[Advaita-l] apaurusheyatva of veda-s

[Jaldhar H. Vyas]

On Fri, 19 Aug 2011, Raghav Kumar wrote:

> We have to conclude in a way which is non-sectarian. By which I mean "if a
> fundamentalist muslim or christian were to claim similar infallible
> apaurusheya status for their respective scriptures, we should be able to
> logically show a fallacy in such claims without invoking the need for
> "faith" and "belief"  and "vishvAsa" etc. Because the Pope claims that its
> "a mystery of God, as to why the Catholic Church alone has salvific value
> and not the other faiths and even other Christian denominations" . We should
> avoid giving such faith-based reasons and still manage to converge on
> the apaurusheyatva of Veda.
>

Why?  Who cares what Christians or Muslims believe?  I should hope you 
want to be a Hindu not a not-Christian or not-Muslim.  We have our own 
internal arguments about the roles of faith and reason some of which may 
be similiar to those of other faiths and some may be exactly the same.

Incidently neither Christianity or Islam claim apauresheyatva for their 
scriptures.  In fact the whole point of scripture in those religions is 
that they are the words of actual historical people.

Fundamentalism is another word that is used more for its emotional content 
than to further understanding.  A fundamentalist is merely one who 
believes there are certain articles of dogma in his religion which are 
beyond question.  So of course we are fundamentalists.  The difference is 
we are the kind of fundamentalists who are willing to accept features from 
other faiths which do not clash with our fundamentals instead of 
condemning them outright.

> Therefore the scientific laws and theories are on par with (as apaurusheya
> as) the ideas and knowledge revealed by the vedic karma kAndam. Both are
> useful, provisional and are subsequently seen to be not absolutely true.
> How would that go !! .

Others have already commented on the appropriateness of the analogy to 
scientific laws but I want to mention a slightly different scientific 
concept -- domain.  Newtonian mechanics may not be as "truthful" as 
quantum mechanics but it is the basis for most engineering problems not 
the latter.  In the same way the Vedantic critique of karmakanda is not 
that it is not true but that it only applies to the domain of people who 
identify with the ego.


-- 
Jaldhar H. Vyas <jaldhar at braincells.com>