A challenge to IRM[5]

[Guest guest]

Hare Krishna, Krishnakant Prabhu:

 

Please accept my sincere obeisances. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

 

I followed your advice and went back to the Special Issue to carefully read

your words and study your arguments, receptive to the idea of being wrong.

Remember that I opened this debate with a prayer to Krishna asking that

Srila Prabhupada would grant undisputed victory to one of us. His great

mission deserves no less. Hence if you defeat me in point one, I will accept

you have Srila Prabhupada’s blessings.

 

While going over your arguments, I realized I had overlooked a much simpler

logical flaw that would have avoided much time and words in establishing the

truth of point 1, that is, to establish the logical invalidity of your

purported Proof 4 in IRM’s The Final Order: “One guru falls = no Gurus

authorised.” Keep in mind that my assertion from the beginning in point 1

was that “there is a logical flaw in your purported Proof 4.” So my

responsibility was to find such flaw. In the process, I was deluded by

pride, and Krishna, unpleased by that, prevented me from seeing the truth.

Please, forgive me for any offenses I might have committed against you while

deluded by pride.

 

Please, study this simple argument carefully, and you will immediately

realize that ‘proof 4’ is no proof at all, since from the very beginning it

suffers from a serious logical flaw.

 

In the Special Issue you write:

 

“Here is the proof recapped:

 

a) Nectar of Devotion states that when not properly authorised – sometimes

the Guru falls.

 

b)Hence, if Guru falls, then he was not properly authorised.

 

c)But all Gurus authorised in exactly the same way.

 

d)Thus all Gurus not properly authorised.

 

e)Ritvik system authorised by July 9th directive remains.”

 

Here is the flaw: B does not follow from A. Let us look at the logical

structure of the statements. Let P be the statement “guru not authorized”.

Let Q be the statement “guru falls.”

 

Srila Prabhupada establishes in the Nectar of Devotion that “But sometimes,

if a spiritual master is not properly authorized and only on his own

initiative becomes a spiritual master, he may be carried away by an

accumulation of wealth and large numbers of disciples.” I will accept your

interpretation that being “carried away by an accumulation of wealth and

large numbers of disciples” constitutes a falldown. Now, there are at least

two ways to show B does not follow from A. I do not think you will be much

pleased with the first one, but I’ll present it anyway.

 

CASE 1. The word ‘sometimes’ is not conclusive, something may or may not

happen. If a guru is not authorized, then he may or may not fall. We cannot

conclude anything further than that.

 

CASE 2. For the sake of argument, let us ignore the word ‘sometimes’:

 

P: guru not authorized

 

Q: guru falls

 

Prabhupada’s dictum becomes: If P, then Q.

 

(I accept that I was deluded by pride and unintentionally changed

Prabhupada’s dictum in my previous messages to “If Q, then P”)

 

In B you claim, “If Q, then P”, that is “if guru falls, then he was not

authorized.” If you can show that B holds, *independently* of A, then you

would have the stronger biconditional statement: “P if and only if Q”, which

is an abbreviated form of saying “If P, then Q - AND - If Q, then P.” The

accepted rules of inference of logic show that A and B are different; so

much so that the greatest joy in mathematics and logic is to find statements

with this property. Consider the following example:

 

If it rains in the morning, then Prabhu takes his umbrella.

 

If Prabhu takes his umbrella, then it rains in the morning.

 

Here, Q is the statement “it rains in the morning.” P is the

statement “Prabhu takes his umbrella.” They are obviously different

statements with distinct truth values, as discussed in mathematics and

logic. Sometimes it is not so easy to see that two statements written in

standard English are independent. That is why mathematicians and logicians

look at the structure of arguments, precisely to avoid making false claims.

 

In summary, B does not follow from A. If you want to establish the validity

of B, then you would need additional arguments. A direct quote from Srila

Prabhupada stating “if a guru falls, then he was not authorized” will

suffice. Find it and we will go, in order, to steps C, D and E of your

recapping. Of course, we have unnecessarily already debated this at large.

However, if you cannot show the validity of B *independently* of A, then the

entire argument collapses and we can avoid much disturbance to our Vaishnava

readers. Until then, ‘Proof 4’ in IRM’s “The Final Order” is no proof at all.

 

I think my prayer has been answered.

 

At Srila Prabhupada’s feet,

 

hector

----------------------

 

On Fri, 5 May 2006 07:23:18 +0530, IRM wrote

> Dear Hector Prabhu,

 

> Hare Krishna! Please accept my humble obeisances. All glories to Srila

Prabhupada.

