there is no yhwh, say hawking and hitchens. or for that matter, allah, or jesus.
peeved semites cry buckets. if the mohammedans can understand what hawking is saying, there'll be a fatwa on him pronto. fortunately for hawking, his prose is beyond the average mohammedan's understanding, but we can fix it, i suppose, by putting in a word with the friendly neighborhood mohammedan terrorist. word will get to the ayatollahs and saudi princes, and the rest will be history. hawking will be toast.
personally i have never been a big fan of hawking, because i think he's another creature of british public relations (like m teresa, who was laboring in well-deserved obscurity until a blubbering old sinner named malcolm muggeridge of punch and bbc manufactured her saint-ness -- with apologies to hitchens who said this years ago in 'the ghoul of calcutta').
but i am sure happy to see hawking sock it to yhwh, ratzy, and godman pals.
quite interestingly, these sentient-being fantasies only afflict the semitic ideologies. hinduism and buddhism talk of non-anthropomorphic forces, the former of 'it' and the latter of 'the void'. no problem if 'intelligent design' and suchlike are shown to be so much poppycock.
 via Seesmic Web |
6 comments:
"peeved semites cry buckets"
You should copyright that one.
- shyodha
Not a fan of Hawking?
You quote him all the time!
Him and Hitchens!
Actually we have to understand that whenever the westerners are denying GOD, they are denying the jesus or allah and the stories wound around it..
but we hindus are equating it with our religion too..
In my opinion, there is definitely a creator.. but what hawking denies is the bible story..
For us, we can accept any supernatural force as creator..
Many philosophers have noted the points of divergence of mImAmsa and vaisheShika after a similar opening of their darshana sUtra-s. vaisheShika is not interested in the two prime issues of mImAmsa: 1) The veda being by its very nature valid. 2) The eternal existence of the veda. While not bothered about these issues, in the very last sUtra-s (adhyAya 10, Ahnika 2), kaNAda stresses the authoritativeness of the veda. Then both vaisheShika and mImamsa agree upon a critical point: There is no creator for the universe and there is no Ishvara. The universe is entirely a result of combination of the fundamental particles and the sole agent for their combination is karma. Finally, mImAmsa depends heavily on the position that sound is eternal, and this is connected with its world view of the apauruSheyatva of the veda. kaNAda examines the possibility of the eternality of sound and then rejects it. To me in addition to the above positions, it is this position on sound that makes vaisheShika an over all superior philosophy of all the hindu systems.
In conclusion it might be said that the ancient Hindus had in vaisheShika a proto-scientific frame work whose important features included: 1) The absence of a creator for the universe or an Ishvara as the cause of the universe; 2) The construction of the universe through the combination of fundamental particles paramANu-s- “atoms” to give rise to “aNu-s” molecular particles. 3) The particle nature of light and heat. 4) An explanation of natural phenomena using molecular and atomic particles and a small set of basic physical forces. 5) karma chiefly implies physical forces and force itself has a particle nature. 6) The mind is molecular in nature. 7) consciousness is not per say “non-material” but associated with matter- perhaps as a distinct particle or as a “property” of a particle, perhaps like charge.
But going by later Indian thought and modern Hindus it is clear that this naturalism has been receding to the background. In this context, I have been puzzled by certain observations: I believe that the majority of modern Hindus believe in Ishvara as the cause of the universe or are creationists of different grades. Some may restrict themselves with seeing the universe’s cause as the Ishvara, others may see all the diversity and complexity of nature as a sign of Ishvara. Yet others may believe in the special entities like the sUkShma sharIra transmitting their pApa-s and puNya-s from one sthUla sharIra to another and so on. Majority of Hindus using the Abrahamistic terminology say they believe in God and even go through some effort to say that they are not polytheistic but actually believe in one basic God. Many Hindus and particularly Hindu vedAntic achArya-s do not accept evolution of life by natural selection. Is all of this because of Abrahamistic subversion of their thought alone? Or is it because they have been pre-conditioned for this mental state due to decay of the old vaisheShika and sAMkhya thought?
http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2007/04/08/some-considerations-on-hindu-atomism/
http://manasataramgini.wordpress.com/2007/07/09/western-generalizations-of-religiosity/
agworld, i am sorry, i have never once quoted hawking. that's partly because i never read anything he writes. i don't buy into the 'he's a cripple, so he must be brilliant' meme, and i generally have found the media hype about him annoying.
hitchens. now, that's a different kettle of fish. i admire him greatly.
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