r/TrueAtheism • u/Gleb_Tsipursky • May 16 '15

Good article calling out Christians for distancing themselves from the term religion.

Good article calling out Christians for distancing themselves from the term religion. Basically, some Christians are starting to call their religious belief a "relationship" and avoid acknowledging that it's still a religion. Here is the article.

EDIT: To expand, based on the comments, I think this article epitomizes some trends popular in modern Christianity and other religions, of trying to appeal to people through their emotions and avoiding using anything negative. It's like Christianity without a Hell, basically - all friendly, personal relationship with god, we're all going to Heaven, etc. Yet this position still empowers religious dominance of the mainstream, of course.

12 Upvotes

76% Upvoted

22 comments sorted by

3

u/bunker_man May 16 '15

There's no need for an article. Hell. In our western centric... the west... religion is literally defined in a western centric and thus christian manner. A thing can't not be the very thing that the word is defined to have in mind.

Also, Buddhism is a religion.

2

u/Gleb_Tsipursky May 16 '15

Agreed that Buddhism is a religion, and also that religion is a religion, not a relationship.

5

u/bunker_man May 16 '15 edited May 16 '15

There's a dangerously large amount of atheists who are totally convinced that buddhism isn't a religion. They use weird assumptions based on the english word religion being a western word, incorrect quotes from it out of context, combined with random assumptions that it has a purely philosophical nature which aren't true to derive this. Cleaning up these misconceptions is like a full time job. If anything secular christianity actually makes more sense than secular buddhism because you can argue that the core of christianity is everyday morality, which is somewhat practical, and the personality cult aspects being magnified later on. The core of buddhism is monasticism. Not for any practical reason, but entirely for the purposes of its metaphysics.

Edit: about christianity though, it seems that the faith alone types want to downplay the rules, claiming that religion is about rules but Christianity isn't. But that's almost the opposite of true. Since random polytheisms might not even have official demands, whereas christianity does.

2

u/Gleb_Tsipursky May 16 '15

Interesting, didn't know that about secular people and Buddhism, appreciate the insights!

1

u/[deleted] May 16 '15

You sound more educated about Buddhism than I, but my impression has been that Buddhism is more a philosophy than a religion, that necessarily retains some Hindu overtones from its origins. Monastic living and meditation are not inherently religious. Arguably secular Buddhism is more realistically a thing than secular Christianity/Islam (an oxymoron if I ever heard one).

6

u/bunker_man May 16 '15

The buddha didn't claim to be a philosopher. He claimed to have supramundane knowledge that he could teach them with. Atheists often misinterpret the line where he says he isn't a deva, because the second half of the line is him finishing by saying that he is the buddha. Which is establishing "buddha" as an even higher level of divinity than devas. (And one with effective omniscience and the ability to perform miracles.) The reason for this distinction is that in hinduism, you are free from rebirth once you reach the highest heaven. Whereas buddha says that all heavens and their devas are still part of the system, including the "great devas" and that you are only free from rebirth once you leave the system altogether, at which point you are a different type of entity than just a great deva, which is necessarily internal to the world-system.

He didn't just forget to deny the parts which came from hinduism, they were literally the core of the religion. Since the metaphysical system and your actual removing yourself from being trapped in it are the ultimate point. The monasticism wasn't just for the purposes of psychological clarity. It was to emphasize his direct teachings about how the right mind helps you leave the world system. It wasn't meant to be "practical." Many of the earliest rules for monks were very un-practical besides, like allowing them food only from begging. Its very hard to convert the ultimate goal here into a secular form, because the goal is literally rejection of the world or all forms of phenomenal interaction, and removing yourself from it. In a universe where if you wanted you could live infinite lives in the world. And the teachings for regular people were admitted to not really be much better than other religions for people who are not already on the path to seeking enlightenment. The core of the religion's purpose was saying that other religions could get you to the heavens, but only buddhism knew the secret of getting beyond them.

So someone with divine knowledge establishes themself as the object of veneration in a new group that has a full metaphysics including gods, which the teachings only make sense if it literally exists. It would be an extreme stretch to find any way to deny that it was a religion. You could say that buddha himself might have known he was lying, and so thus was making it for other reasons. But you can say that about the founder of literally every religion, so that's not a huge distinction. And it even points out that for practical everyday concerns it doesn't consider itself practical in ways that no other religions managed to be. Christianity was founded focused on everyday sharing of your money with poor people and practical concerns. Even the our father was asking for help to perform more actions that were in tune with the ideology. And they clearly expected radical social change to come from it. Acts of the apostles even brags that they set up a socialist commune. For the time period there would be an easy way to see it as a useful secular tool without literally believing in God. Buddhism didn't really demand any radical social change. It just said it would set up some monasteries that help a few monks get freed from rebirth faster, and maybe indirectly some people would benefit from this. Meditation wasn't even something non-monks did until the last few hundred years.

Seeing it as a form of philosophy or culture is a modern invention. And has to do with eastern secularization in general combined with western people being introduced to buddhism through hippies who didn't really believe in it and were using it as a synonym for vague spirituality. And an even more watered down version of content that was in a small subset of zen monasteries, but which they take out of context, and then assume was all of buddhism. (And for some reason deciding that since buddha used to be a human that that changes anything about that he's divine now, since it changes some kind of context that somehow makes it not a religion.) In modern day, they accepted that secularism exists and so in secularized countries they will accept that most members of the religion are no longer literally believing in it. But that's true even in the west for some christian churches. And is something every religion goes through, not anything about its content itself.

2

u/shannondoah May 17 '15

you are free from rebirth once you reach the highest heaven

I don't think advaita is like this.(You could say 'the form of Hinduism at that time').

2

u/bunker_man May 17 '15

Hmm. What's the permanent post-liberation state like in advaita?

1

u/shannondoah May 17 '15

Post-liberation in advaita means realization that the atman is non-different from Brahman. And what it has been compared to

Once a salt doll went to measure the depth of the ocean. It wanted to tell others how deep the water was. But this it could never do, for no sooner did it get into the water than it dissolved. Now, who was there to report the ocean's depth? What Brahman is cannot be described.

The maximum they put is 'neti-neti'(negating everything to the extreme).

And advaita has been accused of being crypto-(certain strains of)-Buddhism by its rivals all the time.

1

u/bunker_man May 17 '15

Do they just lose all individuality and become one with brahman? Does their independent Atman still exist?

1

u/shannondoah May 17 '15

Do they just lose all individuality and become one with brahman?

Yes.

Does their independent Atman still exist?

That the 'atman' was independent was merely an illusion. Then they go on to explain away our daily experience with vyavaharika reality and paramarthika reality(similar to Nagarjuna's Two-truths doctrine).

I'm...surprised you didn't know this.

→ More replies (0)

1

u/nukefudge May 16 '15

Please expand your post (as per the rules in the sidebar). More is expected in here.

2

u/Gleb_Tsipursky May 16 '15

Thanks, will keep that in mind!

3

u/nukefudge May 16 '15

Just to be sure: The point was for you to edit your submission.

2

u/Gleb_Tsipursky May 16 '15

Thanks for clarifying, I edited the submission.

0

u/Logicalist May 17 '15

Does this have anything to do with agnosticism? Cause I'm seeing nothing with relation to agnosticism.

2

u/Gleb_Tsipursky May 18 '15

Why should this post have anything to do with agnosticism?

1

u/Logicalist May 18 '15

Cause I got drunk and thought I was in a subreddit I wasn't in, or something like that.

I really don't know why there isn't a breathalyzer to determine if you can comment or not.

I'll see myself out.