http://www.nonzero.org/islam.htm

So, Atanu’s theory is right. As long as the critical threshold of cultural + material poverty did not reach Islam, its obnoxious face remained hidden. Once this threshold arrived, all hell broke loose.

Not that educating the masses, and giving them a better chance of avoiding fanatical tendencies, isn’t great, but maybe we ought to pick option (3): “Get rid of both the intolerant religion and provide a way out of poverty.”
And here the “intolerant religion” really represents all fanatical-propagators viz. the KKK advocates, the Modi’s, the Togadia’s, and the Osama-bin-Laden’s of the world etc.

Since you know so much about dvaitins and advaitins, and you think that is the ‘fault line’ within Hinduism (more evidence of incorrect conceptualisation) why don’t you visit a mandir or satsang and go around asking the people there whether they are advaitins or dvaitins.

…which is exactly what I am arguing. A hindu who does not have a formal religious training hardly cares for such differences. However, for a hindu who is trained in the rigors of religion and has developed a religious conviction of his own, these differences suddenly become all too important. What other proof do you need to understand that it is ‘religious conviction’ that is at the heart of intolerance, not ‘a religious conviction’? The difference in degrees is only in details.

And you should also be very careful before you make sweeping claims about thinkers from 700-1500 CE. Hedge your claims next time, it’s easier to wiggle out when you are shown up to be wrong.

Why do you want to argue without doing any home work? I challenge you to pick any undergad text on medieval world history and come with reference. From my side, I can quote you entire chapters from Cambridge medieval history or Bingham’s Medieval World. But they will not make any sense to you unless you have gained a basic literacy in world history.

Contempt, and condemnation of the other to eternal damnation and the fires of hell (either in the ‘afterworld’ or here on earth) are absolutely alien to Hindu tradition.

It seems you are completely ignorant of not only other faiths, but of your own too. I suggest you check dvaita school’s stand on ‘eternal damnation’ before arguing any further.

Check out the Ali Sina page; at least you will find out why the poster takes the name of Ali Sina.

Good Lord!

Let us stop wasting each other’s time. We seem to be arguing on two entirely different levels.

I tend to see most of these issues as the consequences of the faith element needed to face insecurities of life. However good a driver I may be, as a I start my car, I am anxious about, say, other errant drivers coming my way and harming me. A variety of insecurities exist, and I need some faith framework to guide me to the next step in the face of these insecurities.

The root issue is in the nature of the framework that I use: the difference between blind faith and realist faith. The former gives us religions, the latter – science. Perhaps blind faith may accidentally land itself on some pragmatic base, but a realist faith (the one that diligently checks it’s facts) does not permit itself the liberty to be factually baseless. I suspect that the notion of cultural poverty is better explained in terms of the “degree of blindness” that the faith holds. On that basis, I suspect that the more ‘mono’ a faith is, the more blind it needs to be, and the more at odds it can be with the reality around us.

I see faith as somewhat necessary to survive the unknown (though I am not very clear yet on this issue). The more blind a faith system, the more it needs to base itself on numbers strength to obtain security against failures of an individual when the unknown is faced. Being blind, it does not carry the responsibility of basing itself on facts, and thus anything and everything that aggrandizes the blindness is admissible justification. Material affluence merely reduces the insecurity, and hence the need to be violent. Violent response probably occurs because the blindness does not permit a realistic assessment of facts, but yet the insecurities have to be fought. If the appeal to blindness is stronger than the reduced insecurity due to material affluence, I suppose that even materially affluent societies would be prone to violence.

A good way for me to control you is by first pointing out your insecurities and raising your fear, then pointing out that scarcity of time to ponder/assess the situation realistically, and finally offer you the prescription of acts that I design ‘altruistically’ for your benefit. I would require techniques to blind you, and then demand a blind faith in me (or whatever ) from you. Your interest in self preservation and the reluctance to face reality squarely are my assets that I can use to even goad you to self-annihilation for a greater purpose.

