Vedanta And Evolution - Vedanta Kesari - Jan 2009

Vedanta and the Theory of Evolution CHETHAN BELLUDI

Prelude Let us recall the famous Indian fable— ‘Six blind men and an elephant.’ There were six blind men who wanted to know what an elephant was. They were hence taken to an elephant and given an opportunity to feel it for themselves. Each one touched the elephant to know how it was. When they were asked to describe how an elephant looked, each one described it differently depending on the part he touched and felt. There were arguments among the six men as to who was correct. They were told that everyone was ‘partially’ right because they had touched only ‘a part’ of the elephant and that putting them all together will give the real picture. Creation versus Evolution The 19th century witnessed some of the greatest scientific discoveries and technological advances. While discoveries in the fields of physics and chemistry were readily accepted and appreciated, advances in the field of biology were condemned. The single most important reason was it confronted religious dogmas. Scientists like Nicolaus Copernicus and Galileo Galilei were ridiculed and punished for challenging the geocentric descriptions (that the earth was the centre of the universe and the sun and other celestial bodies revolved around it) found in the Biblical works. Therefore, in 1859, when Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species by means of Natural Selection, religious fanatics turned red-hot.

Darwin’s theory of evolution refuted the Biblical belief of God’s creation of life on Earth and human beings in six days and that occurred 10,000 years ago. For Darwin’s theory of evolution to be true it was essential to prove three things. One, the earth was much older than 10,000 years to have allowed sufficient time for evolution; two, the complex species that exist today had descended from one or a few simpler and common ancestors; and three, the driving force for species to evolve. Even if one of them were disproved, his theory would simply collapse. The creationists attacked these assumptions time and again but the judgement has been going in favour of evolutionists at most times. Darwin’s speculation that the earth is older in the order of millions of years is strongly supported by the radiometric dating by the geologists. They estimate that the earth is at least 3.56 billion years old! Darwin was right in his first assumption. The assumption of common ancestors is now supported by fossil records. Radiometric dating of the fossils reveals that the simpler fossils were older than the more complex fossils. This supports the origin of more complex organisms from simpler ancestors. ‘Natural Selection’—one of the most breathtaking ideas ever—provided the answer for the driving force in nature that causes the species to evolve. Just as a farmer selects those crops with better yield over low yielders for further cultivation, Darwin proposed that

Dr. Chetan Belludi from Davangere in Karnataka is an alumnus of Sri Ramakrishna Vidyashala (Mysore), pursuing higher studies in medicine. … T h e

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nature selects individuals with favourable traits to pass them on to their next generation. For example, among the deer’s it is more likely for a deer with faster legs to survive the attack of predators than a normal deer. This is how nature selects the faster deer. There are innumerable such examples. Theory of Evolution—Its Ascent and Descent While the physical evidences were going in favour of evolution and against the western religious beliefs, the first serious threat to Darwinism came not from fundamental Christians but from scientists themselves. Their argument was, of course the faster deer was more likely to survive but when it has to mate, it is more likely to mate with a normal deer and so the offspring would be a blend of the two characteristics—a half-faster deer! The argument focussed on successive-dilution of the variations bringing the equation back to where it started! The blend of characteristics into a ‘halffaster’ progeny was merely a hypothesis. None of the scientists who argued on successive dilution of variations really tested it seriously because it ‘sounded’ logical. In 1865, when an Austrian monk called Gregor Johann Mendel presented a paper ‘Experiments on Plant Hybridization,’ where he confronted the belief of the ‘blend of characteristics’ but nobody paid enough attention to it. Darwin passed away in 1882 and Mendel died two years later. Thus, by the end of the 19th century, the ‘Theory of Evolution’ was written a scientific obituary! In 1900, two scientists—Hugo de Vries and Carl Correns—understood the ‘Experiments on Plant Hybridization’ like neverbefore and the theory was given a successful Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation (CPR), so to say! All of a sudden it sprung back to life and became popularly known as ‘Mendel’s Laws T h e

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of Inheritance.’ With the ‘Laws of Inheritance’ accounting for the passage of the variations down the generations, Darwinism came back to the scientific front with a vengeance! Mendel’s Laws of Inheritance provided tremendous insight into one’s ‘Vehicles of Heredity’ or ‘Genes.’ Many interesting facts were discovered—chromosomes, genes, Deoxyribose Nucleic Acid (DNA) and its ‘twisted -ladder’ structure and the molecular techniques of comparing the DNA of different samples like Nucleic Acid Hybridisation, etc. These technological advances were at once used to test Darwin’s hypothesis. The more it was explored the louder was the judgement in favour of Evolution! Here are some important findings. All living creatures use the same set of 20 amino acids to build their proteins. The DNA code for these amino acids is the same in all of them. For example ‘UUU’ codes for the amino acid Phenyl alanine, in bacteria, in fungi, in plants, in crustaceans, in fish, in mammals and be-it-any species! This clearly demonstrates that the blueprint for all living creatures was derived from one or few common ancestors. It doesn’t stop there. Analysis of DNA samples from different species shows direct relationship between the extent of resemblance and the proximity of their relationship in the ladder of evolution. For example human DNA is 96% similar to that of the chimpanzees, 75% similar to that of the dogs and 33% similar to that of the daffodils! This clearly shows that we are more closely related to chimpanzees than dogs or daffodils. Darwin was more than right again! The Continuing Stalemate Through most of the 20th century Darwinism grew exponentially. The sad part about it is it inculcated ‘materialism’ into one’s thinking and seemed to support atheism. There

