Dear Macauluy Culkin,
Yes for a time I studied Buddhist philosophy...still extremely helpful I find...
As I understand, it is not so much they don't "believe" in God, it's more they suggest you explore for yourself as to the nature of Reality...not to take anyone else's word, no preconceptions. Take nothing on faith; like the Buddha did 2500 years ago, you meditate, contemplate, explore, each person find out for yourself.
This Buddhist walks up to a hotdog vender and says,
make me one with everything. God is everything.
A particle not a person.
In researching your question, I found this comment made a lot of sense. I have listed the site "from whence it came" in case you are interested (I was).
The historical Buddha's teachings were about how we humans live our lives and interact with each other. He outlined some simple, yet profound and revolutionary things he had learned: (1) our lives are plagued with this deep sense of incompleteness and dissatisfaction, (2) this dissatisfaction is caused by our expectations for the events of the world to align with our individual needs and wants, (3) we can find a way out of this self-reenforcing loop, (4) the way to get out of this circular mess is to see how it formed in the first place, and how this "self" that we craft and protect is a secondary emergent property of the intellectual, discursive mind.
The Buddha referenced Hindu gods of the times, just as you and I would perhaps reference a quote from Mr. Spock to make our point clear (e.g., "The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.") His teachings had no need of anything metaphysical. That is to say, he did not address anything that could not be experienced directly by people.
https://www.quora.com/Why-is-there-no-God-in-Buddhism-Are-all-Buddhists-atheists
I know very very little about Buddha. Only what the women in the nail salon has told me and what I observed as he's sitting in the corner. He is extremely overweight, he sits for all eternity smiling, the women feed him (they told me he eat a every 4-5 day) and never drinks water or use the restroom. I noticed he never eats his fruits, man has to feed him, light the candles and incense sticks, that surrounds him. I think he really likes the incense because 3 weeks later there're what looks like 100+? Sticks. They dust him every 3 weeks, she said that's all he needs and she stated he blessed their business. Business is good.
I went 20 yrs old ago with a woman to a meeting. We were sitting in a room with about 30 people and the "leader" said something can't remember what he said, but all of the sudden, they all started chanting (scared the heebie jeebies out of me) and the guy said something again and they turn to the left, then to the right all the time chanting in an unknown language. Not English. The chanting lasted for 5- 10? Minutes and we left. I never talked about it with her and never returned to her as my hairdresser. I never read anything or comments about him.
The One God concept (as the Judeo-Christian God) you refer to, Macauley, was largely unknown in the time of Siddhartha Gautama, who became known as the Buddha.
God, in the form most of the religious world now observes, arose from the time of the Jewish Captivity in Babylon in the 6th century BCE. The origin of modern monotheism. Long story that.
Buddhism is not a religious doctrine as much as the principles of a lifestyle, dedicated to the pursuit of personal enlightenment, ultimately to attain Nirvana-- to fully "blow out" the conditions that cause suffering. In Buddhism, suffering is anything outside of happiness, the Buddha taught the paths to release oneself from sufferings (and by connection, everyone else), to pursue nirvana. This is most accurately defined as a state of perfect peace, the extinction of want and disharmony. As this is an intensely personal journey, no god(s) need apply.
In fact, as one raised in the cradle of Hinduism, the Buddha recognized the inherent peril in man's competing theisms, and he questioned their attending doctrines. Worship of specific supernatural deities is absent in Buddhist teachings.
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