Coya:
"Please, God of my grandfather Whom I don't believe in, please make it a coincidence. Make those ships ahead of us belong not to harmless miners but to the great and terrible Elder Race." (p. 666)
The beings at Mirkheim can be the Elder Race now only if they have been that until now. Does it make sense to pray for something to have been the case? Yes. If the prayer addresses a being who perceives our single temporal dimension as a fourth spatial dimension such that what we call past and future he calls left and right, then he can intervene to the left in response to a prayer from the right.
Having been indoctrinated in a theistic tradition, I used to rationalize God and eternity in this way but now consider it philosophically problematic.
20 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
I have to wonder, tho, about prayers from agnostics/atheists. Such things makes me suspect they are not all that far, some of them, from belief in God.
I want to look up one or two particularly striking agnostic prayers from the works of Anderson.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Some of them, no doubt. There are people at all stages of changing their views. But most of us are not on the verge of conversion to monotheism. There is a long tradition of pagan and agnostic prayers:
to an unknown god;
to whom it may concern.
We can ask for help but then we have to whatever it is ourselves.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
And my view remains that the rise of Judaism and then Christianity has made it nearly impossible for most people to take polytheism seriously. With me concluding Hinduism is the last real pagan religion existing. And Islam has also done its bit in undermining paganism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The person who prays, "If there is anyone there that can help, then please do," is not committing themselves to any kind of polytheist theology.
Polytheism appeals to my imagination but not to my intellect. I can see no philosophical objection to the idea of superhuman beings controlling the elements but also no empirical reason to believe that any such beings exist whereas I do have philosophical problems with monotheism.
Hinduism incorporates its own monotheisms as well as everything else.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
But I did not have polytheism in mind when I mentioned the "agnostic prayer."
I don't see how polytheism can appeal to your imagination once you seriously examine the various pagan pantheons: the weird animal headed gods of Egypt, those "children" on Olympus a Roman in THE GOLDEN SLAVE scorned, or the grim and gloomy gods of the Scandinavians, etc.
I don't know if you read any of the books of Eric Voegelin, such as ISRAEL AND REVELATION. But I recall him discussing how philosophers like Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, etc., leaned more and more to some kind of monotheism, even if their thoughts about this was too abstract to appeal to many. But they too helped to erode away polytheism and prepare the way for Christianity. But it's plain these philosophers did have problems with polytheism.
I still disagree about Hinduism. You persist in trying to make later, more philosophic strains within it favorable to monotheism the norm for Hinduism, which it is not. The vast majority of Hindus are plain and simple polytheists. No, I consider it the last real pagan religion.
Sean,
But it's possible to have a view of polytheism that doesn't involve zoomorphism etc. There are devotional monotheists in Hinduism.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
I have read of how the origins of these monotheistic leaning Hindus goes back to being influenced by the Catholic missionaries which reached India in the 1500's. But the fact remains they have not changed or transformed Hinduism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Some Hindu monotheism is clearly influenced by Christianity, even including intolerance of other views. It is not their responsibility to transform Hinduism. The Indian attitude is more live and let live - except for the few that have become intolerant. At the same time, change does occur at a natural rate. There is every possible response: secularization; conversion to Christianity or Islam; Hindu reformism; Hindu conservatism; reintroduction of Buddhism; Parsees; Jains. No one can or should try to control all that.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
If these monotheistic Hindus believe there is one, not many gods, any refusal to attempt the transforming of Hinduism strikes me as them not being SERIOUS about their beliefs.
It's a bit puzzling, this mention of non-Hindus like the Parsees, who are not any kind of Hindus. They are Zoroastrians who descend from the exiles who fled Iran at the time of the Muslim conquest. I was thinking of Hinduism only.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
I stuck the Parsees and Jains in as additional examples of Indian religious diversity. A Hindu looking for alternatives can consider them.
You are judging a completely different tradition by your own set of values. In these matters, seriousness about one's own world-view does not necessarily mean trying to convert others. Hindus can regard the many gods as the many ways that the one god appears to different minds. Krishna in the Gita says: "The gods are my million faces." Rig Veda says, "Truth is one, sages call it by various names."
