Hinduism vs. Christianity - Forgiveness for Sins

Christianity is often touted as a better religion because it offers forgiveness for sins and hence redemption. However, Dharmic traditions do not propose forgiveness for sins.  Does that mean Christianity is a better religion?  Are  followers of Dharmic tradition in a fix because they receive no forgiveness, no redemption?

When contemplating on this loaded question, Hindus should realize that concept of sin in Christianity is non-existent in Hinduism.  Without the burden of sin, there is no need to seek forgiveness, there is no need for redemption.  The idea of sin is a heavy burden thrust upon its followers by Christianity. To moderate its effect, Christians then speak of forgiveness.  

Unfortunately, this concept brings other burdens on the already suffering.  Imagine that a lady you know was raped.  Can you ask her to forgive the rapist?  Does she have to forgive?  Does she have a choice not to forgive?

Contemplate on what the bible says regarding forgiveness.  

Matthew 6:14-15

For if you forgive other people when they sin against you, your heavenly Father will also forgive you. But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Colossians 3:13

Bearing with one another and, if one has a complaint against another, forgiving each other; as the Lord has forgiven you, so you also must forgive.

Most Christian apologists defend the above biblical position by saying that forgiveness is a way to cope with bitterness.  It is not.  Forgiveness is saying that the person who inflicted the pain and suffering is freed of the blame.  There is simply nothing worse than imposing on the victim to forgive the offender: forgive or else you will not be forgiven.

Hinduism does not consider human beings to be stuck in the inescapable condition of sin. On the contrary, Hinduism considers the essence of human beings to be non-different from the Supreme Being. There is no sin but only ignorance in Hinduism.  Due to ignorance human beings are caught up in the stranglehold of Maya. Once freed from the veil of ignorance, human beings understand that Atman and Paramatman are one and the same.

Bhagavad Gita 4:36

Even if you were the greatest sinner, you will still cross the sea of past sin aboard the ship of (transcendental) knowledge.

You need redemption only when you are stuck in the inescapable condition of being a sinner. 

Revealed Religion & Morality

by Thomas Paine

from Age of Reason Part II

The most detestable wickedness, the most horrid cruelties, and the greatest miseries, that have afflicted the human race have had their origin in this thing called revelation, or revealed religion. ... Whence arose all the horrid assassinations of whole nations of men, women, and infants, with which the Bible is filled; and the bloody persecutions, and tortures unto death and religious wars, that since that time have laid Europe in blood and ashes; whence arose they, but from this impious thing called revealed religion, and this monstrous belief that God has spoken to man?...

Some Christians pretend that Christianity was not established by the sword; but of what period of time do they speak? It was impossible that twelve men could begin with the sword: they had not the power; but no sooner were the professors of Christianity sufficiently powerful to employ the sword than they did so, and the stake and faggot too; and Mahomet could not do it sooner.... Besides this, Christianity grounds itself originally upon the [Hebrew] Bible, and the Bible was established altogether by the sword, and that in the worst use of it -- not to terrify, but to extirpate. The Jews made no converts: they butchered all. The Bible is the sire of the [New] Testament, and both are called the word of God. The Christians read both books; the ministers preach from both books; and this thing called Christianity is made up of both. It is then false to say that Christianity was not established by the sword.

The only sect that has not persecuted are the Quakers; and the only reason that can be given for it is, that they are rather Deists than Christians. They do not believe much about Jesus Christ, and they call the scriptures a dead letter. Had they called them by a worse name, they had been nearer the truth.  It is incumbent on every man who reverences the character of the Creator, and who wishes to lessen the catalogue of artificial miseries, and remove the cause that has sown persecutions thick among mankind, to expel all ideas of a revealed religion as a dangerous heresy, and an impious fraud. What is it that we have learned from this pretended thing called revealed religion? Nothing that is useful to man, and every thing that is dishonourable to his Maker....

As to the fragments of morality that are irregularly and thinly scattered in those books, they make no part of this pretended thing, revealed religion. They are the natural dictates of conscience, and the bonds by which society is held together, and without which it cannot exist; and are nearly the same in all religions, and in all societies. The [New] Testament teaches nothing new upon this subject, and where it attempts to exceed, it becomes mean and ridiculous....

Loving of enemies is another dogma of feigned morality, and has besides no meaning. It is incumbent on man, as a moralist, that he does not revenge an injury; and it is equally as good in a political sense, for there is no end to retaliation;... but to love in proportion to the injury, if it could be done, would be to offer a premium for a crime. Besides, the word enemies is too vague and general to be used in a moral maxim, which ought always to be clear and defined, like a proverb. If a man be the enemy of another from mistake and prejudice, as in the case of religious opinions, and sometimes in politics, that man is different to an enemy at heart with a criminal intention; and it is incumbent upon us, and it contributes also to our own tranquillity, that we put the best construction upon a thing that it will bear. But even this erroneous motive in him makes no motive for love on the other part; and to say that we can love voluntarily, and without a motive, is morally and physically impossible.

