The two Christian saints who are the Buddha

That's not really accurate. All bishops were essentially "autocephalus" in antiquity. Whether they could even be removed by a council of other bishops was something that was really not resolved for many centuries. There were many occasions of competing councils declaring each other heretics and shenanigans like that.

The Orthodox still practice this system of governance (although sovereignty has been moved up from diocesan bishops to the patriarch of each autocephalus church).

Modern media has allowed the pope to receive unceasing attention that the papacy never possessed historically, but what is important to emphasize is that this is not a reflection of how the Church is administered or how authority is distributed. The idea that the pope is "running the Church" or "watching every member of the one and a half billion member flock like a busybody hawk" is a fiction drawn from jejune ignorance. Rome is notoriously slow to act, which should in general not be seen as a sign of incompetence, but as an expression of subsidiarity. It is much better to view the pope as the ultimate referee rather than some oppressive overlord. The moral ball is in your court, as it were.

W.r.t. absorbing what's around it, the Church has always recognized logos spermatikos or seminal reason, meaning, it recognizes reality as an intelligible creation of God, it recognizes the inherent rational nature of every human being, and thus it recognizes that every human being has an in principle capacity to recognize and know reality, to one degree or another. So, it sees no reason to suppose that there is nothing good or true or beautiful outside the Church and plenty of reason to recognize it and embrace it. What is good is good, what is true is true, what is beautiful is beautiful. When the Church encounters a culture, it seeks what is good within it and seeks to transfigure it in order to rescue its goodness and perfect it. Gratia non tollit naturam, sed perficit.

"The devil and a friend of his were walking down the street, when they saw ahead of them a man stoop down and pick up something from the ground, look at it, and put it away in his pocket. The friend said to the devil, 'What did that man pick up?' 'He picked up a piece of Truth,' said the devil.'That is a very bad business for you, then,' said his friend.'Oh, not at all,' the devil replied, 'I am going to let him organize it.'"

Turns out, culture isn't a singular thing you can just have. People everywhere all the time are picking up bits of things to do, things to say, things to believe in, and borders, no matter how fluid they are, only exist in the aggregate.

It wasn't syncretism, it was systematic eradication. Syncretism is more akin to reconciliation of different views.

We're talking about adopting cultural practices in a selective and transfigurative way. If a cultural practice doesn't conflict with the Church's teachings and would be beneficial, then it could be embraced as such. A cultural practice may also be transfigured and adapted into something that maintains a certain resemblance, but has a changed and elevated meaning. For instance, having encountered a culture that practices ancestor worship, it might take that practice and transfigure it into a restrained expression of filial piety that moves it away from idolatry. Pagan harvest festivals are another example where the symbolic meaning is changed.

I read a few books on it for a term paper in college, and the part that most sticks out in my distant memory is that the creation myth involves a lot of what were translated in my copy as aborted fetuses.

Except for it's never done. No Hindu believes Allah or Jesus is an Avatar of Vishnu.

It can't be. Vishnu literally means the "All-Pervading One". Allah is explicitly not Omnipresent. Jesus is Omnipresent but does not have infinite forms. So neither fit the bill. Even Buddha, who we Hindus associate as one of the Avatars of Vishnu is not the same Buddha as Gautama Buddha who founded Buddhism.

1. https://bitterwinter.org/the-taiping-mystery-1-why-is-the-cc...

But e.g. modern American evangelical churches are to me quite clearly quite far from the original meaning of the texts with some theology outright invented in 18th and 19th centuries.

It really is the case that what you bring to a text colors what you get out of it, and the more people insist that they are reading a text "as it is clearly written" the blinder they seem to be to this.

Not at all.

Some believe one should come to forgive their enemies. Some believe that one should purge one's enemies from life itself. Some believe that one should have no enemies.

Some believe that material wealth is fine to a point, some believe that the desire of possesing material wealth is a source of discontent, some believe that it is the source of many or all other discontents.

Some believe that wanting to improve one's station is a source of discontent.

Some are fine with removing life if it is inconvenient (like bugs) where others value the life of a bug equally to their own.

Some are okay with their friends and family members murdering foreigners actively engaged in warfare that threatens their own life and livelihood. Some are okay with their friends and family killing the friends and family of the enemy combatants. Some are okay with killing anyone just generally in the vicinity of enemy combatants. Some say literally poisoning the well is a step too far, but that we had to write that down is evidence of other's believing differently. Some believe it's okay to murder people, communities, and entire populations because they'd rather use the land for themselves, or maybe their noses are too long and their skin is indistinguishably different.

