I do not agree with the Dalai Lama that all religious traditions carry basically the same message of love, compassion, and forgiveness. The truth is that there is good and evil in all religious traditions--as there is in every other human institution and every individual human being. Sweeping statements of pro-religious propaganda, even (or especially) when they are made by men as admirable as the Dalai Lama, have the effect of smothering rational discussion about the pros and cons of any and all religion.
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Religion confers no special nobility on its believers or its leaders, and that goes for Eastern as well as Western religions. Many Americans (including secularists) have all sorts of fantasies, originally spawned in the sixties, about the superior virtue of Eastern religions. Look at the inferior position of women in many societies with a strong Buddhist influence, and tell me that this religion has done any better by the female sex than the monotheistic creeds of the West.
Whether people adhere to secular or religious traditions, the dividing line is always between the merciful and the merciless.
