His Holiness the Dalai Lama

After the Dalai Lama’s recent visit to UCSB, I started thinking about how odd it is that Americans seem by-and-large content to refer to him simply as “His Holiness.”
These people that call him by this vague and yet exalted title; are they Buddhists?
I think something interesting must be happening in the American religious sphere when [...]

some thoughts: the UN conference on racism

In the Middle East, Israel frequently receives criticism for policies designed to maintain a Jewish majority in the political state of Israel. Even before tackling a controversial negotiations over the geo-political borders of Israel, the policies of the state concerned with defining eligibility of its citizenry based upon ethnic-religious identity are decried as racist by high-profile characters such as Ahmedinejad, who argue that using state policies to set limits upon citizens based upon their religious or ethnic identity is passé, to put it lightly.

How Karl Marx changed (and popularized) Buddhism

Three key situations that developed together during the counterculture movements of the 1960s influenced the future of Buddhism: Hippies, immigration reform, and the ‘scientization’ of psychology into neuroscience.
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Eastern religions were viewed as an escape from the dogmatic Church and hellfire-Christianity.
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Beyond Belief

“Believers” complain that those godless atheists, bereft of morals, will eventually undermine all that is good in the world. On the other hand, atheists are exasperated by the pandemic of irrationality it seems to grip the minds of whole generations of otherwise sensible people. Failure to exercise the faculty of reason, atheists often claim, leads those misguided communities to fight violently over something that no one can prove anyway.

A response to “Being Religious is Like Eating Sand”

As for the beliefs themselves, it’s just as hard to prove a belief that there is a soul as to prove that there isn’t. If there is a “spiritual” reality, we might not be able to detect it with scientific instruments. But not seeing something doesn’t constitute proof that it doesn’t exist. Ignoring accounts of people who claim to have had firsthand contact with some other form of reality would be an irrational handicap to our pursuit of knowledge. If investigation isn’t possible, the best we can do is to say “I don’t know for sure… but I’ve heard X and I’ve heard Y.”

You can believe as much or as little as you want, and still live a good and happy life, in peaceful coexistence with others.