BUDDHISM AND MATERIALIST
WESTERN CULTURE
One reason why Buddhism has come to the world’s attention is not because of its existence in the Far East—its traditional home—but thanks to propaganda spread in the West. The beginning of this propaganda goes back as far as the 19th century and attracted more interest in the second half of the 20th century when it became a fad for those looking to be more “original.”
The beginning of this fad dates from the pop-culture of the 1960′s when a large number of western youth and some western intellectuals turned away from traditional Christianity looking for something else and found what they were seeking in far-eastern religions. The main impetus for this search was the desire to attract interest by going against the established order. When the late George Harrison of the Beatles, who helped define the pop culture of the ’60s, stated that he had become a Hindu (a pagan religion that preceded Buddhism) and later recorded his own composition, “My Sweet Lord,” a song to Krishna, many Beatles’ fans followed suit. John Lennon used Buddhist mantras in his song entitled “Across the Universe.” Buddhist hymns, styles of dress, and artworks were very popular among hippies in the ’60s and ’70s.
Interestingly, the most important architects of popular cultural expressions are imposing Buddhism on Western society. In this process, Hollywood has taken the lead. It’s generally accepted that Hollywood reflects the ideas of American society’s liberal wing, often supporting anti-religious ideas and values contrary to Christian morality and belief. For example, most films strongly impose the theory of evolution on the minds of viewers. In the evolution-versus-creation argument, “scientific” films are almost always come down on the side of Darwinism. (Hollywood’s anti-religious, pro-Darwin propaganda began with the famous film, Inherit the Wind.) And the tendency of today’s films to disparage Islam is a highly evident strategy.
But though Hollywood is generally unfavorable towards revealed religions like Christianity and Islam; when it comes to Buddhism, it takes a totally opposite line, depicting this religion in a most attractive light as peaceable and humane. Films like Seven Years in Tibet, starring Brad Pitt, and Kundun, about the life of the Dalai Lama, directed by Martin Scorcese, have undertaken to popularizing Buddhism among the movie-going masses.
For spreading Buddhist propaganda, the private lives of actors and actresses are as important as the films they star in. The Supreme Head of the Nyingma School of Tibetan Buddhism has declared Steven Seagal, well-known for his roles in action films, to be the reincarnation of a 15th century lama (a Buddhist monk of Tibet or Mongolia)! Famous actor Richard Gere, in addition to writing books promoting Buddhism, has founded the Tibet House in New York with Richard Thurman, father of actress Uma Thurman. Other well-known Buddhists include Tina Turner, Harrison Ford, Oliver Stone, Herbie Hancock and Courtney Love.
Of course, a person’s private life and personal beliefs concern no one else. People are free to choose any religion they wish. But if these individuals learned about true Islam, certainly their hearts would be warmed. But the picture presented so far brings us to an important conclusion: Buddhism is attracting interest, being adopted and promoted in the West wherever a materialist culture predominates. Materialism Western culture has become alienated from the Judeo-Christian basis of its own spirituality.
But why? To answer this question, we must first determine the basic characteristics of Western materialism. This culture’s foundations were laid in the 18th century; its theoretical framework was established in the 19th and—despite the gradual erosion of the theoretical framework—it became a mass movement in the 20th. Essentially, it:
- denies the existence of God and believes the universe to be the result of chance.
- believes that living things arrived at their present state through evolution, and that Darwinism explains the phenomenon of life and the “origin” of species.
- believes that human beings are simply a higher species of animal and downplays the existence of any human spirit.
- rejects the idea of life after death, resurrection, Judgment Day and the existence of an eternal Paradise and Hell.
These assumptions of a materialist culture, every one of them false, naturally contradict all revealed religions. But significantly, all these erroneous assumptions are shared by another culture—Buddhism.
Huxley’s Discovery of Buddhism
An atheist religion, Buddhism doesn’t accept the existence of God, an everlasting hereafter, Paradise, or Hell. It supposes that the human spirit is no different from that of an animal and believes in continual karmic returns to the natural world. According to Buddhists, a fish could come back as a mammal in a later life, and a human could come back as a worm. This idea of the “transmigration of souls” between species has important parallels with Darwin’s theory of evolution.
