This article disabuses those who wish to speak of the “East” as if it was filled with open-minded sages:
“It … (is) scientific fundamentalism to dismiss warnings from Indian astrologers,” said Murli Manohar Joshi, India’s Human Resources and Development minister. He was inaugurating a workshop on “Predicting Earthquakes and Calamities” in New Delhi. “Scientists with advanced computers sometimes fail to predict major earthquakes,” he said. “Ancient Indian astrology does have the tools to roughly foretell the time and sometimes even the exact date and time of an earthquake.”
Keep reading, there is plenty of politicized crap detailed. Well, I think moderate Muslims should tell the fundies to shut the fuck up, well, moderate Hindus should tell these RSS wacks to fuck off too, they really give idolaters a bad name….
Check this out:
References to beef eating, which is prohibited by Hinduism, and cattle sacrifices were deleted.
What the hell? Is this Islamic & Creationist in its Know-Nothingness, or what? I got news for the Hindus who think they are descendents of Aryans-THEY ATE BEEF!.
…In the asvamedha, the most important of public sacrifices, first mentioned in the Rgveda and discussed in the Brahmanas, more than 600 animals (including wild ones like boars) and birds were killed and its finale was marked by the sacrifice of 21 cows, which, according to the dominant opinion were sterile ones.
….
According to the subsequent Brahmanical texts (e.g. Grhyasutras and Dharmasutras) the killing of animals and eating of beef was very much de rigeur. The ceremony of guest-reception (known as arghya in the Rgveda but generally as madhuparka in subsequent texts) consisted not only of a meal of a mixture of curds and honey but also of the flesh of a cow or bull.
Yum, I need a bloody steak….
I don’t make as big of a deal about Hindu fundamentalism and their repulsive caste consciousness because they tend to be a little more tolerant of their minorities than is the norm in Islam. I still think they’re more tolerant, but is there a bidding war for showing who is the descendent of the Neandertal or what? Let’s thank their devil gods that the moronic sages of Hinduism advised their followers not to push this idiocy beyond the Khyber Pass….
Godless comments:
“stupid…shut the fuck up…wacks…repulsive…descendants of neanderthals…devil gods…moronic…idiocy”
First things first: I’m not a defender of Hindutva by *any* means…and the historical revisionist stuff with the “nuclear weapons in the Mahabharat” is as fundamentalist as it gets…but Razib’s comments are over the top, in my opinion. I would oppose this tone if it was directed at Islam, Judaism, or Christianity – I only fault radical Muslims for their actions, not their theology per se .
The thing is – calling Hindus “devil worshippers” for being polytheistic is like calling Muhammad a “pedophile”. As I said then, such an attack is not meant to be theological – it’s just meant to be insulting:
“All Muslims are evil/freaks or Muhammad was pedophile”, etc. – unnecessarily inflammatory in both cases. (False in the first case b/c we’re talking about an inapplicable universal quantifier, and technically true but practically contentless in the second case, as it is on the same lines as “the Old Testament God is a mass murderer”.)
