[buddha-l] it's not about belief

[Richard P. Hayes]

On Fri, 2006-01-06 at 09:13 -0500, curt wrote:

> The accusation that I am "fanatically anti-Christian" is completely 
> disingenuous coming from you, Richard. You are of the opinion that 
> Christians are mentally defective mutants (a la Paul Bloom).

That is not even close to what I said, as you well know. What I reported
Blook as saying is that 90% of the human race has a genetic
predisposition to believe things without evidence.

> Obviously there are great variations in the degree to which different 
> Religions have been, and are today, tolerant and intolerant. A blind 
> insistence that this cannot possibly be the case is an extremely 
> irrational position.

Yes, if anyone were to argue such a thing, it would be irrational. As
far as I can see, no one has argued it. Indeed, as I said in my opening
message on this topic, I am inclined to agree with Sam Harris that there
are some ideologies that are much more prone to being used as
justifications for violence than others. All the Abrahamic religions
fall into that category. Quite a few Buddhist texts (come chapters of
the Lankavatara, the Shurangama and the notorious Lotus Sutra) fall into
that category. And I am inclined to agree with Ambedkar's observation
that most of the texts that form the basis of popular Hinduism (NOT the
Vedas and Upanishads, but the epics and Puranas) seem to condone
aggressive warfare, chicanery, rape and deception with a wink and an
implicit claim that "heroes will be heroes and gods will be gods."
Where, asked Ambedkar, can we find a single character in popular Hindu
literature whose life can be seen as a moral example.

My claim is that human beings on the whole are quite capable of
irrationality. I submit the entirely of recorded human history as my
evidence. And since the human race as a whole has done a very poor job
of being rational, I think it is mistaken to single out Christianity as
having a monopoly on irrationality, or intolerance or violence. And it
seems to me you have tried to to just that. You seem to have got stuck
in an adolescent neo-Romantic (almost neo-Nazi) fantasy about noble
savages, honorable pagans, and wise Asians, all having their utopias
disrupted by nasty Christians.

I may have caricatured your position slightly, but that is only because
I am trying to make sense of what you write. As far as I can tell, you
don't really have any position at all. You just like to argue against
whatever anyone else is saying, in the manner of what the Indian
scholastics called a vaitandika. (That's okay. I do that sort of thing
myself. It's fun. Making frivolous and capricious claims and offering
carping criticisms of other people's positions is partly what buddha-l
is all about. Posing bad arguments is a service to readers, because it
helps them cultivate skills in critical thinking.) 

-- 
Richard