What causes muslims to be violent

[Belinda]

The followers of Islam seem to be the most violent among the three Abrahamic religions.
What you think?

I think you need to justify this statistically.
The emphasis is on the word "SEEMS".

Historically, of course it is Christianity which as produced the most violence.

I think might want to look at the way media concentrates on Muslims, yet fails to fully focus on all the wars caused by say, the USA, recently.
Were you to take actual deaths ,Vietnam alone would more than swamp any Muslim based violence statistic since 1945.

Christian fundamentalists in modern times don't kill journalists to avenge a picture of Jesus wearing a disrespectful costume.I'd be scared to publicly disrespect Muhammad. Some Muslim fundies are downright dangerous. Does anyone get killed for blaspheming Jesus? No.But Islamic blasphemy is a live issue.

[Sculptor]

The followers of Islam seem to be the most violent among the three Abrahamic religions.
What you think?

I think you need to justify this statistically.
The emphasis is on the word "SEEMS".

Historically, of course it is Christianity which as produced the most violence.

I think might want to look at the way media concentrates on Muslims, yet fails to fully focus on all the wars caused by say, the USA, recently.
Were you to take actual deaths ,Vietnam alone would more than swamp any Muslim based violence statistic since 1945.

Christian fundamentalists in modern times don't kill journalists to avenge a picture of Jesus wearing a disrespectful costume.I'd be scared to publicly disrespect Muhammad. Some Muslim fundies are downright dangerous. Does anyone get killed for blaspheming Jesus? No.But Islamic blasphemy is a live issue.

Yes, and that is what makes it "SEEM" like Christians are less violent bu they are not.
Given the vast numbers of Muslims, a few nutcrackers really makes their violence negligible, whilst the media earn bucks to make is "SEEM" the way you describe.

And since the media are less interested in Christian based violence they do not seem as bad
https://www.dw.com/en/the-lords-resista ... a-18136620
And since Christians military campaigns in various places such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, ect.. are not seen as "violence" (which I beg to differ upon) is would "SEEM" that Muslims are more violent.

[Immanuel Can]

Terrorists are by definition not highly educated.

the 12 men in the 9-11 attacks were all college educated.

[Immanuel Can]

Yes, and that is what makes it "SEEM" like Christians are less violent bu they are not.

Hilarious claim.

The best case you think you could find was the "Lord's Resistance Army", which you uncritically took to be Christian? I guess maybe because you saw the word "Lord". I assure you, cases of Muslim violence are nowhere near so hard to find...if you actually look.

Here's the truth. They're followers of Joseph Kony, a former Catholic altar boy, practitioner of witchcraft and charismatic mysticism by Alice Auma. You'll look in vain for anything in common between him and Jesus Christ, I assure you.

[PeteJ]

What I mean is that they take experience, intensity of emotion and mystical enthusiasm as the certification of genuine religiosity. One thing common in Pentecostalism is a skepticism about any religious expression that is too calm, to knowledge-based or too dispassionate. They take that for 'dead' religion. For them, the very intensity of the experience is self-certifying.

Yes. It's a view I cannot comprehend.

Interesting. I am aware that Sufism, as I said earlier, is regarded as inferior or non-authentic by what you call the "institutional" Muslims. Why is that?

For the same reason all the monotheistic churches denigrate mysticism. It removes the reasons for having an institution and deprives the priests of
their power and influence. For a start, it would mean equal opp's for women and they can't be having that. I have a Christian friend for whom mysticism is the work of the Devil. You might like to google the famous story of the crucifixion of Al-Hallaj. The Churches are dead serious about their ban on mysticism and until recently I wouldn't have dared have this discussion in public. Even just a century ago Schrodinger ran into trouble with his Christian publisher for suggesting we are all God.

That's the part I don't find hard to agree with. And that's what I mean when I say "each of us has to choose a path": the starting point, not the end.

