Religious Ignorance

[Trauma-san]

Why are people so ignorant?  

Not mentioning any names, but what kind of bitch would say something about Hindus and Elephants?  Is he REALLY that ignorant?  I know people like this that are christians, you say "Hindu" to them, and they think it's some weird crap dealing with Elephants.  While I'm sure Hindus have some connection to holy animals, don't they realize that the reasoning behind this connection/belief/theory/religion has THOUSANDS of years of history behind it?  THOUSANDS of years, of MILLIONS of people thinking about this religion.  Imagine how complex the Hindu religion must be, if Millions of people have been following it, finding explanations for it, for thousands of years.  Can 1 person really, really think that it just deserves a passing thought, and can be summarily dismissed on one idea?

And Christians... to say, "I accepted Jesus Christ, now what? Nothing changed!"  Is the most asinine thing I think I've ever heard.  Christianity, in a true sense, as practiced in the bible, goes MUCH, MUCH deeper than just saying Jesus Christ is your personal savior.  For someone to think that's all their is to it, shows their shallowness, and utter FAILURE to realize even 1 10th of a percent of the theory, logic, and history behind the religion.  I mean, you can literally, spend YEARS studying the bible, and studying different passages, the history of the people that wrote them, the history of the Kings mentioned in the old testament, etc. etc. etc. To think that you can SUMMARILY dismiss the entire Christian idea with 1 sentence shows an unmentionable level of arrogance.

Same thing with Jews.  First, the statement was false, you don't have to be born a jew.  The whole statement had a hole in it from the beginning.  Again, he doesn't understand even the FIRST CONCEPT of Judaism, and yet he thinks he can summarily dismiss it.  


Unbelievably Arrogant.  I give people player passes when they don't accept a religion, believe it to be false, etc. but to just mock it, and actually attack a religion, and it's followers, is extremely poor taste, in my opinion.  If you dont' believe in it, that's your perogative, I don't believe in every religion, save christianity, lol.  I can still recognize that most religions have good aspects, and they are all so incredibly similar it really makes you question if every religion isn't an offspring of some original religion, and they've all been twisted and changed over time.  

Comments like that coming from a muslim, also, make all your muslim brothers look bad.  I hope and believe that's not representative of what you're taught as a student of Islam, and if you think God wants you to attack your brothers, you're sadly mistaken.  

[pappy]

hmmmmmm call it hunch but i think some1 was talking about the closet homosexual of the board *cough*brian*cough*

[Don Jacob]

this brian?

[Quakaveli]

lol damn trauma, respect man.. now I feel bad for the couple times I discreditted islam immaturely "jizzlam, etc" -it  was all fun and jokes anyway.

[.:DayGoStyLz:.]

only one word came to mind when i saw the title of this thread....

"Redundant"

[Bigg AG]

Are one of those people you are refering to can any chance be me?

[zevin64]

  While I'm sure Hindus have some connection to holy animals, don't they realize that the reasoning behind this connection/belief/theory/religion has THOUSANDS of years of history behind it?  THOUSANDS of years, of MILLIONS of people thinking about this religion.  Imagine how complex the Hindu religion must be, if Millions of people have been following it, finding explanations for it, for thousands of years.  Can 1 person really, really think that it just deserves a passing thought, and can be summarily dismissed on one idea?

Hinduism claims that reality as we know it is an illusion-maya. We're each part of the illusion and have no true individual identity.

If I am part of the illusion how could I know it? How could I possess true knowledge that I don't exist, or have any knowledge at all if I'm not real? Do the individuals in a dream know they're mere phantoms? Does Charlie Brown know he's a cartoon character?

The Hindu concept that the world is an illusion contradicts the idea that I can have the knowledge that I'm only an illusion, rendering Hinduism self-refuting and thus false.

 Christianity, in a true sense, as practiced in the bible, goes MUCH, MUCH deeper than just saying Jesus Christ is your personal savior.  For someone to think that's all their is to it, shows their shallowness, and utter FAILURE to realize even 1 10th of a percent of the theory, logic, and history behind the religion.  I mean, you can literally, spend YEARS studying the bible, and studying different passages, the history of the people that wrote them, the history of the Kings mentioned in the old testament, etc. etc. etc. To think that you can SUMMARILY dismiss the entire Christian idea with 1 sentence shows an unmentionable level of arrogance.

Let's not get too arrogant of ourselves now. Really it doesn't matter just how much passages or teachings a religion has that makes it any harder or easier to prove false. Rather if you find a contradiction or other flaw in just the basic principle on which the religion lies then logically it renders all other teahcings false.

