Thoughts on Buddhism

[Reforged]

If theres any religions philosophy that deserves respect it is buddhism, Abracadabra is right.

Carnavon, how do you explain all the killings in the Bible decreed by God? Sodam, Egypts first born, the Amalekites... Do you think "the good lord" as described in your book considered everyone equal? Do you think individuals found at the hands of those who were filled with righteous fervor were thankful for Gods mercy? What of the chosen who will supposedly emerge from the prophecy of the Book of Revelations in paradise while non-believers are left to suffer? Is this not a separation?

If you believe the message of the Bible, of your "God" is one of peace then you have obviously not read it thoroughly but rather had people quote cherry picked verses that you have adopted and looked specifically for on occasion. Make no mistake; the message of the Bible is one of fear and control not of morality.
If you want to form an actual perspective on it you should read it all.

[Abracadabra]

I agree that it is a pity that disagreements should "deteriorate" into "mud slinging", using foul language in many cases. But that is human nature? Indeed it is - as we can see from many of the discussions.
You are seemingly mistaken on the issue of Abrahamic religions that renounce anyone who refuses to climb on board as being a 'worthless heathen' unworthy of respect. From my perspective as a Christian, that is 180 degrees from what the Bible teaches. (See i.e parable good Samaritan). To suggest that one should judge others because you are "better than them" is directly opposed to the Bible as there is nothing that we did not receive and hence have nothing to boast about or feel superior (1Co 4:7 For who makes you to differ? And what do you have that you did not receive? And if you received it, why do you boast as if you did not receive? )
The Christian perspective is exactly this : Thankful that God in his mercy, and not because of my "goodness (superiority?)" looked kindly upon me and saved me as I am no better than anyone else.

I'll be the first to agree with you that "Christianity" appears to be about grace first and foremost. The only problem is that the scriptures themselves are grossly self-contradicting on that very point.

You say, "The Christian perspective is exactly this : Thankful that God in his mercy, and not because of my "goodness (superiority?)" looked kindly upon me and saved me as I am no better than anyone else."

But that's a contradiction right there. Ultimately neither God nor Jesus decides to 'save' anyone. It must be their choice to "repent their sins", and ask for forgiveness, and to accept Jesus as their LORD.

So in a very real sense they must 'earn' this grace via their own choice to repent their sins, ask for forgiveness, and make a commitment to obey Jesus as their LORD.

So they can indeed lay claim to a special "goodness (superiority)", over those who refuse to chose goodness over evil (i.e. over sin).

But the whole story is grossly riddled with contradictions concerning this very ideal.

Even Jesus supposedly asked of the Father, "Father forgive them for they know not what they do".

This is an oxymoron in many ways.

First off, it suggests that people who are doing bad things "know not what they do". And that this is sufficient reason for bestowing them with forgiveness and grace.

Well, if that's true then all non-believers would automatically be eligible for this kind of "Jesus Grace" because, if they don't even believe in the religion and 'sin', then clearly "they know not what they do".

So a mere disbelief in the religion, and a disbelieve that Jesus was the son of God, would be an automatic pardon based on Jesus' own request to the Father that people be forgiven if "they know not what they do".

The second oxymoron is to ask, "Why should Jesus even need to suggest this to a supposedly all-wise God?" Shouldn't the Father already be wise enough on his own to recognize that people who "know not what they do" should be pardoned if righteousness is to have any meaning at all?

