When weakness in intellect confronts hard truths what we have is a nervous LOL!. Perhaps that’s all you could do. Never mind the historical truths that it was the Christian Emperor Charlemagne who outlawed the pagan practice of witch burnings. Nor do we need the Joan of Arc example, as one among many, in pre-Renaissance times. Of course all this, is either to explain away or worse justify an overt and central ritual of a barbaric religious practice of Hindu casteism. So too was wife burning which has its roots in vile Hindu traditions where widows are dragged against their wish onto a lighted pyre.
The first woman known as Sati was the consort of Lord Shiva. She burnt herself in fire as protest against her father who did not give her consort Shiva the respect she thought he deserved, while burning herself she prayed to be reborn again as the new consort of Shiva, which she became and her name in the new incarnation was Parvati.
This is the stuff of Hinduism as conveyed from one generation to another.
As for a Dalit Indian’s President address, this is supposed to float a sea-change in entrenched Hindu rituals by the sheer force of such lofty rhetoric about concerns for the common man. What happened to Robespierre? This would be news to the speakers of the Indian literary panel that formed the subject of this thread.
What keeps you from continually failing to comprehend the point about Jewish clergy being hereditary? You insist that I “validat(e) how hereditary transmission is superior to the non-hereditary kind” This is a straw argument. It was never raised. Go back and check the earlier posts. What was offered was a rationale not a justification? Do you understand the difference between the two? Accusations like “laughable” “stupid” etc gets you nowhere except suggest an infantile mind at work.
Finally, you quote from Samuel 1 :15:2-3 as a riposte to Gov. Bobby Jindal view of Hindu deity violence. This is a classic case of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread. Interpretation of scripture is not like reading a book for kindergartners. In Jewish tradition, the Amalekites came to represent the archetypal enemy of the Jews and this passage you cite as been the subject of intense discussion and interpretation from Maimonides down to present times.
All in all, you must concede that Hinduism encompasses a system of beliefs and rituals that are anathema to civil society and cannot withstand the rigors of serious intellectual inquiry and human experientce which explains why it is thankfully confined to a geographical swath of millions of illiterates and their clerics, otherwise known as Hindu India.
Weakness in intellect? ROFLMAO! Do you detect nervousness in this as well? Good.
Your bicycle-chain circular-logic illogic is laughably visible in all your replies to me. Let us now delve into the details, shall we? Here goes:
Joan of Arc. Well, what do you think was the estimates for the numbers of “witches” that were toasted in Europe, in times far, far since the pagans were relegated to a fringe minority? For a period between 1400 to 1700, the estimates range from 40,000 to 100,000. Want citations?
There is nothing in the Bhagavad-Gita that condones or supports either the burnings or murder. At least, not nearly as explicitly as similar categories of violence is condoned in the Old Testament. Please note that in spite of your oft-repeated and frequently abused phrase, “Hindu roots”, you have absolutely and flatly failed to prove any substantial links making the practices more endemic to Hinduism, than was slavery, torture and murder endemic to pre-Reforms Christianity.
The Bhagavad-Gita, does not condone any of this nonsense. Prove otherwise, and you would have contributed something to the discussion, instead of maintaining polar orbits around your circular illogic-based false philosophy.
As for Parvati, aside from the hilarity of it, now you quote mythology as actual practice? What sort of translation did you apply, to decipher that for Parvati to transform from her previous form, she had to undergo physical immolation? After all, you are the one prancing all over about my “misunderstanding” of Old Testament violence, due to my “poor Hebrew translation” skills. All this, leaving alone the main FACT that the Bhagavad-Gita has this to say about mythologies and rituals:
“For not by Vedas cometh this, nor sacrifice, nor alms,
Nor works well-done, nor penance long, nor prayers nor chaunted psalms,
That mortal eyes should bear to view the Immortal Soul unclad.”
- Bhagavad-Gita, Ch:XI lines 313-317.
News to the speakers of the Indian “literary panel”, of the like of Kancha Illaiah, you mean, who is none other than a race-pandering racist, advocating that Catholic missionaries are responsible for sustaining discrimination in India, as shown in my past post to you.
You have not given any valid explanation for the necessity of hereditary priesthood in Judaism. All you did was make silly excuses using vague nonsense such as “psychologically proven”, “noble task of transmission” etcetera. Go back to the same yourself, and provide an objective, convincing, holistic, scientific reason for the benefits of hereditary transmission of priesthood in Judaism, instead of making laughable attempts at dusting off this contentious issue under the carpet, as if to convince yourself that I am going tire from your circular arguments and let you off. Strawman argument, it is not. I am explicitly declaring that it is not, and the onus is on you, to show otherwise.
1 Samuel 2-3 is a quote that better men than either of us have discussed about, and failed to arrive at a consensus. What makes you think that your utterly idiotic explanations involving excuses like “poor translation” and “misunderstanding” is going to persuade anyone who has been following this debate, otherwise? The verse is plain and simple. There cannot be any ambiguity in it, when the protagonist speaks of slaughtering infants and toddlers, enemy or not. It is plain, uncivilised barbarity right there, and there is no other way to look at it. Go ahead, give your best shot, and explain it away.
So far, your poor logic, poor attempts at explanation, pathetic circular reasoning littering almost all of your replies here, and a penchant for not being able to objectively criticise, together with the tendency to divert into obscure tangents, has utterly devastated even the most earnest of your arguments.
The rest of us, shall meanwhile, rejoice in the ‘little’ triumphs of a progressive people.