Apply Nāgārjuna’s tetralemma to deism:A universe cannot arise from something wholly other, because if God and universe are genuinely self-contained, nothing intrinsic relates God specifically to this effect. Causation itself requires relation.Suppose God is wholly other than the universe in the strong svabhāva sense: God is completely self-contained as God, and the universe completely self-contained as universe. Now say: God causes this universe.But “causes this universe” is already a relation. God is not merely “God”; He is God-of-this-effect. And the universe is not merely “universe”; it is effect-of-this-God.So either that relation is real, in which case the two terms were never absolutely self-contained and unrelated (theism), or the relation is unreal, in which case God did not cause the universe.That is Nāgārjuna: absolute otherness destroys the very relation required for causation.So the deist picture—self-contained God :: self-contained creation :: God withdraws—fails. If God genuinely causes creation, creation never possesses the svabhāva required to become causally closed from God.If the universe has a source, therefore, then classical theism is the only game in town.
Upanishad/Adi Shankara/Advaita Vedanta bros...Our response?...
>>18690038Why would you think this contradicts the likes of Upanishads/Adi Shankara/Advaita Vedanta? Those are not deist positions as far as I know.
>>18690038There is plenty of Buddhist and non-Buddhist literature that attempts to bypass or qualify Nagarjuna's apparent nihilism. The canonical response by Shankara to the ideas of Mahayana Buddhism is in the Brahmasutrabhashya, II.ii.18-32, although Shankara's understanding of Buddhism is not penetrative. Additionally most Tantric practitioners qualify nihilism in some way, because Buddhism is not, at its core, nihilistic. There is some higher station that the Buddha perceived. It's just that trying to conceptualize that higher station or condition or whatever is abjured by honest Buddhist practitioners. This is why the prasangika method is not to put forward their own view, claiming that all delineated conceptual views are flawed and ultimately incorrect, including the view that "everything is just void and that's the way things are".However as >>18690410 said, Vedanta does not posit deism in any way. Ishvara is stated quite clearly to be active in the world at many places in the Upanishadic canon. That being said, >>18688968 is completely misusing Nagarjuna's tetralemma and trying to prove a creator god by selectively negating his opponent's views while sparing his own. If the tetralemma is applied to classical theism you will get the same result. Madhyamaka is not usually understood to be about repudiating others' views to aggrandize one's own, but rather to repudiate all views, since, as I said, all delineated conceptual views are ultimately wrong and the only truly right view is that of the Buddhas who have achieved omniscience of the truth. Therefore trying to argue for a creator god with the language of Madhyamaka is disingenuous.
>>18690447> If the tetralemma is applied to classical theism you will get the same resultHow do you figure?
>>18690447OP’s claim is not “Nagarjuna proves God.” It is: Grant God as Creator. Then creation cannot possess svabhāva relative to God, because “created by God” already makes its actuality relational and dependent rather than self-grounded. It’s using Madhyamaka to interrogate the God–creation relation, not to derive God.
>>18688968give me 1 good reason why I should listen to an indian
>>18690572The Vedas
>>18688968>A universe cannot arise from something wholly other, because if God and universe are genuinely self-contained, nothing intrinsic relates God specifically to this effect. Causation itself requires relation.Rejected. Obviously it's a metaphor and not related to the "causality" interior to the universe.
>>18690647Don’t know what you mean
>>18690647No, Nagarjuna is quite serious. It is ultmiately a type of razor to prevent belief in any essence, substances or any metaphysical entities.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CyhHz23AHb4https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/nagarjuna/
>>18690663I'm sure that he is. And that's why he's wrong.
>>18690663>It is ultmiately a type of razor to prevent belief in any essence, substances or any metaphysical entities.Not fully. That wording overstates Nāgārjuna. His razor targets anything supposedly existing through its own intrinsic, independent nature. “No metaphysical entities whatsoever” is a modern metaphysical conclusion someone might draw from madhyamaka, not what the analysis itself says. The razor itself just cuts independent closure, not whatever happens to receive the label “metaphysical.”
