Quote:
Originally Posted by photon
Anyway, I think part of it was Buddhists don't have a deity but are a religion.
I don't know enough about Buddhism to comment on what they believe or don't believe, but I'll accept they don't believe in god/s so that makes them atheists by the definition of the word. They may be a lot of other things as well, being an atheist and being a member of a religion are not mutually exclusive; I know Christians who are atheists.
And Buddhism is more than the lack of something, there are a common set of beliefs and such for a Buddhist.
Atheism has nothing like that, there are no tenants, no shared beliefs, no sacred texts, no common history, nothing that would be required to define it as a religion.
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I know next to nothing about Buddhism (and it would be great if someone who did could step in and correct me), but as I understand it, Buddhists do generally believe in an unseeable, supernatural order to the world. In my view, although there may not be a personal God or Gods, that likely would be sufficient to characterize Buddhism or Taoism as a religion. Confucianism is more difficult to characterize (in my very unsophisticated opinion.)