Pie in the Sky, in the sweet by and by

the opiate of the masses

I am familiar with those arguments.  I did study Marx as sociological philosopher.

Christianity is an immature philosophy full of cognitive dissonance, a simplistic view of the "divine" and false values.

Eastern philosophy goes way beyond that. Although their are many differences, they all pretty much say that the real power/divinity is hidden within oneself and not some silly anthropomorpic being out in "heaven" (wherever that's supposed to be). By learning the proper techniques, we can use that power to both improve both ourselves and others. Easterners also have a better understanding of the individual's position among other humans and of humanities position among nature. That's why I regard these philosophies as superior.

Personally I prefer Shinto and Vedanta to Chinese philosophy (Buddhism, Taoism and Confucianism), because the Chinese put too much stress on modesty and obedience. Not that I opose modesty and obedience, but there must always be leaders and followers. We can't all be followers.

From my perspective, Christianity actually held back the potential of European man. Sure, European man achieved a lot but I am pretty sure he would have achieved a lot more if he hadn't forcibly been converted to that damned desert religion.

Islam is hard to rate. I somewhat admire the open mind of Shia scholars, but I'm horrified by the fundamentalism of Wahhabism. I would regard Islam as one of the more pagan and therefore more healthy Abrahamic religions, but I would still say that all Abrahamic religions are inferior and quite childish. This includes Judaism, Christianity and Islam.

The deeper you look into different forms of spirituality the more similar they appear. The best philosophy often comes from a fusion of different religious ideas--the ability to adapt and apply general principles to specific circumstances.

Neither eastern nor western religions is better. Nor is new religion superior to older (animistic) beliefs. It all spirituality…
But spirituality applied and adapted to a particular context.

How a set of religious ideas is applied--this is what makes a religion good or bad.

That's what I like about Vedanta. They basically teach you that anyone can choose his own path towards enlightenment. To them, the end result is far more important than the path you take to get there.

Still, I don't like Abrahamic faith. Those religions have supremacist tendencies and stimulate dogma, which tends to have an effect oposite to enlightenment.

That's rubbish. The closer a religion to the principles of nature, the more valuable and the more spiritual it is. The further away from the principles of nature, the more dangerous and the less spiritual it is. Desert religions like Judaism, Christianity and Islam are quite distant from nature and therefore quite dangerous and unspiritual.

Fancy that! The followers of a religion being supremacist?  I take 'supremacist' in that context to mean 'believing their approach to spirituality to be superior to others'...and I'm sure you'd have no truck with that kind of thinking, would you?

Jews tend to consider themselves as God's chosen people and tend to look down upon anyone who doesn't belong to that category. Christians and Muslems don't nearly go this far, but they do have the tendency to convert others with violence or to use laws to enforce their ideas onto others.

Eastern philosophy lacks this attitude. Everyone is free to accept or not accept their teachings. They don't treat with disrespect those who are different and they don't want to enforce their ideas onto anyone. Enlightenment must come from within and simply cannot be enforced.

I believe the latter approach to be superior to the first. If you regard that as supremacist, so be it. I regard it as maturity and common sense.

As far as I perceive it, the eastern philosophies, especially Buddhism, care about what this is really about here on earth, and how to improve performance. They actually provide a manual, something substantial with a strong connection to reality.

Monotheistic religions on the other hand, like Christianity, Islam or Judaism construct sets of very earthly rules that are designed to establish a hierarchy of power. They claim to be connected to some patriarchal super-being that simultaneously judges each and everyone of us, but does not really care to change its master plan for the prayers of those puny mortals.

Eastern schemes are more about 'how to get things working' and the monotheistic ones are more about 'how can some few control a lot of others, while giving those others a bad feeling for just living'. This statement is not entirely true; It is more true for institutions called Churches than for the Religions itself. But even there: eastern stuff is more like the kernel, western stuff more like clothing.


... maybe, we should start another 'Dispute about religion'-thread. This one was originally about a slightly different topic. But of course, the topics may be related, like "Why do people of some confession tend to hate others, especially minorities?". Change 'confession' with 'wiring' and strip off the voluntariness of choosing a religion.

That was more or less the point I was trying to make.

Indeed. I was practicing the 'say-it-in-your-own-words'-technique

Buddhism, for example, teaches the Eightfold Path of 'Right' livelihood, 'Right' action, 'Right' thought etc.  Christianity also offers guidance on how to behave - more rules if you count the ten commandments (any real argument with any of those?), less if you focus on the two commandments of jesus.  In fact you'll find all the world's major established religious philosophies revolve around the same kernel (not really a surprise...): "Treat other people as you would like to be treated - and honour the divine".  There really isn't that much to choose between them - except that in western countries recent political developments have made it fashionable to denigrate any power-base connected with the outmoded establishment.

Are you familiar with the caste system of the Indian sub-continent?  Their society establishes a powerful hierarchy of power.  The same hierarchies are patently obvious in confucionist china - find me a society that doesn't have them and I'll give you a cookie.  (I did once live in a non-hierarchical concesus community - but it was destroyed from within by some people who were nominally interested in eastern philosophies...buddhism, yoga and so on...who were keen to establish a heirarchy of power that put them above the other members).

Ah there we are - I did try to avoid using the word 'patriarchal' above, but thanks for making it clear that this is just a fashionable political attack that doesn't bother to assess all the evidence in any disinterested manner.  Can you really claim that Indian and Chinese societies are not patriarchal?  Buddhism is connected to a patriarchal super-being (Buddha) and encourages its followers to think of their lives as being judged and as the master plan being impervious to the pleas of puny mortals.  Even Taoism considers mortals to be puny and at the mercy of the Tao, although it's the only religion that stops short of personifying the divine force.

