Ten reasons

Where Buddhism goes wrong

Each reason states the Buddhist teaching fairly, quotes the Buddhist discourses word for word (Bhikkhu Sujato's translation), sets the Bible beside it in the World English Bible, gives the common Buddhist answer, and notes honestly where scholars disagree.

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The universe had a beginning. Buddhism says it has none.

The Buddha taught that the round of rebirth has no known beginning and set the origin of the cosmos aside as a question not worth asking. The universe we can measure did begin, and the Bible names who began it.

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The Buddhist texts call belief in a Creator a mistake

The Pali discourses tell how the god Brahma falsely imagines he created the world, and how a monk who repeats it is deceived. The Bible says the Creator is real, and is not a confused god but the Lord who made the heavens.

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You are not an illusion. You are someone God made and knows by name.

The Buddha taught that nothing in a person is a self (anatta). The Bible says you are a real person, made in God's image, known before you were born, and called by name.

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The problem is not desire. It is sin.

The Buddha's first sermon says suffering comes from craving and ends when craving ends. The Bible goes deeper: the heart is turned away from God, and the cure is not to stop wanting, but to be forgiven and made new.

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Karma keeps the books. It can never forgive.

In Buddhism, deeds are intention, and every deed bears its fruit. Nobody can carry your debt or cancel it. The Bible's message is the opposite: God forgives, because Jesus paid.

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Karma blames the sick and the poor. Jesus did not.

The Buddha taught that short lives, sickness, ugliness and poverty come from deeds in past lives. When Jesus' disciples asked whose sin made a man blind, he said neither, and healed him.

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Be your own refuge? No one can save themselves.

The Buddha told his followers to be their own island, their own refuge, and said no one can purify another. The Bible says we cannot cleanse ourselves, and that God saved us, not because of our works, but by his mercy.

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Rebirth again and again? The Bible says once, then judgment and grace.

Buddhism teaches rebirth driven by kamma, yet denies any self that passes from life to life. The Bible says we live once, then face God, and that Jesus offers eternal life starting now.

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Nirvana is the fire going out. Jesus offers life.

Nibbana means extinguishment: the ending of greed, hate and delusion, and finally of any further birth. The Buddha would not say whether the freed one exists after death. Jesus promises eternal life: knowing God, face to face.

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The Buddha died and his relics were divided. Jesus' tomb is empty.

The Buddha never claimed to be God, and his own texts record his death, his last words and the division of his relics into eight portions. Jesus claimed to be the Son of God, died, and rose again, and hundreds saw him alive.

Swipe all ten Questions Buddhists ask