Jeffrey,
“Brit is correct about Tiger because his Buddist religion offers no salvation which means no real transformation into a new being. In other words “you must be born again”. Anything else is just a waste of time. In other words all efforts to transform ones self are in vain.”
Transforming the self to another kind of self would be in vain, I fully agree with that.
Now, getting rid of the self – that’s something much more.
I can kind of understand your rebirth metaphor – getting rid of our whole former existence. But actually rebirth is not a good metaphor IMHO, because achieving any kind of meaningful change takes time. People don’t change anything meaningful in an instant, everything good in life requires a lot of work. I have Christian friends, mostly Catholics, who see their lives as a constant struggle against vanity and sin, with small and small wins every year. That’s something I can understand.
But I cannot understand the strong focus some New Protestants put on rebirth in baptism. AFAIK little meaningful happens. You go to the baptism pool as an angry, aggressive man for example, who yells at his wife, and you come back as an angry, aggressive man who yells at his wife a little bit less frequently.
I’m not really impressed about it’s efficiency.
And it’s not a criticism of Christianity in general, just of it’s New Protestant versions that focus very strong on adult baptism. The “oldschool” folks like my Catholic and Anglican friends are wiser, they know you will not win the war against your own vanity in one battle. Actually we get along well enough, we understand each other. Even with the Old Protestants like the Calvinists, we understand each other well enough. But with the New Protestants we simply do not understand each other at all… 
