Evan Thompson’s critique of my eudaimonistic and probabilistic approach to karma has two prongs: that it is not really karma, and that it doesn’t work on its own terms. I addressed the first criticism last time. Now I’d like to turn to the second, which I personally find to be the more interesting and important of the two.
Let us start with the word “probabilistic”, which I use in a non-technical way. My eudaimonism is a probabilistic claim (as opposed to a deterministic claim) in the same sense that “brushing your teeth will prevent cavities” or “running into the middle of a busy street will get you run over by a car” are probabilistic claims. That is, we assert that these causal correlations are likely, not certain. In the case of the busy street, I’m not sure we have a detailed statistical model of how likely you are to get run over by a car, but I don’t think we need one. Everyday observation is sufficient to determine that. In the case of virtue and happiness, I’ve mentioned a couple of ways that Śāntideva says one leads to the other, in this life; there is a lot more to say about it, and I intend to say it in my book – not with a statistical model, but again I don’t think that’s necessary. This is what I mean by “probabilistic”. I’m not wedded to that specific word: so far “probabilistic” has seemed the most appropriate word to express the concept in question and I haven’t been convinced that it isn’t, but I wouldn’t mind expressing the concept just described with a different term if a better one is available.
If I read Thompson’s objections on that point correctly, though, I don’t think they are about a statistical model or its absence. Rather, his bigger concern is this: “Normative concepts operate in the logical space of reasons—the logical space of being able to justify what you say in relation to norms and values. The concept of probability, however, is a descriptive one that operates in the logical space of causes.” This is a Sellarsian way of making a sharp fact-value distinction, and I don’t think that such a sharp distinction is tenable. Without the kind of connection between facts and values that eudaimonism provides, I think that moral claims are left without any rational foothold – any reason for us to follow them. A Kant is powerless against a Nietzsche, but an Aristotle (or a Śāntideva) is not. For when normative claims are held to operate in an entirely separate space from the world of cause and effect (as they are in Kant), one has good reason to ignore those normative claims and do whatever one was going to do anyway; the normative claims are left as an empty “you just ought”, unable to motivate. In my view, this is a problem that eudaimonism does a great deal to solve. It gives us reason to be good, starting from the motivational set we already have.
Now Thompson also says “the proposition that good and bad actions are more likely to produce experienced good results, and bad actions are more likely to produce bad experienced results isn’t obviously true as a general empirical proposition about the world. Maybe it’s true, and maybe it’s false.” That criticism – that eudaimonism might not be factually true – is an extremely important one, and I have acknowledged that the arguments I have made so far against it are insufficient on their own. That’s part of the reason I’m writing a book, and it’s my intent that this proposition will stand or fall on the book’s case – some of which, I’m sure, will be developed in this space over the next couple years. There is plenty to return to in the future, which is itself a sign of the productiveness of this discussion.
I do need to say at least a little about it now, though, in order to clarify what I’m claiming. First, Thompson treats the claim that good actions bring about good results as separate from the claim that they generate pleasant mental states. I don’t. I think that mental states, characterized above all by less suffering, are among the most important of the good results – for Śāntideva and for myself. (Thanks to this conversation, though, I am realizing that “pleasant” is not a wide or powerful enough term for them.)
That leads me into the second point, where Thompson asks why a eudaimonistic claim would be true, if it were indeed so:
Is it true because of some inherent causal power on the part of good and bad intentions, as traditional Buddhists believe? (Mādhyamikas are an exception, because they deny that anything has inherent causal powers.) Or is it true because of social and political structures that regulate human behaviour? If the latter factors carry more of the causal weight, then eudaimonistic karma loses causal relevance in proportion.