But there are still more problems with the idea that the "paths" remain individual and different from one another. If that is true, they are not a "path" at all, since only one person every walks one. And since they are said to converge at the end, and "lead to Rome," so to speak, none of them is a "wrong" path, and neither is the choice of any of them of any importance at all. For then, all the "paths" differ only in the beginning and middle, but all are the "right" path, so to speak.

Hmm. I see what you mean but disagree. One may wander about for all ones life without ever finding a path. When I say 'path' I mean a path that goes to Rome. If it does not then it is not a path. I should have used the usual phrase 'authentic path' to avoid confusion.

If that's so, then "institutional" Muslims are on something every bit as good "path wise" as Sufis...and so are Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Atheists, pagans, and people who have no thought of God at all.

I agree. The point is that the path has to start somewhere and it may be just about anywhere. The Perennial philosopher views the dogmatic religions as doorways to inner truths and knowledge, and this would be so for Pentcostalism. The problem is only that they have, as Jesus says of the Pharisees, 'stolen the keys of knowledge'. They do not encourage followers to move beyond faith but actively discourage it. They breed sheep, not truth-seekers. Even the ancient Rig Veda warns us against the 'hymn-reciters'.

So then, on what basis do you find Sufism recommendable? Its "path" would be of no particular merit.

The practices of Sufism, Middle Way Buddhism, Taoism, advaita Vedanta and more generally the Perennial philosophy are interchangeable, It is only that some will suit us more than others. Al-Hallaj says only what is said my Master Eckhart, Lao Tsu, Sadhguru or the Buddha, albeit they have different focusses and angles of attack etc. I would include Jesus and Mohammed.

(Understand here, please, I'm not trying to be difficult; I'm trying to understand how this sort of view works.)

I completely get this. This may be the first sustained sensible discussion I've had on the forum, and in the religion section of all places. Nor am I trying to browbeat you. The problem is only that every question deserves an essay.

If all roads lead to Rome, that will make Catholics very happy. But it may not quite delight you or me.

Ha. Luckily they have no idea where the road leads. If they did they'd be promoting Eckhart and the non-dual interpretation of Jesus, for this is the only doctrine that allows us to know such things.

.That sounds inclusive at first, but could be quite imperious. It would be to dissolve the Christian belief into the Taoist, and then absorb both into another narrative that is neither Taoist nor Christian.

This will al depend on our interpretation of religion. For there is no important difference between Christianity and Taoism, but they employ different methods, languages, ideas and practices, so neither will ever absorb the other. The narrative would be Christian and Taoist, because Jesus and Lao Tsu were not theorising but telling us what they knew.

But "these kinds of group-hugs" are just a different "path." And whether it entails any "Truth and Knowledge" would be immaterial, since it will still get them "to Rome." So you must be implying that their "path" is, for some reason not yet evident to me," not really a "path" at all. That is, if by "Rome" you mean "Truth and Knowledge."

Their path will not lead then to Rome unless it leads them to knowledge. These are the same thing. The point is that even the 'group-hug' approach has its place as a process by which people may be drawn to become a truth-seeker. If they continue to be satisfied with group-hugs then they cannot expect to make any progress. I'm very thankful for my Christian upbringing for opening doors, even though I rejected it at age twelve. Only when I studied Buddhism forty tears later did Christianity start to make sense to me, and studying Taoism shed much light on Buddhism. It's known as the 'Perennial' philosophy because it appears all over the world in all times and never varies.

I'd like to hear more about how you keep those two claims -- namely that all paths are good and that that path is not good -- believable together. It seems to me that the first wipes out the second, or the second makes the first impossible.

I hope this is answered above. Not all paths go to the end, but those that don't may nevertheless be good places to start.

Phew.

[Sculptor]

Yes, and that is what makes it "SEEM" like Christians are less violent bu they are not.

Hilarious claim.

The best case you think you could find was the "Lord's Resistance Army",

No my best case is Vietnam which alone caused more violent deaths by ONE Christian country that all the muslim troubles since 1945.

