by arviguji13 (Posted Mon Dec 23, 2013 7:31 am)
People seemed to have misunderstood what I said. No I didn't say Westerners actually 'created' new religions.
They came to these different places like India, China, Africa and whatever practices they saw there, they saw it as religion. For example, when a British trader came to 16th century India and saw an Indian bowing before a statue/idol of Ganesha, he immediately sees and labels it as a religious practice. He doesn't even consider the possibility that this might not be a religious practice.
So they didn't invent actual religions, Westerners just described how they experienced these different cultures and in the process 'invented' concepts like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism. These entities only exist in universities and textbooks. There is no correspondence between the concept of Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and any reality in the world.
These so called religions do not exist.
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People seemed to have misunderstood what I said. No I didn't say Westerners actually 'created' new religions.
They came to these different places like India, China, Africa and whatever practices they saw there, they saw it as religion. For example, when a British trader came to 16th century India and saw an Indian bowing before a statue/idol of Ganesha, he immediately sees and labels it as a religious practice. He doesn't even consider the possibility that this might not be a religious practice.
So they didn't invent actual religions, Westerners just described how they experienced these different cultures and in the process 'invented' concepts like Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism. These entities only exist in universities and textbooks. There is no correspondence between the concept of Hinduism, Buddhism, Shintoism and any reality in the world.
These so called religions do not exist.
Read Main Topic