Wednesday 6 September 2017

A Comment On Atanu Dey's Ganesha Post

Find the post here.

Well I have been following your blog for years now(probably read 500 posts and your book too) and understand your position on religion pretty well.

It’s something like:

  • Monotheism just thinks of everyone else as an infidel to be saved. Hence its obsession with conversion.
  • The monotheistic god comes across as a psycho sadistic despot.
  • They are close to all reasoning beyond what their books say.
  • Hinduism is open and welcoming to all people, a smart guy like carl sagan is also impressed how hindus get the age of universe almost right(or close).

In the end though I will just say that if the british had successfully converted the country to majority christianity things simply would have been better today.

All give and take today, modern christianity today is a far better myth to encourage than 2 million hindu gods or the religion of piece.

  • They value education.
  • They are mostly highly pacifist.
  • They practice live and let live most of the time.
  • They speak and understand better english! This alone would have I feel made india somewhat a nation of readers.
  • They become true and proper atheists when confronted with some good arguments.

I would also like to bring out a few points on hinduism in general. I recently got done with the amazing book Sapiens - A brief history of humankind by Yuval Noah Harari.

Here’s how he challenges the idea that hinduism is polytheistic. And also explains how christian monotheism incorporated specific gods in the form of saints. Let’s just keep it to hinduism for this post.

In Hindu polytheism, a single principle, Atman, controls the myriad gods and spirits, humankind and the biological and physical world, Atman is the eternal essence or soul of the entire universe, as well as of every individual and every phenomenon.

The fundamental insight of polytheism, which distinguishes it from monotheism, is that the supreme power governing the world is devoid of interests and biases, and therefore it is unconcerned with the mundane desires, cares and worries of humans. It’s pointless to ask this power for victory in war, for health or for rain, because from it all-encompassing vantage point.

Basically the atman simply does not care what happens to homo sapiens.

He compares this with the greek god of fate.

The greeks did not waste any sacrifices on Fate. and Hindus built no temples to Atman.

He further continues.

Most hindus are not sadhus. They are sunk deep in the morass of mundane concerns, where the atman is not much help. For assistance in such matters, hindus approach the gods with their partial powers.

Precisely because their powers are partial rather than all-encompassing, gods such as ganesha, lakshmi etc have interests and biases. Humans can therefore make deals with these partial powers and rely on their help in order to win wars and recuperate from illness.

Which basically comes down to your last line of “That’s why I recommend paying appropriate bribes to him before starting on any endeavor” which sounds “cute” with all with the emoticon and everything.

But there are sad human tragedies behind this.

  • A family I know has been welcoming the ganpati for 3 yrs now, and this year a family member has been hit with cancer, they were already struggling with finances, then cancer and then comes gannu. One would think they could connect the dots and see that mr.gannu is not really interested in “removing their obstacles”. Alas, they are still at it. Bankrupt but at it.
  • A christian family would have enough sense to just have a few drinks less for christmas but gannu unlike jesus just won’t put up with that. Not inviting him after inviting for 2 yrs means a great misery will befall on you (like cancer?). Is that any different than the monotheistic psycho desert god yahweh?

Look at these wretched people below. No roads, no lights, probably haven’t eaten enough calories (unaffordable for most) for the day but “the remover of obstacles” wants them to dance on the road and block traffic and that they will.

poor hindus dancing on the roads for ganesha

People dancing for hindu myth ganesha

Are you trying to convince people that these idiots are more enlightened than the those eating the flesh and drinking the blood on sunday mornings? How exactly do you come to the conclusion that hinduism has a somewhat higher moral standing that christianity and islam?

On an empirical level they are all just myths but given the fact that humans need myths to get along, I think modern christianity is a much better choice than anything else.

We can further go into how the current hindu psycho PM is using this myth to set his power base. There is hardly anything you can say against him today. His mouthpiece swarajyamag carries articles on how hindi should be revived in tertiary higher education. 

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