Pretty interesting, IMO.

"3. The Church regards with esteem also the Moslems. They adore the one God, living and subsisting in Himself; merciful and all- powerful, the Creator of heaven and earth,(5) who has spoken to men; they take pains to submit wholeheartedly to even His inscrutable decrees, just as Abraham, with whom the faith of Islam takes pleasure in linking itself, submitted to God. Though they do not acknowledge Jesus as God, they revere Him as a prophet. They also honor Mary, His virgin Mother; at times they even call on her with devotion. In addition, they await the day of judgment when God will render their deserts to all those who have been raised up from the dead. Finally, they value the moral life and worship God especially through prayer, almsgiving and fasting.

Since in the course of centuries not a few quarrels and hostilities have arisen between Christians and Moslems, this sacred synod urges all to forget the past and to work sincerely for mutual understanding and to preserve as well as to promote together for the benefit of all mankind social justice and moral welfare, as well as peace and freedom."

Here's the rest-http://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html

as an ex muslim i find this interesting too. i think this is just lipservice.

Yep...

We have all your gold and fine jewels...

Now is the time to FORGET we stole them...

Where's here's the truly major point:

"Finally, they value the moral life and worship God"

Well so do Buddhists and Wiccans, etc.

The only difference is that the Buddhists and Wiccans don't view "God" as an egotistical male-chauvinistic pig.

I mean seriously. This very idea that people who do not acknowledge the Hebrew mythologies and scriptures as being the "Word of God" are somehow immoral people or people who do not revere the creator of this universe is a totally nonsense and actually quite offensive to all of those highly moral and dedicated religions and spiritual views.

This is what makes the Abrahamic religions so "hateful". The mere fact that they renounce everyone who doesn't worship their "religion" as somehow refusing to revere God.

In fact, many secular atheists actually revere nature, which is truly no different from revering "God".

After all, why should it be necessarily for a "God" to have an ego that needs to be pacified in the first place? All that does is reduce God to nothing more than a human egotist.

So all these religions are truly saying is that anyone who doesn't acknowledge that God has an ego as per described in the scriptures of their choosing, then that person is somehow an immoral person who refuses to revere God.

That, to me, is what makes these kinds of religions truly sick.

They have to have an "ego" to worship before then can acknowledge a "God concept". The very thought of an ego-less "God" is a concept that they can't even begin to comprehend.

Yet if a "God" does exist, and is truly 'infinite' in its power and intellectual capacity, then it seems to me to follow that any concept such as an "ego" is going to be so petty to such a God that it must surely be rolling its eyes at these religions that demand it has an ego.

In a very real sense, it is my most sincere view that any and all such religions must necessarily be false man-made fables.

If God exists she has no "ego". And I use the feminine term here because that's what we typically use when we refer to things of this nature, "Mother Earth", "Mother Nature". If there exists a creator, she is the mother of all that exists.

The whole patriarchal notion of God was indeed a man-made concept based on the masculine ego. And that's why this "fatherly image" of such a God is so egotistical right down to having qualities of being jealous, and demanding obedience, etc. It's clearly a man-made egotistical Godhead, not all that much different from Zeus. In fact, Zeus wasn't even quite as bad. Zeus wasn't a male-chauvinist and even though he was the "God of Gods" by definition, he still didn't proclaim to be a jealous God.

The Hebrew version of Zeus, (i.e. Yahweh) is really nothing more than Zeus with a bad attitude.

Of course Yahshua, or Jesus gave a far more feminine and loving approach to life. But I personally believe that he was a Mahayana Buddhist and so that's where that sanity comes from.

In fact, I find it quite ironic that the best part of the Abrahamic religions most likely comes to us from Buddhist sources.

Why do you think so? The Abrahamic religions (Judaism especially) and Budhism are separated by several centuries and vastly different cultures.

Three wise men...

From the east...

What is it that would be east of the area in question?

Traditions identify a variety of different names for the Magi. In the Western Christian church they have been commonly known as:

* Melchior (Melichior,[7] Melchyor)
* Caspar or Gaspar (and several other Greek or Latin variants such as Gathaspa,[7] Jaspar, Jaspas, etc.).
* Balthasar (Bithisarea,[7] Balthassar).

These names apparently derive from a Greek manuscript probably composed in Alexandria around 500 A.D., and which has been translated into Latin with the title Excerpta Latina Barbari.[7] Another Greek document from the 8th century, of presumed Irish origin and translated into Latin with the title Collectanea et Flores, continues the tradition of three kings and their names and gives additional details.

In the Eastern churches, Ethiopian Christianity, for instance, has Hor, Karsudan, and Basanater, while the Armenians have Kagpha, Badadakharida and Badadilma.[12][13] Many Chinese Christians believe that one of the magi came from China.[14] This final idea is used by Christopher Moore in his novel Lamb.

