If you're at all interested in looking into the topic more deeply, I'd highly recommend this paper, showing just how deeply transmission west into the Hellenic world occurred, including bilingual koine Greek and Aramaic translations of Buddhist material:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/345171245_When_the_...

There are possibly deeper, more controversial parallels--Naraka (Hell), punarjanman aka reincarnation (gennēthē anōthen or "born again"), Dhamma (Logos), the Triratna (the Trinity), dukkha/kamma (Khowba (חובא) -> opheilema/harmatia or debt/trespass), āpatti-paṭidesanā (confession), arhat (hagios or saints), etc. ad nauseam--but as you've seen, even provisionally entertaining these notions is beyond the ken for most in the West, whether academic, religious, or otherwise. Elsewhere in Buddhist thought there are also forms like Pure Land that end up resembling certain strains of later Christian forms, despite independent genesis.

But ultimately, whether my perspective is true or not, or whether the metaphysical claims between the traditions differ (they do, especially at this point in time), the right course of living isn't really that different broadly between the two traditions--focus on one's own conduct rather than others, do good for others in the world and not merely oneself, forgive others, and always keep in mind that there is a moral law in the universe that is inescapable in its consequences. If you struggle to do it yourself, find others pursuing the same goals, and you'll eventually find the way.

I wish you well, and hope your faith grows to be as secure as St. Thomas Aquinas's before his death and not as Bellarmine's during his life.

You're still doing the exact same thing. "Eastern ideas" is a leaky set and faulty abstraction. You have pointed to no actual bounded idea or ideology within that set. You proceed to attribute two ideas--the illusory self and non-theism--to that set, again without referent to anything.

>Am I wrong to claim that the ideas I listed are associated with the east? Does the undoubted fact that there are hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies undermine the claim?

You're wrong to claim that association is in any way relevant to what I've written. If I said "Christianity believes that Jesus visited North America" it would be rightly seen as the words of someone who had so little understanding and charity to the concept and diversity of Christianity that it would fall into the "not even wrong" category.

>Do you agree with my point that Christianity "was persecuted for three centuries precisely because it refused to be syncretic -- the Romans were happy to tolerate additions to their pantheon but couldn't abide Christianity's claims to exclusivity"?

I do contest that -- specifically because proto-Rabbinic Judaism was specifically categorized as a monotheistic religion that was largely recognized and exempted from Roman suppression because of its connection with temple Judaism. That Christians were persecuted by the Romans was not solely due to their monotheistic (or rather anti-polytheistic) beliefs, but that it was rapidly becoming expressly a gentile and proselytizing religion.

In any case, you first argue (wrongly) that "eastern ideas" can't be syncretic to Christianity because of a lack of personal deity, then you argue that Christianity is unique and was persecuted specifically because it denied personal deities.

In one breath, you treat theism as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and “eastern ideas”; in the next, you treat religious exclusivity as the relevant dividing line between Christianity and Rome. But those are entirely different axes, and neither establishes anything about the historical provenance of the ideas under discussion.

I would really like to continue to be charitable to and engage with you, but you have a continued fixation on the Roman attitudes of 1st century CE as evidence of an argument based on what was happening in the Mediterranean world in the 2nd century BCE--again, entirely reasonable from someone catechized within the Church--and the ability for you to even provisionally evaluate my argument on its own terms seems insurmountable. You've a priori stated more than once "Christianity is not 'a syncretic import from the east'" which already shows that this isn't really a dialogue.

I think you presume that I am ignorant of Catholicism and the history of orthodoxy. I'm not. I was raised by a traditionalist father who ran around with SSPX back in the 80s and then the FSSP. I ceased being Catholic for the same reason Cardinal Newman said "To be deep in history is to cease being protestant." Well, it turns out that history is much, much deeper than Newman supposed and doesn't end with Polycarp, Clement, and Ignatius.

