WEBVTT 00:07.980 --> 00:13.420 Thanks very much indeed for coming along tonight and I hope you'll be challenged by 00:13.420 --> 00:14.340 what I have to bring. 00:15.180 --> 00:20.080 I would like to start by a word of personal testimony in a sense because when 00:20.080 --> 00:25.060 I was an undergraduate, which is some while ago, and I was studying ancient 00:25.060 --> 00:28.080 history and classical studies, that's what I end up qualifying in 00:28.080 --> 00:30.180 teaching and researching in. 00:31.120 --> 00:35.240 And when I was going through the classical philosophers, Greek philosophers, 00:35.400 --> 00:41.220 I kept coming across references which caught my attention, which seemed to be 00:41.220 --> 00:45.500 earlier understandings pointing towards evolutionary theory. 00:46.400 --> 00:50.440 So I sort of collected a few of those references, didn't do much more about it 00:50.440 --> 00:55.680 at the time, but it kept buzzing away in the back of my mind over a number of 00:55.680 --> 00:55.960 years. 00:56.920 --> 01:02.440 And it was in the last years I began to seriously dig around and go on a quest 01:03.100 --> 01:06.660 researching, particularly in the last three years in the National Library here 01:06.660 --> 01:10.720 in Edinburgh, and tracing things through. 01:11.900 --> 01:16.540 So it's actually been, I suppose on and off, a 25 year search for me. 01:17.640 --> 01:23.560 And what I discovered caused me to have a long look at my understanding of 01:23.560 --> 01:24.460 evolutionary theory. 01:25.840 --> 01:30.240 Now just looking at this, this first slide exposing the roots of evolution part one. 01:31.440 --> 01:35.380 So you might be in different positions tonight, you might think well you don't 01:35.380 --> 01:39.760 necessarily agree with evolution or you partly agree with it or you might think 01:39.760 --> 01:44.120 it's absolutely fantastic and it's foolproof and it's sort of like two plus 01:44.120 --> 01:47.060 two is four or the law of gravity or something like that. 01:48.240 --> 01:54.280 Well I want to give you first of all a quotation from Julian Huxley who was 01:54.280 --> 01:59.840 descended from Charles Darwin, sorry from Thomas Huxley who was Charles 01:59.840 --> 02:04.260 Darwin's bulldog, that was he was a main spokesman for Charles Darwin at the time. 02:04.480 --> 02:09.020 He said, Darwin's theory is no longer a theory but a fact. 02:09.900 --> 02:12.620 And it might be that some of you are absolutely convinced of that. 02:14.280 --> 02:15.360 And that's one position. 02:16.680 --> 02:21.800 However, some scientists take a completely different view, in particular in the last 02:21.800 --> 02:22.400 ten years. 02:23.520 --> 02:28.360 Here's a quotation by Professor James Shapiro who's a leading bacteriologist, 02:28.660 --> 02:29.560 University of Chicago. 02:30.360 --> 02:34.640 He says, for those scientists who take it seriously, Darwinian evolution has 02:34.640 --> 02:38.980 functioned more as a philosophical belief than as a testable scientific hypothesis. 02:39.880 --> 02:43.960 This quasi-religious function of the theory is, I think, what lies behind many 02:43.960 --> 02:48.120 of the extreme statements that you have doubtless encountered from some scientists 02:48.120 --> 02:51.700 opposing any criticism of neo-Darwinism in the classroom. 02:52.380 --> 02:56.480 It is also why many scientists make public statements about the theory that they 02:56.480 --> 02:59.080 would not defend privately to other scientists like me. 02:59.580 --> 03:01.520 Now that is quite a challenging quotation. 03:02.560 --> 03:06.500 And I don't know how you regard that, whether your blood's boiling or what's 03:06.500 --> 03:10.360 going on when you see a quotation from a leading scientist. 03:10.500 --> 03:14.060 As far as I know he has no particular religious axe to grind whatsoever, 03:14.680 --> 03:17.600 but this is his observation as a scientist. 03:20.020 --> 03:24.280 Before we get into the talk, I really want to look at what is evolution to make sure 03:24.280 --> 03:27.680 that we're actually batting on the same wicket, as it were. 03:28.840 --> 03:31.560 And so I've taken an Oxford English Dictionary definition. 03:32.620 --> 03:36.260 The origination of living things by development from earlier forms, 03:36.640 --> 03:37.960 not by special creation. 03:38.900 --> 03:41.700 In other words, there's been a long process from amoeba through to 03:41.700 --> 03:48.180 philosophers to us today, but not any divine supernatural intervention that 03:48.180 --> 03:49.480 brought it together in the first place. 03:51.380 --> 03:55.700 Now I regard natural selection and adaptation as being very clear scientific 03:55.700 --> 04:02.260 principles because they can be observed, they can be repeated, and they can be 04:02.260 --> 04:03.000 examined thoroughly. 04:03.900 --> 04:09.920 However, the theory of evolution is actually really quite open because the 04:09.920 --> 04:16.820 fact is it's impossible yet to recreate a universe and to observe everything 04:16.820 --> 04:19.440 happening and take notes on it. 04:19.520 --> 04:24.780 So we can actually assume things, we can aim at things, we can have a good 04:24.780 --> 04:29.460 sort of intelligent guess at things, but we cannot say necessarily that 04:29.460 --> 04:33.400 evolution and its whole thing from the cosmos right through to biological 04:33.400 --> 04:36.360 evolution is concrete science. 04:38.140 --> 04:42.100 The purpose of this talk, though, is not really to look into the science of 04:42.100 --> 04:42.160 it. 04:42.200 --> 04:47.580 Other people speak on this subject, and last week we had Professor John Walton 04:47.580 --> 04:52.020 from St. Andrews who was speaking on the origins of life. 04:53.100 --> 04:55.240 Was it evolved or was it designed? 04:56.040 --> 04:59.780 And by the way, you can click onto his talk which is now available on our 04:59.780 --> 05:02.380 website, edinburghcreationgroup.org. 05:02.940 --> 05:07.480 But I'm here to demonstrate that evolution has its roots in an ancient philosophy 05:07.480 --> 05:12.040 going back thousands of years and to trace that philosophy to its modern day form. 05:12.820 --> 05:18.600 Now you might think that it all began with Charles Darwin. 05:19.260 --> 05:22.680 I remember studying biology at school and I thought that was it. 05:22.900 --> 05:24.660 Charles Darwin was this amazing scientist. 05:25.520 --> 05:30.840 He went off to the Galapagos Islands and studied wildlife out there and he wrote 05:30.840 --> 05:33.640 his book Origin of Species and published it in 1859. 05:33.960 --> 05:38.120 It had a world impact and I thought it all originated with him. 05:39.300 --> 05:42.500 And probably most people actually going through the education system would think 05:42.500 --> 05:42.860 the same. 05:42.960 --> 05:46.320 I've certainly asked a number of students here and they are under the impression 05:46.320 --> 05:48.620 that Charles Darwin really came up with it. 05:49.220 --> 05:51.260 But that is simply not true. 05:51.660 --> 05:56.460 Often in major paradigm shifts, as they're called, change of thinking, 05:56.460 --> 06:01.040 there have been many people before and somebody happens to come along and develop 06:01.040 --> 06:03.440 the mechanism and launch it and publish it. 06:04.580 --> 06:07.240 So let's look at a quotation from Charles Darwin himself. 06:08.440 --> 06:13.300 He said, until recently the great majority of naturalists believed that species were 06:13.300 --> 06:16.540 immutable productions and had been separately created. 06:17.260 --> 06:19.860 This view has been ably maintained by many authors. 06:20.740 --> 06:23.880 Some few naturalists, on the other hand, have believed that species undergo 06:23.880 --> 06:28.320 modification and that the existing forms of life are the descendants by true 06:28.320 --> 06:30.820 generation of pre-existing forms. 06:31.520 --> 06:35.980 Passing over the allusions to the subject in classical writers, the first author who 06:35.980 --> 06:39.700 in modern times has treated it in a scientific spirit was Buffon. 06:40.040 --> 06:42.260 He was a chap from the Enlightenment period, the 18th century. 06:43.320 --> 06:48.320 He was influential, along with people like Voltaire and others, for David Hume, 06:48.480 --> 06:51.340 who became the father of the Enlightenment movement here in Edinburgh. 06:52.740 --> 06:55.760 But this is the Origin of Species, 6th edition, 1888. 06:57.180 --> 07:00.340 Now it seems to be that Charles Darwin was under pressure from a number of people to 07:00.340 --> 07:02.280 say, look, put all the cards on the table. 07:02.360 --> 07:03.140 It wasn't just you. 07:03.200 --> 07:06.540 The credit is not just you, but there was actually a whole lot of other people 07:06.540 --> 07:08.560 before you who were discussing the subject. 