A Critique of Monk Ilmuk, Part 2 — The Monk Who Insists That Heavenly Realms and Hell Exist, Without Even Knowing What the Problem Is

What Is Wrong with Claiming That Heavenly Realms and Hell Exist?

This is the second part of my critique of monk Ilmuk. I titled it “The Monk Who Insists That Heavenly Realms and Hell Exist, Without Even Knowing What the Problem Is.” I do not simply mean that his views differ from mine. He claims that these realms actually exist without recognizing the problem involved in making that claim. If he understood the problem, he could not so casually declare their existence. Yet he does. I take this to show that he understands neither Buddhism, science, nor philosophy.

The video we will watch is one of Ilmuk’s short Dharma talks, asking whether the three realms—including heavenly worlds, the human world, and hell—should be regarded as actually existing. Its description says that Buddhist practice aims at complete freedom from the suffering of repeatedly being born and dying through rebirth in the three realms. It presents the view that these realms are real and that difficulty proving them scientifically does not make them untrue. To the question of whether they are a teaching device or a reality, the answer is reality.

This criticism is not confined to Ilmuk as an individual. It also concerns those who believe in the real existence of rebirth, the three realms, heavenly worlds, hell, asuras, and hungry ghosts, including the Theravada, elder tradition, or Southern Buddhism that calls itself early Buddhism. Why does this Buddhism, reimported and spread from the island south of India, make such claims? Because they appear in scripture. But must we believe something simply because it is written there? That is the question I want to clarify today.

The original video lasts nine minutes and thirty-six seconds. At our usual playback speed of 1.5, it should take roughly seven minutes. Even if it is frustrating, let us hear the entire argument before criticizing it. I found it frustrating myself. I intended to pause over a few points, watch the whole thing, and then gather the central issues. In practice, so many statements could not be passed over that I had to stop repeatedly.

Question the Choice Between a Teaching Device and Reality

The questioner says that she has read Ilmuk’s account of rebirth in early Buddhism and found its systematic explanation of the three realms helpful. She then asks whether the realms actually exist, physically or mentally. Or did the Buddha describe them in ways suited to people’s capacities, to make his teaching easier to understand? Might they be stories and metaphors for levels of mental development? Although the book seems to say that they really exist, she wants clarification.

We need to pause here. Both the questioner and Ilmuk share the same major premise: words written in scripture are the Buddha’s words. Neither questions whether they might not be his. If heavenly realms seem like ancient superstition, the question becomes whether the Buddha used stories that ancient people could believe as a teaching device. The possibility that someone else wrote them later never enters the choices.

Whether the subject is a heaven within the desire realm, hell, animals, hungry ghosts, the form realm, or the formless realm, the structure is the same. Is it a useful fiction told for the listener’s benefit, or does it really exist? I propose a third possibility: the passage may be in scripture yet be a story fabricated by later writers rather than the Buddha’s words. While we choose between two answers, the premise we should question first disappears.

I have said that we cannot even know whether the Buddha was a historical individual. Even if we assume that he was, judged against various important teachings within Buddhist scripture, these accounts are very likely to be teaching devices, falsehoods, stories, or later writings. Before asking why the Buddha said something, we must ask whether it was actually his statement.

Religion That Trains People with Carrots and Sticks

The questioner goes further. Although she thinks the three realms ought to exist, she observes that religions have long sustained themselves by frightening people away from wrongdoing and encouraging good deeds through hope. Hell and hungry ghosts are frightening; heavenly worlds are desirable. If these are invoked to make people accumulate good karma, how is Buddhism different from other religions? I find this a sharp question. The questioner is pressing the more precise point.

They threaten you with hell after death if you do wrong and wave the candy of heaven if you do good. Candy and punishment, carrots and sticks: people are trained as horses are trained. As long as the message is that rebirth and karma send good people to good places and bad people to hell, the structure is no different from other religions. What is different? Nothing. Yet the answer keeps moving elsewhere.

Why Write That It Exists If There Is No Way to Prove It?

Ilmuk says there is little way to prove whether the three realms exist as physical worlds. The problem appears immediately. Why did he write that they exist if he has no way to prove it? He first makes the claim, then admits that he cannot substantiate it when asked for grounds. What, then, are all the explanations that follow? To me, they are excuses.

