krazylearner
poor little me
i believe in this
By allan watts .
Religion, do we really need it ?
i believe in this
By allan watts .
Sources?
The only experiment I have read about is in the novel "The Last Symbol" by Dan Brown. Please enlighten me about actual experiments if you have come across any. I find it really hard to believe, since I firmly believe human beings to be robots of flesh and blood.
doomgiver
Warframe
there was that rofl-inducing experiment with dying people and weighing scales, supposed to find the mass of a soul leaving the body.
and if soul has a physical characteristic, like mass, then it should be influenced by all physical laws, and be limited by them. so, thats another kick in the groin for the "believers"
gaurav_div
Broken In
really brother god is one and we don't really need religion actually god created us human beings but we have divided ourselves on the basis of religions and i agree with you that religion hasn't given us anything but has given us communal hate among ourselves
DigitalDude
PhotonAttack
I will take the privilege of not being politically correct. The term 'Religion' is just a mask for hiding political ideologies. It is a political construct just like communism etc. to control population, influence demographics, capture land and exert power. The biggest curse of India is that all the ancient culture, heritage, spirituality, cosmology, technology and science have been dumped into a similar religious construct 'Hinduism' by the mughal/british invaders and traders. So hinduism has been made to fit into the western notions of religion. there is no precise and proper word for 'religion' in sanskrit or tamil. we have 'Dharma' and 'Araneri'(Tamil). The words that come close to religion are sampradaya or matha but they are also not correct.. esp matha/matham being attributed to 'religion' is not an ancient one.
I will be surprised if any of you have read the Gita, Quran and Bible from 'cover-to-cover'. All religions DO NOT say the same thing apart from few common sense. this is the biggest lie on the naive population
Myth of Hindu Sameness : Rajiv Malhotra Also read the book 'Being Different' by Rajiv Malhotra. especially the argument of Believers Vs Atheists is a response to Abrahamic religions. In hinduism belief is neither a pinnacle thought nor the basis, 'belief' should not be confused with 'bhakti yoga' which is entirely different. The human population is not homogeneous, there are variety of personalities and everyone cannot intellectually contemplate life's challenges and questions before them. Some are satisfied with bhakti/devotion to god, some are satisfied with karma yoga and only a very few are capable of intellectual contemplation gnana yoga. and there are various schools of thought within hinduism even for atheism like carvaka's. so this abrahamic forced homogeneity cannot be clubbed together with Indian integral hetrogenity. if one reads the introduction part in vivekananda's Raja Yoga, he even mentions that the prerequiste for it is that one should completely erase the thought of a god as a personality. even Ashtavakra Gita.
please read about 'saraswati river valley civilisation' and 'dwaraka city under-sea excavations'. but one may also like to call it sanatana dharma instead of the recent naming of hinduism. this 'recent' naming may also not be an absolute fact. there are many arguments regarding this HINDU sacred word Hindu in Vedik Scriptures
Ayn Rand's objectivism may make one feel very intellectual but IMO that's a detriment to society as an organism as is evident from the vices that the one-dimensional materialistic western society is experiencing. and for the Indian society it will kill our historical identity.
"Alan Watts (1915-1973) a professor, graduate school dean and research fellow of Harvard University, drew heavily on the insights of Vedanta. Watts became well known in the 1960s as a pioneer in bringing Eastern philosophy to the West."......Hindu Wisdom - quotes on hinduism 41-60
(one fact - majority of temples in India come under the administration of the state governments. a part of temple collections goes to the government. this does not happen for other religious places of workship)
btw why stop at flesh and blood? why not go upto quarks?
