zinnat13 wrote:Prism, I generally do not take that much pain to explain atheists because they are not ready to listen the other side. But, my assumption is that you are not one those thus I am trying.
Whilst I am not a Hindu, not from India, I was involved in Vedanta quite seriously in one phase. In any case, not all non-theists , e.g. Buddhists [preferred but not one officially] and others, are militant atheists
Prismatic567 wrote:I dare say, there are substantially* no evil laden elements (potential or otherwise) in the holy texts of Buddhism nor Jainism.
Because, there was no such need for Buddha or Mahavira to address those kinds of questions. That brings us again to the point that i made in the last post.
Religions are not isolated texts. Each and every religion has a particular context and its propagator tried to address that context only. The purpose of Buddhism and Jainism was merely to make people aware of those unnecessary social practices, which was forced by the Brahmans as an interpretation of Vedas. That is all. They did not go beyond this. That is why they are free from violence.
Buddhism and Jainism are merely complementary religions to Hinduism, not fully fledged ones. The same is for the Christianity too. They do not address all verticals of the life.
One may also conclude in his wisdom that Buddha was not against homosexuality because he did not say that. But, that is not the case because Buddha did not say a word about sex. But, offering a complete life style, both of Hinduism and Islam has to address sex and marriage too.
Are you aware that the famous Kamasutra was written by a sage and was taught to the students besides with other streams of the knowledge! Does that make Vedanta a vulgar religion and Buddhism a sacred one?
Secondly, are you aware that both Hinduism and Islam too, laid down the guidelines even for how one should sit on the toilet seat, which hand should be where and which hand should be used to wash the excreta? Does that make them obscene religions in the comparison of Buddhism and Christianity, as they are free of such things?
The same is in the case of violence too. Hinduism and Islam talked about the violence because that is also an inevitable part of the human behavior too. It does not make any religion violent. Our present social system also lay down the guidelines for war like which weapons should be used and how one country should behave with prisoners of war. Does that mean that our present system is violent?
Unlike Muhammad , Moses and lord Krisha, Buddha did not have to face a war. So, he needs not to set the guidelines for a war. His focus was only the uncalled rituals in the name of Vedas like sacrificing the animals and other unnecessary ones. His only purpose was telling the people that these Brahmans are fooling you. These rituals are not the ultimate purpose and you can know and be like them by doing meditation on your own.
IMO, your above views off target from the core philosophy of religion.
There is a proximate root cause of religion. This is the substance.
The variations are the forms that support the substance.
These forms vary with the local conditions, the individual's conditions and other factors.
Buddha was a prince of a kingdom and in those days wars are very common. There are good reasons why Guatama steer clear of wars and his birth duty to fight.
Btw, imo, the story of Moses and lord Krishna, Buddha are myths/allegories to convey the substance or core principles of the philosophy of religion. Whilst Lord Krishna and Guatama's arrows hit the 9 and 10, Moses hit 5 of the target.
In the case of Muhammad, I would take into consideration his psychosis (I mentioned somewhere the experienced of God by the mentally sick re Ramanchandran) and his plagiarism of Christianity and Judaism.
Prismatic567 wrote:Except for some potential areas of misinterpretations, Hinduism generally is OK and do not has notable inherent evil elements like those of the Abrahamic religions.
*minor disputable points.
See, that is the problem.
When it comes to Hinduism, its shortcomings (so called) become minor disputable points for you. But, as soon as you find something such in Abrahamic religions, you present those as evil laden texts. Those are not misinterpretations for you! How you concluded that distinction?
Did Lord Krishna not force Arjuna to fight a war against his own cousin brothers, even when he was not ready and wanted that to let go? That war killed millions of innocents from both sides. Lord Krishna said many occasions in Mahabharata that it is okay to cheat a cheater and kill a killer. But, when Muhammad did the same to save his community, he becomes violent for you! Why?
Secondly, how Christianity, who does not propagate violence at any cost, looks evil laden to you?
I did mention Hinduism is a bit problematic because it comprised and is represented of hundreds of religions and cults. This is why I always refer to Buddhism and Jainism to represent the peaceful religion with no evil laden verses.
When I charged that the Abrahamic religions are in part inherently evil I was referring to the total ethos and ALL the evil laden verses [have you read them] there in their holy texts plus the substantiation of the real evidence of evils acts SOME of their believers [Islam the worst at present, Christianity minimal] are committing.
