What is the best religion?

[Losonti Tokash]

Gah. Ghetto edit: It's basically the entire thought behind the Middle Path.

[General Zod]

Which version of Buddhism are you basing this off? I don't recall reading anything like that with regards to what I've seen on the religion.

Straight from the horse's mouth (or at least as close as I can get). Not any particular sect.[/quote]

From a priest? If so, do they actually work in a temple or are they one of the traveling varieties? Also, you realise that there are two distinct main sects of Buddhism, each of which place a different emphasis on the original Buddhist teachings, right?

[Losonti Tokash]

From a priest? If so, do they actually work in a temple or are they one of the traveling varieties? Also, you realise that there are two distinct main sects of Buddhism, each of which place a different emphasis on the original Buddhist teachings, right?

Originally from a book that is essentially the story of Buddha's life, but was confirmed by the priest at the only temple in town, called Nebraska Zen Center.

I'm well aware there are other varieties of Buddhism and that since I am going entirely off of memory I could be wrong, but it's just how I've always understood it and so that what I've done.

[General Zod]

From a priest? If so, do they actually work in a temple or are they one of the traveling varieties? Also, you realise that there are two distinct main sects of Buddhism, each of which place a different emphasis on the original Buddhist teachings, right?

Originally from a book that is essentially the story of Buddha's life, but was confirmed by the priest at the only temple in town, called Nebraska Zen Center.

I'm well aware there are other varieties of Buddhism and that since I am going entirely off of memory I could be wrong, but it's just how I've always understood it and so that what I've done.

Mahayana Buddhism. Theravada Buddhism.

[RedImperator]

If I still believed, I think I'd convert to Zoroastrianism.

[Plekhanov]

If I have to take a religion I’d go for Deism a general wonder and delight in the world has little scope to do harm. Buddhism on the other hand has done a great deal of harm in it’s time it gets a very easy ride in the west largely I think because we mainly see it as a touchy feely religion taken up by impressionable Hollywood types and have little experience or historical awareness of it.

This easy ride isn’t really justified though just take for example the history of the Buddhist theocracy in Tibet which is every bit as disreputable as anything Islam or Christianity managed (only posted an exert of article for length click the link if you want more Lama bashing with added defence for Chinese imperialism):

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
July 2004 (updated)

The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with violence. Throughout the ages, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to massacre infidels, heretics, and even other devotees within their own ranks. Some people maintain that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic violence of other religions. To be sure, for some practitioners in the West, Buddhism is more a spiritual and psychological discipline than a theology in the usual sense. It offers meditative techniques that are said to promote enlightenment and harmony within oneself. But like any other belief system, Buddhism must be judged not only by its teachings but by the secular behavior of its proponents.

Buddhist Exceptionalism?

A glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of religious groups. In Tibet, from the early seventeenth century well into the eighteenth, competing Buddhist sects engaged in armed hostilities and summary executions.1 In the twentieth century, in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere, Buddhists clashed with each other and with nonBuddhists. In Sri Lanka, armed battles in the name of Buddhism are part of Sinhalese history.2

Just a few years ago in South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various duties. The brawls partly destroyed the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, "it would use worshippers' donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars."3

But what of the Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chinese crackdown in 1959? It is widely held by many devout Buddhists that Old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La.

The Dalai Lama himself stated that "the pervasive influence of Buddhism" in Tibet, "amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment."4 A reading of Tibet's history suggests a different picture. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is quite a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army.

To elevate his authority beyond worldly challenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was done in by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their high priests or other courtiers.5

Shangri-La (for Lords and Lamas)

Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending."6 Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went mostly to the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families.

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet.7 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma."8 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine.9 The monastic estates also conscripted impoverished peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery.10 The greater part of the rural population---some 700,000 of an estimated total of 1,250,000---were serfs. Serfs and other peasants generally were little better than slaves. They went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for high-ranking lamas or for the secular landed aristocracy. Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners send them to work in a distant location.11

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: "Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished." They "were just slaves without rights."12 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." He claimed that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord's men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain.13

The serfs were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land---or the monastery's land---without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.14 They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery sometimes for the rest of their lives.15

The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

Torture and Mutilation

In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation---including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon runaway serfs and thieves. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion."16 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.17

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, and breaking off hands. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling.18

The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.19

Early visitors to Tibet comment about the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of oppression." At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft." Tibetan rulers "invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth."20

Just like Robertson/Fallwell (can’t remember which one it was) the Dali Lama stated after Katrina that it was a punishment visited upon New Orleans inhabitants for their sins (only in this case committed in past lives) it might not be quite as bad as the Abrahamic religions but Buddism is far from the least bad religion out there.

