The purpose of prayer in all 3 Abrahamic religions is very similar.
Nope. The word used is the same, but not the practice.
Islam and Rabbinical Judaism are indeed quite close, but not Christianity.
You have to remember that even Calvinist Christians pray, even though they believe in total predestination. Why do you think they pray if they cannot
ask for anything (because everything is predestined)
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).
Indeed (the injunction to pray in private is in the Gospels)
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.
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.
Your understanding of Jewish practices are incorrect, and so is your understanding of the historical circumstances of Buddhism.
Really? As far as I can tell, I know much more about both than you do.
Buddhism did not reject Mantra yoga because that did not even exist at that time.
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".
Mantras were solely a thing that were used by Brahmin priests at those times to perform sacrificial rituals from the Vedas.
Nope. See this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pranava_yoga and this
https://www.yogabasics.com/learn/yoga-101-an-introduction/mantra-yoga/
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?
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.
That is why Christian are told not to pray in public.
This is not a meditation in any way. The idea of prayers of begging to be like Jesus is not a meditation.
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.
Most historians do agree they both existed, so to dismiss their existence is a cope.
What kind of "historians"? Christian Scholars?
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.
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.
The early Christian accounts of Jesus like that of his brother James the Just make him out to be more human and relatable.
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.
You have preconceived ideas about religion, which are pretty much the same as standard blupiller lefties. What I am arguing for is a novel way to look at religions, including Judaism, Islam, Christianity and the Indic tradition. The synthesis is mine but the scholarship it is based on is quite uncontroversial and mainstream among religious history scholars.
Instead of calmly considering what I am saying, you are hyperventilating and finding every possible way to reject it. The question is why? Why are you doing this?
The answer is simple: you are afraid that I might have had an original idea that you did not have. And then of course, it is the ultimate catastrophe: "Oh, my God, maybe this guy is a
genius and, if he is, it means he is
superior to me, Aaaaaaargh!"
That is your problem. Because you believe that certain people can be "superior" because they are "geniuses", or some other nonsense notion, you are stuck in a form of elitism that bites its own tail. Because you theoretically admit the possibility of "superior" people, you can never accept it in practice because that would force you to fall on your knees and worship them.
This is one of the main benefits of Christianity: it rejects any form of human superiority. Everyone is equally in total subjection to God.
Christianity is the only religion that fully conceptualizes the universal equality between men, without leaving any loophole.
@JayGoptri