The purpose of this book is threefold. Firstly
it aims to critically examine Christianity and thereby highlight the logical,
philosophical and ethical problems
in Christian dogma. In doing this I hope to
be able to provide Buddhists with facts which they can use when Christians
attempt to evangelize them. This
book should make such encounters more fair,
and hopefully also make it more likely that Buddhists will remain Buddhists.
As it is, many Buddhists
know little of their own religion and nothing
about Christianity - which makes it difficult for them to answer the questions
Christians ask or to rebut the
claims they make.
The second aim of this book is to help any
Christians who might read it to understand why some people are not, and
never will be, Christians.
Hopefully, this understanding will help them
to develop an acceptance of and thereby genuine friendship with Buddhists,
rather than relating to them only
as potential converts. In order to do this,
I have raised as many difficult questions as possible and not a few home
truths. If it appears sometimes that I
have been hard on Christianity, I hope this
will not be interpreted as being motivated by malice. I was a Christian
for many years and I still retain a fond
regard, and even admiration, for some aspects
of Christianity. For me, Jesus' teachings were an important step in my
becoming a Buddhist and I think I
am a better Buddhist as a result. However
when Christians claim, as many do with such insistence, that their religion
alone is true, then they must be
prepared to answer doubts which others might
express about their religion.
The third aim of this book is to awaken in
Buddhists a deeper appreciation for their own religion. In some Asian countries
Buddhism is thought of an
out-of-date superstition while Christianity
is seen as a religion which has all the answers. As these countries become
more Westernized, Christianity
with its "modern" image begins to look increasingly
attractive. I think this book will amply demonstrate that Buddhism is able
to ask questions of
Christianity which it has great difficulties
in answering, and at the same time to offer explanations to life's puzzles
which make Christian explanations look
rather puerile.
Some Buddhists may object to a book like this,
believing that such a gentle and tolerant religion as Buddhism should refrain
from criticizing other
religions. This is certainly not what the
Buddha himself taught. In the Mahaparinibbana Sutta he said that his disciples
should be able to "Teach the
Dhamma, declare it, establish it, expound
it, analyse it, make it clear, and be able by means of the Dhamma to refute
false teachings that have arisen."
Subjecting a point of view to careful scrutiny
and criticism has an important part to play in helping to winnow truth
from falsehood, so that we can be in
a better position to choose between "the two
and sixty contending sects." Criticism of another religion only becomes
inappropriate when it is based on a
deliberate misrepresentation of that religion,
or when it descends into an exercise in ridicule and name-calling. I hope
I have avoided doing this.
I would like to thank Moses Chan and Paul Teo,
two devout Christians and good friends, for the hours of stimulating discussions
we had on some of
the matters covered in this book. We agree
to disagree but remain friends.
A.L. De Silva
II
CRITIQUE OF CHRISTIAN ARGUMENTS FOR GOD'S EXISTENCE
Christians claim that there is an all-knowing,
all-loving God who created and who controls the universe. Several arguments
are used to prove this idea.
We will examine each of these arguments and
give the Buddhist objections to them.
The Authority of the Bible
When asked to prove God's existence, the Christian
will often open the Bible and say "The Bible says God exists, so he must."
The problem is that if
we ask a Hindu, a Muslim, a Sikh or a Jew
the same question they too will point to their respective holy books as
proof of the existence of their Gods.
Why should we believe the Bible but not the
holy books of all the other religions? Using the Bible to prove God's existence
is only valid if we already
accept that it alone contains God's words.
However, we have no evidence that this is so. In fact, as we will demonstrate
later, there is strong evidence
that the Bible is a highly unreliable document.
The Existence of the Universe
In their attempts to prove God's existence,
Christians will sometimes say "The universe didn't just happen, someone
must have made it and therefore
there must be a creator God." There is a major
flaw in this argument. When it starts to rain we do not ask "Who is making
it rain?" because we know
that rain is caused not by someone but by
something - natural phenomena like heat, evaporation, precipitation, etc.
When we see smooth stones in a
river, we do not ask "Who polished those stones?"
because we know that the smooth surface of the stones was caused not by
someone but by
something - natural causes like the abrasive
action of water and sand.
All of these things have a cause (or causes)
but this need not be a being. It is the same with the universe - it was
not brought into being by a God but by
natural phenomena like nuclear fission, gravity,
inertia, etc. However, even if we believe that a divine being is needed
to explain how the universe came
into existence, what proof is there that it
was the Christian God? Perhaps it was created by the Hindu God, the God
of Islam or one of the gods
worshipped by tribal religions. After all
most religions, not only Christianity claim that their God or gods created
the universe.
The Argument from Design
In response to the above refutation, the Christian
will maintain that the universe does not merely exist but its existence
shows perfect design. There is, a
Christian might say, an order and balance
which point to its having been designed by a higher intelligence, and that
this higher intelligence is God. But as
before, there are some problems with this
argument.
Firstly, how does the Christian know that it
was his God who is behind creation? Perhaps it was the gods of non-Christian
religions who designed and
created the universe.
Secondly, how does the Christian know that
only one God designed everything? In fact, as the universe is so intricate
and complex we could expect it
to need the intelligence of several, perhaps
dozens, of gods to design it. So if anything the argument from design proves
that there are many gods, not
one as Christians claim.
Next, we would have to ask, is the universe
perfectly designed? We must ask this because if a perfect God designed
and created the universe, then that
universe should be perfect. Let us first look
at inanimate phenomena to see whether they show perfect design. Rain gives
us pure water to drink but
sometimes it rains too much and people lose
their lives, their homes and their means of livelihood in floods. At other
times it doesn't rain at all and
millions die in drought and famine. Is this
perfect design? The mountains give us joy as we see them reaching up into
the sky. But landslides and volcanic
eruptions have for centuries caused havoc
and death. Is this perfect design? The gentle breezes cool us but storms
and tornadoes repeatedly cause
death and destruction. Is this perfect design?
These and other natural calamities prove that inanimate phenomena do not
exhibit perfect design and
therefore that they were not created by a
perfect God.
Now let us look at animate phenomena to see
whether they reveal perfect design. At a superficial glance, nature seems
to be beautiful and harmonious;
all creatures are provided for and each has
its task to perform. However, as any biologist will confirm, nature is
utterly ruthless. To live, each creature
has to feed on other creatures and struggle
to avoid being eaten by other creatures. In nature, there is no time for
pity, love or mercy. If a loving God
designed everything, why did such a cruel
design result? The animal kingdom is not only imperfect in the ethical
sense, it is also imperfect in that it often
goes wrong. Every year millions of babies
are born with physical or mental disabilities, or are stillborn or die
soon after birth. Why would a perfect
creator God design such terrible things?
So if there is design in the universe, much
of it is faulty and cruel. This would seem to indicate that the universe
was not created by a perfect all-loving
God.
The First Cause Argument
Christians will sometimes say that everything
has a cause, that there must be a first cause, and that God is the first
cause. This old argument contains its
own refutation, for if everything has a first
cause then the first cause must also have a cause.
There is another problem with the first cause
argument. Logically there is no good reason to assume that everything had
a single first cause. Perhaps
six, ten or three hundred causes occurring
simultaneously caused everything.
Miracles
Christians claim that miracles are sometimes
performed in God's name and that the fact that this happens proves that
God exists. This is an appealing
argument until it is looked at a little more
closely.
While Christians are quick to claim that because
of their prayers the blind could see, the deaf could hear and crooked limbs
were straightened, they are
very slow in producing evidence to back up
their claims. In fact, some Christians are so anxious to prove that miracles
have occurred at their prayer
meetings that the truth often gets lost in
a flood of wild claims, extravagant boasts, and sometimes even conscious
lies.
It is true that things which are unusual and
difficult to explain do sometimes happen during religious events - but
not just for Christians. Hindus, Muslims,
Taoists, etc. all claim that their God or
gods sometimes perform miracles. Christianity certainly does not have a
monopoly on miracles. So, if miracles
performed in God's name prove the existence
of the Christian God, then miracles performed in the name of numerous other
gods must likewise prove
that they too exist.
Christians may try to overcome this fact by
claiming that, when miracles occur in other religions, they are done through
the power of the Devil. Perhaps
the best way to counter this claim is to quote
the Bible. When Jesus healed the sick, his enemies accused him of doing
this through the power of the
Devil. He answered that healing the sick results
in good and if the Devil went around doing good he would destroy himself
(Mk 3:22-26). Therefore the
same could be said for the miracles performed
by Hindus, Jews or Sikhs. If these miracles result in good, how can they
be the work of the Devil?
The Argument for God's Necessity
Christians will often claim that only by believing
in God will people have the strength to deal with life's problems, and
therefore that belief in God is
necessary. This claim is apparently supported
by numerous books written by Christians who have endured and overcome various
crises through the
power of God. Some of these books make highly
inspiring reading, so the claim that one can cope with problems only with
God's help sounds rather
convincing - until we look a little more deeply.
If this claim is true, we would expect most
of the non-Christian people of the world to lead lives of emotional distress,
confusion and hopelessness while
most Christians through their faith in God
would be able to unfailingly deal with their problems and to never need
to seek help from counsellors or
psychiatrists. It is clear, however, that
people from non-Christian religions and even those with no religion are
just as capable of dealing with life's crises
as Christians are - sometimes even better.
It is also sometimes the case that people who are devout Christians lose
their faith in God after being
confronted with serious personal problems.
Consequently, the claim that belief in God is necessary to cope with and
overcome problems is baseless.
The "Try and Disprove" Argument
When Christians find they cannot prove God's
existence with doubtful facts or logic, they may switch tactics and say
"Perhaps it can't be proved that
God exists, but neither can you disprove it".
This of course is quite true. You cannot prove that God doesn't exist -
but neither can you prove that the
gods of Taoism, Hinduism and a dozen other
religions do not exist. In other words, despite all the hyperbole, the
extravagant claims and the confident
proclamations, there is no more evidence for
the existence of the Christian God than there is for the gods worshipped
in other religions.
The Testimony
After everything else has failed, the Christian
may finally try to convince us that God exists by appealing to the emotions.
Such a person will say,
perhaps quite truthfully, "I used to be unhappy
and discontented but after giving myself to God I am happy and at peace
with myself." Such testimonies
can be deeply moving, but what do they prove?
There are millions of people whose lives became equally happy and meaningful
after they embraced
Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam. Likewise, there
are no doubt many people whose lives have not changed for the better after
they became Christians -
the same weaknesses and problems sometimes
remain. So this argument, like all the others, does not prove the existence
of the Christian God.
WHY GOD CANNOT EXIST
We have seen that the arguments used to prove
God's existence are inadequate. We will now demonstrate that logically
an all-loving, all-knowing and
all-powerful God such as the one in which
Christians have faith cannot exist.
The Problem of Free Will
For the religious life to be meaningful we
must have free will, we must be able to choose between good and evil. If
we do not have free will we cannot
be held responsible for what we do.
According to Christians, God is all-knowing
- he knows all the past, all the present and all the future. If this is
so, then God must know everything we
do long before we do it. This means that our
whole life must be predetermined and that we act not according to the free
exercise of our wills but
according to our predetermined natures. If
we are predetermined to be good we will be good and if we are predetermined
to be evil we will be evil.
We will act not according to our will or choice
but according to the way God has already foreseen we will act. Although
Christians will insist that we do
have free will, God's omniscience simply makes
this logically impossible. And that people will act only as God determines
is verified in the Bible (e.g. 2
Thess 2:11-12; Rom 9:19-21; Rom 9:18).
If people are evil it is because God has chosen
to make them evil (Rom 1:24-28) and caused them to disobey him (Rom 11:32).
If they do not
understand God's message it is because he
has made their minds dull (Rom 11:8) and caused them to be stubborn (Rom
9:18). God prevents the
Gospel from being preached in certain areas
(Act 16:6-7) and he fixes long before it will happen when a person will
be born and when he or she will
die (Act 17:26). Those who were going to be
saved were chosen by God before the beginning of time (II Tim 1:9). If
a person has faith and is thereby
saved, their faith comes from God, not from
any effort on their part (Eph 2:9-10). One may ask "If a person can only
do what God predetermines them
to do, how can God hold them responsible for
their actions?" The Bible has an answer for this question.
But one of you
will say to me: "If this is so, how can God find fault with anyone? For
who can resist God's will?" But who are you, my
friend, to answer
God back? A clay pot does not ask the man who made it: "Why did you make
me like this?" After all, the man who
makes the pot
has the right to use the clay as he wishes, and to make two pots from one
lump of clay, one for special occasions and one
for ordinary
use. And the same is true of what God has done (Rom 9:19-22).
So apparently in Christianity a person's life
and destiny are due purely to the whim of God and as mere humans we have
no right to complain about
what God has decided for us. The idea that
we are all predetermined is quite consistent with the idea of an all-knowing
God but it makes nonsense of
the concept of making an effort to do good
or avoid evil.
The Problem of Evil
Perhaps the most potent argument against the
existence of an all-powerful, all-loving God is the undeniable fact that
there is so much pain and suffering
in the world. If there is really a God of
love who has unlimited power, why doesn't he put an end to all evil? Christians
try to answer this question in
several ways.
Firstly, they will say that evil is caused
by man not God and that if only man would follow God's commandments there
would be no pain, evil or
suffering. However, while it is true that
evils such as war, rape, murder and exploitation can be blamed on humans,
they can hardly be blamed for the
millions who die each year in earthquakes,
floods, epidemics and accidents, all of which are natural events. In fact,
according to the Bible, the germs
that cause hideous diseases like TB, polio,
cholera, leprosy etc. and all the misery, deformity and suffering to which
they give rise, were created by God
before he created man (Gen. 1:11-12).
Another way Christians will try to explain
away evil is to say that it is God's punishment for those who do not follow
his commandments. However this
implies that terrible things happen only to
bad people, which is certainly not true. We often hear of painful sickness
or disasters befalling good people
including good Christians, and likewise we
often hear of really bad people who seem to have nothing but good fortune
and success. So it cannot be
said that suffering and evil are God's way
of punishing sinners.
Next, Christians will say that God allows evil
to exist in the world because he wants to give us the freedom to choose
good over evil and thereby earn
salvation. Evil, they will say, exists to
test us. At first this seems to be a good explanation. If a man sees someone
being beaten up by a bully he has a
choice between turning away (doing wrong)
or deciding to help the victim (doing right). If he decides to help then
he has been tested and found good.
However, as we have seen before, an all-knowing
God must already know what choices a person will make so what is the point
of testing us? Also,
even if suffering and evil exist in the world
to test us, couldn't an all-loving God think of a less cruel and less painful
way to do this? It seems unloving
and unfair to allow pain to be inflicted on
one person so that another person can have the opportunity to choose between
good and evil.
Some Christians will try to free God from responsibility
for evil by saying that it is not created by God but by the Devil. This
may be true but again if
God is so loving why doesn't he simply prevent
the Devil from doing this? In any case, who created the Devil in the first
place? Surely it was God.
By this stage the Christian will start to get
a bit desperate, shifting the argument from logic to pragmatism. He will
say that even though there is suffering
in the world we can use it as an opportunity
to develop courage and patience. This is undoubtedly true but it still
does not explain why an all-loving God
allows babies to die of cancer, innocent bystanders
to be killed in accidents, and leprosy victims to suffer deformity and
pain. In fact the existence of so
much unnecessary pain, misery and evil in
the world is very strong evidence that there is no all-loving all-powerful
God.
Why Create?
Christians claim that God is perfect, that
he is complete in every way, but if God really did create the universe
this would prove that he was not perfect.
Let us examine why.
Before God created the universe there was nothing
- no sun, no earth, no people, no good or evil, no pain - nothing but God
who was, according to
Christians, perfect. So if God was perfect
and nothing but perfection existed, what motivated God to create the universe
and thus bring imperfection
into being? Was it because he was bored and
wanted something to do? Was it because he was lonely and wanted someone
to pray to him?
Christians will say that God created everything
because of his love of man, but this is impossible. God could not love
humans before he created them
any more than a woman could love her children
before she had conceived them. God's need to create indicates that he was
dissatisfied in some way
and therefore not perfect. Christians might
then say that God created spontaneously and without need or desire. However
this would mean that the
whole universe came into being without purpose
or forethought and therefore it would mean that God was not a loving creator.
The Problem of the Hidden God
Christians claim that God wants us to believe
in him so that we can be saved - but if this is so why doesn't God simply
appear and perform a miracle so
that everyone will see and believe? Christians
will say that God wants us to believe in him out of faith, not because
we see him with our eyes. However,
according to the Bible, God in the past performed
the most awesome miracles and often intervened dramatically in human affairs
so that people would
know his presence. So if he did so in the
past, why doesn't he do so now?
Christians will say that God does perform miracles
today (healing, solving personal problems etc) but being stubborn and evil
most people refuse to
believe. However these so-called miracles
are individual and minor and leave much room for doubt. If God performed
a really impressive miracle which
could have no other possible explanation,
then most people certainly would believe.
According to the Bible when the Israelites
wandered in the desert for forty years, God fed them by making food fall
regularly from the sky (Ex 16:4).
During the 1980's, several million Ethiopian
Christians died slowly and painfully from starvation due to a prolonged
drought. God had then the
opportunity to make food fall from the sky,
as the Bible claims he did in the past, in order to prove his existence,
his power and his love. Buddhists
would say that God did not manifest his presence
because he does not exist.
GOD OR THE BUDDHA -- WHO IS THE HIGHEST?
While Christians look to God as their lord
and creator, Buddhists look to the Buddha as their model and ideal. Although
Christians have never seen
God, they claim to know him by communicating
with him through prayer and through feeling his presence. They also claim
that they can know God's
will by reading his words which they maintain
are contained in the Bible.
As Buddhists neither pray to nor acknowledge
God, the only way they can get an idea of what he is like is by reading
the Bible. However when
Buddhists look at what the Bible says about
God they are often shocked. They find that God as he is portrayed in the
Bible to be profoundly different
from how they hear Christians describe him.
While Buddhists reject the Christian concept
of God because it seems to be illogical and unsubstantiated, they also
reject it because it seems so much
lower than their own ideal, the Buddha. We
will now examine what the Bible says about God, compare it to what the
Tipitaka (the Buddhist sacred
scriptures) say about the Buddha, and thereby
demonstrate the moral superiority of the latter.
Physical Appearance
What does God look like? The Bible says that
God created man in his own image (Gen 1:26) so from this we can assume
God looks something like a
human being. The Bible tells us that God has
hands (Ex 15:12), arms (Deut 11:2), fingers (Ps 8:3) and a face (Deut 13:17).
