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Sitaram · Site Admin Joined: 14 Sep 2005 Posts: 1079

You must be careful, when you leave your tent-door open at night. All
sorts of things may creep in while you are not looking; a camel who
feels cold, for example, or Sitaram with his bizarre ideas.

I spent several years debating and arguing and studying religions
full time on the Internet. I remember one of my early encounters with
a Muslim whose screen name was "Titanium," a very strong metal immune
to rust and tarnish. Titanium attempted to assert that Hindus condone
poor treatment of women, and therefore Hinduism is bad because such
perpetrators are a product of that belief/ideology. I raised the
subject of Sarah giving her handmaiden Hagar to Abram. I pointed out
that nowhere is it said whether Hagar had any say or consent in all
this. Various onlookers cheered at the brilliance of my rhetorical
fencing parry.

One day, a Christian was trying to criticize Hinduism on various
criteria. I pointed out the great irony, which one rarely sees
mentioned, that in the Old Testament, one of the most heinous crimes
was to join in the worship of Moloch and pass one's own child through
the fire as a sacrifice. Yet what do we see in the New Testament but
a monotheistic God who is a Trinity of a Father offering His only
begotten to the sacrifice of a crucifixion.

I suppose my point in all this, aside from amazing and entertaining
all of you, is that there are always ways to get inside of any
religion or philosophy or ideology, and find that it contains within
its very fabric the contradictory seeds of its own destruction.

Mathematician Kurt Gödel did this with the axiomatic systems of
mathematics, in his dispute with (oh who was that? Ah yes, Hilbert)
another mathematician who asserted that any proposition which is TRUE
must certainly be PROVEABLE. For millennia, mathematics was
considered to be the one hope of humanity to access absolute truth.
Socrates and Plato and the Pythagoreans looked to number and geometry
as the haven and refuge of eternally infallible assertions. There
seemed to be only one little flaw in Euclid's geometry, namely, the
Fifth Postulate, that, given a plane, with a line in it, and a point
in the plane not on the line, there can pass through that point one
and only one line which is parallel to the first line, never
intersecting with it in either direction, though we extend it as far
as we please. The word postulate comes from the Latin "postulo"
meaning, "I demand or require." In monasteries, the POSTULANTS are
those of whom demands are made as the are tested for suitability to
make life-long vows. Hence, in geometry, a POSTULATE is something
which we demand that you accept without any sort of proof in a
theorem, but simply on the strength that it is intuitively obvious.
And, may I add, it is intuitively obvious that were we to attempt to
prove EVERY assertion in some axiomatic system by means of a theorem,
why then the number of theorems would be INFINITE, and we abhor an
infinite regress on the grounds that we haven't the time for such
nonsense. By the way, this little tale which I am narrating, of the
incompleteness theorem and the failure of mathematics (failure to
live up to our expectations) is far more important a tale to be
included in every young person's curriculum vitae than any tale of
angels, or apples, or gardens, or flying mounts, or nights of power
or third heavens. Yes, those were the "good ole' days" when we were
certain that the earth was the absolute center of the universe, about
which all else revolved, and mankind was the special concern of the
Almighty, and mathematics was the pristine reservoir of absolute
truth unsullied and untainted by the corruption of the material world
below the lunar sphere.

For centuries, generation after generation of mathematicians tried
their darnedest to PROVE the fifth postulate of Euclid. They
thought, "If only we could PROVE it, then geometry will be perfect,
without that little blotch of doubt on it's otherwise irreproachable
escutcheon of convincing accuracy." One day, a Russian chap by the
name of Lobachevsky said, "I know! I will ASSUME that there is MORE
than one line passing through the point which never meets the first
line, and I shall reason on and on from that premise, until I arrive
at some obvious contradiction, and then I shall have PROVED the Fifth
Postulate by REDUCTIO AD ABSURDUM." But Lobachevsky's clever tactic
never yielded the much desired fruit of contradiction. Instead,
Pandora's box opened again, and a swarm of different geometries flew
out like a swarm of Harpies to defile our mystical last supper feast
of communion with the Logos. How disillusioning. Geometry was no
longer the unassailable bastion of certainty. The earth was no longer
the center of the universe. Soon, humankind itself would be dethroned
from the seat of honor by notions of Evolution.

http://www.math.yorku.ca/Who/Facult...m/lecture.shtml

When does questioning and doubt become disrespectful? My suspicion is
that it becomes disrepectful the moment it becomes too successful and
persuasive. Was Copernicus disrepectful to Ptolemy? Was Darwin
disrepectful to Moses and Aristotle?

I should have entitled this post "Respect and Science" but I find
cold desert nights and nomadic tents far more romantic, don't you?

