Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

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

To: epicure who wrote (4740)	12/12/2000 11:31:30 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 28931

If I remember my Buddhist period...the Buddha himself could not, or would not, make a declaration as to whether or not there was actual survival of self after death. The answer was beyond comprehension, and ought not to be asked. I would have liked to have met him! One of the reasons I quit the study of Buddhism, probably 2o years ago, was that I recognized that I did not want Nirvana...YET. In a painful and perhaps meaningless old age...I suspect that I might. However, I do not have a problem with the poetic affinity of good hearted persons for certain flowery ideas. We need flowers. If people do not violate the sanctity of the individual, they can believe in flying pigs. But when their beliefs threaten my right to live free...then I need to speak my opposition. It is instructive to compare Christianity with Buddhism, in terms of how they can be used to influence control of social mores, and control in political matters: Buddhism contrasts the hope of bliss with the fear of punishment (justice)...vis-a-vis reincarnation (and karma). Christianity takes this to a finer point. ONE reincarnation (figuratively speaking): Eternal torture, or Eternal something. Budhism encourages moral behaviour in a rather softer voice than does Christianity, allowing for a rather sensible view of justice inasmuch as there are degrees of violation, and a correspondence between act and consequence--if not now, then later. Christianity does not proffer an understandable idea of justice; Rather, it exhorts obedience based on threats of the most extreme cruelties and tortures that can be conceived in the mind. The Christian God is the ultimate Terrorist, and it speaks to the kind of tribal solidarity that must have existed at the time. The comments about the Taliban seem to suggest appropriate parallels to those ancient desert wanderers...