Churches are the worst thing i have ever seen. They demand people to pray instead of going to hospital as a result a lot of people died where I live.
They demand a cut even from a loan. Pathetic people praying on innocent people
The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
91–100 of 195 posts
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/exp…
> Tell a devout old world European catholic about say Day of the Dead traditions and they will probably think its blasphemy.
Want to make a Catholic mad? Tell them saints are just minor gods of the Christian pantheon.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#93Earlier quoted context omitted.
Religion is very closely tied to social support structures: You can only "make one up" if the people who you are close with go along with you.
> Religion is very closely tied to power structures Fixed it for you, Sir.
in all cases? Really. That seems more like a trusim that people often blindly repeat than something that's actually supported by facts.
I can see how Islam being designed as a state religion can be tied to power structures. Perhaps there is an argument that Hinduism supported feudal social structures. Other than that, the idea that religion is closely tied to power structures seems to be questionable and weakly supported. Was shamanic belief tied to the power of chiefs in ancient tribes? I don't think so. Buddha was a prince but it seems tenuous to say that buddhist monks somehow supported royal power in the East. I could go on. . .
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#94Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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 functi…
> 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".
I mean "bad teachings" from the point of view of an outsider who might not agree with the religion. What I'm saying is that even where that's the case, it's the people following the religion choosing to do so and choosing how they behave.
And I'm not pretending anything: I know full well about group psychology and indoctrination. But it still boils down to people being people, and people being hypocritical.
> The Catholic Church internal policies target the ages of 4-14 for indoctrination and habit forming.
Exactly. And what did I say about letting leaders off the hook? Grown adult church leaders choosing to indoctrinate, brainwash, and sometimes exploit children. It's people. Again. It's all people.
Sooner or later we all have to grow up and take responsibility and accountability for our own actions.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#95Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the article, or just the headline?
I just read the headline. Why should I read the article when the headline is so misleading.
> I just read the headline. Why should I read the article when the headline is so misleading.
Because the article explains the origins of the saints as Christianity coopting the story of the Buddha. The headline isn't wrong or misleading, you just made yourself look foolish by embracing ignorance.
>> Individual Western historians have noted the similarities between the story of Barlaam and Josaphat and the story of the Buddha for centuries – for example, it’s mentioned in an early printed edition of Marco Polo’s travels from 1446. But it was only in the mid-19th century that the saints’ tale was generally acknowledged as being derived from the Buddha’s.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#96Earlier quoted context omitted.
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/exp…
> Tell a devout old world European catholic about say Day of the Dead traditions and they will probably think its blasphemy. Want to make a Catholic mad? Tell them saints are just minor gods of the Christian pantheon.
Yeah the protestants think the saint stuff is absurd and even creepy when you get into the relics. I'm not sure where it came from but I'm guessing some weird roman religion origin.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#97"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…
> Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical It has a hierarchy, but it has multiple hierarchies. It is not all that top down. Bishop's ave a lot of autonomy, and most decisions are made at the diocesan level. Dioceses have their own property and funds held by their own trustees. On top of that religious orders have their own hierarchy (and property and funds etc.). Then there are the rites such as the…
Right. The Church recognizes the principle of subsidiarity which is not coincidentally part of its social teaching.
Modern media has allowed the pope to receive unceasing attention that the papacy never possessed historically, but what is important to emphasize is that this is not a reflection of how the Church is administered or how authority is distributed. The idea that the pope is "running the Church" or "watching every member of the one and a half billion member flock like a busybody hawk" is a fiction drawn from jejune ignorance. Rome is notoriously slow to act, which should in general not be seen as a sign of incompetence, but as an expression of subsidiarity. It is much better to view the pope as the ultimate referee rather than some oppressive overlord. The moral ball is in your court, as it were.
W.r.t. absorbing what's around it, the Church has always recognized logos spermatikos or seminal reason, meaning, it recognizes reality as an intelligible creation of God, it recognizes the inherent rational nature of every human being, and thus it recognizes that every human being has an in principle capacity to recognize and know reality, to one degree or another. So, it sees no reason to suppose that there is nothing good or true or beautiful outside the Church and plenty of reason to recognize it and embrace it. What is good is good, what is true is true, what is beautiful is beautiful. When the Church encounters a culture, it seeks what is good within it and seeks to transfigure it in order to rescue its goodness and perfect it. Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit.
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#98I get the author's not trying to write a watertight syllogism, but the point he's trying to make (his last sentence) doesn't follow from the obvious fact that beliefs can influence each other.
Christianity and worldviews typically associated with the 'east' (as I've seen them discussed here and elsewhere) disagree in both their view of the 'building blocks' of reality, and in their 'big picture' view. They disagree on base questions like if there is really a "you", or whether change is real, or whether the material world is real, or whether multiplicity is real, or whether the truth of A implies the falsehood of not-A, and so on. (I've heard all of the above answered in the negative here.) And they disagree on 'big picture' things like the goal of human existence, the nature of the Absolute, what it is to live a good life, whether evil is the result of illusion or is (in addition to this) a defect in the will and caused ultimately by an indescribably malevolent being, whether a human being can reach a 'blessed' state by his own power, etc.
So the differences are vast and essential, on both the macro and micro levels. The fact that some beliefs and practices influence other beliefs and practices doesn't change this.
(The emergence of the "18 year old who just read Dawkins for the first time and thinks science disproves sky-daddy lolz" atheists on this thread is also most unfortunate.)
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#99Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
> Just throw in a new avatar of Vishnu to legitimize it and carry on. Except for it's never done. No Hindu believes Allah or Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu. It can't be. Vishnu literally means the "All-Pervading One". Allah is explicitly not Omnipresent. Jesus is Omnipresent but does not have infinite forms. So neither fit the bill. Even Buddha, who we Hindus associate as one of the Avatars of Vishnu is not the same Bu…
I'm not knowledgeable enough about Hinduism to argue the first point but that's too reductive of a view of Christianity and Islam.
There's a rich history of panentheism in both. Ibn Arabi, probably the most famous Sufi scholar was known for defending it ("[God] sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man"), Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics held similar views etc. Of course that often got them into hot waters with Orthodoxy but it certainly existed and continues to exist.
A lot of these traditions are much more flexible than whatever is the dogma or institutional version of the time suggests. David Bentley Hart's writing on Vedantic traditions and Christianity is worth reading
Re: The two Christian saints who are the Buddha
#100Churches are the worst thing i have ever seen. They demand people to pray instead of going to hospital as a result a lot of people died where I live. They demand a cut even from a loan. Pathetic people praying on innocent people
Sounds more like the "scribes and Pharisees" that Jesus preached against:
"They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. ...they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven." -- in Matthew 23
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, and don't throw out the Christ with the 'christians'.