# Back to Godhead Magazine #43 *2009 (06)* Back to Godhead Magazine #43-06, 2009 PDF-View ## Welcome THIS SPECIAL ISSUE commemorates the two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin. One hundred and fifty years after the publication of his book *Origin of Species*, the basic elements of his theory of evolution are widely accepted as truth and influence practically every branch of knowledge today. During Darwin's bicentennial year, his praises have been sung in conferences and publications around the world. This publication won't join that chorus. Ours is a discordant note. Though trained in science, the contributors to this issue of *Back to Godhead* see the world primarily through the lens of the Vedic scriptures and the great spiritual teachers guided by them. They view Darwin's ideas as the product of a speculative mind. Mental speculation, or guesswork, the *Vedas* tell us, cannot possibly reveal perfect truth. But rather than dismiss Darwin's ideas on this basis alone, the authors in this issue present *scientific* arguments against them. How, for example, could the prototypical no-frills fish evolve step-by-step, by random mutations, into a fish that lets a smaller fish enter its mouth to clean its teeth? Can Hare Kṛṣṇa scientists beat materialistic scientists at their own game? Read on, and judge for yourself. Hare Kṛṣṇa.—*Nagaraja Dāsa, Editor* Our Purposes • To help all people discern reality from illusion, spirit from matter, the eternal from the temporary. • To expose the faults of materialism. • To offer guidance in the Vedic techniques of spiritual life. • To preserve and spread the Vedic culture. • To celebrate the chanting of the holy names of God as taught by Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. • To help every living being remember and serve Śrī Kṛṣṇa, the Personality of Godhead. ## Śrīla Prabhupāda on Darwin & Darwinism *A selection of quotations from the books, letters, and talks of His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda, with comments (in italics) by Drutakarma Dāsa.* *In* *Śrīmad-Bhagavatam* *(*4.24.73*) we learn that Brahma, the first demigod, instructed subordinate personalities called the Prajapatis to generate the various kinds of material bodies at the beginning of creation. The Sanskrit word* prajapati *means "generator of population." Śrīla Prabhupāda comments in his purport to this text:* In *Śrīmad-Bhagavatam* Lord Kapiladeva told His mother that the living entity gets a particular type of body in accordance with his work and that this body is decided upon by higher authorities. The higher authorities, as appointed by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, are Lord Brahma and all other Prajapatis and Manus. Thus from the beginning of creation it can be seen that the first creature is the most intelligent. It is not that so-called modern intelligence has developed by the gradual process of evolution. As stated in *Brahma-vaivarta Purana*, there is a gradual evolutionary process, but it is not the body that is evolving. All the bodily forms are already there. It is the spiritual entity, or spiritual spark within the body, that is being promoted by the laws of nature under the supervision of superior authority. We can understand from this verse that from the very beginning of creation different varieties of living entities were existing. It is not that some of them have become extinct. Everything is there; it is due to our lack of knowledge that we cannot see things in their proper perspective. In this verse the word *dhvasta-tamasah* is very important, for without being free of ignorance one cannot control the creation of different types of living entities. As stated in *Śrīmad-Bhagavatam* (3.31.1), *daiva-netrena*—bodies are awarded under the supervision of superior powers. How can these superior powers control the evolutionary process of the living entity if they are not free from all imperfection? The followers of the Vedic instructions cannot accept the Darwinian theory of evolution, for it is marred by imperfect knowledge. *According to Darwin, the origin of the bodies of living things occurred like this: In some warm pond, chemicals combined to produce the first single-celled organism. Once this happened, multicellular creatures arose in the water, diversifying into plants and animals. Later some of these plants and animals migrated onto the land. The first land animals were amphibians and reptiles. Later the mammals emerged, and finally humans came into existence.* *Darwin wavered about the causes of this development. Sometimes he seemed to favor a strict materialism, and sometimes he seemed to allow for a kind of theistic evolution, with God setting up the laws of nature in such a way as to allow for the development of more and more complex forms of life.* *Modern evolutionists have refined Darwin's account of the origin of species, and most prefer to explain it strictly in terms of unguided material causes. According to them, the oldest unicellular fossils are about 2 billion years old. The first land plants and animals came into existence about 400 million years ago. The first primitive mammals came into existence about 300 million years ago. The first primates came into existence about 40 million years ago, the first hominins came into existence about 6 million years ago, and finally humans like us came into existence within the past 150,000 years.* *Today, some theologians, and many other people, explain this development in terms of theistic evolution, with God operating in such a way as to cause the generation of the first life forms and their subsequent evolution into various species without violating the laws of nature recognized by modern science. But according to Śrīla Prabhupāda, the* Bhagavatam *says that all the life forms, including the most intelligent, were manifested at the beginning of the day of Brahma, which occurred about 2 billion years ago. Thus the* Bhagavatam *view of the origin of species—the timing, order, and process—is different from that of both unguided materialistic evolution and guided theistic evolution.* *In the following excerpt from Śrīla Prabhupāda's purport to* Śrīmad-Bhagavatam *(*4.29.60*), Prabhupāda expands upon one of the points he made in the excerpt above, namely that there is more to a living thing than the gross material body.* The living entity has two kinds of body—the subtle body and the gross body. Actually he enjoys through the subtle body, which is composed of mind, intelligence, and ego. The gross body is the instrumental outer covering. When the gross body is lost, or when it dies, the root of the gross body—the mind, intelligence, and ego—continues and brings about another gross body. Although the gross bodies apparently change, the real root of the gross body—the subtle body of mind, intelligence, and ego—is always there. The subtle body's activities—be they pious or impious—create another situation for the living entity to enjoy or suffer in the next gross body. Thus the subtle body continues whereas the gross bodies change one after another. Since modern scientists and philosophers are too materialistic, and since their knowledge is taken away by the illusory energy, they cannot explain how the gross body is changing. The materialistic philosopher Darwin has tried to study the changes of the gross body, but because he had no knowledge of either the subtle body or the soul, he could not clearly explain how the evolutionary process is going on. *According to the* Bhagavatam *worldview, there is a kind of evolution, but not the kind that Darwin imagined. The soul evolves through different kinds of material bodies until it comes to the human form, which offers liberation from material existence. As explained in Śrīla Prabhupāda's purport to text* 5.14.30*, some souls come to the bodies of humans from the bodies of monkeys.* By fulfilling the process of evolution from the aquatics to the animal platform, a living entity eventually reaches the human form. The three modes [*gunas*] of material nature [*sattva*, or goodness; *rajas*, passion; *tamas*, ignorance] are always working in the evolutionary process. Those who come to the human form through the quality of *sattva*-guna were cows in their last animal incarnation. Those who come to the human form through the quality of *rajo-guna* were lions in their last animal incarnation. And those who come to the human form through the quality of *tamo-guna* were monkeys in their last animal incarnation. In this age, those who come through the monkey species are considered by modern anthropologists like Darwin to be descendants of monkeys. *According to the* Bhagavatam, *time goes in cycles of four* yugas, *or ages. We are now in the Age of Kali, which is dominated by the* tamo-guna, *or mode of ignorance. Śrīla Prabhupāda takes it as ironic that evolutionists falsely believe that the human body evolved from the bodies of ancient apes. In terms of the evolution of the soul, this is actually in some sense true, because in the Age of Kali most souls entering human bodies are born in the mode of ignorance and came into their human bodies from the monkey or ape bodies they had in their last lives.* *The importance of the human body in the evolution of the soul through different bodies is explained in* Śrīmad-Bhagavatam *(*7.13.25*):* In the course of the evolutionary process, which is caused by fruitive activities due to undesirable material sense gratification, I have received this human form of life, which can lead to the heavenly planets, to liberation, to the lower species, or to rebirth among human beings. *Śrīla Prabhupāda elaborates in his purport to this text.* All living entities within this material world are undergoing the cycle of birth and death according to the laws of nature. This struggle of birth and death in different species may be called the evolutionary process, but in the Western world it has been wrongly explained. Darwin's theory of evolution from animal to man is incomplete because the theory does not present the reverse condition, namely evolution from man to animal. In this verse, however, evolution has been very well explained on the strength of Vedic authority. Human life, which is obtained in the course of the evolutionary process, is a chance for elevation (*svarg*apavarga**) or for degradation (*tirascam punar asya ca*). If one uses this human form of life properly, he can elevate himself to the higher planetary systems, where material happiness is many thousands of times better than on this planet, or one may cultivate knowledge by which to become free from the evolutionary process and be reinstated in one's original spiritual life. This is called *apavarga*, or liberation from the punishment of material existence.... The word *tirascam* refers to degraded life. Human life, of course, provides an opportunity for the best living conditions. As Western people think, from the monkeys come the human beings, who are more comfortably situated. However, if one does not utilize his human life for *svarga* or *apavarga*, he falls again to the degraded life of animals like dogs and hogs. Therefore a sane human being must consider whether he will elevate himself to the higher planets, prepare to free himself from the evolutionary process, or travel again through the evolutionary process in higher and lower grades of life. If one works piously one may be elevated to the higher planetary systems or achieve liberation and return home, back to Godhead, but otherwise one may be degraded to a life as a dog, a hog, and so on. As explained in *Bhagavad-gītā* (9.25), *yanti deva-vrata devan*. Those interested in being elevated to the higher planetary systems (Devaloka or Svargaloka) must prepare to do so. Similarly, if one wants liberation and wants to return home, back to Godhead, he should prepare himself for that purpose. Our Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is therefore the highest movement for the benediction of human society because this movement is teaching people how to go back home, back to Godhead. One reason Śrīla Prabhupāda objected to the Darwinian theory of evolution was its compatibility with atheism and materialism, which serve to distract people from the real goal of human life, thus insuring for them continued suffering in the cycle of birth and death. In the following conversation with one of his scientifically trained disciples (biochemist Dr. Thoudam Damodar Singh, later known as Bhaktisvarupa Damodara Swami), Śrīla Prabhupāda blames governments for promoting evolution. The conversation took place on February 3, 1977, in Bhubaneswar, India. Śrīla Prabhupāda: So why is the government fostering this godless "evolution" science—this dishonesty? Because the government leaders are themselves dishonest. They want simply to accumulate money by inducing people to work in their big industries. So they are cheating the people out of their birthright: to live the simple, natural life, to become God conscious, and at life's end, to go back home to God. The government must make sure that people develop genuine God consciousness. That is the government leaders' actual business. They should promote genuine God consciousness, strict following of God's natural laws. Anything not genuine should be finished. Nothing bogus allowed. This is real government. This we are working for. The government leaders' business is to see that the scientific or intellectual group is giving the students a sense of the transcendent Personality of Godhead, a sense of the divine. Dr. Singh: Nowadays, the government leaders are seeing that the intellectuals impart a sense of all-pervasive matter, with no soul and no Supreme Soul. A sense of the demoniac, one might say. It's hard to imagine these demoniac types being convinced by godly arguments. Śrīla Prabhupāda: We must push forward. Gradually the whole world will see that here are first-class gentlemen and here is first-class culture. Vedic, godly culture. Real culture. We must always remember, people are inclined to this God conscious culture. It is natural. And Lord Kṛṣṇa wants it. Why should we care about some rascal's objections? Do something to spread God conscious culture. It is Kṛṣṇa's business. Print books. Travel all over the world. Challenge this godless government policy. Challenge their intellectual hirelings. "Come on, rascal scientists. You have given yourself to spreading materialism and godlessness. We shall scientifically establish the existence of the spiritual self—the soul—and God." *Śrīla Prabhupāda instructed his scientifically trained disciples to challenge the Darwinian theory of evolution. Sometimes he would refer to the supporters of the theory in strong terms ("rascals"). Some may object that not all evolutionists are godless materialists. For example, today some support varieties of theistic evolution, which involve accepting as true the Darwinian picture of the development of bodies of living things. They say, "God created the bodies of plants and animals, but He did it by Darwinian evolution." As can be seen in this selection of quotes, this idea is not compatible with the account of the origin of the bodies of living things given in the Vedic literature (defined broadly as including the* Puranas). ## Challenges to Evolutionary Theory *Scientists refer to evolution as established fact, but how good is their evidence?