One Buddhist researcher has described as follows the relation between Buddhism and evolution:
Buddhism. . . is quite happy with the theory of evolution. In fact, Buddhist philosophy actually requires evolution to take place—all things are seen as being transient, constantly becoming, existing for a while, and then fading. The idea of unchanging species would not be compatible with Buddhist ontology.6
For this reason, Darwinists have felt sympathetic toward Buddhism and promoted it ever since the 19th century.
The first to express Darwinist admiration for Buddhism was Thomas H. Huxley who, after Darwin himself proposed his theory, played the next most important role in the spread of Darwinism. Huxley appeared on the scene as Darwin’s most passionate supporter and became known as “Darwin’s bulldog.” His debates with scientists and clergy defending the idea of creation, and the passion of his writings and speeches have made him the 19th century’s most famous Darwinist.
One little-known fact about Huxley was his keen interest in Buddhism. Even while struggling with representatives of revealed religions like Judaism and Christianity, he regarded Buddhism as appropriate to the kind of secular civilization that he wanted to see established in the West. This is elaborated in the Philosophy East and West article, “Buddhism in Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics,” which includes the following description of Buddhism from Huxley’s book of that name:
[Buddhism is] a system which knows no God in the Western sense; which denies a soul to man; which counts the belief in immortality a blunder and hope of it a sin; which refuses any efficacy to prayer and sacrifice; which bids men look to nothing but their own effortsfor salvation . . . . yet [it] spread over a considerable moiety of the Old World with marvelous rapidity and is still, with whatever base admixture of foreign superstitions, the dominant creed of a large fraction of mankind.7
The only reason for Huxley’s admiration of Buddhism is that it—like Huxley and other Darwinists—did not believe in God.
According to Vijitha Rajapakse, a professor at Hawaii University and the author of “Buddhism in Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics,” Huxley saw a parallel between Buddhism and the atheistic pagan ideas of ancient Greece. This contributed to his admiration:
Huxley’s evident tendency to link Buddhist thought with Western ideas, which comes to the fore strikingly in his comments on the concept of substance, was further exemplified at other levels of his discussion as well. He found the nontheistic stance taken by the early Buddhists to be analogous to the outlook of Heracleitus and referred, in addition, to “many parallelisms of Stoicism and Buddhism.”. . .8
Rajapakse notes that some other 18th and 19th century atheists or agnostics were also great admirers of Buddhism. Parallels between Buddhism and the materialist Western philosophy of the time form part of the thought of David Hume, an 18th century Scottish philosopher and atheist with an antipathy towards religion. Rajapakse writes, “Interestingly enough, the parallelisms that exist between Buddhist and Humean standpoints on the question of a substantial soul were duly noted by certain early commentators on Buddhism” and continues:
Mrs. Rhys Davids [a pioneer translator of early Buddhist texts from Paali into English], for example, remarked that “with regard to the belief in an indwelling spirit or ego, permanent, unchanging, unsuffering, Buddhism took the standpoint two thousand, four hundred years ago of our own Hume of two centuries ago.”9
As Rajapakse maintains in his article, Buddhism intrigued many thinkers in Victorian England because they found it in harmony with the ascendant philosophies of the 19th century—atheism and Darwinism. Friedrich Nietzsche, the famous German philosopher, looked with favor on Buddhism for the same reason.
