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ORIGINAL: jlf1961

Funny, the Muslim religion still suppresses women's rights, endorses slavery, AND in some fundamentalist groups advocates the use of terrorism, and no one is calling for them to evolve.

The Eastern Orthodox church is just as steeped in dogma and tradition as the Catholic Church.

Yet, because of the scandals, which in my opinion are more covered because it is the Catholic Church, it is vilified, attacked and condemned.

Hate to tell you people, but other religious groups that are more "modern" have had their share of scandals, including child abuse. But they also include adultery.

Let us not forget the various fundamentalist Mormon churches that advocate the forced marriage of 13 year old girls to men three or four times their age.

I have not been to mass in years, but it is irritating that everyone points fingers at the Catholic church and conveniently forgets other religious organizations and denominations that have had their share of scandals.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

I, personally, am quite happy to engage in discussion of how all religions have their share of hypocrisy... fundamentally, it is almost impossible to remove all of the negative elements.

Since your breadth of knowledge obviously exceeds mine, may I ask what negative elements and hypocrisy you find in Shaivism, particularly Kashmir Shavism? Also, if you would be willing to expand your presentation, I would be gratified if you could include Advaita Vedānta and Vaishnavism.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

Many Hindu religious leaders and movements support things like repression towards women, the caste system, and numerous other social ills that exist in India. That's just for a start. Or are you thinking that those things are not wrong? None of the Hindu sects that you mention are progressive in the way that Americans would view that term. So what exactly are you driving at?

Very simply, that you don't know what you're talking about. Let's take the caste system. The caste system forms a part of what religion's doctrine? Name the religion and cite the pertinent textual references. Or are you just (as usual) assuming your conclusion that religion must be at the bottom of it?

K.

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ORIGINAL: Hillwilliam

http://news.yahoo.com/catholic-church-dangerous-outdated-dissolve-204000761.html

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

There is no consensus on the issue of caste and its religious roots... And NONE of the sects that you mention, even if they reject the caste system, can claim that the caste system is NOT part of the religion.

If there is "no consensus on the issue," how can you state categorically that Hinduism has a caste system as "part of the religion"? And for your information, Vedanta is not a "sect" of Hinduism. It is a school of philosophy based on the Upanishads.

History of the Indian Caste System

The most ancient scriptures -- the Shruti texts, or Vedas -- place very little importance on the caste system, mentioning caste only sparingly and descriptively (i.e., not prescriptive). Indeed, the only verse in the Rigveda which mentions all four varnas is 10.90, the Purushasukta. A hymn from the Rig Veda seems to indicate that one's caste is not necessarily determined by that of one's family:

I am a bard, my father is a physician, my mother's job is to grind the corn. ~Rig Veda 9.112.3

In the Vedic period, there also seems to have been no discrimination against the Shudras on the issue of hearing the sacred words of the Vedas and fully participating in all religious rituals, something which became progressively restricted in the later times.

Later scriptures such as Bhagavad Gita and Manusmriti state that the four varnas are created by God. However, at the same time, the Gita says that one's varna is to be understood from one's personal qualities and one's karma (work), not one's birth. The Indian society honoured people on their achievements irrespective of their caste. For instance, Valmiki, once a low-caste robber, became a great sage and author of the epic Ramayana. Veda Vyasa, another respected sage and author of the monumental epic, the Mahabharata, was the son of a fisherwoman.

Caste [India]

Contemporary scholars thus argue that the social system was made rigid and the four-fold Varna caste made ubiquitous by the British colonial regime, much like the caste or casta systems literature for southeast Asia, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East.Before the British use of Varna categories for enumerating and ranking the Jatis in the decennial census, the relative ranking of the Jatis and castes was fluid and differed from one place to another, based on their political and economic power.

Dirks proposes that caste is neither an unchanged survival of ancient India nor a system that reflects India's core cultural value. Rather than a basic expression of Indian tradition, caste is a modern phenomenon, the product of commentaries of 18th and 19th century Christian missionaries driven to bring religion to uncivilized masses, and the enumerative obsessions of the late-19th century census. Dirks concludes one effect of British rule of India was to make caste into a single term capable of naming and above all subsuming India's social identity in the world.

K.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess

K, no disrespect, but I am from a Hindu and Indian background. I am speaking of the realities of what exists.

None taken, and fair enough. But the fact remains: There is nothing in the Vedas or Upanishads, the Tantras or Shiva Agamas, or the Bhagavad Gita that supports (let alone mandates) the caste system as it exists today in India. We have a not totally dissimilar situation here in the West. Pauline priests can say what they will, and Fundamentalists can froth, but there is nothing in the teachings of Christ that supports half of it. When religion becomes whatever some pack of charlatans (or comedians) decides it is, you end up with Fred Phelps and folks having their driver's license photo taken wearing a colander. But if that's what you mean by religion, I'll happily grant your point in that context.

K.

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
Again, there is hypocrisy in rejecting part of a religion and simply keeping what suits. While we can call this evolution, there is fundamentally a hypocrisy associated with that.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata
History of the Indian Caste System
Caste [India]

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
From the Rig Veda, the first man created, Purusa, is sacrificed in order to give rise to the four varnas: “The Brahmin was his mouth, his two arms were made the Rajanya [Kshatriya, king and warrior], his two thighs [loins] the Vaishya, from his feet the Sudra [servile class] was born.”

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
What the Vedas do not have and do not refer to anywhere is the concept of "untouchability". Most people agree that untouchability was probably a social construct that was added onto the existing caste system.

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ORIGINAL: fucktoyprincess
If anything the caste system is older than the religion

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ORIGINAL: Fellow
This is the area church needs to enhance its activities. They are cornered to a great extent. The Devil is winning, lawlessness, greed, corruption wars on the rise.

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961
To continue to point out the failings of one church and ignoring the others is hypocritical.

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ORIGINAL: jlf1961
To continue to point out the failings of one church and ignoring the others is hypocritical.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata
The metaphor shows the dependence of society on those who labor: They are the legs upon which the body stands. To ignore their common divine origin, and the importance of all parts in an optimally functioning organism, bastardizes the metaphor in order to attribute value unequally, and would provide an example of your later observation: