I have just broken my ties with religion yesterday after a 2 month long struggle with contradictions in morality as given by my religion.
I was a Hindu, and strongly believed in things like karma, and spirituality. I called myself a spiritual atheist for years today, but things have taken a different course.
What caused it was the overwhelming sexism in the rites after one's family member dies.
Now I don't care what other people tell me about the aryan theory, I know it is a bunch of bogus the British made to undermine Indian culture. I know this religion is the oldest in the world, 5000+yrs old. Now, obviously it is of an adaptive nature or it would not have survived. So long. It gives answers to atheistic questions in a way that it becomes the strongest of all.
Does that mean I can't apply the same deduction one applies to the Abrahamic religions, and consider certain rules to be something that came out of social evils?
Now, even if it is certainly a more advanced religion that other ones, does it mean it is true?
Am I on the right track here?
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I group religion into the same category as everything supernatural. Ghosts, ginns, demons, mental telepathy , abominable snowman. The older the fable - the more suspicious. If a man came to me today and told me had just arose from the dead I would consider him insane or a liar. Why would I believe a man who made the same claim thousands of years ago ?
The overarching question as to the equity in "badness" between Hinduism and other religions is too relative to answer objectively; there is no standard metric for evaluating that kind of "badness." A more focused question might be, "Is Hinduism subject to the same types of criticisms leveled at other religious systems, and what are those criticisms?" With that said, I think it is possible to give something of a meaningful response to your post. Hinduism can be criticized on some of the same general criteria as other religions, and also on criteria unique to itself. For example, the principle of Karma is unique, but its practical use as a mechanism to justify great suffering in society, and to coerce adherence to social expectations is something it shares in common with other religious concepts like "sin." An ethical person cannot accept supernatural explanations for suffering, or for refusing to resolve it through human intervention, and this is a major point of failure for Hinduism, as for all religions.
Regarding the age of Hinduism, it is not necessarily the world's oldest religion, whether you accept that or not, but rather among the oldest world religions for which a concrete literary evidence survives. The Sumerian religious literature predates all others that I am aware of (with manuscripts dating to approximately the early Second Millennium BCE), but even this does not qualify it as the world's oldest religion. We must also consider that there is religious significance to many of the artifacts, and pictographic expressions left by our ancestors that pre-date the arrival of written language. However, we cannot know the full context of their significance, because it was lost in transmission over time.
I'm not sure what specific "deduction" you are referring to in relation to the Abrahamic religions, but certainly Hinduism should be subjected to the same theological and moral scrutiny of any other religion. It will inevitably prove insufficient and unable to withstand said scrutiny, but that is something that you must see for yourself to appreciate its full value; having a bunch of atheists tell you will have a much diminished value by contrast.
I guess Hinduism today might be defined as a religion but its history seems to suggest it to be more of a way of life rather than a religion per say. Today definitely it has morphed into the normal cultist phenomenon that we see around us and as such is just as ridiculous as any other religion on the market.
However for a good part of its history hinduism survived as a way of life rather than a cult or religion. That is why it was so inclusive of all other philosophies prevalent at the time and made room for it in its teachings. Definitely there were ridiculous stories to prove insignificant points and a lot of superstition that also got included, but that was precisely the beauty of it. It accepted all without derisiveness and so was enriched. You pick out what part of the philosophy you like and live by it. It was so inclusive that it accepted religions that do not have anything to with god like buddhism and jainism but talk of the spirit and even included full on atheism.
Today however it is no longer a philosophy or a way of life. it has made anecdotes into doctrines and promotes pseudoscience and superstition.
The question is what do you perceive it to be?
Personally, I do not need anything more than the rules common sense dictate like basic human rights, the golden rule and so on. There are times I still draw on religious scripture as a source of philosophy where they can be quite good at times but I could just as easily draw inspiration and philosophy from works of premchand, kabir, tagore, shakespear. Thats all it is for me today, literature with some good sayings which I may or may not find moving at a particular instance of my life. Not a dogma or doctrine to follow until the so called end of days.
I guess in that sense even the abrahamic books are useful as literature and prose with a few good ideas.