For e.g being a christian how would you answer an argument such as:

"You say that God is omnipotent and He is also perfectly good. Those are in contradiction. Why?. Because omnipotent means He is able to do anything, which would include being able to do immoral things. But a perfectly good creature would not be able to do so, and so you Christians are essentially saying God is able to do immoral things and He is not able to do immoral things at the same time."

or rather:

"Well then it seems logically possible to imagine a being greater than your being. If your being is the greatest of all possible beings and I can imagine a being, one even greater than that, then your being must not be the greatest of all possible beings. I can imagine one greater. I can imagine one that can do all kind of things and more; he can do bad things too. Therefore your God who is not capable of doing bad things is an inferior God."

I'll wait for your surely interesting reply.

[Trauma-san]

Nah, i've said what I wanted to say, I didn't intend it to be an argument on the validity of religions.  I said my thoughts, you said yours, arguing about it is useless.  

[zevin64]

Nah, i've said what I wanted to say, I didn't intend it to be an argument on the validity of religions.  I said my thoughts, you said yours, arguing about it is useless.  

fair nuff. I respect that. However I doubt having a discussion in which we use logic and facts to support or refute a point would have been "useless".

[T.J.]

^^trust me... it would have broken out into an ugly argument.

[Quakaveli]

  While I'm sure Hindus have some connection to holy animals, don't they realize that the reasoning behind this connection/belief/theory/religion has THOUSANDS of years of history behind it?  THOUSANDS of years, of MILLIONS of people thinking about this religion.  Imagine how complex the Hindu religion must be, if Millions of people have been following it, finding explanations for it, for thousands of years.  Can 1 person really, really think that it just deserves a passing thought, and can be summarily dismissed on one idea?

Hinduism claims that reality as we know it is an illusion-maya. We're each part of the illusion and have no true individual identity.

If I am part of the illusion how could I know it? How could I possess true knowledge that I don't exist, or have any knowledge at all if I'm not real? Do the individuals in a dream know they're mere phantoms? Does Charlie Brown know he's a cartoon character?

The Hindu concept that the world is an illusion contradicts the idea that I can have the knowledge that I'm only an illusion, rendering Hinduism self-refuting and thus false.

 Christianity, in a true sense, as practiced in the bible, goes MUCH, MUCH deeper than just saying Jesus Christ is your personal savior.  For someone to think that's all their is to it, shows their shallowness, and utter FAILURE to realize even 1 10th of a percent of the theory, logic, and history behind the religion.  I mean, you can literally, spend YEARS studying the bible, and studying different passages, the history of the people that wrote them, the history of the Kings mentioned in the old testament, etc. etc. etc. To think that you can SUMMARILY dismiss the entire Christian idea with 1 sentence shows an unmentionable level of arrogance.

Let's not get too arrogant of ourselves now. Really it doesn't matter just how much passages or teachings a religion has that makes it any harder or easier to prove false. Rather if you find a contradiction or other flaw in just the basic principle on which the religion lies then logically it renders all other teahcings false.

For e.g being a christian how would you answer an argument such as:

"You say that God is omnipotent and He is also perfectly good. Those are in contradiction. Why?. Because omnipotent means He is able to do anything, which would include being able to do immoral things. But a perfectly good creature would not be able to do so, and so you Christians are essentially saying God is able to do immoral things and He is not able to do immoral things at the same time."

or rather:

"Well then it seems logically possible to imagine a being greater than your being. If your being is the greatest of all possible beings and I can imagine a being, one even greater than that, then your being must not be the greatest of all possible beings. I can imagine one greater. I can imagine one that can do all kind of things and more; he can do bad things too. Therefore your God who is not capable of doing bad things is an inferior God."

I'll wait for your surely interesting reply.

No thats not true...Hinduism is such a complex religion that theres many trains of thought about certain things, like Rastafarianism.  That illusion-maya thing, I personally never heard about it...mayb what thhe concept was that the REAL WORLD as we know it iz an illusion, and the reality iz that we are souls not human beings, in a spiritual world, and this is really just a game. Like I was saying hinduism is really complex and it should be considering its the oldest popular religion.

[zevin64]

No thats not true...Hinduism is such a complex religion that theres many trains of thought about certain things, like Rastafarianism.  That illusion-maya thing, I personally never heard about it...mayb what thhe concept was that the REAL WORLD as we know it iz an illusion, and the reality iz that we are souls not human beings, in a spiritual world, and this is really just a game. Like I was saying hinduism is really complex and it should be considering its the oldest popular religion.

I gather that this is your own speculation. However an analysis of the religion reveals otherwise.

The main strain of Hinduism is the one that teaches monism. Monism is that there is only one reality and that reality is a unity. There's only one thing that really exists in the universe and that's Brahmin, and there is no differentiation in Brahmin. So everything that seems like differentiation, like the fact that you exist or anything exists, is really an illusion. The Hindu term for that is "Maya". The world is simply an illusion. It has nothing to do with if we are actually souls or whatever, it simply states that we ourselves are illusions, as well as the rest of the world.

If Hinduism is true how could we possible know it, because the only way we could know it was true was by measuring and sensing and testing our environment. But since our very environment is an illusion we could not know.

Many Hindu's do realise that their faith seems to have some sort of contradiction but alot of them pass it off, calling the notion of contradiction a western idea and since ultimately knowledge doesnt exist ultimately nothing exists at all so contradiction doesn't exist. This is harmful when applying the idea of Karma. If the Hindu admits that nothing really exists, then karma doesn't exist. How would the Hindu know for sure what is Karma?(which by the way seems very egoistic and self-servng)

Another view of most Hindu's is that logic isn't the way to truth, experience is. However when one says "You actually do think logic is the way to truth" the Hindu replies "No it isn't". They have just used logic to accept the idea of a contradiction that logic and experience can't be both the way to truth using their own philosophy. However they have just used logic to find this very truth!. The whole idea is self-refuting.

So a person who rejects rationality, a person who rejects logic, a person who rejects the world as a real thing and contends that it is merely an illusion can therefore have nothing to say about the real world cause the real world isn't real. And any commentary on it would acknowledge it's reality. Any commentary trying to correct your view so that you may believe the world is an illusion would have to use rationality..that doesn't exist!

[Quakaveli]

No thats not true...Hinduism is such a complex religion that theres many trains of thought about certain things, like Rastafarianism.  That illusion-maya thing, I personally never heard about it...mayb what thhe concept was that the REAL WORLD as we know it iz an illusion, and the reality iz that we are souls not human beings, in a spiritual world, and this is really just a game. Like I was saying hinduism is really complex and it should be considering its the oldest popular religion.

I gather that this is your own speculation. However an analysis of the religion reveals otherwise.

The main strain of Hinduism is the one that teaches monism. Monism is that there is only one reality and that reality is a unity. There's only one thing that really exists in the universe and that's Brahmin, and there is no differentiation in Brahmin. So everything that seems like differentiation, like the fact that you exist or anything exists, is really an illusion. The Hindu term for that is "Maya". The world is simply an illusion. It has nothing to do with if we are actually souls or whatever, it simply states that we ourselves are illusions, as well as the rest of the world.

If Hinduism is true how could we possible know it, because the only way we could know it was true was by measuring and sensing and testing our environment. But since our very environment is an illusion we could not know.

Many Hindu's do realise that their faith seems to have some sort of contradiction but alot of them pass it off, calling the notion of contradiction a western idea and since ultimately knowledge doesnt exist ultimately nothing exists at all so contradiction doesn't exist. This is harmful when applying the idea of Karma. If the Hindu admits that nothing really exists, then karma doesn't exist. How would the Hindu know for sure what is Karma?(which by the way seems very egoistic and self-servng)

Another view of most Hindu's is that logic isn't the way to truth, experience is. However when one says "You actually do think logic is the way to truth" the Hindu replies "No it isn't". They have just used logic to accept the idea of a contradiction that logic and experience can't be both the way to truth using their own philosophy. However they have just used logic to find this very truth!. The whole idea is self-refuting.

So a person who rejects rationality, a person who rejects logic, a person who rejects the world as a real thing and contends that it is merely an illusion can therefore have nothing to say about the real world cause the real world isn't real. And any commentary on it would acknowledge it's reality. Any commentary trying to correct your view so that you may believe the world is an illusion would have to use rationality..that doesn't exist!

and where did u learn all this?

[zevin64]

Research. The reading of literature by higher authorities on the subject many of them obviously being Hindus themselves. And talking with a Hindu myself.

[Don Seer]

Thankfully I don't have to quote it because quake already did.

But unnaturally large portions of that post are directly lifted from this webpage.

http://www.str.org/free/commentaries/misc_topics/reflecti.htm