Yeah Jon J

just as well someone was smart enough to design the aircraft eh! Very unlike the fable you believe in.

runner
A man rises from the dead. A man walks across water. A man parts the Red Seas. A man collects a pair of every animal on earth on a rickety wooden boat.

This is the stuff of fables. Why can't you see what is in front of you?

How do you know for sure you are right?

Nice to see an article on Buddhism, though the author doesn't differentiate Theravada Buddhism from the latterday corruptions: Mahayana and Zen. Buddhism has one very important thing in common with science: neither is, or should be, an ideology. Why all this cow towing to science? which is nothing more than method; it has nothing to offer us but (bar the lucky ones) an engaging hobby. Yet we readily adopt the geeky myopia of science as somehow revelatory. Scientists are the new priests, as always funded by surplus production. Buddhism is akin to contemporary existentialism, and ancient cynicism; it's not about finding happiness--life is fundamentally "unsatisfactory"--but about escaping suffering (dukkha) and the endless cycle of rebirth. And since there is no afterlife, oblivion (wisdom) is its goal. Thus, according to Nietzsche: like Christianity, Buddhism offers no hope in 'this' world.
Buddhism is about renunciation, not just of material things, but of illusions, including those fostered by science; more properly, the progressivist ideology that indifferent science parasitises.

In some ways the above reasoning fits in with that of St Thomas Aquinas who with a so-called troubled mind decided to accept Hellenistic Reasoning to help lift Christianity out of the Dark Ages.

Apparently because Aquinas regarded himself as a philosophical teacher as well as a Preacher, he was at the time and is still not regarded as a true Christian.

Indeed, it remains a mystery how Aquinas was ever accepted as a Saint?

Regards, BB, WA.

For all the talk of "science vs religion" it pays to remember that they simple cannot be ENTIRELY in conflict. Science, by sheer definition, is incapable of answering many of the questions religions attempt to answer. In some spheres of knowledge and for some questions, it's simply religion vs religion or philosophy vs philosophy. I like pointing this out whenever an enlightened Buddhist or some psuedo intellectual atheist trys to paint out the old battlelines and make the case for science vs religion, and how religion is some outmoded idea put forward by Cavemen. Regardless of how far in conflict you may think that they are, the fact will always remain that science is inherently limited in many ways and that there are many questions which it will never be able to answer.

An example: Studying the components of the universe and why they work a certain way is one thing, but questioning why anything exists at all (and something that we're capable of studying) is another altogether.

Science cannot tell us how something came from literally nothing (A disclaimer: I realise attempts have been made, but the definition of "nothing"ness put forward by physicists is always actually "something"ness when you drill down further). And it can't tell us why something has always existed without any reason whatsoever. Personally, I'd argue that the nature of time and the existence of an ordered universe point us closer towards an intentionality based explanation and away from a mindless explanation- but that's a topic for another day...or a long, long essay

(continued)

Another question is why the universe is simply ordered and mathematical in the way it needs to be in order for science to work. This is another question for which religion provides a (satisfactory, in my view) answer but that science is simply incapable of providing any response to whatsoever.

Science itself presupposes many things, in fact, but it is capable of providing an explanation for those presuppositions. It simply launches from them and goes on it's merry way. Dealing with the presuppositions lies in the realm of religion and philosophy. (For an interesting article on this kind of thing, check out this brief piece by distinguished physicist Paul Davies: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/24/opinion/24davies.html)

Yet another example would be the realm of moral questions. Consider this from Holmes Rolston:

"Science is never the end of the story because science cannot teach humans what they most need to know: The meaning of life and how to value it....science has evident survival value, teaching us how to gain benefits that we desire. But what ought we to desire? Our enlightened self interest? Our genetic self interest? More children? More science? The conservation of biodiversity? Sustainable development? A sustainable biosphere? The love of neighbour? The love of God? Justice? Equity? Charity?...After science, we still need help deciding what to value; what is right and wrong, good and evil, how to behave as we cope. The end of life still lies in its meaning, the domain of religion and ethics"