* > By Lalitanatha Dāsa To scientifically explain the origin of the eye by evolution, it would be necessary to show the explicit sequence of stages leading to its many intricate mechanisms. Darwin and his successors have never squarely confronted this challenge. *"Darwin's greatest accomplishment was to show that the complex order and function in living creatures can be explained as a result of a natural process—natural selection—without having to refer to a Creator or some other external factor."*1—Dr. Francisco Ayala, evolutionary biologist, former president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science EVOLUTIONISTS such as Ayala consider evolution, as Darwin saw it—evolution without a Creator or any other external factor—to be a solidly established fact. But what evidence establishes this fact? Let's look at some of the proofs that to evolutionists, from Darwin onwards, establish the fact of evolution. *Breeding* In his theory, Darwin proposed a plausible natural *mechanism* that could account for how all living forms could have originated from the simplest of microbes through natural evolution over hundreds of millions of years: Darwin claimed that species are *infinitely mutable* and can change unlimitedly through the interplay of *natural variation* sifted by *natural selection.* By "species" Darwin meant that members of the same species must be able to procreate fertile offspring; if they can't, they belong to different species. Species can again be divided into varieties, also known as races or sorts. Unlike species, however, there are no strong demarcations between varieties; they can crossbreed freely and produce fertile offspring and new varieties that are still within the same species. The crux of Darwin's argument was that *varieties can gradually become species through breeding:* Nevertheless, according to my view, varieties are species in the process of formation, or are, as I have called them, incipient species. How, then, does the lesser difference between varieties become augmented into the greater difference between species? That this does habitually happen, we must *infer* from most of the innumerable species throughout nature presenting well-marked differences; whereas varieties, the supposed prototypes and parents of future well-marked species, present slight and ill-defined differences.2 Please note that Darwin "inferred." Why only inferred? Because he had never observed varieties become species. Thus he had to settle with something less: he pointed to man's artificial breeding of plants and animals and implied that if artificial selection can cause sweeping changes in a species after only a few generations, conceivably nature could have accomplished incredible feats after eons of natural selection. Darwin spent the two first chapters in his book making this argument. Yet Darwin's pleading is unconvincing. All research, both before and after his time, points to nature having limits on how far a species can change. Breeding can mix only preexisting characteristics. Breeding dogs can produce dogs of different sizes and color. Still, they remain dogs and never become cats, no matter for how long we try. Breeding simply shuffles and recombines already existing traits. According to zoologist Pierre Grasse: In spite of the intense pressure generated by artificial selection over whole millennia, no new species are born. A comparative study of sera, hemoglobins, blood proteins, interfertility, etc., proves that the strains remain within the same specific definition. This is not a matter of opinion or subjective classification, but a measurable reality. The fact is that selection gives tangible form to and gathers together all the varieties a genome is capable of producing, but does not constitute an innovative evolutionary process.3 In other words, breeding is not evidence of evolution, and no one has ever observed that varieties can become new species; in fact, all observations point to the opposite. *Pangenesis* It is important to remember that natural selection is not a creative process. It can only eliminate and not create new variations in a species. Darwin noted, "Unless profitable variations do occur, natural selection can do nothing."4 Besides natural selection, Darwin needed a new source of variations. He believed this source to be external influences, such as food and environment. Or how organs are used or not used could cause changes in an organism that are passed on to the next generations. He wrote: From the facts alluded to in the first chapter, I think there can be little doubt that use in our domestic animals strengthens and enlarges certain parts, and disuse diminishes them; and that such modifications are inherited.5 Darwin had this idea from Lamarck, a French naturalist who had suggested that giraffes had evolved when their ancestors had gotten longer necks by stretching to eat the leaves other animals could not reach and, as a result, had produced calves with longer necks. But all evidence has shown that "pangenesis" doesn't happen. Acquired traits are not inherited. We may lift weights until we develop muscles like steel, but our children will not be born with larger muscles. In some cultures women enhance their beauty by enlarging their lips or earlobes, yet their newborn daughters look like girls in any other culture. A light-skinned person who always gets tanned in the sun does not give birth to darker babies. A species exposed to the cold doesn't develop fur, fat layers, and a higher metabolism and pass on these traits to its offspring. Natural selection simply eliminates those individuals that don't *already* have the favorable traits. In other words, Darwin was completely mistaken about inheritance. The actual laws of inheritance, which were discovered around Darwin's time by an Austrian monk, Gregor Mendel, turned out to be completely contrary to what Darwin had wanted them to be. Mendel showed that inheritance involves only the passing of constant factors from one generation to the next, and that external factors do not affect inheritance. A process of inheritance that doesn't happen is not, of course, evidence of evolution. *Neo-Darwinism* With the ideas of mutable species and pangenesis disproved, Darwin's proposed mechanism was shown wrong, a fact generally accepted by the end of the nineteenth century. Paradoxically, however, at this time evolution had become so much a part of their mindset that scientists still considered evolution a fact. Under the name of neo-Darwinism, it was subsequently suggested that random mutations are the source of the favorable heritable variations required for evolution to occur. Although inherited characteristics generally remain stable and unchanging, it was observed that on rare occasions there are still genetic changes. First called "freaks of nature," these later become known as "mutations." Much later, with the discovery of the DNA double helix, it turned out that mutations are random errors taking place when the genetic code stored on the DNA is copied. This neo-Darwinian mechanism is unfortunately much weaker than Darwin's original mechanism. His was almost deterministic in nature; if food is scarce for long enough, and the only way to survive is to stretch your neck and consume what no other member of your species can reach, your descendants will almost certainly develop longer necks and eventually become giraffes. The only problem with this was that it was wrong. But to achieve the same result through random mutations is a different story. The number of random mutations required to evolve a long neck does not occur simply because long necks happen to be advantageous at a given time. Being random, the mutations may or may not occur, and since each particular mutation is highly improbable, it most likely won't occur at the time when it would be favorable. What's more, genetic mutations have never been shown to create new organs but only changes to existing ones. There are also very few examples of beneficial mutations; most mutations are either neutral or harmful. Thus although neo-Darwinism has been in vogue for more than a century, it is still uncertain whether it has ever proposed a mechanism to account for how evolution occurs. This was seen when, in 2008, the Konrad Lorenz Institute in Austria invited the world's leading theoretical biologists to a conference called "Toward an Extended Evolutionary Synthesis." The organizers explained themselves in their invitation: The challenge seems clear to us: how do we make sense, conceptually, of the astounding advances in biology since the 1940s, when the MS [The Modern Synthesis," or neo-Darwinism] was taking shape? Not only have we witnessed the molecular revolution, from the discovery of the structure of DNA to the genomic era, we are also grappling with the increasing feeling that we just don't have the theoretical and analytical tools necessary to make sense of the bewildering diversity and complexity of living organisms.6 Could it be more clear? "We don't have the theoretical... tools" to explain "the bewildering diversity and complexity of living organisms." *The Fact of Evolution?* If the evidence goes against Darwin's original theory, and modern evolutionary biologists don't even have a theory, why then are evolutionists still convinced that evolution is a fact? Good question. A possible answer was given at the Wistar conference. In 1967, the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia hosted the conference "Mathematical Challenges to the Neo-Darwinian Interpretation of Evolution." Arguing against leading evolutionary biologists, leading mathematicians stated the statistical impossibility that complex organs, such as the eye, could have evolved by a series of thousands upon thousands of small random mutations; the number of mutations needed to create a complex eye is simply too large, and there hasn't been enough time in the world's history for these random mutations to have occurred. Instead of acknowledging the problem, however, the biologists accused the mathematicians of "doing science backwards." Evolution, they said, was an established fact; the eye had evolved. Thus the mathematics problems could not be reflecting reality. Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr reassured, "Somehow or other by adjusting these figures we will come out all right. We are comforted by the fact that evolution has occurred."7 But what precisely made Mayr so sure that evolution had occurred? He didn't say. Perhaps it was the fossils. But Darwin didn't think so: The number of intermediate varieties, which have formerly existed, [must] be truly enormous. Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely-graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and serious objection which can be urged against the theory.8 Darwin considered the fossil record and the absence of intermediate forms between species "perhaps the most serious objection" to his theory. Has that changed? In 1954, Professor Heribert Nilsson from Lund's University, Sweden, wrote: The fossil material is now so complete that... the lack of transitional series cannot be explained as due to the scarcity of the material. The deficiencies are real; they will never be filled.9 As recent as 2008, prominent palaeontologist Niles Eldridge wrote: Patterns in evolutionary history characteristically repeat themselves regardless of position in time, place, or clade. The pattern [is one of] rapid-seeming appearance of higher taxa with their defining adaptations/synapomorphies already well in place in the earliest known fossils—implying... a very rapid evolutionary origin, often leaving no trace of intermediates."10 Despite claims to the contrary, apparently fossils don't provide more evidence for evolution today than in Darwin's time. Only by assuming evolution in the first place are paleontologists able to fit fossils into what seem like neat evolutionary lineages. What about molecular evidence? Today, many scientists believe that comparative study of the detailed structure of proteins, RNA, and DNA in different species provides evidence for evolution. But does it? On closer inspection it is found that molecular evidence often challenges evolution. In many cases molecular analyses have either failed to establish relationships between species or indicated relationships different from those established by anatomical comparisons and fossil studies. Different molecular studies may also give inconsistent results, and some broad molecular comparisons across the entire living kingdom point to no evolutionary relationships at all. According to molecular biologist Michael Lynch: Clarification of the phylogenetic relationships of the major animal phyla has been an elusive problem, with analyses based on different genes and even different analyses based on the same genes yielding a diversity of phylogenetic trees.11 It is also worth remembering that similarities—which is what molecular analysis is all about—whether anatomical or molecular, aren't necessarily evidence of evolution. Almost a hundred years before Darwin, Swedish naturalist Carolus Linnaeus invented the classification system still used by biologists today and classified animals and plants into categories based on anatomical similarities. Did Linnaeus see this as evidence of evolution? No, he considered it an overall divine design uncovered. How similarity can also be due to design can be seen from the example of cars. Different cars, such as a Volkswagen and a Rolls-Royce, share many "anatomical" similarities; yet not only are cars a result of design and not of natural evolution, but each car is separately manufactured. Similarity in itself cannot tell whether it is due to natural evolution or design. *Ultimate Evidence* How do evolutionists respond when confronted with the possibility of design? Harvard zoologist