Hmm.. to set the bar as high as proving that a religious system is true, is impossibly high. Inevitably we will fall back on some major assumptions and evidence that is largely "internal".binocular wrote: ↑Thu Mar 28, 2019 2:06 pmNo no no, I'm not talking about placebos and useful fictions.Dan74-MkII wrote: ↑Wed Mar 27, 2019 6:29 pmThere is some element of the "pudding proving itself, even if it is not a pudding, but believed to be a pudding", kind of a self-justifying belief system plus the placebo effect of religions and all those psychologically beneficial and enjoyable factors you list.
Notice that I did not say they are all the same.But saying that " Beyond that, it doesn't really seem to matter which religion/spirituality one commits to." is a massive overreach in my view. It matters a great deal as people who have practiced different religions can readily attest to, but also as one can see by looking at the practices and the underlying belief-systems.This isn't to say that one can rigorously prove one religion to be superior to another, but to rush into the opposite conclusion and say that they are all the same is intellectually lazy, IMO.
I'm saying that if one commits to a religion/spirituality, one will experience it as true, useful, beneficial. If one doesn't experience it as such, then, so the religious/spiritual justification, one has not committed to it. If someone is not satisfied with a particular religion/spirituality, then this is because they have not committed to it, not because said religion/spirituality would be faulty in any way.
But your answer to this seems to be to basically say that therefore they are all the same and what matters is the depth of commitment. I don't think this follows. If you commit deeply to something with Wrong View, like the IS suicide bombers, the results of your commitment will not be wisdom and compassion.
Susam Blackmore, I think it was, described Buddhism as a self-destroying meme (back in the days when a meme was more than a funny picture). The Buddha himself described it as a raft and warned that the teachings were to be used appropriately and not attached to beyond their use. So commitment in Buddhism is a very different thing - it is about doing moreso than believing. Nagarjuna's expanding the Buddha's teaching of Emptiness makes clear that there is in reality no suffering and no ending of suffering, no birth and no ending of birth and all the concepts we hold to are not the reality. This is, to me, the essential difference between Buddhism and all other religious systems. It spells out its own provisional nature and urges us to awaken to reality, rather than worship the Buddha and make a fetish out of his teachings. We may well do that and perhaps that can have some provisional beneficial effect, but it's not the point.
So what does commitment mean in Buddhist practice? I think it means first and foremost training the mind in ethics, contemplation and wisdom, which includes sharpening awareness and eventually dropping all assumptions, beliefs, conceptual and other attachment, even notions like commitment. As Blackmore said 'a self-destroying meme.'