Jonah Sachs: “We live in a world that has lost its connection to its traditional myths, and we are now trying to find new ones — we’re people, and that’s what people without myths do. These myths will shape our future, how we live, what we do… The ability to dream up and spread these solutions lives or dies on the ability to tell great stories that inspire people to think differently. Nothing is more urgent than that right now”¹.

Edward Edinger: “A human society cannot long survive unless its members are psychologically contained within a central living myth. Such a myth provides the individual with a reason for being…

“Western society no longer has a viable, functioning myth. Indeed, all the major world cultures are approaching, to a greater or lesser extent, the state of mythlessness… Meaning is lost…

“Nothing less than the discovery of a new central myth will solve the problem for the individual and for society”².

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    This article is the latest in a series on the theme of whether we can find a new mythology, a common visionary story, to unite humanity in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. We need this because the planet is in crisis, and it is not clear whether the current political systems and leaders are capable of providing solutions. (For a guide to the whole series, see under Mythology on the Blog Index page. )

    I believe that the root of the problem is that modern society has lost its way, is in a spiritual vacuum, secularism having become the norm in politics. We have been led astray by the philosophical and scientific movement known as the Enlightenment which has erroneously rejected ancient, traditional ways of thinking, the great religions and myths of the past. As Steven Pinker, one of the Enlightenment’s current main spokesmen, sums up: “The findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures…are factually mistaken”³. The worldview of atheistic materialism is on the rise, promoted aggressively, most obviously by Richard Dawkins, with the support of many others.

    As this new article has reached a turning point in the series, here is a brief summary of what has preceded. Earlier articles have discussed the function and nature of mythology, how myths originate, and the attempts by various modern Enlightenment scientists to construct their own mythology to replace that of the ancients, which they reject. I have argued strongly that these attempts are unsuccessful and unhelpful, simply wrong.

    So we have reached the point where we need to search for this new unifying story, this new mythology. There is a passage in Keiron Le Grice’s book The Archetypal Cosmos⁴ which describes the current situation very well: “When old beliefs no longer adequately explain the actual facts of our life experience, when a myth becomes out of touch with the reality of daily lives of the people of a culture… so conflict arises between personal experience and collective mythology as people struggle to accept the validity of the story they are presented with and to accept, consequently, the associated values of the culture. Then the discrepancy between professed beliefs and the lived reality of human life gives rise to what psychologist Leon Festinger has termed cognitive dissonance, an acute psychological discomfort arising from an irreconcilable contradiction between our actual experiences and our understanding of how the world is supposed to be. Yet it is out of such psychological conflict and innate tension that new visions, new world views, and new myths are born… We stand in need of a new response to the unique spiritual challenge of our time. We need a new mythic perspective” (p33).

    There was a time when this would have referred to the Enlightenment thinkers who thought that old religions were in conflict with the new findings of science. Now the boot is on the other foot, and the time is fast approaching when the worldview of Enlightenment science (how we are told the world is supposed to be) is irreconcilably contradicted by the actual experiences of many people around the world, who therefore adopt a spiritual viewpoint. At the same time, many people remain converted to Enlightenment thinking, and have not yet thought deeply enough, or had experiences which would convince them otherwise.

    If there is going to be a new mythology, we have to ask how it will originate. In ancient times myths seemed to emerge spontaneously from the collective psyche, in the manner of dreams, thus were not created consciously by humans. (Joseph Campbell said: “Myths are public dreams, dreams are private myths”.) It is possible, indeed likely, that this age has now long passed, never to return. We can, however, live in hope; Le Grice is optimistic: “As we leave behind the old mythic and religious forms, our time is now pregnant with the possibility that a totally new form of myth might emerge. The history of religion has demonstrated the remarkable resourcefulness of the human psyche, for new religions and new myths have sprung forth from the fertile ground of the collective imagination just at the time they were most needed” (p33). If that age has passed, however, then any new mythology would have to be fashioned by humans themselves. There is nothing wrong with this in principle but, almost by definition, this would not be mythology in the original sense.

    If a new mythology does not present itself spontaneously, we can attempt to move towards a new worldview, a new philosophy, which can then inspire artists, poets, novelists, and perhaps others to give expression to any emerging ideas.

    Seemingly everyone recognises the power of stories to captivate and influence people, whether or not they are the unifying stories I am discussing. There are those who openly call for a new mythology: Joseph Campbell, depth psychologists like Carl Jung and his followers, notably Edward Edinger, the scientists that I have discussed (Steven Pinker, David Christian, Julian Huxley, Ursula Goodenough), environmentalist Alex Evans⁵, and Keiron Le Grice as in the above quotes. Others use mythological themes in their works, and their immense success is a testament to the power of such stories: novelists like J. K. Rowling, and film-makers like George Lucas — it is well known that Star Wars was heavily influenced by Joseph Campbell, and we now have a massive Star Wars cult. There is also Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy as novels and films.

    And then we have advertising agencies. It is obvious that they tell stories in order to influence the population’s buying habits. It should not come as a surprise to anyone that sometimes the stories they tell are, to put it mildly, not 100% true, and are closer to propaganda. Some of their methods have been revealed by Jonah Sachs, a marketing man himself, in his excellent book Winning the Story Wars¹. He is also calling for a new mythology — see the quote at the beginning of this article.

    Since it is easy to influence people by the power of stories, when creating a new mythology it is vital that we tell true stories, because false stories unfortunately seem to have the same power. We live in an era of propaganda and ‘fake news’, made much more available to public participation by the advent of the internet. We should not be surprised that advertising agencies, politicians, and the media indulge in such activities. It is not quite so obvious, and therefore needs to be stressed more, that scientists are just as capable of telling false stories in order to influence people, to promote their own agendas.

    Our new mythology would therefore have to emerge from a true understanding of the nature of the universe — cosmological, scientific, religious and spiritual truth. From my perception, this would be a synthesis of the spiritual wisdom of ancient peoples, their mythologies and religions — sometimes called the Perennial Philosophy — and the best of modern science, inspired by quantum physics, what is often called the new paradigm. This would therefore be a reunification of science and religion, which separated at the time of the Enlightenment. I’ve identified four ingredients of the new mythology: science and cosmology, religion and spirituality, psychology, and old myths which are still relevant. I’ll discuss those in more detail in further articles.

    Click here for the next article in the series.

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Footnotes:

1. Winning the Story Wars, Harvard Business Review Press, 2012, p6–7

2. The Creation of Consciousness, Inner City Books, 1984, p9, p11

3. “Science is Not Your Enemy”, The New Republic, August 19th 2013, p33

4. Floris Books, 2010

5. The Myth Gap, Eden Project Books, 2017

    On many points “the great scientific theories have lapsed. The more sophisticated the theories, the more inadequate they are. This is a reason to cherish them. They have enlarged and not diminished our sense of the sublime”. (David Berlinski, The Devil’s Delusion, Preface)

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    This article is the latest in a series on the theme of whether we can find a new mythology, a common vision, to unite humanity in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. (For a guide to all the articles, look under Mythology on the Blog Index page.) I am currently discussing some thinkers who are trying to create such a mythology from the worldview and findings of (what they perceive to be) science. In earlier articles I’ve discussed Steven Pinker, David Christian, and Julian Huxley. I’m now going to turn my attention to biologist Ursula Goodenough and her book The Sacred Depths of Nature¹.

    It’s likely that many readers will not have heard of her, but what follows is nevertheless relevant. It can be thought of as a study in:

• the inadequacy of science to create a unifying story even when it is trying to be religious.
• how confused sincere and well-meaning scientists can become when they deny the existence of the supernatural and the Divine.

    Goodenough is different from the three authors in previous articles, who are all vociferous atheists, believing that modern science has proved their case. She differs in that, even though she believes in the same science, she is nevertheless “deeply enmeshed” in a Christian tradition (the Presbyterian Church) — although she may not necessarily accept their theology — and introduces religion into the debate.