He explains that the formless realm is not a physical world and consists of beings without matter. Beings without anything material—what are they? Has he verified them with his eyes? Has he seen them at all? How does he know they exist? Saying that the desire and form realms are understood physically while the formless realm is different does not explain what the speaker has verified or how.

Invoking the Three Knowledges While Denying Deification

Ilmuk then says that the Buddha did not describe himself as possessing omniscience; the correct description is someone endowed with the three knowledges. These are knowledge of past lives, the divine eye, and the ending of the taints. He explains the first as remembering past lives however remote, and the divine eye as knowing how beings die and are reborn. The Buddha thus knows existence before the present and sees death and rebirth.

Even setting aside whether any of this is factual, it is strange to assign such powers and then evade the issue by saying that this is neither a god nor omnipotence. If someone knows past lives and sees the deaths and rebirths of other beings, how does that differ from a god? I also want to note the selection of three knowledges rather than a discussion of all six supernatural powers. A different label does not remove the problem of deification.

The usual account of the divine eye that I know is different again. Like clairvoyance, it supposedly allows someone to see places beyond ordinary eyesight—even events on the opposite side of the Earth—in real time. I pointed to such a description in the Discourse on the Fruits of the Contemplative Life. Other passages may describe it differently. Rather than treating one scriptural description as a verified ability, we should first examine precisely what is being claimed.

I Do Not Treat the Four Truths, Eightfold Path, and Twelve Links as Original

Ilmuk says that explaining why beings are born, die, and are born again is central to Buddhism, and that the Four Noble Truths and twelve-link dependent origination explain it. The Four Truths also bring in the Eightfold Path, described as the final truth, the path. I state my conclusion in advance: I regard all three—the Four Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the twelve links—as later constructions rather than Buddhism’s initial form. My position is that they were formulated at least after the Buddha’s death.

Dependent origination did not begin in the twelve-link form. There are formulations with six, seven, eight, nine, and ten links. I regard the six-link version as close to the earliest and argue that further links were added over time. Later writers kept revising it, adding ignorance and then birth and aging-and-death to what had not contained them. Why add birth and death? To explain rebirth.

Dependent origination was not originally a framework for explaining rebirth. Birth and death are added to force rebirth into it. I call this Frankenstein: a monster assembled from assorted parts. In my view, it is a later fabrication rather than Buddhism. I raise the same issue about the Four Truths and the Eightfold Path, but I will not unpack their entire history here. That belongs to another discussion.

What Would a Human Live By Without Craving?

According to Ilmuk, craving drives the production of good and bad karma. People want to do things for their children or themselves and obtain what they desire, so they keep acting. While desire remains, they do good and bad things, and become connected to a body matching their mental state in the next life. An animal-like mind leads to animal rebirth; a noble meditative mind leads to birth as a noble being in the form realm.

Does completely stopping craving then stop rebirth? I ask whether that would make us stones. As humans, we eat when hungry, defecate when we need to, and try to breathe when we are suffocating. We want enjoyable food, too. Can human life be explained through the complete elimination of desire? Are we to erase the conditions of living and acting, then call that Buddhism’s goal?

The Logic of Domination Inside the Phrase “Noble Being”

I stopped particularly at the phrase “noble being.” This goes beyond merely being non-Buddhist: it is anti-Buddhist. On one side are holy, good, noble beings; on the other are lowly, bad beings. Heavenly worlds, hell, and hungry ghosts are evaluated through that division. But is a spider lowly? Is a dog lowly? Are humans noble? Who draws that distinction, and by what standard?

I have often said that I dislike the instruction not to discriminate. That does not mean we should remain trapped in human divisions between noble and lowly. This is a thoroughly human yet presumptuous judgment. The moment we say that we must be born noble, we turn that judgment into an order of the world. Look at where such thinking leads.

Even among humans, someone born wealthy, attractive, and equipped with conventionally desirable advantages becomes noble. Someone born poor, facing hardship, living with a disability, or judged unattractive becomes lowly. I am successful and rich because I did well in a past life; that person was born into hardship because they did wrong. People ask whether such circumstances could arise without a reason, and assign someone else’s suffering to their supposed past-life faults.

The logic of rulers and vested interests is embedded in this concept. The Brahmin declares himself noble. I discussed how the word ariya includes the meaning “noble,” and how that meaning is blended with being Aryan. The Brahmin priest is supposedly nobly born, while commoners and the military class carrying weapons must obey him. “I am noble; you are lowly” is ingrained to the bone. That logic is repeated under Buddhism’s name.

