(December 30, 2015 at 10:10 am)robvalue Wrote: Agreed. Buddhism is a mixture of sensible practices and baseless superstition. No free pass from being criticised or ridiculed from me. As usual, I criticize the belief and not the adherents of that belief. If anyone holds their belief in such high esteem that they take insults against it personally, then I reckon they need to sort themselves out.
No, sorry even Harris is stuck on it. I love his blasphemy of Christianity and Islam, but even Victor Stenger took issue with Harris on his Buddhism fetish.
The "meditation" and control over one's body seems pragmatic, sounds nice, but again that ability of mental training can also be found in say, the Navel Seals. They too have to train themselves to be so focused that they can endure what most people cannot. It is the gatekeeper fallacy. And like most gatekeepers, they don't like you pointing out that the label isn't doing it, humans are. Bruce Lee got lots of backlash for wanting to teach his talent to non Asians.
The fallacy that they invented endurance is no different than when Muslims claim their religion is the one true religion because Arabs invented Algebra. No group in the world past or present owns a patent on morality. Humans as individuals will do good or bad regardless of the clubs they belong to. All nations in the world, friend and foe alike all have hospitals and prisons.
