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Why are you against Christianity?
vlrox
Explorer
Just really curious, I have many reasons. 1.) WHy if there was all powerful God would there be such chaos? 2.) Why are we born with defects? 3.) How does one man create a whole universe? 4.) How does this one man know what everyone is thinking all the time? 5.) Why are they not tolerant of freedom of choice/religion for others? And so many more reasons i just cant think right now lol. Why dont you believe in God? Worship God etc. What led you to Buddhism?
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Comments
But I'm not against it as it does have a lot of wisdom in it. "Thou shall not kill, not steal, not commit adultery", "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you", "Thou Shalt Love Thy Neighbor as Thyself", etc, etc. Pretty difficult to be against those things.
(1) Without chaos we'd all have mushrooms for brains. Zombies deserve treats too.
(2) Life without defects prevents evolution from happening....ooops!
(3) What's a guy without a woman supposed to do with his time?
(4) Because no one else responded to that want ad?
(5) LOL, yeah, I wonder if Christians have a similar posts against Buddhism.
Does it really matter what others think about it, or if they subscribe to it or not?
I have traveled a very long and winding path through two prior spiritual belief systems to arrive at the door of Buddhism a couple of years ago. Although I've known of Buddhism and had been applying much of the Buddhist philosophy to my Pagan practice for many years -- it's only a couple of years ago that I decided to admit to myself that I had abandoned the idea of God/Goddess/Supreme Being and I'm very comfortable and satisfied with that decision.
I really don't want to waste thought or effort trying to figure out why others are on their own (different) paths. Whatever floats their boat and makes them happy.
Here's an interesting link -
http://www.thezensite.com/non_Zen/Was_Jesus_Buddhist.html
If it makes someone happy and a better person then I have no problem with it though. As long as they don't preach at me about it
I also don't like that it's so fear-based. Everything is about obeying out of fear of punishment, and even people I know who really are good Christians, live in fear of going to hell, live in fear of judgement by God, even though by all accords they are living good lives. I don't get on board with fear and judgement.
My older sister thinks I was born Buddhist for my tendency to happily stare at a little patch of earth for hours for all that could be observed in it. I think that's a diplomatic way for a sister to call her brother, simple.
they believe in an all knowing omnipotent god.
if god is all powerful and compassionate, the world would be very different.
when they cant explain something, they say god works in mysterious ways.
it is a fantasy.
i dont believe in the christian god, i believe in the japanese god. lets see whose god is more powerful!
I don't think the Christian God is a nasty God, I think He just became that way through the mouths of men who project their own issues. They'd do it onto any deity.
I like Christianity, the real deep stuff, but so much of it is just politics and that doesn't work for me
Christianity is as it is practiced, it's not merely what particularly political and vocal people say it is.
Christianity is as it is practiced, it's not merely what particularly political and vocal people say it is.
I'm not talking about the Nicean Council. I'm not talking about the first pope. I'm talking about Jesus Christ teaching and lineage. Jesus definitely had a core teaching just like the Buddha had a core teaching. Gautama, like all Buddhas, taught the fourfold truth, impermanence, unsatisfactoriness, and emptiness, samsara, etc.
(However the nature of Christ's teachings are religious.)
I think that it would be very difficult to construct a religion around Christ's or the Buddha's teachings, which is why it didn't happen.
I am not. In fact, don't ask me where as I can't recall the sutta, but the Buddha thought given the alternative between annihalation and eternalism, eternalism was the bestter choice. Is it my choice? No. But if it lightens one's life and gives hope and joy, why not?
My sympathies Virox. I sometimes forget what living in a Christian dominated community can feel like for someone seen as a rejection of that belief..
Is there anything you'd like to discuss further on this matter?
Feel free to post in the 'Members-Only' forum. That one's away from prying eyes and curious searches.....
I've read that Fidel Castro, leader of a formerly atheist state, once said 'from the standpoint of social vision, I declare that I am a Christian'. And I reckon I could agree with that, but then again couldn't anyone? In my mind, the teachings that we deem to be acceptable, or even inspired, are not specifically Christian values. 'Love your neighbor a yourself', 'do unto others as you would have them do to you' etc. These are human values that we all have, because of our shared evolutionary past.
