As an atheist, do you still “acknowledge” Jesus Christ?

Really? Maybe? Any examples of Christian violence during the first three centuries? Please elaborate. I think in terms of violence and body counts in the twentieth century, atheistic communism has Christainity beat by a mile , and Islam is a runner up for second place. Marxist-Leninist ideology is atheistic, quasi-religious and persecutes "deviationists", although not necessarily all religious people. Over 100 thousand clergy were martyred by in the Soviet Union. Yakovlev, Alexander N. (2002). A Century of Violence in Soviet Union Recently, Falun gong and the Uighurs have been the main targets. Recently, however, even Buddhism has been contributing. In Sri Lanka, the Budddhist Power Force(B.B.S) , which is still around, took the lead in provoking violence against Hindu Tamils and against moderate Buddhists who spoke out against the violence. In Myanmar, Buddhist monks are leading the violence and persecution against the Rohinga Muslims. Historically, Buddhism made its major gains after Ashoka converted. The Ashokavadana tells us he persecuted Jains and Ajivika (Charvaka). Ashoka, The Not So Great Christians have been relatively peaceful since the seventeenth century, and of course it depends on what Christians you're talking about. Quakers are famously non-violent, and I don't think Methodists have been into persecutionl. Of course, we have negative examples in this country, mainly in the South during and after the Confederacy. Christianity is used there as to rationalize a domination system based on race.

So I'm wondering what violence by "Christianity" you have in mind.? Christianity isn't a monolith under central control. I think certain forms of Christianity have been hard on gays and women seeking abortions. Some have not. I go by what Jesus said on those issues, which is absolutely nothing. A Buddhist friend has teased me about a remark I made years ago about the danger of the religious right taking over in Oklahoma. I think that's clearly happened, with a ban on abortion even before pregnancy, and an anti-sodomy statute still on the books waiting for the opportunity. But I blame politics more than a monolithic Christianity for these developments. It's a Red State, evangelical and Catholic thing.

But they do. They all agree that Julius Caesar existed. They just have a lower bar than you for thinking that Jesus did too. The social sciences, especially history, more especially ancient history, have found it necessary to relax the standards of the hard sciences in order to say much. The natural sciences adhere to stringent standards to avoid Type One errors (false positives, or the danger of accepting something that is false. But at the risk of Type Two Errors (false negatives, or the risk of rejecting something that is true. In the field of ancient history, if we adopted your standards we'd end up concluding that only big wigs like Julius Caesar existed in ancient times, which would give us a badly distorted view of reality.

 

So in the absence of "many records", you suggest those Christians might have been pretty violent? The records we have suggest otherwise.

That's not how the term is usually used. The term usually suggests physical force, although there is a tertiary meaning suggesting verbal or other abuse. And I'd agree that toxic faith system inflicts enormous emotional harm. As i've often said, religion can be a mind crippling disease. It doesn't have to be. Hell fire and damnation has gone out of style in mainline churches.

No, it has to do with violence by an atheist movement around an ideology of dialectical materialism.

That's putting it mildly. Atheism per se is defined only by what it doesn't believe.

As I've said, the "core beliefs"of Christianity, so far as I and most mainline and progressive Christians and Quakers are cocerned are "peace, love and understanding." For progressives, original sin, venegeful god, viaricarious atonement, etc.As for "core" Buddhist beliefs, what are those? The three refuges? The Four Noble Truths? The Five Precepts? The Eightfold Path? I think what you seem to present is an idealized Buddhism and a demonized Christianity, both rather monolithic. When I asked you about some of the doctrines like no self, rebirth, dharma, karma,sangha, erc., you seemed to view these somewhat metaphorically. I think the way they're viewed in Buddhist monasteries and temples and the way western atheist intellectuals understand them is quite different. Women adoring statues of the Buddha in temples look and act for all the world like the old bead clicking ladies in Catholic churches when mass isn't going on, venerating the images of saints and lighting candles. I think the Buddhist worshipers expect that what they're doing will bring them good karma and shorten their stay in the cycle of samsara, just as the Catholic ladies think it will take off some of their time in purgatory. There seem to be pretty dramatic differences between Budddhism of the Pali canon, Buddhism of the Lotus sutra, Tibetan Buddhism and Zen Zen Buddhists had no trouble giving their support to the war mongering and violence of the Imperial forces of Japan during World War II. They rationalized it as in keeping with samurai devotion to Zen in earlier imes.. Brian Victoria, Zen at War https://www.nytimes.com/2003/01/11/books/meditating-on-war-and-guilt-zen-says-it-s-sorry.html
.

