A Short History of Secularism & the Road to the Modern World: From Buddha to Einstein

A condensed history of the ideas that led to the secular world and the interesting connections to Buddha from my forthcoming book, Dangerous Ideas.

Video chapters:
0:00 Introduction
0:21 Contextual background
1:45 Persian conquest of the Indus Valley & Ionian Greece
2:19 Birth of Greek philosophy
3:32 Alexander & Pyrrho
4:16 Epicurus
5:21 Lucretius
6:02 Sextus Empiricus
7:49 Rediscovery of Lucretius and Epicureanism
8:23 Hobbes & Spinoza
9:28 Spinoza the Epicurean/Buddhist
10:09 Spinoza & the Enlightenment
10:57 Mach, Einstein & The Middle Way
11:41 Summary

[hamo]

Holy shit! That was a wonderfully detailed, yet somehow remarkably concise, breakdown of all of that. I am legit impressed. Very well done sir.

[jmdawlat]

Really great video and I loved it. One small criticism: Lucretian ideas were revolutionary at that time in terms of thinking about the natural world and as you nicely mentioned had ramifications. But the later relativistic thinking of Mach only had scientific implications. That is to say even if the universe did have an absolute frame of reference and both Mach and Einstein were wrong, there would be no reason think that 20th century political and social progress would have been influenced significantly. That is to say, the separation of church and state does not require justification from extremely profound physics.

Great work by the way. I am subscribed and looking forward to watching more from you.

[metagalaxy-go-the-distance]

Good to see the mention of Buddha. Most of Buddhist temples are captured and converted into other gods in the name of Hinduism at present in India. And the temple priest is called Brahman who is supposedly born from Brahmas(creators) mouth

[furrysfriend]

Great. Can you also make a video in Western ethical theory?

[astridhelgesen]

I am unable to find the book itself, do you have a link to where it can be bought?