07:08.740 --> 07:13.620 In fact, Charles Darwin, in his preface to the 6th edition, lists 21 or 22 scientists 07:13.620 --> 07:17.120 before him who held to this theory of evolution. 07:18.500 --> 07:22.500 The passing over of the allusions to the subject in classical writers is what's 07:22.500 --> 07:25.780 going to be my thing I'm going to retarget on tonight. 07:26.920 --> 07:30.340 And he does actually in his footnote mention Aristotle. 07:31.020 --> 07:35.080 He says, we see here the principle of natural selection shadowed forth. 07:35.560 --> 07:38.660 And one of those references to Aristotle's physics. 07:39.240 --> 07:42.740 And Aristotle is actually quoting something from a chap centuries before him 07:42.740 --> 07:43.560 called Empedocles. 07:44.320 --> 07:49.680 Talking about teeth, he's talking about animal forms evolving by chance. 07:49.760 --> 07:55.360 Well, he doesn't use the word evolving and discusses the development of teeth. 07:56.520 --> 07:58.480 Let's look a bit further on. 08:00.480 --> 08:04.920 Let's wind the clock further back than the classical Greek philosophers, right back 08:04.920 --> 08:06.780 to 1200 BC in India. 08:07.940 --> 08:11.080 Now India had their own sort of enlightenment period which went on for 08:11.080 --> 08:11.440 centuries. 08:12.560 --> 08:15.920 And here is a classic case of one chap, I guess he was an agnostic. 08:16.940 --> 08:18.500 And he's saying, whence is this creation? 08:19.320 --> 08:22.260 The gods came afterwards with the creation of the universe. 08:22.780 --> 08:24.480 Who then knows whence it has arisen? 08:25.240 --> 08:26.520 Whence this creation has arisen? 08:26.800 --> 08:29.760 Perhaps it formed itself or perhaps it did not. 08:30.440 --> 08:34.920 The one who looks down on it in the highest heaven only he knows or perhaps he 08:34.920 --> 08:35.460 does not know. 08:36.280 --> 08:39.620 So you might be a person just like that tonight who's agnostic. 08:39.780 --> 08:43.040 You're not quite sure whether there's an intelligent designer behind it or whether 08:43.040 --> 08:44.360 it all evolved by itself. 08:45.140 --> 08:49.440 Well, you're in the same boat as this guy 3,200 years ago. 08:54.100 --> 08:59.400 Now, we're going to look, and this might be quite strange for you, to even consider 08:59.400 --> 09:05.480 looking to Indian Brahmins into Hinduism going back thousands of years ago. 09:06.560 --> 09:09.380 And I'm looking at this section now, what I've called the rise of the 09:09.380 --> 09:14.100 pantheistic evolutionists, who, in my understanding and research, 09:14.220 --> 09:16.560 were the forerunners of evolutionary thinking. 09:17.100 --> 09:20.760 Now, pantheism, just in case you're not sure what that means, is basically the 09:20.760 --> 09:23.180 Hindu or pagan concept that God is everything. 09:23.660 --> 09:24.380 Nature is God. 09:25.880 --> 09:32.180 And so we will now look at a quotation, just so you see. 09:32.360 --> 09:33.100 And it's an interesting thing. 09:33.120 --> 09:36.980 When I began to research, I came across others who had actually gone before me and 09:36.980 --> 09:37.700 done research. 09:38.020 --> 09:41.560 And it's really nice when you actually find others confirming stuff that you've 09:41.560 --> 09:43.920 been digging around yourself in the long hours in libraries. 09:44.880 --> 09:49.620 But here's a quotation from Sir Monty Williams, who is a professor of Sanskrit 09:49.620 --> 09:53.740 at the University of Oxford, and generally regarded as one of the leading experts in 09:53.740 --> 09:59.280 the study of Hindu philosophy and Sanskrit, both in the 19th through to the 09:59.280 --> 10:00.140 early 20th century. 10:00.420 --> 10:05.580 He says, indeed, the Hindus were Spinoazists 2,000 years before the birth 10:05.580 --> 10:06.220 of Spinoza. 10:07.200 --> 10:11.720 Darwinians centuries before the birth of Darwin, and evolutionists many centuries 10:11.720 --> 10:15.760 before the doctrine of evolution had been accepted by the Huxleys of our time. 10:16.420 --> 10:21.640 And before any word like evolution existed in any language of the world. 10:21.720 --> 10:23.820 Now that's quite a statement. 10:24.800 --> 10:28.780 So now let's look at the source material of the Hindus. 10:29.800 --> 10:33.480 Well, they have a number of writings, the main ones being the Rig Vedas written 10:33.480 --> 10:38.360 between about 1400 and 1000 BC, the Upanishads written between about 800 10:38.360 --> 10:45.780 and 400 BC, Bhagavad Gita about 500, Laws of Manu about 200 BC, and Mahabharata 10:45.780 --> 10:49.660 between 400 BC and probably about AD 100. 10:51.120 --> 10:56.720 And within these scriptures of the Hindus is a combination of both religious thought 10:56.720 --> 10:58.680 and philosophical thought that come together. 10:59.380 --> 11:01.120 Bear that in mind as we go through. 11:03.160 --> 11:06.460 One of the first things you have to point out, if we're looking first of all at the 11:06.460 --> 11:10.780 cosmology before we even get into the biological understanding, is that the 11:10.780 --> 11:13.960 Hindus had an idea of an eternal universe, a cyclical universe. 11:14.080 --> 11:19.220 In other words, it's depicted there, as you see, as a serpent with a tail in 11:19.220 --> 11:22.020 its mouth, kind of like a circle going round and round and round. 11:22.380 --> 11:27.560 The universe has an apparent beginning, has an end, starts again after a gap, 11:27.900 --> 11:31.340 has an end, has a beginning, has an end, and continues. 11:32.340 --> 11:37.800 Interesting enough, people like Sir Fred Hoyle, who was a very well-known 11:37.800 --> 11:42.640 astrophysicist, was very keen on the idea of an eternal universe. 11:43.040 --> 11:49.800 People sometimes called it an oscillating universe, or other names were given to it. 11:50.980 --> 11:58.660 And no doubt, and I've seen some articles in Scientific American and also in New 11:58.660 --> 12:03.040 Scientist, that there are people even discussing the possibility of an eternal 12:03.040 --> 12:04.220 universe all over again. 12:04.500 --> 12:06.800 The popular view at the moment is singularity. 12:07.140 --> 12:11.020 Big bang begins and it has just one start. 12:11.640 --> 12:12.640 But watch that space. 12:13.640 --> 12:16.000 So that's what the Hindus and most of the pagans believed in. 12:17.640 --> 12:19.160 Now then, let's look at another thing. 12:19.700 --> 12:24.500 Now in Hindu understanding, you had what's called a Tramurti, which is the gods of 12:24.500 --> 12:25.720 Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva. 12:26.820 --> 12:29.800 Now for the religious people, they were seen as gods, but for philosophical 12:29.800 --> 12:32.500 Hindus, Brahmins, they were also seen as principles. 12:33.740 --> 12:37.500 Brahma was seen to be the creative principle, Vishnu was seen to be the 12:37.500 --> 12:40.680 preserving principle, and Shiva the destroying principle. 12:41.480 --> 12:45.360 And if you see this diagram here, you see the circle representing the 12:45.360 --> 12:46.460 eternity of the universe. 12:47.700 --> 12:52.040 Within that, you're supposed to have the sort of equilateral triangle of the three 12:52.040 --> 12:53.080 gods or three principles. 12:54.460 --> 12:59.400 And our present universe takes place within those principles. 13:00.600 --> 13:06.980 Now let's have a look at one of the early quotations of the Hindus. 13:08.140 --> 13:10.820 The beginning of our present universe, an atomic particle. 13:11.100 --> 13:15.800 It says, he, that's Brahma, that's a creative principle, becomes a size of an 13:15.800 --> 13:19.840 atomic particle and brings to life this whole universe. 13:20.740 --> 13:23.500 In other words, you have this understanding, it began, our present 13:23.500 --> 13:29.220 universe is a tiny particle and all that was needed within that particle for the 13:29.220 --> 13:33.560 whole universe and life and everything was contained within it, in that creative 13:33.560 --> 13:36.360 process, and everything came from it. 13:39.180 --> 13:40.980 They have a kind of a big bang. 13:41.920 --> 13:46.800 It says here, and this is a reference about probably about 3,400 years ago from 13:46.800 --> 13:51.600 the Vedas, after hundreds of millions of years, he, that's Brahman, Brahman by the 13:51.600 --> 13:55.460 way in Hindu thinking is the entire universe with a consciousness within it, 13:56.260 --> 14:01.300 split the egg, as they refer to, into parts, making heaven out of one and 14:01.300 --> 14:02.760 the earth out of the other. 14:03.100 --> 14:06.800 A lot of the pagan cultures referred to a cosmic egg as the beginning. 14:06.940 --> 14:10.440 They had quite poetic and different explanations of it, quite amusing 14:10.440 --> 14:14.220 accounts, but essentially over and over again there was that kind of understanding 14:14.220 --> 14:15.840 in a kind of a simple form. 14:17.680 --> 14:21.340 They had an understanding of this expansion, expanding universe. 