IMO its definitely for the best. If you don’t believe in rebirth, presumably you believe in nothingness (maybe becoming part of the greater physical world, sounds poetic and feels nice to say, but subjectively it would still be nothingness) - which means you don’t think that your intentional actions will have personal consequences which carry beyond this life. This doesn’t mean that the person who denies rebirth will consistently engage in harmful actions, but I think it does mean that their views on what happens at death are not actually pushing them towards taking up more virtuous activities. The belief in rebirth actually helps you to do this, IMO.
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It seems unavoidable that if someone is committed to a certain belief, and is aware of the existence of contrary beliefs, they must at some level believe their own believe is better - otherwise they would believe the other thing instead!
Thank you, Bhante. In my own walk along the Buddha’s path (I’m trying to avoid the hackneyed word “journey”) I am frequently straining to understand points of Dhamma that are presented to me, either in my own reading or from listening to my current teacher, but I am never too distressed by this; in fact, not distressed at all. As a student of Dhamma, I am not overwhelmed at all by the magnitude of the task ahead for me; instead, I feel a kind of wonder at the thought that each time I dip my cup into the ocean of the Buddha’s teaching, for all that I might struggle to comprehend, I am enriched. Secularists can smile at my simple joy if they choose. I also smile but am warmed each time a small ray of understanding opens in my mind.
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Of course, there are places in the suttas where Buddha seems to have been pretty definitive about not doing that.
http://www.accesstoinsight.org/tipitaka/kn/snp/snp.4.05.than.html
On the other hand, in other places in the suttas the approach seems markedly different. Go figure.
Yes, that’s a good point. I have a friend who is a gastroenterologist, and he has been with many older, dying people. He says that frequently they just feel sort of exhausted with life, and have the attitude that the work is done, so to speak, and its quitting time.
Perhaps the attitude is different with the young, where the native biological striving energy is at its most powerful level in them.
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True. But it’s like a scary operation for them. It’s going to hurt, but they may think they are going to be better off later. They get to be kids again, play a bit with a healthy young body, fall in love again, maybe be richer this time - maybe even be a deity.
sure, thank you for your generosity 
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True but then they get to die all over again! no bueno!
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I beg to differ.
2 Corinthians 4:18: So we fix our eyes not on what is seen, but on what is unseen, since what is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.
The Catholic Encyclopedia has a fairly detailed article on this. Basically they acknowledge the role of the senses, but assert the existence of an entirely separate faculty they call the “intellect”, “an immaterial, supersensuous and superorganic power or faculty”, which “differs essentially” from the senses and inference therefrom. The existence of this faculty is essential:
Sensism destroys the foundations of morality and religion. For, as sensists and positivists admit, their theories leave no proof of the soul’s spirituality and immortality; of the existence of moral law, its obligation and sanction in a future life; of the existence of God and His relation to man. Now, history bears witness that these truths are fundamental for man’s religious and moral life.
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difference is buddhism right mystical experience depends on right calm mind dependent on right virtue, ie very specific directions. different means different ends.
I would like to add this related point to the discussion, which I found on another Buddhist forum:
From
https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/70bpip/it_is_not_necessary_to_believe_in_rebirth_in/
[discussing rebirth in Buddhism]
“Early Buddhist teachings are based on the vision of rebirth…this needs to be fully acknowledged in order for us to understand what early Buddhism is teaching but this does not mean that somebody who comes to early Buddhism…that is a requirement…that you have to believe this in order to work with Buddhist doctrine or meditation, there is no question of a belief that is a precondition in order for someone to engage in the practice.”
[someone asks if it is necessary to believe in order to reach nirvana]
"I definitely do not think that it is necessary to believe in rebirth in order to engage fully in the practice up until the attainment of stream entry. That is really not necessary and if you look at Kalama sutta it gives you that sense of engaging in practice and letting certain aspects of the teaching be without immediately taking them on board…
Simply let be as it is and take that part that is meaningful"
from lecture 02 at http://agamaresearch.ddbc.edu.tw/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/lectures2013.htm
You are replying to something I quoted, not what I wrote.
Stream enterer has confirmed confidence in the Buddha, Dhamma, and Sangha - It is hard to imagine they would be seriously entertaining ideas ‘maybe the Buddha got it wrong’ (about rebirth/devas) - Then again, in the Susima Sutta (“Thief of the Dhamma”) there are Arahants who have not recollected their previous births, or seen other beings passing away and reappearing - although I’m sure they didn’t doubt these things.
