If the topic is about skeptics, MN60 discusses such views.
The first grouping that you made is the group that I wanted to address. To me, this verification is an important step in accepting not only the teachings, but learning in general. Gravity isn’t seen, yet I’ll try to dodge a falling branch without fail. In the same way, something like kamma is apparent enough to verify – we can recall our actions and their results and apply this recollection to our future actions.
It would seem that most people aren’t coming to Buddhism from a vacuum, and have been intimate with faith at some point in their past. While points about our ignorance, specifically regarding us not being aware of that which is not known to us, hold logical merit, the specific instances of those things which we really don’t know yet are understandably as difficult to explain to others as the idea of germs was a millenium ago. While universally accepted now, the idea of germs in the past would have cast much doubt upon the person making the claim. It is important to note that such a claim would be one claim in a sea of claims, most of which would be invalid and forgotten (survivalship bias?). If we were to believe in germs a millenium ago, we would have probably been just as liable to believe in the other claims which were proven false. Building from this point, with realizing that ignorance is a factor in our choice, this boils down to one of the following conclusions; we accept none of the claims (obviously useless in pursuit of the dhamma), we accept all of the claims (useless, as well, if we accept Jain ideas and other contemporaries that the Buddha specifically challenged), or follow a claim on blind faith. Following it on blind faith again exposes us to making a choice arbitrarily – one choice among a sea of many. A common comment about the dhamma, at least from newcomers, seems to be that they regard the dhamma and its teachings as empirical – again, things like impermanence, not-self, etc. – and this empirical nature doesn’t require blind faith. The empirical nature gives direction in choosing between the claims, and seeing those things like impermanence by direct experience seemingly removes having to arbitrarily choose something to believe it. It can be seen and verified with confidence. This is a point where the cosmology seemingly diverges from something that is empirical to something that should be taken on faith.
If I ever gave speech which indicated I think this or believe this, then I was certainly very inarticulate wasn’t I. Rather, the claim is that we’ll never know with certainty any direct information about the people living 3000+ years ago who left behind no extent written records.
It is rather like finding a recipe 500 years ago for delicious pie. We date the paper the recipe was written on to 550+ years ago. The recipe itself states that it is several thousand years old. So we follow the recipe and find that it is indeed delicious pie. So delicious in fact that it makes all newer recipes seem bland in comparison. Now, what’s important is the recipe and the fact that we can follow it and see if it produces what it claims to produce. Whether or not the recipe really is several thousand years old or not really doesn’t matter nor can we ever know this. Something like that. 
Depends on which Buddhism you are looking at. This is orthodox Buddhism. It is just one mode of a very large and highly diverse religion. In some Buddhisms, mandalas present cosmologies and yet lead to emptiness. In other Buddhisms some devotional people seek Buddha-kṣetra in which all obstacles to nibbana are removed and from there can be obtained. The put their faith in other Buddhas, not the one you are familiar with. In some Buddhisms people are bodhisattva incarnate. In some Buddhisms people believe in gods, spirits and other things. Additionally, there are Buddhisms that are not “faith based,” whatever that actually means, but are, rather, practice intensive, severe, and limited to select practitioners who have surrendered to that particular path.
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The result of following the teaching here is a completely new way of acting with body and speech - ‘doing’ - and with mind - ‘thinking’. And this result is exactly the same for every arahat, from those of ancient times, to those of today, to those of the future. To arrive at the right view is to become an arya - to arrive at doing and thinking as other aryas have done and thought. So a person who’s arrived at the right view can know exactly how those people of the past were doing things and how they were thinking. The only way you can know for yourself that you’ve really arrived at the right view is to know that you’re actually able to do things and think in the way it should be according to the suttas - out of non-greed, non-aversion, non-delusion, out of direct knowledge and understanding of what dukkha is and how to uproot it.
Even the practice of following uposatha is about imitating the way arahats act and think. - See AN9.18
So, yes, we can know exactly how people in the past did things and thought. What’s more, it is our duty to arrive at exactly the same way of doing things and thinking as the arahats.
But how does one know when its the 8th and 15th day of fortnight?
You can google “uposatha calendar 2024”. There are lots of sites with such calendars, either for online reading or downloading as an image file or pdf.
If you’re involved with a Buddhist group that’s affiliated with some particular Asian country and wish to observe the uposatha on the same day as your friends, then you might want to add the country’s name to your Google search.
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Personally, I use the calendar from Google, in the settings of the web version of which there is an option to connect a calendar with moon phases from a set of predefined calendars with different regional holidays.
No amount of evidence would convince Westerners of the existence of devas, re-birth, and so on. Even if someone told you they saw a deva, Westerners would say it was probably an illusion, the brain deceiving you, and so on. It is the same with re-birth, there are dozens (if not hundreds) of documented cases, but it is of no use if you refuse to look into it.