    I’m interested in what she has to say because her aim is the same as mine. She recognises the need for mythology in general: “Humans need stories — grand, compelling stories — that help to orient us in our lives and in the cosmos” (p174), and that to move forward we have to find some common agreement: “Any global tradition needs to begin with a shared worldview — a culture-independent, globally accepted consensus as to how things are” (Pxvi).

    This is the shared worldview she offers us: “The Big Bang, the formation of stars and planets, the origin and evolution of life on this planet, the advent of human consciousness and the resultant evolution of cultures — this is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true” (Pxvi). She later concludes that this “Epic of Evolution is such a story, beautifully suited to anchor our search for planetary consensus, telling us of our nature, our place, our context” (p174).

    She therefore believes in the same science as the three authors mentioned above, so the title of her book is intriguing. Sacred is a word usually associated with religion. Her follow-up to the first of those quotes is: “But that potential can be realized under only one condition. A cosmology works as a religious cosmology only if it resonates, only if it makes the listener feel religious (my italics). To be sure, the beauty of Nature — sunsets, woodlands, fireflies — has elicited religious emotions throughout the ages. We are moved to awe and wonder at the grandeur, the poetry, the richness of natural beauty; it fills us with joy and thanksgiving”.

    She continues: “Our response to accounts of the workings of Nature, on the other hand, is decidedly less positive. The scientific version of how things are, and how they came to be, is much more likely, at first encounter, to elicit alienation, anomie, and nihilism, responses that offer little promise for motivating our allegiance or moral orientation” (both her italics, Pxvi-xvii).

    She is certainly correct there. As physicist Steven Weinberg says: “The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless”². Other authors I have quoted in this series talk about the universe’s pitiless indifference. What does Goodenough have to offer as a solution?

    She says that religions address two fundamental human concerns, a cosmology — thus an understanding of the true nature of the universe — and a morality or ethos. “The role of religion is… to render the cosmological narrative so rich and compelling that it elicits our allegiance and our commitment to its emergent moral understandings” (Pxiv). The problem is therefore how a worldview which elicits alienation, anomie, and nihilism, can become rich and compelling enough to unite humanity.

    She continues: “As I witness contemporary efforts to generate global understanding, I see some high-minded and idealistic people attempting to operate within an amalgam of economic, military, and political arrangements… (but) where is the religion? … What is really orienting this project besides fear and greed? Where is the shared cosmology and the shared morality? … Without a common religious orientation, we basically don’t know where to begin, nor do we know what to say or how to listen, nor are we motivated to respond”. She therefore wants to “outline the foundations for such a planetary ethic” (Pxv-xvi).

    I would agree with much of what she says here. She clearly recognises that a unifying mythology must have a religious foundation — science is not enough. However, from this starting point, it is vitally important that we begin with a true cosmology, a true understanding of how things are. And that is where the problems begin. Goodenough has complete, but I would say unwarranted, faith in the worldview of conventional (materialist) science. Referring to the necessary globally accepted consensus, she says: “From my perspective, this part is easy. How things are is well, how things are: our scientific account of Nature, an account that can be called The Epic of Evolution”. As noted above, this is “The Big Bang, the formation of stars and planets, the origin and evolution of life on this planet, the advent of human consciousness and the resultant evolution of cultures”. She therefore believes in the Big Bang, the neo-Darwinian Synthesis (natural selection acting upon genetic mutations, her chapter 5), and the emergence of human consciousness. This is her truth, but all are debatable, and none of them have been proved absolutely.

    The scientific worldview that she describes can be called the old paradigm. Just as life evolves, so too, it would seem, does science, for what she describes as “reality” (p172), “a fully modern, up-to-the-minute understanding of Nature” (Pxi), may now be out of date. A relevant article has recently been published on Medium by Paul Mulliner³ on the theme of how this worldview is being replaced, and there are many others saying similar things. He opens: “Our current world-view, which holds that our separate human brain generates consciousness, the Universe is a mostly empty and lifeless void and that the living beings on planet Earth have somehow emerged from random mutations of material stuff, is slowly being displaced by an emerging new vision of reality”, thus a new paradigm. Specifically on the emergence of human consciousness, he says: “Human consciousness, rather than being generated by the brain, is actually present everywhere in the Universe as an intrinsic cosmic consciousness field, which our brain tunes into and participates with”.

    In another recent Medium article⁴, Deepak Chopra says: “Consciousness is innate in Nature. Living creatures should be viewed as unique species of consciousness”, and “Intelligence is innate in Nature and forms the linchpin of evolution. Intelligence is not the late-stage product of billions of years of primitive life forms becoming more complex physically”.

    On the subject of natural selection acting upon genetic mutations, Mulliner says that there is a “generative cosmic intelligence that is continuously making the whole world out of itself, vibrationally transforming itself into the interwoven orchestration of living-cell biochemistry”. He is therefore introducing quantum physics into the debate, something that many biologists, including Goodenough, are unwilling to do⁵. The suggestion would be that what appears random to neo-Darwinians may not be quite so random after all.

    The Big Bang is accepted by the majority of cosmologists, but is nevertheless controversial. I have discussed this in earlier articles⁶ where I have argued that, even if the Big Bang theory is true, it emerged from some very poor science. (A supplementary article will follow this one, developing on that theme.)

    I would argue, therefore, that Goodenough does not allow herself to trace her feelings of wonder and awe to their true source, because she has allowed herself to be persuaded by a false scientific worldview⁷. She believes that the universe and life have arisen through natural processes, and this is the foundation upon which she wants to build her unifying vision: “So we extract from reality (!) all the meaning and guidance and emotional substance that we can, and we bring these responses with us as we set out to chart global paths” (p172). Her task is therefore to reconcile scientific materialism with religious feelings, and she comes up with two key phrases:

1. Religious naturalism:

• “It is therefore the goal of this book to present an accessible account of our scientific understanding of Nature and then suggest ways that this account can call forth appealing and abiding religious responses — an approach that can be called religious naturalism. If religious emotions can be elicited by natural reality… then the story of Nature has the potential to serve as the cosmos for the global ethos that we need to articulate… The project can be undertaken only if we all experience a solemn gratitude that we exist at all, share a reverence for how life works, and acknowledge a deep and complex imperative that life continue” (Pxvii).
• “Most religious traditions ask us to bow and tremble in deference to the Divine, to walk humbly with thy God. Religious naturalism asks that we locate such feelings of deference somewhere within the Earthly whole” (p87).

2. Covenant with Mystery. Confronted by the nihilism that lurks in the findings of science, she says: “I don’t have to seek a point. In any of it. Instead, I can see it as the locus of Mystery”, elaborating in statements like these:

• “Nature can take its place as a strange but wondrous given”.
• “The realization that I needn’t have answers to the Big Questions, needn’t seek answers to the Big Questions, has served as an epiphany” (both p12).
• “For me, the existence of all this complexity and awareness and intent and beauty, and my ability to apprehend it, serves as the ultimate meaning and the ultimate value. The continuation of life… requires no further justification, no Creator, no superordinate meaning of meaning, no purpose other than that the continuation continue…” (p171).

    Here she is displaying a strange lack of inquisitiveness for a scientist. She says that “the need for explanation pulsates in us all”, but not in her apparently, since she is unwilling to ask the big question, what is the source of these mysteries? She certainly feels religious, and invites others to also feel religious. However, what it might take to actually become religious would be to explore further the implications of what she is saying. She says: “Our story tells us of the sacredness of life, of the astonishing complexity of cells and organisms, of the vast lengths of time it took to generate their splendid diversity, of the enormous improbability that any of it happened at all. Reverence is the religious emotion elicited when we perceive the sacred” (p170).

