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Michael Cremo

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Michael A. Cremo
Michael A. Cremo
Born (1948-07-15) July 15, 1948 (age 76)
Schenectady, New York
NationalityAmerican
Occupation(s)Author, editor
Websitewww.MCremo.com

Michael A. Cremo (born July 15, 1948, Schenectady, New York), also known as Drutakarma Dasa, is an American Hindu creationist whose work argues that modern humans have lived on the earth for billions of years.[1] Cremo's antievolutionist book Forbidden Archeology has attracted attention from Hindu creationists and paranormalists,[2] but has been labeled as pseudoscience by representatives of the mainstream archaelogical and paleoanthropologist community.[3][4][5][6] Cremo has referred to himself as a "Vedic creationist."[7][8]

Early life and education

Cremo's father, Salvatore, was a military intelligence officer. Michael Cremo went to high school in Germany and spent much of his summers travelling throughout Europe. He attended George Washington University from 1966 to 1968, then served in the United States Navy.[9]

Religious views

Cremo is a member of the International Society for Krishna Consciousness and the Bhaktivedanta Institute. He has written several books and articles about Hindu spirituality under the name Drutakarma Dasa. He has also been a contributing editor to the magazine Back to Godhead and a bhakti yoga teacher. Cremo told Contemporary Authors that he decided to devote his life to Krishna in the early 1970s, after receiving a copy of the Bhagavad Gita at a Grateful Dead concert.[9] In the end of 1990s he authored a paper on the official ISKCON statement on capital punishment.[10] His work on "Puranic Time and the Archaeological Record" was published in the ISKCON Communications Journal.[11]

Forbidden Archeology

In 1993 Cremo co-wrote Forbidden Archeology with Richard L. Thompson. The book claims that humans have lived on the earth for millions, or billions, of years, and that the scientific establishment has suppressed the fossil evidence for extreme human antiquity.[9] He speaks about a knowledge filter (confirmation bias) as the reason for this suppression. Cremo continues this theme in Forbidden Archeology's Impact (1998) and Human Devolution (2003). Cremo considers himself a "Vedic archeologist", since he believes his findings support the story of humanity described in the Vedas.[2] The Indian magazine Frontline called Cremo and Thompson "the intellectual force driving Vedic creationism".[12]

Cremo's work has attracted attention from Hindu creationists and paranormalists,[2] and he has been a frequent guest on the late-night talk radio show Coast to Coast AM, which specialises in a range of topics.[13] His books provided much of the content for the widely criticized 1996 NBC special The Mysterious Origins of Man.[citation needed]

Forbidden Archeology has been praised (by some) and also criticized (by some) for failing to test simpler hypotheses before proceeding to propose more complex ones (a violation of Occam's razor) and for relying heavily on outdated evidence (often from the 19th and early 20th century).[14] Tom Morrow of the National Center for Science Education noted that Cremo's "specimens no longer exist" and called his work pseudoscience.[1]

His book Human Devolution, which like Forbidden Archeology claims that modern man has existed for millions of years, attempts to prove this by citing "every possible research into the paranormal ever conducted anywhere to "prove" the truth of holist Vedic cosmology which proposes the presence of a spiritual element in all matter (which takes different forms, thereby explaining the theory of "devolution")."[15]

Recent years

In recent years he has organized a number of conferences where ISKCON associated academics exchanged views and experiences.[16] In March 2009, Cremo appeared in a History Channel television series called Ancient Aliens, and in 2010 a mini series of the same name.[17]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b Morrow, Tom. "Forbidden Archeology's Impact by Michael A Cremo". RNCSE. 19 (3): 14–17.
  2. ^ a b c "Cremo, Michael". Chambers Dictionary of the Unexplained. Ed. Una McGovern. Chambers, 2007. p. 135.
  3. ^ Hidden History, Hidden Agenda, Bradley T. Lepper
  4. ^ Creationism: The Hindu View, Colin Groves
  5. ^ Forbidden Archaeology : Antievolutionism Outside the Christian Arena, Wade Tarzia
  6. ^ "This remarkable compendium of pseudoscience [Forbidden Archeology] is premised on the assumption that modern science is a prisoner of Western cultural and religious biases..." Scientific Values and Civic Virtues, Noretta Koertge, Oxford University Press
  7. ^ Cremo, Michael A., [http://www.mcremo.com/rutot.html The Discoveries of Belgian Geologist Aimé Louis Rutot at Boncelles, Belgium: An Unresolved Archeological Controversy from the Early Twentieth Century], XXIVth Congress of the International Union of Prehistoric and Protohistoric Sciences, Liège, Belgium, Sep. 2-8, 2001. Retrieved 23 June 2009.
  8. ^ Nanda, Meera, Vedic creationism in America, Frontline, Vol 23, Issue 01, Jan. 14 - 27, 2006.
  9. ^ a b c "Michael (A.) Cremo". Contemporary Authors Online. September 23, 2002. Retrieved on August 17, 2008.
  10. ^ "Position Statements - ISKCON News Weekly". iskcon.com. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
  11. ^ "Puranic Time and the Archaeological Record". www.iskcon.com. Retrieved 2009-02-20.
  12. ^ Nada, Merra. "Vedic creationism in America". Frontline. January 14–27, 2006. Retrieved on August 18, 2008.
  13. ^ Michael Cremo. Coast to Coast AM. Retrieved on August 17, 2008.
  14. ^ Tarzia, Wade (1994). "Forbidden Archaeology : Antievolutionism Outside the Christian Arena". Creation/Evolution (34): 13–25.
  15. ^ Nanda, Meera "Postmodernism, Hindu Nationalism and 'Vedic Science' in Koertge, Noretta (ed.) Scientific Values and Civic Virtues OUP USA (25 Aug 2005) ISBN 978-0195172256 p. 232
  16. ^ "ISKCON Academy of Arts and Sciences conference (2006) at [[Bhaktivedanta College]]". www.bhaktivedantacollege.com. {{cite web}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)
  17. ^ Erbs, Lory. "Drutakarma Dasa Featured on The History Channel". news.iskcon.com. Retrieved 2009-03-07.
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