Secularism as we learn more, we hear the idea wasn’t practiced in a way that upheld the communities sensibilities. Example- butcher shops& liquor stores near temples affected the important precepts of multi faceted many different ways of worship in hindus. To call it secularism was poor interpretation for power of statecraft. We have detailed recorded arguments of denial of a temple in the birth place of Ram, it was blatant misuse of power to deny archeological scientific evidence for propaganda statecraft. It caused most people to more than question secularism as a fair idea & provided living proof for blatant authoritarian statecraft against civilian communities. Was it overriding commonly held belief that real scientific proofs help make fair arguments? But sad it failed to uphold secularism as a healthy fair approach.
But the questions that argue goes back to the atheism& religion, and idol worship.
What is an idol? Its a representation as visual sculpture. Now think of one example-navagrahas- the sculpture revered by agrarian communities paid respect to sun, earth, planets,…& linked to astronomical science. This was common to every village. & may be people didn’t suffer from idea of cosmic mysticism but had a respectful approach to knowledge, though not scholarly enough to know great details& it held checks& balances against dictatorial propaganda of fake news for power, because common man wasn’t foolish mindless but could understand earth was a globe& sun was the center of the solar system. Much of this knowledge was common sense.
But as we read global histories we are told often that much of the knowledge was lost in many places. Dictatorial powers & invaders attacked many communities for wealth, power& human labor. Fear of dictatorial power of statecrafts built new constructs because people didn’t have info for understanding common knowledge& wide misuse of fake propaganda used for dictatorial power grab. History speaks of these in many cultures at different times. The fear of unbridled power created new constructs of resistance& atheism due to fear of power in religious centers.
The bigger point was what happened to checks& balances as scholars& people guarding safety of civilians were negated by propaganda? Misuse of info collapsed many communities around the globe causing mindless people unable to sustain care nurture healthy ideas, but facing dictatorial systems only replicate dictatorial power wealth pursuit.
The idea of idol or not idol isn’t the problem, nor is the aspect of keeping governance free of religious power alluding to basic everyday tasks- not favoring one over the other. It is always the concept of misuse of power, info & safety of civilians. More important ensuring civilians don’t live in fear(fearless doesn’t mean attack others), but are able to learn, grow with thoughtful practices not to violate people as in control of another humans ability to live. These are part of checks& balances in any community every culture speaks of ideas of resisting power. Atheism is just one such ‘ism’
My bigger question- why did power become unbridled? Why did people not understand what happened ? Why did power forget others on the planet? All religions claim god is force for good for civilian living. What Was it causing mindless pursuit of power? Was it propaganda- misinfo attacking sensibilities of humans? Bigger question is robotic machine power really the same unbridled power that could be misused with propaganda causing burn out in ways that are more difficult for humanity? Idea of sensibilities and healthy means to knowledge, understanding will always be important so that people aren’t caught by propaganda attacks or oppression (misuse of power) of simple unsuspecting civilians.
Recently renovated Nalanda university is it’s own kind of world’s most ancient and most enriched by versatile knowledge Hindu university ..
Being hindu is the way of life to live peacefully and achieve the paramgyan (from where you came from and where you to go for)of life being a human yoni which one gets after 84 lacs yonis..
Moksha as defined by liberation of the soul and merging into the brahma is predicated upon rebirth, existence of brahma and the soul. There's not even a shared of empirical evidence for any of the three found in last 2,500 years. Sure, science hasn't cracked everything and we don't completely know the objective reality hence these things are a matter of choice of belief as of today. All I'm saying is that belief in rebirth is declining, and, hence, in moksha as well. There wasn't any belief in rebirth outside the subcontinent to be begin, it will be true inside the subcontinent in a matter of decades. As you say, experience is how we learn about reality in our philosophy -- people no longer relate to rebirth. Just ask people around you whether they believe in it.
With regards to repudiating rebirth philosophically -- I'm sure, you can arrive at this on your own. To me, Occam's Razor is enough. The concept of a soul and the process of rebirth are superfluous to explain life as I currently experience it.
