Buddhist writer Stephen Batchelor has just published a new book called Confessions of a Buddhist Atheist, which tries to pare away the theistic/religious trappings of contemporary Buddhism to get to the philosophical core of Buddhism, which has a lot of non-theistic elements to it. This book review in the Manchester Guardian by religion writer Mark Vernon explains the root of Batchelor’s observations. Batchelor writes that the Four Noble Truths of Buddhism resonate with non-theism: the focus on self-reliance and self-awareness, the derivation of meaning from real experience, and the acceptance of the world as it is without supernatural explanations or magical beliefs. The book has drawn praise from none less than Christopher Hitchens, and has also been embraced by Harvard humanist Greg Epstein, both of whom should be familiar to readers of this blog by now.
A lot of my own approach to an atheistic worldview is similarly informed by those parts of Buddhism, though I would never consider myself a Buddhist in any way. I’m not sure how I feel about the effort to attach that to the touchy-feely humanist movement, but I can see where using the sort of arguments Batchelor is making about demystifying religious cultures certainly can be applied. Looks like this book and it’s predecessor, Buddhism Without Beliefs, are worth a read.
