in words most eloquent.

[Lanzerus]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HPu7TI-X ... re=related
(warning profuse swearing in the video)

this dude, really needs to get his head out of his ace, he acts like he knows it all and really he knows about as much as the common american when it comes to other/foreign religion, about nothing.

he manages to make his point that he knows very little about this religion in 8 minutes he goes and talks about how buddhism causes people to suffer and that if everyone were buddhist, that people "would die of in h-hundreds, no t-thousands, no not even thousands, it would be MILLIONS"....Its one of those "HELLO IDIOT MILLIONS OF PEOPLE DIE IN ONE DAY ALREADY!"

then he goes about talking about how the dolli lama(sp), is "retarded" because they believe that a child destin to become the doli lama is a re-incarnation of the older one, and that he doesn't understand that buddhism isn't the only religion with reincarnation ideas, besides the bible itself had a ton of chapters removed, notice how it skipped from when jesus was about 7 to about 30? and how this child is "forced"to live on a mountain without beer, sex and temptation, the idiot doesn't even realize that a MAJORITY of religion doesn't quite like the idea of sex, and last time i checked, children aren't supposed to have alchol and sex....

[Stellar]

people do stuff like that just to get their 15 minutes of fame. As long as you and i and other intelligent people know he's full of bs then everythings good

just ignore it since you can't silence it.

[Dracos]

Hey, it's Captain 'O Awesome. Awesome! He's a buddy of mine, if you don't believe me check out the name of my post in the characters forum.

Now, I'm not going to get into a religious debate, but it should at least be pointed out that Captain 'O Awesome is a prominent Youtube atheist, and as such, he doesn't much care for the bible's beliefs on reincarnation. He's not a fan of any religion, so pointing out that an idea is common among religions does nothing to boost its credibility.

Now about alcohol. That's just our society's stigma, which is obviously influenced by religion. The question is, should we really stop children from having alcohol? You may think it's obvious, but in countries with no minimum drinking age, children grow up with alcohol and drink responsibly while in America teens break the law and get wasted regularly. As several people I've known have stated, "Drinking just wasn't as much fun anymore after I hit 21 because I was allowed to do it." Having alcohol be illegal just encourages irresponsibility and leads to crime.

Oh, and about 153,781 people die per day, not anywhere near millions.

[If you want to see a more intelligent Youtube atheist, check out Captain 'O Ordinary]

[Christina Anikari]

Verbally an entire religion and pretty much calling all its adherrents either stupid or evil is not exactly a nice thing to do. Especially given that buddhism exists in quite varied forms and like all religions is influenced by its surrounding cultures. That does not change the fact that buddhism does have some rather nasty sides, such as a rather great fondness for self-mortification and suicide as exemplified by sokushinbutsu, buddhist monks who followed a ritual diet that would litterally starve them to death in such a manner that they would hopefully mummify in death. Information on it is not widely available, but wikipedia has an article on it with sources given (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sokushinbutsu) and this travelogue piece describes the process in more detail. Much the same phenomenon with buddhist self-mortification and denial of the self can be seen in the ritual self-immolation performed by buddhist monks in opposition to the South Vietnamese government in the years immediately before the outbreak of the Vietnam war.

Also Buddhism like most other major religions has also proposed strict caste systems at various times and often been closely allied with a warrior elite. A clear example of this would be the Japanese Sohei, buddhist warrior monks. Clearly a religion possessing warrior monks cannot be entirely peaceful. And by modern day views the Edo period caste system in Japan or the ancient Tibetan caste system are completely and utterly repressive and a hallmark of all that we consider wrong with radical religion.

However, this is not to say that buddhism is worse than other religions or worse than atheism, only that the guy in that video does in fact have a case for what he is saying. That he is doing it like an arrogant, obnoxious fool who has no clue about what he is doing pretty much kills the case for him.

[Dracos]

As I already said, Captain 'O Awesome is a prominent Youtube atheist. He's more of a performer than a debater, really. He speaks to a target audience of atheists who already agree with him, so he doesn't have to convince so much as entertain. Claiming that his demeanor kills his case ignores the fact that people listen to him because of his demeanor. It would be like saying that O' Reilly should change his ways because he makes himself look foolish; for his target audience, he does a great job, which is why he has crazy ratings despite how he acts to guests. In exactly the same way, Captain O' Awesome is one of the top 3 Youtube atheists in subscriptions, the Youtube measure of success.

Like I said earlier, if you want level headed, well thought out arguments on Youtube, check out Captain O' Ordinary. CDK007 is also awesome for reasoned arguments. If you want to be entertained, watch Captain O' Awesome or The Amazing Atheist, but only if you already agree with what they're saying.