Reply To: Post on "Buddhism and Evolution – Aggañña Sutta (DN 27)"

#23591
Anonymous
Inactive

Most people read aganna sutta and see differences between the current evolution theory and the Buddhist teachings. Lal even called this a reverse evolution theory but somehow I have managed to see some similarities that I would like to mention here.

1. Agganna sutta mentions living beings coming from Brahma realms with very fine bodies and tells the story on how the bodies became denser to become the current version. To me, it sounds like a different way of explaining how humans evolved from a single celled organism into living beings with denser bodies consisting of tissues, organs and complex Systems etc.

2. The sutta explains how at the beginning all their needs were met without having to work hard. in my mind it equals to single celled organisms having all their needs such as food met buy the nature itself.

3. Apart from the use of the word human everything seems to add up for me. The fact that the sutta uses the phrase humans with less dense bodies sounds like the buddha was referring to humans in a different sense than what we usually call humans. In my head it is a pre evolutionary stage of Being a human.

4. Sometimes I Wonder If buddha used the word humans at all or was it a mistake in Translation? since I don’t know Pali it’s difficult for me to determine.

5. Evolution says that humans appeared around million years ago. In science human is defined according to the physical aspects of Being Human. In Buddhism they may be referring to the mental aspects of being born in the human realm. Is it possible that in the age of Dinosaurs there was a certain version of living beings with similar capabilities to humans? May be not with two legs, two hands and two eyes but similar mental emotional functions and intelligence.

Does these claims make sense to you? I would really like to know your opinion.