Evolution and Conscious Design...

[John]

Just some thoughts.

The idea of micro-blackholes is compelling to me. For one thing, it unifies the strong force with gravity and so I'm sure Einstein would like it. We're all trying to unify the four known forces, and any progress on that is great news.Hawking radiation may well be a myth.They haven't found it yet and that makes me skeptical. As an expert on spectroscopy, I have to say this doesn't bode well for the little creep, not finding this already.

All a singularity means is that their equations break down when they try to extrapolate. The math gives out, that's all. Mathematics is a language. A singularity is a mathematically ineffable state of a system. So duh, stop extrapolating already, dipshit. No one knows what the physical state really is, that's the point, it's undefinable. Anyway, if Hawking is wrong in his hypothesis, then black holes have zero entropy. That's what everybody wants to avoid, so Hawking invented this Black Hole piss idea. It has all kinds of problems, not least of which is that it has never been confirmed by experiment.

[Elias]

Religion is a highly inclusive word, but when you define it (as you did) as the antonym of atheism, it is most definitely not a religion. In fact, it is a mode of atheism.

Atheists include in the general category of "religion" any system of belief which involves the supernatural, whether it is theistic or not. Since Buddhism clearly involves a number of supernatural beliefs about the nature of the universe and reality, it's a religious system.

The Dalai Lama supposedly said "Buddhism is not a religion, it's a philosophy." (Can't remember where I read that quote.) And a couple of recent Popes have pointed out the same thing.

You really have to laugh at a guy whose very title depends on millions of people believing that he is a living God, declaring that he's not involved in a religion. That's a worse case of cognitive dissonance than Adidam.

It is interesting how you choose to emphasize certain aspects of Buddhism that are clearly peripheral and very likely absorbed from the cultural matrix as part of Buddhism's tolerant approach.

Essential Buddhism, however, is something that any modern atheist-humanist ought to be able enjoy, if they would spend some time with it.

1. Buddha did not claim to be a god, or sent by God. He did not claim to be the incarnation of any great being at all, but a mere man who was his own judge and jury, responsible to no "higher authority".

2. He advised all who listened to him to do that same. "One is one's own refuge, who else could be the refuge?" Each of us is responsible for working things out ourselves, responsible for our own emancipation, and we are liberated through our own intelligence and effort. (I paraphrase Rahula here -- the first chapter of his book is significant in its emphasis on individual freedom as the essence of Buddha's teaching.

So what does it mean to be a man? Does it mean belief in invisible worlds, ghosts, supernatural powers, or gods and goddesses guiding our destiny? It does not, and in this regard godless science is an excellent teacher, very much in resonance with the teachings of Gautama.

Beyond its realism, Buddhism is also a philosophy of the mind -- a psychology as good (or better) than any that exists. In fact it is the Buddhist mastery of human psychology that makes it so adaptable to the world of "religious nuts" in which it finds itself.

Sure, in common parlance Buddhism is "one of the world's five great religions". So it is easy for you, as a famous Adidam lawyer, to defend your client by claiming Buddhism is part of the opposition to atheist scientism.

But you know better. (In fact, you always know better than you say. You just like to play chess with ideas. )

cheers,

Elias

[mdpc]

(You guys are way too fast for me. The following contains some stuff that probably has already been addressed some in better form that I am doing here, but anyhow, here goes) ---

And of course Islam is also a religion, if a rather lousy one in my view.

Yes, well, one could glibly toss out any religion and talk about its shortcomings. The traditions that get bundled under the umbrella of Hinduism are wonderful, but why is India so impoverished and just generally effed-up? Judaism is wonderful, but the Hebrew Bible is filled with oodles of crap thrown in by various power-mongering priests. Christianity is wonderful, but golly, there sure has been boatloads and boatloads of atrocities and just plain inanities committed in Jesus' name. Buddhism is wonderful, but, like pretty much every other religion extant today, its record as far as gender equality leaves sooo much to be desired.

I mean, has any major religion that is still happening today dealt in a healthy, balanced way with issues of gender and sexuality? Hell, no. Have any of them been immune from having unsavory relations with political powers from time to time? Nah. The sheer fact that religions have so consistently screwed up so awfully in the realms of gender relations, sex, and political power lends credence to the idea that if there is hard-wiring in this area, then it's more about issues of social control and attempts to deal with "lower chakra" issues such as fear, sexuality, aggression and territoriality, and any talk about God and such is more a convenient window-dressing of sorts which lends itself especially well in the service of manipulating and exploiting people.

You really have to laugh at a guy whose very title depends on millions of people believing that he is a living God, declaring that he's not involved in a religion. That's a worse case of cognitive dissonance than Adidam.

