>>Just so you know, not all western Buddhists are New Agey.
Some of us practice the real thing. I’ll grant you that a
lot of them are. As are a lot of western Christians.
You can also check back and you will find that I did include “a lot of Western Christians” since Progressive Protestants make up a large portion of the Mainline Protestant denominations and most of the “hip, cool church” non-denoms.
And, as you admit, a lot of Buddhists are just as Humanist.
But, I guess its no longer safe to assume that people understand that when a person makes a general statement, they do not mean ALL members of the population being spoken of.
Scott Adams explains it best:
Watch the clip for the Absurd Absolute tell for cognitive dissonance that happens at ten seconds in. The scientist defines the opposition argument with the absurd absolutes “anything” and “everything.” Whenever you see your opposition create a strawman argument with absurd absolutes, it means you won the debate. You only see this behavior when the opposition has no response to your real argument; they have to transform it into an absurd absolute in order to have any response at all.
(http://blog.dilbert.com/post/160989114746/the-time-i-nudged-climate-scientists-into)
Yes, I saw your comments about humanist Christians. Sorry, it was my bad taking offense at your comment. It looked like a broad brush but that’s no excuse. My apologies!