A major intent of my dissertation on Śāntideva was to understand him on his own terms. How exactly does karma work, for him – including in our future lives? To scientifically minded people like Thompson and myself, the supernatural causality involved in rebirth is weird enough that it’s tempting to write it off as mysterious unexplainable wooj: it’s some inherent causal power, and we can’t really say anything about which such power. But we do not need to write the supernatural causality off in this way entirely, for Śāntideva provides us with at least some sense of how he thinks karmic rebirth works. Charles Goodman’s chapter in Jake Davis’s A Mirror is for Reflection shows us how even Śāntideva’s passages about rebirth in the hells are often written in such a way that the suffering caused to the agent in hell mirrors the suffering caused to the agent in worldly life. (As is the case in many readings of Dante’s Inferno.) A man who engages in sexual misconduct will continue being reborn in a hell where he is devoured by women made of iron and fire, because his lust continues to drive him toward them. One who murders will be reborn in a hell encircled by enemies, alone and friendless. Goodman points out that similar fates likely await murderers in this life, in ways that go well beyond the punishments meted out by social and political institutions:
Quite obviously, once you start murdering people, the number of friends who will stand up for you and help you diminishes rapidly, while the number of enemies you have (starting with the SWAT team) increases just as rapidly. Even more significant, the murderer comes to perceive the world as a hostile and threatening place, full of enemies. No one can be trusted; anyone could stab you in the back at any time. This world, in this life, becomes a harsh realm of conflict, full of fire and demons. The murderer comes to perceive the Earth as a hell. (Goodman 134)
Goodman’s point here – an extrapolation from Śāntideva’s writing on rebirth – is a start (and I recognize it’s just a start) to answering Thompson’s important objection about a hypothetical person who enjoys tormenting young animals (or children) because of the pleasant mental states that the act gives in the moment. As with tobacco or cocaine, the pleasures offered by such experiences do not come in isolation; they are part of a larger package of harmful mental states, as well as social consequences not limited to institutions.
Furthermore, the Dalai Lama, in the passage I quoted earlier, makes it explicit that the causal process involved in rebirth is a function of mental habits and dispositions, the same ones that are at the heart of eudaimonism. That is, the habits that have led us to internal bads in this life manifest in the world at the time of death and rebirth, leading us to external bads in the next life. Once we understand the causal power that guides rebirth in the works of Śāntideva and the Dalai Lama, we see how it is closely connected to the causality of habit and psychology that (we eudaimonists claim) underlies eudaimonism in this life.
So – the big question – does such a view hold up in this life? Again I think the truth of eudaimonism stands in part on the claim that a great deal of human flourishing is constituted by the internal goods, including good mental states, that virtue brings – rather than the kind of external goods that social and political structures can provide. If our focus is primarily on the latter, then yes, eudaimonism is likely hard to sustain. (I think Thompson and I may be mostly in agreement on that point.) The Stoics and Epicureans manage to be determinist eudaimonists without believing in rebirth, specifically because they take external goods to be valueless. I do not take their strong ethical stance, though I do think that their stance is very close – closer than mine – to that of traditional Indian Buddhists. (On this point I disagree deeply with Goodman: Śāntideva, just like the Stoics and Epicureans, views virtue as the truly valuable thing, with external goods and bads being a side benefit at best. That’s why he, like most classical Indian Buddhists, views political participation as fruitless.) I do, however, think that the traditional Buddhists, Stoics and Epicureans have realized a crucial truth: external goods are much less important to our well-being than human beings in most ages generally tend to think they are. To live a good life we need to turn our focus to the internal causes of our suffering, and the virtue that helps heal it. It is in that respect that I believe a this-worldly eudaimonism to be both plausible and Buddhist.
Again, there is much more to be said. But I will leave the discussion there, for now at any rate. It has been tremendously thought-provoking, as well as enjoyable, for me. I hope that it has also been so for Thompson, and for our readership. My thanks to Thompson again.