Stephen Gould wrote: "Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread."12 Douglas J. Futuyma wrote similarly in his college textbook Evolution: "There are many examples [of traits in living organisms] ... inconsistent with the notion that an omnipotent Creator, who should be able to adhere to an optimal design, provided them."13 Apparently evolutionists use as evidence for evolution their own judgments on how God would have created. Even Darwin argued, I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the Ichneumonidae [wasps] with the express intention of their [larva] feeding within the living bodies of Caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice.14 Unfortunately, neither Darwin nor his adherents rarely specify where they got their information about how God would or would not create or His motives for doing so. But they still often argue, "God would never have done it like that. Therefore it must be the result of random and mindless evolution." Some even go so far as to claim that because God cannot possibly exist, evolution, by default, must have occurred. For instance, British zoologist Richard Dawkins claims that since God most likely, or even definitely, doesn't exist, life must have arisen spontaneously from dead matter, in spite of the vast improbability for this to have ever happened. In conclusion, when talking about "the fact of evolution," what are we really dealing with? A scientifically established fact, or just the opinion of some scientists who cannot accommodate the possibility of God in their logical structures? At least to those among us who remain unconvinced about the claims of Darwin and his modern followers, it would appear that we are mainly up against veiled materialistic and atheistic arguments posing as scientific evidence. ## The Origin of Life SRILA PRABHUPADA criticized scientists by saying that although they claim that life came from chemicals, they can't demonstrate it. His critique is still apt today. A few years ago, a chapter in a book from Cambridge about the origin of life began, "This chapter is a story of abject scientific failure." No one in science has any idea how life could have arisen chemically. Darwin hardly addressed this issue. Basically he assumed that the jump from chemicals to life was small and unproblematic, and he started his theory from where life already existed, with organisms reproducing themselves. But as it turned out, life's biochemistry is infinitely more complex than anyone had imagined. Today, scientists working in the field still hope to uncover life's chemical secrets. There are theories, but their proponents mainly point out, with precision, the defects in opposing theories without themselves establishing anything convincing. Confusion reigns, with everyone dismantling the position of everyone else. This is not always the impression the popular press gives. For instance, this year an article in the *New York Times* reported that scientists would probably solve the mystery in five years. But judging from comments to the article from scientists working in the field, the journalist was out of touch with reality. Of course, that is nothing new. Even in 1953 when Stanley Miller synthesized some simple amino acids in his laboratory, worldwide headlines announced Miller's experiment: Scientists were now creating the building blocks of life! What they didn't say is that amino acids are very simple molecules, but to get a protein is a different story. It is like going from a brick to a magnificent building. Imagine an archeologist finding a naturally formed square rock and proclaiming that he now knew how the pyramids were built. That's absurd, but that's how Miller's experiment was proclaimed. What's worse is that although his experiment really has no bearing on anything, one can still find it mentioned in popular textbooks as a great step toward uncovering the origin of life. The recent *New York Times* article contained outright lies, such as the claim that the problem of homochirality has been solved. What is homochirality? When amino acids are formed naturally, an equal number of "left-handed" and "right-handed" forms result. They share the same chemical formula and structure but are mirror images of each other, just like a left-handed and a right-handed glove. But only the left-handed amino acids are used when proteins form in living cells. This phenomenon is called homochirality. If life is the result of unguided chemistry, a natural chemical process must select one form of the amino acid and exclude the other. Contrary to claims by the *New York Times*, no such process is known. And this is just one of numerous similar problems facing origin-of-life researchers. Additionally, when we consider that scientists haven't even begun to find the source of the genetic code written on the DNA with a technology that surpasses any computer software ever written, we can see that Śrīla Prabhupāda's critique is as apt as ever. Science has overwhelmingly demonstrated over the last fifty years that life cannot have arisen as a spontaneous chemical reaction. Only because of endless funding and a commitment to a materialist ideology does the search for a chemical origin of life continue. ## The Evolution of Consciousness *Although Darwin was right in proposing a process of evolution, he was wrong about what was evolving.* > By Aja Govinda Dāsa Consciousness, or awareness in the simplest sense, is not a characteristic of humans alone. Take dogs, for instance. Not only can they sense their surroundings (through smells, sounds, sights, tastes, etc.), but they can also recognize places, odors, flavors, and sounds. One might argue that even machines can sense with detectors, so what differentiates them from a dog? A dog can experience pain, fear, anger, comfort, excitement, and so on, whereas a nonliving machine cannot. All mammals, vertebrates, reptiles, amphibians, aquatics, and so forth, are conscious, even though what they sense may differ for individual species. Dolphins and bats navigate with sonar; snakes and some nocturnal animals see with infrared vision; sharks and some other fish sense electricity. No matter how varied their sensations, they all share the faculty of consciousness. What about insects? If you block an insect's path, it will turn around. Or if it senses danger, it may run to safety or bite as an act of self-defense. So the instinct of survival is present. But this alone does not suffice as a differentiating attribute of consciousness, because even a robot could be programmed to avoid certain dangers. But a robot does not have desire, whereas the insect desires to live. It desires to survive. Are microorganisms—bacteria and single-celled creatures—conscious? They can move in response to stimuli such as light and chemical changes in their environment. Now, even a robot could reposition itself just as a bacterium does in response to external stimulus, but the difference here is that the robot is itself only a nonliving system controlled by a living person, either manually or through code written by a programmer. But who controls the motions of a bacterium? Who decides how a bacterium will rotate its flagellum? *Instinct* is the one-word answer that comes to mind. Some geneticists say that the organism's inborn patterns of behavior, or its unlearned and inherited fixed-action patterns, are encoded in its DNA. In this sense, the organism, a biochemical system embedded with DNA code, is just the biological counterpart of the robot, a silicon-based machine programmed with a computer language. But just as no robot, computer, or machine can function without a living person's commanding it, the bacterium, a biochemical machine, cannot function without a living being controlling it. Now the skeptic may challenge, "The bacterium is living by itself. There is no need for a separate living being to control it." This rebuttal is based on a mechanistic theory that reduces the life of an organism to its internal biochemical reactions. Śrīla Prabhupāda responded by pointing out that if life is just a result of chemical reactions, then scientists should be able to create it in the laboratory, but no scientist can claim to have created even one living cell. *Atma: The Source of Life* Every organism is alive only because of the soul dwelling within it. To the skeptical, belief in a soul sounds superstitious. But occurrences documented by medical practitioners suggest its validity. In his book *Light and Death*, cardiologist Dr. Michael Sabom reports the surgery of Pam Reynolds, a patient suffering from an aneurysm (a sacklike widening of an artery) in her brain stem that was on the verge of rupture, which could be fatal. Since the aneurysm was at the base of Pam's brain, her surgeon, Dr. Robert Spetzler, director of Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix, Arizona, had to drain all the blood from her brain to flatten the brainwaves and stop her heartbeat and breathing. Pam was clinically dead during the surgery. After the successful operation, however, she could recollect exact conversations among the surgeons and accurate descriptions of medical instruments (only uncovered after the patient is anaesthetized) used in her surgery, during which she was supposed to be unconscious. During the operation, Pam could see her body from above; she was floating outside her body, so to speak. This and several other documented near-death and out-of-body accounts suggest the existence of the soul, the spirit particle, as a metaphysical being that is the actual source of consciousness. According to the *Bhagavad-gītā*, a spirit soul resides within each living organism. The spirit soul, or *atma* in Sanskrit, is the source of consciousness. The spirit soul enters a body at conception and departs at death, transmigrating to a new body arranged by the laws of nature according to the soul's desires and past deeds. During this cycle of birth and death (or reincarnation), the soul can travel to lower or higher forms of life. But the further down the *atma* travels in the ladder of life forms, the more dormant the consciousness, and thus the less the symptoms of consciousness are exhibited. So even though each bacterium is possessed by a spirit soul, the soul's presence is not as evident as it is in mammals and other advanced species. *Development Of Consciousness* Most biologists will tell you that the vast disparity in levels of consciousness in species is a result of evolution. They say that awareness and conscious experience evolved from rudimentary perception in the first life forms as multi-cellular organisms developed more sophisticated biological sensors. Cells developed sensors for detecting changes in the light and chemistry of the environment and further combined to form sensory organs for detecting visual, aural, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory information. To process this data and define the organism's feedback or response to a stimulus, nervous systems came into being. Central nervous systems offered the organism an integrated perception of its surroundings. As brains evolved, consciousness expanded. The limbic system developed to store memories of behaviors that resulted in agreeable and disagreeable experiences, thus allowing the animal to "learn" not to repeat an action that had adverse consequences. Thus the development of the cerebral cortex aided not only sensory perception, but also higher cognitive functions such as memory, location, orientation, and motion. For example, predators chasing prey recognize the visual form of their kill; higher developed mammals can pay attention; dogs can look you straight in the eye and can show intention. The cortex in more developed species grew in complexity to include reasoning and communication. Though some aquatics, birds, insects, and other animals can communicate with sounds of different frequencies, the much more highly developed species of primates can use symbols. Chimps and gorillas can't speak because of restricted tongue motion and lack of a larynx, or voice box, but they have the potential to learn words and compose sentences in sign language. The Vedic version agrees with modern evolutionary biology in that there are various species and life forms, some more developed than others. But the succession in these species is not a chronological development. There is no hard evidence to suggest that one life form evolved from another over millions of years. The "evolutionary jumps" of complexity (from lower to higher states of development) are unsubstantiated speculations. Darwinists put forth the fossil record to uphold their theory of gradual development of unique species through variation and natural selection. But the fossil record has many missing links, or evidence of transitional or intermediary life forms bridging the gaps between known species. The late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould admitted this to be "the trade secret of paleontology." In a paper entitled "Evolution's Erratic Pace," published in the journal *Natural History*, he acknowledged, "The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils." Also, as reported by researchers Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson in their book *Forbidden Archeology*, the fossil record is riddled with anomalies that don't fit Darwinian evolution. For example, dinosaur and human footprints have been found in the same strata, and some excavated artifacts date humans back millions of years. Charles Darwin himself stated in his book *On the Origin of Species*, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been produced by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down." Biochemist Michael Behe has pointed to irreducibly complex biological systems, such as bacterial flagella (which act as propellers) and cilia (biological sensory antennae). Neither of these could have been the products of gradual evolution because "the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning. An irreducibly complex system cannot be produced directly (that is, by continuously improving the initial function, which continues to work by the same mechanism) by slight, successive modifications of a precursor system, because any precursor to an irreducibly complex system that is missing a part is by definition nonfunctional." (*Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution,* Behe 1996). Additionally, Darwinists have never been able to convincingly explain how complex cell machinery developed, nor have they experimentally demonstrated the origin of the first living cell from inanimate matter. The