Trav,

Santa Clause is not something that you can just put in a test tube and test for, and these simplistic notions of him being some bearded old man in the North Pole are so naive and unsophisticated. Santa Clause transcends this reality. You completely ignore the notion of personal revelation and stick to some sort of crude desire for evidence. Pfft!

The above argument is just as valid and meaningful as any of the arguments we hear defending the existence of a god. That a god’s role/purpose is usually to create (or kickstart the creation of) the universe, rather than to deliver presents to children all around the world, makes no difference. I could simply use a more modern adaptation of Santa Clause (as so many Christians nowadays do with their god) and argue that, while parents are the ones who buy their children presents, it is through them that Santa Clause is working. You seem to have this idea that there is some kind of split between "what Santa Claus does" and "what parents do". But there is no such split with the belief in Santa. Santa Clause is at work in all things, including the parents when they purchase their children’s presents (http://forum.onlineopinion.com.au/thread.asp?article=15995#277148). Now, you could argue that we don’t have billions (of adults, at least) believing in Santa Claus, but this would simply be the Argumentum ad populum fallacy.

<<Here’s a suggestion for the author and anyone reading: Thoughtfully consider the claims of religious belief, instead of swallowing poor counter arguments such as those presented here.>>

If you could present me with some, I’d be happy to give it a crack. Sadly, however, I could not find any, and my faith died as a result of that.

Coincidence is an amazing thing.

'We' (Homo Sapiens) are here today investigating the structure and workings of the universe, and pondering the miraculous nature and history of our planet home, by virtue of our amazing inherited (or 'coincidental') intellect.
Such an imponderable string of coincidence, of chance, has placed us in this extraordinarily fortunate (or 'blessed') position.
Is there life elsewhere in the universe, sentient or otherwise, or are we 'it'?

I saw a program portraying the likely formation of our Earth from myriad random collisions of masses/particles/asteroids over millions and billions of years, growing by virtue of gravitational attraction as a red-hot molten tumult - red-hot because of the energy generated by these collisions.
An angry and seemingly unstable 'mass', which was then stabilized by a mega-collision with a mass of similar size, a chunk of which formation flew off and became our Moon - which by some fortunate means achieved a stable orbit around our Earth.
Our Earth, which in concert with the other planets of our solar system, established a stable orbit around the centre of our system, our Sun (another 'miraculous' formation), within our seemingly stable galaxy (just one of many billions) - the 'milky way' - itself of billions of suns (stars) and their 'solar systems'.

The Earth cooled, water held (somehow) within the heretofore molten rocks was released as steam, and collision(s) with frozen-water comet(s) added more water, and so came oceans, lakes, streams.
Water, the foundation of all life on Earth.

Where did the rock, asteroids and comets come from to make this all possible? The 'big bang', or the destruction of a predecessor universe?
Or, perhaps from an enormous amount of random energy spontaneously creating 'matter'?

And then, 'life' itself! So much coincidence.

How lucky we are; and if there is any 'meaning' to life it ought be to respect and savour our good fortune by preserving the marvels of our inherited home, our 'universe', for all future generations.

However, with 'Money' as the new 'god', the 'future eaters' are bent on consuming it all, and who's to stop them?

Yes CANIDE I believe you are correct, that Buddhism is in fact a Religion and not as the author suggests some kind of secular, atheistic philosophy based in reason.
I am sure Buddhism believes in the soul and reincarnation like Hinduism does. This would make the belief in the soul as a “blind” acceptance as FACT and this fits with being a religion.
Also the fact that for some reason the philosophy of Buddhism requires one to wear certain types of clothes of certain colours is also “group-like” and dogmatic.

ANYWAY . . . . .
I am once again as always dismayed and disappointed by the clear entrenched narrow beliefs about our society as being one where only European descendants and their culture and history are considered when reflecting upon society and culture and history etc., This is shown when the author says that . . .
“Before the modern world became educated as now, there was total reliance by over-trustful people on religious mores to run society” and then he reminisces about the “Sunday Observance laws of the not too-distant past” as though “WE” are now past this.
But who is this “we”?

