I have many answers. It was explained to you before and you didn't understand. And what religion do you feel mogs Christianity and why? I don't reject the fact some other religions had useful practices or insights to offer, but Christianity improved upon them. It's one of the reasons the Christian dominates West became more successful into modern times.
Buddhism because they have superior morals, have a better understanding of reality, isn’t a belief based religion (go to hell for believing the wrong things), and much more. Even if you only talk about Christianity that combined ideas with those of the Greek philosophers through the church fathers Christianity still gets mogged by Buddhism.
I disagree. I think Christianity in the form of the Roman Catholic Church brought unity in Europe and civilized them in spreading of Roman cultural values. But overall the real explosion in the Christian (and Islamic) world came with the Greek ideas heavily influencing their academia, and the West going even further with capitalism allowing people to make money from new scientific innovations.
Buddhism and even Hinduism have some good vocabulary and maybe a few good ideas about techniques. But Buddhism mostly leads nowhere. You want to starve yourself in a cave and try to reach Moksha or Salvation (aka Enlightenment) that way? I mean, what, shit isn't bad enough for us already, that's the way? No thanks.
You are forgetting the most important aspect of Christianity which I believe led to this sort of success and that is the Protestant reformation and then the movement of those peoples to New England, which greatly boosted the START of America as a leading power. In England it was their religion at their heights also. This is what allowed people to be able to cooperate enough to create these things you mentioned. And many of those scientific innovations and the actualising of those innovations into engineering marvels would not have been possible without men cooperating as more of beta males. Which I also attribute to Protestant Christianity.
Hinduism is retarded, but Buddhism is probably true as a religion. It’s full of myths, but it correctly identifies the problem in life which is suffering and has a solution to it. Christianity fundamentally is just deity worship like every other religion, and if you don’t believe it you go to hell. Just low iq cope imo.
Protestantism was only possible with the invention the printing press and the Gutenberg bible being mass produced. And yeah many early settlers of the new world were Protestants, but those societies were still shit holes in thos early days. However the West was already the most advanced civilization in the world before Protestantism existed.
Anglicanism is a weird one. It was made solely due to the king wanting to get a divorce. But how did Protestantism do make people cooperate exactly, in such a way that was unlike anything before? Anglos were already set to mog the rest of Europe with government changes like magna carta, john locke, and much more. Power was being removed naturally from their monarchs, unlike anyone else that existed in Europe who till this day support authoritarian control in one way or another.
Beta males have been building civilizations through cooperation since time immemorial. Science and innovation isn’t just going to spontaneously happen in very close tribal groups that have much more cooperation. They need to have a basic level of civilization first (which Roman Catholic Church did for the West), then (imo) it was about bringing those influence of ancient Greek traditions into their worldview (like it did for the islamic golden age before), and then it fully accelerated with capitalism so people could innovate for a living and make money for it.
So why do you say Christianity is mogged by other religions? Which religions?
This means that you do not understand Christianity.
John Locke was a Protestant buddy. Sola Scriptura !
It seems to me that Protestant Christianity helped to standardize beta male behavior more times than others did. I don't discount the early success of the Roman Catholic Church, but judging from the success the New England colonies had in starting a new country, removing the British, then siding back with the British quickly, it shows that Protestants were able to behave more beta when it was needed. It's not obvious that early Protestants themselves did it, but their ancestors had a big role in it. I mean, roughly half or more were the descendants of these Protestants and before that they were successful in Great Britain and Western Europe. Even today you can see it's lasting mark 48% or so have Protestant origins, even if they have stopped practicing or believing themselves.
Christians don’t become enlightened or close to overcoming suffering. Even Jesus was screaming on the cross and wondering why god had betrayed him. All religions tell people to practice some restraint, that is superficial af to think that will stop anything. You probably know that is just repression and why christians and many other religious people secretly become degenerates.
