me: strife and war in the muslim world is le bad. let's be monotheists together :)
some troglodyte: denounce the talmud!!

@georgia So war genocide and killing children for Zionists is fine?

@georgia@netzsphaere.xyz i would never be a monotheist

@anemone most hindus these days are monotheists because we believe in a Supreme Lord. its not quite like tawhid though because divinity is said to have many manifestations including the devas (celestials/demigods)

@anemone @georgia cool, same

@sathariel @anemone one can worship many aspects of Brahman and still acknowledge that ultimate reality is perfectly one

@georgia@netzsphaere.xyz cringe tbh

@anemone on the contrary I find the classical indo-euro and semitic polytheist religions lame. its like if catholicism had only saints. "this God does this thing, this one another thing". and the stories about them interacting are so absurd and human-like. (dont ask me about hindu mythology I take and I leave some lmao)

@georgia@netzsphaere.xyz that stuff is cool tho

@anemone I dont want divine beings to act like humans they should be much better than us!!!

@georgia@netzsphaere.xyz why would they be, though?

@georgia
At least Indo-European polytheisms had inherent drip and vibe, contrary to most monotheistic religions (except Catholics, those guys can cook)

@georgia @anemone yeah im ngl if i believed that to be true id probably just kinda hate the gods lmao

@anemone devas are believed to be much more wise than us, not just more powerful. and they are believed to be guardians of dharma and rita and to have been born in their station due to righteous conduct. so they shouldnt act like fools and whores!

@lizzie@brain.worm.pink @georgia@netzsphaere.xyz nature is arbitrary and equal parts wondrous and cruel, why would the beings that govern the natural world not also be so?

@georgia@netzsphaere.xyz i havent done enough reading to respond to this yet

@georgia @anemone I agree that's cool and I'll add beautiful. Wouldn't that be them also participating in the lila or whatever you call it?

@anemone @georgia if theres no ultimate arc to things then i am dead before i am born tbh

@georgia @anemone "righteous conduct" is a very human (and also very fool) ideal. Basically spook spirituality.

@anemone @lizzie in the earliest vedic texts of the rigveda the Gods were basically personified natural forces. some of them are still pretty important like Agni, but many faded into obscurity. theres a reason vaishnavism shaivism and shaktism became the dominant strands of hinduism. all are monotheist or monist and have been for a while.

@sathariel @anemone we will not agree on this matter lol

@georgia @lizzie @anemone yeah, as soon as humans fall for the blah blah blah and start pursuing abstractions instead true experiences

@sathariel @anemone lila is the play of the Supreme Lord who derives transcendent enjoyment from the roles of creation, sustentation, and dissolution, even from being subjected to maya as the jiva. we are participants in lila but but not its architect. (sorry bout the mixed metaphor)

@georgia @anemone the point for me is that God is the ground of being, not just what governs it. the things that fill the world are cool bur theyre not the ultimate concern

@lizzie @anemone so true bestie

@georgia @anemone + a lot of the times worship of capricious gods end up being transactional and transactionality is a feature of the fall imo

@lizzie @anemone yes the mimamsakans were criticized for their reward-seeking rituals. its not highest dharma thats for sure.

@georgia @anemone Divinity does not warrant wisdom or coherence, at least not in human terms, since it's usually just one or several concepts manifested as a being that grows from it. Divine beings can be both considerably wiser and considerably more stupid than us, sometimes both at once.

Some divinities suck as a figure to follow and imitate, but that's not their role in the first place.

@nerthos @georgia @anemone it's like deciding to follow a tree

sometimes it bears fruit but sometimes you leave

@nerthos @anemone sometimes agree with the latter but not the former. if the lofty station of deva (or even lower celestials like gandharvas) were not higher than a human in almost every way, these beings would not be given such power and would not be worthy of sacrifices and other worship.

@georgia @anemone This assumes that the divine criteria is the same as the human criteria for higher and lower, or for reason at all.

I agree with right equals might to a degree, but I think the divine does not play by our rules, and in some cases we can only see the sense in retrospective.

@nerthos @anemone this is true for the Supreme Lord who is above dharma and adharma and all human laws and proscriptions, but the devas follow dharma like the dharma humans are meant to follow or they wouldnt be devas. manifestations of the divine, devas or amsas/kalas, that appear fearsome or disgusting are actually quite beautiful and benign to the eye and heart of a yogi.