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Buddhists can justifiably claim that their most important insights are based on empirical observation or experience. These include important aspects of the workings of the mind, the causes of human suffering and ways of disrupting or ending at least some of the causes of suffering. These insights are based on patient observation of the mental phenomena taking place before the mind’s eye, as well as long experience with the effects of meditation and other behavioral practices on the well-being of the people engaging in those practices.
But I’m afraid that in the area of pronouncements on rebirth, Buddhist empirical observation and reason has left the building, and what we are left with are mainly faith-based beliefs, not fundamentally different in kind from the similar faith-based beliefs of Christians and others. Let’s note that there is a gigantic difference between between actually basing one’s belief on empirical evidence, on the one hand, and offering a wildly speculative hypothesis to the effect that someone else had special enhanced mental powers that enabled them to observationally verify that belief in a way no ordinary person can.
Could we say that through “mental development” the Buddha developed his mind into a marvelously powerful observation machine that was capable of seeing all sorts of other cosmic realms, and delineating the global history of rebirths across the eons? Well, I guess so. But by the same token, we could say that perhaps by “mental development” some Near Eastern deity was able to create a global flood; or that by “mental development”, Jesus was able to psychically repair his crucified body and resurrect himself; or that by “gastric development” one of the saints was able to fart a solar system into existence. Or here’s one: maybe by "mental development " some siddha can find all of the CO2 molecules in the atmosphere, and jet a bunch of them out of our atmosphere and into the sun, using only his “mind force”, and thus solving global warming! These possibilities all fall into the same category of wild speculation, with a tinge of megalomaniacal projection. Even though they all appear to evoke some sort of experience or natural process, the belief that such a process is more than a bare speculative possibility, and instead really does or could exist in the actual course of nature, is itself without any evidential foundation, and is based only a bounding leap of faith.
There is a common intellectual response when faith-based belief systems are confronted with the fact that those beliefs systems appear not to be founded on anything evidentially solid. The cognitive dissonance sometimes pushes people to look for increasingly unlikely and intellectually destructive escape hatches. People will often start blaming reasoning and evidence themselves, and start believing in higher, but inexplicable forms of “knowledge” that can support their belief. Or they start blaming a host of cultural enemies that are leading to the downfall or true religion and right thinking. We have seen here many times how lengthy is the list of potential bad guys:
“western” science
"western" rationalism
"western" materialism
modernism
postmodernism
the enlightenment
the renaissance
"scientism"
capitalism
socialism
communism
It’s easy to generate this list, because the same sort of anti-intellectual flailing occurs wherever speculative faith encounters more disciplined and methodical forms of human reason.
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Okay. So you’re not a Buddhist (yet ) I take it? But you like meditation? That is fine!! But other people do have faith in the Buddha, and that’s okay too. And not all of them are “anti-intellectual” or think “western science” is the “bad guy.”
BTW thanks for your well written reflections.
eloquent persuasive language and good writing skills must be looked past to see idea content. otherwise can fall into trap of giving undeserved merit to someone’s opinions based on impression and appearance instead of substance.
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Hi Gabriel,
Unfortunately you misunderstood my point.
What I am trying to illuminate is the fallacious character of all views, and hence the necessity to rise beyond. Views should be seen for what they are: views, and one should neither cling nor attempt to interpret the world according to what one holds to be true. This is what the Buddha calls “a thicket of views; a wilderness of views”. No view can capture any ultimate truth, or true experience. Whatever views a blind man may hold about the experience of seeing, he does not know the experience until at last he can see.
In Ud 6.4 (https://suttacentral.net/en/ud6.4/0) - the wonderful simile of the blind men and the elephant - the Buddha makes this characteristically clear:
There were some ascetics and brāhmaṇas who were of this argument, this view: “The individual exists after death—this alone is the truth, all else is foolish.”
But there were some ascetics and brāhmaṇas who were of this argument, this view: “The individual does not exist after death—this alone is the truth, all else is foolish.”
There were some ascetics and brāhmaṇas who were of this argument, this view: “The individual exists and does not exist after death—this alone is the truth, all else is foolish.”
But there were some ascetics and brāhmaṇas who were of this argument, this view: “The individual neither exists nor does not exist after death—this alone is the truth, all else is foolish.”
