Do Atheists favour Buddism over the other faiths?

Speaking only for myself (Atheist), I would say no.

Among all the religious dogma out there, I find Buddhism to be one of the less odious options if forced to choose, but Secularism trumps all religion equally.

Indeed, Roswell . . . this is a pretty silly question.

How is it a silly question, why be rude about it it's just a discussion.

I'm an atheist, and I agree with Rosb. There are aspects to Budd. that I like (meditation) but it pretty much stops there.

I haven't met a lot of hypocritical Buddists, so I don't have as much disdain for them as I do other reliious followers.

You must be very thin-skinned if you consider it rude to say you've asked a silly question. Are you some kind of aristocrat who should never be questioned, whose every utterance should be treated with profound, sycophantic respect?

It's a silly question because buddhism is a bundle of superstitions just as are all of the theistic religion, and in my experience, atheists are atheists because they don't accept the superstition.

Please, try to get over yourself.

Buddhism does not require that one's religious "roots" be abandoned. (Christianity, Moslem, Judism, Atheism, etc)

Rather it is a thinking process that is accessible to all of us, using the Buddha's teachings to comfort us and elevate wisdom by pulling from within us our own self-strengths.

I take "atheism" specifically to refer to rejection of the concept of "a creator" with or without interventionist "powers". I concur with this view, but that does not prevent me from communing with the holistic philosophy which underpins Buddhism, as opposed to its detailed mythology.

I know a number of Budists here in Hawaii. Some of them profess to be atheists and actually resent it when Budhism is referred to as a "rfeligion." They claim it to be a philosophy of life and a life-style, rather than a religin.

In my view, the Oriental religions are no better than Christianity (itself of Oriental origin, of course) or Islam; all of them tend to divorce men and women from the earth, from other forms of life, by their mystical emphasis upon the general, the abstract, the invisible, and by their psychological tendency, in prayer and meditation, to turn the mind inward, toward self-love, self-importance, self-obsession. Salvation. Satori. Union with God, union with the All-Source, union with The One. (Which one? ) Of course, the devotees of these mystical rites claim the opposite"that they are engaged in self-transcendence. I think they delude themselves; rather than escaping the self, they are wallowing, luxuriating, in a most enormous vanity. The same is true of all the many lesser cults now flourishing, like fungi in a bog, among us bored and idle Americans"EST, for example, and Esalen, and TM, and psychoanalysis, and anal-analysis, and good God! all the many other sickly little superstitions that pollute the psychic atmosphere.

(However, I tell myself . . . it’s all part of the carnival. All part of the human comedy. These things have always been with us and always will.

Since Buddhism does not profess to worship a personal god it is perhaps true that those who profess no god would gravitate to such a discipline.

Well, "no" belief 'is" a belief.

I have more respect for agnostics who really don't care or who chose to expend no energy to a belief.
But that's not to say that an agnostic can't be a moral, loving person.

All you have to do is look at nature and you can't help but believe in something.

Well, that's just simply false.

I would agree with Dys up to a point, and the only disagreement i have with him is in divorcing men and women, etc. I know of no religion, Buddhism included, which does not treat women as an auxiliary, if it acknowledges their existence at all. One reason that i have a great contempt for Buddhism, and the claims about it, is that Buddhist are content to watch women and children sink into misery, poverty, even starvation while they prate their superstitious nonsense about karma, the great wheel of life, reincarnation, and dozens (if not actually thousands) of cop-outs about the "unreality" of reality, thereby excusing themselves from taking positive steps to alleviate the misery of mankind. For all that one can claim about the repression of the Chinese in Tibet, prior to their arrival, it was essentially a feudal state, with tens of thousands of useless mouths being fed by peasants who lived on the edge of starvation. I have no respect for the Dalai Lama and his self-serving pose of spiritual authority. Buddhism did not prevent Buddhist monks from becoming some the most deadly warriors in 16th century Japan, nor has it prevented the Tamils and the Sinhalese from slaughtering one another in their thousands in our own times.

I concur completely with Maporche's most recent remark, that's a common, but silly position of religionists.

I don't think so.

It seems that it is important to religionists to equate a lack of belief with belief, i suppose so that they can claim that what one has is a struggle of competing, but polar opposite belief sets. Being atheist, though, from my point of view, doesn't require one to have any belief system at all.

Yes. It's a common, though specious argument.

I think one of the root motivations for floating the idea that "Atheism is just another Religion" is to potentially undermine the idea of secularism (the separation of church and state).

Yes, certainly . . . and to deflect the criticism of religion in general through the inference that atheists are being disingenuous in condemning a practice in which they indulge themselves. Unfortunately, the militant, canting, ranting atheist just add arrows to the quiver of this criticism.

sulliedfish spoke


The absence of something is nothing. It is not something.

As far as Setanta goes that was actually polite, welcome to a2k and don't take it personally.