ATTRACTIVE ARGUMENTS ARE DISTRACTIVE.
If an X god cries on death of his wife, how can he be God? If a Y god takes help of monkeys to save his wife, how can he save you?
The problem with these approaches is not the questioning, our tradition is supports curiosity based questioning.
Infact most of our scriptures are born out of question-answer dialogue between a disciple and a teacher. Many Upanishads, Bhagvad Geeta, Ayurvedic texts are a result of deep curiosity of the disciple and a kind-hearted guru.
Ignorance of important aspects of one's tradition, political/social scenario and other aspects is definitely our fault. But on the other hand, Knowing everything is not possible as well. Therefore in my understanding, the bigger problem is not the lack of knowledge, but not knowing where to seek the right answers from and discriminating true knowledge from false claims.
Nyaya shastra (one of the schools of Indian Philosophy) puts a lot of emphasis on tests for validity of information. Knowing which information can be relied upon is the first step towards 'Knowledge acquisition (Prama/Gyan)'.
With regards to the above topic, Nyaya shastra specifies that information only from a reliable person who has studied the concerned topic with due diligence is valid.
The process of arguing over a topic (Vaad), another limb of Nyaya philosophy was highly systematised so as to make the conclusion born out of the discussion authentic and valid. Attractive argument doesn't necessarily mean its true. In the Nyaya tradition, such baseless arguments disqualified the participant at the very first instance.
This ancient Nyaya wisdom was one of the essential branches for a student to learn in Vedic days. If foundation is built with Logic and the correct Knowledge acquisition process, the superstructure becomes unshakable.
Satya (truth) is a dynamic process and needs to be accessed with deep study or from a person who has done that. May be more then the knowledge, we need to to learn how to seek knowledge before believing in it?
Dr. Karan Mittal
MBBS, MA (Sanskrit, Clinical Psychology)
M.Sc (Counselling Psychology)
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