questioning christians

[atanu]

Namaste Friends,

As usual I side with EM, however, rejecting his views on Advaita.

How will a non-indian react to Markandeya Purana, wherein Shiva, Vishnu and all divinities equip Durga, so that she may slaughter all asuras? She slaughters them for 9 or 10 days. During the process she also turns into a monstrous figure with a red protruded tongue and laps up asuras as soon as they are born and before they could fall to the ground and grow.

Was Durga lapping up the unwholesome thoughts before they could take root or was Durga killing people in flesh? I do not know but I am inclined to believe that She is the pure consciousness of the Self, which on growth (as agni) purifies our minds. There are supporting shruti, which says that 'this agni when lit lights up the full heaven'. There are shruti that indicate the protruding tougue to be a flame. The protruding tongue is Jihva-Jiva.

Jiva has to kill the unwholesome worries and tendencies.

Similarly, before a physical Jerusalem city was created, the 'Jerusalem' or 'Zion' meant "City of Joy", similar as our body-self is called a city of nine gates. It is surely the function of terrible Rudra to keep this city joyful.

The worries and doubts dwelling and growing in the City of Joy must be ruthlessly annhilated.

I see the whole thing this way. I may be grossly wrong but who stops me from seeing the good picture?

Om Namah Shivaya

[atanu]

Wanted to add that Kurukhestra, also means city of joy, where, however, warfare must take place.

Om Namah Shivaya

[rkpande]

Wanted to add that Kurukhestra, also means city of joy, where, however, warfare must take place.

Om Namah Shivaya

Adding further to Atanu ji,
Will they ever under stand without a hindu mind, as to why was Draupadi considered a virgin, can a soul be impure which is IT whom the five prana serve, or we have to fight with 100s of the illness we pamper in our body and mind, the kurukhestra ,which are born out of Blindness to THE reality.
Or what we call Samudra manthan is the process of yoga churning the merudanda with kundalini to fight the devils with the help of our own goodness, the devas, to take the poison out of our body and to aim for Amurt and to get all the siddies on the way.
or perhaps ganga did not fall from swarga after all but bhagiratha only changed its course by vertue of his tapas,effort, to irrigate the dry land for his people to prosper.
i can carry on..

[rainycity]

Pranam,
It will be almost impossible to understand what "they" believe. The Bible is suppose to be taken literally. Christianity has multiple denominations. You will find that not every Christian goes to church or read the Bible.

By "they" I meant the people who respond in the thread. I can't know what every single christian believes, but most of the members of christian forums take the bible literally, go to church and read the bible. I haven't seen any christian members there suggest that the bible is symbolic, unless its something which is actually specified as symbolic in the text itself. Some have said that the genesis account of creation is symbolic, or that the exodus story for example is not a precise account of exactly what happened. But the verses in question are clearly not symbolic, they're recounts of events that supposedly happened. There's nothing symbolic about it at all, they're historical treatments of the israelites' battles and massacres.

So really, I don't understand your purpose, other than to rile them up, like purposefully stepping on a wasp's nest. What good might come of it?

Before I'd made that thread I'd never seen a christian's opinion on these sorts of verses from the old testament. I'd only seen them quoted by atheists or other non-christians to show that the old testament is full of atrocities, and their comments were that christians are unaware of these verses because they don't read the bible, or they ignore parts of the old testament like this and pretend they don't exist.

Namaste rainycity,

It is difficult to comment anything on scriptural quotes without understanding the context & situation under which it is stated.

It's quite straightforward, the verse in Ezekiel actually isn't the best example, but in these sorts of verses, yahweh is commanding his followers to kill men, women, children and babies. The reasons given are that they practice different religions (obviously this can't apply to infants though), have 'wickedness in their hearts', etc.

My only say is that if God wanted to kill idolators, why he himself didn't do it ? Is he so weak that he needs help of a bunch of human beings to do this task ? God's sense of justice cannot be completely unreasonable & he doesn't really need anyone to do his job.

OM

well, some of the posters in the thread said that he told his followers to do it to increase their faith in him. I guess it's about obedience and executing his will.

Most Christians--maybe even most Jews (besides something like Hasidic or Conservative)--do not accept all of the old Testament. Some Christians reject it entirely.

