Letters to the Editor
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strange notion of love
Hey, if you guys wanna love someone who doesn't love you back, be my guest. But honestly, I'd go crazy if I had to love every single person that had some particular strand of DNA. I like my family fine because I've grown up with them, but that's a far cry from loving every single Jew on the planet. Honestly, how can you live in a democratic society with this kind of tribal mentality? I evaluate people on the merit of their character, not based on some mythological bond. (This is the part where that crazy Zionist uncle grabs my arm and yells "Well, the NAZIS wouldn't have evaluated you based on your character!", as if that were a good argument for adopting the same exact kind of mentality).
Besides, I'm sure I could make you hate me if I really tried. I'm too nice to do that though :-)
Finally, it would be strange indeed to ask potential mates to convert to a religion that I don't follow myself.
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Traveling Road Show
is what this thread has dengenerated into. Just like I knew it would. All you have to do is say Christianity on Salon (and many other places) and every anti-Christian bigot comes flaming out.
Tell me if you disagreed with somebody's decision to live in the country instead of the city would you tell them they were a fkg idiot? Decision to have children or not? Would you tell someone you don't know who to marry?
Why do you clowns then feel so at ease insulting someones religious/spiritual decisions. You're the rudest people on God's green earth, Christian Right not withstanding.
Sorry, buddy, no obsession here. I go through 95% of my day without thinking about religion. I don't go looking for the other 5%
Well, gee, Einstein, someone has stolen your identity, logged onto Salon and has deliberately sought out a thread of religious and has been posting as you.
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Why Christianity?
What is all of this doubting, doubting, doubting, trying to rationalize to yourself actually swallowing Christianity's supernatural mythology, contradictions, and outright perversions, as written in the Bible? And why does it seem that the justification for a religious conversion is always because of nothing more specific that a "heartfelt longing", that is somehow supposed to prove that that particular religion (Christianity) is actually true.
In Christianity, you assign your inherently human spiritual feelings to the story of Christianity, and are then continually trying to justify to yourself how you can possibly believe all the nonsense in the Bible.
When studying Buddhism, one immediately recognizes the deep wisdom and potential for self-transformation inherent in its secular system, as laid out by Guatama Buddha 2500 years ago.
Christianity is juvenile, a balm to a weak and unimaginative mind. Buddhism is "religion" come of age.
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I rest my case.
What is all of this doubting, doubting, doubting, trying to rationalize to yourself actually swallowing Christianity's supernatural mythology, contradictions, and outright perversions, as written in the Bible? And why does it seem that the justification for a religious conversion is always because of nothing more specific that a "heartfelt longing", that is somehow supposed to prove that that particular religion (Christianity) is actually true.
In Christianity, you assign your inherently human spiritual feelings to the story of Christianity, and are then continually trying to justify to yourself how you can possibly believe all the nonsense in the Bible.
When studying Buddhism, one immediately recognizes the deep wisdom and potential for self-transformation inherent in its secular system, as laid out by Guatama Buddha 2500 years ago.
Christianity is juvenile, a balm to a weak and unimaginative mind. Buddhism is "religion" come of age.
And as you blathering this sort of obnoxious bile out of your piehole, I wonder how many Buddhist voters we can find in America to make up for the loss of the Christians you so needlessly alienate because you just don't have it in you to just STFU.
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Hey, No Name
Good job responding to one sentence in my argument. Maybe someday you'll find the balls to respond to the rest, you pathetic wuss. And you gotta love the irony of someone talking about a thread 'degenerating' while ending every post with 'STFU'.
Your whole argument can be boiled down to this: 'I don't like the tone of some of the people on the left when they talk about religion, so I'm going to vote for the other party just out of spite'. And then you wonder why we call you idiots. Maybe if Christians were more concerned with actually supporting policies that work instead of just voting for whatever party puts on a better show of treating you like royalty and inserting the word 'god' into every sentence, it wouldn't matter what 'unhinged' secularists like myself think.
Just for the record, I don't like Buddhism any better than I like Christianity. Once you've opened the door to believing in mystical mumbo-jumbo and looking outside the natural world for explanations, anything goes.
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Christians have been extremely successful
in embedding their delusional beliefs into American politics, to its detriment. If I alienate rapture-waiting, homophobic, science-denying, young-earth Christians, so be it. If you are a Christian who doesn't believe all of that, then you have some explaining to do about certain passages in the Bible. It's an old, tired debate, and eventually we will have to grow up as a nation and reject the influence of religions delusion in our government.
Buddhism is not about mystical mumbo-jumbo; it is about examining one's own consciousness.
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Good grief!
It's downright stunning to me that so many Salon readers have gotten so violently bent out of shape by one woman's personal reflections on her personal search for meaning in her own life. It's even more stunning that many of the critics have berated Salon for publishing such an innocuous essay. Jesus Christ people, some of you make the narrow-minded hatemongers who hounded the Dixie Chicks off the airwaves look reasonable by comparison.
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Agreed, but...
the danger is that one could say the same thing about Christianity that you say about Buddhism. And indeed there is a lot of interesting stuff there about guilt, redemption, etc. But you don't have to espouse incorrect and unfounded beliefs about the nature of the universe, whether it be the virgin birth or reincarnation, in order to examine your consciousness. Those things can be done through psychology, biology, and philosophy of mind. Once you reject the requirement of natural explanation, you have opened the door to all kinds of ridiculous delusions, even if your religion in particular is fairly benign.