[Posted December 10, 2007]

Life is Not a Chemical Combination

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami

Science has to redefine the living organism as comprised of two separate energies: the living entity and the body, just like the driver and his vehicle; they are not inseparable.

excerpt from conversation with disciples, Delhi, March 26, 1976

CYAVANA: Prabhupada, in the early fifties the scientists performed an experiment which substantiates their theory that life comes from matter, and they actually created a one-celled being. They made one cell which had life in it. It moved like an amoeba.

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No Creation

Living Entities Not Created: scientists will never create life A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami and disciples

..The living entities, they are eternal. Their only position is marginal, sometimes manifested here, sometimes manifested there. So in the material world the living entities are already there. You haven't got to create. That is foolishness. It is never created. Simply in the material world it becomes manifest in four ways. Some of them are coming like trees, plants. And some of them are coming from perspiration... not coming, being manifested through fermentation, perception. And some of them are being manifested through eggs. And some of them are being manifested through embryo. The living entity were already there. Their struggle is going on, and they become manifest in the material world in four sources. In the spiritual world there is no such... They are eternally existing. There is no question of manifestation. So this is the science of living entities. What do they know? Therefore I say they are rascals. They do not know anything, simply trying to create. What is the creation? It is already there. But they do not know what is this, and still, they are scientists... more

If they did it then, why not now?

PRABHUPADA: Then why do they not do now? What is the wrong now?

CYAVANA: Well, they've done it. They can do it by creating certain conditions.

PRABHUPADA: But why do they not do?

CYAVANA: They use amino acids and water and electricity.

PRABHUPADA: Bluffing.

CYAVANA: But this gave great strength to their theory that life can come from matter because they created a one-celled amoeba. They say they created it, that life actually came into it.

PRABHUPADA: They said everything, but where is the proof?

CYAVANA: Well, the scientists saw it.

PRABHUPADA: Saw it? Now show us.

CYAVANA: They put the chemicals, and then it moved. It became alive.

PRABHUPADA: All rascals.

YADUBARA: In so many years they haven't done anything else.

PRABHUPADA: Just see.

CYAVANA: No, that's as far as they got, but it really boosted their theory, at least so that they thought they would be able to create life.

PRABHUPADA: All rascals.

DAYANANDA: There's also a scientific argument against that, that there may have been the life conditions or the conditions conducive to life, so therefore life came, but not that that was produced by chemical combination. Just like they're actually opposing that argument, scientific school that opposes the idea that they actually produced the life itself.

CYAVANA: Some of them said the life was already there in the water to begin with.

PRABHUPADA: In the water, life there is; in the air, in.... That is another thing. But life is different from the water. That is our proposal.

Sri Guru and Gauranga

There is life in the water, in the air... but life is different from the water, from the air.

Life is Not a Chemical Combination

If they did it then, why not now?