--- In [email protected], "jim_flanegin" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > --- In [email protected], TurquoiseB <no_reply@> wrote: > <snip> Sacrifice gains spiritual favor and ascendancy in divinity. > > The Ribhus gained immortality through their zealous > > sacrificing (Rig 1.110.4). Sacrifice was to enbue the > > sacrificer with power and wealth from the gods (Rig 1.111.2). > > When reading the [translated] Veda, it is like the Bible, not > to be read literally, but rather as descriptions of inner states. > Just as Christian fundamentalists misinterpret the knowledge of > the Bible when reading it literally, so do Vedic fundamentalists > misintepret the Veda, as you have done, when reading it literally.
Yeah, that's pretty much what all True Believers say when their scriptures are challenged. "The scriptures don't really say what they say. If you were as evolved as we are, and knew all the esoteric stuff we know, you'd know what they *really* say." :-) Jim, you're talking about a culture that clearly believed that the gods they believed in were real and ran everything, and that the way to gain their favor was to kill animals and offer their guts to these gods on a platter. No problem with that; many cultures believed the same thing. But to pretend that the Vedic culture *didn't* believe this, and pretend that these practices are a "misinterpretation" is ludicrous. "Vedic" isn't what you want it to be; it's what it *was*, both the parts that make sense in today's world and the parts that don't.
