India is celebrating the birth anniversary of Krishna, the god.
Monotheistic religions dominate the world. The only influential polytheistic religion in the world today is Hinduism. Krishna is a mythical Hindu God. The holy book of Hinduism is Bhagavad Gita which is all about the conversation between the warrior Arjuna and the God Krishna. The life of Krishna is a wonderful fairy tale. It has lots of miracles, a river saved Krishna’s father from sinking and a snake protected Krishna from rains, a voice from the sky told the fate of the king of Krishna’s village. A fetus from Krishna’s mother’s womb transferred to his step mother’s womb. Krishna opened his mouth, and a whole universe was seen in his mouth. Krishna lifted up a mountain on his small finger to save the villagers from torrential rains, Krishna killed many demons and he made Draupadi’s clothes endless when she asked for his help from being unclothed by some goons.
All Gods are fictitious. But millions of people seriously believe that holy books of Gods are facts, not fictions. A place in India has been kept which was believed as the birthplace of Krishna, the God. Hindus go to that holy place everyday to show their love and respect for Krishna. Beliefs are contagious. Beliefs are dangerous too.
Thousands of years ago there was probably a man called Krishna who had good qualities, and people in Mathura called him God, and then a God-story was made.
Einstein said in 1945 about Gandhiji: that ‘generations to come’ would ‘scarce believe that such a man ever in flesh and blood walked on this earth’. This is not even a century back.
There is no harm in believing unless it hurts someone
It is better to follow many good qualities of any God & to believe in supernaturals than to follow & believe some peculiar athiest who maximum time tries to create unnecessary controversy in order remain in limelight of people only.
Nope, not even if the second half of your hypothetical were remotely true. Which qualities are the good ones, exactly? Are they exemplified, say, by the whole dharma, violence, and caste system propaganda of the Gita? Perhaps the authoritarian warrior-cult is better exemplified by the Iliad and we should all be following the virtues extolled in that epic. Still, teasing out the “good” bits of godly and human behavior hardly seem worth the effort when we can act ethically, justly, and excellently without all the baggage.
Create controversy? Your “controversy” threshold must be so low as to exclude anything beyond “water is wet” from the realm of the non-controversial. Further, the vast majority of people taking some sort of issue with a particular religion are those of a different religion, not atheists.
All gods are created by djinn, djinn are robotic drones from other places in the universe and/or under the surface of the earth. There is no supernatural sphere, there are no gods, you are being fooled by demons, and there is no salvation except to choke on the mind control slavery the djinn have created for you, and death and despair.
Put more money in my paypal and I will tell you of more dark tales of no way out, how the light at the end of the tunnel is bullshit, and religion is used primarily by rich assholes to control and extort money, power, and sex from the idiots willing to believe in it, while the end game of it has been designed by the demons/djinn, who are pure drones/robots, to exterminate humanity through the psychological warfare of religion.
Religion is Mental Slavery given to you by robotic djinn to pitt sectors of Humanity against other sectors, so that there can never be a unified Human Race, One World. Only by growing up, getting rid of religion, refusing to engage in the mental slavery, the mind control of religion, to refuse to believe the rich assholes that peddle religion selflessly while it causes Humanity to self destruct..only by doing these things can we ever truly be free, can we ever be Enlightened, can we ever have hope.
I like that – I watched the whole series that its makers had uploaded to YouTube.
That birth story is a version of the “dangerous child” birth motif common among legendary heroes. Someone tries to kill the baby hero out of fear that something bad will happen as a result of them living. Usually overthrowing or killing them. Zeus, Oedipus, Perseus, Hercules, Romulus, Moses, Jesus Christ, …
The Buddha has a variation. His dad wanted him to grow up to be a good heir, not a religious leader.
