Where does "Do unto others ..." lead?

[The Liturgist]

Is the validity of a religion something verified by the numerical preponderance of saints? Somehow, that logic doesn't seem right. Reducing the question of religious validity to a numbers game trivializes the nature of religion.

Forgive me, but if you feel that way, perhaps you shouldn’t have made an objective falsifiable statement based on equivalence of quantity:

For every St. Francis or Mother Theresa in Catholicism, you can find the Buddhist equivalent.

Essentially, you said C = B, where C is the total number of Catholic saints and B is the total number of equivalent Buddhist saints. This can be verified at least from the Christian side objectively, and if you were to pick a particular Buddhist sect and provided a quanitifable standard, you could then do the math.

Now, my view is that quality and not quantity matters, so I would be thoroughly unimpressed with Buddhism even if they did have more people in their hagiography, but the problem is, you took us in the direction of objective quantifiable statements.

What I would suggest is that you avoid making statements that relate to an objectively defined quantity where you regard the argument as qualitative. For example, you could have said “Buddhism also has pious saints who have done good works”, which is a qualitative statement which cannot be reduced to a simple mathematical equation, and it also would have been a statement I would have agreed with in principle, since it lacks any hint of the offensive idea that Buddhism is morally equivalent to Christianity.

 

[Xeno.of.athens]

What you see as cruel is more aptly called indifference. Buddhism doesn't teach a deontological moral ethic. And should we judge a religion by the most base behavior? I am afraid that Christianity would fare no better. Just as there are many nominal Christians, there are also many nominal Buddhists, for whom it is primarily a cultural identity and source of ethical normativity.

For every St. Francis or Mother Theresa in Catholicism, you can find the Buddhist equivalent. There are Buddhists that opened orphanages or cared for lepers, similar to Catholic saints.

I think we differ or may differ about this matter because for me cruelty is cruelty regardless of the religious context. It is not somehow better to be cruel as an ordained bishop nor is it better to be cruel because you're a Buddhist monk in Sri Lanka. And Catholicism is not made holy, just or good because Mother Teresa lived when many Catholics can be censoriously cruel to divorced or homosexual people. Christianity isn't good because Christians are good - and God only knows how much I pray and wish Christians were universally good. It is Christ who makes Christianity good, not the bible, nor Tradition. Revelations from God though these last mentioned are they are words and actions in a liturgical setting without power in themselves to make anyone good. Goodness comes from God working in and through people who willingly work with God to do good in the world.

So, karma is a cruel teaching precisely because its explanation for congenital suffering as guilt in some past life. It is cruel for its explanation of temporal suffering as guilt for deeds done.