The two Christian saints who are the Buddha(signoregalilei.com) |
The two Christian saints who are the Buddha(signoregalilei.com) |
It's interesting dynamic. Catholic Church is notoriously top-down and hierarchical, yet local parishes can feel entirely distinct. It's not uncommon to see traditional Javanese processions integrated right into the mass. Like skin/mod in a game.
It has a hierarchy, but it has multiple hierarchies. It is not all that top down. Bishop's ave a lot of autonomy, and most decisions are made at the diocesan level. Dioceses have their own property and funds held by their own trustees. On top of that religious orders have their own hierarchy (and property and funds etc.). Then there are the rites such as the Ukrainian or Syro-Malabar churches that have their own hierarchies.
Historically this was the result of the fact the church predates modern communications. It was not possible for a Pope to direct things the way a CEO of a modern corporation does, but in recent times it has been recognised as guiding principle: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity_%28Catholicism%29 that has been adopted by other org anisations https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subsidiarity
> It's not uncommon to see traditional Javanese processions integrated right into the mass.
That is encouraged, as long as there is not conflict with Catholic belief https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inculturation#
Modern media has allowed the pope to receive unceasing attention that the papacy never possessed historically, but what is important to emphasize is that this is not a reflection of how the Church is administered or how authority is distributed. The idea that the pope is "running the Church" or "watching every member of the one and a half billion member flock like a busybody hawk" is a fiction drawn from jejune ignorance. Rome is notoriously slow to act, which should in general not be seen as a sign of incompetence, but as an expression of subsidiarity. It is much better to view the pope as the ultimate referee rather than some oppressive overlord. The moral ball is in your court, as it were.
W.r.t. absorbing what's around it, the Church has always recognized logos spermatikos or seminal reason, meaning, it recognizes reality as an intelligible creation of God, it recognizes the inherent rational nature of every human being, and thus it recognizes that every human being has an in principle capacity to recognize and know reality, to one degree or another. So, it sees no reason to suppose that there is nothing good or true or beautiful outside the Church and plenty of reason to recognize it and embrace it. What is good is good, what is true is true, what is beautiful is beautiful. When the Church encounters a culture, it seeks what is good within it and seeks to transfigure it in order to rescue its goodness and perfect it. Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit.
That's not really accurate. All bishops were essentially "autocephalus" in antiquity. Whether they could even be removed by a council of other bishops was something that was really not resolved for many centuries. There were many occasions of competing councils declaring each other heretics and shenanigans like that.
The Orthodox still practice this system of governance (although sovereignty has been moved up from diocesan bishops to the patriarch of each autocephalus church).
These traditions settled over a very long time. I don't think a few months to send a letter would be a real barrier to deciding what's acceptable doctrine.
the Church has been "multipolar" on multiple levels for about as long as it's existed.
A very easy to parse political example from recent history is during ww2 when Croatia had the catholic fascist Ustase collaborating with Nazi Germany and Italian fascists whilst in Poland the Nazis were actively suppressing the church and sending the clergy and other religious to the concentration camps.
A theological example would be the "conflict" (and I use the term lightly) between Franciscan Scotists and Dominican Thomists wrt stuff like the Univocity of Being
Saints Josaphat and Barlaam never had an official decree of canonization. That process didn't exist (in its earliest form) until 1170 AD. Saints before that were generally just acclaimed by the Christians in the area and probably recognized by a local bishop.
The Vatican does keep a "Roman Martyrology" by which they try to keep a list of all known saints, but the saints that existed before the canonization process are known as "pre-congregation" saints and our certainty about them is generally less, well, certain.
In this case, these two names were removed from the Martyrology. That isn't to say that the Vatican has declared they are not saints, but is no longer actively making that claim.
There have been quite a few other pre-congregation names removed from the list when historical study has found little evidence of their existence or life story.
"The devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of Truth,' said the devil.'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend.'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to let him organize it.'"
Turns out, culture isn't a singular thing you can just have. People everywhere all the time are picking up bits of things to do, things to say, things to believe in, and borders, no matter how fluid they are, only exist in the aggregate.
It wasn't syncretism, it was systematic eradication. Syncretism is more akin to reconciliation of different views.
We're talking about adopting cultural practices in a selective and transfigurative way. If a cultural practice doesn't conflict with the Church's teachings and would be beneficial, then it could be embraced as such. A cultural practice may also be transfigured and adapted into something that maintains a certain resemblance, but has a changed and elevated meaning. For instance, having encountered a culture that practices ancestor worship, it might take that practice and transfigure it into a restrained expression of filial piety that moves it away from idolatry. Pagan harvest festivals are another example where the symbolic meaning is changed.
There also were countless statues and icons of Pachamama which is a kind of merge between mother Mary and a Andean earth goddess.
Arguably wet got Christmas trees the same way
Except for it's never done. No Hindu believes Allah or Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu.
It can't be. Vishnu literally means the "All-Pervading One". Allah is explicitly not Omnipresent. Jesus is Omnipresent but does not have infinite forms. So neither fit the bill. Even Buddha, who we Hindus associate as one of the Avatars of Vishnu is not the same Buddha as Gautama Buddha who founded Buddhism.
We're just looking at this through the lens of the Protestant Reformation so this pragmatism is often lost.
One of the most studied issues in Catholic evangelism is the Chinese rites controversy which is also one of the historical reasons why religions are suppressed in China (aside from ideological policies ascribed to communism).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chinese_Rites_controversy
(That and the Taiping rebellion which was estimated to have killed as many people as World War 2 on the higher end. It was led by a failed scholar claiming to be alleged brother of Jesus. Most of the deaths were due to starvation. Not quite Netflix material but interesting plot nonetheless)
1. https://bitterwinter.org/the-taiping-mystery-1-why-is-the-cc...
This is straight out of the Manichaeism playbook whose followers believed that a wide range of previous belief systems including Platonism, Buddhism, Zoroastrianism and Christianity each had a part of divine truth in them. This allowed them to absorb a diverse set of followers and contributed to them being one of the fasted spreading religions in Late Antiquity even giving Christianity a run for its money.
I read a few books on it for a term paper in college, and the part that most sticks out in my distant memory is that the creation myth involves a lot of what were translated in my copy as aborted fetuses.
Really it's only in the last/final generation of religions, where they started writing them down in canon/scripture/testaments/writs/dogmas/whatever, that you started to see unique stories get associated with specific religions.
Before that? It's all mush. Aphrodite descends pretty clearly from the same line as Astarte/Ishtar/Innana (maybe Isis too), etc... People steal good stories. People get conquered and then confused by retelling the stories their new overlords tell. Again and again.