He does not like people
seeing his face but he doesn't mind if they
see his back.
And I will take away my hands and you will see my back parts but my face you shall not see (Ex 33:23).
However, although God seems to have a human
body he does at the same time look not unlike the demons and fierce guardians
one often sees in
Indian and Chinese temples. For example, he
has flames coming out of his body.
A fire issues from his presence and burns his enemies on every side (Ps 97:3).
Our God comes and shall not keep silent, before him a fire burns and around him fierce storms rage (Ps 50:3).
Now the people
complained about their hardships in the hearing of the Lord, and when he
heard them his anger was aroused. Then fire
from the Lord
burned among them and consumed some of the outskirts of the camp (Num 11:1).
When God is angry, which seems to be quite often, smoke and fire come out of his body.
The earth trembled
and quaked, and the foundations of the mountains shook, they trembled because
he was angry. Smoke rose from his
nostrils; consuming
fire came from his mouth, burning coals blazed out of it (Ps 18:7-8).
When the prophet Ezekiel saw God and his attendant angels, he described them as looking like this.
On the fifth
of the month - it was the fifth year of the exile of King Jehoiachin -
the word of the Lord came to Ezekiel the priest, the son of
Buzi, by the
Kebar River in the land of the Babylonians. There the hand of the Lord
was upon him.
I looked, and
I saw a windstorm coming out of the north - an immense cloud with flashing
lightning and surrounded by brilliant light. The
centre of the
fire looked like glowing metal, and in the fire was what looked like four
living creatures. In appearance their form was that of
a man, but each
of them had four faces and four wings. Their legs were straight; their
feet were like those of a calf and gleamed like
burnished bronze.
Under their wings on their four sides they had the hands of a man. All
four of them had faces and wings, and their wings
touched one
another. Each one went straight ahead; they did not turn as they moved.
Their faces looked
like this: Each of the four had the face of a man, and on the right side
each had the face of a lion, and on the left the
face of an ox;
each also had the face of an eagle. Such were their faces. Their wings
were spread out upward; each had two wings, one
touching the
wing of another creature on either side, and two wings covering its body.
Each one went
straight ahead. Wherever the spirit would go, they would go, without turning
as they went. The appearance of the living
creatures was
like burning coals of fire or like torches. Fire moved back and forth among
the creatures; it was bright, and lightning flashed
out of it. The
creatures sped back and forth like flashes of lightning.
As I looked at
the living creatures, I saw a wheel on the ground beside each creature
with its four faces. This was the appearance and
structure of
the wheels: They sparkled like chrysolite, and all four looked alike. Each
appeared to be made like a wheel intersecting a
wheel (Ezek
1:4-21).
Christians often look at the many-armed and
fierce-faced gods in Hindu and Taoist temples and claim that they are devils
rather than gods - but as the
Bible makes clear the Christian God is very
similar in appearance to these. Furthermore, just as Hindu and Taoist gods
carry various weapons so too
does the Christian God.
In that day the Lord will punish with his sword, his fierce, great and powerful sword (Is 27:1).
The sun and moon
stood still in the heavens at the glint of your flying arrows, at the lightning
of your flashing spear. In wrath you strode
through the
earth and in your anger you threshed the nations (Haba 3:11-12).
The Lord thundered from heaven, the voice of the Most High resounded. He shot his arrows and scattered the enemies (Ps 18:13-14).
But God will shoot them with arrows, suddenly they will be struck down (Ps 64:7).
Then the Lord will appear over them, his arrows will flash like lightning. The sovereign Lord will sound the trumpet (Zech 9:14).
Another interesting way in which God's appearance
resembles that of non-Christian idols is in how he travels. The Bible tells
us that God gets from one
place to another either by sitting on a cloud
(Is 19:1) or riding on the back of an angel (Ps 18:10). It is obvious from
these quotes that God has a
savage and frightening appearance; a conclusion
verified again by the Bible where people are described as being utterly
terrified by God's appearance.
Serve the Lord
with fear and trembling, kiss his feet or else he will get angry and you
will perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled
(Ps 2:11).
Therefore I am
terrified at his presence. When I think of him I am in dread of him, God
has made my heart faint. The Almighty has terrified
me (Job 23:15).
Jesus frequently says that we should fear God
(e.g. Lk 12:4-5). The Bible also very correctly says that where there is
fear there cannot be love (I Jn
4:18) and so if God creates fear in people
it is difficult to know how he can genuinely be loved at the same time.
What did the Buddha look like? Being human,
the Buddha had a human body like any ordinary person. However the Tipitaka
(the Buddhist sacred
books) frequently speak of his great personal
beauty.
He is handsome,
good-looking, pleasant to see, of most beautiful complexion, his form and
countenance is like Brahma's, his appearance
is beautiful
(Digha Nikaya, Sutta No.4).
He is handsome,
inspiring faith, with calm senses and mind tranquil, composed and controlled,
like a perfectly tamed elephant (Anguttara
Nikaya, Sutta
No.36).
Whenever people saw the Buddha, his calm appearance
filled them with peace and his gentle smile reassured them. As we have
seen, God's voice is
loud and frightening like thunder (Ps 68:33).
while the Buddha's voice was gentle and soothing.
When in a monastery
he is teaching the Dhamma, he does not exalt or disparage the assembly.
On the contrary, he delights, uplifts,
inspires and
gladdens them with talk on Dhamma. The sound of the good Gotama's voice
has eight characteristics; it is distinct and
intelligible,
sweet and audible, fluent and clear, deep and resonant (Majjhima Nikaya,
Sutta No.19).
God carries weapons because he has to kill
his enemies and because he controls people with violence and threats. The
Buddha, on the other hand,
showed enmity to no one and was able to control
people by reasoning with them. Addressing the Buddha, King Pasenadi once
said:
I am a king,
able to execute those deserving execution, fine those deserving to be fined,
or exile those deserving exile. But when I am
sitting on a
court case people sometimes interrupt even me. I can't even get a chance
to say: "Don't interrupt me! Wait until I have finished
speaking." But
when the Lord is teaching Dhamma there is not even the sound of coughing
coming from the assembly. Once, as I sat
listening to
the Lord teach Dhamma a certain disciple coughed and one of his fellows
tapped him on the knee and said, "Silence, sir, make
no noise. Our
Lord is teaching Dhamma", and I thought to myself, indeed it is wonderful,
marvellous how well trained these disciples are
without stick
or sword (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta No.89).
We can just imagine how God would react if
one were foolish enough to interrupt him while he was speaking. We can
see from what has been said
above that the Buddha's physical appearance
reflected his deep inner calm and compassion. People were always inspired
by the aura of peace that
surrounded him.
Mental Make-up
We have seen that Buddhists do not believe
in God because to them the idea is illogical and contrary to the facts.
Buddhists also reject the Christian
God because, if the Bible is correct, God
appears to be so imperfect. All of the negative emotions which most cultured
people find unacceptable are to
be found in God. Let us examine how the Bible
describes God's mind.
The emotion which is associated with God more than any other is jealousy. He even admits that he is jealous.
For the Lord is a devouring fire, a jealous God (Deut 4:24).
Nothing makes God more jealous than people worshipping other gods, and he tells us we must even kill our own children if they do this.
If your brother,
the son of your mother, or your son, daughter, the wife of your bosom or
the friend of your own soul, entices you secretly,
saying, "Let
us go and serve other gods" which neither you nor your fathers have known,
some of the gods of the people that are around
you whether
near or far, from one end of the earth to the other, you shall not yield
to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor
shall you spare
him, nor shall you conceal him, but you shall kill him. Your hand shall
be the first against him to kill him and after that the
others can strike
him (Deut 13:6).
The Bible tells us that God frequently loses his temper.
See, the day
of the Lord is coming - a cruel day, with wrath and fierce anger, to make
the land desolate and destroy the sinners within it
(Is 13:9).
God is angry every day (Ps 7:11).
The Lord will
cause men to hear his majestic voice and will make them see his arm coming
down with raging anger and consuming fire (Is
30:30).
His anger will burn against you and he will destroy you from the face of the land (Deut 6:15).
God tells us to love but he is described as hating and being filled with abhorrence.
You hate all those who do wrong. You destroy those who tell lies; bloodthirsty and deceitful men the Lord abhors (Ps 5:5-6).
He is further described as hating many other
things as well as people (see Deut 16:22, Mala 2:16, Lev 26:30). God has
a particularly deep hatred for
other religions which probably explains why
Christianity has always been such an intolerant religion. He is often described
as feeling special hatred for
those who will not worship him.
Your New Moon festivals and your appointed feasts my soul hates (Is 1:14).
The Buddha had compassion for those who were
cruel, he forgave those who did wrong, and he had respect for those of
other religions. We would
expect God, being capable of jealousy and
hate, to be vengeful, and not surprisingly the Bible often mentions God's
vengefulness.
Behold, your God will come with vengeance (Is 35:4).
The Lord is avenging and wrathful, the Lord takes vengeance on his adversaries and holds wrath for his enemies (Nahum 1:2).
For we know him
who said, "It is mine to avenge; I will repay", and again, "The Lord will
judge his people". It is a dreadful thing to fall
into the hands
of the living god (Heb 10:30-31). (See also Rom 1:8, 2:5-6, 12:19).
What would be the use of worshipping a God who is full of the very mental defilements which we ourselves are striving to overcome?
During the forty years after his enlightenment,
the Buddha urged people to give up anger, jealousy and intolerance and
never once in all that time did he
fail to act in perfect accordance with what
he taught to others.
The Lord acts
as he speaks and speaks as he acts. We find no teacher other than the Lord
who is so consistent as this whether we survey
the past or
the present (Digha Nikaya, Sutta No.19).
In the whole of the Tipitaka, there is not
a single example of the Buddha expressing anger, hatred, jealousy, etc.
because, being perfect, he was freed
from such negative emotions.
Attitude to War
The Bible tells us that there is a time for
hate and a time for war (Ex 3:8) and it is widely recognized today that
those great evils depend upon each
other. As we have seen, God is quite capable
of hatred and, not surprisingly is therefore often involved in war.
The Lord is a man of war (Ex 15:3).
The Lord your God is in your midst, a warrior who gives victory (Zeph 3:17).
The Lord goes
forth like a mighty man, like a man of war he stirs up his fury, he cries
out, he shouts aloud, he shows himself mighty against
the enemy (Is
42:13).
When I sharpen
my flashing sword and my hand grasps it in judgment, I will take vengeance
on my adversaries and repay those who hate
me. I will make
my arrows drunk with blood while my sword devours flesh: the blood of the
slain and the captives, the heads of the enemy
leaders (Deut
32:41-42).
For centuries Christians have been inspired
by these Bible passages, which encourage and even glorify war, to use violence
to spread their religion.
Even today there is a distinctly militaristic
flavour about Christianity. The Salvation Army with its motto "Blood and
Fire"; the hymns that speak about
"Onward Christian soldiers marching as to
war"; the saying "Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition", etc. The Bible
contains dozens of examples of
God helping his devotees to capture cities,
slaughter civilian populations and defeat armies (for example Num 21:1-3,
Num 31:1-12, Deut 2:32-34,
Deut 3:3-7, Josh 11:6-11, etc.). Concerning
captives in war God says:
And you shall destroy all the peoples that the Lord your God gives over to you, your eye shall not pity them (Deut 7:16).
When the Lord
your God gives them over to you and you defeat them you must utterly destroy
them and show no mercy to them (Deut
7:2).
Even Christians are often shocked when they
read passages like these. Buddhists simply feel that such passages justify
their rejection of God and their
faith in the Buddha.
What was the Buddha's attitude to war? There
is no example of the Buddha ever praising war, encouraging war, or going
to war himself. On the
contrary, he urged all to live in peace and
harmony and is described in this way:
He is a reconciler
of those who are in conflict and an encourager of those who are already
united, rejoicing in peace, loving peace,
delighting in
peace, he is one who speaks in praise of peace (Digha Nikaya, Sutta No.1).
He set an example by being a man of peace.
Abandoning killing,
the monk Gotama lives refraining from killing, he is without stick or sword,
he lives with care, compassion and
sympathy for
others (Digha Nikaya, Sutta No.1).
The Buddha was not content with merely speaking
in favour of peace or with being peaceful himself. He actively promoted
peace by trying to stop war.
When his relatives were about to go to war
over the waters of the Rohini River, the Buddha did not take sides, urge
them on, give them advice on
tactics, or tell them to show no mercy to
their adversaries, as God would have done. Instead he stood between the
two factions and said, "What is
more valuable, blood or water?" The soldiers
replied, "Blood is more valuable, sir." Then the Buddha said, "Then is
it not unbecoming to spill blood for
water?" Both sides dropped their weapons and
peace was restored (Dhammapada Atthakata Book 15,1). The Buddha had put
aside hatred and filled
his mind with love and compassion, so approving
of war was impossible for him.
Idea of Justice
Justice is the quality of being fair, and a
person who is just acts fairly and in accordance with what is right. However
ideas about what is fair and right
differ from time to time and from person to
person. Christians claim that God is just, so by examining his actions
we will be able to know God's concept
of justice.
God tells us that anybody who disobeys him
will be punished "seven times over" (Lev 26:18), that is, one sin will
be punished seven times. God
obviously considers this to be fair and just.
He also tells us that he will punish the innocent children, grandchildren,
and even great-grandchildren of
those who sin.
I the Lord am
a jealous God, punishing the children for the sins of the fathers to the
third or fourth generation of those who hate me (Deut
5:9).
This is known as collective punishment; punishing
a whole family or group for the crime committed by one of its members.
Collective punishment is
condemned today as unfair and unjust but God
apparently considers it quite just.
God tells us that even minor offences should
be punished by death. For example, those who work on Sunday should be stoned
to death. Once a man
was found collecting firewood on Sunday and
God said to Moses and the people who caught the man:
"The man must
die. The whole assembly must stone him outside the camp." So the assembly
took him outside the camp and stoned him to
death as the
Lord commanded Moses (Num 15:32-36).
God's idea of justice does not seem to embrace
the idea that the punishment should fit the crime. We are told that all
who do not love God will suffer
eternal punishment in hell. There are many
kind, honest and generous people who do not believe in God and they will
all go to hell. Is this fair and just?
God apparently thinks so.
Was the Buddha just? The Buddha had attained
the freedom of enlightenment and he taught others how they too could attain
this freedom. Unlike God,
he was not primarily a lawgiver, a judge,
or one who metes out punishment. He was a teacher. In all his dealings
with people he was fair, mild and
merciful and he urged his followers to act
in like manner. If someone did wrong, he said that one should not rush
to punish him.
When you are
living together in harmony, a fellow monk might commit an offence, a transgression.
But you should not rush to condemn
him, the issue
must be carefully examined first (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta No. 103).
In addition, when a person is being examined one should remain uninfluenced by bias or partiality and should look at both sides of the case.
Not by passing
hasty judgments does one become just, a wise man is one who investigates
both sides. He who does not judge others
arbitrarily,
but passes judgment impartially and in accordance with the facts, that
person is a guardian of the law and is rightly called just
(Dhammapada
256-257).
As for punishment, the Buddha would have considered
stoning someone to death or any other form of capital punishment to be
cruel. He himself was
always ready to forgive. Once a man called
Nigrodha abused the Buddha and later realised his mistake and confessed
to the Buddha. Full of
compassion and forgiveness the Buddha said:
Indeed, Nigrodha,
transgression overcame you when through ignorance, blindness and evil you
spoke to me like that. But since you
acknowledge
your transgression and make amends as is right, I accept your confession
(Digha Nikaya, Sutta No.25).
The Buddha forgave all whether they accepted
his teachings or not, and even if Nigrodha had refused to apologise the
Buddha would not have
threatened to punish him. To the Buddha the
proper response to faults was not the threat to punish but education and
forgiveness. As he says:
By three things
the wise man can be known. What three? He sees his faults as they are.
When he sees them he corrects them and when
another confesses
a fault the wise man forgives it as he should (Anguttara Nikaya, Book of
Threes, Sutta No.10).
Attitude to Disease
Disease, sickness and plagues have been the
scourge of mankind for centuries, causing untold suffering and misery.
The Bible shows us that God has
always considered disease a useful way of
expressing his anger and exercising his vengeance. When Pharaoh refused
to release the Jews, God caused
festering boils to break out on "all Egyptians"
(Ex 9:8-12). God used this affliction to punish men, women, children and
babies for the sin of one man.
Later God made the first-born of every male
child die. He says:
Every first-born
son in Egypt will die, from the first-born son of Pharaoh who sits on the
throne, to the first-born son of the slave girl who
sits at her
hand-mill. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt - worse than there
has ever been or ever will be (Ex 11:5-6).
This is another good example of God's idea
of justice and compassion. Countless thousands of men, boys and innocent
babies were killed by God
because Pharaoh would not obey. In many places
in the Bible God promises that he will inflict terrible diseases on those
who do not follow his
commandments.
The Lord will
plague with diseases until he has destroyed you...the Lord will strike
you with wasting disease, with fever and
inflammation...(Deut
28:21-22).
The Lord will
inflict you with the boils of Egypt and with tumors, festering sores, and
with itch, from which you cannot be cured (Deut
28:27).
The Lord will
send fearful plagues on you and your descendants, harsh and prolonged disasters
and severe and lingering illness. He will
bring upon you
all the disasters of Egypt that you dreaded and they will cling to you.
The Lord will also bring on you every kind of
sickness and
disaster (Deut 28:59-61).
Sometimes God even inflicts hideous diseases
on people just to test their faith. To test Job God allowed all his children
to be killed (Job 1:18-19) and
Job himself to be struck with a terrible disease
(Job 2:6-8). So unbearable was Job's grief and suffering that he began
to wish he had never been born
(Job 3:3-26).
God even created some people blind and allowed
them to spend their lives begging and groping in darkness just so that
Jesus could miraculously heal
them and thereby demonstrate God's power (Jn
9:1-4). Obviously, God sees illness, sickness and disease as useful means
of punishing people and of
demonstrating the extent of his power.
Now let us have a look at the Buddha's attitude
to sickness. The Buddha saw sickness and disease as a part of the general
suffering from which he
came to free mankind. He was called "the compassionate
physician". There are no examples of the Buddha ever having caused people
to become
diseased in order to punish them or because
he was angry at them. The Buddha rightly understood that for as long as
we have a body we will be
susceptible to disease. He urged all to attain
Nirvana and be forever free from suffering. While he tried to cut the problem
at the root, he also did
practical things to comfort the sick and restore
them to health. Rather than inflict diseases on people, as God did, he
gave practical advice on how to
help and comfort the sick.
