Yes, but I didn't mind when Harris pushed back on that (around minute 18), saying that beliefs and the way we "vet" them also matters.
I'll have to go back and watch that more closely tomorrow.
I think the pastor and Harris need to come up with a non-biased definition of "dogma." Not all dogma makes the world more dangerous, at least if you use an objective definition. Harris flirted with this when he said that the dogmas that all humans have intrinsic worth and that life begins at conception seem innocuous but become problematic because [such and such].
Perhaps that particular dogma only becomes problematic when coupled with other dogmas or doctrines, such as what meta-ethical considerations are important in the first place.
Buddhists generally view life beginning at conception (and thus would see sacredness in all life, even non-human life), but there's a great deal of disagreement among Buddhists about subjects like abortion or stem cell research, and it comes down basically to how much a person is a modernist or critical of premodern, patriarchal modes of religion that discount the experience of women (there is at least one Thai monk, for instance, that has taken the radical step of criticizing the Thai government's ban on abortion, based on personalist ethics).
And I think that's a good example of how it's not just a matter of what doctrines you believe, but what meta-ethical and ethical considerations you believe are important as well.
I understand a dogma to be some core belief that cannot be rejected without rejecting the religion (or ideology) itself. A dogma is basically an essential doctrine. So the Four Noble Truths are the most obvious candidates, but the doctrine of no-self is also considered perfectly fundamental for many Buddhists. Many see it as a kind of linchpin.
They are doctrines but not dogmas. That is my understanding based on reading various sources over the years, including Thitch Nhat Hanh's expositions on Buddhist doctrine. That's not to say some doctrines aren't more important than others, but Buddhism as a religion is not generally defined primarily by belief, but by practice and belonging, in that order, with belief being tertiary in most schools.
True, but he also draws on theories from Buddhism and mindfulness quite often. I would actually be curious to see him pressed on the ontological status of sunyata. I think the Yogacara approach which sees sunyata as having a kind of ontological reality is interesting. Of course it is highly unlikely that Harris would follow in those footsteps.
Various Buddhist schools, particularly in Tibetan Buddhism, have different approaches dealing with the concept of Sunyata, roughly analogous to how different Protestant churches have different emphases.
Madyamika philosophy and the Prajnaparamita (Perfection of Wisdom) literature are usually considered superior in dealing with the concept of Sunyata, and even Sunyata is understood in this literature as negating itself, ad infinitum (perhaps Sunyata is roughly akin to the concept of the Infinite, from what I have read, some Buddhists do seem to speak of the concept as being analogous). Yogacara really functions as a Mahayana Buddhist phenomenology, it breaks down consciousness into various strata and focuses on how they interact.