Spirituality In Politics

Evolution-the Miracle of Metamorphosis

    In the modern debate between science and religion it is often said that religion believes in miracles, thus demonstrating that it is false, while science doesn’t. ‘Enlightenment’ science only believes in natural, by which it means materialist, physicalist laws, rejecting supernatural explanations.

    Such a stance is becoming increasingly hard to maintain, as we move to a new paradigm in science, a reunification with spiritual thinking. I recently came across these two quotes from Bishop George Berkeley, the 18th century philosopher, which seem to me to describe how outdated this materialist approach is:

    “Nothing can be more evident to anyone that is capable of the least reflection, than the existence of God, or a spirit who is intimately present to our minds… on whom we have an absolute and entire dependence, in short, in whom we live, and move, and have our being”.

    “That the discovery of this great truth which lies so near and obvious to the mind, should be attained to by the reason of so very few, is a sad instance of the stupidity and inattention of men, who, though they are surrounded with such clear manifestations of the Deity, are yet so little affected by them, that they seem as it were blinded with excess of light”¹.

  One apparent miracle is the transformation of an apparently lifeless egg into a chicken, and another is the fact that the fertilisation of a human egg by a single sperm can eventually lead to a being capable of composing symphonies and producing artistic works of genius. As Lawrence LeShan puts it: “This (Darwinian) theory must be stretched to its limits to account for such things as eggs, and even this intellectual stretching is very unconvincing. Science is reluctant to admit this fact, since it smacks of what has come to be known as ‘intelligent design’ ”².

    Perhaps the greatest miracle of all is the process of metamorphosis. How a caterpillar is transformed into a butterfly, and why ‘nature’ deems this necessary, appears to be completely beyond comprehension. Michael Denton describes it thus: “…the complete dissolution of all the organ systems of the larva and their reconstitution de novo from small masses of undifferentiated embryonic cells called the imaginal discs. In other words, one type of fully functional organism is broken down into what amounts to a nutrient broth from which an utterly different type of organism emerges”³.

    Paul Nelson and Ann Gauger give more detail: “It hatches out of the egg as a worm-like creature whose sole purpose is to eat as much as possible and to grow as rapidly as it can. When it has grown large enough, it tucks itself into bed (we know it as the chrysalis or pupa), and over the course of several days, while it sleeps, so to speak, its body is built anew. Caterpillar (larval) tissues are dissolved or remodeled, and new wings, legs, eyes, antennae, nerve connections, muscles, epidermis, and reproductive organs develop. Even the brain itself undergoes a substantial transformation. The adult butterfly finally emerges as a beautiful, free-flying animal, completely unlike what came before”⁴.

    Denton goes on to say (writing in 1986) that “not even the vaguest attempts have been made to provide hypothetical scenarios”. So it is reasonable to ask how on earth this could have come about by a process of neo-Darwinian evolution, natural selection acting upon random genetic mutations, without any intelligence, creative intent, or sense of purpose. Evolutionary biologists will presumably assure us that this is indeed the case, even if no explanation is offered. I would suggest, on the contrary, that anyone who believes this should take a serious look at themselves or, as Berkeley said, is “blinded with excess of light”. Atheistic scientists might not like the idea, but isn’t a more likely explanation for a caterpillar’s metamorphosis divine creativity or imagination?

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Update.

Since I wrote the above a few days ago, I’ve come across a relevant article. This points out an obvious further miracle in relation to chickens and eggs, which is the old conundrum of which came first. “To get A we need B, but to get B we first need A. We can’t have one without the other” (quote from first link below). This fact is an obvious problem for Darwinian evolutionary theory, and naturalistic explanations. Something very strange is going on.

Check out: 

Marcos Eberlin: Chicken-and-Egg Questions Suffuse Life, Pointing to Intelligent Design

and

The Chicken-and-Egg Problem is Everywhere in Biology

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Footnotes:

1. quoted by Peter Wilberg, The Science Delusion, New Gnosis Publications, p27

2. A New Science of the Paranormal, Quest Books, 2009, p9

3. Evolution: a Theory in Crisis, Adler & Adler, 1986, p220

4. e-book, Metamorphosis: The Case for Intelligent Design in a Chrysalis, David Klinghoffer (ed.), p24

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Creative Evolution, part 2

    This is the latest in a series of posts¹. Here is a brief summary of the earlier ones for readers not familiar with them.

    I’ve been discussing Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Creationism, and the possibility of an alternative. The problem with Darwinism is that it is driven by an atheistic agenda, and tends to ignore the evidence, which is that there appears to be intelligence and purpose in organisms. The problem with Intelligent Design (even though the idea has some merit) is that it is often derived from unproven Christian theology, namely monotheism and a Personal God. The question, therefore, is whether we can find an alternative understanding which does justice to the evidence. In the previous article I introduced the term Creative Evolution, which is the title of books by the physicist Amit Goswami, the philosopher Henri Bergson; it is also implied by the thinking of the biologist Stephen Talbott.

    I am now going on to discuss the issue from a spiritual perspective, offering speculations and hypotheses, which will hopefully throw some light on this difficult issue, beginning with some necessary preamble. There are two sections, the first considering the nature of God and the cosmos.

    Spiritual traditions, in contrast to Christianity with its Personal God, consider the ultimate Ground of Being to be impersonal, beyond all description, attribution — a kind of nothingness. In Hinduism this is called Brahman, and in the Jewish mystical tradition of the Kabbalah it is called Ayin. Thus Z’ev ben Shimon Halevi says: “God the Transcendent is called in Kabbalah AYIN. AYIN means No-Thing. AYIN is beyond Existence, separate from any-thing. AYIN is Absolute Nothing… There is nowhere where AYIN is, for AYIN is not”².

    Hard though this is to understand, out of this nothingness emerges a creative principle, a unity of being, a Oneness. In Hinduism this is called Brahma, which should be considered neither personal nor masculine, even though it is sometimes called the creator God. (If it is the source of everything, it must contain everything feminine.) In Kabbalah, it is called the En Sof. Halevi says that “out of the no-thingness comes the one of EN SOF… As the One to the Zero of AYIN, EN SOF is the Absolute All to AYIN’s Absolute Nothing… Both Nothing and All are the same”³.