With five qualities
one is worthy to nurse the sick. What five? One can prepare the correct
medicine; one knows what is good for the
patient and
offers it, and what is not good one does not offer; one nurses the sick
out of love not out of desire for gain; one is unmoved by
excrement, urine,
vomit and spittle; and from time to time one can instruct, inspire, gladden
and satisfy the sick with talk on Dhamma
(Anguttara Nikaya,
Book of Fives, Sutta No.124).
He not only taught this but acted in conformity
to his own teaching. When once he found a sick monk, neglected and lying
in his own excrement, he
bathed him, comforted him and then calling
the other monks together said to them, "If you would nurse me, nurse those
who are sick" (Vinaya,
Mahavagga, 8). When God was angry he would
inflict diseases on people and then watch them suffer. When the Buddha
saw people with diseases, out
of compassion he did all he could to restore
them to health.
Creating Evil
God created all that is good, but because he created everything, he also created all that is evil. God himself says:
I am the Lord
and there is no other. I form the light and I create the darkness, I make
the good and I make evil (Is 45:7-8). (See also
Rom 11:32).
When we think of nature and we remember that
God is supposed to have created everything we understand the meaning of
these words. Leprosy
germs cause untold misery and they were created
by God. Tuberculosis germs kill and deform millions of humans each year
and they were created by
God. God created the plague bacteria, the
fleas and the rats that together cause bubonic plague and which have throughout
the centuries killed perhaps
as many as a hundred million people. In 1665,
68,000 people died of the plague in London alone. No doubt all this is
what God means when he says
he created darkness and evil. But God also
created other forms of evil. He says:
When disaster comes to a city, has not the Lord caused it? (Amos 3:4).
This undoubtedly refers to the earthquakes,
fires, social strife, wars and other forms of evil which periodically afflict
mankind's towns and cities. We
also read in the Bible that even evil spirits
come from God. In 1 Samuel 16:14-16 we are told that an evil spirit from
God tormented Saul.
Did the Buddha create evil? As he was not a
creator God, he could not be held responsible for 'darkness and evil'.
The only thing he 'created' was the
Dhamma which he discovered and then proclaimed
to the world. And his Dhamma has brought only light, good and gentleness
everywhere it has
spread.
Sacrifices
In Old Testament times when people broke God's
commandments he would get angry and the only way the sinner could make
atonement and soothe
God's anger was to sacrifice an animal. God
himself gave exact instructions on how the animal was to be slaughtered.
If the offering
to the Lord is a burnt offering of birds, he is to offer a dove or a young
pigeon. The priest shall bring it to the altar, wring off
its head and
burn it on the altar; its blood shall be drained out on the side of the
altar. He is to remove the crop with its contents and throw
it to the east
side of the altar, where the ashes are. He shall tear it open by the wings,
not severing it completely, and then the priest shall
burn it on the
wood that is on the fire on the side of the altar (Lev 1:14-17).
God tells us that when the meat, fat, skin
and bone of the sacrificial victims are thrown in the fire and burned,
he likes the smell of it (Lev 1:9, 1:17). But
not all the sacrifices God demanded were animals;
sometimes he demanded even human sacrifices. God once said to Abraham:
Take your son,
your only son Isaac, whom you love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice
him there as a burnt offering on one of the
mountains I
will tell you about (Gen 22:2).
Abraham took his son to the place God indicated,
built an altar, laid his son on it and then took up the knife. Just as
he was about to slit his own son's
throat, Abraham was stopped by an angel (Gen
22:12). Presumably, Abraham was a good devotee because he blindly, unquestioningly
and willingly
did anything God told him to do, even to the
extent of preparing to butcher his own son as a sacrifice to God.
In later centuries, mankind's sins became so
bad that the sacrifice of mere animals could no longer appease God's anger.
God required a greater, a
more valuable sacrificial victim - his own
son Jesus. Once again it was the blood of a victim which most atoned for
sin and which is able to reconcile the
sinners with God. Thus modern Christians often
say that their "sins have been washed away by the blood of Jesus".
What did the Buddha think of animal or human
sacrifices? At the time of the Buddha, the Hindu deities were offered animal
sacrifices just as the
Christian God was, and so the Buddha was quite
aware of this practice. However, he considered sacrifices to be vulgar,
cruel and useless.
The sacrifice
of horse or man, the Peg-Thrown Rite, the Sacrificial Drink, the Victory
Rite, the Withdrawn Bolt, all these rites are not
worth a sixteenth
part of having a heart filled with love, any more than the radiance of
the moon outshines the stars (Anguttara Nikaya,
Book of Eights,
Sutta No.1).
Christians believe that Jesus' sacrificial
blood will wash away their sins just as Hindus at the time of the Buddha
believed that their sins could be washed
away by bathing in holy rivers. The Buddha
criticised the Hindu idea just as he would have criticised the Christian
idea if he had known about it. To
believe that blood, water or any other external
things can purify the heart, which is an internal thing, is foolish indeed.
In the Bahuka
River, at Adhikakka, at Gaya, in the Sundrika, the Sarassati, the Payaga
or the Bahumati the fool can wash constantly but
cannot cleanse
his evil deeds. What can the Sundrika, the Payaga or the Bahumati River
do? They cannot cleanse the angry, guilty man
intent on evil
deeds. For the pure in heart every day is lucky, for the pure in heart
every day is holy (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta No.7).
This being the case, bathing in sacrificial
blood or holy rivers is a poor substitute for purifying oneself by acting
in a pure way. The only sacrifice that the
Buddha asked us to make was to give up our
selfishness and replace it with love, wisdom and compassion.
Love
We are told that God is love and the Bible
sometimes mentions love as one of God's attributes. However, there are
different types of love. A person
can love his or her own children but hate
the neighbour's children. Someone might have a strong love for his own
country but a burning hatred for
another country. Though we may love someone
deeply, we may, due to changed circumstances, grow indifferent or even
hateful towards them. This is
the lower, less developed, type of love which
ordinary people feel - but there is a higher, more universal, type of love
than this. This higher type of love
is well described in the Buddhist texts and
also in the Bible. In Corinthians we read:
Love is patient,
love is kind, it does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud, it
is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered,
it keeps no
record of wrongs (1 Cor 13:4-5).
Does God exhibit this higher type of love?
Let us have a look. We are told that love is patient. Patience is defined
as the ability to wait calmly for a long
time, to control oneself when angered, especially
at foolishness or slowness. We have already seen that God gets angry every
day (Ps 7:11) and that he
gets angry very quickly (Ps 2:11). Obviously
God has very little patience.
We are told that love is kind. Is God kind?
Read Deuteronomy (28:15-68) where God describes in his own words just how
cruel he can be. This
shocking passage proves beyond all doubt that
God is capable of truly terrible cruelty. Obviously God is not always very
kind.
We are told that love does not envy. Envy is, of course, very similar to jealousy and God often describes himself as fiercely jealous. He says:
For the Lord your God is a devouring fire, a jealous God (Deut 4:24).
We are told that love does not boast and is
not proud. Is God like this? Certainly the Bible does not give us the impression
that God is modest and
retiring. God spends a lot of time telling
Job how great he is (Job 40:41) and ends by boasting of himself that:
He looks down on all that are haughty, he is king over all that are proud (Job 41:34).
Next we are told that love is not easily angered. We have already seen that God is very easily angered.
Serve the Lord
with fear and trembling, kiss his feet or else he will get angry and you
will perish in the way, for his wrath is quickly kindled
(Ps 2:11).
Finally we are told that love does not keep
a record of wrongs that are done, that is, love soon forgives and forgets.
Does God keep a record of
wrongs that are done? God tells us that he
will punish the children, grandchildren and even great-grandchildren of
those who sin (Deut 5:9). In order to
do this he must keep a record of the wrongs
that have been committed and long remember them. Jesus tells us that God
will never forgive those who
insult the Holy Ghost (Lk 12:10). We are told
that God casts sinners and non-believers into eternal hell. In other words,
he refuses to ever forgive
them. In short, he keeps a record for eternity
of the wrongs which have been done. Quite clearly, God does not exhibit
the highest type of love.
What about the Buddha? Did he exhibit the highest
type of love? The first characteristic of this highest kind of love is
patience, and there is not one
incident recorded in the Tipitaka of the Buddha
being impatient. Even when he was abused he remained calm. His every action
displays a calm, strong
patience. When Asurinda cursed and abused
the Buddha, he calmly replied:
He who abuses
his abuser is the worse of the two. To refrain from retaliation is to win
a battle hard to win. If one knows that the other
person is angry
but refrains from anger oneself, one does what is best for oneself and
the other person also. One is a healer of both
(Samyutta Nikaya,
Chapter Seven, Sutta No.3).
As he was always patient, he was also free
from anger. Even when his cousin Devadatta tried to murder him, the Buddha
displayed only pity and
tolerance.
We are also told that love is kind. Was the
Buddha kind? Again there is not a single hint of the Buddha being anything
other than kind and
compassionate - not only to those who accepted
his teachings but also to the followers of all faiths, not only to the
good but also to the evil, not only to
humans but also to animals. He says:
One should do
no unkind thing that wise men might condemn and one should think, "May
all beings be secure and happy. Whatever
beings there
are, moving or still, tall, middle-sized or short, great or small, seen
or unseen, whether living far or near, existing or not yet
come into existence,
may they all be happy." One should not harm another or despise anyone for
any reason. Do not wish pain on another
out of either
anger or jealousy. Just as a mother would protect her only child even at
the risk of her own life, even so, one should develop
unbounded love
towards all beings in the world (Sutta Nipata, Verses 145-149).
The Buddha did not only teach this but he also
practised everything he taught. God tells us that he is jealous and by
this he means that he is jealous of
other gods and other religions. He wants everyone
to worship and revere him alone. So jealous is he that he says his devotees
should kill even their
own children if they worship other gods (Deut
13:6) and that God hates followers of other religions.
I hate those who cling to worthless idols (Ps 31:6).
I gain understanding from your precepts, therefore I hate every wrong path (Ps 119:104).
Was the Buddha jealous of other faiths? Indeed,
he was not. A man called Upali was a follower of the Jain religion. The
Buddha explained the
Dhamma to him after which he decided to become
a Buddhist. The Buddha did not exult nor was he anxious to 'win' Upali.
Rather, he advised him to
think carefully before making such an important
decision:
Make a careful
investigation first, Upali. Careful investigation is good for well-known
people like yourself (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta
No.56).
The Buddha then advised Upali to keep offering
donations to the Jain religion. He said this because he could see the good
in all religions and because
he was free from envy and jealousy.
Vacchagatta said
to the Lord, "I have heard it said that you say that charity should only
be given to you, not to other teachers, to your
disciples, not
to the disciples of other religions." Then the Lord said, "Those who say
this are not reporting my words, they misrepresent
me and tell
lies. Truly, whoever discourages anyone from giving charity hinders in
three ways. He hinders the giver from doing good, he
hinders the
receiver from being helped and he hinders himself through his meanness."
(Anguttara Nikaya, Book of Threes, Sutta No.57).
Even today many Christians, especially fundamentalists
and evangelicals, will refuse to have anything to do with non-Christians
and would certainly
refuse to help non-Christian charities.
The Buddha was not boastful or proud, he was
not rude or self-seeking, he was not easily angered and he did not keep
a record of wrongs that were
done to him. From the day of his enlightenment,
his every thought, word and action was an expression of love and compassion.
As one of his
contemporaries said:
I have heard
this said, "To abide in love is sublime indeed", and the Lord is proof
of this because we can see that he abides in love
(Majjhima Nikaya,
Sutta No.55).
FACT AND FICTION IN THE LIFE OF JESUS
The single thing which makes Christianity what
it is, the foundation on which it rests, is Jesus Christ, or rather, claims
about Jesus Christ. Christians are
always making the most exaggerated claims
about this man: "Jesus was the only man in history to claim to be God";
"Only faith in Jesus can give a
person peace and happiness"; "Either Jesus
was God or he was the greatest liar in history"; "Thousands of witnesses
saw him rise from the dead so it
must be true"; "Jesus was the most perfect
human being who ever lived"; etc, etc, etc. These claims all sound very
impressive until we look at the
evidence.
Prophecies about and by Jesus
Every time there is a change in the turbulent
politics of the Middle East, Christians will sift through their Bibles
and loudly proclaim that the newest crisis
has been prophesied. A prophecy is a prediction
in the Bible which is supposed to foretell events which will take place
in the future. These so-called
prophecies are bandied about for a while and
then quietly dropped when they do not come to completion in the way they
are supposed to.
Christians claim that many of the events which
are happening in today's world were long ago prophesied in the Bible. When
one actually asks to have a
look at these 'amazing prophecies' one can
see that they are usually so broad and general that they could be interpreted
to correspond to any event.
For example, they will say that the world
is going to end soon because the Bible prophesises that in the last days
"There will be wars and rumours of
wars" (Matt 24:6). The problem with this prophecy
is that it could refer to any period in world history because there are
always a few wars occurring
somewhere. Christians also claim that all
the events in Jesus' life were prophesied in the Bible long before he was
born and that the fact that these
prophecies came true proves that he really
was the Messiah . So let us have a look at some of these supposed prophecies
and see if there is any truth in
this claim. In the book of Isaiah in the Old
Testament it says:
For to us a child
is born, to us a son is given, and the government will be upon his shoulder,
and his name shall be called 'Wonderful
Counsellor,
Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace'. Of the increase of his
government and of peace there will be no end. (Is
9:6-7).
This is supposed to be a prophecy foretelling
the birth of Jesus. But does it? Other than being born no event mentioned
here happened to Jesus. The
government was not on his shoulders, he was
never called nor did he call himself by the titles mentioned here and there
has been no more peace since
he was born than there was before. This is
a fairly good example of the 'amazing prophecies' upon which Christianity
is based. Before Jesus' birth an
angel is supposed to have prophesied that
The Lord God will make him a king, as his ancestor David was, and he will be the king of the descendants of Jacob forever (Lk 1:32-33).
But if what the Bible says is true David could
not possibly have been Jesus' ancestor because God, not Joseph, was Jesus'
real father. Also David was
a king in a political sense, while Jesus never
became a king in this way or in any other way similar to David. Finally,
the descendants of Jacob (i.e. the
Jews) never accepted Jesus as their king -
politically, spiritually or in any other way - and have refused to accept
him as such even to this day. So as
before this prophecy is wrong on every point.
Again in Isaiah it says:
He was oppressed,
and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth; like a lamb that is
led to the slaughter, and like a sheep that before
its shearers
is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. (Isa 53:3-5).
This is supposed to prophesise that when Jesus
was attacked by his opponents he would not retaliate. But in the Gospels
Jesus is portrayed as robustly
defending himself against criticism and loudly
condemning his enemies. He cursed and criticized the Pharisees when they
opposed him and according to
John 18:33-37 he was anything but silent at
his trial.
When the Romans crucified people they would
nail them to a cross, let them hang there for some time and then finally
break their legs, thereby
increasing the poor victims' pain and killing
them. According to the Bible, when the Romans came to break Jesus' legs
he was already dead and so they
did not bother (Jn 19:31-34). This, so Christians
claim, is another remarkable example of biblical prophecy, for in Psalms
(34:20)it says that God will
not let even one bone of the Messiah's body
be broken. Unfortunately the Christians have overlooked a very important
fact. Although the bones in
Jesus legs may not have been broken, the bones
in his feet definitely were. When the nails were driven into Jesus feet
they must have broken or at least
cracked one or several of the metacarpals.
Christians claim that Jesus died and on the
third day rose from the dead. And of course they claim that this was prophesied
before it happened. The
supposed prophecy says:
For as Jonah
was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son
of Man be three days and three nights in the heart of the
earth (Matt
12:40).
However, like most Christian prophecies, this
is wrong . Jesus is supposed to have died on Friday (Good Friday) and risen
from the dead early on
Sunday morning (Easter Sunday). Even a schoolchild
can see this is not three days and three nights - but one day and two nights.
Another problem is
that just before Jesus died he turned to the
two criminals crucified with him and said "I assure you, today you will
be in Paradise with me." (Lk 23:43).
Yet Jesus was supposed to be in the tomb for
three days before ascending into heaven, so how could he assure the two
criminals that they would be in
heaven on the day he died? But it is not just
prophecies about Jesus that are wrong, the prophecies he himself made were
also wrong. Christians are
always claiming that the end of the world
is coming soon. Where do they get this bizarre idea from? They get it from
Jesus. He believed and explicitly
taught that the world would end within his
own lifetime or very soon afterwards.
I tell you the truth, this generation will certainly not pass away until all these things have happened (Lk 21:25-33).
By "this generation" he was obviously referring
to the people he was addressing. On another occasion he again told the
people who stood listening to
him that some of them would still be alive
when the end of the world came.
I tell you the truth, some who are standing here will not taste death before they see the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom (Matt 16:28).
On every one of these points Jesus' prophecies
proved to be wrong. The people who lived at his time have been dead for
2000 years and the world
has not ended nor has Jesus returned. Jesus'
disciples finished going through all the cities in Israel within a few
years of Jesus' death and he has still not
returned.
These and other examples prove that most of
the supposed prophecies about Jesus and by him are false. But even where
a prophecy seems to be true
this does not necessarily mean anything. It
can be demonstrated that whoever wrote the Gospels deliberately invented
events in the life of Jesus to make
them fit into supposed prophecies. We will
examine one well-known example of this. Several hundred years before Jesus
the Old Testament was
translated from Hebrew into Greek, the language
of the day. When a passage in Isaiah which says that the Messiah will be
born of a young woman (Is
7:14) was translated, the word for young woman
(almah) was mistranslated as virgin (parthenas) changing the meaning of
the prophecy considerably.
When the authors of the Gospels read this
they thought that to qualify to be the Messiah Jesus' mother had to be
a virgin and so they fabricated the
story of the virgin birth. In fact it only
became necessary to invent this story because of a misunderstanding. So
it is not that prophecies foretold events
in Jesus' life but rather that events were
fabricated to fit into prophecies.
The Birth of Jesus
We will often hear Christians boast that no
one has ever found a mistake in the Bible, just as we will often hear them
claim that the Bible is the inspired
word of God and therefore infallible. Considering
how carefully Christians pick through the Bible text it is difficult to
know how such claims can be
made, much less believed.