[SirNitram]

SirNitram
Good pick. The question is - can deism be called a religion at all?

Not an organized one. It's definately a belief, but organized? Definately not.

I have met organized Deists. They're assholes. They spew on and on about the core of Deism... Use your reason and brain to figure out the universe.. Then immediately launch into evangelizing via telling you their version of the answers, which includes being rabid against all other points of view.

[Zero]

If I have to take a religion I’d go for Deism a general wonder and delight in the world has little scope to do harm. Buddhism on the other hand has done a great deal of harm in it’s time it gets a very easy ride in the west largely I think because we mainly see it as a touchy feely religion taken up by impressionable Hollywood types and have little experience or historical awareness of it.

This easy ride isn’t really justified though just take for example the history of the Buddhist theocracy in Tibet which is every bit as disreputable as anything Islam or Christianity managed (only posted an exert of article for length click the link if you want more Lama bashing with added defence for Chinese imperialism):

Friendly Feudalism: The Tibet Myth
July 2004 (updated)

The histories of Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, and Islam are heavily laced with violence. Throughout the ages, religionists have claimed a divine mandate to massacre infidels, heretics, and even other devotees within their own ranks. Some people maintain that Buddhism is different, that it stands in marked contrast to the chronic violence of other religions. To be sure, for some practitioners in the West, Buddhism is more a spiritual and psychological discipline than a theology in the usual sense. It offers meditative techniques that are said to promote enlightenment and harmony within oneself. But like any other belief system, Buddhism must be judged not only by its teachings but by the secular behavior of its proponents.

Buddhist Exceptionalism?

A glance at history reveals that Buddhist organizations have not been free of the violent pursuits so characteristic of religious groups. In Tibet, from the early seventeenth century well into the eighteenth, competing Buddhist sects engaged in armed hostilities and summary executions.1 In the twentieth century, in Thailand, Burma, Korea, Japan, and elsewhere, Buddhists clashed with each other and with nonBuddhists. In Sri Lanka, armed battles in the name of Buddhism are part of Sinhalese history.2

Just a few years ago in South Korea, thousands of monks of the Chogye Buddhist order fought each other with fists, rocks, fire-bombs, and clubs, in pitched battles that went on for weeks. They were vying for control of the order, the largest in South Korea, with its annual budget of $9.2 million, its additional millions of dollars in property, and the privilege of appointing 1,700 monks to various duties. The brawls partly destroyed the main Buddhist sanctuaries and left dozens of monks injured, some seriously. The Korean public appeared to disdain both factions, feeling that no matter what side took control, "it would use worshippers' donations for luxurious houses and expensive cars."3

But what of the Dalai Lama and the Tibet he presided over before the Chinese crackdown in 1959? It is widely held by many devout Buddhists that Old Tibet was a spiritually oriented kingdom free from the egotistical lifestyles, empty materialism, and corrupting vices that beset modern industrialized society. Western news media, travel books, novels, and Hollywood films have portrayed the Tibetan theocracy as a veritable Shangri-La.

The Dalai Lama himself stated that "the pervasive influence of Buddhism" in Tibet, "amid the wide open spaces of an unspoiled environment resulted in a society dedicated to peace and harmony. We enjoyed freedom and contentment."4 A reading of Tibet's history suggests a different picture. In the thirteenth century, Emperor Kublai Khan created the first Grand Lama, who was to preside over all the other lamas as might a pope over his bishops. Several centuries later, the Emperor of China sent an army into Tibet to support the Grand Lama, an ambitious 25-year-old man, who then gave himself the title of Dalai (Ocean) Lama, ruler of all Tibet. Here is quite a historical irony: the first Dalai Lama was installed by a Chinese army.

