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  • Did Buddhism become a major religion by the quality of its truth? I am doubtful ...

    • Your doubts are well-founded. Buddhist religious violence is very much a real thing.

      • Right, but my understanding is that historically Buddhism did not spread through violence. My point was more that religion can spread for reasons that aren't either violence or truth.

        And Buddhist violence is mostly a result of British colonialism and the rise of nationalism, rather than something about the religion itself (whereas Christianity more directly encourages violence, especially against heathens, Muslims, etc.).

    • I disagree with the whole premise of this post as well, but yeah the early history of the spread of Buddhism actually does contain a lot of this. The emperor Ashoka, who ruled most of India at one point, spread Buddhism across his empire by force, which was a major factor early on in its trajectory. Buddhism and Christianity actually have pretty similar early histories, complete with councils to determine doctrine, early spread among lower classes, and eventual adoption as state religions of powerful states. Even today there is still a lot of sectarian violence committed by Buddhists, particularly in the Myanmar/Burma civil war.

      A lot of atheists in the west think of Buddhism as being more of a moral philosophy than a religion but that's not really true. Buddhism has gods and demons and heavens and hells, and rules one has to follow. It is often said that Buddhism doesn't believe in "God" but this is kind of misleading because there are definitely beings pretty much everyone would agree are gods even if they are technically mortal or are seen differently, such as the Buddhas.

      • Ashoka converted to Buddhism because of his experiences with war, and only did so after conflicts ended. I'm not sure this would really count as spreading Buddhism with violence, but I get that it's a bit like violence which resulted in an emperor taking power who later converted to Buddhism, so Buddhism is getting second-hand benefits from the violence that was committed before (though not to spread Buddhism directly, the way colonialism spread Christianity through violence directly).

        And yes, I think the contemporary sectarian violence is a good example of Buddhist violence, though I'm not as familiar with historical examples.

        And yes again, Westerners have a poor concept of Buddhism, it's a religion like any other - it was a sect of Hinduism, and has its own complicated cosmology and beliefs that are broadly incompatible with science. There are Buddhist modernist apologists (see: What the Buddha Taught by Walpola Rahula) who argue that the historical Buddha did teach a belief system that is compatible with contemporary Western beliefs, but this relies on cherry-picking and ignoring the majority of what Buddhism actually is in the world, i.e. it fabricates a new kind of Buddhism from a narrow selection of scripture. It's mostly a response to colonialism and a form of assimilation that tries to take the upper hand, and a rather successful one in that it has played a role in Buddhism being uncritically adopted in the West, especially by psychologists, scientists, and industry (like Jon Kabat-Zinn's Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, which claims to be secular while promoting Buddhist soteriological goals).

        Can you imagine if a "secularized" version of Christian prayer was being promoted to treat insomnia, depression, stress, etc., that is essentially what's going on currently.

        If anyone is interested in learning more:

  • Christianity became a major religion by first generating mass appeal among the lowest class and then winning the support of key figures within the highest class. The class contradiction of the proletariat and aristocracy was (somewhat) reconciled through articles of religious faith that promised egalitarian utopianism to those that played nicely within their respective rolls.

    The meme is overly simplistic, as it neglects the prevailing systems of violence predating Christianity. Systems which Christianity promised relief from - first by way of its evangalized utopianism and then by its capacity for resolving contradictions between classes which expanded the military and economic power of its adherents.

    Later iterations of Christianity, Islam, Mormonism, and more baroque cult faiths like Scientology have repeated this pattern while the earlier iterations stagnate and calcify around a permanent gentry class. It isn't the Truth or the Violence that gives these religions its rapidly growing pool of adherents, but the promise of upward mobility and economic expansionism.

    These faiths fail when alternative social structures outperform them. One religion replaces another when the growing congregants create more opportunities to join the prelate class and rise above one's inherited role in society. Capitalist institutions supplant church institutions when more people can join these large multinational management structures than can join the religious ministries (and church institutions infiltrate capitalist structures when religious denomination dictates one's managerial ceiling). Socialist institutions replace capitalist ones when state bureaucracies outperform private enterprises and party politics expands to encompass more of the proletariat.

    "Truth" only matters in so far as individuals can realize a better standard of living. "Violence" only matters when participants can harvest their higher standards of living at their neighbors' expense. But the root of success in all these institutions is the speed and efficiency through which they incorporate more unaligned people into more (perceived) prosperous conditions.

    • "Proletariat"

      While I do not endorse the Marxist view of history, I have to say that there was no proletariat in antiquity according to Historical Materialism. Slave societies had slaves, not the proletariat.

      • Sometimes words like this take on a more general meaning, like how "bourgeois" is used sometimes to imply association with the economic elite rather than specifically a middle class between peasants and aristocracy ... it's not necessarily wrong to classify slaves or the lower classes as "proletariat" in a general sense for the same reason, the term is just being used in a more generic way.

      • Slave societies had slaves, not the proletariat.

        Fair enough.

        Point being, Christianity spread first and fastest among Middle Eastern slave populations. The violence inflicted on slave Christians was the same violence that had been inflicted on pagan and monotheist minorities in ages past. Christians were simply better at organizing into opposition, which freaked out the Pagans, which heightened the divide between wealthy masters and increasingly rebellious slaves, which fueled civil wars and ultimately toppled the smaller insular, sclerotic military cults ruling Rome up to that point.

        Along the way, Christian social networks became a ladder by which the lower classes could climb into higher station. And Constantine claiming the imperial crown was the apex of this early Christian revolution.

  • I honestly don't think this is true, I think it's the savior part that made it successful.

    Say you're a shitty person by stealing, lying, slept with married women and being a con man. If you can repent in your older years and all is forgiven by god, that releases the guilt.

    In my mind, guilt is the emotion of control for most major religions. If you give rules that if you break are super "wrong," but actually human nature (like sex), you will be able to control the masses. The religion alone can release the guilt that the religion made up.

  • Not by the quality of its truth but by the quantity of its violence.

    Very true, but don't disregard the quality of its truth. I'd say that most of the claims of miracles were used to justify the violence. And both can be dropped in favor of the core truth.

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