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were revolts and judicial proceedings on whether Darwin’s theory of evolution should be taught in high school biology. The intention was not to disprove evolution but to prevent the growing atheism. Judgements seemed to fluctuate between the two ends and the topic remained a mystery for decades until the next big threat to Darwinism came with the proposal of the ‘Theory of Intelligent Design’ by Philip E. Johnson. This theory wasn’t totally different from the biblical description of creation according to Genesis. It just scientifically altered the theory to sound more logical. It brought in an ‘Intelligent Designer’ who crafted the life deftly and intentionally and opposed the crude undirected ‘Natural Selection’ as the driving force for evolution. Also evolution could not account for the development of ‘Intelligence’ and ‘Awareness,’ which could be explained by the ‘Intelligent Design.’ Evolutionists are working on the challenges of propellers of ‘Intelligent Design’ and are successful to some extent but by and large, the tug-of-war between Evolutionists and Creationists has been 50-50 with no clear outcome as of now. Obviously, all this is quite mind boggling. Moreover, how does India’s religious tradition respond to the theory of evolution? Well, the best and one of the most convincing answer to it was provided by a great Indian scientist way back in 19th century itself. 19th January 1896, New York A 33 year old Indian scientist was addressing an American gathering. Mind you, this was a pre-genetic era when Darwinism and the theory of evolution were still shaky. But the scientist had the answer. The lecture opened with some of the basic questions that have crossed almost all mind. ‘Whence is this?’ he asked and continued, T h e

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Millions of attempts have been made to answer it, yet millions of times it will have to be answered again. It is not that each answer was a failure; every answer to this question contained a part of truth, and this truth gathers strength as time rolls on. I will try to present before you the outline of the answer that I have gathered from the ancient philosophers of India, in harmony with modern knowledge.

He began with some of the subtle observations in the Nature. He observed that some things in Nature though seemingly different were actually a part of the spectrum of a big thing. For example, a seed and a tree. Though seemingly different, they are a part of the bigger spectrum of the plant life, each one leading to the other. The seed is a finer form of the plant and over a period of time it develops into a grosser form, i.e., a tree. The tree in turn dies out leaving behind a finer form, the seed. Same is the case with a chicken and an egg. They aren’t two different things to argue which one came first. They are one and the same. Man and his germ cells are no exception to this phenomenon. He explained: So is the case with everything in nature by which we are surrounded. We know that the huge mountains are being worked upon by glaciers and rivers, which slowly but surely pounding them and pulverising them into sand, that drift away into the ocean where it settles down on its bed, layer after layer, becoming hard as rocks, once more to be heaped up into mountains of a future generation. From sand rise these mountains, unto sand they go.

The Myth Debunked With these analogies, he derived the equation, ‘Destruction means going back to the cause.’ And ‘Therefore we learn that the effect is the same as the cause, not different. It is only in another form.’ Next he applied this to the universe taken as a whole.

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This universe must be resolved into its causes; the sun, moon, stars, and earth, the body and mind, and everything in this universe must return to their finer causes, disappear, be destroyed as it were. But they will live in the causes as fine forms. Out of these fine forms they will emerge again as new earths, suns, moons and stars.

The whole of this universe was present in the cosmic fine universe. The little cell which becomes afterwards the man, was simply the involved man and becomes evolved as a man. If this is clear, we have no quarrel with the evolutionists, for we see that if they admit this step, instead of their destroying religion, they will be the greatest supporters of it!

With this new understanding, the creationists and evolutionists seemed like those blind men trying to understand a huge elephant called universe. Both of them were right in their own way. They were only ‘partially’ right. Each dealt with only a part of evolution akin to the blind men describing the elephant. They seemed like the components of a jig-saw puzzle—though the individual components seemed to complement, they lacked totality. When the components are properly arranged, they merge into one another, revealing a bigger picture of which they are only a part! The bigger picture was nothing but the finer cosmic energy getting evolved firstly into the earth, sun, moon, etc., and secondly, into the living cell, the organisms which later Darwin explained how they developed into Man. The whole thing was one big process. As if man developed from his first cell, the zygote, growing into the blastula, which later on develops into foetus, then comes out of the womb as a baby, grows up into an infant, a child and then finally into an adult. If you observe carefully, Man didn’t just ‘evolve’ from the zygote; he was ‘involved’ in it! The young scientist put this concept into words,

Let us close this discussion with another quote of this scientist,

No rational man can possibly quarrel with these evolutionists. But we have to learn one thing more. We have to go one step further, and what is that? That every evolution is preceded by an involution.

He also appealed for peace from the evolutionists, T h e

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If that is so, take this whole evolutionary series, from the protoplasm at one end to the perfect man at the other, and this whole series is one life. In the end we find the perfect man, so in the beginning it must have been the same. Therefore, the protoplasm was the involution of the highest intelligence. You may not see it, but that involved intelligence is what is uncoiling itself until it becomes manifested in the most perfect man. It, therefore, follows absolutely that the perfect man, the free man, the God-man, who has gone beyond the laws of nature, and transcended everything, who has no more to go through this process of evolution, through birth and death, that man called the ‘Christ-man’ by the Christians, the ‘Buddha-man’ by the Buddhists, and the ‘Free’ by the Yogis—that perfect man who is at one end of the chain of evolution was involved in the cell of the protoplasm, which is at the other end of the same chain.

That is quite a breath-taking statement— providing such a conciliatory solution to this knotty issue. And surely the readers must have guessed the name of the scientist—of course, it is Swami Vivekananda. The lecture referred to in the above discussion is in his Complete Works (2: 207-209). Indeed it is Swamiji’s genius to harmonise, but to limit his greatness through just one lecture is another case of a blind man trying to explain ‘the elephant’! No matter what the ‘elephant’ looks like, one thing is sure, it’s gigantic. †

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