raghu
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Posts posted by raghu
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One doesn't "know" anything. Only a fool thinks he "knows" something.
How strange. You seem to "know" that I am a bigot and that what I say is wrong.
I guess what you mean is that if *you* believe in something, then you "know" it, but those of us who disagree with you can't "know" anything in reality, right?
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Didn't Vedavyas admit that his works were imperfect? Does that make those works "suspect"?
Do you want to provide evidence for your statement, or are we supposed to draw conclusions based on hearsay?
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Dodge. Interpolation or corruption adulteration, tainted etc. still you must present the evidence for your statement schoolboy
Here is an example of why some individuals really need to be more compliant with their attention-deficit medication before they presume to post.
Theist earlier wrote in this very same thread, and I quote:
"The Bible while containing many God conscious passages is also heavily mixed with much specualtion. I had a Jehovah witness lady last week show me a verse from the Old Testament that clearly stated that at death there is no after life until the Lord comes to bring people back to life for the Judgment. This was her answer to my belief in reincarnation.
As the saying goes, "too many cooks spoil the broth", and the Bible has too many authors or more precisely too many authors offering differing and unenlightened speculations on such topics as the self etc."
As in, he just clearly stated that the Bible has been corrupted over the years by the adulterations of other individuals.
But when I say the same thing, he wants proof?
Some people are just hopelessly confused, but despite that, they just have to argue and disagree, not because they have something intelligent to contribute, but just for the sake of arguing.
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A lot of tangential and frankly irrelevant postings here...
The basic point that no one addressed is that a given scripture's validity cannot be established by the "pick and choose" mentality of the christian-vaishnava syncretists. Either the scripture is beyond all flaws, and is thus independently authoritative, or it has some corruptions/adulterations/flaws in which case all of it is at least suspect.
It's not a question of being a paramahamsa. It's a question of what is pramana and how you know that something is correct. This is a simple and elementary point, but once again the confusion resulting from your (possibly deliberate) attempts to obfuscate the issue do nothing to help these people shed their misconceptions.
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As you can see, Theist did not understand the real "purport" of your question. If my experience is any indication, no one else here will get it either, and they will just repeat more or less what Theist just wrote.
The problem is that they don't have any standard of determining valid knowledge - it's whatever they want it to be. They will even quote pramanas out of context that seem to support this "selective pick and choose" mentality. Actually, Theist just did that too.
And of course, someone who is comparably clueless will inevitably chime in with the "jnani" remark. This may sound odd to you, but they see that as an insult of sorts. To them, "jnani" means "mayavadi."
So, in essence, you and I are going to be called mayavadis because we have pointed out their inconsistency on determining correct knowledge from a given source. The corollary being that if you simply pick and choose what you want to be correct, and that too from a source of information you acknowledge to have been adulterated over the years, then you are a Vaishnava and not a mayavadi.
I know it doesn't make sense to you. Try standing upside down and then see how it looks.
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Does it occur to the Christians on this thread that their beliefs flow in the opposite direction?
You start with a self created image of God and using that as the baseline you are working your way backwards into the bible. Take this self created image and compare it with each reference to God in the bible. If the two are compatible, then it is the real message of God. If incompatible, then it is written by man and it is incorrect. Ultimately you are selectively interpreting the bible to pick what you like and reducing everything else as the words of man. What is the value in that?
Is Truth a function of personal preferences as the Christians here are making it out to be?
As you can see, Theist did not understand the real "purport" of your question. If my experience is any indication, no one else here will get it either, and they will just repeat more or less what Theist just wrote.
The problem is that they don't have any standard of determining valid knowledge - it's whatever they want it to be. They will even quote pramanas out of context that seem to support this "selective pick and choose" mentality. Actually, Theist just did that too.
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Okay... well, could you please point out where Jesus' message is corrupt? Not Yahweh's message, not the disciples' messages, but Jesus' message. Please, I beg you to point out something he says that is corrupt.
Is English not your first language? I said that his message had been "corrupted" - meaning, interpolated, adulterated, tainted, etc by the unauthorized interventions by other individuals down the ages. This is an undisputed fact, and even the iskcon intellgentsia on this very thread agreed with it.
QED the Bible is not a valid pramana and any religion based on such invalid pramanas is also invalid.
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In response to my question about how you know that what you say is right, you wrote:
The same way, as the Hare Krishnas are in love with a Krishna they have never seen or met. Through the experience of Bona-fide Gurus and Yogis. oh and Krishna himself talks of samadhi too. I don't memorize quote numbers though.To me, you and the Hare Krishnas seem to have a lot in common, not the least of which is your propensity to articulate religious views without any obvious attempt to authenticate them on the basis of some mutually-accepted standard of evidence.