If you honestly want to seriously engage with my position, here are the questions that would help clarify where we actually disagree. You obviously don't need to answer all of them if you don't want to (and there's a non-trivial possibility you won't even have read this far before noping out), but these are the substantive points I don't think you've addressed:

Where is your evidence that the Buddhist traditions relevant to this discussion posit that “the self is an illusion” in the undifferentiated sense you're invoking? Which Buddhist school, which period, and which text or tradition are you talking about? If you're going to use that proposition as evidence that Christianity could not have incorporated Buddhist material, you need to establish what Buddhist position you're actually comparing it to.

Likewise, what do you mean by “Buddhism denies that God is personal”? Which Buddhist traditions, which period, and which conception of God are you referring to? Why should the theological position of those particular traditions be treated as representative of “eastern ideas” generally?

How do you explain the independent emergence of a gender-inclusive monastic tradition in Christianity that so strongly resembles the general form of Buddhist monasticism found throughout its various sects, especially given that we have evidence of Buddhist missionary activity in the region predating the emergence of Christianity? If you think the resemblance is coincidental, what is your positive account of the parallel development? What historical mechanism do you propose produced the same unusual institutional configuration independently?

What is your explanation for the specific structural and narrative parallels between Christian ascetic literature and Buddhist material that predate or are plausibly independent of the Christian tradition? It appears you might have inferred that I was speaking about the content of Mark 7 and MN 55, but I wasn't. I was speaking specifically about the recurring structure found in both. I'm not asking whether Christianity ultimately gives those narratives a different theological interpretation. I'm asking what you think accounts for the historical similarities.

How do you account for the presence of Indian philosophical material in the Hellenistic world independently of Christianity? In particular, what do you make of the evidence concerning Pyrrho and the Greek encounters with Indian philosophers? If you reject the possibility of influence on early Christian intellectual culture, what is your explanation for why those demonstrable pre-Christian channels of transmission are irrelevant to the hypothesis?

If your position is that these similarities are insufficient to establish influence, what evidence would you regard as sufficient to establish influence in principle? And, applying that standard consistently, which of the existing pieces of evidence fail it, and why?

You didn't actually point to anything substantial; you kind of hand-waved at what you presumed "eastern religions" posit, but there are literally hundreds of eastern religions and philosophies that do in fact have very different attitudes towards the divine and basic metaphysics. The very first sutta of the Dīgha Nikāya--the Brahmajāla Sutta--has a section where the Buddha directly enumerates and engages with 62 of them present just in his neck of the world. Sectarianism, too, is as prevalent in the East as it is in the West. None of these things are monoliths. The world is large.

I honestly don't think you have the wisdom, the charity, or breadth of experience to understand or appreciate anything that I've written. And that's okay. You have a very real and meaningful investment in dismissing a priori the claims that I'm making, which is entirely understandable, especially for a Catholic who takes their faith seriously, as it would be for anyone else whose beliefs are jeopardized by implication. That's exactly the firewall that I'm talking about.

I don't expect the firewall to fail, in any case, so don't worry there. Catholicism is lindy. And if that firewall ever does fall and any of what I've written is integrated into the Standard Narrative, I'm sure Catholicism will also adjust to it, just like they've done every other time it has happened.

>To what extent should one trust a statement that a program is free of Trojan horses? Perhaps it is more important to trust the people who wrote the software.

https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~rdriley/487/papers/Thompson_1984_Ref...

Earlier today, I was listening to Evangelical Christian Radio while doing errands (my phone is broken and I live deep in Red America) and the pastor, Alistair Begg, was making the argument that the synoptic gospels are totally unique in what they are. The format is unprecedented. They're not biographies. They're not systematic theology. It's just a direct witness to Jesus Christ. And so on. Therefore, they're historically valid and true, etc.

But if you have read the Pali Canon or other collections of sutras and agamas, it's almost blindingly obvious that the structure of the pericopic episodes found in the synoptic gospels aren't really unique at all.