If no one is concerned about quantum mechanics, does it matter? Yes and no. Yes, if it is the objective reality. No, because then it can have no impact on anyone's life. But since world has many people who care about the truth and that there is an immense volume of experimental evidence that validates quantum mechanics, therefore, it is not something that will ever go out of favour.
I'm not stopping you from exploring concepts of Indic philosophy. In the beginning of this thread -- I started by saying, we need to move beyond religion -- that means rituals, idol worship, gods, etc. A lay person in our country has no deep engagement with any philosophy from any land. People are even aware of history of our or any philosophy, they're not capable of critical thinking or abstract reasoning. Religion then causes more harm than good and creates more conflict than peace. It is hardly a guide for moral action -- look around, India is a cesspool of corruption, litter, selfish behaviour everywhere. A deeply religious country full of deeply immoral people. What good is this religion?
Well read people like you want to engage with esoteric, abstract ideas such as Advaita philosophy which state that atma and brahma are one, even when no evidence has ever been found for the existence of soul despite so many advances in neuroscience? Sure, be my guest. But Ramesh or Zulfiqar on the street is screaming Jai Sri Ram or Allah in shrill voice and wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Adi Shankaracharya and Asaram Bapu. To his life and lives of thousands of millions, religion does more hard than good, it is a convenient tool for social control and statecraft than anything else.
You can read Antonio Damasio, Daniel Dennett and Robert Sapolsky for their writings on nature of consciousness. I really liked Behave by Sapolsky and Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio. Body can't really observe it's brain. It's beyond the capacity of the brain to observe itself completely. You can sit through your own open brain surgery and not make what your brain is doing. Neuroscience and cognitive psychology is your best guide to understand how brain constructs a representation of reality around you.
This conversation has veered off into exploring philosophy, rather than secularism! It would be a very interesting conversation to have!
"A deeply religious country full of deeply immoral people. What good is this religion?"
Do agree with this though!
"A lay person in our country has no deep engagement with any philosophy from any land. People are even aware of history of our or any philosophy, they're not capable of critical thinking or abstract reasoning"
And unfortunately, this is true as well.
The point you bring about Moksha, we could have an interesting conversation about what exactly constitutes evidence.
Conversations would be much more useful if there were more people like you willing to engage!
I agree, it would be a very interesting conversation. I'll write out a more detailed reply a little later today or tomorrow regarding moksha. I think it would start off with a discussion on existence of soul. To me, it appears there is no soul. Or at least, a parsimonious explanation of consciousness and subjective experience doesn't require a soul.
Perhaps you can start -- why do you think there is a soul in the human body / living organism?
I think I'll turn this into a post and then we can discuss there.
But I don't think soul is the correct terminology. I would rephrase as it consciousness. Once that is done, then basically it is distinguishing between the knower and the known. What relation does the subject have to the object? The object has to be separate from the subject. So applying that principle, who is the consciousness that is experiencing the body?
It can't be the body because you observe the body. It can't be the brain because you can observe it. It can't be the mind because you can observe it too. So what is the "Thing" that is separate from the mind allowing it to observe the mind.
Here is a neat trick: there is no independent knower. Knower is also part of the known.
Brain constructs a representation of reality -- it learns about its surroundings through the senses and interprets the sensations through conceptual knowledge it is continuously acquiring. Hence, the brain of the 1 year old kid doesn't see what we see, or even average Ramesh on the street won't see the world as we who are somewhat well-read. Brain acquires concepts - it looks at a laptop, knows it's a "laptop" as an object.
Consciousness (or the awareness of a self as a knower) is also an object within the representation of reality it constructs. The object "I" represents our self -- the body, brain, it's neurons with all its memories and the conceptual knowledge of the world it has acquired since birth.
Therefore, there is no independent knower, only the known - knower is part of the known, which in its broadest sense includes process of the knowing of the known.
To this point, however, there could be a question: why is there subjective experience at all? If consciousness is just a product of physical processes, information that is integrated into a unified whole then it begs the question "why is there any experience of the world?"
