Confession & Summary

As a product of my education—that is, as a snob, an elitist, a neo-Darwinian, and a skeptic—I naturally suppose it to be insuperably difficult for the educated class in the West to embrace any form of religious orthodoxy. I am well aware that to think so is an error on the face of it. Consider the case of the biologist Kenneth Miller, who describes himself, sincerely if incomprehensibly, as an orthodox Darwinist and an orthodox Catholic. Yet the idea that I seem to be stuck with, namely, that doctrinal conformity is practically impossible for a post-Enlightenment person, is not groundless, and may yet prove to have some validity as a generalization. Over the course of my life I have watched Catholic doctrine and practice crystallize and dissolve, again and again, upon the background of the pre-Vatican II Church into which I was baptized. I have studied the historical ebb and flow of the religious visions, enthusiasms, and awakenings that produced, among other things, the more than 250 ostensibly Christian denominations represented in the armed forces of the United States. My own rather shaky edifice of belief is the result of nearly continuous demolition and rebuilding. So let me begin by declaring that while I can imagine the benefits of orthodoxy, I have little feeling for it in the way of either sympathy or nostalgia. Thus I am surprised, again and again, when a one of my contemporaries mounts a defense of Buddhist orthodoxy. When faced with a choice between a philosophically suspect Buddhist doctrine and an explanation consonant with the findings of the sciences, I choose the latter every time.

Given the exuberance and fecundity of religious philosophy in India, the Buddha showed remarkable restraint when it came to ontological speculation, let alone commitment. On the contrary, he seems to have done his utmost to discourage the proliferation of theoretical constructions. From the time of his immediate successors, beginning with the Abhidhammists, attempts have been made to fill in the gaps in his teaching and to address those questions which he declined to answer. Ever since, there has been an alternation between those among his disciples who would capture the Dharma like a truffle in aspic, and those, like Nagarjuna, who would return to a wide-open prospect. Then, too, the geographical journey of the Buddha-Dharma brought it into contact with native religious elements which not only refused to be subordinated, but threatened to overshadow even fundamental doctrines. The history of Buddhism is a history of orthodoxy-busting.

Huston Smith complains that the story of life as told by scientists is dull, incomplete, uninspiring if not actually depressing, and lacking in the happy ending he seems to think life demands. Perhaps we are reading different books. Anyhow, there is a reason why Professor Smith gets upset whenever E. O. Wilson or anyone else suggests that science is, or ought to be, the base line against which all opinion is measured. What really bothers Smith, I think, is that, whether you find the stories told by scientists uplifting or demoralizing, more or less satisfactory than the stories told by the religious scriptures, only the stories of science are subjected to a continuous process of re-evaluation and adjudication. Only the stories of science are routinely scrutinized, analyzed, and tested against observable data. In short, they are the only stories upon which there is any real possibility for agreement.

The conceptual,schema of karma and rebirth fails to deliver useful information. It is based on no confirmable evidence, has no predictive value (as might be expected of a "theory" that is compatible with any imaginable set of circumstances), generates no testable hypotheses, and cannot to date be plugged into the body of modern science. The many troubles with the karma complex boil down to the following kinds:

   ·As ostensible fact, it has no evidential support.

   · As theory, it is (1) conceptually incoherent, (2) almost certainly absurd, (3) lacking in explanatory power and (4) incompatible with existing theory.

   · As a sound basis and a source of motivation for moral striving, it is inadequate precisely because it is not what it claims to be, namely, the true picture of a just universe.

In order for the karma-rebirth-samsāra complex) to make a serious claim upon our attention, it must be (1) a collection of facts about the world (events or processes) explicable under the terms of our best theoretical understanding, and/or (2) a theoretical schema capable of enriching our understanding of the facts. As it happens, the karma complex is commonly presented as both fact and theory. However, it is easily shown that the karma complex cannot fill the bill in either category.

To the extent that talk about karma, rebirth and samsara is put forth as a kind of conceptual knowledge, it is subject to the same kinds of analytic scrutiny as other such claims. To the extent that it purports to comprise or encompass fact, it falls under the rubric of science and is subject to the criteria of scientific method. The same is true of any such statement