This book is a rare critique of the Buddhist Tradition. Patrick Foster, a former Buddhist himself, brings to this exploration the tools of professional Religious Studies and Philosophy. Its examination of early Buddhism and later Mahayana are an in-depth study of one of civilization's oldest, largest, and most complex religious traditions. There are four informative appendices on semantics, logic, meditation, and self. Whether you are a practicing Buddhist, a scholar, or someone interested in how religion fits into the modern world, this book will make you think.

The deeper cause for the breakdown of civilization, worldwide, is the absence of meaning in each of our lives. Our historical worldview no longer makes sense in the modern light of reason, science, and evidential thinking, but we have not come up with a replacement. We have thought for millennia that values must come from religious traditions, but modern biology and contemporary philosophy are now in a position to articulate a universal ethic based on the facts of our natural world. Our existing, traditional worldview has been responsible for the alienation in each of us, and until we...