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But doesn't that make this very cycle "horrible" in some sense, in that its continuation indicates a failure to achieve enlightenment? Zed himself says the "ultimate goal" (of Hinduism) is "to break the cycle of birth and death and achieve moksh (liberation)." Who wouldn't find it a little bit horrible to continue in the chains of life rather than attain blissful release? (Update: Prothero has clarified that his statement meant "the Hindu doctrine of rebirth says that this life is hard/negative/horrible," not that anything about Hinduism itself is horrible.)
It may seem like an overreaction, but Zed is clearly on a mission to make sure his religion is positively portrayed in American media. He previously voiced objections to Remember the Zohan and Angels & Demons, criticizing Zohan's satirical take on Hinduism, and worrying that Angels could feed religious misconceptions. Zed's dedication may be excessive, but his quest to confirm the accuracy of information about Hinduism actually meshes interestingly with Prothero's point: that religions really are different, and glossing over those differences is not only unwise but potentially dangerous.
Writing for the Globe a few months ago, Prothero pointed out that:
We pretend that religious differences are trivial because it makes us feel safer, or more moral. But pretending that the world’s religions are the same does not make our world safer. Like all forms of ignorance, it makes our world more dangerous, and more deadly.
Zed's crusade may seem petty or annoying, but at least it's rooted in a desire for accuracy. By contrast, some religion journalism seems rooted mostly in a desire for warm fuzzies that suggest all religions are part of a big happy theistic family (exactly the opposite of Prothero's point). There have been some interesting exchanges on religion-related blogs of late regarding whether religion journalism should focus on the similarities or differences of religions, with participants in both camps and all along the spectrum.
Rod Dreher of Beliefnet points out that "[promoting] the idea that to explore genuine conflicts both between and among faiths is an act of provocation is to turn religion journalism into an act of therapy," moving coverage from incisive explorations to moderate muddlings. Terry Mattingly at Get Religion points out that the general tendency is to reward moderate conceptions as preferable: "as [Jay] Rosen noted in his famous essay Journalism Is Itself a Religion it is crucial that many journalists are absolutely convinced that there are no moral absolutes, no absolute truths that transcend time and culture."
Both Dreher and Mattingly point to a more recent Jay Rosen article that takes on the ideology of the press, which more or less concludes that reporters may be ideological but have an incentive not to appear so. And it's not an ideology that's necessarily the problem, but (as Zed complained about with Angels & Demons) the lack of disclosure or recognition of that ideology. Rosen says that "political journalists are cosmopolitans, and they will see the world through that lens. They may also stop seeing it as a lens, and that’s when it becomes an ideology."
Religion, too, is a lens, and to pretend that every religious lens sees things similarly is, as Prothero argues, quite dangerous. So too is to elide the backstory of religious tenets and traditions. Zed may be misinterpreting situations, but he and Prothero may ultimately have a similar goal in mind: ensuring that we thoroughly understand religion—and others' assertions about it—before making judgments.
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