if you want to take reductionism to it's logical end, reality as we perceive is nothing but a bunch of photons hitting a bunch of electrons, changing their and it's energy levels, then hitting another bunch of electrons in retina which pushes another bunch of electrons to a gooky stuff where something(consciousness) makes sense of the bunch of electron patterns with already stored ones. yes it's all maya. but is that the question. reality is itself a belief
TLDR:
we need religion but with renaissance. being non-religious or apolitical is becoming a fashion without proper understanding or thorough knowledge of what is being negated. that is a threat for surviving as a society or a nation with a common cultural heritage. “The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.” ― Swami Vivekananda
_
I will be surprised if any of you have read the Gita, Quran and Bible from 'cover-to-cover'. All religions DO NOT say the same thing apart from few common sense. this is the biggest lie on the naive population
Myth of Hindu Sameness : Rajiv Malhotra Also read the book 'Being Different' by Rajiv Malhotra. especially the argument of Believers Vs Atheists is a response to Abrahamic religions. In hinduism belief is neither a pinnacle thought nor the basis, 'belief' should not be confused with 'bhakti yoga' which is entirely different. The human population is not homogeneous, there are variety of personalities and everyone cannot intellectually contemplate life's challenges and questions before them. Some are satisfied with bhakti/devotion to god, some are satisfied with karma yoga and only a very few are capable of intellectual contemplation gnana yoga. and there are various schools of thought within hinduism even for atheism like carvaka's. so this abrahamic forced homogeneity cannot be clubbed together with Indian integral hetrogenity. if one reads the introduction part in vivekananda's Raja Yoga, he even mentions that the prerequiste for it is that one should completely erase the thought of a god as a personality. even Ashtavakra Gita.just because newton named gravity as such it does not mean it was not in existence before. it just got a collective name thats it.
please read about 'saraswati river valley civilisation' and 'dwaraka city under-sea excavations'. but one may also like to call it sanatana dharma instead of the recent naming of hinduism. this 'recent' naming may also not be an absolute fact. there are many arguments regarding this HINDU sacred word Hindu in Vedik Scriptures
air is also present everywhere then why do we need fans and ACs? why do we have statues of leaders and personalities? why does one have a photo of a loved one in their purse? is the photo=the person? isn't it a symbolic representation of something larger and a conduit to focus or relate the mind(or meditate) to that particular thing/person? temples were (and even today are) the heart of an ancient Indian society. acting as an enabler of social gatherings, an amphitheatre for drama, music and speeches (which depicted, strengthened culture and provided moral compass to many), a place of social security for the homeless and needy, the area an economic hub for many traders. another important aspect of a temple was that it was a medical centre. for eg. people went to a vishnu temple early in the morning to get tirtham (water kept in a copper vessel over night which is good for the health and also influenced by certain sanskrit mantras), few tulsi leaves which strengthens your immunity esp against common cold, a jadari on the head to douse the ego.
Ayn Rand's objectivism may make one feel very intellectual but IMO that's a detriment to society as an organism as is evident from the vices that the one-dimensional materialistic western society is experiencing. and for the Indian society it will kill our historical identity.
this is more of a liberal 'politically correct' rhetoric. this 'transformation' line of argument assumes 'selective' acceptance or 'partial' following of the particular religion's teachings. but in reality most religious texts mandate you either are 100% compliant or 0%. The people in this 'selective acceptance' club are either ignorant of their own religion or in denial or worse conciously hiding facts for an ultimate political goal. conservatism is not any kind of root to any problem. it is 'discrimination' that is the root. be it based on caste, religion, race, money or class. this 'discrimination' is even a fundamental part of many religious theology. that is where all the problem starts. even some atheists' assume being an atheist makes one an intellectual by default - the problem of discrimination is here also.
isn't this a fallacy? how can you group all religions into a single entity if you want to discuss on the issue of the relevance of religion. that basic assumption is itself false. if you want to be politically correct then an objective discussion is not possible.
yes we will believe in our own principles only if a westener tells it
"Alan Watts (1915-1973) a professor, graduate school dean and research fellow of Harvard University, drew heavily on the insights of Vedanta. Watts became well known in the 1960s as a pioneer in bringing Eastern philosophy to the West."......Hindu Wisdom - quotes on hinduism 41-60
that is the illusion created by the marxist historians. many so called social and caste problems were direct result of brutal mughal/british invasions and subsequent rule. for eg Amazon.com: Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime : Veena Talwar another eg. is there were no records of any caste conflicts before 1884 even in Max Muller's history. one has to read the accounts of various ancient chinese, arab or other travellers to india like huan tsang, al-baruni, megasthenes.