 

Many aren't so restrictive. They settle for far less evidence than "tons"

But we didn't exactly claim that did we? A majority of historians are persuaded that in the absence of "mountains" of evidence, there's enough to conclude that Jesus is likely to have existed.

Well, what is the evidence that the Jolly Green Giant existed. Even a shred? And the Jolly Green Giant is one of those extraordinary chaps for whom extraordinary evidence is required.

Let me just review what I think might be going on here. It all started when I gave my opinion on whether or not there was an historical Jesus, and gave my reasons for doing so. That's all. You gave your opinion to the contrary, which I take it is that opinions need to be backed up by proor. In fact now you're talking about tons or mountains of evidence. Which you are entitled to do. All the stuff about alleged Christian violence in the fourth century and after is irrelevant to that point.

I think you may have created a straw man in drawing on fourth century and medieval Christian doctrines to try to discredit modern or first century Christianity. The forms of Christianity which come closest to what you seem to think a true Christian must be are Roman Catholicism and Evangelical Protestantism. Mainline Protestant churches which made their peace with the Enlightenment and Darwin decades ago, not to mention Progressive ones and Quakers, don't seem to be included in your model of "Christian". I don't follow what you think is a connection between the straw man and the improbability that people making up a Jewish Messiah in the first century would make up one who would be cursed in the eyes of the Jews. My guess is it is more likely the guy was real and they were stuck with Him, so they made lemons into lemonade by making Him a Paschal lamb. More accurately, they may have done this unconsciously rather then conspiratorially . I never claimed to be able to prove it, but from what I know about Judaism and the first century Mediterranean,world, it seems the more likely explanation. And a majority of scholars who have studied and written about the matter seem to agree. For what it's worth, which might not be much, since the more important issues are whether he did and said the things attributed to Him in the New Testament, and whether or not the miraculous claims about His nature and mission are true or believable.

 

We can use words any way we want, so long as we make it clear we're using the term in a specialized way, as I have. words are tools; but we can criticize usages which cause confusion or are less useful than others. I use "religion" the way specialists in the field of comparative religion use the term--to include godless religions--and have cited ample sources. Thus there was religion before gods I think the functionalist and cluster approaches are useful in calling attention to striking similarities among beliefs and behaviors of folks who may or may not feature supernatural beings. Most standard textbooks on world religions use the same approach.
But "violence"? Webster's tells us that violence is the use of physical force so as to injure, abuse, damage, or destroy. World Health Organization's The World Health Organization has a broader definition: "the intentional use of physical force or power, threatened or actual, against oneself, another person, or against a group or community, which either results in or has a high likelihood of resulting in injury, death, psychological harm, maldevelopment, or deprivation." When you tell me that the earliest Christians spread their religion by violence, it suggests at a minimum that it was primarily by coercion. Fear of divine punishment might have had something to do with it, but the emphasis seems to have been on the promise of resurrection and the coming of god's kingdom to earth and the example of mutual caring. It would be similarly misleading to suggest that Buddhism advanced by spreading fear of samsara.