Education merely removes the blindfold that I put on your eyes.

Since you know so much about dvaitins and advaitins, and you think that is the ‘fault line’ within Hinduism (more evidence of incorrect conceptualisation) why don’t you visit a mandir or satsang and go around asking the people there whether they are advaitins or dvaitins. How about doing that at, say, Tirupati? Among the purohits a few may be able to tell you whether they are dvaitins or advaitins (or neither). So Sanjay pyaare, next time don’t read up trashy touristic accounts of Indian traditions and use the wrong framework to understand Hinduism or for that matter its fellow-Indic traditions, Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Now when Rajaji writes about the Bhajagovindam (by Adi Sankara) was he being dvaitin or advaitin?

Shiva:

It hardly makes any difference whether hinduism is one religion or a cluster of several religions. My point is that whatever religion I may belong to, it comes with a baggage of contempt for those who do not share my beliefs. Degree of contempt may vary from sect to sect and religion to religion, but the essential nature of contempt remains the same. Even with “ekam sad viprah bahudha vadanti” dvaitins and advaitins have been calling names to each other for centuries. Moreover, since a substantial part of (any) religious beliefs is objectively unverifiable, it finally boils down to an intractable problem of my brand of non-sense being better than yours.

The risk of reducing fanaticism debate to monotheism vs. polytheism is that it clouds the fact that ‘religion’ is at the root of fanaticism not ‘a religion’. We can continue to wallow in the smug satisfaction of following a polytheistic religion without realizing that a polytheistic religion is equally capable of apotheosizing its own brand of non-sense. Thus, instead of moving towards a sensible solution we start arguing over whether a polytheistc non-sense is better than monotheistic non-sense.

As for your suggerstion that if we “Try to think of any hindu or christian or jew or buddhist name from 700 ca to 1500 ca [we will]…come almost empty handed.” Are you joking or have you not read any popular history of those times?

It is only because I have read history that I say that the accomplishments of all the civilizations put together in medieval period pale in comparison to what was achieved in this period by Islamic zealots. Pick any historian you trust to see my point.

But anyway, this argument is beside the point. I am not arguing about cultural superiority of one civilization over the other. I am simply countering Atanu’s argument about Islam’s cultural poverty. For whatever else you may call the Islamic civilization, it was never culturally poor. Dismissing Islamic civilization as “culturally poor” may provide a momentary satisfaction of denouncing an opponent but only at the cost of objective analysis.

My point is that Atanu’s thesis of “material + cultural poverty = fanaticism” is interesting but flawed. It fails to explain the existence of millionaire jihadis. It is the emotional conviction of truth of a belief (ANY belief), which is the root cause of fanaticism, not a combination of poverties.

Hinduism isn’t polytheistic or monotheistic; it is not even theistic. These are all labels affixed by external experiencers of the Indic traditions looking for ‘religion’ through their own imperfect lens. It may be true that proponents of dvaita and vishishtadvaita OTOH and advaita on the other may call each other names. In fact there was some gloating in Srivaishnava quarters over the troubles of the Kanchi teacher Jayendra Sarasvati; (check out the readers’ letters in The Whimpu of Madras). It is another matter that a host of other gurus ranging from Bangaru Adigalar and Ramdev (all non-brahman) and a few 1000 discriminated folk like the Arundatiyar and Balmikis continue to welcome him into their precincts and mandirs.

As for your suggerstion that if we “Try to think of any hindu or christian or jew or buddhist name from 700 ca to 1500 ca [we will]…come almost empty handed.” Are you joking or have you not read any popular history of those times? You could have easily miss out the Indian thinkers and mathematicians starting from Aryabhatta’s disciples right up to Gangesa’s “Tattvachintamani” a 3000 pg work on logic – the Navya Nyaya or Abhinavagupta’s work on aesthetics and the Kerala school of mathematics (infinite series, tattvasamgraha, calculus, kuttakaram etc.) but have also missed out William of Ockham?

