>>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.
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>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.

Ophelia considered that sort of rehab too, and so did a few of Tolstoyevsky's characters. But then they didn't invent anything like 5 to 10 on probation in a halfway house, it was always life.

As long as the monk gang doesn't constitute a hierarchy, and doesn't extract contributions from the people in the area, i.e. as long as the monks have to work like anyone else, I'm OK with that.

>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 )

Going back to Cristofer Hitchens, what do all these religions have against sex? Abstinence is somehow supposed to turn you into a balanced person? Just look at the number of dioceses which are going bankrupt - there's balance indeed.

>>Can't remember who said "Books are not dangerous. One book is. Beware of people with one book."
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>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.
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>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 once had a cab driver try to sell Jesus to me, and in the end he didn't have the answer to "if you can't find a reason to do good within yourself, then by all means believe in something on the outside that will make you do it... it's a good crutch if you need it". As the difference between mister and gentleman goes, the gentleman is a gentleman even when broke and when nobody's watching.

>"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>

Good one. The one from home, somewhat parallel to this: "I can believe that some god would create such a bunch of idiots like you - but I can't believe he'd ever put them together."