> Yeah, we just had to wait on him for that lesser thing, all-encompassing trans-ethnic humane values.
> (And before someone shouts "Christianism didn't invent those", citing this or that precedent: sure. Like Apple with the iPod, it just created the first version of them people in large numbers cared about).
What about, eg, buddhism? As for trans-ethnic, I thought this was a later addition to Christianity - after all, Jews are still the "chosen people", right?
Buddhism is merely a method to accept Nihilism (Nihilism being "the belief that all values are baseless"). The Anathapindika records that the Buddha taught that there was no Creator God (issara-karaṇa-vāda), therefore there were no morals, that the universe was deterministic and there was no free will, but that even so humans should strive to act with loving-kindness ("just because"/Eastern nonrationalism).
Ultimately, the true goal of Buddhism is to achieve "Enlightenment", a state of mind where one fully internalises this Daoist idea that God does not exist and due to this Good and Evil are not different but are one and the same (as depicted in the symbol of the Yin Yang). According to Buddhism, Good and Evil have no real existence, being part of the illusory world of phenomena.
All of the practices done before this (meditation, compassion, tantra, etc) are--as in other branches of Hindu and Dharmic faiths--understood to be merely optional "yogas" or activities to fill the time and enjoy oneself in a Nihilistic world.
Buddhists sometimes claim these practices can lead to Enlightenment, but what they don't mention is any practice on Earth is as likely to lead to this state, because for the Buddhist, wanting Enlightenment is a huge mistake as Moksha/Nirvana/Nihilism is available at all times, without the practices, as our default status. As Jed McKenna notes: Why does Buddhism rarely produce Buddhas? It is because Buddhist practices ("yogas") are not able to transmit the realization that Self is Illusion and All is Nothingness.
Christianity on the other hand teaches that Good and Evil are distinct, objective, and Real, that Good is to be sought and practiced, and that man has been endowed with self-evident, unalienable value having been created in the Image of God, giving unconditional worth to all human persons. As the Personalist Project puts it "those who repudiate God cannot preserve [this affirmation] though they may for a time live by the light of a setting sun".
Had some similar ideas, but was mostly concerned with the elimination of the self, which is something different. But more importantly, it was a non-player outside of Asia for the most part of history. Even today, after a century of spreading of Buddhist ideas here, it's cultural impact in the popular culture of West is negligible.
>As for trans-ethnic, I thought this was a later addition to Christianity - after all, Jews are still the "chosen people", right?
Huh? No, jews are not the "chosen people" in Christianity. Christianity has no special affinity to the Jews as such. The tacked-on Old Testament stories relating to Israel etc. -- and previously part of the jewish "state religion" (from the Tower of Babel to Noah's flood etc), are taken to apply to "the whole of humanity" by Christians.
I think it's a shame that in the US especially, most christian doctrine is relegated to the Old Testament -- but then again, the US was founded by christian sectarians thrown out from Europe for such differences of opinion.
Here's how Paul the apostle, put the trans-ethnic thing: "There is no Jew or Greek, slave or free, male or female; for you are all one in Christ Jesus.".
And of course Jesus himself is said to have told his disciples "Go into all the world and preach the gospel to all creation".
> (And before someone shouts "Christianism didn't invent those", citing this or that precedent: sure. Like Apple with the iPod, it just created the first version of them people in large numbers cared about).
What about, eg, buddhism? As for trans-ethnic, I thought this was a later addition to Christianity - after all, Jews are still the "chosen people", right?