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The Forum > Article Comments > In the beauty of the lilies > Comments

In the beauty of the lilies : Comments

By Peter Sellick, published 15/12/2014

Most people I know, churched or not, are decent and reliable and honest. Those who proclaim atheism are perhaps even better than most because they have actually thought about the question of god.

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The ultimate fallacy in Squeers' dogma Sells is that two of the largest religions in the world - Christianity and Buddhism - are anything but "conservative". One seeks to radically remake the world in a way which empowers the least powerful, and the other holds that the world is just an illusion.

Christianity has been behind such a radical transformation of the Western World that when we run up against groups like ISIS, which are behaving in ways which were quite common even 500 years ago we see their behaviour as totally foreign and aberrant.

We are a society that values equality, trust, inclusiveness and charity precisely because an outsider was tortured and killed for sedition 2,000 years ago in Palestine, and his message, and that of his followers, was so powerful that today only a minority would try to justify torture and capital punishment by an empire.
Posted by GrahamY, Tuesday, 16 December 2014 9:52:16 AM
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Perhaps my first post above was too abrupt and insensitive of Peter's efforts and feelings and fellow Christians, so I apologise for my tone. in my efforts to be economical, yet still say something substantial I do tend to offend in this way. Sorry Peter, I'll try to be more considerate in future.

I don't retract anything of substance, however with the qualification that all such sweeping opinions as I've offered are necessarily lacking substantiation. Paradigm critiques and conceptions are useful however in the long process of transformation that cultures unfortunately seem to require. We no klonger have the luxury.

Graham, if I have any religious inclination it's for Buddhism, about which it's clear 'you' don't know what your talking about. But more later perhaps.
Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 16 December 2014 11:16:29 AM
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Squeers is corect. If religious belief had any positive benefit at all then the USA, where the vast majority of the population are believers in a supernatural personal deity, would not be the worlds greatest threat to peace, have the most teenage pregnancies, the world's highest civilian murder rate, more police murders and the highest prison incarceration rate and...need I go on? Check out Uganda...what an example of religion-inspired love and kindness. And then look at agnostic northern Europe and compare.
Updike is a shallow author, obsessed with sex and populist ideas, I'm astounded anyone would use him as an example of philosophical merit.
Posted by ybgirp, Tuesday, 16 December 2014 11:23:45 AM
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Graham:
“The ultimate fallacy in Squeers' dogma Sells is that two of the largest religions in the world - Christianity and Buddhism - are anything but "conservative". One seeks to radically remake the world in a way which empowers the least powerful, and the other holds that the world is just an illusion.”
I wasn”t aware I had a dogma, but no matter.
As for these potted accounts of Christianity and Buddhism, I beg to differ.
Jesus was indeed radical, if the Gospels are testament, but I’m afraid it ended there and then. When the Catholic church had the running Christianity was used to engorge the coffers and empower it. It’s certainly true that the current Pope offers hope that Christ’s radicalism survives yet: https://quadrant.org.au/magazine/2013/11/24340/ though it’s doubtful he will get anywhere with his neo-Christian mission, threatening just too many vested interests, including the Vatican of course.
The Protestants are infinitely less likely to fill the shoes Graham lays out, having long since made their piece with the drastic inequities with which they ideologically sympathise; the self-made-man ideology of neoliberalism is a perfect fit with Protestant austerity of spirit, punishing the dissemblers and rewarding evangelists/entrepreneurs.

The Buddha saw human existence as unsatisfactory and irredeemable, though suffering could be mediated and enlightenment attained once we see through the illusions that enmesh us. The world is real and indifferent and the illusion only obtains at the level of socially-mediated desire—if the Buddha’s teachings ever really took hold it’s doubtful capitalism could survive, but alas they too are corrupted.
tb
Posted by Squeers, Tuesday, 16 December 2014 10:44:29 PM
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Squeers,

Christianity, building on Judaism and Hellenism, gave rise to what we call the West with its emphasis on “knowing the world you live in”. Historically, it complements the Eastern religions represented by Buddhism with their emphasis on “knowing the world within yourself”. Because of globalisation, this complementarity is becoming a dialectic of perspectives, if you like: depending on where you come from, the one is the thesis, the other the antithesis leading to a synthesis, hopefully incorporating the positive sides of both the perspectives. [Here a pessimist might replace “positive” by “negative”.]

As you suggest, Buddhism on ist own, (without the West/Christianity) would not have led to capitalism, but neither would it have led to scientific and technological achievements that we all enjoy. Of course, both beliefs are unverifiable speculations.
Posted by George, Wednesday, 17 December 2014 1:10:13 AM
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George:<<Christianity, building on Judaism and Hellenism, gave rise to what we call the West with its emphasis on “knowing the world you live in”.>>
No, George, It was the rejection of religion by rational thinkers of the "Enlightenment" [1650s to the 1780s] that gave rise to the current situation...and look where that led us.
Posted by ybgirp, Wednesday, 17 December 2014 6:18:43 AM
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