14:21.540 --> 14:27.900 It says by tapas, that's the heat or power of meditation of Brahman, which is the 14:27.900 --> 14:34.680 universe, attains expansion and then comes primeval matter and from this comes life. 14:35.240 --> 14:39.900 In other words, what you have within the universe itself, Brahman, you have both 14:39.900 --> 14:45.720 consciousness and you have this creative principle at work, which is not the same, 14:45.880 --> 14:49.620 by the way, as a supernatural creative thing about God outside the universe 14:49.620 --> 14:53.840 creating it, as the Judeo-Christian understanding, but it's contained within. 14:54.560 --> 15:00.000 It expands and primeval matter and life comes from that. 15:01.840 --> 15:07.660 They have a concept that it doesn't just start as an atomic particle and expands 15:08.320 --> 15:10.820 and blows apart, but you also get this thing. 15:11.940 --> 15:15.720 It says here, these, that is the creative processes that the universe goes through, 15:16.160 --> 15:20.500 in succession acquire the attributes of the immediately preceding ones from which 15:20.500 --> 15:21.220 they have originated. 15:21.780 --> 15:26.540 Each has not only its own special attribute, but each succeeding one has the 15:26.540 --> 15:29.780 attributes of all the previous ones and that's from the Mahabharata. 15:30.360 --> 15:35.020 So that principle is contained right from the beginning at the start of our 15:35.020 --> 15:40.240 particular present universe and is contained within the whole process, 15:40.940 --> 15:45.040 including life, that what was before is built on. 15:45.140 --> 15:49.900 So in other words, there were more simple forms and more complex forms were built up 15:49.900 --> 15:51.420 out of it through a process. 15:53.140 --> 15:57.020 So what do we say about the Hindu cosmic evolution in a very simple understanding, 15:57.460 --> 15:59.200 not like our complex ideas today? 15:59.700 --> 16:01.260 The universe is cyclical. 16:02.140 --> 16:06.620 Motion involving consciousness causes an atomic particle to appear. 16:07.040 --> 16:11.920 The particle or the egg as it expands and explodes, forming the universe. 16:12.560 --> 16:17.340 Out of this there is an evolutionary progress, progression from particles to 16:17.340 --> 16:17.780 philosophers. 16:18.680 --> 16:21.040 This process takes billions of years. 16:22.060 --> 16:27.720 Sound quite familiar, even though this is such ancient philosophical understanding. 16:28.980 --> 16:32.880 Let's move on now to Hindu biological evolution and reincarnation. 16:33.600 --> 16:37.140 Now if you look on the right hand picture is a picture of reincarnation. 16:37.220 --> 16:42.300 In one sense reincarnation has got nothing whatsoever to do with evolution because 16:42.300 --> 16:47.620 what you have is a person dies and the soul leaves the person and ends up in 16:47.620 --> 16:48.360 another life form. 16:48.480 --> 16:54.780 It could go up and become another lighter skinned human being or it could go down in 16:54.780 --> 16:58.520 animal form depending on karma, whether the person's done good deeds or 16:58.520 --> 17:00.000 bad deeds and so on. 17:00.000 --> 17:03.940 That's very much written into Hindu religious understanding. 17:05.820 --> 17:10.580 But before you just cast aside reincarnation, there's another point which 17:10.580 --> 17:14.420 also is grafted in with reincarnation understanding. 17:15.140 --> 17:16.720 It's an upward tree. 17:16.800 --> 17:18.240 It's often referred to as a tree of life. 17:18.300 --> 17:22.820 You find this often in ancient cultures, what's called the tree of life. 17:23.760 --> 17:31.360 And you have simpler forms developing up a tree until they become more and more 17:31.360 --> 17:31.860 complex. 17:33.540 --> 17:39.080 And that thinking is what we'll trace through tonight. 17:40.020 --> 17:50.240 Let me just give you... we'll follow that through as we go through tonight. 17:50.660 --> 17:56.360 And I'm going to now look at some of the other things in understanding of Hindu 17:56.360 --> 17:56.880 thinking. 17:57.620 --> 18:02.000 One of the things they believed in was the concept of life from non-life, 18:02.080 --> 18:06.280 what we call spontaneous generation, which was accepted for thousands of years 18:06.280 --> 18:09.160 right up to 1869, I think, by Louis Pasteur. 18:10.000 --> 18:16.580 It was regarded as being one of the best proofs of evolution and many of those who 18:16.580 --> 18:19.900 at the time of Charles Darwin accepted it. 18:20.280 --> 18:23.320 Now they had a more sophisticated understanding of it concerning bacteria, 18:24.100 --> 18:28.480 but the more primitive understanding of it was this, that things like mosquitoes, 18:28.760 --> 18:33.480 gnats, lice, flies and maggots, other species of this sort, originate from 18:33.480 --> 18:35.620 heat, are born of sweat or moisture. 18:36.220 --> 18:38.060 This was known in the Egyptian understanding. 18:38.680 --> 18:41.980 Aristotle later also took it through into the Western understanding. 18:42.960 --> 18:51.240 In other words, life can come by itself from non-animate to animate and that is a 18:51.240 --> 18:52.720 very important link as we look through. 18:54.980 --> 18:58.640 Now here's some quotations from some of the Hindu writings. 19:00.320 --> 19:03.960 This one, they, the plants, have an eternal consciousness. 19:04.720 --> 19:08.320 In this terrible cycle of transmigration, that's another word for reincarnation, 19:08.320 --> 19:12.960 which moves relentlessly on and on, the levels of existence are said to begin 19:12.960 --> 19:16.880 with Brahma, that's the creative principle remember, and to end with them, 19:17.740 --> 19:18.380 laws of Manu. 19:18.480 --> 19:22.640 Another one, whatever creation is born is resolved once more and is moved again by 19:22.640 --> 19:26.440 the merits and demerits acquired in that life and enters into another body 19:26.440 --> 19:30.100 resulting from its deeds, his habitation always resulting from nascence, 19:30.300 --> 19:31.140 desire and acts. 19:31.480 --> 19:34.900 He migrates from one body to body, leaving off one another repeatedly, 19:35.060 --> 19:39.720 urged on by time, like a person leaving house one after another in succession. 19:40.420 --> 19:44.400 So you have that reincarnation thing but you also have an upward push that's going 19:44.400 --> 19:46.660 on, driven on by desire. 19:47.380 --> 19:53.980 And we'll find this also mentioned in what's called the Padma Purana. 19:54.800 --> 20:01.620 It says that there are 20,000 species of non-mobile plants, Svara, 900,000 species 20:01.620 --> 20:06.060 of aquatic creatures, 900,000 species of amphibians and reptiles, a million species 20:06.060 --> 20:11.120 of birds, three million species of other creatures such as animals, 400 species of 20:11.120 --> 20:17.200 anthropoids, as called Vanaras, after which the human species Manjusha of 20:17.200 --> 20:22.340 200,000 varieties comes into being and man then engages in purposeful activity to 20:22.340 --> 20:23.100 attain perfection. 20:23.580 --> 20:27.240 Now what they're saying through that is this, this tree of life coming from a 20:27.240 --> 20:33.180 simple form of plants through aquatic creatures, through amphibians and 20:33.180 --> 20:39.020 reptiles, through various animals, through to anthropoids, monkeys, 20:39.460 --> 20:45.220 through to apes and so forth, through into the human 200,000 varieties, which is 20:45.220 --> 20:51.040 rather a lot, and man engaging in purposeful activity to attain perfection, 20:51.420 --> 20:55.020 which is all about the yoga system, which I mentioned just briefly at the end. 20:56.300 --> 21:01.280 But also in the Rig Vedas, going back a long time, they also had an understanding, 21:02.740 --> 21:06.660 the evolution, when it came to man, you then had the caste system. 21:07.620 --> 21:12.200 You had the Sudra, which were the dark-skinned African or aboriginal human 21:12.200 --> 21:18.600 beings, and then this evolution took place through into then the Vaisya, which is a 21:18.600 --> 21:23.460 lighter skin, through to the Ksatriya, which is more the warrior caste, 21:23.920 --> 21:28.140 lighter skinned again, and finally the Aryans, the white-skinned Brahmin, 21:28.420 --> 21:31.660 who were the philosopher kings and the priests, as it were, of Hinduism. 21:33.040 --> 21:36.880 Now interesting enough, when you look, and I'll be dealing with this in a second 21:36.880 --> 21:41.640 talk I'll be doing in November, you will see something of that after 21:41.640 --> 21:48.580 Charles Darwin was accepted and through into the 20th century, culminating sadly 21:48.580 --> 21:52.380 with the final solution and Hitler's kind of ideas. 