About this episode
In this episode, we discuss the idea of God. Is Buddhism really Atheistic? We discuss what a “religion” actually is, we look at the Problem of Evil presented by the Buddha and look at Early Buddhist cosmology. We debate if “atheist” is an appropriate term to describe Buddhism and look at the ideas of more learned people in the field such as Stephen Batchelor and Bob Thurman who prefers terms such as anti-theist, non-monotheist, non-creator-theist, etc.
(00:49) - What is a religion?
(2:40) - Theistic vs polytheistic vs atheistic
(4:00) - The Problem of evil
(5:10) - Buddhist idea on what Gods are
(5:35) - Bob Thurman's views - non-mono-theist, non-atheist, non-creator-theist
(8:00) - Humanism and Buddhism
(9:35) - Greek ideas of Gods
(10:45) - Shinto ideas
(16:55) - Buddhist cosmology and mysticism
(21:40) - Wait, is Buddhism theistic?
Sources, References and further reading:
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QOQiZbAPtW4
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N9eM36vdkZE
- https://tricycle.org/trikedaily/was-buddha-atheist/
- https://americanhumanist.org/what-is-humanism/definition-of-humanism/
- https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/6957758-confession-of-a-buddhist-atheist
- http://www.unm.edu/~rhayes/atheism.pdf
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