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Amod, I recently came across this interesting quote in a chapter by Daniel Nicholson [“Reconceptualizing the Organism From Complex Machine to Flowing Stream” in Everything Flows: Towards a Processual Philosophy of Biology (Oxford University Press, 2018)] who writes on the philosophical underpinnings of biology: “The thermodynamically grounded fact that organisms need to keep acting in order to keep existing helps to account for the emergence of a rudimentary form of normativity in nature … It is because its existence depends on its own activity that an organism must act in accordance to the operational norms that enable it to persist through time. If the organism stops following these norms, it ceases to exist. What this means is that it is in principle possible to objectively specify what is intrinsically ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for an organism (that is to say, what is and what is not in an organism’s ‘interest’) by evaluating its activities according to the contribution they make towards the preservation of its organization in far-from-equilibrium conditions.” I like his grounding of normativity in the biological nature of organisms, and while normativity is different for paramecia and humans, I think normativity should ultimately be grounded in sociobiology. i.e., what does it mean for creatures-such-as-us (who must live within a functioning social order that can help promote flourishing) to properly develop, thrive, and flourish. Just a thought to toss into the mix as you think through your book.
What Seth said supports Amod’s rejection of “a sharp fact–value distinction” above. Also note that although natural selection is not explicitly mentioned in the passage that Seth quoted from Nicholson, it is implied: “If the organism stops following these norms, it ceases to exist.” What Nicholson called an organism’s “operational norms” are also its operational forms, and those forms were naturally selected over the history of life: unsuccessful forms ceased to exist. So again we see, as we have discussed before, that from a naturalistic perspective human norms and practices—even Amod’s “eudaimonism in this life”, i.e., in a single organism’s life history—are best understood in the larger context of the entire history of life.
The argument of a biological ground for normativity is a common one, shared by thinkers from MacIntyre (in Dependent Rational Animals) to Ayn Rand. I think it is probably mostly true for nonhuman lifeforms.
Human beings, though, have the ability to reflect on and change their values and ends: not just reason about what will achieve the goals, but reason about what is worthy. I think our initial starting point is with biological value – when we are infants – but just the language we learn from our fellow humans, and the lessons they teach us in that language, already begins to change our values from the biological starting point even as young children. By the time we are able to engage in philosophical reflection we are able to move further away. I don’t think we ever fully lose the biological grounding – that’s what, say, Kant and even Hegel don’t get – but we do end up somewhere very different from the basic biological ground for value that a mushroom or even a horse has. I think part of this is important for qualitative individualism: while different dogs do have different personalities and therefore different needs, those needs do not include a need to express themselves. This is the point where my disagreement with MacIntyre is strongest, on qualitative individualist grounds: what is normative for each of us is not reducible to what is normative for creatures such as us (even though as with any universal, there is something that unites the particular cases).
Amod’s point that “what is normative for each of us is not reducible to what is normative for creatures such as us” is well taken, but that too is an evo-devo-eco biological truth: evolutionary-developmental-ecological processes diversify populations of reproducing entities and their cognition, which results in, for example, a diversity of cognitive values among individual humans such as importance, centrality, and priority.
Along with evolutionary divergence of forms, there is also evolutionary convergence: similar (analogous) forms evolved independently in different lineages, due to environmental and physical constraints such as the one that Nicholson mentioned in the passage that Seth quoted above. Here I would note that human beings may not be the only living beings who “have the ability to reflect on and change their values and ends”—some birds such as corvids are pretty smart, and their intelligence is likely an example of convergent cognitive evolution.
“Reducing” normativity “to what is normative for creatures such as us” amounts to only considering evolutionary and developmental convergence into similar (analogous) forms: that is bad biology as well as bad philosophy. A complete account of norms and practices and cognitive values can’t ignore evolutionary-developmental divergence. Evolutionary developmental complexity could explain value if one had a complete enough account of evolutionary developmental complexity—unlike Ayn Rand.
What Amod may find most objectionable in Seth’s comment is the word “ground”, and if “ground” were to mean single foundational normative axiomatic principle it would indeed be wrong (though I don’t think that’s what Seth meant). This was well explained in a paper I once read: Katinka Quintelier, Linda Van Speybroeck, & Johan Braeckman (2011), “Normative ethics does not need a foundation: it needs more science”, Acta Biotheoretica, 59(1), 29–51.
