Prabhupāda: What is the simplest form of life?
Śyāmasundara: They find at the lowest bottom of the soil layers which have built up through the years, they find small one-celled animal forms, sea shells, like that.
Prabhupāda: So how is it forming?
Śyāmasundara: Gradually, through the ages, they have become more and more complex to this age when...
Prabhupāda: What is the beginning?
Śyāmasundara: In the beginning they have found only the one-celled animals.
Prabhupāda: They found, but beyond that they do not know. They found it. It was already there. So wherefrom it came?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Another definition that is raised by most so-called modern scientists, research scientists, they try to find out the meaning of what is research and what is invention. So many scientists have posed also the concept that invention, strictly speaking, is a paradox. When we say invention, "I invented something," somebody invented radio, or somebody invented such-and-such thing, it is not really an invention.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: They say it cannot come out of nothing. It is already there.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: We did not know it, that it was already there. Foolishly we say that we invent these things.
Prabhupāda: You see, the action is already going on. You see all of a sudden something comes. But that is not perfect knowledge.
Śyāmasundara: Then how do you explain that...
Prabhupāda: We explain that everything, the source, the original source of everything is Brahman, Absolute Truth, Kṛṣṇa.
Śyāmasundara: What we are discussing is this doctrine of natural selection, or survival of the fittest.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That natural selection, that law is made by Kṛṣṇa.
Śyāmasundara: So there is a law of...
Prabhupāda: Yes. Certainly. The scientists say that we do not know wherefrom it is coming. All of a sudden I see something and you say that invention. It is not invention. It is already there. You could not see before, and now you can see. That's all.
Śyāmasundara: Just like dinosaurs, these huge animals once existing in...
Prabhupāda: That is his imagination.
Śyāmasundara: Well, they found bones...
Prabhupāda: Bones, that's all right. There are many... We also say from the Vedic śāstra there is fish, timiṅgila, which can swallow up big, big whales, you see. That is also very big. And there is Varāha incarnation, He picked up the whole earth on the tusk. How much big the Varāha animal was to show that it can pick up the whole earth, earthly planet just like a ball. He cannot imagine such big animals.
Śyāmasundara: But my point is they excavated down into the ground and they found that gradually, through the years, animals are evolving towards more and more complex forms, from very simple forms in the water to land animals, plants, and these big dinosaurs, then they died out.
Prabhupāda: If they died out, that means there is no more existence of that animal. But how can you say that the animal is existing somewhere else? Now, according to his statement that from a certain basic principle, by gradual evolution, the human body is coming. Now his theory is that the human body is coming from the monkey.
Śyāmasundara: They are related; they come from the same...
Prabhupāda: Related? Everything is related. That is another thing. But if the monkey's body is developing into human body...
Śyāmasundara: Yes. Apelike man.
Prabhupāda: Then after development of human body, why is the monkey species does not cease? Why not it does not cease?
Śyāmasundara: They are like branches of the same tree, he calls them.
Prabhupāda: Branches of the tree, just like we see now the monkey is existing and human being is also existing. Similarly, we say what he sees the beginning of life, at that time also there was human being.
Śyāmasundara: They find no evidence of them.
Prabhupāda: Why no evidence?
Śyāmasundara: In the ground. There's no evidence in the ground.
Prabhupāda: In the ground? That means that in the ground is the only evidence? There is no other evidence?
Karandhara: Scientists think that the only way to maintain integrity is not to accept anything until they can see it or understand it with their own senses and mind, by material evidence. That is their whole platform of empiric research, that nothing can be accepted until it's proven by their own sensuous experience.
Prabhupāda: But they cannot prove that there was no human being wherefrom they are starting their study. They cannot prove.
Śyāmasundara: It appears from the evidence that there are apelike men in certain layers of...
Prabhupāda: The apelike man or manlike ape is already existing. If you say development, just like from this, it has developed this, then there should be no existence of this. Kārya-kāraṇam. That's all. Now when I see still both are existing...
Śyāmasundara: The former doesn't exist any more.
Prabhupāda: No, no, no. If from monkey, man is coming, so then when monkey develops into man, the monkey should not exist. Kārya-kāraṇam, kārya-kāraṇam, cause and effect. When the effect is there, the cause is finished now.
Śyāmasundara: The monkey didn't cause the man; they came from the same common ancestor. That is their explanation. They had the same common ancestor.
Prabhupāda: That is, we say that all we come from God, the same ancestors, the same father. What is the difference?
Karandhara: Everyone has the same ancestor.
Prabhupāda: The same ancestor. What is the new thing?
Śyāmasundara: But if I am a Darwinist, your explanations are still not satisfactory to me. I'm not convinced because I see...