Imo the Anglos succeeded so much is because of their culture, not because of Protestanism necessarily. I made my government reasons of why England mogged the rest of Europe, as they have been naturally evolving away from monarchism for almost a millennium. But even if you look at the philosophy of England and compare it to the rest of Europe it makes sense why they all failed in comparison to England. There was a fundamental divide between continental philosophy of Europe and the Analytic Philosophy of the English world. Analytic philosophy was all about pragmatism and empiricism, while continental philosophy was about speculation and rationalism. The patterns England needed to mog the rest of Europe came through many avenues.
Neither do Buddhists. Yes, some Buddhists can be burned alive without lifting a finger, but that is a meaningless stunt.
He is not portrayed as screaming in the Gospels. In any case, he is an imaginary character, so that doesn't really matter, does it?
Yes, all religions induce some restraint because this is their role within the context of civilization. But this is not what we are talking about here.
Most Buddhists don’t even try, as the religion for most people has just devolved into devotionalism like Christianity. As the Buddha said that his path is only for those with little dust in their eyes.
Buddhist enlightenment is said to be something you can attain directly in this life. Buddhists think people go to heaven anyways for doing good deeds so Christian salvation is nothing special.
He literally screams on the cross and this is the only thing Jesus says that is in more than one gospel.
That’s the relation you brought up to tanha
Nirvana is probably real, it just means the end of suffering. It is something that you can theoretically achieve in this very life. Meanwhile Christianity can not do that, and later Mahayana Buddhist tradition of gaining paramis to free all sentient beings os suffering is a wide spread version of the teachings just like Christianity. However, Western Europe’s success is built on the Roman Catholic Church civilizing the rest of Europe as a base and then it was all Ancient Greek philosophy that gave the next steps on the ladder.
All this just means that you have drunk the Buddhist kool aid. How do you know Buddhist promises are worth more than those of Christianity?
Buddhist idea if enlightenment is something that they say can be achieved in this very life. It’s not some other realm you go to where everything is better or anything, it’s literally the extinguishing of suffering. And Buddhism doesn’t require you to believe in shit blindly, the Buddha literally says:
Alright look, this is the last time and way I will explain it to you. @K9Otaku can try to provide more details and connections if he wishes but, here is the laymen explanation so please listen this time:
People would say that kind of nepotism is why Jews are so successful, and I agree. In curryland it’s the same with the parsis and Jains. This give you a huge advantage in society over others, but it doesn’t make a society prosper. But I’ve heard and read other people talk about how protestantism made America great before, and it’s just not something I agree with.
I don't even know if you realise you are making our argument for us or what? I mean honestly you don't see how the English viewed the Monarch, the Church and the State as the most beneficial system likely ever divised?
I don't see how you aren't able to connect Christianity and it's aid in Capitalism and in fact we might say that Protestants in New England and the breakaway from Catholicism in Europe is what AIDED in this sort of capitalism's boom, the kind which EVENTUALLY led to all the things you keep mentioning as "advancement" in America and in Science. Again, the The Protestant work Ethic and propagation of beta-male behavior and admitting of sins in such a strict way is what we (K9 and I) feel contributed to this higher level of cooperation. And you can feel that cooperation's effects all the way through WWIi as the Americans and Allies (the right form of Christianity) defeat the Nazi's (the flawed form?)
Yeah, read above and you will see everything I said and what you are saying is just aiding my point. You just aren't willing to relinquish the idea that it played a larger role than you want to admit !
Yeah. Suite yourself. But the reasons have been provided, time and again. What's the other explination? You seem to want to remove that Protestants and Christian reason, and then you replace it with some vague empty thing like..."Muh Science did blossom dude"...
I’ll just keep it short and give my opinion then. The West was so successful because of the increasing liberalization of the Anglo world for a millennia, and this allowing for capitalism to create the incentives necessary for scientific innovations to lead to mass produced goods and services.
I don't disagree but this alone doesn't guide people. People need their spiritual and religious source and I don't think that Christianity in early America worked against these innovation and incentives. Infact, it must have helped boost it by grounding the generations in some common bond. Ex: At Church on Sundays, through marriage and many other related things.
Huh? Please re-read your statement, your last point seems to negate the points made in your first paragraph. So I'm not sure what you mean here..."except capitalism"?
Fuck god even if he did exist
Well. This is true in the sense that it may also be what certain Christian scholars and Buddist before them were trying to say.