    She obviously has an unusual understanding of the word ‘sacred’. The Oxford English Dictionary definition is “connected with God or a god or dedicated to a religious purpose and so deserving veneration”. But according to her, there is actually nothing, despite the title of her book, really sacred about life; it can all be explained naturalistically — she is quite insistent about it. For her it is “clear that life works through myriads of chemical reactions and that the information needed to organize this chemistry is encoded in DNA molecules”. Even though she has earlier talked about “the countless miracles that surround us” (p30), she is nevertheless convinced that “the foundation of life… (is) just so much biochemistry and biophysics… (that) the workings of life are not mysterious at all. They are obvious, explainable, and thermodynamically inevitable. And relentlessly mechanical. And bluntly deterministic” (p46).

    She also assures us that “everything in our universe, including the Earth and its living creatures, obeys the laws of physics”, although she concedes that how they originated is one of the great mysteries. This would again be old-paradigm thinking. Deepak Chopra, in another Medium article⁸, discussing the wholeness and interconnectedness of the universe, says: “Whatever controls space, time, matter, and energy must be the universe’s overriding reality. Wholeness exerts a force, call it ‘the power of one’, that goes beyond physical forces. Or to put it another way, no combination of physical forces can be used to explain how the whole maintains and organizes itself”. Also, as Mulliner explains, the biochemistry and biophysics are only the surface of life, which emerge from a generative cosmic intelligence. This is what spiritual traditions have been saying for centuries. Goodenough claims to be exploring the sacred depths of nature, when she is only looking at the surface, not even scratching it.

    We need a true cosmology, religion and mythology, not superficial ones unwilling to explore the deeper realities. Goodenough isn’t willing to search for them, preferring her Covenant with Mystery, which is really just a euphemism for not wanting to explore difficult questions. She says: “Life can be explained by its underlying chemistry, just as chemistry can be explained by its underlying physics” (p28), but wants to go no further. Why do we have to stop there? She says that the origin of the laws of physics is a mystery, is therefore unwilling to ask the question, what explains them? Is there nowhere we can go beyond physics? Is metaphysics a meaningless word?

    To perceive life and the universe to be miracles is, I believe, the correct response. Goodenough refuses to make the obvious conclusion that Nature is not apparently, but really sacred, that is, a manifestation of God, or whatever similar term one prefers.

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    “When I have (the experience of absolute or ethical value) I wonder at the existence of the world… It is the experience of seeing the world as a miracle”. (Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lecture on Ethics)

    Click here for the next article in the series.

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Footnotes:

1. Oxford University Press, 1998

2. The First Three Minutes, Flamingo, 1993, p149

3. https://medium.com/@paul_mulliner/discovering-the-new-reality-3b51f621ef4b

4. https://medium.com/@DeepakChopra/the-mystery-of-where-we-came-from-b113d612431f

5. As Deepak Chopra says: “Quantum mechanics is considered the most successful scientific theory of all time, but its effect on everyday life — or at least everyday thought — has been marginal”. (https://medium.com/@DeepakChopra/the-power-of-one-251d0792efcc )

6. Click here, here, and here.

7. Further evidence that she is trapped within the old paradigm are:

• she says that “life emerged from nonlife” (p27). Actually there is no such thing as nonlife, only different levels of life — there is nothing but consciousness, which is by definition a feature of life, as both Mulliner and Chopra attest.
• she says: “My thoughts are a lot of electricity flowing along a lot of membrane. My emotions are the result of neurotransmitters squirting on my brain cells” (p46–47). It is worth at least considering the alternative possibility that her thoughts are the cause of electricity flowing along membrane, and that neurotransmitters squirting on brain cells are the result of her emotions. Such possibilities never enter the minds of old-paradigm scientists, however.

8. https://medium.com/@DeepakChopra/the-power-of-one-251d0792efcc

    This article is the latest in a series on the theme of whether we can find a new mythology, a common vision, to unite humanity in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. (For links to all the earlier articles, see under Mythology on the Blog Index page.) At the moment I am discussing some thinkers who are trying to create such a mythology from the worldview and findings of modern science. Humanism is one significant foundation stone of their new mythology, and I discussed it in relation to Steven Pinker in an earlier article (click here). I’m now going to turn my attention to the late Julian Huxley, who was a passionate advocate of Humanism, witness the titles of two of his books. (See Bibliography below. All quotes here are from Essays of a Humanist, unless otherwise stated.)

    Humanism is a ‘religion without God’. Put another way, it is claimed to be the most optimistic worldview that humans can come up with, if it is assumed that there is no God, nothing supernatural, nothing spiritual, nothing beyond the observed universe we inhabit. Here is Huxley holding forth on that theme, making statements similar to those of Steven Pinker and David Christian in earlier articles in the series: “The knowledge explosion of the last hundred years since Darwin is giving us a new vision of our human destiny — of the world, of man, and of man’s place and role in the world. It is an evolutionary and comprehensive vision, showing us all reality as a self-transforming process. It is a monistic vision, showing us all reality as a unitary and continuous process, with no dualistic split between soul and body, between matter and mind, between life and not-life, no cleavage between natural and supernatural; it reveals that all phenomena, from worms to women, from radiation to religion, are natural.

    “It will inevitably lead to a new general organization of thought and belief, and to the development, after centuries of ideological fragmentation, of a new and comprehensive idea-system… The present is the first period in history when man has begun to have a comprehensive knowledge of stars and atoms, of chemical molecules and geological strata, of plants and animals, of physiology and psychology, of human origins and human history… It is comprehensive, in the sense of covering every aspect of reality, the whole field of human experience” (p124–5).

    This is therefore the vision (myth) that Huxley wants to be taught to all humanity. Some of his Humanism sounds wonderful; it affirms “the unity of mind and body… the continuity of man with the rest of life, and of life with the rest of the universe… the unity of all mankind” (p77). This is not especially Humanist, however; this might equally have been said from a spiritual perspective. There is also this striking passage: “Man must remember that he is part of nature, and must learn to live in harmonious symbiosis with the environment provided by his planet, a relation of responsible partnership instead of irresponsible exploitation. If he is to make a success of his job as guiding agent for evolution, he must abandon the arrogant idea of conquering and exploiting nature; he must cooperate and conserve” (p125). It would be hard to disagree with this. Elsewhere, however, he does reveal his spiritual ignorance: “The evolution of mind or sentiency is an extremely rare event in the vast meaninglessness of the insentient universe, and man’s particular brand of sentiency may well be unique” (p82).

    And of course, Humanism is intimately linked with Darwinism, which Humanists freely admit is their intellectual foundation. Huxley says: “This new vision is inevitably an evolutionary one” (p78), and the Humanist Manifesto III of 2003 states it clearly: “Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change”¹.

    Humanism is therefore built on a very shaky foundation. I said earlier in the series that if this “new and comprehensive idea-system”, otherwise known as the ‘Enlightenment’, has led Steven Pinker to believe the things he does, then his book is its own refutation. The same can therefore be said of Julian Huxley.

    Humanist Richard Dawkins is well known for saying:“Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. You might think that it is not possible to be more Darwinian and Humanist than Dawkins, but if such a person exists or existed, then a very strong candidate would be Julian Huxley, who wants to make Darwinism the foundation of this new religion, in his language a “new dominant thought-organization” called Evolutionary Humanism.

    He was the grandson of Thomas Huxley, whose passionate campaigning for the ideas of Darwin led him to be called ‘Darwin’s bulldog’, so Darwinism clearly ran in the family. Julian was a graduate of Balliol College Oxford, interestingly the same as Richard Dawkins. (Is this just a coincidence, or is Balliol a breeding ground for rabid Darwinian atheists?) He went on to have a distinguished academic career, was also the first Director-General of UNESCO, and the first President of the British Humanist Association, obviously a highly influential figure.

