Worms respond to stimuli (try dissecting one and watch them squirm). Insects are able to perceive light and dark, heat and cold. They perceive threat (try to swat a housefly with your hand). Some studies suggest insects can be trained in a Pavlovian sense.

You're obviously being deliberately obscure and leading. Where are you going with this?

And you believe insects and worms to be 'sentient' ? Correct?

I would think you would know this. Sentience is a function of consciousness that involves the mental and physical ability to perceive or feel things.

What do you think a ‘sentient being’ is ?

By no particularity I explained that I mean no distinction between elements or characteristics, no diversity or distinctions basic to reality at all. There would only be an eternal unified oneness, with not even the possibility of any subject-object relationships between two distinct things. This would be panthiesm. And if the universe is pantheistic, where God is all and all is God, then there is no possibility of personality.

By "blank unity" I explained that ultimate reality is a bare unity about which nothing may be said. All is one and one is all. In Buddhism, an off-shoot of Hinduism, ultimate reality is non-personal and therefore anti-social. Hinduism is similar. Joe Boot writes, "Acknowledging a pantheon of gods expressing the impersonal one of Brahman, the Hindu is not able to break out of an endless succession of ages and rebirths. It is again a fundamentally anti-social perspective since its inherent caste system designates some people as outcasts because they were born into the wrong family. There is no vision of a new humanity where caste distinctions are overcome. There is no social justice in these mythic concepts because these Eastern religions can give no meaning to the fact that man is a social being, nor can they account for his real personhood. The monadic conception of God within Islam leads to similar problems. God is so transcendent and remote he is likewise an unknown God. As a singularity, this unknown God is an impersonal unity and this leads to a unitary and totalitarian understanding of the state and often a cruel indifference to persons. Life is all too cheap in Islam because an unknowable and impersonal God has not revealed himself as a divine community of love, but rather 'unveils' arbitrary will, mediated through a medieval warlord. For such a god, nothing social can reflect his nature or be essential to his being—indeed they are foreign to his being. Why would such a god want any society and what would be the purpose and meaning of it?"

> …no particularity, but only a blank unity.

What do you mean by ‘particularity’ and by ‘blank unity’ ?

Thank you for the conversation. It is always enjoyable to talk with someone who is both respectful and interested in honest dialogue.

> How come, in your understanding, if the universe is not the creation of a personal God, there isn't a foundation for love, knowledge, morality or ethics?

If the universe is not the creation of a personal God, then there can be no personality in the universe. The effect cannot be greater than the cause, and the resultant reality cannot include elements that were not there to begin with. You can't put in carrots, zucchini, and tomatoes and end up with apples, strawberries, and eggs. If all the universe has is impersonal energy, impersonal matter, impersonal chemicals, and impersonal forces, you can't end up with personality.

Love: As far as we know, and consonant with how we define love, it is necessarily personal. Only personal entities love, and not impersonal ones like trees, rocks, or flowers. And as far as we can tell, even sentient beings, such as insects or worms, do not show or experience love. It seems, as far as we know, that only more advanced sentient beings, or what we might call personal beings, show or experience love. It is a necessarily conscious decision and emotion known only to personal beings.

Knowledge: Knowledge is the function of a personal, conscious recognizing coherent patterns and submitting to their reality. It is an ultimately personal endeavor. Knowledge is what is acquired and appropriated by sentient beings. All knowledge is somebody's knowledge.

Morality and ethics: We can only understand right and wrong if these concepts have a standard by which to define them and judge them. And if there is such a standard, then that standard has its origin in someone. Every time the question of evil is raised, it is either by a person or about a person (including conscious, sentient animals). The question itself assumes the worthiness of asking it (because then good and evil have meaning). But it is a worthy question only if conscious, sentient beings (people and animals) have intrinsic worth, or good and evil are meaningless concepts. And the only reason people have intrinsic worth is if they are the creations of a personal being who is of ultimate worth: God. The question of good and evil self-destructs for the naturalist or the pantheist; it is valid only in the context of personality.

