a counter example / Beware of Kali's agents

[Guest guest]

> For what it is worth:

>

> Yesterday, Akhila Prabhu, a godbrother in Germany, told me that a teenager

> became a shaved-up devotee and joined the Berlin temple after taking Dhira

> Govinda's course. Previously, this young man was enrolled in school, wore

> his hair long, and bummed around or stayed with his mother (a fixed-up

> devotee) and his two younger brothers. Now his younger brothers are

> imitating their older brother's devotional behavior.

>

> --ys, td

 

Here's an interesting comment on what Tattvavit Prabhu has theorized herein

above:

 

> Just because event A is followed by event B, it does not mean that event A

> caused event B. This is known as the Post Hoc fallacy. (Post hoc, ergo

> propter hoc.)

>

> For example, someone might see another leaving a pot of warm milk in an

> oven (or other warm place) over night, and when the next morning the milk

> becomes yogurt, he concludes that leaving warm milk in a warm place for

> long enough turns milk into yogurt.

>

> In the same way, this counter example is a product of such faulty

> reasoning. We know that the notion to join an ashram never occurs to the

> vast majority of people who go to a therapist, yet it frequently occurs to

> people who associate regularly with devotees. It is most likely is that

> the boy has had sufficient contact with devotees in the past, and that

> because the course was taken in the association of devotees. That

> additional association was what he needed to inpsire him to join the

> ashrama.

>

> So, without providing us the details of this boy's history of association

> with devotees or who his fellow seminarians were, then it is impossible to

> conclude that Dhira Govinda's course caused someone to move into a Hare

> Krishna ashram.