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| Dear veerji Preet Mohan S Ahluwalia Sat Sri Akal It is good that you clarified your position. When you get the reference of the quote please let me know, meantime I shall endeavor to find it also. BTW I had assumed that you knew Bertrand Russell well enough to know that he himself labeled himself an atheist. When I gave him credit for some of his works it was not a change of opinion. I assumed that you knew enough about the man and his contributions and did not mention it before. I think I gave the wrong impression that you just throw out every thing he said. This is not what I meant as his original and creative contributions are very valuable. Your interpretation of "hell" in the SGGS as a mere illustration, i.e. figurative has to be justified in terms of hermeneutics. You need to delineate the rules for how and when you know a passage is figurative and when it is real. You cannot just arbitrarily assign a section as figurative. There are many references to hell in the SGGS, and I do not think you can allegorize them all as figurative. This would be a good topic for a future discussion. Unfortunately hermeneutics is an area, which is very neglected in Sikh theology. There is definitely nothing written in English as far as I am aware. Sahib Singh might have written some thing in Punjabi but I have not come across it. My objection to the quote was that knowing what I know about the man, it was out of character for him to say what you are assigning to him. I thought may be you were getting the author of the quote mixed up with Russell. If we can find the documentation then I think the philosophy academia would be interested in it. The other point is that the vast majority of what he wrote is not in synch with Sikhi and actually destroys all the pillars of Sikhism as well as all other religions. BTW I have no problem per se with the contents of the quotation itself, whoever said it is perfectly entitled to their opinion. Sometimes lengthy replies are necessary, but what would you rather have a short off the hip response or a coherent well reasoned and well researched one? Rational discussion i.e. arguments supported with reasons will make them longer. Without reasons they are mere opinions which come a dime a dozen. Once again it has been a pleasure to get to know you a little better and that is well worth the effort. I am glad we ended amicably and that's the way it should be whether we disagree or agree. Regards Jass Singh. |