And also, Earth hell for Idol worshipers (like worshipping people) and heaven for those who give it up.
I think many of us tried this...
Yes, societies need a bare minimum floor they don’t fall through like they might now.
By that I mean capitalism is the unique element that allowed the west to prosper at an unprecedented scale when all the pre-conditions werw present. Allowing corporations to make massive investments into innovating things and making use of the new scientific discoveries.
Yeah. So what is the "bare minimum floor" now? Degeneration has no limits anymore. You can see that.
We're going in circles now. I already mentioned what connections I think existed between capitalism's successfulness in the West and Christianity.
Are you hinjew
Ok, but after all that is said, how do you know that Buddhists' promises about enlightenment are to be believed?
What promises? That you will never be reborn again? That’s what materialists believe anyways.
Buddhist monks don’t tell anyone they are enlightened and there’s no need to check. Even if you check the brains of meditators in brain scans there are big differences, and this is without being enlightened. In fact, you can start seeing visible changes to the brain after only 2 weeks of meditation in people doing like 15-30 mins a day (forgot the number).
Ignoring brain scans and changes to a person’s behaviour from meditation, there’s difference you can notice in your own mental states directly over time. Meanwhile there is absolutely no evidence any Christian can have of the afterlife. Even if he has visions of heaven, they can be dismissed as schizo hallucinations or something. But you can’t dismiss the increased positive mental states over time you get from meditation when you get them.
militant atheist
Ok, so you have abandoned your claim about enlightenment, right? Because it cannot be verified ...
I think you can probably get into similar states with drugs tbh, like psychedelics. Not sure if they are exact same, but you can have an ego death.
Ok
No, prayer is just wishful thinking. You are not training your mind. Prayer is closer to Buddhist chanting which is more like reaffirmation and such, rather than actual meditation.
Nirvana is not an outlandish claim, but going to some heaven after you die is something that is impossible to verify until you are dead.
The best thing that Christianity does better than Buddhism is community as Jay said, but Islam does it far better than Christianity where people meet 5 times a day to pray and for much longer on Friday.
How do you know? Did you practice Christian prayer and worship?
I’m literally an orthodox Jew and have practiced similar things my whole life. And if Jesus is the peak of Christianity, he was clearly suffering and in doubt on his death on the cross.
You cannot evaluate Christianity from a Jewish orthodox POV. Christianity uses the same word "prayer" as Rabbinical Judaism but the actual meaning is very different.
Jesus never existed. He is an allegory. Buddha probably never existed either. Both Jesus and Buddha are imaginary composite characters made up of some real anecdotes that must have happened to real masters (probably more than one in each case) and some wholly invented passages meant to illustrate a point of doctrine.
Which group do you belong to within Orthodox Judaism?
The purpose of prayer in all 3 Abrahamic religions is very similar. Jews pray 3 times a day in communion, Muslims pray 5 times a day in communion, while Christians are told to pray in private and rejected this part (at least in protestantism). So in this ritualistic aspect you are right that it is different, but this is something that is of great benefit and why protestantism nations have fractured away from communal identities. It’s not a coincidence that protestant countries are the least religious over time and people are heavily isolated, the opposite of what Jay claimed.
Your understanding of Jewish practices are incorrect, and so is your understanding of the historical circumstances of Buddhism.
You sound like a Christ coper tbh, because the mental gymnastic you are performing is astounding. Do you think Jews don’t believe God doesn’t already know what we want? And why would Jews pray in communion just because of wanting something?
This is not a meditation in any way. The idea of prayers of begging to be like Jesus is not a meditation. If it’s recollecting what qualities we should strive for, then that is like Buddhist chanting rather than meditation. If it’s asking God for spiritual growth then that is not meditation either, and is a concept of prayer present in both Judaism and even the later Brahmanic tradition, like the Bhagvata Gita.
Most historians do agree they both existed, so to dismiss their existence is a cope. They have literally found the house the Buddha has said to be born in while there is plenty of Jesus of evidence for Jesus as well. I see there is more push back against Jesus’s existence cause butt hurt atheists just want to trigger some Christians.
