Inquiries Into the Absolute: Digest 156, Bringing life to dead body,

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Inquiries Into the Absolute: Digest 156, Bringing life to dead body, Adaptation

is not macro-evolution

Digest 156, February 17th, 2006. Answers by His Holiness Romapada Swami

Maharaja

**You are welcome to send in your questions to HH Romapada Swami at

iskcondc with the word "Question" included in the subject line.

 

(The technical portions of the following answer has been provided by a devotee

trained in modern science.)

 

Bringing life to dead body

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Question: Srila Prabhupada said scientists cannot create life or bring life in

to dead body. but in ancient ages "Sanjevani Vidya" was used to bring life back

in dead bodies. it is also a material science, so in future scientists may

rediscover "Sanjevani Vidya" and can bring life from dead.

 

Ans: Sanjivani-vidya is a technique to bring the soul back to the body. This is

clearly seen in the 6th Canto narration of Narada's revival of the dead son of

King Citraketu. Srila Prabhupada's basic point is that scientists cannot make a

dead body live by MATERIAL means. The sanjivani vidya requires knowledge of the

soul (the existence of which the scientific community largely totally rejects),

as well as far more subtle sciences than modern science will be able to access

due to the lack of purity and sattva-guna.

 

Adaptation is not macro-evolution

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Question: According to theory of evolution by Darwin living entity adapts

itself to the environment in which it lives. (eg zebra turning into giraffe by

elongating its neck). Logically its perfectly right.

 

Response: Darwin's theory says for scarcity of food on the ground, the giraffes

had to extend their necks to get food from tree tops. But deer, antelopes and

other herbivores were eating from ground anyways. So is it logically perfectly

right to say that zebra had to become a giraffe?

 

Question: In nature we see so many examples. Someone living in cold countries

develops white body while someone living in hot climates develops black body.

People of different countries have different bodily features due to climatic

conditions.

 

Comment: The hinge of these arguments is that adaptation results from chance.

Let's see how valid is this explanation.

 

Skin color comes from special cellular organelles called melanosomes. The

difference in skin color of different races comes because of differential

pigment synthesis. The synthesis begins from tyrosine -> DOPA -> dopaquinone.

At this point the pathway branches and dopaquinone either reacts with cysteine

to produce pheomelanin or it is converted to leucodopachrome to produce

eumelanin (there are some intermediate steps before the specific melanin is

produced). So the point is the change in body color cannot just come because of

temperature. This is not to say that change in temperature does not affect the

body color but is not sufficient enough to cause generation of totally

different race/ethnicity. Furthermore, its not only the skin color that is

different between the races but also bodily features (as you have correctly

pointed out) and each characteristic that we mention may it be skin color or

something else has to result from some elegant biochemistry. And if you study

these different biochemical process

es (a couple I have mentioned above on melanin biogenesis) are irreducibly

complex and tightly controlled by precise biochemical and biophysical

parameters. What is the probability that these will just result from a chance?

 

Question: Appendix (part of body) was used by primitive people to digest hard

foodstuffs. But now as it is not used it is led invaluable and can be removed

without any loss.

 

Comment: Whatever science says has to be accepted with a grain of salt as it is

dependant on information gathered from our imperfect senses and hence is far

from perfect. This case of appendix is an excellent example. The supposed

"uselessness" of appendix is one of the controversial subject matters in human

physiology. There are some schools that hypothesize that appendix has

lymphatic, endocrine, exocrine and neuromuscular functions and there are others

who disagree with this view. Thus we cannot use appendix as a case to defend

evolution. Let us await what science has to say about appendix in future; it

should no come as a surprise to us that scientists are able to ascribe some

function to appendix as they did it with the pineal gland that once considered

as a "vestigial remnant of evolution".

 

I beg to correct you on the primitive function of appendix that you have

mentioned: the human appendix is considered as a vestigial organ of larger

cellulose-digesting cecum that was used by the herbivore ancestors and not used

by primitive people to digest hard foodstuffs.

 

Question: Mosquitoes develop immunity to mosquito repellent chemicals after

some period of time. so this proves living entity adapts itself to

environment.

 

Answer: The body's adaption capacity (some call this 'micro-evolution') is not

a contradiction to the Vedic model by any means. Certain changes "within" the

species that increase its fitness are certainly observed within a population.

Antibiotic resistance is another example. However, what Darwinian evolution

talks about is generating a totally new species, which is not acceptable. There

have been veritably millions of mutagenesis experiments done on Drosophila but

there has been never been a case when a house-fly or some other species

developed from a fruit-fly. There has never been a case when a human gave birth

to a monkey or vice-versa. Like begets like.

 

Question: So why not monkeys turn into human beings due to adaptability?

 

Answer: I again would like to correct you that the Theory of Evolution does not

say that monkeys became human beings. As per Theory of Evolution, humans, apes,

monkeys and other "look-alikes" descend from a common ancestor.

 

On a concluding note, the proposed Theory of Evolution is not so simplistic

that "something adapts itself". With the advent of molecular biology, the

theory is becoming more complex and is seeking its justification at the DNA and

protein level. Changes in allele frequencies, genome duplications, orthology,

paralogy and similar other observations are being used to substantiate its

credibility. But Evolution is far from being "proved". Moreover, as devotees we

are more concerned with the atheistic foundation and subsequent implications of

ToE rather than the theory itself. This was also one of the reasons that Darwin

did not publish his findings until very late even though he had compiled them

much earlier.

 

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