    Huxley, like Pinker and Christian, has supreme confidence in the findings of modern science. As noted above, he says that “the present is the first period in history when man has begun to have a comprehensive knowledge” (p125). He also refers to “the knowledge-explosion of the last hundred years (which provides) man with a new revelation, a new vision of his destiny. (THF, p6). He talks about “the failure of older ideas which attempted to organize beliefs round a core of ignorance” (THF, p13). Here he is echoing Steven Pinker who says: “The findings of science imply that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures… are factually mistaken” (p394), and David Christian who says: “Today, we can tell that story with a precision and scientific rigor that was unthinkable (at the beginning of the 20th century)”; and “It draws on a global heritage of carefully tested information and knowledge”². None of them is aware that in ancient times there seem to have been very advanced technologies, which suggests that the science cannot have been too bad. There was also a far more sophisticated understanding of the nature of the universe than their materialism provides.

    The Humanists also have supreme confidence in the truth of their ideas, dismissing any objections as irrational or outmoded thinking, and condemning any dissenters as intellectually inferior. In an earlier article I noted that Steven Pinker implied that anyone who disagreed with him must be stupid: “Who could be against reason, science, humanism, or progress?” This is clearly not strong enough for Huxley, who begins one book with a more arrogant and condescending statement: I “remained a firm Darwinian all through the curious phase of anti-Darwinian prejudice which beclouded the minds of many avant-garde biologists for the first three decades of the present century” (p9). Elsewhere he wrote: “To all save those who deliberately shut or averted their eyes, or were not allowed by their pastors or masters to look, it was at once clear that the fact and concept of evolution was bound to act as the central germ or living template of a new dominant thought-organization” (THF, p17).

    As I have argued in previous articles, and as is clearly demonstrated by the Dawkins quote above, Darwinian theory has become so popular and entrenched, despite all the objections that can be made against it, because of its appeal to atheists, and because it can be contained within the box of scientific materialism. This is again confirmed by Huxley: “The evidence and the arguments marshalled by Darwin in the Origin were decisive in persuading leaders of scientific thought like (Thomas) Huxley and Hooker that evolution had occurred and that it was based on a natural and scientifically intelligible mechanism” (p23). Darwin obviously believed in his theory. It was nevertheless merely a hypothesis, but was so appealing to the scientific community because it meant that they would not have to stretch their minds beyond their usual limited way of thinking, and because a denial of anything spiritual or supernatural was firmly implanted in their minds.

    It is therefore pointless arguing with them, so what follows is not an attempt to persuade them, rather an alternative viewpoint which will hopefully inspire readers to challenge such ideas wherever they find them. My source is Kenneth Oldmeadow, who speaks on behalf of the Perennial Philosophy, the idea that all religions, despite their superficial differences, at their heart are saying the same thing. He calls the Perennial Philosophy Traditionalism, which is also the title of his book³.

    As I noted above, Humanism is intended to be the most optimistic worldview that humans can come up with if it is assumed that there is no God, nothing supernatural, nothing spiritual. If that is taken as a given, it would follow logically that “an increasing number of people are coming to feel that man must rely only on himself in coping with the business of living and the problem of destiny…” (p77 and THF, p14). (I would suggest that this can only be because they have been brainwashed by people like Huxley.) On this theme Oldmeadow quotes Brian Keeble: “The human state as such is by definition a mode of ignorance — a blindness that cannot, by merely having recourse to itself, overcome its own unknowingness”⁴. I would add that there are none so blind as those who do not want to see, a deficiency we might call wilful blindness. The same idea is expressed more eloquently by the Perennial Philosophist Frithjof Schuon: “That which is lacking in the present world is a profound knowledge of the nature of things; the fundamental truths are always there, but they do not impose themselves because they cannot impose themselves on those unwilling to listen”⁵ .

    Humanism is a significant ingredient in what Oldmeadow calls Modernism, “the prevalent assumptions, values and attitudes of a world-view fashioned by the most pervasive intellectual and moral influences of recent European history, an outlook in conformity with the Zeitgeist of the times” (p117). We could therefore equate this with ‘Enlightenment’ thinking, something that Steven Pinker is so keen on, and which I have criticised in previous articles. It is typically “humanist, rationalist, materialist”, and marked by secularism, evolutionist progressivism, the absence of any sense of the sacred, and an unrelieved ignorance of metaphysical principles”⁶.

    He continues: “Modernism is nothing less than a spiritual disease which continues to spread like a plague across the globe… Its symptoms can be detected in a wide assortment of inter-related ‘mind sets’ and ‘-isms’… always united by the same underlying principles. Scientism, rationalism, relativism, materialism, positivism, empiricism, psychologism, individualism, humanism, existentialism: these are some of the prime follies of modernist thought”.

    Exposing much of what is called science, so beloved by Pinker, Christian, and Huxley, to be mere scientism, he says: “European science is not simply a disinterested and, as it were, a detached and ‘objective’ mode of inquiry into the material world: it is an aggregate of disciplines anchored in a bed of very specific and culture-bound assumptions about the nature of reality and about the proper means whereby it might be explored, explained and controlled”. “By its very nature modern science is thus unable to apprehend or accommodate any realities of a suprasensorial order. Science becomes scientism when it refuses to acknowledge the limits of its competence, denies the authority of any sources which lie outside its ambit” (p118, p119).

    Specifically on the subject of Humanism, Oldmeadow says that it is one of modernism’s “most typical off-spring”. “Humanism is not, of course, a single-headed monster but an ideological hydra stalking the modern world seeking whom it may devour… We can isolate a defining characteristic in all (various) secular humanisms be they atheistic or agnostic, ‘optimistic’ or ‘pessimistic’, Marxist or existentialist or ‘scientific’: the insistence that man’s nature and purpose is to be defined and understood purely in terms of his terrestrial existence. This amounts to a kind of first principle in humanism wherein man is seen as an autonomous, self-sufficient being who need look no further than himself in ‘explaining’ the meaning of life and who need pay homage to nothing beyond himself” (p138).

    On the denial of God and the supernatural: “The humanist failure to recognise the transcendent dimension in human life and its indifference or hostility to the very idea of God has all manner of ramifications: it impoverishes our view of reality, breeds all kinds of false definitions of man, and produces a chimerical ‘humanitarianism’, as well as encouraging negative attitudes to the past and to tradition itself. Humanists, by definition, are sceptical about the claims of the great religious teachings. The humanist outlook is seen, by its exponents, as ‘open-minded’, ‘sane’, unfettered by ‘prejudices’ and ‘superstitions’. It seems not to occur to humanists that their own attitudes are simply the prejudices of a modernist rationalistic materialism, nor that scepticism may be a function of ignorance rather than knowledge” (p139).

    There is a dark side to atheism in politics. The Communist regimes under Stalin in the USSR and Mao in China, while claiming to be “liberating the proletariat”, had no qualms about murdering their own citizens. Richard Dawkins complains correctly about all the violence and murder that has been committed in the name of religion. When challenged by an interviewer on a radio programme that similar violence and murder has been committed by atheists, his somewhat weak response was that they did not do this because they were atheists. That may be true strictly speaking, but holding such views would certainly lead someone to believe that there are no consequences for one’s actions, no judgment, no retribution. Pinker assures us that there is no such thing as karma. Perhaps he’s right. The Bible, however, says: “You reap whatever you sow”⁷ (although that is not how Christians interpret the saying). Perhaps that is what St. Paul meant, however, and it would certainly be helpful if everyone did believe in karma. That might stop such despots believing that they can freely indulge in acts of murder without suffering any consequences.

    There is a similar dark side to science. The last three chapters of Huxley’s Essays of a Humanist are entitled The Enlightenment and the Population Problem, The Crowded World, and Eugenics in Evolutionary Perspective. Does this not sound very frightening? What exactly is he advocating?

