Does God Exist?

Your expression of such comical doubt about me and Eternal_Bliss sure puts you in a weirdo category. For your information, there are 1 Billion Hindus on this planet, and is it not possible for two of them to be on this board? Matter of factly the owner is also one. There are a dozen others who do not want to enter this religious feud.



No one's forcing anyone to any religion. If you feel so, report it to the moderator.


There is difference in understanding the preachings and challenging them. You were challenging them, by saying things about Krishna. You are not allowed to say anything false about Krishna OR ANY OTHER HOLY FIGURE over here. Be it Christ, or Prophet or Buddha. I don't challenge the holiness of Christ and neither of Prophet and neither shall I ever. There are billions who believe them, and even if I ever have doubt, I will keep it to myself instead of saying on a public bulletin board.


urgh...! There is a difference in "I speak sense" and "I speak sense attitude" !!! and with the above line, you just reinforced my statement.

So are grouping me and Eternal_Bliss throughout, just because we belong to the same ethnic group?

 

 

 

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What's wrong with challenging it lol, they mostly challenge the opposite from my experience (generally) so why not the other way around, fair is fair right .

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How should I have known what ethnic group you belong to? I thought you two were the same person because you reacted so similarly. But that you are of the same culture makes sense of this too. It also explains some of the reactions we have to each other's posts as some kind of cultural dissonance. Speaking sensibly is an ideal we of the west aim for, and your distaste for it triggers my own sense of you being wierd, and this is typical of a clash between cultures. So we live and begin to learn. Hmmmm....






No, CaptainRon has a point here, though it is difficult for us to see. I believe He is pointing to a different kind of religious peace than we have in the west and such would certainly make sense in a place like India. At least, I begin to see some kind of self-consistency in it. In the west we respect the right of others to their belief and the freedom to speak these beliefs, but we have several difficulties. To deal with the potential disruption cause by inter-religious bickering we selectively ban this "freedom of speech" somewhat in the work place and in schools. And when it comes to people like Nazis, who have only a message of hate, we feel a bit conflicted in deciding how to handle them.

Certainly if you invite someone over to dinner then knowing their belief you would attempt not to give offense even if it meant being quiet about things that you believe. Otherwise what result could you expect, except that your guest would storm out of your house offended. We do not concieve of the public arena in this manner. In the west, our highest ideal is truth rather than harmony, and we see the public arena as the place for debate not politeness. And by our rather difficult ideal, we defend the right of these Nazi extremists to speak their point of view in public even though many of us are strongly tempted to shoot them as well.

I have never been to India, so I can only guess, but the words of our friends here make me suspect that India is somewhat different. I guess it is possible that the public arena in India is the same as welcoming a guest at your home. I am not agreeing with it, for I think it has problems of its own. I wonder if this supression of feelings in this manner does not lead to the kind of explosive violence that we have seen in India. And what if a man believes himself to be God? In the west, we can respect his right to believe so as long as he respects our right to disagree. Inviting such a person over to your house and trying to avoid giving offense may be too much of a burden for most people of the west to bear.


In light of the above, I think I begin to understand. I think what you object to is a western tradition that we have from ancient Greece called rhetoric. Where we try to convince the jury or bystanders that our point of view is the reasonable one. There is little relationship between this rhetoric and the kind of politeness which you seem to see as appropriate for the public arena. The funny thing is that the internet forum has become an even more exaggerated version of the western ideal of the public arena as the place for debate and rhetoric. In any case, it seems that although I am not consciously engaging in debate, my manner of expression still gives you the impression of rhetoric. You could also call it, delight in my own cleverness, which has become so inseperable from my effort to express myself and be understood that I am not sure it is even possible for me to do otherwise.

So perhaps what you wish to say is something like, "let's forget the rhetoric and cleverness, and try to understand each others religious point of view in the interest of communication." Communication is a respected ideal in the west even if its tradition is newer and weaker than that of debate. But I don't think this can work unless one is careful to include phrases like, "I think that" or "I believe" in ones statement of belief. It may seem redundant to you, but in the west, a statement of belief as if it were a matter of fact is generally taken as a challenge to a debate. No doubt we will still find each others way of expressing ourselves a bit grating but perhaps awareness of the reality will help us to achieve some degree of toleration.

I hope this helps.

 

 

 

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Hii, Everyone .mitchellmckain just check out the post no. 50 and 51 of this topic .You will get to see that there was a question asked by CaptainRon which I dutifully replied. Don't you think that its kinda weird that the same guy can asks a question and then replies to it.Does it makes any sense ?? Not to me at least....

I and CaptainRon may have a similarity in the point of veiw on some of the points in this topic but there may be differences on other things. And I dont know what ethinic group CaptainRon belongs to, so I cant really say if we are of the same ethinic group. AND regarding INDIA I want to make it clear that INDIA is the largest democratic country in the whole world and also that its a secular country and everyone can express his/her own veiw (unlike many of the countries of middle east)....

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I have been searching through the thread to find out where this impression of similarity came from.

And it was the following post, suddenly making irrational personal comments in the midst of a discussion.



