It was NEVER my intent to encourage people to play a percentage game when it comes to committing sinful acts or offending God; I used that 10% argument in an attempt to make a point.
Well, I certainly fail to see the point.
Now, back to Yoga: a bad tree cannot yield good fruit- someone cannot engage in a pagan religion’s activities, (such as Yoga with its religious ties to Hinduism and Buddhism), and expect to glean good fruit from it.
Define “pagan religion.” Do you have any idea how hard it is to define what a religion is?
Furthermore, do you have any understanding of the Hindu concept of God? Have you ever actually talked to a devout Hindu about what they believe about God? You seem to have a boilerplate concept of what a “pagan religion” is, but you haven’t supported this with any evidence or argument.
Even more to the point, we do have a classic definition of “pagan religion”–ancient Greco-Roman religion. And yet Christian civilization has all kinds of elements that are deeply connected with Greco-Roman paganism. Our very separation between “secular” and “religious” originates from the fact that early Christians wanted to be able to use
some elements of pagan culture while not worshiping pagan gods. And yet, they did continue to study
literature which spoke of pagan gods. You can even find Christians performing classical Greek drama, which was an act of worship to pagan gods. Do you have a problem with this? If not, why not, on your own principles?
Your “bad tree, bad fruit” argument, if applied to the form of paganism that gave us the term in the first place, would condemn most of traditional Christian civilization. And yet you think you can apply it to an entirely
different culture which itself created powerful criticisms of its ancestral polytheism? You even apply it to Buddhism, which doesn’t regard the Hindu
devas as beings worthy of worship at all.
The abortion analogy is, of course, not an argument at all and doesn’t deserve an answer until you can show how the one thing is like the other.
Edwin
