Refuting a Hindu as an Atheist?

I am both a Hindu as well as an atheist ie. I don't believe in any personal gods or deities. Hinduism really is huge, and largely subjective so there is no rule of thumb you can use. There are branches of Hinduism that refute the Vedas, so each Hindu will have his own set of beliefs and principles.

I am by no means a scholar of Hinduism, and if you had the misfortune to debate one, I wish you luck, because they will mostly speak in riddles, because reality according to Hinduism and Buddhism can only be understood with an open mind, not with direct explanations. Empirical science will fail you if you try it there.

EDIT:

You should understand that the word "Veda" means knowledge. The ancient sages of India saw reality in a certain way, and they attempted to explain it as best as they could. How they saw it is a complete mystery. They calculated the age of the Earth as 4.32 Billion years, which is not very far off, considering they had no instruments or any technology to calculate it.

The Vedas cannot be dismissed as crap, but neither can it be followed blindly. The line must be drawn, but it is very difficult to do so.

- "...god is energy..."

We already have a word for energy - "energy" - but a god includes attributes that don't apply to energy. Don't let him redefine words. That's a common tactic among theists. They redefine words to the point where they're meaningless.

- "...he insists that the Veda's are peer reviewed scienfitic literature."

Ask him to give you links to the articles in the prestigious scientific journals that published them. See, the thing is, it's up to the person who says something exists, even scientific articles, to provide the evidence. If they can't, there's no reason to take them seriously. Unsupported claims are not evidence.

Remember, it's not up to you to prove he's wrong, it's up to him to prove he's right. All you have to do is explain why you're not convinced. It's up to him to either provide credible evidence, or admit he doesn't have any that anyone who doesn't already believe what he does would find acceptable.

Atheism is valid in Hinduism, why you will argue..

Hindu philosophy, Mimamsa, and Samkhya... read those and you can match his arguments always use their own philosophy, to counter...

Rejects a personal God, creator God, or a God with attributes. check

Rejected the idea of an eternal, self-caused, creator God, check

No deity book....Mimamsa argued that the Vedas could not have been authored by a deity. check

Sound enough atheist to me

Just remember that you as an atheist are only saying that the vacuum is filled with nothing. The burden of proof is upon the theist to show that his god exists, you do not have to disprove his god. So, very simply, you introduce me to a four-armed, blue elephant/human hybrid riding a mouse who also has supernatural powers, and I'll believe in your god. Until then, you have no more evidence of Ganesh's existence than you do the tooth fairy.

Sorry, the Eastern religions like Buddhism, Hinduism, and Taoism comport better with contemporary logic and science than does absolute non-belief in a duality between physical world and spirit.

Atheists are about 75 years behind in science and 150 years backlogged in their understanding of contemporary logic. Part of the reason that Eastern religions are difficult for modern Atheists to refute is that the foundations for existential logic are in Buddhism and Hinduism! Modern philosophy uses Eastern religion as the centerpiece for its fundamental assumptions about the nature of inquiry! Nevertheless, modern materialist science has rejected the notion of duality (but is re-finding it with quantum mechanics).

*edit* when you say they have a tendency to engage in circular logic it becomes apparent that you have never deeply considered the nature of the Atheist's own arguments. All logic is ultimately circular which happens to render all science absurd.

Didn't read your details but I know this - you can very easily refute theistic Hinduism, but it's not as easy with nontheistic and atheistic Hinduism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atheism_in_Hinduism