The Dalai Lama and Quantum Physics

[Angrboda]

apophenia,

most of my response wasn't even toward you neither did I care to call you a fundie atheist. I hardly read any of your response. And you seriously need to take some chill pill. I wasn't surprise that the Buddhist forum banned you. I'm sure you did a lot more than innocently ask a question.

Between the following posts of yours, here and here, there were three responses, which prompted you to write, "I think being atheists most of us have the tendency to cut and aggresively attack any religion at all... I think as an atheist we need to present ourselves in a more reasonable and admirable manner. The fact is there will always be religion. There are things worth and appropriate to attack and there are some that arent necessary. If we attack any religion just because it is a religion. We are just another group of fundies." Since mine was the only post of the three critical of Buddhism, your asking us to believe you weren't responding to me appears little more than a self-serving lie. That you can't distinguish between how someone behaves on an internet forum and in real life speaks volumes. And now we find that you're a former Buddhist. What a shock, a former Buddhist apologizing for Buddhism.

Moreover, even in this last post of yours, you didn't address a single one of the substantive criticisms I made. All you do is continue to whine about how we should be nicer to Buddhists because they're really harmless, science friendly people after all (without citing any actual evidence of Buddhist practices changed as a result of an encounter with science; deferring to something without any deferring is not deferring). And I can't find the reference, but health and mortality rates in Tibet have improved substantially since the departure of the Dalai Lama. Wikipedia writes:

Norm Dixon observes that "The Tibetan 'government' in Lhasa was composed of lamas selected for their religious piety. At the head of this theocracy was the Dalai Lama." In Portrait of the Dalai Lama (1946), British tibetologist Charles Bell describes the 13th dalaï-lama as "an absolute autocrat in both the religious and the secular administration of Tibet," adding that his being regarded as Tibet’s patron deity earned him an overpowering position in Tibet....

And on the class system in pre-communist Tibet:

[According] to journalist and writer Israel Epstein, a foreign-born Chinese citizen and member of the Chinese communist party, "the old society" in Tibet "had nothing even remotely resembling human rights." He explains: "High and low, the belief had for centuries been enforced on the Tibetans that everyone's status was predetermined by fate, as a reward for virtues or penalty for faults on one's past incarnations. Hence it was deemed senseless for the rich (even though compasssion was abstractly preached) to have qualms about sitting on the necks of the poor, and both criminal and blasphemous for the poor not to patiently bear the yoke. ‘Shangri-La’ the old Tibet was definitely not."

See the video at the end of this post as an example of how your harmless Zen Buddhists rationalized their participation in war and combat as 'peaceful Buddhists'.

"I suppose you suggest we defer to people practicing female genital mutilation in Africa, because, well, it's their tradition, and they've been born into it, and it likely goes back hundreds of years. What a pathetically stupid set of rationalizations for giving people who don't deserve a pass the pass they don't deserve."

I don't know where you got this from. this is a strong indication that you failed to understand what I said and pretty much I should just stop responding to your angry self.

You don't understand where I got this from? Maybe from here: "I think being atheists most of us have the tendency to cut and aggresively attack any religion at all. We must understand and remember that most people are born into a religion with hundred and sometimes thousand of years of traditions and concrete belief." (Quoted here; maybe if you spent less time 'not reading me' and more time actually reading yourself, you'd be better off.)

You're an apologist for Buddhism, plain and simple, but you haven't even done a good job at that, doing nothing but whine about how we should be nicer to them because they really are harmless.

"And I spoke to a Buddhist who studied overseas for two years, and he assured me that Buddhism was a regimented, weekly experience over there, just like Christian services over here. Buddhism is much more heirarchical and institutionalized over there. I have a friend on another forum who is a former Buddhist monk, having been trained in the Thai forest tradition, and he tells me in no uncertain terms in a lot of Buddhist traditions, it's little more than a Buddha fan club. Believe what you want, so long as it drips from Siddhartha's ass"

Atleast these buddhists can openly criticize their religion without fear, that said a about practitioner.

Citation?

I was trained in Mahayana tradition and was heading toward ordination to become a trainee monk. I practiced both Pure land tradition and Chan tradition. I also studied variety of different school of Buddhism in Mahayana, Theravada, and Vajrayana. I also taught Buddhism Dharma. I am well aware of what Buddhism is about. I know all the rituals and belief I was trained under. I see all the pros and all the cons. And Now I am an atheist and I point out why I don't believe in Buddhism and if necessary I will criticize what I believe is harmful which I do.

So you are a wolf in sheep's clothing after all. I'm not surprised that you're an apologist for the tradition, given your prior commitment to its truths. I don't think anyone here sees any disparity there. But again, you didn't actually defuse any of my criticisms; you whined, danced around, and complained about my bad attitude (all the while hypocritically defending Buddhism without actually defending it). You want to know the source of my bad attitude, go look in the mirror.

I don't know why you guys blow this up out of proportion with your unnecessary anger and vulgar attack. All that I am simply saying is that they are generally moderate and even in most case advocate science, and doesn't care much for influence public education, science education, or in a lot of case political benefits.

Citation?

"You've just called a theist an atheist. I can't wait for your encore. A little watery eye into whine, perhaps? My Taoist traditions have been around as long as Buddhism, and my Hindu traditions thousands of years more, if not tens of thousands. Come here, I've got some spittle I'm just sure you'd love to lick."

it's not always about you. Glad you are a hindu and a taoist, have fun with that, though I think Hinduism would have A LOT more for us to criticize than Buddhism will ever have.

Implied threat noted.


Here's that video that I promised: (Jump to 1:35, or watch the time indexed version on Youtube - the time index isn't working properly with the forum software)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=pla...Zw3U#t=96s


I look forward to your actually responding to my criticisms now that you're actually reading me :rolls-eyes:. And I look forward to your citation of concrete examples of Buddhism deferring to science and Buddhists engaged in substantive criticism of their tradition. Given your utter aversion to saying anything bad about Buddhism, period, I'd say the proof is in the pudding.

Oh, and for what it's worth, I belong to close to thirty groups ranging from atheist to psychics to believers in channeled entities, am well liked and routinely complimented on my contributions and encouraged to continue my participation in them. The only group out of thirty that had any issue with me was the Buddhist group. (As it turned out, this yo-yo in the Buddhist group who was handling me let me know that one of the most troubling "disruptions" of their group was that I had a screensaver on my netbook that was going while I discussed a book, and several members of the group took offense at the images. It was a mistake on my part not to fix that screensaver prior to the reading, but it's hardly a reason for kicking someone out of the group. In addition, I criticized the, "if it works for me, it works" rationalization which you yourself repeat. So much for being "open to criticism". I must say however that I'm not surprised at all the projecting you appear to be doing, accusing me of things based on a modest internet discussion; a common response to cognitive dissonance and criticism is to demonize and project fancifully malignant images onto your antagonist. You're doing a bang up job of that.)