Science, Reason, and Buddhism

Abstract

Abstract Buddhism is unique in the world’s major religions in that there is no god. Consequently, there is no such thing as divine revelation. All we can do is to figure things out for ourselves. As the Kālāma Sūtra puts it: don’t believe something just because some sacred text or person says it is so; it’s got to make sense to you. Of course, you can take expert advice. When it comes to the nature of the natural world we live in, the experts are the scientists. Thus, HH the Fourteenth Dalai Lama says that if Buddhist beliefs conflict with science, then it is the Buddhist beliefs that need to be revised. In fact, it is remarkable to what extent modern science has shown the Buddhist view of the natural world to be right: we live in a world of massively interconnected causal interaction, and are ourselves objects composed of parts in a dynamic evolution. Of course, there are things in some Buddhist texts that science does not now endorse, such as that there is a mountain, Mt Sumeru, at the middle of the Earth’s surface. Putting this down to a time when the geography of the world was largely unknown is easy enough. But there are some fairly orthodox Buddhist beliefs which are not verified by science which are not so easily disposed of. The most obvious are the beliefs in karma and rebirth. What is to be said of these? In this chapter, all these matters will be discussed.