CaptainRon did the same thing both before and after yours, although now that I compare them side by side I would have to admit that his/her are a bit more irrational than yours. Although yours was every bit as unjustified for the reasons I have already explained. My point was not that you were proselytizing but that taking offense at my having my own definite ideas makes it sound like you are, for this is exactly the kind of thing I have heard from visiting missionaries.





After calling CaptainRon on the first one, it turns out that his/her reason was even more irrational. He/her says "I called u frustrated because u were calling people extremists", since I was actually responding to someone else calling people extremists and refuting it, this reason is really bizzare. The second instance was even more absurd, since he/she is doing in this post what he accuses me of doing. He/she goes back to posts a month back in order to turn that discussion into a person attack derailing the current discussion and then he/she accuses me of engaging in a "thrash mash". As far as I can tell, with these outrageious personal comments, it is I who have been subjected to the closest thing to name-calling in this thread and it is he/she that insists on turning this discussion into a "thrash mash". I have sincerely been puzzled as to the reason for all this, which is why I attempted to explain this as a cultural thing in my last thread, while ignoring the continuing abuse coming from CaptainRon. Of course, it was just a shot in the dark, so any light you can shed on this (including confirmation or denial of my suggestions) would be appreciated.


Well him/her pulling the race card for no reason could be considered typical of him/her. I am not ignorant of modern history, but government and the cultural attitudes of society are two different things. But since as I said, I have not been to India, my guesses are a shot in the dark.

All in all, since we really do not know that much about each other personally, would you not agree that personal comments are, at least, not helpful and quite likely to be abrasive and insulting? I would suggest that if we are inclined to wonder about the personal character of another poster, we could simply send them a PM asking them. For speaking of rhetoric, as I have, making personal comments like this is worst sort of tactic of rhetoric there is.

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What's wrong with using the word extremist anyway lol, it's what they are (people that are actually labeled that).

It just means they take thins a little too far too heated, hence the word extreme(ist).

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mitchellmckain, I do understand the point now, and I must tell you the reason for it. Here in India, I have all sorts of people from all sorts of religions neighbouring me. Hindu, Sikh, Christian, Muslim and Jain mostly. No doubt Hinduism is the predominant religion but still having a look at recent as well as past clashes between Hindus and Muslims, which all usually started as verbal feuds, we all find it safer to respect each others religion regardless of the kind of practices.

The "rhetoric" you say to have inherited from your Western background, will make me change the subject a bit and ask you to look truly into the history of West and India. The history talks of something called Proto-Indo-Europeans, who were a society prior to European and Indian civilizations, and later split to form todays West and India. The whole theory and concept is highly debated, but still what is surely evident is the common source of origin of these two societies. Here a word "Arya" is introduced, that the ancient Indians used to describe themselves in the Vedas. It is wittily derived that there was an Aryan race from which the two societies were derived. This is what lead to the tainted racial supremacy factor in Hitler's Germany, where they thought that they were the source of Aryan race. However, the two immediate derivatives of the Proto-Indo-European society were the Indians and the Greeks. The reason why I brought this out was to point to the common origin source of me and you, and hence your "probably" false derivation of "rhetoric" as an ancestral attribute. It is more of a present social derivation...

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Well extremists like Eternal_Bliss, CaptainRon and myself are going to object to this. I consider myself a moderate, but I can take things pretty seriously in support of my moderate point of view, which makes me an extremist by your definition. Suffice to say that the term "extremist" is a very relative term, and most people feel strongly about something which they take very seriously relative to other people.

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I am familiar with the linguistic/genetic connections and Hitler's crazy ideas, as well as the pretext used by the British to support their racist attitudes in India. The connection is very old and there is no reason to see any substantial link to culture and I certainly will not support the racist ideas, fostered by the British, that tries to make the lighter skinned Indians out to be superior to the darker skinned. In any case, there is no denying, that rhetoric is an invention of ancient Greek culture deriving largely from their practice of democracy.



Aristotle made a detailed analysis of rhetoric and contrasted as the antithesis of scientific thinking. The adoption of democracy and Western legal practices in India has no doubt made rhetoric a part of modern Indian life in the form of politics and courtroom dialogue, but there is no doubting that the practice of rhetoric has deeper roots in the West, especially in the US whose society was built from its practice nearly from scratch. This is not a matter of pride (let alone racial pride since I doubt I have any Greek ancestors). Rhetoric has often been considered a plague of Western society starting with the criticisms of Plato, for the distortions of truth and justice which it often fosters. There is no need to be defensive for I make no assumption that western culture is the be all and end all of modern society. I point out the cultural differences only to understand what we find so annoying about the way we express ourselves so that in understanding this we can communicate better.

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Scientifically God doesn't exist. Science needs proof and there is no way you can prove his existence.
God in an unknown entity to every human being but every one is looking to find him. To say that god exists because no one can prove he doesn't exist is not logical. By that logic anything can be bought to existence in this world.
But to belief and faith in God is also natural. Belief and faith don't need logic.
There are many advantages and disadvantages of concept of god. Fear of God make people act lawfully while we know many people used God for getting power and maintaining it.

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