Has Hinduism had the Longest Tradition of Continuous Religion?

#327 by kaalchakra

Gotta run. I`ll get back to you soon.

Thanks...

#326 by ranjit

[Well, if it doesnt benefit you in any manner, why would you kill that man? It is needless waste of your own time, which is limited as it is. You may want to enjoy that in peace. On the other hand, if he has something valuable that DOES make a major difference to you, you will indeed attack him and take it away since there is no law enforcement there. That is assuming he doesnt have the means to defend himself. This is just common sense, no great philosophy here!!]

You are still missing the point.

The question is not WHY you would want to kill the man.

The question is, IF someone wanted to (for whatever reason - maybe he likes to kill people, or he likes to hunt, and considers humans fair game - along with wild animals - the reason is not important), would that be okay with you?

( Now don`t tell me that it is not a valid question because it is unrealistic. Because then none of the elementary school arithmetic questions would ever get solved. :) )

ranjit, krishna_abcd

Interesting discussion about the existence and relevance of moral absolutes!

Two great and immortal traditions that have something to say to each of your two positions:

Brihaspati Principle - Maximize your happiness on this earth, since no one knows what happens hereafter:

Yavaj jeevet sukham jeevet, rinam kritvaa ghritam peebet
Bhasmibhutasya dehasya punaraagamanam kutah.

Sage Brihaspati says: As long as you live, live happily. Borrow money and drink ghee. For when this body is reduced to ashes, who knows where/how it will come back from?


Vyasa Principle -

Ashtaadasha puraaneshu Vyasasya vachanah dwayam
Paropakarah punyaaya papaaya parapeedanam.

In eighteen puranas, the Sage Vyasa sends just these two messages: By helping others one gains merit; by increasing others` pain, one commits sin.

Re:krishna_abcd#325

[Imagine a scenario where you are a man with only a few days left to live. You are stranded on a planet that is a vast distance away from earth where the only other inhabitant is also a human with a few days to live as well (for whatever reasons).

If the presence/absence of that other man on that planet makes NO difference to you, would it be then okay for you to kill that man? Because he is just a machine anyway?
]

Well, if it doesnt benefit you in any manner, why would you kill that man? It is needless waste of your own time, which is limited as it is. You may want to enjoy that in peace. On the other hand, if he has something valuable that DOES make a major difference to you, you will indeed attack him and take it away since there is no law enforcement there. That is assuming he doesnt have the means to defend himself. This is just common sense, no great philosophy here!!

Re: #324 by ranjit

[Au Contraire!! If we accept that we have a finite life span on earth and there is nothing before or after that, it is a very liberating thought. Your objective changes from chasing a fantasy in the afterworld (as the muslims do) to surviving in the best possible manner in this world.

Survival dictates that you want to prolong your lifespan and that of your near and dear ones. Hence you will submit to a legal framework that ensures that no one else kills you as long as you dont kill anyone. After survival comes maximizing prosperity. Again, you will submit to a legal framework that ensures that you can maximize your opportunities and protect your gains as long as everyone else can do the same. That takes care of all the legal/ethical behavior. Finally you want to maximize happiness given that you have limited time. That involves maintaining proper social relationships with spouse, family friends etc.

If you think about it, western civilization is based on this framework- life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as articulated in the US constitution. We can see the results as they have managed to make the most comfortable, luxurious and advanced society in the world. As compared to that we have the muslims, who can only think of the afterlife as they send their children to commit suicide bombings. We Indians are somewhere in the middle but even our caste and other abominations have crept in due to an imaginary afterlife, rebirth model. After all, who will accept crap in this life, if there is no chance of afterlife or rebirth?

By the way, this framework has nothing against people who want to go to some religious place and mumble some mumbo-jumbo five times a day or once a week. You can do that as long as you keep it at a mumbo-jumbo level and dont kill anyone to impose your nonsense.]


I think you misunderstood the main thrust of my question.

You have laid out the reasons why we should have a legal framework that is unrelated to morality, but related to common interest. While I think that we should have such a legal framework for BOTH of these reasons - morality AND common interest (and these two are related in some ways, although not all ways), THIS IS NOT THE POINT I AM MAKING.

