Berkley Center

In the debates about the relationship between religion and science, some argue that among world religions, Buddhism, with its lack of a creator deity and natural law of karma, is most compatible with modern science. In this lecture, Donald Lopez provided a history of the various associations of Buddhism with science, beginning with the polemical responses of Buddhist monks to Christian missionaries in the nineteenth century and moving to the present day with the views of the Dalai Lama of Tibet. He also considered possible reasons for the persistence of claims for the compatibility of Buddhism and science. The lecture concluded with some reflections on what Buddhism stands to gain, and lose, in the process.