Because catholic church is whatever the newest model is in the distro but other distros try to be very very clean and try to follow the original texts and their meaning but catholic church is like the new iphone trying to be like whatever is the trendy trend nowadays.
But e.g. modern American evangelical churches are to me quite clearly quite far from the original meaning of the texts with some theology outright invented in 18th and 19th centuries.
It really is the case that what you bring to a text colors what you get out of it, and the more people insist that they are reading a text "as it is clearly written" the blinder they seem to be to this.
So many stories, many people believe are true and build whole religions around, are really just repeated stories with many details changed to fit the local culture and traditions.
It's crazy so many of the world's politics and problems stem from what might actually just be the same story said in a different way... or even of a fan fiction on top of existing fiction.
Christianity and worldviews typically associated with the 'east' (as I've seen them discussed here and elsewhere) disagree in both their view of the 'building blocks' of reality, and in their 'big picture' view. They disagree on base questions like if there is really a "you", or whether change is real, or whether the material world is real, or whether multiplicity is real, or whether the truth of A implies the falsehood of not-A, and so on. (I've heard all of the above answered in the negative here.) And they disagree on 'big picture' things like the goal of human existence, the nature of the Absolute, what it is to live a good life, whether evil is the result of illusion or is (in addition to this) a defect in the will and caused ultimately by an indescribably malevolent being, whether a human being can reach a 'blessed' state by his own power, etc.
So the differences are vast and essential, on both the macro and micro levels. The fact that some beliefs and practices influence other beliefs and practices doesn't change this.
(The emergence of the "18 year old who just read Dawkins for the first time and thinks science disproves sky-daddy lolz" atheists on this thread is also most unfortunate.)
However, anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with the history of early Buddhism, the Therapeutae, and the religious developments of the 1st century BCE/1st century CE can't ignore how improbable the independent development of the latter's practices are, and how influential they became to various groups in the Middle East that later claimed they arrived at them independently.
I think this is another argument for a separation of Church and state. It allows people to challenge when religious teaching goes awry without fear of persecution.
0. https://classics.cornell.edu/news/roman-historian-views-earl...
Unless you presume the Buddhist stories were themselves historically accurate - which would start down a road of "both Buddhism and Christianity are true" - it's hard to imagine that these were coincidentally also stories about real figures.
That's just another assertion of "They copied it!" Where is the evidence that this is so beyond an inference that they were copied?
>Unless you presume the Buddhist stories were themselves historically accurate - which would start down a road of "both Buddhism and Christianity are true" - it's hard to imagine that these were coincidentally also stories about real figures.
Life is suffering, and the Messiah took all human suffering on himself? I'm not sure these are mutually exclusive.
https://www.oca.org/saints/lives/2014/11/19/100292-saints-ba...
The reason, AFAIK, is that the early church didn't have a process for canonization, it was just all local cults. By the time they decided to establish a proper process (proof of miracles, witnesses, devil's advocate etc) many local churches had their own saints, and they decided to basically accept all the ones already in use and only start enforcing rules for the new ones. So the idea that "there's a holy man in the east who did this and that" resulted in "eh, sure, let's write down Saint Jehoshaphat too".
Christianity-as-trivia is a lot of fun.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Guinefort
[1] not to be confused with Saint Christopher, the dog-headed saint https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Christopher#/media/File:...
> Galileo is my actual, real life middle name! “Signore Galilei” is supposed to mean “Mr. Galilei” in the native Italian of Galileo Galilei, considered by many to be the father of modern science. I try to bring a Galilean spirit of curiosity to every post and video I make. An Italian-speaking viewer of mine has informed me that “Signore” should grammatically become “Signor” when it is used with a specific person’s last name rather than as a general term of address, so “Signore Galilei” really means something more like “Mister! Galilei!” instead. I guess that’s still okay with me.
From the about page
I like to think of religions as psychological technology. One doesn’t have to believe the stories are real for them to still have power. One can engage with the fantastic map of the mind that Buddhism provides without literally believing a being achieved “enlightenment” under a tree. Likewise, in the Christian tradition, the desert fathers through Hesychasm realized much of the same stuff as Buddha, and one does not need to accept the dogma as true to make use of the technology.
Humans are myth-makers, and our brains have a neat ability to use myth to enact real change. Ricoeur dubbed something similar as the second naïveté, re-engaging with faiths after a period of rigorous critical doubt, seeing them for what they actually are, stories that provide a technology for the inner working of the human mind.
All religions are nothing more than stories. If science doesn't prove this, then all proclaimed religions are cults.
Neither of them are currently recognised.
Canonization is mostly considered to be under the remit of Papal Infallibility, which means it cannot be revoked. If the Pope gets drunk on sacramental wine and saints Pikachu the Pokeman character, Pikachu (somehow) enters heaven. Doubt that, and you commit heresy.
But that's not absolutely, totally decided RC law - just a majority opinion. AFAICT.
What absolutely has happened is that saints without plausible historical backing have had their feast days revoked, and (sometimes but not always) have been removed from the lists of saints the Church encourages Catholics to pray to. (St. Christopher is now believed to be allegorical, but prayer to "him" is still encouraged nonetheless.) Basically, they've been demoted, like the uncle that is technically still a blood relation, but doesn't get the invite to Thanksgiving dinner.
Now please pass the Turkiye.
We have a lot of places named after her in Scotland. West and East Kilbride, Lhanbryde and various churches and centres named after her.
however in certain countries this gets you executed or imprisoned
Fixed it for you, Sir.
I live in an area surrounded by cults
but also there are plenty of solitary practitioners of Wicca and Buddhism
and then you have the dozen of forms of christianity where every church just put their own spin on things
people are weird, religion just makes it even more so
I don't have a problem as long as they keep it to themselves but that rarely is the case
They demand a cut even from a loan. Pathetic people praying on innocent people
"They tie up heavy burdens, hard to bear, and lay them on people's shoulders, but they themselves are not willing to move them with their finger. They do all their deeds to be seen by others. ...they love the place of honor at feasts and the best seats in the synagogues and greetings in the marketplaces and being called rabbi by others. But you are not to be called rabbi, for you have one teacher, and you are all brothers. And call no man your father on earth, for you have one Father, who is in heaven." -- in Matthew 23
Don't throw out the baby with the bathwater, and don't throw out the Christ with the 'christians'.
Don't be an intellectual hodgepodge
All this tells me that there’s something about our relationship with the divine and the sacred that transcends individual eras and places. A place or a festival or a story that appeals to our common senses of awe or morality or wisdom can reach people of any faith tradition. Perhaps they’ll interpret it through their own lens, of course. But in the end, isn’t that all we have?Would you call them "facts"?