Morality is injured by prescribing to it duties that, in the first place, are impossible to be performed, and if they could be would be productive of evil; or, as before said, be premiums for crime. The maxim of doing as we would be done unto does not include this strange doctrine of loving enemies; for no man expects to be loved himself for his crime or for his enmity.

Those who preach this doctrine of loving their enemies, are in general the greatest persecutors, and they act consistently by so doing; for the doctrine is hypocritical, and it is natural that hypocrisy should act the reverse of what it preaches. For my own part, I disown the doctrine, and consider it as a feigned or fabulous morality; yet the man does not exist that can say I have persecuted him, or any man, or any set of men, either in the American Revolution, or in the French Revolution; or that I have, in any case, returned evil for evil. But it is not incumbent on man to reward a bad action with a good one, or to return good for evil; and wherever it is done, it is a voluntary act, and not a duty.

How do Islam and the Quran look without divinity?

Part III:

How do Islam and the Quran look without divinity?

Let us consider how Muhammad received the revelation from an Islamic point of view. 

The oldest surviving biography of Muhammad is that of Ibn Hisham (died 833 CE). In this biography, According to Ibn Hisham, before the revelation of the Quran, Muhammad used to visit a cave in the mountain called Hira in Mecca for a month every year. When Muhammad was finished with his seclusion in the mountain, he would return to circumbulate the Kaba seven times before heading home. In 610 CE, as in the years before, Muhammad visited Hira. This time, Muhammad claimed that he was visited by a stanger (later identified as Angel Gabriel).  According to Ibn Hisham, Gabriel appeared to Muhammad in his sleep, carrying a book. He commanded him to “read.” Muhammad refused twice the order before finally asking what he was supposed to read.  Muhammad went home in shock and spent the following few weeks in shivers and fears. His wife, Khadija, sought the help of Waraka, a relative and Christian priest, who immediately diagnosed the condition as a sign that Muhammad was going to be a prophet. Khadija agreed with that diagnosis. A few weeks after this incident, Muhammad made the claim to be a prophet and started his campaign to convert the Arabs, and the world, to his religion. 

Devout Muslims believe that the stranger who appeared before Muhammad was indeed the Angel Gabriel and that the Quran, that was communicated to humanity through the otherwise illiterate Muhammad , is the world of Allah.

If we strip divinity off this story, what do Muslims have to show for Muhammad's experience in the cave?  What about the contents of the Quran?  Without divine origin, what is the source of Quran?  Of what value are Quran's claims?  What do we make of violent attacks of Muhammad on idol worshippers of his time and destruction of idols?  What do we make of all the religious wars waged by Muhammad, destruction and looting that followed in the name of Allah's cause? What do we make of all the Muslims in independent India who bow in the direction of Mecca in Saudi Arabia?

Stripped of divinity, Muhammad's story would turn into one of mass deception, intolerance to believers of other deities, and waging wars by imposing fear of Allah.  Quran would turn into a dictionary of banal statements.  It is an ridiculous presupposition for a Muslim to agree with in order to enter a discussion with a "scholar".  It is a heartless act of torture to make a Muslim accept that Muhammad is not a prophet and Allah is not the God.  Indeed, that is what a secular "scholar" would presuppose, but to ask a Muslim to contemplate on that presupposition and participate in a "scholarly" debate?  Removing divinity alters everything about the story, reducing it to a farce.  If such an idea is forced on Muslims, that would be tantamount to tampering with his freedom on conscience.  No free-thinking Muslim will engage in a "scholarly discussion" of Muhammad's history or the Quran with the presupposition of removing all divinity involved in delivery of Quran to humanity.  

Similarly, no free-thinking Hindu should accept the presupposition thrust upon Hindus that all divinity be stripped from a Maha Kavya (Ramayana, Mahabharata for example) in order to have a "scholarly discussion" of it. 

Stripping divinity from Sanskrit Works - Part I

Rajiv Malhotra rejects Sheldon Pollock's approach of first stripping divinity from Sanskrit works, then using a political lens to deconstruct those Sanskrit works, and finally pushing his political interpretations as history on to India and Hindus.

Rajiv Malhotra's rejection is justified in saying that divinity is crucial to interpretation of sanskrit works. Is that justification a reasonable position?

Is the sacred dimension of scriptures necessary for Abrahamic religions as well?  