So here I have quite a bit of experience in this arena. And I can promise you that psychedelics are generally dangerous and lead absolutely nowhere without the rest of the puzzle being solved, or at least without other massive pieces put together. The difference between the "Peak" and "Come-down" effects of hallucinagens and how you try to channel your trip matters a lot. And, with existing mental health worries and problems, ANY Incel who dare ever try to find some sort of meditative and calm experience using Hallucinagens better have it planned out very well with a lot of support, or they will suffer.
Wtf? Lol. Are you taking mushrooms right now? Yes. It. Is. What you are trying to say is EUPHORIA is possible. Just ask any opioid user, but Nirvana...how can you know? How can you feel?
Christianity did the same in the past, with just as large groups with even more outwardly noticable benefits. I'll admit, to all religiously lost Western people, Islam does seem attractive at one point or another on our lives but..I saw the culture up close, I took Arabic and tried all this, it's the same. We can't believe in their nonsense.
Set and setting. And the best drug to get it from is 5-meo dmt. I never got ego death on other psychs either.
Nirvana is literally just the end of suffering, and a state where the illusion of self disappears. If you can get the feeling of consciousness with no one there with drugs, then idk why someone would lie about a similar state they claimed to get permanently.
The difference between Islam and protestant christianity is that protestantism is not as communal, even though you said it was. Meanwhile Muslims pray together 5 times a day, and even non-religious Muslims will go on Fridays to meet with people they know there. So it is much harder for Islamic society to atomize and fracture like protestantism did. People turning away from religion in protestant societies seemed inevitable looking back now.
Nope. The word used is the same, but not the practice.
Indeed (the injunction to pray in private is in the Gospels)
I believe that Protestantism is the ultimate outcome of Christianity. It boosted Protestant nations to levels never before reached by humans. But then, it petered out because Christianity had pushed humanity so far from its original foundation that it made it no longer believable in its traditional form. In many ways, Christianity committed suicide while reaching its goal.
Really? As far as I can tell, I know much more about both than you do.
Mantras and their recitation are far older than Buddhism (Rig Veda = 1200 BC at the latest). The practice of reciting Mantras as a means of meditation (in particular the syllable "AUM") goes back to the early Upanishads (Chandogya and Brihadranyaka) which are roughly contemporary with "the Buddha".
Nope. See this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranava_yoga and this https://www.yogabasics.com/learn/yoga-101-an-introduction/mantra-yoga/
Then it is meditation too, right? Except that if it is done in communion, it is not. If you do it in public, it means that it has become a pharisaic routine meaning: "see how righteous I am!" and therefore a thing of pride which actually increases tanha instead of decreasing them.
It is because you are not really asking anything (God will give you what he will give you, regardless of what you do, especially if you are Calvinist). What you are doing is in fact performing an Asana (a Yogic mental posture) by placing yourself in the mental state of a servant. This is also well known in Indic traditions, where it is called bhakti Yoga (devotion Yoga), for example in the Baghavad Gita.
What kind of "historians"? Christian Scholars?
Absolutely not. The "Buddha's house" is a legend absolutely not endorsed by any serious archeologists. There is no evidence of Jesus apart from the Gospels. The Jesus of the Gospels is not even mentioned in Paul's letters, which were written earlier.
What text are you referring to? The Epistle of James? It does not talk about Jesus at all. All other texts are obvious late forgeries.
I made that statement using the term" if" god exists
Sure, but Hermeticism and Kabbalah are just derivatives of Plato anyways, except the former applies to a Pagan version of Jesus and the Gospel (Hermes Trismegestus, or Hermes, or even Lucifer), the latter applies to Judaism.
Honestly yes. From the very beginnings of Christianity there was an attitude of deconstructing cultural practices and superstitions and pursuing the rational "truth" for the purposes of apologetics towards Christianity (Let's get rid of the Thor tree, it's superstition to venerate a tree!). Even Saint Irenaeus de Lyons mocked the pagans for believing that their deities were involved in wars; after all, if the gods were helping the Romans in wars, why did the gods fail in some wars; and what about wars where both sides were praying to the same gods?
