Fortunately for him, Buddhism is cleverly designed to contain no scientifically falsifiable claims.
Well, maybe some of the 14 (really only 4) unanswerable questions can be answered some day. Cosmologists might prove that the universe is finite (current odds are slim), AI researchers might prove that self is both identical with the body and different from it by doing a successful upload. Would it make Buddhists abandon their faith? Not a chance.
Fortunately for him, Buddhism is cleverly designed to contain no scientifically falsifiable claims.
A Buddhist friend told me that at a class in a temple, the teacher mentioned four types of creation, of which one was spontaneous generation- like maggots spontaneously generating in meat. My friend interrupted to say that, no, that’s not actually what happens, and that people did experiments to prove that it didn’t happen. (My friend was too polite to mention that the experiments were 350 years old.) If I remember correctly, the teacher said something like “huh, okay,” and went on with the lesson, leaving out any parts relevant to spontaneous generation.
Traditional Spontaneous generation and modern abiogenesis are very different things, and comments that assume the first may be invalid if only the second is true.
Fortunately for him, Buddhism is cleverly designed to contain no scientifically falsifiable claims.
Well, maybe some of the 14 (really only 4) unanswerable questions can be answered some day. Cosmologists might prove that the universe is finite (current odds are slim), AI researchers might prove that self is both identical with the body and different from it by doing a successful upload. Would it make Buddhists abandon their faith? Not a chance.
A Buddhist friend told me that at a class in a temple, the teacher mentioned four types of creation, of which one was spontaneous generation- like maggots spontaneously generating in meat. My friend interrupted to say that, no, that’s not actually what happens, and that people did experiments to prove that it didn’t happen. (My friend was too polite to mention that the experiments were 350 years old.) If I remember correctly, the teacher said something like “huh, okay,” and went on with the lesson, leaving out any parts relevant to spontaneous generation.
That’s an unfortunate example. The teacher should have amended his maggot example to ‘the first living cell’, then.
Traditional Spontaneous generation and modern abiogenesis are very different things, and comments that assume the first may be invalid if only the second is true.
They may have differences… but are they any that matter for that Buddhist typology of creation?