21:53.080 --> 21:57.920 But you see this whole drive with a supreme Aryan, the top of the evolutionary 21:57.920 --> 22:02.620 understanding, and in those days, the time of Darwin and through to the 20th 22:02.620 --> 22:08.920 century, it was told by some people that you could never possibly have, 22:09.020 --> 22:13.820 say, an African being a professor of science or something or government or 22:13.820 --> 22:17.040 anything like that, because they were not highly evolved enough. 22:17.780 --> 22:20.760 As I said, that's quite a touchy subject, but we're going to look at that, 22:20.980 --> 22:24.340 fruits of evolution, later on in the series. 22:24.700 --> 22:28.560 But just to show you the roots of some of these things. 22:32.040 --> 22:39.840 Swami Vivekananda was a famous Hindu expert and scholar who came over and wowed 22:40.500 --> 22:44.400 Britain in his tours, and also in America and Chicago. 22:45.500 --> 22:50.600 A quite extraordinary man, incredible memory he had, and he seemed to be one of 22:50.600 --> 22:53.580 these people who could dip into all sorts of things and memorise things so quickly. 22:53.880 --> 22:54.660 I wish I could do that. 22:55.540 --> 22:59.060 But this is something he said as a leading scholar representing Hinduism and speaking 22:59.060 --> 22:59.560 to the West. 23:00.440 --> 23:02.000 What is the cause of evolution? 23:02.300 --> 23:02.680 Desire. 23:03.500 --> 23:06.660 The animal wants to do something, but it does not find the environments 23:06.660 --> 23:09.080 favourable and therefore develops a new body. 23:09.600 --> 23:10.400 Who develops it? 23:10.620 --> 23:12.040 The animal itself, its will. 23:12.780 --> 23:14.540 You have developed from the lowest amoeba. 23:14.840 --> 23:17.820 Continue to exercise your will and it will take you higher still. 23:18.360 --> 23:19.200 The will is almighty. 23:19.960 --> 23:23.040 If it is almighty, you may say, why cannot I do everything? 23:23.600 --> 23:26.460 But you are only thinking only of your little self. 23:26.680 --> 23:30.680 Look back on yourselves from the state of the amoeba to the human being. 23:31.000 --> 23:32.000 Who made all that? 23:32.400 --> 23:33.180 Your own will. 23:33.780 --> 23:35.340 Can you deny then that it is almighty? 23:35.860 --> 23:40.100 That which has made you come up so high can make you go higher still. 23:40.500 --> 23:42.320 That was a speech in London, 1895. 23:45.280 --> 23:49.140 And of course, the end product with evolution, once you go through all this 23:49.140 --> 23:54.240 spiritual evolution right through the whole lot, you end up with the spiritual 23:54.240 --> 23:58.440 evolution of yoga and they have so-called seven energy centres in the body beginning 23:58.440 --> 24:02.700 at the base of the spine right through to, you have probably seen Hindus with a red 24:02.700 --> 24:05.680 dot on their heads, the third eye. 24:06.600 --> 24:12.680 An enlightenment where you become as God, you merge with Godhood and that is the 24:12.680 --> 24:17.360 ultimate in Hinduism and that's the spiritual evolution part of it. 24:19.240 --> 24:23.000 Well, now let's look at going west and Pythagoras. 24:23.800 --> 24:29.280 Now, he's probably known most of you probably because of theorems to do with 24:29.280 --> 24:33.720 mathematics or in some cases, some of you may have heard of his understanding of 24:33.720 --> 24:36.420 music or sound and that type of thing. 24:36.760 --> 24:37.660 All quite fascinating. 24:38.660 --> 24:43.600 Not much is actually particularly known about him because he didn't actually leave 24:43.600 --> 24:48.800 any writings but his disciples wrote about the things he taught and his philosophies 24:48.800 --> 24:49.460 and his ideas. 24:51.380 --> 24:55.900 He spent 22 years in the Egyptian pyramids, well with Egyptian priests, 24:56.460 --> 24:59.860 studying under their philosophy and religious ideas. 25:00.840 --> 25:05.600 Then he went to Babylon and for 12 years he studied under the Chaldean priests and 25:05.600 --> 25:08.800 the Persian magi and others. 25:10.060 --> 25:14.820 But what's particularly interesting, as I dug around, I found that he also 25:14.820 --> 25:16.880 studied with the Brahmins, the Hindus. 25:18.000 --> 25:23.520 And here's a reference from Clement of Alexandria who studied, he was a Christian 25:23.520 --> 25:29.440 but he studied at the famous school of Alexandria which was a neoplatonic school 25:29.440 --> 25:32.680 in Egypt in the third century AD. 25:32.920 --> 25:36.740 And he said Pythagoras was a hearer of the Galatai and the Brahmins. 25:37.940 --> 25:43.560 And Iamblichus was Pythagoras's biographer some centuries after. 25:44.080 --> 25:48.800 Pythagoras travelled widely studying the esoteric teachings of the Egyptians, 25:49.340 --> 25:52.360 the Assyrians and even the Brahmins. 25:53.320 --> 25:56.940 And there are two of them, there are other references too in ancient sources to 25:56.940 --> 26:00.120 Pythagoras being influenced by the Brahmin Hindus. 26:02.060 --> 26:05.780 We can see some of the influences in Pythagoras's practice. 26:06.560 --> 26:12.280 He believed in reincarnation which is very clearly a Hindu root. 26:13.300 --> 26:15.840 Asceticism, very much like the Hindu gurus practice today. 26:18.100 --> 26:21.100 Vegetarianism, it was a taboo to eat certain kinds of beans. 26:21.620 --> 26:24.200 You might think that's a bit odd but anyway they did that and you would find in 26:24.200 --> 26:27.200 also some Hindu understanding some of the gurus same thing. 26:27.800 --> 26:32.020 They weren't allowed to cut their nails or their beards or their hair. 26:32.800 --> 26:35.900 And again if you look at some of the gurus they have the same understanding. 26:37.400 --> 26:40.360 Mathematical theorems were discussed and worked through. 26:40.900 --> 26:46.340 The same with Vedantic philosophy in ancient India and the music and study of 26:46.340 --> 26:49.440 sound also likewise with the Hindu Brahmins. 26:51.380 --> 26:54.300 Just in case you just think I'm getting too carried away, here's some of the 26:54.300 --> 26:58.180 leading scholars who did some investigation concerning this. 26:58.300 --> 27:03.280 And the first quotation is from Sir William Jones who was a pioneer of western 27:03.280 --> 27:04.200 study of Sanskrit. 27:05.680 --> 27:11.020 And he kept in touch with a chap called Lord Monbodo actually from the 27:11.020 --> 27:12.440 Enlightenment period here in Scotland. 27:12.580 --> 27:14.240 We'll hear more about him later, he's a key figure. 27:15.240 --> 27:21.600 Back and forth they wrote letters and he said to Lord Monbodo the analogies between 27:21.600 --> 27:26.260 the Greek Pythagorean philosophy and the Sankhya school are very obvious. 27:26.340 --> 27:29.720 Sankhya was basically, there were two main schools of philosophy in ancient India. 27:30.640 --> 27:33.660 One was Vedantic, the other was Sankhya. 27:34.960 --> 27:36.060 So that's his understanding. 27:37.120 --> 27:42.680 Professor Rawlinson was an archaeologist, Victorian period, and he said, 27:43.160 --> 27:46.780 it's more likely that Pythagoras was influenced by India than by Egypt. 27:46.780 --> 27:51.300 Almost all the theories, religious, philosophical and mathematical taught by 27:51.300 --> 27:54.960 the Pythagoreans were known in India in the 6th century BC. 27:55.180 --> 27:59.340 In fact, centuries before Pythagoras was even born, those things were being 27:59.340 --> 28:03.920 discussed in India and the Brahmins travelled and discussed them with other 28:03.920 --> 28:06.300 people and loved to debate with people in the marketplace. 28:07.960 --> 28:09.040 Let's move on to another figure. 28:10.460 --> 28:14.800 Pythagoras and Plato and later we'll look at Aristotle, the key people in founding a 28:14.800 --> 28:16.460 lot of the Western understanding and philosophy. 28:18.400 --> 28:24.540 Now, Plato was a disciple of Socrates and Socrates, we read in some of the ancient 28:24.540 --> 28:29.720 writings, debated with some Brahmin philosophers in the marketplace in Athens. 28:30.740 --> 28:36.000 Socrates himself believed in reincarnation and some of the ideas you follow through, 28:36.120 --> 28:39.140 through Plato's writings, when he's speaking as a mouthpiece for Socrates, 28:39.140 --> 28:42.820 are very similar to the Hindu understanding. 28:43.680 --> 28:45.360 Plato was of course influenced by others. 28:46.940 --> 28:50.580 He went through studying different philosophers, Heraclitus who said that 28:50.580 --> 28:54.860 everything came through fire and various other ones. 28:55.800 --> 29:01.060 But he spent a lot of money buying some very ancient books in his collection on 29:01.060 --> 29:07.300 some leading Pythagoreans, all about physics and science and metaphysics, 29:07.300 --> 29:07.760 and philosophy. 