Guest guest Posted September 19, 1999 Report Share Posted September 19, 1999 > What do you do about Srila Prabhupada's emphatically clear statements that > the sun is closer than the moon? "Just accept it as it is, (not to say blindly). People will be very much impress by our conviction, (it is not integrism). The motto is: repeat without altering a dot or a coma. The best is, if we want to be effective in our preaching, to avoid these statements. There are different dialectic tactics for that. One thing you should never do is to reveal your doubts if you have any." Thus spoke my friend during the sunday feast exchange when I told him about the matter. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 20, 1999 Report Share Posted September 20, 1999 > I did not take part in such discussions in the past, but to this I must > respond: Thanks God that someone in ISKCON started to think reasonably. > Good reply, Ananda prabhu. I am not much into glorifying others but your > attitude regarding scientific and anti-scientific method is > (unfortunately) rare in ISKCON and thus it deserves approval where > encountered. > > yours, > > Dvaipayana Vyasa das Please read a copy of Drutakarma's Forbidden Archaeology to get some idea of empiric science and their infallibility . I grew up with the belief in the Piltdown man and Carbon 14 dating . I am not debunking observation out of hand obviously but I think your so called rational approach has to be questioned also . You will find much in Sadaputa's writings. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 21, 1999 Report Share Posted September 21, 1999 Dear maharajas, prabhus, matajis, ladies, gentlemen and anyone else... Comments on Occam's Razor postings in past few days... [Text 2643580 from COM] from Mahadyuti (das) ACBSP (TP Soho St. London - GB) (reply to [Text 2642486 from COM] from Madhusudani Radha (dd) JPS (Mill Valley - USA)) > > Very true. Besides, I frankly don't understand this preoccupation with the > > moon. I have no doubt that the above paragraph is correct, nor do I doubt > > for a moment that we actually went there. As far as I've seen, this moon > > paranoia has never brought anyone closer to developing love for Krsna. > > Rather, it puts devotees in touch with a whole bunch of crazy, marginal > > elements of society and, not surprisingly, this gets us in trouble at times. > > Excuse me, but have you ever studied Srila Prabhupada's teachings? We can see in ISKCON's everyday life that indeed such things as "moon paranoia" or anything out of common sense did never bring anyone "closer to developing love for Krsna". This is a hard fact. And only ones I ever saw in ISKCON who were attracted because of such things were for sure "a whole bunch of crazy, marginal elements of society". So we may discuss teachings as long as we like, but facts are facts. And such "crazy elements" did bring ISKCON in trouble at times, it was a fact as well. Second, we all did study Prabhupada's teachings, and many times. But what do you want to say? That we ought to accept everything in SP books completely even when there is no evidence for something and when there is reasonable evidence to the opposite? Is it another "ipse dixit"? Something is proven by a fact that a teacher told it? But everything we have seen in ISKCON hardly anyone will buy "ipse dixit" system any more. > [Text 2640087 from COM] from Sridhar Swami > > Please read a copy of Drutakarma's Forbidden Archaeology to get some idea of > empiric science and their infallibility . I grew up with the belief in the > Piltdown man and Carbon 14 dating . I am not debunking observation out of > hand obviously but I think your so called rational approach has to be > questioned also . You will find much in Sadaputa's writings. I will probably read the book when I get it. And of course rational approach should be questioned, actually, we should question any approach (including that of modern scientists) to see if it is indeed rational. But we must apply same rules to all approaches and theories. If we ask modern scientists to give good proofs for what they say and if we blame them for cheating when they are wrong (or sometimes intentionally cheat) then we must apply the same system for our set of knowledge and beliefs. We can't ask that others accept what we say without any evidence, yet ask scientists to give a complete evidence for everything. > [Text 2639114 from COM] from Akhilesvara (das) ACBSP (Montreal - CAN) > > > What do you do about Srila Prabhupada's emphatically clear statements that > > the sun is closer than the moon? > > "Just accept it as it is, (not to say blindly). People will be very much > impress by our conviction, (it is not integrism). The motto is: repeat > without altering a dot or a coma. The best is, if we want to be effective in > our preaching, to avoid these statements. There are different dialectic > tactics for that. One thing you should never do is to reveal your doubts if > you have any." > Thus spoke my friend during the sunday feast exchange when