Let us have a look at what the Bible says about
the birth of Jesus. First we are told that news of Jesus' impending birth
was conveyed to Joseph, Jesus'
father, in a dream (Matt 1:20). Then we are
told that the news was given to Mary, Jesus' mother, by an angel (Lk 1:28).
Which of these two stories are
true? Was it Joseph who got the news or Mary?
Christians will say that they both got it. Then why does the Gospel of
Matthew fail to mention the
angel appearing to Mary and the Gospel of
Luke fail to mention Joseph's dream? On one hand we are told that Jesus'
parents went on a journey before
the baby was born (Lk 2:4-7) and on the other
that they went on a journey after the birth (Matt 2:13-14). Which of these
true stories is true? When we
come to where Jesus was actually born we meet
with more contradictions. Was Jesus born at home (Matt 1:24-25) or was
he born in a manger at the
back of an inn (Lk 2:7)? Next we come to Jesus'
ancestry. We have two lists of all Jesus' ancestors on his father's side,
but when we look at the names
in these we find almost no correspondence
between them. They do not even agree about the name of Jesus' grandfather.
One says his name was Jacob
(Matt 1:16) and the other says his name was
Heli (Lk 3:23). Moreover, it is ridiculous to talk about Jesus' ancestors
on his father's side and Jesus being
related to King David (Matt 1:1), when not
Joseph but God is supposed to be Jesus' real father.
Was He A Good Teacher?
At the time of the Buddha there was a religious sect called the Niganthas which fell apart soon after the death of its founder Nataputta.
And at his death
the Niganthas split into two parties, quarrelling and disputing, fighting
and attacking each other and using a war of
words......You
would have thought that they were disgusted, displeased and repelled when
they saw that the doctrine was so badly
presented, so
poorly laid out and so ineffective in calming the passions because it had
been taught by one who was not fully enlightened
and was now
without guide or arbiter (Digha Nikaya, Sutta No.29).
Interestingly enough, this was exactly what
happened as soon as Jesus died and for exactly the same reasons. Jesus
is justly famous for the parables he
used to illustrate his ideas but at the same
time he often failed to make his meaning clear. Sometimes this was because
he himself was not clear about his
ideas and at other times it seems that he
was just a poor communicator. What is even more strange is that Jesus even
admitted that he deliberately
obscured his message.
And when his
disciples asked him what the parable meant, he said; to you it has been
given to know the secrets of the Kingdom of God:
but for others
they are in parables, so that seeing they may not see, and hearing they
may not understand (Lk 8:9-10; Mk 8:17-18).
But they did
not understand this saying, and it was concealed from them, that they could
not perceive it: and they were afraid to ask him
about this saying
(Lk 9:45).
Add to this deliberate obscurity the numerous
contradictory ideas in Jesus' teachings and it is not hard to imagine why
his disciples fell into disagreement
as soon as he died. In the Epistles there
are constant references to the bickering and squabbling between the various
factions amongst the early
Christians. Paul complained that all the churches
in Asia turned against him (2 Tim 1:15) and that they refused to take his
side in some theological
argument (2 Tim 4:14-16). He tells us of his
squabble with Peter and the elders of the church in Jerusalem (Gal 2:11-13),
of how he was snubbed by
the church at Philippi (1 Thess 2:1-20), and
of course he accused his rivals of not having real faith (2 Thess 3:1-3),
of teaching 'another Christ' and of
not really knowing God (Tit 1:10-16). John
bitterly complained that his opponents threw those who supported him out
of the church (John 1:9-10).
Paul made a desperate but futile appeal for
harmony between the early Christians.
I appeal to you,
brothers, in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ, that you all agree with
one another that there may be no divisions between
you and that
you might be perfectly united in mind and thought (1 Cor 1:10-12).
What were the early Christians squabbling about?
One of the numerous points of disagreement seems to have been on the issue
of whether it was
necessary to be circumcised or not (Rom 2:25-29,
Gal 5:2-12, Gal 6:12-15, Phil. 3:2-4, Col. 2:11-13). Paul was against it
and called those who
disagreed with him "dogs" (Phil 3:2), said
that he hoped that they would go all the way and castrate themselves (Gal
5:12) and he warned other
Christians to keep away from them (Tit 1:10).
Sadly, all this is reminiscent of modern Christians. While claiming that
they alone have the truth there is so
much disagreement between them about what
that truth is that they have split into hundreds of denominations, sects,
cults and churches and refuse to
worship the same God together. Like the early
Christians there is much ill-will and jealousy between them with one group
accusing the other of not
being 'true Christians', of not understanding
the Bible properly and of being misled by Satan. For Buddhists and other
non-Christians this is all very
bewildering. If it is true that Jesus' message
of salvation was so clear and if it is true that God communicates with
and guides Christians through prayer
why is it that there is so much disagreement
and mutual hostility among them?
The Last Supper
The Bible gives us almost no information about
the life of Jesus until he started teaching at about the age of 30. And
even after his public ministry started
there is great confusion about what happened
and when. For instance, the Gospel of John claims that the cleansing of
the temple took place at the
beginning of Jesus' ministry (Jn 2:13-14),
but the Gospel of Luke claims the cleansing took place at the end (Lk 19:45-46).
On one hand we are told
that Jesus stayed in Peter's house and then
healed a leper (Mk 1:29-45), on the other we are told that he healed the
leper and then went in Peter's
house (Matt 8:1-2, 8:14). On one hand we are
told that the centurion spoke personally to Jesus (Matt 8:5); in a complete
contradiction to this we are
told that the centurion sent people on his
behalf to speak to Jesus (Lk 7:1). In the Gospel of Mark we are told that
Jesus left Tyre and passed through
Sidon on his way to the Sea of Galilee (Mk
7:31). A look at any map of Israel will show that this is quite impossible
as Sidon is in another direction
altogether.
Christians will reluctantly admit these mistakes
but say that they are minor and of no significance. Perhaps so, but they
do prove that the Bible is not
infallible, and if the Bible makes mistakes
about what Jesus did, it could just as easily make mistakes about what
Jesus said. But even when we look at
very important events in Jesus' life we find
confusion. Let us have a look at the Last Supper. According to the Gospels
of Matthew, Mark and Luke,
Jesus' Last Supper took place on the Jewish
holy day of Passover (Matt 26:17-20, Mk 14:12-17, Lk 22:7-14). The Gospel
of John on the other hand
claims that the Last Supper took place on
the day before Passover (Jn 19:14). Matthew, Mark, Luke and John were supposed
to be among the
disciples who attended the Last Supper with
Jesus. They are also supposed to be the disciples who remembered and wrote
down all Jesus' teachings.
If they couldn't even remember the day of
the Last Supper how do we know that they remembered Jesus' teachings correctly?
The Trial
Now we will have a look at that most important
event in the life of Jesus, his trial. As described in the Bible the trial
is predictably full of contradictions,
but it also raises many questions which are
difficult to answer. The trial and the events leading up to it are usually
described by Christians like this -
Jesus entered Jerusalem riding on a donkey
to the acclaim of the population of the city. He was arrested by the henchmen
of the Jewish priests who
beat him and handed him over to the Romans.
The Roman governor, Pontius Pilate, could find no guilt in Jesus but the
Jewish priests kept insisting he
was guilty. Unable to make up his mind, the
Roman governor decided to ask the crowd what they wanted, either the release
of Jesus or a Jewish rebel.
The crowd cried out for the release of the
rebel and the crucifixion of Jesus. So Pilate reluctantly had Jesus executed.
Could the trial really have proceeded like
this? Let us have a look. We are told that when Jesus rode into Jerusalem
crowds of delighted people
greeted him, laying their cloaks on the road
and praising him as their king (Mk 11:8). But only a day later a huge crowd
were screaming out for Jesus to
be crucified (Mk 15:12-14). This sudden change
from adulation to hatred is hard to explain. Next we have Jesus brought
before Pontius Pilate. The
Bible portrays Pilate as a man who can find
no guilt in Jesus but is pushed into crucifying him by the Jewish priests.
This is clearly impossible. The
Romans were famous for their strong and effective
government; their judicial system was known for its justice and they did
not send weak, indecisive
men to govern troublesome parts of the empire.
Who could believe that a Roman governor would allow the people he ruled
to make up his mind for
him and tell him how to run his own court?
The Bible says that Pilate asked the crowd whether they wanted either Jesus
or Barabbas released (Lk
23:13-18), and when they said Barabbas, he
was set free and Jesus was executed. Now credibility has been stretched
to the limit. We are asked to
believe that a Roman governor would execute
a man he believed to be innocent and set free a rebel involved in murder
and trying to overthrow Roman
rule (Lk 23:19). The Romans did not conquer
and govern Europe, Africa and the Middle East by releasing dangerous rebels.
They were strong, fair
and completely ruthless with all who opposed
them. So the Christian account of Jesus' trial is unconvincing.
If we read what Jesus is supposed to have said
at his trial we can see that all the accounts of the trial are fabrications.
According to the Gospel of
Matthew, Jesus "gave no answer", (Matt 27:12)
and "made no reply, not even to a single charge, to the great amazement
of the governor" (Matt 27:14)
during his trial. In a complete contradiction
to this the Gospel of John claims that Jesus answered charges, asked questions
and spoke much during his
trial (Jn 18:33-37). Which of these two accounts
is true? Was Jesus silent or did he speak? Like the Gospel of John, the
Gospel of Luke also claims
that Jesus spoke much during his trial. But
if we compare John's account of what was said with Luke's account we find
that almost every sentence is
different (Compare Jn 18:33-37 with Lk 22:66-70).
Obviously, Christian claims that the Bible is an accurate, reliable historical
document are
completely untrue.
What Happened to Judas?
Judas was the disciple who betrayed Jesus.
After he had done this he is said to have died. But how did he die? Here,
as with many other incidents, the
Bible gives us several confused accounts.
According to Matthew this is what happened:
When Judas, who
had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse
and returned the thirty silver coins to
the chief priests
and the elders. "I have sinned", he said, "for I have betrayed innocent
blood". "What is that to us", they replied. "That's
your responsibility!".
So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and
hanged himself. The chief priests picked
up the coins
and said, "It is against the law to put this into treasury, since it is
blood money". So they decided to use the money to buy the
potter's field
as a burial place for foreigners. That is why it has been called the field
of blood to this day (Matt 27:3-8).
Elsewhere we are told a different story.
With the reward
he got for his wickedness, Judas bought a field; there he fell headlong,
his body burst open and all his intestines spilled
out. Everyone
in Jerusalem heard about this, so they called that field in their language
Akeldama, that is, field of blood (Acts 1:18-19).
Was it Judas who bought the field or was it the chief priests? Did Judas hang himself or did he fall down and have his body burst open?
Jesus' Last Words
Many Christian doctrines are often based on
a single word or sentence which Jesus is supposed to have spoken. To prove
the truth of their beliefs
Christians will rush to their Bibles and point
to a sentence saying, "There, that proves it". They assume that every phrase,
every sentence, every word in
the Bible is exactly what Jesus said. We have
already seen that the Bible is quite confused about what Jesus did and
said. In fact even Jesus' last words
have not been accurately recorded. According
to Matthew, Jesus' last words were: "My God, my God, why have you forsaken
me?" (Matt 27:46).
According to Mark he just gave a loud cry
and died (Mk 15:37). According to Luke he said, "Father, into your hands
I entrust my spirit" (Lk 23:46).
According to John, Jesus' last words were:
"It is finished." (Jn 19:30). Once again we have discrepancies and contradictions
which make it impossible
to know what to believe.
The Resurrection
Did Jesus really die and then rise from the
dead after three days? The Four Gospels' accounts of this most crucial
event are such a confused and
contradictory mess that convincing any unbiased
person to doubt it would be easy. At this point the reader is advised to
have a Bible ready and to
check the references. We will see that the
four accounts of the supposed Resurrection differ in nearly every detail.
(1) When did the Resurrection happen?
All four Gospels agree that the events described took place early on Sunday morning (Matt 28:1, Mk 16:1, Lk 24:1, Jn 20:1).
(2) Who went to the tomb?
Now the problems begin. Matthew says that the
two Marys went to the tomb (Matt 28:1); Mark says that the two Marys and
Salome went (Mk 16:1);
Luke says that the two Marys, Joanna and some
other women went (Lk 24:10); and John says that Mary went alone (Jn 20:1).Christians
claim that the
Bible contains no mistakes but surely there
are a few mistakes here. They claim that those who wrote the Gospels were
inspired by God as they wrote,
but apparently not inspired enough to be able
to count properly.
(3) Was there an earthquake?
Matthew tells us that at that time there was
a "great earthquake" (Matt 28:2), but why do the other three Gospels fail
to mention it? Surely a great
earthquake, especially occurring at such a
significant moment, would be hard to forget. It is far more likely that
Matthew just made up the story to add
drama to his account, in other words he lied.
(4) How many angels?
Next, Matthew claims that an angel appeared
before the two women, rolled back the stone door and sat upon it (Matt
28:2). He also says that the
guards were so frightened that they fainted
(Matt 28:4). Mark's story is quite different. He claims that the door had
already been removed before the
women arrived, so they went into the tomb
and saw the angel inside (Mk 16:4-5). And he doesn't mention any guards.
Luke's story is even more
inventive. He claims that the women went into
the tomb and saw not one but two angels (Lk 24:4). Obviously someone is
not telling the truth. John
claims that Mary went to the tomb alone, saw
the tomb open, ran to get the other disciples and when they went into the
tomb she waited outside. After
everyone went home Mary waited, and as she
did two angels appeared to her, and then Jesus appeared although she could
not recognize him (Jn
20:12-14). And it is on this garbled 'evidence'
that Christianity rests.
Was Jesus God?
Christians claim that Jesus was God. Let us
see if there is any justification for these claims. If Jesus really was
God it is very strange that he never said
so. There is not one place in the whole of
the Bible where Jesus simply and unambiguously says, "I am God". Christians
will object to this and say that
Jesus often called himself or was called the
Son of God. However, the Bible clearly shows that any person who was good
and had faith qualified to be
called a Son of God. For example, Jesus called
Adam a son of God (Lk 3:38).
It will happen
that in the very place where it was said of them "you are not my people"
they will be called "sons of the living God" (Rom
9:26).
Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be sons of your father in heaven (Matt 5:44-45).
You are all sons of God through faith in Christ Jesus (Gal 3:26).
You are God's; you are all sons of the most high (Ps 82:6).
Jesus is called God's 'only begotten son' but
even this is not unique. In the Psalms God says to King David, "You are
my son, today I have begotten
you" (Ps 2:7) In fact, Jesus said distinctly
that when he called himself a son of God, he did not mean he was God or
related to God in a literal sense.
When the Jewish priests criticized him for
claiming to be equal with God, Jesus said:
Is it not written
in your law, "I have said you are gods"? If he called them "gods" to whom
the word of God came - and the Scripture
cannot be broken
- what about one whom the Father set apart as his very own and sent into
the world? (Jn 10:34-36).
Christians will protest that in these quotes
'son of god' is not written in capitals but when Jesus makes his claims
capitals are used thus, 'Son of God'.
But capital letters to make a phrase outstanding
or to give it emphasis is an innovation of modern English. In ancient Greek
and Aramaic, the languages
in which the New Testament was written, capital
letters were never used and so the distinction between 'son of god' and
'Son of God' did not exist.
Christians make an enormous fuss about Jesus'
claims to be a son of God but as we can see, there is absolutely nothing
unique in this claim. Christians
could claim that the term 'son of God' is
used in the Bible in two different ways - as a title for a particularly
holy person and for the actual son of God,
Jesus, who was with God in heaven before coming
to earth. But even in this second sense Jesus was not unique. The Bible
tells us that God had
numerous sons with him in heaven who later
came to earth and lived with humans just as Jesus did.
When mankind
began to increase and spread all over the earth and daughters were born
to them, the sons of God saw that the daughters
of men were
beautiful; so they took for themselves such women as they chose(Gen 6:1-3)
In the Bible Jesus is called the Son of Man
more than 80 times. Yet the Bible also tells us that in the eyes of God
the Son of Man is nothing more than a
worm (Job 25:6). How can Christians claim
that the Son of Man is God when the Bible itself says that the Son of Man
is nothing more than a worm?
Christians will then insist that Jesus was
called the Messiah, but again it was not unusual to be called a Messiah.
The Hebrew word mashiah of which
the Greek translation is christos simply means
'anointed one', and refers to anyone sent by God to help the people of
Israel. Even a non-Jew could be
and sometimes was called a Messiah. The Bible
even calls the pagan Persian King Cyrus a Messiah because he let God's
people return to their
homeland (Is 45:1). So just because Jesus
was called the Messiah does not prove he was God. In fact, throughout the
Bible Jesus goes out of his way
to make it clear that he was not God. When
someone called Jesus 'good teacher' he said:
Why do you call me good? No one is good except God alone (Lk 18:19).
Now if Jesus was God why would he deny that
he was good? We are told that Jesus prayed, but if he was God why would
he need to pray to himself?
And when Jesus prayed, he said to God, "not
my will but yours" (Lk 22:42). Quite clearly Jesus is making a distinction
between God's will and his own.
Jesus says that no one has even seen God (Jn
1:18), meaning that when people saw him they were not seeing God. Again
Jesus says he can do nothing
without God.
I tell you the truth, the Son can do nothing by himself; he can only do what he sees the Father do (Jn 5:19).
By myself I can do nothing; I judge only as I hear and my judgment is just, for I seek not to please myself but him who sent me (Jn 5:30).
I can do nothing on my own but speak just what the Father has taught me (Jn :28).
If Jesus was God he could do anything he wanted
to do, and in these passages and dozens of others he is making it as clear
as crystal that he is one
thing and God another. Jesus said, "The Father
is greater than I" (Jn 14:28) making it clear that he is not as great as
God and therefore different from
God. He says:
Anyone who speaks
a word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who blasphemes
against the Holy Spirit will not be
forgiven (Lk
12:10).
Now if Jesus and the Holy Spirit were the same,
to blaspheme one would be the same as blaspheming the other. In the Bible
we are told that no one
born of a woman can be pure (Job 25:4). Jesus
was born of a woman, his mother Mary, so he likewise must have been impure.
Now if Jesus was
impure how could he be God? We are told that
Jesus was dead for three days before ascending into heaven. How can God
possibly die? Who was
looking after the universe while he was dead?
Jesus said that at the end of the world he would be sitting at the right
hand of God to judge the world (Lk
22:69). If Jesus and God are the same being,
how is this possible? Quite clearly the two are separate and different.