DMT = eww. And unbelievably high potential for instant psychosis because of the short duration which means users will want to experience it over and over in a short time frame once they enjoy the initial use. Thus the potential for damage which you can not undo is increased as well.. Nothing to be gained. Smoke some grass and be content with it. That's all.
Yeah. Sorry no. Nirvana is that in theory, but we'll, you don't have it and so moot point to discuss whether it works. If you had it, we wouldn't find you here.
In the past it was, and yes maybe it's not as communicated in the sense of close physical proximal, but I believe it's effects can still have worked in a church sitting together.
Fair point but, again, lift up their veil on women and/or go into their homes (esp for many Muslims in the West) and see that it's not working that well.
Yeah. But come on man. This is somewhat true for all the religious people in 2023, I think..
Yes. Agreed. And this is so palpable in the way we grow up. I remember having this frustrating feeling at why my cousins in India didn't understand my cynicism or my skeptical lines of thought, and I rejected that it could have anything to do with Christianity and it's morphology or "downfall" in the West, IIn America. But then, later on it started to make sense. Something has to be powerful as a force for cinema to convey certain feelings. Like the way we understand broken characters in Western literature and for the last 50-70 years in film. It's how we eventually arrive at a Walter White from Breaking Bad or a character like Walt Kowalski (Client Eastwood) in Gran Torino and many other films.
Mashallah
The idea that Anglicanism just was invented because the King wanted a divorce is very simplistic and a Catholic myth. The bias towards Protestantism was already there in the 14th century in England with John Wycliffe espousing Protestant beliefs and translating the Bible into English for the Masses to read; a lot of it is due to the fact that England is pretty remote from Italy and didn't like having a Pope friendly with Spain, France, and the HRE meddling with it's politics.
@Copexodius Maximus - Done & Dusted.
Prayers are pretty much the same imo. They just lack the communal aspect that led to protestantism fracturing.
I don’t agree protestantism did anything special. If any religion should get respect for bringing Europe to the rise, it’s Catholicism imo.
Cope
I literally said that mantras were originally done to perform sacrifices of vedic rituals. You are wrong about this by denying it.
I read those links and it doesn’t support mantra being used as meditation techniques in the early upanishads. There are many techniques present that use Om, the main one is it being a sound you hear in the head even in silence and called the unstruck sound.
So praying in private is now a meditation? Jfl, what? And your explanation of it being different than Judaism (like wanting to be like Jesus) still doesn’t explain how it is a meditation. Those just sound like affirmations, or similar to Buddhist chanting rather than meditation.
Non-religious scholars mostly all agree Jesus existed. It’s pretty much almost a scholarly consensus. And Buddha’s house is not a legend jfl, the literal house was found buried underneath the spot tradition said it was, and was underneath a shrine or something. It dates to around the Buddha’s time as well. But even the Buddha has a scholarly consensus on him having existed.
If you don’t know about James the Just, then you clearly don’t really know much about Christian history. He is identified by all traditions as the brother of Jesus (although some that believe in Mary’s perpetual virginity and claim he is Joseph’s son from a previous marriage). He’s where the early church of the Jewish Christian tradition came from and different than Pauline Christianity.
You sound like a religion reinterpretor who is just making excuses for why people shoukd follow religion, and want to attribute all the success of the west to christianity through a back door.
Ah yes, the universal equality of sending everyone not part of you cult for eternal hellfire, while people who believe will all go to heaven no matter what they do (according to most forms of protestantism).
But Catholicism caused Protestantism. Based on the totality of circumstances that happened, Catholicism produced Protestantism which then caused Christianity to eat its own tail.
5-meo dmt is different than nn-dmt, but it is a safe psychedelics long term. Just make sure you have someone there though in case you puke.
I’m not a practicing Buddhist jfl. And unfortunately 5-meo dmt has an eventual comedown.
Personally your argument for protestantism doesn’t seem convincing to me. If you had said catholicism that argument would have made a lot more sense to me.
Yes, when the dominant culture is non-muslim it’s not going to work as well. Although it’s collapsing all over the world now because of technology, just much slower in certain religions with more resiliency.
