let's be real. hindus today believe in Ishvara or at least in their personal Bhagavan, even while many often worship several or more devas. and yet wikipedia talks about "hindu atheism" (often with sources from the 19th century) as if there is a significant cohort of hindus who believe in the eternal authorless nature of the vedas (who the fuck cares about the vedas anymore except the upanishads cmon) who dont believe in God. perhaps part of this misconception is the tyranny of christianity which says that if you believe in a predominantly impersonal God you dont believe in God. but I think its mostly just ignorance which leads people to talk about hindu atheism today, as if theres some huge cohort of mimamsakans or classical samkhyans that nobody talks about.

@georgia Its kinda funny because before portestant slop Christian cultures still had belief in supernatural forces that aren't god and regardless the hindu belief is that all forces are finally a manifestation by god

@georgia Also in terms of pure monotheism (as fuzzy as the boundaries become), id say Sikhism is more in that direction than others and it's hindu derived

@meeper yeah the poll has hindu believers in God split between the large majority who say "I believe in one God with many manifestations" and like 20something percent who say "I believe in one God". bro. both of those things are monotheism (a small amount agreed with neither and I'd call them polytheists)

@georgia There is something hilarious about more hindus believing in god than muslims lmao

@meeper Sikhism in my understanding is like if the panentheism and similar hindu metaphysics were kept but with really strong monotheism

@meeper yes I noticed that too. but theres no wikipedia article on muslim atheism huh huh

@georgia tbh for most intents and purposes an atheist Muslim isn't a Muslim

@meeper I agree but I would say that a hindu who doesnt believe in Brahman and Atman isnt a hindu either

@georgia

hindu is more a culture fold and values from within you can derive your own belief system.

True that functionally all are astik (not in the traditional sense of the vedas but bhagwaan)
but I believe it should (at least on the basis of how the culture should be) offer a lot of freedom. (Also the manner in whuch buddhists are also called hindu)

Even after putting some restrictions I'm completely fine with someone interpreting ishvara say as their conscience personified, if they treat that as a thing of beauty and elegance that the name deserves.

Ie reinterpreations that would fit an athiest palate but preserve the important aspects and their elegance are all fine.

@meeper

@georgia *removed perfection idk how it got typed but its a term I diagree with with respect to god.

(roughly put god is perfectly imperfect in the sense that of a and the collection of superstates which imply a deeper beauty and goodness rather than a fragile perfection that can be irrevocably tarnished with a single change - something which I (loosely)/compare to the fall of satan)

@meeper oops I posted without content. anyway I def agree about hinduism offering a lot of freedom, on things like which Gods to worship and what to consider scripture let alone which bhashya and sect to consider authoritative. but cmon you gotta believe Brahman is the ground of all existence and that an Atman exists and transmigrates. and you also should believe in karma and in dharma even just as a abstract concepts. I just consider hinduism inherently religious and not merely cultural, like if its cultural solely just call yourself by the name of your ethnicity, no? but you know more about the nuances of this than I

@georgia Also believe that the Conscience personified also implies some similarity to the agency (and responsibility) implied by soham.

@georgia

Tbh that's just the looseness of definition; I honestly believe hindu as a term for religion is tragic, (not sure about sanatan, I'd need to look into the etymology to see if its a good word or just an ignorant reaction to hindu beinf a farsi word)

@georgia I need to look into how people self identified with respect to out of the country religions back when therewas much more idealogy and idwalogic diversity and prior to the islamic era

@georgia

also about the ishvara being conscience personified I am fine with it because if done correctly I believe it to be functionally believing in brahman.

I mean bhagwan isnt so crude to judge on the exact meaningless semantics of your belief and honestly those miss the point as in the end they are just words.

