As no major principles of Buddhism contradict it, many Buddhists tacitly accept the theory of evolution. Questions about the eternity or infinity of the universe at large are counted among the 14 unanswerable questions which the Buddha maintained were counterproductive areas of speculation. As such, many Buddhists do not think about these kinds of questions as particularly meaningful or helpful from a religious perspective. One does not need to k...
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As no major principles of Buddhism contradict it, many Buddhists tacitly accept the theory of evolution. Questions about the eternity or infinity of the universe at large are counted among the 14 unanswerable questions which the Buddha maintained were counterproductive areas of speculation. As such, many Buddhists do not think about these kinds of questions as particularly meaningful or helpful from a religious perspective. One does not need to know the origin of life, nor agree with the Buddha's position on scientific topics, in order to achieve enlightenment. In the Majjhima Nikaya, a potential follower asks the Buddha for an answer to the problem of cosmogony:
The Buddha argued that there is no apparent rational necessity for the existence of a creator god because everything ultimately is created by mind. Belief in a creator is not necessarily addressed by a religion based on phenomenology, and Buddhism is generally accepting of modern scientific theories about the formation of...
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