Nice thought pieces. As I said, we're free to redefine common terms if we make clear what we're doing, which the articles you provide unfortunately do not. I must confess not to have opened the second article, since their privacy policy was unacceptable (a form of violence?) But I'm not impressed by the first article, which is essentially a non-refereed opinion piece but makes assertions as though they were accepted facts without documentation. Is the author meaning to suggest that this broad usage is standard in a field of scholarly usage? What field(s) are those? At the end, there is a list of articles entitled "Biblical sources" (in both the table of contents and the heading itself). . Since none of them are citations to scripture, I assume this should have been "Bibliographical Sources", a harmless error but one that doesn't give me confidence in the professionalism of the source. Although the WHO is cited as one of those sources, the author's concept of violence goes far beyond that to include "relationships for the sake of convenience", evictions (nothing said about whether legally justified or not; does a tenant who doesn't pay rent do "violence" to the landlord?), humiliation, etc.

What about hurt feelings? I take it you are majorly offended by Christianity. Does this mean it is guilty of violence toward you? Some Christians might consider your comments about Christianity hurtful.Would that make you a violent person. That of course would be in keeping with some of the usage on college campuses that has helped to fuel the Trumpian backlash. Does that mean they have committed violence by helping to unleash that monster? The author includes ideas as a form of symbolic violence, making it hard for a college professor to teach things like evolution, which might really upset fundamentalist students in class. I think such a view of violence is damaging (i.e., doing violence) to humanity by condemning us to a world of blandness and ignorance.

So? Your last statement is basically what I said. Atheism seems to be a term used by atheists to define their non-belief in a deity. Those who go farther and say there is no deity are considered "hard atheists", and most atheists I know have caught on that this makes them assume the burden of proof. Some religious people may see this as a "failure". But as I mentioned, an atheist friend sees the label as insufficient to define the full content of his belief,which in his case is "humanism".

By no means would I say that. But I would say that Christians are not alone inflicting violence, and haven't been the most recent practitioners on a large scale. Violence by Al-Qaida and the Islamic state against Christians and other religions are in large part religiously motivated. Violence by Buddhist monks in Sri Lanka against Hindus and by Buddhists in Myanmar against Rohinga Muslims seems, likewise, to be directed exclusively against members of other religious groups. As for Marxism-Leninism, the ideology of dialectical materialism is hostile to religion, which it regards as a tool of capitalism. In the Soviet Union the party and state were committed to eliminating religious perspectives and values, demolished many places of worship; imprisoned and killed some 100, 000 clergy; and indoctrinated atheism through the media and school curricula.Are atheists as a whole responsible for this? Of course not I brought it up only in the context of your efforts to portray Christianity as the most inherently violent belief-value system to come along the pike.

I think the confusion may come in your failure to recognize that there is a small but not insignificant body of Christians who focus on the life and message attributed to Jesus rather than believing the unbelievable. See:
Spong, Here I Stand: My Struggle for a Christianity of Integrity, Love and Equality;
Borg,The Heart of Christianity: Rediscovering a Life of Faith;
Ultimate Concern: Paul Tillich in Dialogue With Students
J.A.T Robinson, Honest to God.
Mike McHargue, Finding God in the Waves.
Robedrf W. Funk,The Five Gospels: What Did Jesus Really Say.

I'd say yes, for all practical purposes. I agree with Justin Martyr and Pope Francis on this. But the test, for self-described Christians and well-meaning atheists alike is what they do when push comes to shove: when high ideals conflict with self interest. It's a matter of acting in good conscience.

 

[

That's hard core, but rather vague, I think even more so than peace, love and understanding.. Most Christians certainly believe in causation (materialists do too). But Einstein's relativity theory put causation in a different light. Karma as understood by a majority of practicing Buddhists to involve more than causation. It is involves an inevitable chain of consequences for conduct, and most Buddhists think it affects rebirth and samsara. Impermanence central to Christian process theology. As for emptiness, sounds like nihilism, or maybe French existentialism (See Sartre's Being and Nothingness). Maybe they stole it from the Buddha? Not much to attract a following, and we know the Buddha fleshed it out considerably.No self, rebirth, dharma, karma, sangha, etc. must all be understood in terms of impermanence, cause and effect, and emptiness.[/QUOTE] Explicatio ignoti per ignotium.(That's Latin for explanation of the unknown by the unknown).

