(April 16, 2017 at 6:26 pm)Khemikal Wrote: By and large, western buddhism was packaged as a product and heavily retconned to a western (and psuedo-scientific) perspective. Individual practitioners (or interested parties) further retcon or read in what they wish to see - largely along their own interests. Case in point, emjay likes psychology and neuroscience..and so sees it in whatever is being referred to as "buddhist philosophy".
It's entirely likely that whatever emjay is referring to as buddhist philosophy bares about as much resemblance to the religion of buddhism as a fish does to an elephant.
I really do know what she is doing mentally with her argument and I see that attempt to separate the religion from it's past by trying to take out all the mythology in even Jews, we do know Jews some of them don't literally believe in a God but call themselves "secular Jews" are try to call it a race or ethnic group. This does not work because it is a religion. The Jewish Yahweh was a character name taking from prior Canaanite polytheism.
Even Bill O'Reilly once tried to call Catholicism a "philosophy".
But ok, if it is merely a "philosophy" so what, still stuck with different sects who don't agree with what the correct "philosophy" is, and it still does not change that others DO buy into the superstitions. See the links in my prior post.
This is the same type of avoiding the past I see from Christians who call something metaphor now. The further back in time you go in any religion the more literally and truly more people believed in spirits and the divine world. No religion escapes this.
It is the same attempt to revise some older interpretation to avoid the pratfalls and bad logic of the older interpretations. Changing the "interpretations" does not make it a "philosophy".
And again, in that one article, it says the same thing she argues, "it is about reducing suffering', well sounds nice sure, but human empathy is a evolutionary trait, not even a "philosophy" but an evolutionary observation in a very real scientific fact. Again we even see other species display acts of sharing and compassion for the group.