Hopefully we are not going to descend to the level of the Raving Atheist and his casual tossing around of “Godidiot” 😉 For the most part we try to discuss things with civility…well, maybe with an occasional “moron” or “stupid” thrown in, but not quite so much in one post 🙂
Of course, everyone makes overly vituperative statements from time to time. I think the harshest I’ve ever been was to the Wiccans, I guess, which *does* sound too strong in retrospect 😉
Clarification from Razib:
Hindus as “devil worshippers”: Well, since I don’t believe in ghosts, gods or devils, it’s obviously not a literal belief of mine. It stems from several points:
- Iranian demonology which serves as a primary root of the dualism between “light” and “dark” that you find recurring in the the various Abrahamic faiths (more so Christianity than the other two) uses the term “daeva” to refer originally to the demons that were worshipped by non-Zoroastrian Persians. This religion was almost certainly the polytheistic beliefs of the Aryans, which are preserved only among the Hindu people today. There is a common root from the Indo-European term for god(s), divine, devil, deity, zeus, dyaus, etc. The gods of yore become devils among all the Indo-European peoples, excepting the Hindus, who still worship “devils,” even Devi, the Mother Goddess.For most of the other branches of monotheistic people the pagan beliefs faded away, with a few generations taught to beware of the “devils,” the “old gods.” Some of the old beliefs, such as the tuatha de danann in Ireland, the “fairy folk,” became charming tales of magic once the last of the old believers had passed on and there was no threat to the established worship of the One God. The Muslims of India on the other hand had a different experience, the old gods of their past were still around them, worshipped by devotees, we Mussulmans of Hindustan lived in a demon-haunted world where the great pagan masses still gave puja to the old gods. The bengali term for “god” is bogaban, similar to the Russian bog, but we Muslims have turned it into a term for “devil” or “demon.” The same process that has occurred for thousands of years when the worshippers of the One Righteous God face the believers of the old gods has recapitulated itself, but with a difference, the ancient faith is not going into the twighlight and becoming a memory to haunt the nightmares of small children when they cause mischief.
The more raw and primal manifestations of Hinduism are deeply disquieting to monotheists. The modern Christian conception of the devil seems to be based upon the pagan goatish god Pan, so the animal gods of Hinduism, reminiscent of divinities that have been gone from the West for thousands of years elicits atavistic reactions of horror in my experience. Note this article that speaks of Franklin Graham talking of “hundreds of millions of people locked in the darkness of Hinduism . . . bound by Satan’s power”. The first British to spend time in India noted the contrast between Islam, which they detested, but understood and could relate to, and Hinduism, which they found alien and beyond comprehension.
So do Hindus worship “devils?” Well, if the tenets of the monotheistic religions are correct, yes. And monotheists are 50% of the world’s population. Hindus need to be prepared for the rage and irrational revulsion that greets their faith, because their religion is an affront to the supremacy and dominion of the One God who commanded his peoples to smash the idols.
- Which leads me to my second point. I am a fan of Greo-Roman paganism, I feel an inner sadness at the passing of the religiously diverse world of pagan Rome and the rise of the more monochromatic Byzantine culture. Islam even more than Christianity uproots, de-racinates and purges organically created cultures, and turns what was technicolor into black & white. India is the last redoubt of Aryan paganism, though that is probably the lesser influence in its Hindu practice compared to indigenous South Asian religious themes (karma, vegetarianism, Shiva, aescetism, etc. are not really very Indo-European). Islam is a threat, the RSS intuits this correctly.But, as long as Hindus dehumanize their own, continue to have a sloppy understanding of their own faith, and behave in self-destructive ways, Islam will gain ground. My main beef with Hinduism is the moral blot that is caste, which basically gives religious sanction to some of humanity’s basest instincts. The way upper castes treat the lower castes, it might not be implausible to say that Hindus worship demons, because what god(s) would put their imprinture on such behavior as Holy and the Natural Order? Their preoccupation with ritual cleanliness, their traditional rejection of converts and shaming of those who were forced to convert at sword-point (1920, Kerala for instance) points to a lack of generosity in the soul that is a weakness for any religion or culture.
Islam was founded by a man who was clearly possessed of a meglomaniacal persona. If he did have intercourse with Aiysha when she was 10 after their marriage, well, he’s a pedophile, perhaps God’s own, but nonetheless, the definition fits. Hinduism doesn’t have the excuse of a crazed founder who set an example as a “Perfect Man” by behaving in a rather conventional fashion, accruing power & wealth under the guise of piety, though possessed of enough human feeling to promote a relatively egalitarian and moralistic faith that outlived his own uses and life. Hinduism is an organic religion that can change. And it must, or it will die, pure & simple.
Blah, blah, blah…I think you get my drift.