    The unfortunate subtitle of Darwin’s Origin of Species was “the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life”. What was he thinking of? We can assume that he would not have approved, but it is well known that Hitler, in his desire to create a master race, was inspired by Darwin’s ideas. To be fair to Huxley, he does not openly advocate extermination, but he does talk about “the massive imperfection of man as a species” (p257). He says: “The human species is in desperate need of genetic improvement if the whole process of psychosocial evolution which it has set in train is not to get bogged down in unplanned disorder, negated by over-multiplication, clogged up by more complexity, or even blown to pieces by obsessional stupidity” (p262). He is in favour of “discouraging genetically defective or inferior types from breeding, reducing human over-multiplication in general and the high differential fertility of various regions, nations, and classes in particular. Then (man) can proceed to the much more important task of positive improvement… Eugenics can make an important contribution to man’s further evolution: but it can only do so if it considers itself as one branch of that new nascent science, and fearlessly explores all the possibilities that are open to it” (p255).

    What does ‘fearlessly explores’ mean in practice? It sounds very sinister. Whatever happened to compassion, and “the unity of all mankind” in which he claims to believe? If this is where Humanism, Darwinism, and the Scientific Dictatorship⁸ are leading us, we are definitely living in dangerous times. Huxley claims that Humanism offers a solution to the world’s problems. I would suggest that he is looking in the wrong direction, and the real problem is Humanism itself which, as Oldmeadow suggests, is one of atheism’s most dangerous offspring. Huxley, however, is passionate about his vision, and thinks that it is the best option for the future of humanity!

    In condemning Huxley, I accept that not all those who call themselves Humanists are necessarily like him, that there are more innocent Humanists, who merely seek a secular, humanitarian society. For example, Humanist Steven Pinker seems blissfully unaware of Julian Huxley and his ideas on eugenics. We should nevertheless be aware of the danger that lies at the heart of Huxley’s brand of Humanism with its atheistic agenda; Huxley was, after all, the first President of the British Humanist Society, a Life Fellow of the British Eugenics Society from 1925 and later its President(!). He was also the first Director-General of UNESCO (!!). What were they thinking of when they appointed him? Did they subscribe to his ideas?

    “Those abiding in the midst of ignorance, self-wise, thinking themselves learned, hard smitten, go around deluded, like blind men by one who is himself blind”⁹.

    Click here for the next article, about Ursula Goodenough and her book The Sacred Depths of Nature.

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UPDATE September 28th 2019

    Starting next week the BBC are beginning a two-part documentary on the subject of eugenics, the subtitle being Science’s Greatest Scandal. TV programme-guide Radio Times says this of the first episode: “The controversial theory of eugenics was a driving force behind the Nazi death camps. Adherents believed it was possible to improve the genetic quality of the human race by discouraging reproduction by people with ‘undesirable’ traits. Journalist Angela Saini and disability rights activist Adam Pearson reveal how these shocking beliefs permeated the British establishment in the first half of the 20th century, gaining influential supporters such as Winston Churchill and Marie Stopes”.

    This just goes to show the dangers inherent in the onward march of atheistic science, and the rise of the Scientific Dictatorship. Yet in Huxley’s eyes eugenics represents progress, something desirable, part of his Humanist agenda. Humans everywhere, beware!

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Bibliography:

Essays of a Humanist (EOH), Penguin, 1966

The Humanist Frame (THF), Julian Huxley, ed., Harper & Brothers, 1962

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Footnotes:

1. quoted by Pinker, Enlightenment Now: the Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress, Penguin, 2018, p411

2. Origin Story, Allen Lane, 2018, Pviii and Px

3. Kenneth Oldmeadow, Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy, Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies, 2000

4. ‘Tradition, Intelligence and the Artist’, Studies in Comparative Religion XI, iv, 1977, p239, quoted in Oldmeadow, p62

5. ‘No Activity Without Truth’, in The Sword of Gnosis, J. Needleman (ed.), p28), Oldmeadow’s epigram to chapter 10

6. Here Oldmeadow, p117, is referring to the thoughts of S. H. Nasr

7. Galatians 6:7

8. A term coined, interestingly, by Huxley’s brother Aldous, who gave a chilling prophecy of where it was leading in Brave New World. It is also the title of an earlier article of mine.

9. Mundaka Upanisad 1.2., 8–11, quoted by Joseph Campbell, Flight of the Wild Gander, New World Library, 2002, p38

    This article is the latest in a series on the theme of whether we can find a new mythology to unite humanity in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. (For links to earlier articles, see under Mythology on the Blog Index page.) At the moment I am discussing some thinkers who are trying to create such a mythology from the worldview and findings of modern science. In the previous two articles I discussed Steven Pinker. Now I’ll turn my attention to David Christian.

    I first became aware of him when he was interviewed on a radio programme¹, promoting his latest book, Origin Story². I became interested when I heard him say that he wants to create a human family (as I do), and that to achieve this we need a unifying story based on science. He believes that this is his Origin Story, which is already being taught in various schools. At that moment I started to become alarmed, since this would suggest that a new generation is being indoctrinated. He also said that he admires Steven Pinker, at which point I became even more alarmed.

    His Origin Story is obviously the orthodox scientific account (myth) of the history of the universe. I’m sure I don’t need to go into details, but here is a brief summary: the Big Bang, the formation of stars and planets, the emergence of life, Darwinian evolutionary theory, the advent of human consciousness, ever increasing complexity. The jacket notes announce: “This is the epic story of the universe and our place in it, from billions of years ago to the remote future”. The book is, unsurprisingly, the perceived scientific story of the material universe; there is no spiritual perspective. The notes further state that the author “created the field of Big History”, and the text confirms what the radio programme said: “Today, big history is being taught in universities in many different parts of the world… and also being taught in thousands of high schools” (Px).

    Here is a summary of his justification for the book. He talks about “the feeling of aimlessness, meaninglessness, and sometimes even despair that shaped so much literature, art, philosophy, and scholarship in the twentieth century”. Bizarrely, however, he blames this on the lack of a universal story: “how embedded all origin stories and religions are in local customs and environments”; “multiple origin stories that said very different things”. This led to the corrosion of “faith in traditional knowledge”, so that many people “lost their bearings, their sense of their place in the universe”. This therefore justifies his claimed need for a universal story based on science: “I have written this book in the optimistic belief that we moderns are not doomed to a chronic state of fragmentation and meaninglessness”; “there is emerging a new, global origin story that is as full of meaning, awe, and mystery as any traditional origin story but is based on modern scientific scholarship across many disciplines” (all above quotes Pix).

    Firstly, it is not true that all religions are embedded in local customs and environments. On the contrary, beyond their surface levels, at their heart all religions are saying the same thing, what is sometimes called the Perennial Philosophy. A scholarly exposition of this was provided by the western convert to Islam, Frithjof Schuon, in The Transcendent Unity of Religions³.

    Secondly, and more importantly, what actually explains the feeling of aimlessness, meaninglessness, and despair in the twentieth century is not the loss of faith in traditional religions and mythologies, which have provided, and can continue to provide, meaning. On the contrary, it is the very worldview that he is trying to promote, that humans are alone in a godless, meaningless, pitiless, indifferent universe. (See, for example, the works of Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Bertrand Russell, Samuel Beckett etc.)

    Christian’s motivation is admirable. Because there is a “subliminal message that humans are divided, at the most fundamental level, into competing tribes”, he wants “to teach a unified history of humanity” (Pviii). He recognises the profound importance of origin stories (mythologies), referring to the sociologist Emile Durkheim’s insistence “that the maps lurking within origin stories and religions were fundamental to our sense of self. Without them, he argued, people could fall into a sense of despair and meaninglessness so profound, it might drive them to suicide. No wonder almost all societies we know of have put origin stories at the heart of education” (p8). He also quotes Lia Hills, who puts the idea more succinctly: “We tell stories to make sense of things. It’s in our blood” (Pvii).

    Christian claims that “curiously, modern secular education lacks a confident origin story that links all domains of understanding. And that may help explain why the sense of disorientation, division, and directionlessness that Durkheim described is palpable everywhere in today’s world” (p8). However, coming to the rescue is his modern origin story, built “by a global community of more than seven billion people”, “for all modern humans”, which “builds on the global traditions of modern science” (p9). Once again he fails to notice that perhaps it is precisely because such education is secular, lacking any sense of transcendence or spirituality, true meaning, that it creates disorientation and directionlessness.

