I found this to be fascinating:
The Neural Buddhists.
excerpt:
"In their arguments with Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins, the faithful have been defending the existence of God. That was the easy debate. The real challenge is going to come from people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts built on top of universal human traits. It’s going to come from scientists whose beliefs overlap a bit with Buddhism."
~~~Artiphys~~~
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3 comments:
"people who feel the existence of the sacred, but who think that particular religions are just cultural artifacts"
So the thought is that there IS a "higher existence", but religions are just sets of cultural rules and customs that have nothing to do with that higher power?
If so, do you believe that?
> If so, do you believe that?
I believe that there are aspects of our existence that transcend what we would naively expect from a perfectly materialistic world. Logically, I don't know how that can be, so the question interests me.
I also believe that all major religions were obviously created by mankind, and are flawed, and to at least some degree cause division and hatred, and someday we will need to move beyond them (in their present forms).
I believe that the 'secular atheist agenda', such as it is, often tries to fight or ignore the fact that people long for meaning in their lives, and treats that longing as a failing. I worry that because of that, people feel forced to choose from a false dichotomy: 'science', with its apparent disregard for the transcendent aspects of existence, or 'religion', which acknowledges those feelings but ties them up with various myths, traditions, and dogma.
I think there's room for something else.
Well, I agree. And, you say it so well. If you turn this last comment of yours into a post, I am going to post a link to it over on facebook and on twitter (if you don't mind, of course).
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