[Immanuel Can]

]Interesting. I am aware that Sufism, as I said earlier, is regarded as inferior or non-authentic by what you call the "institutional" Muslims. Why is that?

For the same reason all the monotheistic churches denigrate mysticism. It removes the reasons for having an institution and deprives the priests of
their power and influence.

That's plausible. The same could be said of Protestantism relative to Catholicism. The Reformation shattered Catholic power and priestly power, and was resented for that.

Even just a century ago Schrodinger ran into trouble with his Christian publisher for suggesting we are all God.

He probably should perhaps have run into trouble with his logician instead.

That's the part I don't find hard to agree with. And that's what I mean when I say "each of us has to choose a path": the starting point, not the end.

But there are still more problems with the idea that the "paths" remain individual and different from one another. If that is true, they are not a "path" at all, since only one person every walks one. And since they are said to converge at the end, and "lead to Rome," so to speak, none of them is a "wrong" path, and neither is the choice of any of them of any importance at all. For then, all the "paths" differ only in the beginning and middle, but all are the "right" path, so to speak.

Hmm. I see what you mean but disagree. One may wander about for all ones life without ever finding a path.[/quote]
Ah. So there are bad or misleading "paths" too. Not every path goes to Rome. And we get away from that problem by claiming that a wandering or errant "path" isn't allowed to be a "path" at all, even if somebody chooses it and walks it?

I should have used the usual phrase 'authentic path' to avoid confusion.

That would be better. Because if there are no "inauthetic paths," then as I suggested, no "path" is to be preferred over another...and I have never yet met one inclusively-minded person who did not simultaneously insist that the "best path" was to be inclusive. So that means exclusive paths, paths that deny other paths, would be bad.

But here's the logical problem with that: that even that allegedly "inclusive" path excludes the exclusivists. So it's not really "inclusive" at all.

And, of course, there's a second problem: that in order to include other "paths," the inclusivist has to deny that when those paths say exclusive things, that they can be right. So when, say, a inclusivists claims his religion gets the truth about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc. right, and the exclusivists in those religions get their own religion wrong, then he's excluding their religion.

So again, it's not actually inclusive: it's imperialistic, instead. It denies and reconstructs other religions, in order to absorb them into its own meta-narrative. It does not at all accept Judaism as Conservative or Hassidic Judaism, or Islam as Radical Islam, or Christianity's claim that Jesus is THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life." All those sorts of religion, the inclusivist actually rejects.

Not so inclusive, once again.

If that's so, then "institutional" Muslims are on something every bit as good "path wise" as Sufis...and so are Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Atheists, pagans, and people who have no thought of God at all.

I agree.

But you shouldn't. Not if you really believe in Sufism, that is.

Why would you believe in a variation of a religion that you don't think is in some way "better" than the alternatives? That would make no sense.

The point is that the path has to start somewhere

Well, yes; and we've agreed about that. It can start anywhere.

But can it continue and finish anywhere? No, you say: it all has to "lead to Rome," i.e. get everybody to the right place. So the finish is fixed, too. But what about the middle? Isn't the best middle of a path the straightest line (or at least a functional line) between the start and the finish?

So the start is fixed by where a person begins. The finish is fixed. But for some reason, we are to think the middle can be infinitely variable? I think you'd need to explain how that works. A line tethered at two ends has very little flexibility in the middle, without simply being off-course.

So then, on what basis do you find Sufism recommendable? Its "path" would be of no particular merit.

The practices of Sufism, Middle Way Buddhism, Taoism, advaita Vedanta and more generally the Perennial philosophy are interchangeable, It is only that some will suit us more than others. Al-Hallaj says only what is said my Master Eckhart, Lao Tsu, Sadhguru or the Buddha, albeit they have different focusses and angles of attack etc. I would include Jesus and Mohammed. [/quote]
But they would reject that. Almost any religion actually would, and even allegedly inclusivist ones do, by implication of refusing exclusivists. So what you've really done there, it seems, is simply to reconstruct other people's religions in the image of what you prefer to see, and then claim that is the deep truth about them.

