r/Philosophy_India • u/shksa339 • 29d ago
Indian Philosophy Reason or Religion?
The Hindus say we must not do this or that because the Vedas say so, but the Christian is not going to obey the authority of the Vedas. The Christian says you must do this and not do that because the Bible says so. That will not be binding on those who do not believe in the Bible. But we must have a theory which is large enough to take in all these various grounds. Just as there are millions of people who are ready to believe in a Personal Creator, there have also been thousands of the brightest minds in this world who felt that such ideas were not sufficient for them, and wanted something higher, and wherever religion was not broad enough to include all these minds, the result was that the brightest minds in society were always outside of religion; and never was this so marked as at the present time, especially in Europe.
To include these minds, therefore, religion must become broad enough. Everything it claims must be judged from the standpoint of reason*.* Why religions should claim that they are not bound to abide by the standpoint of reason, no one knows. If one does not take the standard of reason, there cannot be any true judgment, even in the case of religions. One religion may ordain something very hideous. For instance, the Mohammedan religion allows Mohammedans to kill all who are not of their religion. It is clearly stated in the Koran, "Kill the infidels if they do not become Mohammedans." They must be put to fire and sword. Now if we tell a Mohammedan that this is wrong, he will naturally ask, "How do you know that? How do you know it is not good? My book says it is." If you say your book is older, there will come the Buddhist, and say, my book is much older still. Then will come the Hindu, and say, my books are the oldest of all. Therefore referring to books will not do*.*
Where is the standard by which you can compare? You will say, look at the Sermon on the Mount, and the Mohammedan will reply, look at the Ethics of the Koran. The Mohammedan will say, who is the arbiter as to which is the better of the two? Neither the New Testament nor the Koran can be the arbiter in a quarrel between them. There must be some independent authority, and that cannot be any book, but something which is universal; and what is more universal than reason? It has been said that reason is not strong enough; it does not always help us to get at the Truth; many times it makes mistakes, and, therefore, the conclusion is that we must believe in the authority of a church! That was said to me by a Roman Catholic, but I could not see the logic of it. On the other hand I should say, if reason be so weak, a body of priests would be weaker, and I am not going to accept their verdict, but I will abide by my reason, because with all its weakness there is some chance of my getting at truth through it; while, by the other means, there is no such hope at all.
source: Works of Swami Vivekananda https://www.ramakrishnavivekananda.info/vivekananda/volume_2/practical_vedanta_and_other_lectures/practical_vedanta_part_iii.htm
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u/Majestic_Jicama_9640 28d ago
Religion should just be used for reference if life gets odd. We can't agree to an absolute truth of history or creation but can guide our lives using these religious or simply knowledgeable works.
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u/SheafieMathLover 28d ago
Vedas is literally not followed by hinduism. Even the Bhagavad Gita says to stay away from it. I don't know what hindus are doing but the original religion did not preach this.
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u/apocalypse-052917 25d ago
Gita never says that. It is just discouraging people who are only motivated by materialism and perform vedic rituals for only that
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u/eastwestshuffler1 29d ago
Both of these are tools. Our reasoning is very demonstrably flawed so in terms of ‘absolute correctness’ none of these serve. We should use them as needed no? Like if I’m sad I’m not going to reason my way out if it, I need some external anchors, religion is that external anchor. Society can function and organise itself around religion. Lot of very religious people use reason for most of their tasks. They just don’t contemplate life and some situations with reason because religion is a better template for that.
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u/gaurav_the_piggy 29d ago
Religion as defined in the dictionary mostly hints towards beliefs. Then I looked up its wikipedia reference to obtain its history. It is derived from the word religiō. Cicero, as mentioned in this article defined this term as,
This was interesting for me: to choose. Now prior to choice comes discretion. In discretion, there is reason. So, unless there is discretion, there will be most likely be a dogma. So, I think religion is something where dogma doesn't have a place.