Nietzsche’s Sympathy for Buddhism
Nietzsche, one of the 19th century’s most avid atheist thinkers, nurtured a passionate hatred for Christianity and promoted in its stead a pagan culture and morality. His views helped form fascism in the 20th century, especially Nazism. Nietzsche battled with Christianity for espousing the virtues of compassion, mercy, humility and trust in God. Therefore, in fact, he was also against the moral principles of Islam and genuine Judaism. He hated revealed religions not only because of their moral principles, but mainly because of his fanatic atheism. In his article on Nietzsche, American researcher Jason DeBoer writes that “atheism is a crucial part of Nietzsche’s thought,” adding that:
His is not an unbiased critique: Nietzsche burns with hatred toward Christianity, and his atheistic writings are extremely vitriolic.10
As we can imagine, Nietzsche directed his hatred at revealed religions only, not at pagan ones. On the contrary, as DeBoer writes:
. . . Nietzsche, although one of the fiercest atheists in history, was in fact not entirely anti-religious . . . [He] respected and admired many of the aspects of other religions, including paganism and even Buddhism.11
In his review of Robert G. Morrison’s book Nietzche and Buddhism:A Study in Nihilism and Ironic Affinities, English academic David R. Loy says the following on this matter:
Comparing Nietzsche with Buddhism has become something of a cottage industry, and for good reason: there seems to be a deep resonance between them. Morrison points out that they share many common features: both emphasise the centrality of humans in a godless cosmos and neither looks to any external being or power for their respective solutions to the problem of existence . . . Both understand [a] human being as an ever-changing flux of multiple psychophysical forces, and within this flux there is no autonomous or unchanging subject (‘ego’, ‘soul’).12
The sources of these erroneous ideas that Nietzsche shared with Buddhism were certainly nothing more than ignorance and arrogance. Anyone who looks at the universe and the world of nature with conscious intelligence can see clear proofs of God’s existence. This has been supported by modern, scientific discoveries: the Big Bang theory and the Anthropic Principle (the principle that every detail in the universe has been carefully arranged to make human life possible) have crushed the idea of a godless universe as proposed by Nietzsche and other atheists. Science has clear proofs that the universe was created and ordered in an extraordinary balance. These proofs show the invalidity of Darwin’s theory of evolution, but do support the existence of an intelligent design and prove the truth of creation. The results of scientific and sociological discoveries have also discredited the ideas of 19th century thinkers like Marx, Freud, and Durkheim. (For more information, please refer to Harun Yahya’s article “A Turning Point in History: The Fall of Atheism” at www.harunyahya.com/70the_fall_of_atheism _scie34.php)
Buddhism: False Spirituality
to a Materialist Culture
Ironically, this scientific testimony against atheism is closely related to why Buddhism is spreading in the Western world. Architects of atheism and materialist culture see that their theory is collapsing. To prevent the rapidly growing movement towards revealed religions, they counter it by promoting pagan faiths such as Buddhism. In other words, Buddhism—and other Far Eastern religions like it—are spiritual reinforcements of materialism.
But why should materialist Western culture need any such reinforcement? English writers Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln have examined the development (and degeneration) of ideas in the Western world over the past 2,000 years. In the 20th century, they explain, the Western world has fallen into a “crisis of meaning.” In other words, the way of life imposed on Western societies by materialist philosophy has stripped people’s lives of meaning by cutting them off from their belief in God’s existence and from worship of Him. These three authors put it this way:
Life became increasingly bereft of meaning, devoid of significance — a wholly random phenomenon, lived for no particular purpose.13
Adding to this crisis of meaning, the collapse of materialist theories on a scientific level has opened the way for a new return to revealed religions, especially Islam. For this reason, the monotheistic faiths are growing in their numbers of adherents; the number of those who believe and practice their religion is increasing; and religious concepts and values are assuming much more important places in social life.
Buddhism and similar pagan beliefs are eager to curtail this movement by offering, to those confused by the crisis of meaning brought on by the materialist culture, a false route to salvation. Buddhism, Taoism, Hinduism and versions of it like the Hare Krishna sect, Wicca and other New Age trends that bring together various pagan teachings, UFO religions that busy themselves with so-called holy messages believed to have come from space—these are all false teachings embraced by those who do not want to break with atheist and materialist dogmas, while eagerly search for spirituality at the same time. Besides, many who become Buddhists are largely influenced by a desire to unwittingly and blindly imitate something they do not understand, simply to attract attention and pretent that they are, indeed, aware and sophisticated.
To understand why these doctrines are unfounded, we need only pass them through the sieve of logic. We have already examined the concept of karma, the foundation of several Far Eastern religions, and shown it to have no rational basis. (For a more detailed discussion, see Harun Yahya’s Islam and Karma, Ta Ha Publishers, London, 2003) These religions do not believe in the existence of God, nor in an ultimate place of divine judgment for mankind. How, then, can they believe that every person will receive a reward for what he has done—in a subsequent life? Who will determine this? Those who revere “Extraterrestrials” also believe in similar nonsense. How can a person build a philosophy of life on UFOs, whose reality is quite debatable? Even if beings from outer space did exist, they too would, necessarily, have to have been created. But what is the guarantee that they could show humans the true path?