Or is there some sense in which you still propose to accept their actual claims...like the claims of those many Muslims who insist, as per the shahadah or confession of 'faith,' that Mohammed is the final 'prophet,' or those Christians who accept Jesus's claims that He is the exclusive way to God? Do you simply dismiss all such claims, or what do you make from them?

The problem is only that every question deserves an essay.

Well, let's simplify: how do you avoid excluding exclusivists? And what do you do with the exclusive claims of some religions? Let those be the next questions.

If all roads lead to Rome, that will make Catholics very happy. But it may not quite delight you or me.

Ha. Luckily they have no idea where the road leads.

Oh. So Catholics are out. They're on the wrong "path"? Just gotta ask.

...there is no important difference between Christianity and Taoism,

I would definitely say that's not true. I can list significant differences. So could any knowledgeable Taoist, I'm sure. And he might well be quite insulted if I told him, "Your Taoism has nothing to offer that all other religions don't also offer." And why shouldn't he be insulted? I'd essentially have said to him, "Your religion is nothing special."

Wouldn't I actually be more respectful to say to him, "Your religion is different from mine. I see that. It has different values, precepts, ethics and purposes. And I see the difference. I am not going to try to pretend you are just another variety of Christian,' but rather note the differences and say that I hope you change your mind"? For in that case, I might be telling him, "I don't believe in your way," but at least I'm not telling him, "Your way is nothing special." That seems ultimately insulting.

I'm very thankful for my Christian upbringing

May I ask what kind it was? Obviously not Pentecostal, and I'm guessing not Catholic...so what was the tradition from which you came at age 12? And what observation made you abandon it?

Only when I studied Buddhism forty tears later did Christianity start to make sense to me, and studying Taoism shed much light on Buddhism. It's known as the 'Perennial' philosophy because it appears all over the world in all times and never varies.

I've read the Tao te Ching and the Dhammapada. I confess I find that they are nothing like Christianity. At least, they are like no kind of Christianity that most Christians would ever call "Christian." I find them quite different, quite distinct. And I could point to many specifics that show they are, I would say.

It seems to me, if you''ll pardon me saying so, that what you're suggesting is not the inclusion of Christianity within a more inclusive, global religiosity, but rather the denial, dilution and absorption of Christianity INTO somebody else's meta-narrative. Buddhism wins; Christianity loses. That seems to me to be the bottom line...particularly if you consider the majority of forms of Christianity, which are all committed to exclusive claims to the singular value of Christ.

Bu please, feel free to push back on that impression if you think I've missed your point.

[Immanuel Can]

No my best case is Vietnam...

That's no better.

Where, in the claims of Christ, do you find allowance for Vietnam?

[Belinda]

Terrorists are by definition not highly educated.

the 12 men in the 9-11 attacks were all college educated.

I have rebutted this objection before . An educated man is not a terrorist, cannot be a terrorist, because an educated man is self aware regarding his own feelings and motivations, the feelings and rights of all other men, and the historicity of ideas.

College education is high level education but that is not the same as education in humanities. Some medics and some scientists are no more than technicians as regards their humanities education.

[Sculptor]

No my best case is Vietnam...

That's no better.

Where, in the claims of Christ, do you find allowance for Vietnam?

You might ask that of the priests that accompanied all American troops whilst the napalmed the fuck out of little children.

[Veritas Aequitas]

I think you need to justify this statistically.
The emphasis is on the word "SEEMS".

Historically, of course it is Christianity which as produced the most violence.

I think might want to look at the way media concentrates on Muslims, yet fails to fully focus on all the wars caused by say, the USA, recently.
Were you to take actual deaths ,Vietnam alone would more than swamp any Muslim based violence statistic since 1945.

Christian fundamentalists in modern times don't kill journalists to avenge a picture of Jesus wearing a disrespectful costume.I'd be scared to publicly disrespect Muhammad. Some Muslim fundies are downright dangerous. Does anyone get killed for blaspheming Jesus? No.But Islamic blasphemy is a live issue.