> Hinduism certainly does have morality and ethics. Take the Yoga school of philosophy within Hinduism.

Thank you for the links. To be honest, I find Hinduism complex and obfuscatory. From all my research into various religions, I have come to the conclusion that one can only truly understand a religion from the inside as a practitioner. Without that personal commitment and experience, it's just research that doesn't show the whole or the true picture.

> You don't need The Divine to be personal to have ethics or morality.

I agree that you don't need the Divine to have ethics or morality, but I think you have to have the Divine for ethics or morality to have a rational basis. Without a standard outside of humanity, in my opinion, morality is often nothing more than the preferences of the individual, a position I find untenable since countless immoralities have been perpetrated by people on the basis of what seemed right to them.

Thanks for this really respectful and philosophically interesting critique. It really made me think.

How come, in your understanding, if the universe is not the creation of a personal God, there isn't a foundation for love, knowledge, morality or ethics?

Hinduism certainly does have morality and ethics. Take the Yoga school of philosophy within Hinduism.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamas
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niyama
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ahimsa

You don't need The Divine to be personal to have ethics or morality.

Theologically a pantheistic religion like Hinduism never made sense to me because because it ascribes different personalities to different deities and doesn’t stress necessity of faith. Because of this, I always wondered why these gods/goddesses seemingly don’t care enough about humanity to, you know, interact directly with us?

Philosophically it doesn’t make sense because it is very flexible. You can twist it and turn it to mean basically whatever you want it to, which is why some of its doctrines are popular with Western kids. Religion can be pretty hip and cool when you can shift it around to be effortless and interesting.

The Bible presents a world that we see. It presents a world where evil is real (as opposed to other religions like Hinduism), and where God lets things take their course but intervenes to keep his plan of redemption on track. It portrays humanity as noble but hopelessly lost, moral but corruptible, both good and evil, torn between self and others, having a conscience, knowing purpose, aware of morality, acknowledging beauty, capable of creativity, but in some ways animalistic and capable of horrific behavior. We see all these things in real life.

A true religion must engage the whole of the human nature, not just the mind and not just the emotions. It can't possibly just be about swaying to the music, entranced and brainless, caught up in the rhythms, spells, notions and potions. By the same token, it can't possibly just be about deep philosophy, ironing out theological conundrums, connecting intellectually with the mysteries of the universe and transcending humanity to enter the divine. True religion engages the mind and can fulfill the most intellectual queries, but at the same time enjoy expression, joy, uplifting emotions and the pull of our hearts. True religion is for the scholar and the child, the upper and lower caste, the patrician and the plebeian, the civilized and the barbarian, the slave and the free, the man and the woman, the scientist and the poet. Christianity conforms to these categories.

A true religion must make sense out of history. It doesn't function above it or without it, compete against it or necessarily endorse it. Christianity (in contrast to Hinduism and Buddhism) is a historical religion where God works in history and among history, accomplishing his purposes, involved in people's lives, bringing out the redemption of all creation.A true religion must makes sense out of science. It doesn't function above it or without it, compete against it or necessarily endorse it. Christianity teaches principles of cause and effect, beauty, regularity, predictability, beauty, purpose, design, and a world in which science is possible.

To me Hinduism is weighed in the balances and comes up lacking.

RELATIVITY. Hindus seem to believe in the relativity of truth. They can believe that there is one god, 330 million gods, or no god at all. Or they believe that we are gods or can be gods, or that god is in each of us, and each of us is a part of god. As a believer in objective truth, these can't all be true. They contradict each other, and it is inconsistent to me.And yet Hindus seek after truth to discover ultimate reality. I sense a disconnect and a contradiction. The Upanishads, where mystical experience and intuition override reason and even cast doubt on the possibility of knowing ultimate truth, is inconsistent to me. Hinduism doesn't seem to be a commitment to propositional truth or to the world as an object of reason.Ghandi said, "God is truth and truth is God." What does that mean? It doesn't say whether the existence of God is true or false.

NATURE AND CREATION. If the universe is not the creation of a personal God, but is rather a sort of unconscious emanation from the divine, then we have no legitimate subject-object relationships, no particularity, but only a blank unity. In such a view there can be no foundation for knowledge, love, morality, or ethics. Without an absolute personality, there is no diversity or distinction basic to reality at all. Ultimate reality is a bare unity about which nothing may be said.EVIL. If Hinduism teaches that evil is an illusion that can be overcome by meditation, to me that is inconsistent with reality. I have found evil to be very, very real.

SUFFERING. Compassion motives me to do what I can to alleviate the sufferings of other people, but if suffering is paying back one's karma and we should just ignore the suffering in other people, to me that is callous and inhumane. And if all human suffering is deserved, are there no good people, truly spiritual people who escape it?Hinduism sees life as basically painful and full of distress, and yet the supreme Brahman has no part of this insufferable universe. It seems cruel to me. It seems fundamentally anti-social. Its inherent caste system designates some people as outcasts because they were born into the wrong family. There is no vision where we show compassion to humanity, try to right wrongs, heal hurts, or even overcome injustices or inequalities. There is no apparent concern for humans as real persons.

AFTERLIFE. We are to seek the self (Atman) behind and within the body and the senses, but then we are supposed to dissolve all personality into the unimaginable abyss of Brahman. So I don't get it: are we to find ourselves or dissolve (full renunciation) ourselves?

MORALITY: It seems (and please correct me) that morality is to be found in denying oneself all forms of material, emotion, and even spiritual rewards and property. To me that is not morality. Morality, instead, is active goodness combined with passive restraint.

SPIRITUAL PROGRESS. One progresses in spiritual depth by good works, hoping to improve one's karma. To me the idea of earning one's way into God's favor is simply a losing proposition, especially if there are no good people on the earth, if evil isn't real, and if morality is denial of self.

PERSONALITY. Since humans are personal, it makes sense to me that we have a personal source, a personal Creator, not an impersonal Brahman of ultimate reality.

UNION WITH THE DIVINE. In Hinduism we are to seek union with the divine, but a Hindu can't tell me who are "we," who is the "divinity," who is the "self," or how real any of this is. Why union with the divine if I'm already part and parcel of the divine universe? My deluded self is supposed to cease to be deluded so that I emerge as the real self. At the same time the god ended up in embryonic form while I became full grown, so that I will give him the privilege of birth and lose my humanity to find my divinity. No wonder I'm confused. Union with the impersonal absolute defies language, reason, and existential realities. It doesn't satisfy any longing for relationship. It doesn't seem either philosophically or theologically coherent. But all the while I'm supposed to deify myself while diffusing myself.

SCRIPTURES: I'm supposed to move to the supreme truth that I am identical with God, but Hindus point to their Scriptures as truth. But Hindus can't claim that all ways true for the simple reason that other religions deny the eternal truth of the Vedas. Even some Hindus do.
In addition... I find the sexual playfulness of Krishna and his exploits with milkmaids to be problematic. I read that some respected Hindu philosophers and thinkers consider it to be one of the most contradictory system of life's purpose ever expounded.

REINCARNATION: From a Hindu perspective, attaining Nirvana is not often achieved by humans. Though it is the goal, few there be that find it. What that means, however, is that reincarnation for most people is an ENDLESS cycle of meaninglessness. Beings circle through an eternal chain of human being, animal, insect, cow—whatever—in search of the almost impossible to grasp golden ring of Nirvana. Each cycle is weighed according to “goodness” as to whether or not one advances upward in the line or downward, but how can one be a good cat or a good bug? And since they are told in life that life and even their station in life is determined by fate (karma), and it cannot be changed (and they shouldn’t try), their theology teaches them they are hopelessly caught in a meaningless string of determined life cycles that they cannot alter, from which they will likely never escape, and therefore, at core, life for most is ultimately meaningless.

I find Hinduism inconsistent and not true to life.