And by that let me take it further, that he meant reality not dogmatic is the purpose of Spirituality. For reality can only be measured or evaluated when critically investigated and it can provide enlightenment or openness of thinking that most Religions which are dogmatic do not commit to and through the recommendation of the Dalai Lama that they should now commit to. But Science or critical investigation also has its down-side because when radically enforced turns into what Dalai Lama feared, and that is already a sign of dogmatism on the part of critical thinkers because it reduces everything and becomes a form of nihilism.

So all in all, it needs a balance. What are needed are proofs. Not dogmatism, reductionism or nihilism. Dalai Lama simply tries to express that we need proofs and not Scientific reductionism that turns into a nihilist ideology and that Religion should not be dogmatic.

On the other side of the review, I was really disappointed when you (the reviewer) mentioned a Straw Fallacy. I hardly find an idea or expression a straw fallacy when you express it on your own point of view. You as the reviewer seemed to have a prejudiced idea or notion about Science that you attacked Dalai Lama’s expression as a Straw Fallacy. According to Walton’s thesis that Straw Fallacies are committed when there is a shift from a type or context of dialogue to another(also presented in his thesis) which can be found here: http://www.dougwalton.ca/. Since he is expressing his own insight and not performing any dispute (symmetrical dialogue) or dissent (assymetrical dialogue) that I find your review a little bit guilty on bias and therefore, faulty in reasoning. The fault seems to be that you presented you own argument in the review and thus changed the context of an author-reader expression into a dispute. It is because you already have a view that you took it on the side of Science and praised it wholeheartedly that you’ve failed to consider what he is expressing and that is the Science and Religion thesis.

Overall, I would like to thank you for the enlightening review since there are pojnts which are really good. The Karma and God part of the review is one.

Thanks Michael Shermer for your eloquent review of this book.
Mike Huber

What nonscientific method was used to discover this? Did the ‘reveal’ of this fact come from Cthulu?

“Scientists are as corruptible as anyone else. Case closed.”

Too bad your brain shut off so quickly. No one has said scientists are not corruptible (straw man). The problem is that science is a mechanism, not a person. It is designed to weed out bias and corruption as a natural course. None of your examples were discovered by magic. They were discovered because science is not lashed to the corruptibility of a human. Scientists distrust each other more than you do.

Karma is not necessarily tied to reincarnation at all. It functions here and now. The whole problem with reincarnation arises because it really doesn’t make sense if you have that funny idea that there is something that reincarnates, which Buddhism clearly rejects. There are only causes and effects and it is simply as stupid to believe in the first cause as it is to believe in the last, isolated effect.

Of course there is an ongoing scientific debate on the nature of consciousness which affects potential scope of the problem. I recommend reading works of David Chalmers and criticisms by Daniel Dennett and others to draw your own conclusions. Personally, I think that most materialistically biased thinkers (especially those from the atheist-brights camp) either don’t grok the very core of the so-called hard problem of consciousness or are inconsequent in their criticisms.

The word is often used in the context of ‘having good or bad karma’. But again it means nothing mysterious, especially it doesn’t mean that karma ‘exists’ in any way. It is more like a notion of situation that one has worked out through a series of causes and whether this yields a liberating or limiting position. Karma doesn’t imply determinism because you can always re-route the action just as you can choose to wiggle your toe or not right now. I find Buddhism to be the only one so far to deliver naturalistic and logical ground for ethical behavior.

I think that Buddhism being a consequent method to achieve well-defined liberation and enlightenment deserves a better criticism than presented in this article and other alike.