Is it true that Buddhism is atheistic? In a debate with Greg Bahnsen, Gordon Stein said that Buddhism is atheistic.

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Curt Hayashida
member, Community Bible Church (Non-denominational)
Vallejo, CA

In a sense it is. I first came on this board as a "gung-ho" Clarkian. Since then I have learned to also appreciate Bahnsen. But leaning back toward Clark I would ask Stein to "define Atheism." (One thing I will always appreciate about Clark is his insistence on definition for everything. It is a definite necessity in my opinion) The problem here is that the Buddhist and the Christian would have two different definitions of "God."

Although some Buddhist (yes, there are different types of Buddhists ) allow for the existence of "gods" this means something entirely different to them than what we mean as Christians. As a matter of fact, Buddhism is indifferent to all theories on the origin of the universe! The little bit of research that I have done in Buddhism has made my head swim! It almost seems to (unprofessional little) me to be Postmodernism before there was (officially) such a thing. It is a "religion" (if you can define that word) without a "god" (if, in the Buddhist sense, you can define that word).

To sum it all up ... in my very unprofessional opinion, as bad as I hate to agree with an Atheist (especially Gordon Stein )... yes, I believe that Buddhism is basically a "religion" without a God.

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Kevin - PCA - Mississippi

"What, for some, is sin, others do to the glory of God. And the good Dr. Pentecost's remarks notwithstanding, I intend to go home tonight and smoke a cigar to the glory of God. It is a kind of incense drifting to Heaven." - Charles Spurgeon

"Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift!" - 2 Corinthians 9:15

Kevin covered it pretty well, but just to add - I've heard several people (unbelievers among them) that Buddhism is more a philosophy than a religion.

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Kathleen M
nondenominational
Montana

What I learned in AP Human Geography class in school (although some of what my teacher taught us about religions was false, but this is from the textbook at least) is that Buddhism itself does not have a higher power, but that the religion is often combined with another (especially in Japan with Shintoism) to have higher powers.

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Jake; Hold to Original WCF, member of SBC; Greater Atlanta, Georgia Area

The cross does not give us a minor shift or two with regard to a few of our ethical and moral and religious values; the cross radically disrupts the very center and citadel of your life from self to Christ. —Albert N. Martin

Most of the other religions like Islam,Hinduism and even Judaism are more philosophical than theological. They don't do Theology, like we Calvinists do.

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Jacob Peters
Layman
URC
Toronto
Canada

Buddhism considers the question of whether or not God exists to be irrelevant, so it could be described as agnostic.

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Philip
Potomac Hills Presbyterian Church (PCA) Leesburg, VA
Attending Reformed Presbyterian Church, Lookout Mountain, GA
Student Covenant College

The Importance of Being Orthodox

If there's only one true God, and that true God is the God of Scripture, and folks don't believe in the only true God, then yes, in a very general sense, all other religions are atheistic.

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Josh Hicks, Chloë's Dad
Christ Covenant Reformed Presbyterian Church, RPCGA
Facebook - The Calvinist Vent
Board Rules - Signature Rules - Suggestion Box

It is God that multiplies our sorrows.... God, as a righteous Judge, does it, which ought to silence us under all our sorrows; as many as they are, we have deserved them all, and more: nay, God, as a tender Father, does it for our necessary correction, that we may be humbled for sin, and weaned from the world by all our sorrows; and the good we get by them, with the comfort we have under them, will abundantly balance our sorrows, how greatly soever they are multiplied. - Matthew Henry

Greg Bahnsen, in his seminary lectures, classified Buddhism as a religion of eminent moralism, meaning that it is based in the self work of the followers rather than the supernatural power of a god to produce and demand moralism.

One of Buddhism’s internal tensions is that the “way or path to end suffering” is found individualistically through meditation. The way of salvation is through an individual’s developed insight to moral handling of himself and others. And yet suffering is caused by an individualistic establishing of self and relationships. (Noble Truths #2 and #4)

Thus, Buddhism teaches that the way of salvation is the found to be self. An end to suffering comes through a self developed insight to moral handling of ourselves and others. Buddhism also teaches that self is the source of what a person needs to be saved from. The harder one tries to establish these insights to moral handling of self and relationships the more suffering occurs. Man is seen here as needing to redeem himself from himself by himself.

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J. David Kear
Sunday School Teacher
First Presbyterian Church
Villa Rica, Georgia

In the Analytic philosophy of religion it is a generally accepted maxim, by theistic and atheistic philosophers alike, that anyone who rejects the existence of the God of monotheism -- omnipotent (all-powerful), omniscient (all-knowing), and omnibenevolent (all-good) -- is by definition an atheist. In other words, if you are not a (believing) Christian, Jew, or Muslim, you are an atheist. You may believe in other 'gods' (as Hindus do) and you may believe that the Universe is 'God' (as Spinozist pantheists do), but these positions, because they entail a rejection of monotheism as traditionally understood (the 'omni' triad), are atheistic.