battle between creationists and evolutionists has been going on for a long time. In the writings of early Indian scholars, one can find the precursor to Darwinian evolutionary theory. *Svabhava-vada* is the philosophy that the cosmos, geological formations, life, and all the biological variety in species occurred naturally without a Creator. Indian theologians contested this theory, arguing that order and design cannot be by-products of chaos, life could not have originated from inert matter, and chance could not have directed the formation of complex life forms. *The Evolutionary Journey* In modern times Charles Darwin is regarded as the scientist who formulated a theory of evolution by natural selection, but the concept of evolution was known long before Darwin. Śrīla Prabhupāda writes, "Although Westerners accept that Darwin first expounded the doctrine of evolution, the science of anthropology is not new. The development of the evolutionary process was known long before from the *Bhagavatam*, which was written five thousand years ago." (Śrīmad-*Bhagavatam* 3.29.29, Purport). Although we followers of the *Bhagavata* school (devotees of Kṛṣṇa) do not accept Darwin's account, we do accept evolution—but there's a catch. According to the Śrīmad-*Bhagavata*m, one species does not evolve into another, but rather the soul evolves in consciousness as it transmigrates from lower to higher forms of existence in the cycle of birth, death, and rebirth. In the material realm the soul begins its journey in a human body. Material desires and subsequent actions result in the soul's being born in a species that fits its mentality. If the soul falls to a lower species, it then takes successive births in species with higher and higher states of consciousness. This is the process of transmigration. As Śrīla Prabhupāda said, "Darwin's theory of evolution is but a partial explanation of the transmigration of the soul. Darwin has... no conception of the soul." (*The Science of Self-Realization*) Here it is necessary to define the *Bhagavata* concept of species or life form: It is not biological, but rather refers to a state of consciousness. For example, living entities in lower life forms such as plants, corals, sponges, sea cucumbers, sand dollars, and starfish are just barely aware of their external surroundings. Motile species such as fish, insects, birds, and animals are more aware of their surroundings, with more developed sense perception. As the soul moves up the ladder of evolution, it becomes more and more aware, until it reaches the human life. As Prabhupāda puts it: "The evolutionary process of different types of bodies is something like that of a fructifying flower. Just as there are different stages in the growth of a flower—the bud stage, the blooming stage, and the full-fledged, fully grown stage of aroma and beauty—there are 8,400,000 species of bodies in gradual evolution, and there is systematic progress from the lower species of life to the higher." (Śrīmad-*Bhagavata*m 3.31.19, Purport). *Why So Many Lifeforms?* According to the *Vedas*, God is the genius behind all the species of life. The variety we find in the natural world is His artistry. But what is the purpose of so many life forms? They are different vehicles for the soul to enjoy with. For example, if someone enjoys eating flesh, a tiger's teeth and claws are most suitable. If someone wishes to fly, wings are just the thing. And what better way to fulfill the desire of someone who loves diving and swimming than having an aquatic form equipped with fins and gills? Similarly, a snake body is suitable for persons bubbling with anger and envy. The soul can either devolve to lower or evolve to higher levels of consciousness. Souls transmigrate into bodies suitable for their mentality. God is the loving father of all living beings, and He allows them to enjoy (within the limits of what they deserve) in different life forms according to their desires. When a soul falls down to a lower species to enjoy in a certain life form, it evolves back up the ladder of the millions of nonhuman species. It does this by quitting the body of the previous species to enter the body of the next higher species—on and on until it regains the human body. *Beyond Human* The public's fascination with superheroes suggests that we fantasize about overcoming our human limits and transmuting into a superhuman species. We wonder whether Homo Sapiens will be the end of evolution. Scholars such as Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and Śrī Aurobindo conceived of evolution as driven toward a certain destination or culmination. Chardin called it the Omega Point, the highest level of consciousness towards which the universe evolves; for Śrī Aurobindo, it was "life divine." As Śrī Aurobindo said, "Man is a transitional being. He is not final. The step from man to superman is the next approaching achievement in the earth's evolution. It is inevitable because it is at once the intention of the inner spirit and the logic of Nature's process." But according to the *Vedas*, this last transition or evolution is not biological, but rather a spiritual awakening or freeing of the entrapped soul from its coverings of ignorance and an unleashing of the dormant powers of spirit: eternity, knowledge, and bliss. This evolution is possible only for humans, not animals. Animals are conscious, but humans are conscious of being conscious. Humans can inquire. This is the special prerogative of human life. Once the soul evolves back up to the human form, it gains the one special chance for achieving complete freedom from the pains of this mortal world and realizing its original nature as the beloved of God. That can be achieved by performing devotional service to the Supreme Lord, Śrī Kṛṣṇa. In the *Bhagavatam* (7.6.1) the boy saint Prahlada instructs all humanity: "The human body is most rarely achieved, and although temporary like other bodies, it is meaningful because in human life one can perform devotional service. Even a slight amount of sincere devotional service can give one complete perfection." ## Education and Evolution *A look at the influence of evolutionary theory in modern education.* > By Urmila Devī Dāsī THE CHILDREN'S science video began with a view of the vast night sky blazing with stars. A scientist described as a famous evolutionist appeared in a corner of the screen. "When we examine the origin of the universe and the life that is in it," he said, "we find our source to be a cold, impersonal machine." I could almost feel a chill sweep into the room, and I shuddered. I thought of the opposite way in which the *Bhagavad-gītā* describes the origin of everything—as Kṛṣṇa, the all-attractive person who is the source of all warmth and our best friend. What is the relationship between evolutionary theory and education? To answer that question, I'll first examine the purpose of education. I'll then consider how the teaching of evolutionary theory relates to those goals, and finally, look at four ways knowledge is transmitted and how evolution is taught in those four ways. *Why Are Children Educated?* Educational professor Joel H. Spring writes in his book *American Education* that private goals, or parents' reasons, are generally vocational, social, intellectual, and personal. Governments, on the other hand, want an educated citizenry for political, social, and economic benefits. The problem is that those apparently laudatory goals seem to degenerate. For example, the economic goals of a government generally imply classifying people for the labor market. That's different from a parent's desire for a child to earn a livelihood through fulfilling work. Changes of ideology about work also affect how parents and government understand vocational goals. Five hundred years ago, work was a duty, with the results understood as divinely rewarded. Work was viewed as material security by the early twentieth century, and by the 1960s as a way to find personal satisfaction. More recently, work has become a means to satisfy greed and acquire sensory pleasure. If we look at modern education in the light of Lord Kṛṣṇa's teachings, we find that it falls short of its goals of individual and collective good because it fails to culture the mode of goodness to achieve them. For example, in the *Bhagavad-gītā* Kṛṣṇa says that true knowledge and happiness are possible only in goodness. That is because only in goodness does a person have "understanding by which one knows what ought to be done and what ought not to be done, what is to be feared and what is not to be feared, what is binding and what is liberating." People in the mode of goodness do work that helps themselves and society, "without false ego, with great determination and enthusiasm, and without wavering in success or failure." People in goodness are wise, clean, honest, satisfied, self-controlled, and not unnecessarily violent. They speak only what is truthful and beneficial in such a way that others are not disturbed. Most teachers and educational theorists would agree that an educational system that could produce such citizens would meet their stated goals. However, knowledge in goodness must include seeing all living entities as spiritual beings, by nature different from the temporary body. Someone in goodness understands all living beings to be equal in substance and worth. Without such vision, the other benefits of goodness cannot fully exist. Modern education seeks to imitate such equal vision by celebrating all cultures and abolishing bodily stereotypes based on race, ethnicity, gender, or ability. But without distinguishing between the soul and the body, such attempts are incomplete and may even encourage the mode of passion or ignorance. A person influenced by the mode of passion, Kṛṣṇa tells us, identifies the self with the body and thinks differences of body indicate foundational differences of identity. And a person controlled by the mode of ignorance thinks only of what's needed to satisfy bodily demands. To see all living beings as spiritual, a person in goodness must know of the Supreme Spirit. The Sanskrit word for goodness, *sattva*, also means truth, and the Supreme Spiritual Being is called param *sattva*, the one who is totally, completely, absolutely true, without any falsity in Him. Education in goodness results in people whose self, intellect, and body are illumined by truth and who know both the soul and God as distinct from matter. Such enlightened pupils develop personally, socially, vocationally, and intellectually in ways that truly benefit themselves and society. *Evolution Defined, and Evolution's Relation to the Purpose of Education* Evolutionary theory has two major parts: (1) The first living being was the product of a chance combination of matter, so there is no ultimate distinction between life and matter, and (2) from the original chance creation of one living cell, one species turned into another, going from simple to complex, from one kind to many kinds, getting better and better. It is easy to see the harm—spiritually, morally, and socially—from the idea that what we call life is nothing but a random, temporary combination of matter. We then become merely machines. Desires, goals, purpose, values, and feelings are then no more than brief, meaningless blips of chemicals and electricity. Though the harmful consequences of part 2 of evolutionary theory—the idea that one species of life turns into another—may be harder to spot, there are at least three of them: (1) It does away with the need for God, (2) it supports the conclusion that life is nothing but matter, and (3) it promotes competition for resources. Let's look at these one by one. First of all, although God could theoretically direct a process in which one species evolves into another, such intelligent guidance is not necessary for this part of the theory to be true. Indeed, the scientific explanation is that it's all random chance—God might or might not be there, but He's not *needed*. And those who believe in God-guided evolution of species can be dismissed as clinging to tradition and sentiment. Most people who teach any form of divine creation fail to spot the second consequence of accepting the evolution of the species—that it supports the conclusion that life is nothing but matter (part 1 of evolutionary theory). How? Consider this: If one species did not turn into another, then each species must have appeared independently. But no scientist would ever propose such a thing, namely that random physical processes—such as lightning hitting a chemical soup—could produce a fully formed tiger, eagle, or palm tree. Therefore, the evolution of species is the only support scientists have for the idea that life is nothing but matter. For a theist to accept the validity of that support is dangerous. The third consequence of the theory that species change with natural selection to better adapted forms is that it promotes competition for resources. In fact, evolutionary theory states that ruthless competition with the elimination of weaker beings is the main cause of progress. It thus promotes greed and exploitation as ultimate social good. In addition, evolutionary theory in general promotes pointlessness, which the *Bhagavad-gītā* teaches is the opposite to symptoms of goodness—it is a symptom of ignorance, darkness, and madness. Evolutionists themselves openly admit that their theory propounds pointlessness. In 1967, paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson wrote, "Man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind."1 In 1970, molecular biologist and Nobel laureate Jacques Monod announced that "the mechanism of Darwinism is at last securely founded," and that as a result "man has to understand that he is a mere accident."2 It is clear that the theory of evolution is contrary to the principles of goodness. Therefore the attractive goals of educational theorists will always remain incompletely realized as long as evolutionary theory underlies instruction. We should not be surprised that Prabhupāda said, "The more we kick out Darwin's philosophy, the more we advance in spiritual consciousness." We will now examine how children are educated, first in general and then in regard to evolutionary theory in particular. *How Are Children Educated in General?