Reply #19: It's not Christianity that is at fault . . .

[Richard D]

. . . look where it started and spread to. It was assimilated by the Roman empire and made a tool for the imperialistic methodology of Rome. Then it spread to Europe via the (un)holy Roman empire. That whole part of the world (not counting the Druids and some others) was amazingly cruel and barbaric to start with. The real message of Christ was lost and subverted to allow for the crusades, the inquisition, etc. Not a whole lot has changed.

The inner original message, that of "the Kingdom of Heaven is within" changed to one of trying to create the kingdom of heaven without. So there is in general a great absence of inner contemplation. What inner contemplation there is in Christianity involves listening for the voice of God. We can easily see in the fundamentalist movement that the voice of god that they hear has nothing to do with the voice of God that Christ was speaking of.

Contrast that with the contemplative religions like Buddhism where internal silence, opening the way to real inner peace is the goal. As long as this is truly practiced, we're not going to see Buddhist fundamentalists killing others for their beliefs simply because belief isn't important and is recognized as just another level of the chatter of the mind.