Soren wrote on Oct 26
th, 2009 at 8:23pm:
In Islam, all you have to do is belive that there is only Allan and that Mohammed is his messanger. That's it, you're in. There is nothing profoundly ethical or even personal in either of these beliefs, whether viewed separately or together. And once you are in, it is all ritual, down to the minutest detail. There is no redemptive project, personal or universal.
And as Paul revealed to the world, to the outrage of his superiors in Jerusalem, all you needed to be saved was belief in Jesus as the Christ, the waited for messiah, all the rest was unimportant… Although to be fair to Paul, he thought the world was soon going to come to an end.
Of course, the primary act of submission is usually the easiest with religion… It’s the proceeding rituals and laws that are hard. Islam and Christianity are the same in this regard.
Soren wrote on Oct 26
th, 2009 at 8:23pm:
Re Buddhism and Christianity - I don't think the Reformation, the Counter-Reformation and the Enlightenment, the scientific and political revolutions of Europe and the new world came about because monks were challenging state power.
Martin Luther challenged the temporal power of the Pope, thus beginning the Reformation… He was supported by German Princes who saw it as the greatest opportunity since the Schism with Constantinople to break Papal temporal authority.
The counter-reformation (personified by a blood-thirsty zealot-tyrant, Pope Sixtus V) was initiated by the church to challenge the power of the Protestant Princes who had seized former Papal power and property in their realms.
And the Vatican declared and bankrolled wars with the Protestant states for nearly 250 years, from the time Luther had nailed his 95 theses to that church door to the age of enlightenment.
The murders and atrocities committed in the New World by religion-maddened Conquistadors and the armies of Papal clerics and zealots (in an effort to Catholicise the natives masses for their most Catholic Majesties, the Sovereigns of Portugal and Spain) are too numerous to count.
The enlightenment fathers built a wall between church and state in the hopes that never again would temporal authority be arrogated by the Church.
Soren wrote on Oct 26
th, 2009 at 8:23pm:
After all, kings attributed their authority to divine endorsement up until the 20th century Secularisation did not start out as an atheist or agnostic movement but as a Christian project to reform political life, the laws - to remove te claims of divine authority from the political sphere. And it could take off in Christianity because the idea has a solid Christian doctrinal basis.
Secularism challenged the right of the Christian churches to claim temporal authority over the people. And as if to demonstrate the dark gravity of the allure of power, Luther himself developed a taste for interfering in state affairs.
Soren wrote on Oct 26
th, 2009 at 8:23pm:
I also don't think that Tibetan Buddhist are finding themselves in uncharted territory when they are leading the rebellion against the Chinese authoritis occupying them, usurping their previous theocratic rulel.
Yes, Tibet was one of the very few Buddhist realms where, according to tradition, a Bodhisattva of Compassion (an enlightened one who chooses reincarnation over Nirvana out of compassion for living beings destined to suffer lifetimes in samsara), held temporal authority as head of state… And, it must be said, greatly loved by his subjects... Most Popes were feared, despised or both.
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