(March 13, 2010 at 2:03 pm)Laurens Wrote: Indeed, but the stories are drummed up in such a way as to make them seem very believable. Most likely discarding important facts that might cast doubt over the claim.
Just the same as with Christianity. Even as Bible stories may appear irrational to free thinkers, preachers, Sunday school teachers and the like want to make children and youth think an omniscient, all-powerful god is a reasonable thing in which to believe. And like your Buddhist friends, when you begin to question their tales, you are called deluded, or as I was told by my former worship leader, "stop resisting," as if I was acting like a stubborn child in my unbelief. Once you dismiss one religion, I don't see why there is much sense in accepting any of the others either. Hitchens, for instance, has a chapter in his book about the bankruptcy of the far eastern religions. Or, as Sam Harris has said, if someone insists on adopting a religion, Jainism might be the best way to go.
Our Daily Train blog at jeremystyron.com
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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We have lingered in the chambers of the sea | By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown | Till human voices wake us, and we drown. — T.S. Eliot
"... man always has to decide for himself in the darkness, that he must want beyond what he knows. ..." — Simone de Beauvoir
"As if that blind rage had washed me clean, rid me of hope; for the first time, in that night alive with signs and stars, I opened myself to the gentle indifference of the world. Finding it so much like myself—so like a brother, really—I felt that I had been happy and that I was happy again." — Albert Camus, "The Stranger"
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