Yes, and that is what makes it "SEEM" like Christians are less violent bu they are not.
Given the vast numbers of Muslims, a few nutcrackers really makes their violence negligible, whilst the media earn bucks to make is "SEEM" the way you describe.

And since the media are less interested in Christian based violence they do not seem as bad
https://www.dw.com/en/the-lords-resista ... a-18136620
And since Christians military campaigns in various places such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, ect.. are not seen as "violence" (which I beg to differ upon) is would "SEEM" that Muslims are more violent.

Your thinking is too shallow and narrow.

The main purpose of believers [the majority who are either Christians and Muslims] is to seek salvation from God for eternal life in paradise and to avoid hell.
To gain the eternal life that is promised by God, believers has to enter into a contract with God and to comply with the terms of the contracts as stipulated in their core holy texts, i.e. the Gospels or the Quran.

There is an implied contract [offer and acceptance] for Christians with Jesus/God while the requirement of the contract of a Muslim is very explicitly stated in the Quran.
See this;
A Muslim is one who had Entered into a Contract with Allah.
viewtopic.php?f=11&t=30259

The terms of the contract [within Gospels, not OT] a Christian signed with God/Jesus do not include any commands to kill non-believers or other human beings.
Rather there is an overriding pacifist maxim in the Gospels, i.e. 'love all and even your enemies'.
Therefore there is no way Christianity condone killing of another human at all.
This meant that if a Christian has killed other humans, s/he has killed on his/her own personal account and not as being a Christian; the fact is a person normally wears many 'hats' in life.

On the other hand, the terms of contract a Muslim signed with Allah provide sanctions and warrants for a Muslim to kill non-Muslims upon very vague conditions, i.e. even disbelieving Islam is a condition to be killed.
Therefore when a Muslim killed in the name of Allah and Islam, then Islam the ideology is at fault and not the Muslim who had a divine duty to kill non-Muslims.

Obviously there are Muslims who have killed other humans for various reasons, politics, crime of passion, psychopathy, out of rage, jealousy, greed, etc. and these killings has nothing to do with Islam.

[Sculptor]

Christian fundamentalists in modern times don't kill journalists to avenge a picture of Jesus wearing a disrespectful costume.I'd be scared to publicly disrespect Muhammad. Some Muslim fundies are downright dangerous. Does anyone get killed for blaspheming Jesus? No.But Islamic blasphemy is a live issue.

Yes, and that is what makes it "SEEM" like Christians are less violent bu they are not.
Given the vast numbers of Muslims, a few nutcrackers really makes their violence negligible, whilst the media earn bucks to make is "SEEM" the way you describe.

And since the media are less interested in Christian based violence they do not seem as bad
https://www.dw.com/en/the-lords-resista ... a-18136620
And since Christians military campaigns in various places such as Iraq, Iran, Libya, ect.. are not seen as "violence" (which I beg to differ upon) is would "SEEM" that Muslims are more violent.

Your thinking is too shallow and narrow.

Wow what a great way to get a person to read on.....

PLONK!

delete

[PeteJ]

Even just a century ago Schrodinger ran into trouble with his Christian publisher for suggesting we are all God.

He probably should perhaps have run into trouble with his logician instead.

I notice the 'wink' but must comment that I see no reason to doubt his logic. It seems spot on to me.

But there are still more problems with the idea that the "paths" remain individual and different from one another.

I don't see any issues here. No point in arguing how to define 'path'.

And, of course, there's a second problem: that in order to include other "paths," the inclusivist has to deny that when those paths say exclusive things, that they can be right. So when, say, a inclusivists claims his religion gets the truth about Islam, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Christianity, etc. right, and the exclusivists in those religions get their own religion wrong, then he's excluding their religion.

Think of 'path' as meaning 'method' and perhaps the issue is clearer. There are good methods and bad, effective and ineffective, personally suitable and unsuitable. A Zenist may argue there is no path. The issue is linguistic.