It's certain true that Buddhism has a complex philosophy, but it's clearly a religious philosophy. It may not endorse or condemn theism, but it clearly describes the world in supernatural terms, such as in the reincarnation of "tulkus" like the Dalai Lama. Without reincarnation, there's no Dalai Lama. If he really believes that Buddhism is a philosophy and not a religion, he should renounce his title, walk away from the whole operation, and just give lectures now and then on philosophy. J. Krishnamurti did that with the Theosophical Society, which is at least walking the talk.

I don't know why in the heck I'm attempting to take on the role here of being an apologist for the Dalai Lama, but anyhow, here goes...

I'm not sure that "millions of people [believe] that he is a living God". Yes, many Buddhists look upon the Dalai Lama as being an emanation of Chenrezig/Avalokiteshvara. However, Chenrezig is not a god, and most certainly not considered to be a god in the sense of an all-powerful creator. In English, the word "deity" is used, rather than "god", and it is meant to convey that he embodies all manner of sublime qualities of compassion and wisdom developed to their utmost level; that is to say, without any limitation. Buddhists don't "worship" Chenrezig or the Dalai Lama in the same sense in which gods are worshiped in other religions, i.e., "I'm so tiny and miserable and you're so vast and wonderful"; instead they might express honor or appreciation as a means of getting in touch with their own inherent qualities which ultimately are absolutely identical to Chenrezig. While doing so, the view of emptiness is of crucial importance-- the deity is empty of solid, independent existence and in fact dissolved back into emptiness at the end of practice, rather than being viewed as having some sort of substantial self-existence in the manner that a theistic faith's gods would be seen as having. Also, generally speaking, when one does Chrenrezig practice, one meditates on all beings as being Chenrezig (which they are, fundamentally).

I don't think that the Dalai Lama is being disingenuous if he says something to the effect of Buddhism being a philosophy and not a religion. I think that this is more along the lines of his repeated suggestions that Westerners try to follow their own religious traditions as best as they can, rather then waking up one day and "converting" to Buddhism. I'm not sure if the Dalai Lama even said what Elias is making reference to there, but he is definitely famous for saying "my religion is compassion". Again, I think that he is not being disingenuous when he says things like this, but rather I think that he is trying to de-emphasize the trappings of any particular religious tradition or atheistic viewpoint, and instead attempting to emphasize and appeal to some core principles that presumably all religions and all individual persons treasure.

Furthermore, he has indicated in interviews that the tradition of recognizing reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas might not continue after his death:

the Dalai Lama and another prominent Tibetan exile, Lhasang Tsering, appear more than ready to abandon it [the tulku tradition]. In April of 1998 the Dalai Lama publicly questioned its usefulness and viability in an interview in the Indian Express. "I have always been opposing orthodox ideas," he said in reference to the origin of the Dalai Lama line in 1391. "If an institution that came into being 600 years ago loses relevance in modern times, it is logical to scrap it."

On July 6, 1999, the BBC reported the Dalai Lama as saying he would not reincarnate in Tibet in any areas under Chinese control if his successor were chosen in the traditional way. He also outlined other ways in which his successor might be chosen, including an approach similar to papal election. And he indicated that since 1969 he has made clear that it is up to the people of Tibet to decide whether or not the institution of the Dalai Lama should continue.

As for him stepping down from his title, I'm going to guess that he sees being "the Dalai Lama" as, well... his dharma at this point, and he probably imagines that it may cause more harm than good for him to abdicate at this point. Additionally, it's pretty evident that he considers many living lamas to be more eminently realized spiritual figures than he, and I imagine that he sees his title as being of more importance as a political one than a spiritual one.

[John]

So what does it mean to be a man? Does it mean belief in invisible worlds, ghosts, supernatural powers, or gods and goddesses guiding our destiny? It does not, and in this regard godless science is an excellent teacher, very much in resonance with the teachings of Gautama.

The black hole is an invisible world. The electic field is a ghost. The documented powers of nature are, in large measure, identical to the traditional definitions of supernatural powers. The gods and goddesses have all been found in natural phenomena and documented by science under pseudonyms. Electron, quark, brain-cell, etc. These are all just like the gods in the pantheon. Science implies that all these natural powers control our destiny. So the names are changed. I see science as vindicating most of these ideas. This arrogant attitude of, 'we're above all that now' is simply nonsense. The real question is: "How did they ever know all this without our modern testing methods?"

[Broken Yogi]

We propose to term happenings which turn against the trend towards increasing entropy, ‘disentropic’ ~ Alfred Ubbelohde, Professor of Chemistry, Belfast 1947

We've heard from Crick, the guy who won the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA, about how life was a 'almost a miracle', given what he knew about thermodynamics: "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going." F. Crick. Scientists don't often use the word 'miracle'. This alone should give us some pause. Every researcher knows tacitly that he'll never get a Nobel Prize if he uses a word like 'miracle'. Look what they did to Hoyle. Crick must've already had his prize by this time, I'd be willing to bet.

