Bill Maher On "Religulous": Film Till They Throw You Out
To my mind, religion has long been a black mark on human history, from the Old Testament bloodthirsty god who tested Abraham by telling him to sacrifice Isaac and who instructed the Jews to slaughter various populations that "he" didn't like, to the various "Christians" with their even more bloody history and whose god "abominates" whatever the Catholics or any other group of holy rollers says "he" does.
Look at Christian dogma: the "Annunciation" (when the angel Gabriel flies in, Mary doesn't turn a hair but merely recites the Magnificat!), the Immaculate Conception (Mary was born free from sin.), the Virgin Birth, the "miracles" and, of course, the "Resurrection". That all these myths existed in earlier civilizations doesn't matter.
And, of course, the priestly pederast sex scandals of the Catholic Church gives them the right to lecture us on "morality"!
Do they do "good works"? Undoubtedly, but so does the secular world and the religious groups' "bad works" over the centuries (in every area) easily overshadow the good.
I'm not a big fan of Bill Maher but I'm very much in agreement with him on this subject.
About Religion
Read the Article at HuffingtonPost
Labels: politics and religion
posted by Ed @ 8:08 AM
2 Comments
2 Comments:
The following is a little piece about one of the founding fathers of Buddhism that I wrote a few years ago. Of all the major world religions, I probably find my own thinking comes closest to that of the Buddhists, and on the whole they have a relatively "clean" track record. However, that doesn't mean I blindly refrain from criticizing certain aspects of the Buddhist legacy--nor would I feel comfortable calling myself a Buddhist. Religion is capable of wreaking havoc in the lives of individuals and entire nations, as the following illustrates.
--Joseph Dillon Ford
CONTRITION CAST IN STONE: THE PARADOXICAL LEGACY OF EMPEROR ASOKA
Asoka (r. 265-238 BC) is without a doubt one of the most important figures in Buddhist history. Under his rule, Buddhist beliefs were spread across almost the entire subcontinent of India, and even today his Sarnath lion capital is one of that nation's most widely recognized patriotic symbols.
If ever there was a Buddhist state, it was certainly Asoka's Mauryan Empire, and many historians have painted a nearly Utopian picture of his rule of nearly thirty years. "He is remembered chiefly for his patronage of Buddhism and his high ethical standards as a ruler," chronicles the recently published Oxford Encyclopedia of World History. "Adoption of the Buddhist dharma . . . led him to an overriding concern for the spiritual and material welfare of his subjects, and to toleration of other religions." H. G. Wells once rhapsodized: "Amidst the tens of thousands of names of monarchs that crowd the columns of history . . . the name of Asoka shines, and shines almost alone, a star."
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
But there is a dark and troubling aspect of Asoka's personality which calls into question his actual motives for embracing Buddhism and for fostering its proliferation throughout his vast realm.
"For a time he governed in the spirit of his grandfather Chandragupta, cruelly but well," argues Will Durant in Our Oriental Heritage. Even as late as the seventh century, "the prison maintained by Ashoka north of the capital was still remembered in Hindu tradition as 'Ashoka's Hell.' There . . . all of the tortures of any orthodox Inferno had been used in the punishment of criminals; to which the King added an edict that no one who entered the dungeon should ever come out of it alive." However, Asoka himself entered the dungeon when he was informed that a Buddhist holy man miraculously resisted being boiled to death in a scalding cauldron. Having witnessed the alleged marvel, Asoka had the jailer thrown into the cauldron when the latter reminded the Emperor that according to his own edict, Asoka himself could not leave the dungeon alive.
In 262 BC Ashoka conquered and subjugated the people of Kalinga (present-day Orissa) after a particularly bloody and brutal war, although he had already converted to Buddhism about two years prior to these hostilities.
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
Details about this war have been preserved in the form of a carved rock edict erected by order of "Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi," identified in 1915 as an epithet for Asoka himself:
"Beloved-of-the-Gods, King Piyadasi, conquered the Kalingas eight years after his coronation. One hundred and fifty thousand were deported, one hundred thousand were killed and many more died (from other causes). After the Kalingas had been conquered, Beloved-of-the-Gods came to feel a strong inclination towards the Dhamma, a love for the Dhamma and for instruction in Dhamma. Now Beloved-of-the-Gods feels deep remorse for having conquered the Kalingas." [See Rock Edict 13 at the following:]
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
Such dramatic personal confessions of wrongdoing and guilty conscience are rare among political figures of any age. But Asoka was haunted by other crimes of an even more deeply personal nature:
"Buddhist texts portray Ashoka consolidating his empire by killing ninety-nine of his brothers, but some consider this an exaggeration to set off the contrast after his conversion, since some of his rock edicts indicate loving care of his brothers. With a sense of his historic mission Ashoka had these
rock edicts and stone pillars carved all over India with descriptions of his intentions and actions."
http://www.san.beck.org/EC10-Social.html#3
No one will ever know the full magnitude of the destruction Asoka wrought. But it is clear that he sought to assuage traumatic memories of his heinous deeds by cultivating a "puritanical streak" of monumental proportions through which he hoped to transform himself into a benevolent father-figure in the eyes of his inferiors, whom he came to regard as simple children. Buddhism offered him the perfect escape from a self-image which he viewed with the utmost horror and disgust and provided him with the ideological means necessary to outwardly unify an empire in which countless citizens could not privately forget his gory legacy. [Both Constantine the Great and Charlemagne would similarly exploit Christianity in centuries to come.] In this light, Ashoka's Rock Edicts stand today as some of the most impressive examples of propaganda art in the ancient Asiatic world.
http://www.cs.colostate.edu/~malaiya/ashoka.html
--jdf, 21 July 2001
Additional links of interest:
http://campus.northpark.edu/history/WebChron/India/Asoka.html
http://www.wsu.edu:8000/~dee/ANCINDIA/MAURYA.HTM
Hi Joe,
I will have to read up more on Ashoka when I get a chance but this is not an option at the moment.
May I suggest you not post as anonymous when you reply but choose Name/URL and url is optional anyway. I'm doing a test post tosee for myself how it works.
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