And again David is described as
sitting on the right hand of God, so to do
this one does not have to be a god (Ps 110:1). We are told that Jesus stands
between God and man.
For there is one God and one mediator between God and men, the man Jesus Christ (1 Tim 2:5).
This passage clearly states that Jesus is not
God, for if he was, how could he stand between God and men? It also specifically
calls Jesus a man (see
also Acts 17:30-31). In the Gospels of Matthew
and Luke (Matt 1:16, Lk 3:23) we are given the name of Jesus' father, his
father's father, and so on,
back through many generations. If God was
really Jesus' father, why does the Bible list all Jesus' ancestors on his
father's side? Christians are forever
claiming that Jesus is God and at the same
time that he is the son of God. But how is this possible? How can a father
be his own son and himself all at
the same time? And to make matters more confused,
the Holy Spirit is brought in and we are asked to believe that Jesus, God
and the Holy Spirit are
different and yet the same.
The claim of Christians that Jesus is God contradicts
what the Bible says, it goes against common sense and it raises numerous
logical problems.
Whereas if we see Jesus as he was, a reformer
and prophet, none of these problems arise.
Was Jesus Perfect?
If a religious teacher were perfect we would
expect the behaviour of such a person to be unfailingly blameless, their
teachings to be humane and
practical and for there to be consistency
between what they preached and how they behaved. Jesus of course, denied
that he was perfect (Lk 18:19)
but despite this denial and all the evidence
in the Bible, Christians continue to claim that Jesus was perfect. They
have to do this because they
mistakenly believe that Jesus was God - and
how can a God be imperfect? Buddhists believe that Jesus was a good man
as were the founders of the
other great world religions but because he
was not enlightened like the Buddha he was certainly not perfect. Like
other unenlightened people he
sometimes did wrong, some of the things he
taught were impractical, and sometimes he failed to practise what he preached.
Let us examine the
evidence.
Jesus' ethical teachings are often described
as 'sublime', 'lofty', 'utterly perfect' etc. But were they? Let us look
at his teachings on divorce. In the Old
Testament divorce was allowed under certain
circumstances, which of course when a couple no longer love each other
or when they are incompatible,
is the most humane thing to do. But Jesus
took an extreme position on divorce, saying that it was allowable only
on the grounds of adultery:
It has been said,
"Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce".
But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife,
except for marital
unfaithfulness, causes her to commit adultery, and anyone who marries a
woman so divorced also commits adultery
(Matt 5:31-32).
This terrible teaching has meant that until
recently in Christian countries millions of couples were trapped in unhappy
and loveless marriages, unable to
get a divorce. It also meant that countless
women who did manage to get a divorce from their husbands even without
committing adultery were branded
as adulterers if they married again. This
teaching of Jesus alone has caused untold misery and heartbreak. Another
example of the far from perfect
teachings of Jesus is his attitude to money.
Jesus seems to have a deep resentment for the rich:
But woe to you that are rich, for you have received your consolation. Woe to you that are full now, for you shall hunger (Lk 6:24-25).
While it is true that the rich are sometimes
greedy and thoughtless (as are the poor) no mention is made of this. The
rich are condemned simply because
they are rich. Once when a young man pressed
Jesus for an answer to the question of how he could have eternal life he
finally said:
If you would
be perfect, go, sell what you possess and give it to the poor and follow
me and you will have treasure in heaven (Matt
19:21).
Jesus even went so far as to say that it is virtually impossible for a rich person to get to heaven.
Truly, I say
to you, it will be hard for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
Again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through
the eye of a
needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God (Matt 19:23-24).
Christians of course, have never taken any
notice of these sayings of Jesus, but if they did the economies of most
Christian countries would collapse and
all the good qualities that honest entrepreneurship
can engender would disappear. This rather impractical and unfair teaching
of Jesus contrasts very
sharply with the Buddha's attitude to wealth.
He recognized that wealth honestly earned can be a source of happiness.
What is the happiness
of ownership? Herein, a householder has wealth acquired by energetic striving,
won by strength of arm and sweat
of brow, justly
and lawfully won When he thinks of this, he feels happiness and satisfaction.
And what is the
happiness of wealth? Herein, a householder has wealth justly and lawfully
won, and with it he does many good deeds.
When he thinks
of this, he feels happiness and satisfaction.
And what is the
happiness of freedom from debt? Herein, a householder owes no debt large
or small to anyone, and when he thinks of
this, he feels
happiness and satisfaction (Anguttara Nikaya, Book of Fives, Sutta No.41).
He also understood that with the right attitude the wealthy can do great good with their money.
With wealth acquired
by energetic striving, won by strength of arm and sweat of brow lawfully
and justly, a noble disciple makes himself,
his mother and
father, his wife and children, his servants and workmen and his friends
and acquaintances cheerful and happy - he creates
perfect happiness.
This is the first opportunity seized by him, used for good and appropriately
made use of (Anguttara Nikaya, Book of
Fives, Sutta
No.41).
So rather than dismissing the rich wholesale
from the religious life as Jesus did. the Buddha taught them to earn the
money honestly and to use it for the
benefit of themselves and the general community.
But the teaching of Jesus which has caused
more problems than any other is the claim that he and he alone can give
salvation (Jn 14:6). It follows
axiomatically from this that all other religions
lead to the only alternative to salvation - hell - and are therefore evil.
Sadly, this claim by Jesus is the root
of that most characteristic of all Christian
traits - intolerance. Christianity has always equated disbelief in Jesus
with evil and has castigated non-believers
as godless, wicked, stubborn, pagan, scoffers,
followers of false prophets, idol worshippers (see e.g.
I Pet 2:1-22).
Do not be yoked
together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have
in common? Or what fellowship can light
have with darkness?
What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? What does a believer have
in common with an unbeliever? What
agreement is
there between the temple of God and idols? (2 Cor 6:14-16).
What, Paul asks in this passage, can a Christian
have in common with, for example, a Buddhist? For Paul as for fundamentalist
and evangelical
Christians the fact that the Buddhist may
value and practise love, compassion, charity, patience, humility, and truthfulness
just as he does, counts for
nothing. For the Christian the single fact
that the Buddhist does not believe that Jesus is God automatically puts
him on the side of wickedness and
darkness; he is an idol worshipper who should
be shunned and who deserves to go to hell.
This is the great tragedy of Christianity -
the stronger the Christian's faith in Jesus the more partisan, bigoted
and intolerant he usually becomes. What a
relief it is to be able to Take Refuge in
the Buddha and still be able to respect and admire Lao Tzu, the Prophet
Mohammed, Krishna, Guru Nanak,
etc. How pleasant it is to be able to communicate
with others without the need to be always trying to convert them. How nice
it is to be able to be
happy when one sees others happy with their
religion. Christianity is intolerant because it is obsessed with Jesus
and excludes everyone who does not
accept him. Buddhism is tolerant because it
treasures wisdom and compassion and can embrace anyone, whatever their
religion, who is developing
these qualities.
Miracles
Some of the most bizarre things about Jesus
were the miracles he is said to have performed. One of the most famous
of these was bringing Lazarus
back from the dead. Lazarus had been dead
for at least four days and was presumably in heaven, while his family were
heartbroken and grieving. In
raising him from the dead, Jesus certainly
demonstrated his power but what did Lazarus and his family get out of it?
Lazarus was removed from heaven
and brought back to "this vale of tears" only
to have to die all over again some time in the future while his family
would also have to go through grieving
and distress all over again (Jn 11:1-44).
To the Buddhist this miracle, if it even really
happened, seems to be unnecessary, and even cruel. How much more practical
and humane was the
Buddha's approach to death. On one occasion
a young mother named Kisagotami came to the Buddha with her dead son, deranged
with grief and
pleading with the Buddha to give her son medicine.
Full of compassion the Buddha told her to go and get a mustard seed from
a house where no one
had ever died. In the process of looking for
such a seed, Kisagotami gradually came to realize that death is an integral
part of life and she overcame her
grief (Dhammapada Atthakatta, Book 8,13).
Jesus performed showy miracles which seemed to leave people much as they
were, the Buddha gently
and skilfully led people to understanding.
This is what the Buddha meant when he said that education is the highest
miracle (Digha Nikaya, Sutta
No.11).
Another miracle where Jesus seems to have given
little thought to the consequences of what he was doing was the one he
supposedly performed at
Godara. A man was possessed by devils, and
just before Jesus exorcized them the devils asked Jesus if he would send
them into a nearby herd of pigs.
Jesus obliged, sending the devils into the
pigs, which then rushed screaming down the side of a cliff into a lake
where they drowned (Mk 5:1-13). The
man who had been possessed by the devils must
have been very grateful for this but one wonders what the owners of the
pigs would have thought. The
loss of their animals would have caused them
great financial hardship. Not surprisingly, we are told that after this
incident the people from the nearby
village came to Jesus and begged him to leave
their territory (Mk 5:17). Note that Matthew tells this same story but
he exaggerates it, claiming that not
one but two men were exorcized (Matt 8:28-32).
This supposed miracle also highlights Jesus
utter disregard for nature. He could simply have expelled the devils but
instead he chose to do it in a most
cruel way by driving to their deaths a large
number of completely harmless and innocent animals. On another occasion
he used his miraculous powers to
kill a fig tree simply because it could not
bear fruit (Matt 21:18-20). Apparently he never considered that animals
could have eaten its leaves, birds
could have nested in its branches, travellers
could have rested in its shade and its roots would have helped prevent
erosion of the soil by the rain and the
wind - which probably explains why the tree
had been left growing. No advantage at all came from killing the tree -
it was little more than an act of
wanton vandalism.
While some of Jesus' miracles were pointless
others seem to have verged on the ridiculous. Once Jesus was invited to
a wedding. After some time there
was no wine left to drink so Jesus turned
several large jars of water into wine (Jn 2:1-11). No doubt the host must
have appreciated not having to go
out to buy more alcohol, but it does seem
a bit incongruous. that God should incarnate as a man, come to earth and
use his powers just so that people
wouldn't run out of drinks at their parties.
Inconsistency
What we have said above indicates that while
some of Jesus' teachings were good, others were cruel, impractical , and
in some cases just silly. And
perhaps it is not surprising that not only
have Christians often failed to practise Jesus' teachings, but he often
also failed to practise them himself. He
taught that we should love our neighbour but
he seems to have problems doing this himself. He believed that his teaching
could lead people to heaven
and yet he specifically instructed his disciples
not to preach the Gospel to anyone but his own people, the Jews.
Do not go among the Gentiles or enter any town of the Samaritans Go rather to the lost sheep of Israel (Matt 10:5-6).
When a poor distressed woman came to Jesus
begging for help he refused to help her simply because she was not Jewish.
Teaching the Gospel to
Canaanites was, he said, like taking food
from children and throwing it to dogs.
A Canaanite woman
from the vicinity came to him, crying out, "Lord, son of David, have mercy
on me! My daughter is suffering terribly
from demon-possession".
Jesus did not answer a word. So his disciples came to him and urged him,
"Send her away, for she keeps crying
out after us".
He answered: "I was sent only to the lost sheep of Israel". The woman came
and knelt before him, "Lord, help me!" she said.
He replied,
"It is not right to take the children's bread and toss it to the dogs"
(Matt 15:22-26)
It was only after strong urging from his disciples
that Jesus finally decided to help the woman. So much for loving one's
neighbour. Jesus taught that we
should love our enemies, but again he seemed
to have difficulties doing this. When the Pharisees criticized him he responded
with a tirade of curses and
insults (e.g. Jn 8:42-47, Matt 23:13-36).
Jesus said that we should not judge others
(Matt 7:12) and claimed that he himself judged no one (Jn 8:15). But despite
this he was constantly judging
and condemning others, often in a harsh and
sweeping manner (Jn 8:42-47, Matt 23:13-16)
In conformity with the Old Testament Jesus
taught that we must honour our mother and father (Matt 19:19) but on other
occasions he taught and
practised the exact opposite.
If any one comes
to me and does not hate his own father and mother and wife and children
and brothers and sisters, yes, even his own
life, he cannot
be my disciple (Lk 14:26).
This demand that to love Jesus we must be prepared
to hate others, even our own parents, seems to be very much at odds with
the idea of honouring
parents - let alone with the idea of loving
our neighbour. Once Jesus' mother and brothers came to see him while he
was preaching only to be rudely
rebuffed.
And his mother
and brothers came, and standing outside they sent to him and called him.
And a crowd was sitting about him, and they
said to him,
"Your mother and brothers are outside, asking for you". And he replied,
"Who are my mother and my brothers?" And looking
around on those
who sat about him, he said, "Here are my mother and brothers!" (Mk 3:31-35).
Once when his mother spoke to him, he snapped
at her: "O woman, what have you to do with me?" (Jn 2:4). And yet while
he acted like this to his
parents he condemned the Pharisees for their
supposed hypocrisy over the law to honour mother and father (Matt 15:3-6,
Mk 7:10-13).
In some instances, it is difficult to accuse
Jesus of failing to practise what he preached for the simple reason that
he taught contradictory things.
Christians are used to thinking of him as
"gentle Jesus meek and mild", because of his commands "to turn the other
cheek" and to "not resist an evil
person" (Matt 5:39). And indeed Jesus seems
to have acted like this sometimes. But at other times he clearly saw his
role as a violent one.
Do not suppose
that I have come to bring peace on the earth. I did not come to bring peace
but the sword. I have come to turn a man
against his
father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law,
a man's enemies will be the members of his
own household
(Matt 10:34-36).
Certainly he saw nothing wrong with using violence
when he thought it was necessary. When he saw the money changers in the
temple he lost his
temper and lashed out with violence.
So he made a
whip out of cords and drove all from the temple areas: he scattered the
coins of the money changers and overturned their
tables (Jn 2:15).
Before his arrest Jesus was expecting trouble so he told his disciples to prepare themselves by getting weapons.
If you do not have a sword sell your cloak and buy one (Lk 22:36).
When he was arrested there was a fight during
which "one of Jesus' companions reached for his sword, drew it out and
struck the servant of the high
priest, cutting off his ear" (Matt 26:51).
It is very difficult for the Buddhist to reconcile such behaviour with
the idea of being perfect. To retaliate against
one's accusers, to lose one's temper and to
encourage others to carry weapons and use them seem to negate the whole
idea of moral perfection.
At this stage it might be good to point out
that while most of Jesus' teachings are inadequate and ill-conceived, some
are excellent. His teachings on
love, forgiveness, humility and service to
the sick and poor are worthy of the highest praise. However, none of this
is unique. Such ideas are to be
found, sometimes more fully, in the teachings
of the Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Mahavira, Guru Nanak etc, most of whom
lived centuries before
Jesus. What is good in Jesus' teachings is
not unique and what is unique is not particularly good.
Christians have great difficulty understanding
why Buddhists and other non-Christians cannot accept Jesus as the Lord
and saviour as they themselves
do. But when we read the life and teachings
of the Buddha - a man who smiled at abuse, remained calm when provoked
and who always discouraged
violence - the reason for their rejection
becomes clear.
A CRITIQUE OF THE BIBLE
Christianity is a book-based religion. There
is no evidence for the claims and dogmas of Christianity other than what
is said in the Bible and this fact
alone makes this book the bedrock of Christianity.
In the past as today Christians have picked through the Bible arguing with
each other over the
meaning of its phrases and words and tried
to convince non-Christians of the truth of a book that they cannot even
agree about themselves. But one
thing which all Christians agree about is
that the Bible is God's word - not that it contains God's word, but that
it is God's word, an infallible and
complete revelation given to man by God. We
will examine this claim and show that like most of the claims made by Christians
it has very little
substance to it at all.
Is it God's Word?
If the Bible really is God's word it indicates
that he is a very strange being indeed. One would expect that the creator
of the universe would only speak
to man when he had something of great importance
to say and that what he said would be of universal significance. Not so.
The book of Chronicles for
example consists of little more than lists
of names of people we know little or nothing about and who died thousands
of years ago. No commandments,
no ethical principles, no hints on how to
live properly or to worship God - just page after page of useless names.
Why would God waste his and our
time revealing such things? And what about
the Songs of Solomon? This book consists of a collection of erotic love
poetry. Once again, with the world
in such a mess one would have supposed that
God could have thought of something more important to say to man than this.
Then we come to the Gospels which recount the
life of Jesus. Why has God decided to reveal the whole of Jesus' biography,
not once, but four times?
And why has he revealed what are, quite clearly,
four different and contradictory versions of the same story? Unlike Christians,
historians have given
perfectly plausible answers to these questions.
The Bible is not a revelation from God, rather it is a compilation, a fairly
untidy compilation, written by
many different people, over many centuries,
changed and edited from time to time, and containing legends, stories,
genealogies, fables, sacred and
secular writings. It is no more a revelation
from God than are the Iliad or the Odyssey, the Ramayana or the Mahabharata,
books which the Bible
resembles quite closely.
Is the Bible Inspired?
Christians claim that although the books of
the Bible were actually written by different people, these people were
inspired and guided by God as they
wrote. While contemporary Christians make
this claim, the ancient authors of the Bible never did. For example Luke
says at the beginning of his
Gospel:
Insomuch as many
have undertaken to compile a narrative of the things which have been accomplished
among us.....it seemed good to me
also having
followed all things closely for some time past, to write an orderly account
for you..... (Lk 1:1-3).
Nothing about being filled with the spirit
of God either before or while he wrote, he simply says that others had
written accounts of the life of Jesus so
he thought it might be a good idea if he wrote
something also. If he really was inspired by God to write the Gospel why
didn't he say so? But the claim
of inspiration is not just unsubstantiated,
it also raises a very serious problem. Christians are always claiming that
in prayer God speaks to them, gives
them advice and tells them what to do. They
claim that his voice is very direct, very clear and very real. But if they
really have no doubt that God is
communicating with them surely his words should
be recorded and included in the Bible. The Bible contains words God spoke
to Moses, Joshua,
Matthew, Mark Peter and Paul so why shouldn't
the words he speaks to modern day Christians be included also? Christians
will balk at such a
suggestion which indicates that they are not
so convinced that the words they hear in their hearts really do come from
God after all.
One Bible or Several?
In ancient times there was no standardized
version of the Old Testament. Different Jewish groups and different regions
had their own versions. There
were the Septuagint, the Aquila, Theodotion's
version and Symmachu's version, all containing different text and different
numbers of books. The Old
Testament used by modern Christians is based
on the Massonetic version which only appeared after the Jamnia Synod at
the end of the 1st century
AD. The New Testament did not appear in its
present form until the year 404 AD, nearly four hundred years after the
death of Jesus. Before that time,
the Gospels of Thomas, the Gospel of Nicodemus,
the Acts of Peter, the Acts of Paul and a dozen other books were included
in the Bible. In 404 AD
these books were simply cut out of the Bible
because they contained teachings that were contrary to Christian theology
of that time. One of the oldest
existing Bibles, The Codex Sinaiticus, includes
the Epistle of Barnabas, a book that is not included in the modern Bible.