As a random example:

From Majjhima Nikaya 55 (trans. Thanissaro): I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha, in Jīvaka Komārabhacca’s mango grove. Then Jīvaka Komārabhacca went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “Lord, I have heard it said that ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action.’ Those who say, ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action’: Are they speaking in line with what the Blessed One has said, are they not slandering the Blessed One with what is unfactual, and are they speaking in line with the Dhamma so that no one whose thinking is in line with the Dhamma would have grounds for criticizing them?”

Compared to say, Mark 7 (trans. NIV):

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

And so on and so forth. The parallels don't end there, but I've probably gone on long enough of a rant. And this wouldn't even be the first time something like that happened in the Greek world. Pyrrho very likely did something very similar. Plus, the phenomena has modern equivalents as well. Look at how many mindfulness courses and therapy interventions in the West just file the serial numbers off of Buddhism (e.g. CBT, ACT).

So yeah. The pieces are all there, but literally be damned by others if you put them together.

However, anyone who has more than a passing familiarity with the history of early Buddhism, the Therapeutae, and the religious developments of the 1st century BCE/1st century CE can't ignore how improbable the independent development of the latter's practices are, and how influential they became to various groups in the Middle East that later claimed they arrived at them independently.

It's actually kind of sad, that Brevik effectively stole the basic design of a FOSS game and commercialized it, but the end result is very much a better game for it.

To wit, Angband is supposedly the fortress of Morgoth, but it's an empty mine where the enemies are blobs and ants for any n levels. Diablo fixed this by actually gradating the dungeon as strata rather than the same level type over and over again. They likewise reduced the monster types to thematically fit. In Angband you can still encounter level 1 monsters on the 100th dungeon level

Angband had one set of artifacts (random artifact sets came later). There were and are very few that actually appear before well into mid-game. Diablo I did this, discovered that it was pretty boring and added in rares and sets in Diablo II that were accessible immediately.

Angband decided to have big loot that was dropped by unique monsters, but because the drop rate was too low and the unique list too small, made "vaults" of rooms that are loaded with artifacts. Diablo II just allowed you to grind uniques with decaying drop rates, as well as adding in super monsters and chests.

Angband is 100 levels of sameness. Diablo I cut it down to 16, if I remember correctly, whereas Diablo II took the 100 level formula and broke it up into three difficulties and made it a linear adventure rather than only a descent. And even though you repeat it three times, there's enough time between repetition that it feels fresh.

Diablo II did the exact same thing with base items as well. In Angband, there's a dagger (1d4). From dungeon level 1 to 100, a dagger will only be 1d4. Diablo II gave you three tiers of base items that actually made using them feasible.

In Angband, gold becomes useless because the stuff you can buy in town is pegged to level 1 beginner gear. Diablo I had level scaled gear gambling and Diablo II made tiers of cities with scaled equipment and also included gambling.

In Angband, you can haul around 99 potions of various tiers of healing. In Diablo I/II, you are capped to what can reasonably fit into your inventory, with rapid access limited to belt size.

There are dozens if not hundreds of other decisions that were the right ones to make that Diablo I/II made that Angband didn't that makes Angband look like an archaic dinosaur that deserved to have its lunch eaten.

Now, Angband is still being updated, but instead of making the type of choices that Diablo made, they've been just "streamlining" it and bugfixing. The ID game is almost completely gone, you no longer sell gear in town by default, and the majority of players skip the middle 70 levels of the game.

I recently added in needed quality of life improvements to a fork of Angband like DCSS-style autoexplore and tab-combat (no one seemed to actually try it) but the game needs a drastic overhaul to coopt all the improvements that Diablo I/II made on the town-dungeon-sell-loop game so that the game's player base doesn't die off completely. Currently, the only two *band games with sizable player bases are Sil-Q (a tightly designed "modern" and Tolkien-faithful Angband) and FrogComPosBand (a kitchen-sink variant), but Angband's is all but dead.

Unfortunately, the current maintainer and grognard player base want to keep the design fixed roughly at the norms of 1992 with a cleaner code base. So it goes I guess.

Angband: The game that invented epic loot: http://homebrewhomunculus.blogspot.com/2021/05/the-game-that...

My fork: https://github.com/3m4r/angbandv