I > told him about the matter. If "accept it as it is" is not "blindly", then what is "blindly"? Blind acceptance is when one accepts something without asking for any evidence, either a direct, substantial evidence that can be observed (pratyaksha) or an evidence of logic and reasoning (anumana) or in religious case an evidence from the knowledge which came from God (sabda). If you "Just accept it as it is" it _is_ blind aceptance. And one who starts accepting things blindly will sooner or later accept as truth something which isn't. As for the preaching, anyone to whom you preach and who comes in a more serious contact with ISKCON will sooner or later see that you actually can't prove your own words, and he/she will also see the doubts. You can hide such things for only so much of time, and it will come out on the light sooner or later. At that time, disappointment which that person will feel will outweight any initial confidence. One must know what he is doing and why is he doing it; with such knowledge one must make decisions about his/her life and execute these decisions. Anything else is just a gambling with one's life. If an ISKCON preacher accepts something blindly, those to whom he/she preaches will see it in a due course of time, and they will think that he/she simply gambles with his/her life, accepting a theory blindly and adhering his/her life to it hoping that it will prove correct. Not only that "they will think"; such a person will actually do just that. That would not be good for preaching. In such a way, ISKCON would not attract intelligent people who are useful to themselves and who could be useful in the service of the Lord. Blind accepting is more likely to attract potential fanatics, who will in the course of time do more damage than good. > [Text 2639012 from COM] from Jahnu (das) (Almviks Gard - S) > > > What do you do about Srila Prabhupada's emphatically clear > > statements that the sun is closer than the moon? > > Sada-puta das has explained and reconciled it in the following way: > > The moon is further above the plane of Bhurmandala than the sun. > In that sense it is further away from the earth. If we instead of > thinking of earth as a globe think of it as a plane it makes > sense to say that the moon is further away from that plane than the sun. Sadaputa prabhu did offer an explanation, but not much proof for it. I have read the book. While multi-dimensional world is an interesting theory (which is also confirmed in some other heritages besides Vedic), any exact data (eg. how big is the distance from Earth to Sun and Earth to Moon) must be proved if anyone wants to accept it as anything more than just another theory. And it is, so far, completely unproved theory, which means it is not on the level with current scientific data about distances to Sun and Moon which are reasonably well proved and anyone with a basic knowledge of trigonometry can calculate distances for himself. > The explanations of the Puranas are not un-scientific, they are > just offering some extra dimensional angles of vision. I do not > share your faith in modern science, Ananda prabhu. I think modern > science in many areas, especially in the astronomical field, > don't know much more about the universe than they did in Europe > in the middle-ages. Prabhu, that is the problem: you may "think" and I may "think" and anyone may "think" this or that but unless I give some proofs for my thinking it is just so much of thoughts. > I don't know if you read Sada-puta's book Vedic Cosmography and > Astronomy. I can highly recommend it for an academically minded > devotee like you. It is in the latest version of the Folio. I > think the Vedic understanding and explanation of the universe far > surpasses that of modern science. And if you want to say that explanation A "far surpasses" explanation B you would first have to provide proofs that explanation B is, partially or as a whole, incorrect, and proofs that explanation A is correct as a whole or at least more correct (with less mistakes and closer to the truth) than explanation B. And it would not be the proof to say "explanation A is absolutely right, ergo, anything that differs from it must be wrong. And since explanation B does differ from explanation A it is therefore wrong and A being right and B being wrong, we conclude that A far surpasses B". While giving a proof one must observe all standard rules of logic, no self-proved things, no circular evidences, no "ipse dixit" or we will finish in an equivalent of Disneyland (where anything is possible and anyone may say anything) instead in a philosophical discussion with a goal to see what is the actual truth. >[Text 2637488 from COM] from Mahadyuti (das) ACBSP (TP Soho St. London - GB) > Correct me if I'm mistaken, but my understanding is that sabda-brahma (in > the form of either person-bhagavat or book-bhagavat) is always superior to > any "thinking human". For that you would have to prove that any given source of knowledge you want to use as sabda-brahma (eg Bhagavatam) is