If these books were considered
to be revelation by early Christians why don't
modern Christians consider them to be revelation?
When we look at the Bibles used by modern Christians
we find that there are several different versions. The Bible used by the
Ethiopian Church, one of
the most ancient of all churches, contains
the Books of Enoch and the Shepherd of Hermas which are not found in the
versions used by Catholics and
Protestants. The Bible used in the Catholic
Church contains the books of Judith, Tobias, Banuch, etc which have been
cut out of the Bible used in
Protestant churches. Prof. H.L. Drummingwright
of the Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in his introduction to
the Bible explains how these
books came to be cut out of the Bible used
by the Protestants. These books were, he says, "in most Protestant Bibles
until the 19th century, when
publishers, led by the British and Foreign
Bible Society voluntarily began to omit them". Once again, these books
contained ideas which the churches
did not like so they just cut them out. How
can a book like Judith be the infallible word of God one moment and not
the next? Why are there so many
different versions of the Bible? And which
version is the infallible word of God?
Are There Mistakes in the Bible?
We have seen previously that there are many
mistakes in the Bible but we will have a look at three more examples of
its inaccuracies. Today, even
schoolchildren know that the earth moves;
it moves on its axis and at the same time it moves around the sun. We also
know that the tectonic plates on
the earth's surface move also. The Bible however,
clearly states that the earth does not move. In 1 Chronicles 16:30 the
Bible says, "The world is firmly
established, it cannot be moved." (See also
Ps 93:1, 96:10 and 104:5).
Here, and in many places, the Bible contradicts
scientific fact. Moreover the Bible does not just contradict scientific
fact it also contradicts itself. Let
us have a look at the creation story. In the
first book of the Bible it says that God created all the plants and trees
on the third day (Gen 1:11-13), all
birds, animals and fish on the fifth day (Gen
1:20-23) and finally, man and woman on the sixth day (Gen 1:26-27). Yet
a little further on the Bible gives
a different version of the creation story
saying that God created man first (Gen 2:7), then all plants and trees
(Gen 2:9), after that all birds and animals
(Gen 2:19) and only then did God create woman
(Gen 2:21-22). These two versions of the creation story clearly contradict
each other.
Now let us have a look at the story of Noah's
Ark. In one place in the Bible we are told that Noah took two of every
animal and put them in the ark
(Gen 6;19). Later the Bible says Noah took
seven pairs of all clean animals and birds and two of all other creatures
and put them in the ark (Gen 7:2).
Again the Bible is contradicting itself Christians
will object to this saying that these and the numerous other mistakes in
the Bible are only small and of no
significance. However, only one mistake is
required to show that the Bible is not infallible. Also, if mistakes can
be made in small matters they can be
made in important matters. And, finally, one
mistake is proof either that the Bible is not the word of God or that God
is capable of mistakes.
Is the Bible Reliable Testimony?
We have seen that the Bible is not infallible
and therefore cannot be revelation. So if it is not God's word whose word
is it? Many of the books in the
Bible are named after different people who
are supposed to have written them. So the Gospel of Matthew is supposed
to have been written by
Matthew, one of the disciples of Jesus. The
Gospel of Mark is supposed to have been written by Mark, another of Jesus'
disciples, and so on.
The Christian could claim that even if the
Bible is not necessarily infallible revelation it is the testimony of reliable
people, They could claim that
Matthew, Mark, Luke and John knew Jesus well,
they lived with him for several years, they heard his teachings and they
wrote down what they saw
and heard and that there is no reason for
them to lie or exaggerate. Therefore, Christians could claim that the Bible
is reliable testimony. Except that for
testimony to be reliable it must come from
reliable people, people we could trust, people from good backgrounds. Were
the disciples of Jesus such
people? Let us look.
Some of Jesus' disciples were tax collectors
(Matt 9:9), a dishonest and despised class of men (Matt 18;17); others
were mere illiterate fishermen (Mk
1:16-17). Simon was a Zealot (Lk 6:15), a
group of men known for their fanatical and often violent opposition to
Roman rule, and like many people
involved in illegal politics he used an alias
and was also known as Peter (Matt 10:2). Peter and James were given the
nicknames 'Boanerges' meaning
'sons of thunder' (Mk 3:17) once again suggesting
their involvement in violent politics. When Jesus was arrested his disciples
were carrying swords and
were willing to use them (Matt 26:51). Hardly
the sort of people with whom we would feel comfortable.
Another thing that should make us wary of trusting
the testimony of Jesus' disciples is that they seemed to be constantly
misunderstanding what Jesus
was saying (Mk 4:13, 6:52, 8:15-17, 9:32;
Lk 8:9, 9:45). They are supposed to have seen Jesus perform the most amazing
miracles and yet despite
this they still doubted. Jesus scolded them
and called them "men of little faith" (Matt 8:26, 17:20). Should we trust
the writings of men who constantly
failed to understand what was being said to
them and whom even Jesus called men of little faith? If even the people
who knew and saw Jesus had '"little
faith" how could we, who have never seen him,
be expected to have faith in him?
How unreliable and faithless the people who
wrote the Bible were is best illustrated by what they did just prior to
and during Jesus' arrest. He asked
them to keep watch but they fell asleep (Matt
26:36-43). After Jesus was arrested they lied and denied that they even
knew him (Mk 14:66-72), and
after his execution they simply went back
to their fishing (Jn 21:2-3). And who betrayed Jesus in the first place?
His disciple Judas (Matt 26:14-16).
Association with sinners, liars and fools
in order to help them, as Jesus did, is a good thing. But should we believe
everything such people say?
An even more disturbing thing about the disciples
of Jesus is just how many of them were possessed by demons or devils from
time to time. Mary
Magdalene who later claimed to have seen Jesus
rise from the dead, had been possessed by seven devils (Mk 16:9). Satan
entered into Judas (Lk
22:3), tried to get into Simon (Lk 22:31)
and Jesus once actually called Peter, his chief disciple, "Satan" (Matt
16:23) indicating that he too was
possessed by a devil at that time. Whether
possession by devils actually happens or whether it indicates serious psychological
disorders as modern
psychiatrists believe, either way it indicates
that we should treat the words of Jesus' disciples with great caution.
Who Did Write the Bible?
We have seen that the Bible is not infallible,
is not revelation and is not the testimony of reliable, trustworthy people.
We will now show that the Bible
was not even written by the people who are
claimed to have been its writers. Let us have a look at the first five
books in the Bible: Genesis, Exodus,
Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy. These
five books describe the creation of the world, God's first revelation to
man, and the early history of the
tribe of Israel and are supposed to have been
written by Moses. They are, in fact, often called 'The Books of Moses'.
However, his authorship is
clearly impossible, because in these books
we have an account of Moses' death.
So Moses the
servant of the Lord died there in the land of Moab according to the word
of the Lord, and they buried him in the valley in
the land Moab
opposite Beth Peor, but no man knows the place of his burial to this day
(Deut 34:5-6).
How could a man write an account of his own
death and burial? The book of Deuteronomy, at least, must have been written
by someone other than
Moses.
Now let us have a look at the New Testament.
The Gospel of Matthew is supposed to have been written by Matthew (tax
collector, doubter, man of
little faith), one of the disciples of Jesus.
Yet we can easily demonstrate that Matthew could not have possibly have
written the Gospel of Matthew. We
read:
As Jesus passed
on from there he saw a man called Matthew sitting at the tax office and
he said to him, "Follow me". And he rose and
followed him
(Matt 9:9).
Neither now nor in the past do people write in the third person. If Matthew had really written this we would expect it to read:
As Jesus passed on from there he saw me sitting at the tax office and he said to me, "Follow me". And I rose and followed him.
Obviously this was not written by Matthew but
by some third person. Who this third person is we do not know but Bible
scholars have made a guess.
In the preface to his translation of the Gospel
of Matthew the distinguished Bible scholar J.B. Phillips says:
Early tradition
ascribes this Gospel to the apostle Matthew but scholars nowadays almost
all reject this view. The author, who we still can
conveniently
call Matthew has plainly drawn on a collection of oral traditions. He has
used Mark's Gospel freely, though he has
rearranged the
order of events, and has in several instances used different words for
what is plainly the same story.
This is a deeply disturbing admission, especially
coming from an eminent Christian Bible scholar. We are told that "almost
all" modern Bible scholars
reject the idea that the Gospel of Matthew
was actually written by Matthew. We are told that although the real author
is unknown it is "convenient" to
keep calling him Matthew. Next we are told
that whoever wrote the Gospel of Matthew has "freely" copied much of his
material from the Gospel of
Mark. In other words, the Gospel of Matthew
is just a plagiarism where material has been "rearranged" and restated
in "different words". So apparently
in the Gospel of Matthew not only do we not
have the words of God, we don't even have the words of Matthew.
To the credit of Bible scholars like Prof.
J.B. Phillips, they freely admit these and other major doubts about authorship
of the Bible, but such admissions
make the claim that the Gospels were written
by the disciples of Jesus clearly untrue.
Mistakes and Variations in the Bible
If we look at the bottom of the pages in most
Bibles we will find many notes. These notes indicate mistakes, variations
or doubtful readings in the text of
the Bible. And there are literally hundreds
of them. Some of the mistakes or variations consist of only a few words
but some of them are long passages
(see for example the notes to Luke 9:55-56;
John 5:3; Acts 24:6; 1 Corinthians 8:36-38; 11:4-7; 2 Corinthians 10:13-15).
Also notice that the notes to
Mark 16:9-20 mention that this long passage
is not found in the ancient Bible. In other words, this long passage in
the Bible was added at a later time.
How can Christians honestly claim that the
Bible is infallible and without mistakes when all the mistakes are pointed
out at the bottom of each page?
In the New Testament Jesus and his disciples
often quote the Old Testament in order to make a point or, more usually,
to attempt to prove that the Old
Testament prophesizes events in the life of
Jesus. But when we compare these quotes with the original text of the Old
Testament we find that they are
almost always different. We will use here
the New International Version of the Bible.
Old Testament
But you, Bethlehem
Ephasthah, though you are small among the clans of Judah, out of you will
come for me one who will be ruler over
Israel, whose
origins are from old (Mic 5:2).
New Testament
But you, Bethlehem,
in the land of Judah are by no means the least among the rulers of Judah;
for out of you will come a ruler who will be
the shepherd
of my people Israel (Matt 2:6).
The quote in the New Testament contains not
just different words, it also changes the meaning of the original. Has
Matthew misquoted the Old
Testament because he was not familiar with
it and made a mistake? Has he deliberately misquoted in order to alter
the meaning? Or is the Old
Testament Matthew used different from the
one we have today? The New Testament quotes the Old Testament dozens of
times and hardly a single
quote is accurate. Christians will protest
and say that these changes are only minor and of no importance. Perhaps
so, but these are proofs that the
Bible does contain mistakes, contrary to what
Christians say. Also, it is strange that Matthew, Mark, Luke, John and
Paul, who according to Christians
were inspired by God to write the New Testament,
could not even quote the Old Testament correctly.
Changing the Lord's Prayer
Jesus taught his disciples the Lord's Prayer
before he died and since that time generations of Christians have learned
the prayer by heart. But anyone
who learnt it by heart 20 years ago will have
to learn it again because the Lord's Prayer has been changed. We will compare
the original Lord's Prayer
found in all Bibles until 20 years ago with
the Lord's Prayer now in the New International Version of the Bible, and
we will see that Christians have
even tampered with this most important teaching
of Jesus.
King James Version
Our Father who
art in heaven, hallowed be thy name, Thy kingdom come, thy will be done
on earth as it is in heaven. Give us this day our
daily bread;
and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against
us. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us
from evil, for
thine is the kingdom and the power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen.
The New International Version
Father, hallowed
be your name, your kingdom come. Give us each day our bread. Forgive us
our sins, for we also forgive everyone who
sins against
us. And lead us not into temptation (Lk 11:2-5).
Notice that these phrases - "who art in heaven",
"thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven", "but deliver us from evil,
for thine is the kingdom and the
power, and the glory forever and ever. Amen"
- have been cut out of the Lord's Prayer. We should ask our Christian friends
why these verses have
been cut out of the most famous and important
of all Jesus' teachings. Ask them which of these two different versions
of the Lord's Prayer is the
infallible, unchanging word of God. Ask them
who had knowledge and wisdom enough to tamper with the Bible. You will
find that they have great
difficulties answering your questions. Here
as elsewhere, the reader is encouraged to go to the library and the bookshop,
find different versions of the
Bible and carefully compare them. We will
see with our own eyes how much the Bibles differ as the result of tampering.
Cutting Verses Out of the Bible
Proof that the Bible has been tampered with
is found on every page if one looks carefully. The text of the Bible is
arranged into chapters which in turn
are arranged into verses. As we read we will
sometimes notice that one or two verses are missing. On page are reproduced
some pages from The New
International Version of Bible printed by
the New York International Bible Society. Notice that verses 44 and 46
have been deleted from chapter 9 of
the Gospel of Mark. Verse 37 has been cut
out of chapter 8 of Acts and verse 28 has been removed from chapter 15
of Mark. How can Christians
possibly claim that the Bible is the infallible
and unchanging word of God when they cut out inconvenient verses and words?
And why have these verses
been removed?
Selective Interpreting
Whenever Christians want to convince us of
the truth of their religion they will quote from the Bible, believing as
they do, that every word in the Bible is
literally true. But when we quote from the
Bible to prove that their religion is primitive, silly or illogical (e.g.
that smoke comes out God's nose and fire
comes out of his mouth, Ps 18:7-8; or that
donkeys can talk, Num 22:28) the Christian will say: "That's symbolic,
it is not meant to be taken literally."
Christians are very selective in how they
interpret the Bible. Some passages are 'God's word' and literally true
and other parts, usually the embarrassing
parts, are not meant to be taken literally.
Either the Bible is God's infallible word or it is not, one cannot pick
and choose. And if indeed some passages
are meant to be taken literally and others
are not, how do Christians decide? If the stories about Balaam's donkey
talking, Adam and Eve eating the
apple, or Moses turning his stick into a snake
are not meant to be taken literally, perhaps too, the stories about Jesus'
resurrection are only symbolic
and not meant to be taken literally.
BUDDHISM - THE LOGICAL ALTERNATIVE
If you have no
satisfactory teacher, then take this sure Dhamma and practise it. For Dhamma
is sure, and when rightly
undertaken it
will be to your welfare and happiness for a long time.
The Buddha
Christianity is based upon certain supposed
historical events (the virgin birth, the resurrection, etc), the only record
of which is an allegedly reliable
document called the Bible. If these events
can be shown to have never occurred, and if the documents recording these
events can be shown to be
unreliable, then Christianity will collapse.
In this book we have seen that the claims are at best highly doubtful and
at worst demonstrably wrong.
When we examine the teachings of the Buddha
we find an entirely different situation. Even if we were able to prove
that the Buddha never existed or
that there were mistakes in the Buddhist scriptures
this would in no way undermine Buddhism. And why? Because Buddhism is not
primarily about the
historical Buddha or about events which happened
in the past; rather, it is about human suffering, what causes that suffering,
and how it can be
overcome so that humans can be free, happy
and radiant. If we wish to verify or understand Buddhism we don't pick
through scriptures squabbling
about the meaning of words or phrases; rather,
we become sensitive to our own experience. Let us examine the four principles
which are the doctrinal
basis of Buddhism.
(i) When we die we are reborn
Christians believe that when people die they
have only one or the other of two possible destinies - heaven or hell.
They believe that these destinies are
eternal and that one goes to one's destiny
according to God's judgement.
Buddhism teaches that when people die they
can have a variety of destinies (heaven, hell, as a human being, as an
animal, etc). It teaches that none of
these destinies is eternal and that, having
finished one's time in one of these realms, one will die and pass to another.
It also teaches that one's destiny is
conditioned by one's kamma (i.e., the sum
total of the good or bad that one has done during one's life). This means
that all good people, no matter
what their religion, will have a good destiny.
It also means that even those who have done evil will have a chance to
become good in the next life.
Christians scoff at the idea of being reborn
and say that there is no evidence that such a thing happens. But the idea
of rebirth is not so different from the
Christian afterlife belief - if people after
death can become angels in heaven, why can't they become humans on earth?
And as for evidence, there is
certainly no evidence for the Christian afterlife
theory while there is some evidence that people can be reborn (see Twenty
Cases Suggestive of
Reincarnation, University Press of Virginia,
Charlotteville U.S.A., 1975).
(ii) Life is suffering
The next principle upon which Buddhism is based
is the idea that life is suffering. Although Christians accuse Buddhists
of being pessimistic for saying
this, life's inherent unsatisfactoriness is
in fact confirmed by the Bible: "In the world you will have tribulation"
(Jn 16:33); "Man is born to trouble as
sparks fly upwards" (Job 5:7); "All things
are full of weariness" (Ecc 1:8); "the earth mourns and withers, the world
languishes and withers; the heavens
languish together with the earth" (Is 24:4).
But while both religions agree on this point they disagree on why suffering
exists.
Christianity relies on what is plainly a myth
to explain the origin of evil and suffering, claiming that they are due
to Adam and Eve having eaten an apple.
Buddhism sees suffering as a psychological
phenomenon with a psychological cause - wanting, craving and desire. And
our experience tells us that this
is so. When we want something and cannot get
it we feel frustration, and the stronger the wanting the stronger the frustration.
Even if we get what we
want we soon grow tired of it and begin to
want something else. Even physical suffering is caused by craving because
the strong craving to live causes
us to be reborn and when we are reborn we
become subject to sickness, accidents, old age, etc. Buddhism says that
even the bliss of heaven is
impermanent and imperfect, a fact confirmed
by the Bible. The Bible tells us that Satan was originally a heavenly angel
but that he rebelled against God
(i.e. he was dissatisfied) and was cast out
of heaven (i.e. existence in heaven need not be eternal). If having been
in heaven one can fall from that state
this proves that heaven is not, as Christians
claim, perfect and everlasting (see Is 14:12-15, II Pet 2:4, Jude 6, Rev
12:9).