Reincarnation (which I do NOT believe in but we are not talking about me) opens the possibility of each soul developing towards a fuller truth over many lives.
Paul.
The great advantage of Hinduism over Classical or other paganisms is that you don't -have- to be a polytheist to be a Hindu, though most of them are. That is, there are ancient traditions which interpret the religion in a monotheistic manner.
By Classical times, Greek philosophers tended to be embarrassed by their traditional religious stories -- the Gods on Olympus stealing each other's wives and getting drunk and generally acting like a bunch of Macedonian chieftains.
Hinduism found a way around that, so that popular village-and-street religiosity could stick with the multiple Gods and spirits, and high-falutin' philosophical types could interpret those as mere manifestations of a transcendent One, without actually renouncing them.
Good, isn't it? And I heard this argument at University:
All religions are equal.
But Hinduism is the only religion that recognizes this.
Therefore, Hinduism is superior!
The conclusion seems to follow from the premises although it also contradicts the first premise.
It gets better. The transcendent One can be either personal or impersonal. Everyone is happy - provided they don't mind everyone else being happy as well.
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul: Correct! Because those values I have, springing as they do from Judaism/Christianity and Classical Western philosophy are TRUE and thus superior to all others. Which is not the same as claiming all Jews, Christians, Westerners in general, as persons, are better than anybody else. We most certainly are not.
I refuse to be Politically Correct, I reject multiculturalism, the false idea that all cultures are equally good or "true."
Mr. Stirling: As so often, you expressed more clearly than I what I was trying to say. Some Hindus were embarassed by the crude polytheism and idolatry of the great mass of ordinary Hindus. The more "high-falutin' philosophical types" tried to explain away the polytheism of Hinduism as mere manifestations of a transcendent One, without actually rejecting them.
But such efforts did not satisfy everybody. I THINK the Sikhs began as Hindus who DID reject the Hindu gods.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Sikhs began as ecumenical gatherings of Muslims and monotheist Hindus. Rejected by both sides, they were obliged to become a third religion after their founder's death.
As regards spiritual philosophy and practice, I find more of value in Eastern traditions.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Noted, what you said about the Sikhs.
And of all the Oriental philosophies, I find Confucianism as being the truest and most worthy of respect. Next would come the more orthodox strains of Buddhism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: Paul's right about Sikhism -- it was a Hindu-Muslim reformist movement, originally.
And strikingly enlightened -- its founders wrote passionate essays on the equality of the sexes and how the practices of their times wasted the potential of half the human race.
Muslim persecution turned them into a "religion", and a rather militant one. Muslims tend to react with particular ferocity to movements which claim to be "post"-Islamic, or improvements on Islam.
I told an acquaintance who had been raised as a Sikh that I regarded Sikhism as a reformed Islam and he clearly thought that that was at least an informed comment.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Mr. Stirling: I did some quick checking up on Sikh history, and my conclusion was the Muslim influence, while there, was fairly small. But it was enough to get the Muslims viciously persecuting the Sikhs. They get really UPSET about post-Mohammed "shirk" (not quite sure that's the correct term used in Islam). And they behaved exactly the same way to other movements like Bahaism.
Yes, there was a short lived Sikh Empire from 1799-1839, but it fell apart after its founder died.
Paul: but a fairly minimal Muslim influence. If I can trust Wikipedia, the ex-Hindus who became the first Sikhs were reacting mostly against Hinduism.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
The Sikh scripture, the Granth (Guru Granth Sahib) is all hymns - as if the Psalms were the whole Bible. The hymns in the Granth are of 3 kinds, written by:
Hindus;
Muslims;
Sikh Gurus.
The 10th Sikh Guru, Gobind Singh, closed the scripture and appointed it as his permanent successor.
Paul.
Kaor, Paul!
Correct, that is what I skimmed thru in Wiki. But the Sikhs still needed some kind of governing body, to interpret their scripture.
Ad astra! Sean
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