Bhim

I find it astonishing that I was sitting on this goldmine and didn't even see it!

Back when I was an evangelical I harbored similar exasperation towards my fellow Indians. Fools who would debase themselves by worshiping rocks and trees instead of the God of Israel, creator of the universe and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. Now, having returned to Hinduism, I am far more tolerant of such idiocy. Better to worship everything than to worship one thing and believe that those who worship differently are doomed to eternal conscious torment. That said, I will freely grant that it is idiocy.

Thanks @Joshpantera and @midniterider for calling my attention to this. I'm often amazed at the peculiar behavior of rural Hindus in India, as well as the urban ones. It's impossible to pass through the streets of my "hometown" of Chennai without seeing various improvised temples, at least one of which (that I beheld with my own eyes, anyway) is literally dedicated to a Bollywood film star. In rural India, however, people worship cows to the extent that they extract feces and urine from the animals for use in ritual worship. Would that I could liken this to rural American snake handling. Unfortunately, the use of cow dung is specifically prescribed in the scrolls of Manu, and is therefore a legitimate expression of my ancient and noble tradition. I have no idea if this story about the cyclopic cow is "fake news," but is it really any more absurd than the extraction of bovine excrement for ritual purposes? Hence why I adopt the dual labels of Hindu and atheist, I suppose...

Dang prof, you got a one and a half year old thread resurrected! You should write three contradictory eyewitness accounts of this feat, and then add in a fourth account in a couple decades.

I see I'm late to the party with this thread. Back when I was a Christian I hated modern worship music, and was dejected that such a rich musical tradition was abandoned in favor of vacuous and inane drivel. I wanted to worship Jesus, but the music my reformed church had us sing simply did not comport with the intellectual teaching they offered. It's probably for the best though, since this likely contributed to my deconversion at some level. Now, as an ex-Christian I can simply ridicule evangelicals for cannibalizing their own religious history and neutering their faith of its ability to proclaim a message of any substance. I love reading such criticisms as this because it reminds me of my own prior contentions with this terrible religion.

I read the entire Bible. Several times over, actually, though rarely in order (which I guess is fine since the books are not arranged in chronological order). I found the Old Testament to be of extremely high literary quality and to be rather insightful, while the New Testament I found dull, boring, irrelevant, and logically inconsistent. Maybe that's why I read the NT a lot more frequently, in an attempt to get it to make sense to me. Suffice it to say, that never happened.

It was very interesting to read your post, particularly this part. I'll save you the trouble of digging up my ex-timony from half a decade ago: long story short I was raised Hindu, became an evangelical Christian in college, and then deconverted because I felt an obligation to practice the faith of my family and ancestors. So in a sense, I am living precisely what you have always wished for. On the one hand, I'll be the first to admit that Hinduism is utterly ridiculous in many respects. Hindus believe in all sorts of superstitious nonsense which would make creationism seem reasonable by comparison. For example, an uncomfortable number of modern day Hindus believe that the flying chariots of the gods referenced in our mythology are in fact spaceships invented by our ancestors, the existence of which was covered up by Western invaders. Yes, this is an actual superstition that my people believe. As a professional scientist (my field is astrophysics), well, let's just say this is a belief I cannot even respect. And yet...on the other hand I am happy to align myself with the intellectually vacuous dogma of my ancestors as opposed to the dogma of a bunch of Western Europeans (I mean no animus towards Caucasians, I merely state my wish to not fantasize that I am one of them). Today I practice the rituals of my own culture, I celebrate my own holidays, and I immerse myself in my own traditions instead of those of Christianity, which is fundamentally a Western European religion. I appreciate Western culture and believe it has positively contributed to human history in many ways - probably more ways than my own - but it is not my culture and I am happy to not falsely associate myself with it. I suppose I am lucky to be part of a culture which happens to have maintained its distinctiveness from Christianity over the centuries. Many other cultures, particularly those in the West, have been absorbed by Christianity. The various religious groups of Europe - maligned as "pagans" by the Christians of Rome - essentially ceased to exist, and it would be hard to resurrect these faiths in modern times. I suppose the most that an ex-Christian of European descent can do is hold fast to those traditions which survived the Christianization of Europe, and to expunge the Christian elements as much as possible. Holidays such as Christmas and Easter have many elements which are decidently non-Christian. While you cannot fully re-integrate them with their original context, it is still easy to see that they do not fit with Biblical narrative, and to celebrate the fact that they survived Christian conquest.

@RachelSkates, so sorry this happened to you. Like everyone else said, you need to get out ASAP. I realize it's problematic given that you are financially tethered to your parents, and I am under no conceit as to be knowledgeable on how you can effect your departure. But you should determine how you might leave, and then do so. Hope to hear from you often.

I don't think Luke 11:13 is relevant to Josh's point, unless you are merely stating that evil people can do good, and that the Devil can quote scripture. I believe Josh's point is that misdirection towards a false religion is more effective than misdirection towards mere disbelief in the devil, since it will encompass more people. Who is to say that Christianity is not a false religion? From a Jewish standpoint, you are no less an idolater than we Hindus are, since you worship three gods, one of whom is a human. God is not a son of man, remember? As per Deuteronomy 13, he ought to have been stoned to death, and his contemporaries obeyed this law as best they could whilst under Roman occupation. Were I a contemporary of Jesus, I would have regarded him as some long haired Leftist hippie who wasn't raised right. If ever there were a deceiver to parallel the serpent of the Garden of Eden, it is Jesus, who discouraged obediance to the Mosaic Law and worship of himself as God. How do you, in good conscience, deny that Jesus himself is the devil?

@LostinParis I hope this phase of the process passes quickly. As of this summer I have been free of Christianity for nine years. It feels like an eternity since I last went to church, and I love not having to wake up early on Sundays anymore. When I deconverted I lived with Christians, and the ability to not go to church did not come immediately. I am confident that you too will slowly but surely recover your time on Sunday to do with as you see fit. I hope it is sooner rather than later.

If you know that you have a chronic mental condition, don't you think you should be skeptical of supposed visions? Medication isn't a magical fix, it often has to be adjusted by a physician numerous times to achieve your stability. If you're having visions I'd say you are decidedly unstable. That's not my medical opinion, obviously. But it's also why I certainly wouldn't take your visions as an indication of revelation from a deity, and certainly not from Jesus. You should likewise be skeptical.

Ah, so you're the ones attracting the attention from the Christians. Pray to your no-god that I don't send them the address to the next meeting of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy.

It's amusing that they think this is an atheist site. Or did they actually mean "sight?" I am not able to discern the meaning from the words they've supplied. As for the censorship, would that we could have more Christian's here to devour in the Lion's Den. I can count on one hand the number of consistent Christian posters we've had on this site (sight?) in my five years here. None of them were of any intellectual muster, and the late IronHorse was the only one who seemed to be an honest and genuine person. It is because of our lack of censorship policies that Christians are able to frequent this site and post such vacuous and inane material as they do without accepting any challenge. I'm relieved to see that Christians are as vapid as I remember them being.

I have wished for this many times. Don't forget also that the Christian "messiah" has no legitimate claim to that title. A plain reading of the Old Testament invalidates any prophetic application to him.

At the church I attended in grad school after the PCA church failed, I was in the children's ministry (hey, don't judge 😂). No one ever taught the hell doctrine to the kids. I think at some level even the pastors knew how perverted it was.