“
Life Comes From Life
” Morning Walks with His Divine Grace A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada.COPYRIGHT NOTICE: This is an evaluation copy of the printed version ofthis book, and is NOT FOR RESALE. This evaluation copy is intended forpersonal non-commercial use only, under the “fair use” guidelinesestablished by international copyright laws. You may use this electronicfile to evaluate the printed version of this book, for your own privateuse, or for short excerpts used in academic works, research, studentpapers, presentations, and the like. You can distribute this evaluationcopy to others over the Internet, so long as you keep this copyrightinformation intact. You may not reproduce more than ten percent (10%) ofthis book in any media without the express written permission from thecopyright holders. Reference any excerpts in the following way:“Excerpted from “Life Comes From Life” by the Bhaktivedanta Book TrustInternational,www.Krishna.com.”This book and electronic file is Copyright 1979-2003 Bhaktivedanta BookTrust International, 3764 Watseka Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90034, USA.All rights reserved. For any questions, comments, correspondence, or toevaluate dozens of other books in this collection, visit the website ofthe publishers,www.Krishna.com.ForewordFor people who have come to accept every pronouncement of modernscientists as tested and proven truth, this book will be an eye-opener.Life Comes From Life is an impromptu but brilliant critique of some ofthe dominant policies, theories and presuppositions of modern scienceand scientists by one of the greatest philosophers and scholars of thecentury, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada. SrilaPrabhupada's vivid analysis uncovers the hidden and blatantly unfoundedassumptions that underlie currently fashionable doctrines concerning theorigins and purpose of life.This book is based on taped morning-walk conversations that SrilaPrabhupada had with some of his disciples during 1973, in the LosAngeles area. On those mornings when he focused on science, SrilaPrabhupada spoke mainly with his disciple Thoudam D. Singh, Ph.D. Anorganic chemist, Dr. Singh presently directs the BhaktivedantaInstitute, an international center for advanced study and research inscience, philosophy and theology.Each day, wherever in the world he happened to be, Srila Prabhupadawould go out for a lengthy stroll in the chill quietude of the earlymorning, and cloaked in a warm wrap, he would share intimate momentswith a small group of students, disciples and special guests. Somemornings found him immersed in contemplation or quiet appreciation ofthe surroundings, and little dialogue emerged. At other times he spokeat great length, and often with considerable intensity, on varioussubjects. During these animated discourses he demonstrated thatphilosophical analysis need not be a dull, abstruse affair, but can be a
dynamic cutting edge into every sphere of life. Nothing could escape hiskeen intellect, deep spiritual insight and uncommon wit. Rejectingsuperficial and dogmatic thinking, he edified, challenged, cajoled,charmed and enlightened his students, and he carefully guided them toincreased insight and understanding.Srila Prabhupada (1896-1977) is an internationally recognizedauthor, scholar and spiritual preceptor, and he is widely esteemed asIndia's greatest cultural ambassador to the world. In Life Comes FromLife, Srila Prabhupada takes the role of philosopher-social critic. Withphilosophical rigor, profound common sense and disarming frankness, heexposes not only modern science's methodological shortcomings andunexamined biases but also the unverified (and unverifiable)speculations that scientists present to the trusting public as knownfact. Thus Srila Prabhupada breaks the spell of the materialistic andnihilistic myths which, masquerading as science, have so bewitchedmodern civilization.--The PublishersIntroductionScience: Truth and FictionOnce upon a time (as in a fairy tale), most of us believed that thefood we ate was basically wholesome, nutritious and free from dangerouschemicals, that advertising may have been believable, and that productlabels truly described the qualities and contents of what we fedourselves and our families. Once upon a time, most of the world believedin the integrity of our heads of state, high-ranking political officialsand local leaders. Once upon a time, we thought our children weregetting a solid education in the public school system. Once upon a time,many of us believed atomic energy had "peacetime uses" that wereperfectly safe and completely congruous with a happy and healthysociety.Yet in recent times our illusions have been shattered. Repeatedexposes of widespread consumer fraud and grand political collusion andbribery have all but destroyed our former innocence. We now know thatthrough mass marketing and the media, a veil of fantasy and deceptioncan be created with such unprecedented expertise that it can becomeimpossible for us to distinguish between substance and simulation,reality and illusion.Today many scientists are propagating the doctrine that lifeoriginates from matter. However, they cannot provide proof, eitherexperimentally or theoretically. In fact, they hold their stanceessentially on faith, in the face of all sorts of scientific objections.Srila Prabhupada points out that this groundless dogma has done greatdamage to moral and spiritual standards worldwide and has thus causedincalculable suffering.Though beset by internal doubt and division, modern scientists havesomehow managed to present a united front to the nonscientific public.Their behavior brings to mind the worst in political and corporate
trickery. For instance, despite the recent outcry over their masking thedifficulties of maintaining safety standards at nuclear power plants,the scientists and the government remain committed to nuclear power andeven make light of the fact that there is no safe way of dealing withradioactive waste.In popular works and in textbooks scientists present their accountof the material origin of life as the only possible scientificconclusion. They claim that no other theory can be scientificallyacceptable. And so everyone is taught that life gradually arose fromchemicals, a "primordial soup" consisting of amino acids, proteins andother essential ingredients. Yet in their journals and privatediscussions, the same scientists acknowledge that their theory hasgrave, sometimes insuperable difficulties. For example, certain featuresof the DNA coding mechanism cast serious doubt upon the substance ofevolutionary thought. The noted biologist W. H. Thorpe writes, "Thus wemay be faced with a possibility that the origin of life, like the originof the universe, becomes an impenetrable barrier to science and a blockwhich resists all attempts to reduce biology to chemistry and physics."The highly committed evolutionist Jacques Monod has pointed out thesesame difficulties. Theodisius Dobzhansky, another prominent advocate ofevolution, can only agree: "Our scientific knowledge is, of course,quite insufficient to give anything like satisfactory accounts of thesetransitions [from no life to life, from no mind to mind]. Biologists asbasically different in their... views as W. H. Thorpe and Jacques Monodagree that the origin of life is a difficult and thus far intractableand unsolved problem. I concur." Dobzhansky goes on to call the originof life "miraculous." These admissions by Dobzhansky, Monod and Thorpeare by no means unique. Yet in popular presentations and textbooks onefinds little hint of such widespread doubt.Nobel prize-winning physicist Eugene Wigner has shown that theprobability of the existence of a self-duplicating unit is zero. Sincethe ability to reproduce is one of the fundamental characteristics ofall living organisms, Wigner concludes that our present understanding ofphysics and chemistry does not enable us to explain the phenomenon oflife. Herbert Yockey has demonstrated by information theory that even asingle informational molecule such as cytochrome c (what to speak ofcomplex organisms) could not have arisen by chance in the estimatedlifetime of the earth: "One must conclude that, contrary to theestablished and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis oflife on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on thebasis of fact and not faith has not yet been written."As we can see, on the one hand many scientists have a deep personalcommitment to the concept that life comes from matter. On the other handthey admit that they do not have the evidence to corroborate theirconviction, and that their theory is beset with intractable problems.They are convinced that life arose from matter and is reducible tomatter, yet at the same time they must confess to having scantscientific grounds for their conviction. Thus their theory is a priori:it supersedes the scientific method and science itself. Their fervent,almost messianic hope is that someday, somehow, someone may be able tovalidate it, and in the meantime their faith is unshakable.Dazzling technological achievements have given modern scientists anaura of infallibility, and so when the scientists present untested orunprovable theories about life's origin, people tend to accept with
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