quote:
Originally posted by HeruStar:
2. What makes you assume the ancients were any more enlightened?
Because I've yet to see a Buddha-like or Jesus-like person.
3. What makes you assume the original intepretation was more "correct"?
Because of my answer to number 2.
I find your response to this questions particularly interesting. It appears that you require empirical data in order to supersede enlightened individuals for whom I would contend that you do not have empirical data for in the first place.
You have not seen the Buddha or Jesus, so how do you know what the Buddha or Jesus were like? How do you know that your conception is valid? This is part of the problem with interpretation. In some sense, all there is is interpretation. I am not sure if you can ever get to the really real.
If you say, for example, that you are basing your knowledge of who the Buddha or Jesus on a text, why do you believe the text? Why do you believe the author, why do you believe that the author recorded what they experienced or where told faithfully? How do you know that even if they did, you would be able to comprehend it given the difference of time, space, language, culture, consciousness? Are you reading the original manuscript or is it a copy? If a copy, how can you trust the accuracy of the transmission? Are you reading it in the original language, and if not, why do you trust the translations.
I know that this may seem trivial, but just these few issues, not to mention many, many, more makes fundamentalism untenable to me.
From a historical perspective, a strong case can be made for fundamentalism being a modern phenomenon. If you read ancient commentaries or expositions on sacred text, one will not find anything comparable to the fundamentalist mindset. The actual use of the term is only about 100 years old and was given to a group of American Christians who had problems with the "higher criticism" from Europe. They published a series of essays that together where called
The Fundamentals: A Testimony to the Truth.