Darwin's Evolution and the Vedic Understanding of the Soul
A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Chapters
Vedic perspective on biological evolution
This is Darwin. Darwin's conception of evolution rests on the contention that there is a real genetic change from generation to generation. In other words, Darwin rejects the Platonic eidos.
Eidos is the Greek for idea, type, or essence. There is no human eidos, human type or essence. There are no fixed species.
This is in contradistinction to the Platonic idea that the species exists in essence, or as Krishna says in Bhagavad-gītā, "Bījam, I am the seed of all existences."
Darwin would not recognize any bīja or seed, particular type for any species. Rather he sees shifting, evolving physical forms constantly changing. The divine forms are already there.
That's like the form of monkeys are also there, the form of man is also there, other animals, other birds, beasts. So he has no clear conception; the evolution is taking place like that. He
has no idea about whose evolution.
Transmigration and the individual soul
He simply takes account of the body. The body never evolves. It is the soul within the body; he evolves, transmigrates from one body to another. Just to see that a child becomes a boy, the child is dead, no one wants.
So it is the soul that is concerned. The soul is within the body and he desires and evolves. That is the conception that is right.
For example, if a man is within an apartment, the man desires to change the apartment to another apartment, it does not mean with the apartment he walks. But the man desires a change and he goes to the fine apartment.
That is Darwin. So Darwin has no such conception. He has described the idea of evolution from Vedas in his... At
Critique of modern scientific methodology
first Darwin was a Christian, but his faith in the existence of a person is beyond the scope of man's intellect.
The mystery of the beginning of things is insoluble by us, and I for one must be content to remain an agnostic." To be opposed to it...
So he didn't argue against Plato or Descartes or Kant or any other philosopher, but he simply presented what evidence he had amassed during a five—only a five-year voyage on a British freighter from eighteen thirty-one to eighteen thirty- six.
But what is considered important is that his book The Origin of Species marks what they call the emancipation of science from philosophy. What is that emancipation?
That is to say, he simply presented what material he found— that is the fossils. He investigated certain life forms on these islands during this trip and theorized about that. That is evolution; that is not scientific.
He found something and he based his thesis on that. He cannot find out all the bodies because there are at the end in some section, some section they burn the body. So how you can get information on their body?
Burned. So he really is not at all certain. It is always defective. He spent the rest of his life writing about the material he gathered during this five-year voyage, which is a very short time.
And according to his theory of natural selection, the best and the fittest survive. Now if this is the case, the race will necessarily steadily improve. But is it...? I was dictating. Is that alive? No, what is that alive?
Well, by that he means that the strong pass on their hereditary characteristics to their offspring, and that the race—no individual survives, but that the race improves.
Human purpose and spiritual education
But isn't this contradicted by the Vedas? In the present Kali-yuga, for instance, Arjuna's physical prowess was much greater. And that was what, five thousand years ago?
So isn't instead of improving, instead of the race improving in strength and other qualities, isn't it actually degenerated?
What is the cause of man's physical, mental, and spiritual deterioration in the succeeding yugas? That is education. Every individual person, he is for—he has got a particular type of body, especially in human body.
He requires education. What is this adult and what is higher than the human shape? These are minute descriptions. There are eight million four hundred thousand different forms of life and the body is being evolved.
The body is a machine and the individual soul desires, and he gets a suitable body made by material nature under the order of God.
This is Vedic idea, as it is said in the Bhagavad-gītā: «īśvaraḥ sarva-bhūtānāṁ hṛd-deśe 'rjuna tiṣṭhati». God is existing within the core of everyone's heart, and the individual soul is desiring something, and upon the order of God, he is given a machine made by material nature.
So this is evolution, and a man, although he is in human form of body, he can again degenerate to animal form of body according to his desire. So «tathā dehāntara-prāptiḥ». He has to change the body.
And the body is changed according to his work and desire. The animals also desire, but they are under the laws of nature, changing body, and one is given the chance to become a human being.
And then he may deserve, and according to his desire, he gets the next body. If he likes, he can go and have higher forms of life, and if he degenerates, he goes to a lower form of life.
But as the yugas progress, the human body itself, doesn't it become more degraded? What do you mean by degraded?
He, he, he has got a human body, but by his work and by his desire, he can get next life a degraded body or a dog's body; that will depend on his activity.
Human body is meant for understanding God and acting accordingly to go back to home, back to Godhead.
