A Vedanta debate with one apologist that was missed by another

Vijay Senthil K  of  the blog 'My Inquiries, Contemplations and Reflections' has been quite generous and gracious in posting the exchanges he had with me on the Vedanta article on Nirmukta, in their entirety.

Vijay does seem to suggest that he has been branded as a Hindu fanatic. I feel this is his misunderstanding and I for one feel that he is surely a Hindu apologist and ardent defender of the tenets and themes of Hinduism, including the Vedanta, but surely not a fanatic.

I do appreciate his moderated, modest and detailed responses and sometimes feel a twinge of regret at my polemical outbursts, but cannot agree with his idealism and ideological affiliations.

I will try to respond in detail to points of his defense about Hinduism and Vedanta, soon if time permits.

In the meantime, I would invite Vijay to look at my debate/exchange with another apologist who was not as suave and skilled as he

These exchanges with  LN will hopefully provide Vijay and other readers with some perspective to what is reproduced below

Dear LN

I am pleased that my theatrics tickled your senses.

But I can also see that you have always very conveniently evaded answering my question on how Vedanta is not a human composition. If it is a human composition, how it is free from the errors and pitfalls of human fallibility

How is a scriptural word or recording superior to or above or beyond objective aids and tools of reasoning and validation?.

Did its defenders like Adi Sankara and the like resort to pointing to its so-called divine origin and revelatory nature and inspirations?

If they did, which they very likely did, how did they prove these assertations other than by resorting to tautological arguments? ( Sankara has surely attempted the discredited ‘primary UN-caused cause’ argument). This article on spiritualist fads references a link to his dogmatic bhasya.

I will tell why I think Sankara ends up discrediting objectivity and reasoning. Sankara’s argument implies a dichotomy of phenomenon that is either false on one hand or what can be termed as non-falsifiable on the other hand. That is, a distinction between a temporal or physical world or reality and a higher realm or reality called the Brahman.

Sankara has very emphatically defended this position (which implies dualism) and yet claimed that Brahman which is incapable of perception is yet the Ultimate reality which is hidden from senses though the illusion of maya and subsumed in it. He has termed physical appearances and reality as ‘Mithya’ or fiction and that release from it is required and possible only thru asceticism and bhakti.

This is again a contradiction of non-dualism and an obvious absurdity.

You are welcome to peruse the commentaries and apologies of Sankara in John Muir’s translation of Vedic scriptures and commentaries of other Orthodox vedic scholars on it on Goolge books site

What more proof do you need of Sankara’s and other Santana dogmatists’ assault on reason?

My rejection of scriptures stands on solid logical grounds.

What are your reasons for accepting scriptures at their face value?

Lets come to your next gem of wisdom:

“I will tell my personal opinion on this. I would spend my energies chasing or worshiping unicorn, pegasus etc. if (and that is a big if) I genuinely feel that the concepts of unicorn, Pegasus etc will make me a better person.”

What is so special about Brahman, that is not special about unicorns, Pegasus or even Aliens?. There are alien worshipers in this world. That has surely made some of them better persons. Only it has not made them any rational or wiser than you.

I am sorry for my condescending tone at times, but then your ignorance of the details of scientific method and how phenomena are investigated and validated comes across as annoyingly cursory and dismissive.

I can see that cherry-picking of lines and arguments are tactics of debate, but you must not lose sight of the gist or central message of the article that you are contesting.

Vedanta claims to provide that knowledge(of Brahman) or the means to it by which everything will be known

This is a very astounding, over-ambitious and arrogant claim to say the least.

 And to add to the misery of its blind and gullible seekers, there are atleast 100 or more Upanishads competing to provide that ‘esoteric wisdom’


If you care to read the main parts of the texts without the bias of the influence of the self-serving and dogmatic commentaries of ancient orthodox theologians like Sankara or Badrayana or even modern pseudo-scientific glosses of Vivekananda or Sivananda on it, you are bound to detect many inconsistencies and contradictions in them. 


This imposture and canard of Upanishadic dogma has been rescued from its deserved fate of rejection and isolation by orthodox vested interests in preisthood, aristocracy, royalty in the past and in modern times by religious extremists, spiritualists and cultural fanatics of the Hindu society.

There is no such thing as absolute, ultimate, supreme or highest truth or truths. Other than physical facts (to some extent), all truths are relative and subject to change.

Any work that claims that it has the key to the magic elixir to one ultimate truth is either deluded or for some ulterior or vested motive leading others up the garden path of an non-existent paradise.

We can go on debating about this, but there will very likely be little meeting ground since you are wedded to an irrational and idealistic religious mode of thought, that is at odds with the thought process of material or dialectical realism.