As no major principles of Buddhism contradict it, many Buddhists tacitly accept the theory of evolution. Questions about the eternity or infinity of the universe at large are counted among the 14 unanswerable questions which the Buddha maintained were counterproductive areas of speculation. As such, many Buddhists do not think about these kinds of questions as particularly meaningful or helpful from a religious perspective.
| Property | Value |
|---|
| dbpprop:abstract
|
- As no major principles of Buddhism contradict it, many Buddhists tacitly accept the theory of evolution. Questions about the eternity or infinity of the universe at large are counted among the 14 unanswerable questions which the Buddha maintained were counterproductive areas of speculation. As such, many Buddhists do not think about these kinds of questions as particularly meaningful or helpful from a religious perspective. One does not need to know the origin of life, nor agree with the Buddha's position on scientific topics, in order to achieve enlightenment. In the Majjhima Nikaya, a potential follower asks the Buddha for an answer to the problem of cosmogony: In response, the Buddha said, “It is as if a man had been wounded by a poisoned arrow and when attended to by a physician were to say, ‘I will not allow you to remove this arrow until I have learned the caste, the age, the occupation, the birthplace, and the motivation of the person who wounded me. ’ That man would die before having learned all this. In exactly the same way, anyone who should say, ‘I will not follow the teaching of the Blessed One until the Blessed One has explained all the multiform truths of the world’-that person would die before the Buddha had explained all this. ” The Buddha argued that there is no apparent rational necessity for the existence of a creator god because everything ultimately is created by mind. Belief in a creator is not necessarily addressed by a religion based on phenomenology, and Buddhism is generally accepting of modern scientific theories about the formation of the universe. This can be argued either from the standpoint that it simply does not matter, or from an interpretation of the Agañña Sutta favoring the notion that it describes the basic concept of evolution.
|
| dbpprop:date
| |
| dbpprop:hasPhotoCollection
| |
| dbpprop:wikiPageUsesTemplate
| |
| rdfs:comment
|
- As no major principles of Buddhism contradict it, many Buddhists tacitly accept the theory of evolution. Questions about the eternity or infinity of the universe at large are counted among the 14 unanswerable questions which the Buddha maintained were counterproductive areas of speculation. As such, many Buddhists do not think about these kinds of questions as particularly meaningful or helpful from a religious perspective.
|
| rdfs:label
| |
| owl:sameAs
| |
| skos:subject
| |
| foaf:page
| |
| is dbpprop:redirect
of | |
![[RDF Data]](/statics/sw-cube.png)