I mentioned the story of Krishna and Arjuna is a myth and an allegory [not historical nor literally] to represent the substance of religion within the human system. Arjuna is the atman [the self] and his enemies represent his animal and primal instincts and impulses. Therefore Arjuna [the higher self] was advised to ‘kill’ his own animal impulses. In that contexts and logically, all the subsequent chapters in the Gita present the various methods (meditation, etc.) and philosophy of how to deal with and modulate one’s lower impulses spiritually.
It is very unfortunate that the Gita used the ‘war’ allegory to explain the substance of religion and spirituality. This enable evil prone people to cherry pick some verses literally for their evil purposes and that was what the Nazis did to motivate their soldiers to kill anyone even their kin, relative, race, etc.
Prismatic567 wrote:When I compare the Abrahamic religions to the main Eastern Religions, the basis is the average best performance they are capable of.
To use an analogy from academic;
1. The highest potential for the average Abrahamic believers is up to say primary level.
2. The highest potential for the average Eastern religions is up to University Level.
There is some worth in that argument but already gave the answer to that question in the last post. That was not the fault of the Abrahamic religions but the shortcoming of the people who were being addressed. They were just not mature enough to comprehend subtleties. That is why the most of the Abrahamic prophets restrict themselves to simple day to day issues.
As my earlier point I do not agree with your interpretation which focus on merely the forms but missed the substance of what is the core of religion.
Prism, you certainly know more about religions than an average intellectual but you are still far far behind from being an expert. Do not take it as an undermining statement. That is not my purpose at all. I am just trying to give you the actual picture. Religions are very vast and subtle concepts. It takes too much time and commitment to be an expert, sometimes a life time is not enough.
I have never claimed to be an expert but I dare claim I know a lot and make the attempt to cover as much as possible. The point is the difficulty to assess how much a person knows in a forum like this is limited, but an assessment can be made based on one’s understanding of the principles and philosophy of religion generically.
If you remember that in other thread you said that you studied Kant for three years yet that seems not to be enough. If understanding the work of a single person is taking so much time, how much time it will take to understand that collective work of so many scholars?
At present I can read the most complex books on religion, i.e. those related to Nagarjuna, Chandrakirti, etc within a day or two but it will take me a year to fully comprehend one of Kant’s main book.
The complexity of Kant thoroughness is way beyond anyone I have came across {which is many} within the sphere of philosophy and spirituality.
That is precisely the problem with intellectuals now. They think that reading some articles here and there on the net can make them an expert of anything. And, they start judging everything. It is not that simple.
I am confident [based on extensive work done] to know enough [not expert] of the principles and substance to judge the various forms.
Prismatic567 wrote:Note I said, the potential for the average believers, this will exclude the mystics who are special class of people. This include Christian mysticism and Sufism. You will note the Sufis are regarded as apostates and infidels by mainstream Muslims. Note the recent bombing of Sufi shrines. IMO, the mystics of Christianity and Sufis should be regarded more to mysticism rather than belonging the their conventional religion. In this case, a Sufi is 90% mystic and 10% conventional Muslim, as is similar with a Christian mystics or a Buddhist mystic.
You are again taking a wrong route without investigating enough.
How you concluded that Sufism is a special class of people and a Sufi is 90% mystic and only 10% conventional. I do not think that you know enough about Sufism to conclude that.
The bombing on Sufi shrines does not proof anything. Infighting within the different sects of a religion is a common amongst all religions. Shias and Sunnis have been involved in fighting and killing each other all over the world since long. That does not make any of them non-Muslim. So, how does the attack of Sufi shrines make Sufism non-Muslim religion?
It is only Wahabi and Salafi community of Islam that does not accept Sufism as a sect of Islam. Unfortunately, they belong to rich Arab countries, especially Saudi Arabia and west takes only Arabs as true flag bearers of Islam, while they are only 20% of the total Muslim population!
They also forget that more than half of the Muslim population lives in the countries like India, Bangladesh, Indonesia, China, Pakistan, Russia etc. Do you know that Indonesia has the largest Muslim population, followed by India, Pakistan and Bangladesh?