Prabhupāda: My explanation is that the original father is Kṛṣṇa. As Kṛṣṇa says in the Bhagavad-gītā, sarva-yoniṣu kaunteya: (BG 14.4) "As many forms are there, I am the bīja pradaḥ pitā, I am the seed-giving father." So what is your objection to this?
Śyāmasundara: Well, if I examine the layers of earth, I find no evidence in any of the layers below of any...
Prabhupāda: You are packed up with the layers of the earth, that's all. That is your boundary of knowledge. That is not knowledge. That is not knowledge. There are many other evidences.
Śyāmasundara: But certainly, if there were men living millions of years ago, they would have...
Prabhupāda: But man is still living. Man is still living.
Śyāmasundara: But they would have left evidence in the earth. They would have left evidence behind them, tangible evidence, that I could see the remains of their civilization.
Prabhupāda: So if I say that the human society, man after death is burned into ashes, so where does he get the bones?
Śyāmasundara: Well, that's possible, but I don't find...
Prabhupāda: According to our Vedic system, when a man is dead, he is burned into ashes. Why the rascal will get the bones?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: There are no bones.
Śyāmasundara: But there are no other... There's no cities, tools...
Prabhupāda: The animals, they are not burned. They remain. But human being, they burn into ashes. So he cannot find the human bones.
Karandhara: Another thing is that after a certain number of years, bones cease to be bones. They turn back into chemicals and merge into the earth.
Prabhupāda: Yes.
Śyāmasundara: But what about cities and tools, these things? There must be some evidence. In the lowest layer there are clam shells that have become fossilized. In the lower levels millions of years back they find clam shells.
Karandhara: They say it's been millions of years, but how do they prove it's been millions of years?
Śyāmasundara: Through radioactivity.
Karandhara: But that is an imperfect method, devised by imperfect senses.
Svarūpa Dāmodara: It is limited. It is limited. It is very hard to find about five thousand or six thousand years back.
Karandhara: They don't even agree amongst each other about what the age of things are.
Śyāmasundara: Just like if you go down a hundred feet below the soil, that soil has been down there a long time. But there is no evidences of men, actually civilized creatures.
Prabhupāda: Why he is trying to find out men's bones there? What is the...
Śyāmasundara: I'm just saying that it appears, because layer after layer is deposited in the earth's crust, that the animal forms are evolving toward more complex forms, from simple animals to bigger animals, and then more complex, then to the man, civilized man.
Prabhupāda: From where it began?
Śyāmasundara: It began with the simplest forms.
Prabhupāda: What is that simplest form?
Śyāmasundara: Small one-celled animals, then bivalves, then mollusks, then simple forms of aquatics.
Karandhara: So the one-celled animals must be God.
Śyāmasundara: That isn't what I'm talking about; I'm just saying that this evolution appears to exist, evolution of species, from simplest forms to more complex forms. That's Darwin's idea.
Prabhupāda: But the simplest form is still existing and the complex form is also existing at the present moment. Not that from the simplest form developed, developed, developed. Just like development means, just like I have developed my childhood body. The childhood body is no more there. But it is a fact I have developed from childhood body to this body. There are so many. So similarly, all the species are existing simultaneously, still.
Śyāmasundara: But they find no evidence in the earlier times that these complex forms existed.
Prabhupāda: No, no. Earlier times or modern times, when I see the all different species, 8,400,000 species of life still existing, so what is the question of development? It existed long ago also. You might not have seen, you have not source of knowledge to understand, but you have to accept it, because all these species are now existing. Similarly, millions of years ago all these species existed. You might have missed. That is a different thing.
Śyāmasundara: But then it is simply a matter of one opinion against another, because the scientists say...
Prabhupāda: No. It is not opinion, it is a fact. Do you think that this development has ceased all other species, simply human being is there?
Śyāmasundara: No. But I don't see evidence that all these complex forms...
Prabhupāda: I have said that one, this, by evolution, one after another, the human form is there. Now Darwin's theory is that some forty thousand years ago there was no human being.
Śyāmasundara: Several million years.
Prabhupāda: But we don't see that. Because at the present moment we see that all the species are there existing, including human beings.
Śyāmasundara: But he says they evolved. That's because they evolved.
Prabhupāda: Evolved, but they are still existing. Evolved, that is another thing. But all of them are existing still. So how you can say that millions of years they did not exist, all? His theory is that...
Śyāmasundara: Because there is not evidence that they exist.
Prabhupāda: Evidence, this is the evidence: if now all the species of life are existing, why not millions of years ago? What do you say?
Svarūpa Dāmodara: Yes. It was existing, but simply we did not know.
Prabhupāda: Yes. That is one-sided test.