>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
Salvation is a very real experience in many peoples lives. My aunt who has been doing hard drugs in a life destructive way (coke, meth) has been transformed, reborn if you will. I commend Brit for what he was trying to convey, that there is hope and restoration in salvation. Likewise, it is hard to walk the middle path when you are the best golfer in the world...not very middle path at all really.


But you don't have to believe in Jesus or be a Christian to accomplish that.

And, true to form, Brit Hume is an ignorant fuck-head espousing untruths with reckless self-assuredness.

Forgiveness is a fundamental precept in Buddhism, and as someone has already pointed out, you never hear about Buddhists turning suicide bombers or waging holy war crusades.

You also won't hear many Buddhists sticking their noses into Tiger's business or passing judgment on him with condescension.

Tags for this video have been changed from 'avatar, judaism, scientology, tiger, woods, calendar, islam, buddhism' to 'tds, jon stewart, avatar, judaism, scientology, tiger woods, calendar, islam, buddhism' - edited by demon_ix

Norway is #2 on their Peace Index and listed as 72% atheist. A quick wiki search reveals that "According to the most recent Eurobarometer Poll 2005, 32% of Norwegian citizens responded that "they believe there is a god", whereas 47% answered that "they believe there is some sort of spirit or life force" and 17% that "they do not believe there is any sort of spirit, god, or life force"," and "Nominal religion in Norway is mostly Protestant (Evangelical-Lutheran) with 78.9% belonging to the state Evangelical Lutheran Church of Norway."

Regarding Vietnam: "The majority of Vietnamese people classify themselves as non-religious, although they visit religious temples several times every year. Their everyday behaviours and attitudes are dictated by the synthesis of philosophies which can be traced from many religions, especially Mahayana Buddhism, Confucianism, and Daoism. Those religions have been co-existing in the country for centuries and mixed perfectly with the Vietnamese tradition of worshiping their ancestors and national heroes. That special mix explains why the people there find it hard to say exactly which religion they belong to."

nah he's not the living embodiment of anything like Tibetan Buddhism's Dalai Lama supposedly is, he's just the current elected leader of Catholicism, most of the "holy" mumbo jumbo associated with the job has faded away over the last several decades.

Claim that japan has the highest IQ AND least religious is absolutely wrong.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religion_in_Japan

According to the CIA World Factbook 84% to 96% of population adhere to Shinto and Buddhism while 4% to 16% of the demographic population adhere to other religions or non-religious, atheist groups. However, such high numbers come primarily from birth records, following a longstanding practice of family lines being officially associated with a local Buddhist temple and not the people truly following the religion. The majority of Japanese carry on the roles of one or more religious body, but do not consider themselves believers in one particular religion, but are syncretistic.

---------
Chilaxe: "As a side-note, we might have faith in the esential spiritual hypothesis, that there's an invisible spiritual material (soul, spirit, universal consciouss etc.) that invisibly perturbs neural circuits to make it look as if the brain is self-contained, but 1. modern history is a relentless chipping away of magical thinking like that, and 2. science will finish reverse engineering the human brain in 20-50 years, so I humbly don't recommend betting too much money on that hypothesis."
---------

I'm no proponent of this widespread religious assumption Chilaxe has identified. That said, there's some room for clarification.

But first a quibble: the error behind the belief that there is some tangible animating spirit somewhere offstage from human affairs is based not on an assumption of brain isolation but rather the contrary. In fact, the assumption is that the brain, specifically in its capacity to generate interiority, is somehow profoundly *involved* with the "unseen."

In other words, spiritualists always presuppose an intrinsic bridge between some common "essence" -- that is, "human essence" -- and their particular oceanic-hidden-premise (OHP). Gary Zukov's quantum Woo-Woo and this "Secret" come to mind.

Contrast this view with Buddhism (Theravadin Buddhism) which asserts that all phenomena can arise only when the necessary preconditions are present. So, for example, as far as brains are concerned, emotional experience is contingent upon a functioning limbic system. (Compare the behavior of your dog to, say, a gecko.)

Science has greatly advanced our understanding of how the brain functions, and how it is able to integrate the various complex physiological processes. But there still remains the difficult problem of just how the brain gives rise to conscious experience.

That's the hard question, *ahem* AI people...

>> ^Throbbin:
Everyone knows Buddhists hate the Jews. How is this news?

I think you're confusing every other religion with Buddhism (which is essentially the only one that entirely lacks any sense of hatred).

Hitler really took something benign and turned it into pure evil in everyone's mind. This is interesting because it's sort of the exact opposite of what Christians/Catholics did with the crucifix, turning it from a horrific medieval torture device into something worth praising.

I'm sometimes amazed at how seriously Christians take their beliefs. I've never experienced that sort of fanaticism, and I suppose that's part of of the reason why my transition to atheism was so simple.