I don't think thats true, at least in the case of christians. Of course I can't speak for the 2 billion christians in the world, but from my personal experience, christians do accept all of the old testament, many believe it's the infallible, inerrant word of God, and all literal truth.
This thread (on christian forums) demonstrates that there are christians who know the bible well, accept the old testament and interpret it literally, and have no problem with it's 'atrocities'.

DavidC and Snip make good points, rainycity. Context and history are particularly relevant to this topic. One cannot isolate parts of a scripture and have any hope in understanding what they mean. These texts came from hundreds of years ago. The world was a very different place from the one we live in now, although I grant you the essential values have not changed. People understood things differently. Like Snip said, they most likely used this kind of language and imagery to get the crude message across to the people to lead better moral lives, as abstraction would have been a harder thing to communicate to the everyday man.

Just because it happened in the past, in a very different time and place, doesn't make it ok. And I don't think that these verses are just examples of using language and imagery to get a crude message across to primitive people, I see them as historical treatments and christians, at least the ones who responded to the thread agree with me. From a scholarly perspective too, they're not parables or symbolic stories used to send a message. They have a message in them but they are intended as literal accounts.

[atanu]

Shri Rainy city does not seem to have noticed an answer or two?????????

[DavidC]

I don't think thats true, at least in the case of christians. Of course I can't speak for the 2 billion christians in the world, but from my personal experience, christians do accept all of the old testament, many believe it's the infallible, inerrant word of God, and all literal truth.

Not even Jews accept it all. The Old Testament (OT) has almost 400 rules and only the most extreme Jews (which sects I named) follow most of the rules. There are rules like 'you cannot mix two types of thread.' Most 'Christians' also blame the Jews for the death of Christ so reject a lot of Jewish philosophy--i.e. the OT, and some reject it outright though they try to say it is reasonable and then they just choose to use the wrathful God idea from it. Some Christians try to accept the 10 Commandments, but then they say they are 'better' than Jews and do not even need the commandments--that Christians only need to cannibalize or beg Christ and they can sin all they want and be 'saved.' Of course these are just the major sects that do not really deserve the name 'Christian.' Someone asked me about the Essenes/Nazareans and I posted in the Abrahamic religions section. The Nazareans rejected OT violence--even animal sacrifice and meat-eating, and even the OT's named god (some are not named)--and it is the sect that for various historical reasons some people think produced Yeshua (Jesus) and at least some Apostles and one of their disciples. However later followers corrupted everything.

I guess this is off-topic, but is war in the Puranas and animal sacrifice in the Vedas literal or symbolic? I have read that by using the Brahmanas and numerology to analyze the Vedas they can give a different esoteric idea than a literal meaning of animal sacrifice. Maybe I should ask this in a new thread.

[sanjaya]

By "they" I meant the people who respond in the thread. I can't know what every single christian believes, but most of the members of christian forums take the bible literally, go to church and read the bible. I haven't seen any christian members there suggest that the bible is symbolic, unless its something which is actually specified as symbolic in the text itself. Some have said that the genesis account of creation is symbolic, or that the exodus story for example is not a precise account of exactly what happened. But the verses in question are clearly not symbolic, they're recounts of events that supposedly happened. There's nothing symbolic about it at all, they're historical treatments of the israelites' battles and massacres.

Even if the account supposedly records a literal history, it may be better to judge Christians on their own actions rather than what is contained in the Bible. As you've pointed out, Jews also believe in the Old Testament. Yet throughout history, Jews have been a very peaceful people who are tolerant of other religions and don't go around converting people at the point of a sword. Even the Zionist Jews who commit questionable actions against Palestinians in Israel are largely secular, and don't justify their actions with the Old Testament. Yes, the Bible contains some violent material about ancient Jews wiping out their enemies. But let's ask ourselves: do Christians behave the same way? We can see that many Christians throughout history have used these verses to justify oppressing European Jews, colonizing India, and doing various other evil deeds. And evangelical Christians use these verses to justify their missionary work (e.g. "Joshua Project"). But many other Christians do not do this. Why do we not instead judge the Christians by what they do with these passages in the Bible, instead of yelling at them because of what their scripture says? After all, the Bible has already been written; Christians can't just alter their scriptures without becoming intellectually dishonest.