Santayana once said, I think, something about how one of human-kind's
greatest abilities is the ability to feel self-contempt, self-
loathing. He may have also been the one to say that our skepticism is
like our virginity, and we must not too easily surrender it to the
first idea which comes along.

Our writings, ideas, theories, heritage and culture are very much
like children to us. We are very proud of them and very attached to
them. We are very protective. It is often difficult for a mother to
see her child as really quite naughty and culpable.

An idea or theory must earn our respect. Even a God must earn our
respect and become worthy of worship in our eyes. Ever since Eve took
her famous bite from that apple of knowledge we have been saying that
a tree is known by its fruits.

Of all the Deities who have ever claimed omnipotence, none has ever
claimed the power to force or enforce belief. Belief is a banquet
table which is "invitation-only" and no invitation is effective
unless we exercise our freewill, accept and R.S.V.P. It took the
genius of a Kierkegaard, the father of Existentialism, to point out,
in "Fear and Trembling," that it is Abraham's free will choice, and
THAT FREEWILL CHOICE ALONE, which ultimately empowers the voice from
heaven commanding sacrifice.

Now, you may well ask, "What sort of tapestry is this Sitaram weaving
for us with his work-in-progress allegory of his about a cold desert
night and a tent with the entrance left open?"

Well, a desert is barren. Cold is lifeless and enervating. The
darkness and gloom of night obscures all details. A tent is a shelter
which harbors warmth and light. Now a cold camel, as we know, is a
crafty beast who at first begs that only one hoof gain entrance to
warm for a moment. But the end of all rhetoric is that the camel
winds up filling the tent, and we are pushed out into the night cold.

A lobbyist for the interest of the Boxing League once spoke out
against those who would ban the sport by demonstrating how boxing is
really of universal interest. He explained, "Suppose you are walking
along a street, and you notice that, on the other side of the street,
a husband and wife are having an argument which suddenly breaks out
into a knock-down-drag-out fight, with kicking, biting,
scratching.... no holds barred. Well, do you look straight ahead and
keep on walking? No, of course not. Your eyes are glued to the
spectacle, along with all the other passers-by, until a huge crowd
gathers."

We like fights. We enjoy seeing something or someone get the
daylights beat out of it. This is way all those Survival shows and
Trump shows are now so popular.

People enjoy a good fight, a good argument. Hmmm.... well, let us be
somewhat discriminating. Fighting is not good, because violence is a
poor way to settle differences (unless we annihilate all opposition
to the status of extinct, at which point all disputation ceases.) But
reasoned argument is interesting and educational and is sometimes
actually instructive, whenever we can learn something new, or see
things in a different light, from a different perspective.

One thimbleful of Truth is always seasoned with bushels of falsehood.
Wheat is always rubbing shoulders with Tares (weeds). The famous
Homilist, John Chrysostome (the golden mouthed), of the 4th century,
once stated that the Tares are left side-by-side in the Wheat until
the final day of harvest precisely because until that final judgment
day, mystically, tares may be transformed into wheat and, conversely,
wheat may be transformed into tares.

The "proof of the pudding" is knowing a tree by its ultimate fruits
of a lifetime.

Maximus, in the Philokalia, wrote "Do not say that you are the temple
of the Lord, writes Jeremiah; nor should you say that faith alone in
God can save you, for this is impossible unless you also acquire love
for God through your works. As for faith by itself, 'the devils also
believe, and tremble' (Epistle of James, 2:19)"

What is your "Persuasion?"

We should note with some interest the word "persuaded" in Paul's
statement: "For I am persuaded that neither death nor life, nor
angels nor principalities nor powers, nor things present nor things
to come, nor height nor depth, nor any other created thing, shall be
able to separate us from the love of God which is in Christ Jesus our
Lord." Romans 8:38-39

Who was it that persuaded Paul? What was it that persuaded Paul? What
does the word "persuasion" mean to you?

Paul lists many and mighty things in his verse above, angels,
principalities, powers, the whole of heaven and earth, BUT Paul does
NOT mention PERSUASION, since the key which opened the door to let us
enter is also the same key which can lock the door and keep us out.

Kierkegaard once observed that a suicide does not end their life with
deliberation, but rather, they die from an EXCESS of deliberation
(they think too much.)

Martin Luther, father of the Protestant Reformation (as well as
father of a number of children with a former nun) said that we
must "pluck out the eyes of reason" lest we become, no longer
PERSUADED but disuaded, and made appeal to the words of Jesus who
said, "better to pluck out one's eye and enter into paradise maimed
then for the entire body to enter into hell."