I think an important question is whether or not there is an essential metaphysical aspect to Buddhism. I think there is: the concepts of rebirth, karma and samsara. Peter Harvey (2012, in Foundations of Buddhism,pp. 32-33) considers rebirth to be a "foundational doctrine"of Buddhism, although they differ from one form of Budddhism to another. Theravada Buddhism holds that while there is no soul that transmigrates, but deah is not annihilation. Paticca Samuppāda, the Law of Dependent Origination, somehow assures that the energy of karma somehow assures that a new becoming (kamma-bhava) will carry the baggage of a previous one. "Rebirth is the immediate arising of a new consciousness called the rebirth or re-linking consciousness, together with the new nama-rūpa. It is called re-linking consciousness because it joins the new existence with the old one." Don't ask me to explain that. It's too deep for me. Death and Rebirth | Theravada Buddhism Mahayana Buddhism holds believe that, depending on one's karma, a person can be reborn in any of six realms: gods, demi-gods, humans, animals, hungry ghost and hells. https://buddingbuddhist.com/buddhist-beliefs-reincarnation/ (How could anybody know that?) The goal is not to achieve nirvana but to achieve buddahood (enlightenment). The concept I resonate with is that of Vajraryana Buddhism, which also seeks budahood instead of enlightenment. Vajrayana.
The arising, of the rebirth consciousness is conditioned by the last kamma before death But If there were no continuity of like in any shape after death there would be no moral law of kamma and vipaka actions and results) operating in the universe. All life would be meaningless and there would certainly be no object in practicing self restraint or endeavouring to free oneself of the craving which brings suffering in its train in its train. The Buddha's entire doctrine of Nibbana, the path to it and the reason for following that path would be redundant if death were followed by complete extinction. " Not the sort of thing most western atheists are likely to believe.

Really? I thought the gospels said Jesus came to put us on a new path? Read the Sermon on the Mount. How violent is that? You have heard it said...but I say unto you. You might read more before making such generalizations.

 

The Ajivika , while being atheistic, is not the Charvak philosophy, as the Ajivika emphasized determinism, fatalism and a simple life of goodness for its own sake and utility rather than for the afterlife or liberation. The Charvak philosophy , while being atheistic, emphasized hedonism and philosophical skepticism in contrast.

Ājīvika - Wikipedia

Emperor Ashoka embraced Buddhism after his repentance following his carnage in the Kalinga war. He made Buddhism the state religion as well.

It should be understood that Buddhism was a minor religion at that point of time, as opposed to the majority religion of Hinduism as well as established philosophical systems like the Ajivika.

While Ashoka was tolerant towards all religions and philosophical systems in general, he was particular in developing his own minority religion of Buddhism, and defending it from the other religious and philosophical systems which may have viewed Buddhism as a threat. This could be the reason for the heavy punishments he meted out to the Brahmins, Jains and Ajivikas for possible slander and propaganda against Buddhism during those times.

I am not condoning Ashoka in this regard, but to his credit he never forcibly converted people to Buddhism but ensured freedom of choice in terms of religion. His patronage and missionary work enabled Buddhism to grow from a minor religion to a world religion, probably influencing Christ himself who was born two centuries later after Ashoka.

 

I 'd certainly allow that threats of death or serious injury would be violent, and even serious emotional abuse. And it not just my private concept. I accept the WHO's definition. I draw the line at causing someone to feel offended.

If you do that your argument that the early Christians spread their beliefs primarilly by force falls apart. Christianity was doing pretty well before Constantine, which was probably one of the reasons he decided to back it.