    It’s hard to disagree with Durkheim or Hills, in which case it’s important that we tell ourselves true stories, taking into account as much information as possible. Christian has great confidence in the truth of his origin story, saying: “Today, we can tell that story with a precision and scientific rigor that was (previously) unthinkable” (Pviii), and “it draws on a global heritage of carefully tested information and knowledge…” (Px). Let’s have a look at how precise and carefully tested this story is.

    Christian is convinced of the reality of the Big Bang, saying that this is the “most widely accepted account of ultimate origins”, “one of the major paradigms of modern science, like natural selection in biology or plate tectonics in geology”(p20). He says: “Bizarre as this story may seem when you hear it for the first time, we have to take it seriously, because it is supported by vast amounts of evidence” (p31). He later claims that “today, the evidence that our universe began in a big bang is overwhelming… The core idea is firmly established as the first chapter of a modern origin story” (p37–38). However, in the meantime he merely goes on to recite what in an earlier article I have called the orthodox story of the Big Bang — Edwin Hubble, red-shifted light, the expanding universe, and the cosmic microwave background radiation (CMBR). Now, the Big Bang may have been a real event but, even if true, is nevertheless based on some very dodgy science. I have written about this at length in a second earlier article, from which I’ve extracted some relevant material here.

    Edwin Hubble is widely credited with the discovery of the expanding universe because of the red-shifting of light, but himself rejected the idea, saying in a later paper that the data were incompatible, and that “the expanding models are a forced interpretation of the observational results”⁴. You don’t find this mentioned very often in Big Bang literature.

    Christian further says that the discovery of the CMBR “persuaded most astronomers that the big bang was real because no other theory could explain this all-pervading radiation” (p37). This statement is factually inaccurate because in 1933 the German physicist Erich Regener had predicted the existence of a microwave background produced from the warming of interstellar dust particles by high-energy cosmic rays, thus not a product of a Big Bang. He had also predicted the temperature of the CMBR much more accurately than any Big Bang theorist, suggesting that his theory was more likely to be true. Again this is hardly ever mentioned in Big Bang literature. Is the so-called ‘evidence’ for the Big Bang as convincing as is claimed?

    Christian finds Darwinian evolutionary theory equally convincing. He would say that, of course, because it “seemed to do away with the need for a creator god” (p84), which is one of his stated objectives. As I have argued in earlier articles, this is the reason Darwinism seems so attractive to modern scientists; it is more a question of their philosophical worldview, religion and faith.

    Like other scientists speaking from a Darwinian perspective, Christian has at some point to deal with the tricky problem of purpose, and comes up with the usual answer. He says: “The spooky thing about life is that, though the inside of each cell looks like pandemonium… whole cells give the impression of acting with purpose. Something inside each cell seems to drive it, as if it were working its way through a to-do list” (p76). He obviously cannot contemplate the possibility that the cells are really acting with purpose, since that would undermine his whole thesis. We are therefore subjected to a barrage of words to convince us that what we are witnessing is an illusion. However, as the biologist Stephen Talbott asks: “How, after all, might we distinguish between an organism capable of expressing wise intention, and an organism capable of conjuring an overwhelming illusion of wise intention? Is there, in fact, evidence that can properly override the judgment of our own eyes?”⁵

    Christian goes on to say that “the appearance (or, perhaps, illusion) of purposefulness is… not (his italics) a feature of the other complex entities”. He asks “would it mean anything to say that stars have a purpose? Or planets, or rocks? Or even the universe?”, and his own response is: “Not really, at least not within the conventions of the modern origin story”. Here he is echoing the thoughts of Theodosius Dobzhansky, one of the original contributors to the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis: “It would make no sense to talk of the purposiveness or adaptation of stars, mountains, or the laws of physics”⁶.

    The phrase that I have italicised is the key. The worldview that Christian is advocating excludes on principle the possibility that the universe has a purpose, despite possible evidence to the contrary. Perhaps, however, stars, planets, the universe, the laws of physics do have a purpose. Perhaps the purpose of stars is to provide heat and light for solar systems. Perhaps the purpose of planets is to provide suitable habitation for living beings. The universe and the laws of physics are a bit trickier. However, even conventional cosmologists agree that the hypothesised initial conditions of the universe were precisely right, finely tuned for life to arise, and that if various constants were only very slightly different, then life as we know it could not have evolved. This is known as the Strong Anthropic Principle, and atheistic materialists have spent much time and energy trying to wriggle their way out of the teleological implications.

    Christian says that living things are different from stars, planets and rocks: “Life, with its never-ending attempts to push back against entropy, represents a new type and level of complexity… The components in complex adaptive systems seem to have a will of their own. They appear to follow additional rules that are harder to detect… (They) act as if every component is an agent with a will of its own” (p77). Here we are being subjected to another concerted, relentless attempt to persuade us that there is no purposive behaviour in living organisms; it may appear that way, but is an illusion. However, as Stephen Talbott might say, what scientific experiment could possibly distinguish between an organism capable of expressing wise intention, and an organism capable of conjuring an overwhelming illusion of wise intention? Why should we not believe in the evidence of our own eyes?

    Christian then introduces a new idea into the debate, information (p78). He is obviously still trying to promote his ‘scientific’ origin story, yet introduces some very interesting phrases: “We should think of it as working undercover or in disguise, manipulating events but staying out of the spotlight… Information directs (his italics) change, often from the shadows” (p78). Is it not reasonable to ask exactly what this mysterious information is, and where it is located? Christian’s choice of words suggests that he has absolutely no idea. One obvious suggestion is that the physical universe is being directed by information from other non-material levels (higher/supernatural?), for that is what ‘undercover’ and ‘staying out of the spotlight’ imply. He is obviously unwilling to contemplate this possibility, and fudges the issue with these vague phrases.   

    We therefore arrive at Christian’s contention that there is no place for a creator god in his origin story. He says: “Most versions of the modern origin story no longer accept the idea of a creator god because modern science can find no direct evidence for a god” (p25). This is obviously true, even though Big Bang believers have no idea what happened before it, or what caused it. It would be interesting to know, however, exactly how Christian conceives the creator god he rejects, hopefully not an old man with a beard in the clouds.

    Spiritual thinkers do not think of the creator god in that way either, one of them even going so far as to say that “the notion of an external, anthropomorphic ‘Creator God’ as preached by the exoteric religions”⁷ is the first in a list of crucial misunderstandings that must be cleared before there can be any hope of a reunification between science and religion. The spiritual understanding of ‘God’ is rather that of a Cosmic Consciousness, a Divine Mind, a hidden ultimate intelligence. Christian himself has noticed such hidden intelligence; it is information working undercover, staying out of the spotlight. Of course, he refuses to accept the implications of his own words.

    Perhaps there is no direct evidence for God, but what about indirect evidence? The early quantum physicists, upon discovering the true nature of matter seemed to move in that direction, for example Sir James Jeans, who said: “The universe is looking less like a great machine, and more like a great thought”⁸. Max Planck took the idea even further: “There is no matter as such! All matter originates and exists only by virtue of a force which brings the particles of an atom to vibration and holds this most minute solar system of the atom together… We must assume behind this force the existence of a conscious and intelligent Mind. This Mind is the matrix of all matter”⁹. This mind, we might add, is probably the ultimate source of the information that is working undercover, staying out of the spotlight.

    Finally, is there some contradiction here? Christian says that “The universe really is indifferent to our fate (p291), sounding like Richard Dawkins: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”¹¹. He continues: “It’s a vast ocean of energy for which individual wavelets such as us are ephemeral, passing phenomena”. Only a few pages earlier, however, he had said: “New flows of information and energy have woven humans, animals, and plants, as well as the chemicals of the earth, seas, and atmosphere, into a single system constructed primarily for the benefit of our own species” (p278). If the universe really is indifferent to humanity, as Christian claims, then why is it doing something primarily for our benefit? Now, I know that he doesn’t mean what he is saying literally; he doesn’t think that these flows of information and energy are doing this consciously, deliberately — for him it’s obviously a bizarre, unlikely accident. He is interpreting these flows from a materialist perspective. But suppose they are doing this deliberately? Spiritually speaking, everything, including these flows of information and energy are manifestations of the Divine Mind. So why can’t they be consciously doing something for our benefit? Perhaps the universe is not indifferent to our fate after all.