Here is an elaboration on Martin Luther's teaching:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/luther.htm

Originally Posted by Martin Luther on Reason

Luther openly advocated the abandonment of using natural reason
(Luther considered his use of theological reasoning different from
natural reason, i.e., scientific reasoning) . His theological message
to live by faith and to abstain from listening to reason has mentally
enslaved the lives of millions of Christians to this day. Throughout
his literary life he wrote statements such as, "Whoever wishes to be
a Christian, let him pluck out the eyes of his reason," "We must give
reason a vacation and enter a different school. We must refrain from
consulting reason. We must bid reason hold its peace; we must order
it to be dead. We must gouge out its eyes and pluck its
feathers...," "You must kill the other thoughts and the ways of
reason or of the flesh, for God detests them."

I am about to say something in regard to the Mutakallimum Islamic
school, and as I searched in google.com, I came across this url which
may be of some interest, though it represents something of a
digression:

http://www.emery.archive.mcmail.com...s2/occas16.html

What follows is a quote from "Islamic Theology: Traditionalilsm and
Rationalism" by Binyamin Abrahamov, Edinburgh University Press, ISBN
0-7486-1102-9, Chapter 3, page 19:

We must bear in mind that some Muslim scholars have criticised the
use of rational arguments in the interpretation of the Qur'an. They
have prohibited the use of independent rational interpretation of the
Qur'an (al-tafsir bi'l-ra 'y). A criticism of rational methods in the
sphere of Islamic law is illustrated in the teachings of the Zahirite
school of law which rebuked the use of analogical reasoning (qiyas)
in deriving law from the Qur'an or the Sunna. In both cases, the
criticism was directed against the VERY USE of rational arguments,
not against their place in argumentation or interpretation.

The traditionalists' attitude towards rational arguments in theology
is two-sided. On the one hand, rational proofs of the principles of
religion, such as God's existence, His unity and attributes, are
rejected by extreme traditionalists, but on the other, the
traditionalists use rational arguments to prove principles derived
from the Qur'an and the Sunna and to refute their adversaries. They
oppose the tenets of the rationalists derived from Qur'an and the
Sunna and to refut their adversaries. They oppose the tenets of the
rationalists derived from speculative considerations, and also the
inevitable consequence of using reason, namely, the diversity of the
rationalists' theological solutions, as against the uniformity of the
traditionalists' teachings.

The foremost target of the traditionalists was the Mutakallimun, the
main body of Muslim scholars who used speculative ways of reasoning
to formulate their theological tenets and also to attack the
traditionalists' approaches.

(end of quote)

We see how the traditionalists resemble Martin Luther with regard
to "plucking out the eye of reason."

We must sometimes fight fire with fire. We fight Reason with reasoned
arguments. A five volume study of "Fundamentalisms" from the
University of Chicago observes on its very first page that, though
Fundamentalists of every religion dislike science and technology,
they all avail themselves of Internet and word processing to
propagate their message.

Socrates was accused of making the weaker argument defeat the
stronger argument as well as corrupting the youth.

An infant is such a blank slate. Place that infant in a Catholic home
and in a few years it is saying the Rosary. Place the same infant in
a Muslim home, and in a few years they are bowing towards Mecca and
fasting the Ramamdan. Place them in an Hasidic household and they are
studying the Torah and Talmud and facing Jerusalem in prayer.

If infants are such convenient, willing, cooperative blank slates,
then why is it that culture and language and tradition are not
inviolable and fixed but are ever changing and evolving and mutating?

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words, but a thousand
inspired words are, for me at least, worth more than all the pictures
in the world. Such inspired words are a dialectic process, which
Socrates describes it as a weaver's loom, with warp and woof, and a
shuttle with passes back and forth, creating a tapestry.

One of the greatests wonders is that, even though reality is build
upon the random, bizarre twilight zone of Quantum, yet it remains
intelligible and recognizable as a cohesive whole. Even if our
perception of reality should ultimately prove to be illusion and
error, yet it is miraculous if even illusion and mirage so orderly on
a macroscopic level should arise from such frenetic discontinuity at
a subatomic level.

"All things are possible, not all is profitable." Actually, that is
not quite what Paul said. Paul actually said: 1 Corinthians
10:23 "All things are lawful for me,but not all things are
profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify."

Now, an EDIFICE is something we construct, similar to a tent, but
more substantial. Sometimes, an edifice is a fort and other times it
is an ivory tower. Sometimes ivory towers become Towers of Babel.

Back to the tent, quickly!

Well, back to allegory of our well-lit warm inviting tent in the
cold, dark, barren desert night. Existential absurdity is the bleak
cold barren darkness which is torment to light-loving, warm-seeking,
purposeful, rational creatures such as we.

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