Debates
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Secular humanism needs no metaphysics, and that is its strength
I'm an atheist, and I call myself a humanist in the modern sense: ethics and meaning without religion. I keep being told that humanism is just another religion, a faith in Man with its own unprovable dogmas. I want to argue the…
Started by Arvind Poojary5 replies -
The West’s picture of ‘Indian philosophy’ is Vedanta-shaped, and it has hidden everyone else
You can probably guess where I stand on most metaphysics. But this isn't an attack on Vedānta. It's a complaint about how Indian philosophy got packaged. The thesis: what reaches Western readers as "Indian philosophy", or worse "Eastern philosophy", is overwhelmingly Vedāntic…
Started by Arvind Poojary6 replies -
Scholastic reasoning was rigorous, but it was rigour inside a fence
I'm an atheist, and I don't share the old Enlightenment sneer at the scholastics. The method was superb: state the objections, distinguish the senses of terms, answer point by point. Modern philosophy papers are built on it. But I want to argue…
Started by Arvind Poojary6 replies -
Locke was right that the mind starts without ideas, and the argument from the newborn’s hunger fails
I'm biased towards Locke, I admit. But I came across an argument for innate knowledge from the Nyāya tradition that I had never seen, and I want to test my bias against it. Locke's case in Book I of the Essay is…
Started by Arvind Poojary6 replies -
The self-defeat charge against the Cārvākas attacks a position they probably did not hold
I have a soft spot for the Cārvākas, India's materialists, who accepted perception as the only independent means of knowledge (pramāṇa) and rejected rebirth, the soul and the authority of scripture. Every rival school gave them the same knock-down reply: you reject…
Started by Arvind Poojary6 replies -
Brute facts are not a cop-out: some things just are, and the universe may be one of them
When I talk with believers in the villages where our association works, the conversation often reaches this point: "But who made the universe? Everything has a cause." When I say the universe may simply exist, with no further explanation, I'm told I…
Started by Arvind Poojary6 replies -
Atheists should retire the logical problem of evil: Plantinga answered it
I'm an atheist, so this is a thesis against my own side's habits. In "Evil and Omnipotence" (1955), J. L. Mackie argued that theism is not just unlikely but inconsistent: an omnipotent, wholly good God and the existence of evil cannot all…
Started by Arvind Poojary5 replies