"This statement is not true."  There, fixed that for you.

This statement is not true either - Buddhist temples set their priests above the common herd and used tithes and donations to accrue wealth in concrete form while the unenlightened peasants starved.

There is no validity in your arguments at all, Yigal - not least because you appear to be seeking evidence to support your position, rather than reviewing the evidence in order to arrive at a position.

Buddhism:

Wisdom
  1. Right View
  2. Right Intention
Ethical Conduct
  3. Right Speech
  4. Right Action
  5. Right Livelihood
Mental Development
  6. Right Effort
  7. Right Mindfulness
  8. Right Concentration

Huna:

   1. IKE (ee-kay) - The world is what you think it is.
   2. KALA - There are no limits.
   3. MAKIA (mah-kee-ah) - Energy flows where attention goes.
   4. MANAWA (man-ah-wah) - Now is the moment of power.
   5. ALOHA - To love is to be happy with (someone or something).
   6. MANA - All power comes from within.
   7. PONO - Effectiveness is the measure of truth.

Those are positive and applicable, nicely shaven by Occam's Razor.


Now the Two Commandments and the Eight Prohibitions:

   1. You shall have no other Gods but me.
   2. You shall not make for yourself any idol, nor bow down to it or worship it.
   3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your God.
   4. You shall remember and keep the Sabbath day holy.
   5. Respect your father and mother.
   6. You must not kill.
   7. You must not commit adultery.
   8. You must not steal.
   9. You must not give false evidence against your neighbour.
  10. You must not be envious of your neighbour's goods. You shall not be envious of his house nor his wife, nor anything that belongs to your neighbour.


See, the problem with that is stated often as "Do not think of a pink giraffe". NLP taken as an attempt to describe observations (not instructions of manipulations) has filled books with it.

So, after reading those ten rules, my imagination was brought to murder, theft, envy and what not, and leaving me behind with an unspoken threat (what if I fail to obey?).


George Carlin made a good point in my eyes as he attempted to reduce this set of ten rather arbitrary rules to two significant ones in a positive way .

And yes, I have seen Zeitgeist and find it almost amusing that some Monotheistic Churches put so much effort on embellishing something that is actually worshiping the sun.


The other thing is that the Eightfold Path and the Huna are directed to a spiritual development and the actions of human beings are a consequence of that. They describe a stance.

In the Christian Teachings, I have problems to find such clear statements directed towards spiritual development. The writings (the Bible for example) is a collection of stories which may imply such a stance. Finding this stance (or maybe Gods will) is subject of the exegesis. This means that Gods will can only be understood by interpretation. This sounds like a contradiction to me (but I do not go for the whole God-stuff at all anyway).


As a safety clause I'd like to cite: De Gustibus Non Disputandum Est.

And describing something as 'Right' doesn't 'make' you think of wrong?  The punishment for being wrong in buddhism is arguably as unpleasant as being wrong in christianity - and both are wide open to the (lucrative) interpretation of the (exploitative) priest classes.

What is 'Right action'? We do not know - unless the priests are paid to tell us.  What is wrong action, according to christian teaching?  Murder, for example - best not do that then, even it 'feels' right to us...and do you honestly believe the human mind wouldn't consider murder unless it was exposed to christian teaching??

I havent watched your George Carlin link, but really, can you justifiably describe the ten commandments as arbitrary?  You have a lot to learn about human nature.  If they were, for example, Thou Shalt Not Wear Pink, or Thou Shalt Always Eat The Eggs Before The Bacon, they would be arbitrary.  Using a word doesn't make something so.

I haven't seen Zeitgeist either - apparantly it's a freely distributed paranoid conspiracy-theory movie?  Do you plan on citing any respected sources at all?  Do you plan on reading any respected sources at all?

You fail to find what you fail to find in the christian teachings because you approach them with the view that they are patriarchal and outmoded and inferior to eastern philosophies.  You fail to back up your position in any meaningful way - except to argue (in latin?? odd that it should have been the monotheistic priest class you despise that used that as a tool for promoting its own superiority and learnedness in the eyes of the peasants)that 'it's all a matter of taste'.  Quite so - which would make it ludicrous to claim that marmalade was 'superior' to Marmite.  It is equally ludicrous to claim that eastern philosophies are 'superior' to the Abrahamic religions....but you keep doing it.

And your Paganism is "real" is it, Richard? good Gods grow up.

I confess, I had to research 'Huna' - it was new to me.  Some interesting remarks on the relevant wiki page though...

"Huna is a Hawaiian word first used by Max Freedom Long (1890-1971) in 1936 to describe what he called “the secret science behind the miracles” that ancient Hawaiian kahuna (experts) performed....One of the primary themes in his [Long's] books is that the kahuna were not unique to Hawai’i. They were the Hawaiian version of an esoteric priesthood that was also found in ancient Egypt. Indian yogis, Christ and Buddha were adepts in these universal principles."

"Long's use of Hawaiian words is based on his understanding of the English translation of Hawaiian words in a dictionary compiled by a missionary in 1865. None of the accepted Hawaiian sources - Malo, Kamakau, I'i, Kepelino - use the word Huna for a tradition of esoteric learning. "

Interesting stuff - a discredited invention of some self-serving westerner, more or less deliberately misunderstanding an ancient tradition.  I can see how it would appeal to you more than the time-honoured principles of a world-wide religion that has moved millions of ordinary people to acts of extraordinary bravery, generosity and service to others...and that has stood against 'wrong' action, 'wrong' livelihood and so forth time and time again.  If only it hadn't been found and perpetuated by those old dead {men} who you apparantly deem responsible for all the ills of the world.

<prays that Gareth will see the light and bless us with an edit button>