If you ever go to the countries of Indian subcontinent, you will be able to realize what the place of Sufism among Muslims is in these three countries, which collectively accounts roughly 1/3 of the world Muslim population. There is no special class of people here who follow Sufism. They are very much common Muslims. The fact of the matter is that you will not able to distinguish between the two here. They offer prayer in the Mosks in the day and visit to Sufi shrines in the evening.
As I said it is not easy to go into details. I was making a very general statement in this case.
Sufism is basically Islam but it is influenced and intermixed with some aspects of ‘Hinduism.’
I assess that Sufism is veering towards ‘mysticism’ in general.
In practice, I agree there are many who follow Sufism, but its essence is mysticism.
It is the same for Christian mysticism.
There are many Christians who respect or follow the mystics teaching.
But if one were do a serious peeling away of the forms, they will find there are variations in the substance.
Have a look at this-
“The Amman Message, a detailed statement issued by 200 leading Islamic scholars in 2005 in Amman, and adopted by the Islamic world's political and temporal leaderships at the Organisation of the Islamic Conference summit at Mecca in December 2005, and by six other international Islamic scholarly assemblies including the International Islamic Fiqh Academy of Jeddah, in July 2006, specifically recognized the validity of Sufism as a part of Islam”
In practice, most Muslims do not give a damn about the OIC views. Note the killing of Shias, Ahamadiyas and other Muslims by Sunnis.
But, unfortunately, no western intellectual pays attention to all this. In their opinion, only people like Osama can interpret Islam wisely and no other.
The western premise is that anyone who does not propagate violence cannot be a Muslim. They all are non-Muslims. It is as simple as that.
This need a debate on this on what is the true Muslim who obey Islam literally and the not-so-true-Muslim who subscribe to higher human values, compromise and ignore the evil laden verses of God in the Quran, Hadiths and Sira. Btw, I am not from the West.
Now, let us come to your theory of 90% Sufi and 10% Muslim.
Sufism accepts Muhammad and Allah in the same way as other sects of Islam. To be a Sufi, a person has to be Muslim in the first place. There is no direct entry to Sufism. One has to follow the Quran before entering into Sufism.
Agree, but Sufism filters off the evil laden verses and add elements of Hindu thoughts to Islam. This is why most ‘true’ Muslims regard the Sufis as blasphemous like the Ahmadiyas and others regardless of what the toothless OIC recommends.
There is no merit in that argument. Explain me the process of your conclusion and i will tell you how it is wrong. Let us go to the details of the brain as it is one of my favourite subject.
Don’t be too quick to brush this off.
You will need to understand the core and substance of religion first.
Frankly the core of religion is reflected in the story of the Buddha and Lord Krishna & Arjuna.
It has to do with the subliminal fear of death and what happen after death.
This issue is dealt critically within the Abrahamic holy texts. (Salvation is primary)
Fear is an emotion which is dealt with by the middle limbic system and the amgydala [google this].
However the primal fear is beyond emotion and dealt with within the primal brain.
Is there merit is my argument?
(There is more to it but a sufficient clue for the moment)
You are again back to square one.
The only difference between the Sufism and Conventional Islam is that of interpretation of the text. Otherwise, they share the belief both in Muhammad and Allah. So, how can you say that Islam did not evolve? Existence of the Sufism is the enough evidence that Islam is flexible.
Whilst you think I am ignorant, it could like be the other way round.
The point is Sufism impute other elements from Hinduism (and others?) to combine with Conventional Islam.
Islam did not evolve as God’s word by default cannot be edited nor changed, thus evolution of Islam is an impossibility.
What evolved was the brain of SOME Muslims.
By the way, Buddhism was never pushed out of India. It is still very much there. It spread outside India, not pushed.
OK, that is just a matter of semantics. By ‘pushed’, I meant it was not popular anymore but obviously it was not totally eliminated or got rid off in such a big place like ancient India.
Let me also tell you that I am not a Muslim but a Hindu, and a religious one too. But, I have to say right to right and wrong to wrong.
Noted you are luckily not a Muslim. I’ll appreciate if you point out anything I stated which is wrong. I only wish you dig deeper so we do not have to discuss much and waste so much time in our responses. Such lengthy replies eat into my full time attention for Kant’s third Critique of Judgment.
I am a progressive human being, a World Citizen, NOT-a-theist and not religious.