Nathan, you are correct about what I meant about “ground.” I also think the human abilities Amod finds most relevant to ethics (reflection, reasoning) emerged over an evolutionary time scale from more basic biological functions common to all organisms. This is not to deny a large degree of variation in individual humans in terms of how they can best realize the good and flourish, so yes, Amod, kudos to qualitative individualism. Nevertheless, I think there are basic human inheritances common to most members of the species that serve as the biological anlagen out of which our more mature ethics are developed. In this way, I am in partial agreement with the Chinese philosopher Mengzi who talked about an orginal common nature that are the “sprouts” for our more mature adult moral intuitions, although these are also shaped by cultural, familial, and personal experience, and finally reflection. Thanks, also Nathan for the reference to Quintelier et al. I look forward to reading it.
So I’m looking back at Seth’s first quotation on this from Nicholson: I completely agree that organisms’ need to act “helps to account for the emergence of a rudimentary form of normativity in nature”. Where I really disagree with it is in that last sentence: “it is in principle possible to objectively specify what is intrinsically ‘good’ or ‘bad’ for an organism (that is to say, what is and what is not in an organism’s ‘interest’) by evaluating its activities according to the contribution they make towards the preservation of its organization in far-from-equilibrium conditions.” The logic of those sentences is pretty much exactly what Rand says. And there’s nothing wrong with it in the first sentence, which specifies a rudimentary form of normativity – but in the last sentence they go way beyond that, to say that what is objectively good and bad for an organism is what preserves its organization. On that account as quoted, there is no way to say that, for example, altruistic sacrifice could be the good thing for a human (or other organism) to do. (Rand would approve.)
I’m also extremely skeptical of the claim that corvids have the ability to reflect on and change their values and ends. Of course they are smart enough to think intelligently about what will achieve those ends and adjust accordingly, but to change the ends themselves? To start out valuing (say) sexual pleasure over longevity, and then think about the issue, and via that reflection, decide that they should be aiming at longevity instead? Let alone decide on reflection to take on new ends that they hadn’t already previously valued?
Agreed: I was too frivolous with the corvid example. It was a poor setup for what I really wanted to mention, which was convergent cognitive evolution. Certainly a corvid’s cognitive world is radically different (divergent) from yours and mine. There is evidence of metacognition in our closer relatives among other animals, but I don’t know of any examples in other animals of the kind of value clarification through “second-order” reflection that you emphasized.
I’ve looked at Nicholson’s chapter, and the passage that Seth quoted above should be read in the context of the chapter’s purpose of differentiating between organisms and machines. A couple of sentences before the quoted passage say: “The indissoluble bond linking existence to activity in organisms and other dissipative structures obtains because their operation is directed inwardly, towards the generation and maintenance of their own organization. The operation of machines, by contrast, is directed outwardly, towards the production of something external to themselves.” One can’t say that something is “intrinsically good or bad” for a machine in the way one can say that of a living organism. This doesn’t imply that altruistic self-sacrifice for the sake of other organisms is bad, because the self-sacrifice is for the sake of another, or larger, intrinsic good. In contrast, for Nicholson there would be no such intrinsic good for machines.
The problem of the evolution of altruism has been in my opinion pretty much solved by now (see, for example, Samuel Bowles’s and Herbert Gintis’s A Cooperative Species, which I mentioned in a comment on a previous post), to the shame of Ayn Rand. By the way, when I said “unlike Ayn Rand” in my comment above, I could have added “or me”, since I don’t think I have “a complete enough account of evolutionary developmental complexity” either. The question of how exactly to explain the emergence of human reasoning seems to me to be still controversial, as seen, for example, in discussions about Hugo Mercier’s and Dan Sperber’s The Enigma of Reason.
