From: gpalo@digi.lonestar.org (Gerry Palo)
Newsgroups: alt.atheism
Subject: Re: atheists & agnostics
Date: 8 Jan 93 19:17:24 GMT
Organization: DSC Communications Corp, Plano, TX

In article <1993Jan4.182758.24281@spectrum.xerox.com> eradm@wbst845e.xerox.com writes:
>In article mRXuwB3w165w@mantis.co.uk, mathew@mantis.co.uk (mathew) writes:
>> patc@extro.ucc.su.OZ.AU (Pat Caldon) writes:

          [Caldon's  deleted]


> Reincarnation is a little more complicated. There is no truly definitive view of
>reincarnation that I am aware of in either Buddhism or Hinduism. One thing
>common to both, however, is that one must be "human" to release one's self from
>the cycle of rebirth. Hindus believe one can reincarnate as a lower or higher
>life form (from plant to demi-god). It is far less clear in Buddhism, except that there are "
>heavens" and "hells" (the six realms of existence) one can be reborn in
>according to the type of karma one accumulates in a lifetime. The common factor in both views
>, however, is that these heavens and hells are _not_ permanent. When one's bad
>(or good) karma expires, one winds up being reborn as a human. The only release from
>karma and rebirth is full enlightenment _during_ a human lifetime.

>This is the most significant dividing line betweeen Hinduism/Buddhism and Christianity,
>Judiasm, and Islam. According to H/B, one _must_ reach enlightenment while still
>alive, which does away entirely with the "faith" element.

Here is another angle:

Christianity does not exclude either reincarnation or enlightenment in this life.  The 
rejection of reincarnation by the Church during Christianity's first two centuries created
a logical dilemma that forces things that must happen as a process of growth over many earth
lives either to this present life or to eternity after death.  But the whole of Christian
teaching emphasizes the realization of the Kingdom on earth - and ultimately the emergence
of that Kingdom, not in a removed heaven, but in a new heaven-permeated earth.

The most important difference between Christianity and Hinduism/Buddhism, in my opinion, is the
idea that through the deed of Christ, which reached material manifestation at a specific point
in history, the earthly existence now becomes healed of its inherent suffering.  Where Buddha
rightly saw that the only way out of suffering was to purify oneself of all desire and break the
wheel of incarnation, the uniting of the Christ impulse with the body of the earth began its
transformation, so that the new earth grows, seedlike at first, over the millenia to come.  The
idea is that God (or the Gods) created Man for the earth and the earth for man.  So in a way
Christianity is a further fulfillment of Buddhism, in that the realization of the Kingdom really
does take place on earth.  Without this "injection" of the Christ impulse into the earth, the
consequences of the sickness of earth and of human existence on it would have been that earthly
man would at some point no longer be able to re-establish a connection with the the spiritual
world, the world of his origins.  You might say also, that this impulse made future human
incarnation and the human development afforded thereby possible.

As for faith, it allows not only the pupil on the path, but also every human being in every
station of life and karmic evolution to partake of the healing power that leads to enlightenment -
and to the creation of a new heaven and earth and a new human body fit for that earth.  What 
is experienced as faith in one life can lead to actual enlightenment in a later one. 

In a nutshell, the essence of Christianity lies, not only in the overcoming of sin (which Buddhism
and also Judaism and other religions offer to a degree) but in the overcoming of death.  As the ritual
of a certain Easter service has it, "Christ is arisen as the _meaning_ of the earth."  This 
can be seen as an evolutionary step beyond the conceptual view of Hinduism that the earth, as 
maya, is devoid of meaning, and the Buddhist impulse of will that strives, therefore, to
free one from it.  What the objective facts are is a legitimate topic, and I don't intend to
argue it.  But I wanted to provide a conceptual expansion to the relationship of Christianity
to Hinduism/Buddhism.

(I suppose atheists will object to this as being entirely inappropriate to the newsgroup,
but I note that alt.atheism is the only group to which it is posted, and I am only resspon-
ding to what's there).

Gerry Palo (73237.2006@compuserve.com)