Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

signoregalilei.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 194 posts

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#41

Post by tgv »

bitsage wrote: post #24

It’s quite ironic how the assimilationist nature of high church Christianity has ended up becoming what early Christianity was in opposition to. Early Christians were non-conformist, to the point of execution, and were sometimes even seen as anti-social. A thousand years later, Christians are incorporating obscure tales from the East. I think this is another argument for a separation of Church and state. It allows pe…

Idk. The establishing act of Christianity supposedly consists of Paul (?) saying that newcomers don't have to follow the strict rules from the Old Testament.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#42

Post by bmacho »

xutopia wrote: post #10

This reminds me so much of the Raglan hero archetype rank: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rank–Raglan_hero_archetype So many stories, many people believe are true and build whole religions around, are really just repeated stories with many details changed to fit the local culture and traditions. It's crazy so many of the world's politics and problems stem from what might actually just be the same story said in a diffe…

> Classicist Thomas J. Sienkewicz analyzed additional heroes using Raglan's pattern, including Mithridates VI of Pontus (22 points), Krishna (21 points), Jesus (18 points), Mohammad (17 points), Beowulf (15 points), Buddha (15 points), Czar Nicholas II (14 points), Samson (13 points), Sunjata, the Lion-King of Ancient Mali (11 points), Achilles (10 points), and Harry Potter (8 points).

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#43

Post by Lio »

rimeice wrote: post #39

I find it incredible how many people have died in the name of minor variations in their monotheistic beliefs that are all based on the same foundational stories and yet here is a one of those foundational stories that has totally non-theistic source. I struggle with the hypocrisy of religion sometimes.

There's many a true word said in jest. Like this passage from Red Dwarf:

> Mr and Mrs Rimmer were very religious, taking the Bible scriptures at face value. The Hoppists were primarily concerned with a particular verse from the New Testament. St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13 had been misprinted in a certain edition of the Bible. In their version, the verse read "And now these three remain: Faith, Hop and Charity. But the greatest of these is Hop".

> The Hoppists took this literally and insisted that their followers spent every seventh day hopping. They would hop to church, hop through the service and then hop home again. The Rimmers even served their Sunday lunch whilst hopping, causing them to wear protective clothing to avoid burning themselves.

This is obviously a joke but there's load of examples of people getting hung up on seemly minor details like that.

E.g. The Umbilicus Adami discussion. If the bible is literal and God made Adam then Adam didn't have a mother. So that leads to the question, did he have a belly button?

If he didn't have a belly button was he human?

It sounds ridiculously trivial but people have died over that, which is itself even sillier.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#45

Post by bartread »

rimeice wrote: post #39

I find it incredible how many people have died in the name of minor variations in their monotheistic beliefs that are all based on the same foundational stories and yet here is a one of those foundational stories that has totally non-theistic source. I struggle with the hypocrisy of religion sometimes.

> I struggle with the hypocrisy of religion sometimes

That doesn’t really make sense to me. Do you mean the hypocrisy of people who follow those religions?

I tend to think that blaming outside forces for bad behaviour by people lets them off the hook a bit too easily - in particular it lets leaders off the hook far too easily - and disincentivises change because “I do X because Y makes me” rather than “I do X because I choose to”, which is the truth.

Religions might contain good teachings and bad teachings but, ultimately, people choose how they behave and so it’s the people who show hypocrisy.

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#46

Post by pessimizer »

dyauspitr wrote: post #30
wiradikusuma wrote: post #13

"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia. It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommo…

I don’t think anything assimilates religions better than Hinduism. New belief system? Just throw in a new avatar of Vishnu to legitimize it and carry on.

That's because there's not really a there there when it comes to Hinduism. It's a nationalism disguised as a religion (by eating every local religion.)

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#47

Post by paxcoder »

rimeice wrote: post #39

I find it incredible how many people have died in the name of minor variations in their monotheistic beliefs that are all based on the same foundational stories and yet here is a one of those foundational stories that has totally non-theistic source. I struggle with the hypocrisy of religion sometimes.

[dead]

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#48

Post by broken-kebab »

phyzix5761 wrote: post #38
broken-kebab wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Syncretism is mixing religions (as doctrines, beliefs). Assimilating local traditions into one's religious rituals is not that.

"It can include assimilation of several originally discrete traditions, especially in theology and mythology, thus asserting an underlying unity and allowing for an inclusive approach to multiple faiths." "...in the realm of religion, it specifically denotes a more integrated merging of beliefs into a unified system, distinct from eclecticism, which implies a selective adoption of elements from different traditions w…

Which is what I wrote above?

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#49

Post by bitsage »

Onavo wrote: post #23
wiradikusuma wrote: post #13

"Christianity in particular has a history of absorbing other religions’ traditions" -- Tangentially related: I'm a Catholic, so I don't know much about other "distros", but the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions in Indonesia. It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommo…

> the Roman Catholic Church has a long, pragmatic history of absorbing local traditions One of the most studied issues in Catholic evangelism is the Chinese rites controversy which is also one of the historical reasons why religions are suppressed in China (aside from ideological policies ascribed to communism). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Rites_controversy (That and the Taiping rebellion which was estimate…

The CCP actually views the Taiping Rebellion positively, as an egalitarian movement which is a precursor to their own, albeit significantly flawed [1]. Upon looking this up, I was surprised to see they rarely even view it from a religious lens, maybe because the movement was so syncretic. Although, that could be due to the similarities between the Taiping Rebellion and Cultural Revolution’s aims.

1. https://bitterwinter.org/the-taiping-mystery-1-why-is-the-cc...

Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

#50

Post by ajross »

mightyham wrote: post #40
ajross wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Editor snobbery digression: that would be poor writing. The job of signaling the main subject of the article belongs to the headline and lede, and "Christian saints" is right there. No, that phrase is just filler. And IMHO it's basically wrong. Certainly if the author want to show that Christianity is more likely than other religions to import ideas, the article has a lot more work to do than point out one myth. Lite…

This is a really pedantic editorial argument. I'm not going to claim the author's sentence is anything amazing, but you are being overly critical. The paragraph clearly introduces the general concept of religious influence through contact, then transitions that idea to pointing out instances of this in Christianity. It is quite literally particularizing the idea as it relates to the main subject, and so it uses the p…

I can't tell what you're disagreeing with.

I'm just going to repeat: there is nothing notable or unique to Christian appropriation of myths and stories from other religions. It does it at least as much as everyone else does, and everyone does it everywhere. So trying to tie this uniquely to Christianity seems needless and confusing. The deeper point is more interesting and more important.

Is there anything in that paragraph you'd like to argue about?

Post reply on HN