Religious or philosophical revolutions cannot be divorced from social revolutions.
The other day Steven Rosen published a piece on Buddha from a Vaisnava perspective (only available to Facebook members at this point). It's the classic narrative that explains that the Vedic brahmanas as a class had become degraded. These brahmanas were performing many sacrifices in order to consume the flesh of the animals. Therefore Lord Vishnu incarnated (in the form of a saktyavesa-avatara, or empowerment of a human being) as Buddha.
A side point with a tip of the hat to Kripamoya prabhu. First of all, someone (for example, a modern anthropologist) may attempt to cast this as using a sectarian meta-narrative to ascribe everything to the tribal Hindu Deity Vishnu. "Jesus? Oh yeah, a saktyavesa-avatara of Vishnu!" It's an easy strategy to adopt and use to "embrace, extend, and extinguish" other religions.
However, as a counter to this - if the Supreme Lord does exist, then everything is part of his scene, whatever you want to call Him. And actually, Hare Krishnas don't even think that Vishnu is the Supreme - they believe that Vishnu himself is an incarnation. In this analysis of Buddha as "an incarnation of Vishnu" "Vishnu" is a employed in a more generic sense meaning "the Supreme Lord", rather than the Hindu Deity Vishnu (who is another incarnation of that "Vishnu" who empowers Buddha) . So it's not some kind of sectarian chauvinism to interpret Buddha in this way.
So we have a narrative in which everything is part of the big plan of the Supreme Lord. It's not a sectarian narrative, it's the meta-narrative of theism.
Leaving that point aside, to focus on the social aspect of Buddha's revolution, which modern anthropologists, sociologists and devotees can agree on:
What gave Buddhism the ability to spread the way it did was a large group of socially disaffected people who were ready for another grand narrative, one that they could rally around to change their social situation. Buddhism provided exactly that.
These people were oppressed under the rule of the Brahmans. Buddhism provided them with a socially liberating philosophy, much more egalitarian than the rigid caste system.
This social precondition can be interpreted as historical coincidence or part of the divine plan, nevertheless, it existed, and its discontent powered the spread of Buddhism.
A similarly socially disenfranchised, disaffected, and discontent sector was responsible for the spread of the Hare Krishna movement in the 60s and 70s.
The spread of early Christianity similarly took place among the socially disenfranchised.
Modern science rose to its present prominence in a similar way. It is a philosophical system that enabled social revolution around the world, breaking the social and political stranglehold of the Church. Its political counterpart, liberal democracy, is designed to create an egalitarian state that does away with the rigid stratification of feudalism.
This is an important point to understand:
Science as a philosophy is an enabler for social revolution against the oppression of a ruling religious elite.
God is not the enemy of science. People who try to rule oppressively in the name of God are.
Religion and Science are not incompatible. They are complimentary. Science addresses "how?", in a powerful way. Religion answers the question "why?"
Religious Fundamentalism, however, is incompatible with Science.
Religious Fundamentalism is an attempt to maintain a monopoly of control over the minds and the lives of the people. It perceives Science as its deadly enemy, and can brook with no co-existence.
While Science is compatible with Religion, Religious Fundamentalism's counterpart, Scientific Atheism, is not.
The equation is simple:
The more fundamentalist Religion gets, the more atheistic the scientific reaction will be.
Got that? Dawkins is reacting.
sastra
The alternative to fundamentalism is the fourth offense against the Holy Name. How do you deal with that?
Haribol Pandu, Spoken like a
Haribol Pandu,
Spoken like a true fundamentalist! :-)
You'll have to spell that out a little more explicitly for me to be able to answer. In that sentence, to be able to comment, I'd have to understand what you mean by "fundamentalism", and I'd have to hear your case that the only existing alternative to it is the fourth offense to the Holy Name (your working conception of which you should probably define as well).
What I mean by
What I mean by fundamentalism is the acceptance of sastra as true, and by the fourth offense saying that some of sastra is not true.
Srila Prabhupada did not teach us to believe in an abstract God based on individual faith alone. The Vedic works such as Srimad Bhagavatam give real details, and if we take these lightly then we are dismissing our scriptures.
"So one is accepted as atheist who does not believe in the tenets of the Vedas. That is the sum and substance of atheism. It may be a sound philosophy or whatever it may be, but atheism, one who does not believe in the authority of the Vedas, they are called atheist."
>>> Ref. VedaBase => Bhagavad-gita 4.9-11 -- New York, July 25, 1966
It's not just a matter of fundamentalism instigating atheism in others. It is a choice of fundamentalism or atheism we each have to make. One cannot simply reject sastra and say they believe in God, because one's belief would be simply imagination. By doing that, one's philosophy degrades to "yata mata tata pat," thinking that whatever one believes is OK.
If we reject some of the statements in sastra based on empirical evidence, then we're saying that our senses are more reliable than information provided by the Personality of Godhead. We're forgetting our material defects and neglecting to take Krishna's bewildering potency sufficiently into consideration.
Last night I read the following in a Srimad Bhagavatam purport:
"This verse from Brahma-samhita confirms that even the largest and most powerful planet, the sun, rotates within a fixed orbit, or kala-cakra, in obedience to the order of the Supreme Personality of Godhead. This has nothing to do with gravity or any other imaginary laws created by the material scientists.
"Material scientists want to avoid the ruling government of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and therefore they imagine different conditions under which they suppose the planets move. The only condition, however, is the order of the Supreme Personality of Godhead."
>>> Ref. VedaBase => SB 5.23.3
There's not much difference in the scientists feeling of certainty about evolution compared to gravity, and I think Srila Prabhupada's statement can be applied to both. In the context of discussing evolution, one could easily replace "planets move" in the second paragraph with "forms change," and I think Srila Prabhupada would approve. Scientists come up with explanations of the world with the firm rule that they cannot depend upon any "supernatural phenomenon," in other words, they must be atheistic. Mayadevi, whose job it is to keep us bound to material senses, is almost unnecessary when we have such scientists. They serve the same purpose, except that Maya is doing it as Krishna's devotee.
If we put science and sastra into different categories of valid knowledge, saying that science is good for mundane explanations and sastra reveals the transcendental but may be wrong about the mundane, then there is no reason to trust sastra's description of the transcendental. If we sacrifice sastric descriptions of the material world, we will be forced to abandon it as an authority altogether.
Consider your following statement compared with Srila Prabhupada's:
"Science as a philosophy is an enabler for social revolution against the oppression of a ruling religious elite." - Sita-pati Prabhu
"Material scientists want to avoid the ruling government of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and therefore they imagine different conditions under which they suppose the planets move." - Srila Prabhupada
Whereas Srila Prabhupada was very often harshly critical of scientists, you seem to be supporting them. I'm interested to hear what you get when you think this through.
Thanks for sharing your
Thanks for sharing your thoughts Pandu.
We are using different definitions of Fundamentalism. I will write further on that point shortly.
Right now I'd like to address one of the various points you've made:
If you want to say that science is not good for mundane explanations then you should do it by writing on a banana leaf, because doing it using a computer over the Internet sends mixed messages - the medium is the message, and in this case your medium is a mundane technology provided by science. It seems to be working.
So I think that science *is* right as far as it goes.
I also don't see how it follows that because of this sastra isn't true.
Your comparison of my
Your comparison of my statement and Srlia Prabhupada's shows that we're saying the same thing. Science is an enabling philosophy to allow people to throw off an oppressive ruling elite, just like Buddhism was. It's not God that people were trying to do away with, but people misruling in the name of God - like the guys who condemned Galileo, or burned the printer of the first English Bible.
Oh, and one other important point: I did not say: "sastra reveals the transcendental but may be wrong about the mundane".