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Re: Theism Can't Honestly Be Dismissed

Nov 22, 2002 02:08 PM
by rnewman2003


--- In theos-talk@y..., "Steve Stubbs" <stevestubbs@y...> wrote:

>>> The Adwaita Vedanta does not teach that supreme reality is 
personal.

Correct. But Adwaita Vedanta is but one interpretation of Vedanta. 
If you are interested, I refer you to the philosophy of Ananda Tirtha 
Goswami, better known as Madhvacharya or Madhva, who lived and 
preached around the 12th century in India. Better I think than 
anyone before or after him, he pointed out the logical fallacies in 
the Adwaita Vedanta of Shankara and promulgated his own system, 
called (somewhat imprecisely) Dwaita Vedanta.

Vedanta itself, i.e., the Brahma Sutras of Badarayana, like the 
Upanishads of which they are a synthesis and concordance, contains 
statements that can be interpreted such that the supreme reality is 
described as either personal or impersonal. Shankara is the most 
famous of the impersonal interpreters, while Ramanuja and Madhva are 
the best-known in the personal camp.

But this is somewhat beside the point, and perhaps you were aware of 
all this already. The ultimate proof of the existence of anything is 
direct experience. It boils down to the personal experience of 
certain highly advanced souls who have testified that the ultimate 
reality is indeed personal. You may point out, correctly, that there 
are at least an equal number of highly advanced souls who testify the 
opposite. BUT THERE'S THIS DIFFERENCE, AND THERE'S NO REFUTING IT, 
UNFORTUNATELY FOR ADHERENTS OF ADWAITA VEDANTA: Those who have 
experienced and described the supreme personality invariably have 
also experienced and described the impersonal aspect of absolute 
reality, and they state from their direct experience of both that the 
personality is the ultimate aspect. Those who have only experienced 
the impersonal aspect, by definition, are in no position to judge 
between them.

It is as if a group of mountain climbers who have scaled Mt. Whitney 
claim that it's the highest mountain in the world, while there is a 
group that has scaled both Mt. Whitney and Mt. Everest, and know very 
well that while Whitney is awfully high, Everest is considerably 
higher. In general, when a person offers positive testimony (i.e., 
that such-and-such exists), it logically supersedes the opposite 
negative testimony (such-and-such does not exist). Indeed, to say 
that something (or someone) does not exist can never be proven either 
empirically or logically. Why would anybody believe it, if there is 
any credibility at all in the positive viewpoint? Beats me.

Robert





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