theophiles.org - Tulsi Gabbard, First Hindu Elected To Congress, Will Swear In On Bhagavad Gita, Sacred Hindu Text

Tulsi Gabbard, First Hindu Elected To Congress, Will Swear In On Bhagavad Gita, Sacred Hindu Text

Written by holmegm

Tuesday, 20 November 2012 12:10

From Huffington Post:

When Tulsi Gabbard, a Hawaii resident who made history this month at the first Hindu elected to Congress, attends her swearing in ceremony in January, she's poised to mark another first in American politics: Gabbard will take her oath over the Bhagavad Gita, a sacred Hindu text.
While no religious ceremony is legally required for those elected to Congress and the Senate, many choose to take oaths of office over Christian and Jewish texts, and Minnesota Rep. Keith Ellison, a Muslim, took his oath over a Quran. But Gabbard's use of a non-Abrahamic text will be unique and is symbolic of the growing religious diversity of Congress.

Comments

holmegm

|2012-11-20 15:47:30

Going to make a comment just to poke the site ...

"I'm not dead yet!"

laika

|2012-11-23 20:56:50

Surely the old TheoPhiles gang will get off the cart before the club comes down...

holmegm

|2012-11-21 06:09:41

A rather provocative question about this contained here:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/3338 30/old-time-religion-daniel-foster

PineHall - Disappointment

|2012-11-22 20:11:11

holmegm wrote:

A rather provocative question about this contained here:

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/333830/o...

I am disappointed in Marco Rubio's response. The article says he is Catholic. He could have said my Catholic faith has no problem with what science says the age of the earth is. Instead he babbles about 7 days or 7 eras, and misses the detail that it is 6 days of creation in Genesis 1, not 7. It sounds he needs to be informed what the young earth creation position really is. I think he said what he said was not to offend some of his more conservative supporters.

I am disappointed in the author of the opinion piece, Daniel Foster, who first incorrectly says
"Rubio’s Catholic faith doesn’t leave him an easy parry to GQ’s question" and then later correctly says 'the Vatican’s rejection of both “crude creationism” and “intelligent design” and its affirmation that the Bible is not “a source of scientific knowledge”'. Those 2 sentences are contradictory, but the sound good and helps make the point.

I am disappointed in GQ. The author is right in that GQ "asking Marco Rubio about the age of the universe was an invitation to out himself as an anti-scientific rube, not an invitation to reflect on the intersection of religious and scientific truths". It seems the point of the question was to put down Marco Rubio. It is a question asked not of Democrats but only of conservative Republicans. Why is that?

Finally, I find that like most Americans, politicians who say they are Christian have no idea what traditional Christian beliefs really are. I wonder about Marco Rubio. And that is disappointing.

laika - re: Disappointment

|2012-11-23 20:42:09

PineHall wrote:

I am disappointed in Marco Rubio's response. The article says he is Catholic. He could have said my Catholic faith has no problem with what science says the age of the earth is.

But he represents a large and diverse state. The Jewish and Catholic in South Florida might not be troubled by such an answer from a politician, but go north, especially the panhandle, and he might run into problems.

holmegm

|2012-12-03 13:16:14

Apparently the same answer plays well in Chicago, if the "right" person is giving it:

Who Said It: Marco Rubio or Barack Obama?

Quote:

And here's then-Sen. Obama, D-Ill., speaking at the Compassion Forum at Messiah College in Grantham, Pa. on April 13, 2008:

Q: Senator, if one of your daughters asked you—and maybe they already have—“Daddy, did god really create the world in 6 days?,” what would you say?

A: What I've said to them is that I believe that God created the universe and that the six days in the Bible may not be six days as we understand it … it may not be 24-hour days, and that's what I believe. I know there's always a debate between those who read the Bible literally and those who don't, and I think it's a legitimate debate within the Christian community of which I'm a part. My belief is that the story that the Bible tells about God creating this magnificent Earth on which we live—that is essentially true, that is fundamentally true. Now, whether it happened exactly as we might understand it reading the text of the Bible: That, I don't presume to know.

PineHall - Very interesting

|2012-12-04 09:46:35

So Rubio can point to President Obama and say "My answer is the same as his. Why are you giving me a hard time?"

holmegm - re: Very interesting

|2012-12-27 15:09:01

PineHall wrote:

So Rubio can point to President Obama and say "My answer is the same as his. Why are you giving me a hard time?"

Precisely :)

holmegm

|2012-11-25 15:06:40

The National Review article author makes an excellent point, though, in that nobody is asking Tulsi Gabbard if we are "in the 51st year of the present Brahma and so about 156 trillion years have elapsed since He was born as Brahma."

It would be equally relevant to whatever Rubio might think about the age of the Earth, no? And equally irreconcilable with the mandatory scientific cosmology?

holmegm

|2012-11-25 15:18:49

Or for that matter, ask any Christian politician whether they believe that a person three days dead can be raised to life.

PineHall - Resurrection MIracle

|2012-11-25 17:53:39

The Resurrection is the biggie. I can think of 3 reasons they would not ask about that.

1) It would make the questioner look anti-Christian.

2) Alot of Democrats would say yes too. And that would not differentiate between Democrats and right wing Republicans.

3) Also science has no potential evidence to the contray for Jesus resurrection whereas in creation they do. And because an observable physical miracle is extremely rare and a miracle does not fit in the framework of science, nonbelievers tend to just ignore and discount it.

whitemice - Loaded Questions

|2013-01-14 20:00:31

>they believe that a person three days dead can be raised to life

But there are assumptions built into any question or any dialog.

I believe in the resurrection. But if you asked me that question my answer would be solidly "no". I've got no way of raising a person from the dead, I'm aware of nobody who has such means. Isn't there a difference between "Can God, the Lord of Hosts, raise a person from the dead after so many days?" and "Can someone be raised from the dead?" First question: Yes, Second question: No. If you want me to answer that question in the affirmative you need to make it clear your question includes by-extraordinary-means; otherwise I'll interpret [correctly] your question as within the scope of ordinary means.

My point is that religious understanding / theology and sound-bite or verse quoting style discourse is simply incompatible.

PineHall - missed it

|2012-11-25 17:26:38

Ahh, I did not catch that. Good point!

whitemice - No issue

|2013-01-14 20:07:01

> While no religious ceremony is legally required
> for those elected to Congress and the Senate,
> many choose to take oaths of office over
> Christian and Jewish texts

That pretty much answers it for me.

But in another way I welcome this. 'Hipster' laissez faire (apathetic) secularism is, IMNSHO, the single greatest threat to civilized society to ever march across the and. They call them "Nones" now apparently.

I'd choose a society comprised of loudly diverse religious groups, including the various types of paganism, over a secular one. Hands down.

Nothing is more frightening than the morally smug person with no particular convictions. Those who refer to themselves as "spiritual but not religious".

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Our valuable member holmegm has been with us since Thursday, 03 April 2008.

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