Amod: A thought occurred to me about your use of the word “probabilistic”, which you tried to explain above. You said you use the word “in a non-technical way” to mean “likely, not certain”, so a “detailed statistical model” is not necessary. This reminded me of what a linguist said about the ordinary English word “probably”, which she called an “epistemic adverb”, in: Anna Wierzbicka (2006), “PROBABLY: English epistemic adverbs and their cultural significance”, in English: Meaning and Culture (pp. 247–297), New York: Oxford University Press. This is in a section of the book titled “Anglo culture reflected in English grammar”. The abstract says:
“English has a much larger repertoire of epistemic (sentential) adverbs than other European languages, possibly indeed without parallel in other languages of the world. The set of these adverbs includes the following: probably, possibly, clearly, obviously, presumably, evidently, apparently, supposedly, conceivably, undoubtedly, allegedly, reportedly, arguably, unquestionably, seemingly, certainly, and in American English likely. As this chapter discusses in some detail, this rich repertoire of epistemic adverbs developed in English gradually… The cultural concerns reflected in the two categories are essentially the same, and in both cases they can be linked with the post-Lockean emphasis on the limitations of human knowledge… The legal scholar Larry Solan (1999) has observed that British ’17th century thinkers, influenced heavily by John Locke, developed an epistemology that differentiated among various kinds of evidence.’ It is shown that in the English-speaking world, this epistemology differentiating among various kinds and degrees of certainty has had an impact on ordinary ways of speaking, and on the English language itself, and this impact continues to this day.”
Take your example of “how likely you are to get run over by a car”. Saying that “running into the middle of a busy street will get you run over by a car”—probably—may be saying: “Well, since I don’t know exactly what the conditions will be if you run into the street—for example, how fast the cars are driving, whether the pavement is wet, whether you are dressed in bright clothing so drivers can see you, how quickly drivers will react, whether there will be a break in the stream of traffic—I can’t say for certain that you will get run over…”
In summary, I wonder if your use of the word “probabilistic” is just the adjectival form of “probably”, and so could be called an “epistemic adjective”? If so, Wierzbicka’s cultural history of the English word “probably” may be relevant.
That’s entirely possible. Again I’m not making a whole lot hang on the word itself: the point is that virtue leading to flourishing is typical, prevalent, likely, and is so enough to make it worthwhile for nearly all human beings to cultivate habits of virtue. The contrast being drawn with classical Buddhist thinkers for whom (because of rebirth) the virtue-flourishing connection is definite, certain, inevitable, an ironclad law. If other people seem to share Thompson’s reservations about “probabilistic” then I probably just want to look for another word, whatever the history of English “probably” is.
I am a newcomer to this interesting blog on Wisdom. Since Wisdom is a quality I hold to be of great relevance, especially in our chaotic modern world, and the blog invites even strangers to leave comments, I am taking the liberty of making a few observations:
As someone from outside the Buddhist tradition, I am looking forward to reading Prof. Thompson’s book, Why I Am Not a Buddhist. From what I have read about the book on this blog, it seems to me that Prof. Thompson has been quite sympathetic to Buddhism, unlike Russell towards Christianity.
I have certain reservations about some aspects of Buddhism which I am expressing below, and would welcome responses from those who are well versed in the tradition.
– As a belief system, certain doctrines in Buddhism like Karma and rebirth seem problematic to me. The evidence for them seems very fragile. The doctrine of Karma seems to mistake fortune for virtue, and lack of fortune for lack of virtue. Also, in the Indian historical context, the doctrine of Karma seems to have been a powerful ideological tool for legitimizing an unjust social order. The doctrine could also have the effect of reducing empathy for those less fortunate, if we are all held to be “responsible” for our own conditions.
– The Buddhist world view seems to be based on the belief in a tight chain of causation. Both Hume, as well as Quantum theory, seem to have problematized causation. For Kant too, it doesn’t seem to lie outside of the human mind.
– Buddhism’s concept of Nirvana, a final/absolute solution to the problems of human existence, seems rather simplistic. It’s view that all craving/desire is illegitimate also seems open to question.
– Buddhism, as a religious/spiritual system, doesn’t seem to leave much space for a Creator God. Like other belief systems without a Creator, it could easily end up as man/creature worship, which may have pernicious consequences in practice, such as leading to a “God delusion”.