29:08.560 --> 29:12.020 And he had a great influence from Pythagoras as well as Socrates. 29:13.780 --> 29:20.040 Now, he said in Timaeus, in his own writing, these are the principles on which 29:20.040 --> 29:22.800 living creatures change and have changed into one another. 29:23.460 --> 29:26.920 The transformation depending on the loss or gain of understanding or folly. 29:27.700 --> 29:34.160 Now, he understood, just as the Hindu Brahmins had, that living things can 29:34.160 --> 29:34.640 change. 29:34.800 --> 29:36.620 They are not fixed, but they change. 29:36.720 --> 29:38.680 They go through a process of fluidity, they change. 29:38.820 --> 29:40.980 And he understood that, one to another. 29:41.920 --> 29:45.380 But he didn't have the kind of understanding we look about in Darwinian, 29:45.780 --> 29:50.220 with just purely natural selection and environmental pressures and so on. 29:50.860 --> 29:53.280 They were looking at something internal because they believed in the 29:53.280 --> 29:53.680 consciousness. 29:54.860 --> 29:58.740 Plato believed that God created the world, but it was the same, but the universe was 29:58.740 --> 30:03.260 also co-eternal, which was quite difficult to hold those two things together, 30:03.360 --> 30:04.080 but that's what he did. 30:04.480 --> 30:10.620 He had very much this Hindu Brahmin concept, which followed through later on. 30:11.480 --> 30:17.920 Other scholars, when they looked at Plato, they realised that the influences, 30:18.080 --> 30:21.420 again, have come from a Hindu Vedantic school. 30:23.420 --> 30:27.900 And Sir William Jones, again, this is a quotation of him writing to a letter to 30:27.900 --> 30:30.080 Lord Mombodo from the Enlightenment here in Edinburgh. 30:30.740 --> 30:34.460 And he wrote, I have seen enough of it to be convinced that the doctrines of the 30:34.460 --> 30:35.960 Vedantic school are platonic. 30:36.820 --> 30:40.220 Another chap, Professor Irwick from the University of London, said, I affirm very 30:40.220 --> 30:43.420 confidently that if anyone will make himself familiar with the old Indian 30:43.420 --> 30:47.540 wisdom, religion of the Vedas and the Upanishads, he will shake himself free 30:47.540 --> 30:50.860 from the academic attitude and limiting Western conception of philosophy, 30:51.100 --> 30:55.540 and will then read Plato's dialogues, he will hardly fail to realise that both 30:55.540 --> 31:00.740 are occupied with a self-same search, inspired by the same faith, drawn upwards 31:00.740 --> 31:01.940 by the same vision. 31:03.040 --> 31:04.020 Let's move on to Aristotle. 31:04.620 --> 31:06.160 He was a disciple of Plato. 31:07.480 --> 31:11.440 And many of his ideas, Plato, I think, thought he'd be a carbon copy and carry 31:11.440 --> 31:15.720 all his ideas through, which he didn't necessarily, because Aristotle thought for 31:15.720 --> 31:16.120 himself. 31:16.400 --> 31:21.580 He gained a number of his own ideas, but also a lot of his writings were taken 31:21.580 --> 31:26.240 straight from the thinking of Pythagoras, and the writings of Pythagoreans before 31:26.240 --> 31:26.500 him. 31:27.520 --> 31:34.320 Now, a chap called Professor Arthur Lovejoy gave a series of lectures at 31:34.320 --> 31:39.580 Harvard University, one of the leading universities in America, in the 1930s, 31:39.600 --> 31:44.180 and he wrote this book, The Great Chain of Being, a Study of the History of an Idea. 31:45.080 --> 31:48.900 And what he did, and it was really to find this book, is he did my work, tracing 31:48.900 --> 31:52.340 through Aristotle, right through to Charles Darwin. 31:55.620 --> 31:58.320 And, as I said, gave that series at Harvard. 31:59.180 --> 32:00.800 Let's look at Aristotle. 32:00.940 --> 32:04.460 Unfortunately, the first quotation, I was digging around, I didn't put it in 32:04.460 --> 32:04.660 there. 32:05.900 --> 32:07.760 But here's a quotation from Aristotle's writings. 32:08.020 --> 32:12.480 Nature gradually, step by step, developed from inanimate substances to 32:12.480 --> 32:13.080 living creatures. 32:13.600 --> 32:18.440 And again, other bloodless animals, generating from decaying earth and 32:18.440 --> 32:19.200 excrements. 32:19.760 --> 32:24.240 Now, it's the same kind of concept we had with the Hindus beforehand, about 32:24.240 --> 32:28.820 spontaneous generation, living things coming out of non-living things, 32:29.400 --> 32:31.620 in a progressive upward thing. 32:31.700 --> 32:36.140 And it was what was called the Scala Naturae, the ladder of nature, 32:36.520 --> 32:39.480 from the lowest forms to the highest forms, up to humans. 32:41.680 --> 32:46.260 I won't read through that one, it's just a quotation of an encyclopedia 32:46.260 --> 32:49.000 of philosophy, just confirming what I just said. 32:49.820 --> 32:52.700 Well, let's have a look at the rise of the naturalistic evolutionists. 32:52.780 --> 32:53.440 Now, what happened? 32:54.420 --> 32:58.680 A chap called Thales, we don't know very much about him, but he believed that 32:58.680 --> 33:02.380 everything could come about by itself, through natural processes. 33:03.500 --> 33:05.260 And he was contemporary with Pythagoras. 33:05.340 --> 33:09.520 Remember I mentioned, for those who just joined us, Pythagoras came via Hindu 33:09.520 --> 33:14.200 understanding, and he was a pantheist, that he believed that God was the eternal 33:14.200 --> 33:14.660 universe. 33:14.840 --> 33:21.180 Now, Thales broke away from that route, and he decided everything came by itself. 33:22.080 --> 33:26.320 And then we have a number of other people that came through this line, Anaximander, 33:26.920 --> 33:30.380 who said that animals come into being from moisture evaporated by the sun. 33:31.400 --> 33:34.920 Humans originally resembled another type of animal, namely fish. 33:35.900 --> 33:39.080 Now, you begin to get a few things you can recognize here concerning evolution. 33:41.020 --> 33:45.000 Empedocles, he was a chap that Aristotle quoted. 33:46.720 --> 33:51.260 And Aristotle says, Empedocles says that the greater part of the members of the 33:51.260 --> 33:53.020 animals were generated by chance. 33:54.240 --> 33:57.400 In other words, he went that it was not some consciousness, it was a chance 33:57.400 --> 33:59.700 randomness process that was going on. 34:00.700 --> 34:06.280 And then he said that many races must have been unable to beget and continue their 34:06.280 --> 34:11.500 kind, for in the case of every species that exists, either craft or courage or 34:11.500 --> 34:15.900 speed has from the beginning of his existence protected and preserved it. 34:17.160 --> 34:21.780 And like the Pythagoras, he believed in reincarnation. 34:22.540 --> 34:25.680 So even though he was very much a naturalistic philosopher, he held on to 34:25.680 --> 34:30.540 that Hindu, Pythagoras, Plato kind of understanding. 34:32.820 --> 34:33.300 Democritus. 34:33.840 --> 34:36.260 I'm not going to give you any quotes, otherwise we'll be here all night. 34:37.300 --> 34:41.260 But he was generally regarded as the father of the atomic theory. 34:41.620 --> 34:46.340 And he said, basically, that atoms appeared all by themselves, and through 34:46.340 --> 34:51.760 the process of randomness, the universe came into being as the atoms built up and 34:51.760 --> 34:53.460 through eventually to life forms and so on. 34:53.920 --> 34:56.640 He also spoke about the evolution of language. 34:57.640 --> 35:01.420 And he said that human beings, first of all, they grunted like animals. 35:02.520 --> 35:07.600 And they went from that to a state of language through that long process. 35:08.880 --> 35:10.740 Epicurus, you may probably come across. 35:11.420 --> 35:15.100 Again, he talked about everything coming through a random process, natural process 35:15.100 --> 35:15.720 through atoms. 35:16.340 --> 35:17.860 Natural selection he spoke about. 35:17.920 --> 35:19.540 They didn't use the phrase natural selection. 35:19.920 --> 35:20.880 But you read their writing. 35:21.260 --> 35:22.660 That's exactly what they're talking about. 35:23.420 --> 35:29.200 And Pliny the Elder, who was a Roman later on, a bit of a fan of Epicurus, 35:29.240 --> 35:31.800 he said, chance takes the place of God. 35:33.640 --> 35:39.400 Well, we move into the time of the early church, and now into the second and third 35:39.400 --> 35:40.060 centuries AD. 35:40.760 --> 35:45.320 And there was a famous school of Alexandria, led by a man called Ammonius 35:45.320 --> 35:47.720 Saccas, who had a great influence at that time. 35:48.720 --> 35:51.640 And he's very well known because at that time, there were great big squabbles 35:51.640 --> 35:55.120 between the followers of Aristotle and the followers of Plato. 35:56.060 --> 35:59.660 And one lot was saying, oh, well, it's more by observation. 