How should one look at buddhist mythologies and cosmologies from a scientific perspective

Although it could well be that those words were not directly from Gautama himself, yet just in case, assuming Gautama probably wouldn't lie except for educational purposes, how can those rather surreal descriptions of the world, which again share (too) many similarities with the hinduist ones, reconcile with modern science? Should one just regard them as "white lies" so that Buddhism be more easily accepted? How self-consistent are those descriptions anyways? Also, I read somewhere before that those "insights", including Karma could be partially gained/observed through meditation. How true is this statement in terms of canonical literature reference?