12/7/23

How Different Religions Get On

Religions don't need to accept one another. Most commercial religious leaders probably can socialize together as it is, or at least have some respect for the other. It is politics and society generally that is the line of conflict, with economics and scarce resources being salient conflict starters too.

Politically people need to respect the freedom of individuals to think for even though it is the most basic of human, individual rights. Political authoritarians want to control what other people think and believe spiritually and otherwise. Thought control was the Orwellian oeuvre and that hasn’t changed since politicians made themselves god-kings and divine authorities or head of the church,

Christians find numerous prophecies of the Messiah in the Old Testament, some Jews are Christians and some Jews are just staying with the Old Testament. Others are secular. Real Americans like Israel and don’t mind conservative ethics and behavior regardless of them being Mormons or Jews. Western civilizations does concern itself with Islam though, not simply because its a wrong, semi-heretical syncretism of Christianity and Judaism, since people should be free to think what they want; the problem is that Islam divides the world in two camps; the zone of peace and the zone of war. Basically Islam seeks to conquer the world through any means including lying-tawfiq, battle, economic purchase etc. Islamists are rather like Democrats in that regard.

For Buddhists the 8th heresy is faith in God. So they are antipathetic to Christian and other deists yet harmless socially,or even helpful, so the west doesn’t care about Buddhists as if they were troubling or anything.

There are some religions that could be concerning if they were numerous, and seem silly or idiotic as tiny sects, yet people are free to be primitive or have stupid beliefs so long as they aren’t elected to office.

Hindu believers are polytheists so regarded by many monotheists as little better than pagan. Others wonder how modern, intelligent people can believe in multiple demi-urges and little gods yet about nobody finds Hindus to be implicitly wicked or world conquering. People can get along with them from other faiths except for a few radicals that feel that bashing icons and destroying pagan statues is de rigueur for the faithful. Historians and archaeologists take a dim view of those destroying ancient artifacts even if they are of fertility symbols.

The Hindu elephant god Ganesh made it into an offshoot of ‘Uncharted Lost Legacy’. 

Many non-Muslims like Taoism, or as Allan Watts called it; The Watercourse Way. It is an observation of the natural flow of nature- you know, gravity and crushed rock talus slopes, stars and black holes fusing together. Yet like the original Buddhism- not Pure Land Buddhism or even the Hinayana or Mahayana, Taoism is more of a philosophy that some upgrade to a religious devotion because it was the only good idea locally available and better than paganism, Shinto with it’s spirits that land on spirit gates and other animist religions. People do take the latter quite seriously too. It’s understanding if one is close to nature.

How many stupid Thor movies have entertained the world? Thor is portrayed as an E.T. rather than a god yet it is still paganism for the modern American in a way. Religionists are a little like movie goers in choosing different poisons and metaphors to mix. Its better to keep one’s faith plain an unadulterated with fusions of sundry liquors in the hope that if one has a wrong religion they might at least have a chance of being illuminated by the true faith one day before biting the dust.

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