Extraterrestrial Life and Holograms Are Not Evidence for Heavenly Realms

Ilmuk says that, from a position of trust in the Buddha, he accepts that the Buddha taught what he knew and saw; he does not regard it as falsehood or a mere teaching device. Yet he cannot prove it to the questioner. Immediately afterward, he adds that there is considerable possibility of life other than humans in the universe. If he cannot prove his claim, should he not stop there? Why bring in something entirely unrelated?

What connects the possibility of extraterrestrial life to the existence of heavenly realms or hell? Are we supposed to be reborn light-years away? Is the suggestion that people in the Buddha’s time envisioned rebirth somewhere far out in space? The universe’s vastness and the possibility of other life do not verify heaven, hell, personal karma, or another life. Joining unrelated issues does not produce evidence.

He also says that time may flow differently elsewhere and that natural science has an innovative view of the universe as something like a hologram. Again, we must distinguish things. Ideas about multiple dimensions or holograms, proposed through mathematical conditions or thought as possible ways things might exist, are hypotheses. Without generally accessible observation, they remain hypotheses. I criticize the practice of invoking them as established facts of natural science.

What is a hypothesis? A conjecture, a guess, an idea, an imagining. We can use different words, but its lack of observation remains. Someone who does not understand science borrows its name. He then invokes The Matrix and says that our universe is merely a hologram. What hologram account is he claiming The Matrix gave? I cannot tolerate this habit of attaching any convenient statement to an argument.

Ilmuk goes on to say that changes of mind through karma can form matter, as in what is called spontaneous birth, and that the lack of present verification does not justify calling this untrue. We return to the same sentence: because it has not been established, we must not say it does not exist. But the detour through holograms and extraterrestrial life has supplied no evidence for spontaneous birth or rebirth.

“You Cannot Say It Does Not Exist”: The Grammar of Superstition

This is the sentence I hear most often from believers in superstition: “You cannot say it does not exist just because it has not been observed.” Yoon Hong-sik said the same thing before. Ilmuk says it now. After all the nonsensical digressions, he finally calls it a matter of faith. What is faith? A believing mind. Since it can neither be proved nor observed, one must simply believe. But why should I?

Would you believe me if I said Quetzalcoatl actually exists? What if I said the universe contains Odin and Thor, as in Norse mythology? What if I said you must die in battle to enter heaven, be taken by a Valkyrie, and otherwise go to hell? Those claims cannot be observed either. If each person says, “You cannot say it does not exist,” whose account should we believe? If inability to check a claim allows every claim through, the reason to believe only one’s own religion disappears.

Ilmuk even calls it dangerous to say something is untrue because present science cannot understand it. Dangerous to whom? To frauds who claim the existence of things that cannot be observed. People call themselves Maitreya, a returned Jesus, or the Jade Emperor and claim to see the future, past lives, and souls. Those who demand rituals, money, or people’s bodies use the same logic. In this reasoning, what distinguishes them from Ilmuk and the Theravada that calls itself early Buddhism?

There is no difference in asserting what cannot be observed and demanding belief. That is why I say that faith is Buddhism’s least necessary word. Buddhism is not a religion of being told to believe; it is a religion of questions and doubts. Does a god really exist? Is there an afterlife? What am I, and can an “I” continue to exist? If there is no atman, how can I be born elsewhere after death and go on living? Does everything change while I alone continue unchanged?

What matters in Buddhism is questioning and doubt, not certainty and self-evidence. It is not “This is certain; believe it.” Buddhism does not want even the smallest amount of your faith. Belief that stops questions cannot replace a practice of questioning.

Dragging Einstein and Quantum Physics into the Argument

Ilmuk now turns to Einstein. He says that even the century’s greatest genius disliked quantum physics, declared that God does not play dice, and could not accept the probabilistic existence of electrons. Einstein’s physical laws do not work in the quantum world, he says, while the radically different quantum physics has made some Buddhist claims more acceptable. Why does Einstein enter the discussion now? Does the speaker understand Einstein or quantum physics at all?

