Dominant Force in West Today According to Dennis Prager is Fear of Left

Asw I said, many religions have a Hell. Idiort.

According to a picture I posted here some time back the Buddhist hell looks quite a bit like the Christian idea of hell, a bunch of demonic beings threatending a bunch of naked (clearly Asian by the way) people with pitchforks.

I'm unable to find the picture I had in mind but Google image has a bunch under "Buddhist Hell:"Buddhist Hell - Google Search:Edited by Admin, : Fix URL rendering.

What kind of stupid comment is that? I said they do have a Hell. I said it more than once. I knew it from reading about it and I also know it from conversations with a Buddhist teacher. The pictures should add to the certainty.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Buddhist Hell as I understand consists of different realms for the punishment of different kinds of sins. I haven't studied it, why should I? I gave evidence that it exists and that's enough for my purposes in this discussion.But I suppose to punish gluttony they starve them or make them eat dirt? To punish adultery they cut out their genitals? To punish lying they cut out the tongue? Perhaps they murder murderers over and over again? I've read stuff like that somewhere, maybe it applies here.But I'm interested in the mere fact that they have a place of punishment which Christianity also has though it is denied. The Bible speaks of Hell but does not define it. I guess we could also read up on Hades, the Greek version of Hell, or others, but the point is simple: Christianity did not invent Hell, the concept preexisted Christ in many cultures already.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

What you aren't getting is that infiltrators are going to act like Trump supporters so they can provide the fake news of shouting him off the stage. I simply don't know of any actual Trump supporters who would have done that to Trump Jr. But perhaps you have better evidence.

No it isn't permanent but there is also reincarnation which brings you back as an animal or insect which isn't much more fun. Anyway the Buddhist Hell it is a place where sins are punished, and I bet most people don't know that, most people think Christianity invented Hell. But no, what Christianity gave us was a Savior from it. If you are willing to go through thousands of lives before you finally figure out how to snuff out your karma and experience Nirvana, go ahead. I find it too hard to believe in reincarnation myself, and I know of some actual Buddhists who fear coming back as an animal, speaking of fearing Hell. Or even coming back as a human being only with no memory of their identity in this life. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

You really should give a little benefit of the doubt now and then, it would be good for your soul.Yes that is true they don't believe in sin, but on the other hand when you get into their teachings and realize that according to their system you suffer on account of your wrongdoings it amounts to pretty much the same thing in the end. I've been having discussions with a Buddhist teacher and a Buddhist friend about all this stuff over the last few months. They prefer the neutral or supposedly nonmoral term "cause and effect," meaning if you behave a certain way certain consequences will follow, and the behavior they are talking about is described in terms Christians would call sin. A lot of it reminds me of the Ten Commandments. They don't have all ten but they have "don't steal," "don't lie," "don't have sex with the wrong person" (not quite as strict as monogamy I gather but that's something to spend more time discussing with them.) and of course "don't kill" which to them means you can't kill any living thing, even step on a bug. I find that rather disturbintg myself since there are some bugs I definitely want dead, such as bedbugs, and if they won't kill those they are contributing to the miseries of human life. \\There may be another one or two I forget. Anyway I guess they don't believe in sin as long as you ignore the moral quality of these rules and the fact that they have negative consequences._ They also don't believe in God but since there are consequences to what they consider to be bad behavior, and there are even Hells to punish people, the practical matter turns out to be similar as far as the moral aspects of life are concerned.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Believe it or not I'm making no efforts whatever to shoehorn anything into anything. When they describe their rules they simply remind me of the Ten Commandments and I don't see how you can say they aren't in the same category as sin. And no I haven't heard of Naraka, why don't you be a nice guy, hard as I know it must be for you in talking to me, and explain it?I simply got interested in Buddhism from my friend who is seriously trying to live by it, and she thought I'd be interested in this one teacher so I started listening to her teachings -- they are on You Tube if you are interested, she's known as the Venerable Robina, an Australian IRRC who became a Tibetan Buddhist nun. (Years ago I had a friend who became a Zen Buddhist nun, eventually in the Korean tradition, so I'm at least somewhat aware of the various versions of Buddhism.)I got fascinated with the similarities I found between some of their teachings and Christianity, and the teacher herself, a former Catholic, agrees, but of course also wants to emphasize the differences.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

