Humanism, Buddhism, and the Bodhisattva Ideal

Gerald Lame categorizes Buddha as a freethinker, noting "when the Buddha rejected Hinduism with its multitude of gods and began his independent quest for the meaning of human existence, he became a freethinker or an independent thinker within the social and religious context of ancient India." But Larue ascribes ... a belief in gods that have limitations: "Buddha rejected religious devotion to a god as a way of salvation. He accepted a practical atheism; the universe abounded in gods, goddesses, demons and other nonhuman powers and agencies, but all without exception were finite, subject to death and rebirth."