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causticusI adopted this list from "The Dharma Manifesto", which is a book by the American Vedic guru and scholar, Sri Dharma Pravartaka Acharya. I expanded on each of the 10 points:
1. All three Abrahamic religions have a shared acceptance of the teachings of the Old Testament (Hebrew) prophets. In addition to that, Christians have Jesus, and Muslims have Mohammad. The prophetic narrative places the historical Hebrew/Jewish people (whether they were a real nation or merely a literary contrivance of the post-exile priesthood) at the very center of both earthly and cosmic affairs. This narrative promotes the supremacy of Hebrew mythology and legal tradition over that of all other historical cultures.
2. Anthropomorphic Monotheism: The supreme god of Abrahamism is seen in very human terms, including his exhibition of such very human emotions as anger, jealously, prejudice and jealously. According to various Natural Way traditions, God is vastly beyond (to put it lightly) anything resembling human characteristics or attributes, and the association of God with such base things should be seen by any genuine seeker as being both supremely perverted and abominable. In a higher metaphysical sense, the vulgar anthropomorphization of the Godhead could be seen as the ultimate blasphemy.
3. Abrahamism, and its atheistic offshoot known as Marxism, promotes a profound sense of religious and ideological exclusivity, creating two strictly delineated camps of “believers” in opposition to everyone else. All of these religions and ideologies aim, in one way or another, at achieving some form of world domination. This renders all mobile and expansionist Abrahamic religions as globalist ideologies in both form and function. The largest of these religions have tirelessly worked over the centuries to subvert, undermine and destroy countless local cultures and their Natural Way traditions. By design, totalizing/monolithic religions will always undermine tribal, national and familial bonds, in favor of some abstract, globalized collective entity.
4. Sectarianism: The belief that there is only one true faith, and that any other form of religious expression external to the one truth faith is necessarily wrong. This belief has long been the wellspring of countless acts of religious fanaticism and the aggressive erasing of any and all history and tradition that contradicts the sectarian ideology being promoted.
5. And thus the acceptance of terrorism, violence, mob action, and aggressive missionary tactics to spread their religion. In other words, religion is spread “by any means necessary”; real harm and destructive consequences be damned.
6. A common sense of being at war to the death with the Dharmic (“pagan”), Gnostic and Perennialist world that preceded Abrahamic ascendancy. Again, there is the inherent tendency of Abrahamic ideology, in addition to its Marxist offshoots, to ruthlessly memory-hole anything that contradicts or questions the ideology in question. Those aspects of earlier traditions which don't overtly conflict with the ideology, are incorporated and re-contextualized as being a product of (as opposed to pre-exisiting) the ideology being promoted.
7. The centrality of unidirectional prayer to commune with their god, with systemic meditation practice playing either little or no part in the practice of their respective religions. Abrahamic ideology asserts a “one size fits all” spiritual regimen which ignores real differences in human personality type, the innate aptitudes of different individuals and other predispositions, in addition to glossing over the differing cultural and ethnic characteristics of various human populations. Every human group everywhere on the planet gets monolithically stamped with the same exact religious and spiritual mandate.
8. A rigid belief in the existence of angels, the devil, demonic spirits, and the like. Non-human spiritual beings or entities from other traditions usually get demonized or anathematized unless they are re-branded as angelic or sanitly figures. This inflexible cosmic dualism allows for no middle ground or nuance in the realm of various psychic and spiritual phenomena. Every form of intelligence in the universe is presented as being unequivocally good or evil.
9. All three teach bodily resurrection, the Final Judgment, the creation of the soul at the time of conception or birth (as opposed to the soul's pre-existence), the binding effects of sin, and so forth. These positions, when presented as literal dogma, contradict the teachings of the world's great Natural Way traditions. For example, Hindusim, Buddhism, Gnosticism and various Pagan/Native traditions have teachings of things like soul preexistence, soul transmigration and karma, in one form or another.
10. The importance of a holy day of the week set aside for prayer and rest, and the imposition of non-local and ideology-based holidays and festivals onto converted peoples. In all traditions preceding Abrahamic ascendancy, nearly all religious holidays and festivals were based on the changing of the seasons and natural cycles in general. The first stage in alienating various peoples from nature started with the redirection of religious festivities away from nature and instead toward the celebration of book-based events and other ideological features.