    Carl Jung, the influential ‘mystical’ psychologist, opens his so-called Gnostic treatise The Seven Sermons to the Dead⁴ with very similar statements: “I begin with nothingness. Nothingness is the same as fullness… Nothingness is both empty and full… A thing that is infinite and eternal hath no qualities, since it hath all qualities”. “This nothingness or fullness we name the PLEROMA. Therein both thinking and being cease, since the eternal and infinite possess no qualities. In it no being is, for he then would be distinct from the pleroma, and would possess qualities which would distinguish him as something distinct from the pleroma”. In this last sentence Jung is explicitly saying that any being with personhood, for example the Christian personal deity, would be lower in the hierarchy of emanations, and should not therefore be considered God the Absolute.

    These spiritual traditions therefore replace the idea of a personal Creator God with an impersonal creative principle, which can reasonably be called the Divine Mind.

    Those introductory remarks were necessary in order to provide a background to what follows. The idea most frequently encountered in spiritual literature, relevant to the question of Intelligent Design, is that from this Oneness various levels of being emanate, one of which is a realm of ideas, which might be called the thoughts of the Divine Mind. Jung calls them archetypes, which means blueprints. In ancient Egyptian religion these were called neter. Something similar was expressed by the philosopher Plato, who is widely believed to have been initiated into the Egyptian esoteric tradition; he wrote about a world of Ideal Forms, so that we now talk about Platonic ideas.

    Amber Jayanti, writer on the Qabalah (a later spelling of Kabbalah), while discussing the creative process of four worlds according to that system, says: “The first world is called the World of Archetypes, or Atziluth in Hebrew. This is the divine world of the Universal Mind which generates the seed ideas after which things are then patterned by people and nature… This world is symbolized by the divine spark that causes the outward and downward flow of emanation or the life force from above”⁵. She also talks about “the invisible framework or structure beneath all physical forms, and upon which these are built”, and “the blueprints for what we have been planning to manifest in the physical world”.

    In passing, I’ll just note that, before Darwin, archetypes were thought to be the explanation for the forms of creatures.

    My second section addresses the question of the nature of organisms. Spiritual traditions often talk about a hierarchy of levels of existence, seven in number, of which the material universe is the lowest. For example, Amber Jayanti, even though Qabalah refers to the four worlds of creation, thus apparently four levels, talks about “the metaphysical system of the seven planes of existence and seven bodies” (p73). Thus spirit, before it manifests as a physical human being, descends through these levels and acquires several bodies appropriate to each one. The six bodies below pure spirit have been called soul, causal, mental, astral, etheric, and physical⁶, sometimes with variations, according to the various traditions.

    In spiritual literature this idea is usually applied to humans. It is an interesting question, therefore, whether the same idea, or something similar, can be applied to other organisms — animals, or even plants. I’ll briefly discuss the latter, assuming that, if this is true of plants, then it would surely also be true of animals.

    We know what Darwinian biologists will say about plants, that they have evolved through a process of natural selection, end of story.

    It would once have been absurd to think of plants as sentient, let alone having some form of consciousness. Times are changing, however, and new research is being done. Some books which offer alternative ideas, from a reasonably scientific perspective, are:

  • Peter Wohlleben, The Hidden Life of Trees, What They Feel, How They Communicate: Discoveries from a Secret World⁷
  • Daniel Chamovitz, What a Plant Knows⁸

    Others, which would seem more outrageous to an orthodox scientist, are:

  • John Whitman, The Psychic Power of Plants⁹
  • Peter Tompkins and Christopher Bird, The Secret Life of Plants¹⁰.

    I’ll briefly discuss the latter. Having presented over 300 pages of material, describing many scientific experiments, on their concluding page the authors refer to:

  • “(Gustav) Fechner’s animistic vision of plants being ensouled”
  • “Goethe’s concept of a prototype plant” (does prototype = archetype?)
  • “the world of the devas and nature spirits”
  • two spiritual traditions:

1) Theosophy: “The ancient wisdom, as detailed by seers like Mesdames Helena P. Blavatsky and Alice A. Bailey, throws quite another light on the energy of bodies, both of humans and of plants, as well as the relation of individual cells to the entire cosmos”.

2) “Steiner’s anthroposophy, or Spiritual Science, throws such a light on plant life and agriculture as to make scientists root in their tracks”.

    It’s worth mentioning that the conclusions made by these spiritual traditions are sometimes obtained by clairvoyance, psychic investigation. The authors quote Dr. Aubrey Westlake: (who describes our imprisoned state, we are locked in a) “valley of materialistic concepts, refusing to believe there is anything other than the physical-material world of our five senses. For we, like the inhabitants of the country of the blind, reject those who claim to have ‘seen’ with their spiritual vision the greater supersensible world in which we are immersed, dismissing such claims as ‘idle fancies’ and advancing far ‘saner’ scientific explanations”. The authors continue: “The attraction of the seer’s supersensible world, or worlds within worlds, is too great to forgo, and the stakes too high, for they may include survival for the planet. Where the modern scientist is baffled by the secrets of the life of plants, the seer offers solutions which, however incredible, make more sense than the dusty mouthings of academicians”.

    There may be much more to plants, therefore, than is apparent. They may have other invisible, immaterial aspects —  the higher bodies and levels that I was discussing above.

    If these other bodies do exist, this opens up two intriguing possibilities:

  • evolution and development might take place at levels different from the physical before emerging into physical form
  • physical processes might be directed from higher levels.

    Such suggestions might seem strange and far-fetched, and are of course impossible from a materialist perspective. In the next post, I’ll begin to explore whether there is any scientific evidence in support of such ideas.

    Footnotes:

1. Earlier articles were: 1) Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Creationism — or Something Else?    2) Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — the Problem of Natural Selection     3) Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Intuition, part 1  4) Reasons to Doubt Darwinism – Creative Evolution, part 1

2. A Kabbalistic Universe, Rider & Company, 1977, p7

3. In this context, a wonderful symbol for God is a turtle. I have discussed this in a previous article, The Problem of Literalism.

4. Robinson & Watkins Books, 1967, p7. The circumstances around the creation of this text were extraordinary. For details see book 10 of my article, 10 Books Which Changed My Life.

5. Principles of Qabalah, Thorsons, 1999, p78

6. Although it is often expressed in those terms, it is also possible, and perhaps closer to the truth, to see this process as one of progressive densification, these bodies being superimposed upon each other and integrated. They coexist but the ‘higher’ bodies are merely more subtle, more rarefied than the physical.