(iii) Suffering can be overcome
The third principle upon which Buddhism is
based is the idea that it is possible to be free from suffering. When craving
and wanting stop, one's life
becomes more content and happy, and at death
one is no longer reborn. This state of complete freedom from suffering
is called Nirvana and is
described by the Buddha as being "the highest
happiness" (Dhammapada 203). Christians often mistakenly think that Nirvana
is a blank nothingness
and accuse Buddhism of being nihilistic. This
misunderstanding arises because of their inability to conceive of an afterlife
more subtle than their own
naive heaven - a place "up there" (Ps 14:2,
53:2) with doors and windows (Gen 28:17, Rev 4:1, 2 Kg 7:2, Mal 3:10),
where God sits on a throne (Rev
4:2) surrounded by Christians in beautiful
gowns with crowns on their heads playing trumpets (Rev 4:4). The Buddha
categorically said that Nirvana is
not nihilistic.
When one has
freed the mind, the gods cannot trace him, even though they think: "This
is the consciousness attached to the enlightened
one (Buddha)."
And why? It is because the enlightened one is untraceable. Although I say
this, there are some recluses and religious
teachers who
misrepresent me falsely, contrary to fact, saying: "The monk Gotama (Buddha)
is a nihilist because he teaches the cutting off,
the destruction,
the disappearance of the existing entity." But this is exactly what I do
not say. Both now and in the past, I simply teach
suffering and
the overcoming of suffering (Majjhima Nikaya, Sutta No.22).
But he also said that Nirvana is not the crude
'eternal life' as portrayed in Christianity. It is an utterly pure and
blissful state which no conventional
language can adequately describe.
Christians sometimes claim that Buddhism contradicts
itself because in wanting to attain Nirvana one is strengthening the very
thing which prevents one
from attaining it. This point was raised at
the time of the Buddha and answered by one of his chief disciples, Ananda.
A priest asked
Venerable Ananda: "What is the aim of living the holy life under the monk
Gotama?" - "It is for the sake of abandoning
desire." - "Is
there a way, a practice by which to abandon this desire?" - "There is a
way - it is by means of the psychic powers of desire,
energy, thought
and consideration together with concentration and effort." - "If that is
so, Venerable Ananda, then it is a task without end.
Because to get
rid of one desire by means of another is impossible." - "Then I will ask
you a question; answer as you like. Before, did you
have the desire,
the energy, the thought and consideration to come to this park? And having
arrived, did not that desire, that energy, that
thought and
that consideration cease?" - "Yes, it did." - "Well, for one who has destroyed
the defilements, once he has won enlightenment,
that desire,
that energy, that thought and that consideration he had for enlightenment
has now ceased" (Samyutta Nikaya, Book Seven,
Sutta No. 15).
(iv) There is a way to overcome suffering
The last of the four principles which form
the basis of Buddhism tells us how to eliminate craving and thereby be
free from suffering both in this life and
in the future. The first three principles
are how the Buddhist sees the world and the human predicament while the
last principle is what the Buddhist
decides to do about it. And the Buddhist response
to suffering is to walk the Noble Eightfold Path. This practical and universally
valid system of training
comprises the development of Right Understanding,
Right Thought, Right Speech, Right Action, Right Livelihood, Right Effort,
Right Mindfulness and
Right Concentration. We will look briefly
at each of these steps.
Right Understanding
If we persist in believing that evil and suffering
are due to something Adam and Eve did, or that they are caused by devils,
we will never be able to
overcome them. When we come to understand
that we inflict suffering upon ourselves through our ignorance and craving,
we have taken the first step in
overcoming that suffering. Knowing the true
cause of a problem is the beginning of overcoming it. And it is not sufficient
to just believe - we must strive
to understand. Understanding requires intelligence,
careful observation, weighing up the facts, openness; and in trying to
develop insight, these qualities
are strengthened.
Right Thought, Speech and Action
The next three steps on the Noble Eightfold
Path embody Buddhism's ethical teachings. Christians often try to give
the impression that theirs are the
only ethics which revolve around gentleness,
love and forgiveness. However, the truth is that 500 years before Jesus
the Buddha taught a love-centred
ethic as good as and in some ways more complete
than that of Christianity. To practise Right Thought we must fill our minds
with thoughts of love and
compassion.
Develop a mind
full of love, be compassionate and restrained by virtue, arouse your energy,
be resolute and always firm in making
progress (Theragata
979).
When with a mind
full of love one feels compassion for the whole world - above, below and
across, unlimited everywhere, filled with
infinite kindness,
complete and well-developed; any limited actions one may have done do not
remain lingering in one's mind (Jataka
37,38).
Just as water
cools both good and bad and washes away all dirt and dust, in the same
way you should develop thoughts of love to friend
and foe alike,
and having reached perfection in love you will attain enlightenment (Jataka
Nidanakatha 168-169).
In practising Right Speech we should use our
words only in ways which promote honesty, kindness and peace. The Buddha
described Right Speech
like this.
If words have
five characteristics they are well-spoken, not ill-spoken, neither blamed
nor condemned by the wise, they are spoken at the
right time,
they are truthful, they are gentle, they are to the point, and they are
motivated by love (Anguttara Nikaya, Book of Fives, Sutta
198).
With a beauty and comprehensiveness typical of the Buddha he describes the person who strives to develop Right Speech like this.
Giving up lying,
one becomes a speaker of the truth, reliable, trustworthy, dependable,
not a deceiver of the world. Giving up slander, one
does not repeat
there what is heard here, or repeat here what is heard there, for the purpose
of causing divisions between people. Thus,
one is a reconciler
of those who are divided and a combiner of those already united, rejoicing
in peace, delighting in peace, promoting
peace; peace
is the motive of his speech. Giving up harsh speech, one speaks what is
blameless, pleasant to the ear, agreeable, going to
the heart, urbane,
pleasing and liked by all. Giving up useless chatter, one speaks at the
right time, about the facts, to the point, about
Dhamma and discipline,
words worthy of being treasured up, seasonable, reasoned, clearly defined
and connected to the goal (Digha
Nikaya, Sutta
No.1).
Right Action requires that we avoid killing,
stealing and sexual misconduct and that we practise gentleness, generosity,
self-control and helpfulness
towards others.
Right Livelihood
To practise Right Livelihood one will do work
which is ethically wholesome and which produces something which does not
harm society or the
environment. An employer will pay his workers
fairly, treat them with respect and make sure their working conditions
are safe. An employee on the
other hand will work honestly and diligently
(see Digha Nikaya, Sutta No. 31). One should also use one's income responsibly
- providing for one's
needs, saving some and giving some to charity
(see page ).
Right Effort
Christian beliefs about God and man make human effort inconsequential. Humans are by nature depraved and evil sinners.
How can man be righteous before God. How can he who is born of a woman be clean? (Job 24:4).
The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt (Jer 17:9).
Being nothing more than a maggot (Job 25:6)
humans are incapable of being good, and can be saved not through their
own efforts but only through the
grace of God. Buddhism, by contrast, sees
human nature as primarily good and in the right conditions more likely
to do good than evil (see
Milindapanha 84). In Christianity humans are
held responsible for the evil they have done throughout their lives but
they are also held responsible for
and likely to be punished for the sins of
Adam and Eve. In Buddhism people take responsibility only for their own
actions and, as human nature is
basically good, this means that effort, exertion
and diligence are of great importance. The Buddha says:
Abandon wrong.
It can be done. If it were impossible to do, I would not urge you to do
so. But since it can be done, I say to you:
"Abandon wrong".
If abandoning wrong brought loss and sorrow, I would not urge you to do
so. But since it conduces to benefit and
happiness, I
urge you: "Abandon wrong." Cultivate the good. It can be done. If it were
impossible to do, I would not urge you to do so.
But since it
can be done, I say to you: "Cultivate the good." If cultivating the good
brought loss and sorrow, I would not urge you to do so.
But since it
conduces to benefit and happiness, I urge you: "Cultivate good." (Anguttara
Nikaya, Book of Twos, Sutta No. 9).
Right Mindfulness and Concentration
The last two steps on the Noble Eightfold Path
jointly refer to meditation, the conscious and gentle practice of firstly
coming to know the mind, then
controlling it, and finally transforming it.
Although the word meditation occurs about twenty times in the Bible, it
seems to refer only to the simplistic
practice of ruminating over passages from
the scriptures (e.g. Josh 1:8). The Bible seems to be almost completely
devoid of the sophisticated
meditation techniques found in the Buddhist
scriptures. Consequently when Christians are plagued by evil desires or
troubled by stubborn negative
thoughts, about all they can do is pray harder.
This absence of meditation is also the reason why Christians so often appear
agitated and lacking in the
quiet dignity which is characteristic of Buddhists.
God says "Be still and know that I am God" (Ps 46:10) but Christians can't
seem to sit still, let alone
still their minds, for a moment. God also
says "Commune with your own heart on your beds and be still" (Ps 4:4) which
is exactly what Buddhists do
when they meditate. But Christian services
and prayer meetings often seem like a cross between a rock concert and
a riot, with the pastor shouting and
wildly gesticulating while the people in the
congregation sway back and forth, 'speak in tongues', weep and clap their
hands.
The great advantage of Buddhism is that it
not only advises us to be calm, peaceful, free from unruly desires and
self-aware but it also shows us how to
develop these states. There are meditations
to induce calm, to modify specific mental defilements, encourage positive
mental states, and to change
attitudes. And of course when the mind is
calm and free from prejudices, preconceived ideas and distorting passions
it is more likely to see things as
they really are. It is not surprising that
many of the meditation techniques taught by the Buddha are now being used
by psychologists, psychiatrists and
counsellors. HOW TO ANSWER THE EVANGELISTS
As part of their efforts to promote their faith,
evangelical Christians often ask Buddhists questions intended to confuse
or discourage them. We will look
at some of these questions and comments and
give effective Buddhist responses.
You do not believe in God so you cannot explain how the world began ...
-- It is true that Christianity has an explanation
about how everything began. But is this explanation correct? Let us examine
it. The Bible says that God
created everything in six days and on the
seventh day he rested. This quaint story is nothing more than a myth and
is no more true than the Hindu myth
that the gods created everything by churning
a sea of milk, or the classical belief that the universe hatched out of
a cosmic egg.
Some parts of the creation myth are plainly
absurd. For example it is said that on the first day God created light
and darkness but on the fourth day he
created the sun (Gen 1:15-16). How can there
be day and night without the sun? The creation myth also contradicts modern
science which has proven
how the universe began and how life evolved.
There are no departments of astronomy or biology in any of the world's
universities which teach the
creation myth for the simple reason that it
is not based on fact. So while it is true that Christianity has an explanation
for how everything began (as do
most religions) that explanation is just a
myth.
Then what does Buddhism sat about how everything
began? Buddhism says little on this subject and for a very good reason.
The aim of Buddhism is to
develop wisdom and compassion and thereby
attain Nirvana. Knowing how the universe began can contribute nothing to
this task.
Once a man demanded
that the Buddha tell him how the universe began. The Buddha said to him
"You are like a man who has been shot
with a poison
arrow and who, when the doctor comes to remove it, says 'Wait! Before the
arrow is removed I want to know the name of
the man who
shot it, what clan he comes from, which village he was born in. I want
to know what type of wood his bow is made from,
what feathers
are on the end of the arrow, how long the arrows are, etc etc etc.' That
man would die before all these questions could be
answered. My
job is to help you to remove the arrow of suffering from yourself" (Majjhima
Nikaya Sutta No. 63).
Buddhism concentrates on helping us solve the
practical problems of living - it does not encourage useless speculation.
And if a Buddhist did wish to
know how and when the universe began he would
ask a scientist.
Buddhism is impractical because it says you cannot even kill an ant ...
-- Before we defend Buddhism against the charge
of being impractical, let us see if Christianity is practical. According
to Jesus if someone slaps us on
the cheek we should turn the other cheek and
let them slap us there also (Matt 5;25). If we discover that someone has
stolen our pants we should go
out and give the thief our shirt too (Matt
5:40). If we ourselves cannot resist stealing we should cut off our hands
(Matt 5:30). We could call all these
teachings impractical although Christians
would probably prefer to call them challenging. And of course they would
be right. To turn the other cheek
when someone assaults us is not easy. It requires
that we control our anger and doing this helps to develop patience, humility,
non-retaliation and love.
If we are never challenged we will never grow.
The Buddha asked us to have respect for all
life, even for humble creatures. As with turning the other cheek, this
is not always easy. Like some people,
creatures such as ants can be an irritating
inconvenience. When we take the precept not to kill and try to practice
it we are challenged to develop
patience, humility, love, etc. So in asking
us to respect all life, Buddhism is no more impractical than Christianity.
The Buddha is dead so he cannot help you ...
-- Buddhists sometimes have difficulty responding
effectively when Christians say this to them. However if we know Dhamma
well it will be quite easy
to refute this claim because, like most Christian
claims about Buddhism, it is based upon misunderstandings.
Firstly, the Buddha is not dead. He has attained
Nirvana, a state of utter peace and freedom. The other name the Buddha
gives Nirvana is the
Deathless State (Amita) because after one
attains it one is no longer subject to birth or death. Of course Nirvana
is not the naive 'eternal life' described
in the Bible, where the body is resurrected
and where angels sing. In fact it is so subtle it is not easy to describe.
However it is not non-existence, as the
Buddha makes very clear (Majjhima Nikaya Sutta
No.72; Sutta Nipata, verse 1076).
It is equally untrue to say that the Buddha
cannot help us. During his forty year career, the Buddha explained in great
detail and with masterly clarity
everything we need to attain Nirvana. All
we need to do is to follow his instructions. His words are as helpful and
as valid today as when he first spoke
them. Of course the Buddha doesn't help us
in the same way as Christians claim Jesus helps them, and for a very good
reason. If a student knew that
during the exams he could ask the teacher
for the answers to the exam questions, he would never study and consequently
would never learn. If an
athlete knew that by merely asking for it
the judge would give him the prize, he would never bother to train and
develop his body. Simply giving people
everything they ask for does not necessarily
help them. In fact, it guarantees that they will remain weak, dependent
and lazy.
The Buddha pointed us to Nirvana and told us
what provisions we would need for the journey. As we proceed, we will learn
from our experiences and
our mistakes, developing strength, maturity
and wisdom as we do. Consequently when we finish our journey we will be
completely different persons
from when we started. Because of the Buddha's
skilful help we will be fully enlightened.
This statement that Christians make is not
only wrong, but it also implies two things: that, in contrast to the Buddha,
Jesus is alive and that he can and
will help us. Let us look at these two assumptions.
Christians claim that Jesus is alive but what evidence is there of this?
They will say that the Bible
proves that Jesus rose from the dead. Unfortunately
statements written by a few people thousands of years ago don't prove anything.
A statement in the
Mahabharata (one of the Hindu holy books)
says that a saint had a chariot which could fly. But does this prove that
the ancient Indians invented the
aeroplane? Of course it does not. The ancient
Egyptian scriptures say that the god Khnum created everything out of clay
which he shaped on a potters
wheel. Does this prove that everything which
exists is just mud? Of course it does not. A passage in the Old Testament
says that a man named Balaam
had a donkey which could talk. Is that conclusive
proof that animals can speak? Of course it is not.
We cannot uncritically accept claims made in
the Bible any more than we can uncritically accept claims made in other
sacred books. When we examine
Bible claims about Jesus' supposed resurrection,
we find very good reasons why we should not believe them (see page ). In
fact, the Bible actually
proves that Jesus is not alive. Just before
he was crucified Jesus told his disciples that he would return before the
last of them had died (Matt 10:23,
Matt 16:28, Lk 21:32). That was 2000 years
ago. Jesus has still not returned. Why? Obviously because he is dead.
The second assumption is that Jesus always
responds when you pray to him. It is very easy to prove that this is not
true. Christians die from sickness,
suffer from misfortunes, have emotional problems,
give in to temptations etc just as non-Christians do and despite the fact
that they pray to Jesus for
help. I have a friend who had been a devout
Christian for many years. Gradually he began to doubt and he asked his
pastor for help. The pastor
instructed him to pray and even got members
of the church to also pray for him. Yet despite all these prayers to Jesus
for strength and guidance my
friend's doubts increased and he eventually
left the church. Later he became a Buddhist. If Jesus is really alive and
ready to help why do Christians have
just as many problems as non-Christians do?
Why didn't Jesus answer my friend's prayers and help him to remain a Christian?
Obviously because he is
dead and cannot help.
In answer to this objection Christians will
say that there are people who can testify that their prayers have been
answered. If this is true, it is also true
that there are Muslims, Taoists, Sikhs, Hindus,
Shintos and devotees of Kuan Yin who can say the same thing.
Unlike Christianity, Buddhism is so pessimistic ...
-- According to Webster's Dictionary, pessimism
is "the belief that evil in life outweighs the good". It is interesting
that Christians accuse Buddhism of
being pessimistic because the idea that evil
is more pervasive than good is one of the central doctrines of Christianity.
Two of their favorite Bible quotes
are "All have sinned, all have fallen short
of God's glory" (Rom 3:10) and "Surely there is not a righteous man on
earth who does good and never sins
(Ecc 7:20). The doctrine of Original Sin teaches
that all human beings are sinners, incapable of freeing themselves of sin,
and that the evil in us is
stronger than the good (Rom 7:14-24). Christians
will say that while this is true, we can be free from sin if we accept
Jesus. This may be so but it is still
the case that Christians feel they need Jesus
because their view of human nature is so utterly pessimistic.
Buddhism on the other hand has a very different,
not to say more realistic, view of human nature. While fully recognizing
mankind's potential for evil,
Buddhism teaches that we can conquer evil
and develop good through our own efforts.
Abandon evil!
One can abandon evil! If it were impossible to abandon evil, I would not
ask you to do so. But as it can be done, therefore
I say, "Abandon
evil!"
Cultivate the
good! One can cultivate what is good! If it were impossible to cultivate
the good I would not ask you to do so. But as it can
be done, therefore
I say, "Cultivate the good!" (Anguttara Nikaya, Book of Ones).
Whether one agrees with this belief or not, one could certainly not say that it is pessimistic.
Jesus teaches us to love but Buddhism encourages us to be cold and detached ...
-- This is not true. The Buddha says that we should develop a warm caring love towards all human beings.
Just as a mother
would protect her only child even at the risk of her own life, even so
one should cultivate unconditional love to all beings
(Sutta Nipata,
verse 150)
In every sense love is as important in Buddhism
as it is in Christianity and is emphasized just as much. There is however
something which somewhat
spoils Christians' practice of love. Their
loud insistence that only they love, that the quality of their love is
superior to that of others, and their constant
disparagement of and scoffing at others' efforts
to practise love makes them appear thoroughly invidious. So petty and jealous
are some Christians that
they cannot even praise or appreciate a quality
as beautiful as love, unless it has 'Made by Jesus' written on it.