See this.

Well taken. And it shows that the degree of insanity is lower among hindus. But the insanity of religious mind still exists. Vedanta is said to be the pinnacle of hindu thought. And I can show you vedanta forums defending obnoxious passages from manu smriti. But for their religious conviction, how else can we explain otherwise decent normal people defending such things? And have you ever visited a debate between dvaita vedanta and advaita vedanta schools? Apart from physical violence, everything else is there; and on such issues that neither side can produce a shred of evidence for. At the same time non-religious or indifferently religious hindus do not display such hatred towards either dvaita or advaita. Similarly, an indifferently religious sikh does not show any hatred toward hindus. But visit any religious sikh forum. Oh boy..! The hatred for hindus is sickening.

The point I am making is that take any indifferently religious or mildly religious person and start giving him religious training. Any religion. And you will notice that the same person starts behaving strangely. Is it then unfair to conclude that there is something in the nature of ‘religious conviction’ that breeds hatred?

The point you are making here is not relevant, Gulab. If you read my post, you would have noticed that I hold Islam and Christianity as the biggest culprits for fanaticism. However, I am trying to make a wider point. There is nothing like sanity for a religious mind. There are only degrees of insanity. Some like Islam are more insane than others. But as you can very well see from some of the responses here, insanity is no stranger to Hindus either. Religious people seem to suffer from a cognitive disability to even understand the basic thrust of an argument if it is not to their liking.

Atanu’s theory is that material poverty + cultural poverty leads to fanaticism. It is a facile explanation. Materially prosperous people are equally prone to fanaticism. And if cultural poverty were the other cause, then we should not be seeing jihadis among us. For whatever else you can call Islamic culture, it is not culturally poor.

The root cause of fanaticism is the imagined certainty offered by religion. In their desperately hopeless and powerless situation in a vast and complex universe, humans want to cling to any illusion of certainty and it antagonizes them when someone tries to take it away. Religions that offer more imagined certainty produce more fanatics than those that offer less. It is the only difference among them.

Sanjay, I invite you to convert — or die you stupid kuffar.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali said its upto muslims to say that although verses X do say so its wrong, particularly if they want to come to another society.

Hinduism is an external label for religion but it has one saving grace the lack of a defined structure. Which means one is more easily succeptible to pick and choose(although logicaly hindu beleifs dont make any sense either, but atheist are tollereated more easily with in a hindu cultural framework than Islamic.)

Not really.
My trump card is existence of Harish Shahs that proves my point.

As for the contribution of Indians to mathematics, there has been considerable injustice in acknowledging them. Please see

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Indexes/Indians.html

See the myths of islam.

Harish is right that Sanjay is an idiot dhimmi.

He should go to Jihadwatch.org http://jihadwatch.org and educated himself. Scroll down the left column and see the “LINKS”. Can Sanjay see a similar set of links for any religion aside from Islam?

And while he is at it, can he point out which part of the Hindu holy books Modi used to kill the hundreds of MILLIONS he slaughtered?

Sanjay is a f***ing idiot. Some links from Jihadwatch.org below.

Monotheistic intolerant faiths such as Christianity and Islam are a necessary but not a sufficient condition for evoking the fanatical response.

Why just monotheistic? Modis and Togadias have proved beyond doubt that polytheistic faiths can also evoke equally fanatical response. I keep on hovering on several religious forums and my impression is that religious people of any hue are fanatical. Islam and Christianity are no doubt the biggest culprits. But go to a sikh philosophy forum and you might be surprised by the hatred against hindus. Now I do not see any hatred against hindus among common sikhs. Therefore, I am forced to conclude that it is only among religious sikhs. Then go to a vedantic debate forum among different schools of vedanta and you will find it sickening. Followers of dvaita vedanta insisting that shankara was an asura and vice versa. Again I do not see such hatred among common hindus and am forced to conclude that only religious hindus harbour such beliefs. The point is that imagined certainty offered by any religion brings fanaticism, not just monotheist.

