Opera Nut

Nowhere, that one made me stop in my tracks too.

I think it's a bizarre sentiment.

I think Christianity is quite detestable, truly, for its history of bloodshed and killing and persecution of others.

Christianity is certainly not philosophically deep, after you get thru all the stupidity and contradictions and political decisions making certain books canonical and others non canonical, in history. Nothing more than political power growing and seizing power from others, political, military and spiritual power.

Aradia

Yes. No specific school, but I identify as Theravadin for simplicity's sake.

And, no, christianity is not detestable. It is the followers of a religion that pervert said religion that is detestable. It is not the religion per se.

Opera Nut

Christianity is detestable as far as the mutually contradictory statements in it which literalists do not reconcile, and it doesn't bother them.

I come not in peace, but with a sword? Thine enemies shall be in thine own household? Having to leave your family and go away to be a christian? Cussing a fig tree out for doing what is in its nature to do?

Various double bind mindfucks, like freewill and predestination, original sin and forgiveness. Yes you are saved if you do A,B,C....no you are not saved no matter what you do.......

U can know God's will......you cannot know God's will.




God is psychotic, random and bloodthirsty in Christianity.

Totally ridiculous and anti intellectual religion.

Aradia

Perfect example of why I separate religion from its followers. I see the beneficial things that christianity has to offer. You see what others have perverted.

lugotorix

I agree completely. Any tendency toward philosophical depth was wiped out really early. One of the things that attracted me to Buddhism is that it is still whole, meaning it has both a devotional side and a gnostic or mystical side. Unfortunately for Christianity, the devotionalists eventually had all the might of the Roman empire backing them and were able to effectively wipe out the gnostically-inclined. As a result, nowadays if you look deeper into your Christian faith, you won't find much of substance. At least that's what happened to me.

Buddhism had just enough early political support (from the Emperors Ashoka and Kanishka) to help it to spread, but not enought to warp it the way Christianity was. The dynamic tension between the devotional and gnostic sides of Buddhism helps to keep it evolving and vital, IMHO.

lugotorix

lugotorix

I have two problems with that. Firstly, you can't really separate religion from its followers. It's not like religion exists in some Platonic realm of ideas and its expression by its followers is some pale imitiation. It exists in the world. The actions of its followers are a good yardstick to measure the influence, good or bad, of a religion.

Secondly, cursing the fig-tree for not blooming out of season and saying 'I come not in peace, but with a sword' are not someone's perversion of Christianity -- those are actual excerpts from the New Testament. Face it, even before the years of political chicanery, Christianity had some problematic elements. For instance, in one NT passage Jesus said to resist not evil but to turn the other cheek. In another, he grabbed a whip and used it to drive the moneychangers out of the temple. (Hello, Jesus? Which is it -- complete pacifism or holy ass-kickin'?)

lugotorix

Aradia

Of course you can. Well, let me rephrase that. *I* can. At least, I can to the point of realising that christianity could exist *today* in a different form than that currently practiced.

Bah. If you're just going to assume that the entirety of the NT is what Jesus really taught, then you're already screwed. You have to take each book individually, examine the translations, determine authorship if possible (at least, relative authorship between books), and take historical context. Paul, for example, was a twit.

Yes, there *is* deep philosophy in christianity. But anti-theists will never see that. I'm glad that I'm a buddhist. I see quite clearly that each individual has their own path. Christianity is one such path, and it's perfectly valid in its own right.

lugotorix

I don't think that the NT is what Jesus really taught (personally I think the Gospel of Thomas and the Nag Hamadi texts are probably a lot closer). But that isn't the issue -- most Christians actually do think it's what Jesus taught, and the issue is how they act on that belief (including how they reconcile the contradictions).
I do agree with you about Paul being a wank, though.

Perhaps, but each path has it own "baggage", and in the long trip from Jesus' teaching to being the official religion of an empire, Christianity picked up a lot. Just consider the adversarial relationships Christian authorities have had with the religion's greatest thinkers (like Meister Eckhart, who came perilously close to being executed as a heretic).

I have no doubt that Christians can be philosophically and spiritually deep. I just think that the few that are, are that way in spite of their religion rather than because of it. Religion can either give you stock answers or, like Buddhism, give you a method of finding your own answers. Very few Christian sects that I've encountered do the latter.

lugotorix

Aradia

Yes, and the way I see it, "christianity" is the belief system that Jesus taught, irrespective of who comes later and fills it full of crap (coughPaulcough). That is why I insist that it is possible to separate a religion from its followers. If you want to talk about lutheranism, or roman catholicism, or some other denomination whose founder was not Jesus, so be it. But I'm not talking about any of those. I'm talking about the religion that Jesus taught.

In my eyes, it's the reclamation of a word's proper denotation. A hacker is not a vandal. A skinhead is not a racist. But those connotations persist. Just as the negative connotations exist with regard to christianity.

lugotorix

...which no longer exists. AFAIK, all modern denominations are Pauline, so they all have Jesus as an object of worship but follow the teachings of Paul. Paul's main opposition, the Jerusalem church, was essentially wiped out with the destruction of Jerusalem in 70 CE.

As to what Jesus actually taught, no one really knows. You'll get a different answer depending on which scholar you ask. Mack and Crossan say he was a wandering sage, Borg says he was a non-Messianic but spiritual social critic, and Hyam Maccoby says he was a mystically-inclined Messianic revolutionary. If the Q document actually exists and is ever found in some form, then we might be able to say with certainty what Jesus taught.

BTW, with regards to the subject matter of the OP, there was an article recently on the Beeb about Buddhists which says that Buddhists are generally happier than other people. Cool.


lugotorix