Reddit athiests are solely obsessed and bound by words so they need not be considered, this is also what I handwave with done correctly

In the end imo regardless of semantics you can find your way

@meeper your conception of Gods perfection is very neat but I do think God is capital P perfect personally, perfect in all attributes though transcending all attributes and possessing no attributes all at once. I understand this ontologically, God though containing the All is one "thing" and that thing being slightly different is impossible because such a "thing" wouldnt be God and thus wouldnt exist, because of Gods inherent nature as unique and self-existent (arising from nothing but His own inherent nature to exist, always and forever). so basically, either God is God (and could never be anything else, because if God was even a little bit imperfect nothing would exist at all including God) or maya is at play and the imperfect being is subject to it, and therefore its a jiva whose imperfections cant tarnish God. its hard to explain smdh. God is simply perfect beyond description and beyond fathoming!

@georgia

I kinda picture it as limits -

I say that god is the beauty between sarva and shunya but as absolute sarva and absolute shunya do not exist in the world in a throught the true forms of them would might as well be identical (also in this sense I feel some buddhism is vindicated)

In this sense mh view of satan as fallen would be trhing to assume the guise and folly and arrogance of unattainable and a meaningless view of perfecfion

@meeper sanatana dharma is in the bhagavata purana, which isnt saying much. I dont consider it scripture for the most part.

@georgia scripture is only for learning and enhancing oneself to treat it as dogma is a folly and regardless all people are liable to make mistakes

This is also why I like how the adi granth is called a guru - it is not a dogma but a teacher perhaps your firsg and mosy formative

@meeper ooooh I really like that I'm gonna put a variant of it in my hymn

@meeper I consider certain upanishads, the brahma sutras, and the bhagavad gita to be scripture personally. as in, highly divinely inspired. some of it directly from God. imo perhaps scripture should never be seen to be more than a way of teaching what is highest dharma, leave lower dharma to the jurists.

@georgia I don't consider jurists because some will always bound to be ignorant and I believe ignorants must never be given authority.

@georgia ofc they should only serve as guides but shouldn't be put on a position of higher trust than yourself, but only as those to learn to correct yourself.

When you can trust yourself to be responsible (ie to never be a reddit athiest or a christochud or an andhbhakt -) you should truly proceed and learn for youself and chart your own way

@georgia Anyway a lot of my position comes form my past as a frankly reddit atheist - I know why people believe like that and I know how I left that without really changing my core beliefs, so I understand the refinement of thought.

this is also why I consider meaningleses semantics, if you properly remove those dharma should even be understood by the worst if not delusional reddit atheist

@meeper when I say jurists I mean secular jurists. I dont mean to say that common law is divine, what I'm saying is that right now common law is better than the dharma sutras/shastras, or sharia, or halakha in many respects. where religious law excels against common law is prohibiting things that are bad but not illegal, but it has a tendency to be incredibly punitive in other cases. thats why its important to look to scripture for higher dharma, like "love your neighbor as yourself" and "abandon all duties and take refuge in Me alone, I will free you from all sins, do not grieve."

@georgia practicality (ie adapting to ones culture and conditions as opposed to the retarted economics shekelmaxxing) is always purer than the head-in-assery that tends to infect scripture

@meeper I was never a reddit atheist but I once said "I dont believe in God" out loud at hebrew school for the shock value

@meeper okay time for me to sleep smdh good talk meep

@georgia I was a weird kind, in a certain sense I still believed in a watchful presesence over me but I just rationalized that (though in the core of it I'd be more an agnostic (though not so much as i' still have dialogue and wish for the 'presence' to do things) it was more or less only rationalization and semantics and when I realized how meaningless that was I got better

@georgia nini :)

@georgia

A lot of people say "Japanese people don't have religion, they don't believe in god"

It's like, as a former shintoist, I feel the need to point out, that there's a misconception there... Kami are not "Gods" in the western sense. About 22 of them meet the definition out of 80,000 ish total. (they're actually kind of similar to Devas, to the point that there's a legend where a Kami kills Agni and that's why humans struggle to build fires easily). There's also the fact that "religion" has a negative connotation and refers to only foreign and new religions. Not to Buddhism, Shinto, Onmyoudo, or Shugendo. A very astounding number of Japanese pray at shrines, so saying they don't believe in anything is a hell of a stretch. But for ordinary practice of Japanese religions, there isn't really a mandate that you must do x y z, and I think that confuses unfamilliar people. They're superstitous and following a shamanic philosophical way of life, they're not exactly all atheists though. And of course there are exceptions.