Bible historian Chuck Missler mentions an Armenian tradition identifying the Magi as Balthasar of Arabia, Melchior of Persia and Gasper of India.

The phrase from the east, more literally from the rising [of the sun], is the only information Matthew provides about the region from which they came. Traditionally the view developed that they were Babylonian or Persians or Jews from Yemen as the Makrebs or kings of Yemen then were Jews, a view held for example by John Chrysostom. The majority[who?] belief was they were from Babylon, which was the centre of Zurvanism, and hence astrology, at the time; and may have retained knowledge from the time of their Jewish leadership by Daniel.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biblical_Magi

While it's true that Buddhism formally began about five centuries before the time when Jesus supposedly lived, that doesn't separate these religions by centuries at all. On the contrary Buddhism was growing the entire time. In fact, at the time when Jesus would have walked the earth a particular form of Buddhism called "Mahayana Buddhism" was actually at its historical peak.

There is a lot of history of Buddhism that I obviously can't go into in this post, but Mahayana Buddhism was known as the "Great Vehicle". It was a culmination of all the major ideas of Buddhism refined and purified to embrace all views of spirit. The Mahayana Buddhists were also well-known to require that all of their disciples swore an oath to become a Bodhisattva before the Buddhist monks would even consider taking them in as a student. The very nature of a Bodhisattva is to basically do what Jesus did. Go out and gather more disciples and educate them in the way of the mystical spirit of enlightenment.

So this would have been the popular form of Buddhism that existed when Jesus lived. Moreover nothing Jesus taught would be news to any Buddhist. I am my brother are one. What you do to the least of your brothers you do to me. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Take no thought of the morrow for the morrow will take care of itself. I and the father our one. Ye are gods as well. Judge not lest you be judged as you judge.

These are Buddhist principles that had been around for centuries long before Jesus ever taught these ideas. There is nothing in anything that Jesus taught that was new.

Of course, you need to realized that as soon as you recognize that Jesus was indeed a mortal man who was either grossly misunderstood, or purposefully abused to support another religion, the New Testament can no longer be "trusted" to be the "Word of God". Instead it becomes nothing more than the hearsay rumors of men, or possibly even outright propaganda using the rumors of Jesus to intentionally try to support the very religion that was failing at that time.

So you can't trust the New Testament to be an accurate verbatim account of precisely what Jesus taught. I see much of Buddhism in the teachings of Jesus, but I also see a lot of claims that I personally don't believe Jesus ever truly said or supported.

For example, its easy for me to see Jesus saying that he and the father are one. After all, that is the Buddhist view of a pantheistic spiritual essence to life.

However, to believe that he actually claimed to be the only begotten son of the God of Abraham is a whole other story. In fact, I don't see where he ever made any such claim even in the gospels anyway, those claims were typically made about him based on speculation.

The other thing that people don't seem to realize is that many Jews actually had a more mystical and pantheistic view of God. They didn't view God as a Zeus-like character who could actually speak from the sky as the New Testament has God doing.

Many of the ancient Jews were actually more pantheistic in their views. So it makes sense that Jesus could have very easily been a pantheistic Jew who learned of and taught the spiritual wisdom of Buddhism. After all, for a mystic these two different views of spirituality would not be all that different really.

It wouldn't have been a battle of "religions" for Jesus. It would simply have been a culmination of spiritual wisdom.

It was the authors of the New Testament who tried to turn him into a jealous God modeled after their own egotistical ideas of what they felt the God of Abraham should be.

I see no reason to believe that Jesus himself would have supported any of that.

By the way, the cultures weren't all that different in those ancient times, not like they are today. India isn't all that far from the Middle East. You can be certain that there were trade routes. In fact, historically it's well known that these cultured exchanged goods, which would indeed include their religious philosophies and writings.

These cultures were basically neighbors for all intents and purposes. They had five centuries since the birth of Siddhartha Gautama to interact before Jesus was even born. I'm sure that Buddhism was well-known by the time Jesus came onto the scene. And in truth, Siddhartha did not entirely invent Buddhism, he actually simply make it popular. The foundational philosophy even predates the Buddha by several centuries as well.

So from my perspective, this is not only plausible, but is in fact, the most likely scenario. Everything was in place for this to scenario to play out.

This scenario is a very reasonable explanation, IMHO.

Compare this with what we'd actually need to believe to accept the New Testament view of things and there's no comparison. This scenario makes sense, but to believe in the New Testament version you need to believe a myriad of serious absurdities, not the least of which would be that our creator underwent a major change in character.

RE:
The 2nd Vatican council statement on Muslims

They can only say those things because in truth they know that Jesus is not the savior of mankind and that all you have to do to "be saved" is accept Jesus as your lord and savior. (That's what protestants believe maybe but not Catholics.)

If they actually believed the way most protestants do, they would believe that Muslims will be going to hell like all the others who reject Jesus as the Christ and savior.

So, they are just trying to keep peace so they can keep their spies in every country on the planet.