 

> You have said:

> "Yes, I did made a mistake when I did not separate the first eleven gurus

from the other 93,"

> I am glad you have finally directly admitted your mistake. If you had done

 

> this earlier, we could have saved time and words. You had earlier claimed

that

 

> your withdrawn argument mentioned above was evidence of how my argument

 

> was 'weakened':

> " However, your explanation only further weakens your argument. You assume

that the 93 devotees became gurus out of their own volition in exactly ..."

 

> Hence due to your grave charge that you had 'weakened' my argument, your

point

 

> had to be firmly defeated, which it now has been.

> Now we move onto your other point in response to my answer 1. I had

correctly pointed out the condition required for your challenge 1:

 

> "Therefore in order to apply THIS reasoning to the Gaudiya Matha, you

 

> would need to first demonstrate that Srila Prabhupada and all his

 

> Godbrothers who became guru, were all authorised *in exactly the same

 

> way*."

 

> You accepted this condition, and in response as evidence to demonstrate

that Srila Prabhupada and all his Godbrothers were authorised in exactly the

same way, you have responded:

 

> "I take it for granted that they were."

 

> This is not evidence that they were. Otherwise anyone could win any debate

on any subject simply by saying "I take it for granted!"

 

> Further asserting that Srila Bhaktisiddhanta did NOT leave a successor

would be evidence of what did NOT happen. You have to demonstrate what DID

happen - i.e. that all the subsequent gurus became authorised in the same

way.

 

> You have also said:

> "Thus, another question to you is, can you show that Srila Prabhupada and

his godbrothers were NOT authorized in the same way to initiate disciples?"

 

> But it is not up to me to show the opposite. This is a logical fallacy

called 'shifting the burden'. YOU have asserted that my proof "crumbles",

because:

 

>  "we reject the conclusion upon finding an unacceptable conclusion when

applied to an analogous setting, i.e. that of the Gaudiya Matha."

 

> So YOU need to prove your assertion that it was indeed an analogous

setting. You cannot assert something, and then say either "I take it for

granted", or that your opponent must prove the opposite. I am surprised I

have to point out such an elementary logical fallacy to a

supposedly 'mathematical brain'.

 

> Hence your challenge is already defeated for lack of evidence.

 

> In addition what makes your "I take it for granted" claim regarding gurus

being 'authorised in the same way', is that you had previously stated that

such an assumption is:

 

> "a blanket statement which is highly biased and lacks the seriousness

required of a dignified debate. [...] Besides, a devotee knows that Krishna

and Guru can manifest through the heart and in dreams and you do not know if

and how Srila Prabhupada has manifested his wishes in those ways to at least

some of those gurus, or whether he expressed his views in private

conversations. (After all, remember that Madhvacarya was initiated by Srila

Vyasadeva in a very mystical way since there is a gap of several millennia

between their physical manifestations.) [...] cannot be taken as objective

and hence has little to no value."

 

> Yet when it suits you, you are more than happy to apply such an assumption

to the Gaudiya Matha!

 

> (Further, as you will clearly see in BTP, *we* did not just assume the 11

and the 93 were authorised in the same way, but demonstrated it via the

GBC's own statements. But this is NOT relevant here, since you have

challenged to show the flaw in our proof accepting our 'axioms' as true.)

 

>

> Therefore to summarise:

 

>

> a) You challenged that our proof was flawed by asserting that when it is

applied to an analogous situation - i.e. the Gaudiya Matha - the conclusion

would need to be rejected.

 

> b) However you have failed to demonstrate that the Gaudiya Matha was

indeed an analogous situation in which you could apply our proof. You have

simply 'taken it for granted'. (If you claim that it is not possible to be

able to prove this, then your challenge still remains unproven.)

 

> c) You have further conceded that you have no evidence for your claim, by

committing a logical fallacy in asking me to show the opposite. But I do not

need to show anything, since it is not my name which is Hector, nor am I

challenging myself.

 

> d) Further compounding all this, you have even destroyed the very

assumption on which your unsubstantiated argument rests, by stating that

such an assumption would in any case be "biased, not objective, of little or

no value' etc.

 

> So in conclusion your challenge 1 has failed due to lack of evidence,

relying only on an assumption, buttressed with the logical fallacy of

shifting the burden, and in addition you have further self-defeated even the

assumption on which you hang your argument.

 

> So unless you have can provide evidence that Srila Prabhupada and all his

godbrothers were authorised in exactly the same way your challenge 1 is

defeated, and we will move onto your challenge 2.

 

> WARNING: Do not respond with methods of evasion like asking me further

questions (they will simply go onto the end of the list), or any other

unrelated verbiage, or complaining I have not answered something else, or

been defeated by others etc. These things did not do you any good

previously, nor will they help here.

 

> *Respond with anything short of the evidence requested above, and your

challenge will still remain unproven, and I will simply keep pointing this

out.*

 

> Thank you.

 

> I look forward to hearing from you,

 

> Your servant,

 

> Krishnakant