We've heard this from Schrodinger:"In the famous 1944 book What is Life?, Nobel-laureate physicist Erwin Schrödinger theorizes that life, contrary to the general tendency dictated by the Second law of thermodynamics, decreases or maintains its entropy by feeding on negative entropy. ~Wiki

First, quoting famous guys who have an opinion on this means nothing. Famous people's opinions without evidence are meaningless. Science doesn't work by authority. A Nobel prize doesn't make you an authority, it means you have demonstrated convincing evidence of a theory, that's all. I could quote quite a huge number of Nobel Prize winners who disagree with these guys. But even that doesn't matter. What matters is the evidence. And there's no evidence for biological processes going against entropy. If there were, I'm sure there'd be a Nobel Prize for demonstrating that.

Your misunderstanding seems rooted in this idea:

As I've established here, quite thoroughly, cellular metabolic processes are disentropic; these processes concentrate potential energy in apparent defiance of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. A close reading of the 2nd Law reveals that spontaneous natural processes are only required to be entropic on average, over time. This rule of nature, the "Law of Entropy" does not expressly prohibit the possibility of local disentropic processes.

In the first place, you have not demonstated any defiance of entripy in any cellular metabolic process. What on earth are you talking about? Which cellular metabollic process defies entropy? You seem to think that "concentrating energy" is some kind of defiance of entropy, rather than a part of the theory. What you seem to be referring to in this "concentration of energy" that occurs in nature is simply what are called "endothermic reactions" - reactions that require an energy input to accomplish, that suck energy out of heat and put it into something like a chemical bond, or a nuclear bond, or gravitational potential. But there's nothing disentropic about that. Endothermic reactions are entropic, just as exothermic reactions are. All reactions are entropic, even reversible ones. Heat and energy disippate in the process, without exception.

Endothermic reactions do NOT "go against the trend of the 2nd law". Nor are they unanticipated by the 2nd law. The theory of entropy was developed until the mid to late 19th century, well after endothermic reactions had been noticed and studied in great detail. So the 2nd law was conceived of with precisely these kinds of reactions in mind. Ot explains how endothermic reactions always increase entropy, even as they store energy. Any process by which one stores or transfer energy is entropic, without any known exceptions. No cellular metabolic process violates this, even endothermic ones that require an input of energy, such as the production of sugars through photosynthesis.

The Law of Entropy clearly states: Overall the Universe is entropic. This means that whenever any energetic exchange takes place in the Universe, some of the potential energy that is unleashed will be lost as unrecoverable, 'useless' kinetic energy (heat).

FIrst of all, heat is not "useless energy". Steam engines and nuclear reactors create heat to do very useful work. The radiant heat from the sun is not useless at all, it's what makes life on earth possible. But it is true that one will not have as much energy overall to do further work with.

To illustrate with a simple example: imagine you turn on the stove to cook some carrots. The heat that cooks the carrots is doing the 'useful' work of cooking the carrots. This heat was bound up in the potential energy of the fuel and was liberated when the fuel was burned to power the stove, either locally or at the power plant. However some of the heat that was liberated from the fuel will be lost to the environment, this 'useless' energy cannot generally be recovered and according to the 2nd Law, some portion of it can never be recovered; no way, no how. This 'lost' energy is known as entropy, and according to the 2nd Law, all natural energetic interactions that tap any kind of potential energy from Nature will always add some net entropy to the Universe.

So far, so good. But then you run into this whopper:

Yet, as we've seen, novel processes exist that seem to defy the odds, they concentrate potential energy and reduce entropy locally.

First of all, nothing about endothermic reactions "defy the odds". They are not rare feats of randomness that somehow has one part of a room heat up because all the fast molecules happen to go to the right, and all the slow molecules end up on the left, by sheer chance. Endothermic reactions are perfectly predictable by the laws of nature. They are an intrinsic part of the laws of nature. A huge number of chemical reactions are endothermic. Living systems make use of both endothermic reactions and exothermic reactions, as do non-living systems. Nothing about that "defies the odds". It's like saying that basic chemistry defies the odds of thermodynamics, when it obeys those laws perfectly, including endothermic reactions.

I suppose what you are trying to get at is that in a universe in which there was no chemistry, in which nuclear reactions did not occur, in which there was no gravity, no electromagnetism, not strong or weak force, just motion and heat, in which there was only the initial heat of the big bang, you would get some kind of perfect entropic process, whereby the heat of the big bang would simply even out over time such that there was no discontinuity. But we don't live in a universe like that. We live in a universe in which there are all kinds of complex possibilities, complex reactions, complex ways in which energy can be moved about, stored, create reactions, store energy, etc. The law of entropy states that all that action and reaction will always reduce the overall available energy to do work. The heat will dissipate to the degree that it can. But it will not dissipate perfectly, as it would in a universe that had no chemical or nuclear reactions or gravity. Instead, as it dissipates, it will fall into various states along the way through the laws that govern those reactions. All of those reactions obey the 2nd law however, and all of those states lose available energy in one respect or another.