I would actually posit that a lot of 'open theists' are technically atheists, because of their substantial limitation of the divine omniscience (for instance, the view that God's knowledge of what human beings will do is contingent upon the free actions of human beings).

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Nathan Tyler
Reformed Baptist
University of Toronto (Student: Hons. B.A. in Philosophy)
Ontario, Canada

1689'er

http://nathantyler.wordpress.com

I'm currently reading a book by Kenneth R. Samples on testing worldviews including Pantheistic Monism, Islam, Naturalism, Postmodernism and Christian Theism. I would highly recommend it to any Christian who is comparing the philosophical roots of false faiths with Christianity.

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Richard
communicant member, FCoS
Perth, Scotland UK

His Name forever shall endure;
last like the sun it shall:
Men shall be blessed in Him,
and blessed all nations shall Him call (Ps. 72:17)

I'm well acquainted with Buddhism and consider it atheistic in the sense that it does not teach that there is a higher power to whom we are morally responsible. There are a multitude of spirit beings, much of this taken from Hinduism, and the religious life consists in manipulating the spirit beings for one's own advantage.

When living in Thailand a very educated Thai Buddhist woman took me on an excursion into the countryside. I asked about the curlicues on the corners of the roofs. She replied, "When the lord Buddha was approaching death, the sacred serpent appeared to him. Buddha asked the serpent what he could do to show his appreciation for the revelations he had received. The serpent told Buddha, 'Put the image of my tail on every house top.'. So now we know where Buddhism REALLY came from.

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Mary Vanderkooi
Kale Heywott Church (KHC)
Soddo, Ethiopia

During my studies with visiting Tibetan monks, I was taught that the Buddha was silent on the issue of God. He didn't say "yes, there are gods" or "no, there aren't" because this was not the central point of his teaching. He attempted to teach humankind how to avoid suffering. To him, a deity, or lack of, was irrelevant.

I know one accurate label we can hang on Buddhism, IDOLATRY.

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Rich Koster
1689'er
Browns Mills NJ USA
Often Goofy Reformed Eccentric
Romans 7:14-25

On the moralistic side, it would have to be in the genus of humanism, as it bases its definition of reality upon human conception instead of God. Yet in another and far more fundamental sense, if a religion claims that everything is God, it is paramount to claiming that nothing is God: for making the former claim absolves the term "God" or "Deity" of all meaning (inasmuch as we regard the traditional definitions).

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"Peace if possible, truth at all costs." (Martin Luther)

David G. Suggs Jr.
New Covenant, PCA
Anderson, South Carolina

I returned from Thailand two weeks ago. I had the opportunity to talk with lots of Burmese and Karen Christians who were converts from Theravada Buddhism.
Theravada Buddhism is an oriental expression of a of a world life view that we would call transcendentialism.
My experience in Thailand in the mid 1970s and again a few weeks ago is that the Theravada expression of Buddhism is a thin veneer over an underlying Hindu understanding of the world.
I get the impression that in Burma, the popular religion of th masses is a kind of syncretism between Buddhism and and an older underlying Hinduism.

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Thomas Yeutter,
Mason, MI
Member St. Patrick's Anglican Church, Comstock, MI

Ezra 7:10 For Ezra had set his heart to study the law of the Lord and to do it and to teach its statues in Isreal.

Mahayana Buddhism, especially as it is expessed in the Zen tradition, offers a path to enlightenment that would seem to be atheistic.

Isn't what makes a "Religion" a Religion, the fact that there's a Deity/Deties and an Afterlife of some kind?

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Mikel Kennedy
Reformed Baptist
New Albany, Indiana
I would rather believe a limited atonement that is efficacious for all men for whom it was intended, than a universal atonement that is not efficacious for anybody, except the will of men be added to it. --C.H. Spurgeon

Not really. I would suppose that religion requires faith. For example, Evolution has to be one of the most faith-requiring religions ever! People are religiously and blind-faithedly devoted to it, even though there's no deity (not deity but themselves, born from a primordial soup of stuff) and promising after life to follow! How dismal.

Combine this with the fact that the God-question is irrelevant, and you've really got humanism.

I like seeing connections between secularism and Buddhism (assuming I am actually seeing a connection here).

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Ben Maas. . . . .Facebook
In college, attending First Presbyterian Church (PCUSA), Ada, OH, and
Belle Center Reformed Presbyterian Church (RPCNA), Belle Center, OH
When at home, attending Covenant Presbyterian Church (OPC), Mansfield, OH

“Prayer is as natural an expression of faith as breathing is of life.”
-Jonathan Edwards-

Merely functioning as a social animal requires faith. There is no learning without believing what people communicate to us.