* There are four levels of education. One is cosmetic and visible, one is substantive and visible, and two are substantive but almost imperceptible. The first level is called the "planned curriculum." It's what a school or teacher or government office or school board claims to be teaching. It often consists of well-organized books and papers with charts, color-coding, and cross-referencing, all neatly numbered and sometimes annotated with research that supports it. The planned curriculum generally is created to impress. Many people make their livelihood from creating it, revising it, and appraising it. It's only when we get to the second level, the "taught curriculum," that we find something substantial. This is what a teacher, book, video, computer program, or fellow pupil is overtly teaching. Sometimes the taught curriculum corresponds to the planned curriculum, and sometimes it does not. As the anthropologist Margaret Mead said, "What people say, what people do, and what they say they do are entirely different things." The third level is called the "hidden curriculum." It is a powerful way to teach, and educational publishers use it deliberately. Most of the time, teachers probably use it unknowingly. The hidden curriculum deals with classroom rules, the types of illustrations used in books, the terms employed to describe things, and what is praised or mocked. It is mostly through the hidden curriculum that children learn values, beliefs, acceptable social behavior, and their own self-image. For example, when I visited a classroom of twelve-year-olds during my work as an administrator in a government school, the teacher asked the children to name their favorite restaurant. She then turned to me. When I replied that I rarely eat in restaurants, the teacher was incredulous. The students made derisive noises and rolled their eyes, with no admonition from the teacher. I felt like a social outcaste. It is unlikely that a teacher would directly teach that it is socially strange to avoid restaurants, but the message was clear. In another example, a photograph in a textbook of someone plowing a field with oxen had a caption that read, "In *undeveloped* countries people still use *primitive* farming techniques." A hidden curriculum can be used in many positive ways. For example, while children's reading books in America used to show exclusively Caucasian children, now publishers are careful to portray a wide range of races and ethnicities. No matter how much a teacher might speak of the equal value of all types of people, the hidden message will carry more weight if the materials show only one type as ideal or normal. The fourth level is called the "null curriculum." It is what is taught by silence. For example, although modern children's reading books in America, the United Kingdom, New Zealand, and Australia show illustrations of a variety of races and ethnicities, almost all families shown are middle-class suburbanites. There are no very rich families, no very poor families, few families who live on farms, no families with more than three children. And while families are shown engaging in cultural activities, none are shown with a deep religious life, or almost any religious life for that matter. It's as if those things not shown do not exist. Or, at least, they are not normal. The null curriculum conveys strong messages about social desirability. And more than that, by omitting certain information throughout schooling, society gives a strong message that such topics are not worthy of study or have some fault in them. *Evolution in the Planned, Taught, Hidden, And Null Curriculums* A search through planned curriculums will yield only short units that deal directly with evolution. It may appear for a week during a school year or, in some years of education, barely at all. Sometimes it might be taught directly for a month, but on the primary and secondary level that's rare. Anyone looking at planned curriculum would find little cause for concern over such a minor part of education. In taught curriculum, the degree and form of instruction on evolution vary considerably from teacher to teacher and school to school. Many classroom books and videos have evolutionary content not listed in the planned curriculum, and teachers may teach aspects of evolution in the context of various subjects as a natural consequence of the flow of the discussion. Evolutionary theory is pervasive in the hidden curriculum, even outside of science class. Children's reading and history books are full of illustrations of imagined former ages, replete with club-wielding cavemen and battling dinosaurs. Characters in stories that are required reading speak about evolution as fact. Books and videos on science and history explain the incredible ways in which the bodies of various creatures are suited to their environment as the result of evolution. History and geography materials are full of assumptions of evolution, especially the idea that civilization is progressing. Civilization before industrialization is shown as grossly inferior to modern life. All human traits, behavior, gender differences, and so on, are explained in terms of what renders us most fit for survival in various stages of development as imagined by evolutionists. Survival and competition are portrayed as the only purpose behind all physical features, psychological tendencies, and cultural norms. Living beings are characterized as machines, only gross physical bodies, with the self being equal to the brain. Religion, especially belief in a personal God, is mostly presented as something primitive people needed to explain nature before the advent of modern science. It is perhaps in terms of the null curriculum that evolutionary theory has the greatest hold over modern education. If there is controversy over evolutionary evidence, generally only one side of the story appears in textbooks and teaching material. Evidence against evolution is never mentioned. Other theories about how and why anything exists are either not discussed or just presented as interesting myths of primitive cultures. Deeply spiritual persons are not included in the lists of great persons studied. If they are, their spiritual life is not described. Fictional heroes in literature are not religious. Evidence of advanced technological or cultural achievement in ancient societies is rarely discussed. Empirical evidence for the fact that we are something beyond the body is absent, even though, for example, there are many well-documented cases of out-of-body experiences and highly reputable universities such as Duke carried out years of experiments in clairvoyance. Students quickly learn, without anyone ever saying so directly, that to suggest anything other than evolution is socially unacceptable and perhaps even a sign of mental instability. It is not surprising that even many religious people who have been through such an education system end up propounding an idea of evolution with God's guidance. I had a powerful experience with evolution in the null curriculum when I was teaching mathematics to gifted twelve-year-olds in a government school while the teacher was overseas. The students were learning how to find a common denominator when adding or subtracting fractions. We need the common denominator, I told them, because things have to be alike in order to add or subtract them. I started with the common expression of not being able to add apples and oranges. "We can do it if we call them both fruit!" one pupil suggested. The class then thought of examples of apparently unlike things that could be added by finding a commonality. "Are there things you can never add because they can't be considered the same thing in any way?" a pupil finally asked. "Yes," I answered, without thinking of the implications. "You can't add people and cars. They are intrinsically different." Oh, how the students argued with me! "No, they are both things made of atoms and molecules," they said with excitement. I had thought that the pupils would immediately agree with my example. Their reaction caught me off guard, because then I realized I had ventured to give voice to something in the null curriculum. I tried to tie up things quickly and simply. "A person is a living being, not just a thing. Life is different from matter. The body is a thing, like a car, but life is different from the body. A living being is driving the body like one drives a car." The students' reaction to my explanation was striking. They were completely stunned. Because I was in a position of authority, they didn't doubt that I was telling them the truth. Yet I was telling them something so strange and surprising that they didn't know how to react. Any idea of life as distinct from matter had been firmly part of the null curriculum for these students. They had never even considered the idea. *Modern Education Not Meeting Its Goals* Instead of awakening pupils to their spiritual nature, evolution teaches that they are simply matter, accidentally conscious for a brief moment of universal time. Instead of aiding children's loving relationship with the Supreme Lord, Kṛṣṇa, evolutionists such as the one on the film I saw insult Him by calling Him "a cold, impersonal machine." Therefore it is not surprising that an education system permeated with this philosophy falls short of its stated goal of truly being good for individuals and society. ## Nature’s IQ *Can the study of mysterious animal instincts and behavior provide the key to the origin of life?* > By Isvara Kṛṣṇa Dāsa *This article is adapted from the book* Nature's IQ*, by lsvara Kṛṣṇa Dāsa and Bhagavata-priya Dāsa. The book is available from the* Krishna.com *Store.* HAVING BEEN brought up in a city, Budapest, I first learned about nature from books and films. For a long time, books about the living world fascinated me—stories by ornithologists, accounts by naturalists about their expeditions, presentations by researchers of animal behavior. My favorite authors were Gerald Durell and David Attenborough. I would never have thought that investigating the most hidden subjects of nature would become my profession. My parents' familiarity with science helped make biology my favorite subject in elementary and secondary school. My mother worked as a chemist, and my father was a doctor. Thinking in terms of science came naturally in our family with three children. In high school biology class I couldn't escape dissection of animal specimens. I was sorry and morally repelled to see the earthworm crucified with pins and the disemboweled frog or prepared birds that seemed much more attractive seen intact than with their guts visible. My interest turned to the social sciences, and I went to the university to study cultural anthropology, which analyzes and compares past and present civilizations. In Hungary, where I lived, my first university years coincided with the change of the political system. Communism was out, and suddenly I realized that the world can be seen from various aspects and man is free to choose the worldview he wants. This freedom was promising but also frightening because of the heavy implications of choice. Therefore the structure and thinking of other societies became important for me not only from a scientific point of view but also existentially, as relevant for my own life. During this period I got acquainted with the wisdom of India's Vedic scriptures from the books of Śrīla Prabhupāda, an Indian teacher representing an unbroken tradition. After a few small books on reincarnation, I read *Bhagavad-gītā* and acquired an overview of its philosophy: Every living being (including plants and animals) is an eternal soul who, somehow or other, got entangled in the material world and now wanders from one kind of body to another, accepting various body forms. When souls get a human body, they are awarded the chance to wake up to their original pure consciousness and, by acting properly, can go back to the spiritual world at the end of life to reconnect with God. At first I thought this too good to be true. At the same time, however, the coherence of the reasoning, the concept of nonviolence, and the option that life may have a higher purpose fascinated me. After scientific materialism, imbibed in the education system of Socialism, this was very attractive, but at the same time quite unusual and hard to believe. I got into an ideological crisis. My system of thinking, acquired in my childhood and deemed beyond doubt, was undermined. At the same time, it was still strong enough to prevent me from accepting another ideology. I especially had problems with one question: Where had the kingdoms of animals and plants I so much admired come from? According to my childhood books and schooling, life had emerged through chance chemical processes and the species evolved from common ancestors over millions of years. But according to the several-thousand-year-old Vedic texts I was starting to respect, the body plans of plants and animals have existed on our planet since the beginning of time. I also got hold of some publications that raised scientific counterarguments against the theory of evolution. I was surprised to discover a whole array of arguments and started to ponder that evolution theory might, after all, not be an undeniable fact. Perhaps it was just one possible interpretation of nature—one that had been spoon-fed to me. I was curious to find the truth. And I thought that without finding an answer to the question of origins, I could not make a well-founded decision about the purpose of my own life. *Back to the Bookshelf* I reread my animal books and noticed that origins were treated with remarkable superficiality. Whatever phenomenon the authors spoke about, they used expressions like "evolved," "emerged," "was modified," "adapted," etc., but they never went into the details of how these things happened. I thought I could get more detailed information from biological journals, but found, to my dismay, that the descriptions, though worded more scientifically, were based on an unproven preconception. This reinforced my suspicion that my schooling was misleading and that evolutionism was but a linguistic construction, a mythic explanation of the world from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. To borrow an expression from the humanities, it was a "narrative," a story invented by people in a certain age and told to the others. Rereading the books, I was taken by the wonder of the inborn instincts many animal species demonstrate. To gather more information for deciding on the question of origins, I chose to study this subject in detail. Animal behavior is the subject of the scientific discipline of ethology. Being a cultural anthropologist by training, and also interested in nonhuman cultures, I dubbed myself a "cultural zoologist" (maybe the only one on planet Earth). Let's look at some questions that arise in connection with instinctive