No amount of pseudo-philocophical and quasi-historical research can change this basic fact.
Naive attempt of some buddhists to reduce (in their eyes of course its the highest compliment) other religion figures to mere "buddha" label is nothing but silly, laymen kitchen theology. It is disrespectful to both buddhism and other religion.
One note - and this could just be nitpicking rather than making any correction.
I mostly agree, but the "details changed" part implies that there was actual connection between the societies and one borrowed/modified the other's stories.
That surely happened sometimes. But, there's plenty of evidence of very similar stories springing up in completely disconnected parts of the world. The explanation is that they come from something innate to the human experience.
Also, just because they're "stories" doesn't mean they don't have profound insight and value.
Joseph Campbell did tremendous work in presenting all of this. He had deep reverence for it all, not just despite, but likely because of, the deep similarities across the world.
But he was very clear about the fact that everyone's fighting over what to call bread. They miss the point entirely. But so do atheist-type people who write it all off based on literal, logical readings - they miss the metaphor, and therefore the value.
He would say things like "atheists would sit down at a restaurant, look at the menu, then start eating the menu" - mistaking the symbol for the reference. Or seeing a road sign "welcome to city" and thinking "ah, here we are".
Everyone - "believers", atheists and anywhere in between - has a tremendous amount to learn and gain if they can learn to read it all as great literature, poetry etc...
That has to be the universal one, no? I feel like basic moral principles, at least directed towards the in group, are pretty universal. I'd argue they are more base than even humans and are shared with certain intelligent animals.
Not at all.
Some believe one should come to forgive their enemies. Some believe that one should purge one's enemies from life itself. Some believe that one should have no enemies.
Some believe that material wealth is fine to a point, some believe that the desire of possesing material wealth is a source of discontent, some believe that it is the source of many or all other discontents.
Some believe that wanting to improve one's station is a source of discontent.
Some are fine with removing life if it is inconvenient (like bugs) where others value the life of a bug equally to their own.
Some are okay with their friends and family members murdering foreigners actively engaged in warfare that threatens their own life and livelihood. Some are okay with their friends and family killing the friends and family of the enemy combatants. Some are okay with killing anyone just generally in the vicinity of enemy combatants. Some say literally poisoning the well is a step too far, but that we had to write that down is evidence of other's believing differently. Some believe it's okay to murder people, communities, and entire populations because they'd rather use the land for themselves, or maybe their noses are too long and their skin is indistinguishably different.
Rereading your comment, I see the "in group" disclaimer. What's the in group? Some believe it's just their family, the people on the block, the people who have lived within a certain number of miles for a certain number of years, citizens governed by a particular government, the citizens governed by a group of governments, the people living on a particular continent, people in general, humans in general, life in general, or everything. There are people to whom no human should ever murder another for any reason. You might agree with that in theory, but would you allow a conquering force that is literally raping your friends and family to simply do so unquestioned? Would you feel vindicated striking back? There are some who have decided that the morally correct thing to do is to simply quit the land and or life itself rather than to fight back, because to them murder is wrong period.
The good life is deeply personal and absolutely not universal.
Earlier today, I was listening to Evangelical Christian Radio while doing errands (my phone is broken and I live deep in Red America) and the pastor, Alistair Begg, was making the argument that the synoptic gospels are totally unique in what they are. The format is unprecedented. They're not biographies. They're not systematic theology. It's just a direct witness to Jesus Christ. And so on. Therefore, they're historically valid and true, etc.
But if you have read the Pali Canon or other collections of sutras and agamas, it's almost blindingly obvious that the structure of the pericopic episodes found in the synoptic gospels aren't really unique at all.
As a random example:
From Majjhima Nikaya 55 (trans. Thanissaro): I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha, in Jīvaka Komārabhacca’s mango grove. Then Jīvaka Komārabhacca went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “Lord, I have heard it said that ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action.’ Those who say, ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action’: Are they speaking in line with what the Blessed One has said, are they not slandering the Blessed One with what is unfactual, and are they speaking in line with the Dhamma so that no one whose thinking is in line with the Dhamma would have grounds for criticizing them?”
Compared to say, Mark 7 (trans. NIV):
The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”
And so on and so forth. The parallels don't end there, but I've probably gone on long enough of a rant. And this wouldn't even be the first time something like that happened in the Greek world. Pyrrho very likely did something very similar. Plus, the phenomena has modern equivalents as well. Look at how many mindfulness courses and therapy interventions in the West just file the serial numbers off of Buddhism (e.g. CBT, ACT).
So yeah. The pieces are all there, but literally be damned by others if you put them together.
That kind of evidence is much harder to wave away than narrative parallels alone, since parallel stories could theoretically arise independently, but the name connection is essentially a paper trail.
> Mr and Mrs Rimmer were very religious, taking the Bible scriptures at face value. The Hoppists were primarily concerned with a particular verse from the New Testament. St. Paul's first epistle to the Corinthians, chapter 13, verse 13 had been misprinted in a certain edition of the Bible. In their version, the verse read "And now these three remain: Faith, Hop and Charity. But the greatest of these is Hop".
> The Hoppists took this literally and insisted that their followers spent every seventh day hopping. They would hop to church, hop through the service and then hop home again. The Rimmers even served their Sunday lunch whilst hopping, causing them to wear protective clothing to avoid burning themselves.
This is obviously a joke but there's load of examples of people getting hung up on seemly minor details like that.
E.g. The Umbilicus Adami discussion. If the bible is literal and God made Adam then Adam didn't have a mother. So that leads to the question, did he have a belly button?
If he didn't have a belly button was he human?
It sounds ridiculously trivial but people have died over that, which is itself even sillier.
I think it's less hypocrisy and more the desire to integrate all available information into a consistent framework. When you encounter something that doesn't fit, you can of course reject it and fight bitterly over who is right, but you can also file off the sharp edges and puzzle it together with the rest of your worldview somehow.
That doesn’t really make sense to me. Do you mean the hypocrisy of people who follow those religions?
I tend to think that blaming outside forces for bad behaviour by people lets them off the hook a bit too easily - in particular it lets leaders off the hook far too easily - and disincentivises change because “I do X because Y makes me” rather than “I do X because I choose to”, which is the truth.
Religions might contain good teachings and bad teachings but, ultimately, people choose how they behave and so it’s the people who show hypocrisy.
Religions don't exist without the people. The scriptures have no narrative power if they are not told by people to people. The rites and traditions only serve to reinforce habits and pass themselves down throughout time to new people. The religion evolves with the people because keeping followers become the fitness function.