No. again this is a common belief albeit false. some maybe time specific and obscure now but many Indian rituals have definite purpose, scientific/health basis. for eg. *vivekitam.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/athirathram-a-perspective-3/
that is an gross generalisation. I read few articles that may be relevant here. U.S. Views on God and Life Are Turning Hindu - Newsweek , Muslims will become majority in Europe, senior Vatican official warns - Telegraph , BBC News - Europe: Nationalist resurgence
assume the Temple and it's trust to be the NGO. why not ? JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
(one fact - majority of temples in India come under the administration of the state governments. a part of temple collections goes to the government. this does not happen for other religious places of workship)
your knowledge is very superficial and limited. It is evident by the summary where you cruelly reduce such a vast spectrum of knowledge into a very narrow understanding. you have clearly not read even the bhagavad gita leave alone upanishads, vedas or brahmasutras etc. but I wouldn't blame you it is the result of common stereotyping by the equally ignorant society and media.
oh well yes, "If religion cannot scrutinize, question itself, it must go." - Swami Vivekananda. Krishna says 'in kalyug even if lord brahma comes down on earth and says fire is not hot, don't believe him but use your intellect and experience for finding it yourself' I forgot where this is quoted in.. bhagavad gita or ashtavakra gita or bhagavada purana.
all those esperiments for weight of the soul are mostly bunkum. spiritual thoughts cannot be validated with material experiments. Tesla experienced a very strange phenomenon when he was a totally immersed in his research for several days without sleep. some abnormal sensory capabilities and he thought he was dying. his narration can be found in a biography named 'wizard'. some mystics in his neighbourhood called it as awakening of the pineal gland. but he was not able to experiment on it.
btw why stop at flesh and blood? why not go upto quarks?
if you want to take reductionism to it's logical end, reality as we perceive is nothing but a bunch of photons hitting a bunch of electrons, changing their and it's energy levels, then hitting another bunch of electrons in retina which pushes another bunch of electrons to a gooky stuff where something(consciousness) makes sense of the bunch of electron patterns with already stored ones. yes it's all maya. but is that the question. reality is itself a belief TLDR:
we need religion but with renaissance. being non-religious or apolitical is becoming a fashion without proper understanding or thorough knowledge of what is being negated. that is a threat for surviving as a society or a nation with a common cultural heritage. “The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.” ― Swami Vivekananda
_
skeletor
Chosen of the Omnissiah
Indeed, but when did Sati start off anyways?
I will take the privilege of not being politically correct. The term 'Religion' is just a mask for hiding political ideologies. It is a political construct just like communism etc. to control population, influence demographics, capture land and exert power. The biggest curse of India is that all the ancient culture, heritage, spirituality, cosmology, technology and science have been dumped into a similar religious construct 'Hinduism' by the mughal/british invaders and traders. So hinduism has been made to fit into the western notions of religion. there is no precise and proper word for 'religion' in sanskrit or tamil. we have 'Dharma' and 'Araneri'(Tamil). The words that come close to religion are sampradaya or matha but they are also not correct.. esp matha/matham being attributed to 'religion' is not an ancient one.
I will be surprised if any of you have read the Gita, Quran and Bible from 'cover-to-cover'. All religions DO NOT say the same thing apart from few common sense. this is the biggest lie on the naive population
just because newton named gravity as such it does not mean it was not in existence before. it just got a collective name thats it.
please read about 'saraswati river valley civilisation' and 'dwaraka city under-sea excavations'. but one may also like to call it sanatana dharma instead of the recent naming of hinduism. this 'recent' naming may also not be an absolute fact. there are many arguments regarding this HINDU sacred word Hindu in Vedik Scriptures
air is also present everywhere then why do we need fans and ACs? why do we have statues of leaders and personalities? why does one have a photo of a loved one in their purse? is the photo=the person? isn't it a symbolic representation of something larger and a conduit to focus or relate the mind(or meditate) to that particular thing/person? temples were (and even today are) the heart of an ancient Indian society. acting as an enabler of social gatherings, an amphitheatre for drama, music and speeches (which depicted, strengthened culture and provided moral compass to many), a place of social security for the homeless and needy, the area an economic hub for many traders. another important aspect of a temple was that it was a medical centre. for eg. people went to a vishnu temple early in the morning to get tirtham (water kept in a copper vessel over night which is good for the health and also influenced by certain sanskrit mantras), few tulsi leaves which strengthens your immunity esp against common cold, a jadari on the head to douse the ego.