Let me re-state my question -

Imagine a scenario where you are a man with only a few days left to live. You are stranded on a planet that is a vast distance away from earth where the only other inhabitant is also a human with a few days to live as well (for whatever reasons).

If the presence/absence of that other man on that planet makes NO difference to you, would it be then okay for you to kill that man? Because he is just a machine anyway?

Re:krishna_abcd#323

[..So then if we are really nothing but robots, would you say that killing anyone is okay? There is no moral or legal provisions against destroying a mechanized toy, is there?...]

Au Contraire!! If we accept that we have a finite life span on earth and there is nothing before or after that, it is a very liberating thought. Your objective changes from chasing a fantasy in the afterworld (as the muslims do) to surviving in the best possible manner in this world.

Survival dictates that you want to prolong your lifespan and that of your near and dear ones. Hence you will submit to a legal framework that ensures that no one else kills you as long as you dont kill anyone. After survival comes maximizing prosperity. Again, you will submit to a legal framework that ensures that you can maximize your opportunities and protect your gains as long as everyone else can do the same. That takes care of all the legal/ethical behavior. Finally you want to maximize happiness given that you have limited time. That involves maintaining proper social relationships with spouse, family friends etc.

If you think about it, western civilization is based on this framework- life, liberty and pursuit of happiness as articulated in the US constitution. We can see the results as they have managed to make the most comfortable, luxurious and advanced society in the world. As compared to that we have the muslims, who can only think of the afterlife as they send their children to commit suicide bombings. We Indians are somewhere in the middle but even our caste and other abominations have crept in due to an imaginary afterlife, rebirth model. After all, who will accept crap in this life, if there is no chance of afterlife or rebirth?

By the way, this framework has nothing against people who want to go to some religious place and mumble some mumbo-jumbo five times a day or once a week. You can do that as long as you keep it at a mumbo-jumbo level and dont kill anyone to impose your nonsense.

#313 by ranjit

[ Nothing happens after death i.e. it is just an end as our neurons stop firing. Man finds it hard to accept that harsh reality and creates a fantasy of afterlife - God, heaven, hell etc. ]


So then if we are really nothing but robots, would you say that killing anyone is okay? There is no moral or legal provisions against destroying a mechanized toy, is there?

Re:sunlight #321

[...Take a look at the ``World Map of Happiness`` which shows that the US and Saudi Arabia are equally happy....]

Is this a joke? 50% of Saudi population i.e. women cant even drive a car. Minorities have no rights. They cannot practice their faith. People from South Asia and Southeast Asia are treated like cattle. Are you saying that they are very happy? Maybe the poll is limited to the Saudi royal family.

