Logic
Table of contents
Vedas
Bhagavad Gita
BG 4.5-6
Translations:
Besant: Many births have been left behind by Me and by thee, O Arjuna. I know them all, but thou knowest not thine, O Parantapa. Though unborn, the imperishable Self, and also the Lord of all beings, brooding over nature which is Mine own, yet I am born through My own Power.
Comment: This claims Krishna remembers many past births, then says he is unborn while still being born through his own power.
BG 6.41-45
Translations:
Besant: Having attained to the worlds of the pure-doing, and having dwelt there for immemorial years, he who fell from yoga is reborn in a pure and blessed house; Or he may even be born into a family of wise Yogîs; but such a birth as that is most difficult to obtain in this world. There he recovereth the characteristics belonging to this former body, and with these he again laboureth for perfection, O joy of the Kurus. By that former practice he is irresistibly swept away. Only wishing to know yoga, even the seeker after yoga goeth beyond the Brâhmic world; But the Yogî, labouring with assiduity, purified from sin, fully perfected through manifold births, he reacheth the supreme goal.
Comment: This presents rebirth, stored traits from a former body, and spiritual progress across many lives as fact without evidence.
BG 5.13-15
Translations:
Besant: Mentally renouncing all actions, the sovereign dweller in the body resteth serenely in the nine-gated city, neither acting nor causing to act. The Lord of the world produceth not the idea of agency, nor actions, nor the union together of action and its fruit; nature, however, manifesteth. The Lord accepteth neither the evil-doing nor yet the well-doing of any. Wisdom is enveloped by unwisdom; therewith mortals are deluded.
Comment: This denies ordinary agency by saying the embodied person does not act or cause action, while shifting action onto “nature.”
BG 5.8-9
Translations:
Besant: “I do not anything,” should think the harmonised one, who knoweth the essence of things; seeing, hearing, touching, smelling, eating, moving, sleeping, breathing. Speaking, giving, grasping, opening and closing the eyes, he holdeth: “The senses move among the objects of the senses.”
Comment: It treats ordinary actions like eating, moving, and speaking as things the person is not really doing.
BG 4.18
Translations:
Besant: He who seeth inaction in action, and action in inaction, he is wise among men, he is harmonious, even while performing all action.
Comment: This is mystical wordplay: “inaction in action” and “action in inaction” are asserted as wisdom rather than explained as a coherent claim.
BG 2.12
Translations:
Besant: Nor at any time verily was I not, nor thou, nor these lords of men; nor verily shall we ever cease to be hereafter.
As It Is: Never was there a time when I did not exist, nor you, nor all these kings; nor in the future shall any of us cease to be.
Comment: This claims eternal personal existence without evidence, making it a metaphysical assertion rather than a logical conclusion.
BG 2.22
Translations:
Besant: As a man casteth off worn-out clothes and putteth on others that are new, so the embodied casteth off worn-out bodies and entereth into others that are new.
As It Is: As a person puts on new garments, giving up old ones, the soul similarly accepts new material bodies, giving up the old and useless ones.
Comment: Rebirth is asserted as fact through analogy, but analogy is not proof.
BG 2.23
Translations:
Besant: Weapons cleave him not, fire burneth him not, waters wet him not, wind drieth him not.
As It Is: The soul can never be cut to pieces by any weapon, nor burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.
Comment: This describes an entity that is physically unaffected by all physical processes, which is not testable or evidenced.
BG 3.14
Translations:
Besant: From food creatures come forth; from rain food is produced; from sacrifice ariseth rain; sacrifice is born of action.
As It Is: All living bodies subsist on food grains, which are produced from rains. Rains are produced by performance of yajña [sacrifice], and yajña is born of prescribed duties.
Comment: The claim that sacrifice causes rain is a pre-scientific causal assertion that conflicts with meteorology. As It Is adds “prescribed duties” and “yajña” wording, but the causal chain is effectively the same as Besant.
Ramayana
Mahabharata
Upanishads
Puranas
Bhagavata Purana or Srimad Bhagavatam
SB 6.9.7
भूमिस्तुरीयं जग्राह खातपूरवरेण वै ।
ईरिणं ब्रह्महत्याया रूपं भूमौ प्रदृश्यते ॥ ७ ॥
Translations:
srimadbhagavatam.org: With the benediction [by Indra] of having her hollows filled with water the earth took one fourth of the burden of killing a brahmin by accepting on her surface the deserts as the visible sign [of the sin].
Vedabase: In return for King Indra’s benediction that ditches in the earth would be filled automatically, the land accepted one fourth of the sinful reactions for killing a brāhmaṇa. Because of those sinful reactions, we find many deserts on the surface of the earth.
Siva Purana
SP Vidyesvara Samhita 24.56
By means of Tripundra(type of tilaka), the following and similar others of innumerable sorts are destroyed immediately :- Theft of others’ wealth, outraging the modesty of other men’s wives, censuring others, usurping and forcibly occupying others’ fields, harassing others, theft of plants, parks etc, incendiarism, acceptance from base people of the gifts of cow, gold, buffalo, gingelly seeds, blankets, cloths, cooked rice, food-grains, water etc; sexual intercourse with prostitutes, women of the tribal castes, fisher women, slave women,actresses, widows, virgins and women in their menstrual periods, selling of flesh, hides, gravy etc. and salt, calumny perjury, deceitful arguments and utterance of falsehood. Source (Page-180)