To elevate his authority beyond worldly challenge, the first Dalai Lama seized monasteries that did not belong to his sect, and is believed to have destroyed Buddhist writings that conflicted with his claim to divinity. The Dalai Lama who succeeded him pursued a sybaritic life, enjoying many mistresses, partying with friends, and acting in other ways deemed unfitting for an incarnate deity. For this he was done in by his priests. Within 170 years, despite their recognized status as gods, five Dalai Lamas were murdered by their high priests or other courtiers.5

Shangri-La (for Lords and Lamas)

Religions have had a close relationship not only with violence but with economic exploitation. Indeed, it is often the economic exploitation that necessitates the violence. Such was the case with the Tibetan theocracy. Until 1959, when the Dalai Lama last presided over Tibet, most of the arable land was still organized into manorial estates worked by serfs. Even a writer sympathetic to the old order allows that "a great deal of real estate belonged to the monasteries, and most of them amassed great riches. . . . In addition, individual monks and lamas were able to accumulate great wealth through active participation in trade, commerce, and money lending."6 Drepung monastery was one of the biggest landowners in the world, with its 185 manors, 25,000 serfs, 300 great pastures, and 16,000 herdsmen. The wealth of the monasteries went mostly to the higher-ranking lamas, many of them scions of aristocratic families.

Secular leaders also did well. A notable example was the commander-in-chief of the Tibetan army, who owned 4,000 square kilometers of land and 3,500 serfs. He also was a member of the Dalai Lama's lay Cabinet.7 Old Tibet has been misrepresented by some of its Western admirers as "a nation that required no police force because its people voluntarily observed the laws of karma."8 In fact. it had a professional army, albeit a small one, that served as a gendarmerie for the landlords to keep order and hunt down runaway serfs.

Young Tibetan boys were regularly taken from their families and brought into the monasteries to be trained as monks. Once there, they became bonded for life. Tashì-Tsering, a monk, reports that it was common for peasant children to be sexually mistreated in the monasteries. He himself was a victim of repeated rape, beginning at age nine.9 The monastic estates also conscripted impoverished peasant children for lifelong servitude as domestics, dance performers, and soldiers.

In Old Tibet there were small numbers of farmers who subsisted as a kind of free peasantry, and perhaps an additional 10,000 people who composed the "middle-class" families of merchants, shopkeepers, and small traders. Thousands of others were beggars. A small minority were slaves, usually domestic servants, who owned nothing. Their offspring were born into slavery.10 The greater part of the rural population---some 700,000 of an estimated total of 1,250,000---were serfs. Serfs and other peasants generally were little better than slaves. They went without schooling or medical care. They spent most of their time laboring for high-ranking lamas or for the secular landed aristocracy. Their masters told them what crops to grow and what animals to raise. They could not get married without the consent of their lord or lama. And they might easily be separated from their families should their owners send them to work in a distant location.11

One 22-year old woman, herself a runaway serf, reports: "Pretty serf girls were usually taken by the owner as house servants and used as he wished." They "were just slaves without rights."12 Serfs needed permission to go anywhere. Landowners had legal authority to capture those who tried to flee. One 24-year old runaway welcomed the Chinese intervention as a "liberation." He claimed that under serfdom he was subjected to incessant toil, hunger, and cold. After his third failed escape, he was merciless beaten by the landlord's men until blood poured from his nose and mouth. They then poured alcohol and caustic soda on his wounds to increase the pain.13

The serfs were under a lifetime bond to work the lord's land---or the monastery's land---without pay, to repair the lord's houses, transport his crops, and collect his firewood. They were also expected to provide carrying animals and transportation on demand.14 They were taxed upon getting married, taxed for the birth of each child, and for every death in the family. They were taxed for planting a tree in their yard and for keeping animals. There were taxes for religious festivals, for singing, dancing, drumming, and bell ringing. People were taxed for being sent to prison and upon being released. Those who could not find work were taxed for being unemployed, and if they traveled to another village in search of work, they paid a passage tax. When people could not pay, the monasteries lent them money at 20 to 50 percent interest. Some debts were handed down from father to son to grandson. Debtors who could not meet their obligations risked being placed into slavery sometimes for the rest of their lives.15

The theocracy's religious teachings buttressed its class order. The poor and afflicted were taught that they had brought their troubles upon themselves because of their wicked ways in previous lives. Hence they had to accept the misery of their present existence as a karmic atonement and in anticipation that their lot would improve upon being reborn. The rich and powerful of course treated their good fortune as a reward for, and tangible evidence of, virtue in past and present lives.