#318 by ranjit
I support liberal, strictly secular, democracies with captitalist economy. That works best and has proven itself all over the world to maximize human happiness. In every other system, especially religion based systems, the people are totally miserable.
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Take a look at the ``World Map of Happiness`` which shows that the US and Saudi Arabia are equally happy. http://www.physorg.com/news73321785.html An enlarged map is here http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn9642.html

````Further analysis showed that a nation`s level of happiness was most closely associated with health levels (correlation of .62), followed by wealth (.52), and then provision of education (.51). ``

Re: # 307


``After that Hindus lost political clout and hence lost their laws just as after Britain took over India, Muslims lost their Islamic Sharia laws, which were replaced by English Common Law.

But this statement is not entirely true either; just as Hindu law continued to be practiced during Muslim era, in some aspects Muslim laws were also permitted to continue in British era. After independence this continuation resumed under the tiles of Muslim Common Law, and Hindu Common law respectively. Law is not a static entity; it updates at the speed at which society progresses. This change is brought into laws by science of jurisprudence and jurisprudence can only be practiced through sovereignity. Therefore, both Islamic and Hindu laws in subcontinent have been stagnant because both Hindus and Muslims lack soveriegnity. Our respective countries were hijacked by atheists or ritualists after independence. ``

``
Practically, for all intent and purposes almost every other religion except Islam are either dead or they are dying dinosaurs- they only live on the life-support of rituals-they offer no ideology and no hope for mankind. ``



That was a perceptive anlyses. But there is another view to it.

British Common law was indeed one of the most important piece of British contribution in this sub-continent.

With the British Common Law the supressed and exploited workers, women and other oppressed members of these traditional societies in the sub-continent were able to find a way to escape out of the oppressive hold of the archaic institutions of caste, creed, religion and patriarchy. The modern cities of Delhi, Bombay and Calcutta with overwhelming British presence were the embodiment of these common laws , and by escaping to these cities the lower and exploited rungs of society could find a way to break away from the archaic social institutions spawned by the Kings and Nawabs.
The cities thrived and the common law found its best publicity in the form of the wealth of the cities. Those who preferred to live by their ``Sau Khoon Maaf`` Jagirdaars lost the liberty, equality and freedom that the cities with their common laws provided. The older laws continued to bleed the villages and perpetuated their perverse forms of slavery in the form of casteism and feudalism.
These older laws we still find in remote areas of Pakistan and India- the perverse places out of the reach of common law!!

Compare Hinduism & islam on the basis of the following criteria

``capacity to hold diversity(diverse opinions-ideas-points of views) within its fold``

hinduism wins , islam fails miserably !
hinduism is superior to islam atleast on this basis.

Re:sunlight

[...Do read a little (recent) history; you will find that atheistic governments (Communist Russia, Communist China, ...) have perpetrated much larger mass murders than any religious government.....]

That is true but I do not support aethist dictatorships either. I support liberal, strictly secular, democracies with captitalist economy. That works best and has proven itself all over the world to maximize human happiness. In every other system, especially religion based systems, the people are totally miserable. Show me any other system that can make man happy.

Secondly your contention doesnt imply that religon is benign. Just look at the violence throughout history in the middle-east, europe, south asia and elsewhere in the name of religion. The jihads, crusades, inquisitions, pogroms, holocausts etc in the name of religion. Even as we speak, we see idiots blowing themselves up all over the middle-east in the name of religion. How stupid can one get to lose one`s only chance to experience consciousness in entire eternity!!

#313 by ranjit

`` Nothing happens after death i.e. it is just an end as our neurons stop firing. Man finds it hard to accept that harsh reality and creates a fantasy of afterlife - God, heaven, hell etc. ``

Oh I don`t know if I really want to agree with your hypothesis. It is so convenient for me fantasize heaven as a worehouse. Apparantly, in that worehouse there are 72 hores per every true believer. Now isn`t that the fantasy worth blowing up for ?

#313 by ranjit
Given the amount of violence and hatred in the name of religion, I wish all religions would die out and mankind can live in peace without this nuisance.
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Do read a little (recent) history; you will find that atheistic governments (Communist Russia, Communist China, ...) have perpetrated much larger mass murders than any religious government. For example, if you look at the Khmer Rouge (Cambodian communists)
http://www.yaleherald.com/archive/xxvi/12.4.98/news/genocide!.html

``In Cambodia, some scholars estimate that atrocities committed by Pol Pot`s murderous Khmer Rouge regime resulted in the massacre of at least 1.7 million people between 1975 and 1979, annihilating roughly 25 percent of the country`s population.``

http://www.unitedhumanrights.org/Genocide/pol_pot.htm
