Evolution Discussion

Thanks for all the comments on the last post, a few thoughts.

Sitapati Prabhu, you asked for a citation on "cycles of creation," what I had in mind there was the different manu's (progenitors of the universe) within a day of Brahma. In speaking with Drutakarma (Cremo) he mentioned this as a possibility, and one thing he noted was that the different epochs in geological history roughly correspond to the different Manu's within the day of Brahma.

Emma, In regards to the specific content of the book review, I honestly don't think it addressed any of the specific content of the book. The book is extremely well researched, not pseudo scientific drivel. Groves even says at the end of the review that the book would "make a useful deconstructionist exercise for an archaeology or palaeoanthropology class."

Two paragraphs of generalizations should not be enough to dissuade the honest researcher from considering the arguments in the book. A full rebuttal to the book would require a book of equal length, and it would have to prove exactly why every single one of the issues they raise throughout the book are wrong.

Neither of the reviewers objections are relevant to the table mountain case, you can check that out on Micheal Cremo's website.

Of course there are non-scientific claims or possibilities hinted at in the book, but these are not any different category from the non-scientific claims that materialists bring to the table. And they are not relevant to the research presented in the book.

Nitai, I actually thought the reference to "monkey people" in the Vedas was quite an interesting connection to draw bring into the evolution/human history debate.

Atmananda, I've heard of the book by Vine Deloria but haven't had a chance to look at it. Catastrophism would be a good way to describe the history of the universe provided in the Vedas.

My personal view on this subject is that it is a mystery which is impossible to unravel. As Darwin said we are like a dog trying to understand the mind of Newton.

From our three dimensional perspective we will never be able to know the totality of reality, and we will never be able to know that we don't know the totality of reality.

As the physicists David Bohm said “The possibility is always open that there may exist an unlimited variety of additional properties, qualities, entities, systems, levels, etc., to which apply correspondingly new kinds of laws of nature.”

We are chained in Plato's cave. We are in the matrix. We are at the mercy of the Descarte's evil demon.

And the view in the Vedas is that the world is specifically designed that way. The world is illusory and it is designed in such a way as to be misleading, or ambiguous, to allow souls to perceive the world how they choose.

One little thought on trying to reconcile geological history to the history of the Bhagavatam is that it seems to me very plausible that we can imagine that in previous yuga's other dimensions of reality intersected with the earth planet and that these dimensions are now closed, so it makes trying to sort out reality impossible. We are like the flatlanders looking at a sphere, all we can see is a circle.

One more thought is that the Bhagavatam contains descriptions of the relativity of time. Which is a very interesting fact in and of itself, but it becomes very interesting when we consider the implications in the creation of the universe. Brahma could create one species in one second, and another in another second and many thousands of years could have elapsed. He could take a break for lunch and millions of years on earth could've passed. Interesting thought huh?

Anyhow, in conclusion Forbidden Archeology does present very formidable evidence which does contradict the theory of that humans have only existed on the planet within recent geological history.

That being said, the archeological evidence does not really support the Vedic view. Where is the evidence of the last Kali yuga which should have only been four million years ago? Of course there some kind of partial devastation that resets things to a pristine state in the Satya yuga but we don't really see evidence of any of this.

Ultimately philosopher's, both in the East and the West, have rejected knowledge based on sense perception as valid method of understanding reality.

It is only philosophically naive who believe they can actually know what reality is.

That is something religious fundamentalists and fundamentalist atheists share in common.