Well, here there is a contradiction in terms. The moment someone asks that question, they have outed yourself as subject / observer making an observation. A stone doesn't or can't make this observation. Only an observer capable of observing does. Another's human subjective experience is unknowable to you, but even the unknowability is part of the fact that you are not a stone, but an observer.
Subjective experience is not an add-on to physical processes, independent of the process of observation that is baked into the design of brain + senses through billions of years of evolution. Subjective experience IS wholly the capacity to observe / act of observation.
So, let's distill it into a much simpler question: what does a stone need to do to be able to acquire the capacity of observing the universe? What does it mean to be able to observe?
If you can answer that, you'd have traced what nature has achieved in the last 2 billion years. It doesn't need a soul to do it. It's a superbly complicated contraption of a system responding to information through the laws of physics.
What incredible genius is nature that it could figure out vision and hearing -- like think about the development of eyes? How did it even figure a simple living creatures could learn / construct a "visual" map of their surroundings by absorbing photons carrying different wavelengths of energy?
When systemic poverty pushes communities to work all day& barely have enough to pay for food water shelter, probably eating one meal a day, how many would think of finding the next paying job to care for parents kids& family or philosophies on abstract reasoning? The idea of care nurture is often valued over abstract ideological scholarships. But… but lack of scholarly in communities can make it vulnerable to fake propaganda. The question would then revert back to privilege instead of common sense. The point that all humans are capable of understanding& learning abstract concepts& so cant be carried away by propaganda will always be important. Healthy reading, mind& emotional expressions always remain valuable pursuit in humanity.
In point no. 7, you mention 'NEP STRONGLY RECOMMENDED inclusion of Sanskrit in school curricula. That almost feels like state forcing heads of pupils into Sanskrit scriptures. In a free democratic society, these decisions must be left to the parents and students. State must not attempt to engineer culture (I'm assuming you know what happens when governments starts to do such stuff). Then you follow this up by saying that those who opposed this are 'ERASING culture.' Very heavy words 😀. Culture is always fluid. The fittest will survive.
I don't have a strong opinion on inclusion of Sanskrit in the curricula. What I am trying to point out though is that including Sanskrit isn't trying to insert religion into education. It is a cultural insert. You can be for or against that cultural insert. But if you are against Sanskrit on the basis of religion, you are erasing the culture of an entire civilization on the anvil of secularism.
That's what I am trying to point out through these examples.
We should take a leaf from China's book and be on our way to atheism. Oye country suffers because we remain steeped in idol worship, rituals, mysticism, superstitions. We would advance much faster materially (and spiritually as well) if we left 2,500 year old religions behind.
That China is atheist, is a misnomer. Atheism is predominantly an Abrahamic construct. It requires a central deity. Even in Indian philosophy, Advaita Vedanta could technically be called Atheist, but it isn't really. So these terms don't really map.
China practices its folk religions, Buddhism and Confucianism even now under the CCP. The CCP espouses atheism, but it can only do so because it has a strong hold over Chinese society. That's simply not practical in a democracy. Equating China's progress with atheism is confusing correlation with causation.
Even the Chinese have traditions similar to tribal and folk traditions in India and they're widely practiced in Chinese society (I'll have to look this up though, been a while since I've studied religion in China).
While India does suffer from mysticism and superstitions, I don't see why idol worship is a problem. Frankly, revulsion to idols is an Abrahamic monotheistic superposition. Same folks who follow Indian traditions in Western nations achieve a lot of success.
A lot of India's problems are related to law and order. Simple deregulation - that the PM called for in the Budget session - would go a long way in increasing India's growth rate.
I'm calling for moving beyond all religion. Those ideas were developed about 2,000-2,500 years ago when we had no knowledge about anything. They're good answers for that time, we can choose to be rational and evidence-based today.
As regards to China -- a majority of Chinese are atheists. They are not affiliated to any religion.
I think religion is an handicap for India. Yeah, there might some folks who live in the West, who may have become successful while practicing religion. At scale, it doesn't work. Religion is entirely superfluous to progress -- we don't need it for any purpose, we have much better answers to whatever religion helped with.
For morals - we have law, ethics and philosophy. For mental health - we have psychology, neuroscience. For social bonding - we have sports, movies, concerts, etc.
