Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
No, I did not like the fact that you assert that I should not be a minister and you went all censorious about what you deem incompatible with the Christian faith.

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quote:

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Furthermore, let me repeat a third time: I do not 'believe in reincarnation.' I wrote that I was agnostic about re-birth. I'm wondering how you actually know all these things about the afterlife or the soul, personally. I'm just saying I don't know or understand what a 'soul' is or how it constitutes a self.
If you think your post does not drip with animus, think again.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

Anyway ISTM the Greco-Roman part of Christianity has been there from the beginning. It's a feature, not a bug.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

Anyway ISTM the Greco-Roman part of Christianity has been there from the beginning. It's a feature, not a bug.

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I agree that the Greco-Roman part of Christianity has been there all along, but I'm not sure about the feature vs. bug aspect. Christianity, by its spec sheet, should transcend that cultural reference frame. Indeed, non-forced conversion works best when the local culture is considered.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
How much of this is an add-on? I suppose you could argue, a la Feser, that it flows logically from basic premises about reality, God, actus purus, and so on. I feel too old and tired to really read stuff and find out.

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quote:

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Ah well, that went well. Maybe the internet is not a good place for nuanced discussions about cross-faith relations. Or do I mean, inter, no, cross is good.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
No, I did not like the fact that you assert that I should not be a minister and you went all censorious about what you deem incompatible with the Christian faith. Furthermore, let me repeat a third time: I do not 'believe in reincarnation.' I wrote that I was agnostic about re-birth. I'm wondering how you actually know all these things about the afterlife or the soul, personally. I'm just saying I don't know or understand what a 'soul' is or how it constitutes a self.
If you think your post does not drip with animus, think again.

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

Anyway ISTM the Greco-Roman part of Christianity has been there from the beginning. It's a feature, not a bug.

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I agree that the Greco-Roman part of Christianity has been there all along, but I'm not sure about the feature vs. bug aspect. Christianity, by its spec sheet, should transcend that cultural reference frame. Indeed, non-forced conversion works best when the local culture is considered.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
In relation to effort, I'll have you know that I recently read two, yes, that's two, books by David Bentley Hart, and I thought that they were the biggest load of tripe since I stopped reading Tripe News. No, no, no more arguments from incredulity, please.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:
Christianity, by its spec sheet, should transcend that cultural reference frame. Indeed, non-forced conversion works best when the local culture is considered.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
And I'm not even against reincarnation as an idea, I just can't see that it is consistent with Anglican Christianity - which is a belief with fairly set ideas on this.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
This being said, and though Buddhist philosophy has its own set of problems, the kind of Aristotelian 'natural law' theories that are now only peddled in our churches does not help our dialogue with the hard sciences. Talking for instance of teleology or of the created 'purpose' of certain organs (mostly the sexual ones), when they are demonstrably adaptations and many such adaptations were unsuccessful is doomed. I cannot see of what use Plato can still be today either. Buddhism however is a living tradition that still makes sense to millions.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
How would you understand the doctrine of the resurrection of the body without reference to either soul or self? ISTM to presuppose some kind of continuity between the person who dies and whatever is resurrected, and that continuity is necessarily incorporeal.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

But if Christianity took on board Buddhist ideas would that be a cultural reference frame? That seems patronising. Buddhist ideas aren't a cultural reference frame - not in the sense that they can be transcended.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Eliab:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
No, I did not like the fact that you assert that I should not be a minister and you went all censorious about what you deem incompatible with the Christian faith. Furthermore, let me repeat a third time: I do not 'believe in reincarnation.' I wrote that I was agnostic about re-birth. I'm wondering how you actually know all these things about the afterlife or the soul, personally. I'm just saying I don't know or understand what a 'soul' is or how it constitutes a self.
If you think your post does not drip with animus, think again.

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The compatibility of Christian and Buddhist ideas is obviously fair game for discussion on this thread. Which you started. While this is clearly a subject of personal importance to you - not being too easily offended is one of the Board's commandments - try to cool it a little, please.

Eliab
Purgatory host

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by mr cheesy:
And I'm not even against reincarnation as an idea, I just can't see that it is consistent with Anglican Christianity - which is a belief with fairly set ideas on this.

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Chad Varah, who founded the Samaritans, believed in reincarnation. As far as I'm aware, he was never disciplined by the Church of England on that count.

I don't think reincarnation is true or even coherent in the Platonic/pythagorean form. But I don't think there's any disciplinary reason why an Anglican shouldn't believe it, and even if there were that would have no bearing on its truth.

For what it's worth, I believe St Augustine of Hippo refused to rule it out, which seems to me to imply that it's compatible with Western orthodoxy.

In any case, I'm not sure that the Buddhist version of reincarnation is subject to any of the same criticisms as the Western versions. Since Buddhism doesn't believe there's a self or soul there to transmigrate in the sense in which Pythagoreanism does, I'm not sure it's reincarnation in the Western sense at all.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

Anyway ISTM the Greco-Roman part of Christianity has been there from the beginning. It's a feature, not a bug.

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I agree that the Greco-Roman part of Christianity has been there all along, but I'm not sure about the feature vs. bug aspect. Christianity, by its spec sheet, should transcend that cultural reference frame. Indeed, non-forced conversion works best when the local culture is considered.

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This is very interesting. I was thinking about the Aristotelian stuff, which has resurfaced today in terms of natural law or even neo-scholasticism. How much of this is an add-on? I suppose you could argue, a la Feser, that it flows logically from basic premises about reality, God, actus purus, and so on. I feel too old and tired to really read stuff and find out.

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Posted                         

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And, since personal invective is allowed.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
hosting/

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And, since personal invective is allowed.

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Personal invective is not allowed. Eliab host posted on this just a few posts previously.

You can complain in the Styx if you think you've been unfairly treated. Flouting the rules here will get you into trouble, especially after a host has intervened.

Calm down or take it to Hell.

/hosting

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
hosting/

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
And, since personal invective is allowed.

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Personal invective is not allowed. Eliab host posted on this just a few posts previously.

You can complain in the Styx if you think you've been unfairly treated. Flouting the rules here will get you into trouble, especially after a host has intervened.

Calm down or take it to Hell.

/hosting

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Eutychus:
hosting/

Take it to the Styx or Hell, or step away from the keyboard and cool down before you attract Admin attention. Now. Stop adding "and another thing..." here.

/hosting

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:

It's all very well to blast Buddhism as incompatible with 'real' Christianity on the notion of self or soul, but when you have no counter-argument , it makes you look a little silly.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:

It's all very well to blast Buddhism as incompatible with 'real' Christianity on the notion of self or soul, but when you have no counter-argument , it makes you look a little silly.

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I stopped responding because here you indicated that you weren't going to post any more.

And I'm not 'blasting' Buddhism. My assertion is that most Christians hold to a concept of a soul which is incompatible with anatta. You seem to be responding that most Christians are wrong, which they may be, but this to me is just agreeing that the two views are incompatible, but that the incompatibility should be resolved in favour of the dhamma.

Now to my own views:

1. I personally find the afterlife to be the least satisfying point of Christian doctrine, so I am certainly not in the business of making assertions about what actually is the case (as opposed to what Christians believe is the case). But your original question was why Christians in general are leery about the dhamma.

2. I think we are getting excessively hung up on the words 'soul' and 'self', which is probably my fault.

The doctrine of the resurrection of the body requires that on some level the departed and the resurrected are the same person, which implies that 'something' has been passed on from one to the other (to create the continuity) and that this 'something' is real (in that it has real-world consequences). The problem is then that as soon as I assert the existence of a 'something'*, that immediately suggests the existence of an object that is basically like any other object but made of some magical material, but I think that suggestion is a quirk of the way our minds conceptualise stuff, rather than a helpful description of reality.


* The English word 'something' is potentialy unhelpful in that it contains the word 'thing', but I would assert that etymology =/= meaning and no implications should be drawn from it.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I merely asked where people saw difficulties in a articulating one of the philosophies of the ancient world, one that is still thriving, when they generally see absolutely no problem importing concepts from Hellenistic philosophy.

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I think your last paragraph is one of the closest 'conceptual' approximation of what the Buddha taught.

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quote:

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With copious apologies for my abrasive tone.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I think your last paragraph is one of the closest 'conceptual' approximation of what the Buddha taught.

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I thought the Buddha went a little bit further, though, based on what he taught about dukkha (suffering).

Dukkha AIUI is, or is caused by, the gap between reality and what I want. E.g. I want to be young, healthy and alive, whereas the reality is that I will be old, sick and dead. The Buddha (and please correct me if I am mistaken) taught that since the 'I' is an illusion, the 'I's desires, and therefore the gap between them and reality, are also illusory, and when this is understood, there is no more place for dukkha.

Conversely Christianity doesn't say that our desires are illusory but rather that they should be properly directed towards God and neighbour. Now if desires can be attributed to the 'something-that-continues' as described in my previous post, ISTM that the something-that-continues has a bit more substance (??? can't think of a better word) than whatever passes between reincarnations in Buddhism.

quote:

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With copious apologies for my abrasive tone.

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No need to apologise. I admit to being a snarky git, and I'm sure you're an excellent pastor.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
How any reputable thinker can still peddle the Aristotelian causes as a useful tool, even if only in matters of logic, is beyond me. The theory of evolution, although technically called a theory, is pretty solid science. Our organs, our bodies etcetera... have no 'purpose' in any final sense. They are not 'designed' for any particular use. They've evolved. They're adaptations.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
It's not, you are right, at least I'd argue the very same point. Do you have any reference for Augustine on the matter?

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quote:

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I'd also be curious to know hoe those who think that 'God creates an immortal soul out of nothing' every time a child is conceived, which is medieval Catholic orthodoxy by the way, reconcile their alleged orthodoxy with discoveries in modern reproductive biology (fertilised eggs seldom make it to implantation, even less frequently to blastocyst stage and regularly turn into blastoma).

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
It's not, you are right, at least I'd argue the very same point. Do you have any reference for Augustine on the matter?

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It's somewhere in the City of God.

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quote:

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9. And, behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still living. But thou, O Lord, whose life is forever and in whom nothing dies--since before the world was, indeed, before all that can be called “before,” thou wast, and thou art the God and Lord of all thy creatures; and with thee abide all the stable causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all changeable things, and the eternal reasons of all non-rational and temporal things--tell me, thy suppliant, O God, tell me, O merciful One, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy followed yet an earlier age of my life that had already passed away before it. Was it such another age which I spent in my mother’s womb? For something of that sort has been suggested to me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. But what, O God, my Joy, preceded that period of life? Was I, indeed, anywhere, or anybody? No one can explain these things to me, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Dost thou laugh at me for asking such things? Or dost thou command me to praise and confess unto thee only what I know?

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
How any reputable thinker can still peddle the Aristotelian causes as a useful tool, even if only in matters of logic, is beyond me. The theory of evolution, although technically called a theory, is pretty solid science. Our organs, our bodies etcetera... have no 'purpose' in any final sense. They are not 'designed' for any particular use. They've evolved. They're adaptations.

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I don't think that's an objection to Aristotelian causes in the logical sense. To say that organs are adaptations is to say that they have a final cause for which they're adapted. If the explanation of an elephant's ears is that they've adapted to radiate heat then that is a final cause explanation; even if you then parse that as elephants with smaller ears overheated more quickly than elephants with larger ears and so had fewer offspring.

That's not to say that final causes so understood have the kind of moral significance that conservative Roman Catholic sexual ethics wants them to. I don't think those arguments are coherent.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Ricardus:
[QUOTE]Originally posted by Joesaphat:
[qb]I think your last paragraph is one of the closest 'conceptual' approximation of what the Buddha taught.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
I merely asked where people saw difficulties in a articulating one of the philosophies of the ancient world, one that is still thriving, when they generally see absolutely no problem importing concepts from Hellenistic philosophy.

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There is a difference, I think, between using a different philosophical toolbox to think about Christanity, and forming a syncretic amalgam of Christianity and something else.

Using the toolbox of the people you're talking to makes sense - if you wanted to talk to me about your Christian faith using your Buddhist philosophical toolbox, you'd first have to teach me Buddhist philosophy, which doesn't strike me as an efficient process. If you were talking to a group of Buddhists, beginning with a frame of reference that they can relate to makes sense.

Unless you want to discuss insights that you think are only accessible with a different toolbox - if your case is that we are all in error because of some wonky assumptions in Greek philosophy - in which case we'd need a very serious technical discussion (and people who know a lot more than me to have it).

A lot of the language that you've used in this thread, however, comes across as more of a syncretic amalgam than a different toolbox. I don't know whether that's what you're doing or not, but it's the impression I get, which means you're setting off a whole load of warning bells.

It's particularly easy to get that impression because Buddhism is presented, rightly or wrongly, as a religion: one can be Christian, or Buddhist, or Muslim, or Hindu, or whatever else, whereas nobody presents being a Platonist in that light.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Dave W.:

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
It's not, you are right, at least I'd argue the very same point. Do you have any reference for Augustine on the matter?

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It's somewhere in the City of God.

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There's some speculation about it in Confessions, Book 1, chapter 6 (p. 14 of the pdf):

quote:

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9. And, behold, my infancy died long ago, but I am still living. But thou, O Lord, whose life is forever and in whom nothing dies--since before the world was, indeed, before all that can be called “before,” thou wast, and thou art the God and Lord of all thy creatures; and with thee abide all the stable causes of all unstable things, the unchanging sources of all changeable things, and the eternal reasons of all non-rational and temporal things--tell me, thy suppliant, O God, tell me, O merciful One, in pity tell a pitiful creature whether my infancy followed yet an earlier age of my life that had already passed away before it. Was it such another age which I spent in my mother’s womb? For something of that sort has been suggested to me, and I have myself seen pregnant women. But what, O God, my Joy, preceded that period of life? Was I, indeed, anywhere, or anybody? No one can explain these things to me, neither father nor mother, nor the experience of others, nor my own memory. Dost thou laugh at me for asking such things? Or dost thou command me to praise and confess unto thee only what I know?

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Dafyd:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
It's not, you are right, at least I'd argue the very same point. Do you have any reference for Augustine on the matter?

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It's somewhere in the City of God.

quote:

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I'd also be curious to know hoe those who think that 'God creates an immortal soul out of nothing' every time a child is conceived, which is medieval Catholic orthodoxy by the way, reconcile their alleged orthodoxy with discoveries in modern reproductive biology (fertilised eggs seldom make it to implantation, even less frequently to blastocyst stage and regularly turn into blastoma).

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I'd assume that believers in the special creation of souls assume that God only ensouls cells God knows are going to survive.
Incidentally, I think it's not quite consistent to cite Aquinas in support of your view and then dismiss Catholic orthodoxy.

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
To me, you are assuming what you are trying to establish: it's only a syncretism if the two things you are trying to mix are incompatible

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Leorning Cniht:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
To me, you are assuming what you are trying to establish: it's only a syncretism if the two things you are trying to mix are incompatible

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I don't agree. If you are trying to "mix", it's syncretic. If you're trying to examine Christ in the light of a different set of philosophical tools, it's not.

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Posted                      

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
But why should, say, since he was quoted above, Augustine's constant use of Platonic concepts not be deemed syncretism whereas Buddhist concepts are deemed different?

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by lilBuddha:

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
But why should, say, since he was quoted above, Augustine's constant use of Platonic concepts not be deemed syncretism whereas Buddhist concepts are deemed different?

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They are different because, as pointed out previously, what Christianity is came as a result of those concepts. Christianity is very Western.
This is a different issue to whether that should remain the case, of course.
And Buddhism is what it is because of its origins as well. Why do you then object to a Western view of Buddhism?

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Posted                       

quote:

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Originally posted by Joesaphat:
Then it's a mere quarrel over terms.

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Posted                          

quote:

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Originally posted by quetzalcoatl:
After all, people could cherry-pick, no? I know this has never been tried before in Christianity, but there's always a first time for everything.

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