Buddhism vs. Religion

K

kr8m3r_78

Registered Member
I am writing a HSC report on whether or not religion contradicts science (vise versa) and if so whether or not this then affects the way people follow their belief systems.

I am Catholic myself, so I am able to think up evidence for the Christian and parts for the Jewish religions. (i.e. '7 days of creation vs. man was created by evolution', 'Jesus born by immaculate conception' & 'Moses parted the red sea' etc.) However I have never really had much exposure to any other major religions (i.e. Hindu, Buddhist or Islamic)

I was wondering if people could help me with getting evidence from Buddhist scriptures that have been contradicted by modern scientific proofs or theories.

Although such discussions may offend people, anyone who can in post evidence of such contradictions from their religion, to include in my report I am in great debt to you.

Thanking you in advance,

kr8m3r_78
 
kr8m3r_78 said:
I am writing a HSC report on whether or not religion contradicts science (vise versa) and if so whether or not this then affects the way people follow their belief systems.

I am Catholic myself, so I am able to think up evidence for the Christian and parts for the Jewish religions. (i.e. '7 days of creation vs. man was created by evolution', 'Jesus born by immaculate conception' & 'Moses parted the red sea' etc.) However I have never really had much exposure to any other major religions (i.e. Hindu, Buddhist or Islamic)

I was wondering if people could help me with getting evidence from Buddhist scriptures that have been contradicted by modern scientific proofs or theories.

Although such discussions may offend people, anyone who can in post evidence of such contradictions from their religion, to include in my report I am in great debt to you.

Thanking you in advance,

kr8m3r_78
Click to expand...





http://www.google.com/url?sa=U&start=3&q=http://www.ciolek.com/WWWVL-Buddhism.html&e=7800
 
you'd probably find plenty depending on a few factors -- the age of the texts being the key factor, but also find it irrelevant because buddhism was meant to be dynamic like that. if science can prove something wrong, that particular way of buddhist thought will have to change. words like this come straight from the dalai lama when asked about what buddhism's response would be if science could prove that reincarnation was not true, a core belief. the scriptures are in no way set in stone.. they're more or less guidelines, tried and true methods with the implied understanding of "... but don't take my word for it, try it for yourself."

i'd best quote a scientist on this one:

Albert Einstein said:
The religion of the future will be a cosmic religion. The religion which based on experience, which refuses dogmatic. If there's any religion that would cope the scientific needs it will be Buddhism...
Click to expand...

that may not be the exact quote. if not, i will correct it when i get home, but it is very close.

:m:
 
Buddhism is not strictly a religion, so it may be best to pick some other doctrine to write about for your essay.

The Einstein quote from Buddhafish is great but he was wrong. Buddhism does not agree with the 'scientific view', it just does not contradict any scientific evidence, which is a very different thing.

Both science and religion contradict Buddhism, which might be an interesting angle to explore.
 
Based on that Keanu Reeves flick, I was under the impression that Buddhism also had a belief in a virgin birth. Is that what I get for taking the A-list retard seriously?
 
No Buddha was born in a more traditional way.
But just to be on the safe side. Never watch anything staring Keanu again, as he is a henchman of satan. Attempting to dominate the world of a-list acting with his bad movies, failed shakespearean parts and emotional range of a teaspoon.
 
Buddhism is based on yoga of knowledge. Science is based on yoga of knowledge too. Both yogas yearn to learn about our creation and creator.

One chants and the other chants to a computer! :D

Enlightenment or wisdom does not come from blind faith or very little information.
 
http://www.age-of-the-sage.org/buddhism/buddha_quote.html

in other words, the goal of buddhism is not to find a god to praise, or a heaven to aim for, but to work hard in this life, the only one that you have, in order to reduce the unhelpfull suffering of both yourself, and all sentient beings that live in this world.

Pure-Land Buddhism disagrees with me a bit, but I disagree with pureland Buddhism, so :p


the problem with "disproving" a religious idea is that more often than not, the idea itself is based on faith, not facts. You can't disprove faith.
I would say that the evidence supporting evolution and the existance of dinosaurs, etc, suggests that the book of genesis is not historically accurate, but it can't be proven. The idea behind Judeo-christian-Islam is that God is perfect, as such, he can create or un-create anything he wants. There is no way to use logic in that context.


