Talk:Edicts of Ashoka

I'm claiming that the suggestion that various Christian values are derived from edicts of Ashoka is noodle-headed. We must remember Occam's razor when we propose an explanation for something. Christianity grew out of Judaism. To theorize that Ashoka's missionaries influenced Christian or pre-Christian thinking, we need to find distinctly Buddhist themes appearing in Christianity which are not presaged in Judaism. Moreover we would not expect that a minor aspect of Buddhism would attach itself to Christianity without the major aspects of Buddhism showing in some degree. Despite the implications of the article, Christianity and Buddhism do not teach the same thing, or even close to the same thing, though of course any two religions agree on many moral principles. The distinct core of Buddhism centers around the eight-fold path and karma/reincarnation (derived from it's own predecessor, Hinduism). Karmic thinking implies kindness to all creatures. This would have been easy enough to append to Christian thinking, but we don't find it. Religious tolerance, while definitely a Buddhist theme, is also an important theme in the Old Testament -- for example the Book of Jonah where the Jew's pagan antagonists, the Ninevites, are nonetheless spared by God due to their righteousness. Etc. etc. etc. technopilgrim 21:46, 13 Sep 2004 (UTC)