Sunday 30 September 2012

Buddhist Blasphemy Riots



The epidemic of blasphemy rage sweeping the Muslim world is now claiming Buddhist casualties:

From the BBC
"Muslim protesters have attacked Buddhist villages in Bangladesh, after an image said to show a burnt Koran was posted on social network site Facebook.

Witnesses said angry crowds set fire to homes and temples in the Cox's Bazar district, forcing families to flee.

A curfew has been imposed and security forces are patrolling the streets.

The man accused of posting the image is in protective custody. Police say he was tagged in the photo but did not post it himself.

Buddhists in the area, in south-east Bangladesh, said their possessions were stolen before their homes were destroyed.

"Before they set fire to my home, they looted everything," said resident Sumoto Barua.

"They took our possessions, money, gold and even computers. Then they torched the house. I am now living under open sky."

The violence erupted on Saturday and continued into the early hours of Sunday.

Hundreds of protesters are said to have rampaged through Buddhist neighbourhoods, smashing statues, burning down monasteries and attacking houses.

The violence spread to the outskirts of the port city of Chittagong, where a Hindu temple was also attacked."


This area of Bangladesh is close to the border with Burma, which invasive jihadists have crossed in campaigns of rape and murder against Burmese Buddhists.





Previous victims of the recent wave of  jihadist blasphemy rage have included an eleven year old Christian girl in Pakistan who was framed by burned pages of the koran planted on her, and Christopher Stevens, the American ambassador to Libya who was sodomized, tortured and murdered by a howling mob of jihadists in protest at the Mohammed Movie.

Buddhists,even more than Christians and Jews, have always been favorite targets for jihadists, and we can no doubt expect further attacks as the global jihad on Buddhism intensifies. On the same day that the rage riots took place in Bangladesh, another anti-Buddhist attack occured in Thailand.



In the latest development, the powerful petrodollar-funded Organization of Islamic Cooperation is demanding that the United Nations enforce a global ban on criticism of Mohammed and Islam to help reduce the rioting.


RELATED ARTICLES:

The long Jihad against Buddhism and Buddhists











Muslims to Behead Boy for Being Buddhist

Can the Metameme Immunize against Islam?


Buddhist Defense League 

 

Friday 21 September 2012

Can You Trust Your Mind? Does Your Brain Deceive You?



Does the brain have its own selfish agenda?

If the mind is nothing more than the brain, and the brain has evolved solely to ensure the survival of our stone-age ancestors, then how do we know that it can reliably do anything beyond the range of competence for which 'survival of the fittest' selected it?  

Natural selection cannot select directly for true beliefs, but only for advantageous behaviors.

So is the brain giving us a picture of the world that is being dictated by selfish genes, rather than one that represents some true underlying reality? 

Is the brain just a propaganda machine for our genes, telling us to preserve and propagate them?

And, observing it all, is there a non-physical mind that is being deluded by the physical brain?


Researching the Doors of Perception


Darwin had his doubts

Charles Darwin himself doubted whether the brain can give us an unbiased representation of reality:

"But then with me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"    
- Letter to William Graham, 1881 




A Biological Scam

So who or what is being deluded by this biological scam?   

Free agent?


If we aren't just the products of our genes, then what are we?  How is it possible for us to think of ourselves as potentially non-deluded, non-mechanistic, non-biological free agents, who can see beyond the tricks the brain plays on us?    Is there indeed an immaterial mind that can be trained to penetrate the delusions and discover ultimate truth?  

Is this ability to see beyond the brain's self-serving propaganda the change in awareness that Buddhist meditations aim to bring about?


Read the full article at Evolution, Emptiness and Delusions of the Darwinian Mind



Saturday 15 September 2012

Forty-two



I've brain-dumped some ramblings on Buddhism, mathematics and the mind over at Rational Buddhism...


What goes around comes around:

- The structures and operations of mathematics are reducible to the structures and operations of the mind.

- The structures and  operations of the mind are reducible to the structures and operations of biological macromolecules.
 

- The structures and operations of biological macromolecules are reducible to the structures and operations of organic chemicals.

- The structures and operations of organic chemicals are reducible to the structures and operations of atoms.

- The structures and operations of atoms are reducible to the structures and operations of mathematics.

- The structures and operations of mathematics are reducible to the structures and operations of the mind...

-  which is where we came in!








This allows us to draw the following equally valid conclusions:

(i)  Matter is fundamental
(ii)  Mind is fundamental
(iii)  Both mind and matter are fundamental
(iv) Neither mind nor matter are fundamental
(v) Nothing is fundamental
(vi)  Forty two



So if you can help sort this out, please add a comment to the main article.