You'll get no argument from me there, except for the fact that the mainline churches which made their peace with the Enlightenment, Darwin and the New Biblical Criticism, don't preach those things, and even the Catholics have toned it down so much. You continue to view Christianity as a monolith. I don't believe any of those things you're complaining about and neither do my friends in bible study. I do think that toxic faith syndrome is a mind crippling disease. (Arterburn and Felton, Toxic Faith)
BTW, my earliest memory of anything (age 5) was a nun's lesson on original sin. I remember it like it was yesterday. I didn't last long in the Catholic schools. They drummed me out
BTW, my earliest memory of anything was a nun's lecture on original sin. I remember it like it was today--a vivid, lasting impression! But I didn't last long in Catholic school, They drummed me out the same year; told my parents I'd be better off in the public school. (That's kind of like being kicked out of East Germany during the Cold War, when they were shooting everybody else who tried to escape. In the public school, most of the kids were Calvinists who told me I'd go to hell if I stayed Catholic, while the Catholics told me I'd go there if I didn't-- the classic dilemma of "Damned if you do, damned if you don't". But I survived, as a Progressive Chrisitian Humanist Freethinker!

I never said Buddhism initially advanced by violent teachings. That was your charge. But it certainly got a boost from Ashoka, and those monks in the Japanese Zen monasteries, Sri Lanka, and Myanmar mustn't have gotten the memo. We could throw in the Red Hats (Kagyu) and Yellow Hats ( Gelug) who duked it out in Bhutan and Tibet in the eighteenth century.
I addressed this above.

I answered that supra. But the article you provided did seem to come close to that, and elite college campuses have become notorious for protecting "snowflake"students from ideas that might offend them.

You don't read carefully, do you? I said that atheists who simply claim they don't believe in God carry no burden of proof. However, the so-called "hard atheists" who assert that there is no god are expected by the norms of logic,debate, and courtroom procedure to prove their assertion. (He who asserts must prove) That's not something theists made up. They carry the same burden if they assert there is a God.

By dwelling exclusively on the alleged violence of Christianity, you seem to imply it's the principle villain. And by generalizing about "Christianity" as a monolith, ignoring peaceful groups like the Quakers and mainline Protestants, you present a misleading picture.

Really? Progressive Christians hold prominent positions as theologians (Marcus Borg), Bishops (Episcopal BishopJohn Spong), Catholic Priests (Raymond Brown), faculty at Catholic Universities (John Dominic Crossan)[/QUOTE]

 

We could say that, and they all claim it. Do you think Islam is a religion of peace? It can be for ordinary believers, but we also know it can be used to justify appalling violence.

Yes, Christianity has it's abstract truisms and ruminations, too. Some consider them profound; others vapid. Most of us have a tendency to think of ours as the best.
Yes, Christianity has it's abstract truisms and ruminations, too. Some consider them profound; others vapid. Most of us have a tendency to think of ours are the best. William James, the psychologist and pragmatist who wrote Varieties of Religous Experience, asked how it "works" for the believer. Sometimes a coin toss or a Ouija Board can turn a life around.
Buddhist philosophy is very simple, yet extremely complicated.

If that's true, why do you argue so vehemently against Christian understandings?

Face it, that's a pretty incoherent concept, bordering on double talk. I presented statements from the three main traditions of Buddhism on rebirth. All struggle with the paradox that the Buddha said there is no "soul" that survives after death. What is this "relinking' all about. Most atheists I know think that when they die, the body that was previously there's will go into the ground and rot to become worm food. We could say that the worms are a "new birth", linked to the deceased through karma. And when the worms die, their bodies will be food for plants or something else. But as the Tibetan Encyclopedia put it:
"If there were no continuity of like in any shape after death there would be no moral law of kamma and vipaka actions and results) operating in the universe. All life would be meaningless and there would certainly be no object in practicing self restraint or endeavouring to free oneself of the craving which brings suffering in its train in its train. The Buddha's entire doctrine of Nibbana, the path to it and the reason for following that path would be redundant if death were followed by complete extinction. " How much would anyone care if the worm remained caught in the cycle of samsara. What I suspect is that modern Buddhist intellectuals tend to view such concepts metaphorically, in which case we might call them "Progressive Buddhists"

And I assume you agree that the Old Testament is part of Christianity.
And I assume you agree that the Jesus Christ was prophetised by the Old Testament to be the Son of David of the Old Testament and the Son of the God of the Old Testament. (Excuse me for assuming so much!)[/QUOTE]You know what they say about "assume". Surely you know by now that I'm not a fundamentalist and don't believe in any of those things. I thought I made that clear at the outset.

