| The Impetus For This Site Here, I have some quotes from the March 23rd, 1995 broadcast of "The 700 Club." The program featured a report from India, in which Pat Robertson and his son have plenty of false information about Hinduism (I am a Hindu) to talk about. Basically, they are full of shit and incredibly insulting the whole time. Below, I have some quotes from the show. The Hinduism Today article which first brought this my attention is here. Below, everything in bold is a quote from the show, otherwise they are my words. Robertson: "They have thousands and thousands of earth stations picking up satellites. It's a window of opportunity [for Christian TV programs]. Of all of India's problems, one stands out from the rest. That problem is idol worship. It is said there are hundreds of millions of Hindu deities. All this has put a nation in bondage to spiritual forces that have deceived many for thousands of years." As anybody who knows a shred about Hinduism will tell you, Hindus do not think that an idol IS God; it is just a representation, a symbol. It is no more God to us than is a crucifix a God to a Christian. Also, Hinduism does not really have millions of deities. Hindu scriptures make it clear that there is one God; "the hundreds of millions of Hindu deities" are considered different aspects of that one God. I'm not going to comment on his last line here-its just baseless crap. Gordon Robertson (his son): "Wherever you find this type of idolatry, you'll find a grinding poverty. The land has been cursed. The Bible talks in terms of the land being cursed on behalf of what the inhabitants have done to it. You erect all these idols under every green tree, on top of every hill,you're going to curse your land. And the oppression, we see it in evidence." Pretty ludicrous. There are plenty of reasons for poverty in India, but only an ass would think it is because of the existence of carved stone statues. Cohost: "You said there's a connection between the New Age, as it is in America, and Hinduism." Robertson: "It's the same thing. You see, the whole concept of Hindus is based on karma; that people have a karma attached to them when they are born, and they go through a cycle of life and they come back in the next world as something else. So the whole thought of reincarnation is karma-you come back as a cow, a pig, a goat, a dog, a snake or an untouchable. We're importing Hinduism into America. The whole thought of your karma, of meditation, of the fact that there's no end of life and there's this endless wheel of life, this is all Hinduism. Chanting too. Many of those chants are to Hindu Gods-Vishnu, Hare Krishna. The origin of it is all demonic. We can't let that stuff come into America. We've got the best defense, if you will-a good offense." There are two parts about this that I like; the "demonic" part and the "We can't let that stuff come into America" part. The first because it so random and xenophobic, the second because it is so blatantly bigoted. |