SOME SALIENT POINTS OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS AND HINDUISM

SOME SALIENT POINTS OF DIFFERENCE BETWEEN THE ABRAHAMIC RELIGIONS AND HINDUISM 

Islam and Christianity are based on arbitrary assumptions imposed upon their followers whereas Hinduism is founded on realisable philosophical truths. Islam and Christianity demand unquestioning obedience to doctrine whereas Hinduism exhorts you to question and seek solutions in the depths of meditative experience. Prophetic religions which all three Abrahamic religions, namely, Judaism, Christianity and Islam, are, aver that spiritual revelations are uniquely delivered by the Divine to prophets and cannot be experienced by others, however holy they may be. This is exclusiveness at source which makes Abrahamic faiths necessarily intolerant, exacting and demanding unquestioning obedience of doctrine. On the contrary, Hinduism avers that truth is accessible to all as truth is universal and the human bodily apparatus is organically capable of experiencing its transcendental existential truth which God or the Self (Atman) is. Abrahamic religions keep God in the high heavens apart from the universe  whereas Hinduism has God immanent in and manifest as Nature. Abrahamic religions believe in a Creator God whereas Hinduism holds the very idea of creation an impossibility as something cannot come from nothing, for, if it did, it would violate the conservation principle. God in Hinduism is both transcendental and immanent and is manifest as Nature and living beings. Everything is God in lesser or greater degree of divine manifestation.

Written by Sugata Bose