7. William Collins, 2017

8. Oneworld, 2012

9. Starbooks, 1975

10. Penguin, 1975, p318

 

 

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism – Creative Evolution, part 1

    The purpose of this post is to discuss the term Intelligent Design in relation to evolutionary theory, and suggest that, even though it may have some merits, the term Creative Evolution may be better.

    In a previous post, I noted that the emphasis can fall on either of the two words in Intelligent Design, its advocates stressing the ‘design’ element. However, it is also possible to stress the ‘intelligent’ element, thus putting ‘design’ onto the sidelines. This is more in accord with what can actually be observed, since there is strong evidence for intelligence in nature. The word design is therefore controversial, but the word intelligent less so, even Darwinian biologists agreeing that living organisms appear intelligent and purposeful, although they dismiss this as an illusion created by natural selection.

    The perceived problem with the term Intelligent Design is that it suggests a specific being, an intelligent agent, planning in advance in the manner of an inventor or an artist, therefore that the organism is an after-effect, the result of this process. Atheists and materialists obviously want to reject this idea out of hand because of its supernatural implications.

    Although advocates of Intelligent Design make scientific arguments, and usually avoid making specific claims about the nature of the designer, it is often the case that they are Christians. Therefore, hidden behind their arguments, there are assumptions about the truth of Christian theology, specifically monotheism and a personal God. Once these are assumed, there is little room for discussion about the nature of the designer, or the meaning of the term ‘design’, since there is only one candidate.

    Thus Douglas Axe in his recent book, having made a scientific case for Intelligent Design, says: “the weighty realization that the great Cause of everything clearly reveals himself not as an impersonal force but as a very personal God… Creation is only ever accomplished by drawing upon what exists, and personhood, so fundamental to our existence, must therefore have come from someone in whom it already existed. Persons can only have come from a personal God”¹.

    Likewise, Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, who challenge Darwinism from a conventional Christian standpoint, say: “The Christian worldview begins with the Creation, with a deliberate act by a personal Being who existed from all eternity”².

    Therefore, in order to pursue that debate, it is important to consider how true this theology is, and what other possibilities there are. Is God personal? Is monotheism true? Most spiritual traditions believe that the ultimate ground of being is impersonal, therefore that any personal beings (gods, deities, high spiritual entities, or whatever you want to call them) are at a lower level in the hierarchy. We are therefore drawn into the debate between what is often called the God of the Bible and the God of the philosophers (a First Cause).

    In the opinion of the Theosophical writer Edi Bilimoria, who in his book is seeking, as I do, a reunification of science and religion/spirituality, “there are four crucial misunderstandings (my italics) that must be cleared before there can be any hope of genuine and sustainable progress, on a large scale”. The first of these is “the notion of an external, anthropomorphic ‘Creator God’ (who performs according to his fancy), as preached by the exoteric religions… (his italics)”³. From this alternative spiritual perspective we would definitely have to find other non-Christian understandings of Intelligent Design.

    Now let’s have a look at statements by two scientists critical of both Darwinism and Intelligent Design. The biologist Stephen Talbott says that “many of the opponents (Richard) Dawkins commonly has in mind prefer an intelligent designer. What seems to have fallen out of the argument on both sides is the organism itself, which has vanished into the automatisms of engineered machinery. Its living powers have been transferred to a mysterious designer, blind or otherwise, who, having messed around with everyone’s ancestors, remains conveniently obscure for current scientific investigation”⁴.

The physicist Amit Goswami has written Creative Evolution: a Physicist’s Resolution between Darwinism and Intelligent Design⁵. The jacket notes say: “Dr. Goswami’s central theme is that pure consciousness, not matter, is the primary force in the universe. This view differs radically from mainstream theories that see evolution as the result of simple physical reactions. It also differs from intelligent-design arguments that posit a clockmaker God who fabricated the universe. Biology, Dr. Goswami says, must come to terms with feeling, meaning, and the purposefulness of life. The key is the idea of creativity in biological development, which reconciles evolution with intelligent design by a purposive designer… What’s more, when the question of life’s purposefulness and the existence of the designer is reconciled with neo-Darwinism, other difficulties of biology are resolved” (my italics).

    Two observations on the above are:

  • the idea that pure consciousness is the primary force in the universe fits well with many spiritual traditions, although not necessarily with mainstream Christianity.
  • the statement that “intelligent-design arguments… posit a clockmaker God who fabricated the universe”, may be an overstatement, since I don’t think that all ID advocates would argue that. It does, however, highlight the basic problem, that the word design stresses the importance of an earlier event, and perhaps does not attach enough importance to what is going on in the present.

    The philosopher Henri Bergson has also written a book called Creative Evolution⁶. He notes that there is sometimes the “production of the same effect by two different accumulations of an enormous number of small causes”, that this “is contrary to the principles of mechanistic philosophy” (i.e. materialism), and that “every moment, right before our eyes, nature arrives at identical results, in sometimes neighbouring species, by entirely different embryogenic processes”. He then concludes: “We must appeal to some inner directing principle in order to account for this convergence of effects. Such convergence does not appear possible in the Darwinian, and especially the neo-Darwinian, theory of insensible accidental variations…” (my italics).

    So we have a biologist, a physicist, and a philosopher making a similar argument. They are all saying that there is an ongoing process of creative evolution in organisms, and the two scientists are saying that the term Intelligent Design does not take this sufficiently into account. As I noted above and in previous articles⁷, atheistic neo-Darwinian biologists strongly agree that this appears to be the case, although they argue that this is an illusion created by the process of natural selection. (I suggest that it might be better to accept the evidence of their own eyes.)

    The question is therefore, what spiritual or philosophical worldview is suggested by the phenomenon of creative evolution? Does it suggest animism? Some variety of pantheism? Does Christianity need to change its beliefs in order to accommodate this? Do we need some clarification of the concept of Intelligent Design in order for it to be reconciled with Creative Evolution? These are questions I will try to address in future posts.

 

Footnotes:

1. Undeniable, How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed, HarperOne, 2016, p254

2. Developing a Christian Worldview of Science and Evolution, Tyndale House Publishers, 2001, p24

3. The Snake and the Rope, the Theosophical Publishing House, 2006, p239

4. Can Darwinian Evolutionary Theory Be Taken Seriously? http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/org/comm/ar/2016/teleology-30.htm This article is no longer available online, having been updated.

