creation of human kind

[Claude Setzer]

Dear Erik Hoogcarspel,

You said:
-
I happen to jave written a review of a book by a logician about religion.
...
also into strict logical formulae, so that you can see that they're
waterproof ...

Mathematics, logic (even Dutch Logic!), and philosophy are only
 tools that must be used carefully and integrated with
experience to be of any benefit to humankind.
Otherwise, like any tool, they can easily lead to false "knowledge,"
 pain, suffering, even death of thousand's or millions of people.

The songwriter, Donovan, in singing about the Vedic experience
said:
"..innocence in childhood falsely misconstrued
to be years of darkness spent enchained,
denying childhood's vision of the God of man,
so that TRUTH be turned about and UNTruth made..."

A few years ago a small 5 year old Indian girl gave dynamic
expression to this natural integration of  logic and experience.
Although I had not seen her for about a year, she came
running up to me without any hello or introduction. Her
 face was wondrously glowing with bliss and excitement,
and she blurted out to me, "God must be real, because
he is so beautiful!!!"

On the other hand, there are many cases of some of
 the world's most famous and supposedly deepest thinkers
 that have abused logic, etc. to create UNTruth that has
causes lack of knowledge and even immense suffering for
 thousands or millions of people.

A fairly recent example of this is famous physicist, Max Plank
I think, "proved" in the early 1900's that cosmic bodies
could not give off microwave radiation. He was so highly
respected that when many engineers and scientists started
 to observe microwave radiation from cosmic bodies they
were ridiculed and disbelieved. The result was a substantial
loss of knowledge in the 1920s and 1930s, that may well have
been able to reduce the immense suffering or even to have
prevented World War II.

Another example is that of Georg Ohm, who's meticulous
 experimental results led him to propose Ohm's Law.
 The logic of the time, however, caused him to be
ridiculed and exiled for most of his life, holding up the
progress of electrical engineering for nearly 50 years,

Perhaps one of the most famous philosophers was Aristotle,
falsely known as the Father of Science. In reality, he so
deluded himself that his "knowledge" of "science" caused
 immense pain and suffering for nearly 2000 years, until
the last of his logical nonsense was finally disproved by
Isaac Newton. Before that, Aristotle's theories were so
 respected that they were even adopted by religion, and
those who proved them wrong were put out of society if
they were lucky, put to a painful death if not.

My point is that  clever use of "logic" can be used to "prove"
 or "disprove" just about anything. Why would anyone want
to wade through a book that "disproved" the existence of
 God??? You either believe in God or not, and a book is
unlikely to change that.

More to the point of this discussion group, I think your
statement about Indolgy being for "scientific" discussion
 is rather surprising, since a  large portion of Vedic literature
 is very closely linked with God. If  by "science" you mean non-belief
in God, then it would seem very difficult to get to a profound
 understanding of  literature that places so much emphasis
on the nature of God and gods if you do not believe in their existence.
 Then we would be again under
a spell like the ignorance created by Aristotle.

I am not in any way trying to be offensive, but we often place
 far to much importance on logic without considering
the truth that it may be related to.

Sincerely,

Claude Setzer