Eastern philosopy is religion

[wynn]

That means we can not engage in Brain Science or major health needs or chemical vs. surgery? Or that the world is still flat? ...and imported ideas of one place vs. the other...


Oh...well...

No, appeal to novelty is fallacious when one argues that something is good simply because it's new, and that old things are bad (or less than good) because they are old.

[kmguru]

Most of the time, old thing are bad or less than good because it may not have all the information that we just learned...to do good and some times it works on bad information...

[spidergoat]

New science is usually better than the old stuff.

[wynn]

Most of the time, old thing are bad or less than good because it may not have all the information that we just learned...to do good and some times it works on bad information...

And what does this have to do with Eastern philosophy/religion, specifically the Dharma as taught by the Buddha?

[kmguru]

And what does this have to do with Eastern philosophy/religion, specifically the Dharma as taught by the Buddha?

Knowledge is what it is...lack of it is where you are!!! (Not you specifically)...

[lightgigantic]

New science is usually better than the old stuff.

roundabout way of saying contemporary science is built on error

[wynn]

Knowledge is what it is...lack of it is where you are!!! (Not you specifically)...

Again, what does this have to do with Eastern philosophy/religion, specifically the Dharma as taught by the Buddha?

[Ellis]

The traditional Buddhists even have a word for love of the Dharma - dharma-rati.

Yeah, sorry but, dharma-rati does not mean love of wisdom.

[Ellis]

I think that "love" is one of the components that begets wisdom in buddhism. There isn't an actual "love" of wisdom itself.

(edit) * ie: compassion

[kmguru]

Again, what does this have to do with Eastern philosophy/religion, specifically the Dharma as taught by the Buddha?

Whatever you seek to infer...no one else does...

Can I close this post for good? Like to have a second support...

[Ellis]

close-rati.

[Yazata]

Appeal to novelty is fallacious.

That means we can not engage in Brain Science or major health needs or chemical vs. surgery? Or that the world is still flat? ...and imported ideas of one place vs. the other...


Oh...well...

IF people want to argue that some new thing is better than some older thing, then they are going to need to provide some substantial reason WHY it's better. Just pointing out that it's more recent doesn't suffice.

[Yazata]

Most of the time, old thing are bad or less than good because it may not have all the information that we just learned...to do good and some times it works on bad information...

I think that's probably true in natural science and technology. It's less clear whether it's true in the so-called social sciences. It's even more questionable in areas such as ethics, aesthetics and spirituality.

Widespread faith in progress is a fairly recent phenomenon, historically speaking. It seems to have appeared on a large scale in the 18'th century in Europe, during the 'Enlightenment'. Intellectuals felt a new confidence that if all of human life could simply be remade on the model of science, then things would just get better and better. It was self-consciously the "age of reason".

Today, at the dawn of the 21'st century, after a couple of disastrous world wars and the failure of many intellectuals dreams of communism, many of those European intellectuals feel growing skepticism about the whole idea.

My own view is that both faith in progress and denial of it often take exaggerated forms that aren't very smart.

Some areas of human inquiry do progress, some faster and more straightforwardly than others. Other areas of human life don't seem to progress very much at all, and oftentimes ancient arts and ideas are just as valuable as more recent ones.

Even in areas where progress is clearest and most obvious, it can still be foolish to simply assume that new ideas are automatically going to be better ideas and that we have nothing to learn from all the generations that came before us.

[Yazata]

And what does this have to do with Eastern philosophy/religion, specifically the Dharma as taught by the Buddha?

The way the Pali tradition evolved, things seem to have grown quite conservative. The Buddha taught, the teachings were collected in the discourses, the canon was closed several hundred years after the time of the Buddha, and that was that. But even in the Pali tradition we see signs of development subsequent to the Buddha, kind of frozen in amber so-to-speak, in the development of the Vinaya to embrace institutionalized monasticism and in the elaborated scholasticism in the Abhidhamma.

My own speculation is that Theravada grew more conservative and traditionalist in reaction to what they perceived as the non-traditional speculations popular among the incipient Mahayana.

Anyway, it's pretty clear that Buddhist philosophy displayed a great deal of development and elaboration in the big monastic universities like Nalanda and among thinkers like Dharmakirti and Dignaga. A whole school of Buddhist logic/epistemology arose, in part through ongoing controversies with contemporary Hindu thinkers.

And even today, novel applications of ideas derived from ancient Indian philosophical thought are appearing in areas like computer science, so say nothing of philosophical logic, philosophy of language and philosophy of mind.

But... having said all that... it still isn't clear whether all this elaboration in Buddhist philosophy had a whole lot of relevance to the Buddha's original purpose, or value for those trying to follow his path to enlightenment. (Tibetans are apt to argue that stuff like the proper understanding of Madhyamaka is vital, but Theravadans and followers of movements like Zen would probably disagree.)

[wynn]

Is nowadays karma something other than it was 2600 years ago?

[spidergoat]

roundabout way of saying contemporary science is built on error

Yes, such grand errors as Newton's Laws of Motion.

[polynesia99]

Religion is a "philosophy."

Is it that hard for you to just not click on the "Religion" and "Eastern philosophy" forums? There are a whole lot of other discussions in philosophy that have nothing to do with religion.