Sordid

Eh, it’s still based on completely unfounded, unsupported, and nonsensical ideas. Whether or not there’s a personal god doesn’t make any real difference IMO.

Rebirth sucks.

I never understood that part. Maybe the next life does suck, but so what? I’m not going to be there to experience it, and the next guy won’t have any memory of me, so who cares? Reincarnation as a concept never made sense to me. You get a new body, your memories get erased… what is even left of you?

You could say the same about Christianity. “Life sucks, but you can be happy if you think about the fact that the suffering is temporary.”

Reincarnation is not part of that. That’s what I’m talking about, in case it’s not clear.

Christianity is “Life sucks and will always suck unless you submit to what we say and only what we say, otherwise you suffer forever”

And Buddhism doesn’t say that? The only difference is that Christianity adds “in hell” at the end of that sentence, Buddhism adds “in the cycle of death and rebirth”.

Even if I did believe in that, I still wouldn’t care. Trying to destroy your soul by reaching nirvana so that it can’t be reborn seems to me akin to trying to destroy your carbon atoms so that they can’t be recycled into other organisms’ bodies. I mean… you could, I guess, but why on earth would you care about that?

True, but whether or nor the suffering is caused by a personal god or by impersonal cosmic forces doesn’t really make any practical difference. Both religions claim, without any basis in fact, that the suffering is eternal and that they are the only way out.

That’s not what the term means in Buddhism, though, and reaching spiritual enlightenment doesn’t prevent it.

Eh… that depends on which particular sect you’re talking about. Some lean more heavily in to the supernatural than others.

Of course. Because otherwise rich people living a life of leisure might think life isn’t so bad after all and they wouldn’t mind reincarnating to live it again.