Are scripture and evolution contradictory?

Anwser Podcast

So in school we study evolution the history of the earth and then it seems to be completely contradictory to what scripture tells us and slavopada did not support evolution so what should we argue see firstly the word evolution it has multiple meanings and sometimes one meaning is used in one context but another meaning is applying so first is that evolution simply means change or adaptation to nature so that is something which is a fact of life we can see it let us say if plants are in a particular area the cactus they will adapt to desert areas or whatever so adaptation to nature that is an observed fact and not only with respect to life forms like that it is also an observed fact with respect to microscopy organisms and how medicine works against them and all that so adaptation if evolution is used in the form of adaptation that is observed fact of nature and there is there is no reason to say that that is contradictory to scripture because that material nature keeps changing that scripture also talks about it constantly and in the in the in the krishna book it’s talked about when krishna went to gurukul he learned 64 things in 64 days so one of the things he learned was or the specific word use like plant cultivation but in the plant cultivation it is like a cross breeding of plants and interbreeding so basically the idea of if you look at the sanskrit over there the idea of species adapting or some variation happening that is talked about you know there’s no material which is constantly changing that’s one meaning of the word evolution this from here it is often extrapolated from here it is extrapolated to say that evolution can explain explain the the origin of different species so at one level evolution refers to variation within species so you have a grape of this size you can have a grape of this size you have apple of this size you can have apple of that size so variation within species is perfectly fine that can be done it’s been done in vedic times also now from that evidence that is there that is of variation within species from there we talk about not just variation within species but variation across species and origin of species so for this the evidence is debatable there are some evidences of intermediate forms but there are a lot of questions first of all not only questions about there is a theoretical aspect into the observational aspect so this one species changing into another that can’t be observed because it happens over many long long time so in the fossil record also whatever fossils have been found you know that they represent a transition from one species to another that is debatable so there’s no clear transitional species that have been found but that is not the that is not the major bone of contention if the evidence is there for that in many much of the evidence that is offered for that say dinosaurs were there they may extinct that is not evidence for this that is simply that is simply yes in response to nature’s change things they could not live that’s okay but one species changing to another if we go into the microscopic structure of the species it requires substantial amount of change and i’m not going to technicalities now but genetic mutation is proposed as a mechanism but mutations are usually destructive for them to lead to something so constructive it’s debatable whether it’s there or not but it’s debatable but from there so evolution as adaptation that evidence is there that we are no problem evolution as mechanism for origin of species that is evidence is debatable but we’ll come back to that our real problem is with evolution as an all-explaining ideology that is how evolution has become an alternative to to any need for god or anything higher so now consider the branch evolutionary linguistics so evolution is the all-explaining ideology means they say that everything that is there today it can be explained from evolution so for example we speak now if you look at the history of linguistics so there was the caveman if you look at any whether it is west or india uh hebrew or sanskrit actually they are much more organized and structured than english even if you consider shakespeare’s english as compared say today the english in detroit it’s much more organized so if we look at language there is no evidence of evolution there is devolution if you look at even the average book say which was the book you’re talking about the other day you said talked about the corruption canterbury tales you know if any of those books novels are written 100 years ago 200 years ago the average sentence length there was much more now sentence length is becoming smaller so everywhere we see uh the we see devolution we don’t see evolution in terms of language so now darwin evolution theory modern evolutionary synthesis whatever is there what is its explanation for how language came about there was cavemen who used to grunt for communication and from that time you have sanskrit which takes 12 years to just understand the grammar how would grunting came and came up with a language which is 12 years which requires grammar to 12 years to master it’s so there are and this is with respect to so so physical characteristics is there but you go from physical characteristics to behavioral characteristics like speech and from there you go to mental functions so even bigger so it all becomes uh not just speculative there are critics who call it they call it evolutionary psycho babble you know babble means just meaningless talk so evolution is treated like a magic wand that explains everything but it is not and so our question our primary so in this there are three senses in which the word evolution is used evolution is adaptation evolution as mechanism for origin of species and evolution as an all-explaining ideology and for each of these if you see for this okay there is a lot of evidence and we have no conflict with this but for this there is no evidence it’s complete speculation and it is not there’s no logic also to support it how it happens so our main issue is with evolution as an all-explaining ideology whenever shiva prabhupada was presented the theory of evolution he was presented it as a atheistic evolution that there is no god and everything happened by by natural selection combined with chance and prabhupada was very strongly against that now in the intermediate thing that evolution as a mechanism for change as an as an agency that has brought out change for that the evidence is debatable so there are two possibilities i’ll explain both so one is that let’s assume that there is adequate evidence for that or that