[Buddha-l] the existence of God in Buddhism

[Michel Clasquin]

Ilana Maymind wrote:
> 
> Emilio Gentile in a newly published /Politics as Religion/, (Princeton 
> University Press, 2006) in his discussion related to the term "secular 
> religion" (used interchangeably with "political religion" or "secular 
> religion") states the following: " If, for example, your definition of a 
> religion is premised on the existence of a supernatural divinity, then 
> you would be justified in denying that a belief system that considers a 
> secular entity to be sacred could be a religious phenomenon.  However, 
> if we accept this definition, we would be obliged *to deny that Buddhism 
> is a religious phenomenon, because it does not allow for the existence 
> of God,* whereas the Nazi political religion could be considered a 
> religious phenomenon, because it did not deny the existence of god, even 
> though it dressed that god up in its own ideology" (3).


<reluctantly emrging from hibernation into the full glare of Buddha-Hell>

To quote my favourite crusty old SF author, Robert Heinlein, "one man's 
miracle is another man's engineering". "Supernatural" is essentially a 
meaningless term. It stands for "uhh, we can't quite explain this yet, 
sorry". So, to posit a supernatural divinity means that we can 
reasonably ask "As opposed to a natural divinity? Or an unnatural 
divinity? A preternatural divinity? A sub-natural divinity?" OK, I made 
that last one up, but you get the idea.

Scholars of religion love torturing undergrads with the definition 
issue. It makes us look very wise and important. But in the end, you 
don't get to *define something into existence* (unless you are a 
supernatural divinity, of course). Things exist and are recognised, and 
definitions are made up afterwards to try to make up something 
reasonably concise and self-contained that may eventually be transformed 
into a college credit or two. It is very easy to forget about the 
historical bacground to the definition and think that it too sprang 
fully formed from the forehead of (Zeus / Brahma / Your favourite 
supernatural divinity here).

The definition of religion issue started like that. Dead White Males 
went a-exploring in Asia back in the 18th century. They saw people doing 
things that bore a certain resemblance to what their relatives back in 
Europe and wrote back home about "the religion of the Boutta". And that 
was that. Buddhism was added to the list of "religions". It takes more 
than an armchair definition to remove a thing like that once it has 
stuck. There is a historical drag effect that keeps it in the list.

Now imagine it had gone the other way round. Imagine that the East, not 
the West had been on the rise and sent out explorers to, say, the late 
Roman Empire. Then they might have written back to China or India that 
the dominant "religions" in the barbaric west were Stoicism and 
Epicureanism, or maybe Neo-Platonism, and that these fine religious 
traditions were making themselves at home by infiltrating the mass of 
popular superstitions and rituals held by the uneducated. If that had 
happened, we would now start defining "religion" in terms of lifestyle 
prescriptions and philosophical backup, and in every Religion class at a 
thousand universities we would start off with "Is Christianity really a 
religion"?

</returning to lurking mode>

-- 
"Many people would sooner die than think; In fact, they do so."
-- Bertrand Russell