5. Quest Books, 2008

6. First edition 1911. The quote is from the 1954 edition, translated by Arthur Mitchell, Macmillan & Co Ltd., pp. 79–80.

7. See:    The Problem of Natural Selection, and Intuition, Part 1

 

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Intuition, part 1

    This post follows on from The Problem of Natural Selection, and continues its theme.

    Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life is Designed is the name of a book by Douglas Axe¹. As the title implies, it is a critique of Darwinian evolutionary theory, arguing for Intelligent Design.            I don’t intend to discuss it in detail, but want to refer primarily to the word intuition in the title.

    Darwinian evolutionary theory, in its modern form, argues that evolution is a blind, purposeless process, natural selection acting upon random genetic mutations. (Blind and purposeless is what ‘natural’ means in this context.) The focal point of Axe’s argument is that nobody would believe this, if they relied purely upon their intuition (common sense); if we contemplated living organisms without any preconceptions, we would assume that some intelligence lies behind them.

    As I noted in my earlier post three evolutionary biologists accept that position, even the arch-Darwinist and atheist Richard Dawkins conceding: “So overwhelming is the appearance of purposeful design that, even in this Darwinian era when we know ‘better’, we still find it difficult, indeed boringly pedantic, to refrain from teleological language when discussing adaptation”².

    Darwinism is not the only belief of modern science that is counterintuitive. On a different topic, that of the nature of the self, in previous articles I have often quoted Francis Crick and his Astonishing Hypothesis, that “ ‘You’, your joys and your sorrows, your memories and your ambitions, your sense of personal identity and free will, are in fact no more than the behaviour of a vast assembly of nerve cells and their associated molecules… This hypothesis is so alien to the ideas of most people alive today that it can truly be called astonishing”³.

    Crick made a statement comparable to that of Dawkins on the subject of evolution: “Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved”⁴. If I may take the liberty of paraphrasing Dawkins and Crick, they are saying that, if biologists believed the evidence of their own eyes, they would concede that living organisms demonstrate purpose, thus intelligent agency; they have to keep trying to persuade themselves, that what they can see with their own eyes, against their better judgement, is a false perception.

    Scientists, therefore, have to go to great lengths to persuade not only the public of their beliefs, even themselves.

    Let us turn this argument on its head. If living organisms exhibit a convincing appearance of purpose and intelligent agency, is not the simplest explanation that they are indeed purposeful? And if, as Darwinists claim, the end results are exactly the same as if they were intended, how do we know that they were not intended? It is hard to imagine a scientific experiment which could decide. Perhaps the intuition that there is intelligence and purpose in life is correct. Perhaps the public know best.

 

Footnotes:

1. HarperOne, 2016

2. ‘Replicators and Vehicles’, Current Problems in Sociobiology, edited by King’s College Sociobiology Group, Cambridge University Press, pp45–64

3. The Astonishing Hypothesis, Simon & Schuster, 1994, p3

4. What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery, Basic Books, 1988, p138

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — the Problem of Natural Selection

    In an ideal world, science should seek the truth objectively, without bias, desired outcomes and preconceived ideas. In reality, there is no such thing as science in the abstract; there are only scientists doing their work, and they may be subject to the same human failings as the rest of us. At the very least, if scientists do desire a particular outcome of their experiments, and are trying to prove something, this should in no way influence the scientific work, which must remain objective.

    With all this in mind, let’s examine the concept of natural selection in evolutionary theory. Natural selection does not exist in the sense that it is something that can be seen or touched; it is merely a theoretical principle, assumed to operate. This is not necessarily a problem, and does not deny it, for we also cannot see or touch gravity, but this does not stop us from seeing and experiencing its effects. We therefore assume that gravity is real. It is not quite so clear, however, in the case of natural selection.

    The arch-Darwinist Richard Dawkins wrote: “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. He reveals, I would suggest, that his motivation to be an atheist is stronger than his desire for scientific truth; that is perhaps why he so enthusiastically accepts Darwin. And he is not alone; the desire to be an atheist, often expressed as the need for ‘naturalistic’ or ‘materialist’ explanations, drives much science.

    It can be seen clearly in the language of some evolutionary biologists that they are predisposed to the concept of natural selection, precisely because they want to avoid any suggestion of anything non-material (supernatural), therefore teleological.

    August Weismann said: “the principle of [natural] selection solved the riddle, how it is possible to produce adaptedness  without the intervention of a goal-determining force”¹. So for him, in nature there appears to be a goal-determining force. Rather than accept this as real — one might say the evidence of his own eyes — he assumes that this is an illusion, wants it to be an illusion, because he says that it is a problem or riddle that needs to be solved. He refuses to consider the possibility that this is how things are, that there might actually be a goal-determining force, which is perhaps the simpler explanation. He therefore welcomes the arrival of natural selection, which gets rid of the teleological implication he dislikes.

    Julian Huxley said: “It was one of the great merits of Darwin himself to show that the purposiveness of organic structure and function was apparent only. The teleology of adaptation is a pseudo-teleology, capable of being accounted for on good mechanistic principles, without the intervention of purpose, conscious or subconscious, either on the part of the organism or of any outside power”².

    Richard Dawkins said: “So overwhelming is the appearance of purposeful design that, even in this Darwinian era when we know ‘better’, we still find it difficult, indeed boringly pedantic, to refrain from teleological language when discussing adaptation”. And yet “the theory of natural selection provides a mechanistic, causal account of how living things came to look as if they had been designed for a purpose”³.

    The atheistic agenda of the latter two authors is so obvious that it requires no further comment. Of course, Darwin did not show what Huxley and Dawkins claim. It would be more accurate to say that, if Darwin’s theory were correct, then it would suggest that the purposiveness was apparent. Since the theory is adopted so enthusiastically and uncritically by those who want to deny purposiveness at all costs, it is reasonable to doubt the truth of the theory.

    Dawkins also said:

  • “The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life”.
  • “The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity”⁴.

    I believe both his statements are incorrect. Darwin’s theory cannot explain the origin of life, although it could explain the evolution of life once it had started. This is what Dawkins says in the second quote, but it is not in principle the only explanation, for alternative explanations (possibly more credible but unacceptable to Dawkins) would be divine creativity or imagination. So what Dawkins means is that Darwinism is the only rational or scientific theory which could explain organized complexity, i.e. a naturalistic or materialist explanation. Maybe the truth is irrational, outside the realm of science as we normally understand it, thus something needing a spiritual or supernatural explanation.