Coming back to the question of Jainism and Buddhism, I think that one reason for their non-fanatical response is that both the religions do not offer any imagined certainty. Jains openly admit that some of their scriptures are not completely authentic and buddhism is more like an ongoing exploration than settled religion. However, here also fanaticism raises its head as we will see later.

Civilized cultures (Jains and Buddhists, for example) no matter how materially deprived do not descend to mass murder.

Don’t they? Look at Sri Lanka and say that again.

I suspect that people who are comfortable at home rarely go out rioting in the streets.

You don’t have to look beyond what happened in Gujrat to appreciate that people who are comfortable at home can also go out rioting. Of course if you need more convincing proofs, you only have to look at the list of millionaire and billionaire jihadis – Osama included. Material success is no guarantee against religious fanaticism. Your option 2) is a lame solution to begin with. Option 1) and 3) are the only real solutions. If we cannot implement them, we have to accept that problem of religious fanaticism has no solution at all. It is just like the problem of ageing and dying.

Material poverty coupled with cultural poverty (which manifests itself as a fanatical devotion to an ideology) give rise to the observed phenomenon of violence.

I have a distaste for Islam’s arrogant and exclusive ideology. However, I do not agree when you put Islam in “cultural poverty” bucket. For nearly seven centuries every frontier of human knowledge be it mathematics, science, medicine, astronomy or architecture was advanced by this civilization. Try to think of any hindu or christian or jew or buddhist name from 700 ca to 1500 ca and you come almost empty handed. Think of islamic contribution in this period and you find almost everything that was done in this period was by muslim zealots.

Intellectual high !

By the way, India and China were by most accounts already in relatively high socio-economic equlibria about 2000-3000 years ago. They were prosperous and had critical mass populations (but not big enough to cause “diseconomies” of scale for existing administrations) and were in many ways universes unto themselves. Technology had seemingly stopped developing, definitely was not exploding. They were probably analogous to sub-urban America but minus the sheer dizziness of speed and stress. In short, they were post-modernist societies incarnate. (Women were equally treated; a flexible caste system did not preclude social mobility; food, art, metals and textiles were traded domestically and internationally; riverways and pigeons were doing their jobs just fine and Nalanda, Taxila plus a lot of Gurukuls/Confucian Centers were doing a commendable job indeed).

Such places could peacefully reform existing philosophies like Hinduism with Buddhism etc. But I guess deserts like Israel, Arabia and Mongolia which (rightfully) had such proud (and comparatively few) inhabitants – had to “shout louder” to be heard on the “worldmap” – hence the expansionist policies of early Christianity and Islam. I am not justifying anything, just trying to look through economics-tainted anthroplological lenses.

Christianity got reformed; and instead of religion being the opium of the masses, opium almost has become the religion of the masses in nominally Christian lands (!) Unfortunately most Islamic societies still need development and reform but you are right – just economic development wont cut it (what with the petro-dollars), but structural and cultural too.

Yes we will always have nincompoops like Bajrang Dal and extreme Evangelicals – so its not just Islam and its not just monotheistic religions either. (Religions change, Atanu, over time – going by their original charter all the time seems unfair)

But your central point is something which I have thought about a lot and you have expressed it well – worship of specific leaders and celebrities is all about group identities. And education is indeed the best way to counter this.

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24. Mar ‘07 1:27 pm [...]

Am in general agreement with your thoughts. People who cant create anything of their own seek second hand success by cheering the success of achievers and second hand superiority by burning their ‘idols” effigies when they fail. As for Religion, it is sometimes a crutch (cos you have nothing else to hold on to, and you badly want to make sense of things, and give in to what you think is a bigger purpose) and sometimes a ticket to livelihood (in the context of christian missionaries). Either ways you offer irrational loyalty (which translates to actions) until probably education and reason frees you.