Those who can educate themselves well -- no harm in their being religious. But that's not the case with 95% of our population. A PM of India could take no better step to uplift the country than investing more in education and working towards eradicating religion.
I'm not saying ban religion. I'm saying educate people enough so they can organically reject it.
There's a fair argument that can be made for moving away from rituals. Coercion is something I'm against, it goes against liberalism.
More importantly though, what we have in India is a akin to philosophy than religion in the Abrahamic sense. Various traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are philosophies of life. They explore the very nature of consciousness and the fundamental reason for the existence (or non-existence) of bliss and happiness.
To classify that as religion and push towards its eradication would be a great loss!
Let me explain how -- today you don't need to read Aristotle. His major ideas have already been absorbed. Whether or not you read him, you already have read much that was influenced by him. That's how philosophy works -- we don't have to go back to the originals.
Secondly, the core tenets of Indian philosophy -- moksha and rebirth have already fallen out of favour of much of top 10% of Indian society. There's no proof of rebirth, and no one's cares about moksha. Once you remove rebirth out of the picture, a lot of Indian philosophy falls flat. There might be some useful stuff with regards to epistemology and logic but you're better off picking up modern texts on the these subjects.
I'd argue the same for any Western philosopher as well. There's no point in reading Adam Smith or Immanuel Kant. If one really wants, one could read select passages or summaries -- but much of their relevant ideas have been absorbed by modern day disciplines.
Do you have any source for moksha and rebirth having fallen out of favor? I'm not so sure of that claim.
Rebirth isn't really necessary for a lot of Hindu Philosophy. There are others who can correct me here, if I'm wrong. The core of it is exploration of consciousness and using meditation to reach there. A lot of Indian society and rituals are centred around that.
Also, I don't agree with the premise that absence of empirical proof invalidates an entire philosophy. The purpose of philosophy is exploration. In fact, in a lot of Indic traditions, only personal experience is considered proof because of the nature of the experience itself.
Indian philosophy extends beyond rebirth and moksha though. There is Nyaya logic and Vedantic metaphysics for example. They aren't abstract thinking tools, they're practical tools in daily endeavours. Granted, you can achieve the same results through something like Stoicism, but that doesn't invalidate Indian philosophical tools.
I don't see any research having absorbed the core philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism though. I know there have been tons of studies on mediation, and some on consciousness, exploring the Advaiting model. Are there others and if so can you point me to them? I would like to know what they've been researching and the way they've integrated models of consciousness.
I think the philosophies you're referring to nyaya, Advaita -- they are frozen in time. They didn't develop further beyond 8th century. You'd probably get a far deeper exploration of nature of consciousness if you were to pick up books from the last 30 years of neuroscience (which has undergone a revolution due to fMRI).
What you're referring to as Vedantic metaphysics -- is precisely what was written in Upanishads (about atma, brahma, rebirth, etc.). Most of Indian philosophy with the exception of Charvaka school agreed with Upanishads. Even Buddhism agreed with karma and rebirth while rejecting atma and brahma. But I don't see how this metaphysics helps in daily endeavours in any way.
I did a survey on 130 people, ~70% of the respondents said they believe in one life. The set of respondents were representative of top 5-10% of our society. You can do your own survey -- you'll find out one way or the other.
Regarding moksha -- I think that's my personal observation, but a solid one. No one talks about moksha anymore. One wouldn't even know that moksha is the highest goal if one never read about the core tenets of Indian philosophy. Even the previous generation doesn't care about moksha. Again, you can do your own research here -- ask your friends, family -- no one gives a damn about moksha. It is nobody's aim anymore.
The concept of atma, bramha, rebirth and moksha are the bedrock of Indian philosophy. There is no empirical basis for rebirth, hence it will fall out of favour one day or another. It has already started.