No religion knowingly offers its followers "bad teachings". Anybody who thinks a religion has "bad teachings" quickly becomes an impostor and gets pushed out. The self selection means that there are no "bad teachings".
Also, you are trying to pretend like the choice is only applied by the cognitive brain by the individual human at the time of an action. This ignores both group psychology and the role of habits / indoctrination.
The Catholic Church internal policies target the ages of 4-14 for indoctrination and habit forming. What 10 year old will resist their parents, resist their church authority figures, resist all of the teachings of thousands of years of their people, resist the "word of God", have the knowledge and self awareness to know the difference between God's voice and typical bipolar ruminations?
I don't think this is a "foundational story". I, for one, am a Christian and I have never heard of these people. I also don't recognize any "Saints"
The eastern Catholic churches are also in communion with Rome but have a far longer history of independence and also allow married men to become priests, even if they weren't married clergy before joining, which the AO doesn't allow: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Catholic_Churches
We also have Christian nationalists in the US, for a more politically active flavor.
What do you mean by "local religion"?
> some interpretation of the Vedic texts, which doesn't actually entail all that much
If you studied the Vedas you would know why this issue exists in the first place. The Vedas talk of One Supreme Brahman who should be given Havis during a Yajna. The dispute between the sects is on who the Supreme Brahman is identified as. Every name in the Vedas is but a name of the Supreme. Vyasa composed the Brahma Sutras to unravel it. But then, as is the case with Dharmics, we have around 30+ commentaries on the Brahma Sutras itself. This, coupled with commentaries on Prasthanatrayi as well as interpretation of Puranas created sects.
All of them come within the umbrella term of Hinduism as all of it is Dharmic and native to the Indian subcontinent.
And not just with the classic Greek/Roman Gods. The similarities between Pandora and Eve, the Flood myths[0] like Deucalion and Noah; there are so many appropriated stories in the Abrahamic religions (probably others, but most familiar with Greek and Abrahamic ones) I don't even understand how these days religion is taken seriously given the historical pattern of appropriation and cleansing of the more fantastical shape-shifting, creature, magic-spell type bits.
In Bible we have stories, songs, history (that cruel part), teachings, prophecies and straight jurnalists like researched relations of Someone life and words.
Think about that: Church know that some stories are older myths and did not removed them from official books. Why ? Becouse religion is much serious thing that some industrialized system. At least for Christians. And "history" can only help to true seekers - why censor the truth, what someone did ? Learn in what "context" things was done and how it looks on others doings background and what was later and what you can learn from all of that. But someone with bad intensions can't be bothered to think much...
And about shape-shifting :) a) if omnipotent God exists than He can do miraculous things, right ? b) that magical creatures are usually described in books that are stories or prophecies not historical one. In case of doubt look a) ;)
Anyway: there is _insane_ amount of wisdom in Christianity teachings, even for atheists.
And if God is True then finally everything He done will be explained as good and just - logic :) There is 'if' there because faith is important. IMO without faith there is no free will - humans are not like angels that just know and decide only once...
"A Christian is a person who believes in Jesus Christ and follows the religious teachings of Christianity."
Some are good people. Some are bad. All are Christians, so long as they have this core, defining belief system.
If you want to bicker over what constitutes a "good Christian", you might have some basis - but you're arguably in the wrong forum.
The Orthodox churches may want to have a word with you. Especially the orthodox church in India founded by Thomas (one of the Jesus' 12 disciples)
What does this even mean? That the Catholic Church has some special authority by dint of having been around a long time? Also, what does it even mean if the Catholic Church has been around for a long time when so much about it (including the line of Popes) has been interrupted? Feels a bit like Theseus's ship.
> BUT it is still here and the closest thing we have to the way early church fathers practiced Christianity than any of the 30,000 protestant churches lol.
By what metric? Catholicism added _a whole lot_ onto traditional Christian teaching (Saints, the pseudo-divinity of mary, the infallibility of the papacy, relics, purgatory, etc) that many protestant denominations have stripped away. One could easily argue (and many do) that these protestant denominations are closer.
I'm not sure we can find an objective answer, or that finding one is even useful beyond ego stroking.
Neither did the Buddha
I consider myself lucky to live in a time and place where I'm not forced to participate or financially support a religion.
---
Now, if you don't want to sound like a random person on the internet talking about something they don't understand, a good book to look at is "Caught in the Pulpit: Leaving Belief Behind". (Co-authored by Daniel C. Dennett, one of the "big four" atheists and Linda LaScola.)
The book is based around interviews with clergy who've become atheist. It exposes the different kinds of social and power structures that exist within common religions. I distinctly remember reading about a Hasidic clergy member who has a secret atheist club in his community, but they all love their community so much that they would never leave. I also distinctly remember an Episcopalian minister who's "trapped" in a conservative church where the elderly parishioners still believe, even though he doesn't, nor does official church doctrine require him to.
The book humanizes the power structure to the point where you realize it exists because of social momentum and peoples' desire for a social support system.
https://www.amazon.com/Caught-Pulpit-Leaving-Belief-Behind/d...
This made me laugh. Thanks for not letting me fall unassisted into such an overpopulated trap. ^_^
> People form religions, the power gets abused, they form new ones, the power gets abused, rinse, lather, repeat.
Zeal in general and religious movements in particular are useful. Power imposes its order on anything useful in the exercise of power. States adopt religions, religions adopt armies, people change religions.
Lather, rinse, syncrete, repeat.
The individual manifestation of religious feeling of a hermit and his favourite cactus is in the main not what gives the "great religions" of today their greatness.
> the book humanizes the power structure [...] it exists because of social momentum and peoples' desire for a social support system.
To be sure, community centres have existed wherever humans have formed community.
I suppose we can agree that our species was living in groups quite early in its evolutionary journey. Group living and pooling resources are fundamentally advantageous survival strategies. But there is order even in such humble groups.
Individuals may agree or not on what they believe. A rapid survey of the present or of any other time/place in history shows that they often disagree. Sometimes with weapons.
Humanised or not, the power structure serves a few main purposes. Among which: imposition of order, economic management, and (in many examples) military support. The power structure expands to meet the expanding needs of the power structure. Which may even result in people praying for its healthy continuance.
I can see how Islam being designed as a state religion can be tied to power structures. Perhaps there is an argument that Hinduism supported feudal social structures. Other than that, the idea that religion is closely tied to power structures seems to be questionable and weakly supported. Was shamanic belief tied to the power of chiefs in ancient tribes? I don't think so. Buddha was a prince but it seems tenuous to say that buddhist monks somehow supported royal power in the East. I could go on. . .
