A Catalogue of the fallacies of the Vedanta apologists

When this article criticizing and refuting Vedanta appeared on Nirmukta,  a Vedanta  follower by pen name LN responded with a lot of  fervor and made claims in comments like these that the view point of a sincere Vedantin has been misrepresented.

After a few exchanges, it became quite clear that the apologist was going around in circles and evading the essential points of Vedantic refutation.

While resting the case of  the skeptic, I thought it fit to point out the fallacies of  the religious adherent at the opposing side of debate

Nirmukta or other free-thought forums indulge the likes of LN despite their obvious and overt disingenuous and specious methods of debating like:

• Harping upon trivial distinctions (traditional vs non-traditional vedantins), without framing these distinctions clearly and when confronted with the onus of providing evidence and definitions, excusing themselves with selective ignorance or amnesia or both.

• Diversion (exclusively referring to the term ‘Brahman’ and making it the primary focus of argument to the exclusion of other topics raised in the article like ‘Karma’ , ‘re-incarnation’ , souls and the so-called mechanism of ‘maya’)

• Defending the arbitrary views of their heroes like Adi Sankara, and imputing their own perceived views to them and continuing with such stubborn insistence without providing any evidence of their own erudition or due diligence of history, theology, archived references and other such documentary material.

• When presented with links and references to citations that debunk their pet notions, disputing them on the basis of preconceived notions of their established positions on religious dogma (realm of Brahman or scriptures in this case) and refusing to quote sections of cited material to support their contention.

• Using fancy terms like ‘ultimate standpoint’, ‘empirical level’ ‘multiplicity of levels and standpoints’ without elaborating what these mean and signify and how they endorse the debater’s viewpoint.

• Accusing his/their opponents of not having read the scriptures or the works of scholars on theology, when he is probably more guilty of transgression of that supposed requirement of disputation.

• Taking shelter against the obligation of providing an independent source of verification or validity for a contention (scriptural sanction for Brahman) with a regressive recourse to the notion of axiomatic truth, and stone-walling any critical attempts at such self-erected walls by arbitrarily treating axiom as the end or final resolution of a hypothesis.

In the hope that the forum can expose the fallacies, inconsistencies and contradictions of arguments inspired by an attitude of affinity for religiously conditioned idealism and dogmas, and not a love of or interest in impartial and diligent investigation or research of a phenomenon or issue, for the benefit of those more inclined to reexamine their pre-existing biases in religion and philosophy.

Tirades and strong repudiative outbursts do happen in an exchange, but people like LN tend to conveniently ignore the provocation that they cause, by their own self-serving and slippery arguments and improper framing of their points of debate.

Since LN has no means to support his position on Brahman by means of independent verification and validation, he has to fall back on the crutches of regressive and negative argumentation i.e.,

- Scriptural description and sanction of the validity of Brahman is an axiomatic tenet that has to be either accepted or rejected.

In this broad and ever-expanding canopy of the negative catch-all term of axiom, the supposed ‘author-less’ and/or divine origin of the scripture, its immunity from human fallibility and any other warts and inconveniences of empirical validation that can serve as flies in the ‘ointment of scriptural perfection’ have also be totally accepted or totally rejected. (Even if this all flies in the face of any and every available evidence and knowledge to the contrary )

- Inability to disprove the existence of Brahman or god is good enough proof its existence and validity

(This can be extended to Unicorn, Gryphon, Pegasus, aliens and host of other creations of a fertile or frenzied imagination, but LN won’t have any of this because they are not endorsed by his favorite scripture and his favorite theocrat Adi Sankara. That privilege is of the Brahman and the Brahman alone!)


So we should not be surprised if LN and his likes accord the blessing of axiomatic sanction to ‘Karma’ , ‘re-incarnation’ , souls and the so-called mechanism of ‘maya’ and transform them from the bizarre fiction that they ought to be to a scripturally sanctioned reality.


But then now one is again confused whether this is at the ‘empirical level’ or the ‘ultimate standpoint’ of ‘Brahman’ or ‘Atman’ or ‘Jiva’ or multiplicity or singularity of empirical levels and in accordance with traditional vendantism , of whose many flavors we need to be very careful about, because those flavors can be dualistic or non-dualistic , which can in turn make the Brahman dualistic or non-dualistic or even elastic, according to how you can pull and stretch the words and meaning of the scriptures.