I'm creating this poll because I think there is something to the accusation of the euphoric edgelords on this board that it's currently too focused on issues in Christianity, and I'd like to provide an alternative that's not their Bush-era movement-atheist preening.
For the unfamiliar.
Personally, I have a mixed opinion of Dharmapala. I don't think very highly of the content of Buddhist Modernism because it strikes me as typifying unwarranted embarrassment about the religious content of Buddhism in favor of philosophical concepts that in many cases can be just as easily found elsewhere. I also definitely don't like the fact that his Buddhist revivalism and his Sinhalese nationalism were as closely intertwined as they were. However, I appreciate his positive articulation of South Asian culture in an environment of British political and cultural domination, and I think within the context of Buddhism his attempt to transmute a "pan-Asian" religion into a truly "global" one was an admirable effort.
I think he's lean FF, but a few years ago I would have said lean HP and I reserve the right to change my opinion back to lean HP in the future.
I'd like to see more non-Christian threads, but given the demographics of Atlas, I think the accusation is a bit unfair. The vast majority of our board is either Christian, or ex-Christian or was raised in a historically Christian country, so its reasonable to expect that (with a few exceptions for unusual cases like yourself) our working knowledge of religion will be limited to Christianity and/or a few secular positions.
To use this thread as an example, the person sounds interesting, but I don't feel remotely qualified to comment since I am ignorant of Buddhism (and basically every religion besides Christianity and Islam) beyond a comparative religion level.
Poll
