Some are. There is, for example, Soko Gakkai:
which is a Nichiren Buddhist group (sort of. They were expelled from the main Japanese Nichiren organization). They look for converts, not only from non-Buddhists, but also from Buddhists of other groups. (I think they claim that they’re the only “real” Buddhists.)
Despite the assumptions of the OP, I don’t think anyone here singles Christianity out as being uniquely evil or flawed on purpose. It’s just that most of us were raised in and live in the general European culture, which is overwhelmingly Christian.
If the majority of us had been raised in India, we’d probably be bitching about the Brahmins instead of ranting about the Reverends…
Hmm, maybe I was thinking of another group. That the problem with relying on your memory. Stiil the other groups, and more still stands.
Well, I mean that the vast majority took the bible at it’s word. No, doctrine, no interpretation, and no paribles when discussing how great it is to slay an enemy. Especially when it said that the jews killed jesus, sin is the fault of women, it’s good to slaughter other groups, just as a straightforward reading of Genesis, exodus, would suggest. It seems I am always quiting the same verses, so here’s a new one.
John. Jesus speaking to a person he just healed:
5:16
And therefore did the Jews persecute Jesus, and sought to slay him, because he had done these things on the sabbath day.
Whoops, wrong one.
Afterward Jesus findeth him in the temple, and said unto him, Behold, thou art made whole: sin no more, lest a worse thing come unto thee.
So, basically physical handicaps are the result of sin, huh?
Please, give me details on how it isn’t convincing. After all, the idea of god sacrificing himself to himself to apease rules he made sounds pretty damning to me.
My girlfriend goes to a Buddhist temple in FL, and they have the same sort of community outreach as the neighboring christian churches, with the aim of introducing people to the faith and encouraging them to join.
I think that is in fact a vital part of the faith and inherent part of the four noble truths, that by following the teachings of the Buddha you can avoid eternal suffering.
I think there is a certain desire to create a sort of “buddhist exceptionalism” in western societies, to picture Buddhism as free of all the things that we don’t like about western religions and make it an ultra-tolerant, lily white religion, when it in fact suffers many of the faults of its western conterparts.
I do not think there is anything in the New Testament itself that glorifies, condones, promotes, or encourages slaughter. In this discussion, the Old Testament does not count because if something evil exists in the Old Testament, the evil can be counted again Judaism as well as against Christianity, but this thread is about what makes Christianity - alone - uniquely evil or flawed.
In many religious traditions, handicaps, diseases, and other misfortunes are considered to be punishment by God for sin. (As my mother is often wont to complain to God: “What sin did I commit to have such disobedient children?” or “For what sin are my children a punishment to me?”) This theory exists in Islam, I believe in certain strains of Judaism, and, viewed as a result of karma/samsara (and thus a punishment for some evil done in this lifetime or a previous one), Hinduism and maybe Buddhism.
One of my heroes, Tamerlane, posted in this thread! Woohoo!
WRS - Tamerlane pahlavaani-ye man o moallem-e bozorgvaar ast!
I wouldn’t say that was true. Both Catholicism and Eastern Orthodoxy (the two largest Christian groups at the time) rejected biblical literalism, and both had various schools of biblical interpretation, some of which integrated first Platonic, and later (in Catholicism) Aristotelian thought. In fact, a number of Christian thinkers, among them Augustine of Hippo, explicitly argued against a literal reading of the bible, saying that some biblical passages had to be viewed metaphorically, and that the bible needed to be viewed in light of Christian traditions and other, non-biblical teaching.
In fact, one of the reasons for the Reformation was that Luther thought that the Catholic Church had gone too far in interpreting the bible, and he was calling for a more (although not completly) literal reading.
But that’s not the same as saying, “Accept this faith or spend eternity in Hell.” In the Buddhist view, the “eternal suffering” is what we’re enduring now. But at least reincarnation gives you unlimited chances to find your way to Nirvana (and I think it’s possible in theory to get there without ever having heard the Buddha’s teachings – so long as you just live the right way; Buddha did not claim to have received a unique revelation from the gods, he just sat under a tree and worked out the obvious). In Christianity (and Islam), once your one life ends, your fate is sealed for eternity, one way or the other.
Uniquely evil? Nah. But different in particular ways that allowed it to be used in particular ways with particular efficacy. And to the degree that all religious institutions can be used for evil ends, it could so do as well, even moreso.
One, there is that “love” your neighbor bit. Other religions converted and proselytized, but Christianity took the position that a Christian has an obligation to love and care for his or her neighbor’s everlasting soul. Makes converting them an ethical obligation. Sometimes no matter what it takes to do it. Much evil has been done in that service.
Next it was a very syncretic faith. Before it most faiths were tribal in nature and functioned to provide a common bond of peoplehood and basis for law within a particular nation-state; to emphasis that “us”/“them” dichotomy. Christianity’s syncretism allowed the Empire to absorb other cultures effectively across a wide geographic distribution; it became the Microsoft of its day - subsuming other faiths into its religious corporate structure.
Again, I do not believe that it is any more evil than any other institutionalized religion, but it had a sword with an unusually sharp blade.
True. I’m just saying that Buddhism is more like Christinanity then Whynott seems to be suggesting. Both religions belive that humans will be punished unless they embrace the religious teachings* esposed by the faith, and that therefore the compassionate thing to do is to is to prosletyse.
*As you say, both religions have sects that differ as to whether you can be saved independent of their religions teachings, but regardless, following these teachings is universally seen by far as the best and easiest way to be saved, even if it is not the only one.
I think that it’s not so much that people will suffer for not embracing the teachings, but that the teachings are a method for alleviating suffering.
It’s kind of like saying “You will suffer until you are healed.”, and I don’t think either Christ or Buddha was a monopolist in this regard. They might have believed that there was only one truth, but I doubt either believed they were the ONLY people ever to find it. I think it is the people who twist the teachings out of a need for power that make it sound otherwise, and I don’t think they should be referred to as the religious authorities in the matter.
In regard to religions “wiped out” by Christianity. Would it be fair to say that the Aztec religion was wiped out by Christianity? To what degree must a religion be persecuted before it is considered ‘wiped out’? I mean, if we know some of it’s teachings at all, then it wasn’t completely wiped out.
Erek
Re: your last paragraph. I suppose you are right. Also, no one can prove that there was no “perfect crime*” committed in all of history, since there would be no evidence of its having happened.
"*(that is to say, a crime that will never be known to have happened, an idea used often in books)
Well, there can be evidence of a civilization having been there previously, but we might not know anything about that civilization. In which case the religion could be wiped out, but we don’t know anything about it, while we do know that it was wiped out.