But if he does not utilize this human form of body properly, if he remains on the platform of animal propensities and degenerates, then he goes—he can become next like a dog. There
are two things: elevation or degeneration.
In "The Descent of Man", Darwin writes: "The belief in God has often been advanced as not only the greatest, but the most complete of all the distinctions between man and the lower animals."
It is, however, impossible to maintain that this belief is instinctive in man. The idea of a universal and beneficent creator does not seem to arise in the mind of man until he has been elevated by long-continued culture.
Yes, the culture is important. If he gets his chance of culture, association, then he elects. That is explained in Bhagavad-gītā: yānti deva-vratā devān.
If he, according to his cultural life, he can go to the higher planetary system. He can remain where he is, he can degrade, and he can go back to home, back to Godhead.
Therefore, culture is very important in the human form of life.
Soul consciousness versus material identification
He further writes, "He who believes in the advancement of man from some low organized form will naturally ask: how does this bear on the belief in the immortality of the soul?"
He says, "At what precise period does a man become an immortal being?" That is to say, he doesn't know at what stage the immortal soul inhabits the species. The soul is put into different bodies.
That is the defect of Darwin's knowledge: he does not know about the soul. So the existence of the soul—to understand this is the first education. One who does not know this, he remains sa vai... sa eva go-kharaḥ.
If one continues the bodily concept of life without any understanding of the soul... and it is very easy to understand that a child is becoming a boy, a boy is becoming a young man. So the soul is there.
And we remember that "I was a child, I was a boy, I was a young man." So I continue to exist, the body changes. And this is confirmed in every Vedic scripture, and that is the beginning of knowledge.
If one does not understand how the soul is changing body, he remains on the level of cats and dogs. He says he doesn't know at what point the soul enters, but the soul is in anything that moves, is that correct?
Even, uh, the soul moves. Bacteria, for instance, or an ant. The ant moves because there is soul. The bacteria moves there because there is soul. Similarly, the man moves because there is soul.
The animals move because there is soul. And every soul is immortal? So that's all on Darwin. This is, uh, an appendix to the Darwin... In
1925, the Tennessee legislature passed the Butler Act forbidding the teaching of Darwinism, Darwinian evolution, in the public schools of that state.
In May, John Thomas Scopes, a science teacher at Dayton High School, consented to be the defendant in a court test of the law. He was arrested and indicted by a grand jury and stood trial on July 19, 1925.
Well, why he was there was for teaching Darwinism, for teaching that man descended from the apes. So he was teaching and, uh, the government arrested?
The gov— the American government arrested, yes, the Tennessee legislature arrested him. He was arrested and defended by Clarence Darrow, a famous trial lawyer, and the prosecutor.
Prosecutor was William Jennings Bryan, who was a thrice-defeated presidential candidate. So they— they discussed evolution and religion and how they could coexist.
And Scopes, who was teaching Darwinian evolution, claimed: “All men have a natural and indefeasible right to worship Almighty God according to the dictates of his own conscience.
No human authority can in any case whatever control or interfere with the rights of conscience, and that no preference should ever be given by law to any religious establishment or mode of worship.”
Divine creation and material nature
This was... and the concept of worship, if actually one believes or knows. So the real worship is that this pleases God.
He... to manufacture... just like I want a glass of water, and if my servant gives me a glass of hot milk, is that worship? Worship means what I want, if you give me. Then I am satisfied.
But I want a cold glass of water to give me. If you think, “No, milk is better than water,” so will that satisfy me? So these concocted ideas of worshiping God will actually satisfy God?
There is wrong here, that one can worship God according to his own dictation. That means his God is fictitious. He has no idea of God. And he can concoct ideas.
But actually, if there is God, one should worship according to the dictation of God. But if one does not know what is God, what is the dictation of God, and His will, what is the use of his so-called worship?
It may be to some extent a sentiment, but that is not worth it. If you want to worship God, you must worship God according to His dictation. That is real. How can one manufacture the way of worship? The prosecutor...
If you want to worship God, you must worship according to the dictation of God. If you have no such dictation, if you have no idea of God, then how can you worship God? You can worship a ghost.
According to your... if freedom is given to your conception, then you can worship a dog instead of God. Because you do not know what is God and what God wants you to do.
So, without the real conception of God, how can one worship God by physical ideas? This has always been a very touchy subject in the schools. In the schools.
Now in the United States, the schools are not even allowed to mention God. That is frustration. They could not get the idea of God. This is frustration.