Surely the author is not including in his thoughts the more than 50% of Australia’s people who are not of this group of European descendants and in fact many new-comers have strict religious adherence levels, strong traditions of tribal origin as well as a dogmatic approach to marriage and also to many western secular NEW qualities and practices which may still be strongly taboo in their beliefs.

Again as with ALL authors I read on this site and at university circles (Journals etc.) seem to in one breath claim to be wholeheartedly accepting of all new cultures and respectful of their ways YET in another breath they fail to give a hint of a thought for considering their existence in this society, their society too, when making judgments and reflections on our nation.

Dear Individual,

<<Why does God need religious hierarchy>>

He doesn't. What hierarchy is needed when there is nothing but God?!

<<I certainly would like to know what God gets out of all the wealth in the world's churches.>>

I thought you were a good atheist, but now I'm disappointed to find that you believe that God gets any of the money taken by the churches, that would imply that He exists, doesn't it?

Welcome, Jottiikii,

Yes, Buddhism is a great example showing that belief in God is not a requisite for religion. One may come closer to God without ever entertaining a concept of Him.

Indeed, Western culture seems to be over-represented in this forum - perhaps it is because of the need to write in English. Anyway, we can hopefully help to make this forum more balanced.

Yuyutsu,

I feel you may have misunderstood my point in my post and also the point about Buddhism. I did not say Buddhism is an example of a non-religious or non-irrational belief system of tradition.

In fact I noted that Buddhists believe in a soul and reincarnation thus making the system a religion of same irrational unfounded ideas about the universe and thus not much different to other religions. I even noted how the belief culture seems to irrationally and dogmatically involve a certain universal dress code and certain colour combinations of these clothes, also the bald head.

You mention something about Western over-focus in this FORUM of western-biased views, opinions and issues and state something about needing to write in English. But what do you mean here? English is the main language in this country and so why the shock?

As to my points on over-focus and over-bias in the west for all things western and almost total disregard for serious focus on anything non-western that does not involve blaming the West again.

I feel that this is why the author of this article on religion whilst saying he "bags" all religions makes the bizarre claim that Buddhism is somehow not a religion at all and ok to follow yet as I note this is false, dogmatism is present there too.

I wish to address the phenomenon which pertains to the motives for why westerners (mostly Left) tend to over-praise the non-west and also to severely under-criticise their problems of which I feel the attitude to Buddhism in the West shows.

My overall point as ALWAYS is that the west too often ignores the non-west (even in their own nation being now half the population), over-praises them and never criticises them, and this sound disturbing similar to how people usually treat disabled people or children.

Dear Jottiikii,

Buddhism is certainly a religion, or at least it once was, as the Buddha himself predicted that it will only survive for 500 years, then deteriorate. I met for example Asian people who claim to be Buddhists but instead worship a variety of local goddesses and have no idea who Buddha was and what his teachings are.

I can't see you mention irrationality in your previous post. Of course Buddhism is irrational, but so is any other system of thought, religious or otherwise, because underneath any tower of rational conclusions lie a set of axioms, choosing which is never rational.

What I meant is that the reason we have an overwhelming over-representation of Western ideas on this forum may be because those who come from other cultures, though as you say about half the population, are not proficient enough in English to comment here.

From my experience in this forum, Westerners tend to be preoccupied with themselves and couldn't care less about others. The only history they consider is the Western/European history and the only divisions they care about are the products of Western history such as between 'Left' and 'Right'. When they talk about 'conservatism' they only refer to the wish to resume the life-style and values of former centuries in the West; when they talk about 'progress' they only refer to forsaking that life-style and values; and when they talk about 'religion' they mainly think about Christianity (being a Western feature), or at most include the related Abrahamic traditions, Judaism and Islam (which are then criticised as well).

Neither 'Leftist' Westerners nor 'Rightist' Westerners really care or want to know about non-Western cultures/traditions: they just use them as convenient ammunition in their internal wars - one blindly favours them in their propaganda, while the other blindly opposes.

The author of this article is an example of blindly and incidentally favouring Buddhism simply because it's not Christianity. He doesn't care to check what Buddhism actually is: he is lazy to confront the intellectual burden involved, because all he's interested in is attacking his Western Christian opponent.