So first, let me douse the tempers of any Buddhists angered by the subject of this thread: I've spent a lot of time over the years studying Buddhism, staying in buddhist retreats, and learning what the Buddha taught and I think he was a phenomenal human being. I've also become a better person (I think) from meditating and from the lessons I had from buddhist teachers over the years.

So I'm going off the premise here that between 2,400-2,600 years ago, a man named Siddhartha Gautama attained enlightenment and reached an end to suffering. There is no proof that he never suffered from that moment forth, but frankly as I've been reading the sutras I've found the idea compelling. I think it's important to recognize that, in his time, he had the recognition of thousands of reclusive ascetics who were testing his teachings out, as the teachings require they do. These weren't run of the mill fanatics, but disciplined, fiercely-self-analyzing, determined hermits who were looking for a teaching that worked and these recluses came to acknowledge him as fully enlightened.

That said, the sutras are also full of factually wrong and outlandishly unscientific statements attributed to the Buddha. For instance, the Buddha claims, when asked by the monk Ananda about the cause of earthquakes, that earthquakes are caused by liquid under the earth (true enough), under which is another sky producing atmospheric phenomena that rile up the liquid and produce earthquakes (not so true). He goes on to assert that the second cause of earthquakes relates to the death of a Buddha. Further, he claims that Buddhism would cease to exist 500 years after his time, he speaks about gods coming to visit him, about teleporting into the worlds of gods, about fantastical paradise-type worlds containing other buddhas like Amitabha Buddha, he claims farseer-type psychic abilities, the ability to recall quadrillions of his own past lives and he alludes to possessing numerous other apparently-supernatural abilities.

Now, while much of this, and perhaps even all of it could have been embellishments added in by overzealous followers in the years since his death, one interesting point to notice is that, at least as far as I've read, and please correct me if I'm wrong, but it seems the Buddha never once admits to not knowing the answer to any question. There are questions he refuses to answer, but he never claims a lack of knowledge on anything at all. Given the number of sutras coming from so many different sources, one might be forgiven for thinking that the historical Buddha was in fact incapable of admitting a lack of knowledge on any subject.

Now, let's say that, through his practice, his Dhamma, that this man who - remember, could admit to no ignorance - truly changed some fundamental wiring in his brain, ensuring that he would never experience suffering again. He beat the game, if you will, reverse-engineered his own coding, tinkered with his computer's settings down to the bare bones code to remove all clutter leaving just the essentials. Let's for a second imagine "enlightenment" as something real happening in the brain.

So what is the final step to achieving enlightenment, then? Removing ignorance! According to the Buddha, ignorance is the final, ultimate obstacle to enlightenment, to ending suffering. So here's what I'm getting at: Is it too outlandish to think that the pitfall of achieving enlightenment is that it requires that we become unable to ever be ignorant about ANYTHING? Not that the Buddha became a liar, but that he was, by very nature of being the Buddha, incapable of accepting that there was anything he did not know.

So this is outlandish conjecture on my part, I know, but it seems a solution to the disparity between the Buddha's penetrating insights into the human and animal experience, and his bafflingly counter-scientific statements concerning the natural world.

What if all consciousness is set up this way? To end suffering, we have to become know-it-alls?

Feedback is welcome!

In the event that any one of you find this conjecture such an affront to reason and science that you feel inclined to summarily dismiss or (in the case of moderators) delete, I welcome the judgment and challenge you to leave no more than a few sentences explaining in simple terms how my reasoning is so flawed as to not merit further discussion. In the spirit of Einsteinian conciseness, "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough."