[Buddha-l] Re: Anyone up for another year?

[curt]

Richard P. Hayes wrote:

>
>Steinmetz's critique of Harris is interesting but much too superficial.
>I think the critique rests on just the kind of flaw that it falsely
>accuses Harris of making. Steinmetz sees Harris as falsely assuming that
>all religions are like Christianity in placing an emphasis on beliefs.
>He then claims that Christianity is preoccupied with creeds (a claim
>that is, by the way, false for most kinds of German and American
>Protestantism) and that other religions are not. 
>  
>
Protestants are actually a worst case scenario when it comes to defining 
Religion solely in terms of belief. The business model for Protestantism 
seems to be for every two-bit self-proclaimed preacher to set up his or 
her own church based upon yet another hodge-podge of ideological 
idiosyncrasies. In fact, if Benoit Mandelbrot had not discovered fractal 
geometry while contemplating coastlines, someone else would probably 
have made the same discovery while contemplating the infinitely 
recursive process of Protestant schizmatism (if you do a google search 
on "schizmatism" you get exactly one hit - I forget what that's called).

- Curt