Actually, Hinduism is monistic, not polytheistic. That is to say, Hindus hold that there is a single Ultimate Reality which manifests in different ways (such as different gods) for various reasons. And, there isn’t really a single Hindu religion, either: different “denominations” hold different views as to the identity of this alleged Ultimate Reality, with the four largest “denominations” claiming either Vishnu, Shiva, Devi or Brahman. True polytheism is largely limited to the very small communities that still practice the pre-Hindu Vedic religion.
I have learned Hinduism is pantheistic-monism with polytheistic and henotheistic elements.
Dear Taslima ji,
While you are entitled to your views, I for one would urge you to go deeper into understanding the true Hindu ideology and religious beliefs, before you make up your opinions and even further put them to expression.
Your understanding is so extremely simplistic and belittling, as watching a star hundred times larger than our Sun, from millions of lights years afar from earth and making sense of it. Even my knowledge of Islam or Latin literature far exceeds your understanding of Hinduism in content, which is not much to compare.
In short, Hinduism is not about Lord Krishna or Lord Ram or even Hanuman, Ravana or Arjun, these are probably all ancient beings, divine or otherwise, that rule Hindu imagination, but these are only a few more popular ones among the whole pantheon of millions of other deities/gods we have… core to our belief is that we consider all life is a part of the one supreme source (the omnipresent Om or any other way you see/hear/percieve it) and any intelligent being can attain the same state as the God almighty in life and god can also manifest itself in millions of avatars in various forms, human and even animal… which is why Hinduism is so tolerant and assimilative of all religions – that many would even consider prophets from all over the world including Jesus, Mohammed, Zarathustra to be divine reincarnations and would not hesitate to pray or bow to them if they feel the divinity in a church or mosque or synagogue… we believe in many paths to god, not just one, and definitely not just the one we preach…. some offshoot religions like Jainism, Buddhism, Sikhism, etc were similarly assimilated and co-revered by Hindus over time as we did not consider each other mutually threatening and basic principles were the same.
Our issue with Abrahamic religions, is that they seek or give no option to co-exist and seek to denigrate and annihilate hinduism without even understanding it – pure bigotry – only accepting their book and their name for god as sacred. This makes Hindus take an antagonistic stand towards these religions only in self-preservation.
What I have mentioned above is also a very generic belief core to most hindus, and as one of my other friends elaborated in another comment, we have multiple schools of thought and philosophy, each championed by inspiring and charismatic icons in ancient times, leading to Dwaita, Adwaita, Sanatan, Karma, Brahmo, Mimamsa, Nastik etc branches of Hinduism, with further subdivisions like Shaivite/Vaishnavite… and some are against idol-worship in particular like Abrahamic religions… and while many do practise Idol-worship, it is not the same as in animistic premitive so-called “pagan” tribal ways… it has more profound and reasoned objectives – about which you can read from Abul Fazl in Akbarnama… and I am sure it will open your eyes.
It is another story that over time the religious practices by ordinary Hindus have lost meaning and foundation, and look similar to a premitive animalistic tribal form, and we have become quagmired in caste system, women supression (despite praising the women form as supreme Goddess Shakti that completes Shiva), sheer idolatory and superstitions. Our orthodoxy and religious leaders haven’t done a good job of keeping true Hinduism alive in the masses.
I have no opinion on Islam and Christianity worth sharing here, hence my silence on them. I hope I have been able to ignite some curiosity in your mind about my religion and hope this would force you to think how much you know or don’t know about the subject that you have written about in your article.
Regards,
Devout Hindu
Absolutely right observation Mam
(emphasis mine)
Hey look, a polytheistic no-true Scotsman, followed by a lot of finger wagging. Hmm…I’ve seen this before….
I’ve found that Krishna scores rather high in Lord Raglan’s mythic-hero profile: List of Lord Raglan evaluations – Atheism
I’d come up with a score of 17, way up there with the likes of Perseus, Romulus, and King Arthur.
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//Thousands of years ago there was probably a man called Krishna who had good qualities, and people in Mathura called him God, and then a God-story was made.//
This is correct and I do not think there is nothing wrong in following him…