Hindus Propose Giant Monkey God Statue On Oklahoma Capitol Grounds

Not sure if anyone noticed, but the Ten Commandments monument was smashed. Interestingly, there was also a lawsuit brought by the ACLU on behalf of Christians to have it removed - which they lost.

The plaintiffs in this case do not seek the removal of the Ten Commandments monument from the state capitol lawn because they find the text of the monument offensive, but rather because, like many Oklahomans, the Ten Commandments constitute a core part of their sincerely held religious beliefs and it is offensive to them that this sacred document has been hijacked by politicians.

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This should be interesting. It might be easier for courts to reject the Satanists’ arguments since in many respects Satanism is more of a long-running gag designed to annoy religious conservatives than a bona-fide religion in and of itself, but Hinduism is at least as old as Christianity and has almost a billion followers.

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Boker tov! Moses smashed those like 3500 years ago when he came off mt. sinai saw the golden calf orgy, geeze get with ancient history!

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The link at rajanzed.com is now returning a 404 not found. Google tells me that a year ago, some Hindus said they will fill out the application. Anyone have a decent link about this story (something more credible than addictinginfo)?

The ceremonial deism argument can cut both ways. Since most modern monotheists usually just use a generic word for “god” instead of actually naming theirs, one could just as easily inject Hinduism by glossing over Hanuman as “God” the same way Christians might sneak Jehovah in as “God”. They didn’t invent deniability! If you don’t specify your god, you get what you get. Honestly, real Deism is closer to Buddhism IMO than it is to contemporary Christianity anyway.

So how about a statue of Marduk holding a copy of the Code of Hammurabi? If they’re going to claim that the Ten Commandments are the basis of US law and that’s why they deserve to be represented by a statue, I think it would be hard for them to claim with a straight face that one of the oldest known legal codes isn’t also an ancestor of US law and so also deserves a statue.

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It wasn’t their plan. It was what they presented as their plan.

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Because, indeed, it wasn’t their plan - that was just their excuse as to why the 10 commandments monument didn’t constitute state establishment of religion when pressed by the ACLU - but now that they’ve said it’s their plan…

Ok, I get what you’re saying. I guess it was hard for me to believe that they would be so thick as to not realize that their reasoning would also apply to others.

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In fact, I remember good ol’ Mr. O’Reilly last year (during the latest iteration of the War On Christmas, or whatever it’s called now) was resorting to the argument that Christianity is a philosophy and not a religion.

So, by that reasoning the Ten Commandments would clearly be a monument to a philosophy and thus completely different from a Giant Monkey God Statue. But what other philosophies might have monuments?

I’ve had my Nihilist monument installed there for ages, and nobody’s complained yet.

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but the new update is so much more interesting:

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Sure, because Sri Baba O’Reilly is an expert on such matters, along with his other many qualifications.

This is easily disproven even the very name “Commandments”, direct religious revelation puts this squarely in the religion camp. And to seal the deal, the same religious fundamentalists tend to be hostile to philosophy, since in encourages comparative religious study, along with other ideas. Even if we forget about Hanuman and offer work commemorating other philosophers, they are still going to kvetch. Are we going to see monuments to Plato and Nietzsche then?

[quote=“popobawa4u, post:33, topic:45027”]This is easily disproven even the very name “Commandments”, direct religious revelation puts this squarely in the religion camp.[/quote]But there are nonreligious concepts with names like the Categorical Imperative.[quote]Are we going to see monuments to Plato and Nietzsche then?[/quote]It might be interesting, but is there anything in that area that lends itself particularly well to the same kind of representational statuary? A statue of Plato or Nietzsche would just look like a statue of a man.

Sure, but these are a specific set of commandments, hence the proper name. If the statue had ten different commandments then the ones the supporters were expecting, they would need to balk on scriptural grounds. “Hey, they represent a philosophy - what have you got to complain about? Since it’s not religion, it doesn’t need to be a specific philosophy, does it?”

Just like a statue of Moses would look like… however Moses looked. I said monuments to other philosophers, not of other philosophers. They could be text, like the first one was.

SCOTUS does not have 5 conservative christian (almost dead) white males on it. Stephen Breyer is a liberal Jew.

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Shoulda used Kali.

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There is an old story about the astronaut who went far out into space and was asked upon his return whether he had been to heaven and seen God.

"Yes," he said.

"Well, what about God?"

"She is black."
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That’s not “more monkeys,” it’s images of Rama and Sita engraved on Hanuman’s heart.

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Brilliant! There is no Constitutional guarantee of freedom of philosophy!