It’s Vedic “devolution” versus Darwin’s evolution

Story on man who challenges Darwin
CHANDRIMA S. BHATTACHARYA

Darwin’s theory of the evolution of man
It’s Vedic “devolution” versus Darwin’s evolution.

A man of God is in town to challenge Darwin. Researcher Michael A. Cremo, like many of Darwin’s critics, doesn’t believe that man descended from monkeys. But unlike most of them, he turns Darwinian theory on its head, using the Vedas, believe him or not. “We haven’t evolved from monkeys. We have devolved from pure consciousness,” he says.

Mind came first, he says. And God, or consciousness, even before that. Matter last. Human beings are a combination of the three, says Cremo. But Darwinian theory puts everything down to chance, explains mind as a chemical activity of the brain and advocates the dreary notion of natural selection. The fittest survives. Cremo is strongly opposed to such a “reductionist” worldview.

The idea, he says, is also to stress that there is room for alternatives to Darwinian theory, which enjoys pride of place in the scientific community.

In town to launch his book Human Devolution, the 58-year-old archaeologist and the disciple of Iskcon founder Bhaktivedanta Swamy, says there are two sets of evidence on which he bases his argument. His evidence, though, may not be regarded as strictly scientific.

Archaeological evidence, he claims, suggests that human beings were spotted on the earth much before Darwinian theory concedes. Miners working on Table Mountain in Tuolumne County found deposits of early Eocene Age, about 50 million years old, which predates Darwin’s original human.

Cremo, who has an honorary doctoral degree from a European university, also claims that Darwin and his followers fall short of explaining the process of evolution. “Let’s grant the existence of the first tiny organism. Darwinians say that it will get a more developed eye through mutation in its DNA. But the theory has not been demonstrated conclusively,” he says.

But there is strong evidence, he claims, that man has descended from pure consciousness or spirit. It lies, he says, in different kinds and functions of consciousness. Mind can influence matter. In an experiment with number generators, he claims, the mind can effect the selection of certain numbers.

Mind can be independent of matter, he says, and cites several experiments, like memories of past life, or “Out of Body Experiences”, when patients, regarded to be dead for some time but brought back to life, “remember” having watched their bodies from above.

In Cremo’s scheme of things, nothing is arbitrary; everything is part of a subsuming consciousness, something big.

But he admits that many may not agree with him. The reader has to take a leap of faith in order to appreciate his science. But while Darwin scares, saying it is aggression and chance that rule life, a view such as Cremo’s comforts, assuring that someone is watching over you.