Is the strength of your belief system rooted firmly in the idea that because they do it, then so will you?
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Raghu ji,
Namaskar.
Well, yog is not essentially a topic for vedantic debate. Its more experiential.
rasa is experiential. Thus yoga. Bhakti is also yoga as its experience based. To give "pramana" of taste and rasa is to talk of explaining the taste of rajbhog to someone who never taster sugar or anything sweet. I am not talking this personally in terms of you. I'm making a general statement.
I cant seem to keep my finger off the exclamation key? Is that a problem?
Yes I'm expressive!
Of course my statements are not based solely on my own opinion. And I'm not implying that all of you have to accept it. Gaudiyas are good accepting their own versions of stories and milk curd, Shiva 87% etc. theories. No problem. Problem is with the put down of others! (here goes the exclamation mark).
This is a very verbose answer to what was a very simple question. Perhaps I need to be more clear.
The question, simplified, is this - how do you know that what you assert to be true is in fact correct?
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You are only applying concept to Christianity. It is said that there are three kinds of Puranas: those meant for people in tamas, for people in rajas and those in sattva guna. This means that there are gradations of religious conception even in the Vedic tradition.
No, the Vedic tradition is not classified in such a manner. Only the Puranas are. Their authority is only valid to the extent that they uphold the conclusions of the shruti.
Gradation is everywhere but the pivotal point here is that love of God and fear of God are quite different. Fear of punishment is also coincides with social control. One group is told, "Thou shall not kill" another is told, "Don't mate with your mother". These pronouncements are there because these are the tendencies is a particular group that need to be curbed. Evidently the tribes of Israel were very much prone to following religious conceptions other than Yaweh, so they received stern warnings to curb this tendency.You are going off tangent here. We were talking about how the Biblical god curses people who don't worship him, sends plagues to kill their first born, made warnings about his jealousy if they worship other gods, etc etc and you claimed these were all lies told to "control the population." My point is that these "lies" have taught the followers of Biblical tradition to be aggressively expansionistic and to uproot all non-Biblical traditions, for that is the logical result of being told that their god is a jealous god who demands, on pain of violence, that he be given exclusive worship.
Are you really going to sit here and claim that Sri Vishnu arranged for these people to hear these things for their own good? That He didn't know their descendents would use this to go and start attacking all other religions? Come on.
And again as we showed in the previous post there are also "well motivated lies" in the Vaisnava traditions.Maybe in *your* own tradition, perhaps - like the "well motivated lie" to the effect that Jesus is a pure devotee of Krishna?
Perhaps the fear of "other gods" was a contributing factor to the global spread of Christianity and Western culture, but the situation was certainly much more complex.Historically, the teachings of the Bible united several Greco-Mediterranean subcultures and gave them a philosophical impetus to take to a program of aggressive socio-political domination of the known world, all in the name of spreading their faith. Is it likely that the all-knowing, compassionate and impartial Sri Hari gave them these teachings by which they then proceeded to terrorize and destroy much older religious cultures (including Vaishnavism)? Or is it more likely that some other entity who was wrongly deified as "God" did this? I think that any intelligent person who deliberates on this objectively will think the latter.
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Dear Tantra guy,
You obviously have some issues with Hare Krishna people. That, and you can't seem to keep your fingers off the exclamation mark key. I am not a Gaudiya Vaishnava, so I am not going to get into all of that. All I want to know is, when you make statements like this -
The highest stage of rasa is Nirvikalpa samadhi.
... on what pramana are you basing it? Is it merely your own opinion, and you want to us to accept it on that basis? Or is there some other evidence to substantiate this?
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The Vaisnavas who accept that Visnu and the Judeo-Christian God are one do not accept the concept that that Yaweh is in reality a vengeful and jealous God. They propose that the stories that describe Yaweh in that way were written to control the population.
What a strange theory, given the fact that such "well motivated lies" did nothing to control Christians from spreading all over the globe and uprooting all other religions in their path.
Whatever the rationale, if a given source of information gives any false information, then all of it is necessarily suspect. Thus the entire scripture becomes unacceptable as a valid means to proper knowlege. Which again speaks to the point of the validity of the religion which is based on it.
