Sunday, February 15, 2009

Some dialogue on Eastern religions at Richard Dawkins' site

Are religions like Buddhism and Hinduism unacceptable to someone who believes as Dawkins does? Atheists debate that issue here.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

First of all, it is clear that none of these people know the eastern traditions well. Vedanta is a highly developed and rational system of philosophy. In ancient India, there were many darshanas or religions. These included Buddhism, Jainism, Charvaka, Tarka, Nyaya/Vaisheshika, Yoga, Sankhya, Pasupata Mimamsa and Vedanta. The last of these, Vedanta, is itself divided into Advaita, Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita, among others.

Debates were common, and the loser of a philosophical debate accepted the winner's school of thought. In that sense, Vedanta has vanquished every other tradition. Debates have raged between Advaita, Vishishtadvaita and Dvaita Vedanta as well.

Kindly read up on the intellect and logic of Vedanta before coming to conclusions. It is not a faith based system like other religions, but one that accepts pratyaksha (perception) and anumana (logic/inference) as its fundamentals, besides Shabda (Veda). It takes a dozen brains like Darwin's or Newton's to actually master even the basic concepts of the Veda.

Most of those posts regarding 'Hinduism' on caste, etc. are nothing short of ridiculous.

Regards,

Narayana.