Much to my surprise, my article on Nirmukta refuting the validity and practical utility of Vedanta and Brahman received a lot of comments from its apologists and devotees in the Hinduism fold.
What I am attempting in the series of these posts is to highlight some of my more important responses to them and in the process accumulate a body of counter-apologetic thought and opinion on many facets of Hindu religious doctrine and dogma.
The first one is here
The comment was from one Supreeth and goes like this
The points of my response are highlighted here:
What I am attempting in the series of these posts is to highlight some of my more important responses to them and in the process accumulate a body of counter-apologetic thought and opinion on many facets of Hindu religious doctrine and dogma.
The first one is here
The comment was from one Supreeth and goes like this
Your post here has lighted more thoughts into my critical mind. In one of the emails above, you have listed the themes and components of a vedantic world view. Indeed that was step 1 to putting forth an argument. Could you write more detailed arguments about a rebuttal, or if it is left, to more scientific rebuttal which takes time and energy to come up with complete thesis on why it is holistically not true, to some other time…
The points of my response are highlighted here:
- We need more efforts at critical refutation of the Vedanta to rid vast sections of educated Indians of their obsessive reverence for this system of thought.
- Surely more arguments than what I have put out in this article are always welcome. But whether such arguments need to be very detailed is debatable. As I have implied in the article, with the state of knowledge and tools for reasoning that we have now, the absurdity of the central tenets and themes of Vedanta becomes very manifest and obvious.
- Critics of Vedanta don’t need to beat around the bush and go into the detailed meanings of esoteric shlokas and terms in the Upanishads to contradict and debunk them. Apologists of spiritualism may need such crutches.
- The central conception of Brahman is itself a giant house of cards resting on the flimsy foundations of scriptural apologetic.
- The need is really one of proper framing of our opposing arguments and adhering to the rules of debate and refutation. Vedantic apology is like a loose cannon and it can go all over the place. It needs to be reined in and one needs to be watchful about its tendencies for tautology and circular argumentation.