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Footnotes:

1. Quoted in Ernst Mayr, The Growth of Biological Thought: Diversity, Evolution and Inheritance, Cambridge MA: Bellknap/Harvard University Press, 1982, p517

2. Evolution: The Modern Synthesis, Allen and Unwin, 1942, p412

3. ‘Replicators and Vehicles’, Current Problems in Sociobiology, King’s College Sociobiology Group, Cambridge University Press, 1982, pp45–64

4. The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin, 1988, p288, p317. In the second quote, I have changed the italics. In the original ‘capable’ was italicised, not ‘in principle’.

Ongoing Doubts About Darwinian Evolution

    I’ve written frequently about objections to the Darwinian theory of evolution. One of the important points to appreciate is that this is not simply a debate between science and religion, especially biblical Creationists, which science should therefore win. There are many scientists who also express doubts.

    It is rewarding therefore to note that “over 1,000 doctoral scientists from around the world have signed a statement publicly expressing their skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution” (1). The list can be found at https://dissentfromdarwin.org/

 

Footnote:

(1) https://evolutionnews.org/2019/02/skepticism-about-darwinian-evolution-grows-as-1000-scientists-share-their-doubts/

The Natural History Museum (London) — a Temple to Darwinism

    A temple to Darwinism is what I prefer to call it, even though it is meant to be a science museum, and seemingly once was. Here I am going to describe its transformation, and hopefully explain my reasons for calling it that. This should interest anyone following the debate between Darwinian evolutionary theory and theistic alternatives, including Intelligent Design, although they will not be discussed here.

    In my opinion the Darwinian theory of evolution has become equivalent to a religion. Its believers do not think that, obviously, because they have convinced themselves that it is science. It perhaps takes an outsider to see what is going on, hence the philosopher Mary Midgley’s book Evolution as a Religion (1). Words like dogma, creeds, heresy, Inquisition have become relevant, as I hope to show.

    In 2009 there was a special Darwin exhibition there, timed to coincide with the bicentenary of his birth. My wife and I decided to visit it, and naïvely assumed that we would be able to just turn up and get in; after all, it wasn’t going to be a sell-out, or so we thought. To our surprise, it was fully pre-booked and we couldn’t get in. We therefore spent the time looking at the exhibits in the rest of the Museum. As a sceptic, I found the experience an oppressive attempt at indoctrination, and would probably have felt the same if I had managed to get into the exhibition, since one review described it as having “an unambiguous militant tone” (2).

 

    The Museum was founded in 1881. Richard Owen was the person primarily responsible and its first director. He was an outstanding naturalist, comparative anatomist, and a lifelong opponent of Darwin’s theory. He was apparently a devout Christian, which may have influenced his views; it is also possible that his religious views were inspired by his observations. Owen agreed with Darwin that evolution occurred, but saw nature as a series of experiments by a Creator. (Divine Imagination! You don’t have to be a conventional Christian to believe that.) For at least part of his career Owen believed that living matter had an “organising energy”, a life-force that directed the growth of tissues, a viewpoint that is called vitalism. In case anyone thinks this is an antiquated idea, smacking of mysticism and the supernatural, let me assure you that the debate continues. As recently as 1989, physicist Paul Davies, not someone likely to indulge in fanciful speculation, while not himself endorsing vitalism or animism, nevertheless outlined in The Cosmic Blueprint (3) the difficulties encountered when trying to explain life, specifically morphogenesis, by ordinary physical laws, and included vitalism and animism as part of the discussion.

    I am not saying that this science museum began under the influence of Christianity, but I do think that it was a genuine science museum, i.e. open-minded and objective, showing exhibits, not promoting one particular line of thought. In what follows, I’ll relate some of the moments which were significant in its transformation into a Temple of Darwinism.

    1981 was a significant year in my story for two reasons. Firstly, this was the centenary of the Museum, which celebrated by opening an exhibition on Darwinism. Upon entering the hall, the first thing the visitor saw was a notice:

    “Have you ever wondered why there are so many different kinds of living things? One idea is that all the living things we see today have EVOLVED from a distant ancestor by a process of gradual change. How could evolution have occurred? How could one species change into another? The exhibition in this hall looks at one possible explanation — the explanation first thought of by Charles Darwin”.

Later in the exhibition a poster said: “Another view is that God created all living things perfect and unchanging”.

    It would seem, therefore, that the exhibition was an example of what all science should be, open-minded and objective, on this occasion, with its reference to religion, possibly beyond the call of duty. Was this a hint that it was articulating the split between the co-founders of the theory of evolution by natural selection, Darwin and Alfred Wallace, the latter going on to believe in God and Intelligent Design (although he did also believe in evolution)? (4)

    1981 was also important because it was the year when Colin Patterson, a senior paleontologist at the Museum, caused something of a stir when he read a paper at the American Museum of Natural History, New York (5). Here are some significant quotes:

  • “Last year I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up, and something had happened in the night, and it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That was quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long”.
  • “I woke up and I realized that all my life I had been duped into taking evolutionism as revealed truth in some way”.
  • Following this revelation, for several weeks he “tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. The question is this: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that you think is true?” “I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History, and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time”. “The absence of an answer seems to suggest that it is true, evolution does not convey any knowledge, or if so, I haven’t yet heard it.”
  • “Now I think many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years, if you had thought about it at all, you’ve experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith. I know that’s true of me, and I think it’s true of a good many of you in here.”

    I’m not aware to what extent, if any, Patterson was involved in the preparations for the 1981 exhibition. As he did not retire until 1993, it is reasonable to assume that he was involved in some way.

    Colin Patterson became involved, presumably following his eureka moment, in a new approach to evolution, specifically to classification, called cladistics. Put simply, this is an attempt to classify living things strictly on the basis of evidence, thus observable biological facts. Cladists think that the classification scheme of living things found in textbooks has been established on the assumption that Darwinian theory is correct, whereas facts should take precedence over any theory. We see patterns in the fossil record, but cannot say with certainty how they arose; “we cannot deduce a process from a pattern” (6).

    The founding father of cladistics was Willi Hennig. One of his most important observations was that many groups are defined by an absence of characteristics, and are therefore not proper groups. An example would be invertebrates; this covers any creature without a backbone, and that is not a distinct group in its own right, rather an amalgamation of groups.

