Nero's Boot

.....

.....do have any damn clue how vastly Buddhism differs from Christianity???

--they are so disimilar as to be from entirely different planets NB

Steven Carr

2 Corinthians 11:4 For if someone comes to you and preaches a Jesus other than the Jesus we preached, or if you receive a different spirit from the one you received, or a different gospel from the one you accepted, you put up with it easily enough.

Why did the church just believe all these false stories about Jesus with no evidence supporting them?

-Jay-

An easy and obvious answer (though by no means the only possible answer) is that the story grew to fill a vacant social need. Jesus preached (broadly) to the disaffected. People will latch onto a message that resonates with them whether it's true or not.

People join the Church of Scientology because the promises of the Church of Scientology resonate with the problems they see in their own lives.

People join Christian churches today not because they reason their way into them, but because their family belongs, or their friends, or the object of their affection - social needs are being fulfilled.

One of the things you're doing here, Half-Life, is that you're (I think unintentionally) retrojecting your 21^st perspective backwards -
you're assuming that people in 1^st century Palestine and the surrounding areas had the same understanding of things that we do today. They didn't. You're looking at Buddhist statements with a Christian perspective and deciding they are about Christ. They aren't. You're engaging in a bit of eisegesis here - imposing your own interpretations on things.

You might find it useful to step back and ask yourself "If I were going to make up a religion that I wanted people to believe in, how would I do it?"

regards,

NinJay

Manakin

Yeah... at the OP, the question that interests me more due to is greater historical proximity is how the hell anybody can believe Scientology.

But the thing is, people do. And people think that it's impossible for the early Christians to have believed in something false?

We just started a religion in the last fifty years that behaves like a scam and was founded by a man who made his living selling science fiction!

Half-Life

Nope, once again you are wrong.

Read the prophecy again. buddha said the new teacher's disciples would number "many thousands" while mine will number "many hundreds."

If you read about these religions, you will find that followers of Bahá'u'lláh are 200 million people. Buddhism has 350 million people at the least.

LOL! Buddha himself was wrong!

I have just PROVEN buddhism wrong.

Half-Life

Doesn't matter. L. Ron hubbard never claimed a certain man was killed under United States government, rose again from the dead, and leaves no corpse behind to find.

Just because people believe Hubbard shows even more how misguided they can be.

But no worries, the Bible predicted people will start following man made religions instead of the one from God.

This only futher PROVES God's word.

Dogfish

Maybe I'm reading this wrong. Aren't millions considered "many thousands"?

Dogfish

Moving the goal post again, huh?

-Jay-

Interestingly, Scientology has a number of very strong similarities between (at least some flavors of) Christianity. Hubbard, whether he did it deliberately or just had a natural talent for it, understood how to manipulate people.

The real characteristics of early Christianity are, as far as I know, rather speculative. The information we have available to us just doesn't go back to the very start of it all. That's one of the reasons I find it interesting when certain conservative Christian groups claim to be modeled on the first Christians. (I know others here will quite competently elaborate on this if need be.)

regards,

NinJay

-Jay-

No, honestly, Hubbard's claims were even more bizarre. IIRC, he essentially claims that he himself is God at OTVIII...

There's a certain irony to this statement that I probably don't need to point out.

The Bible also predicted that Jesus would return within the lifetime of the people he was speaking to...

Before you open the Pandora's box of prophecy, you would be well-served to look through some of the older threads on the matter.

regards,

NinJay