Room Conversation – July 5, 1976, Washington, D.C.

Whether they will accept it or not, that is the question

[Prabhupada is being massaged]

Prabhupada: First try to point out as many as you can. And our view is they are wholesale mistaken. They are imperfect, speculating.

Svarūpa Damodara: There's one strange point here about calculating this that dawn of Brahma about two billion years old. Now strangely, these geological calculations, they also claim that at that time the first free oxygen in the air appeared, for first time. The beginning there was no free oxygen.

Prabhupada: That we cannot accept.

Svarūpa Damodara: We can accept that? [laughter] Now from here... Anyway, this is the basic point, that once this oxygen appeared, free oxygen, then the living entities began to appear slowly. That is the whole theory of this chemical evolution. The results for the chronology is just put it that Brahma's..., dawn of Brahma is two billion years old?

Prabhupada: You can carefully read the Second Canto, Bhagavatam, Third Canto. You'll get all the knowledge, how things develop. It is question of development. So maybe there was something missing, but after development it is manifested there. That is possible.

Rūpanuga: In the day of..., one day of Brahma, there are fourteen Manus. And in the course of creation..., re-creation of the same species from the previous day-they are re-creating the same species-it takes..., there's some time, maybe one Manu, there's some species that are finished, but the next Manu...

Prabhupada: That doesn't mean time. What is the wrong?

Rūpanuga: No, no, I'm saying this is what really happened, right? So we were thinking that we could show one day, this is one day, one day of Brahma...

Prabhupada: No, you do not think what is actually there, you can say. You do not be a speculator.

Rūpanuga: No, no, but from the Bhagavatam we have taken it, and broken down the day of Brahma.

Prabhupada: Now whether they will accept it or not, that is the question.

Svarūpa Damodara: We don't worry about whether they accept it or not.

Prabhupada: That is. But we have taken that they are talking all nonsense. And whatever we present, they'll take it as mythology.

Rūpanuga: But like Madhava prabhu pointed out, we have to make some explanation. We should explain, because they...

Prabhupada: That you do, but the position is like this. Our conclusion is that whatever they are saying, that is imperfect. That is not possible. And that is a fact. Therefore they change. After fifty years, they change, because it's speculation. Therefore we say totally they are wrong, and they will take totally, "From mythology," like that. This is going on.

Svarūpa Damodara: Now one aspect in that, now in Christian group also, some are trying to preach that these things are created by God, but they have a problem there.

Prabhupada: That's a fact. Everything is created by God. It is being done by one, that Supreme. We are simply studying how it is acting. Otherwise everything is being done by Him. Mayadhyaksena prakrtiḥ sūyate sa-caracaram [Bg 9.10]. That is a fact. How He is working so nicely, that is the subject matter of our study, or something is explained in the sastra or something has been studied by these material scientists. But the things are being done by the supreme arrangement of manager. That is a fact.

Svarūpa Damodara: The difficulty in this Christian aspect is that they claim that it was created about five thousand years ago. That is the reason why we want to bring up this...

Prabhupada: That is nonsense. [laughter]

Rūpanuga: These Creationists preach that?

Svarūpa Damodara: Yes, Creationists.

Rūpanuga: Gish[?] preaches that? Five thousand years ago, literally?

Svarūpa Damodara: Approximately.

Rūpanuga: Do we want to make this comparison, Srila Prabhupada, or not?

Prabhupada: Why you are going to fight with them?

Rūpanuga: No, no. We don't fight. We're just saying that they are using all the good arguments already, but they are making that one mistake.

Svarūpa Damodara: Fundamental mistake, there. So if we bring up this, scientists are going to believe here, more likely to believe, because this is right in the time range that they are talking about.

Prabhupada: That's also wrong. As soon as there is five thousand years, there is chaos. The Christians, they used to say that the world is flat. So what is the value of their words? There is no value. You do not try to compromise with others.

Svarūpa Damodara: No, we are not compromising with anybody.

Prabhupada: You present your own as it is Bhagavatam; try to explain them to your best capacity scientifically. If you bring this, bring that... All of them are imperfect. So what is the use of wasting time in something which is imperfect?

Svarūpa Damodara: But we want to demonstrate that those points are imperfect.

Prabhupada: Huh?

Svarūpa Damodara: We want to demonstrate, though, that those points are imperfect.

Prabhupada: That you can do. That you can do. But you must know they are all imperfect. Five thousand years! We can give history of millions and millions of years. And what was before five thousand years, there was no, nothing? What is their belief?

Svarūpa Damodara: Five thousand years ago-what do they say, the Christians?

Sadapūta: They don't say too much.

Svarūpa Damodara: Want to make any more points along that line?

Rūpanuga: One thing is, just like here, Srila Prabhupada, these are our Manus, the real situation, right? And their time scale begins back here, Cambrian Age. Back here in Vaivasvata Manu's age, according to Veda. So we were showing..., we made the actual time scale, and showed how their time scale only went back one or two Manus. [aside:] Is that right? How many Manus? Two.

Prabhupada: One Manu's age is 72 into 432,000 years. So they are calculating five thousand years.What is this nonsense?

Rūpanuga: No, the Christians calculate, but the others, they go back more than that time. The scientists... These Christians are not accepted so much as... They're not included in scientific knowledge; they are considered something else.