– The Buddhist doctrine of non-self may not necessarily lead to a better/more moral world. If I don’t “really” exist, then neither does the other person. This belief could have dangerous consequences. Also, an emphasis on altering one’s inner attitude, rather than on changing social structures, seems to hand over a powerful ideological tool to those wishing to uphold an unjust status quo.
– To sum up my reservations, Buddhism seems to fall between two stools- that of science and that of religion. It seems to be neither entirely one nor the other. That is why I am looking forward to Prof. Thompson’s book, since he seems to question the claims of Buddhist “exceptionalism”, as well as that all Buddhist beliefs are in sync with those of modern science.
This is a great set of questions/criticisms about the family of traditions that we call Buddhism—and all of the questions/criticisms mentioned above have been discussed in the vast literature about Buddhism. I will point to just a few examples here.
The criticism of nirvana, and the resolution of it in past Buddhist thinking, is addressed right at the start of Herbert Guenther’s book From Reductionism to Creativity (Boston: Shambhala, 1989, p. 2), where Guenther wrote: “Essentially, path is a dynamic notion, and its process character became ever more evident in the course of the development of Buddhist thought. The path thus became synonymous with the unfolding of an individual’s potential rather than being conceived of as merely a ‘way out’. This latter connotation continued to dominate Buddhist thought only so long as a static world view prevailed, in which creative participation on the part of the individual was seen as minimal and where the only alternative to stagnation was escape into a ‘state’ that remains without consequences. This ideal state was that supposed to be attained by the arhant in early Buddhism. The emphasis on mind/mentation, not only as a dynamic factor, but as an operational system, is already present in early Buddhist thought, where it initiated a further probing into the dynamics of the system and paved the way for a new vision of reality and the human being’s embeddedness in it. This does not mean that the old model was simply discarded; rather the old model was incorporated into the new one and given a new meaning.”
The change in meaning over time that Guenther summarized in that passage applies not only to nirvana but to many other Buddhist concepts. But since older meanings were also preserved and may be preferred by some Buddhists and promoted by them as the one true meaning, it would be easy to see “Buddhism’s concept of nirvana” (or other concepts) as “simplistic”. But this would be to deny that any creativity or development occurred in the Buddhist traditions over thousands of years.
The question about whether “all craving/desire is illegitimate” in Buddhism can be addressed, for example, by a passage from a Mahāyāna Buddhist sutra called the Inquiry of Ugra (Ugrapariprcchā) wherein the Buddha told lay practitioners to think toward others: “I will act, accomplish, and exert myself in order to fulfill your desires and those of all beings” (from: Jan Nattier, A Few Good Men, Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, p. 259). On a related topic, there is a passage in Thich Nhat Hanh’s book The Heart of the Buddha’s Teaching (Berkeley: Parallax Press, 1998, p. 22) that explicitly denies that craving/desire is the source of all suffering in Buddhism: “Another common misunderstanding of the Buddha’s teaching is that all of our suffering is caused by craving. In the Discourse on Turning the Wheel of the Dharma, the Buddha did say that craving is the cause of suffering, but he said this because craving is the first on the list of afflictions (kleshas). If we use our intelligence, we can see that craving can be a cause of pain, but other afflictions such as anger, ignorance, suspicion, arrogance, and wrong views can also cause pain and suffering. Ignorance, which gives rise to wrong perceptions, is responsible for much of our pain. To make the sutras shorter and therefore easier to memorize, the first item on a list was often used to represent the whole list. The word ‘eyes’, for example, is used in many sutras to represent all six sense organs and ‘form’ is often used to represent all Five Aggregates (skandhas). If we practice identifying the causes of our suffering, we will see that sometimes it is due to craving and sometimes it is due to other factors. To say, ‘Life is suffering’, is too general. To say that craving is the cause of all our suffering is too simplistic. We need to say, ‘The basis for this suffering is such and such an affliction’, and then call it by its true name.”
