"Dharma Wars" and the problems with Buddhists/Buddhism online

This is why I've had the caveat about not being a teacher since I started this blog...

In cyberspace, we can craft whatever persona we choose and call our blog whatever we want, and Buddhist bloggers often inflate their experience and understanding. Shinge Roko Sherry Chayat Roshi, a Zen teacher who serves as spiritual director of the Zen Center of Syracuse, likens this behavior to online personal ads, where people have been known to misrepresent themselves (to put it charitably).

“People who purportedly are teachers—whether they’ve been given transmission or not—are seen as Zen authorities online,” she says. “Sometimes students get swept into currents of basically malevolent speech. How can that be what the Buddha taught? I’m very concerned about it.”

“There’s something about the social distance that happens on the Web,” concurs James Ishmael Ford, a Zen teacher and blogger. “Anybody with a keyboard is instantly allowed to present whatever they’ve pulled out of their butt as if it were the dharma. There’s some ugly stuff out there. There’s massive misinformation, and there’s an amazing amount of ego wrapped in opinion.”

Not every Buddhist-themed website is a vehicle for vicious personal attacks, of course. Many teachers and sanghas have found the Internet to be an effective way to post text, video, or audio links to teachings that would otherwise be unavailable to people living far from practice centers.

So are atheists getting worse, more numerous, or just more vocal?

Image via Wikipedia

You will forgive me, right? Because you know I am not putting down atheism or atheists as a whole. So I know the title might read to some like an insult, but bear with me a bit before you make up your mind.

I have a friend who is very educated and passionate about philosophy, theology, and the history of ideas who went online over a decade ago to challenge and be challenged by people of differing views. Having been an intellectual 1960s/70s kind of highbrow atheist, he became a Christian with a far-left political leaning and an experience and understanding of God that is ancient but yet often missing from modern discussions of theology - a view of God as the foundation of existence, beyond but not less than our conception of a person yet as intimate as can be. Simultaneously transcendent and immanent. This friend, however, has a quick temper and dyslexia, and like anyone who has been fighting battles for a long time, he can quickly become defensive and project past experiences from the internet war zone onto current events.

Those just looking for an easy target to mock and provoke seem drawn to my friend like flies to honey, and it is true he does bring a lot of that attention on himself in the quest for a good debate. But that doesn't mean he lacks insight. And while his rants about the atheists he often encounters are often over the top and sometimes inexcusably insulting, that doesn't mean there isn't something valid to his complaints and observations. So taking away the hostility and over-generalizations, does he have a valid point?

It is hard to quantify anecdotal observations about the education, temperament, and behavior of such a broadly defined group, even when limiting it with qualifiers like "those on the internet", "those on message boards", etc. There is no doubt that the books and articles by the so-called New Atheists have energized a segment of the population who identify as totally irreligious, but that still doesn't help to describe or explain the aptitude or attitude of "atheists who read books on God and religion by folks like Hitchens and Dawkins and post anti-religious/anti-God material on blogs and message boards". Characterizing a group with a broad brush hides the very details necessary to the aforementioned task.

That said, if we simply take one example, we can use it as a starting point. There is a forum that I have been to on and off for over a decade. I have visited as an ineffectual sort-of-Christian-kind-of-Deist, as an agnostic/weak atheist, as a strong atheist, as a secular Buddhist, as a spiritual Buddhist, and as whatever it is I am now. I have also been to other forums. There have always been some places online where some atheists go to run vent their frustrations among people of like attitudes and stroke each others egos and sense of intellectual superiority.  Some of them do this while revealing their profound immaturity and ignorance. This isn't surprising. It's the internet.  You can find the same kinds of places for Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, Pagans, etc. But on our example forum, which is has consistently high traffic, and which tends to mirror trends on similar forums, there has been a definite change.

Some things are the same, with newly minted or newly emboldened atheists working through the same things others have done for generations before them, the same kinds of questions and challenges to non-atheists, the same kinds of arguments and assumptions. Yet there does seem to be a subtle shift. There appears to be less respect for academia, especially the social sciences and humanities, including philosophy and history, and more misunderstanding and misattribution of scientific principles and discoveries. There appears to be less struggling with important readings and issues and the ambiguity they present and more black and white regurgitation and borrowing of ideas. 

There appears to be less interest in mutual respect and the notion that all sides are struggling in their own way for the truth and more interest in demagoguery and polarization. I have observed some of these folks using the same kinds of quote mining, quote and concept distorting, unfair generalizing, etc that some of the especially disreputable Young Earth Creationists have been using for years to try to shake up or discredit the science of evolution. Apparently some of these self-professed debunkers of religion believe it's OK to use such cheap tactics so long as you know for certain in your heart that they are wrong, Wrong, WRONG!

Now, I have and continue to know too many atheists in real life and online to believe this is typical of atheism, but it does seem to fit some of the "new" folks who have been popping up over the past 4-6 years and especially the last year or two. Not all or even most -- I can't make that claim. But this new pattern does seem to be on the rise. 

So, if that is a fair and accurate observation, what is up with this? 

I know in my atheist days we used to school the newbies when they embarrassed us with their poor attitudes or immaturity, but now it seems like these traits are becoming more acceptable. So what is going on? Are some minority of atheists just taking a dive into the mud? Is there an increase in atheism with more of the new "recruits" being pulled from the shallow end of the critical thinking and personality pool? Or are more of the ruder, cruder folks now feeling more emboldened to pop up and be heard (or read)? Something else?

What if the Buddha was a young white woman?

The Universal Prayer of the World Peace Prayer Society

Continuing a general theme this week inspired by the Memorial Day holiday, allow me to present another prayer for peace. This one comes from the an multi-faith organization. [Here is some context for those who are new to reading my perspective or who have forgotten my approach to things like "God", "religion", etc.] You can view the prayer in 83 languages here. Here it is in English:


May Peace Prevail on Earth.

Religious and Spiritual Resources

Dharmic Traditions

-American Buddhist Study Center
-Buddhanet
-Cloudwater Zendo
-E-Sangha Buddhism Portal
-(A Few) Mahayana Sutras
-Pali Canon
-Buddhist Peace Fellowship
-Buddhist Inmate Sangha
-Earth Sangha
-Prison Dharma Network
-Women Sakyadhita

Abrahamic Traditions

-The Center for Progressive Christianity
-The Christian Allaince for Progress
-The Christian Universalist Association
-Contemplative Outreach
-Awakened Heart Project
-Tikkun

Interfaith, Multifaith, and General Religious Tradtions

-Unitarian Universalist Association (North America)
-Sea of Faith (UK)
-Humanist Manifesto(s)
-Sacred Texts (Beliefnet)
-Faithful America
-Interfaith Alliance
-Religions for Peace
-Monastic Interreligious Dialogue
-Teasdale Memorial
-The Empty Bell

Getting Involved

-Search for Common Ground
-International Campaign for Tibet
-Amnesty International
-National Religious Campaign Against Torture
-Save Darfur
-(RED)
-Earth Share
-World Environment Organization
-World Wildlife Fund
-American Red Cross
-America's Second Harvest
-US Campaign for Burma

Weekly Action Coalition Members

-Weekly Action Coalition
-Thoughts of an Average Woman
-Public Theologian
-IddyBud
-Rage is Good
-Disenchanted Forest
-Faithful Progressive
-Levellers
-Lydia Cornell