A one-day national seminar on the “Genesis of living being” was organised by the Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan at its Munshi Memorial Hall here on Tuesday.

The participating speakers at the seminar discussed the relevance of debate for the evolution theory, Darwin’s “doubts”, relevance of Indian education and evolution, the genesis of living beings in Indian philosophy, rethinking Darwin, evolution and micro-chemistry and the Indian perspective on the genesis of living beings.

Sharing his views, Pawan Sharma, professor of Chemistry, Kurkshetra University, said, “Darwin’s theory on the genesis of living beings is more speculation-based rather than a fact-based theory. It is not proved by any kind of scientific experiments. ”

Sharma said the Indian knowledge system talks of a cyclic nature of evolution of living beings “which is more scientific” whereas Darwin talks of a linear approach. “It is nothing but a mere theory”, he added.

A presentation on Leif A Jensen’s book “Rethinking Darwin” was given by Sabyasachi Das from ISKCON. Das expressed his views on various themes including “life is beyond matter” and four constituents of “observable reality” ~ matter, mind, consciousness and super-consciousness.

Vrindavan Chandra Das from ISKCON told The Statesman, “We gave a presentation on the book ‘Rethinking Darwin’ which has a wide collection of evidences contrary to Darwin and evolution theory as well as a Vedic Indian alternative that explains the origins of life much more logically than Darwin’s theory.”

Among other participants who addressed the seminar were Anurag Mishra, professor of Electronics at Delhi University, Ramsagar Dubey, professor of Chemistry at Amity University, Madanlal Modi, a retired DRDO scientist, Jagmohan Singh Rajput, a former NCERT director, and Ravi Shankar, Research Director, Centre for Civilisational Studies.

Most of the speakers seemed to contest Darwin’s theory, asserting that students must get a chance to study other theories and perspectives on the evolution of life. That will develop their reasoning capacity, which should be the ultimate goal of the study of science, they said.