[quote]Here is what I think he means (and I may be WAY off base here).
If the crusades hadn’t happened, Buddhism would have had a bigger influence of Christianity and taken it to a new level. By warring with the Muslims, Christianity was influenced by and became more like the very thing it was supposed to be fighting.
By launching the crusades, Christianity lost the chance to develop into something better.
I THINK that is what he meant. Am I right? [/quote]
yup[/quote]
I unno.
[/quote]
How did the Crusades prevent Christianity from becoming like Buddhism? I don’t see a connection, but I may have misinterpreted your idea.[/quote]
I’m not sure, since Christianity and Buddhism don’t run on the same tenets.
[quote]Here is what I think he means (and I may be WAY off base here).
If the crusades hadn’t happened, Buddhism would have had a bigger influence of Christianity and taken it to a new level. By warring with the Muslims, Christianity was influenced by and became more like the very thing it was supposed to be fighting.
By launching the crusades, Christianity lost the chance to develop into something better.
I THINK that is what he meant. Am I right? [/quote]
yup[/quote]
I unno.
[/quote]
How did the Crusades prevent Christianity from becoming like Buddhism? I don’t see a connection, but I may have misinterpreted your idea.[/quote]
Because as much as people don’t like to admit it, Christianity and Islam are different versions of each other. By being distracted by each other for a prolonged amount of time, they both began to converge again from the divergence provided by their split from Judaism. The nasty traits Islam had picked up started to rub off on mainstream Christianity and vice versa. Has there been no Crusades, it seems more likely that either of the two would have come into contact with other ideologies and picked up something there.
I disagree with the implication that it would have been purely positive though.[/quote]
What nasty traits did they pass on to each other exactly? Islam still remains set in its belief that Allah is the one true God and Muhammad is his prophet and Christianity still remains set in its belief that Jesus was the Christ sent by God as promised in the Old Testament. True they both claim heritage out of Judaism and are monotheistic, but I don’t see where either one influenced the other.
[quote]spiderman739 wrote:
Not my idea, just what I thought the author was trying to say. By going off on crusade, Christianity was thrown into conflict with Islam which resulted in Christianity becoming more similar to Islam.
Had they not gone on crusade to the east, Christianity may well have been influenced by Buddhism and been better off for it.
I am not saying I agree with this or even think it. This is just my interpretation of what that author was offering as an alternative historical “what if…”.[/quote]
Sounds like what I see a lot of Christians doing, they are Buddhists by nature, only Christian by name. It’s a schism current in Christendom.
I have a theory, and I have heard it before. Islam was pulled from the Catholicism, a very corrupted version of Catholicism. A few points of similarity (at the start, and a little bit current).
Catholicism
Jesus, recognized as a greatest prophet.
Mary, recognized as greatest woman.
Hell and Purgatory.
Call to charity to poor and less fortunate against social norms.
Islam
Jesus, recognized as a greatest prophet, only second to Muhammad.
Mary, recognized as a greatest woman, only second to Muhammad’s daughter.
Hell and Purgatory.
Call to charity to poor and less fortunate against social norms.
That is not enough points to show that Islam was a corrupted copy of Catholicism, however there seems to be a correlation.
[quote]Kanada wrote:
(in my view the Western Roman Empire will remain as long as the Pope exists. Now its called the EU.)[/quote]
Interesting idea. So with this in mind what level of corrolation would there be with the current conflicts in the middle east if any? (in your opinion)
I mean do you believe, as iv heard people flaunt this as a kind of conspiracy theory recently, that there is still a religious power struggle at the heart of the current situation between east and west in say iraq and afghanistan?[/quote]
Sounds as plausible as the U.S. and Russia are still in the Cold War.
[quote]Here is what I think he means (and I may be WAY off base here).
If the crusades hadn’t happened, Buddhism would have had a bigger influence of Christianity and taken it to a new level. By warring with the Muslims, Christianity was influenced by and became more like the very thing it was supposed to be fighting.
By launching the crusades, Christianity lost the chance to develop into something better.
I THINK that is what he meant. Am I right? [/quote]
yup[/quote]
I unno.
[/quote]
How did the Crusades prevent Christianity from becoming like Buddhism? I don’t see a connection, but I may have misinterpreted your idea.[/quote]
Because as much as people don’t like to admit it, Christianity and Islam are different versions of each other. By being distracted by each other for a prolonged amount of time, they both began to converge again from the divergence provided by their split from Judaism. The nasty traits Islam had picked up started to rub off on mainstream Christianity and vice versa. Has there been no Crusades, it seems more likely that either of the two would have come into contact with other ideologies and picked up something there.
I disagree with the implication that it would have been purely positive though.[/quote]
I wonder how many Jews and Muslims would agree with the statement that Islam is a split off of Judaism. I know a lot of Jews that will agree that Christendom is a split (or is an extension) of Judaism, but I’ll put five on it that they say no on the Islam thing.
i will try and answer some of your questions tomorrow.
i read Levi Strauss in the original french text and i will have to translate more extracts to explain the possible “connection” he is speaking about.
for now, i will just say that he is speaking about Christianity here (ie the West, or “the Old World”), not about christianism itself.
it’s more about civilization than religion.
but even on religious matters, there’s some connections which exists between christianism and buddhism which don’t exist between christianism and islam.
christianism and buddhism have meditative prayer, eremitism and monachism in common, for example.
historicaly, Christianism and Buddhism both started as a reaction against a religious legalism. a shift from orthopraxy toward orthodoxy.
islam on the other hand is first and foremost an orthopraxy and a religious legalism.
