Buddhism for Beginners : Fscebook site : my post on 14 March 2024

 Hello, I'm new to this group.  I have a question : all the authoritative sites I have come across assure me that Buddhism is atheistic and against the idea of God existing or having any role in our destiny. Budfjidm also does not acknowledge a soul. The seven "qualities" or 'skandhas' of psychosomatic existence die with the death of the body. That's it. In this respect, Buddhidm appears to be the same as Western materialism. The consciousness of the individual ends.

Then we get a massive jump to something not demonstrated by the self-evident : Karma and Transmigration.

As a result of our deeds there are consequences. Th These consequences have physical results in the form of the cycle of rebirth which continues endlessly until and unless we work ourselves out of it by living the Eightfold Path correctly and through meditation, achieve Nirvana or extinction of ego and self.

That extinction is a state of not-being which has nothing to do with any state including cosmic consciousness. The Buddha did not assert the existence of the individual living being ( Jiva) the soul ( Atman) or the Cosmic consciousness ( brahman) as the Hindus did : the ultimate existence of any of these was denied and declared illusory.

My question is : if everything that IS is illusory, if reality is NON existence ( sunyata, emptiness), if God, soul, cosmic consciousness purpose, meaning, all are illusory ...

How can karma and Transmigration be real ?

In other words, how can one assert moral processes like karma and Transmigration having a physical result without any conscious purpose or direction in the Universe, without a Cosmic Mind at the bottom of it?

The ontic factor of purpose is impossible to understand without requiring a Cosmic Mind and karma and Transmigration require explaining why these laws linked to morality and judgement exist at the heart of an atheistic view of the Universe.

It goes up to the gates of Western atheism and then goes right past it into an endless hell. At least in Western atheism when you're dead, you're dead. In Buddhism it seems you're never dead, you keep.coning back, you keep going through the whole thing repeatedly, yet nobody designed this process and it means nothing in the end because the immortal soul does not exist. It is very hard to make sense of this. At first sight, Western atheism makes more sense than Buddhism which adds to the death of consciousness an egregious amount of concepts for which no cause or purpose can be found whatsoever. So why should we believe in it?

I Respectfully wait for elucidation from experts in this field as I'm just trying to understand as a near beginner what it is all about. Thank you for your patience in reading this.