Back to your original question, I have not come across anything in buddhist scripture which can be considered scientifically wrong. Much of it is worded specifically for interpretation, and nearly all of it comes from the observation of the external and internal, so it lies along science fairly well. It very much a "if x then y" type of spirituality. Buddhism itself (as suggested by the above link) never gets much into the religious side of things - the god pantheon, myth history, etc comes mostly from hinduism.

*as a side note, you mention that you don't know much about Islam, though you say you know about Judeism and Christianity. Islam follows the same God, reads the same old testament/torah...
 
I was under the impression that it is part of Catholic dogma that Bhuddism is not a religion, and that Catholics were even allowed to be Bhuddists as well. I'm not so well red on Bhuddism either, but what has reached me makes it seem like the meat of it is a philosophy for living life, not a lot of bizzare and ficticious claims aout some super hero who lived a long time ago in a land far far away. If this is true, I imagine their need to refute scientific claims would rairly be so great as that of christianity.
 
kr8m3r_78, you are going to have a tough time cause for the most part buddism like other skisms was constructed with nature in mind and for the most part is congruent to nature and your info is going to probably be thin. A great website though that is a huge database for factual info on religion is

http://www.religioustolerance.org/

Being Catholic I am curious to what the areas you listed for Catholicism were?

to skip to buddism go to

http://www.religioustolerance.org/buddhism.htm
 
I know very little about Buddism, but here is a passing thought I had after posting on a free will thread.

If the universe is in harmony and balanced, the only thing that could upset it would be free will. Maybe Zen attemps to acknowledge the power of free will to create change and thus advocates harmonic action in order to preserve the balance in the universe.

Harmony , patterns and maths are very similar in some respects.

kula
 
I think it is implied, if not in Buddhism, then definitely in Taoism, that the universe is self-balancing, and that we can act in accord with it, or not. The stress is on personal realization, which then naturally promotes harmony without any intervention of will power or the wish to create change. The difference is between the natural "growing from within" of the wise versus the "controlling from without" model of troublemakers and rulers. Intervening on behalf of the self-balancing universe is just what makes conflict. It's basically a hands-off approach. Buddhists say nothing is permanent, so it is completely unnecessary to "create change", change is the one thing that you can always count on.
 
Hi spidergoat,

I was thinking along the lines that consciousness (free will) is the quality that causes change through observing potential (breaking the wave function in quantum theory) so free will is required to 'cause' the physical universe to manifest from the potential, but could then also 'choose' to observe or act in a disharmonious manner.

kula
 
Since Buddhism attmepts little in historic stuff, like Christianity, nor does it have a need to prove history true in its own image, perhaps Kr8m3r_78, you could compare the psych of Bhuddism to that of a Protestant, Catholic, Freudian or Jungian.

Protestants are about changing stuff with work, Catholics change stuff with sacrifice, Freudians say it's your mother (so get over her), and a Jungian would say it's your genes (have you tried will power, or perhaps drugs?). A Buddhist wouldn't want to change anything but himself. Perhaps something along those lines? Wow, that was almost nonsensical.
 
kula said:
Hi spidergoat,

I was thinking along the lines that consciousness (free will) is the quality that causes change through observing potential (breaking the wave function in quantum theory) so free will is required to 'cause' the physical universe to manifest from the potential, but could then also 'choose' to observe or act in a disharmonious manner.

kula
Click to expand...
Interesting thought, but is conciousness the same thing as free will?
 
I dont think so. You can be conscious during a computer game but be restrained by the physical limits of the software/hardware. Although I do think the two are closely linked (if free will does exists).

If you had full control over your dreams then I suppose you could class that as more free will than the physical world, but dreams do seem to consist of past experiences and bits thereof, so you could say they are restrained within our limits of perception. But then thats consciousness.........(+ memory of expereince)

I came up with a couple of toungue in cheek equations:

Reality=potential / consciousness
Experience = sensation x emotion squared
Conciousness=Potential ( / ?) Pi

and now i can include

Perception=consciousness+experience

I think they are all interchangeable !

So maybe

free will=reality / ( perception x experience)

kula
 
The best you might find is a possible paradox.

Dependent co-arising. Match that with the reincarnation scheme.

See the contradiction? If you don't, you don't know enough about this to be writing a paper on it, so give up on Buddhism and move on to Manichaeism.
 
Common description of.........? I'd have said that reality is 'decided' first and that society put the meaning to it afterwards, but society could be seen as a group observation, so I could almost agree if society was classed as (perception x experience).

kula
 
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