculine to neutral here) because the very concept of god in and of itself is so massively improbably that the creation or appearance of such a thing is mind-bogglingly beyond any one system of doctrines. In terms of spirituality, I consider myself more among scientists such as Einstein in seeing spirituality and divinity not as superstition but in the greatness of the universe. The falling of a leaf in a cool autumn breeze is no less spiritual than the beauty of the cosmos. Any god that might exist contrary to all probability I think would be more on the side of such thinking rather than supportive of specific doctrines which intend to exclude elements of its creation.
I suppose it's also a bit tricky when one seeks to define a god. What really is god composed of? How powerful does a creature have to evolve to become a god? I suppose we can connect this with the point about reincarnation though. We know that god is unlikely, we know that god is by nature meant to be resistant to all attempts to discover it, so we must ask ourselves whether belief in god will improve the moment in which we life. In truth it does not and cannot, because we can never be sure. So we must accept that god is speculation, and continue on with other more important things.
I think the all is one concept of Buddhists is often misunderstood by people of other religious ideologies and backgrounds. It is though an endearingly simple philosophy and truth of reality. It is not that you and I are exactly the same person, thinking the same, etc, but that because everything we do relates in some way to one another, we are eternally connected. This may have a large part to do with Karma and the belief that it is carried over into future lives. The butterfly effect, as you say. What we do now will reverberate forever into the future, no matter how small our action is. It is moving particles, destroying and creating things. As I type this, my back is starting to hurt, so I'll go stretch afterwards, but the action of doing that will crush some insects and plants, whose future offspring may have begun a new fascinating evolutionary branch. This would of course effect future generations, and so on till the end of time itself... if time will have an end. It reminds me of the stream allegory used in Buddhism. The universe is like that stream, constantly changing, shifting in subtle ways. We are like particles in that stream. Our actions now will effect those that come in the future. We are all part of one great whole, but see things as individuals. I personally find it fascinating, though I'm not sure how good I am at explaining it to those who have not had the epiphany themselves. "Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves." - Carl Sagan
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Re:The God Question...
Date: 2007/10/18 09:16
By: titojtd
Status:
Beautiful post.
I have to agree that the whole karma/butterfly effect concept is fascinating. But let me explain my view of the "all is one" concept: Everything that exists in reality is composed of smaller parts, and those parts are composed of smaller parts, and those parts are composed of smaller parts, etc. When you get down to the absolutely smallest level of composition, everything is the same. From what I can tell, this absolutely smallest level of composition would be "strings", as in string theory. Since everything is composed of strings, everything is essentially one, literally. That's the scientific way of looking at it. That's usually the way of analyze things.
From a more philosophical point of view, you would be right. But in the end, it doesn't matter how you look at it, because you always arrive at the same conclusion. "Try not. Do or do not, there is no try."
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Re:The God Question...
Date: 2007/10/18 15:33
By: MooYak
Status:
Haha, yup, string theory and quantum mechanics, it's all way over my head, so I go for philosophy. "Where we have strong emotions, we're liable to fool ourselves." - Carl Sagan
) it was no different from simply speaking to myself in my head. The sense of awe comes from the sincere belief that what one believes to be happening is real, and this can be proven in psychology. A man can be convinced that he is speaking to someone else through a wall for instance, only to find out through evidence that that individual is not there. It is no different with God, except we simply cannot prove without a shadow of a doubt that he is not there. We cannot go into the other room to check, and there are no windows.
