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The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
81–90 of 193 posts
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#82Earlier quoted context omitted.
Catholic church tries to be practical but inadvertently poisons Christianity. Christianity is way different from the Catholic church. Because catholic church is whatever the newest model is in the distro but other distros try to be very very clean and try to follow the original texts and their meaning but catholic church is like the new iphone trying to be like whatever is the trendy trend nowadays.
That couldn't be further from the truth. The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time, and is still the original church. It has had its dark times for sure when people said exactly what you are saying now, BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.
> The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time
What does this even mean? That the Catholic Church has some special authority by dint of having been around a long time? Also, what does it even mean if the Catholic Church has been around for a long time when so much about it (including the line of Popes) has been interrupted? Feels a bit like Theseus's ship.
> BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.
By what metric? Catholicism added _a whole lot_ onto traditional Christian teaching (Saints, the pseudo-divinity of mary, the infallibility of the papacy, relics, purgatory, etc) that many protestant denominations have stripped away. One could easily argue (and many do) that these protestant denominations are closer.
I'm not sure we can find an objective answer, or that finding one is even useful beyond ego stroking.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#83Earlier quoted context omitted.
Its called syncretism. The Greeks and Romans have been doing it since the time of Alexander the Great.
It's more cultural colonization than syncretism. For example, America was culturally colonized by forcibly converting its inhabitants to Catholicism. Their temples were destroyed, the stones used to build churches, and while celebrations were still observed, the deities were replaced with Catholic ones. Even the folklore was rewritten with Catholic characters. It wasn't syncretism, it was systematic eradication. Sync…
Basically how christians have always operated since they first emerged and started doing the same throughout the hellenic world. Most (all?) christian traditions are pagan in origin. The main goal was not necessarily replacement but a sort of corporate ownership takeover of the littany of existing traditions, such that these cultures might be ingrained into a unified fold of christian power/influence/customs/laws/expectations and not see themselves as some distinct independent people. And boy that model worked to tame europe and much of the known world under the whip of the pope in a way the roman emperors never could, at least until Martin Luther screwed up a bit of that unity.
Mexico is interesting because it is a certainly a different catholicism than what is practiced elsewhere. Tell a devout old world European catholic about say Day of the Dead traditions and they will probably think its blasphemy. There is a lot of what amounts to local diety worship still as well, although they just label them as some patron saint of somesuch to preserve the veil of monotheism.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 issue is moot since nowadays local practices are accepted to a degree. Even if Rome decided to go back on that it would have little practical relevance nowadays since there are lots of branches of Christianity that are not in communion with Rome and who are perfectly fine with that.
It's significant because it effectively lost them their biggest market.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#85[deleted]
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#86Ya know, the Divine sometimes works in mysterious ways. While it is possible these two fellas were a ripped-off Buddha story, it is also possible that they were actual people who lead these lives so that people who were Buddhists had some examples of how to adapt their previous Buddhist tendencies to Christian ones if they had an experience that caused conversion. Is there evidence to suggest they were not real peopl…
Religious stories about the Buddha were readily and literally coopted into Christian lore by early Church writers.
Unless you presume the Buddhist stories were themselves historically accurate - which would start down a road of "both Buddhism and Christianity are true" - it's hard to imagine that these were coincidentally also stories about real figures.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
Catholic church tries to be practical but inadvertently poisons Christianity. Christianity is way different from the Catholic church. Because catholic church is whatever the newest model is in the distro but other distros try to be very very clean and try to follow the original texts and their meaning but catholic church is like the new iphone trying to be like whatever is the trendy trend nowadays.
That couldn't be further from the truth. The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time, and is still the original church. It has had its dark times for sure when people said exactly what you are saying now, BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.
A whole lotta "No True Scotsman" BS going on in both/all sides of this argument.
"A Christian is a person who believes in Jesus Christ and follows the religious teachings of Christianity."
Some are good people. Some are bad. All are Christians, so long as they have this core, defining belief system.
If you want to bicker over what constitutes a "good Christian", you might have some basis - but you're arguably in the wrong forum.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#88I 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…
This is a weirdly dissonant comment that misunderstands both religion and the nature of choices.
Religions don't exist without the people. The scriptures have no narrative power if they are not told by people to people. The rites and traditions only serve to reinforce habits and pass themselves down throughout time to new people. The religion evolves with the people because keeping followers become the fitness function.
No religion knowingly offers its followers "bad teachings". Anybody who thinks a religion has "bad teachings" quickly becomes an impostor and gets pushed out. The self selection means that there are no "bad teachings".
Also, you are trying to pretend like the choice is only applied by the cognitive brain by the individual human at the time of an action. This ignores both group psychology and the role of habits / indoctrination.
The Catholic Church internal policies target the ages of 4-14 for indoctrination and habit forming. What 10 year old will resist their parents, resist their church authority figures, resist all of the teachings of thousands of years of their people, resist the "word of God", have the knowledge and self awareness to know the difference between God's voice and typical bipolar ruminations?
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
That couldn't be further from the truth. The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time, and is still the original church. It has had its dark times for sure when people said exactly what you are saying now, BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.
> The Catholic Church has withstood the test of time What does this even mean? That the Catholic Church has some special authority by dint of having been around a long time? Also, what does it even mean if the Catholic Church has been around for a long time when so much about it (including the line of Popes) has been interrupted? Feels a bit like Theseus's ship. > BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to…
And then there’s the Orthodox Church, which included the Roman Church until the pope insisted on changing the Greek text of the Symbol of Faith in a way that altered basic theology. And hasn’t changed much at all.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#90"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.
Even that doesn't cover it. Vaishnavism, though the most popular branch, is only one Hindu denomination. Shaktism and Shaivism don't give Vishnu the preeminant status he's given in Vaishnavism. "Hinduism" at this point in time indicates a tradition cares about some subset and some interpretation of the Vedic texts, which doesn't actually entail all that much.