35:59.800 --> 36:01.480 The others were saying, it's more metaphysical. 36:02.020 --> 36:03.460 And they were arguing back and forth. 36:04.080 --> 36:07.520 And he solved the division of these followers by saying, actually, 36:07.620 --> 36:11.900 they both had their foundation from Pythagoras, as we've already discovered 36:11.900 --> 36:12.680 tonight. 36:15.580 --> 36:20.580 There were two figures in the church, Clement of Alexandria on the left-hand 36:20.580 --> 36:23.900 side, and Oregon, his disciple, on the right-hand side. 36:24.440 --> 36:27.500 And even though they were Christians, what they did is they brought in an 36:27.500 --> 36:30.580 allegorical method of interpreting the Bible. 36:31.220 --> 36:36.540 And they brought with them some of the ideas of Plato and so on, that became 36:36.540 --> 36:41.060 essentially the door that opened up the way for liberal thinking within the 36:41.060 --> 36:41.420 church. 36:43.380 --> 36:47.920 Later on, getting to the 1200s, Thomas Aquinas, a well-known monk from 36:47.920 --> 36:54.880 that period, wrestling, as they were, with a sort of a kind of rise revival of 36:54.880 --> 36:57.080 Aristotle and Plato's thinking. 36:57.480 --> 37:01.260 And he was trying to work it out with his understanding of scripture. 37:02.360 --> 37:05.280 We get into, I'm whizzing through these people quite quickly, because it would 37:05.280 --> 37:05.900 take too long. 37:06.980 --> 37:11.660 You get to Leibniz, the German Plato, as he was called. 37:12.600 --> 37:16.020 And he was called German Plato, obviously, because he based a lot of his 37:16.020 --> 37:17.940 thinking on Platonic philosophy. 37:20.020 --> 37:24.340 Tudor John Locke, an English philosopher, famous philosopher. 37:24.980 --> 37:28.700 And these kind of ideas about Aristotle and Plato, and the forerunner of 37:28.700 --> 37:30.800 evolution, were being discussed in this period. 37:38.790 --> 37:41.550 Now, we get to an interesting part. 37:42.350 --> 37:48.070 And Sir Francis Bacon, founding the Royal Society, and modern Freemasonry. 37:48.550 --> 37:52.250 You think, what on earth has that got to do with evolution, that we've been talking 37:52.250 --> 37:55.870 about, and these ideas which go right through from the early times? 37:57.790 --> 38:03.850 Well, Francis Bacon was regarded as being a founder of modern Freemasonry, 38:03.930 --> 38:10.550 particularly Scottish Rite, and also being very much in founding the Royal Society in 38:10.550 --> 38:14.390 London in 1660, along with Robert Boyle and Sir Robert Murray. 38:14.510 --> 38:18.710 By the way, Murray House in part of Edinburgh University Education Centre is 38:18.710 --> 38:19.690 named after him. 38:21.410 --> 38:26.430 And you have to bear in mind, Christianity after the Reformation, and so on, 38:26.450 --> 38:27.130 was very strong. 38:28.850 --> 38:33.310 And any ideas which were contrary to that, philosophies tended to go underground. 38:33.510 --> 38:36.990 In other words, you're Aristotle, you're Plato, Pythagoras, going back to 38:36.990 --> 38:39.110 the Egyptians, Babylonians, all that kind of stuff. 38:40.230 --> 38:45.810 So some people kept a veneer of Christianity on the outside, but within, 38:45.970 --> 38:50.570 a hard core was still the philosophy was kept alive, the ancient philosophy was 38:50.570 --> 38:51.010 kept alive. 38:51.390 --> 38:53.050 You see this, for example, even in Edinburgh. 38:53.230 --> 38:56.650 If you go to George Street, you'll see the Grand Lodge of the Freemasons. 38:57.070 --> 39:00.070 And on the outside, you have a sculpture of Christ carrying a cross. 39:00.130 --> 39:01.510 So you think, oh, it's a Christian thing. 39:02.390 --> 39:04.750 But actually, when you go into Freemasonry, you discover it's not 39:04.750 --> 39:05.670 actually a Christian thing. 39:06.090 --> 39:09.270 Everything is interpreted through a very ancient philosophical system. 39:10.450 --> 39:17.230 So, bear in mind too, the Royal Society, wonderful as it is, because a lot of 39:17.230 --> 39:21.330 empirical science, and that's fantastic and great, was also very much founded by a 39:21.330 --> 39:25.370 bunch of people who were very much forerunners in Freemasonry. 39:26.450 --> 39:33.230 Now, here's a quotation straight from a lecture of an initiation of a 32nd degree 39:33.230 --> 39:34.090 Freemason. 39:34.150 --> 39:37.450 You don't tend to get this kind of information very often, but here it is for 39:37.450 --> 39:37.910 you tonight. 39:38.010 --> 39:38.950 It's supposed to be kept secret. 39:39.450 --> 39:39.930 But here we go. 39:40.270 --> 39:44.550 In a Scottish rite, you will be taught that our ancient ancestors who knew all 39:44.550 --> 39:49.390 the mysteries left enough traces so that today, with diligent labour and teaching, 39:49.790 --> 39:53.190 like we're trying to do tonight, may renew them and bring them to light for 39:53.190 --> 39:53.670 your enlightenment. 39:54.330 --> 39:56.710 We now come to the great symbol of Pythagoras. 39:57.230 --> 40:01.750 Our symbols have descended to us from the Aryans, which is like the Hindu Brahmins, 40:02.630 --> 40:06.510 and many were invented by Pythagoras, who studied in Egypt and Babylon. 40:06.850 --> 40:10.030 We've already discussed those things, so they already knew this. 40:10.430 --> 40:14.590 And this philosophy, this understanding, was kept and preserved within Freemasonry, 40:15.090 --> 40:17.470 in what's called speculative Freemasonry. 40:18.870 --> 40:23.770 And within Freemasonry, you have this understanding of a sort of an evolution up 40:23.770 --> 40:26.170 the ladders to a higher degree. 40:27.310 --> 40:30.770 On the left-hand side, you have what's called the Scottish Rite, 33 degrees. 40:31.290 --> 40:33.270 And on the right-hand side, the York Rite. 40:33.970 --> 40:36.970 And they debate about their ancestry and so on, but we won't get into that. 40:38.010 --> 40:41.590 Now, let's look at French Freemasonry and Enlightenment in the 18th century. 40:42.550 --> 40:46.650 And if you look at those pictures, the one on the right is from the first 40:46.650 --> 40:50.730 edition of French Encyclopedia. 40:52.090 --> 40:57.730 And on the left-hand side, you probably can't make out very well, but you've 40:57.730 --> 40:58.010 got... 41:00.170 --> 41:02.310 here, these are ionic columns. 41:03.190 --> 41:05.210 And here's where the light comes, the Enlightenment comes. 41:05.950 --> 41:07.390 And these are all women down here. 41:07.490 --> 41:10.990 And this woman here, who's kind of veiled, represents truth. 41:11.690 --> 41:19.650 And at her feet are philosophy down here, and theology is somewhere down here. 41:19.770 --> 41:20.310 I can't... 41:20.310 --> 41:21.350 somewhere along there, anyway. 41:22.190 --> 41:24.950 And there's a whole bunch of these different ideas and so on, and science and 41:24.950 --> 41:25.510 everything else. 41:26.230 --> 41:29.830 But the light is coming from the ionic philosophers. 41:30.570 --> 41:31.790 Who were the ionic philosophers? 41:31.990 --> 41:35.150 Were those Greek philosophers I was mentioning earlier, those ones I was going 41:35.150 --> 41:35.330 through? 41:35.890 --> 41:41.530 So, the French Academy of Science came via that line, and most of the people that 41:41.530 --> 41:45.290 wrote, that were there on the board, the committee for the French Encyclopedia, 41:45.410 --> 41:45.970 were Freemasons. 41:47.130 --> 41:50.870 So, in other words, you have this philosophy that comes right through the 41:50.870 --> 41:51.790 founding of that. 41:54.190 --> 41:57.230 Voltaire, of course, who was a very famous person in the French Enlightenment, 41:57.330 --> 41:59.830 had an influence on David Hume here in Edinburgh. 42:00.610 --> 42:05.210 And he said, when I first read Plato and came upon the gradation of beings which 42:05.210 --> 42:09.870 rise from the lightest atom to the supreme being, I was struck with admiration. 42:11.250 --> 42:14.010 So, in other words, and he, of course, was a Freemason too. 42:14.190 --> 42:19.650 And he, again, was referring to this Plato, this understanding, that quotation 42:19.650 --> 42:23.970 I had very early on, about from one form evolving through to another form. 42:24.550 --> 42:27.350 This philosophy was there within them. 42:28.550 --> 42:31.070 Now, we come to home ground. 42:32.090 --> 42:35.930 And James Burnett, or Lord Mombodo, who is a High Court judge, quite an 42:35.930 --> 42:41.850 eccentric character, he used to take air baths, which in case you don't know what 42:41.850 --> 42:44.630 they are, he used to run around like real men with nothing on, he thought, 42:44.990 --> 42:49.570 in his garden, in his home, and he'd take ice baths, which in the winter, 42:49.850 --> 42:54.930 and it was even colder in those days, Edinburgh, and so he'd have a bath in his 42:54.930 --> 43:00.190 garden, break the ice open and have an ice bath, because he thought it was being like 43:00.190 --> 43:01.270 the Spartans, really tough. 