niranjan

The famous scientist , J B S Haldane, who gave up his British citizenship and became an Indian and settled in Calcutta, observed that the Dasavataras are a true sequential depiction of the great unfolding of evolution.

If you analyse the avatars of Vishnu , you can observe an uncanny similarity to the biological theory of evolution of life on earth.

The first avatar of Vishnu is Matsya or fish.( According to science, life originated in water).

The second avatar of Vishnu is Kurma or tortoise.( the evolution of the fish to the amphibean tortoise)

The third avatar of Vishnu is Varaha or the boar. ( the evolution of the amphibean to the strictly land animal).

The fourth avatar of Vishnu is Narasimha or the man-lion. ( the evolution of the land animal to a humanoid form with animalistic charecterestics ).

The fifth avatar of Vishnu is Varaha or dwarf ( the evolution of the animal-man to purely human in dwarf form).

The sixth avatar of Vishnu is Parashurama ( the evolution of the dwarf to a physically well-developed and ferocious warrior).


The seventh avatar of Vishnu is Rama ( the evolution of the ferocious warrior to Rama, who is considered as the ideal man or the maryada purushottama and the embodiment of morality , ethics and righteousness).

The eighth avatar of Vishnu is Krishna ( the evolution of Rama , the ideal man to Krishna who is considered as the ideal yogi, the superman who is known for his manysidedness and allrounded character , as I mentioned in the thread 'Krishna : Zorba the Buddha'. in the Hinduism forum)

The animal evolution and development connotations bear striking resemblances to the modern scientific theory of Evolution.

Og

So does the process of creation in genesis 1 It's all ordered and makes sense.

Hindu connection to reality is not just limited to this either. The chakras are a wonderful expression of the human psyche. Carl Jung and Joesph Campbell go on and on about the way that indians have such a close understanding of the human mind.

Their path definitely has value.

If you're implying that vishnu actually exists or that indians somehow had figured out evolution without genetics or an understanding of the existence of microbial life I don't know what to say.

It's neat that there seem to be parallels. Doesn't mean correlation though

The myths are illuminating when taken as poetry... Not when taken as a newspaper report.

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Answer this asks the Sphinx:

What crawls on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, and three legs at night?

That riddle is more of the language of every God. Simple reality!

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niranjan

Relax Og, I am not that gullible.

I think perhaps a yogi or a scholar who must have accessed the superconscious mind or was in a state of peak intuition, could have written down about these avatars of Vishnu.

With regard to Vishnus existence, I must say I am an agnostic in this matter.

Logically, as far as I am concerned, he cannot exist. But at the same time due to the fact that I have seen, read and heard a lot of strange things here in India, I cannnot totally reject the possibility that he exists.

Anyway I really don't care whether he exists or not. His existence , or lack of it , is not going to diminish me in any way.


However I have always been fascinated by the theory of evolution and the striking resemblance of the sequential depiction of the avatars of Vishnus to the theory of evolution. Hence this is the reason why I put this post in this forum.

I hope this post will be handy material to evolutionists , who can now say that evolution is presented symbolically in religious scriptures as well, and hence is not totally alien to religion.

niranjan

The fifth avatar of Vishnu is Vamana, not Varaha.

Apologize for the mistake.

kt errant

Atheism – The Richard Dawkins Delusion

An atheist is someone who rejects a belief in God or gods. This seems to me, in the light of what we now know, to be an illogical stance. To deny the existence of a creating force is as questionable as to believe in one, without evidence to support that belief, but old dogma requires this. The new dogma of the non believer is as unhelpful to the discussion as the blind adherence to ancient texts of the fundamentalist Christian who believes in the literal truth of every word of the bible. It is clear that there are unanswered questions in both camps for people with any sort of an open mind and the fact that there are these separate camps with battle lines drawn between them is a very sad reflection on our modern society. This is particularly the case because there is still a willingness to resort to violence, or the threat of violence, to support an argument or position when this position is in fact a hypothesis.
In other words we are ever more willing to resort to force in what should be a logical debate which should take into account our present state of knowledge about our world and origins. When physical evidence of evolution started to appear the suggestion was made that fossils were placed in rocks by God to test our faith and belief in the words of the bible. This is an idea that any reasonable man or woman would have to weigh up for themselves. But equally there are some very strange aspects of the known development of our species which defy rational explanation with our present state of knowledge; how and why did our line of homo sapiens appear as a distinct and uniquely ‘successful’ group so quickly. There are clearly aspects of our past that defy adequate explanation and now we have new evidence, which has come to light as a result of the publication of an e-book on the Internet, and raises new questions for atheist and believer alike. The book is called ‘The Great Design’ by Harry Verness and the evidence certainly greatly surprised me and others who have read it… so it is worth a look if your mind is not made up.

lauraclay

Or maybe, a scholar who studied biology developed the idea. I'd be interested to see exactly where it came from.

niranjan

Well, the concept of Dasavataras are centuries old, and was conceived much before Darwin developed and expounded his theory of evolution.

However it was a scholar who studied biology , JBS Haldane, and who was a famous scientist himself, who first observed the sequential depiction of evolution in the dasavatars.

JBS Haldane gave up his British citizenship , in protest against the British imperialist attitude and policies towards Egypt , and became an Indian.

lauraclay

If Darwin didn't invent evolution, if he in fact just discovered it, why should he be the only one allowed to notice it? Maybe he was the first to notice it at the level he did, but why can't other cultures notice? And if their way of documenting it was to integrate it into their religion, the ultime truth, wouldn't that be just what they did?

hindweb

I feel the Vanar sena or Monkey army in Ramayana must be one particular phase of evolution. If you look at Darwins theory, it does make sense.

Here you can learn about Vishnu avatars.

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