You claim that when we die we are reborn, but there is no proof of this ...
-- Before responding to this let us examine
both the Christian and Buddhist after-life theories. According to Christianity,
God creates a new soul that
becomes a human being which lives its life
and then dies. After death the soul will go to eternal heaven if it believed
in Jesus, or to eternal hell if it did
not.
According to Buddhism, it is impossible to
fathom the ultimate beginning of existence. Each being lives its life,
dies and then is reborn into a new
existence. This process of dying and being
reborn is a natural one and can go on forever unless the being attains
Nirvana. When a being does attain
Nirvana their understanding, and consequently
their behaviour, alters and this changes the process which causes rebirth.
So instead of being reborn into
a new existence the being attains Nirvana.
Nirvana is not existence (to exist means to respond to stimuli, to grow
and decay, to move in time and space,
to experience oneself as a separate etc.)
and it is not non-existence in that it is not annihilation. In other words
each being's existence is beginningless
and endless unless Nirvana is attained and
until that time existence has no other purpose than to exist.
There is little evidence for either of these
two theories. However, there are several logical and moral problems with
the Christian theory which are
absent from the Buddhist theory and which
make the latter more acceptable. Christianity sees existence as having
a beginning but no end whereas
Buddhism sees it as cyclic. Nature offers
no examples of processes which have a beginning but no end. Rather, all
the natural processes we can
observe are cyclic. The seasons go and return
again next year. Rain falls, flows to the sea, evaporates, and forms clouds
which again fall as rain. The
body is made up of the elements we ingest
as food; when we die the body breaks down and releases its elements into
the soil, where they are absorbed
by plants and animals which we again eat to
build the body. The planets circle the sun and even the galaxy containing
our solar system slowly revolves.
The Buddhist theory of rebirth is in harmony
with the cyclic processes we see throughout nature whereas the Christian
theory is not.
Christians claim that God created us for a
purpose - so we can believe in him, obey him and be saved. If this is so
it is very difficult to explain why,
each year, millions of foetuses naturally
abort, and millions of babies are born dead or die within the first two
years of their lives. Further, millions of
people are born and live their whole lives
with severe mental retardation, unable to think even the most simple thoughts.
How do all these people fit into
God's supposed plan? What purpose can God
have in creating a new life and then letting it die even before it is born
or soon after its birth? And what
happens to all these beings? Do they go to
heaven or hell? If God really created us with a plan in mind, that plan
is certainly not very obvious. Also, as
the majority of the world's people are non-Christian
and as not even all Christians will be saved, this means that a good percentage
of all the souls that
God creates will go to hell. God's plan to
save everyone seems to have gone terribly wrong. So although we can't prove
either the Christian or the
Buddhist afterlife theory, the Buddhist doctrine
is more appealing and acceptable.
If we are really reborn, how do you explain the increase in the world's population?
-- When beings die they are reborn but they
are not necessarily reborn as the same type of being. For example, a human
could be reborn as a human,
as an animal, or perhaps as a heaven being,
according to its kamma. The fact that there is a dramatic increase in the
world's human population indicates
that more animals are being reborn as humans
(there has been a corresponding drop in the number of animals due to extinctions
etc.) and more humans
are being reborn as humans. Why is this so?
Just why more animals are being reborn as humans is difficult to say. But
why more humans are being
reborn as humans is undoubtedly due to an
increasingly widespread knowledge of the Buddha's teachings. Even where
the Dhamma is not widely
known its capacity to be a subtle influence
for good is powerful. All this can account for the increase in the human
population.
Nirvana is an impractical goal because it takes so long to attain and so few can do it ...
-- It is true that attaining Nirvana may take
a long time but on the other hand rebirth gives us plenty of time. If one
does not do it in this life one can
continue striving in the next life. In fact,
it will take as long as one wants. The Buddha says that if one really wants,
one can attain Nirvana within seven
days (Majjhima Nikaya Sutta No.10). If this
is so, the Christian will ask, why haven't all Buddhists already attained
Nirvana? For the simple reason that
mundane phenomena still hold an attraction
for them. As insight and understanding gradually make that attraction fade
one moves step by step, at one's
own pace, towards Nirvana. As for the claim
that only a few people can attain Nirvana, this is not correct. While in
Christianity one has one and only
one chance of being saved, Buddhism's teachings
on rebirth mean that a person has an infinite number of opportunities to
attain Nirvana. This also
implies that everyone will eventually be liberated.
As the Buddhist text says
This immortal
state has been attained by many and can be still attained even today by
anyone who makes an effort. But not by those who
do not strive
(Therigatha, verse 513).
In Christianity, history has a meaning and
is moving towards a particular goal. Buddhism's cyclic view of existence
means that history
has no meaning and this makes Buddhists fatalistic
and indifferent ...
-- It is true that according to Buddhism history
is not moving towards any climax. But the person who is walking the Noble
Eightfold Path certainly is.
He or she is resolutely moving towards the
peace and freedom of Nirvana.
Just as the river
Ganges flows, slides, tends towards the east, so too one who cultivates
and makes much of the Noble Eightfold Path
flows, slides,
tends towards Nirvana (Samyutta Nikaya, Great Chapter, Sutta No.67)
So it is not true to say that Buddhism's more
realistic view of existence and of history necessarily leads to indifference.
And what climax is history
moving towards according to Christianity?
The Apocalypse, where the vast majority of humanity and all the works of
man will be consumed by
brimstone and fire. Even the lucky few who
are saved will have the gloomy prospect of an eternity in heaven knowing
that at least some of their family
and friends are, at the same time, being punished
in hell. It would be difficult to imagine a more depressing future to look
forward to than this.
The Buddha copied the idea of kamma and rebirth from Hinduism ...
-- Hinduism does teach a doctrine of kamma
and also reincarnation. However, their versions of both these teachings
are very different from the
Buddhist versions. For example, Hinduism says
we are determined by our kamma while Buddhism says it only conditions us.
According to Hinduism,
an eternal soul (atman) passes from one life
to the next while Buddhism denies that there is such a soul (anatman) saying
rather that it is a constantly
changing stream of mental energy that is reborn.
These are just two of many differences between Hinduism and Buddhism on
kamma and rebirth.
However, even if the Buddhist and Hindu teachings
were identical this would not necessarily mean that the Buddha unthinkingly
copied the ideas of
others. It sometimes happens that two people,
quite independently of each other, make exactly the same discovery. A good
example of this is the
discovery of evolution. In 1858, just before
he published his famous book The Origin of the Species, Charles Darwin
found that another man, Alfred
Russell Wallace, had conceived the idea of
evolution exactly as he had done. Darwin and Wallace had not copied each
other's ideas; rather, by
studying the same phenomena they had come
to the same conclusion about them quite independently of each other. So
even if Hindu ideas about
kamma and rebirth were identical to those
of Buddhism (which they are not) this would still not be proof of copying.
The truth is that Hindu sages,
through insights they developed in meditation,
got vague ideas about kamma and rebirth, which the Buddha later expounded
more fully and accurately.
Jesus forgives our sins, but Buddhism says you can never escape the consequences of your kamma ...
-- It is only partially true that Jesus forgives
sins. According to Christianity, after people are created they will live
forever - first for a few decades on
earth and then for eternity in either heaven
or hell. Jesus will forgive people's sins while they live in the world
but for the rest of eternity he will refuse to
do so, no matter how frequently or how pitifully
the souls in hell may call upon his name. So Jesus' forgiveness is limited
to a minute period of time in a
person's existence after which he will withhold
it. So most people will never escape from the consequences of their supposed
sin.
Can Buddhists escape from their kamma? The
doctrine of kamma teaches that every action (kamma) has an effect (vipaka).
However this effect is not
always equal to its cause. For example, if
a person steals something this act will have a negative effect. If however
after the theft the person feels
remorse, returns the stolen article, and sincerely
resolves to try to be more careful in the future, the negative effect of
the theft may be mitigated. There
would still be an effect although not as strong.
But even if the thief does not mitigate the wrong which has been done with
some good, he or she will be
free from the deed after its effect comes
to fruition. So according to Buddhism we can be free from our kamma while
according to Christianity our sins
will only be forgiven during an extremely
limited period of time.
There are other ways in which the doctrine
of kamma is better than the Christian ideas of forgiveness and punishment.
In Buddhism while one may have
to endure the negative effects of the evil
one has done (which is only fair) this means that one will experience the
positive effects of the good one has
done as well. This is not so in Christianity.
For example, a non-Christian may be honest, merciful, generous and kind
yet despite this at death this
person will go to hell and not receive any
reward for the good he or she has done. Furthermore, according to the doctrine
of kamma the effects we
experience, all things being equal, are in
direct proportion to their cause. Again this is not so in Christianity
- even if a person is exceptionally evil during
this life, eternal hell is an utterly disproportionate
punishment. How much more is this so if the person is virtuous but non-Christian?
Indeed the eternity
of hell, and the idea that all non-Christians
are condemned to it, are teachings that cast very serious doubts on the
concept of a just and loving God.
Christianity has spread to almost every country in the world and has more followers than any other religion, so it must be true ...
-- It is true that Christianity has spread
widely but how has this happened? Until the 15th century Christianity was
largely confined to Europe. After this,
European armies spread throughout the world
forcing their religion on the people they conquered. In most conquered
countries (e.g. Sri Lanka, the
Philippines, Taiwan and parts of India) laws
were passed banning all non-Christian religions. By the late 19th century
brute force was no longer used to
enforce belief but, under the influence of
the missionaries, colonial administrators tried to hinder non-Christian
religions as much as possible. Today the
spread of Christianity is supported by lavish
financial assistance which missionaries get largely from the U.S.A. So
Christianity has spread not because
of its inherent superiority but because of
violence in the past and wealth today.
Whether Christianity is the world's largest
religion is a matter of definition. Can we consider the Mormons, the Moonies
and the Jehovah's Witnesses to
be Christians? Can we consider the numerous
strange cults and sects that flourish in South America and Africa, and
which account for many millions of
people, to be Christian? Most Protestants
don't even consider Catholics to be Christians! If we deny that all the
heretical, heterodoxist, cultic and
bizarre Christian groups are 'real' Christians,
this would probably make Christianity one of the smallest religions in
the world. This would also explain
why the Bible says that only 144,000 people
will be saved on Judgement Day (Rev 14:3-4).
God blesses those who believe in him. That is why Christian countries are so rich and Buddhist countries are so poor ...
-- Of all the arguments that Christians use
to try to convert people this is by far the most foolish. Firstly if what
the Bible says about wealth is true (Matt
19:23-24) it would seem that the blessings
which God has supposedly poured out on Europe and America are really a
curse in disguise. Secondly if
prosperity is really proof of God's favour
it would seem that he really likes the Muslims because he has given them
all the oil. Thirdly, some Christian
countries such as Honduras and the Philippines
are extremely poor while Japan, predominantly a Buddhist country, is very
rich. And finally, by making
statements like this, Christians are letting
slip their real motive for worshipping God - desire for money. Buddhism
for its part teaches that qualities like
contentment, love, gentleness and inner peace
are more precious than money.
Throughout the world including Asia, Christianity has been a force for progress while Buddhism has done little to improve society ...
-- In Christianity's long history there is
much to be proud of and perhaps equally as much to be ashamed of. Take
for example slavery, a terrible
institution that almost all churches supported
until the 19th century. After Paul converted the runaway slave Oresimus
he convinced him that as a
Christian he should go back to his master
(Philemon 1:3-20). He asked the master to be kind to Oresimus but he did
not ask him to free the slave. The
Bible says that slaves should obey their masters
even if they are treated with cruelty.
Slaves, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling, singlemindedly, as if serving Christ (Eph 6:5)
Slaves, give
entire obedience to your earthly masters, not merely with an outward show
of service, to curry favour with men, but with
singlemindedness,
out of reverence for the Lord (Col. 3:22)
Bid slaves to
be submissive to their masters and give satisfaction in every respect;
they are not to be refractory, nor to pilfer, but to show
entire and true
fidelity so that in everything they may adorn the doctrine of God our saviour
(Tit 2:9-10)
The reason why slave owners in Africa, U.S.A.
and Brazil encouraged their slaves to become Christians was because it
made them passive and
obedient. In England the campaign to abolish
slavery in the 18th century was strongly opposed by the churches as they
opposed similar campaigns in
Mexico, Brazil and the southern U.S.A. (for
details read the section on 'Slavery' in The Encyclopedia of Religion and
Ethics, 1989).
Take science. The development of science in
the West was retarded by church opposition (see A History of the Warfare
of Science with Theology
in Christendom, 2 Vol., A.D.White, 1960).
Christian opposition to dissection of corpses held back the development
of medicine and anatomy for 300
years. The churches were against dissection
because they believed that it would make bodily resurrection impossible.
The church was opposed to the
heliocentric view of the universe and even
threatened to execute Galileo for saying that the earth moved around the
sun. When Benjamin Franklin
invented the lightning rod that prevented
buildings from being damaged by lightning, Protestant churches were in
an uproar. They believed that God
would no longer be able to punish sinners
by hurling thunder bolts. When chloroform was invented, the churches refused
to allow it to be used to
alleviate the pain of childbirth. The Bible
teaches and they believed that such pain was God's punishment on women
for the sin of Eve (Gen 3:16).
Take intolerance of the Jews. Of all the bleak
pages in the history of Christianity this is the bleakest and most disgraceful.
For 2000 years Christians
have harassed, hounded, humiliated and murdered
the Jews because they refused to believe in Jesus. In this respect Protestants
have been no better
than the Catholics. In 1986 a leading Protestant
clergyman in the U.S.A. said "God does not listen when the Jews pray".
We could go on but this is enough. However
since the 19th century it is true that many Christian churches have begun
to eagerly adopt the outlook of
the liberal secular tradition and make it
their own. So now Christians are often in the forefront of movements for
justice, democracy and equality but
there is little in the Bible that they can
use to justify their actions. On the contrary, the Bible specifically says
that all rulers, even the unjust, get their
power from God and to oppose them is to oppose
God.
Let every person
be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except
from God, and those that exist have been
instituted by
God. Therefore he who resists the authorities resists what God has appointed,
and those who resist will incur judgment (Rom
13:1-2, see
also Jn 19:11, Tit 3:1, Pet 2:13, Prov 8:15-16)
Despotic kings, cardinals and bishops quoted
passages like these for centuries to justify their rule. Liberation theologies
are very silent about such Bible
passages today. Christian social philosophy
doesn't come from the Bible. It comes from the Western secular tradition
that the churches spent 400 years
opposing. Now they try to pretend that these
values originate from Jesus (see What the Bible Really Says, ed. M. Smith
and R.S.Hoffman, 1989).
Buddhism has always been less aggressive and
less organized than Christianity. This has meant that its influence on
society has been subtle, less
noticeable and even perhaps less dynamic than
it should have been. On the other hand it has also meant that the witch-hunts
against heretics, the
persecution of non-believers, and the bloody
religious wars that have marred Christian history, have been rare or absent
in Buddhism.
(1) Deep down Buddhists are really searching
for God.
(2) Buddhism is just a different expression
of man's understanding of God
(3) Buddhists are Christians outside the church
...
-- Today one often hears liberal Christians
make statements like these. Sadly, such statements are meaningless. One
could simply reverse them and say
"Deep down Christians are really searching
for Nirvana", "The Christian God is just a personification of Nirvana",
or "Christians are Buddhists outside
the Sangha". Although such statements are
often welcomed by Buddhists as indicating that liberal Christians are more
tolerant than their fundamentalist
brothers and sisters, this is actually not
so. Such statements really show that Christians still wish to claim superiority
for their own religion. They also
show that the liberal Christian's supposed
tolerance is dependent upon believing that Buddhism is just another form
of Christianity. In short, it is based
on a delusion. Liberal Christians will only
be genuinely tolerant when they can admit that Buddhism is different from
Christianity, very different, and be
tolerant despite these differences.
Buddhism may be a noble philosophy but if you look at Buddhist countries you notice that so few people seem to practise it ...
-- Perhaps! But is it not exactly the same
in Christian countries? What honest Christian could say that all Christians
fully, sincerely and with deep
understanding follow Jesus' teachings? Let
us not judge a religion by those who fail to practise it.
CONCLUSION
If what has been written so far has stimulated
in the reader the desire to know more about Christianity and Buddhism,
we will briefly recommend some
books for further reading.
A popular and easy to read book exposing many
of the fallacies in Christianity is Jesus - the Evidence by Ian Wilson,
1984. Wilson examines the
history of the Bible and shows how scholars
have demonstrated beyond doubt that it is an untidy compilation composed
over several centuries. He also
shows how the man Jesus gradually came to
be seen as a god.
Another good book is Rescuing the Bible from
the Fundamentalists by John Spong, 1991. Spong is a Christian bishop and
scholar who freely
admits that most of what the Bible contains
is either mythological or erroneous, and he gives abundant evidence for
this.
Perhaps the most scholarly and thorough critical
study of recent times is Is Christianity True? by Michael Arnheim, 1984.
This outstanding study
examines every major Christian doctrine and
exposes each of them to the cold light of reason - and none of them survive
the exposure.
Many excellent books on the teachings of the Buddha are available.
A good introduction is The Life of the Buddha
by H. Saddhatissa, 1988. It includes a well-written biography of the Buddha
and a clear account of
basic Buddhist concepts.
What the Buddha Taught by W. Rahula, 1985 and The Buddha's Ancient Path by Piyadassi Thera, 1979 are good introductions.
A Buddhist Critique of the Christian Concept
of God by G. Dharmasiri, 1988 is an excellent but highly technical examination
of the modern
Protestant concept of God from the Buddhist
point of view.
A most interesting book is Two Masters One
Message by Roy Amore, 1978. In this study the author demonstrates that
much of what was taught by
Jesus is likely to have been derived originally
from Buddhism.
Fundamentalist Christianity poses a real threat
to Buddhism, and while we can never hope to match the aggressiveness or
organizational abilities of its
proponents, we can very easily counter them
by becoming familiar with Christianity's numerous doctrinal weaknesses
and Buddhism's many strengths. If
the Christian challenge stimulates in Buddhists
a deeper appreciation for the Dhamma and a desire to live by that Dhamma,
then that challenge can be to
Buddhism's benefit.