Ideological failure

re: "Secular solution" (Post Bag, August 13)

Dear editor,

A Bangkok Atheist, whilst I have to agree that theistic religions have serious problems that inevitably follow from their insistence on blind faith in one or other or many of a motley panoply of gods whose existence, when rightly understood, can never be any more confidently demonstrated than that of Bertrand Russell's celestial teapot, Buddhism in the Buddha's version escapes this inherent failure of the set of all ideologies that are theisms.

Bangkok's Buddhist temples often are, and more could be, green places of peace in Bangkok. Nor do the Buddha's wise teachings, which were not a religion, inherently fall foul of the ideological pits that characterize religion. Indeed, his teachings show the Buddha to have been one of the deep thinkers who offer insightful philosophical guidance for a good life, as do Socrates, Plato, Aristotle and others in the Western tradition, and Confucius among others in  the Far Eastern traditions.

The problem is that Gotama's wisdom has too often been traditionally subverted by self-serving old men into nationalistic religions that are profoundly unBuddhist in intent and effect. How else to explain the mass slaughter of animals for no better reason than to sate the lusts for tasty flesh of those ordering the daily killings whist kidding themselves that they are good Buddhists? How else to explain the corrupting notion of bribing karmic forces by gifting gold to adorn temples? How else explain draconian censorship laws that directly contradict the Buddha's prime teaching that the good life demands right understanding?

 Felix Qui

_______________________________

The above letter to the editor is the text as submitted by Felix Qui to the Bangkok Post.

The text as edited was published in PostBag on August 14, 2019, under the title "Ideological failure" at https://www.bangkokpost.com/opinion/postbag/1729807/behave-and-fawn