A Logical Starting Point

[ancient_paztriot]

Arjuna’s sense of justice here impels him to ask this question. He says My dear Lord Krsna, please cut away this doubt. In other words, Arjuna feels that this must not be true that a fallen yogi ends up a complete looser, no spiritual achievement, no material achievement. So Arjuna feels that this must not be true, so please take away this doubt. Tvad-anyah samsayasyasya chetta na hy upapadyate. He says there is no one besides you who can destroy this doubt. Only you can destroy this doubt. Why only Krsna? Because Krsna is the Supreme Personality of Godhead.

 

There is a supreme person. Just as we are persons, we are living in this world full of desires, ambitions, purposes, feelings, relationships, our life is personal. And because we are conscious and because we desire knowledge, therefore naturally we try to discover the history of our own existence. Scientists for example… Of course many scientists are simply puppets of the military/industrial interests. As you may know, up to 50 percent of the scientists in the United States are directly engaged in research related to military objectives and probably most of the other ones are engaged for industry, commerce, figuring out a better fingernail polish or children’s toy or something like that… some other noble endeavor like that. So almost as an accidental by-product of western business and military interest sometimes we learn something about the world. So those scientists who are in fact trying to understand the nature of reality, what is the world really, what are we really? Naturally they are trying to understand the origin of life. Somehow we know that the origin of life is very much related to it’s purpose. When we find out where life came from, when we find out where we have come from, we presume that we will know a good deal about what we should be doing now and where we are going. That’s our presumption. Therefore for example in the western culture and actually all over the world, the thesis of Darwin had tremendous impact. Because it was a new theory, a new proposal as to the origin of our existence as personal conscious human beings. And in fact we see in this ongoing debate between the Darwinists and usually the Christians who are usually their opponents, we see this debate on the origin of life. And presumably whoever wins has scored a major victory because to know where things come from is suppose to be a very important question to answer.

 

Anyway, the fact is that all of us come from God just as the sun rays come from the sun. For example we feel heat in the sunshine. In general sunshine is warm or hot. Therefore we feel safe in presuming that the sun itself is hot and not cold. Now of course, theoretically it could be possible that the sun is cold and that we’ve simply jumped to conclusions thinking the sun is hot. That somehow the sun rays pass through some type of energy field and become hot. But the sun itself is cold. That’s theoretically possible but no one would believe it. It’s very implausible because… We assume the sun is hot. Why? Why do we assume the sun is hot when we could say theoretically the sun is cold? We all presume the sun is hot because of a simple type of logic that all of us employ knowingly or unknowingly. And that logic is that somehow an effect tells us something about the cause. We all assume that. Therefore, the sunshine which is the effect of whatever the sun does… The sun is doing something up there. And whatever it does the result is sunshine. The scientists are still trying to understand exactly what it is the sun does. They don’t know that yet. But it does something and as a result of that, it shines. Any way, because the sunshine is warm, we assume the sun is also warm or hot. Similarly, for example if there’s an automobile accident –– at least in America. I suppose also in Fiji –– you’re not suppose to move the cars after the accident. Is that the system here also? Why? Because in order to understand who was the cause of the accident and therefore who was responsible, we begin with the effect. The effect is there is a couple of smashed automobiles and broken glass and so on. That’s the effect. But the insurance companies can’t settle anything until they find out the cause. So the start with the effect and go back to the cause… hopefully. Similarly, when you go to a doctor. The doctor asks you… He wants information about you. Do you smoke? Do you drink? What are your habits? When did you start feeling this? Do you have any previous diseases? Because the doctor tries to find out what’s wrong with you by studying the history of your case. He begins with the effect which is a particular condition you’re in and he tries to go back to the cause. Similarly, if we want to understand God we do have something to begin with. That is we have a big effect called the material world. After all, what is this universe if not a big effect? Now what is the cause of that? That’s the problem. So just as we are… It is reasonable for us to presume that the sunshine being warm must emanate from a hot sun and not a cold sun. Similarly because all of us, we are all effects of God, because all of us are conscious and we are persons, therefore it is completely reasonable to presume that God is somehow conscious and personal. Because if God were not conscious and personal, how could he account for so many billions of conscious persons? That’s the point.

[Streetstraw]

Matter is an index to spirit. Thanks for your paztriotic purport.

[ancient_paztriot]

Guest: Nope. When you get to “the end”, the cause of the cause, the ultimate, I admit that I cannot explain. From there on or from that starting point on, I feel I can arrive at logical deductions based on present theory and observed phenomenon. I accept that. In other words, the synthesis of organic material from inorganic, the evolution of quote physical form…

 

Hridy: No, that is not science because that is not observable. We shouldn’t blur all these lines. If you want to stick to a strict empirical system, then stick to it.

