Transcript 63: Is the Dalai Lama an Atheist? Dr. Alan Wallace
February 17th, 2009 adminShow Notes: Is the Dalai Lama an Atheist? Dr. Alan Wallace
Guest: Buddhist scholar and author of the upcoming Mind in the Balance, Dr. Alan Wallace discusses Buddhism and atheism.
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Alex: Is the Dalai Lama an atheist?
“In the framing itself, the question is already skewed. It’s not so obvious to a person who’s totally immersed in western civilization and has almost no glimmering of understanding of anything outside of western civilization. Frankly, so much of the rhetoric, this antireligious rhetoric from the likes of Richard Dawkins and so forth, is just wildly unconsciously and uncritically ethnocentric. Do the Buddhist themselves, and I’m honing in on your question. Do the Buddhist themselves ask are we atheists? Well, I’ve never seen that question posed. In Buddhism that would be regarded as such a dumb and uninformed question that is not even worthy of a response.” — Dr. Alan Wallace