43:02.310 --> 43:07.170 Now, there's a poem by a chap called Lord Neves, who again was a High Court judge in 43:07.170 --> 43:07.410 Edinburgh. 43:08.170 --> 43:13.170 Though Darwin now proclaims a law and spreads it far abroad, oh, the man that 43:13.170 --> 43:15.990 first a secret saw was honest old Mombodo. 43:16.630 --> 43:20.750 The architect precedence takes of him who bears the hoddo, so up and at him, 43:21.070 --> 43:22.950 land of cakes will vindicate Mombodo. 43:23.450 --> 43:27.070 That land of cakes, by the way, is Scotland, saying, it's not Charles 43:27.070 --> 43:31.250 Darwin, he may have studied medicine here at Edinburgh University, but give a credit 43:31.250 --> 43:35.230 to Lord Mombodo, he's a man from Edinburgh, a true Scots. 43:36.110 --> 43:39.470 So, let's have a look at this character, Lord Mombodo. 43:40.210 --> 43:45.830 Now, here's an interesting photograph, a painting rather, of the Canongate Lodge, 43:45.950 --> 43:48.750 which is a Freemason lodge down the bottom of the Royal Mile. 43:48.850 --> 43:51.110 It's the oldest Masonic lodge building in the world. 43:52.350 --> 43:57.670 And here we have Robert Burns, who became the national poet. 43:58.250 --> 44:03.010 He was a 32nd degree Freemason, very high up, and real notables and 44:03.010 --> 44:07.050 intellectuals and the powerhouse behind the Enlightenment, because most of the 44:07.050 --> 44:11.990 Enlightenment was spread through the Masonic lodges, both in France and Germany 44:11.990 --> 44:13.730 and here in Britain and Edinburgh. 44:14.690 --> 44:21.450 Now, down here, that's Lord Mombodo, James Burnett, looking on what's going on. 44:22.990 --> 44:24.830 And so, there we have him. 44:25.730 --> 44:28.810 Now, who were the great influences of Mombodo? 44:29.130 --> 44:32.750 Well, he tells us in his own writings, which you can find in the National 44:32.750 --> 44:33.110 Library. 44:33.730 --> 44:37.390 Those whom I truly call philosophers, such as the Pythagoreans, Plato and 44:37.390 --> 44:37.830 Aristotle. 44:38.410 --> 44:40.510 You see, the common theme that keeps coming through again and again. 44:41.590 --> 44:45.570 He says, now, I think it's not all probable that the Indians invented so 44:45.570 --> 44:46.250 great a science. 44:46.390 --> 44:47.090 It came from Egypt. 44:48.010 --> 44:51.650 You see, a lot of the Freemasons at the time were convinced that Egypt was a great 44:51.650 --> 44:55.490 thing, because you had all these hieroglyphics on the monuments there, 44:55.770 --> 44:57.170 and they thought, it's only a question of time. 44:57.530 --> 45:02.010 If only we could crack the code, we will be able to understand great 45:02.010 --> 45:02.670 science. 45:03.710 --> 45:08.530 Of course, when the Rosetta Stone was discovered with Greek as a translation of 45:08.530 --> 45:11.810 it and everything else, the code was cracked, and now we can translate 45:11.810 --> 45:12.530 hieroglyphics. 45:12.670 --> 45:20.650 And there was nothing of the sort coming out of Egyptian philosophy, much to Lord 45:20.650 --> 45:22.790 Mombodo's dismay, I would have thought. 45:23.750 --> 45:28.630 But, as I mentioned before, it was Sir William Jones, who was writing from India 45:28.630 --> 45:34.330 to communicating with Lord Mombodo, said, no, it was a Brahmin Hindus who were 45:34.330 --> 45:37.430 the originator of the theory of evolution. 45:39.170 --> 45:40.950 Now, here's some quotations from Lord Mombodo. 45:41.330 --> 45:45.470 He says, the orangutan, that's an animal betwixt a monkey and a man. 45:46.190 --> 45:47.310 1768, he said that. 45:47.650 --> 45:48.150 Another one. 45:48.890 --> 45:56.270 There are, I know, many, there are, I know, many who will think this progress 45:56.270 --> 46:00.370 of man from a quadruped and an orangutan to men such as we see them nowadays, 46:00.890 --> 46:02.310 very disgraceful to the species. 46:02.910 --> 46:05.330 But they should consider their own progress as an individual. 46:05.890 --> 46:07.830 In the womb, man is no better than a vegetable. 46:08.850 --> 46:15.730 If therefore there be such progress in the individual, it is not to be that there 46:15.730 --> 46:19.030 should be progress, is it not to be that there should be progress, also in the 46:19.030 --> 46:22.530 species from the mere animal up to the intellectual creature. 46:23.370 --> 46:24.010 1795. 46:25.710 --> 46:28.610 Now, we're getting to Erasmus Darwin, we're getting closer to home. 46:28.970 --> 46:31.350 Erasmus Darwin was the grandfather of Charles Darwin. 46:32.490 --> 46:36.470 Charles Darwin, his father and his grandfather all studied medicine at 46:36.470 --> 46:37.190 Edinburgh University. 46:38.470 --> 46:43.230 Erasmus Darwin was a key philosopher and scientist from the Enlightenment period, 46:43.370 --> 46:49.050 and he came here and he was initiated into Freemasonry, and he attended the same 46:49.050 --> 46:54.870 Masonic Lodge as Lord Mombado and those other men there, and he was influenced by 46:54.870 --> 46:55.570 Lord Mombado. 46:56.130 --> 47:00.170 In fact, in his own writings, he quotes and gives reference as an authority to 47:00.170 --> 47:00.770 Lord Mombado. 47:01.710 --> 47:02.790 Now, what does he say? 47:04.310 --> 47:08.530 He wrote a book called The Temple of Nature in 1803, which is actually a poem. 47:09.610 --> 47:12.370 Well, it's actually, he died before then, but it was published in 1803. 47:12.370 --> 47:17.150 And you have here this poetry. 47:18.170 --> 47:21.590 Unfortunately for us, it has philosophical footnotes, so you don't have to try and 47:21.590 --> 47:24.710 guess what he's saying in his poetry, this esoteric poetry. 47:25.890 --> 47:31.490 But he says, in the Eleusinian Mysteries, which came from Egypt, the philosophy of 47:31.490 --> 47:34.730 the works of nature with the origin and progress of society are believed to have 47:34.730 --> 47:39.130 been taught by allegorical scenery explained by the Hierophant to the 47:39.130 --> 47:42.110 initiated, which gave rise to the machinery of the following poem. 47:43.210 --> 47:45.090 Now, you're looking here. 47:47.250 --> 47:50.390 You can't really see it very well, but you have to take my word for it. 47:50.410 --> 47:52.290 There's a woman behind a veil with three breasts. 47:53.890 --> 47:57.570 And you've got two women here who are unveiling this. 47:58.250 --> 48:02.130 And down here in the back, there are all these people in worship and great 48:02.130 --> 48:07.110 celebration, ecstatic over the revelation of truth and so on. 48:07.970 --> 48:12.190 Now, you think that's a bit of an odd thing for Charles Darwin's grandfather to 48:12.190 --> 48:12.990 have in his poetry. 48:13.990 --> 48:15.730 Well, all will be revealed. 48:18.870 --> 48:22.670 Some quotations from Erasmus Darwin about evolution and Pythagoras. 48:24.410 --> 48:27.190 Here's a quotation from his poem. 48:27.630 --> 48:30.910 So, as the sage, he's referring to Pythagoras, with scientific truth, 48:31.490 --> 48:34.310 in Grecian temples taught the attentive youth. 48:35.090 --> 48:40.210 With ceaseless change, how restless atoms pass from life to life, a transmigration 48:40.210 --> 48:41.010 mass. 48:42.390 --> 48:46.210 And then he says, in the other book he wrote, Zoonomia, which is a scientific 48:46.210 --> 48:51.870 book, this idea of the gradual generation of all things seems to have been as 48:51.870 --> 48:55.090 familiar to the ancient philosophers as to the modern ones. 48:55.950 --> 48:59.870 So, he's saying there's nothing new with modern day philosophy. 48:59.870 --> 49:02.150 And bear in mind, he was before, obviously, his grandson. 49:03.210 --> 49:04.350 I guess, well, he didn't... 49:05.850 --> 49:10.190 not sure about the actual date we would have met his Charles Darwin, wouldn't we? 49:10.250 --> 49:12.390 Because I think Charles Darwin was 1809 when he was born. 49:13.090 --> 49:14.650 But, that sort of time. 49:15.910 --> 49:18.710 And there he is, he's saying, look, you think this is new? 49:19.650 --> 49:20.330 No, it's not. 49:20.430 --> 49:21.850 It's been around for thousands of years. 49:24.570 --> 49:27.270 Here's a bit of a quotation from Temple of Nature. 49:28.950 --> 49:30.570 God, the first cause. 49:31.150 --> 49:34.630 Bear in mind, he was... he believed that God triggered off everything at the 49:34.630 --> 49:34.890 beginning. 49:35.390 --> 49:37.730 But he also believed in an eternal universe like Plato. 49:38.530 --> 49:42.030 But he said, God, the first cause, and his terrine abode, young nature lists 49:42.030 --> 49:43.190 he is a child of God. 49:43.750 --> 49:48.850 From embryon births, her changeful forms improve, grow as they live, and strengthen 49:48.850 --> 49:49.530 as they move. 49:50.110 --> 49:54.910 A time began from flaming chaos hurled, rose the bright spheres which form the 49:54.910 --> 49:55.650 circling world. 