Why should Jesus need to suggest to God-the-Father what should be considered to be 'righteous judgment'? Was the Father not already wise and righteous to begin with?

~~~~

I mean, seriously. If a person honestly sees no reason to believe in the ancient Hebrew tales, then even if those tales were true, that non-believer would qualify as "knowing not what they are doing" with respect to rejecting "God's word", because they honestly see no reason to believe in it.

Therefore people who don't believe in the religion would necessarily need to be automatically saved through the "Grace of Jesus", because Jesus himself proclaims that people who "Know not what they do" should be forgiven.

So the whole religion breaks down right there. Especially the idea that a person would need to do anything "special" on their own free will choice (like accepting Jesus as their LORD and savior) in order to earn the "Grace" of forgiveness, etc.

The whole religion is just a Pandora's box of one contradiction after another.

[Carnavon]

Carn, your religion has taught people more about fear and loathing than nearly any other, so, simply because you are too brainwashed to get the point doesn't give you any moral height from which to hand down your astonishment.

Mote, eye, you know the drill.

Hi there Epimethean. Trust you are well. Epimethean you make some statements which may be a perception, I agree. Whether it is the truth, can only be judged by the actual proper interpretation of relevant texts, don't you agree? I will be happy to discuss any of the texts, seen in context (as proper exegesis requires).
Many texts have been used for various purposes when taken out of context - for the specific purpose of supporting a specific viewpoint.
As an example, the "prosperity teachings of guys like Copeland rests on very poor interpretation of for instance 2Co 8:9 For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that being rich, He became poor for your sake, so that you might become rich by the poverty of that One. If you were to read the text in context of the paragraphs surrounding it, it is evident that it is very little about earthly riches - but that is not what people want to hear. (see 2Co 8:7 Therefore, as ye abound in every thing, in faith, and utterance, and knowledge, and in all diligence, and in your love to us, see that ye abound in this grace also.)Being basically self-centered people want wealth, health and happiness and God is the vehicle - to satisfy their "lusts".

But getting back to your comments, it will be great if you could then support your claims with some proof?

[The Grand Nudger]

Sorry, "my interpretation disagrees ergo they are wrong" doesn't cut it for me.

[Carnavon]

Sorry, "my interpretation disagrees ergo they are wrong" doesn't cut it for me.

Hi Rhythm. Good to chat to you again.
The principle is nobody can just consider their own interpenetration to be the right one (including me). I am open to correction and so is anybody that is honest and do not wish to support their viewpoint by a few carefully selected verses, that is contrary to the argument by the writer, the purpose why he was writing, to whom he was writing, the book (Psalms is different to Romans), the Bible as a whole and the specific word used etc.

Even so (with honest discussion) there may be differences of opinion. So it will be a good idea if you agreed with the position taken in the point raised, to support it with argument.

Let me concede from the beginning that if you take "Christians" as the standard, there will be ample proof of the view expressed. That is however not the standard. The Bible is.

[Epimethean]

The NT was written by men who were, at least ostensibly, xtians.

[Carnavon]

The NT was written by men who were, at least ostensibly, xtians.

You are suggesting they were without vice? Jesus knew that they were not and even taught them to prey "please forgive us our sins". In my previous post I admitted that Christian often do not measure up to living holy lives. That has no impact on what the Bible teaches. It actually confirms that which you will find all over Scripture - Rom 3:23 for all sinned and fall short of the glory of God, and every true Christian will attest to that fact.
But let us look at your statement "your religion has taught people more about fear and loathing". Please support that from Scripture.

[Epimethean]

Carn, if we look at what xtians actually do as opposed to what they are supposed to do, we see that they prefer the OT, so let's look at their deeds. A book which proclaims itself as a standard is only as good as those who revere it, and xtians depart from it every chance they get. The bible teaches nothing. Man teaches, and if he uses the bible as a tool, but still lashes out at those who are different from him, his standard is his own conduct. look at my statement. It did not say that your bible teaches people fear and loathing (though it certainly does do that): It says that your religion teaches these things.

Shall we start with Charlemagne and the execution of the Saxons? Or perhaps the massacre of Jews in Germany and Poland in the 14th century? Do the Crusades (including the Albigensian Crusade) ring any bells? How about the Inquisitions of Spain and Italy (Cathars, anyone?)? Or perhaps the witch hunts of the 15th through 17th centuries? Hmmm, or maybe the murder of the Huguenots? What about that insidious fellow named Columbus? Good ol' John Mason? The list runs very long, and many others can be placed amidst the ones I have listed.

[Abracadabra]

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Sorry, "my interpretation disagrees ergo they are wrong" doesn't cut it for me.

Hi Rhythm. Good to chat to you again.
The principle is nobody can just consider their own interpenetration to be the right one (including me). I am open to correction and so is anybody that is honest and do not wish to support their viewpoint by a few carefully selected verses, that is contrary to the argument by the writer, the purpose why he was writing, to whom he was writing, the book (Psalms is different to Romans), the Bible as a whole and the specific word used etc.

Even so (with honest discussion) there may be differences of opinion. So it will be a good idea if you agreed with the position taken in the point raised, to support it with argument.

Let me concede from the beginning that if you take "Christians" as the standard, there will be ample proof of the view expressed. That is however not the standard. The Bible is.

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There is no hope for saving the biblical picture via mere interpretations.

It's far more problematic that this.

Take the very basis for the whole tale (i.e. The fall from grace)

