“God’s mistake”: How Kṛṣṇa had the last laugh
There are large chunks of our DNA that are noncoding. In other words, they don’t carry instructions that are used to create proteins in the cells. Some would call it "God's mistake."
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We all know about DNA; we study it at school. One interesting detail about DNA is that there are large chunks of our DNA that are noncoding. In other words, they don’t carry instructions that are used to create proteins in the cells. For a long time, some scientists called it “junk DNA” because, in their understanding, it was just useless material. Some went as far as calling it “God’s mistake” and using it as proof of the non-existence of God since an intelligent designer would not leave such useless information on the DNA molecule as proof of his ineptitude.
This continued for a long time until scientists started to make discoveries that showed how areas of the so-called “junk DNA” actually were responsible for important functions. For example, Elizabeth Blackburn, together with Carol Greider and Jack Szostak, received the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 2009 for discovering how chromosomes are protected by telomeres and the enzyme telomerase. They discovered that far from being useless, the telomeres are the very thing that is maintaining us alive.
How does it work? It happens that the telomeres protect the ends of the DNA just like the tips at the end of the shoelace protect the whole thing from untangling. As the cells in our body divide, the telomeres become progressively shorter, and after a certain number of divisions, they become too short to remain useful. At this point, further copies of the DNA become impossible, and the cell dies. This same process happens all over the body until it can’t sustain itself, leading to death. If a person does not die from any disease, the shortening of the telomeres will eventually kill him or her.
In other words, the so-called “God’s mistake” was the whole time the very thing that was maintaining the arrogant scientist who wanted to ridicule God alive. More than that, the so-called “God’s mistake” is the ultimate dead end that forces all materialists who have hopes of extending their lifespan indefinitely to face death. The so-called “God’s mistake” is, therefore, a reminder of the authority of God.
More than that, later studies have suggested that the telomeres (and thus our life expectancy) can be protected by living a natural lifestyle, as well as avoiding meat eating, drinking, smoking, drugs, and stress, as well as fasting regularly. In other words, one can’t live forever, but it’s possible for one to live longer by cultivating sattvic habits.
It happens that the rate of telomere decay is not fixed: one can lose from 20 to 100 base pairs per cellular division, depending on the circumstances. The main factor is what is called oxidative stress. We put our bodies under oxidative stress by smoking, eating a poor diet, stress, and so on. This means a person who is living the wrong lifestyle can become older quite fast, as we can observe in practice.
Other studies indicate that caloric restriction also has a positive effect on reducing telomere decay. One important recommendation in Vaiṣnava culture is to fast on ekādaśīs, either by abstaining completely from food or reducing one’s eating during the ekādaśī days. One would start from the previous evening and break the fast on the following morning. This is in line with modern studies that show that fasting for about 36 hours every 2 weeks can considerably extend lifespan, especially when combined with a healthy lifestyle and a clean life.
In jyotiṣa, it’s mentioned that human beings (in our age) can live up to 120 years, and it’s just because of bad habits that one’s lifespan is shortened. The scriptures mention 100 years as the maximum duration of life in Kali-yuga as an average, but a person with exceptionally good habits may live up to 120 years. It can be empirically observed that people who reach lifespans close to that are people with good habits who, due to habit or hardships, used to fast regularly during a great part of their lives.
We can see thus that these styles agree in essence with what the scriptures recommend. We are advised to abandon bad habits like meat-eating, smoking, drinking, etc., to live a natural lifestyle and to fast for about 36 hours two times per month on ekādaśīs. We can see how all these different studies brought us to recommendations similar to what the scriptures were giving all along.
Even though living longer is not the goal of life, it can be a valuable opportunity because it gives us more chances to develop our spiritual practice, giving us a better opportunity to attain self-realization in this life. Therefore, if we can attain it as a secondary benefit of following ekādaśīs and cultivating sāttvic habits that are anyway favorable to our spiritual practice, there is nothing to complain about.
This point about telomeres shows that there is good science and bad science. Good science is based on careful and impartial observation, and it will always bring one to conclusions similar to the scriptures. As Śrila Prabhupāda mentions, “If you make experimental endeavor, you come to the same conclusion, but just to save time you should accept.” (ISO introduction)
Bad science, on the other hand, happens when one creates theories about things one can’t properly understand, based on bias. The bad scientist jumps on topics he can’t fully understand, jumping into interpreting data in ways that advance his own agenda of atheism. There is no God; human beings are an evolutionary mistake; everything happens by chance, and there is nothing after death. This is the type of “science” that Śrila Prabhupāda strongly criticizes in his books. Good science, however, is usually positive, since it reaches more or less correct conclusions by observation, coming to similar conclusions to the ones offered by the scriptures, and thus upholding their authority. There are thus good scientists and bad scientists.
We can see that in this case, the error was not in observing non-coding DNA. The error was in declaring, “We do not yet know its function; therefore it has no function.” That is not science; it is arrogance disguised as science. Modern science is good at measuring what can be measured; the problem begins when scientists use material data to make conclusions about God, the soul, or the origin of life beyond their experimental reach.
This was one of the points repeatedly emphasized by Prabhupāda. The main defect of materialistic science is not that it studies matter, but that it tries to explain everything without accepting the controller of matter. Matter is real, observation can be useful, and careful research may bring one to correct conclusions, but when research is combined with atheistic pride, the result just further supports one’s ignorance.
In the Bhagavad-gītā, Kṛṣṇa explains:
“This material nature, which is one of My energies, is working under My direction, O son of Kuntī, producing all moving and nonmoving beings. Under its rule this manifestation is created and annihilated again and again.”
One may study the material manifestation, but real knowledge is to see Kṛṣṇa behind it.
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