    Patterson, developing this insight, went on to claim that “all the well-known ancestral groups of evolutionary biology are of this type — they are all defined by an absence of characteristics. And statements claiming to identify such groups as ancestral to other groups are disguised tautologies” (7). For example, to say that vertebrates evolved from invertebrates is another way of saying that the ancestor of the first vertebrate was not a vertebrate, thus a truism.

    The thinking of the cladists at the Museum was not especially controversial; they were not making any exaggerated claims, merely saying that Darwinism was an unproved theory which might be true — there was circumstantial evidence in favour of it — but could be false. This is surely how true science is meant to be conducted, and the Museum responded appropriately. As Alan Hayward explains: “At the Natural History Museum it was thought that this made sense, and the Museum began to reclassify its collection on cladistic lines. Sometimes the Museum’s new scheme supported the accepted wisdom, and sometimes it conflicted with it”. He then quotes Patterson: “Cladistics calls into question much of conventional evolutionary history”. “Is stability worth more than a century of conflict with evidence?” (8).

    I suggest that up to this point the Museum was doing science as it should be done — objectively, without preconceptions, open to all possibilities. So what happened next? The Darwinian Establishment reacted furiously. The prestigious scientific journal Nature published an editorial entitled ‘Darwin’s death in South Kensington’ (9). (The editor at the time was John Maddox. He will be the subject of a later article.) An earlier Museum brochure (which was written by Patterson, according to Tom Bethell) had included the phrase “If the theory of evolution is true…”. This “set off weeks of agitation and a flurry of letters to Nature” (10), which then cited this as evidence of “the rot at the museum”, and went on to say: “The new exhibition policy, the museum’s chief interaction with the outside world, is being developed in some degree of isolation from the museum’s staff of distinguished biologists, most of whom would rather lose their right hands than begin a sentence with the phrase, ‘If the theory of evolution is true…’ ”.

    Nature was therefore suggesting that the management of the Museum was beginning to operate a strategy independent of the scientists there. This prompted a response signed by twenty-two of these ‘distinguished biologists’, which said that they were astonished to read this editorial. They continued: “How is it that a journal such as yours that is devoted to science and its practice can advocate that theory be presented as fact? This is the stuff of prejudice, not science, and as scientists our basic concern is to keep an open mind on the unknowable. …

    “You suggest that most of us would rather lose our right hands than begin a sentence with the phrase ‘If the theory of evolution is true…’ Are we to take it that evolution is a fact, proven to the limits of scientific rigour? If that is the inference then we must disagree most strongly. We have no absolute proof of the theory of evolution. What we do have is overwhelming circumstantial evidence in favour of it and as yet no better alternative. But the theory of evolution would be abandoned tomorrow if a better theory appeared…”

    This was not controversial, actually quite mild. The cladists were not saying that Darwinian theory was false, merely that at that time the theory seemed to be true, but had not been proved beyond doubt. However, they were strongly refuting Nature‘s insinuation that the scientists did not support the Museum’s official line. This clearly demonstrates, however, that Nature thought that the Museum should be a temple to Darwinism, and were reacting strongly, in true Inquisition fashion, to this heresy. Darwinian theory had become a dogma which, just like any Christian creed, all true believers had to recite and sign up to. 

    This conflict between the Museum and the Darwinian Establishment took place in the 1980s. I’m not sure exactly what transpired in the intervening period, but it is clear now that the Museum lost the battle, and that normal service has been resumed, as my visit in 2009 demonstrated.

    The current director is Michael Dixon, a devoted Darwinian, who took up his post in June 2004. His attitude was clearly revealed in an article he wrote in the Guardian newspaper (11), in which he criticised the decision to remove the teaching of evolution from the curriculum in Israel and Turkey. The reasons stated by these countries were not on grounds of religion, although it is possible that there may have been a hidden agenda along those lines. Dixon’s objections would then be understandable. However, his scientific claims in defense of Darwinism might be considered somewhat exaggerated:

  • The heading of the article claims that Darwinism is the “only evidence-based explanation of life”.
  • “The fantastic diversity of life and the molecular composition of life past and present in our collection is clear, concrete, accumulated evidence of evolution”. He then complains that “evolution is still questioned”.
  • “Since its inception in the late 19th century, evolutionary theory has been thoroughly challenged and rigorously tested across a range of scientific disciplines by tens of thousands of scientists around the world. It is considered irrefutable scientific law”.
  • “Darwin’s theory of evolution not only underpins all biological science, it has an immense predictive power. From understanding the emergence of antibiotic-resistant organisms, to the ways in which different species might respond to global warming — emerging as new pests or sustainable sources of food — human health and prosperity will depend on decisions informed by evolutionary evidence”.

    So human health and prosperity, even the survival of the planet, are at stake! Wouldn’t it be terrible, then, if the theory turned out to be false?

    Readers will not be surprised to discover Dixon’s education policy: “So how should we respond to overt or insidious attempts to undermine this vital scientific concept? We must — of course — teach it in schools as the core part of any science curriculum. And we must speak up to defend scientific evidence and rational debate”. I’m sure we can all agree with that last sentence. However, two relevant questions are:

  • Has Darwinian theory passed these tests?
  • Is Dixon a good example of someone putting this into practice, or is he rather dogmatic and blinkered? (His tone is close to that of a Fundamentalist preacher.) Were the cladists not better examples of this?

    He eventually concludes: “As the top science attraction in the UK, the Natural History Museum will always be a refuge for those who want to discover more about the natural world. We will continue to defend Darwin’s legacy, the theory of evolution — the only evidence-based explanation for the epic, wonderful diversity of life on Earth”.

    A refuge from what? Presumably from open-minded, unbiased debate.

    In two previous articles I have listed at length the many reputable scientists, and others, who have rejected Darwinism (12). Is it fair to claim then that it is established science? Even Darwinians themselves sometimes express reservations about the limits of the theory (13).

    2009, under Dixon’s directorship, saw the completion of a £78 million project to deliver the second phase of the Museum’s Darwin Centre. It will also come as no surprise then that in the same year the statue of the founder Richard Owen was replaced by one of Charles Darwin. One can, of course, argue that Owen’s view of the world had been disproved, replaced by Darwinism, and therefore that it is only right that the statues should have been swapped. It still seems odd to me that the statue of the founder of the Museum, which had been there for 128 years, should be replaced.

