(March 16, 2015 at 1:26 pm)Chuck Wrote:(March 16, 2015 at 11:02 am)Brian37 Wrote: [
Buddhism is NOT a philosophy, it is a religion. It has hero figures, prayers, rituals, monks, holy places. Just like every other religion.
That's a little bit like saying atheism is not a philosophy, but a religion, because many self professed atheists have had heros, rituals, holy places, and for all practical purposes prayers and monks.
The Buddhism philosophy is not explicitly antitheist. But in itself, while not rational by contempoary standards, is not theistic either. So the fact that buddhism can easily alloy with other social currents to menifest overtly theistic or religious characteristics does not make buddhist input into the resulting alloy a religion in itself.
An attempt to be more earthy, yes, but it is a myth like every other human invented religion. The first Buddha was depicted as a price and born of a queen. And some of his birth depictions have him being born out of Queen Maya's side and not her vagina. Back then humanity falsely attributed their success to the "divine". And the idea of purity in females was also popular. I am not arguing the existence of a first Buddha, but just in that like all humans, that religion to was started by a man like all others in a scientific age of ignorance like all others.