animal behavior. It is not at all surprising that insects behave like insects, birds like birds, and mammals like mammals. They execute most of their intricate behavior in a predetermined, instinctive manner. But how do they know when and how they should act? Where did the intelligence manifested in nature come from? To explain the origin of behavioral patterns, evolutionists point to gradual modifications of simpler behaviors. But is the current view necessarily the correct one? Is it based on detailed, plausible deduction? Or could there be an alternative, better explanation? Is it possible that our world reflects in many ways a supernatural intelligence that applied its own infinitely ingenious solutions to create the living world? *Nature's Thermostat* Many animal behavioral patterns do not merely consist of one single phase, but involve a range of behavioral steps that must always be present to achieve successful action. This represents a serious, if not lethal, threat against the Darwinian theory. The East Australian mallee fowl (*Leipoa ocellata*) hatches its eggs in an unusual way. First, with their strong legs mallee fowl parents dig a hole fifteen feet wide and three feet deep. During winter, they gather twigs and leaves from within a radius of fifty-five yards and amass them in the hole. When the material has gotten thoroughly soaked in the rain, they cover the whole thing with a layer of sandy earth twenty inches thick. This is how the mallee builds its craterlike nest, which towers nearly five feet high. The mallee fowl hen lays her eggs on rotting leaves in the egg chamber within the nest mound, and then the male buries the egg chamber. Starting in the spring, for three to four months the hen comes once a week to lay one egg each time, then leaves the nest. During the long nine-month period of hatching, the cock takes care of the right incubation temperature. Most species of birds hatch their eggs with the warmth of their own body. This case is totally different. The eggs of mallee fowl hatch by the warmth of the hill, as the rotting plant matter piled up inside generates heat that hatches the eggs. From time to time the male sticks his bill into the hill to check the temperature of the soil. He is able to measure the temperature most probably with his tongue or oral cavity. He maintains the temperature of the mound functioning as an incubator at 93.2° Fahrenheit (34° centigrade) with incredible precision. He allows a maximum fluctuation of 1.8° (1° centigrade) inside the mound, even though daily and yearly temperatures vary considerably in that region. If the eggs are in danger of overheating, he assiduously removes a layer of sand from the top of the hill to emit extra heat. Alternatively, to protect the mound from excessive sunshine, he scratches more soil onto the mound. When the outside temperature turns colder, he removes the upper layers of the hill during the day so that the sun shines right on the middle of the nest. But in the evening he covers it again to retain the heat. Nestlings hatch at different times and break the eggshell with their strong legs. Miraculously, they do not suffocate inside the mound but, keeping their bill and eyes tightly shut, dig themselves out of the hill. They struggle hard for five to ten minutes to make their way upwards a few centimeters, then they rest for about an hour and start again. It might take them two to fifteen hours to get to the surface. After getting out, they take a deep breath and open their eyes. Afterwards, they waddle or roll down the hatching mound and rush into the surrounding scrubland. They never meet their parents and learn from no one how to build a mound or how to maintain its temperature. Still, when they come of age, they behave exactly as their parents did. "The construction of dwelling place, it is known even to the birds and the beasts. The mouse also knows how to live within the earth. They make a hole. According to their capacity, they make it there. The birds also, they make their nest, to live comfortably. Ants also. So this intelligence is there. God has given that intelligence."—Śrīla Prabhupāda "Many instincts are so wonderful that their development will probably appear to the reader a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory."—Charles Darwin *Beyond Hen-Witted Explanations* The mallee fowl belongs to the family of incubator birds (*Megapodiidae*). All the bird species belonging to this taxonomic family are well known for using an external heat source to hatch their eggs. Evolutionary science journals assume that this hatching method evolved in small steps from the traditional "sitting on the eggs" hatching. Nevertheless, they are unable to give any kind of detailed and convincing theoretical explanation for this gradual evolvement, which would be in line with the principles of their theory. To understand more deeply why evolutionary theory does not stand its ground regarding the origin of the mallee fowl's hatching strategy, let us take into consideration what is needed for the successful hatching of the nestlings. From the hen's point of view: • Coming back regularly and laying the eggs on the appropriate spot. From the cock's point of view: • Knowledge about the material and structure of the hill. • Building of the hatching mound. • Specific organ to check the temperature of the soil. • Sophisticated instinct to ensure a constant temperature inside the hatching mound. From the chicks' point of view: • Appropriate instinctive behavior about what to do after hatching. • Adequate anatomical build to have the strength to dig themselves out from the mound and to survive on their own. • Instinctive behavioral patterns from their birth on, making them capable for breeding and nurturing. Just think it over. Would it be possible to omit any of these elements and still have the eggs hatched? Surely not, because all these particular anatomical characteristics and instinctive behavioral programs are needed *at the very same time*, so that the following generations of birds can come into existence. This is why one cannot draw a line of progressive development consisting of numerous gradual little changes leading from the "heating with body" to the "mound builder" system. By the time the eggs are laid and hid in the ground, *all the other elements* (physical characteristics and instincts of the mallee fowl) should be present; otherwise the temperature of the eggs would not be maintained and the embryos inside would perish. Thus the mallee fowl's method of hatching is an *irreducible system*, as the process works only if each jigsaw-puzzle piece of the behavioral chain is in its proper place. The simultaneous emergence of so many coordinated elements without conscious control—merely by undirected chance mutation—is utterly impossible. Therefore the origin of the mallee fowl is a riddle with only one solution: This bird, with all its anatomical features and instinctive behavior, was devised by a higher intelligence. Moreover, the "sitting on the eggs" and the "mound-building" incubation techniques most likely manifested at the same time as parts of a comprehensive superior plan. *A More Reliable Answer* The mallee fowl is but one of the many examples in our book *Nature's IQ*, written in cooperation with my bioengineer friend Bhagavat-priya Dāsa. It describes a hundred examples of unusual animal instincts of unexplained origin (www.naturesiq.com). Here are some more exciting questions: How did the archerfish get the idea of spitting beyond the water level, and how did its special mouth weapon (capable of shooting down insects with water) develop? What kind of evolutionary advantage would the ability to spit small quantities a short distance have represented for many, many generations? How can a small fish (the cleaner wrasse) stay alive when swimming voluntarily into the mouth of a predatory fish (the coral grouper)? How do the migrating birds know when and in what direction they should leave? What special mating habits contradict Darwinian evolution? What are the strategies of animal parents in raising their offspring, and why is it likely that these come from a higher intelligence rather than from chance genetic changes? Animal behavior patterns pose logical riddles that can hardly be solved without postulating the involvement of intelligent design. It seems reasonable, then, to consider the standpoint of the ancient scriptures. According to the philosophy of the Vedic scriptures, living beings in this world are made of three components. In all cases, the source of life and consciousness in any living body is an eternal individual spiritual spark. A subtle physical body, in which the mental activities of the living entity take place, covers the living being. It seems that the instincts of a given species are also coded into this subtle material body, and they are substantially constant. The visible biological body covers the subtle body. The variegated forms of life and the appropriate behavioral patterns ultimately come from an infinitely intelligent and ingenious being, who is present in the hearts of all living things as Supersoul. I have learned to identify the misleading ideological prejudices in science books and to handle them with the appropriate reservation. And nowadays, when I read about nature, I often feel that from behind the lines, someone is winking at me. ## Intelligent Design and Kṛṣṇa Consciousness *What is intelligent design? Should Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees concern themselves with it?* > An Interview with Lalitanatha Dāsa Back to Godhead *spoke about intelligent design (ID) with Lalitanatha Dāsa, author of the recent book* Was Darwin Wrong? A Vedic Study of Darwinism and Intelligent Design *(Bhaktivedanta Book Trust). The book argues for ID and includes chapters by three prominent ID scientists: biologist Dr. Jonathan Wells, mathematician Dr. William Dembski, and biochemist Dr. Michael Behe.* BTG: Is everything about ID compatible with Kṛṣṇa consciousness? Lalitanatha Dāsa: I think so. Of course, ID isn't complete or the last word to be said about the origin and nature of life. But still, the scientific arguments for ID are sound and are the same kind of arguments devotee scientists have been making since the time of Śrīla Prabhupāda. There is nothing antithetical to Vedic philosophy in the contemporary arguments for ID. ID scientists are making the scientific arguments that Śrīla Prabhupāda always had in mind for his followers to make. That's how I see it. BTG: What is intelligent design? LD: The term *intelligent design* refers to a pattern, an event, or a structure that cannot have been caused by any physical process and apparently is due to an intelligent cause. Scientists dealing with *intelligent design* thus try to figure out how to assess what must have been intelligently caused and what unaided physical processes on their own are capable of. This is a common affair in many sciences. For instance, archeologists infer *intelligent design* when they study flints and conclude that certain features cannot be explained by geological processes but are due to intentional work. Similarly, forensic scientists, when investigating a possible crime, try to draw the same distinction-did he fall accidently, or did someone push him? A movie called *Contact* also provides an example of inferring intelligent design, specifically in the scientific search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI). SETI scientists scan radio signals from outer space—many stars and other heavenly bodies emit radio waves—to see if any of these signals originate from intelligent beings communicating their existence. So far, the real SETI program has been unsuccessful, but in the movie the scientists detected a radio signal they concluded came from an intelligent source. What convinced them was a string of signals spelling out the prime numbers from 2 to 101. Prime numbers are those that are only divisable by themselves and one. They concluded that no chance event but only intelligent beings with knowledge of mathematics could hit upon such a significant series of numbers. We infer intelligent design all the time. For instance, we know that this room is an artificial structure and not a naturally formed mountain cave. We may also have inferred that the intricate arrangement in the room—the furniture, the electrical wiring, the pipes, the colors on the walls, etc.