Those caught up in such superstitious ideas should think about these words of God from the Qur’an (56: 57): “We created you, so why do you not confirm the truth?” They should follow His way, as He has commanded:
This is My Path, and it is straight, so follow it. Do not follow other ways, or you will become cut off from His Way. That is what He instructs you to do, so that hopefully you may do your duty. (Qur’an, 6: 153)
COULD BUDDHISM BE A TRUE RELIGION THAT’S BECOME DISTORTED?
Although up to this point we’ve examined Buddhism as superstitious and false, at the same time, we must say that it contains some positive moral principles. Buddhist scriptures warn people against stealing, encourages them to be helpful to one another and cleanse themselves of selfishness and worldly ambitions. All of this suggests that Buddhism possibly began as a religion founded on God’s revelation, only to become corrupted over the course of time.
In the Qur’an, God tells us that to every nation, He sent messengers to deliver His warnings:
We have sent you [Muhammad] with the truth bringing good news and giving warning. There is no community to which a warner has not come. (Qur’an, 35: 24)
We sent a Messenger among every people saying: “Worship God and keep clear of all false gods.” Among them were some whom God guided, but others received the misguidance they deserved… (Qur’an, 16: 36)
Elsewhere in the Qur’an, He affirms that, “Every nation has a Messenger” (10: 47) and “every nation [is] summoned to its Book” (45: 28). These verses show us that God could certainly have sent a messenger to the Hindus; and one of them could have been Siddhartha Gautama. Buddhism resembles revealed religion in another one of its tenets: that throughout history, prophets have come to reveal the same truths to humanity, but after them, human followers have debased these religious truths. Indeed, after Gautama’s death, his teaching may have lost its roots and become distorted in just this way, mixing with the religions and cultures of the countries to which it spread, and assimilating various local myths and superstitions. (But of course, only God knows the truth.)
In such case, doubtless the real biography of Siddhartha Gautama would be much different from the mythological stories about him that we know today. There exist conflicting versions of his life story—a clear sign that the reality may have been probably quite different from the “history” we are now familiar with. Some of the true moral principles that Buddhism promotes lead us to believe that it might have developed from an originally monotheistic religion. Western scholar J. M. Robertson explains the Buddhist belief of the “chain of prophets”:
[Buddhism] did not claim to be a new teaching. The tradition holds that it had been promulgated many times before—that Gotama [sic] was only one of a long series of Buddhas who arise at intervals and who all teach the same doctrine. The names of twenty-four of such Buddhas who appeared before Gotama have been recorded . . . It was held that after the death of each Buddha, his religion flourishes for a time and then decays. After it is forgotten, a new Buddha emerges and preaches the lost Dhamma, or Truth.14
All of this suggests that Buddhism could be one of the perverse, distorted beliefs that came to degenerate in the wake of the prophets. On the other hand, Buddhism’s set, conservative structure reminds one of the classic distortions that can occur during the degeneration of the true religion.
In the Qur’an, God says that Christians and Jews have fallen into the same trap and have smothered their religions with useless minutiae and prohibitions. For example, erroneous ideas in Buddhism about withdrawing from the world and subjecting one’s self to pain also arose in Christianity as it degenerated through the years. God speaks of this error in the Qur’an (57: 27):
Then We sent Our Messengers following in their footsteps and sent Jesus son of Mary after them, giving him the Gospel. We put compassion and mercy in the hearts of those who followed him. They invented monasticism—We did not prescribe it for them—purely out of desire to gain the pleasure of God, but even so, they did not observe it as it should have been observed. To those of them who believed, We gave their reward, but many of them are deviators.
Buddhism may have been a true religion that was ruined after the development of a priesthood. It has certainly degenerated much more than Judaism or Christianity. However much these two religions have been distorted over the course of time, still they are devoted to God’s revelations and found their faiths upon Him. Even if the essence of Buddhism actually comes from a true source, it has completely departed from that essence and become smothered in superstitious ritual, with only a few true moral principles left.
Buddhism resembles the monotheistic faiths of Judaism, Christianity and Islam in another way: It, too, believes in the End Times and in one ultimate savior for humanity—Jews and Christians know him as the Messiah; and for Muslims, he is the Mahdi.
