The West is suffering from a disease of the mind called "materialism" in which man is reduced to a soulless automaton of no real worth except as a wage slave. Yet, the great majority of people don't buy into materialism which took sort of a great leap forward with the discovery by Watson and Crick of the DNA structure in 1953 which some believed was the main controller or brain of the cell. Such scientists initially believed that we are preprogrammed by DNA. However, this soon became a short lived hypothesis. Materialism's great triumph soon fell down like a cheap card table. It is nurture that leads. Nature only makes specialized protein suits.
Let’s not forget that materialism is a philosophical theory not a scientific one. Materialism is not a brother of science, either. Science only pertains to how we investigate the external world around us and also the internal world (this is where Buddhism comes into the picture). Science cannot beg the question. It has to investigate with an open and unprejudiced attitude. If science discovers a more adequate model of what our world is really about, including ourselves, which involves the primacy of mind or consciousness, sobeit. That is what we have to go with. And that's the end of materialism. Thus far, science as no clue as to what the universe is made of. It is still investigating. It hasn't ruled out mind stuff.
Turning to Buddhism, it has almost been hijacked by materialists who don't believe in a soul or ātman. They still suffer from a number of false assumptions such as the universe is material which is 'some thing' that in the final analysis is, entirely, indivisible and partless. For if the basis of our universe is infinitely divisible—we are looking at a spiritual universe. Another assumption of theirs is the primacy of DNA, the central dogma that neither mind nor consciousness are necessary. In other words, we as conscious agents don't control our life, our genes do. The worst assumption is Darwinian fitness ideology which is antithetical to the holistic and harmonious structure of our cellular, physical body. The pain and suffering that we go through as individuals in the course of a finite life is a direct result of failing to understand how cellular life works and its ultimate dependence upon non-physical conscious agents. These conscious agents, according to Buddhism, are what transmigrates from one life to the next in an effort to gain final, all-complete knowledge. Buddhism will not long survive if the materialists are not purged from it soon.
I particularly liked this post as well as the previous one about the spiritual body. It touches upon some very profound and interesting scientific questions. I posted links to these posts in my blog dedicated to theoretical biology.
http://psychicgeometry.blogspot.pt/
Posted by: mathesis | December 25, 2015 at 06:52 AM