Because the article explains the origins of the saints as Christianity coopting the story of the Buddha. The headline isn't wrong or misleading, you just made yourself look foolish by embracing ignorance.
>> Individual Western historians have noted the similarities between the story of Barlaam and Josaphat and the story of the Buddha for centuries – for example, it’s mentioned in an early printed edition of Marco Polo’s travels from 1446. But it was only in the mid-19th century that the saints’ tale was generally acknowledged as being derived from the Buddha’s.
-- Alan Watts
https://www.organism.earth/library/document/four-ways-to-the...
My (completely unfounded) theory is that monasteries have historically been the refuge of those with autism and their comorbidities.
I mean "bad teachings" from the point of view of an outsider who might not agree with the religion. What I'm saying is that even where that's the case, it's the people following the religion choosing to do so and choosing how they behave.
And I'm not pretending anything: I know full well about group psychology and indoctrination. But it still boils down to people being people, and people being hypocritical.
> The Catholic Church internal policies target the ages of 4-14 for indoctrination and habit forming.
Exactly. And what did I say about letting leaders off the hook? Grown adult church leaders choosing to indoctrinate, brainwash, and sometimes exploit children. It's people. Again. It's all people.
Sooner or later we all have to grow up and take responsibility and accountability for our own actions.
No, that phrase is just filler. And IMHO it's basically wrong. Certainly if the author want to show that Christianity is more likely than other religions to import ideas, the article has a lot more work to do than point out one myth. Literally everyone does this.
I'm just going to repeat: there is nothing notable or unique to Christian appropriation of myths and stories from other religions. It does it at least as much as everyone else does, and everyone does it everywhere. So trying to tie this uniquely to Christianity seems needless and confusing. The deeper point is more interesting and more important.
Is there anything in that paragraph you'd like to argue about?
"...in the realm of religion, it specifically denotes a more integrated merging of beliefs into a unified system, distinct from eclecticism, which implies a selective adoption of elements from different traditions without necessarily blending them into a new, cohesive belief system."
"It provides an opportunity to bring beliefs, values, and customs from one cultural tradition into contact with, and to engage different cultural traditions."
I don't think the historical record shows that. The speed of information changed little from the time of the Nicean council to the council of Trent, yet the primacy of the pope was very much established by the latter, even if it was only formalized in the 1st Vatican council.
Even to this day church politics plays out over many months and years (just look at the recent SSPX situation which was a slow-mo train wreck), the speed of information doesn't seem very significant.
Dutch people really handle hierarchy poorly and prefer "flat" organisation style. Anyone who acts as the boss doesn't last long.
There's a rich history of panentheism in both. Ibn Arabi, probably the most famous Sufi scholar was known for defending it ("[God] sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man"), Meister Eckhart and the Rhineland mystics held similar views etc. Of course that often got them into hot waters with Orthodoxy but it certainly existed and continues to exist.
A lot of these traditions are much more flexible than whatever is the dogma or institutional version of the time suggests. David Bentley Hart's writing on Vedantic traditions and Christianity is worth reading
This is literally how Islam got to places in Asia and spread. It was through Sufis who acted as initial points of contact.
> A lot of these traditions are much more flexible than whatever is the dogma or institutional version of the time suggests.
This is only so when it comes to missionaries in each religion. Be it Evangelists saying Vishnu is Avatar of Christ (we literally have Christ idols shaped like Vishnu with multiple arms and sitting on a lotus in a Church in India), Sufis singing Krishna is same as Allah or heck even ISKCON claiming Christ is an Avatar of Krishna /Vishnu. That does not make "traditions flexible". It's just a cheap tactic to increase followers/harvest souls. These converts are typically fluid in their own convictions and can easily be swayed one way or the other based on reasons unconnected to the Religion/Dogma/Philosophy itself. Reasons could range from political, monetary to finding fame/popularity within a new sect/group/cult/ideology.
Very few are seekers of Truth.
That's not mutually exclusive. You're certainly right that religions spread this way, but it's also what they become. Christians today are Pauline Christians more than anything else. The abolition of circumcision and dietary restrictions, household code, 'render unto Caesear' etc were obviously tactics to convert Gentiles, but once you had all the gentiles, you had genuinely altered what the faith is. They never went back to the radicalism of Jesus.
Buddhism is also an interesting case. By the start of the 19th century there wasn't strong Buddhist practice in India. When it was rediscovered it was heavily shaped by China, Tibet and Japan and had done a round about turn.
Same with modern Evangelicalism and Catholicism. Very successfully spread through indigenous cultures in LatAm and Africa but now the influence goes the other way, with real impact on the churches, just look at the last two popes. I don't think this deserves to be categorized as cheap tactic, that's very much what religion is.
I'm sure you are right that many/most Hindus would consider this incompatible with their belief system (and even more sure your average Christian would think he was missing the point of accepting Jesus as his Lord and Saviour), but this sort of syncretism definitely has been attempted and found its converts, probably rather more of them than Akbar's attempts to combine Islam and Hinduism.
I'm also reminded of this mostly unrelated comedy sketch :) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8tw7LIykvBw
For central authorities of the Catholic Church, and Hindu theologians, this is all heretical, but the Catholic Church allowed for flexibility around traditions as it expanded. One big example is that many of what are considered Christmas traditions in northern Europe (the Christmas tree being an especially prominent one) are hangovers from traditions that predate Christianity.
That's exactly the point of why he even attempted to have this conversation with you. It was to convert you to Hinduism.
I explain it here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49620794
This man has definitely been to Kerala.
The historical prominence of the slave trade in both the Christian and Islamic worlds should make it quite clear that it was hardly "unthinkable" but instead very rationalizable.
Rigid systems of social power hierarchy and oppression based on ancestry, perceived race, and occupation (which is a lot of what the worst part of caste is) were very much features of Christian and Islamic societies, even if their religions didn't codify them.
The "Hindu" caste system results from the history of social hierarchy in the Indian subcontinent. What you are calling "Hinduism" is a relatively recent construct that has emerged as a response to religions with more centralized/uniform doctrines and institutions. There are belief systems categorized under this "Hinduism" label that overtly reject caste systems (and have done so for centuries), while others overtly uphold it.
Other societies also have caste systems, just differently rationalized than the one present in some belief systems that fall under the "Hindu" banner. I'm not excusing any of these systems whether Hindu or not - they are all a blight on humanity - but they are also a feature of many societies whether or not they use the particular term "caste".
Some clear examples of excluded/oppressed castes outside of the South Asian context are the Burakumin in Japan, the al-Akhdam in Yemen, and the Mestizos with more indigenous ancestry in Latin America.
