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From: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
Newsgroups: talk.religion.misc
Subject: The Most Memorable Character I Never Met
Message-ID: <15818@ucbvax.BERKELEY.EDU>
Date: Thu, 25-Sep-86 17:49:46 EDT
Article-I.D.: ucbvax.15818
Posted: Thu Sep 25 17:49:46 1986
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Sep-86 04:20:47 EDT
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Reply-To: gsmith@brahms.BERKELEY.EDU (Gene Ward Smith)
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In article <2754@pogo.UUCP> daveb@pogo.UUCP (Dave Butler) writes:

>>Jesus was probably the most remembered character in human history.  More 
>>books have been written, more songs sung, more paintings painted, more great 
>>drama written than any other figure in the past. [Kiki Herbst]

>Oh wow! Deja Vu! Well Kiki, I hate to burst your bubble, but the most widely
>remembered and enshrined person in history is Siddartha (also called Buddha). 
>There are more artistic representations of Siddartha than of any other human 
>(Hell, even the game _Trivial_Pursuits_ knows that). Also, Buddha lived over 
>a thousand years before Jesus was born. That's an additional thousand years 
>to be forgotten, but his fame just keeps on growing.

   I don't know on what basis you claim Gautama is "more remembered" than
Jesus. Certainly, I would advise you are anyone against believing *anything*
you "learned" playing Trivial Pursuits. To give one example of the non-history
they peddle, they give Percival Lowell as the discoverer of the planet Pluto.
Alas, Lowell died *fifteen years* before Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto! I
see you did not bother to check your "data" with a real reference source, or
you would have noticed that Gautama *did not* live more than a thousand years
before Jesus. Estimates give the number of (at least) nominal Christians as
much greater than any other religion, Buddhism included, despite the 
somewhat inaccurate estimates you give later in your article.

ucbvax!brahms!gsmith    Gene Ward Smith/UCB Math Dept/Berkeley CA 94720
 This posting was made possible by a grant from the Mobil Corporation