General Discussion on Morality, Metaphysics and the Existence of God, King’s College, London
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Summary:
In his quest for truth Aristotle (an “early member of the Hare Krsna movement”) found that some starting point must be true to order to build an argument on it. Descartes in the 17th century was a radical thinker during his times. His idea was that to doubt everything he thought he knows. The one fact he couldn’t doubt was thinking, which meant he was existing: “I think, therefore I am”.
How can we be sure that the world around as exists outside of our mind? There was to be a self-evident starting-point. Self-evidence is a proof in itself and the strongest proof, from there one can continue. Otherwise there will be an infinite regress of proves. Thomas Jefferson, the father of American democracy, put forward the self-evident proof that all human beings are equal because the creator endowed them with equal rights. This is clearly a metaphysical claim because obviously in size, body, color, strength, intelligence, etc. people are completely different.
What justifies a metaphysical assumption which massively contradicts any empirical evidence and how do we justify basing on it an entire system of society (democracy) which is contradicted by empirical evidence? On top of it democracy denies any metaphysical claims even though it is build on one. This is an obvious contradiction.
How to resolve it? With common understanding we have the experience of knowing something to be right or wrong because there is a dimension in the universe that tells us that some things are right and others are wrong. So we have to assume some objective facts in the universe.
From there H.D. Goswami shortly outlines the basic philosophy of Krsna Consciousness and his own belief.