Torture and Mutilation

In the Dalai Lama's Tibet, torture and mutilation---including eye gouging, the pulling out of tongues, hamstringing, and amputation--were favored punishments inflicted upon runaway serfs and thieves. Journeying through Tibet in the 1960s, Stuart and Roma Gelder interviewed a former serf, Tsereh Wang Tuei, who had stolen two sheep belonging to a monastery. For this he had both his eyes gouged out and his hand mutilated beyond use. He explains that he no longer is a Buddhist: "When a holy lama told them to blind me I thought there was no good in religion."16 Since it was against Buddhist teachings to take human life, some offenders were severely lashed and then "left to God" in the freezing night to die. "The parallels between Tibet and medieval Europe are striking," concludes Tom Grunfeld in his book on Tibet.17

In 1959, Anna Louise Strong visited an exhibition of torture equipment that had been used by the Tibetan overlords. There were handcuffs of all sizes, including small ones for children, and instruments for cutting off noses and ears, gouging out eyes, and breaking off hands. There were instruments for slicing off kneecaps and heels, or hamstringing legs. There were hot brands, whips, and special implements for disemboweling.18

The exhibition presented photographs and testimonies of victims who had been blinded or crippled or suffered amputations for thievery. There was the shepherd whose master owed him a reimbursement in yuan and wheat but refused to pay. So he took one of the master's cows; for this he had his hands severed. Another herdsman, who opposed having his wife taken from him by his lord, had his hands broken off. There were pictures of Communist activists with noses and upper lips cut off, and a woman who was raped and then had her nose sliced away.19

Early visitors to Tibet comment about the theocratic despotism. In 1895, an Englishman, Dr. A. L. Waddell, wrote that the populace was under the "intolerable tyranny of monks" and the devil superstitions they had fashioned to terrorize the people. In 1904 Perceval Landon described the Dalai Lama's rule as "an engine of oppression." At about that time, another English traveler, Captain W.F.T. O'Connor, observed that "the great landowners and the priests . . . exercise each in their own dominion a despotic power from which there is no appeal," while the people are "oppressed by the most monstrous growth of monasticism and priest-craft." Tibetan rulers "invented degrading legends and stimulated a spirit of superstition" among the common people. In 1937, another visitor, Spencer Chapman, wrote, "The Lamaist monk does not spend his time in ministering to the people or educating them. . . . The beggar beside the road is nothing to the monk. Knowledge is the jealously guarded prerogative of the monasteries and is used to increase their influence and wealth."20

Just like Robertson/Fallwell (can’t remember which one it was) the Dali Lama stated after Katrina that it was a punishment visited upon New Orleans inhabitants for their sins (only in this case committed in past lives) it might not be quite as bad as the Abrahamic religions but Buddism is far from the least bad religion out there.

That appears mostly to relate to the Tibetan system, and not to the teachings of Buddha. Of course, if I went on with this, I might fall into the no-true-scottsman fallacy, but it's also true that some have comitted acts of good under Buddha's teachings, such as Ashoka, a king of the Mauryan Empire, who was known as a quite brutal man before his conversion to Buddhism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asoka

Buddhism also seems reasonably unique as a religion in that its core teachings promote the well-being of those around you. Killing, stealing, and rape are all stated as wrong by Buddha, in the most common scriptures.

Most religions have at least instances where killing is seen as okay, or when causing misery and harm is alright, so long as it isn't the misery or harm of those belonging to the same religion, or tribe.

[Zadius]

Wicca is a rather pieceful religion in my experience. In it's moral philosophy it seems to have a lot in common with humanism.

[Setesh]

Wicca is a rather pieceful religion in my experience. In it's moral philosophy it seems to have a lot in common with humanism.