The End Times is the period immediately preceding the Last Day. Both the Qur’an and the sayings of the Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace) contain a number of indications that in the End Times, Islamic morality will spread throughout the whole world. The Qur’an says that Jesus (peace be upon him) did not die, that he was not killed but was raised to the presence of God while he was still alive, and that he will come to earth again. The Prophet Muhammad (may God bless him and grant him peace) also announced the good news that Jesus will be sent to the world again, and in those End Times while he is here, the world will be filled with peace, justice, well-being, and prosperity. The Prophet’s sayings reveal that the Mahdi will assist Jesus in his blessed work. (For a more detailed account, see Harun Yahya’s Jesus Will Return, Ta-Ha Publishers, London, 2001.)
In the Prophet’s sayings, the End Times are divided into two distinct periods. In the first, God will be openly denied; the number of people living according to the values of religion will be few; the cost of living and distress from material want will be great. There will be famines. People will suffer from natural disasters; injustice will be widespread, wars and conflicts will increase, and pitilessness and cruelty will dominate over love, mercy and compassion. Afterwards, humanity will be saved from the godless and irreligious philosophies that are the real source of all their anguish and turn to the values of religion. As a result, conflict, injustice and cruelty will come to an end. Instead of anxiety and repression, humanity will live in comfort, peace, security and prosperity. The whole world will be filled with plenty and abundance.
In Islam, as well as in Judaism and Christianity, there is the belief in the Mahdi, the Messiah, and the End Times. The Bible—made up of the Old Testament (the Torah and other Jewish writings) and the New Testament (the four gospels and other books and letters)—offers several descriptions of the end times. The gospels especially deal with the coming of Jesus (peace be upon him) and show important parallels with what is written in the Qur’an and in the sayings of the Prophet (may God bless him and grant him peace).
Although the name of Jesus does not occur in the Old Testament, of course, the Hebrew Bible does foretell a Messiah as a savior from the lineage of David (peace be upon him). And in some places in the Old Testament there are mentions of what will happen at the Time of the End. The Messiah, whose coming is promised and about whose deeds are spoken of in the Old Testament, is—as in the Qur’an—Jesus. Apart from the title “Messiah,” this person is called by other descriptions such as “king,” “lord” and “most holy.”15
The Old Testament speaks of the Messiah’s coming, and much is said about the kingdom he will found on earth. Some of the essential things said about him are that he will gather the nations under his rule, that he is of the lineage of David (peace be upon him) and that he resembles his ancestor, David (who in his own time, established his dominion everywhere he went). Some of these relevant passages from the Old Testament are as follows:
The adversaries of the Lord shall be broken in pieces; From heaven He will thunder against them. The Lord will judge the ends of the earth. He will give strength to His king, and exalt the horn of His anointed. (1 Samuel 2: 10)
And in the days of these kings, the God of heaven will set up a kingdom that shall never be destroyed; and the kingdom shall not be left to other people; it shall break in pieces and consume all these kingdoms, and it shall stand forever. (Daniel 2: 44)
Behold! My Servant whom I uphold, My Elect One in whom My soul delights! I have put My Spirit upon him; he will bring forth justice to the Gentiles. He will not cry out, nor raise his voice, nor cause his voice to be heard in the street. A bruised reed he will not break, and smoking flax he will not quench; he will bring forth justice for truth. He will not fail nor be discouraged, till he has established justice in the earth; and the coastlands shall wait for his law . . . I, the Lord, have called you in righteousness, and will hold your hand; I will keep you and give you as a covenant to the people, as a light to the Gentiles, to open blind eyes, to bring out prisoners from the prison, those who sit in darkness from the prison house. (Isaiah 42: 1-7)
But with righteousness he shall judge the poor, and decide with equity for the meek of the earth; he shall strike the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips he shall slay the wicked. Righteousness shall be the belt of his loins . . . (Isaiah 11: 4-5)
The New Testament gives much information about the Second Coming of Jesus to the world:
I go to prepare a place for you. And if I go and prepare a place for you, I will come again and receive you to myself; that where I am, there you may be also. (John 14: 2-3)
This same Jesus, who was taken up from you into heaven, will so come in like manner as you saw him go into heaven. (Acts 1: 11)