I remember going to the Synagogue and having Kiddush on Fridays when I was young, up to about the age of 8-9, when I finally realized there was supposed to be some sort of higher meaning to this. Up until then I treated it like a cultural custom (not that I would have fully understood that phrase at the time), meaning I just did it because my family did it. Then one time, during one of the holidays, it dawned on me that some of the people around me actually believe the Bible quite literally, and I realized my entire thought process was assuming they were idiots. That was when I first regarded myself as a non-believer. The concept of Atheism came later.

Amusingly enough, years later I found out my dad was going through the motions for us, so me and my brother would have some sort of faith while growing up. Last I checked, he was somewhere between Buddhism and Atheism

ugh,
this is terrible.
is she even sure SHE is wiccan?
she references buddhism,egyptology,druids,greeks,zoarorastrian,anglo-saxTon(that made me lol).
i respect her desire to express her inner-spirituality,but i dont think its wise she make a teaching video.
by her statements i take her more for pagan than wiccan.

@rougy
Oh, you mean the "When God created the heavens and the earth in six days" part?
You consider that scientific?

Keep in mind I'm not a Biblical literalist. But yeah. Insofar as it was written by a semiliterate goatherder thousands of years ago, yeah, our current scientific understanding matches the Christian conception of creation. It doesn't match the Buddhist one.

When you speak of life appearing relatively recently, you realize that you are only speaking of our own planet.
You can't say the same for other planets, nor can you say the same for other solar systems in other galaxies.

Oh, sure, it's possible (even likely) that life evolved (or created, take your pick) on other planets before Earth. But if you've studied cosmology, there's a large period of time that having any life at all existing would be rather dubious (without divine intervention, I suppose).

Having any period of time without life is bad for Buddhism, in fact.

I'm sorry, but to claim that the Big Bang theory proves Christianity correct and Buddhism incorrect is speculative at best, and very arrogant.

Prove? Did I say prove? I said supported once, and favors another time. Which is the appropriate level of confidence to use in this case. If you were held at gunpoint and forced to pick between Christian and Buddhist worldviews on the ultimate nature of reality, based on our current scientific understanding of the universe, a rational person would pick Christian.

(And if you'd say neither, you've fallen off the logic wagon a couple steps back.)

In short, you have no proof. You are drawing a conclusion based on limited facts, the same as me, the same as everybody else, and your conclusion is, at best, nothing more than a guess, or a wish.

Which is why I never used the word proof, but argued instead from the fact that the evidence favors life after death instead of extinction.

The facts are 1 to 0, as it were. You can certainly believe in what you'd like against the evidence (taking it on blind faith as it were), but you can't claim it's especially scientific to do so.

>> ^ShakaUVM:
Mind expanding on that thesis?The Christian idea of a created universe with a finite beginning and the gradual emergence of life matches our current scientific understanding. The Buddhist conception does not.


Oh, you mean the "When God created the heavens and the earth in six days" part?

You consider that scientific?

When you speak of life appearing relatively recently, you realize that you are only speaking of our own planet.

You can't say the same for other planets, nor can you say the same for other solar systems in other galaxies.

You have to consider that the phenomenon that we call "life" is in itself a very specific chain of events, and that there are probably other forms of life somewhere out there that do not cohere to our definitions, but they are alive nontheless.

I'm sorry, but to claim that the Big Bang theory proves Christianity correct and Buddhism incorrect is speculative at best, and very arrogant.

In short, you have no proof. You are drawing a conclusion based on limited facts, the same as me, the same as everybody else, and your conclusion is, at best, nothing more than a guess, or a wish.

Mind expanding on that thesis?

Some of the central theses of Buddhism revolve around the eternal existence of reality. For example, the "Meditation on Love" states, simply, that since the universe is infinitely old, we've all at one point or another, been each other's mothers, daughters, sons, fathers, brothers, sisters, etc., and so we should treat each other as if every other person is both our mother and our daughter - because they were. It's really quite beautiful, but it doesn't sync up with the scientific reality that our universe had a beginning, and that in fact there wasn't any life until relatively recently.

Other lessons revolve around there being a constant number of living beings at all points in time, which disagrees with the science for the same reason.

The Christian idea of a created universe with a finite beginning and the gradual emergence of life matches our current scientific understanding. The Buddhist conception does not.

Consciousness is such a difficult subject. I think it's in this series that he makes the parallel to a smile.

What is a smile - we all sort of know what it is, and we have a word for it, but a smile is only the abilities of the face, lips, muscles etc. A smile in itself does not exist, only as the form the face takes.

Consciousness is not necessarily anything in itself, as most cognitive scientists would say, it's the illusion of a separate item - it is the features of the brain that make up the consciousness.

Scientific evidence rejects them both - you can't say one is more false. I'll agree that it is easier to reject Buddhism as scientific fact though.

>> ^ShakaUVM:
...scientific evidence favors Christianity over Buddhism.

Mind expanding on that thesis?

I'm talking about consciousness / self-awareness / being.
The fact that our consciousness transitioned from nothingness to existence is the sole fact we have in the matter, so the preponderance of the evidence can only point to Buddhism or Christianity
so you're just assuming some kind of dualism. and jumping from that to any specific brand of religion is a giant non-sequitur.