In the overall energy balance of the Universe, these anomolous processes do not impact the validity of the 2nd Law, they represent a truly puny portion of the energy out there.

First of all, endothermic reactions are not anomalous. They are incredibly common. All reversible reactions mean that there's an exothermic and endothermic reaction possible. You can put energy into a chemical bond by building a sugar, and you can get energy back out by burning that sugar molecule, and then you can take the heat from that burning and build more sugar molecules out of it, and repeat. The problem is, you lose energy at every step of the way, and so your ability to keep reversing this process is limited. That's entropy. You lose the ability to extract energy from heat and do work with the system. Nothing about either side of that process is anomalous. Both the endothermic reaction of producing sugar molecules and the exothermic process of burning them obeys the law of entropy. No anomaly is present in this process.

The overall entropy of the Universe is going up all the time, despite these novel processes. Entropy still rules overall. Over time the Universe is still headed for

"

Yes, this is true, except that these are not "novel" processes at all. Every reversible reaction has an endothermic and exothermic side to it. You can fuse nuclei heavier than iron by putting energy into the nuclear bonds. You can get it back out by fission. Both of those reactions are entropic. Neither go against the trend of the 2nd law. There are no "local violations" of the second law, because entropy only applies to systems, not to parts of systems. That's like saying that you can locally violate the law of the conservation of mass-energy. Well, duh. It's meaningless, in other words, because the very concept of entropy only applies to a system, not to components within a system. Which means that moving heat energy into a chemical bond does not in any way violate or go against the trend of the 2nd law, since that is accounted for in the theory of entropy from the start.

Lord Kelvin, who discovered the 2nd Law, which he called the 'principle of universal dissipation of energy', said this about his theory:

The result [of this trend] would inevitably be a state of universal rest and death, if the universe were finite and left to obey existing laws. But it is impossible to conceive a limit to the extent of matter in the universe; and therefore science points rather to an endless progress, through an endless space, of action involving the transformation of potential energy into palpable motion and hence into heat, than to a single finite mechanism, running down like a clock, and stopping for ever"

Lord Kelvin did not have knowledge of nuclear physics or astrophysics, and famously said that Darwinian evolution was impossible because the sun could only provide enough energy for about 300,000 years before burning out, thus not giving enough of a timescale for evolution to work. You keep quoting people from long ago who are unfamiliar with modern science to make points that are irrelevant to our debate.

This is where the speculative hypothesis of abiogenesis runs into a brick wall. If the natural trend of the Universe is to run down potential energy toward dissipation as useless heat, then it's not possible for disentropic processes to arise spontaneously from disordered matter.

This is probably the heart of your entire argument, and it's obvious nonsense. All biological processes, whether they are endothermic or exothermic, run down the potential energy of the system and dissipate it into more and more heat-loss. One can play that old "in and out" game of going from endothermic to exothermic back to endothermic and on and on, but the energy continues to dissipate at every step of the way. That it doesn't entirely dissipate instantly, but cycles back and forth, is not going "against the trend". It merely slows the process down, since each step of the cycle goes in the same direction. That's why the universe is an interesting place, so to speak, as opposed to a universe in which no reactions took place, in which heat just dissipated away by random molecular action.

In other words, whereas cellular metabolism can be reconciled with 'overall average' entropy of the Universe going up, abiogenesis violates the principle of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

Well of course this is nonsense. Abiogenesis merely says that there are endothermic and exothermic reactions in nature which can build complex molecules and naturally create living systems that way. It does not in any way require any violation of the second law, either in principle or in practice. Endothermic and exothermic reactions take place all over the universe. Nuclear reactions in stars are built upon a combination of endothermic and exothermic reactions. But they always lose heat in the process, which is why stars radiate light. The exothermic side of the reaction tends to lose more energy than the endothermic side can capture. That's why all chemistry is entropic. And nuclear reactions operate by the same principles.

The assertion that abiogenesis took place over millions of years only makes it less likely to have happened, not more. This is precisely because the 2nd Law is a rule that specifically applies to statistical averages, as we've noted.

Again, that's meaningless, in that life is not said by abiogenesis to be a truly random process, but one which makes use of the basic endothermic and exothermic possibilities of organic chemistry to produce, over time, complex molecules which can go through repeated and reversible reactions which eventually create molecules which can reproduce themselves by making use of these endothermic and exothermic reactions. Nothing in any of that defies the odds, because they are no odds against endothermic reactions occurring. It would defy the odds if they didn't occur. They are perfectly normal and natural and occur all the time everywhere.

When a fair coin is flipped once, the expected value of the number of heads is equal to one half. Therefore, according to the law of large numbers, the proportion of heads in a large number of coin flips should be roughly one half. In particular, the proportion of heads after n flips will almost surely converge to one half as n approaches infinity.

By that same token, approximately half of all chemical reactions should be endothermic rather than exothermic. Which means there's nothing anomalous about them.