How critical is the sacred dimension to those religions?  Let us look at the case of Christianity in this article.

In his deliberations on Christianity, Mahatma Gandhi wrote in his Autobiography:

I could accept Jesus as a martyr, an embodiment of sacrifice, and a divine teacher, but not as the most perfect man ever born. His death on the Cross was a great example to the world, but that there was anything like a mysterious or miraculous virtue in it my heart could not accept.

Now, Gandhi can say this as a non-believer.  He was not a Christian.  But he did not push these views on Christians as "scholarship" the way Sheldon Pollock is pushing.

Gandhi was not alone.  Thomas Jefferson, one of the founding fathers of America, compared miracles in the bible, and hence divinity of Jesus, to dung hill.

In 1813, in a letter to John Adams, Jefferson wrote: 

"... We must reduce our volume to the simple evangelists, select, even from them, the very words only of Jesus, paring off the amphibologisms into which they have been led, by forgetting often, or not understanding, what had fallen from him, by giving their own misconceptions as his dicta, and expressing unintelligibly for others what they had not understood themselves. There will be found remaining the most sublime and benevolent code of morals which has ever been offered to man. I have performed this operation for my own use, by cutting verse by verse out of the printed book, and arranging the matter which is evidently his, and which is as easily distinguishable as diamonds in a dunghill."

Jefferson created for himself a "clean" version of bible called the Jefferson bible from which he stripped all divinity.  Again, Jefferson, like Gandhi, did not palm his views off on Christians as actual history.  

Would Christians accept interpretations of the bible that strip divinity?

Without Divinity, Christianity is Meaningless.

How does Jesus lead humanity to salvation?  

In his letter to the Church of Corinth, Paul writes:

Now, brothers and sisters, I want you to remember the Good News I told you. You received that Good News message, and you continue to base your life on it. That Good News, the message you heard from me, is God’s way to save you. But you must continue believing it. If you don’t, you believed for nothing. I gave you the message that I received. I told you the most important truths: that Christ died for our sins, as the Scriptures say;  1 Corinthians 15:1-4

This is a direct quote from the bible.  

Paul is saying in no uncertain terms that Christians have to believe that Jesus died to atone for the Original Sin of humanity.  If Jesus were just another human being, with no divinity, there is no atoning for Original Sin and no salvation for humanity via Jesus.  Jesus had to have had divine origin for the belief in salvation through Jesus.  If Jesus is not divine, then he is not the Lord, he is either a liar (he outright lied about his miracles) or a lunatic (imagined self-aggrandizement).

Divinity is crucial for Christianity to find honorable meaning in the bible and in the life of Jesus.  In fact, belief in divine origin of Jesus is so critical that all major Christian denominations require divine origin of Jesus.  Every major Christian denomation has codified the core belief of divinity of Jesus as part of their version of "Nicene Creed", a statement(the  of belief that all members of that Christian denominations have to hold.  

Divinity of Jesus is a core belief, an essential axiom, for Christians.  It is unwise for a Christian to accept an argument based on the supposition that Jesus is merely human with no divinity.  It is up to Christians to say what the axioms or the statement of their beliefs are and insist on only engaging in arguments that presuppose beliefs of divinity of Jesus. (Why is it a presupposition and not history?  Divinity is beyond common human experience and cannot be recognized as history even though history-centric religions claim history as confirmation for their beliefs.  Even if we grant that Jesus was born of a virgin mother, performed miracles, died on the cross and resurrected, it still does not follow that he is son of God.  Worse, one cannot even validate those human-observable events to be true.)

After reading the story in the bible, one is invariably struck with the following question:

What did Jesus really accomplish? 

There are many good - very nice - people who were killed mindlessly in the last two thousand years.  Look at Mahatma Gandhi.  He fought for a well-defined cause, made great strides towards that cause using only peaceful means, and finally died during the process but leaving behind a success story.  In contrast, Jesus achieved no improvement to the society and died in vain. Gandhi successfully used civil-disobedience to bring justice to millions of his people.  Perhaps, Jesus could have had the same effectiveness if he had used civil disobedience.

This is not a new thought.  Speaking on Mahatma Gandhi's death, Nobel prize nominee and legendary missionary E. Stanley Jones described Mahatma Gandhi as "the greatest tragedy since the Son of God died on the cross." 

Theodore Beza wrote in his work the Anti-Bellius in 1554:

“There is one way that leads to God, namely, Christ; and one way that leads to Christ, namely, faith; and this faith includes all those dogmas ...  If Christ is not true God, coeternal and consubstantial with the Father, how is He our Savior? How is He our sanctifier? How is He victor over sin, death, and the devil?  Unless He is true man, save for sin, how is He our mediator?”

