Dawkins and Buddhism and fundamentalism.

I almost missed this article from the Guardian via the Buddhist Channel, on one Buddhist's take on Richard Dawkins.

Buddhism's principles tend to be fungible, as I've noted elsewhere (maybe not on this blog, but elsewhere). Buddhists can see eye to eye with atheists Christians, Jews, Hindus, and even other Buddhists.

The scriptures do not have to be taken literally, and under many circumstances should not.

But I don't think Buddhism is really "pick and choose" Buddhism (one that ignores the difficult stuff) for many, probably even most Western Buddhists. For most of us, it really is the framework about which a discipline is practiced and cultivated. True there's the Edie Monsoon types who "practice Buddhism almost religiously," but that is not a fair characterization of all Western Buddhists.

Someone somewhere else recently gave me the inference that I was perhaps being to Buddhistly correct in that I was apparently bringing in some reference to Buddhist scriptures in describing some Buddhists' take on the god conception. That's not me, I'd submit. And I'm not like The Zennist either.