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PaperclipPerfector  1yr ago (text post)   30072 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 21, 2023

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It's quite fashionable these days for many Hindus to Abrahamic-wash their religion, passing off our hundreds of thousands of deities as manifestations of Brahman/God, as you right put it. This is particularly true for the more aggressively proselytizing brand of Hinduism, which smooths over theological differences by saying it's all good, you're just invoking one of the many facets of God when you pray to Shiva or Vishnu.

I still suspect that he is, at heart, an atheist or agnostic. I've heard that it's still taboo for a presidential candidate to be an outspoken atheist, so his protestations to the contrary don't convey all that much information. I suspect that, like most of the PMC/UMC, rich Brahmins are mostly LARPing rather than holding sincere beliefs, especially when you consider the rest of his life.

Not that it makes a big difference, Hinduism is undemanding enough that you can pretty much do whatever you like without the Hindu card being withdrawn, including being a nastik (a sect of Hinduism that denies the existence of gods while still holding other spiritual beliefs). An Atheist Hindu is actually not a contradiction in terms, though I strongly suspect he's just the former.

No way to prove it, of course, but I'd still bet on him just saying the lines that make a nominal Hindu palatable to a Republican audience, especially if using the monotheist doctrine.

My girlfriend is Hindu and told me that the Hindu gods are all manifestations of one god. Is that not a traditional belief? Is that just a result of Christian influence? She put this forward as though it were a standard Hindu belief.

No it is not.

It's one interpretation that's been an around for an extremely long time. Though it might be so that it's popularity in modern times might in some level be a result of the long term influence of the Muslim and then Christian rule over the subcontinent in recent centuries, but much of Hindu tradition and the majority of Hindus are polytheistic in nature.

I don't think he's necessarily being insincere; we're all judging by a Judeo-Christian template, but I don't see that it's impossible for the guy to be agnostic but spiritual-not-religious or "some kind of great impersonal cosmic force out there, sure". I don't think we can make confident pronouncements on "he's too smart to believe in deity so he's lying to the normies/trying not to spook the Republican Bible-bashers" about someone who comes from the background of a particular sect of Hinduism which is non-dualistic.

You're welcome to disagree, it's not like I have a way to prove my suspicions myself!

Oh, I'm not saying that doesn't play into it, but it's hard to know! How Christian is Obama, really? Happy enough to go along with Michelle and pick a suitable church to attend, or genuinely convinced, or just playing along for the black vote? Without being able to read his mind, who can say?

When he says ‘god is real’ he means ‘I’m assimilated, not a savage who worships the contents of your dinner plate’. This is very important for someone named ‘Vivek Ramaswamy’ running in a Republican primary.

I think much the same. It's a meaningless platitude to appease the Republican voter base who might otherwise worry about statues of Ganesh in the White House. Being nominally monotheistic lets you brush a lot under the carpet.

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