A question to John About Eastern Religion.
A few weeks ago I started watching your videos. They are truly sensational, but I think one item is left out. The Far East. It seems that most of your videos are about more Western religions, like Islam and Christianity. I'm really curious to know what you think about Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, ect.(I know there are a few typos, I didn't take the time to look them up).
Some religions are worse than others. By "worse", I mean the behavior that a set of beliefs will inspire. As Sam Harris has noted, as we believe, so we act and certain beliefs are inherently dangerous. As religions show themselves to be destructive, inhibiting or otherwise unhealthy for either individuals or society, we should spend more efforts exposing them as immoral or absurd and try to help its followers to break free.
In the last section of chapter 7, I discuss why Islamo-Christianity is so inherently dangerous. The belief in a devil and in salvation means that these Abrahamic religions can't live and let live and they can be expected to, at best, bring social and technological stagnation to the societies where they're dominant.
As Sam Harris has noted, as we believe so we act. Whenever I hear about a religion's beliefs, one of the first thing that goes through my mind is, "What kind of behavior can we expect if someone really takes these views to be the absolute truth?"
I don't spend much time on the eastern religions simply because I don't see them as dangerous.