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One great difference between the God of the Bible and the God of the Gita is the following. The God of the Bible punishes and kills anyone who worships another God. On the other hand, the God of the Gita rewards those who worship other Gods with heaven, material oppulence, material enjoyment, etc. The Gita tells us that Krishna actually rewards those who worship other Gods. There is no envy, jealousy and hatred towards those who worship another God. Krishna doesn't decide to kill the children of those who worship other Gods. He doesn't send plagues and curses on those who worship other Gods. He doesn't destroy whole civilizations because they choose to worship other Gods. Rather he rewards them with material oppulence, long life, and happiness - and in the next life he sends them to heaven to enjoy the oppulences of swarga.
That is one of the points I had made earlier - several times in fact. It would seem to be an obvious, logical problem with the idea that the Biblical god is the same as Sri Vishnu.
Unfortunately, all I got in response was some innuendo to the effect that I was a misguided Hindu who could not understand that God is one, etc etc and that obviously these two are the same God (despite all the evidence to the contrary). And then there were the numerous digressions, ad hominem attacks, blatant insults, etc.
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I don't think that Jesus' message has been corrupted. I think that Yahweh's word (the Old Testament) is the word of men. I think that the letters of the apostles are the letters of men. But, I don't think that Jesus' message, that actual words of Jesus, has been corrupted. He doesn't say anything corrupt... so I don't think they've been corrupted.
Oh, ok. As long as you think it then....
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First and foremost is the demi-god concept (a concept I see in not just ISKCON, but Vaishnavism all together). Amongst the so-called demigods are Indra, and Yamaraj. However in RigVeda 1:164:46 we find This would contradict the idea held by ISKCON that these deities are seperate from Vishnu and inferior compared to him, seeming to indicate that rather they are other facets or forms of Vishnu.
There's more to come, but unfortunatley I have to run at the moment.
Hairbol all!
There is nothing about this mantra that contradicts the Vaishnava point of view. When the shrutis refer to Brahman by such anya-devata names such as Indra, Agni, etc then these references can only be properly understood to refer to Vishnu. Vishnu does have many names, and these include some names that are also names of other deities. Therefore context is important. One cannot argue that anya-devatas are different forms of Vishnu because even elsewhere in shruti the deva-taratamya (hierarchy of dieties) with Vishnu at the top is upheld.
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And the teachings of Jesus, what are they, raghu? It does not go unnoticed that you run from this question a third time.
In order to accuse someone of running from an idea, you must first develop the attention-span necessary to follow an idea in the brief period of time in which it is moved from one posting to another within a thread, a stage of cognitive development which roughly corresponds with that of mid-adolescence. If you had been paying more attention, you would have grasped the point which has already been articulated here several times in painstakingly-clear English, that *no one* objectively speaking knows the historic Jesus or his teachings. All of his alleged teachings which have been passed down to us have been corrupted over time, a fact which your friends Thiest et. al. repeatedly acknowledged on this very thread.
And yet, in defiance of all of logic, you continue to invoke ideas about Jesus and the "real" Christianity that are based on the very sources which you acknowledge to be corrupted in the first place. It is precisely because you and other new-agers continue to display this sort of confused thinking (and worse yet, try to pass it off as "Vaishnavism") that all true Vaishnavas should feel duty-bound to correct your ludicrous ideas.
You don't deserve to hold an opinion.
Yes, we know. Too much thinking and too little blind following is evil, or some such thing. I heard you the first time... and the second and the third....
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As far as the old testiment, when reading it I don't see much sign of transcendental knowledge. This is just my opinion and everyone has the right to believe what they like. But to me it reads like some tribal people with a lot of hatred against other races and tribes. Such books can be found in any culture. In Kali yuga people hate each other, discriminate against each other and fight amongst each other, usually while invoking the name of "God" to justify their actions. The losers in history did the same thing (such as other pagan religions in europe). If they had won the wars their religion would have similar stories of God ordering them to kill the non believers and of God punishing their enemies.
I also don't see any reason to consider the bible to be the word of God. It was manipulated and more or less written by corrupt popes and fallible men. They borrowed some good things from Jesus, and thats why there is some hint of humanity in the teachings today. The teachings of Jesus were completely different from what God taught in the old testiment. The hatred was gone and there was a new message of love and compassion. The corrupt popes hijacked this popular teaching and then created something they called the bible, while selling tickets to heaven and becoming rich. I don't see anything transcendental or spiritual in their history with the exception of Jesus and a few rare saintly people.
The bible was more or less a product of corrupt leaders. So I don't consider it the word of God, even though there are probably some spiritual things they have stolen from saintly people and included in the mix.
