Forget Zarathustra

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The great and sad thing about running who kills most posts contests is that you start counting how many great posts never got off the ground.

And yet:

We are told that Buddhism does not build in as a necessary module belief in a god or gods. That some Buddhists believe in a divine entity or at least in beings very like divine entities, but that Bujddhism does not look for uniformity on this.

That said:

Given a spiritually advanced serious Buddhist monk,

will we - 91, Awesomely Glorious, anybody - list him as a theist or an atheist?

So a monk who doesn't believe in a 'God'? I suppose it is possible that you could call him a spiritual Atheist. One can believe in the supernatural, I suppose, but reject the notion of Gods or believe it is unimportant (A 'Human' answer)

I haven't seen 91 here for a long time now that you mention it. Hope he's doing well

What does he describe himself as? I mean, frankly, the category scheme wasn't meant for such people anyway, so we'd switch schemas, but it really depends a lot because.... Buddhism isn't so uniform to allow me to say. The West has a very reduced perspective compared to the east.

If I'm not mistaken, while Buddha didn't really mention Gods in his worldview, he also didn't proclaim their non-existence. So this really is an "undetermined" case.

The sad reality is that Buddhism just like Taoism and Confucianism were slowly warped into religions by people who sought to control the power and wealth that a belief system brings.

Their rituals and prayers are adaptations of previous religions very much like most Christian rituals are adapted copies of rituals from previous belief systems... after all, its easier to convert a population if you preserve some of the status quo. People don't usually accept radical change in their beliefs hence its a necessity to slowly warp them into something else.

So in my opinion, these 'monks' are neither theists nor atheists. They are lobbyists.

Why is it often assumed that religions arise only so someone can grab power? Sure, there are examples - I will politely point no fingers.

But it seems the general pattern is someone starts a religion, people sign on, an organization arises, the organization begets a hierarchy and power structure because of the natural ORGANIZERS - the permanent secretaries, if you will. Then once it has some power structure and finances the GIMME POWER people come in and cuckoo it.

THEN people like IR and LP and II - super power people - say HEY - I can start a religion and make serfs and influence people.

Meanwhile the Quiet sneak off to be a spirituality emphasizing religion with no hierarchy. Until enough join to build an organization....

Depends on which type of Buddhist he is. A Tibetan or Pure Land Buddhist probably would be closer to a theist; a Ch'an or Zen Buddhist would probably be closer to atheist.

Exactly my point (in bold). A religion isn't a religion until it reaches 'critical mass' of members and associated wealth (needed to sustain its bureaucracy and its public relations/marketing systems).

Look at scientology for example. As crackheaded as it is, it begun as a philosophy (and I use the term loosely there) called dianetics... then when it had enough people that were giving it money they re-branded as scientology and begun a big marketing campaign that suckered in even more people... its a religion now because the law recognizes it as such but give it 50 more years and a million or so more people following it and it will become a socially accepted religion as well.

Scientology just like Christianity and Buddhism and any other organized religious system very early on attracts the power and wealth seekers into its hierarchy. I cannot think of a single religion that does not offer significantly improved living conditions, wealth, power and privileges beyond what a person born on a certain socioeconomic status can expect to have in his/her lifetime. From ancient times it is known that one of the best ways to move up in social status a person from the lowest rungs of society must either become a priest or risk his life in the military in the vague hope of rising in rank.

I personally deplore the organizationalist, motivationalist, and powergrabbing subsets of humanity.

Why I am a Green Monkey - or is that cause, not effect?

I had to google the name Zarathustra to find out who he was and he doesn't seem to have anything to do with Buddhism, rather he wrote the text that Zoroastrianism is based on. I don't know anything about it so I can't comment on that.

I think you left out a step here where the organizers become so wise in their own sight that they start to believe that anyone who disagrees with them on a point of theology is a heretic. Then members of the religion who agree with them become lazy and simply ask them what they believe rather than use brains God gave them. That is how they get the power, then everything goes to hell.

Well, it's either Zoroastrianism or Nietzsche (Nietzsche wrote a book labeled "Thus Spake Zarathustra") I don't get how the reference ties in, but I suspect the Nietzschean reference because of philologos's other reference "Also sprach ryan93", which imitates the German title for Thus Spake Zarathustra, substituting Zarathustra for "ryan93".

I likely can't guess, and wouldn't care to attempt honestly.

Nobelcynic - AG is on the right trail. Frankly, in choosing titles I tend toward the irreverent and irrelevant since tie title rarely contributes any content and is just there as a POSSIBLE attrention grabber.

This is a tendency held over from trends in professional article titles in late 60s Linguistics.

To the meat - given what I have seen, the "disagreement is heresy" is not a separate step, but is inherent in the mental structures of the Organizers. The Powergrabbers revamp the ptinciple as "disagreement is treason".

Seeing this as automatic, I did not build it in as a separate step. Though in the life of a given organization it often seems separate, because the takeover is not instantaneous. Until the Organizers have a clear majority and occupy the chair, the disagreement/heresy equivalence may not be apparent/

Understood, the title of the topic has nothing to do with what you wanted to discuss. I am still not clear though on what you did want to discuss. Is this an expansion in scope of the A question of Hierachy thread, which never got off the ground after two attempts, discussing the power structure of any religious organization not just Christian ones?

Not quite, though related.

At one point in my teaching career I did a course brainstorming with stufdents on problems in Language X - REAL problems for which I hsad no answer. One [not so hot] student came up with a great suggestion on one of them.

The hierarchy was trying to explore the tension between ordination whether or not a sacrament versus the priesthood of all believers. Looking for useful ideas. I tend to lean toward the all believers - my antiorganization anarchist makeup. But the other has OT and NT scriptural support.

This one - a matter of classification - hey, I do taxonomy.

Which feature is more important in classification? The fact that our Buddhist monk does not postulate a divine entity TECHNICALLY says atheist by normal meaning - but he has an important religiosity which throws him well outside the normal atheist camp. I lean toward belief system and ritual as trumping the godlessness, but then I would want to replace the terminoilogy.