Vedas and Science
I appreciate the response https://medium.com/p/fdf4e6247fe2. I do use certain ayurvedic remedies personally.
The dilemma here, it seems to me, is that many people treat anything appearing in the Vedas as unquestionable truth; revealed fact. That's religion, not science.
In religion, beliefs govern observations. In science, observations govern beliefs.
Science is about maintaining a skeptical mindset, establishing and testing falsifiable hypotheses, then having such tests independently validated. Such is necessary for scientific journal publications. It is not necessary for other journal publications, which I suspect some of the citations to be.
The Vedas are an interesting mix of the plausible and the implausible. Traditional chyavanprash, an elaborate mixture of dozens of organic materials, has been scientifically tested and found to have significant health benefits. On the other hand, the revered "soma" (plant? product of mammalian physiology?) has never been found in today's world, despite significant efforts. (Though recent findings regarding DMT and ayahuasca are causing me to wonder if, perhaps, this is what they were looking for all along.)
Other descriptions in the Vedas simply don't hold up to scrutiny.
For example, detailed illustrations of vimanas, purported to be flying machines, physically could not actually fly--though the tiny propellers might serve for stabilization. (The only way vimanas could actually fly would be if they had an undisclosed antigravity component which is, to put it mildly, reaching.)
As another example, I've personally always found ridiculous the idea that the predecessor incarnation before human is bovine. There's no evident reason why this should be so. Various simians would seem more reasonable. Of course, this cannot be tested until reincarnation is subjected to far more extensive scientific study than the very limited attempts to date.
Morphologically, we have more in common with pigs. Indeed, the eminent hybrid scientist Dr. Eugene McCarthy published a book in which, among other controversial things, he argued that humans appear to be the result of interbreeding between a porcine ancestor and a simian ancestor. To my knowledge, his careful reasoning has never been evidentially disputed.
Might this have been why there was a proscription against eating pigs in the Hebrew Bible? If so, who made that proscription, and why was there none about eating simians?
