In the western part of Shanghai, a very modern and flourishing city, there is a venerable and famous Buddhist temple, Jade Buddha Temple. In 1882, an old temple was built to keep two jade Buddha statues which had been brought from Burma by a monk named Huigen. The temple was destroyed during the revolution that overthrew the Qing Dynasty. Fortunately the jade Buddha statues were saved and a new temple was built on the present site in 1928. It was named the Jade Buddha Temple.

The Jade Buddha Temple is a good place to go whether you are a Buddhist or not, the peaceful and transcendent atmosphere adds a kind of richness to our busy modern society.

We were lucky to see some monks chanting and I was able to film a short sequence of the rite:

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The God Delusion

I recently bought the paperback edition of “The God Delusion” by Richard Dawkins. There is additional information about the topics and a discussion forum on his website RichardDawkins.net. The hardcover edition was described as the surprise bestseller of 2006.

Chapter 1 – A deeply religious non-believer
Great scientists of our time who sound religious usually turn out not to be so when you examine their beliefs more deeply. This is certainly true for Einstein and Hawking.

“An atheist in the sense of a philosophical naturalist is somebody who believes there is nothing beyond the natural, physical world, no supernatural creative intelligence lurking behind the observable universe, no soul that outlasts the body and no miracles – except in the sense of natural phenomena that we don’t yet understand.”

Especially Einstein says that he does not believe in a personal God. Further he mentions ” If something is in me which can be called religious then it is the unbounded admiration for the structure of the world so far as our science can reveal it.” Einstein is a religious non-believer.

Theist, Deist and Pantheist
There are a few definitions which help to understand the different ideologies in the first chapter. For example is the difference between the theist and the deist important and interesting. It helps to find what kind of believer you are.

A theist believes in a supernatural intelligence who , in addition to his main work of creating the universe in the first place, is still around to oversee and influence the subsequent fate of his initial creation. A deist too, believes in a supernatural intelligence, but one whose activities were confined to setting up the laws the govern the universe in the first place. The deist God never intervenes thereafter, and certainly has no specific interest in human affairs. Pantheists don’t believe in a supernatural God at all, but use the word God a non-supernatural synonym for Nature, or for the Universe, or for the lawfulness the governs it’s workings. Pantheism is sexed-up atheism.

Einstein used the word “God” many times but it is clear today that he used “God” in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense.

The last part of the first chapter deals with the great amount of respect humans have for religion. For example it is normal to openly discuss ones political or economic interests but to have an opinion (and share it openly) of how the Universe began or about who created the Universe is much more difficult. We are used to not challenging religious ideas. The author gives much more examples to confirm this statement.

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