Before I'd made that thread I'd never seen a christian's opinion on these sorts of verses from the old testament. I'd only seen them quoted by atheists or other non-christians to show that the old testament is full of atrocities, and their comments were that christians are unaware of these verses because they don't read the bible, or they ignore parts of the old testament like this and pretend they don't exist.

I see. I guess this is a good reason to pose the question to them. But I agree with EM that there's nothing to be gained from debate. Evangelicals are taught from birth that "human reason" is from the devil, as is anything else that disagrees with their Bible. That's how they're able to convince themselves of such absurd propositions as the notion that the earth is 6,000 years old and that humans lived alongside dinosaurs. I'm not trying to bash them. I'm just trying to point out the futility of rational debate. If a person can endure such cognitive dissonance and/or willful ignorance to believe that his ancestors hunted T-Rex, what chance do you have of appealing to his rational mind with any claim that disagrees with the Bible?

It's quite straightforward, the verse in Ezekiel actually isn't the best example, but in these sorts of verses, yahweh is commanding his followers to kill men, women, children and babies. The reasons given are that they practice different religions (obviously this can't apply to infants though), have 'wickedness in their hearts', etc.

You're right, there are some things in the Bible which I can't reconcile with my God-given sense of morality. That's why I don't buy into the "all religions are equally valid" mantra, and why I believe that Hinduism contains more truth than Christianity. But I don't believe that God is going to burn Westerners in a lake of fire for all eternity just because they were born on the wrong side of the world. Neither do I believe in wrenching Westerners from their European culture, of which Christianity is major part, in order to make them practice my religion, which is wholly alien to them. That would make me no better than the missionaries who destroy Indian culture and families by converting Hindus to Christianity. I believe what Sri Krishna said about how people who worship other gods are really worshiping him, and I thus conclude that Christians can come closer to moksha by obeying the good tenets of their religion.

You can't argue rationally with irrational people who refuse to look critically at their own faith. And I think it would be wrong to try and convert them. What is left to do? I think it's best to leave them alone, and when they send the missionaries our way, to explain to them politely why we won't convert.

Of course, maybe I'm oversimplifying this issue. If anyone disagrees with me, I'm certainly open to other opinions.

I don't think thats true, at least in the case of christians. Of course I can't speak for the 2 billion christians in the world, but from my personal experience, christians do accept all of the old testament, many believe it's the infallible, inerrant word of God, and all literal truth.
This thread (on christian forums) demonstrates that there are christians who know the bible well, accept the old testament and interpret it literally, and have no problem with it's 'atrocities'.

Not necessarily. When I was in college I had a friend who was a member of the Episcopal Church (except for a few outlier churches, this denomination is the most liberal one in America). This friend of mine attended his church regularly and participated in many church events. He read his Bible daily, and knew it from cover to cover. He also did not take it literally. Besides me he had other Hindu friends, and he never tried to convert anyone. He and the priest in his church were very willing to read the Bible critically. They freely confessed that while they took the Bible on faith, they didn't claim to understand why God would seemingly order atrocities. My friend certainly would never be the type to run around killing others in God's name. So there are Christians out there who know their Bibles well, who are not extremists.

Just because it happened in the past, in a very different time and place, doesn't make it ok. And I don't think that these verses are just examples of using language and imagery to get a crude message across to primitive people, I see them as historical treatments and christians, at least the ones who responded to the thread agree with me. From a scholarly perspective too, they're not parables or symbolic stories used to send a message. They have a message in them but they are intended as literal accounts.

I agree that time doesn't obscure the immorality of genocide. But again: why are we holding Christians today responsible for something that happened over 2,500 years ago? That's like blaming modern Hindus for the racism and bigotry that is contained in the Laws of Manu. And if the Old Testament's history is erroneous, then that makes it even more wrong to judge them, because we are condemning them for fictional genocide! Christians aren't on trial for the alleged crimes of the ancient Israelites. And even if they were, we're not their judge or jury. I believe that God has the power over the karma of humans, because nothing happens unless he wills it, and I for one do not want to do his job for him.