This kind of conclusion means they tried to understand God, but there was no proper understanding of God. So they have given up the idea of understanding God. The frustration, rejection by frustration, is not success.
The best thing is they should learn about God from God and do accordingly; that is success. So we are preaching the message of God and people should take to it to understand God and worship Him; that is first.
Bryan, the prosecutor, chastised the Darwinists for not telling us where life began and at the same time speaking of evolution. He says they do not dare to tell you that it began with God and ended with God.
Darwin says, "In the beginning of all things is a mystery insolvable by us." He does not pretend to say how these things started. And he goes on. That makes him perfect knowledge.
We say the material world is creation, and within the material world the living entities are allowed to act. So the living entities coming from God. Therefore he says, "Bījam mām."
So God... just like our life begins from the womb of the mother. But the father gives the seed. The mother's womb cannot produce a child. Then there is no need of father.
The father gives the seed, and the mother gives the body.
Similarly, the living entity, part and parcel of God, is put into the material nature, and according to his desire, the material nature gives him a body; that is a being. Very simple thing.
But these people, on account of insufficient knowledge, they cannot understand what is the beginning. Either Darwin or the opposite. This is the beginning.
The material nature is created by God, and the living entities, who are part and parcel of God, desire to enjoy this material nature. So God impregnated material nature with the living entity. This is the beginning.
And Bryan has... You can say against this statement of Bryan. This is the beginning of that. But none of that... both the contending parties had no clear idea what is the beginning. This is the beginning.
Yes, Bryan had difficulty in attacking Darwinism because he based his arguments... he does not know the beginning. He based his arguments strictly on the Bible. Bryan, this is not Darwin, but the prosecutor.
What... what is the meaning of Bible? And he... he was ridiculed, Bryan, for his fundamentalism. The Bible says, "And God said, 'Let us make man in our image,'" etc.
"God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him," etc. And the Bible fixes the creation at about 6,000 years ago.
But science fixes... oh, ancient civilizations of China and India, oh, 6,000, 7,000 years ago. And the Vedas deal with a much, much broader time span. Yeah.
So, uh, that was, uh, it was extremely difficult for Bryan to, uh, maintain any kind of, uh, prosecution with the... because, uh, we say that both of them had ignored about the beginning.
So if both of them had ignored, so I tell you, say, six thousand, seven, and six million. This is all imagination. It is not fair.
But the six thousand and seven thousand, that is not the fact, millions and millions of years.
But this fact is this: that God created this cosmic manifestation and He impregnated the living entity to appear in different types of body according to the soul's desire that I have already expressed: "The soul man proposes, God disposes."
Not only human form of life, but only the animal forms of life, they are also from the very beginning. Not like Darwin's theory, that there was no human form of life in the beginning. That is a wrong theory.
All the forms of life are there. And the, actually, the body is external. Within the body there is the soul. So the body is created by material nature, and the soul is part and parcel of God. This is the real idea.
How they can reprove this idea if they have no idea about the beginning of life? It, it was very difficult on the basis of the Bible. The Vedas date the creation back, oh, that it is when... it's not time.
Time, it is the beginning. The beginning of the creation was when? No. No, there is no question of when. It may be seven thousand years or seven millions of years.
But the beginning should be taken like this: that God created this, uh, cosmic manifestation. And where from the living entities came, that also came from God.
Superior energy and life origins
That is explained clearly in the Bhagavad-gītā that this material creation is composition of earth, water, earth, like that. This is also God's energy.
The ingredients of this material world coming from God, that is called prakṛti and pradhāna. He is the creator. And then the living entities, they are also coming from God.
So this material energy is explained as inferior energy, and the living entity is explained as superior energy, both of them coming from God. So the beginning of life is simultaneous.
It is not that matter later on developed to become life. That is the wrong theory. So so much of Darwin, Thomas Huxley, Thomas Henry... In that case, on the defect, we see that nobody could ascertain the beginning of life.
But here is the solution. The beginning of life is from the very creation, the beginning of creation. Simultaneously. Simultaneously. That we see practically.
That pregnancy is the beginning of the body and that is the beginning of life also. Not that first of all one becomes pregnant and then the life comes. You have got a daily experience.
Rather, the life is there, therefore the pregnancy is there. Is it not? But they say, or understand, that the body develops to a certain extent and then the life comes.
So before the life comes, if the body is destroyed, there is no killing. Isn't that the theory at the present moment? They're killing children. Yeah.
But these foolish persons, they do not know that the body grows provided there is life, otherwise it does not grow. So life and body together.