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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 25, 2017 14:39:54 GMT -6
Ha! Caught your attention! This is an interesting link to an article over at Mother Nature Network. I post it counteract some of the woo our Malati likes to post. You can read it here. |
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Post by Nitaidas on Feb 26, 2017 16:46:26 GMT -6
Hah! Woke you up out of your slumbers, Malati, didn't I. As a GV devotee I go by the teachings of GV gurus and the shastra. That there is a life force, soul, atman that gives life to physical body. The atman is our true identity. Some sampradaya says its localized but some say its reality is that of one single universal entity, like we are one with the paramatma. I am a CV devotee, too, but I don't believe the CV gurus were right about their claims, nor were the shastras. They were operating under a severe limitations. There was no science. They had no means of knowing what was true and what was not true. They merely inherited claims about the truth that could not be tested or supported by evidence. They were the blind following the blind. It is a central responsibility of modern CV bhaktas, if they indeed embrace the initiative "satyam param dhImahi" to pursue the truth through the best means possible. Science is not the enemy. It is the best tool available to pursue the truth, actually the only tool. We should read the ancient texts in the light of modern scientific discoveries and reject what cannot be supported. Souls cannot be supported as the article demonstrates because there is no evidence that such a power or substance exists that can interact with bodies as souls are supposed to. If souls existed, they would be discovered. It is time to give up these mistaken beliefs. It is better to embrace the truths of science than to keep our heads buried in the sands of delusional, backwards thinking. If we start by meditating on truth we will come to some insight. If we start by meditating on falsehoods we will only come to ignorance. Sure, there are other models of physics besides the Standard Model, but none of them have the degree of support the Standard Model does. If that changes, then we can reconsider. Science can correct itself. No religion can do that, because religions are not really genuine ways of knowing knowing anything. They are just a collection of claims about reality without any support. It is just a matter of time. It has. There is nothing in the universe that corresponds to a soul. If it were anything more than a mistaken notion, there would be something there. If the soul cannot be detected it also cannot affect anything in the material world. It cannot inhabit a material body. It cannot even know a material body, what to speak of moving it. Perhaps someone saw you eat that pakora. I can ask that person. It was empirical, both you and that pakora. Everything that can be known is empirical. Even your thoughts can now be traced by brain scans. You are your brain. You are your body. When the body dies, you die too. That was the first lie they taught us in ISKCON: "You are not your body." Godel's theorem has nothing to do with what we are talking about here. It is just a handy obfuscation appealed to by people who want to confuse the waters. It sounds sophisticated and so the people who cite it think they too are sophisticated. It applies only to mathematics, not to the reality we confront on a moment to moment basis. Neither do mathematics nor the mind have realms of their own. Because someone believes in something does not make it true. There is only the brain, neurons firing in various patterns. This we can know. This we can see. Things that cannot be seen or detected or affect us in any way need not concern us. If they can affect us, then they must also be detected. Time to grow up. |
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Post by kirtaniya on Mar 8, 2017 19:10:16 GMT -6
You are your brain. You are your body. When the body dies, you die too. That was the first lie they taught us in ISKCON: "You are not your body." Nitai dasji, A man with a fresh copy of his brain (in the place of his natural brain) - does he remain the same or become a different personality? |
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Post by Nitaidas on Mar 24, 2017 0:29:45 GMT -6
Sorry for my long absence from this discussion. Things have been extremely busy here. Just finished and sent off the translation with comms. of the Isopanisad. What an interesting text! More about that later.
In the meantime, back to Malati's misrepresentation of science in favor of myth and fantasy.
It is too bad that we cannot seem to have this conversation with civility. Malati says:
"You are a fool. A GV devotee believes in consciousness as the symptom of the soul. A GV devotee is in acceptance that our real identity is as a spirit soul (atma) and part and parcel of the supreme supersoul (paramatma). Those are GV 101."
What is achieved by calling someone a fool? It certainly isn't an argument for anything or proof of anything. It does indicate that someone, the name-caller, is troubled or unsettled by something enough to become uncivil. Malati, I don't recall ever calling you a fool. I prefer to let you demonstrate that yourself by your own statements. Your views on science are ample evidence of that. Who needs to say it. Imagine, claiming that science is not based on solid evidence! What are not based on solid evidence are the CV scriptures. There is no evidence in support of them! For science we have ample evidence. It is on the basis of scientific discovery that we are able to communicate in this way. We live longer and healthier lives because of science. We know more about the world because of science. The authors of the CV scriptures thought that the earth was flat and rests on the backs of four elephants who stand on the back of a huge turtle. Some knowledge they had. The only real source of knowledge in the world is science. Malati, if you really think that science is not based on any hard evidence then you should stop driving your car, stop using computers, stop taking your meds.(or maybe you have).
But Malati's views are typical of the blind fanatics who call themselves GV devotees these days. Is it any wonder that people see CV as just another sect from the lunatic fringe? No one can and no one should take CV seriously when it is represented by such lunatic ideas.
The idea that the soul or atman is beyond the scope of science is also a form of idiocy. Think about it. Anything that can move a body or change the world in any way must be observable by science. If something exists that cannot move matter or change the world in any way and is not observable by science, we need not bother ourselves with it, because it may as well not exist.
The idea of the existence of the soul is the result of erroneous inferences based on seeing the dead in dreams or seeing the body become still after death. It is natural to assume that something has left the body. But nothing has. Body itself has broken down and ceased to function. The consciousness that we encountered in the body was a result of the chemical interactions in the nervous system. Once those cease so does consciousness.
The upshot is this: CV is just a beautiful fantasy meant to give us hope when we were down. It is only for the living, though. When we die it ends and so do we. The practices, especially, the repetition of the Mahamantra are meant to soften our brains and eventually turn them into mush so we can no longer think critically or think for ourselves. It is a form of self-hypnosis. By hypnotizing ourselves in this way we can see things that aren't really there or hear things that haven't really sounded.
Yes, Malati, you are right. I am a fool, a fool because it took me so long to realize this, to wake up from this fantasy.
That said, there are still important things CV has to teach us, not the things our teachers wanted us to learn, however.
That is what I want to explore here in a series of meditations on CV from our real positions as modern science-embracing mortals. What gifts does CV have for us, if any?
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Post by kirtaniya on Apr 2, 2017 13:16:25 GMT -6
The soul is the synonymous of a person. There is no talk of an individual soul separated from an individual person, except for a lyrical figure of speech: "oh, my soul...". Who doubts that a person is real?
Brain is basically in our perception. There is no way to point at any brain or other object outside perception. Science studies nothing outside perception. Mind is in brain, brain is in mind.
Any individual subject of perception is a set of defining characteristics, factors and relationships. For a brain and for a person it will be definitely different sets.
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