From: Charles Roghair (ctr@pacificpartssales.com)
Date: Mon Aug 30 2004 - 00:08:52 BST
Hello Scott:
On Aug 29, 2004, at 2:00 PM, Scott Roberts wrote:
A typical Buddhist believes in reincarnation and karma, that is, that
one's
current life is affected by actions in previous lives, and affects
future
lives. But they have no concept of God the way the
Judeo-Christian-Muslim
has. The secular atheist, on the other hand, considers all of that
(reincarnation etc.) to be nonsense, that death is oblivion.
By definition, neither "secular," nor "atheist" addresses
reincarnation, nor any other such concept of life-after-death. Those
are qualities you attribute to that terminology. It's possible you've
met secular atheists who espouse such beliefs (or non-beliefs), but it
doesn't follow that all secular atheists adhere to the same system,
that belief structure beyond "non-theism".
> But as to the theism/atheism question, I reject the
> secular atheist belief that all religion is hooey,
As do I. Secular atheism and the "belief that all religion is hooey"
do not necessarily go hand-in-hand. My understanding of "secular" as a
philosophy is more about being concerned with any church meddling in
public policy or legislation, e.g. the U.S. theoretical "separation of
church and state." Secularists don't necessarily want to stamp out all
religion, by definition, they simply consider it a private matter.
Also, the fact that one believes Christianity to be a lot of hooey,
doesn't necessarily mean said individual considers every religion to be
a lot of hooey.
There are such animals as religions without god, that don't insist on
making a public spectacles of themselves. If asked for an example of
such phenomena, I would cite Buddhism.
I consider myself a secular atheist and in love with Buddhism
simultaneously. Granted, I've barely scraped the skin of Buddhism's
big belly, but I think I've at peace with my grasp of "secular" and
"atheism."
Those words have been undeservedly burdened with negative meaning for
too long I think, much like "liberal" and even "humanist."
> while I consider the
> question of what sort of reality lies behind the physical to be
> unanswerable, or at least not to be captured with the word 'theist' or
> with
> the word 'atheist'.
Fair enough.
Best, Chuck
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