SV: UNiversity and Church

[Lars Martin Fosse]

Narayan R.Joshi [SMTP:giravani at JUNO.COM] skrev 16. mars 2001 05:09:
> Reference-Wendy on Geeta. What is the difference between An American
> University and an American Christian Church? Churches routinely teach
that
> Hebroo was the mankind's first and original language

This sounds like a very American phenomenon. I grew up in the Norwegian
Bible belt, but no one ever claimed as far as I can remember that Hebrew
was mankind's first language. (The Bible of course says so, but most modern
Christians realize that they are dealing with a myth and not with history).

 and address Mahatma
> Gandhi in their sermons as Hindu Gandhi.In future, I expect more attacks
on
> Mahabharata and ShriKrishna. They are paid to do that.More than 20
million
> dollars are spent (conservative estimate) by the western world to study
the
> ancient pagan, heathen, Hindu India. Why? Thanks.

Probably because India is an interesting country. Most of the people that
study India today are agnostics (or more or less indifferent to personal
religion), not fervent Christians, as far as I can see. Seen from a
Christian point of view, Hinduism is of course "pagan", but seen from an
atheist or agnostic point of view, there is no difference between
Christianity and Hinduism when it comes to religious truth value. Most
agnostics would analyze both religions from a sociological, historical or
doctrinal point of view and not show much interest in whether one of these
religions is truer than the other.

No doubt, Christian theologians will attack Hinduism in the future - you're
competition - but I don't see many attacks coming from universities (unless
it is the sort of critique that university people hand out in all
directions anyway).

Lars Martin Fosse

Dr. art. Lars Martin Fosse
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