Secularism as we learn more, we hear the idea wasn’t practiced in a way that upheld the communities sensibilities. Example- butcher shops& liquor stores near temples affected the important precepts of multi faceted many different ways of worship in hindus. To call it secularism was poor interpretation for power of statecraft. We have detailed recorded arguments of denial of a temple in the birth place of Ram, it was blatant misuse of power to deny archeological scientific evidence for propaganda statecraft. It caused most people to more than question secularism as a fair idea & provided living proof for blatant authoritarian statecraft against civilian communities. Was it overriding commonly held belief that real scientific proofs help make fair arguments? But sad it failed to uphold secularism as a healthy fair approach.
But the questions that argue goes back to the atheism& religion, and idol worship.
What is an idol? Its a representation as visual sculpture. Now think of one example-navagrahas- the sculpture revered by agrarian communities paid respect to sun, earth, planets,…& linked to astronomical science. This was common to every village. & may be people didn’t suffer from idea of cosmic mysticism but had a respectful approach to knowledge, though not scholarly enough to know great details& it held checks& balances against dictatorial propaganda of fake news for power, because common man wasn’t foolish mindless but could understand earth was a globe& sun was the center of the solar system. Much of this knowledge was common sense.
But as we read global histories we are told often that much of the knowledge was lost in many places. Dictatorial powers & invaders attacked many communities for wealth, power& human labor. Fear of dictatorial power of statecrafts built new constructs because people didn’t have info for understanding common knowledge& wide misuse of fake propaganda used for dictatorial power grab. History speaks of these in many cultures at different times. The fear of unbridled power created new constructs of resistance& atheism due to fear of power in religious centers.
The bigger point was what happened to checks& balances as scholars& people guarding safety of civilians were negated by propaganda? Misuse of info collapsed many communities around the globe causing mindless people unable to sustain care nurture healthy ideas, but facing dictatorial systems only replicate dictatorial power wealth pursuit.
The idea of idol or not idol isn’t the problem, nor is the aspect of keeping governance free of religious power alluding to basic everyday tasks- not favoring one over the other. It is always the concept of misuse of power, info & safety of civilians. More important ensuring civilians don’t live in fear(fearless doesn’t mean attack others), but are able to learn, grow with thoughtful practices not to violate people as in control of another humans ability to live. These are part of checks& balances in any community every culture speaks of ideas of resisting power. Atheism is just one such ‘ism’
My bigger question- why did power become unbridled? Why did people not understand what happened ? Why did power forget others on the planet? All religions claim god is force for good for civilian living. What Was it causing mindless pursuit of power? Was it propaganda- misinfo attacking sensibilities of humans? Bigger question is robotic machine power really the same unbridled power that could be misused with propaganda causing burn out in ways that are more difficult for humanity? Idea of sensibilities and healthy means to knowledge, understanding will always be important so that people aren’t caught by propaganda attacks or oppression (misuse of power) of simple unsuspecting civilians.
Recently renovated Nalanda university is it’s own kind of world’s most ancient and most enriched by versatile knowledge Hindu university ..
Being hindu is the way of life to live peacefully and achieve the paramgyan (from where you came from and where you to go for)of life being a human yoni which one gets after 84 lacs yonis..
Agreed! There really needs to be a decolonized way of looking at things.
You get it
I do!
Moksha as defined by liberation of the soul and merging into the brahma is predicated upon rebirth, existence of brahma and the soul. There's not even a shared of empirical evidence for any of the three found in last 2,500 years. Sure, science hasn't cracked everything and we don't completely know the objective reality hence these things are a matter of choice of belief as of today. All I'm saying is that belief in rebirth is declining, and, hence, in moksha as well. There wasn't any belief in rebirth outside the subcontinent to be begin, it will be true inside the subcontinent in a matter of decades. As you say, experience is how we learn about reality in our philosophy -- people no longer relate to rebirth. Just ask people around you whether they believe in it.
With regards to repudiating rebirth philosophically -- I'm sure, you can arrive at this on your own. To me, Occam's Razor is enough. The concept of a soul and the process of rebirth are superfluous to explain life as I currently experience it.
If no one is concerned about quantum mechanics, does it matter? Yes and no. Yes, if it is the objective reality. No, because then it can have no impact on anyone's life. But since world has many people who care about the truth and that there is an immense volume of experimental evidence that validates quantum mechanics, therefore, it is not something that will ever go out of favour.