Anyone familiar with the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics should see that the process of Abiogenesis is indeed quite impossible under any conceivable natural conditions, and that the processes of Photosynthesis and Nucleosynthesis are indeed quite improbable. Keep in mind how these processes affect us; we're all composed of stardust that was and is created by nucleosynthesis, we all survive on hydrocarbons that were created by photosynthesis. Yet these processes are both bucking the trend in a dissapative, expanding Universe. This is the supernatural miracle of creation. Oh shit, why did I use that word? There go my chances for the nobel prize.

The reason why hasn't won anyone the Nobel Prize is that it's obvious nonsense to anyone remotely familiar with chemistry, thermodynamics, and biology. As mentioned before, our particular universe is highly improbable, in that for things to work out exactly this way requires that all the coin flips worked out a certain way. But that doesn't mean our universe couldn't have occurred except by a miracle. It just means that it's unlikely ever to be repeated. Some kind of chemical reactions were inevitable, given the universe we started out with, and we have no idea how unlikely life was unless we run the experiment multiple times, and see how many times life forms. I'd say that odds are the life forms on earth, given its initial conditions, most of the time. But I'm just guessing. I don't see any reason why it shouldn't form by purely natural law, or why it needs some kind of special miracle to keep going. The miracle is that anything exists at all. Once that's happened, the rest is just nature.

Now let's here some more uninformed blowback from the 'competative-mud' morons.

In the first place, abiogenesis is not about "mud", since mud is composed of mostly silicone dioxide. Abiogenesis is about life arising from the ocean, from chemicals dissolved in water, which is the ancient symbol for consciousness. The miracle of life forming by abiogenesis is just as wondrous and beautiful as any notion of God reaching down to touch a piece of mud and turn it into a man. I would say even more so, since it gives nature the great and wondrous power of life, rather than taking it away from nature and giving it to something apart form this world. Your view of nature is actually very dismal, as if nature is a dead and lifeless, spiritless place that is only made meaningful by some outside force coming into the picture. I would call that a moronic viewpoint about nature, to be honest. It's certainly not a spiritual view of nature. In my view, nature is so imbued with spirit that its very laws of chemistry and physics produce life spontaneously, from it's own manifest material. It doesn't need "outside" help, because matter is also spirit.

[Broken Yogi]

Yes, well, one could glibly toss out any religion and talk about its shortcomings. The traditions that get bundled under the umbrella of Hinduism are wonderful, but why is India so impoverished and just generally effed-up?

Actually, for most of its history India was the richest nation on earth. Even after Islam invaded the north, it remained a very rich country, much wealthier than Europe and with a higher standard of living. That's what attracted the colonial British who invaded, conquered, and drove India into poverty over several centuries as they exploited its resources. Now that India is independent again, and it is throwing off the socialist mantle its economy is growing at a pace which will make it a rich nation once again, given another century or so.

India's religion was one of the reasons it was always such a rich country. Its highly tolerant and open-minded, inquiring nature led to a peaceful, stable society with strong economic instincts that was not divided by significant sectarian conflict and strife, until Islam and Christianity came along, both of which were highly aggressive and conquest-oriented by that time. India was not, because it had not been subject to that kind of intolerant attitude, and hadn't evolved the kind of "immune system" to fight it off.

I mean, has any major religion that is still happening today dealt in a healthy, balanced way with issues of gender and sexuality?

What about Adidam? (just kidding).

The sheer fact that religions have so consistently screwed up so awfully in the realms of gender relations, sex, and political power lends credence to the idea that if there is hard-wiring in this area, then it's more about issues of social control and attempts to deal with "lower chakra" issues such as fear, sexuality, aggression and territoriality, and any talk about God and such is more a convenient window-dressing of sorts which lends itself especially well in the service of manipulating and exploiting people.

You're only looking at the downside of religion, which is certainly important, but not the only side of the picture. Even the repressive sexual nature of religion has a positive side to it, in that primitive societies were always afflicted with a huge amount of sexual violence, from rape to the murder of rivals over women. This was a huge problem for primitive societies, and so religion evolved a crude but effective way of establishing a social order based on the strict regulation of sexuality to keep things together. We can do without many of those restrictions now, but back then it was a different story. Without that kind of regulation of sexual desiring and conflicts based in sexuality, civilization would have had a much harder time developing.

I enjoy your discourse on the Dalai Lama, who I greatly admire for all kinds of reasons, but let's not pretend that he's the head of a department of philosophy at Buddhist U, rather than head of a religion. I appreciate the balancing act he tries to pull off, but it's a religious balancing act.

On the other hand, you have a good point that for many westerners, it's often best to merely approach Buddhism from a philosophical point of view, rather than a religious one. If they want to adopt the full religion of Buddhism, that's fine, but for most westerners that's probably not the best way to benefit from the teachings of Buddhism. That same is probably true for easterners and third worlders and Christianity. Christianity has many good philosophical and moral teachings that one can benefit from, but taking up the religion itself per se is probably not the best thing unless you are born and raised in that world (and even then...) Hinduism feels similarly. In fact, you can't really convert to Hinduism. You have to be born into it. You can take up various philosophical view of Hinduism, and they encourage that even, and you can take up some of its practices, but you will always be a westerner, not a Hindu.