Rereading your comment, I see the "in group" disclaimer. What's the in group? Some believe it's just their family, the people on the block, the people who have lived within a certain number of miles for a certain number of years, citizens governed by a particular government, the citizens governed by a group of governments, the people living on a particular continent, people in general, humans in general, life in general, or everything. There are people to whom no human should ever murder another for any reason. You might agree with that in theory, but would you allow a conquering force that is literally raping your friends and family to simply do so unquestioned? Would you feel vindicated striking back? There are some who have decided that the morally correct thing to do is to simply quit the land and or life itself rather than to fight back, because to them murder is wrong period.

The good life is deeply personal and absolutely not universal.

Earlier today, I was listening to Evangelical Christian Radio while doing errands (my phone is broken and I live deep in Red America) and the pastor, Alistair Begg, was making the argument that the synoptic gospels are totally unique in what they are. The format is unprecedented. They're not biographies. They're not systematic theology. It's just a direct witness to Jesus Christ. And so on. Therefore, they're historically valid and true, etc.

But if you have read the Pali Canon or other collections of sutras and agamas, it's almost blindingly obvious that the structure of the pericopic episodes found in the synoptic gospels aren't really unique at all.

As a random example:

From Majjhima Nikaya 55 (trans. Thanissaro): I have heard that on one occasion the Blessed One was staying near Rājagaha, in Jīvaka Komārabhacca’s mango grove. Then Jīvaka Komārabhacca went to the Blessed One and, on arrival, having bowed down to him, sat to one side. As he was sitting there he said to the Blessed One, “Lord, I have heard it said that ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action.’ Those who say, ‘They slaughter animals for the sake of Gotama the contemplative. Gotama the contemplative knowingly eats the meat prepared for his sake in dependence on that action’: Are they speaking in line with what the Blessed One has said, are they not slandering the Blessed One with what is unfactual, and are they speaking in line with the Dhamma so that no one whose thinking is in line with the Dhamma would have grounds for criticizing them?”

Compared to say, Mark 7 (trans. NIV):

The Pharisees and some of the teachers of the law who had come from Jerusalem gathered around Jesus and saw some of his disciples eating food with hands that were defiled, that is, unwashed. (The Pharisees and all the Jews do not eat unless they give their hands a ceremonial washing, holding to the tradition of the elders. When they come from the marketplace they do not eat unless they wash. And they observe many other traditions, such as the washing of cups, pitchers and kettles. So the Pharisees and teachers of the law asked Jesus, “Why don’t your disciples live according to the tradition of the elders instead of eating their food with defiled hands?”

And so on and so forth. The parallels don't end there, but I've probably gone on long enough of a rant. And this wouldn't even be the first time something like that happened in the Greek world. Pyrrho very likely did something very similar. Plus, the phenomena has modern equivalents as well. Look at how many mindfulness courses and therapy interventions in the West just file the serial numbers off of Buddhism (e.g. CBT, ACT).

So yeah. The pieces are all there, but literally be damned by others if you put them together.

Religions don't exist without the people. The scriptures have no narrative power if they are not told by people to people. The rites and traditions only serve to reinforce habits and pass themselves down throughout time to new people. The religion evolves with the people because keeping followers become the fitness function.

No religion knowingly offers its followers "bad teachings". Anybody who thinks a religion has "bad teachings" quickly becomes an impostor and gets pushed out. The self selection means that there are no "bad teachings".

Also, you are trying to pretend like the choice is only applied by the cognitive brain by the individual human at the time of an action. This ignores both group psychology and the role of habits / indoctrination.

The Catholic Church internal policies target the ages of 4-14 for indoctrination and habit forming. What 10 year old will resist their parents, resist their church authority figures, resist all of the teachings of thousands of years of their people, resist the "word of God", have the knowledge and self awareness to know the difference between God's voice and typical bipolar ruminations?

Fixed it for you, Sir.

I live in an area surrounded by cults

but also there are plenty of solitary practitioners of Wicca and Buddhism

and then you have the dozen of forms of christianity where every church just put their own spin on things

people are weird, religion just makes it even more so

I don't have a problem as long as they keep it to themselves but that rarely is the case