False Enlightenment Quotes

“Logically, there is nothing in Buddhism that possess free will. If all ingredients in Buddhism are non-Selves that participate in an elaborate system of karmic determinism, then, just as with scientific atoms and the scientific forces that act on these atoms, there is no agent that has free will, hence no agent that can break out of this system (i.e. to attain "enlightenment"). Just as it is absurd for a scientific materialist to claim that a bunch of atoms under the direction of atomic forces could ever become "enlightened" (what could such an assertion possibly mean in relation to atoms and atomic forces?), so it is surely every bit as absurd for Buddhists to claim that non-Self entities and processes under the karmic law of "cause and effect" ever become "enlightened.”
― Mark Romel, The False Awakeners: Illusory Enlightenment