>>But the real difference is, again, the idea of exclusionary, prophetic religions vs philosophies that do not feel a need to convert or compel. With Christianity and Islam you are on the bus or you're off the bus, you're saved or you're damned and it hinges on your acceptance of a set of doctrines and dogmas. Whether it is the shahādatān or the Apostles' Creed it is required and it is what separates the chosen from the infidel.
>
>You've touched my two (among other dozen) complaints against such religions: the sin of hubris ("we are right and everybody else is wrong"), and the will to expand. Communists also started with the idea of making people happy, and we saw where it got them.
>
>So in some way, Buddhism doesn't rank that bad on my bad religions list, nearly to the point that it may not even count as a religion. But it does, because of those monks.

Actually, the monk thing is kind of interesting - at least in Theravada tradition as practiced in Burma, Laos and Thailand, with which I am most famliar. unlike taking orders in Christianity, a Buddhist monk is very often a person taking a year or two off from mundane life - more like a year abroad or flaking out in a hippie commune to get your head together. It is not seen as a profession, but rather as a spiritual retreat. Sometimes the goal is theraputic. ( I've had good friends do it as rehab ) In Thailand it is often where disgraced or displaced political leaders find exile. Sort of a "time out" where it is generally agreed your piece is off the board for however many turns.

Of course, some people take to it and stay there or decide to finish their lives that way and go to it when they retire or after a wife passes away (much as wealthy widows often did in medieval Europe ) I knew a lot of people who had been monks at one point or another in their lives and it really sounded rather serene. ( I considered it, but made other plans when I realized they didn't get cable and Thailand isn't a good place to think about being celibate )


>
>>And, of course, for all the People of the Book there is a great anthropomorphic God, who seems to resemble an ancient Babylonian despot more than a cosmic force or a Great Ground of Being. And this God is vengeful and angry and jealous and requires a lot of ego-stroking.
>
>Can't remember who said "Books are not dangerous. One book is. Beware of people with one book."

Yeah, Aquinas. I will say that at least in the cases of the Qu'ran and the Book of Mormon there is reason to believe we have the original document, so there is just one act of faith regarding Source material ( authorship ? ) required to make it the roadmap for reality. Putting the Bible in that position requires pretty much zero knowledge of history.

I find certainty about things cosmic a pretty sure sign someone has not thought creatively about The Question. <s> It seems the only appropriate response to the vastness and wonder of it all is agape People who are certain just strike me as having taken the easy way out.

I think I quoted before one of my favorite Disraeliisms re Gladstone :

"I don't so much object to his behaving as though he had an ace up his sleeve as I do to the implication God put it there." <g>