[Buddha-l] Subject: the poignancy of Donald Lopez

[Richard Hayes]

On Jan 18, 2010, at 4:55 PM, Curt Steinmetz wrote:

> I am still unsure about just what sort of missionary zeal lies behind 
> Jerryson and Juergensmeyer efforts. They are certainly doing their best 
> to lend credence to the age-old Christian argument that "everyone else 
> does it".

If you are claiming that Christians have argued that their misconduct is acceptable because others have behaved similarly, that is an argument I have not seen. Could you offer some citations? Are you thinking of Solzhenitsyn's famous quote: "If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?" 

> Clearly what we are seeing here is an example of the modern phenomenon 
> of soft-core Christian apologetics, but this is is just as often engaged 
> in by Buddhists, UU's and even Pagans as it is by nice liberal 
> Protestants like Karen Armstrong. The rallying cry of these folks is 
> that it is unfair to single out Christians and Muslims for what they 
> have done, despite the fact that no one else has ever done anything 
> remotely similar.

I hope you realize that that is a caricature of what such people say. And I hope you are not so undereducated as to believe that no one else has ever done anything remotely similar to what Christians and Muslims have done.

Richard

"Violence can only be concealed by a lie, and the lie can only be maintained by violence. Any man who has once proclaimed violence as his method is inevitably forced to take the lie as his principle." --Alexander Solzhenitsyn