I'm not sure that "millions of people [believe] that he is a living God". Yes, many Buddhists look upon the Dalai Lama as being an emanation of Chenrezig/Avalokiteshvara. However, Chenrezig is not a god, and most certainly not considered to be a god in the sense of an all-powerful creator. In English, the word "deity" is used, rather than "god", and it is meant to convey that he embodies all manner of sublime qualities of compassion and wisdom developed to their utmost level; that is to say, without any limitation.

This is nit-picking. There are many kinds of Gods in religion, not just the one all-powerful deity of Abrahamic monotheism. For all practical purposes, Chenrezig is a God, a magical celestial being with miraculous powers over the earth and humanity. The Dalai Lama is his manifestation on earth. Nice gig if you can get it. Not all fun and games, of course. THe Buddhist religious system is quite a good one, in my view, but it's still a religion. It avoids many of the pitfalls of some other less subtle religions, and it has worked out some pretty powerful philosophical views, but it's still a religion, plain and simple, and of course in the Vajrayana heavily involved in wordly politics.

Furthermore, he has indicated in interviews that the tradition of recognizing reincarnations of the Dalai Lamas might not continue after his death:

I imagine you are aware that the reasons for this are not because the Dalai Lama has any migivings about the tulku system, or a desire to make Tibetan Buddhism less a religion and more a philosophical pursuit. It's purely having to do with the politics of China, which intends to find, recognize, and put into play an alternative Dalai Lama after this one dies, so as to continue its efforts to co-opt Tibetan Buddhism and make it a servant of the state of China. The Dalai Lama wants to prevent the Chinese from doing that, by taking his very powerful political position out of the tulku system temporarily, until the Chinese problem is resolved. The thinking is that he may transfer his temporal powers to the young Karmapa, who was able to escape from Tibet and looks very much capable of leading the new century of TIbetan Buddhism for a long while to come. Perhaps, if the Chinese occupation is resolved, the Dalai Lamas will resume their rule by tulku, but maybe not. He may turn out to be the last of the Dalai Lama tulku lineage, and we may end up with the title being passed on only to living Buddhists who are in the west.

[Broken Yogi]

So what does it mean to be a man? Does it mean belief in invisible worlds, ghosts, supernatural powers, or gods and goddesses guiding our destiny? It does not, and in this regard godless science is an excellent teacher, very much in resonance with the teachings of Gautama.

The black hole is an invisible world. The electic field is a ghost. The documented powers of nature are, in large measure, identical to the traditional definitions of supernatural powers. The gods and goddesses have all been found in natural phenomena and documented by science under pseudonyms. Electron, quark, brain-cell, etc. These are all just like the gods in the pantheon. Science implies that all these natural powers control our destiny. So the names are changed. I see science as vindicating most of these ideas. This arrogant attitude of, 'we're above all that now' is simply nonsense. The real question is: "How did they ever know all this without our modern testing methods?"

Wow, what arrogant nonsense. The gods and goddesses of religion are quite different from the laws of science, and I'm not sure how one can make such a comparison except out of sheer ignorance and arrogance combined. Science has nothing to say about destiny. Electrons and quarks are not pseudonymns for gods and goddesses. They are not presumed by science to have any conscious intelligence at all. You can say that science is wrong, if you like, that the world really is controlled by gods and goddesses as EE claims, but you can't say that they are making the same kinds of claims, only using different names.

The real question is, if the ancients did know all this already, how come they couldn't build the kind of technology with that knowledge that science is able to build?

[Broken Yogi]

It is interesting how you choose to emphasize certain aspects of Buddhism that are clearly peripheral and very likely absorbed from the cultural matrix as part of Buddhism's tolerant approach.

Essential Buddhism, however, is something that any modern atheist-humanist ought to be able enjoy, if they would spend some time with it.

1. Buddha did not claim to be a god, or sent by God. He did not claim to be the incarnation of any great being at all, but a mere man who was his own judge and jury, responsible to no "higher authority".

2. He advised all who listened to him to do that same. "One is one's own refuge, who else could be the refuge?" Each of us is responsible for working things out ourselves, responsible for our own emancipation, and we are liberated through our own intelligence and effort. (I paraphrase Rahula here -- the first chapter of his book is significant in its emphasis on individual freedom as the essence of Buddha's teaching.

So what does it mean to be a man? Does it mean belief in invisible worlds, ghosts, supernatural powers, or gods and goddesses guiding our destiny? It does not, and in this regard godless science is an excellent teacher, very much in resonance with the teachings of Gautama.