is not necessarily contradictory to scriptural understanding why not because there are by krishna’s 9.2 says by my arrangement material nature undergoes under my supervision material nature and goes various transformations and things are made so material nature creates everything it constantly changing so the point is krishna also acknowledges that their material nature has its own arrangements so the arrangements can be in the form of laws i’m not saying that the laws are there i’m just giving arguments sake so just like this is a this is a little difficult concept to understand and if you don’t understand i’ll repeat it once again so there is if a if i if i take this and i drop it from here now what made it fall i can say the gravity caused it to fall that is one level of explaining it now we could say that newton himself felt that the law of gravity was a manifestation of the intelligence of god so if i say what made it fall i said law of gravity called it fall if i go backward and ask what caused the law of gravity how will law of gravity come about it’s like god is responsible for that so god as so why do the planets move about in their orbits god and law of gravity these are not necessarily contradictory explanations they are complementary explanations they are complementary for example you know about billiards you know say if there is a billiards table and on the billiards table someone is there is there’s a player who’s playing so we have a stick you know so by a stick it hits one ball that ball goes it’s another ball the whole chain of ball that right and finally one ball goes into the hole now this ball going into the hole we can explain it in terms of laws of physics this stick hit at this angle with this momentum and that’s how according to all the physics you can explain this ball went and if we are looking simply at the table from above we say okay what made the ball going to the hole the stick hitting at this angle if we expanded the frame and look at it okay there’s a table and there’s a stick that hit it but the stick was held by a player and what made the ball going to the hole it was the expertise of the player so the laws of physics and the expertise of the player as explanations for the ball going into the hole they are not contradictory they are complementary explanations both are true just looking at different scales of explanation so even if we assume for argument’s sake even if we assume for argument’s sake that evolution is a mechanism by which change happens so evolution is an intermediate explanation it is not the ultimate explanation it’s like the laws of physics causing the ball to go into the hole or laws of physics as an explanation for why the ball went to the hole that’s an intermediate explanation one level of explanation there’s another level of explanation that is the expertise of the player so like that even if we are we say for argument’s sake that evolution is evolution is a mechanism through which all the species came that does not necessarily disprove god and the bhagavatam is giving us a narrative say things came from the navel of maha vishnu or navel of maha vishnu or garbhodaksha vishnu and brahmaji appeared and the planetary systems were created bhagavatam is not talking about what happened on the earth evolution is talking about what happened on the earth so bhagavatam is talking about i think at a different level of existence so that’s why they need not be contradictory so so that means by krishna the ring means the species appeared at various places and then on the earth they could have come by the mechanism of evolution so it is now if i don’t have time to go into the technicalities of the evidence you see i feel that the evidence for evolution is not that strong so evolution as an adaptation there is no doubt about it and there’s no need to quarrel with that so quite often what happens is that it’s like the scientists who support evolution they offer every so if i talk about evolution three senses evolution as a evolution as b evolution as c evolution as a is adaptation to nature evolution as b is change evolution as the agent of creation of new species agent of origin of new species evolution as c is as a explanation of everything b would be from the amoeba the multicellular organisms came from the uh from the and even fish the amphibians came from the amphibians the mammals came from the amphibian from the reptiles the birds came yeah technically that was the original theory of evolution of darwin that from monkeys humans came but then the problem was that for that they said that they couldn’t find any intermediate species so now they turned the theory around and they say rather than saying from monkeys to humans they said that there was an ape man from whom monkeys came and from whom humans came so then there’s no need for the ape man got extinct so basically the evolution theory in terms of evidence so it’s like okay it’s like say you want to prove that someone has robbed my house of five hundred thousand dollars hmm and i find in that person’s house a five dollar note which that person can’t account for and from that i say you want to solve for five hundred thousand dollars and the evidence is for five dollar loss but from that you cannot prove five hundred thousand dollars has been stolen so so these are three different things so evolution as a that is perfectly fine so the word itself has different meanings so this in the scientific world evolution the evidence for a is offered as proof for b and c so as a we have no problem with it as b that evolution evidence can be evaluated on a case to case basis and there are many books written by even non-religious scientists these are not they’re not really religious who want to prove the existence of god even atheistic scientists or non-believing scientists have pointed out the problems with evolution with b level but c level is absolutely it is fiction totally fiction and our main problem is with the c level evolution as an all-explaining ideology which makes god unnecessary or god imaginary so b it could be unlikely but it could be we don’t have to be at war with evolution so see for all practical purposes when we study the history of the earth so the idea of where the stone age man was a stone age where men lived in the caves yeah they could have lived in the caves okay let me complete this answer then i’ll come to the other answer about this so this is the three level way you can understand evolution there’s really not a major conflict between science and scripture over this because if it’s a there’s no conflict if it’s b the evidence is still debatable and c there is no evidence for this