I have called people who bring quantum physics into Buddhist arguments frauds. So often—enough for me to say 99.999 percent—they understand neither quantum physics nor Buddhism. They fail to understand one side or both, and most know neither while attaching Buddhism to quantum physics. Buddhist emptiness has nothing to do with quantum physics, and much of quantum physics rests on observed facts. It cannot justify a demand to believe in an unobserved afterlife.

Ilmuk says science may change as more is discovered and has historically undergone major changes every thirty years. He repeats that calling something wrong or nonexistent because it is not yet precisely established is dangerous. But the fact that science can change does not make his own claim true. He is substituting science’s incompleteness for the grounds he himself should provide.

The Contradiction in Saying We Must Be Born Somewhere Good to Practice

He says that existence through birth contains fundamental suffering: craving produces karma, karma produces another birth, and whoever is born cannot escape suffering. I challenge the formula that all is suffering itself. People take it as Buddhism, but I regard it as a later formulation following the establishment of the Four Truths of suffering, origin, cessation, and path. Why must everything be suffering? Suffering is one aspect of life; can the whole of life be reduced to it?

He continues that beings born as animals or in hell are too occupied with pain to practice. Even humans may struggle to practice when life is too hard, so one must first be born somewhere good. I could only laugh. What happened to the Buddha who was born, lived, and died as a human? By this logic, would it not be easier to become a Buddha in a comfortable heavenly world with less suffering and better conditions for practice?

Ilmuk explains that good karma brings favorable birth, access to necessities, and physical health, creating conditions for growth. The aim is not eternal happiness there, but practice toward liberation and nirvana, so its direction and goal differ from ordinary religions. He describes those religions as seeking birth in heaven and eternal happiness. I question his manner of speaking as if he knows them all. Above all, this explanation does not establish the initial claim that beings are actually reborn in such good and bad places.

No Evidence Is Supplied; We Are Told to Believe

After watching the entire video, this is my central assessment. Ilmuk says the three realms, heavenly worlds, and hell exist, but supplies no evidence of their existence. Ultimately, we are told to believe the words in scripture. Then comes the sentence used by sellers of superstition: “You cannot say it does not exist.” He adds that denying what has not been discovered is dangerous thinking. I regard this structure as anti-Buddhist, anti-scientific, and anti-philosophical—a foundation for producing countless superstitions.

Someone tells a thousand people to stand, sees one person stand, and claims a miracle. A fortune-teller may be wrong for a hundred people, yet one person who finds the reading accurate marvels at its precision. A few statements seem right, so the entire fortune-telling practice seems right. The structure of demanding belief without evidence keeps producing these superstitions. The same thing repeats when a written claim or a few plausible words take the place of checking.

The Undeclared Is Not Merely Unspoken: It Cannot Be Answered

Let us first approach the issue from Buddhism. There is the well-known category of the undeclared. Chinese-language and Northern Buddhist traditions commonly speak of fourteen undeclared questions; Southern Buddhism’s Nikayas commonly speak of ten. Looking at the Chinese term, one may think it simply means that something was not recorded or explained. I think that misses the point. We must understand why it is not stated and why it cannot be answered.

I examined the Pali avyākata and Sanskrit avyākṛta. The initial a is negative. I explained it through negative forms such as English an or un, as in unhappy. I also treated Korean expressions such as aniyo, an dwae, and an geurae as negative expressions of the same root. Pali and Sanskrit are closely related, and one can ask which represents a dialectal form; observing blurred or omitted sounds in Pali, I described it as generally closer to a dialect.

Explaining vyākata as the past participle of vyākaroti gives the sense of something explained, declared, or analyzed. With the negative prefix, it can be rendered literally as unexplained, unanswered, or undetermined. But those translations can still confuse the issue. My emphasis is not that someone chose not to answer, but that an answer cannot be given. It cannot be explained, and therefore one should not answer.

Consider the representative questions. Is the universe eternal or not eternal? Infinite or not infinite? Why can we not answer? Because we cannot know whether it is eternal. Why can we not know? Because we cannot observe it. The same applies when someone asks whether an afterlife exists. Without observation, we cannot know or explain it. To me, this is among Buddhism’s most basic attitudes.

Without understanding this, people keep selling metaphysics, superstition, and falsehood. Buddhist scripture contains this core, but also a vast amount of superstition contradicting it. I even describe it as ninety-nine percent. If we call the core Buddhism, I question whether all the contradictory falsehoods deserve the same name. A shared label does not remove a contradiction in content.

