Srila Acharyadeva requested that the following letter of appreciation, sent by a senior ISKCON leader on October 27, 2011, be posted on the website.

Dear Maharaja,
Please accept my humble obeisance. All glories to Srila Prabhupada.

I was listening to some of your lectures yesterday. Later I heard an interview with Lisa Randall on The Daily Show (they post them on their website).

It seems that in part Conservative Christians and the big-bad scientists are made for each other. They kinda push each other past the point of rational thinking, both creating straw men and forcing each other to defend the straw men. I see the same sort of dealings in conflict resolution.

I have no doubt that there are weirdly, ill-motivated people on all sides of such discussions and that for many, their strong positions would be there without the pushings of the other. But if the rhetoric was not so extreme, maybe more of them would have the smarts to acknowledge their own weakness and appreciate the possible validity of one another. I am not hopeful for that- I have strong faith in the influence of Kali-yuga.

It seems again and again that you point out that neither are philosophical, and that, lacking philosophy, they are in trouble. Your lectures are great things for the convalescing soul. I am finding them spiritually strengthening and intellectually challenging. Or as one devotee told me yesterday: "When I hear HDG I think to myself, 'if people like him are into KC, I must be in the right place.'" 

~

Response letter by Srila Acharyadeva:

Jaya Srila Prabhupada. I sincerely thank you for your encouraging words. I also appreciate your incisive analysis of the Conservative Christian vs Born-again scientists debate. Actually this battle can be directly traced to the Protestant reformation when Luther rejected science and even rational philosophy, declaring 'sola scritura' and 'sola fede' - 'only scripture and only faith.' Interestingly, in the divorce between western science and religion, the church first filed the divorce papers. Before that, the Vatican was actually a major sponsor of the new science, and then became more conserative (as in Trial of Galileo) to keep up with the Protestant Joneses.

Anyway here we are, many centuries later, and finally Prabhupada came as the culmination of the Renaissance, which was the 'rebirth' of Indo-European Vedic culture in its meleccha Mediterranean version.

With best wishes,
Hridayananda das Goswami
October 27, 2011