Whatever one thinks of the Bible, it is a fact that Christianity is based on the Bible. If one argues that Christianity is valid in some sense then it follows that the Bible must be a valid pramana in some sense. If the Bible is corrupted and interpolated over the years (an idea which I have no problem with as it's consistent with what I know on the subject) then this invalidates Christianity as a "bona fide religion." If it is argued that there is some real Christianity somewhere and sometime then the reasonable question is, what is the evidence? We can say all we want about Jesus really being a great chap but without evidence it is all hearsay.
Regardless of its validity, the bible and Christianity has created some of the most civilized and humanitarian people in modern times, something we don't find much of in India even with the greatest philosophy. So for that I have a lot of respect for them. In India and other third world places like Africa, people getting burnt alive, hacked to death, etc., are daily occurences by the hundreds and thousands. There is a lack of respect for human life, and there is a lot of inner hatred towards fellow man. In modern (usually Christian) countries, such things don't occur because people are more civilized and have respect for human life. There are so many other faults in western civilization (like animal slaughter), but I see some things that we can learn from them as well. And over all I dont see a practicing utopia anywhere in the world, in any of the religions being taught.
Jahnava Nitai Das,
Something I feel very comfortable telling you, and which I think you will accept if you think it over objectively, is that you cannot pass judgement on a given culture's view on human rights by looking at just the last few centuries and without due regard to the whole context of the socio-economic-political spectrum. For the last 10 centuries India (like most of the "third world") has been a civilization in decline, being the subject of numerous invasions which robbed it of its wealth and replaced it with a ruling class that is totally uneducated in dharma. America, on the other hand, got where it was by stamping out every indigenous tribe that stood in its way. There weren't any "civilized and humanitarian" men who managed to stop the near-total genocide of indigenous peoples in North America.
It's all very nice and good for one civilization to plunder another and then point fingers at the desperation of its people.
Bad people are everywhere. Certainly there are some good people who are Christians and bad people who call themselves Hindu. But since the discussion is about the validity of the Bible, Christianity, Jesus, etc, I'm really not sure what this has to do with it.
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Hmmm .. on another thread you posted:
- Source: http://www.indiadivine.org/audarya/spiritual-discussions/445271-what-krishna-consciousness-3.html
This implies you are not an initiated Vaisnava. Are you?
I am initiated, and that post was obviously a light-hearted jab. I'm not sure how it implies that I am not initiated, but then again like gHari's I find your thought process rather disconnected and difficult to follow.
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The title of this thread is "Vaisnava Bible Study - Is Jesus Vaisnava?" Accordingly, we will discuss both subjects, namely the study of the Bible from a Vaishnava perspective as well as the matter of Jesus's alleged identity as a "Vaishnava."
Many points have already been brought up refuting the latter, and beyond the usual ad hominem attacks and sentimental reasoning, no substantial reasoning or evidence has been provided by the new-age/iskcon purva-pakshins to support it. I will therefore revisit that subject after discussing the first matter - namely the Bible from a Vaishnava perspective, and more specifically the Biblical "God" from a Vaishnava perspective. I will continue to provide exact references with due regard to context in the Bible (including the Old Testament) that show how this "God" behaves in ways that are completely out of character for a devotee of Vishnu or even Sri Vishnu Himself.
Another example of this occurs in Exodus 32.27-35. It is explained here how the Israelites finally reach Mt Sinai, and becoming impatient with Moses' long absence, they fashion an icon of a golden calf and start worshipping it. God threatens to kill all of them for this behavior and only relents when Moses convince him to. Then we have the following:
Then he said to them, "This is what the LORD, the God of Israel, says: 'Each man strap a sword to his side. Go back and forth through the camp from one end to the other, each killing his brother and friend and neighbor.' "The Levites did as Moses commanded, and that day about three thousand of the people died. Then Moses said, "You have been set apart to the LORD today, for you were against your own sons and brothers, and he has blessed you this day."
The next day Moses said to the people, "You have committed a great sin. But now I will go up to the LORD; perhaps I can make atonement for your sin."
So Moses went back to the LORD and said, "Oh, what a great sin these people have committed! They have made themselves gods of gold. But now, please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written."
The LORD replied to Moses, "Whoever has sinned against me I will blot out of my book. Now go, lead the people to the place I spoke of, and my angel will go before you. However, when the time comes for me to punish, I will punish them for their sin." And the LORD struck the people with a plague because of what they did with the calf Aaron had made.
