09.22.08
Weinberg takes on Buddhism
For some there is also a sort of spirituality that Emerson wrote about, and which I don’t understand, often described as a sense of union with nature or with all humanity, that doesn’t involve any specific beliefs about the supernatural. Spirituality is central to Buddhism, which does not call for belief in God. Even so, Buddhism has historically relied on belief in the supernatural, specifically in reincarnation. It is the desire to escape the wheel of rebirth that drives the search for enlightenment. The heroes of Buddhism are the bodhisattvas, who, having attained enlightenment, nevertheless return to life in order to show the way to a world shrouded in darkness. Perhaps in Buddhism too there has been a decline of belief. A recent book by the Dalai Lama barely mentions reincarnation, and Buddhism is now in decline in Japan, the Asian nation that has made the greatest progress in science.
Arguing with Christians and Christianity is a tremendously frustrating business, it is almost impossible for a secularist to navigate the shoals of this religion without long study, and it is one aspect/liability of the science/religion debate that Western scientists tend to cast the whole issue in those terms, moving then to lump all other issues of religion together in light of that battle with Christian dogma. With Buddhism you run out of luck with such tactics. When the fighter in the front ranks is a Christian idiot stuffed with a gnostic ideology he doesn’t understand, the scientist picks it to pieces without much trouble, but fails to see the dimension behind it. This statement has nothing to do with belief in god or otherwise, that issue being, I have to say it, a distraction. From one perspective it is easy to critique the monotheisms, because their historical form bottoms out in a kind of ‘superstition’ mode that conceals their subtler histories. The ease in demolishing Christianity makes scientists cocky and overconfident and they then begin to think a similar treatment is going to work universally, as this passage on Buddhism shows.
The question of Buddhism, apparently, is simply beyond the capacity of current science communities and Weinberg’s statements leave one flabbergasted. Confronted with such a take on Buddhism one is, speaking as a secularist oneself, left with no alternative but to enter into an antagonistic stance toward science (or ‘scientific ignorance’).
The point should be noted. Scientists make opposition inevitable, then wring their hands when religion won’t keel over and pass away.
The total destruction of something like Buddhism would be a calamity for humanity. The question of enlightenment is to be scratched from the historical record apparently as Darwinian Bertie Russells in Dawkins beanie caps take over the world. Is that what Mr. Weinberg wants? It will be a long fight, and in the front ranks will be atheist secularists up in arms against the scientific asshole raised in a Big Science operant conditioning box, and oblivious to the realities of world history as they are.