We Observe to Understand Ourselves and the World

Observation is central to Buddhism. One observes dying, contemplates bones, examines one’s mind, and speaks of body, feeling, mind, and phenomena. What is happening in the body? How do thoughts and emotions arise? How do things work? Why observe? To know and understand. In this way we also notice how our own attachment and entanglement cause us distress.

Throw a rock into water and it sinks. However much we wish otherwise, a wish contrary to the way things work does not make it float. However much we complain that the sun rises in the east and wish it would rise in the west, the next day it rises in the east again. People age, become ill, and die; they cannot remain permanent. This is the way things work. Rather than cling to wishes that oppose it and suffer, we should observe the world, ourselves, our minds, and our emotions.

What, then, is not to be asserted? Souls, gods, and a true self. The true self is atman, another version of a soul. If Buddhism speaks of an-atman, what happens when a continuing soul is revived under another name? Imagining something unobservable and declaring that it exists is entirely different from a practice of observation.

The Notions of Self, Person, Being, and Life Point to the Same Problem

People have recently asked about the notions of self, person, sentient being, and life. I explain all four as versions of the same problem as atman. The notion of self is a conception of atman. The notion of person is pudgala, the idea of an individual self. Once the absence of atman is firmly stated in Buddhism, people imagine that there is nevertheless something called pudgala. They change the name and construct something similar.

A sentient being is also called an animate or feeling being, connected with sattva in bodhisattva. People distinguish animate from inanimate things and conceive of something called sentience in living beings. The notion of life is jiva, something like the Jain soul: life continuing through bodily death and rebirth. The Chinese character for lifespan expresses that continuity. I regard all four as ways of reconstructing a god, a true self, or atman.

Can these things be observed? Can gods, souls, and an afterlife be observed? Have you observed the universe’s infinity? If it cannot be observed, an answer cannot be given. Yet scripture gives countless answers to what cannot be answered. Mahayana speaks of Amitabha, Avalokiteshvara, and a future Maitreya; Southern Buddhism speaks of heavenly worlds, hell, asuras, and hungry ghosts. The presence of those stories does not resolve the problem of observation.

A Claim of Seeing Something Alone Is Not Generally Accessible Observation

The observation I mean is generally accessible observation. If someone says they saw a god last night, we must be able to ask how. They should provide the method so that I and other people can follow it and check. If there is a procedure that others can use to verify what was seen, we have a question of generally accessible observation. That differs from insisting that one saw something alone.

Suppose someone says there is a tower in Paris. If they tell me where it is and how to get there by ship or plane, I can go and see it. The Himalayas are similar. Even if I have not visited them, there are photographs and videos, a known location, and ways to get there. Someone who has never been to Seoul can know it exists because others can verify it by following the given method. This does not mean everyone must already have visited.

By contrast, suppose someone claims to have seen an afterlife or left their body, but others cannot reproduce it by following the stated method. If what should be checked and how are unclear, it is a claim of private observation, not generally accessible observation. The same applies to reports of heavenly beings, hell, souls, and ghosts. I cannot see them; how should I look? The speaker demands belief without providing a method.

Can karma be observed? What is it, and where does it accumulate—in the brain, a soul, or heaven? Ask someone who claims to see past lives how the rest of us can see them, and there is no method. Can an account supposedly available to perhaps one person among billions count as generally accessible observation? It is a claim to have seen. Accumulating such claims under the name of scripture does not turn them into observable facts.

I describe most scripture as fairy tales, fiction, and a mass of bullshit. I cannot give an exact percentage. My point is that, by volume, falsehood and fiction are so abundant that I call them nearly ninety percent. Look at the fondness for past-life stories. Teachings centered on observation coexist with endless inventions about the unobservable. We must not ignore that contradiction and venerate everything as the Buddha’s words.

If You Have Supernatural Powers, Float Even a Tenth of a Centimeter

The six supernatural powers present the same problem. People say anyone can acquire them through practice and even speak of touching the sun. I cited the Discourse on the Fruits of the Contemplative Life, which describes the results of becoming a contemplative. It offers some slight negative remarks about powers, then elaborates on those abilities. Touch the sun? You would melt merely approaching it. First float a tenth of a centimeter. Do that, and I will acknowledge it.

