> > The depth of the Indian philosophical systems > > make western philosophy seem like an ant hill! > > Curtis: > David Hume's "Dialogues on Natural Religion" are > the Vedanta of Vedanta for me. By exposing the > intrinsic contradiction... > We are on the same path, Curtis! The 'intrinsic contradiction' espoused by David Hume has a direct counterpart in the Buddhist logician Nagarjuna, the founder of the 'Madhyamaka' school in India. Hume and Nagarjuna's logic is very impressive.
Nagarjuna taught the idea of relativity; an object exists only in relation to other objects. Objects *do not* have an intrinsic nature; an object is possible only in relation to other objects. Which, in a nut shell, means that existence is devoid of of 'own being' - there is a dependent origination. The main tenet of this school can be summed up as: 'any proposition, when taken to it's extreme, will be found to be self-contradictory'. Ken Wilber agrees with this - he ascribes to Nagarjuna's hypothesis concerning the dialectic, outlined in a four-fold negation: "Neither from itself nor from another, Nor from both, Nor without a cause, Does anything whatever, anywhere arise..." - Madhyamaka-karika, 1:1. According to Ken Wilber, this can be termed a 'tetralemma', which follows this logical propositions: "X (affirmation) non-X (negation) X and non-X (both) neither X nor non-X (neither)." > in the very concept of God as being omnipotent > omniscient and good when compared with the > state of suffering in the world, he freed > mankind from thousands of years of superstitious > beliefs. We have seen explosive growth in > every area of human knowledge that embraced > this freedom. > > There is only one area of human knowledge left > that has refused to have an honest discourse > on whether the ideas make any sense. It is no > surprise that this area, shielded from rational > thought and objections to absurd assertions, > produces people strapping bombs on their bodies > to enter an imaginary afterlife. > Agreed!