I find that Christianity has good intention, but carries an enormous amount of baggage. It tells it's followers to follow blindly as members of the flock, to feel ashamed of their basest desires and to love something that they should also fear. It is unnecessarily repressive; whether or not that is by design.
To a great extent I think that the historical Jesus of Nazareth's objective has been forgotten, and his intention corrupted by later Christian institution. Instead of humble and welcoming, it is now in many cases greedy and coercive. The modern Catholic church especially bears the weight of a shameful history associated with some of humanities most terrible acts of cruelty.
In essence I just feel that Christianity lacks a certain purity that truly beautiful philosophy requires. It's just not for me basically.
My appreciation began after reading an interview with Archimandrite Dionysios, and discovering that Gregory Palamas is said to have constantly prayed: "Enlighten my darkness." It also struck me how Hesychastic prayer bears a superficial resemblance with Buddhist meditation, e.g., specific body postures, deliberate breathing patterns, acquiring an inner stillness, sense restraint, etc. It was years ago, however, and my appreciation quickly faded; but it was recently rekindled by my reading of Plato's Republic, as well as other of his dialogues, and a conversation I had at a local Greek Orthodox church a couple of years ago.
While I practice Buddhism and am interested in things like philosophy and religion in general, I'm a very skeptical and secular person by nature, and have really never believed in a jealous, nitpicky creator god. I also have a hard time seeing into what some call 'the realm of the divine' — i.e., Plato's realm of forms, Spinoza's absolute substance, Buddhism's unconditioned reality — and I regularly doubt that such a realm even exists, but my recent readings of Plato have at least piqued my interest in trying. And talking with my guide from Holy Trinity during the annual Greek festival got me thinking about Christianity in a whole new way, especially the aspects of Christian philosophy influenced by Plato, Plotinus, and even the Gnostics.
In addition, our dear friend Simon (a veteran member who still comes around every now and then) shared with me some of his ideas regarding the "excellence of the synthesis of the messages and practices" of Buddhism and Christianity, e.g.: A lot of what Simon wrote reminded me of what the amiable gentleman at the church said, especially regarding the notions of relationship and interbeing. For example, he said that in talking to me, he saw God. Not that I was God, but that there's something special, something divine, in our interactions with other people. This brought to mind one of the images of hell mentioned by the deacon in one of the church tours earlier in the day — that of being utterly alone — and I couldn't help but be reminded of the Buddha's words to his cousin, Ananda, in SN 45.2: I also found it interesting that Simon mentioned the allegory of the cave from Plato's Republic since it's one of the things that helped motivate me to explore this subject in the first place. (I even wrote a blog post comparing some of what's in the Republic to many of the things the Buddha is recorded as saying in the Pali Canon.)
I'm not planning on converting to Christianity anytime soon; still, I do feel like I'm deepening my own practice and understanding of Buddhism simply by allowing myself to be open to these, for lack of a better word, mysteries. This is not only due to the works of Plato and my conversation at Holy Trinity, but to people like David Cooper (God is a Verb), Thomas Merton (Mystics and Zen Masters), and Simon who continually seek to find harmony between spiritual disciplines. Perhaps in time I'll go back to my old, critical ways, but for now, I'm still enjoying this newfound appreciation of what devoted people of all religious disciplines have to offer.
http://newbuddhist.com/discussion/comment/294689/#Comment_294689
I am much more interested after that.
It begins from me and ends with me.
Personally, I think Christianity would be much better off just sticking with Plato and the Jefferson Bible, and getting rid of all that Old Testament, grumpy God business (although the OT does has some good parts, too, like the 'wisdom' books), not to mention most of the writings of Paul (Thomas Jefferson went so far as to deem him "the first corrupter of the doctrines of Jesus").
I mean, in Plato, you've got all the best things about Christian ethics and theology, just without all the homophobia and gender inequality (especially dialogues like Gorgias, Symposium, and Republic). It's hard for me to imagine a perfectly loving God condemning anyone's sexuality or their expression thereof as an abomination (Lev 20:13), or excluding women from positions of authority in the Church (1 Cor. 14:34-35).
While I don't believe in a creator God, nor, as a consequence, that Jesus is the son of God/God in the flesh, I do have a soft spot for Jesus as a spiritual teacher, and I think some of the things he's reported as saying in the New Testament are pretty cool. I especially like, "Let any one of you who is without sin be the first to throw a stone" (John 8:7), the Sermon on the Mount, and his many teachings on forgiveness.
But even with my growing appreciation for Christianity, I definitely tend to lean more towards the heterodox, which is precisely why I think Platonic rationality and Socratic dialectic would make a much better ethical and theological foundation than the rigid, scriptural dogmatism that dominates Christianity today (I think one could even say the same about Buddhism). In fact, from what I've read, I bet Socrates and Jesus would've been best mates. The Buddha too.
The Essenes do seem to express a kind of "awakening" that may be behind many religions... however the circumstances may have led to the same reality being presented in different ways. It may be the same reality indeed that Buddhism speak of, perhaps even the same as the reality of Hinduism. Whether it's an actual being or not, God or Brahman or Emptiness/Mind may be this singular reality that we are awakened to throughout time.
"The value here of these teachings is to see that it didn't just all begin with a people in a desert. That they carried with them something that was universal; not ethnic, not national, not just for them. That in limited ways they expressed it until it was fully expressed, for those of us who recognize it, in the one we call Jesus the Christ."
The Essenes being pro-equality (of the sexes) and against racism is also a strong indication that they (or their teachings) were enlightened in some fashion. They were also vegetarian!
Actually a lot of the material on this site seems to be almost verbatim from the lecture... perhaps it's from the same source after all.
http://www.essenespirit.com/who.html
And thank you very much for watching it and commenting! :thumbsup:
Even if you weren't it's still a great movie lol
1. Chaos is the thing that keeps us in motion. It keeps the whole universe in motion. Life is based on chaos.
2. Biological causes. Again...chaos. If some things can go bad, there's a slight chance that will go bad. And out of randomness defects manifest.
3. Simply by thinking about it. If we are talking about God here, my guess is that your one man was created by the universe. And we may be living inside his mental movie
4. If you take the answer 3. as serious, then he knows what his 'minions' are thinking all the time because ... by the power of his imagination he creates their thoughts ( or the basis of their thoughts). In my opinion , it's irrelevant if it ( god, or whatever) knows what I'm thinking.
5. Now we get down to business. Religion is a business. They ( the christians) are not tolerant with other people of other religions because they are being indoctri...educated to view other religions as competition ( over an unreal resource)
To answer your more personal questions :
1. I used to believe in a God; I used to think that prayer helped me with tests at school and so on ( I 'was' an orthodox christian) ...but I found out that I just played some auto-suggestion tricks on my brain. After that...things were lost, I began to search into new age stuff ( even about god as being some thing that by simply existing maintains the balance of the universe), until one serious talk with an atheist that convinced me that there might be no god out there.
2. Many things led me to buddhism. The prime thing that did was sentimental suffering because of a friend-zone ( I choose to believe that meditation took me out of it)
- warning contains may harse words -
There are various models of religion. Most religions, including Buddhism and Christianity, have a dimension that we could call Folk Religion.
That should not be seen as pejorative. It meets a need, it fulfills a function. It oils the Rites Of Passage...And Buddhism has at least as much Folk Religion as Christianity does...it just seems more exotic. Merit making, temporary ordination of monks..spirit oracles etc are all imo Folk Buddhim.
The Old Man In The Sky that is disbelieved by western Buddhists is far removed from the God of the Theologians and Christian mystics...That Old Man is part of Christianity's Folk Religion.
Some of the deepest and penetrating interpretations of Buddhism in the west have come from Christians...Thomas Merton, Bede Griffiths, Aelred Graham to name but three..They were Christians who had gone deeply enough into their own religious path to hit the mother lode...
Morning Blessing.
May you know yourself as a cross roads
where breeze and leaves meet in rustling.
May you find yourself at the place of giving
A sacrifice without loss
Fuller than the night sky.
May you let it tremble
let it pour
let it breathe
let it mingle
and
let it go.
I am against christianity bcos it is too easy.
just accept jesus n you will got to heaven.