OK, I Confess

Sorry if I misled anyone. If I really was pressed to identify with a religion, I could say I was a Zen or Theravadin Buddhist, but I don't. The clue that should have given away the joke was the mention of Mahayana Buddhism, which embodies so much of the supernaturalism I reject.

This prank was a response to a couple of posts on Pharyngula.

Someone posted a positive response a comment of mine on Russell Blackford's blog about a reported statement from the Buddha that public statements of faith are political acts. A response to that response said "you aren't going all Buddhist on us, are you?". That attitude needed mocking - that reporting the supposed words of a historical figure associated with religion makes one subject to the accusation of being religious. Even agreeing with the ideas of such a historical figure does not make one religious, especially when the ideas one is agreeing with are about rationality and the rejection of dogma. My comment was mean to indicate the complexity and irony of ideas: that followers of a possibly historical figure we consider religious are trying to promote the idea that faith is not just an intellectual problem, but a problem for the functioning of society. This is yet another way that the idea of religion as most people understand it is a mass of self-destructive contradictions.

I am no more Buddhist for finding what the Buddha said interesting than the historian David Starkey is a Tudor for finding the life of Henry VIII a subject to study.