Again, I'm not doubting that there is a vast wealth of truth within the Vedas, and even that there is some portion of the total truth of reality that is only within the Vedas (as is the case for all things). But I just want to respond to some things you mentioned.
"I was taught in disciplic succession that originally there was one Veda that was passed down orally, beginning with Kṛṣṇa, the Supreme Personality of Godhead, to Brahmā, the first soul in universe, who taught it to his offspring, to the present day about 155 trillion years later."
While orally passing knowledge down may arrive at approximately the same outcome for a generation or a few, over time it becomes much greater of an approximation. This alone would indicate that much of what is actually written in the Vedas is an approximation based on the originally spoken message. As a result, the accuracy of the texts would not be the same throughout, with some portions having lost all semblance of truth and others still ringing true. To what degree this has occurred cannot be deciphered without outside knowledge.
"Several original developers of modern quantum theory praised what little they heard about Vedānta for enabling them to somewhat comprehend what their math was telling them."
Quantum mechanics is, simply put, wrong. Nothing about it is true except the observations upon which it is based. It is such a grand approximation that is in no way an accurate description of reality whatsoever. Indeed, Godel's Incompleteness Theorem would apply.
"Everything emanates from Kṛṣṇa, the independent whole and supreme enjoyer, and material nature is experienced by those of us who envy Kṛṣṇa. Forgetfulness of Kṛṣṇa overcomes the envious living beings who then experience the opposite of our true nature, which is repeated birth and death in ignorance and frustration. Remembering Kṛṣṇa activates our true nature and is accomplished in the present age most effectively by chanting Kṛṣṇa's names without stopping. There is no limit to the bliss that can be produced from Kṛṣṇa's names."
I agree fully that remembering Krsna--the Whole--activates our true nature, but I would beg to differ regarding the means. While chanting may or may not form a resonance that is akin to tuning into a certain radio channel to receive energy, Krsna cannot be remembered simply by force or any human will. Krsna, as I call "The Infinite, The All, The Unlimited", or just simply and most accurately in english "God", can only be truly known by getting to know Krsna. Meaning, getting to know all the facets that make up Krsna. Which is all religious texts, all art, music, science, philosophy, history, psychology, all interpretations of these things and every other aspect of all things. Because Krsna, God, is All. I do not believe that chanting would give any degree of the full picture because it would not educate us to all these constituents that make up The All. Though that does not mean that it is not an important part of full understanding, just that it alone will not serve to achieve full understanding.
"Sāṅkhya describes reality without anything resembling gravitational theory. Gravity is a theory of motion, and Sāṅkhya explains the motion of both living and nonliving bodies with one force called prāṇa, which acts in five different ways."
Gravity is an approximation to describe a uniformly recognized functionality of all systems. At its core, it is indeed a result of prana, which I call "the infinitesimal particles", and thus it is not a true part of nature. However, it is of vital importance for understanding because it describes the nature of how these infinitesimal particles work in a much more specific and precise way. It is inseparable from a complete understanding.
"My understanding of the nature of human beings based on the Vedas is that nature is three qualities, sattva, rajas, and tamas, which are often translated as goodness, passion, and ignorance. Life is fundamental, and these three qualities are produced from interactions between the three primary aspects of life, sac-cid-ānanda, meaning existence-knowledge-bliss."
I would say I generally agree with what you have said and, again, see the merits of the Vedas. However, again, the precision of understanding human nature is lost without a complete scientific understanding of reality. The physics of the material world functions identically to the physics of consciousness, which assists in developing much deeper understanding of the nuances of how human psychology works. I write about this in several posts, but I believe this one to be most relevant to understanding human nature as a result of understanding physics (while incorporating many other sources of information into understanding): The Principles of Truth.
"You are correct that the Vedas cannot be comprehended only by reading. Kṛṣṇa says in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam that the Vedas can only be understood in conjunction with careful devotional service. One external reason for this is the formal Sanskrit can only be perfectly spoken and heard, not accurately written. Therefore that portion of the Vedas is called śruti, which means "heard." A vernacular Sanskrit is used in the fifth Veda, which includes Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam, the Mahābhārata, Bhagavad-gītā, the Rāmāyaṇa, etc."
I would specifically argue regarding this that "careful devotional service" includes active consideration of as many sources of information as possible to decipher what is true. Only in this way can we incorporate sufficient "pieces of the puzzle" so as to see the picture clearly enough to recognize it. It is precisely like putting a puzzle together where each puzzle piece is a source of information and the puzzle is infinite in pieces and without borders. This cannot be done to such a degree where every single piece of seen with infinite resolution, but just as an increase in pixels is unnecessary to comprehend an image, with sufficient pixels and a large enough degree of "zooming out" (by seeing more pixels) the resolution becomes high enough that the image is sufficiently clear to recognize with clarity. While the spoken portion of the Vedas would add more resolution to the Vedas that is applicable to many other aspects of God, it still would not be comprehensible without careful consideration of as many seemingly unrelated pixels as possible.
"The Vedas are meant to be taken literally, unless a specific context indicates otherwise. Correct understanding of the Vedas is advised to be received through disciplic succession. There are four ancient Vaiṣṇava traditions that offer complimentary descriptions of the ultimate reality as Viṣṇu or more specifically Kṛṣṇa, and a relatively modern tradition of Śiva worshippers who promote Advaita Vedānta based on Śaṅkarācārya's early teachings instead of the conclusion given by Vyāsadeva."