completely unchanged all the way from God to us. That would be very difficult thing to prove, especially if we consider how old these scriptures are. And the same logic applies to receiving sabda-brahma knowledge by hearing or in any other way. This does not necessarily say that Srila Prabhupada changed something. We have entire chain Krishna-Brahma-Narada-Vyasa and so on through nearly 5000 years, and if even one single part of chain changed something, we would receive incorrect data. So if we want what we received from SP to be treated as sabda-brahma, we must prove every single piece of chain... not likely that it can be done. > What do you do about Srila Prabhupada's emphatically clear statements that > the sun is closer than the moon? We should try to see if it is correct or not; and if we can't find sufficient evidences to prove it right or wrong, we should sincerely say so, that is, that we do not actually "know" that it is correct. We may "think" but there is a great difference between saying that something is a teory and that something is a truth. [Text 2637301 from COM] from Prahladananda Swami >Vedic astronomers using systems based on Rahu can also calculate >eclipses. Bona fide astrologers based on actual scientific knowledge, >which includes Rahu, can also make accurate predictions for personal or >universal phenomena. Your idea that modern science, because it can make >some predictions based on observable planetary movements, gives us the right >to consider or preach that Rahu "a pretty legend only." is both illogical and incorrect. People may, by observing a system but not knowing enough, try to form a theory to explain it. In such a way they will work on the theory until it explains current state of the system, its previous states, and is able to predict its future states with reasonable accuracy. But the fact that they can predict future states of the system does not mean that their theory is correct. Middle-age astrologers used geocentric system which is not correct, yet they predicted planetary motions with some degree of accuracy. I will give an example to be more clear, somewhat funny but maybe more familiar example. If an outsider observes activities in an ISKCON temple, he will see that temple inhabitants sing and dance every morning. If he tries to form a theory about it, he might think that they simply want to wake up, to speed up their metabolism, and thus he may conclude that they will do it every morning after they wake up. With such thinking he will correctly predict their future behavior, but it does not mean that he actually understood what was going on. [Text 2636506 from COM] from Ramakanta (das) HKS (Zurich - CH) >> Every grade schooler knows that the earth is some 93 million miles from >> the sun, whilst the moon is only about 250,000 miles from the earth. > >No-one has proven that so far. The scientists only have formulas (assuming >that the distance between earth and sun is 93 million miles) by which they >can calculate the position of the sun in the sky. But the scientists >themselves can prove that these formulas are inaccurate. >And who says that what we see is really the sun and the moon, and not only >the 'shadows' (the images in our 3-dimensional world) of sun and moon. That is where Occam's Razor comes. If we start adding new unproved things to explain the theory, we can add enough to explain anything. And nothing can be a reasonable reference any more. Who says that anything we see is as we see it? If we go on in such a way, who says that Prabhupada's teachings we know are really Prabhupada's teachings and not only the 'shadows', twisted version of the real thing? Or who can say that Prabhupada existed and that we all are not in a state of mass hallucination? We can't go in such a way, just inventing new things to prove our theory. We may, and must, introduce new facts in the theory, when we have facts, proven, which can be either observed with reasonable certainty, or logically deduced on the basis of already proven facts, or received from a proven sabda-brahma source. But we can't just invent things and put them in theory and call that "philosophy". That approach is perfected in Warner Bros and is called "Looney Tunes". >> Just as Ptolemy could only maintain the geo-centric view by postulating >> complicated planetary epicyclic motions, whereas much simpler planetary >> paths are derived from a sun-centric system. > >Both systems give exactly the same formulas, which cannot be solved 100% >accurately. Astronomical calculations, as all calculations about physical objects, do involve certain degree of error. However, this error is very small compared to difference between modern astronomy and bhagavatam 5th canto astronomy. Astronomers could make a mistake of 0.5%, or 1% or even 5% (though not very likely within the solar system) but so big mistake, it is not likely that they could miscalculate. yours, Dvaipayana Vyasa das Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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