Ayn Rand's objectivism may make one feel very intellectual but IMO that's a detriment to society as an organism as is evident from the vices that the one-dimensional materialistic western society is experiencing. and for the Indian society it will kill our historical identity.
this is more of a liberal 'politically correct' rhetoric. this 'transformation' line of argument assumes 'selective' acceptance or 'partial' following of the particular religion's teachings. but in reality most religious texts mandate you either are 100% compliant or 0%. The people in this 'selective acceptance' club are either ignorant of their own religion or in denial or worse conciously hiding facts for an ultimate political goal. conservatism is not any kind of root to any problem. it is 'discrimination' that is the root. be it based on caste, religion, race, money or class. this 'discrimination' is even a fundamental part of many religious theology. that is where all the problem starts. even some atheists' assume being an atheist makes one an intellectual by default - the problem of discrimination is here also.
yes we will believe in our own principles only if a westener tells it
"Alan Watts (1915-1973) a professor, graduate school dean and research fellow of Harvard University, drew heavily on the insights of Vedanta. Watts became well known in the 1960s as a pioneer in bringing Eastern philosophy to the West."......Hindu Wisdom - quotes on hinduism 41-60
that is the illusion created by the marxist historians. many so called social and caste problems were direct result of brutal mughal/british invasions and subsequent rule. for eg Amazon.com: Dowry Murder: The Imperial Origins of a Cultural Crime : Veena Talwar another eg. is there were no records of any caste conflicts before 1884 even in Max Muller's history. one has to read the accounts of various ancient chinese, arab or other travellers to india like huan tsang, al-baruni, megasthenes.
No. again this is a common belief albeit false. some maybe time specific and obscure now but many Indian rituals have definite purpose, scientific/health basis. for eg. *vivekitam.wordpress.com/2011/05/01/athirathram-a-perspective-3/
that is an gross generalisation. I read few articles that may be relevant here. U.S. Views on God and Life Are Turning Hindu - Newsweek , Muslims will become majority in Europe, senior Vatican official warns - Telegraph , BBC News - Europe: Nationalist resurgence
assume the Temple and it's trust to be the NGO. why not ? JSTOR: An Error Occurred Setting Your User Cookie
(one fact - majority of temples in India come under the administration of the state governments. a part of temple collections goes to the government. this does not happen for other religious places of workship)
your knowledge is very superficial and limited. It is evident by the summary where you cruelly reduce such a vast spectrum of knowledge into a very narrow understanding. you have clearly not read even the bhagavad gita leave alone upanishads, vedas or brahmasutras etc. but I wouldn't blame you it is the result of common stereotyping by the equally ignorant society and media.
oh well yes, "If religion cannot scrutinize, question itself, it must go." - Swami Vivekananda. Krishna says 'in kalyug even if lord brahma comes down on earth and says fire is not hot, don't believe him but use your intellect and experience for finding it yourself' I forgot where this is quoted in.. bhagavad gita or ashtavakra gita or bhagavada purana.
all those esperiments for weight of the soul are mostly bunkum. spiritual thoughts cannot be validated with material experiments. Tesla experienced a very strange phenomenon when he was a totally immersed in his research for several days without sleep. some abnormal sensory capabilities and he thought he was dying. his narration can be found in a biography named 'wizard'. some mystics in his neighbourhood called it as awakening of the pineal gland. but he was not able to experiment on it.
btw why stop at flesh and blood? why not go upto quarks?
TLDR:
we need religion but with renaissance. being non-religious or apolitical is becoming a fashion without proper understanding or thorough knowledge of what is being negated. that is a threat for surviving as a society or a nation with a common cultural heritage. “The fire that warms us can also consume us; it is not the fault of the fire.” ― Swami Vivekananda
_
Well your whole point in this above quoted text was to tell us, that all RELIGIONS are not same. Different teaching [ wrong or right ] are given by different RELIGIOUS group of people, be it Hindus, Muslims, etc around the world.
