(December 30, 2015 at 3:40 pm)CapnAwesome Wrote: Buddhism also has a clergy which leeches from the populace at large. Every look at the palace that the dalai lama lived in? Also the leagues of slums that surrounded it? Like every religion, it just serves to divide people and enrich manipulators who do nothing for society.
Yes and no. I still believe in the good in humanity, even of those liberal individuals who still believe. I don't like however the insistence on taboos for any. I think religion can and does infect politics way too much and is self serving to a great degree and yes it is used to exploit people. But even with the good people in religion, there is no polite way to say it does divide, and Buddhism doesn't escape divisions too.
Buddhism has it's power grabs, it has it's corruption and sexism too, there is no perfect religion anywhere in the world of any label. But as Penn has put it, "Don't hate the faithful, hate faith itself".
I DO value the likes of MLK and Malala and Ann Frank, very empathetic people, but that does not make their gods real or their religions the gatekeepers of human morality. Our species ability to be cruel or compassionate is in us, not the religions or deities humans invent.
