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Religion for non-believers

Thursday February 12, 2009 at 05:05PM

Hello world,

I hate religions where I have to switch off my brain, believe in virgins, angels, messages from above and similar magic. I was always fascinated by the earthy buddhist approach but turned off by these candle burning, mumbling and chanting thing...

Recently I found a really refreshing approach to buddhism: Bad Buddhist radio, www.badbuddhistradio.com/index.html - this guy is really fun, he forces you to *use* your brain and wipes off the dust of an old religion.

4 Comments / add your comment?

Dan Spielmann says:

The basis of all religion is faith. When things become true because you have faith and you have faith because things are true because of faith, rational thought has gone.

Posted 9 months ago. ( permalink )

Дон Андре^pro replies:

Faith is problematic when you think it's absolute, otherwise, we all believe some things for which we have no proof of. Faith can be a sort of guidance, but it cannot be a law.

Posted 8 months ago. ( permalink )

ghoermann^pro replies:

The thing of the Bad Buddhist is that he says you should *not* believe - you should first and forever think yourself, for me it was a quite surprising statement, but I do not know a single buddhist... Maybe someone knows more...

--
Seen in ghoermann home page (?)

Posted 8 months ago. ( permalink )

Дон Андре^pro replies:

Okay, so let me give you some of my thoughts about what this guy and you say.

To me it sounds strange that "not believing" is a possible state of mind. But why splitting a hair between believing and thinking. Aren't they two actually the same thing? Take german, when you're unsure you say "Ich glaube..." or in Bavaria/Austria "I glaub...", then take english for example, they don't say "I believe" when they're unsure, they reply with "I think...". Essentially it's the same message, the difference if it exists is a totally subtle one. Believing is an active process like thinking, scientists believe some model of the world holds and hell they'll do a lot of work to try to proof it and think about it. If you believe in a god, you think a lot about that god. I regard believing as hypothesizing the same way thinking is. Neither thinking nor believing prevents you from accepting premises that are wrong (and thus allow you to infer everything).

On the other hand, take a look at knowledge. When believing and thinking becomes knowledge, essentially you stopped thinking/believing about it! 3 + 5 = 8. You just know it. You say: It's like that... point. You don't even think about thinking about it. Why should you? You know it! So when this guy says you shouldn't believe, I reply: You should believe, but you shouldn't know.

I've also a lot of times experienced that my sympathy drops a lot when I talk to some people who just know about everything. As soon as you try to state your hypothesis, your beliefs and thoughts they just mow you down with their "knowledge" about it. To me this is the actual dangerous part. The more you know, the less you think, the more you apply, the less you infer.

Does that make sense?

Posted 8 months ago. ( permalink )