Gen 3:14 And the LORD God said unto the serpent, Because thou hast done this, thou art cursed above all cattle, and above every beast of the field; upon thy belly shalt thou go, and dust shalt thou eat all the days of thy life:

As written, there isn't much to "interpret". It either means what it says, or we need to appeal to grossly abstract metaphors to avoid accepting that it actually says what it says in an effort to try to pretend that it says something else, (something preferably far more reasonable if we're trying to support the myths) But to do that would be nothing more than to blatantly attempt to make these fables into something they aren't.

What sense would it be to pretend to change a story so completely via highly unrelated abstract metaphors that the story we end up supporting has no relevance to the original scriptures?

Above, in Genesis 3:14 we have this God cursing a demon, (supposedly a serpent), for having beguiled Eve into eating the forbidden fruit. What does this God do to solve this problem?

Well, he curses the serpent to crawl on it's belly for the rest of its days and eat dust. Supposedly the serpent had arms and legs before this? Otherwise it wouldn't have been much of a curse to make it crawl on its belly.

I personally believe these stories originated as stories told to children to scare them into thinking that if they do bad things some "God" might curse them and turn them into a snake. Late on, it became apparent to the leaders of tribes that even adults were gullible enough to fall for these stories, and thus the "religion" was born.

But first we must ask, "Did this solve the problem?"

And the answer must necessarily be, "No it did not". We're only in the beginning of Genesis and we have a whole biblical cannon yet to go, and the evil demon continues to beguile people to this very day. So evidently this God's solution to this problem didn't even work anyway.

There's truly no reason to believe that a supposedly all-wise all-benevolent God would think that cursing someone to crawl on their belly and eat dust should be a viable solution to anything.

In other words, Genesis 3:14 demands already that we must believe that this God is crude, stupid, and basically evil going around cursing people with pathetically gross situations.

In fact, next he turns to Eve who had innocently been beguiled by this evil serpent. Eve necessarily would have needed to have been totally innocent prior to this fall from grace? Why? Well, because the story claims that Adam and Eve did not yet have the knowledge of good and evil prior to eating this fruit. So they could not have understood that it would have been 'evil' to eat it. They could only have acted in pure innocence.

Therefore, IMHO, based on the story thus far (and we're only 3 chapters into the very beginning of Genesis), it would not even make sense to punish Adam and Eve for this event at all. Clearly they would have necessarily had to have acted in a state of pure innocence to begin with if they did not yet have the knowledge of good and evil.

So this story already falls flat on it's face at the very beginning before it even gets off the ground. And no amount of "re-interpretation" could possibly save it. On the contrary to "justify" the story at this point you need to make up external excuses for it that aren't even contained within the original story. But what sense would it make to do such a foolish thing when it's supposed to be the stories you are evaluating?

If you just evaluate the stories in their own right, they fall flat on their face.

So what does this all-wise and all-benevolent God do to Eve?

Gen 3:16 Unto the woman he said, I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception; in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children; and thy desire shall be to thy husband, and he shall rule over thee.

He curses her with greatly multiplied sorrow in conception and childbirth?

That's supposed to be a wise solution to this problem?

Why is it that people feel that it somehow makes sense for a supposedly all-wise all-benevolent God to use crude ignorant and outright mean curses to solve problems?

This is like teaching people that kicking their dog is a divine means of training it.

IMHO, there is nothing wise or benevolent about cursing a woman with greatly multiplies sorrow in conception and childbirth. All that would serve to teach the woman is that this God himself is an ignorant mean jerk that doesn't have any more wisdom than a barroom drunkard.

Then he also supports male-chauvinism by condemning this woman to be the slave to her husband Adam (even thought Adam also ate the forbidden fruit too)

That's enough right there for me to flush these fables down the proverbial toilet of mythological waste materials.

I really have no reason to even bother reading any further into it at this point.

However, in truth I have. In truth, I have studied the entire cannon in detail. My observation is that it only gets far worse, and far more absurd.

There is no hope of ever salvaging the Bible as being the "Word" of a supposedly all-wise all-benevolent God. There are even places in the Bible where this God himself proclaims that he has been driven to anger and he will pour his wrath out on the people who have angered him. And his motivation is "jealously" no less! They were burning incense to other "Gods".

It's just the stupidest collection of fables on the planet. In fact, Greek mythology actually makes more sense, simply because it doesn't proclaim that Zeus is all-wise, all-benevolent, or all-perfect.

Zeus is allowed to be jerk. He can strike you dead with a lightening bolt simply because he felt like it and for no other reason.

But the biblical God is supposed to be "righteous and just" and trustworthy!

But there's no way that the Biblical God could be expected to be wise, benevolent, trustworthy, righteous, or just. The stories contradict all of those traits with every passing page.

The only way to try to attempt to justify them is to appeal to outside sources like saying "Well maybe God has reasons that we just don't know about?"

In other words, "Maybe we can imagine a different story that isn't being told by the biblical cannon."

But those kinds of arguments for justification of the cannon itself are absurd.

Just give it up. It's a collection of fables that cannot stand on their own two feet. The authors of these fables shot themselves in the foot so many times repeatedly that they have no feet left to stand on.

[Epimethean]

Really, given the comparison Carn gave, we have to ask why xtians in general tend to obey governmental laws but have no problem violating scriptural ones. A given state's statutory laws are far more respected by these folk than their ten commandments or anything about being kind that their godboy supposedly ever said.