49:56.290 --> 50:01.170 Earth from each sun with quick explosions burst, and second planets issued from the 50:01.170 --> 50:01.470 first. 50:01.930 --> 50:06.650 Then whilst to see it their co-evil birth, surge over surge involved in shoreless 50:06.650 --> 50:13.010 earth, nursed by warm sunbeams in primeval caves, organic life began beneath the 50:13.010 --> 50:13.370 waves. 50:14.590 --> 50:19.090 And he says about, hence, without parent by spontaneous birth rise the first specks 50:19.090 --> 50:19.950 of animated earth. 50:20.270 --> 50:25.210 From nature's womb the plant or insect swims, and buds or breeze with microscopic 50:25.210 --> 50:25.710 limbs. 50:26.430 --> 50:31.350 So basically, he does have a first cause, a sort of understanding of God, 50:32.790 --> 50:38.290 but as a deist, which meant basic cause there and everything carried on. 50:38.830 --> 50:42.110 But nevertheless, you have evolutionary understanding in here. 50:43.310 --> 50:48.290 And that last quotation there from philosophical footnotes, the temple of 50:48.290 --> 50:52.190 nature, basically says he believed an eternal universe had a beginning. 50:52.350 --> 50:56.170 He talks about like a big bang, explosion, and out of that comes the 50:56.170 --> 50:58.730 system, solar system out of the sun and everything. 50:59.330 --> 51:02.290 And then he says that comes to an end, and then it starts all over again, 51:02.670 --> 51:05.770 and on and on, just like the Hindu way of thinking. 51:06.930 --> 51:12.910 Now here's a quotation from his scientific work, Zoanomia, 1794. 51:13.750 --> 51:19.290 He says, from thus meditating on the great similarity of the structure of the 51:19.290 --> 51:24.350 warm-blooded animals, and at the same time of the great changes they undergo both 51:24.350 --> 51:28.690 before and after their nativity, and by considering in how minute a portion 51:28.690 --> 51:32.990 of time many of the changes of animals have above described have been produced, 51:33.450 --> 51:38.310 would it be too bold to imagine that in the great length of time since the earth 51:38.310 --> 51:42.210 began to exist, perhaps millions of ages before the commencement of the history of 51:42.210 --> 51:47.270 mankind, would it be too bold to imagine that all the warm-blooded animals have 51:47.270 --> 51:54.750 arisen from one living filament or cell which the first great cause, the great 51:54.750 --> 51:58.930 first cause endued with animality, with the power of acquiring new parts 51:58.930 --> 52:04.870 attended with new prospensities, these old words, directed by irritations, 52:05.410 --> 52:09.370 sensations, volitions and associations, and thus possessing the faculty of 52:09.370 --> 52:14.050 continuing to improve by its own inherent activity and of delivering down those 52:14.050 --> 52:18.110 improvements by generation of its posterity world without end. 52:19.070 --> 52:22.850 So he's basically saying that all life, all living things came out of one single 52:22.850 --> 52:23.210 cell. 52:23.910 --> 52:27.990 That's basically through a process of evolution. 52:30.030 --> 52:34.770 I won't read that but basically he refers to David Hume, the atheist in Edinburgh, 52:35.610 --> 52:39.690 who also thought everything could have evolved by itself but through completely 52:39.690 --> 52:40.630 natural processes. 52:41.530 --> 52:46.250 Both Erasmus Darwin and Lord Mombardo, Lord Mombardo was friends of David Hume, 52:46.530 --> 52:47.130 disagreed. 52:47.510 --> 52:52.390 He said there was some sort of cause, a sort of a deity of some sort, 52:52.390 --> 52:57.150 whereas David Hume said there was some sort of first cause but not, you know, 52:57.470 --> 52:58.790 some sort of supernatural something. 53:00.130 --> 53:02.790 And that's a kind of a similar idea we've got there. 53:03.990 --> 53:04.750 Conclusion then. 53:06.410 --> 53:10.810 The theory of evolution came originally from the Hindu Brahmins. 53:10.910 --> 53:12.310 We've seen that as we've gone through tonight. 53:13.910 --> 53:19.150 Secondly, this pantheistic form of evolution, that is pantheistic for those 53:19.150 --> 53:22.110 who weren't here means that God is everything, the consciousness in 53:22.110 --> 53:26.090 everything, was passed down by Pythagoras to the Greeks. 53:27.550 --> 53:33.050 Thirdly, that Thales and his Ionic school of the naturalistic Greek philosophers 53:33.050 --> 53:37.990 branched out from the pantheistic evolution to naturalistic evolution. 53:39.810 --> 53:45.150 Plato, part four, Plato and Aristotle's evolutionary ideas were dispersed through 53:45.150 --> 53:49.710 the Alexandrian school in Egypt in a time when Christianity was coming to its 53:49.710 --> 53:50.290 ascendancy. 53:51.750 --> 53:56.990 The ideas were followed through into the Middle Ages, Renaissance, and into 53:56.990 --> 53:58.530 Freemasonry, where they were preserved. 53:59.030 --> 54:01.930 Bear in mind, I mentioned to you, Christianity had become very strong, 54:02.030 --> 54:07.630 so the ancient philosophy of this whole thing was kept, but it was kept within the 54:07.630 --> 54:08.430 secret societies. 54:11.350 --> 54:17.030 Freemasonry and Enlightenment, bear in mind as I look there, the 54:17.030 --> 54:23.130 powerhouse for the Enlightenment in Europe were the Freemason lodges, and there was a 54:23.130 --> 54:27.190 rebirth of this philosophy of evolution which developed. 54:28.530 --> 54:34.190 And here in Edinburgh, Lord Mombodo, who many regard, a lot of Scots regard as 54:34.190 --> 54:38.910 being a father of human evolution and anthropology and evolution of languages, 54:40.370 --> 54:45.310 and Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, carried the philosophy 54:45.310 --> 54:45.810 forward. 54:47.110 --> 54:51.350 Until we get to Charles Darwin, who developed the idea, and as I said 54:51.350 --> 54:54.130 right at the beginning, we started with Charles Darwin, we've ended with Charles 54:54.130 --> 54:59.630 Darwin, and in his first edition, 1859, of Origin of Species, it would 54:59.630 --> 55:02.210 appear that he was the guy that came up with the whole idea. 55:02.770 --> 55:06.670 But as I said, a number of scientists pressed him and said, you weren't the chap 55:06.670 --> 55:07.790 that came up with this idea. 55:08.150 --> 55:09.650 It's been around a long time before you. 55:10.570 --> 55:15.850 So I think grudgingly, in his sixth edition in 1888, he lists 22 scientists 55:15.850 --> 55:16.450 before him. 55:16.810 --> 55:20.450 And he even, as I said at the very beginning, made allusions to the classical 55:20.450 --> 55:22.810 writers, the classical Greek philosophers. 55:23.850 --> 55:27.750 And for those who weren't here at the time, I pass through from the classical 55:27.750 --> 55:33.170 there to the Hindu Brahmins and trace the Greeks through this whole process. 55:34.310 --> 55:39.270 So what do I think about this? 55:40.470 --> 55:46.170 My personal conclusion is that evolution is a development of a religious philosophy 55:47.200 --> 55:48.310 rather than science. 55:49.710 --> 55:53.590 Here's a quotation from Professor Wolfgang Smith, University of Oregon. 55:53.590 --> 56:00.110 He said, as a scientific theory, Darwinism would have been jettisoned long 56:00.110 --> 56:00.450 ago. 56:01.410 --> 56:05.530 The point, however, is that the doctrine of evolution has swept the world not on 56:05.530 --> 56:10.850 the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic 56:10.850 --> 56:11.210 myth. 56:11.890 --> 56:16.510 It affirms, in effect, that living beings create themselves, which is in essence a 56:16.510 --> 56:17.390 metaphysical claim. 56:18.330 --> 56:25.530 Thus, in the final analysis, evolutionism is in truth a metaphysical doctrine decked 56:25.530 --> 56:26.790 out in scientific garb. 56:27.570 --> 56:31.590 In other words, it is a scientific myth. 56:32.210 --> 56:37.090 Very hard-hitting quotation from a professor of mathematics at the 56:37.090 --> 56:37.510 university. 56:39.230 --> 56:40.350 But there we are. 56:41.190 --> 56:42.750 My personal understanding is this. 56:43.030 --> 56:48.770 I feel that natural selection and adaptation, as I said at the beginning, 56:48.930 --> 56:50.110 are scientific principles. 56:51.070 --> 56:53.730 They should be taught within the scientific departments. 56:54.850 --> 57:01.110 Evolution, I see rather as the philosophy, ought to be taught in the department of 57:01.110 --> 57:01.510 philosophy. 57:02.870 --> 57:05.030 That's my hope and desire. 57:05.670 --> 57:09.430 And I hope you've been challenged tonight by what I've said. 57:09.510 --> 57:12.930 And if you have any questions, please fire ahead.