22AR27-44

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AR 27:44 - God-men and ... con-men

In this issue:

HINDUISM - impatience with India's abusive (and shamelessly unscientific) "god-men"

POLITICS - as LGBTQ activism extends its reach, "politics has become religious"

REASON - now it's "stochastic terrorism," or is it?

Apologia Report 27:44 (1,597)
December 24, 2022

Please note: This is our last issue for 2022. Let the Christmas break begin! Look for AR to show up again the week of January 1st.

HINDUISM

A chat comes to mind that I (RP) once had with an editor at Hinduism Today <www.bit.ly/3YtuwVt> about Walter Martin’s book The Kingdom of the Cults. From his perspective, it only covered "Christian cults." On occasion we gain a fresh perspective into how other cultures perceive what are widely considered cultic movements.

"On Gurus, Godmen & Conmen" by Jayakhosh Chidambaran in Madras Courier, Nov 1 '22 ("the first newspaper of the Madras Presidency, British India, 1785"), offers a social diagnosis from a secular, "scientific" Indian perspective.

Article summary: "Behind the deceptive mask of India's socio-economic advancement and scientific establishments, ushering in the digital and space age, lies a vast majority of the population, from the elitist to the ignorant, who are equally vulnerable and obsessed with myths and legends. Most are believers in superstitions and fairy tales and, invariably, credulous patrons of religious obscurantism and magic. Their intellectual and rational faculties cannot delineate fact and fiction. They look deep into the past to create a future. It seems that India's science education is not scientific enough to permeate a pan-Indian scientific temper."

It begins: "The self-appointed Godmen of the twentieth century eschewed asceticism and chose a life of opulence, fanfare & power-politics. ...

"The Vedic precept of salvation was exclusively sacrificial in nature and concept, and it wasn't until the age of Vedanta or Upanishads (when the focus shifted to Jnana or knowledge as the pre-requisite of 'moksha' or liberation of the soul from the cycle of re-birth) did the need of a Guru warrant to impart that eclectic knowledge. The Pauranika and Tantrika schools of thought in AD 300 transformed Guruism into an institutional lineage, doctrinally sectarian and with the advent of Sikhism in the 15th century, the institution of Guru was redefined structurally into a religio-military entity of the Godman.

"An existential vacuum pervaded the West with the fall of Christianity and the rise of science and rationalistic epistemology, the principle of acquisition of knowledge and unravelling of truth through rational means and empirical evidence."

This, in turn, "provided a fertile ground for exporting Guruism to the West as an alternative, a new counterculture. Maharishi Mahesh Yogi and Swami Prabhupada led this spiritual renaissance in the West in the rebellious 1960s, long after Swami Vivekananda delivered his historic sermon at the [1893] World Parliament of Religions in Chicago, heralding the resurgence of Hindu mysticism and spirituality. ...

"In India, renowned as the cradle of spirituality and mysticism, the ancient tradition of the Gurukula system was metamorphosing into Godmen, the 'realised soul', the supreme authority, synchronised with the unitary consciousness of the ultimate reality or Brahman, in the true spirit of monism. The Godman hailing from a non-brahmin caste in the rigid caste hierarchy of India was perceived as a saviour, liberating the faithful from the oppressive class dominance, ostensibly offering them a mediator for their salvation and a wellspring of spiritual nourishment. ...

"The nobility of mission and purity of purpose, witnessed by great spiritual leaders like Ramakrishna Paramahansa, Mahatma Gandhi, Rabindranath Tagore and Paramahansa Yogananda made India the finest exemplar of spirituality, was ruefully and irretrievably lost in the pursuit of wealth and power of the modern-day Indian Godmen. ...

"A quintessential case is Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh, a rape convict and his Dera Sacha Sauda religious cult, whose charitable trusts provided free food and education to millions of its followers. The underprivileged Sikhs who had converted from Hinduism, escaping oppression and ostracism from their lower caste status, realised that class division is deeply entrenched in Sikhism, too. However, its cardinal message is equality. ...

"Most of these acclaimed Godmen have been convicted of murder, rape, sexual assault and running prostitution rackets in recent years after numerous allegations of sexual orgies and excesses perpetrated in their precincts. Asaram Bapu, Swami Bhimanand, Sant Rampal, Swami Premananda, Santhosh Madhavan, and Swami Sadachari are a few prominent ones, among other scoundrels, who are implicated and currently serving prison sentences, for their various acts of felony, from murder, rape, sexual abuse, financial fraud, cheating and misappropriation. ...

"The most entertaining and comical of the lot is Swami Nithyananda, currently a fugitive, wanted by Interpol for allegations of kidnapping and confinement of children to collect donations for his hermitage in Ahmedabad."

