The God Solution | A Critique of Materialism and a Defense of Theism
For the Love of Yoga with Nish the Fish
English - August 18, 2023 05:00 - 2 hours - 86 MB - ★★★★★ - 42 ratingsAlternative Health Health & Fitness Homepage Download Apple Podcasts Google Podcasts Overcast Castro Pocket Casts RSS feed
We gave this lecture on the full moon celebrating the Guru, guru-pūrnimā the day when we honor our teachers and our lineage.
You are all of you my guru, my teacher.
And it is at your feet that I offer all of these words, like so many meagre flowers.
You have all taught me and are continuing to teach me and will go on teaching me so much!
I am eternally indebted to each and every one of you.
A hundred thousand pranams at your feet! What could I possibly say to you now or offer you that can express my gratitude and devotion?
To celebrate the occasion, I intended to give a lecture on the major schools of Indian philosophy in overview: cārvāka (materialist hedonism), dvaita Vedanta (dualistic theism), vishishtadvaita (qualified non-dualism), kevalādvaita (pure non-dualism), paramadvaya (Shaiva non-duality), acintya bhedabheda (Caitanya's devotional Vaishnavism) etc. I wanted to tell some stories of the great gurus of India: Ramanuja, Nimbarka, Madhava, Vallabha, Shankara, Abinava Gupta etc. But alas, we only really managed to discuss Rāmānuja's very sophisticated form of Theism: Qualified Monism, the in-between ground straddling Duality and non-Duality.
Most of the lecture though turned out to be, as per our inspiration that evening determined, a sustained critique on materialism and a defense of theism (that is, the existence of God).
As such, I thought I'd call the lecture "The God Solution" which is of course a subtle dig at the title "The God Delusion"!
00:00:00 The Indian Spiritual Heritage: A Thaali Meal
00:07:00 Material Reductionism: "God is Unreal, Matter and Energy is Real"
00:11:30 Why Did Indian Spiritual Masters Respond to Material Reductionism?
00:16:40 Critique of Material Reductionism #1: 2 Axiological Issues
00:23:40 Critique of Material Reductionism #2: 3 Epistemological Issues
0:30:06 An Aside on Consciousness: What Is First Person Subjectivity?
00:36:55 An Aside on Mystical Experience, i.e Verifying Spiritual Claims
00:38:20 Critique of Material Reductionism #3: Metaphysical Issues
00:42:20 The God Solution
00:49:50 Epistemological and Metaphysical Issues With Dualistic Theistic Religion (And Some Responses)
01:06:10 An Aside on Skeptical Theism (And Why It's Problematic)