All window dressing imo over the real morals at play under all these layers that society puts on top and frequently changes by the decade. What do liberals and conservatives want out of their countrymen for example? The same exact thing ultimately: good people who might lend them a cup of sugar and won't club them over the head for one. Of course propaganda has blinded people on either side into vilifying what is at the end of the day a fungible human with the same basic needs and wants as most other social animals. At the most base we have the moral principles a stray dog seeks out in either fellow dogs or a sympathetic human: let me find someone who won't fight me off and may in fact share things and help me out while I do the same for them.
I believe that the bible teaches the purpose of life is to glorify the God of the universe. If a religion's "purpose of life" is about "interacting with other humans, and not about God" then we have opposing "purposes". I saw something similar about Secular Humanists: they claimed they align with the bible "Love God and love your Neighbor"... but they don't believe God exists, so they - on a fundamental level - can't follow thay commandment.
Having made friends of enemies, I may or may not depending on the persons development in future, and that's my point. There are many people who would agree that just because someone had done something bad in the past does not warrant continued future negative engagement. But there are also people who will make a lifelong arch-nemesis when getting cut off in traffic.
In the same village model, you'll see villages who will excommunicate people over relatively minor things, some only in severe cases, and some who will offer paths to redemption in all but the most severe of cases. A church might give you a life time ban for skipping a meeting, wearing the wrong clothing, talking to the wrong people, or any of a list of what an average person might call small transgressions.
Homophobes will taunt and even shun their friends if their friends talk to queers, god forbid befriend a fag. Christians will admonish those who talk to declared Satanists, those who listen to satanic music, etc. Some christains are homophobic, some are not. Some Satanists are homophobic, some are not. Some Christains don't mind homophobia, some can't tolerate it. So what's the core good life shared between all of these match-ups? Does the one universal good life include gay people and communication with gay people? How is that there can be these groups of people who are happy to hate on gay people if the one universal good life does not include bigotry? And you can't say that the one universal good life includes bigotry because there are many people who cannot abide such a stance toward anyone.
Even if you abstract all the way to "all in groups are wary of their outgroups" you're still not saying anything entirely true because their are in fact groups of people who believe that all are genuinely equal in all things. Do I personally? No. I believe that there are bad people and that there are people that humanity would be better off without. But, I also know that there are people who do not believe that there are bad people, only bad actions - that everyone is elligible for equality at some point.
You didn't actually point to anything substantial; you kind of hand-waved at what you presumed "eastern religions" posit, but there are literally hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies that do in fact have very different attitudes towards the divine and basic metaphysics. The very first sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya--the Brahmajāla Sutta--has a section where the Buddha directly enumerates and engages with 62 of them present just in his neck of the world. Sectarianism, too, is as prevalent in the East as it is in the West. None of these things are monoliths. The world is large.
I honestly don't think you have the wisdom, the charity, or breadth of experience to understand or appreciate anything that I've written. And that's okay. You have a very real and meaningful investment in dismissing a priori the claims that I'm making, which is entirely understandable, especially for a Catholic who takes their faith seriously, as it would be for anyone else whose beliefs are jeopardized by implication. That's exactly the firewall that I'm talking about.
I don't expect the firewall to fail, in any case, so don't worry there. Catholicism is lindy. And if that firewall ever does fall and any of what I've written is integrated into the Standard Narrative, I'm sure Catholicism will also adjust to it, just like they've done every other time it has happened.
In your previous post, you claimed something different:
>>> [T]here is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import from the east.
This is a different claim entirely.
Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'. One way we know this is by looking at its differences with eastern ideas. What would first-century Christianity make of the denial of diachronic identity (the self is an illusion), or the denial of the idea that God is personal? You accuse me of 'hand waving'. I'm not sure where I do this. Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?
There's quite a bit of mind-reading (in the CBT sense of the word) in your post that I don't really want to respond to because it doesn't advance the argument.
As far as I am aware, Christianity is the only non Indian religion to advocate for monasticism or asceticism. It's really only Jainism and Buddhism that advocate for it other than Christianity (Hinduism picked it up from Jainism and Buddhism).
That being said, your reaction is exactly what the guy above was saying was an issue.
You conflate Buddhism with Roman polytheism. Buddhism is not dogmatic. Buddha is a man who saw idolatry all around him and quickly determined it was ineffective and false. A core part of Christianity is that God needs to reveal himself. Being before Christ, Buddha would not have known about the resurrection or that such a thing was possible. He made some observations and literally said if he was wrong ignore him. While many modern day incarnations of Buddhism are dogmatic and some have descended back into the very superstition the Buddha advocated against, the core story of Buddha is complete the opposite of Roman polytheism.
Again we see the parallel with Christianity where a bunch of people were marginalized for advocating against Hindu Polytheism, with Buddhism eventually winning the support of the great empire of the time (the mauryans).
The existence of caste systems outside Hinduism doesn't change this either.
Some objects are red in and of themselves, while others can be made red by something outside them. Likewise, some beliefs cause people to act in certain ways, while other people may act in the same ways tangentially to, or even despite, their belief.
Mexico is interesting because it is a certainly a different catholicism than what is practiced elsewhere. Tell a devout old world European catholic about say Day of the Dead traditions and they will probably think its blasphemy. There is a lot of what amounts to local diety worship still as well, although they just label them as some patron saint of somesuch to preserve the veil of monotheism.
It’s worth noting that “monotheism” is a modern word. It was not a word used by theologians of the pre-modern era. The Bible is insistent that God is in some sense “one” or “alone,” and that you don’t offer sacrifices to other gods. People just thought that other gods were demons. It made a big difference to this point of view whether a sailor was asking St. Nicholas to help him get home safely or asking a demon for help, in the same way it makes a big difference whether you call the local mob or the municipal police when you have a problem. The latter are quite analogous to an angel/saint because police don’t have power or make laws in their own right, they are just servants of a higher authority (ultimately, the constitution). The mob, like the demon in the Christian point of view, are in disobedience to that higher authority or in direct competition/rebellion against it. There’s a really big difference even if both paths end with armed men with guns coming to solve my problem.
Want to make a Catholic mad? Tell them saints are just minor gods of the Christian pantheon.
That’s the whole idea though:
“God became man so that men might become gods,” -St. Athanasius
I'm old enough to remember being taught how America was settled by expanding into the vast wilderness of the continent, and that sometimes they had skirmishes with natives but they found them new places to live.
It turns out it wasn't quite as neat and tidy as suggested.
I read the entirety of 3m4r's posts in that thread and nowhere did I see any hint of such an implication
You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.
>Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written. If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.
>Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?
