Many people from the general public with western education, being pro-science have difficulties with the supernatural aspects of Buddhism. They happily accept the psychology parts, the parts which help in reducing their suffering directly in this life. This movement of acceptance vs rejection goes so far as to produce secular Buddhism.
This is unfortunate, merely a social phenomenon and not any credible claim to truth, and here's an analogy of what Buddhists sees people like that.
Imagine say M-theory happens to be the ultimate true theory of everything or some version of M-theory plus loop quantum gravity. Imagine that, in the far future, we already discovered it and went on to explore space and meet with aliens. We dont adhere to Star Trek's prime directive of non-interference, but we would like to gift to them the ultimate theory to benefit their society, reduce their suffering and improve their society to utopian capabilities. But the problem is, their society just had their Newton discovered classical mechanics and Newtonian gravity along with them accepting the concept of absolute space and time due to how well Newtonian classical mechanics allows them to design and develop so many machines predictions, of clockwork technology.
We arrive and told them that actual spacetime has 11 dimensions, they are not absolute but can bend in the presence of mass-energy, that mass can turn to energy, quantum effects allow us to create quantum computers, electronics, and mobile phones with moving pictures. Due to the ready availability of their Newtonian worldview to explain almost everything, they regard our claims as magic, contrary to scientific thinking, heresy, a fall back to God and their angels, or demons, which we might be one or the other.
A few more open-minded aliens tested with our inventions, got to see the benefits of our technology can bring to their civilization, and kinda repackaged the mobile phone as complicated gear works inside a box, without the magic of quantum phenomenon. Thereby they can produce factories and have their alien workers reassemble the mobile phone part by part, with only them knowing the science behind, but the average worker doesn't know about it.
'These steve jobs of the aliens decided not to tell the masses that mobile phones actually work on quantum principles because the public is not ready for it. End up, there arise the average consumers who happily use their mobile phone, goes online and engage in "Quantum is heresy, M-theory is junk" reddit group. They eventually make the statement that one doesn't need to believe in quantum to use the mobile phone.
'One of the main arguments against human's attempt to introduce this ultimate science to them is that we require them to dedicate a lot of time to study, money to develop the machines like Large Hadron Collider, LIGO and LISA gravitational wave detectors, Electron scanning microscopes, and before that, to introduce them to the steam engine, electricity and magnetism, and so many centuries of scientific advancements, we try to present it so that a dedicated team of scientists can develop and finish verifying this science if they devote their entire lifetime to it. '
'We offer the mobile phone as the side technology of how useful research into fundamental science is and how it unlocks the key to more technological development and further usage of technology which we cannot currently imagine because we don't have the full M-theory yet. (In the story we have that, but in reality, breaking the fourth wall here, I can't even begin to imagine the powers we might have from M-theory). '
Many denounce our claim as faith-based, not in accordance to the Newtonian view of absolute space and time, of able to predict with certainty both position and velocity, thus two main philosophical reasons not to engage in the study of general relativity and quantum phenomenon which are required to understand M-theory. They point again to their mobile phone and be proud of their ignorance that the mobile phone doesn't prove our point because they don't need to understand quantum to use it, and workers in the factory don't need to understand quantum to make it too.
Ok, the analogy ends here. I think I had gone on for long enough. The mapping of the analogy is as follows, we play the role of the Buddha, who discovered the ultimate truths of suffering and how to end it. The sceptical aliens play the role of the secular Buddhists or those who are meditation enthusiast but doesn't want to discover Buddhism. The Newtonian worldview the aliens have played the role of the materialism world view of most atheists scientists, of assuming that the mind is the brain, nothing more so that when the brain dies, the mind cannot have any mechanism to be reborn.
The M-theory, quantum and general relativity play the role of rebirth, kamma, 31 realms of existences. The expensive experiments of LHC, LISA, LIGO, play the role of supernormal powers which requires the attainment of 4th Jhanas, which requires a lot of investment of time, giving up of sensual pleasures, 5 hindrances, moral purity, which maps with how expensive it is and that we need to teach the aliens step by step from stream engine, to electricity and magnetism etc.
The mobile phones map to secular mindfulness movement. Where the Steve Jobs maps to Jon Kabat Zinn and others like him who basically have to understand a lot of the Buddhist theory to be able to make mobile phones able to be mass-produced without knowledge of quantum.
Those who enjoy using their mobile phone to go to groups which bash the supernatural sides of Buddhism are akin to secular Buddhists who actively try to claim that Buddha didn't actually teach rebirth and that they can happily practise meditation without needing the view of rebirth, akin to using mobile phones without the need to understand quantum. While true, they miss out the ultimate benefit due to not able to progress to M-theory (Enlightenment).
Some of the aliens eventually come to see that quantum is actually true due to long term usage of their phones and unable to explain all the functionalities of the phone via the clockwork theory and converts and be willing to do the scientist work full time. This maps to conversion into Buddhists, and some of the converts are willing to become full-time monks and nuns to develop in meditation. Faith arises due to evidence.
In current terms, we do believe that the Buddha faced with similar dilemma back then. He cleverly designed a curriculum for people to be able to be enlightened within one lifetime, and while he also proclaimed a lot of the techs to help us directly, he didn't shy away from declaring rebirth, 31 realms of existences, kamma, and proclaim them as part of right view.
Those of us who are convinced of his statements due to the truth of the psychology parts of Buddhism, we readily call ourselves Buddhists and accepted rebirth, etc based on faith due to the Buddha's other teachings being useful. Those who are more brainwashed by the materialism philosophy have a harder time of converting. They naturally settle in secular Buddhism, and we engage with them with patience, and not allow them to distort the original message of the Buddha by making false claims of wrong views of no rebirth, no kamma as right views.
We invite them to come and see, to meditate, discover, a lot of them settle for tech from electricity, and not going further into tech from quantum, because the leap into developing supernatural powers is quite huge. The mind and life institute is a reflection of the dialogues between the advanced humans vs primitive aliens.
In the development of physics these last 100 years, there are a few things which make us more confident in this view that Buddha was far ahead of current physics.
- https://www.reddit.com/r/PhysicsandBuddhism/comments/f6ciml/the_end_of_earth_seven_suns_burning_of_earth_and/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3 Bold prediction that the earth ends up burned by the sun, being close to how the sun goes red giant in 5 billion year's time, we only know of this from the discovery of nuclear fusion and mass can be converted to energy, both within the last 100 years.
- Prediction of expansion and contraction of the cosmos, when scientific cosmology only is open to an expanding cosmos in the last 100 years due to general relativity and direct observation of redshift of distant galaxies. The distance is measured using standard candles of supernovas, which in turn relies on understanding stellar lifecycles as above due to understanding nuclear fusion and quantum sciences of Pauli's exclusion principle as the core of neutron star which turns the implosion of the star into explosion. https://physicsandbuddhism.blogspot.com/2013/04/the-beginning-written-for-physicists.html?m=0
It is not too crazy to say that more surprises will come in the future, and my bet is that society as a whole will come to accept more of the Buddhist claims to rebirth, 31 realms of existence etc in light of future discoveries.
In the meantime, there's a lot of empirical evidence for rebirth. https://www.reddit.com/r/Buddhism/comments/dktouv/buddhists_should_repost_rebirth_evidences_more/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3
And these are my speculation of what devas (gods) could be: https://physicsandbuddhism.blogspot.com/2018/11/devas-what-could-they-be-part-1.html?m=0