Greetings from America

[prbeck]

My name is Preston Beck. I am a 66 year old researcher for a large University in Birmingham, AL , USA. I thank the moderators for accepting me in this forum.

I was born and raised a Christian. My nature has lead me to wonder about all religions. I do not claim to be a scholar on any religion. I have been curious about Hinduism for a long time so I wanted to join this forum. I have taught Hindu (and all other religion) students for many years in the School of Dentistry.

I have to admit that of all the religions, Hinduism has been the hardest one for me to try to comprehend. The core beliefs seem to be the same as all of the other religions of the world; that we are all creations of God(s) and need to have compassion and understanding for each other. Please correct me if this is wrong.

I have seen several posts where Christian missionaries have been denounced and I have to agree with them. I have found that generally people that wish to push their beliefs on other people are narrow-minded and bigoted. It is one thing to seek truth while it is a completely different thing to try and force your beliefs on another person.

Please do not judge all Christians by the missionaries. While many of them mean good, most of them are blinded by their beliefs. There are many different types of Christians and these do not represent the entirety of Christianity. We have our fanatics like other religions. In my way of thinking any fanatic is a dangerous person. A fanatic will never listen to reason or another way of thinking. A wise man once wrote, "If you are not capable of changing your mind, do you have one?".

[Believer]

Namaste,

A warm welcome to the forum, Preston!


I have found that generally people that wish to push their beliefs on other people are narrow-minded and bigoted. It is one thing to seek truth while it is a completely different thing to try and force your beliefs on another person.

Please do not judge all Christians by the missionaries. While many of them mean good, most of them are blinded by their beliefs. There are many different types of Christians and these do not represent the entirety of Christianity. We have our fanatics like other religions. In my way of thinking any fanatic is a dangerous person. A fanatic will never listen to reason or another way of thinking.

If I may be so bold, the core beliefs of Hinduism, like reincarnation, no heaven or hell, non-identification of the soul of a living entity with its body and so much more sets Hinduism apart from everything else out there.

Xitianity is an organized religion which believes in 'my way or the highway'. In all the interfaith dialogues in the US, not one Xitian representative has ever said that they accept Hinduism as a way to connect with divinity, accept it as a valid religion and respect its theology. The closest they have come to is to agree to tolerate it, but never to accept it as their equal or God forbid, a superior theology based religion. Now the Xitians who visit and support the churches which reject everything non-Xitian, by association become non-tolerant beings. The very essence of Abrahamic religions is to reject everything else - We Hindus are pagans to Xitians, kafirs to muslims and XXX to jews. So, how could one who is a Xitian, associates with and donates to the churches which espouse such ideology of intolerance/exclusivity escape being called a fanatic?


A wise man once wrote, "If you are not capable of changing your mind, do you have one?".

Another wise man said, "A woman's mind is cleaner than a man's - because she changes it so often." :)

As we have seen in the political campaigns of the recent past, a person changing his mind is labelled a flip-flopper and subjected to immense ridicule.

But, all kidding aside, the only way a Xitian can change his mind about accepting other faiths as valid religions is by leaving it.

Pranam.

[anucarh]

Namaste, Mr. Beck.

Welcome to the forum. I appreciate your broad-mindedness. I hope that you will find your time here to be informative.

Best regards.

****

Namaste Believer ji,

Whatever the current orthodoxy may be in Christianity, I think that many American Christians would pleasantly surprise you. A surprisingly large percentage of Christians in the U.S. respect many spiritual traditions, rejecting the "my way or the highway" perspective. Of course, this is less evident in certain regions of the country and when one is speaking with missionaries or members of sects given to aggressive proselytizing.

According to a recent "major survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life":

66 percent of American Protestant Christians agree that "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

79 percent of American Catholics agree that "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

72 percent of American Orthodox Christians agree that "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

See http://religions.pewforum.org/reports (http://religions.pewforum.org/reports)# (2nd tab)

Frankly, I was surprised by these results myself. This is good news for non-Christians living in the U.S.

