I would argue that a secular version of karma is defensible. We are creatures of habit. A single nonvirtuous action therefore increases the probability of future nonvirtuous behaviors. Taken as a group, the set of those nonvirtuous behaviors can lead to bad consequences, some of them suffered by the perpetrator. An empirical examination of that POV would be interesting.
A generational group Karma of sorts, then? I might be able to go for that philosophy.
I wasn’t suggesting there were a lot of people with only basic god belief. I’m saying that those who have atheism explained to them , the lack of belief in a god thing, should be able to understand it’s not a religion because if they are believers , they should understand that god belief is only one component of a doctrine that makes a religion different from others. They should understand that since god belief does not constitute a religion by itself, then neither should a lack of belief. I guess that’s too logical for lots of believers.
Then it’s good I didn’t imply they were,… at all, not even close.
Man I am having a record day of people not understanding the point of my posts.
The discussion was about whether Buddhism contained mystical beliefs. My point was that even if some people practice Buddhism or Christianity with mystical beliefs, {which in no way equates the mystical beliefs of the two} it’s clearly possible for people to practice them as philosophical disciplines without the mystical beliefs.
Ok: thanks for the clarification.
My point was that secular Buddhism merely strips out reincarnation. A secular Christianity is possible (Deism??) but requires greater surgical intervention. And speaking personally, I find it difficult to unpack the doctrine of Jesus, given the editing and re-editing apparent in the New Testament (Paul at least is understandable). But the Buddha presented a coherent doctrine, so there’s a conceptual framework to latch on to.
The Buddha was a pretty sharp guy, IMHO. One of my problems with Buddhism is that the underlying philosophical issues are hard, my skills in that discipline are limited, and I find the presentation of the Buddha appealing. The result is an untoward bias towards that doctrine. Hey, at least I admit it.
I find that to be one of the most disappointing aspects of Christianity. For someone who is supposed to the Savior of Humanity, we really don’t get to know all that much about him. We learn about his birth, then there’s a time jump to a single incident when he’s 12, then the gospels skip ahead to when he’s 30. His ministry on earth was only 3 years, and the 4 gospels that tell the story of those 3 years all largely repeat the same story.
… in different ways. Even the central tale of the crucifixion isn’t that clear – note the differences between John and Mark.
Moreover, a lot of the reporting in the gospel has a veneer of hagiography that I find difficult to penetrate-- I just don’t find the interpersonal interactions to be credible. This might be unsurprising: Dio has noted that the gospels were penned in a different time, place and even language from that where the original events took place. At least with Paul’s letters I can locate a recognizably human voice. You don’t have to agree with Paul in every particular to recognize the profound encounter he had upon his conversion to early Christianity.
Hmm funny, I don’t find Paul trustworthy at all.
He smells like a fraud. A Smith-like character that uses christianity to start his own cult.
He doesn’t have to listen to any elders or follow doctrine, he had a personal encounter with “spiritual Jesus” or found two golden tablets or whatever. Sure…
Even a fraud can still have a distinct “voice.”
Interestingly, Paul never actually describes the nature and details of his claimed revelations of Christ, at least not in the extant Pauline corpus.
The road to Damascus story is told by Luke, not Paul (and Luke tells contradictory versions of it), so we don’t really have any specific claims from Paul about what exactly happened.
To each his own I guess. I was a Christian years ago and have maintained a reverence for the concepts Jesus taught even after rejecting most Christian doctrine. Viewing him as teacher rather than Savior I find his words in the NT pretty clear concerning our interaction with our fellow man.
I have this book on my bookshelf which demonstrates how similar the teachings of Buddha and Jesus are when seperated from the mythology that surrounds them. Although all religions are not the same there are some fairly common themes running through most of the worlds major religions.
There has been speculation, as noted upthread, that the missing years of Jesus’ life were in part spent in India studying Buddhism. It doesn’t sound like there is any hard evidence so much as striking parallels between the teachings of Jesus and The Buddha as well as just a high probability that he had studied it as a lot of prophets did in those days.
Some background here.
I am not a historian and have no idea how to evaluate concepts like historical validity, but there ya go.
How far did your average unfunded itinerent wander back in the day, does anybody know?
I also find myself wondering how hard it is to come up with these shared tenants. I’m not conversant with buddhism, but after you extract the mythology from christianity, it doesn’t seem to me that there’s a whole lot of themes left. Is it just “be excellent to each other; [don’t] party on, dudes!” or is there a fair amount of esoteric complexity in the shared stuff?
There isn’t any hard evidence that Jesus existed at all.
There is nothing in the teachings attributed to Jesus that can’t be found right at home in pre-Christian Judaism. It’s also not true that his teachings were confined to the peace and love stuff. They were wrought through with high octane, apocalyptic messianism, and were also heavily eschatological, which is alien to Eastern mystical traditions.
Ok, but Paul does refer to his epiphany in Galatians 1.13-24. He also references Damascus proper in 2 Corinthians 11.32, although he is only speaking of a place where the ruler sought to capture him.
I dunno, Paul never explicitly denounced Judism, and he had to co-exist with an hypothesized list of Jesus sayings circulating at the time. The epistles are full of him pleading with the young church to see things his way and dammit they just weren’t listening.
Very human, I’d say.
The Master disagrees: Did Jesus really exist? And what’s with the Shroud of Turin? - The Straight Dope
Mythicism is a minority position among scholars of Christianity, though it is not crankery. We discussed this last March and everyone was eventually won over to my position on the matter… kidding.
Here’s another thread: http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=561547&page=2
All I could find after a quick search, but this book review would concur with your last statement:
Apparently you and I read that differently.
There is no “proof positive.” But several people soon after “did not doubt he had once lived.” And he was “probably the son of somebody.” Certainly can be considered highly suggestive of his existence, tho -of course - says nothing about his divinity.
[QUOTE=begbert2;12719668
I also find myself wondering how hard it is to come up with these shared tenants. I’m not conversant with Buddhism, but after you extract the mythology from Christianity, it doesn’t seem to me that there’s a whole lot of themes left. Is it just “be excellent to each other; [don’t]
party on, dudes!” or is there a fair amount of esoteric complexity in the shared stuff?
[/QUOTE]
While studying and questioning beliefs in general I did a cursory look at several world religions and noticed the common themes that run through them.
You’re correct, the brotherhood of mankind and let’s play nice is a common theme. Then they break down into more details about specific human qualities of anger, greed, forgiveness, honesty, etc. and how that applies to playing nice.
Then I read The Religions of Man and it helped me to see how mankind takes teachings and grows them into a religion over time and philosophic ideals become twisted into dogma.