@georgia @anemone @nerthos this reads like hindu scotism to me

@lizzie @anemone @nerthos what that mean

@georgia @lizzie @anemone free her

@georgia @anemone @nerthos duns scotus emphasized God’s libertarian free will

he actually went so far as to say that God create a world contrary to His nature

@georgia @anemone @nerthos but i have a wikipedia-level understanding of scotus at best

@georgia @anemone @nerthos imo dharma is itself divine

@anemone @georgia @nerthos honestly crazy that scotus is one of the most important western theologians and also the word dunce comes from his first name. i have no idea why

update: i looked it up and the answer is the renaissance and early protestants

@anemone @georgia @nerthos hmmmmmmmmmmm ig in a maximian framing dharma is closer to nature and nature is complementary to divinity but not itself divine. i dont really understand nature in his thinking though i gotta think about this

@georgia @anemone I mean, I can't argue that this is how a hindu would see this, so with you being one you will stick to this interpretation.

I have a far more practical/metaphysical view of divinity, rather than a religious one; though this also is reasonable since you're more interested in following a path to attaining grace and I'm more interested in understanding the nature of divinity and its internal functioning.

I've always done the whole "what God wants from you" part instinctually instead of religiously, and it has worked so far. I think this goes for a lot of beings with different degrees of divinity, they don't necessarily do their role according to structured rules (though some do).

I do agree with the part of "they wouldn't have their position and power if they were off their role" but that's also IMO proof of the validity of playing the part unconsciously or instinctually, if they weren't doing what they're supposed to do they wouldn't be doing any "doing" in the first place.

>that appear fearsome or disgusting are actually quite beautiful and benign to the eye and heart of a yogi

I don't think appearances are too important, since divinity can manifest in many ways depending of necessity and purpose, and this happens in humans too to some degree.

@lizzie @anemone @nerthos I very much agree that dharma is divine, little p perfect, but perfect in the "perfect example of what it is" way that a saint can be perfected, not Perfect like God who is the absolute truth, all encompassing and infinite beyond all fathoming is. its a basic hindu tenet at least as far as I know that while God upholds dharma He/She is totally above it. So God may lie for instance in a place where a human can't (like to an evil person for the purpose of delivering the fruit of that persons karma, or to a good person with a greater plan in mind), not just because sin can't touch God who is unattached and harbors no malice, but because God is genuinely Good beyond the pre/proscriptions of dharma. for instance its pretty obvious that while God can kill a child with an infectious disease based on that child's karma, a human who is not Perfect and unattached like God cannot infect a child with a disease like God can while incurring no sin. its more than it being Gods station to kill as He/She sees fit, God is genuinely transcendently Good beyond common notions of good and evil. God is also nirguna (without the human notions of attributes) but thats another can of worms. its so hard to describe that thing from which all words turn back...

@georgia @lizzie @anemone I think this is the core of the difference of the religious vs metaphysical view of God:
God as the foundation and arbiter of goodness vs God as the foundation and engine of being.

@nerthos @lizzie @anemone I see them both as being true and important. when Brahman is called "sat" that means that God is eternal truth, existence, and goodness. of course nothing truly exists but the good! yet, Brahman is also called "asat", but this means that Brahman is both being and non-being, and collapses/transcends the dual of both

@lizzie @anemone @georgia the absolute dismissive hostility to them that the early church got into such hot water over was one of the things that drew me to christianity as an adult

...internet handle related

@lizzie @anemone @georgia @nerthos
> he actually went so far as to say that God create a world contrary to His nature

this might be the most logically defensible theodicy i've ever seen

@georgia @lizzie @anemone I agree with this mostly, but also think that truth and goodness can be defined as "in the image of God" or according to a structured code, and both have their limitations in different ways; the former in that it requires the "God is excempt" paradox, the latter in that God stands often as an opposition of the preached right way.

Seeing God as the accumulation of all divinity rather than a being with humanlike thoughts solves this problem completely.

@nerthos @lizzie @anemone I'm not a pantheist I'm a panentheist. God doesnt have humanlike thoughts. the mind is just a faculty like the senses, when you go beyond mind, intellect, and ego, there is Brahman.

@nerthos @anemone @lizzie and God being exempt from dharma isnt a paradox. all unattached free beings are exempt from dharma.

@georgia @lizzie @anemone The sovereign citizen of theology