I just remembered this scene from Seven Years in Tibet, where we find out that Tibetans believe that worms and insects are their cousins and friends who have reincarnated into these creatures, so they do not want to kill any living things, including them.
However, wouldn't you want to act in the exact opposite way if you held this belief? Wouldn't you want to squash a mosquito if you saw one and thought it was your dead father who had reincarnated as one so it could reincarnate into something better? Would you not want someone to end your suffering if you were reincarnated as a mosquito or a fly that eats shit?
However, wouldn't you want to act in the exact opposite way if you held this belief? Wouldn't you want to squash a mosquito if you saw one and thought it was your dead father who had reincarnated as one so it could reincarnate into something better? Would you not want someone to end your suffering if you were reincarnated as a mosquito or a fly that eats shit?
teachings of the Bible are so muddled and self-contradictory that it was possible for Christians to happily burn heretics alive for five long centuries. It was even possible for the most venerated patriarchs of the Church, like St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, to conclude that heretics should be tortured (Augustine) or killed outright (Aquinas). Martin Luther and John Calvin advocated the wholesale murder of heretics, apostates, Jews, and witches. - Sam Harris, "Letter To A Christian Nation"