I'm not stopping you from exploring concepts of Indic philosophy. In the beginning of this thread -- I started by saying, we need to move beyond religion -- that means rituals, idol worship, gods, etc. A lay person in our country has no deep engagement with any philosophy from any land. People are even aware of history of our or any philosophy, they're not capable of critical thinking or abstract reasoning. Religion then causes more harm than good and creates more conflict than peace. It is hardly a guide for moral action -- look around, India is a cesspool of corruption, litter, selfish behaviour everywhere. A deeply religious country full of deeply immoral people. What good is this religion?
Well read people like you want to engage with esoteric, abstract ideas such as Advaita philosophy which state that atma and brahma are one, even when no evidence has ever been found for the existence of soul despite so many advances in neuroscience? Sure, be my guest. But Ramesh or Zulfiqar on the street is screaming Jai Sri Ram or Allah in shrill voice and wouldn't be able to tell the difference between Adi Shankaracharya and Asaram Bapu. To his life and lives of thousands of millions, religion does more hard than good, it is a convenient tool for social control and statecraft than anything else.
You can read Antonio Damasio, Daniel Dennett and Robert Sapolsky for their writings on nature of consciousness. I really liked Behave by Sapolsky and Self Comes to Mind by Antonio Damasio. Body can't really observe it's brain. It's beyond the capacity of the brain to observe itself completely. You can sit through your own open brain surgery and not make what your brain is doing. Neuroscience and cognitive psychology is your best guide to understand how brain constructs a representation of reality around you.
This conversation has veered off into exploring philosophy, rather than secularism! It would be a very interesting conversation to have!
"A deeply religious country full of deeply immoral people. What good is this religion?"
Do agree with this though!
"A lay person in our country has no deep engagement with any philosophy from any land. People are even aware of history of our or any philosophy, they're not capable of critical thinking or abstract reasoning"
And unfortunately, this is true as well.
The point you bring about Moksha, we could have an interesting conversation about what exactly constitutes evidence.
Conversations would be much more useful if there were more people like you willing to engage!
I agree, it would be a very interesting conversation. I'll write out a more detailed reply a little later today or tomorrow regarding moksha. I think it would start off with a discussion on existence of soul. To me, it appears there is no soul. Or at least, a parsimonious explanation of consciousness and subjective experience doesn't require a soul.
Perhaps you can start -- why do you think there is a soul in the human body / living organism?
I think I'll turn this into a post and then we can discuss there.
But I don't think soul is the correct terminology. I would rephrase as it consciousness. Once that is done, then basically it is distinguishing between the knower and the known. What relation does the subject have to the object? The object has to be separate from the subject. So applying that principle, who is the consciousness that is experiencing the body?
It can't be the body because you observe the body. It can't be the brain because you can observe it. It can't be the mind because you can observe it too. So what is the "Thing" that is separate from the mind allowing it to observe the mind.
Here is a neat trick: there is no independent knower. Knower is also part of the known.
Brain constructs a representation of reality -- it learns about its surroundings through the senses and interprets the sensations through conceptual knowledge it is continuously acquiring. Hence, the brain of the 1 year old kid doesn't see what we see, or even average Ramesh on the street won't see the world as we who are somewhat well-read. Brain acquires concepts - it looks at a laptop, knows it's a "laptop" as an object.
Consciousness (or the awareness of a self as a knower) is also an object within the representation of reality it constructs. The object "I" represents our self -- the body, brain, it's neurons with all its memories and the conceptual knowledge of the world it has acquired since birth.
Therefore, there is no independent knower, only the known - knower is part of the known, which in its broadest sense includes process of the knowing of the known.
To this point, however, there could be a question: why is there subjective experience at all? If consciousness is just a product of physical processes, information that is integrated into a unified whole then it begs the question "why is there any experience of the world?"
Well, here there is a contradiction in terms. The moment someone asks that question, they have outed yourself as subject / observer making an observation. A stone doesn't or can't make this observation. Only an observer capable of observing does. Another's human subjective experience is unknowable to you, but even the unknowability is part of the fact that you are not a stone, but an observer.
