[Vision2020] More than one path to salvation

[Andreas Schou]

Ralph --

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The Torah isn't too big on the concept of Heaven,
except in the cases Ezekiel and Enoch.

But everytime you bring this up, you ignore Judaism as it's been
practiced for the past 2000 years. The concept of Heaven has been an
explicit part of Judaism since at least the Babylonian captivity. It's
certainly present in the Talmud. And every time you bring it up, it's
to draw a negative contrast with Christianity.

You make exactly the same mistake with Buddhism, and for exactly the
same reason: you confuse the actual practice of a religion with the
standpoint of its authoritative texts, specifically to draw a negative
contrast with Christianity.

You're right that the Buddha of the Pali Sutras was more concerned
with the temporal suffering of humans than the fate (or even the
existence) an indivisible, immortal soul. But you elide the actual
practice of the religion. In this case, the "pure form" of Theravada
Buddhism is seldom practiced outside a monastic context: in its main
geographic area in Southeast Asia, it is almost invariably overlaid on
ancestor-worshipping or spirit-venerating hedge religions. This
necessarily requires an afterlife, or at least a "spirit world."

-- ACS

On Tue, Jun 24, 2008 at 8:37 AM, Ralph Nielsen <nielsen at uidaho.edu> wrote:
> This survey fails to account for religions in which there is no
> promise of eternal life after death, as in the Theravada tradition of
> Buddhism, which is practiced in Sri Lanka and Thailand, and in the
> Hebrew religion of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament.
>
> In both of these traditions there is no such thing as an eternal soul
> that survives death. However, popular Buddhism adopted the idea of
> reincarnation, but with ultimate cessation of this process as the
> ultimate goal.
>
> In the Hebrew religion of the Bible the idea of an eternal soul that
> survives the body is specifically mentioned only once in the Hebrew
> Bible (Daniel 12:2-3). Daniel is also the latest book in the Hebrew
> Bible. Its prophecies are what Bible scholars call "retrospective
> prophecy."
>
> In the Torah/Pentateuch there is not a hint of an afterlife. God
> himself made this crystal clear, "Then the LORD God said, 'See, the
> man has now become like one of us, knowing good and evil; and now, he
> might reach out his hand and take also from the tree of life, and eat
> and live forever" (Genesis 3:22). So God sent the man and woman out
> of the garden of Eden and placed the cherubim with flaming sword to
> prevent them from getting back in and eating of the tree of life. God
> had never intended humans or animals to live forever. We were made
> from the dust of the ground (Genesis 2:7, 19) and when we die we will
> return to the dust from which we were made (Genesis 3:19). Here we
> have no idea of an eternal soul. We are products of the planet earth
> and to earth we will return.
>
> This religious idea is widespread around the world. Most people don't
> need to be bribed or threatened with eternal life in a heaven or a
> hell to live morally with their fellow humans.
>
> Ralph
>
>
>
> [Vision2020] More than one path to salvation
>
> Scott Dredge sdredge at yahoo.com
> Mon Jun 23 11:45:14 PDT 2008
>
> <http://www.time.com/time/nation/article/0,8599,1817217,00.html>
>
> Americans of every religious stripe are considerably more tolerant of
> the beliefs of others than most of us might have assumed, according to
> a new poll released Monday. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life
> last year surveyed 35,000 American, and found that 70% of respondents
> agreed with the statement "Many religions can lead to eternal life."
> Even more remarkable was the fact that 57% of Evangelical Christians
> were willing to accept that theirs might not be the only path to
> salvation, since most Christians historically have embraced the words
> of Jesus, in the Gospel of John, that "no one comes to the Father
> except through me." Even as mainline churches had become more tolerant,
> the exclusivity of Christianity's path to heaven has long been one of
> the Evangelicals' fundamental tenets. The new poll suggests a major
> shift, at least in the pews.
>
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