Devotee (1): Yesterday, Svarūpa Dāmodara—we were speaking about the scientists—he said that they don't accept our proof that God exists as being any more conclusive than their proof that He doesn't exist.
Prabhupāda: Hmm?
Devotee (1): In other words, they don't accept that we have any proof that God exists. They say God doesn't exist.
Prabhupāda: God exists, we have given so many proofs. If the rascal cannot understand, what can be done? There is mother, there is children; where is the father? This is our argument. Mother, the earth is mother, and everything, these trees, we are all coming out of mother, mother nature. And who is the father? What is the answer? Now, what the atheist will say that there is no God? How they will say?
Rāmeśvara: They say the earth is the mother and the father.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Rāmeśvara: They say the earth is the mother and the father.
Prabhupāda: No. That is another nonsense. Because you cannot see, practically, the mother and father is the same person. That is not..., father is different.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: Why doesn't life come from the concrete then?
Prabhupāda: No, apart from that, mother and father cannot be one, they must be two. Our practical experience. So how can I accept a rascal like you that father and mother the same?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: But we see that Lord Brahmā is born from the same father and mother.
Prabhupāda: Huh?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Lord Brahmā, he has no mother.
Prabhupāda: But he has a father, and the mother is that lotus flower.
Rāmeśvara: Material energy.
Devotees: Oh.
Rādhāvallabha: There's a classification of animals called autotroph(?). An autotroph is...
Prabhupāda: First of all, you study your animal, whether your father and mother is the same. Then go to other animals. First of all your animal, you study first.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: They can say though that the material nature is mother and father in this way, that both the mother and father are products of the material energy.
Rāmeśvara: They want this impersonalism. They don't like the philosophy of personalism.
Prabhupāda: Whole thing is personalism. You are talking because you are a person. You are talking all nonsense because you are person. Neither the air is talking, neither sky is talking. Because you are a person you are talking so many nonsense things.
Devotee (1): But then they'll say that after death that person doesn't exist any longer. That personality ceases to...
Prabhupāda: Talk of the present, when you are existing.
Devotee (1): Yes. Their mentality forces them to believe only what they see.
Prabhupāda: You see there is father and mother. Why don't you believe that there must be a father and mother for the whole cosmic? You see everywhere there is father and mother.
Devotee (1): But they don't accept that as God's arrangement.
Prabhupāda: That means a crazy fellow. They manufacture their own idea. There is no reason.
Rāmeśvara: They say within the father and mother is the cosmic energy of life.
Prabhupāda: Whatever it may be, we find the father and mother for begetting children. So as there are so many children... And that is confirmed in the Bhagavad-gītā, sarva-yoniṣu kaunteya (BG 14.4). They are all children, but their mother is the earth. There must be father.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: They say father and mother is material. This is father and mother. They may agree, we have a human father, mother.
Prabhupāda: The principle. The principle. You have to see the principle. That is philosophy.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: They don't agree that God is the seed-giving father, though. They will say "How can you jump to the conclusion that God is the seed-giving father of everything?"
Prabhupāda: God says. Not only says, we don't see any production without seed-giving father.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: But we don't see God. We see the tree is giving seeds.
Prabhupāda: But you don't see your father; does that mean there was no father? Suppose before your birth your father died, does it mean you have no father?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: My mother has seen him.
Prabhupāda: Yes, that's all right. You ask the mother, and she will inform you. The mother is Vedic knowledge.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Well, we accept that everything has a father and mother, but the creation was always there. That has no father and mother.
Prabhupāda: That is your nonsense, without father and mother, aham ādir hi devānām (Bg 10.2). Before creation, the child was created, the father was there.
Rāmeśvara: They say that matter can neither be destroyed nor created. It exists eternally. But there is no need for a creator.
Prabhupāda: Why your body does not exist?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: It does exist, but in a different form.
Prabhupāda: No, at least this body does not exist. This body was not in existence, it was created, and at the present you see, and in the past this body will not remain there.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: But the energy will be there.
Prabhupāda: That is another thing.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: That energy is eternal.
Prabhupāda: That is there.
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: And there's nothing else besides this energy.
Prabhupāda: Yes, but whose energy?
Tamāla Kṛṣṇa: Why does it have to be any whose? It just is there.
Hari-śauri: Just energy by itself needs direction.
Prabhupāda: Don't waste time. You stop this. If you imitate a madman, then you become mad. (laughter) Don't try to talk on behalf of these madmen.
Puṣṭa Kṛṣṇa: The principle is there, though, that there must be a father and a mother.
Prabhupāda: That's it.