AGTSP!
Paoho
We see some tendency to reject some statements of Srila Prabupada in conflict with modern science. I have doubts about rejecting some seemingly incorrect truth statements where popular science contradicts the Vedas and Srila Prabhupada's presentations.
Eg as I understand, having studied quantum mechanics at U.C. Berkeley, etc, Sadaputa shows in his first book that the sun is closer to the moon than the earth comes from the definition of the earth as Bhu-mandala and not the globe of dirt circulating in space. It is an amazing glorification the Vedic cosmology, but certain words have to be interpreted. They are not wrong. He is using them in a non-standard way.
It is not fair to demand that he be accurate in our modern standard. As far as understand the sun is closer to Bhu-mandala, the ecliptic, than the moon.
There seem to be so, so, so many holes in modern astronomy that to say that the stars are suns like ours is subject to question. Eg. if I put a stick in water you can "see" that it is "cut" and shifted very sharply where it hits the water. "Oh, Oh, haw, haw! This is an optical illusion".
Well, yes, but it is just a fact that the speed of sound in water, air, metal etc is different. Having experienced the media on the earth and the moon (?) then are we to say that what we are seeing from Mars is not coming through different media making it shift this way or that way?
Then Mars is just a few million miles away.
You know that the closest star is Alpha Centauri, no? According to my calculations they place it at 7.6 trillion miles away. If we push Mars to 76 million miles away then we are extending our speculation by a factor of 10,000, no? Ie. one Gulabjamun is good two are better, three are better, therefor 10,000 will be really great.
Space is steady all that distance? There is no gravity river around our solar system...?
Hmmmm?