Subjective experience is not an add-on to physical processes, independent of the process of observation that is baked into the design of brain + senses through billions of years of evolution. Subjective experience IS wholly the capacity to observe / act of observation.
So, let's distill it into a much simpler question: what does a stone need to do to be able to acquire the capacity of observing the universe? What does it mean to be able to observe?
If you can answer that, you'd have traced what nature has achieved in the last 2 billion years. It doesn't need a soul to do it. It's a superbly complicated contraption of a system responding to information through the laws of physics.
What incredible genius is nature that it could figure out vision and hearing -- like think about the development of eyes? How did it even figure a simple living creatures could learn / construct a "visual" map of their surroundings by absorbing photons carrying different wavelengths of energy?
I agree. There are various interpretations of quantum theory/string theory and I like the one you mentioned. I have often wondered the same.
I have a far fetched theory that one day, advanced physics and consciousness studies will have a grand unified theory.
Many quantum phenomena change depending on observation and we have no fundamental answer other than "it just is".
When systemic poverty pushes communities to work all day& barely have enough to pay for food water shelter, probably eating one meal a day, how many would think of finding the next paying job to care for parents kids& family or philosophies on abstract reasoning? The idea of care nurture is often valued over abstract ideological scholarships. But… but lack of scholarly in communities can make it vulnerable to fake propaganda. The question would then revert back to privilege instead of common sense. The point that all humans are capable of understanding& learning abstract concepts& so cant be carried away by propaganda will always be important. Healthy reading, mind& emotional expressions always remain valuable pursuit in humanity.
In point no. 7, you mention 'NEP STRONGLY RECOMMENDED inclusion of Sanskrit in school curricula. That almost feels like state forcing heads of pupils into Sanskrit scriptures. In a free democratic society, these decisions must be left to the parents and students. State must not attempt to engineer culture (I'm assuming you know what happens when governments starts to do such stuff). Then you follow this up by saying that those who opposed this are 'ERASING culture.' Very heavy words 😀. Culture is always fluid. The fittest will survive.
I don't have a strong opinion on inclusion of Sanskrit in the curricula. What I am trying to point out though is that including Sanskrit isn't trying to insert religion into education. It is a cultural insert. You can be for or against that cultural insert. But if you are against Sanskrit on the basis of religion, you are erasing the culture of an entire civilization on the anvil of secularism.
That's what I am trying to point out through these examples.
We should take a leaf from China's book and be on our way to atheism. Oye country suffers because we remain steeped in idol worship, rituals, mysticism, superstitions. We would advance much faster materially (and spiritually as well) if we left 2,500 year old religions behind.
That China is atheist, is a misnomer. Atheism is predominantly an Abrahamic construct. It requires a central deity. Even in Indian philosophy, Advaita Vedanta could technically be called Atheist, but it isn't really. So these terms don't really map.
China practices its folk religions, Buddhism and Confucianism even now under the CCP. The CCP espouses atheism, but it can only do so because it has a strong hold over Chinese society. That's simply not practical in a democracy. Equating China's progress with atheism is confusing correlation with causation.
Even the Chinese have traditions similar to tribal and folk traditions in India and they're widely practiced in Chinese society (I'll have to look this up though, been a while since I've studied religion in China).
While India does suffer from mysticism and superstitions, I don't see why idol worship is a problem. Frankly, revulsion to idols is an Abrahamic monotheistic superposition. Same folks who follow Indian traditions in Western nations achieve a lot of success.
A lot of India's problems are related to law and order. Simple deregulation - that the PM called for in the Budget session - would go a long way in increasing India's growth rate.
I'm calling for moving beyond all religion. Those ideas were developed about 2,000-2,500 years ago when we had no knowledge about anything. They're good answers for that time, we can choose to be rational and evidence-based today.
As regards to China -- a majority of Chinese are atheists. They are not affiliated to any religion.
I think religion is an handicap for India. Yeah, there might some folks who live in the West, who may have become successful while practicing religion. At scale, it doesn't work. Religion is entirely superfluous to progress -- we don't need it for any purpose, we have much better answers to whatever religion helped with.
