Hello???
THANK YOU!!!
People who in ignorance make incorrect assumptions of others used to have an excuse that information to correct their opinions was not readily availble. This is hardly an excuse for those who have access to the Internet.THANK YOU!!!
Why do people feel such a need to bash people who are different?
Just read Emmerson and Thoreau…they held the Bhagavad Gita in high esteem.
I doubt that people who say that the Gita isn’t scripture haven’t read it very thoughtfully if at all…
I know! How difficult is that? If one really cared to, one can visit many famous temples in Bharat via their websites and see for oneself. The internet is amazing!
If you’ll notice I commented later on how I started this thread before I took a course on Eastern Religions with a quarter long study of Hinduism after which my thought process toward it has changed. And I don’t think it’s arrogant that I sincerely began a thread for the intellectual discussion of what Hinduism is in relation the world or how it relates to Western ideas of religion. If anything, that has to count for some open mindedness…
Um…if you LOOK at history, it is EUROPE (ie the west) that colonised and subjugated the rest of the world, FREQUENTLY in the name of Christianity…such as Catholic Spain in Latin America…
Please don’t shout at me. I was referring to the West in its current context in relation to the rest of the world. The United States cannot be used as a scapegoat because that is just one very unique part of the West and the rest of the West (primarily Europe and Central America) do not agree with things the United States does, even though we all fall under the title “Western”. I’m not saying my country is right in doing that, but even if it was that diverges from the original statement you made which I responded to that the West is “pushing its ‘superior’ values on everyone else”…which values? Religion? Pop Culture? Materialism? Please specify because I’m sure Chinese and Japanese approaches are radically different to American pop culture than religion.
)The Mission of God.
That is not the classic Christian position. You are ignoring the parallel philosophical developments in European and Indian thought to which I referred in my earlier post. Thoughtful people asked how the gods were related to ultimate reality. Classical Christian thought (such as that of the Church Fathers and the medieval scholastics) is one answer–that YHWH was in fact the One Ultimate Reality making Himself known to human beings in terms that we could understand. Plotinus in the West and Shankara in India (just to give two examples) came up with different answers.
The second quote sounds more like “king of the gods” language than what I’d think of as monotheism (I recognize that much of the OT uses similar language about YHWH–the main difference is that YHWH was a very upstart god to be claiming such a high title!). The first quote does indeed sound more like what I’m familiar with from the Upanishads, and I’m not surprised that it’s generally regarded as late (although I know that scholars can use speculative dating as a way of preserving their assumptions, and I’m wary of this!).
Neat how consolidation of power and influence works isn’t it? Seems completely natural that primitive peoples (god makers) would eventually, when populations reached a critical mass, posit that their god was actually being worshiped by those OTHER people even though they didn’t know it. It is a no-brainer. That is exactly what a monotheist would logically say in support of his god. This in no way proves that there are not multiple or zero gods. Just as technology (boats, weapons) helped centralize power and encourage homogeneity and hegemony, it also increased the stature and apparent power of the god that was worshiped by a given civilization. So eventually, peoples who originally believed in or worshiped many gods, came to see ONE as the most powerful and eventually (to justify colonization and empire) came to see the ONE as the only ONE.
What Hindus told you that? If you talk to one who devoutly practices their faith you will find that there are too many gods to remember. Obviously, some are more important than others, Ganesh is prayed to before all others at temple… all of them are viewed as individual gods.
Hindus acknowledge the presence of the god in the idols, or photos, or whatever other depictions of god. They bathe their idols, feed them (present food to them), etc. They (from my understanding) believe that the idols actually eat the food, afterall, it would be stupid to try to feed something that you know to be an inanimate object, right?
Not really, I have found that all they need is a little explaination. If you never explain something (properly) to a person, you can’t expect them to understand it. We all experience ignorance at one point or another
.I have never found any evidence that Hindus are not monotheistic, and all the gods, more than anyone can remember, doesn’t change that at all. Specifically, himalayanacadamy.com you will have a strong monotheism. Ofcourse, it is hard to call it monotheism, but it is important that it is NOT polytheism either, so some westerners faced with this coined a new word just for the Indian religion, henotheism.What Hindus told you that? If you talk to one who devoutly practices their faith you will find that there are too many gods to remember. Obviously, some are more important than others, Ganesh is prayed to before all others at temple… all of them are viewed as individual gods.
Hindus acknowledge the presence of the god in the idols, or photos, or whatever other depictions of god. They bathe their idols, feed them (present food to them), etc. They (from my understanding) believe that the idols actually eat the food, afterall, it would be stupid to try to feed something that you know to be an inanimate object, right?
Not really, I have found that all they need is a little explaination. If you never explain something (properly) to a person, you can’t expect them to understand it. We all experience ignorance at one point or another