The Vital Institution of Marriage

Question: Is it sinful to have a nice, serious, stable, and committed conjugal relationship without formal marriage? HDG: Without resorting to words like “sinful,” I will try to rationally consider the necessity of “institutionalizing” a “nice, serious, stable, and committed relationship” between a man and woman. We may consider the following points: Ultimately, the justification […]

Atheism & Academia

Question: Why do we see widespread atheism in the academic world among the professors of humanities? HDG: My personal experience, being around the academy for most of my life, is that one seldom finds a more unphilosophical, unreflexive group of dogmatists than atheistic and agnostic humanities scholars. For example, the fervent adherence to unguided evolution […]

The Nature of Atheism

Question: Is atheism a religion? HDG: First, we can address the issue of the difficulty scholars have in defining “religion.” I have always found the academic inability to define religion to be more a sign of the academy’s lack of common sense, than a definitional problem inherent to religion. Incorporating Smart’s seven-fold list, why can’t […]

Agnosticism & Objectivity

Question: I believe that agnosticism is the most objective and rational position possible, primarily because the concept of God is not well-defined in a rigorous, analytic-philosophical sense. What do you say to that? HDG: Actually, European thinkers did very sophisticated, rigorous theology for centuries during the late classical and scholastic periods, but modern philosophers came […]

The Omnibenevolence of God

Question: How we can be sure that Krishna (God) is absolutely good, without any trace of evil? HDG: I know that Krishna is ultimately good because throughout my long life, I constantly see that Krishna rewards virtue and allows us to suffer the natural, fair consequences of non-virtue. The fact that the world is fully […]

Ask H.D. Goswami

Q & A with HH Hridayananda das Goswami