Objections to Creationism

@SW-User It is interesting that the Buddha chose not to directly answer such questions as he realized the answers don't help one reduce suffering.
However the Buddhist teachings do indirectly answer these questions.
Also when asked by an atheist 'Does God exist'? The Buddha replied 'Yes'..and when asked by a theist does his exist'? ..he replied 'No'.
There were valid reasons for both answers..

@Entwistle Hi, yes, the so called "silence of the Buddha" in response to all metaphysical questions is much debated.

Thomas Merton was reading T V Murti's book on the Madyamaka philosophy of Nagarjuna as he flew across the Pacific on his Asian pilgrimage. One relevant passage from his Asian Journal:-

Note that Buddha neither said “there is a self” or “there is not a self.” But among many Buddhists there appears to be a kind of dogmatism that says “there is not a self” instead of taking the true middle. Also Buddha replied by silence because he considered the condition of the questioner and the effect of a dogmatic reply on him. Buddha did not say “there is no self” to prevent the bewilderment of Vacchagotta. “For he would have said: ‘Formerly indeed I had a self but now I have not one any more.’”

It was Buddha’s aim not to give a “final” speculative answer but to be free from all theories and to know, by experience, “the nature of form and how form arises and how form perishes.” He wanted “not a third position lying between two extremes but a no-position that supersedes them both.” This is the Middle Way.

@SW-User Agreed. I have studied the Madhymaka philosophy, sunyata and dependent origination.
I love Nagrjuna's teachings.
The Buddha did confirm a lack of self after being physically attacked one day.
He was attacked by the father of one of his monks. The following day the father came to apologise and the Buddha said 'Neither myself nore the person who attacked me yesterday exists'. He was right.
The person who walks back into the room isn't the same person who left it two mins ago.
Nothing is in a fixed state.

@Entwistle "Studied" might just be a bit strong to describe my own stumbling along....😀......but yes, I've read a few books on this.

I'm more into Dogen now, particularly his "Genjokoan", which is a text variously translated and variously understood. Dogen, as understood by some, asserts that all things reflect ultimate truth, but such truth is the truth of impermanence. Nothing can be contained by static categories - as soon as we try to grasp them they are gone, as soon as we say they are "ours" they are illusion.

One commentator has said that "it" can grasp us, but we can never grasp it in any final way.

@SW-User Nagarjuna came to the conclusion..if there can indeed be any conclusion.. that philosophy can never give us the truth. Simply because we always put our own conceptions on top of what we read,or think we understand.
Zen tries to break through these habitual conceptions with it's use of Koans.

@Entwistle Yes, in Murti's quite famous book he speaks of Nagarjuna demonstrating the "eternal conflict" in reason (which in essence is dialectical) The Middle Way destroys the dialectic.

John Keats in his letters:- "I have never found that anything can be known for truth by consecutive reasoning."

Sorry...I think I'm name dropping...😀....but Wittgenstein can perhaps back some of this up!

Anyway, bedtime!

😀