Prabhupada: My point is that the Christian theory is also imperfect and the scientists also imperfect.

Rūpanuga: Right. We can show both.

Prabhupada: If you can show that, that is all right.

Rūpanuga: That is why we made this chart...

Prabhupada: That is all right.

Rūpanuga: ...to show...

Prabhupada: Show them imperfect. That will be... [break] Actually they're imperfect. Just like they say five thousand years, a ludicrous. They... And the scientists say that the stratum of earth, what is called?

Svarūpa Damodara: Strata, layers.

Prabhupada: Layers. And I was studying while coming that stratus, the layers, so perfect that everywhere, say five inches, just like it appears somebody has laid down. Is it not?

Rūpanuga: Yes. Layer upon layer.

Prabhupada: Yes, one after another, the same height, same color, the same ingredient-how it comes to happen? And they give history of millions of years? And how these people say five thousand?

Sadapūta: We wondered about those strata. We were wondering if maybe those could be masses of sediment deposited...

Prabhupada: Whatever it may be, the size, height, of the strata is the same for miles together. As if somebody very intelligently laid down.

Svarūpa Damodara: So how do we explain that?

Prabhupada: That I want. [laughter]

Sadapūta: [indistinct]

Prabhupada: So how they can say five thousand years? Things are going on for millions and millions of years.

Sadapūta: The geologists say that in different points of the strata..., like they give different names for the strata, and in one strata they say that there is one type of animal remains to be found, and in another strata they say you can find the remains of a different kind of animal. So they say this shows evolution.

Prabhupada: Anyway, it takes millions of years. So how they say five thousand years?

Sadapūta: Well, no one really believes the Christians.

Rūpanuga: They are laughed at, actually. The scientists, how far do they say? Five hundred million?

Sadapūta: The scientists say it goes back six hundred million years.

Prabhupada: That is also imperfect. If we study Brahma's day, it will be all... Brahma's day is, one day equal to forty-three hundred thousands of years multiplied by thousand. That is Brahma's one day. So thirty days, one month; and twelve months equal to year, such hundred years. Your mathematics will fail to figure out. Is it not? [laughter]

Rūpanuga: [indistinct aside comment about slide] There is a slide of this, but we did not show you. The idea is that this is the beginning of Brahma's day up to present, Vaivasvata Manu. This is the beginning of time according to them. They can't explain anything up to here. They say here, in the middle of the day of Raivata Manu, they begin their Cambrian Age.

Prabhupada: No, why Raivata Manu? They are imperfect.

Svarūpa Damodara: Here is Vaivasvata Manu.

Rūpanuga: [indistinct] We're here, and this is the previous Manu, and before him the other Manu, and it's back here that they say their geological records begin.

Prabhupada: Whatever they say, whatever we say, which one is correct? Who will say?

Rūpanuga: We will say. We are correct.

Prabhupada: You'll say; they will say "I am correct."

Rūpanuga: Then the reader must decide.

Svarūpa Damodara: We will say that they are wrong, and we want to find out the reason for that.

Prabhupada: Then it is all right.

Svarūpa Damodara: From here to here is the chemical evolution. There's a long gap.

Sadapūta: I was wondering, to explain, perhaps these periods that they have here correspond with some of these floods, like this is between two Manus and there is a flood of the whole world, and that might pile up a huge layer of mud and rock. And I was thinking that might correspond with some of these layers here, because they are filled with remains of fish that look as though they were buried, things like that.

Prabhupada: That is also imagination. Again you are bringing imagination, speculation.

Svarūpa Damodara: So actually it's very subtle and critical.

Prabhupada: As soon as you bring your imaginations, they'll bring their own imagination. "Perhaps," "It may be," they say.

Rūpanuga: Our imagination is as good as your imagination.

Prabhupada: We have to take the Vedic injunction axiomatic.

Svarūpa Damodara: So how do we, Srila Prabhupada... we're talking about all these things, this time, and we just give our time scale from Brahma, that's perfectly..., that is on Srimad-Bhagavatam.

Rūpanuga: We know from Bhagavatam, it tells what creations went on during these periods. We can show the real creation of the universe, not that we care about their ideas. But these different Manus, there were different species created. Like Daksa recreated a time. From one Manu to the next the species were recreated again by him, we can show that in this chart.

Svarūpa Damodara: But one problem that we're going to encounter in colleges, though, this will come up, they will bring up this thing. So...

Rūpanuga: We just say your time starts only not long enough ago, and ours goes back to the beginning of the day. We can criticize them that theirs does not go back far enough. What else can we say?

Svarūpa Damodara: We will fight.

Hari-sauri: You made a good point yesterday, when you were seeing the slideshow, that how can they possibly calculate a time like two million years or two billion years when they only live fifty or sixty years themselves? How can they possibly come up with a calculation like that?

Rūpanuga: To verify, scientific, they cannot measure it. But our information comes from persons who were living at those times. They lived, historical persons. We don't need some modern man who lives fifty years to tell us what happened fifty million years ago. We know someone who was there. That is our advantage.

Devotee: Jaya, thank you, Srila Prabhupada.

Prabhupada: Hare Krsna [devotees offer obeisances] [end]