They lived contending, quarelling, disputing, attacking each other with sharp tongues, saying: “Such is Dhamma, such is not Dhamma; such is not Dhamma, such is Dhamma.”
This was precisely what I wished to illuminate. All views - being views - cannot appropriate any ultimate truth.
Here your reasoning is not correct. The notion that any particular view holds eminence over another is nothing more than an inherent self-bias, usually based on cultural inclinations, traditions, and deeply held self-accreditation. But this in no ways makes it any more true. Early man held the view that “the earth is the centre of the universe.” Now, if another man were to come along and contest this with his own view - say, that “the earth rotates loosely about space”, then for the first man to say: “My view remains true because the onus is on you to prove yours” is clearly fallacious reasoning. Whether or not the second man can provide any proof does not make the first man’s view that “the earth is the centre of the universe” any the more true.
Let’s simplify this to the language of logic. Man A holds that view A is true, and all else is false. Man B holds that view B is true, and all else is false. Now for man A to pronounce that until man B can prove his view valid, view A remains inherently true, amounts to little more than having the arrogance of assertion. Both view A and view B are on precisely the same footing. They are - both of them - views. To assert either one of them as true requires for that one to be finally, irrevocably, demonstrably proved. And truthfully, there is no such thing as a final, irrevocable proof for any view.
All views are merely views. Not a single one can hold the ultimate truth of raw experience itself.
Thus, once again in MN 72 (https://suttacentral.net/en/mn72/22) the Buddha makes this exceedingly clear:
“Vaccha, the position that ‘the cosmos is eternal’ , that ‘the cosmos is not eternal’, (and so on) is a thicket of views, a wilderness of views, a contortion of views, a writhing of views, a fetter of views. It is accompanied by suffering, distress, despair, & fever, and it does not lead to disenchantment, dispassion, cessation; to calm, direct knowledge, full Awakening, Unbinding.
“Thus, a ‘position,’ Vaccha, is something that a Tathagata has done away with. What a Tathagata sees is this: ‘Such is form, such its origination, such its disappearance; such is feeling, such its origination, such its disappearance; such is perception…such are fabrications…such is consciousness, such its origination, such its disappearance.’ Because of this, I say, a Tathagata—with the ending, fading away, cessation, renunciation, & relinquishment of all construings, all excogitations, all I-making & mine-making & obsessions with conceit—is, through lack of clinging/sustenance, released.”
Finally… @DKervick:
I truthfully apologise if my earlier post seemed harsh. I was retorting to your call that many Buddhists, clinging to their view of re-birth are small-minded. I only wanted to point out that, in truth, all views are - ultimately - nothing but views.
With love, and best wishes for all beings to realise enlightenment. 
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I am a Buddhist. Besides meditation, I take the precepts routinely, chant, request dhamma talks give food, etc. The usual.
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Doug, this phrase is important, and important to me when I read it. Of course, we do have views and hold them closely. I suppose what the Buddha intended is that we cultivate right view as to these matters of his teachings. But, at the end of the day, good and reasonable people may differ on what level of importance to place on rebirth, for example.
I suppose in any strong academic environment, there must be encouragement of spirited and active debate and disagreement over beliefs and issues that many hold dear. I see many that consider themselves as secular Buddhist to be highly thoughtful, compassionate, and wise people generally. You yourself even break this mold, in that your scholarship with the early texts is exemplary, and your videos most compelling.
There’s just so much that the secular Buddhist community holds dear and true that I applaud so much of the work product generated by you, and people like Ted and his podcasts. For myself, I feel its possible to consider all that embrace the teachings of the Buddha as spiritual friends, even if we disagree on core points of the Dhamma and its relevance to our practice.
I feel the Buddha was resolute in his Dhamma, and did not suggest that we can “cherry pick” his Dhamma, but at the end of the day, most of us are all concerned with the causes and the ending of suffering, cultivating compassion and goodwill, and we cannot do a very good job of that if we’re all acting like hammers looking for raised nails to pound down, over issues of Dhamma. I celebrate and join Bhante Sujato’s voice and his positions on these critical issues, but this does not diminish my respect for what the secular Buddhist community, in general, is seeking along its path, and the kindness, thought and wisdom consistently displayed.
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Ok, I see - but you think the Buddha’s teachings about rebirth are equivalent to belief in someone farting out the universe? lol - fair enough my friend!
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