"There is no vacuum, and the Vedas can be understood from within if a person finds how to access them."
Every discipline that exists is a vacuum analysis. For example, psychology studies the state of minds of humans without looking outside of itself. Religions based on the Bible or any other individual source of information functionally do the same. Therefore, this is a "zoomed in" approach where the only pixels, of the infinite pixels, considered are the few directly recognized as related to the given topic. Such as again in psychology, where environmental and biological considerations are additionally made because of a perceived possible connection. However, no such analysis incorporates sufficient "pixels" so as to see the whole picture. "Zoomed in" focus is on one particular aspect of All, which functions identically to zooming in very closely to one part of a picture and only being able to see that one portion of reality which leads to misinterpretation of what the overall picture is. "Zoomed out" analysis requires removing the focus from individual parts of the whole and instead "zooming out" so far as to see the Infinite nature of God, of all things. By "vacuum" I mean studying a system without consideration for outside influences. Such as in science where individual systems are analyzed and interpretation stems from assuming that essentially all other aspects of influence on the system are trivial. No system truly functions in a vacuum, however, because as you mention there is no vacuum.
"Sanskrit grammar has a tree shaped hierarchical construction that can program computers, and I recently noticed there is a lot of in depth modern writing about Sanskrit computational linguistics but have had time to read enough of it to represent it. I have never had the opportunity to learn more then a little Sanskrit myself, but my understanding is anyone who knows Sanskrit grammar perfectly would also know the meanings of all potential words, as explained here: "
I am not acquainted with this subject matter as a whole, but the tree shaped hierarchical construction of nature is very true. The root and trunk are alike to Krsna, The Infinite God from which all else comes. The branches are different aspects of reality that stem from The Infinite. And the leaves are different aspects of reality stemming from these branches. So, for example, science may be considered a branch. From that branch stems all the varieties of science, some arriving from others. Physics, for example, is more fundamental than chemistry and so chemistry fully branches from the physics branch. But, if we zoom in on one leaf, which is alike to studying one aspect of nature reality, all we see is the leaf. If we zoom out and see the whole tree, then we understand the true nature of God.
"Kṛṣṇa said,
SB 11.21.37: As the unlimited, unchanging and omnipotent Personality of Godhead dwelling within all living beings, I personally establish the Vedic sound vibration in the form of oṁkāra within all living entities. It is thus perceived subtly, just like a single strand of fiber on a lotus stalk."
This would be a good example of something that is generally true and yet cannot be comprehended in its entirety without outside information. Physics allows us to understand the nature of the most subtle aspects of reality to develop a precise and complete understanding so as to shed light onto the specific meaning of what is meant.
"My understanding from the Vedas is that in practice the ultimate reality can only be learned from someone who knows it. Perfect knowledge can't be manufactured from independent research; it always exists but is deeply hidden until awakening by someone who has it manifested. I'm one of many who believe Śrīla Prabhupāda empowered his books with such Divine potency. There are two links here to Ashish Dalela's site, who explains the Vedas' theory of everything in a way avoids the internal conflicts in modern science."
God is the only one who truly knows it. If anyone says otherwise, they are not appreciating the Infinite nature of reality. Thus, we can only advance our understanding substantially through God, who is all things. This, again, is why it is vital to study as many sources as possible to develop a more complete understanding. While my work is called "the theory of everything", because this is the name attributed to a hypothetical scientific theory that explains the microcosm and macrocosm in one unified, single explanation, it is not the end of understanding but rather is the beginning of understanding.
"Having found one theory of everything that I am convinced is consistent and complete, I didn't think another would be possible with the same or fewer axioms. If my understanding of Gödel's Incompleteness Theorems is correct, any theory that uses mathematics can't qualify, because it isn't possible to make a complete and consistent set of axioms using numbers."
I fully agree that any theory that uses mathematics cannot qualify. If you study my work closely, it is not based on mathematics at its core, but rather recognizes the approximation inherent to attempting to encompass sufficient variables to describe the nature of a given system or systems.
To quote one of my earlier papers, The Universal Principle of Natural Philosophy where I go into the "math" of it all:
"Pierre Simone Laplace, in his book A Philosophical Essay on Probabilities, states “[W]e may regard the present state of the universe as the effect of its past and the cause of its future. An intellect which at a certain moment would know all forces that set nature in motion, and all positions of all items of which nature is composed, if this intellect were also vast enough to submit these data to analysis, it would embrace in a single formula the movements of the greatest bodies of the universe and those of the tiniest atom; for such an intellect nothing would be uncertain and the future just like the past would be present before its eyes.” (7). In 1963, Edward Lorenz recognized the impossibility of modeling such a system in what became known as Chaos theory (8). Lorenz described chaos as “when the present determines the future, but the approximate present does not approximately determine the future.” The inability to accurately model the system is an inherent characteristic of an infinite system where we cannot know all the variables. This, however, does not preclude the universe from operating under such a model."
No math can possibly ever incorporate all infinite interactions, this is true. But it can still be recognized that the universe functions in an exactly mathematical way. It's just we cannot expect to fully and accurately mathematically model that which has infinite variables.
RE: The True Theory of Everything: Link Compilation