*Where is the joy and humility, runner?*

Ah Poirot, the answer will be "Just you wait until Judgement Day"

The comedian Dave Allen got this one about right. Frankly there
would be nothing more frightening then the thought of spending
eternity with those boring old religious farts, ex popes etc.

Much more entertaining to go with the hookers, gamblers, pimps,
and other entertaining types, so my hell would be to go to runners
heaven :)

Jon J,

You describe "life as biology", the Buddha was interested in the problem of "life as experience".

He was primarily interested in our experience of suffering, and particularly the suffering or pain deriving from the experience of dissatisfaction. I don't see that your cycle helps with that, but it doesn't get in the way, and I doubt that it is unrelated.

Mind must have evolved like other features, as part of the pattern that keep us alive. I wonder if all living things, sentient or insentient, have to assert themselves? I wonder if all living things assert themsleves in essentially the same way, or if there are patterns we can discover that relate to different biological and ecological foundations?

At any rate, I have come to believe that the Buddhist approach is fundamentally one not of doctrine or pre-established cosmologies, but one of approaching things in a thinking rather than an unthinking way. Some Buddhists, the Zen folks for example, might see that thinking is a problem. I don't.

Doctrine so often gets in the way of original thinking. It also becomes part of the way we assert ourselves... and the "human world" is made a mess as a result. Pessimistically perhaps, in what historically became Buddhist cosmology such self-assertion is integral to the "human world" and all other forms of life.

Am I talking in circles... seems so. Better go and sit quietly instead.

Arguing for the existence of something for which there is no evidence is wishful thinking. I have no idea what motivates people to believe in reincarnation -- though I suspect it is the fear of death -- but in the absence of evidence the simple fact is that you are believing something because you want to.

That's fine -- we all do it -- but it doesn't give you a licence to promulgate your wishful thinking as if it were a proven fact.

I wish the Flying Spaghetti Monster was real, hovering above to touch us all with its Noodly Appendages. But it ain't.

Dear Jon,

"Arguing for the existence of something for which there is no evidence is wishful thinking."

- That's only so if that something is desirable, something you would wish for.

Most Buddhists (with the exception of Ian Nance) would rejoice about your news that there is no reincarnation - if that was the case, then we could all so easily end our suffering simply by committing suicide.

runner
Why include feminism in that list? It isn't a religion. Neither is Buddhism although it does devlve into the supernatural via reincarnation. Improvement of the 'self' is not a negative thing - why make it so.

My understanding is that Jesus and God saw all people equal under the Lord (I cannot remember which passage that was from) even women. As equally capable of sin and of good.