[buddha-l] it's not about belief

[curt]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>
>My claim is that human beings on the whole are quite capable of
>irrationality. I submit the entirely of recorded human history as my
>evidence. And since the human race as a whole has done a very poor job
>of being rational, I think it is mistaken to single out Christianity as
>having a monopoly on irrationality, or intolerance or violence. And it
>seems to me you have tried to to just that. You seem to have got stuck
>in an adolescent neo-Romantic (almost neo-Nazi) fantasy about noble
>savages, honorable pagans, and wise Asians, all having their utopias
>disrupted by nasty Christians.
>  
>
There is no need to "ennoble" any savages or anyone else in order to 
make an argument that Christianity falls at the extreme end of the 
intolerance scale. Also I take strong exception to any comparison of 
anything to I have said to Nazism, neo or otherwise. Accusing other 
people of Nazism in lieu of actually responding to what they say is 
usually a sign that a person is loosing an argument and has decided to 
engage in a shouting match instead.

Pagans and Asians have been systematically ridiculed and marginalized by 
western intellectual culture. It is possible to swim against that 
particular stream without being either a Romantic or a Nazi. A simple 
example of the kind of attitude I am talking about is the common usage 
of the word "guru". This word is usually uttered with contempt and with 
the implication that the person so designated is a laughable deluded 
megalomaniacal fool. The word simply means "teacher" - and to use it 
with an implied meaning of "power mad buffoon" reveals a fairly obvious 
negative bias against Asian religions. I believe it is completely 
reasonable to speak positively about Pagan Philosophers and wise Asians 
"teachers". If you prefer to only ridicule them, and anyone who thinks 
highly of them, that's fine, too.

>I may have caricatured your position slightly, but that is only because
>I am trying to make sense of what you write. As far as I can tell, you
>don't really have any position at all. 
>
On the contrary, my position is quite obvious: (1) Intolerance is not an 
intrinsic quality of Religion. (2) Christianity has a well attested 
history of intolerance. (3) Religions other than Christianity have 
varying degrees of intolerance - but nothing that even comes close to 
track-record of Christianity - with the exception of Islam. That you 
disagree with positions (1) and (3) is quite obvious. But to say that I 
have no "real" position is both disingenuous and specious.

>You just like to argue against
>whatever anyone else is saying, in the manner of what the Indian
>scholastics called a vaitandika. (That's okay. I do that sort of thing
>myself. It's fun. Making frivolous and capricious claims and offering
>carping criticisms of other people's positions is partly what buddha-l
>is all about. Posing bad arguments is a service to readers, because it
>helps them cultivate skills in critical thinking.)
>
I agree with this - although it has nothing to do with my contributions 
to this particular discussion.

- Curt