—were intelligently arranged by someone and not due to any blind, unintelligent chance event. At all times, philosophers and scientists have similarly inferred design in nature due to its orderliness and complex structures, which appear not to be the result of physical law or chance. In the *Caitanya-caritāmṛta*, Śrīla Prabhupāda cited our eighteenth-century spiritual master Śrīla Baladeva Vidyabhusana, who argued that material nature shows evidence of design: Material nature is inert, and as such it cannot be the cause of matter, neither as the material nor as the efficient cause. Seeing the wonderful arrangement and management of the cosmic manifestation generally suggests that a living brain is behind this arrangement, for without a living brain such an arrangement could not exist. One should not imagine that such an arrangement can exist without conscious direction. In our practical experience we never see that inert bricks can themselves construct a big building.1 Isaac Newton argued similarly: "This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."2 Newton argued that although the movements of the planets could be explained by physical laws, the very orderliness of these laws pointed to a designing intelligence behind them. Another famous design argument was propounded by William Paley in his *Natural Theology* in 1802. According to Paley, if we find a watch in a field, the watch's adaptation of means to ends—that is, the adaptation of its parts to telling time—ensures that it is the product of an intelligence and not simply the output of undirected natural processes. So too the marvelous adaptations of means to ends in organisms, whether at the level of whole organisms or at the level of various subsystems (Paley focused on the mammalian eye), ensure that organisms are the product of an intelligence. Although rationally appealing, design arguments fell into disrepute after Charles Darwin convinced the world of science that nature's complexity could be fully explained by a natural process: natural selection. This is now changing. Within the last decades, the design argument has had a renaissance, partly because scientists uncovered inside the cell a marvelous world of complexity that Darwin had no idea about. Darwin took the cell to be a simple glob of protoplasm, a microscopic piece of jelly. He turned out to be wrong. The past fifty years have revealed much about the molecular basis of life, including the double helical structure of DNA, the genetic code, and the complicated and irregular structure of proteins. Scientists now know that the cell is run by microscopic machines made of molecules. There are molecular machines that enable the cell to move, machines that empower it to transport nutrients, machines that allow it to defend itself, and so on. Cells are anything but simple. Accordingly, some scientists are now taking recourse in design to explain the origin of all this. Their argument has been made even stronger by mathematical tools developed to assess whether or not patterns, events, or objects are the result of physical law and chance alone. When applied to biology, such mathematical calculations point to many features being beyond the reach of natural law alone. BTG: What about the claim that intelligent design is mainly a ploy by Christian creationists to get their ideas across? LD: There are good reasons why many think like that—the main one being that Darwinian-inspired organizations vigorously propagate that idea, and with great success. But intelligent design as a concept is not creationism. You can have intelligent design without creationism, what to speak of Biblical creationism. And the modern movement of intelligent design arose from within the scientific community, and not from the Christian creationists. In fact, most of today's prominent ID proponents are not Christian creationists. Biochemist Michael Behe, for instance, who wrote *Darwin's Black Box*, the most successful ID book to date, is not a creationist. He accepts evolution and common ancestry; he just doesn't think evolution happened through natural processes alone. The use of the term intelligent design for the design argument is old, going back at least to the eighteenth century. ISKCON's devotee scientists were also using the term long before it supposedly was invented in the wake of a US high court case in 1987, as the Darwinian accusators would have it. For instance, in 1976, on July 3 in Washington D.C., Sadaputa Dāsa explained during a science presentation to Śrīla Prabhupāda: "We'd like to argue that the chance-and-molecular-forces theory won't explain things like this [molecular machinery inside the cell], but to say that there is an *intelligent designer* would be a sensible explanation."3 How can intelligent design be an invention from 1987 when Sadaputa talked about it in 1976? Similarly, in 1979, Jnana Dāsa wrote in *Back to Godhead:* "This theory proposes that the various species are products of intelligent design.... "4 In another BTG article from 1985, Drutakarma Dāsa wrote: "Similarity of structures can also be taken as evidence for an *intelligent designer*."5 The term *intelligent design* was also extensively used in *Origins*, a magazine published by the BBT in 1984. One example: "All available evidence is said to confirm that evolution did in fact occur as described above. This of course excludes *intelligent design* in any form."6 So I disagree with the claim that intelligent design is of recent origin. Thus when adherents of the modern ID movement make the very arguments that we either have been or should have been making, I think we should gladly join with them on the areas where we agree. BTG: Is there no disagreement between us and what today is called ID? LD: In some respects the proponents of ID don't go far enough, especially when it comes to studies of consciousness. But as far as they go, I find them in agreement with Śrīla Prabhupāda's Vedic teachings. ID is science and nothing else. BTG: But don't we have a significant disagreement with the ID proponents' idea that life comes from matter manipulated by an intelligent designer? LD: ID as a concept is not a claim about life being material or having been created by an intelligent designer from matter. Of course, some ID people think like that, and in that respect we disagree with them, but that is a different issue. It is important to understand that intelligent design is neither a claim about the nature of the designer nor a claim about the process of creation. Again, if you take the example of archeologists studying flints to ascertain whether certain traits are due to intentional work, their discussion at this level is not about who has cut the flints or how it was done. For now they are only concerned about how to tell what is natural and what has been intelligently caused. Of course, once they've concluded that some traits are indeed intentional, they may launch into discussing who did it and by what process. But that is a different and later discussion. If you keep that example in mind, I think you'll understand what it is that all ID people, including us, agree on and what it is that we may disagree on while still agreeing on the intelligent design part. BTG: Still, ID seems to suggest that everything that goes on in the cell can be explained in purely mechanical terms. Isn't consciousness evident even at the cellular level? LD: ID only asserts that some features—not even all, necessarily—are intelligently caused. It is not a claim about everything within the cell being mechanical. This is a different claim. And although many scientists, ID people included, may think like that, nobody can tell. Most of what is going on inside the cell is still a mystery to science. But I would expect that if scientists started looking for it, they'd also find evidence for the Supersoul, for instance, in the workings of the cell. BTG: So ID doesn't imply that no soul is needed, just that an intelligent designer is needed? LD: No, and again, soul or no soul, that is a different issue. But while we are at it, although undoubtedly some ID people are materialists at a certain level—such as thinking that life is created out of matter by an intelligent designer—my feeling is that most of them are not and do accept the existence of the soul at some level. In 2007, two Canadian neuroscientists connected with the ID movement even published a book called *The Spiritual Brain: A Neuroscientist's Case for the Existence of the Soul.*7 BTG: What is a good example of intelligent design? LD: There are so many, but the genetic code is interesting. It even made IT-*guru* Bill Gates state, "Human DNA is like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we've ever created." That the cell processes information much like a computer is astounding. More specifically, the "genetic code" is a coded text written all over our DNA in the form of sequences of four particular molecules: A, C, G, and T for short. Just as the order in which regular letters are written on a piece of paper spells certain messages, the order of these molecular letters spells out genetic messages that are translated into innumerable functions in the cell. Most obvious is how they code for the synthesizing of proteins. Nothing about the chemical properties of DNA determines the genetic code. In fact, the codes and the medium upon which they are written have to work independently of each other in order for the code to be functional (just imagine if paper would ruin all the text written on it). Since nothing chemical is known to give rise to codes working independent of chemistry, and since all the codes whose origin we know have an intelligent origin, an obvious inference is that the genetic code also has an intelligent origin. BTG: To wind up, what do you think the future holds for evolution, intelligent design, and Kṛṣṇa consciousness? LD: One devotee friend opined that we shouldn't involve ourselves in the discussion over intelligent design. The time is not right, and it can damage our reputation in the intellectual world. But I think that we won't get a better time. As things stand, evolution, or Darwinism, is passe. The only thing keeping it afloat is that many, including most scientists, either haven't noticed this or can't bring themselves to admit it. Plus, many scientists dare not speak their minds openly out of fear of being ostracized. But the evidence against evolution is so overwhelming that it can only be a matter of time before the real change sets in. I think it will happen within our lifetime. The worst we can do is to think that the theory of evolution is so scientifically solid that we have to compromise our philosophy. Ever since Darwin, many religious people have felt compelled to water down their teachings to a kind of theistic evolution in the belief that the evidence for evolution is indisputable. But it is not. It is, at best, weak and circumstantial. At worst it is a scam. There have always been scientists opposed to evolution, but until about two decades ago few people knew about this. Today the scientific opposition is out in the open, partly due to strong evidence for intelligent design, especially in biochemistry, partly due to modern communication, such as the Internet. The scientific establishment can no longer control the dissemination of scientific knowledge. I think that we Hare Kṛṣṇa people should place ourselves at the frontline—on the cutting edge-of this "evolution war." It will strengthen our own convictions and enhance our reputation among many intellectuals who are themselves critical of Darwinism. Of course, it will also gain us opposition, but that's life—you can't please everyone. Our brahminical principle, set by Śrīla Prabhupāda's own example, is not to cater to public sentiments but to speak and place ourselves on the side of truth. Truth will eventually triumph. Intelligent design is a winning position. ## The Creation and Dissolution of the Material World > Quotations from Śrīmad-Bhagavatam and from the commentary ("purports") on the Śrīmad-Bhagavatam by His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupāda describe how the universe is created and destroyed. > Compiled by Urmila Devī Dāsī *Lord Visnu & Laksmi in Vaikuntha* Beyond the material sky, further than we can see with our eyes and beyond the... universe, there is... an unlimited span of spiritual sky generally known as the *brahmajyoti*. Within this effulgence there are innumerable spiritual planets, and they are known as the Vaikuntha planets. Each and every Vaikuntha planet is many, many times bigger than the biggest universe within the material world, and in each of them there are innumerable inhabitants who look exactly like Lord Visnu. These inhabitants are ... persons directly engaged in the service of the Lord. They are happy in those planets and are without any kind of misery, and they live perpetually in full youthfulness, enjoying life in full bliss and knowledge without fear of birth, death, old age or disease. (*Bhag*. 1.14.35–36, Purport) In those planets there is no difference between the body and the soul, nor is there any influence of time as we experience it in the material world. (*Bhag*. 2.5.39, Purport) *Maha-Visnu Generates the Universes in the Causal Ocean* In a corner of the spiritual sky of *brahmajyoti* a spiritual cloud sometimes appears, and the covered portion is called the *mahat-tattva*. The Lord then, by His plenary portion as Maha-Visnu, lies down within the water of the *mahat-tattva*.... While Maha-Visnu sleeps within the water, innumerable universes are generated along with His breathing. These universes are floating, and they are scattered all over the water. They stay only during the breathing period of Maha-Visnu. (*Bhag*. 2.5.33, Purport) This material manifestation is necessary to give a chance to the conditioned souls who are unwilling to associate with the Lord in the relationship of loving transcendental service.... Instead, they want to enjoy themselves as imitation Gods. The living entities are constitutionally eternal servitors of the Lord, but some of them, because of misusing their independence, do not wish to serve; therefore they are allowed to enjoy the material nature, which is called *maya*, or illusion... because the living beings under the clutches of *maya* are not factually enjoyers, although they think that they are. (*Bhag*. 2.6.42, Purport) *Garbhodakasayi Visnu & the Goddess of Fortune, Laksmi Devi* In each and every universal globe, the same Maha-Visnu enters again as Garbhodakasayi Visnu and lies there on the serpentlike Sesa incarnation. From His navel sprouts a lotus stem, and on the lotus, Brahma, the lord of the universe, is born. (*Bhag*. 2.5.33, Purport) Brahma... is the father of all living beings and the master of all the demigod engineers engaged in the perfect design and working of the universal order. Within the stem of the lotus there are fourteen divisions of planetary systems, and the earthly planets are situated in the middle. Upwards there are other, better planetary systems, and... downwards from the earthly planetary system there are seven lower systems. (*Bhag*. 1.3.2, Purport) *The Wheel of Time* This gigantic manifestation of the phenomenal material world as a whole is the personal body of the Absolute Truth, wherein the universal resultant past, present, and future of material time is experienced. (*Bhag*. 2.1.24) The personal weapon used by Lord Kṛṣṇa, the disc, is called *hari-*cakra**, the disc of Hari. This *cakra* is the wheel of time. (*Bhag*. 5.14.29) *The Creation Of Human Beings* Brahma, who was empowered by the Supreme Personality of Godhead, thought of generating living entities and begot ten sons for the extension of the generations... [Among them] was born... Daksa from a thumb, [and] Marici from the mind.... Sage Kardama, husband of the great Devahuti, was manifested from the shadow of Brahma. (*Bhag*. 3.12.21, 23, 24, 27) When Brahma saw that in spite of the presence of sages of great potency there was no sufficient increase in population, he seriously began to consider how the population could be increased. Two other forms were [then] generated from his body. They are still celebrated as the body of Brahma. The one who had the male form became known as the Manu named Svayambhuva, and the woman became known as Satarupa, the queen of the great soul Manu. [Manu] begot in Satarupa five children—two sons... and three daughters... The father, Manu, handed over... the middle daughter, Devahuti, to the sage Kardama, and the youngest, Prasuti, to Daksa. From them, all the world filled with [human] population. (*Bhag*. 3.12.50, 52, 54, 56, 57) Manu, the father of mankind, is the emblem of His [Kṛṣṇa's] standard intelligence, and humanity is His residence. (*Bhag*. 