baker

Absolutely. Righteous indignation is so addictive.

Irrelevant. I live in a region with one of the lowest vaccination rates in the country, and the national television gives considerable attention to th...

Irrelevant. What is relevant is what happens on the ground level. Ie. in terms of medicine, what is relevant is how actual doctors and other medical p...

Here's the thing: Why don't the vocal pro-vaccers (who claim to be taken hostage by the unvaccinated) put their money where their mouth is and limit h...

The issue is whether the limited effectiveness of the vaccines warrants the hatred and the contempt that the vocal pro-vaccers are directing at anyone...

There is a huge demand for the Janssen vaccine now in Slovenia, given that a covid passport is needed for pretty much everything, and the Janssen vacc...

Your question reveals your implicit materialism. ( ;) It can happen to the best of Buddhists that a hint of materialism sneaks into their thinking.) T...

Why close our eyes to the obvious? Why not consider the possibility that religion is the way it is precisely because it is intended to be that way?

And the limits of this approach have been reached in the OP of this thread. Useful to whom? Someone who wishes to paint religion as impotent? To excus...

So in the name of the politically correct love of novelty and "moving on", we should summarily envision religion as impotent, ineffective, and most of...

I'm saying that in order to have a meaningful discussion, we can't treat words like they can mean anything anyone wants them to mean. We must agree on...

Why should this be the relevant dichotomy?

When I point out the issue of membership in a religious/spiritual community, I do this for the following reason: In order for a person to properly con...

To suck up to whatever New Age guru currently holds our fancy.

They're dead and gone, so they're fair game for anyone who wants to romanticize them. Rather rude, in my opinion. And Turkish soap operas! They are pr...

Then Dawkins clearly didn't think this through. If he wants to demote religion from any notion of facticity, then it's on him to prove, show, evidence...

In that case, it's on you to prove that there is no heaven, no eternal damnation, no nirvana, that Jesus probably didn't do any miracles, etc., for yo...

Which brings us deep into Humpty Dumpty land. Of course. A discussion of religion should be about what is normative in it. Focusing merely on the desc...

No, it requires more than that. Belief in the historicity of Jesus is essential to Christianity. One has to believe that Jesus literally rose from the...

From not being a Mahayani or an Abrahamist.

Where you go wrong is in assuming that they secretly believe they've done something wrong. They don't believe they did. From their perspective, they a...

So "Christian" is a term like "white", "black", "Scottish", ie. it's not a term denoting a particular quality or set of qualities, but a term that is ...

So our core nature is to kill, rape, and pillage? If this is our core nature, then why take issue with killing, raping, and pillaging, whether it be d...

Depends on what you mean by inclusivity, fairness, charity, and righteousness. Sure, religions are inclusive in the sense of, "Anyone can join our rel...

And more should not be expected from humans than from some animals?

It's not surprising. Epistemic autonomy is the holy grail for many people.

Art is for snobs.

And you think this is possible in a suprareligious, neutral, objective way?

Your examples:

Pulchrum est pro fide mori!

Theoretically, yes. But my point is that one cannot choose to become a member of those cultures and spiritualities mentioned in the OP. One can read b...

No, I'm talking about "smiling depression": By some accounts, this is the most dangerous type of depression and that it's such smilingly depressed peo...

And whose problem is that?

When you're talking about the existence of God, what I said applies.

But you're not trying to get that idea. If you want to argue against Buddhist doctrine - fine. But for this, you first need to learn it. To what end?

A hodge-podge of stuff an outsider can safely dabble in, flirt with, never committing to it.

Yes. The Celts, Native Americans, and others will rapidly kick out an impostor. Their spirituality might seem "more true", "more natural", but they wi...

Do you want to talk about the God of actual religions, or the God of philosophers? If the former, then your analysis doesn't apply, because God is def...

If you take that route, you end up in the Humpty-Dumpty land of my-religion-is-anything-I-want-it-to-be-and-I-can-call-it-whatever-I-want-and-everyone...

Some examples, please. Are you referring to things such as "I need another fix, or I'll die. It's a matter of my survival that I get another fix, so i...

Like you say:

Insisting on discussing Buddhist doctrine, while at the same time refusing to learn said Buddhist doctrine is the mark of a fool.

That's not chance. That's just lack of omniscience/prescience.

There are militant Buddhists -- like the persecution of the Rohingya by Buddhists or Sumedhananda Thero in Sri Lanka. Secondly, in traditionally Buddh...

As an aside: I just learned that the Janssen vaccine (which I recently took) is newly estimated to be only about 10% effective. Which leads to the biz...

By creating said truth. This doesn't always work -- it doesn't work with things such as tables, chairs, the universe. But it does work, to a lesser or...

By pointing out that the problem at hand is a complex problem and that solving it requires decisions that are based on priorities (which cannot be est...

I think the salient point is that when it comes to dealing with a pandemic, this is a complex problem, and that priorities pertaining to solving compl...

Well, if it's artificial stupidity, then it ain't real stupidity.

Learning the Buddhist doctrine.