Someone said 'false flag' - This thread is an amusing example of how materialist 'science types' -that means you, Samanthabhadra- misunderstand religion and philosophy. It's not so much a misunderstanding as a willful refusal to try and understand, and it seems to come straight from all those from school-yard 'debates' about what clothes or music are 'cool' - Intellectually, it really is just a 'Fail'.
You and your pals will be sniggering at my po-faced bluntness by now, but it's you that I've just described, so go ahead and laugh at yourselves
. Now that I've 'blown your cover', you'll be even more disappointed than you were when it turned out that few here either identified with or wanted to identify with what you assumed to be your accurate p*%%-takes/satires. You may still laugh at my lack of subtlety, as well as how others let their ingrained "expect-the-best-from-others" politeness allow them to be subconsciously "taken in", but -going back to my playground reference- we all know that most in the west who, like yourself, take some interest in science have suffered the kind of treatment (being labelled 'geeks' and otherwise weak and insignificant) that you're now trying to repackage as 'science-v.-religion'. Credit to you, atleast, for managing to imitate an adolescent _ _
The trouble with your whole act is that Buddhism is not idealism - It starts off with an understanding of reality that philosophers classify as
nihilism, i.e. the denial that either mind or matter really exist - however much Buddhist practice continues in directions that complicate this simple picture to the point where 'nihilism' no longer applies. I was actually surprised to find, on another thread, that the Buddhist logician Nagarjuna can sound like any neuroscientist at face value:
mind has the nature of an illusion
;
the foundational consciousness too
Appears to be real though it is false
;
The mind is but a mere name;
Apart from its name it exists as nothing;
So view consciousness as a mere name;
Name too has no intrinsic nature.
.
Crucially,
"All of this is but one's mind,"
That which was stated by the Able One
Is to alleviate the fear of the childish;
It is not [a statement] of [final] truth.
From your point of view, materialism is perhaps 'tougher' than nihilism, because in the materialist view there's an utterly alien reality out there that we can never compete with because we don't exist and it does. On the other hand, nihilism is bleaker; more 'grown-up' - There's nothing to fall back on, and in the case of the Buddhist view, your mental continuum will probably still have to deal with this long after you're dead.
I look forward to future developments with interest, but wonder if the thread might wind down now