Official Ramakanta vs. IRM discussion thread

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Posted by Yaduraja on Nov 27, 2006:

 

Dear Ramakanta Prabhu,

PAMHO. AGTSP!

you claim:

 

> This is an argumentum ad hominem. You cannot refute my argument just by

> saying that I am funny.

 

No you are wrong yet again over your Latin terms. This is not an illogical

ad hominem. I am not saying you are wrong BECAUSE you are funny, I have

already exposed your arguments as leading to absurdity (I repeat these below

since you seem to have forgotten them), and on top of that I am simply

commenting that you are funny.

 

The reason you are funny is that your own position, that Srila Prabhupada

cannot deliver disciples when he is not physically present, is itself

rendered utterly absurd if taken to its logical conclusion or reductio ad

absurdum , since it would render this debate completely redundant for

reasons I have had to repeat over and over again.

 

> Since you now have dropped this claim, the purpose of my question has been

> fulfilled.

 

I never claimed we do not need Srila Prabhupada himself, but only his books

etc, so how can I drop a claim I never made? I only claimed we do not need

Srila Prabhupada's physical presence, a claim based on what Srila Prabhupada

stated over and over again.

 

So I shall take it you still agree that Srila Prabhupada remains in the

material universe until his disciples are delivered. The hugely vast

material universe that contains billions of inhabited worlds.

 

> What do you mean by "physically present in relation to the disciple"? When

> is the guru physically present in relation to the disciple, and when not?

 

You are the person who claims ‘physical presence’ has some significance in

this debate, therefore the burden of proof falls on YOU to prove that the

‘physical presence’ of the guru is vital to delivering disciples. So you

need to prove what the term must mean such that it defeats my position. This

you have so far failed to do. You are so defeated that you have to keep

asking me to define a term you brought up to defeat me!

 

To remind you, your stated position is that the spiritual master MUST by

physically present on the same planet as the disciple in order to deliver

him. Yet this is never once stated by Srila Prabhupada, and if we apply

reductio ad absurdum we must conclude that none of Srila Prabhupada’s

original disciples (nor by definition anyone unfortunate enough to be

initiated by them) can have been delivered for nearly three decades, nor

ever will be delivered, unless Srila Prabhupada physically returns to this

planet.

 

To try to get around this you then bizarrely argued that delivery takes

place at the time of initiation. Yet if we again apply reductio ad absurdum

this would mean that the souls of all Srila Prabhupada’s newly initiated

disciples would have been transferred to the spiritual sky at the end of the

initiation ceremony (that is how the term ‘delivered’ was defined in the

evidence YOU put forward- letter to JPS).

 

If this had been the case then initiation ceremonies would have appeared

rather morbid affairs to onlookers, whereby, at the dropping in the fire of

the last banana, all the disciples would suddenly drop dead. That would not

have been great PR for ISKCON would it? Yet this is the absurdity that your

position leads to. And it is also philosophically wrong since the ceremony

marks the beginning of the process of diksa, which may take many lifetimes,

‘janme janme prabhu se’.

You are completely lost in this debate.

 

Best wishes

Ys

Yadu