But so many stupid 'wannabe witches'

I'm leaning towards Taoism but that may just be because of the great master of it.
TaoMaster

[Plekhanov]

That appears mostly to relate to the Tibetan system, and not to the teachings of Buddha. Of course, if I went on with this, I might fall into the no-true-scottsman fallacy, but it's also true that some have comitted acts of good under Buddha's teachings, such as Ashoka, a king of the Mauryan Empire, who was known as a quite brutal man before his conversion to Buddhism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asoka

Buddhism also seems reasonably unique as a religion in that its core teachings promote the well-being of those around you. Killing, stealing, and rape are all stated as wrong by Buddha, in the most common scriptures.

Most religions have at least instances where killing is seen as okay, or when causing misery and harm is alright, so long as it isn't the misery or harm of those belonging to the same religion, or tribe.

Maybe somebody should have told the Japanese Buddhist warrior monks link about this whole not killing thing. Incidentally I’ve heard that these guys actually used to take portable shrines into battle with them as it meant their opponents would have to commit sacrilege to attack them.

The Buddha quite possibly was a very nice man who meant well but like every other religious tradition I’m aware of his teachings have been moulded for personal gain by those who claim to follow his tradition. Buddhism is the dominant religion in numerous Asian countries and predictably throughout its history has often been a tool of social control for the rich and powerful.

I think just about any religion will suffer from such problems as they basically all rely upon blind appeals to authority as the basis of their faith, which means that those in authority have great scope for abuse.

[Vendetta]

I think just about any religion will suffer from such problems as they basically all rely upon blind appeals to authority as the basis of their faith, which means that those in authority have great scope for abuse.

This is true. It's also the reason why there is no Sikh priesthood, as the last Guru saw the danger inherent in having priests running arould claiming to act with religious authority, and abolished the concept entirely.

[Rye]

Scientific pantheism; essentially atheism but with a value attached to religious feelings of awe regarding the universe. No obviously made up invisible magical men intervening or creating (theism, deism, I'm looking at you) and Humanism doesn't sit well with me, because frankly, I hate most of them. My cat means more to me than Phelps' whole family, AIDS-infested Africa, etc.

[Max]

Can personal spirituality be considered a 'religion'? I always thought that people that don't subscribe to a religion per se, but have a certain spirituality to them, were always the most pleasant to be around.

[Zero]

That appears mostly to relate to the Tibetan system, and not to the teachings of Buddha. Of course, if I went on with this, I might fall into the no-true-scottsman fallacy, but it's also true that some have comitted acts of good under Buddha's teachings, such as Ashoka, a king of the Mauryan Empire, who was known as a quite brutal man before his conversion to Buddhism.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asoka

Buddhism also seems reasonably unique as a religion in that its core teachings promote the well-being of those around you. Killing, stealing, and rape are all stated as wrong by Buddha, in the most common scriptures.

Most religions have at least instances where killing is seen as okay, or when causing misery and harm is alright, so long as it isn't the misery or harm of those belonging to the same religion, or tribe.

Maybe somebody should have told the Japanese Buddhist warrior monks link about this whole not killing thing. Incidentally I’ve heard that these guys actually used to take portable shrines into battle with them as it meant their opponents would have to commit sacrilege to attack them.

The Buddha quite possibly was a very nice man who meant well but like every other religious tradition I’m aware of his teachings have been moulded for personal gain by those who claim to follow his tradition. Buddhism is the dominant religion in numerous Asian countries and predictably throughout its history has often been a tool of social control for the rich and powerful.

I think just about any religion will suffer from such problems as they basically all rely upon blind appeals to authority as the basis of their faith, which means that those in authority have great scope for abuse.

Yes, all religions rely on a faith of some type, or at least claim a greater ideal, and all can be readily used as tools to subjugate and manipulate massive amounts of people, specifically uneducated ones. Even so, I believe Budda himself had many teachings that are valid today, at least for my personal usage.

[Falkenhayn]

Jainism: Though I could not live with without meat. You can't kill anything with more than 3 senses.

[Patrick Degan]

There's also the Church of Baseball:

I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250... not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake? It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.

[Andrew J.]

Discordianism.

Mmm, hot dogs.