Therefore if they say to you, “Look, he is in the desert!’ do not go out; or “Look, He is in the inner rooms!” do not believe it. For as the lightning comes from the east and flashes to the west, so also will the coming of the Son of Man be. (Matthew 24: 26-27)
Iurge you in the sight of God who gives life to all things, and before Christ Jesus. . . that you keep this commandment without spot, blameless until our Lord Jesus Christ’s appearing, which He will manifest in His own time, He who is the blessed and only Potentate, The King of kings and Lord of lords, who alone has immortality, dwelling in unapproachable light, whom no man has seen or can see, to whom be honor and everlasting power. Amen. (1 Timothy 6: 13-16)
The kingdom that will come into being with the second coming of Jesus will be a period of justice, wealth and high morality:
Blessed are the meek, for they shall inherit the earth. (Matthew 5: 5)
In this manner, therefore, pray . . . “Your kingdom come . . . .” (Matthew 6: 9-10)
There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out. They will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down in the kingdom of God. And indeed there are last who will be first, and there are first who will be last. (Luke 13: 28-30)
As we mentioned earlier, Buddhism also foretells and expects a savior-messiah. Buddha said that 1000 years after him, the Metteya (or Maitreya) would come and bring divine mercy to the whole universe; and with his coming, religion would reach its completion. The following are some examples of this expectation from Buddhist writings from two different countries. First Burma:
Buddha said: “Our cycle is a happy one, three leaders have already lived . . . The Buddha supreme am I, but after me, Maitriya comes. While still this happy cycle lasts, before its tale of years shall lapse. This Buddha, called Metteya, shall be supreme chief of all Men.”16
Now, from Sri Lanka:
I am not the first Buddha [awakened one] who has come upon the Earth, nor will I be the last. In due time another Buddha will rise in the world, a Holy One, a supreme enlightened one, endowed with auspicious wisdom embracing the Universe, an incomparable leader of men. . . He will reveal to you the same eternal truths, which I have taught you. He will establish his Law [religion] . . . He will proclaim a righteous life wholly perfect and pure, such as I now proclaim. His disciples will number many thousands, while mine number many hundreds. He will be known as Maitreya.17
Notes
1. Sahih Bukhari
2. Sahih Bukhari
3. Buddhism, The Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. 3, Copyright © 1908 by Robert Appleton Company Online Edition Copyright © 1999 by Kevin Knight, http://www.newadvent.org
4. Edward Washburn Hopkins, The Religions of India, Ginn & Company, pp. 319-320
5. Dr. Ali Ihsan Yitik, Hint Kokenli Dinlerde Karma Inancının Tenasuh Inancıyla Iliskisi (The Relation of the Idea of Karma in Indian Religions with the Idea of Reincarnation) , pp. 130-131
6. Sean Robsville, Arguments Against Buddhism, http://www.geocities.com/scimah/argumentsagainstbuddhism.htm
7. Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, p. 74; Vijitha Rajapakse “Buddhism in Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics: A note on a Victorian evaluation and its comparativist dimension,” Philosophy East and West, vol 35, no. 3 (July 1985), p. 298
8.Thomas Henry Huxley, Evolution and Ethics, p. 90; Vijitha Rajapakse “Buddhism in Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics: A note on a Victorian evaluation and its comparativist dimension,” Philosophy East and West, vol.35, no. 3 (July1985), p. 301
9. Ryhs Davids, Buddhism-A Study of the Buddhist Norm, (London, n.d.), p. 79; Vijitha Rajapakse “Buddhism in Huxley’s Evolution and Ethics: A note on a Victorian evaluation and its ‘comparativist dimension’,” Philosophy East and West, vol. 35, no. 3 (July 1985), p. 299
10. Jason DeBoer, “Sublime Hatred: Nietzsche’s Anti-Christianity,” http://www.absinthe-literary-review.com /archives/fierce6.htm
11. Jason DeBoer, “Sublime Hatred: Nietzsche’s Anti-Christianity,” http://www.absinthe-literary-review.com /archives/fierce6.htm
12. Robert G. Morrison, Nietzsche and Buddhism: A Study in Nihilism and Ironic Affinities, Reviewed by David R. Loy. Asian Philosophy, Vol. 8, No. 2, (JUly 1998), pp. 129-131, http://ccbs.ntu.edu.tw//FULLTEXT/JR-EPT/ loy.htm
13. Michael Baigent, Richard Leigh, Henry Lincoln, Messianic Legacy, London: Corgi Books, 1991, p. 184
14. “Buddha as Fiction” excerpt from Pagan Christs, by JM Robertson, Dorset Press
15. Psalms, 149:1-9; 145:1-17; 110:1-7, Isaiah 66:13-4, Daniel 9:23-4
16. Henry C. Warren, Buddhism in translation, p.481-82
17. John Hogue, The Messiahs, The visions and prophecies for the second coming, Element Books, p. 35
18. Conway Zirkle, Evolution, Marxian Biology and the Social Scene, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959, pp.85-87
19. Conway Zirkle, Evolution, Marxian Biology and the Social Scene, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1959, pp.85-87
20. K. Mehnert, Kampf um Mao’s Erbe, Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, 1977
21. Sidney Fox, Klaus Dose, Molecular Evolution and The Origin of Life, W.H. Freeman and Company, San Francisco, 1972, p. 4.
