http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2014/06/the-left-right-political-spectrum-is-bogus/373139/

“Jesus was born as the prerequisite-of-existence incarnate, not merely a god.”

This seems to suggest that you believe that there is a distinction to be made between “the prerequisite-of-existence” and “god.”

But it seems clear from any serious interpretation (e.g., Edward Feser’s) of (at least) the first of St. Thomas’ Five Ways that the Angelic Doctor himself makes no such distinction. God is subsistent being itself, the ultimate prerequisite-of-existence, at every moment, of all created beings.

No doubt I have mistaken your point.

I’d like to take the separate opportunity to pick at something else, the alleged parallel lives. Let’s take the first five.

* Born as an incarnate god.
* Born from a virgin mother.
* Birth claimed as a divine event and prophesied as the same.
* Birth attended by singing angels.
* Birth attended by wise men bearing gifts.

#1 is bullshit, and wrong. Buddha wasn’t born as an incarnate anything in particular, he was human and achieved unusual wisdom. Worse, if you take classical Christianity seriously (rather than watered-down pop-culture Churchianity), #1 is supremely ignorant bullshit, because it managed to get the facts of the matter entirely backwards: Neither was born as an incarnate god. Jesus was born as the prerequisite-of-existence incarnate, not merely a god. As the antiphon has it: (from memory) Today He who hung the Earth upon the waters is hung upon a tree. Today He who is King of the Angels is crowned with thorns. Today He who wrapped the Heavens in clouds is wrapped in mockery. Jesus’ birth is an ontology-shaking event where the uncreated, flawless, omnipotent I AM is suddenly manifest as a vulnerable speck of creation to be whipped bloody. It is not merely a bodiless sort of person becoming an embodied sort of person, and to say “an incarnate god” is to misrepresent and flatten Christianity.

#2 is bullshit, and wrong. Buddha’s mother wasn’t a virgin. Buddha’s father was banging her, and Buddha was in line for the throne until Buddha ran away to become a sage. (Buddha may have been conceived by parthenogenesis, but that’s not the parallel being asserted.)

#3 is bullshit, true, and worthless. The birth of the central figure of a religion is claimed as a divine event? What next, people paid homage to the central figure of the religion?

#4 is bullshit, and wrong. Jesus’ birth wasn’t attended by singing angels; Buddhism doesn’t even have angels.

#5 is bullshit, and wrong. Buddha was the son of the local king, so it’s reasonable that wise men could come bearing gifts at his birth. But Jesus’ birth wasn’t attended by wise men; they showed up later. Whatever midwit wrote this list couldn’t have been arsed to go and actually check the Nativity story, I expect, instead muddling together half-remembered mentions of birth and wise men and angels and shepherds and Herod and mangers and stars into a single generic event. What’s actually written in the Bible is this: Jesus is born in a manger, because there was no houseroom – shepherds show up, praise, depart – wise men drop by Betlehem and speak with Herod – Herod asks wise men to please notify him once they’ve found the king – wise men follow the star to the house where Jesus is (this is the first clue that the wise men are showing up later) – God tells wise men to depart without notifying Herod, sends angel to tell the Holy Family to leave – Herod realizes that the wise men aren’t notifying him, orders all babies under two years killed (not all newborns), in accordance with the time he’d gotten from the wise men.

30-Jesus is snipped at the sub-sentence, sub-verse level, which “smells bad”, for lack of a better word. Check out Matthew 7 for more. “Therefore whoever hears these sayings of Mine, and does them, I will liken him to a wise man who built his house on the rock: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it did not fall, for it was founded on the rock. But everyone who hears these sayings of Mine, and does not do them, will be like a foolish man who built his house on the sand: and the rain descended, the floods came, and the winds blew and beat on that house; and it fell. And great was its fall.

32-Buddha strikes me as extremely suspicious. I would want to see an original source before believing that the Buddhist scriptures say any such thing. Google turns up no results for even the first phrase if I add -jesus as a search delimiter, which suggests to me that it was invented by syncretists. 32-Jesus also adds some more bad smell by writing “foregiveness”.

36 isn’t the parallel someone wants it to be. Jesus here commands his followers to love one another; Buddha to love the whole world.

38 is once again badly snipped; the original passage goes: [do particularly good things…] “that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so?”

And as a general objection, several of these parallels are rewritten from the source material, then dishonestly presented as quotes, given without scriptural citations so it’s hard to verify. Combined with the typos, the whole thing reeks of urban legend, chain mail, and poor scholarship.

I see the name of Max Muller is dropped in some of the sourcing, for which I refer you to this piece: http://lesswrong.com/lw/2w/are_you_a_solar_deity/ (recursion to http://www.elfinspell.com/Kottabos.html ) in which it’s noted that Max Muller shows all sorts of parallels and argues that various religions are all based on solar deities; a response is issued by R.F.Littledale who uses the same methods and forms of argument to show that this “Max Muller” character is based on a solar deity.

“The take-home lesson is that any technique powerful enough to prove that Hercules is a solar myth is also powerful enough to prove that anyone is a solar myth.”

Thanks for the comments; I guess this could be analogous to the independent biological evolution of similar morphological/functional features in two distinctly unrelated species?

Again, I’m not sure of the credibility of the source:
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JESUS: “A foolish man, which built his house on sand.”
BUDDHA: “Perishable is a city built on sand.” (30)
JESUS: “Therefore confess your sins one to another, and pray one for another, that you may be healed.”
BUDDHA: “Confess before the world the sins you have committed.” (31)
JESUS: “In him we have redemption through his blood, the foregiveness of sins.”
BUDDHA: “Let all sins that were committed in this world fall on me, that the world may be delivered.” (32)
JESUS: “Do to others as you would have them do to you.”
BUDDHA: “Consider others as yourself.” (33)
JESUS: “If anyone strikes you on the cheek, offer the other also.”
BUDDHA: “If anyone should give you a blow with his hand, with a stick, or with a knife, you should abandon all desires and utter no evil words.” (34)
JESUS: “Love your enemies, do good to those who hate, bless those who curse you, pray for those who abuse you.”
BUDDHA: “Hatreds do not cease in this world by hating, but by love: this is an eternal truth. Overcome anger by love, overcome evil by good.” (35)
JESUS: “This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you.”
BUDDHA: “Let your thoughts of boundless love pervade the whole world.” (36)
JESUS: “Let anyone among you who is without sin be the first to cast a stone at her.”
BUDDHA: “Do not look at the faults of others or what others have done or not done; observe what you yourself have done and have not done.” (37)
JESUS: “You father in heaven makes his sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the righteous and on the unrighteous.”
BUDDHA: “The light of the sun and the moon illuminates the whole world, both him who does well and him who does ill, both him who stands high and him who stands low.” (38)
JESUS: “If you wish to be perfect, go sell your possessions, and give the money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven.”
BUDDHA: “The avaricious do not go to heaven, the foolish do not extol charity. The wise one, however, rejoicing in charity, becomes thereby happy in the beyond.” (39)
—James M. Hanson, Buddhist-Christian Studies, Annual 2005 v25 p75(15).”
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**Full Disclosure: I’m a hardcore deep-fried atheist.**