So, in a nutshell what you are trying to convey basically is : Different RELIGION follows entirely different teachings be it good or bad.
Fallacy ?? uh...
Even if the teachings and origins of different Religions are different be it good or bad, they all fall in a common GROUP [ as you may call it a group BTW ]
The purpose of this discussion thread is not to see if I am politically correct or not. It is to see that does the mere existence of RELIGION as a whole is required in a society of the 21st century ?
What RELIGION has given us, Britishers divided us based of RELIGION, don't you think dividing someone based on his caste or religion is injustice to humanity ?
Karma is what makes us, destroys us. All human being should perform GOOD Karma, we will never need any RELIGION then.
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good post @DigitalDude, everything but the first paragraph is bang on
politics is in schools, homes, and companies, religion is not just another political construct, there is a major spiritual aspect here as well, where politics has no part to play. politics is about people, religion is about things more important than people. man has spiritual needs, and religion provides this.
this thought appealed to me
politics is in schools, homes, and companies, religion is not just another political construct, there is a major spiritual aspect here as well, where politics has no part to play. politics is about people, religion is about things more important than people. man has spiritual needs, and religion provides this.
this thought appealed to me
src is off topic, abt kirpans in schools
DigitalDude
PhotonAttack
Two aspects to be considered here.
first aspect is the event of a wife self-immolating herself on her own volition entirely due to grief or some enormous negative emotion. that is the common belief having derived it's name from an event in a purana: sati wife of shiva immolating herself because of humiliation WHILE shiva is ALIVE. note clearly how this is not in anyway different from anyone immolating himself/herself. by this logic any party worker immolating himself due to humiliation met out to his party leader should also be called sati? so the event in the purana being referred to give name to the practice is itself not related to the practice of widows self immolating after the husbands death.
The actual meaning of 'sati' is 'chaste woman' and nothing else. There is no description or mention of such a practice salled 'sati' in ANY of the hindu scriptures. a few rougue events of self-immolation of women(primarily by yoginis) is found in pre-mughal history but it is no way a systemic or religious practice. infact no women is even allowed to leave the house or enter the cremation ground after a death in a hindu society.
This self-immolation by widows or other women primarily came into practise during the period of mughal invasions. the western sindh areas were rammaged and ravaged easily as they were mostly bhuddist. the resistance by the rajputs(majority hindus) to the islamic invasion were the longest known. these areas saw brutal wars, loot, rape and pillaging all over the countryside by the invaders. till then internal wars happened in battlefields and not in civilian areas but mughal invasion was nothing like war between kings. because of this incessant rape and torture the women folk preferred death than to be raped and taken as concubines by the invaders. they immolated themselves in huge groups to avoid the humiliation. during the mughal rule the kings and clan lords would forcibly take the widows as concubines in their harems. so mostly these widows put themselves into the burning pyre of their husbands (and sometimes forced into it by their family members) to preserve their chastity.
during the rise of the british rule, the stats of sati deaths were around 400~500 per year. all these were in western and northern parts of India which saw the most impact of the mughal empire. In no way these were religious practices followed by the majority of the country. the british missionary historians and subsequently our marxist historians whitewashed the atrocities of the mughal rule and built the edict of sati as an integral part of hindu society. here comes the second aspect of attaching the 'forced' part as something inherent.
well if you read my post clearly esp the second paragraph, my argument was that they don't fall in a common group. the definition vary very widely between abrahamic religions and dharmic religions (most won't define it dharmic religions but dharmic 'traditions'.. even the supreme court of india). So for a term like religion which has no definite meaning and is entirely dependant on what the individual religions say, why one should not ponder over individual religions in a discussion about relevance of religion? why I said 'politically correct' because it is very common practice in political parlance not to talk specifics of individual religion on a flimsy reason that it will offend the people. I clearly sensed that tone of insisting political correctness in your post. because of this and my reason in the above lines I said an objective discussion is not possible to evaluate whether we need religion or not.
btw the commonly used phrase '..in a society of 21st century' itself presumes that our time is the pinnacle of moral, ethical, social and technological superiority. this actually reeks of arrogance. modernism is becoming a religion in itself... scarily more dogmatic.
