You are right. Buddhism should NOT become like fundamentalist Christianity. Unfortunately suttas and authoritative commentaries have their incredible statements.Kare wrote:A totally unadapted form of Buddhism is (almost) unthinkable. It would mean an extremely fundamentalist literal belief in every word in every Sutta, and it would only work in a society that is an exact copy of northern India at the time of the Buddha. So we should not complain over adaptions. Adaptions may be good, and they may be bad. The important question is of course this: How well is the adaption done? Does it keep the essence of the Dhamma? And that can of course be discussed (what is the essence of the Dhamma?) ... and discussed (how well is this specific adaption preserve the essence of the Dhamma?) ... and discussed ...
For example in the suttas it talks about sun rotating around the Earth... Also eclipse is said to occur when demon tries to swallow the moon, rain being caused by rain-devas... Nothing to say about hell (which sounds like in Christianity) and being reborn as invisible peace of meat being pecked by crows.
In VsM it talks about size of the earth, and it is TOO big, while the size of the "world system" is closer to Earth + Moon size.
In some commentaries I've read about creatures thousands of miles tall... I almost completely lost my faith (and still trying to recover) except for "Secular Dhamma" sort of thing where you practice and contemplate things that you can accept.
With all the talk about "super powers" they seem to be no match for current Astronomy and biology...
With all the above, am I expected to take cosmological teachings in the suttas seriously?
I don't know who is "worse": Those who take every word in the suttas as gospel truth like fundamentalist Christians, or Secular Dhamma teaching.