``He (Pol Pot) began by declaring, ``This is Year Zero,`` and that society was about to be ``purified.`` Capitalism, Western culture, city life, religion, and all foreign influences were to be extinguished in favor of an extreme form of peasant Communism.``
[...deleted...]
``At Phnom Penh, two million inhabitants were evacuated on foot into the countryside at gunpoint. As many as 20,000 died along the way.``

``Millions of Cambodians accustomed to city life were now forced into slave labor in Pol Pot`s ``killing fields`` where they soon began dying from overwork, malnutrition and disease, on a diet of one tin of rice (180 grams) per person every two days.``

``Workdays in the fields began around 4 a.m. and lasted until 10 p.m., with only two rest periods allowed during the 18 hour day, all under the armed supervision of young Khmer Rouge soldiers eager to kill anyone for the slightest infraction. ``

``Anyone suspected of disloyalty to Pol Pot, including eventually many Khmer Rouge leaders, was shot or bludgeoned with an ax. ``What is rotten must be removed,`` a Khmer Rouge slogan proclaimed.``

``Up to 20,000 persons were tortured into giving false confessions at Tuol Sleng, a school in Phnom Penh, which had been converted into a jail. Elsewhere, suspects were often shot on the spot before any questioning.``

``Ethnic groups were attacked including the three largest minorities; the Vietnamese, Chinese, and Cham Muslims, along with twenty other smaller groups. Fifty percent of the estimated 425,000 Chinese living in Cambodia in 1975 perished. Khmer Rouge also forced Muslims to eat pork and shot those who refused.``

All this cr@p talk of some retarded posters here about ``My religion is most perfect and superior to yours. Convert or die `` sounds like the childish rant of my 5 year old nephew. The other day he had some of his buddies come over to his house and was showing off his remote control ATV toy. He made the toy run over the legs of his hapless buddies until all of them agreed his toy was superior to any toys any one of them ever owned. He was so insecure he had to make a point through violence.

A great article on this topic, that I have quoted before: ``From Manusmriti to Madhusmriti Flagellating a Mythical Enemy`` by Madhu Kishwar
http://www.infinityfoundation.com/mandala/s_es/s_es_kishw_mythical.htm

``I commented in a recent TV interview that Manusmriti (and other shastric texts) have as much or as little authority for Hindus as have Madhusmriti (my writings) - or for that matter the pages of Manushi, for its subscribers.``
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``The Englishmen who came as traders in the 17th century were befuddled at the vast diversity and complexity of Indian society. Having come from a culture where many aspects of family and community affairs came under the jurisdiction of canonical law, they looked for similar sources of authority in India. They assumed, for example, that just as the European marriage laws were based in part on systematic constructions derived from church interpretations of Biblical tenets, so must the personal laws of various Indian communities similarly draw their legitimacy from some priestly interpretations of fundamental religious texts.``
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``the British took no steps to understand local or jati based customary law or the way in which every community ... regulated its own internal affairs ... The power to introduce a new custom, or change existing practices, rested in large part within each community. ... This tradition of self-governance is what accounts for the vast diversity of cultural practices within the subcontinent. For example, some communities observe strict purdah for women, whereas others have inherited matrilineal family structures in which women exercise a great deal of freedom and social clout. Some disapprove of widow remarriage, while others attach no stigma to widowhood and allow women recourse to easy divorce and remarriage.``
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``Neither shastras nor smritis suggest that there exists an immutable, universal moral doctrine. Rather, they emphasise that codes of morality must be specific to time, person, and place, and evolve according to changing requirements. ... Manusmriti itself stresses that the business of the ruler is not to impose laws from above but that,
``a king... must inquire into the law of castes (jati), of districts (Ganapada), of guilds (Shreni), and of families (kula), and settle the peculiar law of each...Thus have the holy sages, ... embraced as the root of all piety good usages long established.`` (Mulla, Principles of Hindu Laws, 15th ed., 1986, p. 23).
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Since different smritikars documented the customs of different communities, there were substantial differences in their approaches, perspectives, and precepts. But characteristically, none of the smritikars deny the authority of other smritikars or attempt to prove that theirs is the supreme, most authoritative version of a code of conduct. They acknowledge that the authority of the king and the law are derived from the people. ... The Smriti of Yajnavalkya, for instance, lists twenty sages as law givers. The Mitakshara explains that the enumeration is only illustrative and Dharmasutras of others are not excluded. Nor is the authority of any shastrakar assigned hierarchical importance.
[...deleted...]
Gandhi is one of the few modern social reformers to have understood this principle underlying the shastras. Therefore, he could unhesitatingly declare:
``My belief in the Hindu scriptures does not require me to accept every word and every verse as divinely inspired... I decline to be bound by any interpretation, however learned it may be, if it is repugnant to reason or moral sense.`` (The Collected Work of Mahatma Gandhi, The Publication Division, Government of India, Vol. XXI, p. 246)