1. All three Abrahamic religions have a shared acceptance of the teachings of the Old Testament (Hebrew) prophets. In addition to that, Christians have Jesus, and Muslims have Mohammad. The prophetic narrative places the historical Hebrew/Jewish people (whether they were a real nation or merely a literary contrivance of the post-exile priesthood) at the very center of both earthly and cosmic affairs. This narrative promotes the supremacy of Hebrew mythology and legal tradition over that of all other historical cultures.
2. Anthropomorphic Monotheism: The supreme god of Abrahamism is seen in very human terms, including his exhibition of such very human emotions as anger, jealously, prejudice and jealously. According to various Natural Way traditions, God is vastly beyond (to put it lightly) anything resembling human characteristics or attributes, and the association of God with such base things should be seen by any genuine seeker as being both supremely perverted and abominable. In a higher metaphysical sense, the vulgar anthropomorphization of the Godhead could be seen as the ultimate blasphemy.
3. Abrahamism, and its atheistic offshoot known as Marxism, promotes a profound sense of religious and ideological exclusivity, creating two strictly delineated camps of “believers” in opposition to everyone else. All of these religions and ideologies aim, in one way or another, at achieving some form of world domination. This renders all mobile and expansionist Abrahamic religions as globalist ideologies in both form and function. The largest of these religions have tirelessly worked over the centuries to subvert, undermine and destroy countless local cultures and their Natural Way traditions. By design, totalizing/monolithic religions will always undermine tribal, national and familial bonds, in favor of some abstract, globalized collective entity.
4. Sectarianism: The belief that there is only one true faith, and that any other form of religious expression external to the one truth faith is necessarily wrong. This belief has long been the wellspring of countless acts of religious fanaticism and the aggressive erasing of any and all history and tradition that contradicts the sectarian ideology being promoted.
5. And thus the acceptance of terrorism, violence, mob action, and aggressive missionary tactics to spread their religion. In other words, religion is spread “by any means necessary”; real harm and destructive consequences be damned.
6. A common sense of being at war to the death with the Dharmic (“pagan”), Gnostic and Perennialist world that preceded Abrahamic ascendancy. Again, there is the inherent tendency of Abrahamic ideology, in addition to its Marxist offshoots, to ruthlessly memory-hole anything that contradicts or questions the ideology in question. Those aspects of earlier traditions which don't overtly conflict with the ideology, are incorporated and re-contextualized as being a product of (as opposed to pre-exisiting) the ideology being promoted.
7. The centrality of unidirectional prayer to commune with their god, with systemic meditation practice playing either little or no part in the practice of their respective religions. Abrahamic ideology asserts a “one size fits all” spiritual regimen which ignores real differences in human personality type, the innate aptitudes of different individuals and other predispositions, in addition to glossing over the differing cultural and ethnic characteristics of various human populations. Every human group everywhere on the planet gets monolithically stamped with the same exact religious and spiritual mandate.
8. A rigid belief in the existence of angels, the devil, demonic spirits, and the like. Non-human spiritual beings or entities from other traditions usually get demonized or anathematized unless they are re-branded as angelic or sanitly figures. This inflexible cosmic dualism allows for no middle ground or nuance in the realm of various psychic and spiritual phenomena. Every form of intelligence in the universe is presented as being unequivocally good or evil.
9. All three teach bodily resurrection, the Final Judgment, the creation of the soul at the time of conception or birth (as opposed to the soul's pre-existence), the binding effects of sin, and so forth. These positions, when presented as literal dogma, contradict the teachings of the world's great Natural Way traditions. For example, Hindusim, Buddhism, Gnosticism and various Pagan/Native traditions have teachings of things like soul preexistence, soul transmigration and karma, in one form or another.
10. The importance of a holy day of the week set aside for prayer and rest, and the imposition of non-local and ideology-based holidays and festivals onto converted peoples. In all traditions preceding Abrahamic ascendancy, nearly all religious holidays and festivals were based on the changing of the seasons and natural cycles in general. The first stage in alienating various peoples from nature started with the redirection of religious festivities away from nature and instead toward the celebration of book-based events and other ideological features.
