[buddha-l] it's not about belief

[Jim Peavler]

On Jan 6, 2006, at 10:00 AM, curt wrote:

> 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.

What he said is:
   "You seem to have got stuck
>> in an adolescent neo-Romantic (almost neo-Nazi) fantasy", which  
>> characterizes the nature of the idea, not you.

>  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.

Where I am from the terms "lawyer" and "politician", to give only two  
examples, are more often used in derision and disgust than they are  
to refer to highly educated skilled specialists or elected public  
servants. Problem with "guru" is that some folks have come to Europe  
and the US who are little more than snake charmers (an honorable  
enough profession) and claimed to have powers and abilities that  
transcend not only anything westerners know but transcend reality or   
even verisimilitude.
>
>
>> 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.

I would never call Dr. Hayes (nor myself) disingenuous, which, if I  
understand it, "pretending to know less about something than one  
actually knows."  Buddha-l is almost completely devoid of any odor of  
the disingenuous. Most of us tend to fall somewhere on the other end  
of the spectrum.
>
>
>> 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
>
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