Comment by Kenneth Montville D.D. on January 19, 2011 at 8:54pm

Haha that's funny, Flower. Jon lives in what I like to call Pennsyl-tucky.

 

Then again, I grew up in a small town in Massachusetts and encountered very similar experiences when I first stopped believing.

Comment by Kenneth Montville D.D. on January 19, 2011 at 9:02pm

Jon, the Qur'an is difficult. It isn't like the Bible that has been openly translated again and again for several hundred years. Your translation is probably fine... but then again it may well be complete shit. I say it is probably fine regardless because even in Arabic nearly every passage in the Qur'an is horribly vague and requires commentary to understand. (hint: it's because it may well have been written in Syriac and not Arabic but then transcribed into Arabic later by someone who didn't recognize the difference).

 

If you think this is hard wait until you hit Buddhism... you'll need to be picky about what you read, so feel free to ask me as I considered myself a practicing Rinzai Zen Buddhist for several years. It will be hard because of the sheer amount of writings they have, I have seen estimates nearing 80,000 pages of scripture. Not what you'd call light reading.

Comment by Jon Heim on January 20, 2011 at 4:11am

I was browsing amazon.com and found a book called The Dhammapada. It's annotated so I thought I'd give that a read. What is you're opinion on that?

Comment by Jon Heim on January 20, 2011 at 4:20am

That's not the first time I've heard pennsyltucky. The small town I live in might as well be in the south. except we'd be lucky if three people who where not white lived here. true story...I looked up the demographics. lol

Comment by Kenneth Montville D.D. on January 20, 2011 at 6:52am

The Dhammapada is good. I used to own a copy myself, though admittedly I was not a Theravada Buddhist so it wasn't part of the canon in my sect. It differs greatly in structure from a majority of Buddhist scripture, but is a very interesting read.

Comment by Mr Good Without God on January 20, 2011 at 4:39pm

I grew up in the small town of Purchase Line, Pennsylvania and the nearest big "town" is Indiana. I have experienced much of the same thing. It really is sad.

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