What's the general Hindu take on Evolution?

For me personally, and I think other Hindus would support me on this, but in the Bhagavad Gita it states that God created the world but in a sense left it to its own devices. I take that to be that He is not directly involved in day-to-day affairs, but sort of set the laws of physics and everything in motion from the start and is more of a neutral observer. One can infer that, therefore, evolution is possible since the mechanism by which evolution occurs was present from the start.

I'm also heavily involved in the sciences, which would also help explain why I'm very pro-evolutionary theory.

This is not a direct answer to your question, but an interesting aside. See this wiki on avatars: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Avatar . Hindus have the concept of 'avatar's wherein Lord Vishnu came down to earth as a living being at various times in history. There have been ten avatars. The first avatar was a fish. The last avatar was a human being. Some Hindus use this to demonstrate the progression of living beings.

Hindu are walking side by side with science. Infact, in Hindu there's the Devi (I'm not using the word Goddess, it's a wrong translation) of Science & Wisdom. Her name is "Sarasvati".

First you should understand about "Panca Shradda" or 5 basic foundation believe for Hinduism.

Number 2 of five. Believe in Karma. The law that bound every living creature, from bacteria, plants, human until aliens.

The life, the destiny, the evolution, the extinction of all living creature etc. etc. etc, all of it., are all connected with the Karma law.

Number 3 of five. Believe in Rta. The law that bound every dead things, from molecul, atom, wind, water, planets until the whole universe.

The blow of the wind, the planet rotation, the earthquake, the supernova, etc. etc. etc, all of it. it's all connected with the Rta law.

So the conclusion is....I'm sure you could make the conclusion of your own, ha ha ha...

I'm sorry for my english.

Hinduism has a beautiful theory....

hinduism has this concept of cycles......

"evolution followed by involution" and this cycle continues....

the reasoning is simple,

evolution is apparent......we see it everyday and we understand it...

If you are good at math you know that when a straight line is projected to infinity, it will comeback to the starting point completing the circle...

you know the law of conservation of energy right......albert einstein ? ring any bells?

Energy can neither be created or destroyed.....

My way of putting it is, something cannot comeout of nothing.

evolution theory says that we basically came out of molluscs....

now hinduism asks, how can something higher like intelligent beings come out of molluscs?....

ppl immediately say "thru evolution", but thats no answer coz it means you are saying that something came out of nothing which is not logical.

so hinduism says, that there is evolution and involution....first we are at a undifferentiated state.....simply put we are god.....and then we deteriorated until finally we became mollusks and then minerals.....and now we are reevolving....

there is not a single religion in the world which says man is a higher state......all religions say we are a deteriorated state....

which means that there is something higher from which we came....until we became insentient....now we are reevolving to the highest state.....

this will agree with the law of conservation of energy....coz the highest being deteriorated into all these beings so the energy is already there and we are slowly tapping into more and more of it and evolving.....

are you with me so far?

scientists look at the world.....we see that we evolved from lower beings....from reptiles, to monkeys to men.....

now scientists look on only one side.......

what if men became apes and then reptiles and other things?

its only the opposite view and should be considered....

This might be difficult for you to understand as my english is not that good....

so neways......hinduism has this theory of cycles......

evolution-involution-evolution...........so on

what is your religion doing having a concrete idea about evolution.?

Hindus dont not talk, if they are not sure. If it makes you feel that they don't have defnite idea, let it be, its better than blindly following stupid books. I prefer hinduism for this.

Dont try to judge hinduism, it has passed every debate centuries ago.