Ep. 270: Classical Indian (Vedanta and Nyaya) Design Arguments for God w/ Stephen Phillips (Part One)
The Partially Examined Life Philosophy Podcast
Mark Linsenmayer
4.6 • 2.3K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2021
⏱️ 59 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
On God and the World's Arrangement: Readings from Vedanta and Nyaya Philosophy of Religion with one of its translators, Stephen Phillips. Does nature require an intelligent designer? Śaṅkara (710 CE) and Vācaspati Miśra (960 CE), commenting on the Brahma-sūtra (ca. 200 CE) and Nyāya-sūtra (ca. 200 BCE), argue that it does against atheistic Buddhists, Sāṃkhya believers in a primordial matter that acts on its own, and the Mīmāṃsā conservatives who so venerated scripture that they ruled out a God who created it. But if we're all Brahman (God), just trying to discover that we are and so escape the cycle of rebirth, then where is there room for a particular deity who created us?
Part two of this episode is only going to be available to you if you sign up at partiallyexaminedlife.com/support. Get it now or listen to a preview.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hey, just a couple of words before we get going. A content warning for this episode, |
| 0:03.6 | we throw around the names of a lot of Indian schools of philosophy. I think the points are still |
| 0:08.2 | clearly enough made, but if you get confused, just stop and read the blog post associated with this |
| 0:13.2 | at partiallyexaminelife.com and you should be able to quickly recover your balance. And for |
| 0:17.6 | diehards per usual, if you go sign up to become a PEL citizen at partiallyexaminelife.com slash |
| 0:22.6 | support, there's a whole second part of this episode after our guest leaves that might help you |
| 0:27.8 | even more to put all the pieces into place. You're listening to the partially examined life, |
| 0:39.8 | a podcast by some guys who are at one point set on doing philosophy for a living but then thought |
| 0:44.0 | better. Our question for episode 270 is something like is intelligence needed for the creation of the |
| 0:50.0 | world? We're discussing the new book God and the world's arrangement, which presents passages |
| 0:55.4 | from the Niyaya Sutra and the Brahma Sutra with Kamacari by the 8th century philosopher Shankara |
| 1:01.4 | and the 10th century philosopher Vajraspati Misra as well as some of their opponents, all collected, |
| 1:05.5 | translated and explained by Niyon Malagura, Matthew Dasty and our very special guest on this episode |
| 1:10.8 | Stephen Phillips. For more information, please visit partiallyexaminelife.com. This is Mark |
| 1:16.0 | Linton-Mayer, not to be dismissed like a lion replica in Madison, Wisconsin. This is Seth |
| 1:20.5 | Paskin conscious but not sure he possesses action although he's connected to an incentient body |
| 1:26.1 | in Austin, Texas. This is Wes Aulon neither all pervasive nor infinitesisable in Cambridge, Massachusetts. |
| 1:33.8 | And welcome, Stephen. Yes sir, glad to be here. Where are you calling from? You're still teaching |
| 1:38.6 | at UT, right? No, I retired. So this is my first year of full retirement. Fortunately, I avoided |
| 1:46.4 | the Zoom transition. I know my colleagues had to work very hard to broadcast their classes, |
| 1:55.6 | giving exams, etc. My Zoom and I retired just before the pandemic hit. So I have to ask, |
| 2:02.8 | you were a professor when we were there. So if you just retired this year, does that mean you |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Mark Linsenmayer, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Mark Linsenmayer and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2025.