Something similar to the criticism that Buddhism “could easily end up as man/creature worship” is addressed, for example, in Nicholas Gier’s book Spiritual Titanism: Indian, Chinese, and Western Perspectives (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000). Gier shows how some of the Buddhist traditions avoided deifying human beings, thereby avoiding a “God delusion”.
The proposition that Buddhism is not a religion but instead “between two stools—that of science and that of religion” is countered right at the start of Bernard Faure’s book Double Exposure: Cutting Across Buddhist and Western Discourses (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004, p. ix), where Faure wrote: “Buddhism, lofty philosophical thought that, however, manages to keep its feet on the ground, provides us with a way of overall thinking about what, to us Westerners, is characterized by an antimony (that of ‘faith or reason’, ‘idealism or materialism’), for, as we will soon see, in the realm of Buddhist double truth, there is no excluded middle; the old choices are wide of the mark. In the first place, Buddhism is not only a philosophy, but also a religion, and not just the kind of purified and unpindownable religion, cut off from all context and all true transcendence, that is known as spirituality. No: a real religion, with its myths and its rites, its cosmology and its mysteries. And, as if that were not enough, it is also—indeed, some would say above all—a psychosomatic discipline, a technique both spiritual and mental…”
The sources I cited above provide some support for my claim that all of the questions/criticisms mentioned above have been discussed in the vast literature about Buddhism. Certainly other very different responses are possible, but this sample of sources shows that Buddhism is a very complex source of wisdom if we take into account its whole historical scope and continuing development.
Thank you, Nathan, for that interesting response. If Nirvana can be understood as “the unfolding of an individual’s creative potentials”, then I can have no further reservations about that concept.
By craving/desire being “illegitimate”, what I was implying was that even if craving does lead to suffering, it can still be justified/legitimized in certain instances. For example, it may be better to crave the well being of a person one is close to, and suffer pain on that account, rather than avoid the suffering by giving up the craving?
Regarding the “God delusion”, I have sometimes noticed Buddhist monks being treated with such awe and reverence, that it seems to be a kind of “worship” which could be detrimental to them, to their followers, as well as to others outside the tradition who do not regard them in such high esteem. From a theistic point of view, only the Creator is worthy of that kind of worship.
About Buddhism not being a “religion”, what I was trying to say was that Buddhism doesn’t seem to leave as much room for faith as many other religious traditions do- for example, something like Kierkegaard’s “leap of faith”. This is due to the higher degree of rationalizations involved in the Buddhist worldview, which, to me, seems to detract from its status as a “religion”.
Guenther was not saying that nirvana means “the unfolding of an individual’s creative potentials”; rather, that is what “the path” (magga or mārga) came to mean, generally speaking, instead of a path to a final/absolute “way out”. So nirvana was not considered “a final/absolute solution to the problems of human existence” as you said in your comment; it had different meanings in different contexts, and that subtlety and variation is worth considering.
You are correct that “all craving/desire is illegitimate” is not a mainstream Buddhist view. Many Buddhist texts point out that the desire for others’ wellbeing is worthy to be desired. Bhikkhu Basnagoda Rahula pointed out in his book The Buddha’s Teachings on Prosperity (Boston: Wisdom Publications, 2008) that the Buddha taught that the ordinary sensory pleasures of lay life are also legitimate, although as with many other things it’s wise not to overdo it.
What you mentioned about “Buddhist monks being treated with such awe and reverence” is something I have also noticed in Christianity: extreme deference to authorities such as the pope, bishops, priests, saints, etc. Giving “such high esteem” to people with certain social status or other accomplishments seems to be a widespread human social phenomenon, not limited to Buddhism. I have never heard of anyone “worshipping” Buddhist monks.
Śrāddha, an important Buddhist concept, is often translated as “faith”, and can be close in meaning to the Christian meaning of faith. You can read what Amod has to say about faith in this blog, as he has a tag devoted to it: https://loveofallwisdom.com/blog/category/practical-philosophy/emotion/faith/
Thank you, Nathan, for the thoughtful responses. I shall check out the links and other resources you have pointed out.