[Vision2020] More than one path to salvation

Tue Jun 24 11:08:00 PDT 2008

Just one more correction.  Gautama Buddha did believe in 
reincarnation; it was central to his ethics.  It is actually easier 
to explain how karma can be passed from old life to new life with 
Buddha's "bundle theory" of the self than with the idea of an 
unchanging, eternal soul.  Where exactly does karma "ride" on such a soul?

In defense of Ralph I believe that it is important to know what the 
scriptures actually tell us.  On the issue of an immortal soul, it is 
imperative to point out that the idea that we have an unchanging, 
immortal soul is simply not biblical.  It is not even found in the 
New Testament. As Paul himself writes in 1 Cor. 15:42-45, Adam and 
his descendants are "dust men" and they return to the dust until they 
are made immortal by an act of God.  Unlike Greek and Hindu views, 
Judeo-Christian texts teach a "bestowed" immortality not a "natural" 
immortality.  Another clue in this puzzle is the fact that 
Judeo-Christianity has alwlays rejected the idea of the pre-existence 
of the soul, which goes with natural not bestowed immortality.

Nick Gier

Nick Gier

At 10:50 AM 6/24/2008, you wrote:
>Ralph --
>
>Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Torah isn't too big on the concept of Heaven,
>except in the cases Ezekiel and Enoch.
>
>But everytime you bring this up, you ignore Judaism as it's been
>practiced for the past 2000 years. The concept of Heaven has been an
>explicit part of Judaism since at least the Babylonian captivity. It's
>certainly present in the Talmud. And every time you bring it up, it's
>to draw a negative contrast with Christianity.
>
>You make exactly the same mistake with Buddhism, and for exactly the
>same reason: you confuse the actual practice of a religion with the
>standpoint of its authoritative texts, specifically to draw a negative
>contrast with Christianity.
>
>You're right that the Buddha of the Pali Sutras was more concerned
>with the temporal suffering of humans than the fate (or even the
>existence) an indivisible, immortal soul. But you elide the actual
>practice of the religion. In this case, the "pure form" of Theravada
>Buddhism is seldom practiced outside a monastic context: in its main
>geographic area in Southeast Asia, it is almost invariably overlaid on
>ancestor-worshipping or spirit-venerating hedge religions. This
>necessarily requires an afterlife, or at least a "spirit world."
>
>-- ACS
>
>On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Ralph Nielsen <nielsen at uidaho.edu> wrote:
> > This survey fails to account for religions in which there is no
> > promise of eternal life after death, as in the Theravada tradition of
> > Buddhism, which is practiced in Sri Lanka and Thailand, and in the
> > Hebrew religion of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
> >
> > In both of these traditions there is no such thing as an eternal soul
> > that survives death. However, popular Buddhism adopted the idea of
> > reincarnation, but with ultimate cessation of this process as the
> > ultimate goal.
> >
> > In the Hebrew religion of the Bible the idea of an eternal soul that
> > survives the body is specifically mentioned only once in the Hebrew
> > Bible (Daniel 12:2-3). Daniel is also the latest book in the Hebrew
> > Bible. Its prophecies are what Bible scholars call "retrospective
> > prophecy."
> >
> > In the Torah/Pentateuch there is not a hint of an afterlife. God
> > himself made this crystal clear, "Then the LORD God said, 'See, the
> > man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he
> > might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat
> > and live forever" (Genesis 3:22). So God sent the man and woman out
> > of the garden of Eden and placed the cherubim with flaming sword to
> > prevent them from getting back in and eating of the tree of life. God
> > had never intended humans or animals to live forever. We were made
> > from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7, 19) and when we die we will
> > return to the dust from which we were made (Genesis 3:19). Here we
> > have no idea of an eternal soul. We are products of the planet earth
> > and to earth we will return.
> >
> > This religious idea is widespread around the world. Most people don't
> > need to be bribed or threatened with eternal life in a heaven or a
> > hell to live morally with their fellow humans.
> >
> > Ralph
> >
> >
> >
> > [Vision2020] More than one path to salvation
> >
> > Scott Dredge sdredge at yahoo.com
> > Mon Jun 23 11:45:14 PDT 2008
> >
> > <http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1817217,00.html>
> >
> > Americans of every religious stripe are considerably more tolerant of
> > the beliefs of others than most of us might have assumed, according to
> > a new poll released Monday. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
> > last year surveyed 35,000 American, and found that 70% of respondents
> > agreed with the statement "Many religions can lead to eternal life."
> > Even more remarkable was the fact that 57% of Evangelical Christians
> > were willing to accept that theirs might not be the only path to
> > salvation, since most Christians historically have embraced the words
> > of Jesus, in the Gospel of John, that "no one comes to the Father
> > except through me." Even as mainline churches had become more tolerant,
> > the exclusivity of Christianity's path to heaven has long been one of
> > the Evangelicals' fundamental tenets. The new poll suggests a major
> > shift, at least in the pews.
> >
> > =======================================================
> >  List services made available by First Step Internet,
> >  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
> >               http://www.fsr.net
> >          mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
> > =======================================================
> >
>
>=======================================================
>  List services made available by First Step Internet,
>  serving the communities of the Palouse since 1994.
>                http://www.fsr.net
>           mailto:Vision2020 at moscow.com
>=======================================================

"Truth is the summit of being; justice is the application of it to 
human affairs."
--Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Abstract truth has no value unless it incarnates in human beings who 
represent it, by proving their readiness to die for it."
  --Mohandas Gandhi

"Modern physics has taught us that the nature of any system cannot be 
discovered by dividing it into its component parts and studying each 
part by itself. . . .We must keep our attention fixed on the whole 
and on the interconnection between the parts. The same is true of our 
intellectual life. It is impossible to make a clear cut between 
science, religion, and art. The whole is never equal simply to the 
sum of its various parts." --Max Planck

Nicholas F. Gier
Professor Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, University of Idaho
1037 Colt Rd., Moscow, ID 83843
http://www.home.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/home.htm
208-882-9212/FAX 885-8950
President, Idaho Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO
http://www.roadrunner.com/~nickgier/ift.htm

-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://mailman.fsr.com/pipermail/vision2020/attachments/20080624/f588ac6c/attachment-0001.html 