prasen9 wrote: ↑Thu Jan 17, 2019 4:48 amI see we are still debating treatment afforded to fake entities
We were hearing about fake news. Now, we have rights of fake entities to deal with
lol.
If you are trying to see if you will upset a real Hindu with your smartaleckiness, and downright childish word play -- well, you won't. Because you are trying to say something that is well-understood in a very systematic way, though your attempt at stating it as some sort of a joke only shows that you do not understood it. Which is why I call it childish, because I know you are refusing to use your sharp brain which can indeed understand it if you realize that you are brainwashed by what you think is logic, while that logic is based on limited premises. Open your mind and think, please.
"Treatment afforded to fake deities" -- How low have your intellect sunk, prasen? Did you even read what I said that deities are the creation of the devotees, in the minds? Did that not translate to "treatment of a deity" as the treatment of the devotees?
Drop this line of talk, prasen. Those who understand the real Hindu principles have intellectually, and in a logically consistent way, determined that there is real value to one's own personal mental health, and collective community well-being, from "imagined" concepts like God -- which you call "fake". As though imagination is not something that exists! The fake thing you mention is indeed what God is -- in every religion -- though only the Indians (Hindus, Buddhists, etc) seem to really know it.
I guess I am still stuck at a basic axiom. Should we as a people have a set of human rights that the state must uphold? Or does religious rights come first?
In my view, the set of human rights comes first, in general... but it depends on what is "human rights". Certainly "fake" human rights should not come first, above the majority opinions of the "population of concern" (a loaded phrase). Just because 1% of the population perceives that they have some human right, it doesn't mean that such human rights exist. To want to be a nudist can really be argued as a human right of the very basic kind (and India even allows it in some tribal islands, for instance) -- but it is absolutely not allowed almost everywhere. If you want a gender-unequal case of it, just because I am a woman who thinks I have a right to show my nipples in public like a man may be allowed to (in most places), I don't get that "human right". Depending on the country, just because I feel that I have a basic human right to kill and eat a dog, just like I may be allowed to kill and eat a goat or a cow, I don't get that right.
Then comes the issue that "human rights" is not anything absolute. They change over time too. In most societies, people had a right to beat and discipline their young children, but that right isn't there now. Because deeply hurting the feelings of a vast majority of people will usually establish that "human right" as one that is only in your mind, and not in the public's. Smoking was a human right once, and it is not one now. Because it affects a majority of others. The effect in the case of a woman showing nipples, is mental. The effect in the case of smoking can be physical. The effect of any law when it comes to religious beliefs is generally on the mental side. So giving the human right you perceive vis-a-vis religious practices, has an effect no different than human rights perceived in public/social behavior as a nudist. We are again back to the issue of what the majority feels within the "population of concern".
Depending upon whether you think religion should trump human rights or vice-versa, you will derive different conclusions. And, if you do agree with the latter, can I start my religion that requires me to steal Rs. 100 from one person everyday even if it means killing that person? And, the court will uphold this because religion comes before human rights?
No, you have to first show that there are enough people buying that as a religion and show that the public accepts that as not having socially deleterious effects. Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, etc can all show that the beliefs and practices are generally socially beneficial. That is a big reason they became religion. People don't believe in things that aren't good, collectively. The religions have all evolved over time to the point where socially unacceptable and non-beneficial practices slowly went away. Your "stealing religion" does not qualify, on any yardstick a constitution of a country may use. Cannibalism will not be a religion anywhere. You don't have a right to call any bullshit as "religion". Just like you don't have a right to call any bullshit "human right"...
In fact, the religion that you described, exists. Not as a religion but as a political philosophy. It is called communism. Steal money, even if you have to kill, with the reasoning that it makes everybody equal and happy. If anything is against human rights, it is communism, and this whole argument started only because of the dictatorial actions by a communist CM (who by definition is a non-believer in God or temples) to selectively enforce a court order at a temple, without first consulting the people who believe in that temple (who may even have agreed to not oppose the SC verdict but simply ask for it to be fully implemented as it said - "allow DEVOTEE women of any age". A check on whether they were devotees as prescribed by Hindu religious figures was all that was needed. He would've hardly found even 15 devotee women going there, when 15 million men go)
This is a sad state of affairs. But, the contortions people go through to argue makes it interesting and even funny in a perverse way
Only you are going through contortions, because you cannot find logically consistent thoughts within you about beliefs, creating Gods, imagination, its individual and collective power, how it becomes religion, etc. For me, as a Hindu, there are no contortions. I don't need contortions to justify and argue for the beliefs that are in Christianity, Islam, and other religions either. Logic and philosophy on this, that developed over millennia in India, have been quite strong and satisfying for me, who is a mathematically and analytically inclined guy with western science training.
Separation of church and state is not there in India. We are hardly a secular state despite the proclamations. We are, if anything, a multi-religious state.
Like you believe that! You are deceiving yourself if you think you want church and state to be separate. Then why aren't you asking why the SC should legislate what characteristic of a God are allowable? Because that is what they just did in Sabarimala. SC basically said that we cannot have a God made by the devotees under the premise (based on legends) that he didn't want to see young women on the basis of his presumed promise to a Goddess that he would not see young women if he was not willing to marry that Goddess. No, you need to have a God who *will* see young women, said the SC. The devotees are asked to imagine and believe only that kind of a God. What next? Legislate that in India Jesus should be shown to have a female version also in every church, because praying to just a man is discriminating Christian women who want to pray to a woman.
What you really wanted was for the state to get involved in the Hindu temple's beliefs (that do not cause ANY social harm!) and use it for political reasons. You found it fine for the state executive to encourage (with orchestrated false testimonies) judicial activism during the trial, against the wishes of 99% of devotees, in a place where the reason for that activism, gender-inequality, is the least pronounced in India. You found nothing wrong in it, and started singing paeans on the SC and about the state "enforcing" the activism.
It really needs a lot of intellectual dishonesty to yourself for you to say that you want separation of church and state. Unfortunately, you are not aware of how much you are deceiving your own logical thinking because of the leftist (or at least the so-called "progressive") brainwashing you have undergone.
Note that I stayed away from the usual Sangh Parivar retort - "why aren't you asking the state to interfere in the churches and mosques also, then?". Because I feel that such a retort is dishonest too, and is trying to side-step the issue. Plus, I actually think that you want the state to interfere and change Christian and Muslim practices too, not just the Hindus' practices.
What you want is for church and state to be separated, but via the elimination of church, and not by true separation. Yours is a communist view, nothing else. You are just parroting the nonsense the leftists have been saying for a long time.