I do contest that -- specifically because proto-Rabbinic Judaism was specifically categorized as a monotheistic religion that was largely recognized and exempted from Roman suppression because of its connection with temple Judaism. That Christians were persecuted by the Romans was not solely due to their monotheistic (or rather anti-polytheistic) beliefs, but that it was rapidly becoming expressly a gentile and proselytizing religion.
In any case, you first argue (wrongly) that "eastern ideas" can't be syncretic to Christianity because of a lack of personal deity, then you argue that Christianity is unique and was persecuted specifically because it denied personal deities.
In one breath, you treat theism as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and “eastern ideas”; in the next, you treat religious exclusivity as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and Rome. But those are entirely different axes, and neither establishes anything about the historical provenance of the ideas under discussion.
I would really like to continue to be charitable to and engage with you, but you have a continued fixation on the Roman attitudes of 1st century CE as evidence of an argument based on what was happening in the Mediterranean world in the 2nd century BCE--again, entirely reasonable from someone catechized within the Church--and the ability for you to even provisionally evaluate my argument on its own terms seems insurmountable. You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue.
I think you presume that I am ignorant of Catholicism and the history of orthodoxy. I'm not. I was raised by a traditionalist father who ran around with SSPX back in the 80s and then the FSSP. I ceased being Catholic for the same reason Cardinal Newman said "To be deep in history is to cease being protestant." Well, it turns out that history is much, much deeper than Newman supposed and doesn't end with Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius.
If you honestly want to seriously engage with my position, here are the questions that would help clarify where we actually disagree. You obviously don't need to answer all of them if you don't want to (and there's a non-trivial possibility you won't even have read this far before noping out), but these are the substantive points I don't think you've addressed:
Where is your evidence that the Buddhist traditions relevant to this discussion posit that “the self is an illusion” in the undifferentiated sense you're invoking? Which Buddhist school, which period, and which text or tradition are you talking about? If you're going to use that proposition as evidence that Christianity could not have incorporated Buddhist material, you need to establish what Buddhist position you're actually comparing it to.
Likewise, what do you mean by “Buddhism denies that God is personal”? Which Buddhist traditions, which period, and which conception of God are you referring to? Why should the theological position of those particular traditions be treated as representative of “eastern ideas” generally?
How do you explain the independent emergence of a gender-inclusive monastic tradition in Christianity that so strongly resembles the general form of Buddhist monasticism found throughout its various sects, especially given that we have evidence of Buddhist missionary activity in the region predating the emergence of Christianity? If you think the resemblance is coincidental, what is your positive account of the parallel development? What historical mechanism do you propose produced the same unusual institutional configuration independently?
What is your explanation for the specific structural and narrative parallels between Christian ascetic literature and Buddhist material that predate or are plausibly independent of the Christian tradition? It appears you might have inferred that I was speaking about the content of Mark 7 and MN 55, but I wasn't. I was speaking specifically about the recurring structure found in both. I'm not asking whether Christianity ultimately gives those narratives a different theological interpretation. I'm asking what you think accounts for the historical similarities.
How do you account for the presence of Indian philosophical material in the Hellenistic world independently of Christianity? In particular, what do you make of the evidence concerning Pyrrho and the Greek encounters with Indian philosophers? If you reject the possibility of influence on early Christian intellectual culture, what is your explanation for why those demonstrable pre-Christian channels of transmission are irrelevant to the hypothesis?
If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?
> You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.
You wrote:
>>>>> The problem is that there is almost 2,000 years of culture and the metaphysical beliefs of well-more than half of the human population predicated upon their beliefs being entirely unique and an off-shoot of Judaism and not a fundamentally different syncretic import *from the east*.
This claim is predicated on the term "east" (in its philosophical sense) refering to something real. If it's impossible to associate concepts with 'the east', then your own assertion is as meaningless as mine.
In any case, the word 'east' (in this sense) can't be accurate in the way 'grass' or 'human being' can be accurate. It has multiple meanings, unlike them. But it doesn't follow from this that it has no meaning. One can assert things of 'the east', in the way that one can assert things of 'communism' or 'protestantism' or 'long-haul flight' -- other terms where one could argue over the meaning. If we can't assert things of the east, then we can't assert things of those terms either.
But we can assert things of these terms. There is a common agreement about what they mean that's sufficient for meaning to be shared. We can say 'Protestantism teaches salvation by faith alone', or 'Communism calls for the abolition of private property', or 'transatlantic flights are long haul', even though there may be some examples of all of these where the predications are wrong.
It's the same for the term under discussion. Most if not all of the meanings of 'the east' used in discourse today[0] contain the ideas I asserted (illusory self, etc). Therefore your argument -- that my assertion that certain ideas are 'eastern' is meaningless -- fails. Had it succeeded, it would have fatally undermined your main assertion.
>> Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?
> You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written.
Re-read your words I just quoted, which is what I object to, and which I keep trying to come back to. Is the association really "not relevant"? I have asserted that a) certain ideas are commonly and correctly associated with 'the east'; that b) said ideas are anathema to Christianity, in fundamental ways, and therefore c) your claim that Christianity is a 'syncretic import from the east' is false. That is pretty much my whole argument[1]. If you can show that either of my premises is wrong, you nullify my objection to your statement. It's not only relevant, it's central.
> If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.
I could easily deny that though. Only one tiny and very new sect believes it. You can't claim that about my assertions, you've merely claimed they're not relevant.
> You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue
I was responding to your point where you stated the opposite. The disagreement, or the dialogue, is over which belief is true.
> If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?
There is influence in a certain sense, clearly. But your statement is much stronger. You asserted that Christianity is a syncretic import from the east, not that it was influenced by it in some sense, which is obviously true.
[0] Remembering that words exist by convention!
[1] This includes my statement about the Roman persecutions. My point when bringing this up was to show that Christianity considered itself the only way for everybody, which also undermines your assertion that it's syncretic, and is also a major difference from the east. My point was not that monotheism or anti-syncretism was the cause of the persecution. I'm neither asserting nor denying this: it's not relevant to the discussion.
(EDITED slightly to hopefully improve clarity a bit)
I wish you well, and hope your faith grows to be as secure as St. Thomas Aquinas's before his death and not as Bellarmine's during his life.
One point I wanted to make in my original comment was that monotheism vs polytheism is not a helpful object category when talking about 2000 year old religions as their adherents understood it. This analytic category is a fairly recent invention. You can make this distinction if you want, but it will be of precious little use for actually understanding the people of the past.
