“On a public forum… [it was] privileged, private.” No problem with these adjoining statements, no sir.

However, I’ve sad news to report: Johnnie Cochran has been dead since 2005.

Doesn’t matter if my comments were posted on a public forum or on the moon – it was a privileged, private, and COPYRIGHTED communication.

Oh noes! Look what I just did! I just reproduced another one of Kevin’s “copyrighted” communications that was posted on a public forum on the internet! Somebody get me Johnnie Cochran! Only the Chewbacca defense can save me now!

If I were you, I’d look a tad bit deeper into the doo doo

The only “doo doo”, as you so eloquently put it, is Intelligent Design creationism. I’ve looked into that deeper than I should have. It looks like you’ve been eating corn.

please, oh I am begging, PLEASE hire a lawyer to pursue this.

Yes, Kevin. And when you do, please tell us how much he charged you to tell you you don’t have a case.

Doesn’t matter if my comments were posted on a public forum or on the moon – it was a privileged, private, and COPYRIGHTED communication.

If I were you, I’d look a tad bit deeper into the doo doo you are looking to get yourself into by not removing this communication, IMMEDIATELY, excepts or not.

You have been duly notified that this is a copyrighted communication, and so don’t come whining to me (or the magpies who follow your every dribble on this web site) when the hammer comes down.

You’ve been notified.

Kevin Wirth

There are no significant scientific arguments for ID creationism.

There are no significant scientific arguments for ID creationism.

There I fixed it for you.

And all this talk of arms getting ripped out reminds me of a couple of episodes of Arrested Development.

This is what it breeds in the West. It’s one of the many reasons I agree with the Dalai Lama – Westerners, by and large, should not become Buddhists. I used to tell the lama’s nephew, a lama in his own right, “When Tibetan people practice Dharma, they become Buddhas. When Western people practice Dharma, they become crazy!” He found that highly amusing. The Tibetans thought I was “funny guy”.

But, yes, I get your point. You are comparing that to the Fundie Christian practice of enjoying the thought of nonbelievers burning in hell.

PL, a very important difference – the Tibetans don’t relish the idea. When they talk about compassion, they mean it. The Christians just use the term as a piece of jargon – a way to distinguish between “us” and “them”.

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this here before, but I have a history with Tibetan Buddhism, culminating in a recent three-year stint as house manager in a Tibetan monastic/teaching center (I think I might still have been there when I found this blog). Yeah, Tibetan clergy can be condescending (I don’t know that I’d use the term “smug”, but I’m sure there are nuances in their speech and body language I’m not getting), and FSM knows they piss me off royally, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say they actually relish the idea of anyone suffering. In fact, they’re genuinely horrified when they learn that Westerners believe God will send people to hell forever. The elderly lama with whom I lived once told me, “I would ask God, where is his compassion?” (again, he believes God exists, but doesn’t believe he has that kind of power, nor does he believe God would exercise it that way if he did).

Plus, in Buddhism (Mahayana Buddhism, the form to which Tibetan Buddhism belongs), the goal is to become a Bodhisattva, an enlightened being who could become a Buddha and step off of the wheel of birth and death, but who remains in order to work for the liberation of all sentient beings (by which they mean all animate life, not merely humans). As the number of sentient beings (depending upon whom you ask) is believed to be infinite, theoretically, the job never ends.

In Buddhism, the goal is to get everyone else saved. In Christianity, it’s “I’ve got mine, you get yours.” So, yea, in that way, it is preferable. Marginally.

On the other hand, some of the Westerners probably are smug. There’s a tremendous amount of fundamentalism among Western followers of Tibetan Buddhism. Just a whole lotta crazy. Seems to be a prerequisite.