[quote]Brother Chris wrote:
I wonder how many Jews and Muslims would agree with the statement that Islam is a split off of Judaism. I know a lot of Jews that will agree that Christendom is a split (or is an extension) of Judaism, but I’ll put five on it that they say no on the Islam thing.[/quote]
Of course they’ll lie about it, nobody wants to be associated with a death cult.
[quote]kamui wrote:
Christendom and Buddhism both started as a reaction against a religious legalism.
[/quote]
Where do you find this? The Church was started by Jesus Christ, who didn’t get rid of the Law, but fulfilled it. Buddhism came before Christianity, so which legalism did they spring from?
And, there is no such word as Christianism, you have Catholicism, Christianity, Christendom, and Protestantism (including, but sometimes separate from, schism).
[quote]
Where do you find this? The Church was started by Jesus Christ, who didn’t get rid of the Law, but fulfilled it.[/quote]
i never said that he get rid of the Law.
i was refering to pharisee’s legalism.
[quote]
Buddhism came before Christianity, so which legalism did they spring from? [/quote]
brahmanism.
both buddhism and christianity separated themselves from an ethnic religion and became universalism.
on the other hand, islam is not really an universalism. even if it is not linked to an ethny, islam is still directly linked to a particular language : the arabic language.
[quote]
And, there is no such word as Christianism, you have Catholicism, Christianity, Christendom, and Protestantism (including, but sometimes separate from, schism). [/quote]
i stand corrected.
i didn’t knew that this word was a recent and pejorative neologism
since the word “christianisme” exist in french, i was wrongly assuming that “christianism” existed in english.
my apologies, if i offended someone using this term in my previous posts.
Christianity, Islam, and Judaism are all branches of the same tree. Not matter how much they may not like it, it is true.
They share a lot of the same prophets and early/basic tenets.
The simplest way to describe the difference is that, from an Islamic point of view, all the other earlier prophets failed to get their message across or were misinterepreted/misunderstood.
I suppose you could argue that Islam broke off from Christianity as much as you could argue that Christianity broke off from Judaism.
@Makavali and Brother Chris - What did you mean by “death cult”?
About the Pharisee’s Legalism, how do you define legalism?
That is beside the point, if Jesus did not get rid of the Law, and added to the law, stricter laws even, how was it a reaction to the Pharisee’s legalism? It was not, it was a reaction to the hypocrisy of the Pharisees. They followed the Law externally, but not internally. The Pharisee’s were very good at acting holy, they sucked at being holy.
Do I have to remind you of the Council of Jerusalem, where they argued over if they Christians had to become Jews first in the sense that they had to circumcise themselves and go through bar mitz, &c. Which most of that stuff we still have in different forms today in the Catholic Church.
Judaism is universal as well, they just decided to circle the wagons and keep to themselves. Christians have their particular linked language, Latin…Jews to Hebrew.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all profess the same faith…the faith of Abraham…sort of. However, to say that Islam is included on the tree with which the Church was grafted on to (which I am guessing that is where you go the branches on a tree thing from) is a little far fetched. We only have to point to Islam conquering Christian lands and Hamas, which even Arabic Christians are not safe from, let alone the Jews.
Christianity, Judaism, and Islam all profess the same faith…the faith of Abraham…sort of. However, to say that Islam is included on the tree with which the Church was grafted on to (which I am guessing that is where you go the branches on a tree thing from) is a little far fetched. We only have to point to Islam conquering Christian lands and Hamas, which even Arabic Christians are not safe from, let alone the Jews.[/quote]
They all sprung from the same point, hence they are related. It’s like saying you’re not related to your sister despite having the same birth mother.
that’s actually a pretty good definition of legalism.
clearer than the one i proposed (orthopraxy without true orthodoxy).
[quote]
Judaism is universal as well, they just decided to circle the wagons and keep to themselves. Christians have their particular linked language, Latin…Jews to Hebrew.[/quote]
yes, but it’s not the same thing.
Islam teach that the Qu’ran was directly revealed in arabic and that arabic is therefore a sacred/divine language. the language of God (via Gabriel).
that’s why islamization require arabization. and that’s why muslims see translation of the Qu’an as highly problematic.
[quote]Here is what I think he means (and I may be WAY off base here).
If the crusades hadn’t happened, Buddhism would have had a bigger influence of Christianity and taken it to a new level. By warring with the Muslims, Christianity was influenced by and became more like the very thing it was supposed to be fighting.
By launching the crusades, Christianity lost the chance to develop into something better.
I THINK that is what he meant. Am I right? [/quote]
yup[/quote]
I unno.
[/quote]
How did the Crusades prevent Christianity from becoming like Buddhism? I don’t see a connection, but I may have misinterpreted your idea.[/quote]
Because as much as people don’t like to admit it, Christianity and Islam are different versions of each other. By being distracted by each other for a prolonged amount of time, they both began to converge again from the divergence provided by their split from Judaism. The nasty traits Islam had picked up started to rub off on mainstream Christianity and vice versa. Has there been no Crusades, it seems more likely that either of the two would have come into contact with other ideologies and picked up something there.
I disagree with the implication that it would have been purely positive though.[/quote]
I wonder how many Jews and Muslims would agree with the statement that Islam is a split off of Judaism. I know a lot of Jews that will agree that Christendom is a split (or is an extension) of Judaism, but I’ll put five on it that they say no on the Islam thing.[/quote]
Nope. Islam is a sect of judaism. Give me five dollars.
Well, whether you agree that Islam or Christianity is right or not, are we going to let this thread devolve into a religious debate or keep going on discussing the Crusades?