Beyond its realism, Buddhism is also a philosophy of the mind -- a psychology as good (or better) than any that exists. In fact it is the Buddhist mastery of human psychology that makes it so adaptable to the world of "religious nuts" in which it finds itself.

Sure, in common parlance Buddhism is "one of the world's five great religions". So it is easy for you, as a famous Adidam lawyer, to defend your client by claiming Buddhism is part of the opposition to atheist scientism.

But you know better. (In fact, you always know better than you say. You just like to play chess with ideas. )

cheers,

Elias

I think you make a good argument that Buddhism is a good religion, but this fails to demonstrate that Buddhism is not a religion at all. Buddha himself was certainly non-theistic, and he avoided calling himself a God. Even so, during most of his life he was treated with the reverence and deference one would reserve for a God, someone who reveals the truth to mankind. And he created a system for living that was basically religious in nature, with all kinds of rules and regulations, practices and relationships, a hierarchical system of authority and governance, and a clearly other-worldly viewpoint about reality, requiring belief in various supernatural phenomena such as reincarnation, karma, dependent origination, mystical states of samadhi and so forth. It's very clear that Buddha was a religious person for all of his adult life, that he tried various kinds of religious paths in Hinduism, and decided to create his own religious path around the very religious idea of "enlightenment".

Now, of course one can look at all this philosophically, but its still a religious philosophy. One can find aspects of Buddhism which are in harmony with science, and even with atheism. But it's possible to do that with all religions. Science is not inherently opposed to religion. In fact, science grew out of religion, and those who try to use science to destroy religion are just playing Oedipal games - trying to destroy the father so as to pose as the creator of oneself (that's Otto Rank's view of the Oedipus Complex). Christianity is not in opposition to science, despite the claims of some delusional Christians, nor is Judaism, or Islam, or any other religion. Some religious claims are debunked by science, but those are mostly of mythical origin which should not be interpreted literally in any case.

Now, I would say that most religion is in opposition to that peculiar modern disaster known as '"scientism", but science itself is just a method for studying the material world, and it has no metaphysical implications one way or the other. Buddhism also tries to avoid metaphysics, and they have that in common, but Buddhism doesn't really do that, in that it does claim that metaphysical realities such as reincarnation and karma are as real as anything else in this world.

[etphon ehome]

The gods and goddesses of religion are quite different from the laws of science, and I'm not sure how one can make such a comparison except out of sheer ignorance and arrogance combined. Science has nothing to say about destiny. Electrons and quarks are not pseudonymns for gods and goddesses. They are not presumed by science to have any conscious intelligence at all. You can say that science is wrong, if you like, that the world really is controlled by gods and goddesses as EE claims, but you can't say that they are making the same kinds of claims, only using different names.

Yes, the world is under the guidance of higher beings. The Tibetan Buddhism scholar Robert Thurman mentions great benevolent bodhisattvas miraculously controlling events on earth. Otherwise we would have been blown to bits long ago.

We are in control of our lives and destinies with the use of freewill. Those higher beings simply manifest what we wish, good or bad, if and when it all fits in karmically. We each create our own heaven or hell and are responsible for it. The test is to see what we will do when left up to our own devices and desires. If we can use buddhism to liberate ourselves from this level of existence they'll back us up, if that's what we wish. Whatever our intentions are behind our motivations is what will determine where we go from here and how much freedom we will have when we get out of jails like this due to time served, good behavior and lessons learned.

If a person follows any religious or philosophical path, or worldview, with integrity while doing the right thing, they gain their freedom. They can all lead to liberation, including athiesm and secularism. All paths have created saints and devils because it isn't the path, it's what people do with the path that matters. That said, some philosophies are no doubt better than others. What one falls into is determined by their karma.

In my view, forever dissolving into Buddha Consciousness just isn't going to happen. A person might get a vacation for awhile, but they won't dissolve their individual existence away. Attaining a state like Buddha Consciousness simply determines how you live the rest of your life and where you belong after you die, until you decide to do something else. That's my belief and it is no less than the belief that a person will dissolve their individual soul away in Buddha Consciousness. That is a myth, a belief, with no scientific proof for as well. What's the evidence for that other than heresay?

I'm not certain, but I think Jung would say that everything in this world, including electrons, light and gravity, are ruled by archetypes of some form and that archetypes have an autonomous intelligence and agenda. So, if I'm correct, Jung was saying that the Gods control the world as well as the psyche. The world and everything in it arose out of archetypal blueprints - intelligences. It'll be interesting to see what you experts think about this, sincerely. Jung's life was full of spirits that he communicated with as autonomous beings.

With that said, understand that I have full respect for science and the scientific method. Again I'll say that it serves an excellent purpose and in no way is it an enemy in my view. Of course science doesn't agree with my view of ET and otherworldly beings, but they don't agree with each other year after year either, so what the f***. I just don't believe they see the whole picture. If I want to believe there is an otherside, an afterlife populated with living beings, I can. If someone wants to call me crazy I think that's a reflection of their own psyche. As far as science goes, I'll be as objective as anyone else on the planet and until science reveals the whole picture I don't have to "believe" they have it.