22. Alexander I. Oparin, Origin of Life, Dover Publications, NewYork, 1936, 1953 (reprint), p. 196.
23. “New Evidence on Evolution of Early Atmosphere and Life”, Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society, vol 63, November 1982, p. 1328-1330.
24. Stanley Miller, Molecular Evolution of Life: Current Status of the Prebiotic Synthesis of Small Molecules, 1986, p. 7.
25. Jeffrey Bada, Earth, February 1998, p. 40
26. Leslie E. Orgel, “The Origin of Life on Earth”, Scientific American, vol. 271, October 1994, p. 78.
27. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, The Modern Library, New York, p. 127.
28. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 184.
29. B. G. Ranganathan, Origins?, Pennsylvania: The Banner Of Truth Trust, 1988, p. 7.
30. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species: A Facsimile of the First Edition, Harvard University Press, 1964, p. 179.
31. Derek A. Ager, “The Nature of the Fossil Record”, Proceedings of the British Geological Association, vol 87, 1976, p. 133.
32. Douglas J. Futuyma, Science on Trial, Pantheon Books, New York, 1983. p. 197.
33. Solly Zuckerman, Beyond The Ivory Tower, Toplinger Publications, New York, 1970, pp. 75-94; Charles E. Oxnard, “The Place of Australopithecines in Human Evolution: Grounds for Doubt”, Nature, vol 258, p. 389.
34. “Could science be brought to an end by scientists’ belief that they have final answers or by society’s reluctance to pay the bills?” Scientific American, December 1992, p. 20.
35. Alan Walker, Science, vol. 207, 7 March 1980, p. 1103; A. J. Kelso, Physical Antropology, 1st ed., J. B. Lipincott Co., New York, 1970, p. 221; M. D. Leakey, Olduvai Gorge, vol. 3, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1971, p. 272.
36. Jeffrey Kluger, “Not So Extinct After All: The Primitive Homo Erectus May Have Survived Long Enough To Coexist With Modern Humans,” Time, 23 December 1996.
37. S. J. Gould, Natural History, vol. 85, 1976, p. 30.
38. Solly Zuckerman, Beyond The Ivory Tower, p. 19.
39. Richard Lewontin, “The Demon-Haunted World,” The New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997, p. 28.
40. Malcolm Muggeridge, The End of Christendom, Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1980, p. 43.
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أَلَمْ تَرَ إِلَى الَّذِينَ أُوتُواْ نَصِيبًا مِّنَ الْكِتَابِ يُؤْمِنُونَ بِالْجِبْتِ وَالطَّاغُوتِ وَيَقُولُونَ لِلَّذِينَ كَفَرُواْ هَؤُلاء أَهْدَى مِنَ الَّذِينَ آمَنُواْ سَبِيلاً 
…But it is in its reality and in its interior a call to permissiveness, to decay and (to) factors of turmoil, and disintegration in societies, and to the splitting of the handholds of nations and to the destructive, subversive annihilation of the edifice of legal injunctions and noble characteristics (morals) and the corruption and destruction of civilization (culture)…
In this essay we will examine the life and work of Edgar Cayce, often called “the sleeping prophet.” He was a demonically inspired prophet and healer very popular in the sixties and seventies. Today his influence is stronger than ever as he helped pave the way for the popularity of “channeling.”