 

Darwin’s theory is not empiricism, it is dogma… something you believe in. All Darwin can say, all the evolutionists can say is our theory is compatible with observed facts. But compatibility is not what we mean by science. When we say we prove something, we don’t meant we demonstrate compatibility, but rather we demonstrate some type of necessity or reasonable probability.

 

Guest: What is showing is that you are conforming a theory based on observed facts, a theory is that which is reduced from those observed facts to explain what could be possible.

 

Hridy: But that theory is not science. That theory is just theory. What should it be dignified by the term science. It’s not science… I made this point in Gainsville that the term scientific theory is a meaningless term because scientific means demonstrated and theory means not demonstrated. So therefore, the whole term scientific theory is simply like some type of Orwellian doublespeak. Or for example, to say that my personality created God. When you make that statement, you yourself become a dogmatists and not a scientists. What you are doing is trying to make everything fit within your system. In other words, you have an empirical system. And so therefore you are becoming a victim of the inevitable tendancy toward fanaticism. Fanaticism is I want everything to fit into my system even when it doesn’t fit.

 

So therefore, anything which is not empirical I declare to be nonreal. Let’s say we accept – even hypothetically – God is the cause of all causes. Therefore, in that original cause there must be sufficeint substance and complexity and so on to account for that which comes from it. Just like so much heat is coming from the sun. So it’s certainly a bad theory to say the sun is cold. Because if the sun is cold, how does heat come from it? Similiarly, no one should say God is impersonal because just as we observe so much heat coming from the sun, we observe… If there is a God we don’t know what we are investigating. So, if there is a God by which we mean a cause of all causes – a prime mover as Aristotle said – then God is He from whom unlimited personality has been created. So just as we wouldn’t possibly think heat is coming from a cold sun, we would not postulate all this personality is coming from an impersonal truth because that would be muddled thinking as far as causality is concerned.

 

There is a system where you backtrack. All you’ve got to work with is the effect if you try to arrive at the cause. When you do that, you have to propose a cause which is adequate to explain the effect. So, let’s say we are trying to find out about God. We have the effect of this world and that which we can observe. So we observe a world full of consciousness and personality. So an impersonal or unconscious God is not adequate to explain this effect. That’s my point.

 

Even if you say that consciousness evolves from matter – which is completely unproven… Yes. You believe. But you started off the conversation by saying that you didn’t have faith. But now it turns out you do have faith, but it’s something else. It depends on that which you have faith in. Exactly, that was my original point. Unfortunately, I cannot accept faith in your structure – the whole structure – because obviously has – in your mind – substance of… ??? outside my mind. … of ultimate causation. This I cannot accept.

 

Hridy: You can’t accept it. But by not accepting it, that is simply a question of your faith. In other words, when you say “I don’t believe in Krsna”, that is not a rational statement. It is an emotional statement which just tells us the way you feel about things. It doesn’t tell us anything rationally or scientifically. It’s simply a statement which reveals your own emotional proclivities.

 

Guest:No, I cannot accept something which is obviously not demonstrated. Now, there are many things which I accept which are not demonstrated. But eventually, those things which I accept that are not demonstrated yet, will eventually, I feel, have a basis of being proved (or disproved) in the future.

Hridy: Now, you cannot assume, a priori–because you don’t have the right to, nor the position to–that there are not other levels of experience beyond the physical. In other words, there may be a particuliar level of reality which we can be conscious of and in that particuliar level there is proof and disproof. Now for you to assume that there is no such spiritual realm in which things can be systematically experienced repeatedly and verified or disproven and so on is simply faith. There is no way in which you can authoritatively deny that.

 

Guest:I recognise the fact that many individuals have what they call a spiritual realm and when they go through a spiritual experience, it’s imprinted into their mentality just as if it was real.

 

Hridy: No, not just as if it were real. That’s begging the question. Not just as if it were real. You see? If you take the position there is no God, that is the most unscientific position. There are three positions you can take: there is God, there isn’t God and I don’t know. So if you take the position there is no God, by all rules of logic that is not a scientific proposition because it could never be proved. In order to prove that, you would have to be God or you would have to be omniscient. As long as you say there is something I don’t know, that something may be God. Now we are talking about statements you put on the table and then investigate them. So if you take the statement “there is no God”, that is a totally nonrational, nonscientific statement because it does not lend itself to any type of rational or scientific investigation by it’s own internal attributes. Because if there were no God that could never be logically proven anyway. Whereas if I say “there is God” as a statement , at least according to the internal attributes of that statement – if there were hypothetically a God – He could communicate to us and verify His own existence to us. That’s in fact what He does. Of course to say I just don’t know is obviously outside the realm of rationality because if you say “I just don’t know”, so what?

 

Guest: I cannot accept that there is a God.

 

Hridy: But why? For what reason?

 

Guest: Because it is not demostratable.

 

Hridy: But again, that is an priori definition that you are trying to impose upon reality. You are saying that if God exists, the nature of God is that He is not demonstratable.

