Re: Book review: Breaking the Spell (Daniel Dennett)

Ben Goren <ben@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Mike wrote:

> Ben Goren wrote:
>> Mike wrote:
>>> Anthony Campbell wrote:
>>>> Christopher A Lee wrote:
>>>>> Ron Peterson wrote:
>>>>>>
>>>>>> How does Dennet define religion? Does he mean belief in a
>>>>>> god or something more complex?
>>>>
>>>> Yes he does offer a working definition, which is good. (One
>>>> of my complaints about Pasacal Boyer's "Religion Explained"
>>>> is that he doesn't.)
>>>>
>>>> Dennett's "tentative definition" (p. 9) is that religions
>>>> are "social systems whose participants avow belief in a
>>>> supernatural agent or agents whose approval is to be sought."
>>>
>>> But don't buddists believe that you'll re-incarnate based on
>>> how you lived this life and, if you were evil in this life,
>>> you'll re-incarnate into something bad, etc? I.e. it would
>>> seem that there's a "supernatural agent" (even if you just
>>> call it "fate") at work there and you'd want to work towards
>>> the "goals" of that agent, even if it's not a sentient entity
>>> (as all gods would be.)
>>>
>>> But then again, I may be off on exactly what the buddists do
>>> believe.
>>
>> You are.
>>
>> There are almost as many variants of Buddhism as there are of
>> Christianity. Some variants are decidedly theistic, with as
>> many minor gods as the Catholics (angels & saints /v/ devas).
>
> The way I understand it is that buddists can also have OTHER
> religions (such as you can be an xian buddist, an islamic
> buddist, etc. and thus, yes, many buddists are theists) but the
> buddism itself is the part about "harmany with all, blah, blah,
> blah" and doesn't really deal with god(s) as such. But even so,
> my point did address those subset buddists who don't definitely
> don't believe in any gods and how they still might be a religion
> by the above definition and those who DO believe in gods (be it
> via the buddist religion or via another religion that they may
> also have) weren't being addressed here.

That's not what you wrote, and many Buddhists have purely Buddhist
gods.

Yes, it was, in effect, what I wrote. I addressed one part of what buddists,
to my knowledge, believe in and left any reference to any gods (whether they
believed in any gods or not) out of it. I.e. I took the one thing that all
buddists have in common and then questioned about that fitting the
description of a religion as given.

It's mostly the Zen Buddhists who're ``purely'' atheistic, and
they're definitely a minority (even if they're the best known sect
in the States).

Do buddist or do they not believe in reincarnation? Do they or do they not
believe that how you reincarnate in the next life is based on your actions
in this life? Those are the points I was questionng and saying that they
could still show buddism to be a religion even if they don't believe in a
god (and some don't, even as you said) and those are the points that you
totally ignored but, instead, went off on some side line that had nothing to
do with those.

Look, you even admit that you don't know what you're talking
about...yet you still insist that you're right. You've done this
in the other threads, too. Stop making *** up about topics you
don't know *** about.

BWAHAHAHAHA. You come in here and start acting like a pompous ***, make
claims that you have yet to support, misread what's written and address
something that's not even made as a point to begin with and then accuse me
of making things up? That's rich. In this case, I stated something that I
believed to be true but did indicate that I may be off-base on it and that I
wasn't that sure of it. You then come in not even addressing the issue. I
then agreed with what you said and then re-stated my point, since you seemed
to have had a problem comprehending it. And then you come back with this
bull***. Where, pray tell, did I insist I was right anywhere in this
thread?

Cheers,

b&

--
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
``All but God can prove this sentence true.''

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--
Mike

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.