For morals - we have law, ethics and philosophy. For mental health - we have psychology, neuroscience. For social bonding - we have sports, movies, concerts, etc.
Those who can educate themselves well -- no harm in their being religious. But that's not the case with 95% of our population. A PM of India could take no better step to uplift the country than investing more in education and working towards eradicating religion.
I'm not saying ban religion. I'm saying educate people enough so they can organically reject it.
There's a fair argument that can be made for moving away from rituals. Coercion is something I'm against, it goes against liberalism.
More importantly though, what we have in India is a akin to philosophy than religion in the Abrahamic sense. Various traditions of Hinduism, Buddhism and Jainism are philosophies of life. They explore the very nature of consciousness and the fundamental reason for the existence (or non-existence) of bliss and happiness.
To classify that as religion and push towards its eradication would be a great loss!
Yeah, but even they are outmoded in two ways.
Let me explain how -- today you don't need to read Aristotle. His major ideas have already been absorbed. Whether or not you read him, you already have read much that was influenced by him. That's how philosophy works -- we don't have to go back to the originals.
Secondly, the core tenets of Indian philosophy -- moksha and rebirth have already fallen out of favour of much of top 10% of Indian society. There's no proof of rebirth, and no one's cares about moksha. Once you remove rebirth out of the picture, a lot of Indian philosophy falls flat. There might be some useful stuff with regards to epistemology and logic but you're better off picking up modern texts on the these subjects.
I'd argue the same for any Western philosopher as well. There's no point in reading Adam Smith or Immanuel Kant. If one really wants, one could read select passages or summaries -- but much of their relevant ideas have been absorbed by modern day disciplines.
Do you have any source for moksha and rebirth having fallen out of favor? I'm not so sure of that claim.
Rebirth isn't really necessary for a lot of Hindu Philosophy. There are others who can correct me here, if I'm wrong. The core of it is exploration of consciousness and using meditation to reach there. A lot of Indian society and rituals are centred around that.
Also, I don't agree with the premise that absence of empirical proof invalidates an entire philosophy. The purpose of philosophy is exploration. In fact, in a lot of Indic traditions, only personal experience is considered proof because of the nature of the experience itself.
Indian philosophy extends beyond rebirth and moksha though. There is Nyaya logic and Vedantic metaphysics for example. They aren't abstract thinking tools, they're practical tools in daily endeavours. Granted, you can achieve the same results through something like Stoicism, but that doesn't invalidate Indian philosophical tools.
I don't see any research having absorbed the core philosophies of Hinduism and Buddhism though. I know there have been tons of studies on mediation, and some on consciousness, exploring the Advaiting model. Are there others and if so can you point me to them? I would like to know what they've been researching and the way they've integrated models of consciousness.
I think the philosophies you're referring to nyaya, Advaita -- they are frozen in time. They didn't develop further beyond 8th century. You'd probably get a far deeper exploration of nature of consciousness if you were to pick up books from the last 30 years of neuroscience (which has undergone a revolution due to fMRI).
What you're referring to as Vedantic metaphysics -- is precisely what was written in Upanishads (about atma, brahma, rebirth, etc.). Most of Indian philosophy with the exception of Charvaka school agreed with Upanishads. Even Buddhism agreed with karma and rebirth while rejecting atma and brahma. But I don't see how this metaphysics helps in daily endeavours in any way.
I did a survey on 130 people, ~70% of the respondents said they believe in one life. The set of respondents were representative of top 5-10% of our society. You can do your own survey -- you'll find out one way or the other.
Regarding moksha -- I think that's my personal observation, but a solid one. No one talks about moksha anymore. One wouldn't even know that moksha is the highest goal if one never read about the core tenets of Indian philosophy. Even the previous generation doesn't care about moksha. Again, you can do your own research here -- ask your friends, family -- no one gives a damn about moksha. It is nobody's aim anymore.
The concept of atma, bramha, rebirth and moksha are the bedrock of Indian philosophy. There is no empirical basis for rebirth, hence it will fall out of favour one day or another. It has already started.