It’s also not helpful to back-project contemporary understandings of Judaism back into the religious context of the 1st century. The idea that the messiah would be in some sense divine, or even that he would be YHWH Himself, is not purely an invention of the Christians, but was present in Jewish groups prior to Jesus. I would argue this has not even been entirely purged from all strands of modern Orthodox Judaism. This doesn’t even get into stuff like the Zohar/Jewish mysticism where you have 12+ special flavors of God.
All of these groups would have insisted that there’s one true God, but they would also have insisted that he had more than one hypostasis.” Romans at the time also believed that a single God could have different hypostases.* Nevertheless despite this agreement they accused the Christians not of being monotheists but of being atheists because the Christians alone refused to pay respect to any of the hypostases of any of the recognized gods.
The idea that Jesus is depicted as having some kind of separate agenda from His Father is also a very bizarre reading of the New Testament. Jesus’ relationship with The Father seems to be much more complex than that since he says The Son can do nothing Himself and that He only does what the Father is doing, that He and the Father are one, etc.
There nonetheless seems to be some kind of distinction between Them, hence the two thousand years of theological debate. If you want some sources on this type of thought prior to and parallel to Christianity, you can read the book Two Powers in Heaven.
If you pay any attention to Christian history, you would know that this goes back to the very founding instead.
Just want to correct a couple errors of fact here, by quoting from the sources that you're misunderstanding.
"And he withdrew from them about a stone’s throw, and knelt down and prayed, saying, 'Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.'" - Luke 22:41-42 (copied from https://biblehub.com/esv/luke/22.htm)
He doesn't want to suffer and die on the cross. Yet he chooses to serve the Father's agenda, not his own.
"I and the Father are one." - John 10:30 (copied from https://biblehub.com/esv/john/10.htm)
And note that, if you read just a few more sentences, you discover that this statement caused the Jews listening to him to pick up stones to stone him (for anyone who doesn't know, stoning was a method of execution: they intended to kill him). He asks (verse 32) why they want to stone him, and they reply (verse 33) that it's for blasphemy — "because you, being a man, make yourself God."
Finally, I want to address one other point in what you said:
> Christianity, if you ask anyone besides a christian, is polytheistic.
It's true that if you ask most people who are not Christians, most (not all, but most) will tell you that Christians worship three gods. But consider this: if you want to find out about Buddhist teaching, who would be a better source for explaining it to you correctly, a Buddhist, or a non-Buddhist? If you want to find out about Jewish teaching, who would be more informed about it, a religious Jew, or a non-Jew? (The word "Jew" is ambiguous, referring to both a religion and an ethnicity — so I use the term "religious Jew" to distinguish people who follow the religion from people who are ethnically Jewish but don't follow the Jewish religion). If you want to be well-informed about Islam, who would explain it to you better, a Muslim, or a non-Muslim? And if you want to understand what Christianity actually teaches, who's more likely to be correct about it, a Christian or a non-Christian?
P.S. To explain just a little further, the teaching of the Trinity is indeed one of the most complex teachings of Christianity to fully grasp, and there have been countless arguments and debates about it over the centuries. The council at Nicaea in AD 325, which formalized the Nicene Creed, did not completely settle that — some people continued to argue over the doctrine later — but it pretty well cemented the official church position. That the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit ("Holy Ghost" in older English texts, but "Holy Spirit" in modern English) are both three and one. The modern English translation of the Nicene Creed is probably worth quoting here (at least the relevant bits) so people can see what the actual teaching is:
"I believe in one God, the Father almighty ... I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ, the Only Begotten Son of God, born of the Father before all ages. God from God, Light from Light, true God from true God, begotten, not made, consubstantial [which means "of one being, of one nature"] with the Father ... I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life, who proceeds from the Father and the Son, who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified ..." (Source: https://www.usccb.org/prayers/nicene-creed, though there are multiple translations, e.g. the translation I'm most familiar with says "of one being with the Father" rather than "consubstantial with the Father").
And before I quit writing this P.S., I want to mention one kind of awesome story about the council of Nicaea. Which is the story about what St. Nicholas allegedly did there. (Yes, the St. Nicholas whose life inspired the story of Santa Claus). Sadly, the story is probably not true, since Nicholas's name does not appear in any of the lists of attendees that have survived... but it's an awesome story anyway. The story goes that Arius was standing in front of the council arguing his position, which was that Jesus had not existed eternally, but was created by God the Father at one point. (The famous phrase is "There was a time when he was not".) That part is certainly historically true. What is likely not historical is the rest of the story: that Nicholas got so mad at Arius's denial of the divinity of Jesus that he got up and slapped (some sources say "punched") Arius in the face.
Which leads to this historical-humor variation on a famous American Christmas carol:
He knows when you are sleeping,
He knows when you're awake,
He knows when you've denied the divinity of Christ,
So if you're an Arian, DUCK!
There are plenty of unique Christian traditions too that didn’t come from surrounding culture. The veneration of relics and body parts of saints in particular was considered grossly alien and offensive to the pagans of the time. It was deeply countercultural to have such veneration for pieces of a dead body and to go so far as to build your places of worship around them, to kiss them, etc. And as far as we know the Christians didn’t get this idea from contact with anyone else, they came up with it themselves. It’s deeply myopic to treat ancient people as devoid of creativity or agency.
My sense is that in the US and Canada settlers found a great deal of "apparently" uninhabited land, largely a result of the diseases that had swept through because of earlier contact, decimating the existing population.
My guess is that had disease not done its work, the European settlers would have found it much harder to displace the existing inhabitants.
If you're at all interested in looking into the topic more deeply, I'd highly recommend this paper, showing just how deeply transmission west into the Hellenic world occurred, including bilingual koine Greek and Aramaic translations of Buddhist material:
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345171245_When_the_...
There are possibly deeper, more controversial parallels--Naraka (Hell), punarjanman aka reincarnation (gennēthē anōthen or "born again"), Dhamma (Logos), the Triratna (the Trinity), dukkha/kamma (Khowba (חובא) -> opheilema/harmatia or debt/trespass), āpatti-paṭidesanā (confession), arhat (hagios or saints), etc. ad nauseam--but as you've seen, even provisionally entertaining these notions is beyond the ken for most in the West, whether academic, religious, or otherwise. Elsewhere in Buddhist thought there are also forms like Pure Land that end up resembling certain strains of later Christian forms, despite independent genesis.
But ultimately, whether my perspective is true or not, or whether the metaphysical claims between the traditions differ (they do, especially at this point in time), the right course of living isn't really that different broadly between the two traditions--focus on one's own conduct rather than others, do good for others in the world and not merely oneself, forgive others, and always keep in mind that there is a moral law in the universe that is inescapable in its consequences. If you struggle to do it yourself, find others pursuing the same goals, and you'll eventually find the way.