Post 3/
Elst has a section called don't create false problems.
a) According to Elst, Hindus discussing "polytheism" and "idolatry" to delineate what Hindus are/are not, are "creating false problems". He also mentioned how the Vedic Rishis wouldn't care whether they were polytheists or monotheists.
+ Not going to repeat how Hindus - including especially the Rishis - cannot be monotheists (by definition of monotheism), despite Elst thinking they didn't care either way (Vedic Rishis did take their manifest Gods seriously, no less so than Daoist "Rishis" or Hellenes etc).*
+ However: Hindus never "created" the problem. And sadly, it's a very 'real' problem in the sense that christianism plans to shove it in your face eventually.
Why do Hindus think that RSmith wrote Julian's Gods, with *that* title, with *that* inside flap, as an obvious response to false biographies about Julian and evil concoctions in alien scholarship about "Pagan Monotheism"* in Hellenismos? And why do people think a man like RSmith - someone who has obvious brains and skills, not to speak of his other apparent merits - should have devoted his efforts on that? He is
1. acquitting Julian of all kinds of false charges (that he was inventing and/or doing something like a "pagan monotheism" and/or subverting Hellenismos, when he was a typical Hellene);
and thereby
2. acquitting Hellenismos of those charges (that it supposedly was or was becoming a "pagan monotheism").
Note: it's not just Athanassiadi who was waxing eloquent on that concoction. And christo comments on several works manufacturing this very topic indicate exactly where christianism wants to take "pagan monotheism" to: to its logical conclusion -> "it all culminated naturally in christianism/it was all christianism=about jeebusjehovah all along." And not just one christo has indicated how *the same* works apply/can be applied to Hindu and Dao religions. It's used as an attack on Hellenismos and Hellenes, you know: christos repeatedly try to insinuate themselves and tell Hellenes "your ancient river of a religion actually ran out into the sea of pagan monotheism, so that's what you're *actually* meant to be." Do Hindus think they can take on a battle that already requires constant refuting by Hellenes?
Don't scoff at the western scholarship on the matter until you have read it. The enemies can and do rationalise "pagan monotheism" to a nicety - doesn't make it true. Yet it is this reasonable-sounding "rationalisation" that is bound to appeal to the more self-conceited among the angelsk-speaking vocalists (you know, the Self-Appointed new-agey "teachers of hinduism") and that the latter will pull their usual trick: they'll turn around and come back to peddle the poison among the Hindoos back home - to poison the Hindu tree - as they were programmed to do. (Note also how it's always only those people who have never seen the Gods who will claim they are "monotheists onlee"/"have one gawd onlee". Nobody else does it.)
More generally, christoislamism - and other monotheist religions - have *forced* the discussion of mono(poly)theism and idolatry onto heathens including Hindus, as was better explained at the YSEE.gr FAQ. It's going to be turned into Hindus' business to formulate the proper and complete answer: one that will at last silence your enemies on this point and protect your own from confusing itself. Hindus are neither monotheists nor idolators: they don't believe in any invisible monogawd nor other false gods (don't believe in the non-existent 'true god' nor in the non-existent 'false gods' of christian cosmology; indeed, Hindus don't subscribe to christian cosmology at all) and consequently don't worship images of "false gods".
Of course, christoislamism is a learning bot and will next try to attack Hindus in some other way on these same points as well as on others. It will go back to the drawing board and come up with further convoluted sophistry in its attempts to subvert (only while christianism is a minority, after which it will use more violence).
* And yet if it didn't supposedly matter to Plato (say) whether there are many Gods or not - image-worshipper that he was, IIRC we have this on Emperor Julian's own authority (and image-worship is for the numerous *manifest* Gods, whereas the [Platonist] unmanifest is not worshipped through images in Hellenismos but is worshipped through the manifest Gods, predictably/understandably) -
If it didn't matter to say Plato, then why would "neo"-Platonists have fought the christo-accusation of "you're actually a monotheism" tooth and nail even in the past? So let's not pretend it would "not matter" to Hindu Rishis or Daoist sages either, ja? Don't be ambivalent about monopolytheism, it's like being ambivalent about whether your religion is true (works) or not. It is indeed a "false problem", just not in the way Elst intimated, but rather in the way the fellow heathens - the Hellenes at YSEE.gr - clearly identified it: it's a trick question/mental manipulation that christos have prepared the answers to in advance.
I'm not saying that Hindus should go on and on discussing it - up to them what they do - but just tell your Hindus to have their answers prepared (like the YSEE FAQ is consciously prepared) and leave it at that. But there *is* an answer and it isn't Elst's "it doesn't really matter" shrug.
Insert: also, it looks as if Elst was busy writing about "monotheism" and "polytheism" in articles dated some months or so back, even going so far as critiquing modern missionising monotheisms in India himself. I wonder what made him do a 180 into dropping the subject and insisting everyone else drop it too, as if he never showed an interest in the subject let alone took a view of Hindu religion in terms of monopolytheism himself? (At that time, he *seems* to have decided "Hinduism" was polytheistic - though he now thinks it wasn't/didn't matter/whatever/"chill" - but will need to properly read his articles on the subject.)
And moreover, he's asking Hindus to drop the subject just at a time when some visible vocalists had at last started raising this issue in earnest. (Which Hindus must, if only to counteract the grand folly NRIs etc had committed in public in falsely declaring that Hindus were supposedly "monotheists". An error which may then once more have trickled onto the heathens back home, to subvert them into this falsehood.)