Religion has given us Identity and collective social strength. Religion gave us the pinnacle of human mind's exposition to philosophy, morals, life and more. I hope you read the last quote of Vivekananda in my previous post. why divide? isn't division and discrimination the problem? where is the problem with 'Sarva Dharma Sambhave' and 'Ekam Sat, Viprah Bahudha Vadanti'?
we discriminate even based on academic degrees and employment positions. if someone is an engineer or doctor he is seen as a brilliant student but even if a brilliant student takes up arts then the first question someone would think is 'didn't he score well?' in a derogative sense. isn't this injustice to humanity? should we get rid education itself or our mental filth of discrimination?
the theory of karma is a fundamental tenet of Hinduism. hinduism says even gods can't interfere in freewill and karma of an individual. Karma and all these have no meaning to a christian or muslim.
so you say that you need one or two concepts like karma, yoga, ayurveda, spirituality from hindu tradition and say we don't need it anyway? puzzling.
Political aspect is a major part of a Religion, I would say even the most important. Especially in the present day context it becomes the only part as many people don't practice spirituality as such.. mostly only devotional. First I will make clear that I never consider politics as a bad/derogative term. Politics is integral to life. that is how we progress as a society. spiritual aspect is in the individual domain and political aspect is in the social domain. both are necessary. that is why Abrahamic religions are called as centralised and dharmic religions are mostly not. this refers to the political aspect. anyway I will agree with the last line.
_
I don't recall Abrahamic religions to be political in any way. I only see religion based politics in India. Actually, since all Abrahamic religions are based around the concept of a singular God, the only thing nearly political about Abrahamic religions arises from the innumerable denominations and sects. Each agreeing or disagreeing with certain principles. In other words, it depends upon how a certain sect or denomination interprets their scripture.
DigitalDude said:
Well, it seems you are confusing yourself.
Even if one adopts certain good practices, I don't see any harm in it.
BTW my context of speaking in this thread is limited to the present day scenario, rather then going back to the Mughal era.
If you would like I can further discussion why RELIGION is not needed in the present day world, but for this I may have to pull some events of our country which are very critical for discussions in this forum because they will hurt the sentiments of some of the members of this forum and others as well.
I would however urge you to focus on the present day world then the historic world, keeping history out, you will eventually realize that RELIGION in the 21st century is like a cancer, it is used against our own people to rip benefits rather then giving peace and harmony.
DigitalDude said:
And, where did you learned that the term RELIGION does not have a definite meaning ? Only because the teachings and practices of different religions are not the same, that does not mean that RELIGION does not have a definite meaning....
RELIGION existed even before people [ or humans ] were divided into hindus / muslims / etc... If you go back to pre-historic events and ponder you will find the exact meaning of RELIGION. This will bring a more profound and broad area for discussion here in this thread.
Agree..........
skeletor
Chosen of the Omnissiah
Agree
cool. thought only politicians respected politics. this is good.
this abrahamic and non-abrahamic is a distinction made by people who want to study the history of religion. That religions are grouped itself should give an idea to the common origin of them. The content of the religions may be totally diff, from Taoism to Jainism, it is. There may be difference between ground and sky, but all this is ignored because of faith. On the streets, Hindu's worship Jesus and it's all the same. They are all religions, that is why they are the same. When ppl have been oppressed by religion, they don't become atheists, they convert to another religion. This has happened too many times in history. It's Judaism and Hinduism, the two oldest, most of the others can be dated and share from the same fund of wisdom.
Language has many of the same problems of religion, if religion makes us morons, language also makes us morons. Language is racist, and sexist, and political. Nobody is saying language is stupid and we don't need it, let's all shut up and not talk.
Only problem is recently religious people have done a lot of stupid things. Prabhupada went around calling nobel prize winners rascals and asses, and gathered a cult following of hare krishna chanting firangs. This is bad, and worse than Scientology. Religion should never be an excuse for stupidity.
Hindus are complicated, there are many, many religious belief systems that are clubbed together as hinduism.