So again, it's not actually inclusive: it's imperialistic, instead. It denies and reconstructs other religions, in order to absorb them into its own meta-narrative. It does not at all accept Judaism as Conservative or Hassidic Judaism, or Islam as Radical Islam, or Christianity's claim that Jesus is THE Way, THE Truth and THE Life." All those sorts of religion, the inclusivist actually rejects.

I can't follow you at all an this point. Are you talking about the Perennial philosophy? This accepts that Jesus is the Way the Truth and the Light. It's just that Jesus would be a condition of consciousness. If you include everyone than you are an imperialist, if that's how you want to look at it. To avoid being so one would have to exclude some people. All these distinctions break down in the end in a muddle of words.

If that's so, then "institutional" Muslims are on something every bit as good "path wise" as Sufis...and so are Jews, Christians, Zoroastrians, Atheists, pagans, and people who have no thought of God at all.

I agree.

But you shouldn't. Not if you really believe in Sufism, that is.

Why not? I've tried to explain this and am not quite sure what the issue is.

Why would you believe in a variation of a religion that you don't think is in some way "better" than the alternatives? That would make no sense.

I don't believe in any religion. Some teachers are more knowledgeable/helpful than others, some methods are more effective, some paths more suitable, etc, depending on where we are starting from, our temperament etc. We learn the laws of motion by reference to Newton. Later we learn that things are not so simple, but Newton is still a good 'path'.

But can it continue and finish anywhere? No, you say: it all has to "lead to Rome," i.e. get everybody to the right place. So the finish is fixed, too. But what about the middle? Isn't the best middle of a path the straightest line (or at least a functional line) between the start and the finish?

The middle may take any form. It's a unique path for each of us. A Buddhist would say that the middle is likely to stretch over many lifetimes, but in theory may be no longer than an instant. But I feel we're getting into a muddle here by worrying about what we mean by 'paths'.

So the start is fixed by where a person begins. The finish is fixed. But for some reason, we are to think the middle can be infinitely variable? I think you'd need to explain how that works. A line tethered at two ends has very little flexibility in the middle, without simply being off-course.

Imagine a fly trying to find the exact centre of a large sphere starting from a point on the surface. It might wander about forever or go straight there.

So what you've really done there, it seems, is simply to reconstruct other people's religions in the image of what you prefer to see, and then claim that is the deep truth about them.

It's a common complaint leveled at those who endorse the Perennial view. One would have to see this deep truth to see that the complaint is unjustified. Or, perhaps you could just observe how many people share this view of religion. It explains why the Dalia Lama recommends that we do not give up the religion of our birth, since for Buddhism it is not necessary to do so. It is only necessary to go in search of this deep truth.

Or is there some sense in which you still propose to accept their actual claims...like the claims of those many Muslims who insist, as per the shahadah or confession of 'faith,' that Mohammed is the final 'prophet,' or those Christians who accept Jesus's claims that He is the exclusive way to God? Do you simply dismiss all such claims, or what do you make from them?

We'd have to deal with one claim at a time. There's no blanket answer.

Well, let's simplify: how do you avoid excluding exclusivists? And what do you do with the exclusive claims of some religions? Let those be the next questions.

Can I suggest that you post this question as a separate post. These long and broken up post are hard work and rather confusing.

Oh. So Catholics are out. They're on the wrong "path"? Just gotta ask.

They are not 'out'. The whole reason for being on a path' is that one is not at the end of it. Only at the end does one know where the ending is.

...there is no important difference between Christianity and Taoism,

I would definitely say that's not true. I can list significant differences. So could any knowledgeable Taoist, I'm sure. And he might well be quite insulted if I told him, "Your Taoism has nothing to offer that all other religions don't also offer." And why shouldn't he be insulted? I'd essentially have said to him, "Your religion is nothing special."

