if you want to start throwing "vedic" quotes left, right and centre it's probably better to look at what it involves ..... much like if you want to start making statements about specific details of astrophysics, it would probably pay to examine the nature of how they make their claims and what is actually being claimed.
Polytheistic Religions
- Thread starter BenTheMan
- Start date
kmguru
Staff member
Is it like how many blind people you need to describe an elephant?
probably more like how many zoologists does it take to identify an elephant
Buddhism doesn't take a particular stance; it's more a philosophy, and in the various nations it was exported to, it adopted the local gods.
Which is why, say, in China and many east Asian regions, people for the most part still believe in their ethnic religion and the gods of their traditional pantheons.
And the aforementioned of Shinto in Japan, and certain forms of Hinduism in India. Even the more "monotheist" forms of Hinduism are really more monist than monotheist, and still hold that many gods exist, albeit as facets of the Trimurti.
In addition, neopaganism is one the rise, particularly within the past 3 decades. According to various sources, there are between 500,000 and 1,000,000 Wiccans in North America alone, in addition to around the same number of other neopagan religions, like Asatru, neodruidism, Hellenism, etc.
Does God exist? Does God not exist? Buddha called them fruitless questions and did not say categorical yes or no.
Jainism categorically denies existence of God.
Hinduism does accept existence of God. At one time Nyaya sought to prove the existence of God. These proofs are the superset of all such proofs advanced by one so far. They were comprehensively refuted, not only by Jain and Buddhist philosophers, but by the other orthodox Hindu schools.
Buddhist philosophy does not refute existence of God, but only the proofs for existence thereof.