[Buddha-l] FW: H-ASIA: New Book: Buddhist Warfare

[Richard Nance]

On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 11:22 AM, Curt Steinmetz <curt at cola.iges.org> wrote:
> Talk about straw man arguments.
>
> For "Though traditionally regarded as a peaceful religion" one should
> read "though consistently misrepresented by a few westerners as a
> pacifist religion".
>
> For "Buddhism has a dark side" one should read "we are going to try to
> do everything we can to obfuscate the yawning abyss that separates
> intrinsically violent and intolerant religions such Christianity and
> Islam from the vast majority of religions throughout human history, such
> as Buddhism."
>
> For "On multiple occasions over the past fifteen centuries, Buddhist
> leaders have sanctioned violence" one should read "although neither the
> Buddha nor any significant Buddhist teacher in history has ever
> advocated pacifism, nevertheless we are going to portray any deviation
> from pacifism as if it were somehow a failure and a deviation from the
> teachings of the Buddha."
>
> And so forth.

For all of these things, one should read, "I haven't read the book yet."

It might be worth waiting until the book is at least available before
you pronounce that it's full of straw man arguments, Curt. (It may be
-- but your dismissal of it reminds me of nothing so much as the
pronouncements of a few Christian fundamentalists following the
release of Scorsese's "Last Temptation of Christ" so many years ago.
Asked to name what they found problematic about the film, many
expressed incredulity at the question, and declared that, well, they
wouldn't stoop to _see_ it. They didn't _need_ to _see_ it to know
that it was blasphemous. Etc.)

Best wishes,

R. Nance
Indiana University

p.s. And no, I have nothing to do with the book.





R.