From the above, we can clearly see that the Biblical "God" uses wanton violence to ensure purity of his religious teachings, which forbid idol (or icon) worship of any kind. Some misinformed iskconites may try to compare this to Sri Krishna ordering Arjuna to fight in the Battle of Kurukshetra, but this comparison is not valid for the following reasons:
1 - The people who died in Kurukshetra war were kshatriyas - fighting for them was a matter of duty and they were required to fight on behalf of their leige. By contrast, the Israelites were non-combatants and former slaves who had followed Moses on the promise that their "God" would free the from captivity.
2 - The Kurukshetra war was being fought to uproot a corrupt king who was guilty of usurping the throne, attempted murder, and conspiracy to commit rape. Many warriors lost their lives in the ensuing battle, but there is no record of any civilians or non-combatants being targetted. Even those warriors who were slain all got liberation (if you believe the testimony of the Bhagavata). By contrast, the slaughter of 3000 Hebrews was ordered by the Biblical "God" because the Hebrews lost faith in their "God" and turned to "idol worship." And this "God" does not grant them salvation; he vindictively writes them out of his plan for the Israelites.
3 - While Sri Krishna clearly does not agree with anya-deva worship, He does not command anyone to take up arms against someone solely because they are not His devotees. Why should He, when He is very clear that anya-devata worship leads to different results? But the Biblical "God" is very jealous of his position and will not co-exist with any other religious beliefs, right or wrong.
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Another statement that illustrates the principle that the Judeo-Christian god is partial and cruel is this passage from Exodus 10.1-2:
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD."
Essentially, the Judeo-Christian "God" is telling Moses once again that he manipulated the will of the Egyptian leaders so that he could torture the people of Egypt.
Once again, let us be clear on the relationships -
- "God" sends Moses to demand the Israelites' release from Pharaoh
- "God" hardens Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh will not listen to Moses
- "God" then sends a plague which terrorizes the people of Egypt
- "God" again sends Moses to demand the Israelites' release from Pharaoh
- "God" again hardens Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh will not listen to Moses
- "God" again sends another plague which again terrorizes the people of Egypt
... ad nauseum
"God" sends Moses -- "God" makes Pharaoh refuse Moses -- "God" indiscriminately kills Egyptian women and children (but never Pharaoh)
Does this sound like the same para Brahman Sri Krishna who Himself became the chariot driver of Arjuna, or who released Gajendra from the grip of the crocodile, or who greeted the lowly Sudhama Brahmana like a friend with tears of divine joy?
As always, deliberate on the points objectively. Feel free also to consult the original text for fuller appreciation of the Biblical context.
And once again, to illustrate the principle of the Judeo-Christian "God's" partiality, we have this passage from Exodus 11.4-8:
So Moses said, "This is what the LORD says: 'About midnight I will go throughout Egypt. Every firstborn son in Egypt will die, from the firstborn son of Pharaoh, who sits on the throne, to the firstborn son of the slave girl, who is at her hand mill, and all the firstborn of the cattle as well. There will be loud wailing throughout Egypt—worse than there has ever been or ever will be again. But among the Israelites not a dog will bark at any man or animal.' Then you will know that the LORD makes a distinction between Egypt and Israel.
Does Sri Vishnu play racial or ethnic favorites?
Please feel free to consult the original text for better appreciation of the context.
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The Old Testament (Exodus 7.2-5) also describes how "God" will punish the people of Egypt. He states that he will make Pharaoh refuse to listen to Moses, thus prompting he (God) to punish the people of Egypt in various ways.
You shall speak all that I command you, and your brother Aaron shall tell Pharaoh to let the people of Israel go out of his land. But I will harden Pharaoh’s heart, and though I multiply my signs and wonders in the land of Egypt, Pharaoh will not listen to you. Then I will lay my hand on Egypt and bring my hosts, my people the children of Israel, out of the land of Egypt by great acts of judgment. The Egyptians shall know that I am the LORD, when I stretch out my hand against Egypt and bring out the people of Israel from among them." Moses and Aaron did so; they did just as the LORD commanded them. Now Moses was eighty years old, and Aaron eighty-three years old, when they spoke to Pharaoh.
The punishments were as follows - turning the waters of the Nile into blood, the plague of frogs, gnats, flies, killing the Egyptian livestock, the plague of boils, hail, locusts, darkness, and then tops it off by killing all of the first-born children of Egypt.
In each case, the texts make it clear that it was the people of Egypt who had to suffer from all of these punishments because Pharaoh's heart was hardened. It was also mentioned numerous times that the "Lord" himself hardened Pharaoh's heart, resulting in the various punishments up to and including the atrocity of killing the first-born children of Egypt.
