01-27-2007, 09:25 AM
Rajesh_g, cheers.
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the conceptualization of God as an eternal person whose will has created
and governs the universe needs to be taken very strictly.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I get it now. It's right: we don't have a mold for our Gods to fit into. (S)he/it kind of morphs into and out of form, and the forms taken are not all of the same character or intent.
I now see that De Roover is speaking of the tight biblical description of the bible's god. I agree with him, if the quoted statement is taken as <i>no more</i> than what it says, but is considered literally. In that case, it's true:
We don't have a bearded angry jealous guy sitting in the Void (previously it was doctrine that he sat in the literal sky, but probes have explored space and can't find the bible's god), taking an active interest in making sure none of his human creatures on the central planet which the sun circambulates (to be consistent with biblical teaching) are going against his 10 commandments or his plan for eventual apocalypse and selective salvation. Else his gawdly Will manifests as biblical wrath that will punish lots of innocent humans besides animals.
(When I first heard that this was what the biblical belief was, I was astounded beyond all comprehension. But later, by the time I got round to islamic beliefs, I had become rather immunised to the extremes of ludicrousness.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the conceptualization of God as an eternal person whose will has created
and governs the universe needs to be taken very strictly.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Taking De Roover's statement loosely though, it does apply to Hinduism: the Cosmic Mind of Brahman has given birth to the balanced Laws of Nature which guides the Cosmos (through Rta) and the sentient beings (through Dharma, subset of Rta). Brahman did create all of it, and it is through these Laws of Nature which are in place that Brahman's will is manifest. And Brahman is eternal. So check all.
Likewise, it applies to the Tao. The Tao is eternal, which has created all of the Cosmos. The Tao's will is manifest in the balanced Laws of Nature (the Yin-Yang, think Purusha-Prakriti/Shiva-Shakthi). Likewise in Shinto. And like the Kamisama in Shinto takes many forms, Brahman in Hinduism manifests as Krishna, Durga, Shanmuga, Ayyapa, ....
But ultimately De Roover is right as to why drawing parallels between Hinduism and narrowly defined statements of biblical dogma is dangerous: the christoislamic idea of koranic/biblical god is very strict, so strict that I didn't notice the boundaries (until De Roover's explanation came along) and imagined the description applied to the boundless Divine of Hinduism.
Something else:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Where's the historic 'Europe'? Europe is a by-product of christianity.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Acharya just posted a link in the Unmasking AIT thread which again shows up how all my little thoughts have already been thought of by better minds.
Acharya's link goes to a chapter of Ram Swarup's book <i>On Hinduism: Reviews and Reflections</i>, which states:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>India and Europe</i> opens with the "Philosophical View of India in Classical Antiquity", or India in the old Greek tradition. It assumes that Classical Greece provides Europe's antiquity and that the two are related in some special way. It is a debatable point but it has been assumed here as axiomatic. The fact is that at the time when Greece represented a living culture, it did not know Europe, nor Europe of that time knew Greece.
The Greeks knew themselves as Hellenists, not Europeans. And whenever they sought the origins of, or influences upon, their own philosophy and religion, they thought of Egypt, Chaldea and India, not of Europe. They received little from Europe and they bequeathed not much to it, at least at the time when they represented a living culture. In fact, Christian Europe as it was taking shape first grew in opposition to and later in forgetfulness of Greek culture. Christian Europe in its early period used Greek language and Greek philosophy to establish itself; then it attacked ferociously Greek culture. Christian Europe in its early period used Greek language and Greek philosophy to establish itself; then it attacked ferociously Greek religion and culture; it destroyed Greek literature, its schools and libraries.2 The work of destruction was so complete that even the memory of Plato and Socrates was obliterated and for a thousand years Christian Europe grew in complete ignorance of what it calls its classical antiquity.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When I wrote that Europe is a by-product of christianity, I did not mean to imply that Europe was ever united as one connected entity before now (now there's the European Union, and conferences between mutually respectful European heads of state). Throughout the history of christianised Europe, there was of course only war and several countries even sought the utter destruction of the other.
Merely meant that the other European countries were all part of what was the basically familiar world to them: on the south and east they were bounded by islam. A christian nation, however inimical to another European country, was generally considered better than forging ties with islamic ones.