If someone demonstrates an ability that we can observe together, we can acknowledge it. But such demonstrations are absent; instead, people claim to have seen past lives. It is hard to establish whether what they saw was a past life, a dream, or a lie. The ability to see the opposite side of the Earth could be tested, could it not? Instead of presenting such an ability, they offer past-life accounts that are difficult to check.

Even a past-life claim could be presented in a testable way: speaking an as-yet-unknown language of a specific period, identifying facts not yet discovered, or clearly describing the Earth a hundred thousand years ago. Yet nobody does that. Without offering testable content, they repeat untestable statements and demand faith. That is the structure I am criticizing.

Stop Demanding Faith: Explain Why Only Your Religion Should Be Believed

Observation and the undeclared are central to Buddhism. The scientific counterpart is that something unobserved remains a hypothesis. The task is not to posit imagined metaphysical concepts—Buddha-nature, a true self, or gods—as existing entities. Yet people busily discuss and sell them. This happens in Theravada selling superstition as early Buddhism and in Northern Buddhism selling Amitabha and Avalokiteshvara. What difference is made by invoking heavenly beings, Sakka, or souls?

If all are equally unprovable and unobservable, why not believe in Jehovah, Quetzalcoatl, or Odin? Why not a kitchen god? If I say a cockroach god created the world, will you believe me? Is it enough to say that only I can see it and you cannot? When inability to verify is treated as a kind of support, a god I invent on the spot occupies exactly the same position.

Please stop speaking of faith. Stop telling us to believe. I have criticized Christianity for discouraging questions and doubts while demanding belief. Now Buddhism is demanding the same thing. I am not merely trying to insult Ilmuk personally. I am addressing a structure through which Buddhism has long deteriorated under the name of religion. What distinguishes talk of miraculous relics and effective prayers from talk of an unverifiable afterlife?

We Need Grounds for the Claim of Existence, Not Proof of Absence

From the scientific side, the central issue is not whether someone declares something absent. The person asserting the existence of something unobserved must provide grounds. If others can verify it, there is no need to insist or demand belief. Give directions to Seoul and let people visit. What sense would it make to say, “Seoul exists, but you cannot observe it, I cannot tell you how to get there, so believe me”?

The same applies to claims about souls, ghosts, heavenly worlds, qi, or a dantian. The problem is the very assertion that something exists when it is neither adequately described nor generally accessible to experience or observation. Rather than object only to “There is no soul,” clarify what object the word soul refers to. If someone claims a world not composed of matter, we must first ask what it is and how they know.

Everyone knows science is not one hundred percent complete. New facts may emerge over time. What matters, however, is scientific thinking itself: the attitude of speaking about what can be experienced and checked. We cannot leap from science’s incompleteness to the supposed truth of superstition in a book. How is science to prove the absence of something that has not even been properly defined? The person claiming it exists must offer a way to check.

The Kalama Discourse Questions Scripture, Teachers, and Our Own Conclusions

Why reject Korea’s Dangun myth while believing gods and souls described in other books? Look at Quetzalcoatl: a feathered serpent with wings and assorted features. People believe it is a god. Why reject Odin but believe only Avalokiteshvara? They are equally unobservable. If I invent a cockroach god, an amoeba god, or a bacterium god as the world’s creator, a demand for belief alone offers no grounds to distinguish them.

What is the famous instruction in the Kalama Discourse? Do not simply believe and follow something because it is written in a book or handed down from the past. Do not accept it merely because a teacher, another person, or someone who appears authoritative says it. It does not stop there. Do not simply accept what seems right through deduction, or even a conclusion reached inductively from experience. My own conclusions must also be examined again.

There is one point I want you to take away today: neither science nor Buddhism asks you to believe. When science says something happens, it shows it. If bringing two substances together produces fire, the reaction can be checked. Seoul’s existence can be checked by visiting. If a vaccine’s effect has been scientifically established, that is not an incantation demanding belief. Apart from the possibility of rare side effects, it is a matter of verifying an effect.

How do we know microbes exist? We look through a microscope and see what was invisible to the naked eye. How do we know Jupiter has moons? Galileo looked through a telescope, and others using the same approach could see Jupiter and its moons too. People had thought everything revolved around the Earth, yet smaller bodies were observed orbiting Jupiter. Had Galileo alone been able to see them, the world would not have changed. Others could verify the observation. That is generally accessible observation.

