Buddism and Christianity have a lot more in common than they have in opposition. Fate, by definition means that everything is pre-determined by an outside source. Freewill is the power granted by God to create our own destiny. I explain it in the same way as a road. You can't change where a road leads, but you can change the road you are on. So fate would be the ultimate consequence of following a certain life path. Fate exists only as an infinte list of possibilities.
Buddism and Christianity have a lot more in common than they have in opposition.
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I agree. There are many, many, similarities which seem to be lost in semantic differences. The Buddhist concept of emptiness, is similar (IMO) to the western concept of God.
There is a color coded section in that paper which attempts to document some of the similarities.