Ask Americans what their religion is, and nearly 1 in 3 say this -- none. That’s according to the U.S. adults surveyed by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research.

Mike Dulak grew up Catholic in Southern California, but by his teen years, he began skipping Mass and driving straight to the shore to play guitar, watch the waves and enjoy the beauty of the morning. “And it felt more spiritual than any time I set foot in a church,” he recalled.

Nothing has changed that view in the ensuing decades.

“Most religions are there to control people and get money from them,” said Dulak, now 76, of Rocheport, Missouri. He also cited sex abuse scandals in Catholic and Southern Baptist churches. “I can’t buy into that,” he said.

  • @afraid_of_zombies
    5•9 months ago

    You are picking and choosing. You choose the few verses where Siddharth told you to verify what he said but you are ignoring the other parts where he instructed a brain breaking meditation practice that if followed would make you believe you grasp it. Nothing new or original. It is basic cult programming. For a man who supposedly demanded that people check his work not a single one of his followers has bothered to critique it in 25 centuries. Or if they did they were buried in a shallow grave somewhere.

    Every religion does this. Enough chanting, singing, group activities, repetitions, shaming of heretical thought and eventually you will believe that you have the key to the universe and lo it is exactly the doctrine you were taught! What are the odds that the perfect way to exist just happens to be the way you happened to study?

    The greatest extreme is of course in Zen strain. Concentration for endless hours on a paradox, not at all like meditation on the Trinity, right?

    Way to deflect btw. As if I don’t know what Samsura is. Noticed you didn’t answer my question about the Heart Sutra. We both know why.

    Basically you can’t accept that there really is not much of a difference between the two religions. The Buddha was never just a man, he was a cosmic being that came to earth according to the stories. You are following India’s Jesus. Just the Pali itself is twice the length of the KJV Bible and of all those hundreds of pages you pick out a few choice sentences making this celestial being sound a bit sciencey. You ignore all the stuff he got wrong, like his cosmology and geography, and expert shop to find the stuff he got right. You completely brush away the religion itself is practiced and I am firmly convinced that if you went to say Cambodia you would try to correct a monk with an “umm actually”.