[buddha-l] it's not about belief

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 12:00 -0500, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> Also I take strong exception to any comparison of anything to I have
> said to Nazism, neo or otherwise.

If that is the case, then it would be wise to stop spouting the same
sort of careless and essentially negative rhetoric that made the Nazis
famous. 

> 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.

No one accused you of being a Nazi. Rather, an observation was made that
your glorification of pagans, coupled with your attempt to portray
Christianity as unique in its opposition to science and in its general
intolerance of the other, sounds a lot like the sort of rhetoric one
heard from intellectuals who supported the Nazis.

> Pagans and Asians have been systematically ridiculed and marginalized by 
> western intellectual culture.

Do you ever serve evidence with your assertions?

> It is possible to swim against that particular stream without being
> either a Romantic or a Nazi. 

You are swimming against a fantasy current. (this is my polite way of
saying you seem to be having a wet dream.) I'm probably damn near as old
as you are, and I have not observed any systematic marginalization of
paganism or Asian culture during my entire intellectual life. You are
the battles of about one hundred years ago. You are living in the past,
mostly a past of your own imagining. And that, my friend, is pretty much
exactly what Romantics do. There is no shame in being a Romantic. Just
own up to it.

> 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.

Yes, gurus usually are megalomaniacal fools. So what's your point?

> The word simply means "teacher" 

Actually, the word "guru" means "heavy." Applied to a person, it means
someone who is a heavyweight, someone who has gravitas, or someone who
is thought to have gravitas. As you are no doubt aware from your
extensive reading of Sanskrit literature, making fun of gurus has been a
favorite pastime in India ever since before the Buddha's time. Indeed,
the Buddha himself is portrayed as making a great deal of fun of gurus.

> - and to use it 
> with an implied meaning of "power mad buffoon" reveals a fairly obvious 
> negative bias against Asian religions.

What nonsense. If you bother to look at any number of American movies,
you'll find that everything you observe about how people use "guru" is
also true of how people use the word "professor." Professors and
scientists have been the laughingstock of American popular culture for
at least two hundred years. What is being ridiculed is pomposity (or at
least assumptions of where pomposity frequently occurs), not Asians. 

> I believe it is completely reasonable to speak positively about Pagan
> Philosophers and wise Asians "teachers". 

On this we finally agree. Indeed, I have spent my entire adult life
studying them and benefiting from what they have to say. Oddly enough,
nearly all my study has taken place right here in North America, in
universities that have departments of Asian studies that teach Asian
languages, Asian history, Asian literature, Asian philosophy and Asian
religions as if they were legitimate contributions to human history.

> On the contrary, my position is quite obvious: (1) Intolerance is not an 
> intrinsic quality of Religion.

I think this is false.

> (2) Christianity has a well attested history of intolerance.

On this we agree. Indeed, I believe what started this whole discussion
was my observing just that. Where we disagree is on the point of whether
Christianity has a monopoly on intolerance. It clearly does not, as I
think I have shown. Are the Abrahamic religions more prone to
intolerance on a whole than Buddhism? Yes, no one has denied that.
Indeed, that was also one of the first things I said in the message that
started this discussion.

> 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 think I disagree only with (1). But your position (1) is irrelevant to
the point that was made at the outset of this discussion, which is that
in every human culture there is a strong, even dominant, tendency to
enshrine beliefs that do not have the support of evidence. That is for
me the more interesting issue. Intolerance is merely one of the many
ways that dogmatic faith can manifest itself. (Indeed, as you have tried
to argue in previous discussions, dogmatic faith can almost manifest
itself as pacifism and tolerance.) Clearly dogmatic belief is not as
interesting to you as intolerance is, as one can see by the fact that
you changed the name of the thread to "it's not about belief." (On this
we disagree on our focal point. To me, most of avoidable and unnecessary
human misery IS about belief.)

My observation that you have no position is neither disingenuous nor
specious. It is simply inaccurate. Thank you for clarifying your
position. It was very difficult to figure out what you were arguing for
before, because your presentations tend to be rather muddled and
incoherent, but now that you tell me what you think your position is, I
see where we disagree and where we don't. (Interestingly, one of the
points on which we disagree is whether we disagree about the third item
in your position.)

-- 
Richard Hayes
***
"Above all things, take heed in judging one another, 
for in that ye may destroy one another...
and eat out the good of one another."-- George Fox