[Advaita-l] Refutation of Koenraad Elst's article and video on vedāpaurusheyatvam

[Rajaram Venkataramani]

https://www.facebook.com/share/p/1bg1p13sgpMThmJP/

In this speech Koenraad Elst, who l respect for his contribution, does
'dahana kriya' of vedāpsurusheyatvs as one of the Hibdutva lieutenants put
it. Does he really? No. First of all, he does not need 60 minutes as he
makes only 3 arguments and should be able to do it in under 3 minutes.
Before we go into the 3 arguments and how they are illogical, let me call
out just one of the blatant errors in his speech, most of which is
unrelated to the topic of vedāpaurusheyatvam. He says that mūrti pūja is
non-vedic and at the 50th minute says that even the spoon used in yajnas is
deified. So, he contradicts himself.

Now, he says that apaurusheya means 'it is not of human origin' but
apaurusheyatva is not even of divine origin and he equates
vedāpaurusheyatvam with lslamic conception of Quran as eternal and
uncreated. It shows that he does not understand the concept of
apaurusheyatva. In lslam, the knowledge of Quran is eternal but not the
sound as it would contradict the principle of Tawhid (oneness of God) and
Allah's creatorship of everything. In the Vedic conception, the sabda
(sound) itself is eternal in its pure form not only artha (meaning) and is
manifested in every srshti by lshvara as before.

So, what are his 3 arguments and why are they illogical?

One, rishis live in a particular point in space and time as they refer to
past and contemporary events. Two, they use the pronouns "l", "We" etc.,
which are indicative of them being the authors. Three, they borrow mantras
from other rishis, which wouldn't be the case if the mantras were
apaurusheya.

The first one is the logical fallacy of 'setting up a strawman'. It is not
the vaidika sampradaya position that the rishis didn't live in a particular
point in space and time. In fact, they did and the vedas sometimes do an
anuvada (retelling) of what is known through pratyaksha and anumana. The
first argument is without understanding of the sampradaya position. The
addendum to he first argument is that the vedas can't be eternal because
they talk about spacio-temporal events. This is category fallacy where he
confuses the category of the text based on its content. For example, a text
that talks about how to calculate pi is finite and is written at a point in
space-time but the content, namely pi, is an eternal truth and infinite. On
that basis, you can't say the text itself is eternal and infinite. The
inverse applies here. The argument that the vedas are finite and limited in
space-time is not true because some of their content is about
spacio-temporal events. The second argument is a logical fallacy of
'fundamental attribution error'. If characters in a narrative or novel use
subjective pronouns, it does not mean they are the authors. The third one
is the 'fallacy of unique discovery' where one thinks that multiple rishis
cannot discover the same mantras in different forms and 'composition
fallacy' where one thinks no mantra by a rishi can be considered discovered
because some mantras were borrowed.

Now, Plato and other logical philosophers think that information (ideals)
is fundamental the universe. This is also the view held by many Quantum
Physicists that information is fundamental to the universe. So, science is
moving towards what many philosophers knew about the ontology of knowledge.
But within known and well established laws of science, is it possible for
vedas to be apaurusheya? Yes, in one sense. Many mathematical and
scientific discoveries have been discovered without a sense of agency as
reported by Srinivasa Ramanujan, Poincare, August Kekule etc. In deep
meditation and under the influence of certain herbs,, people lose a sense
of agency and this has been verified using MRI studies. While the sense of
agency is lost, truths or ideas appear in their mind.

So, no 'dahana kriya' has been done. Perhaps a 'burial' but using logic, we
will unearth the truth 😊