Prabhupada: Our first proposition is that he says that there was no human beings some millions of years ago. That’s not a fact. Because we see all different species of life existing along with human beings. Therefore it should be concluded this is always existing. Human life is always existing. That is our first charge against him. He cannot say there was no human life.

Syamasundara: But we don’t see any dinosaurs existing.

Prabhupada: You do not see — your power is very limited — but we have to conclude in this way, when we see at the present moment all the different species of life are existing. Therefore it is existing always.

Syamasundara: But I don’t see all the

Prabhupada: You don’t see because you have no power to see. Your senses are very limited. You don’t see. And because you don’t see, it is not to be accepted. So many people say, “I don’t see God.” That does not mean we shall accept, “Oh, so many people say — majority of people will say like that — ‘We don’t see God.’ ” Then we are merely crazy fellow, we are after God?

Syamasundara: No. But dinosaurs

Prabhupada: But simply by dinosaur missing you cannot say that what about other all species of life, other.

Syamasundara: Many, many, many, many are extinct, according toi

Prabhupada: I am accepting many are extinct, but the evolutionary process, it means one extinct, and another comes. But we see that the monkey, from monkey, man comes. The monkey is there and man is there. The monkey is not finished.

Syamasundara: Oh, I remember last time when we discussed this, you said, “Well, then, why don’t we see men coming out of monkeys still?”

Prabhupada: Yes.

Syamasundara: “Why hasn’t some man been born out of a monkey?”

Prabhupada: Yes.

Syamasundara: “In our experience”

Prabhupada: The monkey is existing, the man is existing.

Syamasundara: “So if men came from monkeys, why don’t we see it still happening?” That’s what you said.

Prabhupada: Yes. That is our argument.

Syamasundara: So if you accept that there is an evolution, do you accept that the bodies change because of changing conditions of the natural surroundings?

Prabhupada: Body is not changing. The body is already there. The soul is changing bodies, transmigrating from one body to another.

Karandhara: Darwin doesn’t accept that there is a fixed number of species. Rather, the number of species may vary at any time, simply according to the natural selection. But he doesn’t give any axiom that there are a certain number of species from which all other variations come. We are saying that there are 8,400,000 species to begin with.

Prabhupada: But if first of all you give account for eight million species — you have no account. We say these are the fixed-up species. But your calculation of species, first of all give us account for eight millions, then you say, “The list is not complete.”

Syamasundara: Their idea is that there’s constant

Prabhupada: Whatever it may be, within that eight millions, but you cannot give us list.

Syamasundara: They say that there is new species always evolving.

Prabhupada: That is not new. That is within the eight millions. You could not find the same thing, you could not find, before that; now we are finding. Your species, you could (not) give us a complete list. What is the evolutionary process wherefrom it began and how it’s coming? You cannot give any fixed-up list. That is your imperfect knowledge. You are simply imagining. “It may be changed,” “It may be chance,” or this or that. That’s all.

Conversations with Shyamasundara das on Charles Darwin