May this respectful attitude continue to grow.

praṇām

[devotee]

Welcome Prbeck ! We shall be happy to see you posting here. :)

Hindu Dharma is a lot different from other religions, especially the Abrahimic religions. The highest philosophy in Hindu Dharma comes from VedAnta (Upanishads). It declares something very unique as some listed here :

a) The Creation and Creator are not different from each other. God is not some entity out of the creation. God pervades the entire universe and even beyond through and through like water pervades ice-block.
b) The God is in the heart of all beings and therefore, see all beings as the temples of God.
c) The Creator and Creation dissolve into One sole reality which cannot be described and cannot be given any name and that is called "Turiya" meaning "The fourth". This is the highest state of Brahman and that is AtmAn/ the Self.
d) Consciousness is Brahman. God is undifferentiated Mass of Consciousness.
e) All the above stated truths can be verified by direct experience by anyone which is known by name Self-Realisation or Enlightenment.

OM

[wundermonk]

The reasons why Abrahamic religions are despised by us Hindus are the following:

(1)Xity is mostly deceptive in its operation. For e.g. there is no Indian figure anywhere in the Bible. Missionaries have tried to claim that we dark-skinned Indians are descendants of Ham/Canaan after Noah cursed Ham for seeing him naked that all of his sons would be born with dark skin to symbolize their slave status. Same story has been used to harvest/save the souls of dark-skinned Africans.

(2)Assuming Indians are not descendents of a cursed Canaan, there is no Indian figure anywhere in the Bible. i.e. Xity is a foreign and alien religion to India. How would you like it if Arabs invaded Alabama and replaced all churches there with mosques and insisted that Arabic script is to be used hereafter? It is similar with Xity and India.

(3)India has a long tradition and history, extending even earlier than 4004 BC which was when Adam and Eve apparently roamed the earth. We do not like to be told that we got it all wrong all the while and then some guy hanged by Romans in a far away land is the answer to all our problems.

I am not even getting into other theological/philosophical problems with your religion.

Anyway, welcome.

[Kalicharan Tuvij]

Welcome Prbeck ! We shall be happy to see you posting here. :)

Hindu Dharma is a lot different from other religions, especially the Abrahimic religions. The highest philosophy in Hindu Dharma comes from VedAnta (Upanishads). It declares something very unique as some listed here :

a) The Creation and Creator are not different from each other. God is not some entity out of the creation. God pervades the entire universe and even beyond through and through like water pervades ice-block.
b) The God is in the heart of all beings and therefore, see all beings as the temples of God.
c) The Creator and Creation dissolve into One sole reality which cannot be described and cannot be given any name and that is called "Turiya" meaning "The fourth". This is the highest state of Brahman and that is AtmAn/ the Self.
d) Consciousness is Brahman. God is undifferentiated Mass of Consciousness.
e) All the above stated truths can be verified by direct experience by anyone which is known by name Self-Realisation or Enlightenment.

OM
However, just to remind that this is one POV - of one sect - among almost innumerable sampradaya-s of Hinduism.
Hindu sects, in general, never "claim" anything - they don't practice exclusivism (means, all Hindus are always welcome to all Hindus) - nor any elitism - they are humble and they don't tout. They believe in Spiritual democracy. Plus, all traditions within Hinduism are each eminently capable of achieving the "highest goal(s)".

[Believer]

Namaste,



According to a recent "major survey by the Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life":

66 percent of American Protestant Christians agree that "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

79 percent of American Catholics agree that "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

72 percent of American Orthodox Christians agree that "Many religions can lead to eternal life."

Thank you for providing those stats. I too have, from time to time, seen such figures. But the question is why do Xitians continue to be led by hate-mongers? When their reps show up for interfaith dialogues, they agree ONLY to tolerate Hinduism, never to accept it as a religion, never to accept its theology, never to accept its adherents as God conscious human beings. When you support such people with your presence in the church, by donating to the institutions where they preside, by having them come to officiate at your weddings or to deal with the end of life situations; how can the blame for their exclusivity be shrugged off by their followers?

I understand that a large majority of the common people don't subscribe to the official stance of Xitianity/Catholicism/LDS'ism, but unless they speak up and insist on their leaders changing their ways; they are complicit in what goes on in their name, with their moral and financial backing. It is a stand-off between an outsider's view (mine) and an insider's view (a practicing Xitian's). I have no doubt that most Xitians are pleasant/courteous/respectful, but the next step is to refuse to associate with the clergy that follows an imperfect, misguided theology and lives in the dark ages. Unless that is done, we can't hang the 'Mission Accomplished' banner in the sky, regardless of what the stats say.

Pranam.

PS, I do hope that this is not taken as a confrontational post but as a frank expression of ideas about how Xianity appears to the spectators.
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