Why He Does Not Even Recognize the Problem

Modernity rests on scientific thinking. Yet many of us live in the twenty-first century without properly acquiring either scientific or Buddhist thinking, because we have not learned what science is. That is why we hear that something cannot be denied merely because science has not established it. There is no method, no observation, and no proof even for the speaker, yet we must believe it exists. I call that bullshit of the highest order. It is the core of superstition and fraudulent religion.

What science and Buddhism share is a refusal simply to believe, even when something is written in a book. To avoid fraudulent religion and superstition labeled Buddhist scripture, we must revisit the original question. Before asking whether the Buddha spoke metaphorically or described something real, how do we know he said it? Were we there with him? Yet without verifying any of that, people go on to say he saw it through the three knowledges, the divine eye, and recollection of past lives.

That is why my title says he does not even know what the problem is. Ilmuk may well have discussed the fourteen or ten undeclared questions somewhere; they are famous enough. But knowing the terminology changes nothing if one does not understand why the unanswerable should not be asserted. One must understand that an answer cannot be given where experience and generally accessible observation are unavailable, and that even a scriptural passage does not license casually declaring existence.

The problem is not Ilmuk alone. It is the structure of wearing robes, sitting before a Buddha statue, and selling the Buddha; the structure of Southern Buddhism declaring all its scriptures the Buddha’s word and calling itself early Buddhism. Where was this learned? From scripture and the tradition that absolutizes it. I do not recognize a religion selling superstition as Buddhism.

I will return to the Four Truths, the Eightfold Path, and the twelve links another time. Addressing suffering is one important problem in life, but I do not regard Buddhism as a religion centered exclusively on suffering. I view the turn toward declaring all things suffering and seeking total escape from it as a distortion following the establishment of the Four Truths. The Buddhism I speak of refrains from asserting what cannot be answered, observes the world, thinks through dependent conditions, and lives wisely. It means becoming a little wiser each day, breaking through our own misconceptions, and valuing the life we live today.

How Would You Refute My Cockroach God?

While waiting for questions, I pushed the same logic further. You cannot say something is absent merely because you cannot observe it? Very well: suppose I found a new religion today. A cockroach god created the world and plugged eight billion antennae into people’s heads to monitor every action. It judges one movement of a finger bad and another good, then sends people to hell or heaven. What if I teach everyone to live while holding their fingers in a particular position?

If asked how I know the god exists, I answer, “It exists, damn it. Believe it.” It cannot be observed or proved, but it exists. I can say I entered deep meditation and saw it alone: you cannot see it, but I can. How does this reasoning differ from the stories of deep meditation, past lives, and supernatural powers being sold in Buddhism? A structure that gives authority to unverifiable claims inevitably fills with frauds.

Sadly, I say that Buddhism has become a training ground for frauds. Just as Christianity produces countless purported returns of Jesus, Buddhism produces frauds selling enlightenment and superstition. Do not hear only the harshness of that statement; examine what makes such people possible. Once “I cannot prove it, but believe it” is admitted, there is no standard left for stopping anyone who invokes any god.

Abstract Thought, Repeated Learning, and Questioning What Has Shaped Me

Near the end, Malgom offered a comment: since humans can think abstractly, might it be inevitable that they believe invisible things are real? I agreed that abstract thought can be considered a distinctive human capacity. At the same time, we should consider the brain and learning. Just as cattle and other animals are trained with carrots and sticks, humans learn what they may and may not do.

We are susceptible to repeated exposure. Advertising repeatedly teaches us what is good, bad, or beautiful. We inevitably undergo many forms of conditioning. We therefore need to examine what we have absorbed. Have I tried to become a Buddha without knowing what a Buddha is? Have I accepted rebirth because it appears in a book, without considering what it means or whether it can exist? Have I accepted Avalokiteshvara, heavenly beings, and hell in the same way?

If that is how belief works, why not believe in Dangun or the Jade Emperor? Why be selective? Believe Quetzalcoatl and my invented cockroach god as well. Placing them side by side exposes the contradiction. We should ask whether we have been granting special treatment only to the beliefs we happen to know.

The message to take from this lengthy criticism is ultimately one thing: stop demanding belief. Observe and question. Discuss what can be checked, and do not pretend to know what cannot be known. Your participation gives me the strength to continue broadcasting. Have a good Wednesday night, and I will return on Friday with the third part of my critique of Ilmuk. May you become a Buddha.