    It is also interesting to note that Darwin was buried in Westminster Abbey, a very high honour. The Abbey is the most important building of the Church of England. It is strange, therefore, that the person probably most responsible for attacking, and some would say destroying, the Church’s world-view, should be honoured there.

Conclusion

    A national museum has a special responsibility because visitors will assume that it is authoritative, that it has State approval, that the State has endorsed its message. In 2009 people were queuing up in order to be, in my view, indoctrinated at the Museum. In modern times we are told to respect science, which is held up as a model of correct, rational thinking. I do indeed respect any science wherever this is the case. Unfortunately this has sometimes become a naïve, simplistic worship of anything called science, whether or not it has passed the necessary tests. Perhaps the cladists were right. Their attitude certainly was.

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Bibliography:

Alan Hayward, Creation and Evolution: The Facts and the Fallacies, 1985, revised Triangle, 1994, chapter 1

Tom Bethell, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, Regnery Publishing, 2005, chapter 14

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Footnotes:

(1) Routledge, 1985, new edition 2002

(2) http://www.victorianweb.org/science/darwin/capet.html. I believe the reviewer thought this approach appropriate

(3) Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1989

(4) For details, please see this article.

(5) There is some controversy about the talk. Apparently a Creationist recorded it, then transcribed it, making some errors. It was then revised, and I believe that the following quotes accurately represent Patterson’s thinking.

(6) Bethell, p218.

(7) ibid., p219

(8) Hayward, p20. The Patterson quotes come from New Scientist, ‘Cladistics and Classification’, April 29 1982, p303.

(9) Issue 289, February 26th 1981, p735

(10) Tom Bethell, The Politically Incorrect Guide to Science, Regnery Publishing, 2005, p216

(11) The Guardian, October 3rd 2018.https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/oct/03/darwin-theory-evolution-schools-earth

(12) They’re rather long, but if interested, please see these articles: Daniel Dennett, and Daniel Dennett Part 2.

(13) for examples see this article on Medium.com

Darwinism and Atheism/Materialism

    My starting point is a reference from the book by Foster/Clark/ York, mentioned in the introduction to this series (1). They mention a court case in 1987 about a dispute about the teaching of evolution, Edwards v. Aguillard, during which “a group of scientists, including Nobel laureates, submitted a brief… (which) pointed out that science is devoted to investigating natural phenomena and providing naturalistic explanations. In other words, a commitment to materialism is at the foundation of science” (p12).

    The authors seem to take some delight in this. It should be blindingly obvious, however, that the only thing that science should be devoted to is the search for truth, not a philosophical worldview.

    It is easy to understand, from a scientific viewpoint, why materialism is desirable. In order to conduct experiments, scientists have to assume that they are in control of all the variables; how could they proceed if some uncontrollable supernatural or paranormal elements were involved? Science has therefore to assume that these ingredients do not exist. Because this viewpoint is desirable, however, does not mean that it is true. If science is committed to a false worldview, then that is a serious problem for science to consider, not something that should be inflicted upon society.

    The ludicrous extent to which this train of thought can lead has been provided by Richard Lewontin, a Harvard professor no less: “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs… in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism… Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door” (2). How can an intelligent person say this and expect others to take him seriously?

    It is presumably statements like this which led the U. C. Berkeley philosopher John Searle to write: “There is a sense in which materialism is the religion of our time, at least among most of the professional experts in the fields of philosophy, psychology, cognitive science, and other disciplines that study the mind. Like more traditional religions, it is accepted without question and it provides the framework within which other questions can be posed, addressed and answered” (3).

    We can argue therefore, in the language of Richard Dawkins, that the meme of materialism, which is a thin disguise for atheism, has infected the minds of many modern-day academics. An unpleasant mental illness is trying to take over society and culture.

    Now, if you are committed in principle to materialist explanations, then it is obvious that this is what you will find, whether or not they are credible. Charles Darwin was a dedicated materialist, as revealed in some of his notebooks. There had been earlier theories of evolution “softened by a reliance of vital forces, organic striving, teleology and the like”. However, “Darwin’s theory was distinguished from all the others by its unremitting materialism”. He was a forerunner of modern neuroscientists and materialists, arguing “that the mind was nothing but a special configuration of matter” (4).

 

 

And he has been honoured with a statue at the Natural History Museum, where he can indoctrinate young children. What a sad state of affairs!

 

 

 

 

    As Tom Bethell points out, “if full-blown materialism is true, then Darwin’s theory of common descent must also be true”. Since complex organisms exist, “atoms and molecules in motion must have somehow whirled themselves into the far more complex structures that we see around us” with all the intermediate stages. Even natural selection is therefore unnecessary. Once this is taken as a given, “the true-believing materialist no longer needs to study evolution in any detail”. Any inconvenient anomalies can therefore be swept under the carpet; “Darwinism becomes little more than a deduction from a philosophy. The science is redundant” (5). It is obviously for reasons like this that philosopher Mary Midgley wrote a book called Evolution as a Religion (6).

    Darwinian evolution is one of the cornerstones of the religion of atheism. As Richard Dawkins, with refreshing honesty, has said: “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist” (7). The relevant question, which Dawkins failed to notice, is, why is he so determined to commit himself to a philosophical position which might be a lie? Perhaps it would be a better use of his time to try to understand why he is so desperate to be an atheist. I would recommend a course of psychoanalysis, rather than trying to convert others to his problems.

    A form of Christian Fundamentalism, with a belief in the literal truth of the Bible, was the dominant worldview in Victorian Britain. A well-known laughable example is the calculation, made by James Ussher, of the age of the Earth, based upon the ages of the patriarchs in the Old Testament, that creation happened on October 23, 4004 BC. Since this is something easily refuted by geology, this was an occasion when science had to win. It is reasonable to claim, therefore, that at that time Darwinism, as part of a developing scientific worldview, was necessary in order to move forward and make progress. It is important, however, not to throw out the baby with the bathwater. We have now reached the point when a new revolution is necessary in order to overthrow Darwinism.

