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Re: Religion and ethnocentrismBrian Michael Howell (bmhowell@ARTSCI.WUSTL.EDU)Thu, 11 Apr 1996 16:33:35 -0500
> Brian Michael Howell writes: > > : To say that "religion" is expressed in a variety of ways is to imply that > : the content of religious belief is irrelevant. Muslims are not merely > : "expressing religion" they believe that a historical event, in which > : Allah gave teachings to Mohammed, actually happened. If you believe that > : this actually happened, how can you turn around and say that these > : teachings - GIVEN BY GOD! - are just one way to "express a universal?" > : The same can be said of Christianity, Judaism, and, to some extent > : Buddhism. These are not, in the belief if their adherents, merely > : ahistorical expressions of a human capacity for > : mythology/cosmology/whatever. They are historical instances of God > : interveining in human affairs or true enlightenment. You can encourage > : anyone in any of these systems to be tolerant (i.e. not want to attack, > : harm or insult) of other religions, but to tell them they should abandon > : the idea that they are exclusively true, is to tell them to abandon the > : core historical foundation of their beliefs. > > Could you explain how you think that these remarks are true--even to > some extent--of Buddhism? Surely there are few, if any, Buddhist > schools that believe that their teachings are ``GIVEN BY GOD'', or even > that any of their teachings would be invalidated in any way if it turned > out to be the fact that the historical Buddha was clearly mythical, like > Amida Buddha. The Buddha taught, after all, that one should rely on > oneself and on the teachings, not on the Buddha. > > This is not, of course, to deny that the Buddhists might well take the > positition that myths are true and that beliefs are irrelevant. > > -- > Peter D. Junger--Case Western Reserve University Law School--Cleveland, OH > Internet: junger@pdj2-ra.f-remote.cwru.edu junger@samsara.law.cwru.edu > Of course. Buddhists (meaning orthodox Buddhism, not folk Buddhism, which is a whole diff. thing) use the teachings of Buddha, an historical figure, and his experience of enlightment as the basis of their religion. While there is not a centrality to this event in the same way as the history of Moses, Mohammed, or Jesus play in their respective faiths, there is a belief that the teachings of buddha are true because the Buddha was able to become a Buddha through those teachings. That is why I qualified the historicity of belief in Buddhism.
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