I take an historical-metaphorical approach to the The "Old" Testament, an anthology of writings by various men with different agendas over many centuries. Many Christians believe that the New Testament is a New Covenant, although fundamentalists still take the whole Bible as "inerrant". From an historical perspective, the OT or Hebrew Bible traces the evolution of Judaism from basically a religion similar to that of the Canaanites worshipping the High God El to a tribal cult following the war god, Yahewh (supposedly El's new look), the God of the Axial Age prophets preaching social justice, and the God of the Universe during the Babylonian captivity. Hinduism underwent a similar evolution, from the Rig Veda of pastoral nomads to the swashbuckling Indra of the cattle raiders, to the inward looking Vedantic sages of the Axial Age and ascetic renouncers, and then on to the Buddha. Of course, Buddhism doesn't officially carry the baggage of the Vedas and Upanishads, to which it was to some extent reacting, though also a clear beneficiary of such conepts as dharma, samsara, karma, and reincarnation (modified as "rebirth"). Buddhism was a reform movement of Hinduism,, which was dominated by a Brahmin priesthood practicing arid rituals and animal sacrifices. Likewise, the Jesus movement was a reaction against a Sadduccee-led religion practicing arid rituals and animal sacrifices. In place of ritual purity, Jesus gave us a "come as you are" religion, breaking bread with the "unclean". I consider that to be a major step forward.

All I can say is that, like Buddhism, Christianity was a major reform of a religion that that hadalready evolved considerably from its Canaanite roots. As for the Father God allowing His Son to be sacrificed, that is based on the Paschal Lamb metaphor that was quite compelling back in the day. But I prefer Luke's alternative model of a man who led an exemplary life and was slaughtered by violent humans.

 

Likewise for Constantine. Usually, there are no "independent "sources to positively verify anything. So then you're willing to settle for the official versions? Ashoka was such a perfect monarch! Or do we just say little or nothing about him, since it can't be positively verified. There was an Ahsoka who was an emperor who converted to Buddhism and encouraged it proselytizing. End of story.

 

Ah, a casualty of such a lengthy discussion at late hours. I should have readl"You charge against Christianiy. What I meant to say is that early on you clamed that aftermaking up an improbable Jesus, early Christians proceeded to shove it down people's throats primarily through coercion. Again I am not defending violent actions by individuals or sects, etc.But you are willing to attribute acts by individuals or sects, etc., to Chrisitinity.

No, I defined them as non-theist, which can include anti-theists.

So if you claim to believe in my old standard, BigFoot, and I don't, I can be labeled an antiibigfootest or abigfootist.
But that's not enough, then you want to further divide and manipulate the term into hard and, I guess, soft.[/QUOTE]Obviously not. Denying a n unproven fact isn't the same as denying or not believing in God.There you go again with the straw man, reductio absurdum stuff.I believe that Big Foot is an extraorinary claim, rewuiring extraordinary proof. Technically, in the English language, you could and I could legitimately be labelled anti-bigfootists, or at least non-bigfootists, but it would be silly to do so. I didn't invent this usage for atheists. If you check out atheist websites, that's how they define themselves. How would you define the term?

Yes, that's what we have. Putting it in sarcastic terms doesn't change the fact. And neither I nor those pesky Christians made it up!
Burden of proof (philosophy) - Wikipedia
Rules of debate
Law Web: Basic principle of burden of proof; he who asserts must prove

No, not if you put it that way! I you simply said: "There is not Bigfoot", you'd be expected to prove it.

