A quote from Gandhi:

[struggle4progress]

To me God is Truth and Love; God is ethics and morality; God is fearlessness. God is the source of Life and Life, and yet He is above and beyond all these. God is conscience. He is even the atheism of the atheist

Young India
5 March 1925

link:
Gandhi and Comparative Religion
http://www.bu.edu/wcp/Papers/Comp/CompBaru.htm

[RandomThoughts]

1. If you think in the totality of it

Might God have a way for anyone that wants to help find a way to help, does the person have to know he his helping, or does his heart show what he believes in, by his many actions of better thoughts and help

The most interesting verse in Christian text to me, is when Jesus explains who he is, everyone that is poor and in suffering. Did he say he is every believer that is poor and in suffering? Or everybody that needs help. He even specifically said who your neighbor you should love is, the person of a different culture, that needs help.

I think the spark of life is available to all, and am not going to think I can judge who is, or who is not part of that, by some standard set by some group, knowing I don't know for sure. I think God knows that stuff, and I don't have to, nor is it for me to judge who has the heart mind and soul that helps many.


There is a really good line in a film, a character says he does not believe, and the response was a laugh, and that God believes in him. Only something of pride would 'need' you to worship them, something of good works would be more interested in the many ways anyone can help many people.


Long ago I said I would not follow something that only wanted to be worshiped, why, becuase that sounds alot like pride.

And I don't think the creator of everything is so shallow that he needs worship, but has given free will and many ways for people to help by who they are, and know many believers, and possibly unbelievers helped me in what I think are better spiritual ways. They wanted to help people and spread comfort, and in my belief were given ways to do that.


Although honest worship occurs when you feel and are able to share love in my view, and that is much of how some worship, not becuase it is required in my view.

Although each person should decide for themselves what they think is inspired.



Brothers in Arms - Dire Straits
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k5JkHBC5lDs

Bonnie Raitt - I Can't Make You Love Me
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nW9Cu6GYqxo

Bonnie Raitt - Nick Of Time
http://www.123video.nl/playvideos.asp?MovieID=407128

Dire Straits - Walk of Life
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZxVC0GB838


Constantine - Bring me to life (Evanescence)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dx8d3K_hngw

[dmallind]

2. Nice quote. What does it mean?

All the things Mohandas lists already have well-defined meanings, that are not particularly inclusive of each other. If it's just another variant of the "god is all things" truism, then it tells us nothing about God, because it does not differentiate God from existence. If it's an attempt at an exclusive list it tells us something about God, but not why he should be a small g god or which abstract nouns not listed apply to him if any (let alone how capitalized abstract nouns are considered attributes of an at least partly immanent phenomenon in the first place).

I'm unlikely to match the guy in oratory of course, but if I said "God is Hope and Knowledge; God is empathy and altruism; God is kindness. God is the source of Intellect and Intellect, and yet he is above and beyond all these. God is perception, He is even the science of the scientist" , would it say anything meaningful? Am I describing the same god? The attributes listed are all important, all positive and all abstract just like his, but they are different. Does eitherr version allow us to know anything about God beyond associating him with a list of positive abstract nouns?

[GeorgeGist]

3. Lame

[frogmarch]

4. Goparaju Ramachandra Rao (Gora) did good work too

and Gandhi once told Gora that he, Gora, had accomplished more for humanity than Gandhi had.

Gora devoted his life to propagating atheism. In 1940, he and his wife Saraswathi Gora co-founded the Atheist Centre, in a small village in the Krishna district. On the eve of Independence in 1947, they moved the center to Vijayawada.

Throughout the 1940s he worked in the Indian independence movement, and after Gandhi's assassination retained his links with leaders of the Gandhian movement, especially Vinoba Bhave.

Gora wrote many books, such as Atheism Questions and Answers, An Atheist Around the World, An Atheist with Gandhi, The Need of Atheism, and Positive Atheism. From 1949 on, he wrote a column on atheism, and began publishing The Atheist, a monthly, in 1969. Gora's atheism dictated his campaign to abolish the caste system with its "untouchables," and the idea of "karma" or divine fate. Gora died in 1975. The Atheist Center, which continued under the guidance of Saraswathi, provides counseling, promotes intercaste and casteless marriages, works to abolish child marriages, provides aid to prostitutes, unwed mothers and vulnerable women, debunks superstitious beliefs by holding firewalking demonstrations and debunking other "miracles," educates against belief in witchcraft and sorcery, promotes sexual education and family planning and many other reforms.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goparaju_Ramachandra_Rao

The book An Atheist with Gandhi is an account of conversations Gora had with Gandhi. I’ve read it. A copy was given to me by a cousin of mine who was a Gandhi follower in India. When he moved to UK, my cousin and I exchanged letters with each other regularly for years, in which we discussed religion, philosophy, favorite Indian recipes, and so on. Then all of a sudden, he wrote: “I think we have no more to say to one another,” and that was the end of our relationship. He was brilliant, but strange. Once, he decided to teach piano to Oxford students. He had no musical training whatsoever and played no instruments. Nevertheless he bought a an expensive Grand piano on credit, expecting the money he earned from giving lessons to pay for it. He quickly mastered playing it, and within a year was able to have earned enough from teaching others to play that he paid for the piano. Faith in action! lol

But I digress. For anyone who's interested, here’s An Atheist with Gandhi online: http://www.positiveatheism.org/india/gora13.htm

[struggle4progress]

5. From your link: "If the destitute is not cowardly and if the shopman is not cruel, why did so many

people die of hunger? I think the reason is their philosophy of life"

The actual problem is something entirely different from "philosophy of life"