 

Guest: Well, He has not yet been demonstrated.

 

Hridy: But you can only say that about you. You cannot make a universal assertion that God has not verified His existence to any creature. Now for you to say that you would have to be God in effect. So that would disprove what you said. Because only an omniscient being would dare to presume what billions of other people are experiencing.

 

Guest: When I look at those billions of other people, I see 99% of them have psychological needs to accept that power.

 

Hridy: But that is totally irrelevant to the ontological issue of whether God exists or not. Just like if you say, “I need a cup of water.” That has nothing to do with whether there is water in this building or not. It’s totally irrelevant to say that I psychologically need something. It tells us absolutely nothing about the existence of that thing. So my point is that if you make the statement “there is no God” that is an absolute statement. So it’s like you say there are no absolutes. But that assertion is a negative absolute. You know, it’s still an absolute. So if you say “there is no God” that is an absolute statement which implies total knowledge of everything. So only God could say that – in which case He wouldn’t say it. In other words, it’s logically absurd for someone to make that statement. It’s totally nonrational. If you say “there is no God”, you’re making a statement which does not even lend itself to any conceivable rational investigation. Because you could not even presume to imagine a process by which you could even study that statement.

 

Guest: Suppose I was to state that the concept of a God is a man made creation.

 

Hridy: You might say for example as Zenophinies the old Greek cynic did, the Egyptian Gods look like Egyptians and the Greek Gods look like Greeks and the Ph?? Gods look like ??? That might lead us to believe a type of projection had taken place. But just as if you ask people (especially children) to draw a picture of a tree, they’ll also project so many things onto the tree. They’ll put a smiling face on it or whatever. Now that doesn’t mean that trees don’t exists. Even if you study the psychological process of projection, you project something onto something. You don’t project something onto nothing. So even if we say as Zenophanie said thousands of years ago that people tend to project their own qualities or needs onto God, that means God exists, but that people tend to project.

 

To say “we don’t know if God exist” would be a more plausible explanation because our experience of what happens in the act of projection is we project something onto something, not onto nothing. The laws of nature wouldn’t exists in a vaccum, in void. So, when you say people obviously have anthropomorphic conceptions of God… Yes they do! In fact they do. But that again is totally irrelevant to the issue of whether God exists. There are scientists who are just bad scientists – you know, there are good and bad in everything – who project into their data or tests their own perception and therefore they are not able to be objective and get fired. And certain theologians aren’t able to be objective. So again, it tells us nothing about the nature of reality. I even agree with your statement that 99% of the people do that. I’d even put a few more significant numbers in there. I’d say 99.999% of the people have a very childish anthropomorphic or self dependent concept of God. I agree. But that tells us nothing about the nature of the Absolute Truth, it simply tells us that people tend to be foolish. Just like 99% of the people in this world are not scientific in the way they feed themselves. In the way they just take care of their own bodies they are not scientific. How people smoke, drink or eat meat which causes cancer. So 99% of the people are neither religious or scientific, they’re just mediocre.

 

We say that the relationship between – and Plato said this also although he couldn’t develop it without information – the spiritual world and this world is like the relationship between an object and it’s shadow. This world is more or less like a shadow of the spiritual world. Just as you have a body, so there are bodies in the spiritual world but they are eternal.

 

Reincarnation is a process of cause and effect. Reincarnation simply means as you sow, so shall you reap. But extended over many lifetimes. Just as a biblical saying, “As you sow you shall reap.” If you try to verify that in one lifetime you can’t verify it. Because many bad people are healthy multimillionaires and there are many pious people not doing so well. As you sow so shall you reap. If it is true, it can only be true in a reincarnation system. Where punishment and reward take place over many lifetimes. That’s what karma is.

 

Guest: You just applied the beliefs of current religions like Christianity and so on which essentially is reward and punishment?

 

Hridy: Yes. Just like at M.I.T. they have a very elaborate system of reward and punishment. If you want to get your degree, you’ll do this and that and you won’t do something else. At M.I.T. there’s a very elaborate system of rewards and punsihment. I’m sure at NASA there is also a very elaborate system of rewards and punishments. So, it’s not that the pot calls the kettle black. Reward and punishment – as far as we can see – is simply a fundamental aspect of reality which occurs everywhere. It occurs in ant colonies, at M.I.T., it occurs everywhere. It just seems to be a fundamental prinicple of reality that there is punishment and reward and it modifies behavior. People pursue rewards and they try to avoid punishments. So a certain system of reward and punsihment will generate a particuliar behavior pattern in insects, in scientists, and in true believers. I don’t think you can say reward and punishment is primitive. Rather it appears to be universal. That’s why you stop at the red light. That’s why everyone does everything. So I don’t think we can write it off as a primitive thing. Rather than it being primitive, I would call it fundamental.