As far as buddhism goes I can discriminate my identity away as any other can. That doesn't mean they have the whole picture either. Although I'm fully conscious of the fact that my view has "beliefs", I'm fully entitled to entertain their possibility. I can neti-neti my beliefs away at any moment I choose. I'm allowed because the higher otherworldly beings incharge of watching over us don't care what I believe, only that I live with integrity and try to do the right thing as best I can. If that means zero beliefs then right on. If it means believing in a guy like Da, that can work too. It all depends on one's integrity and rising above the negativities of envy, hatred and greed. If you can do that you have risen above self-reference and done what was necessary for every being who ever became enlightened on this planet. Grand states of consciousness mean little if you haven't risen above these things and learned to live with integrity. It only means you are getting into more trouble than you would without the power of those states.

As far as I can tell those guys who said there is no-self/no-soul got it wrong. There is an individual self/soul, it just doesn't have an identity so they see no-identity as no-self.

The real question is, if the ancients did know all this already, how come they couldn't build the kind of technology with that knowledge that science is able to build?

Again I suggest that our history is vastly different than we have been indoctrinated to believe. For instance, even if humans did build the pyramids, after 5000 years, probably more like 10,000, we still can't figure out how they did it. Yet, we can put a man on the moon. So it has to be tougher than that. Even if we did sink billions into it and had our best minds working on it around the clock for years and actually figured it out, how did they do it up to 10,000 years ago? With vines and copper tools?

Maybe technologies used in the past weren't as invasive as they are now and left little trace on the planet. Maybe they were of a different paradigm and worked seemlessly with nature, again leaving no trace behind.

There are vimanas in the Vedas so somebody knew some shit about flying machines way back. That is just one source and example. Maybe the civilizations that have disappeared developed a technology to leave the planet in conjunction with those already off the planet, leaving the rest of us war-brained souls to figure it out in our own way, when the time is right. Or, maybe they were wiped out by higher beings along with the evidence of their technology.

I'm willing to bet there was technology like the Antikythera mechanism all over the earth before, in ages and civilizations we don't even know about.

"The Antikethera Mechanism ?-64BC Found in the early twentieth Century. The instrument was discovered in a shipwreck by divers off the Greek island of Antikethera . It was dated by the pottery found along with it in the ships hold. Archaeologists have designated it to be a mechanism for predicting astronomical movements. It is as complex mechanically as a Victorian clock and is made of brass/bronze intermeshing movements of superb accuracy and workmanship. It was enclosed in a wooden box and is a historical anomaly. What is missed by the casual reader is that no such instrument comes about as a one off, but is an evolution and conglomeration of diverse long term skills to manufacture it and to use it to its full potential." - The Golden Thread of Time

[Elias]

I think you make a good argument that Buddhism is a good religion, but this fails to demonstrate that Buddhism is not a religion at all. Buddha himself was certainly non-theistic, and he avoided calling himself a God. Even so, during most of his life he was treated with the reverence and deference one would reserve for a God, someone who reveals the truth to mankind. And he created a system for living that was basically religious in nature, with all kinds of rules and regulations, practices and relationships, a hierarchical system of authority and governance, and a clearly other-worldly viewpoint about reality, requiring belief in various supernatural phenomena such as reincarnation, karma, dependent origination, mystical states of samadhi and so forth. It's very clear that Buddha was a religious person for all of his adult life, that he tried various kinds of religious paths in Hinduism, and decided to create his own religious path around the very religious idea of "enlightenment". Now, of course one can look at all this philosophically, but its still a religious philosophy.

I see it differently. I see a worldly person who became religious and then after years of experimentation became worldly in a new way.

I think that is possible because my own life and views followed that course, and I suspect it is a natural evolution of thought and self-knowledge.

The problem with the word "religion" is that it makes bedfellows of people who greatly disagree about the nature of reality. For you and others, no doubt advaita comes under the blanket term religion. In my view advaita is a philosophy. Why? Because, like Buddhism, it deconstructs human awareness until consciousness without illusions or delusions is found.

Now, you can focus on the various trappings and cultural encrustations that these philosophies have acquired over the centuries if you want to. But they are not the thing itself. In fact, the "religious trappings" are in large part a reflection of the religious attitudes natural to the ego in the presence of superior intelligence and insight.

As for reincarnation and such, it seems to me altogether possible they are part of the natural order...something that science will eventually get to. Buddha apparently knew something of this. You can be sure if he did, it wasn't a "belief" and he didn't require anybody else to "believe" it either -- he discouraged "beliefs". (I recall a sutra in which he tried to gently wean people of their obsession with miracles, the occult, and so forth...just as he challenged their belief in gods and goddesses. )

By the way, your speculations about "acausality" and "synchronicity" could be mistaken for a religious belief, could they not? Maybe they are!

Elias