I only know from the Buddhist teachings I've heard and from my Buddhist friends. One friend confided that she is afraid of what she will become in the afterlife. They seriously believe in this. There are Buddhist sects that don't accept reincarnation and she tried to convince herself of that point of view but one of her favorite teachers was very clear that reincarnation is an essential teaching. But you don't remember any of it so it is lost as any kind of educational experience. No longer being who you are in this life is part of what my friend is afraid of. She will not remember this life according to the teaching. Her hope has to be in her Buddhist practices here, that they will allow her to have another human birth and more opportunity to increase her practices and even possibly achieve Nirvana in the next life. That may be so but I think it's still true that most westerners think Christianity invented Hell. I know I was very surprised when I first discovered that a version of Hell is found in many traditions. That's your choice but it's hard work, very hard work, practicing all the rules and meditating on your mental states for long periods of time over and over and over again, and not many who practice these things actually get to Nirvana while the rest have to endure at least another round of reincarnation. Hopefully as a human being thanks to their Buddhist practices but that is not guaranteed.Meanwhile Jesus hold out his hand saying "Come to me and I will give you rest" meanin rest from all the toil to obey the Law or learn how to avoid its consequences. In Him we have rest from the Moral Law. All we have to do is believe He died in our place. If this makes believers "fundies" so be it, but it's a very odd way to describe what Jesus has done for us. \Sure. If you believe in reincarnation so be it. However, their view is that there is no beginning and no end so they don't subscribe to the scientific view beyond the idea of billions of years rather than a few thousand. And they don't really avhe the evolutionary view either as I understand it. They think all creatures living now have always lived so there has always been an opportunity to be born as a human being. .I don't have any particular reason to equate it with leftist politics as an ideology, but it is a fact that the Buddhists I've met of are Democrats.I became a Christian by reading up on the religions and that includes Buddhism. I didn't get deeply into any of them but I wanted to familiarize myself with their basic teachings. My first Christian reading was in the Catholic mystics, and it seemed to me that John of the Cross was practicing a form of Buddhist meditation. How true that is I don't know but it was an impression I had when I was reading about religions in general. I actually fought the idea of becoming a Protestant because I had a lot of the prejudices against it that I find expressed here: "Jerry Falwell? Oh no!" Yes, when my path seemed to be leading me in that direction that's how I felt. It's also incidentally the point where I started losing old friends. They did their best to turn me away from it but I could see that's where the truth was. And then I found C. S. Lewis and other Protestant teacchers and they eased me in the right direction.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Yes I know there are many versions of the afterlife but I was particularly surprised by the existence of places of punishment or Hells because I'd though Hell was strictly Christian. If there exist many cultures with such places of punishment, it makes sense of some biblical doctrines that seem to suggest that the whole world yearns for a Savior. Even where the afterlife seems pleasant there usually turns out to be some part of it for punishing the wicked. In any case however many there are it is a theme that is found more frequenctly that I had expected. And Chistianity is the only religion that offers a Savior. The Savior IS in fact the religion of Christianity. Salvation is what it is all about. Transformative and perfecting, saving us from sin, and from the Moral Law that we sin against, and a universal Moral Law is recognized in some form or other in many religions. Hinduism anhd Buddhism for sure. A law at least that rewards and punishes you for good and bad behavior. Karma for instance. Liberalism is a bogus development in Christianity, a conforming to the world that is specifically warned against in scripture. You like it of course, peole like it because they don't like the strict otherworldliness of traditional conservative biblical Christianity. We understand the liberal Christianity that came out of the German Tubingen School to be the weakening of the churches in Germany that so easily allowed the rise of Hitler, because they didn't have the strict biblical doctrine that would have opposed it. Dietrich Bonhoeffer for instance was basically a conservative/traditionalist and was executed for his part in the assassination attempt on Hitler. He did have some liberal views but he was mostly conservative.Liberalism brought about a great schism in the American churches. J. Gresham Machen is known as the strongest opponent to it.

The point is I think most westerners believe Hell is a Christian invention, and finding out it is almost universal makes sense out of Christian doctrines of salvation that are presented as universally needed.

Christianity is very clear that behaving properly won't accomplish anything. We're destined for Hell from birth. So there is no ground for threatening anyone with Hell for bad behavior.

To me it's just a fact. And it explains a lot too, IMHO of course. The human condition in general. And the need for a Savior, which is why I brought it up. We can't avoid Hell by being good was the point.Edited by Faith, : No reason given.

Profitable? Christians give their money away, they don't get a profit off their teachings.