Does this "god" behave the way Sri Hari does? Does Sri Krishna manipulate people into defying Him so that He can send plagues into their houses and kill their children? Again, don't take my word for it - just read the text yourself.
Another statement that illustrates the principle that the Judeo-Christian god is partial and cruel is this passage from Exodus 10.1-2:
Then the LORD said to Moses, "Go to Pharaoh, for I have hardened his heart and the hearts of his officials so that I may perform these miraculous signs of mine among them that you may tell your children and grandchildren how I dealt harshly with the Egyptians and how I performed my signs among them, and that you may know that I am the LORD."
Essentially, the Judeo-Christian "God" is telling Moses once again that he manipulated the will of the Egyptian leaders so that he could torture the people of Egypt.
Once again, let us be clear on the relationships -
- "God" sends Moses to demand the Israelites' release from Pharaoh
- "God" hardens Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh will not listen to Moses
- "God" then sends a plague which terrorizes the people of Egypt
- "God" again sends Moses to demand the Israelites' release from Pharaoh
- "God" again hardens Pharaoh's heart so that Pharaoh will not listen to Moses
- "God" again sends another plague which again terrorizes the people of Egypt
... ad nauseum
"God" sends Moses -- "God" makes Pharaoh refuse Moses -- "God" indiscriminately kills Egyptian women and children (but never Pharaoh)
Does this sound like the same para Brahman Sri Krishna who Himself became the chariot driver of Arjuna, or who released Gajendra from the grip of the crocodile, or who greeted the lowly Sudhama Brahmana like a friend with tears of divine joy?
As always, deliberate on the points objectively. Feel free also to consult the original text for fuller appreciation of the Biblical context.
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Sigh!!
The utterances of the pure devotee *are* scripture, more pure than any mis-copied, mis-translated, and mis-interpreted words on paper.
This remark is a sterling example of how your (iskcon?) concept of epistemology is more akin to that of Christianity or Islam than it is to Vaishnavism, including Gaudiya Vaishnavism. The Vaishnava concept of shabda-pramana has nothing to do with "mis-copied, mis-translated, and mis-interpreted words on paper," which you ought to know if you really studied Vaishnava philosophy.
Acceptance of an individual's testimony on the grounds that he is a "prophet" or "pure devotee" requires additional assumptions about that individual's character and motives which one cannot readily determine objectively. This form of faith-acceptance is not a characteristic of Vaishnava Vedanta.
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I'm sure that this argument thoroughly establishes that the concept of Vaisnava aparadha is just a social convention. Yeah right! Try reading Caitanya Caritamrta. Oh that's right, you don't accept it as sastra.
Caitanya Caritamrta is not apaurusheya-vakya. It was written by Gaudiya Vaishnavas. Why would non-Gaudiya Vaishnavas accept it? Would you accept Divya Prabandham? Doubtful.
What are you doing on this forum anyway?What makes him out of place on this forum? There are forum members who profess to be attached to Gaudiya Vaishnavism but disagree with Gaudiya Vaishnava acharyas and call some GV Swamis as "foolish,ignorant," and so on. Then there are all the Christians, Muslims, mayavadis, new-agers, etc.
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The "personality of Kali" was also given favor by the Lord's devotee Maharaja Parikshit. Should we therefore accept Kali as a pure devotee and a shakti-avesha avatara?
Buddha was given favor by the Lord to mislead and delude the naastikas. Should we therefore say that Buddhism has its own special validity, even though Buddhists reject all notions of atman and reject the authority of the Vedas?
By your own logic Mohammed must have gotten favor of the Lord. After all, he united the various and sundry tribes of Arabia under the premise of a single god and a single religious doctrine. How can just anyone do that? Should we say that his way is valid in some sense, even when he leads his people to destroy other people's places of worship and take their women into sexual slavery?
Vaisnava Bible Study - Is Jesus Vaisnava?
in Spiritual Discussions
Posted
We really aren't making much effort to grasp the obvious today, are we?
The Bible has been changed over the years. This is an obvious fact to anyone who has bothered to study the subject even superficially, and even Christian scholars will admit to it when pressed.
However, feel free to continue proposing the absurd. If you truly believe that the Bible we have today is the original one, despite the multiple different editions and versions to date, then that is your right.
Murali, if you truly are a Vaishnava, then you should already know the answer to that question. If your guru couldn't trouble himself to explain the ABC's of Vaishnava Vedanta to you, then what kind of guru is he?