Elst has a section called don't create false problems.
a) According to Elst, Hindus discussing "polytheism" and "idolatry" to delineate what Hindus are/are not, are "creating false problems". He also mentioned how the Vedic Rishis wouldn't care whether they were polytheists or monotheists.
+ Not going to repeat how Hindus - including especially the Rishis - cannot be monotheists (by definition of monotheism), despite Elst thinking they didn't care either way (Vedic Rishis did take their manifest Gods seriously, no less so than Daoist "Rishis" or Hellenes etc).*
+ However: Hindus never "created" the problem. And sadly, it's a very 'real' problem in the sense that christianism plans to shove it in your face eventually.
Why do Hindus think that RSmith wrote Julian's Gods, with *that* title, with *that* inside flap, as an obvious response to false biographies about Julian and evil concoctions in alien scholarship about "Pagan Monotheism"* in Hellenismos? And why do people think a man like RSmith - someone who has obvious brains and skills, not to speak of his other apparent merits - should have devoted his efforts on that? He is
1. acquitting Julian of all kinds of false charges (that he was inventing and/or doing something like a "pagan monotheism" and/or subverting Hellenismos, when he was a typical Hellene);
and thereby
2. acquitting Hellenismos of those charges (that it supposedly was or was becoming a "pagan monotheism").
Note: it's not just Athanassiadi who was waxing eloquent on that concoction. And christo comments on several works manufacturing this very topic indicate exactly where christianism wants to take "pagan monotheism" to: to its logical conclusion -> "it all culminated naturally in christianism/it was all christianism=about jeebusjehovah all along." And not just one christo has indicated how *the same* works apply/can be applied to Hindu and Dao religions. It's used as an attack on Hellenismos and Hellenes, you know: christos repeatedly try to insinuate themselves and tell Hellenes "your ancient river of a religion actually ran out into the sea of pagan monotheism, so that's what you're *actually* meant to be." Do Hindus think they can take on a battle that already requires constant refuting by Hellenes?
Don't scoff at the western scholarship on the matter until you have read it. The enemies can and do rationalise "pagan monotheism" to a nicety - doesn't make it true. Yet it is this reasonable-sounding "rationalisation" that is bound to appeal to the more self-conceited among the angelsk-speaking vocalists (you know, the Self-Appointed new-agey "teachers of hinduism") and that the latter will pull their usual trick: they'll turn around and come back to peddle the poison among the Hindoos back home - to poison the Hindu tree - as they were programmed to do. (Note also how it's always only those people who have never seen the Gods who will claim they are "monotheists onlee"/"have one gawd onlee". Nobody else does it.)
More generally, christoislamism - and other monotheist religions - have *forced* the discussion of mono(poly)theism and idolatry onto heathens including Hindus, as was better explained at the YSEE.gr FAQ. It's going to be turned into Hindus' business to formulate the proper and complete answer: one that will at last silence your enemies on this point and protect your own from confusing itself. Hindus are neither monotheists nor idolators: they don't believe in any invisible monogawd nor other false gods (don't believe in the non-existent 'true god' nor in the non-existent 'false gods' of christian cosmology; indeed, Hindus don't subscribe to christian cosmology at all) and consequently don't worship images of "false gods".
Of course, christoislamism is a learning bot and will next try to attack Hindus in some other way on these same points as well as on others. It will go back to the drawing board and come up with further convoluted sophistry in its attempts to subvert (only while christianism is a minority, after which it will use more violence).
* And yet if it didn't supposedly matter to Plato (say) whether there are many Gods or not - image-worshipper that he was, IIRC we have this on Emperor Julian's own authority (and image-worship is for the numerous *manifest* Gods, whereas the [Platonist] unmanifest is not worshipped through images in Hellenismos but is worshipped through the manifest Gods, predictably/understandably) -
If it didn't matter to say Plato, then why would "neo"-Platonists have fought the christo-accusation of "you're actually a monotheism" tooth and nail even in the past? So let's not pretend it would "not matter" to Hindu Rishis or Daoist sages either, ja? Don't be ambivalent about monopolytheism, it's like being ambivalent about whether your religion is true (works) or not. It is indeed a "false problem", just not in the way Elst intimated, but rather in the way the fellow heathens - the Hellenes at YSEE.gr - clearly identified it: it's a trick question/mental manipulation that christos have prepared the answers to in advance.
I'm not saying that Hindus should go on and on discussing it - up to them what they do - but just tell your Hindus to have their answers prepared (like the YSEE FAQ is consciously prepared) and leave it at that. But there *is* an answer and it isn't Elst's "it doesn't really matter" shrug.
Insert: also, it looks as if Elst was busy writing about "monotheism" and "polytheism" in articles dated some months or so back, even going so far as critiquing modern missionising monotheisms in India himself. I wonder what made him do a 180 into dropping the subject and insisting everyone else drop it too, as if he never showed an interest in the subject let alone took a view of Hindu religion in terms of monopolytheism himself? (At that time, he *seems* to have decided "Hinduism" was polytheistic - though he now thinks it wasn't/didn't matter/whatever/"chill" - but will need to properly read his articles on the subject.)
And moreover, he's asking Hindus to drop the subject just at a time when some visible vocalists had at last started raising this issue in earnest. (Which Hindus must, if only to counteract the grand folly NRIs etc had committed in public in falsely declaring that Hindus were supposedly "monotheists". An error which may then once more have trickled onto the heathens back home, to subvert them into this falsehood.)
Death to traitors.