 

Bibliography:

Tom Bethell: Darwin’s House of Cards, Discovery Institute, 2017, chapter 14, Darwin and the Philosophy of Materialism

 

Footnotes:

(1) John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York, Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism From Antiquity to the Present, Monthly Review Press, 2008

(2) Billions and Billions of Demons, New York Review of Books, 1997

(3) Naturalism, Stewart Goetz and Charles Taliaferro, Grand Rapids: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2008, p9, quoted in Bethell, p167

(4) Bethell, p163

(5) ibid. p167

(6) Routledge, 2002, as mentioned in the Introduction to this series

(7) The Blind Watchmaker, Penguin, 1988, p6

 

 

 

Darwinism, Creationism, and Intelligent Design — Preliminary Observations

    This is the first in a series of posts on this theme, following on from the introduction. They will be fairly random, whatever comes to mind at the time, based upon a reading of the five books mentioned there. Before I launch into that, however, here are a few preliminary observations:

  • The three options in the title are not the only ones available. Creationism and Intelligent Design are usually associated with Christianity. There are also spiritual perspectives from other traditions to consider — Hinduism, Buddhism, Qabalah, and various esoteric systems.
  • Creationism and Intelligent Design are not the same thing (the most obvious evidence is that advocates of ID criticise Creationists). Do not let atheist scientists tell you otherwise. They lump them together, saying that ID is Creationism in disguise. This is because both schools of thought believe in a supernatural intelligence, an idea that materialists want to discredit. However, Creationism is a theological worldview based upon a literal reading of the Bible, whereas the best quality Intelligent Design arguments are scientifically based, even if their advocates may be Christians or come from other spiritual traditions. They do not speculate about the nature of the designer, which remains an open question.
  • The word evolution is often misused. It should mean merely change over time, perhaps with the implication of progress towards higher, more complex forms. However, it is often used when Darwinian evolution is what is meant. This enables materialist scientists to call those who oppose Darwinism evolution-deniers. Even worse, the outrageous Richard Dawkins has called them history-deniers, trying to insist that Darwinian evolution theory is a historical fact. At the same time he is quite deliberately, disgracefully, and mistakenly, trying to establish a connection in the reader’s mind between critics of Darwinian evolution and holocaust-deniers, the real history-deniers (1). It is quite possible to believe in evolution, while rejecting Darwinism. Thus Stephen Talbott, a biologist I especially admire, is critical of both Darwinian theory and Intelligent Design (2).

  • Regarding Intelligent Design, to state the obvious, it consists of two words. So the emphasis can fall on either. Its advocates stress the design element. That’s fine up to a point, but the problem is that this conjures up a picture of a specific supernatural deity, usually the Christian one, coming up with a plan, in the manner of a human creative artist, or scientific experimenter. Many people, for obvious reasons, find this idea hard to accept. I therefore think that it makes more sense to emphasise the intelligent element, which leaves the understanding of the process much more open. It is even possible to combine the two ideas, an initial idea (design) which grows and develops over time, an ongoing process of creative, intelligent evolution. This does not rule out some limited acceptance of Darwinian ideas as part of the total process, since some spiritually minded scientists , far more qualified than me, have found no reason to doubt it, e.g. Sir Alister Hardy, former Professor of Zoology at Oxford (3). I do find his position difficult to understand, however.
  • Darwinism is atheism thinly disguised as science. That will be the subject of my next post. In advance of that, I’ll just point out that its later manifestation neo-Darwinism stresses the blind process of natural selection, random genetic mutation, and lack of purpose (teleology), in order to support a materialist, therefore atheistic, explanation for the universe.

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    I have written in the past about the many scientists and philosophers critical of Darwinism. If interested, please click here and here.

 

Footnotes:

(1) In The Greatest Show On Earth: The Evidence for Evolution, he says “The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust.” This, quite rightly, provoked a strong response: “Is that some sort of cruel joke? The evidence for Darwin’s account of evolution and, more so, its controversial mechanism of natural selection is a matter of inference, no matter how strong you think the inference is. The evidence for the Holocaust includes countless eye-witness accounts — a very different and superior order of evidence”. https://evolutionnews.org/2009/09/richard_dawkinss_jewish_proble/

(2) You can check him out at http://www.thethirdwayofevolution.com/people/view/stephen-talbott

(3) See, for example, Darwin and the Spirit of Man, Collins, 1984

 

Darwinism, Creationism, and Intelligent Design – Introduction

    I was up in Cambridge recently. Every time I go there, I always try to pop into the Amnesty International second-hand bookshop; they usually have something there of interest. On this occasion, very close to each other on the shelves of the Religion section (an interesting placement!), I found:

  • Undeniable: How Biology Confirms Our Intuition That Life Is Designed, by Douglas Axe (1)
  • Critique of Intelligent Design: Materialism versus Creationism From Antiquity to the Present, by John Bellamy Foster, Brett Clark, and Richard York (2)
  • Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? by Denis Alexander (3)
  • Evolution as a Religion, by Mary Midgley (4)
  • Essays of a Humanist, by Julian Huxley (5)

    The combination seemed very tempting, and so I bought them all, hoping to get deeper into this very interesting debate. It has since occurred to me that I could use them as a source of brief articles for Medium, offering a few random thoughts.

    Here are a few notes on these texts:

    Douglas Axe is associated with the Discovery Institute, which is a leading organisation in the Intelligent Design movement. (I have subscribed to their website’s articles for several years.)

    The back cover of the second book says that it is “a key to understanding the forces of irrationalism challenging the teaching of evolution in the United States and seeking to undermine the natural and social sciences. This book offers empowering tools to understand and defend critical and scientific reasoning in both the natural and social sciences and society as a whole”. (I’ll reserve comment on that until later, but I hope readers are already thinking some of the things I intend to say.)

    The third book is an attempt to reconcile Creation and Evolution from a Christian perspective. From where I stand, this makes it somewhat limited spiritually. I’ll be hoping to expand upon its thinking.

    The author of the fourth book is a distinguished, professional philosopher. Critics of Darwinian theories of evolution often say that it has become the new religion of science, that is to say, a belief system relying upon faith rather than evidence. Here is a powerful advocate for this point of view.

    Humanism is not exactly the same as Darwinism, but Huxley is a committed Darwinist, and uses it as the basis for his philosophy. The two ideas are often connected.

    A lot of material for an interesting debate. Watch this space!

 

    Footnotes:

(1) HarperOne, 2016

(2) Monthly Review Press, 2008

(3) Monarch Books, 2008

(4) Routledge, 2002

(5) Pelican, 1966