Buddhists should definitely have serious doubts about fundamentalism.catmoon wrote:I suppose the message would be that Buddhists have serious doubts about fundamentalists.
As for any kind of God, though, I chose to disbelieve in him until my practice proves his nonexistence. Since I'm not a quantum physicist, like many here I've no way -short of winning the lottery, squandering it on school courses whose minutiae are of no interest to me, and finally bending my nearly-middle-aged brain in loops- of knowing whether or not the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle might necessitate -or atleast allow for- the existence of God[s]. {Note that this -clearly a pretty big 'gap' as far as 'God of the Gaps' is concerned- would put evolution itself under divine direction, thereby removing any notion of an ex-Biblical God 'deceiving' anyone.} Further, both Buddhism and science avoid the 'first cause' argument, which I'm happy to leave to one side until I'm ready to understand why and how time and reality needed no reason or cause to exist - besides needing no foundational support (if you accept sunyata and/or the absence of fundamental particles) for their existence in the meantime. Until then, I think it's natural to be perplexed as to why and how come this something-that-is-basically-nothing exists - rather than simply nothing at all. As to the Argument from Evil, how do we know authority figures -who were probably ignorant of such things in any case- didn't "sex up" a true situation in which there were was no hell but just graded purgatories, heavens, and/or worldly & heavenly rebirths, ostensibly for the good of their "flock"? Finally, if God -and an afterlife guaranteed by him- existed, then wouldn't directly informing people (of any of it) be the best way to dissuade them from actively living their lives both individually and collectively, i.e. the best way for him to effectively 'de-create' the crowning glory of his creation?
I hope there's plenty of beefy arguments on hand against all this