And beware: the "proprietary Shambhavi Mahamudra Yoga" (aka Inner Engineering) of Sadhguru (aka Jaggi Vasudev) and its alleged "positive correlation with neuronal brain regeneration and similar absurdities ... are highly unscientific, fallacious and ridiculous."

Chidambaran appears to have lost patience with India's slowness to adopt the West's secular values. How widely felt this is, of course, we cannot be certain - even though it may seem oddly familiar to many of our readers. <www.bit.ly/3BHvkfs>

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POLITICS

"The Fourth Phase: Persecution? by Peter Jones of TruthXchange -- "Aaron Renn, a writer for First Things, confirms something I have been thinking for some time: politics has become religious."

En route to this conclusion, Jones reports: "On the Protestant Reformed side, the decisions of Calvin University are disturbing. The school's board recently chose to allow LGBTQ-affirming faculty to remain as recognized professors, even those who offer statements that they are not in agreement with the church's confessional beliefs on homosexuality. 'The big story here is that a college that has claimed evangelical identity for more than a century, completely owned by a denomination that has raised its affirmation of biblical sexuality to confessional status, is surrendering to the sexual and gender revolution.'"

Next, a close examination of the LGBTQ agenda reveals its ultimate goal: "to expose 'childhood innocence' as an 'oppressive heteropatriarchal illusion,' to make 'queer thinking' the future 'moral order' of society. Their task, they say, is to disrupt the 'binary between womanhood and manhood,' seed the room with 'gender-transgressive themes,' and break the 'reproductive futurity' of the 'nuclear family' and the 'sexually monogamous marriage'—all of which are considered mechanisms of heterosexual, capitalist oppression."

The folks behind the radical lobby known as the Human Rights Campaign, predict that "by 2040, one in five Texas voters will be part of the group. '(LGBTQ voters are) emerging as among one of the most influential voting constituencies in the country, whose impact will permanently transform and reshape the American electoral landscape.'"

All of which leads Jones to ask: "What will happen when the moral high ground is held by the LGBTQ community?" Jones discusses a very possible trajectory, and concludes: "I beg all Christian pastors and youth leaders to dig deeply in understanding the theological connections with today's sexual behaviors and then to train your young people to understand the issues and to stand firm, while reaching out to their friends with the gospel." <www.bit.ly/3W9WBzp>

And these are merely the waypoints of Jones' analysis. You'll want to trace his path to consider the trajectory for yourself.

But whatever you do ... watch, and pray.

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REASON

Apparently it all began with the Autumn 2022 City Journal feature "The Real Story Behind Drag Queen Story Hour (Aimed at children, the phenomenon is far more subversive than its defenders claim)," <www.bit.ly/3Wpgy51> by anti-woke activist Christopher F. Rufo. <www.bit.ly/3Wpgy51> It must have been effective. Rufo's writing was attacked in a Nov 5 '22 opinion piece <www.bit.ly/3je9XvW> by frequent Scientific American contributor <www.bit.ly/3Wt0qzu> Bryn Nelson.

Nelson labels Rufo's report an example of "stochastic terrorism," which he creatively defines as "ideologically driven hate speech" that "increases the likelihood of unpredictable acts of violence." (Replying to Nelson, Rufo explains that "Under the concept of 'stochastic terrorism,' logic, evidence, and causality are irrelevant. Any incident of violence can be politicized and attributed to any ideological opponent, regardless of facts.")

Nelson's purported evidence of Rufo's guilt for such "terrorism" includes a Fox News interview with Tucker Carlson which aired the very day that Nelson's *Scientific* piece is dated. In it Nelson asserts that the interview influenced David DePape, who was "radicalized by 'QAnon' conspiracy theories about 'Democratic, Satan-worshipping pedophiles,' [and who then] broke into the Pelosi residence and attacked Paul Pelosi with a hammer." (Happens all the time.)

Rufo's Nov 14 response to Nelson in City Journal observes Leftist influencers: "never attribute fire-bombings against pro-life pregnancy centers, arson attacks against Christian churches, or the attempted assassination of a Supreme Court justice to mere argumentation of left-wing activists, such as, say, opposition to the Court's decision in Dobbs. In those cases, the Left correctly adopts the principle that it is incitement, rather than opinion, that constitutes a crime - but conveniently forgets that standard as soon as the debate shifts to the movement's conservative opponents.

"In recent years, the Left has not only monopolized the concept of 'stochastic terrorism' but also built a growing apparatus for enforcing it." Rufo concludes that "the politics of fighting back are more complex. It will require dislodging a network of professionals who see the concept of 'stochastic terror' as a path to power." <www.bit.ly/3uYuEPf>

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