>>18690466MMK v. 20: essence, aka svabhava, cannot arise, therefore, assuming a creation ex nihilo or ex (something else), that creation is without svabhava either way. So the conceit that god and the universe are opposed by their two different inherent natures or svabhavas is not possible, since, irrespectively of god's possession or nonpossession of svabhava, the universe, which we all know has arisen, must be without svabhava entirely.MMK v. 22: if there is no svabhava in the universe, there is nothing for this God to be different from. the relation between God and the universe is not, therefore, real.MMK v. 40: there are no entities without relation. there cannot be a god who preexists the universe without himself being a separate dependently-arisen system, in which case the question of who created him crops up. this is answered by MMK v. 42, which says very plainly that there is no ultimate beginning or end to creation and that the cycle continues indefinitely.tl;dr theism is incompatible with madhyamaka>>18690475OP literally says "if the universe has a source, classical theism is the only game in town". Nagarjuna explicitly rules out the universe having a source. This debate is pointless.
>>18690677This anon gets it. Madhyamaka avoids nihilism by enthusiastically affirming the reality of the things that exist through dependent origination. Despite being "empty" they are not unreal.
>>18690687>MMK v. 20Agreed.>MMK v. 22You claim that because the universe lacks svabhāva, there cannot be a real God–universe distinction. That does not automatically follow. Emptiness means distinctions lack independent intrinsic existence; it does not mean distinctions or relations are unreal. In madhyamaka, conventional relations are precisely what remain possible because things are empty.>MMK v. 40That pre-assumes everything that is not svabhāvic must be a dependent creature-like entity. That does not automatically follow either. The mistake is the jump from “God is relational” to “God must therefore be a dependently arisen object inside some larger system.” Those are not equivalent. God does not need creation in order to be relationful. Relation can already be internal to divine life. So creation need not turn a previously isolated God into a relational God. Creation receives its existence from a God whose life is eternally relational already.Maybe the reason these authors had to conclude otherwise is because they didn’t have access to the revelation of the Trinity would be my guess.
>>18690727Remember God in classical theism is a singular essence. Nagarjuna is rejecting that. There can't be a metaphysical grounding relationship.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVuhhjkuwpY&t=913s
>>18690727I'm not claiming anything, I'm relating what nagarjuna said. From your posts it is obvious that you have not read the apposite Buddhist texts and are trying to shoehorn in Christianity to a philosophical framework that explicitly, repeatedly, and undeniably rejects the possibility of a creator god. You are behaving disingenuously.
>>18690733The only challenge to classical theism that I know of from Nāgārjuna is if divine essence is interpreted as self-enclosed svabhāva, madhyamaka attacks that. But classical theism need not mean “God is a sealed metaphysical object” so there is no problem. The only problem comes from an unsophisticated view of God-as-big-sealed-object.>>18690739Not an argument. Nagarjuna demonstrates that a svabhavic God doesn’t exist. He does not demonstrate that a non-svabhavic God can’t exist. It is actually absurd that you could think that God could be disproved *in general* through such an exercise, and displays a tragic lack of imagination. Have your Buddhist meltdown somewhere else if you’re just going to collapse into ad hominem and place arbitrary limits on divinity.
>>18690759I'm not even a Buddhist, I've just actually read Buddhist lit. You don't know what you're talking about. In fact, if you're the poster I think you are, you've already made a thread about how nagarjuna "proves" monotheism and have demonstrated yourself to be profoundly intellectually dishonest in your pursuit of verifying the existence of the Christian God that you so desperately cling to. Not going to reply to you anymore as you are sticking to predetermined conclusions instead of arguing in good faith.
>>18690782> no counter argument
>>18690786He's right you know
>>18690975Let him bring an argument from Mūlamadhyamakakārikā to refute the existence of an unconditioned and relationful God then.
>>18690989Nagarjuna, at line 1509 of his commentary of the Perfection of Wisdom in 5000 lines, says>Apart from the conditioned, there is no unconditioned. Why? Because the true nature of conditioned dharmas is the unconditioned.>Now, as we know, the nature of the conditioned is that whatever is subject to arising is subject to cessation, dependent origination. This is the unconditioned. Also known as dharma-dhatu, suchness, dharmata, etc.
>>18691005> >Apart from the conditioned, there is no unconditioned. Why? Because the true nature of conditioned dharmas is the unconditioned.This doesn’t contradict theistic metaphysics at all. God is not “apart” from creation in the sense that the deepest reality of creation is nothing but God. Creation is nullified before God, and this fits Nāgārjuna well. Nāgārjuna is negating God as if a large svabhavic object in some sealed separate chamber.> >[dependent generation is the unconditioned] Also known as dharma-dhatu, suchness, dharmata, etc.I don’t know. It’s choppy language, but he’s not really contradicting theism there either. Nagarjuna is clean. If this is as antitheistic as you can make him, then I don’t think he can be used against theism. Even the other guy was putting antitheism in Nagarjuna’s mouth.
