PART V
BUDDHISM AND SCIENCE
325. Q. Has Buddhism any right to be considered a scientific religion, or may it be classified as a "revealed" one?
A. Most emphatically it is not a revealed religion. The Buddha did not so preach, nor is it so understood. On the contrary, he gave it out as the statement of eternal truths, which his predecessors had taught like himself.
326. Q. Repeat again the name of the Sutta, in which the Buddha tells us not to believe in an alleged revelation without testing it by one's reason and experience?
A. The Kālāma Sutta, of the Anguthara Nikāya.
327. Q. Do Buddhists accept the theory that everything has been formed out of nothing by a Creator?
A. The Buddha taught that two things are causeless, viz., Ākāsha, and Nirvāna. Everything has come ont of Ākāsha, in obedience to a law of motion inherent in it, and, after a certain existence, passes away. Nothing ever came out of nothing. We do not believe in miracles; hence we deny creation, and cannot conceive of a creation of something out of nothing. Nothing organic is eternal. Everything is in a state of constant flux, and undergoing change and reformation, keeping up the continuity according to the law of evolution.
328. Q. Is Buddhism opposed to education, and to the study of science?
A. Quite the contrary: in the Sigālowāda Sutta in a discourse preached by the Buddha, He specified as one of the duties of a teacher that he should give his pupils "instruction in science and lore". The Buddha's higher teachings are for the enlightened, the wise, and the thoughtful.