Famines in India recurred repeatedly throughout the period of British rule. The Bengal famine of 1943, mentioned at the beginning of the text you link, is only one example:

... One of the worst famines was that of 1770 that killed an estimated 10 million people in Bengal (one third of the population) and which was exacerbated by the rapacity of the East India Company. Bengal suffered further famines in 1783, 1866, 1873-74, 1892, 1897 and 1943-44 ... The extraordinary continuing aspect of this 20th century Holocaust was the exacerbation and indeed the creation of famine by the sequestration and export of food for enhanced commercial gain. Thus in severe Indian famines in the mid-19th century (by which time the British authorities were thoroughly familiar with this sort of event) export of grain was permitted on the grounds of non-intervention in trade ... With the entry of Japan into World War 2 and its conquest of South East Asia, including Burma, the British authorities took strategic steps that affected the availability of food in Bengal. Food was required for soldiers, workers in industrial cities such as Calcutta and for export to other parts of the Empire. The grain import requirement of nearly 2 million tons to make up for deficiencies in Indian production was progressively cut back to a disastrous degree. Loss of rice from Burma and ineffective government controls on hoarding and profiteering led inevitably to enormous price rises. Thus it can be estimated that the price of rice in Dacca increased about 4-fold in the period from March 1943 to October 1943. Bengalis having to purchase food (e.g landless labourers) suffered immensely - thus it is estimated that about 30% of one particular labourer class died in the famine ... http://globalavoidablemortality.blogspot.com/2005/07/forgotten-holocaust-194344-bengal.html

Famine affects the politically powerless, not the powerful:

Amartya Sen famously said that famines do not occur in well-run, democratic countries ...
Why Democracies Don't Get Cholera
It's about a lot more than just clean water
by Joseph Amon
Published in: Foreign Policy
October 25, 2010
http://www.hrw.org/en/news/2010/10/25/why-democracies-dont-get-cholera

With political independence, India was able to take steps to limit the human cost of famine:

... Later famine threats of 1984, 1988 and 1998 were successfully contained by the Indian government and there has been no major famine in India since 1943. Indian Independence in 1947 did not stop damage to crops nor lack of rain. As such, the threat of famines did not go away. India faced a number of threats of severe famines in 1967, 1973, 1979 and 1987 in Bihar, Maharashtra, West Bengal, and Gujarat respectively. However these did not materialize in to famines due to government intervention. The loss of life did not meet the scale of the 1943 Bengal or earlier famines but continued to be a problem. Jean Drèze finds that the post-Independence Indian government "largely remedied" the causes of the three major failures of 1880–1948 British famine policy ...
Famine in India
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Famine_in_India#Republic_of_India

[frogmarch]

8. In context:

Here is more of what Gora said about this philosophy of life:

"Both the destitute and the shop-keeper are votaries of the same philosophy of life. Each one said to himself: 'It is my fate, that is his fate; God made me like this, God made him like that.' On account of the commonness of their philosophy, there was no change in their relationship, though some ate their fill and many starved to death. The destitute's faith in that philosophy made his behaviour different from the animals.

"What I have said with regard to the Bengal famine applies also to the relationship between the untouchables and the caste Hindus, between the dark-skinned and the white-skinned. The same philosophy rules all these relationships.

"What is the result of following that philosophy of life? Man has become worse than the animal. Instead of living well, he is dying ill. His strength to resist evil is very much weakened. The pleasures of the few are built upon the bones of the many. This is really the unhappy fact in spite of our moral professions and pious wishes for the happiness of all humanity. This philosophy of life based upon belief in God and fate -- this theistic philosophy -- I hold responsible for defeating our efforts at ethical life and idealism. It cannot securely preserve the balance of unequal social relations any longer, because the pains of the flesh have begun to revolt against that philosophy. Hate and war are already replacing love and peace.

~~

You'll get no argument from me that Indian Independence came none too soon, but Gora isn't speaking about the British raj and its failings. Gora is attacking the caste system. Maybe you should read it again. You seem to have missed his point.

[struggle4progress]

9. You say: Gora isn't speaking about the British raj. I say: Yes, but he should have been.

Gora blames a "philosophy of life based upon belief in God." But the philosophical prejudices that produced the Bengal famine were not the philosophical prejudices of the victims of the famine: the philosophical prejudices that produced the famine were the economic beliefs of the colonial overlords and the belief of the colonial overlords in their own superiority, and these beliefs would have had little influence without backing from the armed might of the British empire. The peculiar political brilliance of Gandhi is that he imagines radical nonviolence is an objective moral truth that can be discovered through experiment, and he sets out to "experiment" by deploying disciplined unarmed masses against the British colonial authorities

Gora, of course, may have been right about the role of religious fatalism in reinforcing the caste system

Anyway, thanks for the link. I shall attempt to read through the book

[dmallind]

11. "Oppressed" Christian whiners should note one thing.

This particular atheist spent most of his time criticizing the secular influence of Hinduism, and pointing out the absurdities of (mostly rural) Hindu beliefs. Yet he was not a Muslim or a Christian, and was educated enough to understand both of them too. Nor did he hate Brahma or have a Vishnu-shaped hole in his heart.

He spent most of his time on Hinduism because he lived in a country that was and is majority Hindu and where Hinduism was (and is) the faith with massive negative influence on Indian law, culture and mores.

You might want to consider that and then ponder why it feels like American atheists are focused on "bashing" Christians rather than Jews or Muslims.

[damyank913]

6. Did'nt he also think that cows were holy?

Holy cow that was a good burger!

[struggle4progress]

7. He was a vegetarian. He also managed to embarass the British into leaving India.

[Ninjaneer]

10. "He is even the atheism of the atheist"

oh goodie! :sarcasm: