PDA

View Full Version : Refutation of Charvaka



Sudarshan
16 March 2006, 10:27 AM
Charvaka is the ancient atheist "religion" of India.

Charvakas beleived only in pratyaxa pramANa, or direct perception. ---(1)
Charvakas did not accept inference as an evidence.---(2)

The first question raised against this system is:

Is there any pratyaxa pramANA for axiom 1?
No, there is none, and axiom 1 is an inference, leading to an apa siddhAnta or an internally inconsistant system.

Modern day atheists accept inference and many other sources of knowledge, so this logic no longer holds water against atheism.

satay
16 March 2006, 11:05 AM
Charvaka is the ancient atheist "religion" of India.

Charvakas beleived only in pratyaxa pramANa, or direct perception. ---(1)
Charvakas did not accept inference as an evidence.---(2)

The first question raised against this system is:

Is there any pratyaxa pramANA for axiom 1?
No, there is none, and axiom 1 is an inference, leading to an apa siddhAnta or an internally inconsistant system.

Modern day atheists accept inference and many other sources of knowledge, so this logic no longer holds water against atheism.


I suppose one could argue until the cows come home about what pratyaxa pramANa is.

We know that our senses don't give the whole picture of anything. Many animals have better senses in certain aspects so how can we see this pratyaza pramANa?

So unless the divine showed up here in jeans and T-shirt and told them "I am that" they will not acknowledge his existence? What a pity!

satay

Sudarshan
16 March 2006, 11:16 AM
Atheism is not as bad as it is projected to be.

It is a kind of intellectual honesty and normal human nature of being rational. At the same time, denying God without proof is a sign of irrationality. A true rational person is an agnostic, willing to accept the divine if sufficient general evdience or personal evidence is available.

If you have a close source giving testimony to the divine, it is a valid evidence for you, though not for others. We beleive in God because rishis and yogis have testified it. Why would you beleive in this testimony? That is the difference between theists and atheists.

God cannot be proved in anyway, and has to known from the scripture alone. God has nothing to loose if you choose to deny- you are the looser!

satay
16 March 2006, 11:33 AM
Atheism is not as bad as it is projected to be.

It is a kind of intellectual honesty and normal human nature of being rational. At the same time, denying God without proof is a sign of irrationality. A true rational person is an agnostic, willing to accept the divine if sufficient general evdience or personal evidence is available.

I agree with this. I am rather comfortable in the agnostic position if there was no personal experience.



If you have a close source giving testimony to the divine, it is a valid evidence for you, though not for others. We beleive in God because rishis and yogis have testified it. Why would you beleive in this testimony? That is the difference between theists and atheists.

I agree.



God cannot be proved in anyway, and has to known from the scripture alone. God has nothing to loose if you choose to deny- you are the looser!

This is where we disagree. My position is that scripture only takes you to a certain point. It gives you 'knowledge' theoritical knowledge but there is still one more rung of the ladder after scripture.

In my opinion that is the "experience" one has to experience in his being that no scripture will ever be able to provide because of its obvious limitations.

don't you think?
satay

Sudarshan
16 March 2006, 11:47 AM
This is where we disagree. My position is that scripture only takes you to a certain point. It gives you 'knowledge' theoritical knowledge but there is still one more rung of the ladder after scripture.

In my opinion that is the "experience" one has to experience in his being that no scripture will ever be able to provide because of its obvious limitations.

don't you think?
satay

What do you disagree with? I said that the only proof of God is the scripture. Scripture itself says that - shAstra yOnitvAt.h.

Unless you are willing to accept the knowledge of God obtained from the scripture, you cannot perform any sAdana that can lead to the aparoxa jnana or realization of God.

sarabhanga
22 March 2006, 09:06 PM
CARVAKA (http://www.geocities.com/sarabhanga/carvaka.html)

The following passage from the “Dighanikaya” exemplifies the neglected thought of the entirely materialist Carvaka Philosophy:

“Man is formed of the four elements.

When he dies, earth returns to the aggregate of earth, water to water, fire to fire, and air to air, while his senses vanish into space.

Four men with the bier take up the corpse: they gossip as far as the burning-ground, where his bones turn the color of a dove’s wing and his sacrifices end in ashes.

They are fools who preach alms-giving, and those who maintain the existence of immaterial categories speak vain and lying nonsense.

When the body dies, both fool and wise alike are cut off and perish.

They do not survive after death.”


Carvaka is certainly an Indian (and thus Hindu) philosophy, but it CANNOT be considered as one of the paths of Sanatana Dharma!

Ram
24 March 2006, 05:51 AM
Atheism is one phase of spiritual development. Provided you a true atheist, it teaches you not to bow down to superstitions and dogmas and not to take the words of others without proper evidence. At some point, an atheist has to realize that he cannot expect a definite proof for everything, that is all. Certain things in life have to be beleived on faith alone.

Atheism is possibly a test, in my opinion. A lot of us are truthful and kind to others due to religion and what it teaches. If you dont beleive in God, how good can you be? God can make somebody born as an atheist to test his intrinsic worth in relation to the sattva guna. An atheist who still retains these divine qualities is indeed a great soul, not any different from a bhakta.

satay
24 March 2006, 09:42 AM
Atheists are a funny bunch. They keep on missing the "evidence" when the evidence sits right under their noses.
What other prove is needed when 'existence' sits right here in front of our eyes.


Certain things in life have to be beleived on faith alone.

Faith alone is not enough for some...for those Bhagwan 'wakes' them up by giving them some sort of 'experience'.



Atheism is possibly a test, in my opinion. A lot of us are truthful and kind to others due to religion and what it teaches. If you dont beleive in God, how good can you be? God can make somebody born as an atheist to test his intrinsic worth in relation to the sattva guna. An atheist who still retains these divine qualities is indeed a great soul, not any different from a bhakta.

Being "good" does not require you to believe in an entity called God.

satay

Ram
24 March 2006, 10:08 AM
Atheists are a funny bunch. They keep on missing the "evidence" when the evidence sits right under their noses.
What other prove is needed when 'existence' sits right here in front of our eyes.


Faith alone is not enough for some...for those Bhagwan 'wakes' them up by giving them some sort of 'experience'.


The atheist could turn the plate as well. Theists are also a funny bunch for beleiving in what could be a mere speculation. Beleiving in something without conclusive proof is called faith.




Being "good" does not require you to believe in an entity called God.


But the goodness itself comes from God, and such an atheist believes in God without his knowledge. Just like plants grow towards the light on their own even when planted in darkness, so does the soul knows how to seek the light even in darkness.

satay
24 March 2006, 10:19 AM
The atheist could turn the plate as well. Theists are also a funny bunch for beleiving in what could be a mere speculation. Beleiving in something without conclusive proof is called faith.

Oh yes, but it is much harder to 'deny' the existence of god I think. Even science is saying that there seems to be an 'intelligent' design at place here. Everything is working so nicely with crazy perfection to be a random thing; this universe.



But the goodness itself comes from God, and such an atheist believes in God without his knowledge. Just like plants grow towards the light on their own even when planted in darkness, so does the soul knows how to seek the light even in darkness.

This sounds like some christian talk.:D goodness, darkness, god. :)

karma my brother, karma is at play here. But you are right, 'evil' seems to be rooted in my being somehow and the goodness is there too. But Bhagwan is the source of both. Isn't it?

satay

Ram
24 March 2006, 11:03 AM
Oh yes, but it is much harder to 'deny' the existence of god I think. Even science is saying that there seems to be an 'intelligent' design at place here. Everything is working so nicely with crazy perfection to be a random thing; this universe.


Say this to an atheist. I wonder if any atheist will accept the "Intelligent Design" model. To them, the first life(abiogenesis) happened by an accidental chemical reaction and then evolved itself. I think it is easier to beleive that a computer found on the sea shore evolved on its own by the constant lashing of the waves on the sand.:D




karma my brother, karma is at play here. But you are right, 'evil' seems to be rooted in my being somehow and the goodness is there too. But Bhagwan is the source of both. Isn't it?


Bhagwan cant be the source of any evil. That is too much dry talk. Putting the blame for your faults on Bhagwan? All this maybe his leela but you are still responsible to work out your own salvation. Ignorance in this matter will cause the karma cat to bite you and send you reeling.:)

satay
24 March 2006, 07:03 PM
Bhagwan cant be the source of any evil. That is too much dry talk. Putting the blame for your faults on Bhagwan? All this maybe his leela but you are still responsible to work out your own salvation. Ignorance in this matter will cause the karma cat to bite you and send you reeling.:)

If there is only The ONE there can only be one source of ALL, good, bad or evil whatever, the source is ONE and that source is Bhagwan. :) Otherwise we are in the realm of christian concept where there are multiple sources...one for good one for evil and so the multi-source nonsense.

satay

Ram
25 March 2006, 03:20 AM
If there is only The ONE there can only be one source of ALL, good, bad or evil whatever, the source is ONE and that source is Bhagwan. :) Otherwise we are in the realm of christian concept where there are multiple sources...one for good one for evil and so the multi-source nonsense.



Satay,

Let us approach this logically, instead of assumptions.

There are only two possibilities,

1. Evil is real.
2. Evil is unreal.

If you take the latter approach, you can wash your hands off everything, but the answer is equivalent to saying that you dont know the answer to this question.

For people who think that evil is real ( I am not a mayavadin), the source of evil has to be one of

a) God
b) Soul
c) Matter

I leave you to locate the source of evil yourself. Let me know what you conclude with.:)

satay
25 March 2006, 08:43 AM
For people who think that evil is real ( I am not a mayavadin), the source of evil has to be one of

a) God
b) Soul
c) Matter

I leave you to locate the source of evil yourself. Let me know what you conclude with.:)

since the source of b) and c) is a) there is only really one choice here! unless you are implying that b) and c) have no source? Is that so?

satay

Ram
25 March 2006, 09:53 AM
since the source of b) and c) is a) there is only really one choice here! unless you are implying that b) and c) have no source? Is that so?


Obviously, matter cannot be responsible. So it boils down to God and soul.

If the source were God, we could accuse him of being a saddist isn't it? When God is capable of removing our sorrows without our asking for it, why is the soul suffering in the world? Unless you want to say that God enjoys the suffering of the soul and did it willingly, you cant ascribe the source to God.

God is just the preraka for the actions of the soul. If the soul desires something, God instigates the soul in a direction to materialize the desire. God is not responsible for the desire itself, for example it makes no sense to say that I murdered my neighbour because God willed so.

If you desire something, God will grant it. However, the result for your action is taken care of, and God is the granter of karma-phala. If you do something bad, you will face the consequences. If you do something good, you will get the results. The cycle will continue until you sacrifice all fruits of karma consiously and seek his grace.

On a bigger scale, it is a sport for him. In the smaller scale, it isn't it. You are solely responsible for your actions and God has no role in it. When you do good things, you must assume that God did it. When you do bad things, you have to take the responsibilty. That is the secret of Karma Yoga.:)

Namo Narayana
31 March 2006, 07:05 PM
well atheists or scientists cannot answer who gave property to elements. who created energy and all that.

Jigar
09 August 2007, 11:59 PM
well atheists or scientists cannot answer who gave property to elements. who created energy and all that.

namaste narayana,
All they can do is play Fetch and run back with something new that they see with their horus blue eye

maste nam,
jigar

Nuno Matos
10 August 2007, 12:27 AM
Namaste Jigar and narayana

I'm gone tell you what you can! You can only pull out a name and nothing more. I suggest you as i have done in some other previous post the reading of essentialist thought and the way it is connected and connects science and spirituality!

Madhavan
10 August 2007, 01:05 AM
First define atheism before generalizing their views.

Weak Atheism: I dont beleive in God.
Strong Atheism: I beleive there is no God.
agnosticism: The existance of God cannot be verified.( both theists and atheist versions are possible)

They are fundamentally different positions.

What is God? Zillions of definitions, so which God is being denied?
A typical atheist may be strong or weak to specific definitions of God.

Most atheists are strong when God = a being sitting outside the universe and watching and controlling the show.( the Christian god for instance)

Most atheists are weak on a deist god.

Like many Hindus beleive, God=everything, or God=energy ; most atheists are weak or perhaps even take agnostic positions here.

Jigar
10 August 2007, 01:17 AM
First define atheism before generalizing their views.

Weak Atheism: I dont beleive in God.
Strong Atheism: I beleive there is no God.
agnosticism: The existance of God cannot be verified.( both theists and atheist versions are possible)

They are fundamentally different positions.

What is God? Zillions of definitions, so which God is being denied?
A typical atheist may be strong or weak to specific definitions of God.



namaste,

If God was walking, he would point you into a direction where you may not be in clearly deep tidal wave of flooded waters. Rather he would align his monumental designs for you all to see with Sekhem Em Pet

maste nam
jigar

Dharmaboy_Vishal
28 December 2008, 09:00 PM
CARVAKA (http://www.geocities.com/sarabhanga/carvaka.html)

The following passage from the “Dighanikaya” exemplifies the neglected thought of the entirely materialist Carvaka Philosophy:

“Man is formed of the four elements.

When he dies, earth returns to the aggregate of earth, water to water, fire to fire, and air to air, while his senses vanish into space.

Four men with the bier take up the corpse: they gossip as far as the burning-ground, where his bones turn the color of a dove’s wing and his sacrifices end in ashes.

They are fools who preach alms-giving, and those who maintain the existence of immaterial categories speak vain and lying nonsense.

When the body dies, both fool and wise alike are cut off and perish.

They do not survive after death.”


Carvaka is certainly an Indian (and thus Hindu) philosophy, but it CANNOT be considered as one of the paths of Sanatana Dharma!




The last three claims in that description of Charvaka are so sad. However, it is true that everyone has their path in life--if this is what one has found they have a karmic connection to, i wish them the best! Still i have to agree this couldn't be considered Sanatana Dharma.

izi
30 December 2008, 08:22 PM
Hmm, but they mention the dead person turns into fire, water, air, and earth...oh...but they don't survive...? right.

lol


I really don't care if people believe in god or not....the great mystery or whatever is way too profound to can in any one religion humans can come up with.

Logic has its place but honestly it has to be used properly to be of any use....this kind of irritated antagonistic atheist shoving their opinions under everyone else's nose is just, well, stupid.

Ok so we all turn into elements when we die, big deal! Tea? I'm not sure this line of thinking has any purpose besides mental masturbation? We have plenty of scientific evidence to prove that a whole lot of strange unseen phenomenon exists...we don't yet have proof that bodies turn into fire ;)

rcscwc
05 May 2009, 08:48 AM
While other schools accepted as an element, Carvaks rejected it as NOT PERCEPTIBLE. They accepted earth, fire, water and air as elements.

They accepted perception as the only source of knowledge and rejected inference, testimony etc.

Surya Deva
02 February 2012, 09:33 PM
Carvaka is indeed an internally inconsistent philosophy. They reject inference as a means of knowledge and only accept perception. If they are asked why perception is the only means of knowledge, they would obviously have to use logical statements to back their statements up. Thus they have to resort to inference as a means of validating their perception.

However, a Caravakin would retort that they are not using inference to discover any new knowledge, but only to make existing sensory knowledge sensible e.g, there is fire on the mountain, because there is smoke on the mountain. Thus they would reject reasoning where one derives something imperceptible from the perceptible e.g., there must be an ultimate material cause for all matter, because all effects pre-exist in a cause; there must be atoms, because else there would be an infinite regress; gravity must exist to explain the cause of objects falling.

Modern science makes exactly the same claim that it is only uses inference only to describe existing perceptible data. However, in practice the scientific method is a mixture of both perception and inference. In fact there is a lot of inference used in science to conclude the existence of imperceptible things(atoms, gravity, black holes, dark energy etc) Thus science is not very different from other systems of metaphysics(Nyaya, Samkhya) because they too use a mixture of perception and inference to conclude imperceptible entities.

As soon as a purely empirical epistemology like Carvaka and modern science start to use inference in any way, then they are forced to accept the existence of imperceptible things predicated by perceptible things. In which case they are doing metaphysics and then it is fair game to compare it to any other metaphysics.

wundermonk
03 February 2012, 04:07 AM
Much of what we know as Charvaka philosophy is derived by representations by the Purvapaksha [Advaita/Dvaita/Jain/Buddhist all of whom attempted to refute the Charvaka]. So, we do not know if truly the Charvaka practised the form of extreme materialism that others accuse him of. I think the actual Charvaka position may have been somewhat more lenient than the position imputed to him by others.

shiv.somashekhar
14 February 2012, 11:53 AM
So do Charvaka people beleive that the gods even exist?

The label Carvaka has been loosely applied to people who were mostly atheists or at the least, agnosts. There is no evidence that they organized themselves into a formal group or school.

Based on this, the answer to your question would be No.

My website http://lokayata.info contains details.