Only if you said "There is no Bigfoot." Then you'd be expected to prove it! You might try to do so by showing that all the evidence for Bigfoot appears to be fake or unconvincing. But you'd probably be expected to do more than that, since you've made a positive assertion.

You're digging your hole deeper and deeper. You seem to be arguing against the well-established principle that a person asserting things must be prepared to prove them. See citations supra. That's why a good scientist would say:'There might be a Bigfoot, but there's no convincing evidence of his existence. If you go farther, and say "There probably is no Bigfoot," you might be expected to put up some arguments and/or evidence. "That's what Richard Dawkins says about God, and he's written books and participated in debates explaining his position. I don't buy them, but I think he's at least presented a case. It's essentially a judgment call. I don't believe in extraterrestrial alien abductions or the Loch Ness monster, although people have claimed to have encountered them. What I'm content to say is "I don't believe in them", which is a factual statemnet no one can challenge. i don't believe in them primarily because on the basis of my personal experience I've seen no evidence of them, and the people who have claimed to have encountered them are people I can easily believe are imagining things. I don't believe in a single miracle reported for Jesus, the Buddha or anyone else for similar reasons. But I do believe in the existence of Paul, Jesus, the Buddha, and Socrates, because they are perfectly plausible people, the little evidence avialable tends to support their existence, most scholars who have studied the matter agree, and it doesn't much matter to me, one way or the other. Of course, to a person who thinks Jesus is the Son of God who came to earth to die for our sins it would matter a great deal, but that person isn't me. However, if pressed, I 'd say I beleive Jesus, the Buddha and Socrates were real, but I'm not convinced Bigfoot, the Loch Ness Monster, or Extraterrestiral Alien Abductors are. Capish?

 

It might be instructive to share with you the views of an 'Hard" atheist thew late Christopher Hitchens, on Buddhism. Hitchens, one of the "four horsemen, on Buddhism I He sees it as a bunch of High minded hokum and hypocrisy. Its founder, like so many of his generation, deserted his wife and kids and sought to "find Himself" in ascetic community of wandering "renouncers". After awhile, he became dissatisfied with extreme self-deprivation and opted for a "middle path." In chapter in God Is Not Great, entitled "There Is No 'Eastern Solution", Hitchens points to examples of damaging effects he attributes to Buddhism. "Sri Lanka is a country now almost entirely ruined and disfigured by violence and repression, and the contending forces are mainly Buddhist and Hindu." Even the Dalai Lama, he says, claims that he should be the rightful ruler of Tibet because "he himself is a hereditary king appointed by heaven itself. How convenient! Dissenting sects within his faith are persecuted. His one-man rule in an Indian enclave is absolute; he makes absurd pronouncements about sex and diet, and when on his trips to Hollywood fund raisers, annoints Steven Segal and Richard Gere as holy." "The first foreign visitors to Tiibet were downright appalled at the feudal domination,and hideous punishments that kept the population in permanent serfdom to a monastic elite." In 1938, leading members of the Nichiren sect founded Imperial Way Buddhism and became servant and even advocates of "imperialism and mass murder." He claims that "Japanese generals "Mobilized their Zen-obedient Zombies into complete obedience." He concludes by stating: "A faith that "preaches resignation, and that regards life as a poor and transient thing is ill-equipped for self-criticism."

Harsh? I think so. Hitchens, in typical fashion, accentuates the negative and eliminates the positive. I tend to follow Jesus' rule "by their fruits shall ye know them". I find aspects of Buddhism attractive enough to draw on in forming my own approach to reality: especially mindfulness and Upādāna. I have a friend who has made remarkable progress in coping with a crippling disability by adopting Buddhism and going to Buddhist monastic retreats. His "what , me worry" attitude can be annoying at times though in tuning out what I consider to be important features of reality. He thinks I'm foolish for being concerned about the advances of the religious Christian right in the state, or watching the news". His "this too shall pass" posture seems a bit ostrich-like to me from the standpoint of civic responsibility. But I don't detect the same attitude from you. Apparently, Buddhism means different things to different people.