If we take away divinity from Jesus, we are left with a Jesus who did not do any miracles (just a human so they must all be magic tricks).  His speeches no longer qualify as moral teachings but political antiestablishment speeches.  He was crucified then as one of many others who were crucified by Romans.  Jesus then lived the life of a trouble-maker who died without achieving anything.   Without divinity, all that Jesus has going for him is that he is a nice guy who accomplished nothing for his people and died in vain.

This basic argument was not lost on Christian thinkers.  

C.S. Lewis, one of the most celebrated Christian apologists, says that if we do not accept Jesus as God, then we have to either consider him a fool, a madman, or a devil.

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, (New York: MacMillan, 1943), pages 55-56

I am trying to prevent anyone saying the really foolish thing that people often say about Him: "I'm ready to accept Jesus as a great moral teacher, but I don't accept His claim to be God." That is the one thing we must not say. A man who was merely a man and said the sort of things Jesus said would not be a great moral teacher. He would either be a lunatic--on the level with the man who says he is a poached egg--or else he would be the Devil of Hell. You must make your choice. Either this man was, and is, the Son of God: or else a madman or something worse. You can shut him up for a fool, you can spit at him and kill him as a demon; or you can fall at his feet and call him Lord and God. But let us not come with any patronising nonsense about his being a great human teacher. He has not left that open to us. He did not intend to.We are faced, then, with a frightening alternative. This man we are talking about either was (and is) just what He said or else a lunatic, or something worse.. I have to accept the view that He was and is God

History-centric blind beliefs

Christian scientists have a difficult problem.  Christianity's history-centric beliefs and theological commitments to historical claims are what reasonable scientists would find objectionable.  This is what draws heated debates from the likes of Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and others.

John Lennox, a well known mathematician at Oxford, speaks passionately for miracles. When he argues for miracles, he is merely arguing that scientists cannot insist that miracles are necessarily impossible.  As a rational scientist, John Lennox can only argue that his beliefs in miracles are not based on the impossible.  So far, so good.  However, there is a gap the size of Grand Canyon between impossible and reasonable.  Lennox cannot take this argument any farther into the realm of reasonableness.   Furthermore, Lennox does not clarify what he considers are reasonble miracles to believe in.  It is a huge leap of faith to go from belief in possibility (anything that cannot be proven impossible is possible) of some miracles to the acceptance of any biblical miracles.  Such are the privileges of beliefs, even when held by scientists.

Other times, Christian apologists argue from an abstract notion of God who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good.  They never bridge their arguments to the specific biblical god Yahweh and his actions as described in the bible.  

More importantly, they are totally silent on how they can accept historical evidence based on hearsay evidence that Jesus regained life after death, miracle if all miracles, and hence infer that that he must be son of biblical god.   Such evidence does not stand a chance in a modern court of law, leave alone a scientists scrutiny.  Is that enough to wage your existence on?  

What can we conclude from all this?  That scientists can have blind faith and beliefs just as well as any other human.  This belief has no bearing on their science.  

Yes, Hindus too are free to hold beliefs if they choose.  They too do not feel compelled to reject their beliefs.  However, their position is far better since they have no history-centric commitments that they have a burden to defend in the face of science.

Christianity vs. Hinduism in the context of karma-phala

No karma-phala without karma or Reaction without action is meaningless : to suggest that all human beings, even those not born, bear the consequences of Adam and Eve's Original Sin is meaningless.  For an action that is not done, no result can accrue. Only for action that is done can there be adrsta-phala, either punya or papa. If the action is proper, it will attract punya and if it is improper, it will attract papa.  Sankara argues that if an action that is not done can produce results, then that which does not exist, asat, can produce that which exists, sat. To say that a nonexistent thing can produce an existent thing is like saying that a non-existent mother can bear a son.

All karma begets karma-phala To suggest that grace of Jesus will guarantee entry to heaven regardless of all past actions is ridiculous.  It is contradictory to say that karmas that are done do not produce results. You cannot throw a stone and expect that there will be no result. There will be a result - especially if it hits someone! Something must take place; some kind of reaction will be there. Therefore, action without reaction makes no sense at all.

One cannot only beget punya-phala it is impossible for a person to perform only good actions, punya-karma. No one can avoid-doing papa-karma at some time or the other. All it takes is one unconscious swatting of a mosquito! Unknowingly, you are destroying millions of bacteria everyday. Nor are all the varieties of papa-karma known to you; some are unknown also. Therefore, you cannot avoid doing papa-karma altogether.  Karma is conscious action.  A waterfall killing an animal does not beget karma-phala.