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Politics : Should God be replaced? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Greg or e who wrote (4719)	12/12/2000 2:58:23 PM
From: epicure	Respond to of 28931

Boy- what a needy guy. I feel sorry for him. All that thrashing about looking for some absolute answer.

To: Greg or e who wrote (4719)	12/12/2000 8:01:09 PM
From: 2MAR$	Respond to of 28931

Well Gregg , cutting and pasting from the Christian "Readers Digest " again ? As with many of the Pat Robertson ways of reporting those kinds of "reports" contain barely enough information and descriptions to seem credible, firsthand and "understanding"... looking outwardly to make things christianly "clear", one get's a sense of the soft-porn style of an obvious smear. ....reads like the sensationalistic $5c novels that described the Wild Wild West of the Cowboys and Indians that were published to "Inform" people of the East of what the conditions were like on the good 'ol frontier. <g> and cuting and pasting , and *Bold Italics* makes it seem so much more real .... Buddhism portrayed as worshipping spirits and demons, with people wearing snakes , having nightmares seeing ghosts, and stepping off into the abyss , worshipping & prostrating before Idols , preaching Nilism and isolation and "Unknowing-ness" of G-d ? and to be expected from a ----->Christian Research Journal... weren't they describing themselves? kind of an oxymoron wouldn't you say---->Christian Research ? ...and Buddha was a vegetarian and did not eat meat , so he did not die from eating a piece of rancid pork FYI, The first law of G-d's "Not Harming Living Things or Killing" was given not to Moses , but to the Indians long, long before. It is called ---->Ahimsa , one of the first principals of Buddhism. PS: too bad they couldn't bring in sex and drugs and Alcohol which pervades the western world , that is so totally sad. ** Also they forget to mention that Zen Buddhism is the most ardent & strenuous form of Buddhism , evolved in stricter Japan representing only the tiniest fraction of the 100's of million Buddhists worldwide...The moon is mooning you.

To: Greg or e who wrote (4719)	12/12/2000 8:41:28 PM
From: cosmicforce	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

Greg, That is an interesting journey. If I was God, I'd know that some people need absolutes and I would arrange for them to be accommodated. As I've said, Zen is too impractical (IMO), but so are all religions. I can do what the Zen Master couldn't bring himself to do : I'll say, "I am cosmic force". The difference between the big Cosmic Force and God is probably zero, but you may have a weaker one. Only you can know that. My Cosmic Force is THE COSMIC FORCE (infinite and all inclusive, while unknowable). I think that if Zen takes you to knowledge, then it is a knowledge that can only be sustained by the unspiritual efforts of others. That doesn't seem fair or sustainable - you have to have armies of people feeding the Zen Masters. I think it is better to have a belief where we can all be gods, but still beholding to THE GOD. As I've said a million times, I don't use the word "g-o-d" very often. The reason is the baggage - what exactly are you and I talking about when we use it? Is it the same? How would we know? What I find fascinating is that these people have all these visitations from various and sundry demons and dragons. The only people I know that have these kind of visions are having chemical imbalances in their brain, either of biological or chemical origins. I hope this doesn't sound too unkindly toward people who seem to be unable to deal with the unknowns of life.

To: Greg or e who wrote (4719)	12/12/2000 8:42:31 PM
From: Mitch Blevins	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 28931

That story reminds me of an old episode of the sitcom "Family Ties". In it, Alex is getting tutored on non-euclidian geometry. His tutor said, "Alex, you are still clinging to your old understanding. To understand this, you must let go of rational thought. To which Alex replied, "My sister, Malory, gave up rational thought years ago and has never got it back." Alex got a cheap laugh, but he never understood non-euclidian geometry.

To: Greg or e who wrote (4719)	12/12/2000 11:12:05 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Respond to of 28931

Delete. Sorry, double post. My response time is extremely slow tonight.

To: Greg or e who wrote (4719)	12/12/2000 11:13:38 PM
From: bela_ghoulashi	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

I have a couple of responses to make to this article. First, it does support what I was attempting to get across earlier today vis-a-vis Buddhism as a religion. Clearly in terms of ritual, dogma, and mythological bases, it is. To participate in it on the same level as this writer was is to be participating in a religion: all the forms are there. Second, enantiodromatic conversions from one set of religious beliefs to another are ultimately poor validations of the superiority of any one religion to another. Firstly, because they are fairly commonplace in every conceivable direction--christian to buddhist, christian to muslim, atheistic to christian and vice versa...every possible flavor and combination is available to point to as testimony for any of them. Secondly, they are entirely personal decisions, made for entirely personal and subjective reasons...and so of course they must be valid for the person making them. That doesn't make them universally valid.