People who claim to be scientists, but whose Hindu cultural loyalties and weaknesses seem to overpower their disposition for scientific temper and an inquiring attitude, keep trying to harp on this futile task of rationalizing the nonsense of the Upanishads and Vedanta.
At the risk of sounding immodest, this article on Vedanta and many of my comment-responses on it, have turned out to be an almost one-stop shop of Vedantic refutation.
Despite all my laments and regrets of the absence of resources and articles that can serve to debunk and denounce the inanity, absurdity and the mulishly stodgy reverence for Vedanta, I have managed to some extent between that Nirmukta article, my comment-responses and my blog posts on Hinduism and Vedanta, to marshal some significant amount of refutation materials and ideas against Vedanta.
My comment-responses, along with the views of my fellow skeptics, have chased,debunked and nearly exhausted almost every kind of apologetic response, tactic and strategy of Vedantic defense, including the absurd and mundane ones.
Of course there are some more to respond and retort to, which I will do in due course. After we had responded to more belligerent of the Vedantic defenses, it was the turn of these shallow and mushy idealist responses from one called RKK
Below here I go again, trying to tear them apart
RKK,
You said: Indian Philosophy lays emphasis on experience AFTER the brain has quietened itself of NOISE generated by sense organs.
My response: Vedanta is not equal to Indian philosophy. So it is wrong and inaccurate to equate a narrow streak of Idealism called Vedanta with broad Indian philosophy or metaphysics. It is true that the barking dogs of Vedantik fanaticism can out-shout its saner critics and other adherents, but just wanted to point this out.
Now what is this experience after the Brain has quietened. What is its description in the Upanishads? Here I am expecting clear definitions and descriptions, not crossword puzzles, chants and poems!!!. Even the poetry and metaphor of the Upanishads is of a poor and inferior quality and order.
Upanishads can’t make its mind about the size of the soul or its location!!!.
Is it the size of a thumb, size of a millet or grain or smaller than that?. Is it microscopic or not? Is it a spirit or is it physical?. Is it embodied or disembodied. Is the soul inside us or outside of us and is it in the heart or in the ‘lotus of the heart’. What is the ‘lotus of the heart’.
These are not my questions, but the puerile and silly questions posed in the Upanishads themselves with no answers to it.
Did Upanishads consider the brain to be a sense organ or not?. And why should brain not be considered a sense organ in itself. It is alright to consider the brain to be distinct from other organs of sense. But is there any reasoning or explanation for that view.
Most Upanishads are not even 5-8 pages long. Even in longer ones like CU and BU, the main metaphysical content in the forms of dialogues of Yagnavalkya, Janaka, Janasruti, Raikva and Pravahana Javali are not more 3-5 pages long.
How do you expect the concepts of consciousness, experience and even an existence of a realm above the physical pale to be explained or taught in such sparse and frugal content.
Read the Upanishads for yourself before making grand claims on its behalf.
Your next few statements make no sense at all to me. Now science/technology is trying to analyze the brain and has had a lot of success in neurological examination. But Upanishadic sages had no means to analyze the brain or remainder of the human anatomy.
They may have been masters at meditation, but they made no precise and verifiable statements in their texts. Yagnavalkya personifies the CYA (cover your ass) strategy of the ancient sages. They hedge one claim or opinion with another and so on, that in the end we don't know what they really stand for.
Can you tell/show me in the Upanishads what verifiable claims are made about analytics of the states of the brain and about experience when brain is in different states of consciousness?.
The you said: Present day scientist do not know the IQ of ancients
My response: What are you trying to establish by means of such a vague statement. We are not making any disputes about the IQ of ancient Indian Sages. They may have been the greatest geniuses in terms of IQ count. But still, we are not able to derive any meaningful or useful hypotheses from their texts that can be empirically and experimentally validated.
You then said: Brain being a destructible part of human body, archeologist at best can depend on bones, or artifacts, to make a guess, which they later turn into a theory.
My response: What are you trying to accomplish with the study of dead brains?? This is not an exercise in anthropology and what have brains got to do with archeology?. Why do we need the dead brains of Yagnavalkya, Pravahana Jaivali or Badrayana and their IQ counts. We have their written texts that have used linguistic, semantic and grammatical rules that we can make sense of. Analyzing that we can judge the merits of their thoughts and claims. There Vedanta and Upanishads get a grade F (Fail).
You said: Ancients have given the instructions on how to experience
My response: Really!! where and in which verses of the Upanishads, are such 'detailed instructions' given, unless the act of sitting near a Guru who will whisper the instructions of the secret(Brahma-Vidya) in your ears is a detailed instruction in itself!!!.
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