I did not say Taosim has nothing to offer that all religions have to offer, and it is exactly the opposite of my view. I said 'significant difference', meaning that there is no difference in the reality that is described by Taoism and Christianity. Thus Taoists equate Jesus with the True Man they say is inside all of us. (I'm speaking here of the original philosophical Taoism of Laso Tsu and Chuang Tsu, not the later religious kind which is an invention to put bums on seats).

Wouldn't I actually be more respectful to say to him, "Your religion is different from mine. I see that. It has different values, precepts, ethics and purposes. And I see the difference. I am not going to try to pretend you are just another variety of Christian,' but rather note the differences and say that I hope you change your mind"? For in that case, I might be telling him, "I don't believe in your way," but at least I'm not telling him, "Your way is nothing special." That seems ultimately insulting.

What I would say would depend on which religion we're talking about and the person's existing view of it. I don't have a religion so the question is moot.

May I ask what kind it was? Obviously not Pentecostal, and I'm guessing not Catholic...so what was the tradition from which you came at age 12? And what observation made you abandon it?

Church of England. At age twelve I became capable of seeing that it is a lot of nonsense. At age fifty I realised I'd thrown the baby out with the bathwater. I'd mistaken the teachings of the Church for the teachings of Jesus.

I've read the Tao te Ching and the Dhammapada. I confess I find that they are nothing like Christianity. At least, they are like no kind of Christianity that most Christians would ever call "Christian." I find them quite different, quite distinct. And I could point to many specifics that show they are, I would say.

Yes, this is true, But the view I'm endorsing is not the view of most Christians. For the gnostic Christian in pursuit of Truth and Knowledge the texts you mention are highly respected and well read. My view in no way idiosyncratic but common. It's just not a majority view among Chritians.

It seems to me, if you''ll pardon me saying so, that what you're suggesting is not the inclusion of Christianity within a more inclusive, global religiosity, but rather the denial, dilution and absorption of Christianity INTO somebody else's meta-narrative. Buddhism wins; Christianity loses. That seems to me to be the bottom line...particularly if you consider the majority of forms of Christianity, which are all committed to exclusive claims to the singular value of Christ.

Bu please, feel free to push back on that impression if you think I've missed your point.

I'll do so strongly. This is nothing like what I'm proposing. Almost the very opposite. Here is Meher Baba expressing exactly what I'm proposing. .

"I am equally approachable to one and all,
Big and small,
To saints who rise and sinners who fall,
Through all the various Paths that give
The Divine Call.
I am approachable alike to saint whom I
Adore,
And to sinner whom I am for,
And equally through Sufism, Vedantism,
Christianity,
Or Zoroastrianism and Buddhism, and other
‘isms’
Of any kind and also directly through
no medium of ‘isms’ at all."

Meher Baba- The Sayings of Shri Meher Baba

[Belinda]

No my best case is Vietnam...

That's no better.

Where, in the claims of Christ, do you find allowance for Vietnam?

You might ask that of the priests that accompanied all American troops whilst the napalmed the fuck out of little children.

That is terrible, Sculptor. I wish to God we could have some ethical leadership. I feel actual fear for the way my own country is going after this afternoon's news The government has awarded oversight of the UK’s post-Brexit border and customs data to Palantir, an American tech firm notorious for assisting the Trump administration’s drive to deport migrants from the US.
Guardian

[Sculptor]

That's no better.

Where, in the claims of Christ, do you find allowance for Vietnam?

You might ask that of the priests that accompanied all American troops whilst the napalmed the fuck out of little children.

That is terrible, Sculptor. I wish to God we could have some ethical leadership. I feel actual fear for the way my own country is going after this afternoon's news The government has awarded oversight of the UK’s post-Brexit border and customs data to Palantir, an American tech firm notorious for assisting the Trump administration’s drive to deport migrants from the US.
Guardian

PALANTIR??
That could not be more sinister. The device with which Saruman communicated with Sauron. It's like they don't even bother to pretend they are not EVIL.
Good old Christendom.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Palantír