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Politics : Formerly About Applied Materials -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sarmad Y. Hermiz who wrote (68154)	3/2/2003 10:16:35 PM
From: Sun Tzu	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 70976

Sarmad, I chose to focus on commonality of the good rather than commonality of the bad between religions. Bible has references to tacit approval of slavery and has what some would consider strong sexist attitude. Also, one way or the other you cannot separate Old Testament from Christianity. So "Christianity" is not quite as benign as some may think. But in my opinion these factors do no diminish the value of Christianity's contributions to human race. Rather they are reflections of the times in which Christianity took shape. It would have been impossible for early Christianity to take a stance on everything we now consider ethical. Rather Christianity prioritized the issues and put forth the best answers to the biggest problems as much as it could. Similarly, I could say that Torah's harsh stance is the best that could have been offered at the time. Now if you compare it to what was going on at the time and show that it is less forgiving than its era, then I will accept your position. BTW, Zoroastrians Story of Creation is very far from Adam, Eve, Cane, and Able stories. They believe that God (for lack of better word) planted a tree in Heaven. This tree had one root and two major branches (kind of a V shaped tree) and gave 6 fruits each of a different color (white, brown, yellow, red, black, ?) that formed the early humans. The imagery should be obvious. Men and women are two branches of the same existence and various races are all equal. They also had an anti-god. His name was Dorough (it means lie) and his greatest tool was ignorance. This is a very different perspective than the Christian view and "pride" as the source of evil. Just the same, you could say that the reason Satan was kicked out of heaven was that he was racist and similarly reason in Zoroasterism that that racism is against the foundation of existence. Two different perspectives lead to the same thing. Hindu tradition views the universe as dreams of a sleeping god. In that sense everything in the world is from a god. Buddhism has similar views (without the sleeping god). Islam has extremely different views. Yet Muslim Sufis have long argued that "just like light which is both separate and part of the fire, every particle of being is simultaneously both God and not". Seems remarkably close to the Buddhist view that everything has Buddha Nature. We can choose to focus on differences and dig in until we lose all perspective. Or we can see the similarities and appreciate the good contributions of every religion to mankind. As I said, IMO, the one true religion is what everyone could believe in. And to me this means the common thread purified from the effects of culture and ignorance of the era that originated it. Appreciating Chinese food does not mean that French dishes are no good. Sun Tzu