2.1.36) Human life... offers the conditioned soul sufficient intelligence to perceive the Absolute Truth. (*Bhag*. 11.9.28) *Kasyapa & the Daughters of Daksa* Daksa was [in his first birth] the son of Lord Brahma... but because of his... insulting... Lord Mahadeva [Siva], he... became the son of the Pracetas [in another birth]. (*Bhag*. 4.30.48, Purport) [In his second birth] Daksa begot sixty daughters in the womb of his wife Asikni....It is because of the union of these sixty daughters with various exalted personalities that the entire universe was filled with various kinds of living entities, such as human beings, demigods, demons, beasts, birds, and serpents. (*Bhag*. 6.6, Summary) Kardama Muni's daughter Kala, who was married to Marici, gave birth to... Kasyapa (*Bhag*. 4.1.13) Kasyapa received seventeen daughters [in marriage from their father, Daksa]. (*Bhag*. 6.6.2) [These are] Kasyapa's wives... [who] are the mothers of almost all the population of the entire universe, and [whose] names are very auspicious to hear. They are Aditi, Diti, Danu, Kastha, Arista, Surasa, Ila, Muni, Krodhavasa, Tamra, Surabhi, Sarama, and Timi (*Bhag*. 6.6.24–26), [as well as] Vinata [Suparna], Kadru, Patangi, and Yamini. (*Bhag*. 6.6.21–22) *The Creation of the Demigods* Aditi [is the] mother of the demigods (*Bhag*. 8.23.4). Indra was her eleventh son. (*Bhag*. 6.18, Summary). Vinata (Suparna) gave birth to Garuda, the carrier of Lord Visnu, and to Anuru, or Aruna, the chariot driver of the sun-god. (*Bhag*. 6.6.21–22) From the womb of Muni the angels took birth. (*Bhag*. 6.6.27) The Raksasas, or bad spirits, were born from the womb of Surasa. (*Bhag*. 6.6.28) The Gandharvas were born from the womb of Arista (*Bhag*. 6.6.29–31) The celestial species of human beings, like the Gandharvas, Vidyadharas, Caranas, and angels, all represent His [Kṛṣṇa's] musical rhythm, and the demoniac soldiers are representations of His wonderful prowess. (*Bhag*. 2.1.36) *Aquatics & Vegetation* From the womb of Timi all the aquatics took birth. (*Bhag*. 6.6.24–26) All the various creepers and trees were born from the womb of Ila. (*Bhag*. 6.6.28) *Insects & Animals* Yamini gave birth to locusts. (*Bhag*. 6.6.21–22) Krodhavasa was the mother of the mosquitoes. (*Bhag*. 6.6.28) From the womb of Sarama the ferocious animals like the tigers and lions took birth (*Bhag*. 6.6.24–26), and from the womb of Surabhi the buffalo, cow, and other animals with cloven hooves took birth. (*Bhag*. 6.6.27) Animals whose hooves are not split, such as the horse, were born from the womb of Kastha. (*Bhag*. 6.6.29–31) The horse, mule, camel, and elephant are [considered the] nails [of the Lord's form as the universe], and wild animals and all quadrupeds are situated in the belt zone of the [universal form of the] Lord. (*Bhag*. 2.1.35) *Birds & Reptiles* Patangi gave birth to many kinds of birds (*Bhag*. 6.6.21–22), and from the womb of Tamra the eagles, vultures, and other large birds of prey took birth. (*Bhag*. 6.6.27) Varieties of birds are indications of His [Kṛṣṇa's] masterful artistic sense. (*Bhag*. 2.1.36) Kadru gave birth to different varieties of serpents. (*Bhag*. 6.6.21–22) The sons born of Krodhavasa were the serpents known as *dandasuka*, as well as other serpents [and reptiles]. (*Bhag*. 6.6.28) *Winding Up the Material Manifestation* At the end of the millennium, when the Personality of Godhead Lord Narayana [Maha-Visnu] lies down within the water of devastation, Brahma begins to enter into Him along with all creative elements. (*Bhag*. 1.6.29) The merging of the living beings into the body of Maha-Visnu takes place automatically at the end of Brahma's one hundred years. But that does not mean that the individual living being loses his identity. The identity is there, and as soon as there is another creation by the supreme will of the Lord, all the sleeping, inactive living beings are again let loose to begin their activities in the continuation of past different spheres of life. (*Bhag*. 1.10.21, Purport) According to human calculations one day of Brahma is equal to one thousand ages of four millenniums (4,300,000 years) each, and the same period is calculated to be his night also. A Brahma lives for one hundred such years and then dies. (*Bhag*. 2.6.11, Purport) The four millenniums are called the Satya, Treta, Dvapara, and Kali *yugas*. The aggregate number of years of all of these combined is equal to twelve thousand years of the demigods. The duration of the Satya millennium equals 4,800 years of the years of the demigods [1,728,000 Earth years]; [Treta-yuga yuga lasts 1,296,000 Earth years]; the duration of the Dvapara millennium equals 2,400 years [864,000 Earth years]; and that of the Kali millennium is 1,200 years of the demigods [432,000 Earth years, of which about 5,000 have already passed]... In the Satya millennium mankind properly and completely maintained the principles of religion, but in other millenniums religion gradually decreased by one part as irreligion was proportionately admitted... After the end of Brahma's night, the creation of the three worlds begins again in the daytime of Brahma... At the end of [Brahma's] day, under the insignificant portion of the mode of darkness, the powerful manifestation of the universe merges in the darkness of night. By the influence of eternal time, the innumerable living entities remain merged in that dissolution, and everything is silent. When the night of Brahma ensues, all the three worlds are out of sight, and the sun and the moon are without glare... and fire emanate[s] from the mouth of Sankarsana [the serpentlike Sesa incarnation]... All the seas overflow, and hurricane winds blow very violently. Thus the waves of the seas become ferocious, and in no time at all the three worlds are full of water.... [At this point in human history,] the first half of the duration of Brahma's life is already over, and the second half is now current. The duration of the two parts of Brahma's life, as above mentioned, is calculated to be equal to one *nimesa* (less than a second) for the Supreme Personality of Godhead, who is unchanging and unlimited and is the cause of all causes of the universe. (*Bhag*. 3.11.18, 19, 21, 23, 28–31, 34, 38) All the universes in seed are emanating from the breathing of the Maha-Visnu, who is but part of a partial expansion of the Lord, and all the universes presided over by the Brahmas vanish when the Maha-Visnu withdraws His great breath. In this way, the material worlds are being created and vanished by the supreme will of the Lord. (*Bhag*. 2.1.25, Purport) ## Guest Editorial *Śrīla Prabhupāda on Science* THIS YEAR MARKS the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin and the 150th anniversary of the publication of his influential book *The Origin of Species*, in which he presented his theory of evolution by natural selection. Because Śrīla Prabhupāda, the founder-*ācārya* of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness, so often spoke about Darwin and his theory, and because Darwin and his theory are so representative of the substance and spirit of modern science, some words about Śrīla Prabhupāda's attitudes toward modern science are now appropriate. Śrīla Prabhupāda gave scientists credit for their proven accomplishments. But he would not give them credit for assertions they could not practically demonstrate. For example, many scientists assert that life arose on earth by chemical combination. In reply, Śrīla Prabhupāda argued that no one has observed life arising spontaneously from chemical combination in nature. Nor have scientists produced life by combining chemicals in their laboratories. Turning to the origin of species, Śrīla Prabhupāda rejected Darwin's proposal that one species transforms into another. There is evolution, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, but it is the evolution of the soul through various forms of life, all created in the beginning by God, Kṛṣṇa. According to materialistic science, consciousness is produced by chemical interactions in the brain. Śrīla Prabhupāda often challenged this idea. The *atma*, the soul, he proposed, is the source of consciousness. In discussing the origin of the universe, most materialistic scientists favor some version of the "big bang" theory. Śrīla Prabhupāda questioned how such an unguided process could produce all the signs of order and design we observe in the universe. He upheld the Vedic account of creation, in which creation unfolds under the supervision of the Supreme Lord and subordinate demigods like Brahma. The Vedic universe differs structurally from the universe depicted by modern science. Many of the structural features of the Vedic universe aren't visible to modern scientific investigators. But Śrīla Prabhupāda suggested that there may be much beyond the range of ordinary sense perception. So beyond pointing out the shortcomings of specific scientific theories about the origin of life and the universe, Śrīla Prabhupāda also offered a critique of the entire scientific method. The best way to acquire knowledge, Śrīla Prabhupāda said, is to accept it from a person beyond the limitations of the empirical method. That person is the Supreme Lord, who gives us perfect knowledge in His words, recorded in the Vedic literature. Ultimately, Prabhupāda opposed many conclusions of materialistic scientists because those conclusions discourage people from taking up the spiritual activities that can deliver them from the cycle of birth and death. Misguided by scientific teachings that deny or downplay the existence of God and the soul, people engage in material activities that keep them in ignorance of their true spiritual identity and keep them from returning back to Godhead, back to their original spiritual home. —Drutakarma Dāsa, Associate Editor Hare Kṛṣṇa Statement On Darwin's 200th Anniversary ENGLISH NATURALIST Charles Darwin was born 200 years ago, and his book *On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection* was published 150 years ago. In his book, Darwin put forward his theory of evolution, according to which all types of living beings gradually evolved from common ancestors, from the primitive to the more complex. Although the theory has never gained universal acceptance, most scientists and laypersons now accept its basic ideas. As we see it, however, the Darwinian hypothesis on the transformation of the living world is but one of several possible interpretations of the facts. It may explain minor variations within species, but does not offer a scientifically proven explanation of how major new features of organisms can arise. Moreover, there is evidence that contradicts the theory. For example, in their book *Forbidden Archeology*, Michael A. Cremo (Drutakarma Dāsa) and Richard L. Thompson (Sadaputa Dāsa) document archeological discoveries that cast doubt on the idea that species as we now know them emerged by transformation of earlier species by evolution. In another area, scientists have applied mathematical statistical analysis to the discoveries made in the last few decades in the field of molecular biology. Their analysis shows that the spontaneous origin of a single-celled organism from chemicals is highly unlikely—so unlikely, in fact, that it should be considered impossible. Hare Kṛṣṇa devotees regard the ancient Vedic scriptures as a reliable source of knowledge about the origin and ultimate questions of existence. These scriptures are part of the most ancient heritage of humankind, and their followers accept them as divine revelation. According to the Vedic literature, our world and the species in it emerged by a process of creation. The various bodily forms were all brought forth at the beginning of creation (many millions of years ago); they did not evolve sequentially, one from the other. These bodies are vehicles for spirit souls, which provide the life force and consciousness. Ideas about the origin of life and our species greatly influence our civilization. In the public education systems of the world, we are for the most part taught that our origin as human beings can be explained by a purely materialistic process of evolution that does not involve either God or the soul. People influenced by such ideas, even if nominally religious, may neglect guidance given by the Supreme Person and pursue exclusively materialistic, selfish goals. Because of unlimited material desires, ethical standards fall and people increasingly exploit the environment and their fellow beings. The materialistic, evolutionist view is thus partly responsible for the economic, environmental, and food crises looming over humankind. Some people propose that evolution theory be integrated into religious teachings. Evolution, they say, is God's method of creation. The scriptures of the monotheistic religions, taken literally, profess the direct creation of both the living and the inanimate worlds. We see no reason to mix the unproven theory of evolution with the wisdom of revelation. The role of religions in society is to consistently represent divine truth rather than make compromises with the dominant (and ever-changing) materialistic views of the day. People with the power to influence opinion should take steps to allow a more balanced discussion of life, broadening the dominant, practically exclusive, evolutionist approach in education and mass communication. They should present Darwinian thought not as "The Explanation" but rather as one hypothesis with its own problems and limitations. And they should present divine creation as a justified and rational alternative. Leaders of society—politicians, teachers, intellectuals—have the responsibility not only to look after the physical and cultural needs of the members of the society but also to work toward people's moral and spiritual progress. Philosophical materialism, rooted in evolution theory, is unproven, its validity questioned by an ever-increasing number of thinkers. Unfortunately, its general acceptance today weakens the moral and ethical standards of society, promotes a recklessly wasteful model of consumption, and spreads disrespect for life. NOTE: This statement was written by the Vedic Science Research Center and approved by the executive committee of the Governing Body Commission of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness. The Vedic Science Research Center is a department of the Bhaktivedanta College of Religious Science in Budapest. The aim of the Center is to answer modern scientific and social questions based on the Vaisnava understanding of the ancient knowledge of India. www.vedic science.eu. 2010 Believing vs. Knowing