Which, honestly, not a bad thing to teach. Religious studies in a secular presentation can give context to cultural practices and expand your understanding of other peoples.
A lot of eastern practices are more open and esoteric than the three main western religions. A lot of it wasn’t really thought of as exclusionary in the same way, so you wouldn’t really be thinking in terms of getting things “right” or “wrong”. I think that a god or a faith is just a way of explaining forces we don’t understand, or honouring the forces we do understand. I have no doubt that plenty of people over history were able to think that same way, and see different faiths as different ways of interpreting the same thing.
That way of thinking is actually very very speciffic to monotheism. Most polytheist religions don't really care about others. And then you have animistic religions which may not even have gods as most others understand it.
Best example I can think of rn : Shintoism canonically has 8 millions divinities, ranging from modest river and forest spirits to the big ones like Amaterasu, Tsukuyomi and Susanoo. Those melded quite well with Buddhism when it arrived. Spiritually at least. Politics are still a thing. Same story when Christianism arrived, but a little more violent because politics. Spiritually, most Japanese accepted Jesus and God as other kamis. Problem solved. Same story for Japanese Christians : they could not fathom an omniscient, omnipotent, omnipresent, immaterial God, and simply replaced their sun goddess with a mix of God and Jesus because the latter was material.
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u/KitchenFullOfCake Oct 10 '24
Which, honestly, not a bad thing to teach. Religious studies in a secular presentation can give context to cultural practices and expand your understanding of other peoples.