I can’t figure out if this is a claim to omniscience or you’re just playing devil’s advocate or? Is it your contention that arahat or arya’s achieve omniscience or approach it?
Do you believe there are beings walking around who could tell us definitively the oral pronunciation and spoken word sounds of the Buddha? Could they tell us what the weather was like at a specific latitude and longitude in the Buddha’s time and whether the Buddha took shelter and in what way for that specific weather? What precise robes he was wearing down to the thread count and how it was made and where? Could they report on the animals and beings that made the robes that the Buddha was wearing when he took shelter from that specific weather at that precise latitude and longitude? Do you believe they could answer the myriad minutiae suppositions that are possible to question regarding the people and actions of thousands of years ago who left behind no extent records?
Or is all of that minutiae unknown and unknowable like the pie recipe that claims to be thousands of years old but whose precise provenance can’t actually be known that nonetheless produces excellent and delicious pie?
Not just an excellent and delicious pie, but the pie: exactly the same and the only possible pie with such and such qualities - exactly the same way of thinking and doing things; not a recipe, but the recipe: exactly the same and the only recipe to make this pie - the N8P.
As I said earlier, please don’t make these generalizations. It doesn’t help the discussion.
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The Buddha clearly accepted the existence of Devas. If you have faith in the Buddha, then you accept them. Strangely I find many secular Buddhists rejecting Devas etc because of a lack of evidence, yet they willingly accept such a thing as nibbana.
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Now @Ceisiwr why would you say that? We have all sorts of problems with Creationists, Evangelicals and Fundamentalists in NA who truly believe that the world is 7000 years old, that the Rapture is coming soon or is even right now upon us, because of their faith in the bible as God’s Word. We can even just look at Catholicism, without getting all southern gothic. Dogmatics are not a good thing.
So, why would you encourage this type of fundamentalist mindset in Buddhism? Especially when it produces personal suffering, extremism and violence.
I suspect that the word ‘faith’ is doing a lot of the heavy lifting and different people have very different ideas about what this word means.
Some people define faith as a kind of certainty based on trust. They feign to know things based on faith. This idea of faith as a kind of knowing based on trust can lead to huge problems.
Others define faith as a lack of knowledge based on trust. In this telling, faith is a sincere and honest statement of not knowing and yet carrying on in certain actions or manners based upon trust.
For me, faith is not a form of knowing and claims otherwise lead to immense confusion and miscommunication.
But if you’d say there are no devas, would you then also say there’s no heaven and the opposite, no being reborn spontaneously, no ascetic rightly practiced who sees these?
Wouldn’t that be the definition of wrong view? If so that it the reason why say those things. MN60 talks about this in detail.
PS: MN60 does not force people to have right view I believe, but it states if one believed the opposite it would be not good. If one is undecided then its better to have ethical conduct nonetheless.
“There is” as in making a categorical statement about something that is an article of faith for several religions not just Christianity would simply be to invite dispute. In Canada we have freedom of belief, conscience and religion, among other things. As long as people don’t break laws and/ or harm other people they are free to follow their journey as they like.
Faith in the Dhamma means faith, or trust, in a person, namely the Buddha. I recommend Rupert Gethin’s “The Buddhist Path to Awakening”.
I don’t think anything I said necessarily leads to a fundamentalism. Faith in the Dhamma is trust in the Buddha and his awakening. The Buddha clearly thought kamma, rebirth and Devas existed so…
I’m not so sure about that. There is certainly a secular approach that downplays and redefines nibbana:
What I’ve found slightly strange in some contexts is when the concepts of devas, rebirth, and even nibbana are dismissed, but one is urged to do such things as “feel your connection with the forest and mountains”.
On the other hand, what are we to make of religious texts that appear to be in stark contrast with modern knowledge about the physical world, whether from Christian or Buddhist sources?
In my view, both Batchelor’s Secular approach and the sort of Fundamentalist approaches that Meggers refers to are a result of reading the texts through a modern lens. For the Secularists, only the parts of the text that conform to modernity can be “true” and “useful”, the rest is dismissed. For the Fundamentalists the texts are known to be “useful” (from experience and/or faith) and therefore they must be “true”.
Since I don’t have personal knowledge of the culmination of the Path, my reconciliation is that the texts are useful and so they should be taken seriously, but there is no need to see them as presenting the same sort of knowledge as modern science. Their truth does not have to be the same as physical models of matter and energy. That doesn’t make them useless. Quite the opposite. I’ve had a lifetime of learning and teaching about such things as quantum mechanics and relativity. Such knowledge is enjoyable, and technologically useful, but I don’t see it as a path to the end of suffering. Why should we expect that the truth that leads to the end of suffering should be modelled on modern physical theories?