Re: The Flat Earth? - Conclusion
Madhudvisah dasa Swami (shelter@peg.apc.org)
Fri, 14 Jul 1995 06:33:01 GMT
tneilson@phloem.uoregon.edu (Tony Neilson) wrote:
>I can't believe I'm buying into this, but anyway...
>In article <3ts3lg$hnf@dingo.cc.uq.oz.au>, shelter@peg.apc.org (Madhudvisah dasa Swami) writes:
>|> istewart@metz.une.edu.au (Ian Stewart,F13,732405,) wrote:
<snip>
>Swami, I think you're missing Ian's point entirely here. You have suggested that we
>the "best way to get perfect knowledge is to here it from Him" and given the analogy
>of a phone book as "perfect knowledge" for finding someone's number. Fair enough.
>What Ian is trying to say (and imagine he will reply to this) is... in real life,
>when looking for knowledge about "bigger questions" (life, death, our place in the
>Universe etc...), WHAT 'telephone book' do you say we should use? There's lots of
>'companies' out there providing THEIR answer to our questions (e.g. the books he
>mentions. With these competing 'authorised telephone books', it would seem difficult
>to arbitrarily accept one as the supreme truth. Therefore scientists tend to be wary
>of these 'telephone books', and use the 'scientific method' (however THAT is defined)
>to approach answers to questions. Ian is just saying that there is no single
>'telephone book' that gives us the answers.
I agree there are many people who are presenting religious "phone-books"
and there are many problems. It is not a very common thing to find a
person really interested in helping people understand their relationship
with God, but there are many who want to use some scripture or religious
organization for their own ends. Many people want followers, fame, money
and so on and they often use religion as a means to achieve this... It has
spoiled the whole thing. But still there is no other way. If you want to
find out about the spiritual world you have to find someone who actually
knows about it and get the knowledge from him... It is outside the
universe so how else could we find out about it?
<snip>
>Sorry, but the two of you having two different aguements. Ian means 'phone books' to
>be any 'authoritative' prescriptive answer to a question, giving the example of
>religious books. These have different 'phone numbers' for the same 'person'.
>Therefore, why trust these 'phone books'? Find your own 'numbers'!
But, although I have outlined a scientific process based on observation
and experiment for finding numbers it would take a VERY long time to find
a phone number and it may fail completely. It depends on the assumption
that phone numbers are distributed in a somewhat organized way, but this
may not always be the case. If Telstar don't follow this pattern my
"scientific" experiment will fail. So I for one will continue to use your
excellent phone books and very efficient directory operator service...
>P.S. I agree with Swami that Telstra (Telecom Australia's new name) has wonderful
>phone books (in the literal sense!) - and that IS a commercial!
PS: If you want a spiritual "phone book" without wrong numbers in it I
reccommend you read "Bhagavad-gita As It Is" by His Divine Grace A.C.
Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. If nothing else you will find it a very
refreshing change. [BTW there are many other translations as well, but
mostly they have lots of wrong numbers...]
Chant Hare Krishna and be happy!
Thank you. Hare Krishna!
Madhudvisah dasa Swami
(shelter@peg.apc.org) http://www.peg.apc.org/~shelter
All glories to His Divine Grace A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada!
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