Theos-Talk Archives (May 2004 Message tt00210)

It's a serious question.

I am thinking of one of the passages in the Mahatma Letters, wherein KH 
implies very strongly a lack of belief in the Christian (or other 
Monotheistic) version of God. In fact, he suggests that the view of the 
Adepts is quite close to a type of Atheism. They seem to deny the 
existence of a single, isolated Divine Deity separate and apart from His 
creation, which I guess also denies the Dvaita of Vaishnavism. (See 
http://www.dvaita.org/faq.shtml). To me, this is closest to Mahayana 
Buddhism, which apparently adopts a somewhat Atheistic approach.

Atheism seems to follow three forms:

The theistic position is belief in a deity. Then there are two atheistic 
positions. The first, called implicit (or weak) atheism, is a disbelief 
in a deity. The second, called explicit (or strong) atheism, is a belief 
that there are no deities. So what we actually have is:

Theism -- positive claim
Implicit Atheism -- neutral claim
Explicit Atheism -- negative claim

The following link however suggests that Mahayana does not in fact teach 
Atheism (being largely based on Vaishnavism), and suggests instead that 
pure Atheism is to be found in the Theravada school.

http://www.vaisnavi.com/saragrahi/columns/one/one1/pure_land_bhakti_buddhism.htm 

What do you'all think?
--
Paul Gillingwater
Confused in Vienna