(I also vaguely recall that the name 'Europe' itself comes from Greek religion, where Zeus as a Bull carried off a girl called Io and crossed the Mediterranean which somehow lead to the name Europa. But this only marked the geographic region, it never indicated that the lands were more intimately related let alone housed a close-knit set of societies and peoples.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the conceptualization of God as an eternal person whose will has created
and governs the universe needs to be taken very strictly.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->I get it now. It's right: we don't have a mold for our Gods to fit into. (S)he/it kind of morphs into and out of form, and the forms taken are not all of the same character or intent.
I now see that De Roover is speaking of the tight biblical description of the bible's god. I agree with him, if the quoted statement is taken as <i>no more</i> than what it says, but is considered literally. In that case, it's true:
We don't have a bearded angry jealous guy sitting in the Void (previously it was doctrine that he sat in the literal sky, but probes have explored space and can't find the bible's god), taking an active interest in making sure none of his human creatures on the central planet which the sun circambulates (to be consistent with biblical teaching) are going against his 10 commandments or his plan for eventual apocalypse and selective salvation. Else his gawdly Will manifests as biblical wrath that will punish lots of innocent humans besides animals.
(When I first heard that this was what the biblical belief was, I was astounded beyond all comprehension. But later, by the time I got round to islamic beliefs, I had become rather immunised to the extremes of ludicrousness.)
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->the conceptualization of God as an eternal person whose will has created
and governs the universe needs to be taken very strictly.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Taking De Roover's statement loosely though, it does apply to Hinduism: the Cosmic Mind of Brahman has given birth to the balanced Laws of Nature which guides the Cosmos (through Rta) and the sentient beings (through Dharma, subset of Rta). Brahman did create all of it, and it is through these Laws of Nature which are in place that Brahman's will is manifest. And Brahman is eternal. So check all.
Likewise, it applies to the Tao. The Tao is eternal, which has created all of the Cosmos. The Tao's will is manifest in the balanced Laws of Nature (the Yin-Yang, think Purusha-Prakriti/Shiva-Shakthi). Likewise in Shinto. And like the Kamisama in Shinto takes many forms, Brahman in Hinduism manifests as Krishna, Durga, Shanmuga, Ayyapa, ....
But ultimately De Roover is right as to why drawing parallels between Hinduism and narrowly defined statements of biblical dogma is dangerous: the christoislamic idea of koranic/biblical god is very strict, so strict that I didn't notice the boundaries (until De Roover's explanation came along) and imagined the description applied to the boundless Divine of Hinduism.
Something else:
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Where's the historic 'Europe'? Europe is a by-product of christianity.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->Acharya just posted a link in the Unmasking AIT thread which again shows up how all my little thoughts have already been thought of by better minds.
Acharya's link goes to a chapter of Ram Swarup's book <i>On Hinduism: Reviews and Reflections</i>, which states:<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><i>India and Europe</i> opens with the "Philosophical View of India in Classical Antiquity", or India in the old Greek tradition. It assumes that Classical Greece provides Europe's antiquity and that the two are related in some special way. It is a debatable point but it has been assumed here as axiomatic. The fact is that at the time when Greece represented a living culture, it did not know Europe, nor Europe of that time knew Greece.
The Greeks knew themselves as Hellenists, not Europeans. And whenever they sought the origins of, or influences upon, their own philosophy and religion, they thought of Egypt, Chaldea and India, not of Europe. They received little from Europe and they bequeathed not much to it, at least at the time when they represented a living culture. In fact, Christian Europe as it was taking shape first grew in opposition to and later in forgetfulness of Greek culture. Christian Europe in its early period used Greek language and Greek philosophy to establish itself; then it attacked ferociously Greek culture. Christian Europe in its early period used Greek language and Greek philosophy to establish itself; then it attacked ferociously Greek religion and culture; it destroyed Greek literature, its schools and libraries.2 The work of destruction was so complete that even the memory of Plato and Socrates was obliterated and for a thousand years Christian Europe grew in complete ignorance of what it calls its classical antiquity.<!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
When I wrote that Europe is a by-product of christianity, I did not mean to imply that Europe was ever united as one connected entity before now (now there's the European Union, and conferences between mutually respectful European heads of state). Throughout the history of christianised Europe, there was of course only war and several countries even sought the utter destruction of the other.
Merely meant that the other European countries were all part of what was the basically familiar world to them: on the south and east they were bounded by islam. A christian nation, however inimical to another European country, was generally considered better than forging ties with islamic ones.
(I also vaguely recall that the name 'Europe' itself comes from Greek religion, where Zeus as a Bull carried off a girl called Io and crossed the Mediterranean which somehow lead to the name Europa. But this only marked the geographic region, it never indicated that the lands were more intimately related let alone housed a close-knit set of societies and peoples.)