HOLY CHRIST! I try to find some common ground with a guy like Frenchy and he insults my religion! Man, I know who I'm NOT going to be stuck in a subway station with....: Beings that may be treated simply as means to the perfection of persons can have no rights, and to this category the brute creation belongs. In the Divine plan of the universe the lower creatures are subordinated to the welfare of man.
Yeah, St. Francis of Asissi was really a animal abuser. Try again Frenchy.
: On Islam:
: It is hardly necessary here to emphasize the fact that the ethics of Islam are far inferior to those of Judaism and even more inferior to those of the New Testament.
Right. I'm not a Muslim, and I don't admire Islam more than any other religion which I know nothing about- i certainly have no desire to become one myself, but that kind of statement is beyond silly- JUDAISM AND ISLAM SHARE THE SAME ETHICS, in case you forgot! Islam derived most of its law from Mosaic law! All the way down to the penalty for aduletery! What the hell is this trying to say? I can't figure it out.
By the way, the collective prayer and the zakat are Islamic practices that seem to be quite progressive and could stand to be adopted over here. Islam also seems to have done a better job than Western Protestantism at combating alcoholism, prostitution, crime, AIDS, and rape. just look at teh statistics for the Middle East and for (about half-Islamized) West Africa on these indicators.
: On Hinduism:
: "...Hinduism adapts itself to every form of religion, from the lofty monotheism of the cultivated Brahmin
It's not 'monotheism', it's simply 'theism', the Hindus believe in a little thing called tolerance, meaning it''s OK if you see God as having a single personal aspect or many of them. The Hindu "Universal Spirit" or "Brahman" is sometimes seen as transcending the different personal forms which it may manifest (e.g. Krishna, Shiva, etc.) sometimes, on the other hand, it's seen as identical with one or more (generally Vishnu).
:to the degraded nature-worship of the ignorant,
Yeah, suck it Frenchy, we don't call our poorer citizens primitive or degraded, even though you might prefer to, and we don't spit on their beliefs, nature worship or otherwise. Nature worship is a perfectly legitimate form of recognizing the glory that is God. Looks like it worked a little better than your western capitalism at combatting environmental destruction. Oh I frogot, your creed is fuck the environment. Well the Hindus beg to disagree. We were the first religion in teh world to practice nature conservation and set up wildlife refuges.
:half savage peasant....
YEah, that expression really shows your empathy fro teh peasants. Nice one Frenchy.
: We have nothing to learn from India that makes for higher culture.
That would explain why the sick society in the West is looking into Indian culture and philosophy as fast as it can. Ever heard of M.K. Gandhi? Tagore? Ever heard of teh Hindu Epics?
:On the other hand, India has much of value to learn from Christian civilization.
Yeah, that would explain why Christianity came to India over 19 centuries ago, with St. Thomas the Apostle, and in all this time they've converted a grand total of 3 percent of the population. And a lot of that 3 percent has blended Catholicism with a great deal of Hindu practices and beliefs- syncretic Catholicism.
If Christianity is so self-evidently superior to every other religion, then its missionaries haven't been doing a very good job. India's population is 82% Hindu or nature worshiping, 12% Muslim, 3% Christian, 2% Sikh, 1% other. HEll, the Moghul warriors arrived in India twelve centuries after the Christians, were hated by the populace, yet their success in conversion beats the Christians by a country mile.
Damn, Frenchy, even this Pope (not to mention John XXIII, one of the great men of this century) has endorsed religious tolerance and teh idea that every religion has good insights and things to teach each other. Your recationary superiorism has nothing to stand on.