    Click here for the next article, Against Julian Huxley and the Mythology of Humanism.

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1. Afternoon Edition, BBC radio 5, May 31st 2018

2. Allen Lane, 2018

3. originally 1957, my copy Theosophical Publishing House, 1993

4. “Effects of red shifts on the distribution of nebulae”, Astrophysical Journal 84 (1936): p554

5. http://natureinstitute.org/txt/st/org/comm/ar/2016/teleology_30.htm This article is no longer on line.

6. quoted in Talbott, footnote 6. The source given is Corning, Peter A. (2014). “Evolution ‘On Purpose’: How Behaviour Has Shaped the Evolutionary Process”, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society vol. 112 (June), pp. 242–60.doi:10.1111/bij.12061, pp. 247–8

7. Edi Bilimoria, The Snake and the Rope, Theosophical Publishing House, 2006, p239

8. The Mysterious Universe, Cambridge University Press, 1930, my edition 1947, p137

9. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/7819522-as-a-man-who-has-devoted-his-whole-life-to

10. River Out of Eden, chapter 4. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/73917

    This article is a response to and critique of Steven Pinker’s book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress¹, and follows on from part 1, which it is important to have read before continuing here, in order to establish the context. It is also the latest in a series on the theme of asking whether we can find a new mythology to unite humanity in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. Pinker’s book is relevant because it is an attempt to replace ancient mythology and philosophy with a new story based on atheistic ‘Enlightenment’ science. I’m not going to offer a detailed refutation, rather an alternative viewpoint, in the hope of attracting people who might want to form a counter-movement.

    Pinker says: “Who could be against reason, science, humanism, or progress?” (p29). This is a rhetorical device, the subtext being that anyone who disagrees with him must be stupid, which is not a helpful starting point in an intelligent debate. Putting that thought to one side, however, it is indeed very hard to argue against reason, science, or progress; the case for Humanism, depending on what we mean by that, is not so clear cut. It is possible, however, to argue against Pinker’s understanding and valuation of enlightenment, reason and science, which I intend to do, since they are not necessarily progress. Let’s go through his idols one by one:

1. ENLIGHTENMENT

    All sensible people should be in favour of enlightenment — better knowledge, scientific advance, freedom from superstition — but not necessarily the Enlightenment. This was a philosophical and scientific movement, which obviously had some very good points, and at the time was probably a necessary development for humanity. It becomes a problem, however, when such a worldview becomes entrenched, and people fail to see that we then need to move on even further. If the goal of the Enlightenment was progress towards truth, then it is no longer helpful; it has become a cul-de-sac, not so much enlightenment, rather an ugly black cloud blotting out the sun. The baby was thrown out with the bathwater. In an attempt to free humanity from outdated superstitions and slavish belief in religious texts, vast treasures of spiritual knowledge and thinking were rejected — Hinduism, Buddhism, Taoism, Kabbalah, the wisdom of the ancient Greeks, Hermeticism, the Italian Renaissance, and the mystics of various traditions. Instead of separating the wheat from the chaff, these thinkers decided that everything was chaff, and the worldview of Pinker and those like him is the unfortunate consequence.

    He fails to distinguish between what the Enlightenment correctly helped us to leave behind, belief that “witches can summon up storms”, that “the rainbow is a sign from God”, that “comets portend evil” and so on (p9), and genuine spiritual traditions. He is also against “the 19th-century Romantic belief in mystical forces, laws, dialectics, struggles, unfoldings, destinies, ages of man, and evolutionary forces that propel mankind ever upward toward utopia” (p11), and has said elsewhere: “There is no such thing as fate, providence, karma, spells, curses, augury, divine retribution, or answered prayers”². I won’t discuss the items on these lists individually, but many of them are arguably true. Pinker says that science has disproved them, which is not true, since no scientific experiment could prove or disprove them; they are logical deductions from the worldview of scientific materialism, what Pinker means when he says ‘science’, which operates according to the following rules:

• “The statements of science must invoke only natural things and processes”³.
• “Science… by definition deals only with the natural, the repeatable, that which is governed by law”⁴.

    For example, Pinker believes that “mental life consists of patterns of activity in the tissues of the brain” (p3), and obviously also believes that consciousness emerged from the brain at some point in the Darwinian evolutionary journey. This is not science, however. Neither of these statements has been proved by experiment; they are merely fiercely held assumptions and, as I said, logical deductions based on false premises. Nothing can be proved if it isn’t true.

    If those two quotes correctly describe how science is conducted, which they do, and if the supernatural, the paranormal, and the irrational actually exist, which I believe they do, then by definition and on its own admission science is very limited, and cannot provide a complete explanation and understanding of the universe, even though that is what it aspires to. It is unreasonable, therefore, and wrong for Pinker to claim that science is the only source of truth. The supernatural, the paranormal, and the irrational do not disappear merely because scientists choose to wish them out of existence.   

2. REASON

    No sensible person should be against reason; it is one very useful tool among others available to us. It is possible, however to be against the overvaluation of reason, when it is elevated to a status beyond its true worth, and worshipped, as Pinker does.

    According to Carl Jung, reason or thinking is just one of four functions which contribute to the totality of an integrated personality, the others being feeling, sensation, and intuition. The healthy individual is one who has a balance between them, and has therefore achieved wholeness. Jungian analyst Jolande Jacobi wrote: “There is one main function which is as a rule congenital and is the most clearly differentiated… If a person avails himself all his life only of a single — the main — function, there is a danger of neurotic disturbances arising from the partial or complete repression of the other functions”⁵. It is not hard to see that Pinker’s differentiated function is thinking (reason); I leave readers to draw their own conclusions about his psychological health. It’s reasonable to say that Enlightenment thinkers like him are not in favour of psychology and self-awareness of the Jungian type (even though he is a professor of psychology!).

    Neither is he a fan of the anti-Enlightenment Romantics, but could learn much from the poet Wordsworth who wrote: “Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing boy”⁶, referring to the developing analytical, rational mind which prevents consciousness from seeing things how they truly are. As the well known spiritual saying puts it, the mind is the slayer of the real. Far from being, as Pinker claims, the only or best tool for science to understand reality, the rational mind actually prevents this. His problem is that he cannot comprehend that all the things he rejects are beyond the capability of reason to understand. That is the meaning of the prison house, being trapped within the limitations of one’s own mind.

    There are various things that Pinker is certain about: “The findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures… are factually mistaken… We know that the laws governing the physical world… have no goals that pertain to human well-being”. Repeating the earlier quote, “there is no such thing as fate, providence, karma, spells, curses, augury, divine retribution, or answered prayers”². If what follows the words ‘we know’ is a false statement, then it cannot be said that this is known, merely a belief, a logical deduction from a worldview, the deluded rational mind at work. What he thinks he knows is merely due to his psychological predisposition. He says that his worldview “is true — true to the best of our knowledge, which is the only truth we can have. We believe it because we have reasons to believe it”. What he calls reasons in reality is the worldview of materialistic science, that is to say his psychological mindset.

3. SCIENCE

    Everybody should be in favour of science, as I am, as long as by that we mean seeking a true, objective understanding of the universe without bias or preconceptions. When rationalists accuse others of being ‘anti-science’, they are making the assumption that their understanding of science is the correct one. I argue against Pinker, not because I am anti-science, but because I want a better, truer science than atheistic materialism. Just as he overvalues reason, he elevates science to a status way beyond what it deserves; he truly worships it. Such an attitude is often called scientism, and the quasi-religious worship of science is the definition I prefer. Another definition is “the view that the hard sciences alone have the intellectual authority to give us knowledge of reality”⁷. Even if Pinker would be reluctant to agree that he worships science, it is beyond doubt that the second definition is appropriate.

    Pinker is aware of the accusation, but his first response is strangely off the mark, describing scientism as “the intrusion of science into the territory of the humanities such as politics and the arts” (p34). He continues more appropriately, complaining that “in many colleges and universities, science is presented not as the pursuit of true explanations but as just another narrative or myth”.

    Science, of course, should be the pursuit of true explanations. Since what Pinker believes to be true is at least highly debatable, probably wrong, and since no scientific experiment can confirm or deny the things he rejects, his ‘science’ can only be just another narrative or myth. It is a philosophical worldview posing as scientific truth. Therefore, another ingredient of scientism is claiming something to be science when it is actually merely a belief, an article of faith.

    As an example, let’s consider the question of consciousness surviving death. Although there is circumstantial, anecdotal evidence for this — past-life memories, near-death and out-of-body experiences — it’s hard to imagine a rigorous scientific experiment which could confirm the issue one way or the other. So when the ‘Enlightenment’ thinker William Provine says, “There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me”⁸, he is merely enunciating his faith; saying such things passionately with conviction does not make them more true.  

    Pinker further says that science “is accused of robbing life of its enchantment”, and criticises non-believers for only wanting to believe “deep explanations of the universe, the planet, life, the brain” if they involve magic. If by ‘magic’ he means supernatural factors, then modern science is coming round to this point of view — just ask the early quantum physicists, and other new paradigm thinkers. Are the explanations he offers deep or shallow? Based as they are on philosophical materialism, it is reasonable to conclude that they are shallow. He further criticises non-believers for wanting more from life than “longevity, health, understanding, beauty, freedom, love”. There doesn’t have to be more to life than that, but actually there is, much more. (All the above quotes are from pages 34–35.)

    Having mentioned quantum physics, it’s worth noting that this is the branch of science which best undermines and refutes Pinker’s arguments. Even though he claims to be promoting a worldview based on science, he hardly mentions it, and even in that brief section he does not address the relevant issues.

    I have further criticisms:

    Firstly, conveniently for his line of argument, when addressing the question of spirituality, as noted above, he dismisses the wisdom of the great spiritual traditions. Instead he quotes a woman from a comedy sketch: “So I was texting while I was driving. And I ended up taking a wrong turn that took me directly past a vitamin shop. And I was just like, this is totally the universe telling me I should be taking calcium”. He concludes, probably correctly, that “a ‘spirituality’ that sees cosmic meaning in whims of fortune is not wise but foolish”, but then continues: “The first step toward wisdom is the realization that the laws of the universe don’t care about you”. While I’m quite happy to concede that the laws of physics don’t care much about us, that doesn’t mean that there are not other agencies, intelligences that do care. It is reasonable to call them supernatural, and they have been given names like higher self, soul, spirit guide, guardian angel, daimon. I and many others have had experiences of such agencies, although obviously nothing which would persuade Pinker, since they cannot be repeated in a science laboratory. It doesn’t bother me that he would consider me deluded.

    Secondly, he misunderstands the concept of purpose, saying: “A major breakthrough of the Scientific Revolution — perhaps its biggest breakthrough — was to refute the intuition that the universe is saturated with purpose. In this primitive but ubiquitous understanding, everything happens for a reason, so when bad things happen — accidents, disease, famine, poverty — some agent must have wanted them to happen” (p24). As examples he mentions “witches, who may be burned or drowned”, and sadistic gods who “can be placated with prayers and sacrifices”, then continues with “disembodied forces like karma, fate, spiritual messages, cosmic justice”. It seems to me that once again he has failed to distinguish between what should be rejected, and what is spiritually real, depending on how you define these terms.

    Furthermore, this is not a good example of what spiritually minded people understand by purpose. If the universe is saturated with purpose, as I believe it is, it is rather because it is the manifestation of the divine spirit according to some kind of plan. Suitable analogies might be an artist’s creation, or a scientific experiment. Neither of these imply that every event is willed by this divine mind. Just because a lack of purpose and meaning is a logical deduction from Pinker’s scientific viewpoint doesn’t mean they don’t exist. The fact that materialists don’t experience them, and are impervious to them, is irrelevant. Purpose and meaning do not emerge from the physical world; they are supernatural phenomena emerging from higher levels.

    Thirdly, Pinker is economical with the facts. He says: “Galileo, Newton, and Laplace replaced this cosmic morality play with a clockwork universe in which events are caused by conditions in the present, not goals for the future… Projecting goals onto the workings of nature is an illusion”. Here he is, conveniently for his argument, misrepresenting Newton who, apart from being a dedicated alchemist — surely something shocking for Pinker — believed that the laws he formulated were manifestations of a divine mind.

    Another example would be the following: “Organisms are replete with improbable configurations of flesh like eyes, ears, hearts, and stomachs which cry out for explanation. Before Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace provided one in 1859, it was reasonable to think that they were the handiwork of a divine designer” (p18). Again he conveniently omits to mention that this is precisely what Wallace believed, at least at the end of his life, as is clearly shown by the title of his 1914 book The World of Life: a Manifestation of Creative Power, Directive Mind and Ultimate Purpose. In it he states his view that the purpose (one of Pinker’s scientific heresies) of evolution is “the development of Man, the one crowning product of the whole cosmic process” (Preface, Pvii). He was also a believer in, and wrote extensively about, spiritualism. Not exactly an Enlightenment figure then, even though Pinker tries to enlist him.

4. HUMANISM

    Pinker defines Humanism as “the goal of maximizing human flourishing — life, health, happiness, freedom, knowledge, love, richness of experience”. It would be hard to disagree with anything on this agenda, but there is nothing specifically Humanist about it. A Christian, Jew, or even a modern Pagan could just as easily be in favour of all these items. He further says that Humanism “promotes a non-supernatural basis for meaning and ethics: good without God” (both quotes p 410). Fair enough. There is indeed abundant evidence that many atheists behave morally, in accordance with the law and humanitarian values.

    The problem with Humanism is its underlying philosophical assumptions; it is an atheistic philosophy which rejects religion and spirituality, and believes that in the absence of the Divine and higher worlds, humanity must take on the roles traditionally assigned to them. Humans are therefore compelled to forge their own path, implying that there is no help or guidance available, that we are compelled to become sole arbiters of what is right and wrong. Such an attitude rejects all ideas of spirit, higher self, soul, higher beings, guardian angels, helpful spirits, daimons. In my view, this is a dangerous and arrogant hubris, Pinker’s book being an example of the ignorance that humans can aspire to when they deny the Divine, spirituality, and religion. This is the folly of Humanism.

    Pinker quotes the Humanist Manifesto III (2003), much of the material being the same as the themes of his book. One sentence stands out: “We accept our life as all and enough, distinguishing things as they are from things as we might wish or imagine them to be” (p411). The author is presumably referring to the common belief that people turn to religion and spirituality to avoid having to face the inevitability of death, and life without meaning. We can turn this statement on its head, however, and note that here Humanists are guilty of what they accuse others. The sentence assumes that humanity knows how things are, therefore that we are in possession of scientific and philosophical truth, an excellent example of the hubris to which I’m referring. The absence of the Divine and the denial of spirituality are further excellent examples of how Humanists wish things to be, a denial and ignorance of how things are. Why they should so passionately want to believe these things is hard to understand.

    Pinker says: “Given that we are equipped with the capacity to sympathize with others, nothing can prevent the circle of sympathy from expanding from the family and tribe to embrace all of humankind… We are forced into cosmopolitanism: accepting our citizenship in the world” (p11). Indeed, although there is nothing specifically humanistic about this goal, which would equally qualify as a spiritual objective; I’ve argued for it in past articles. But where does this capacity for sympathy come from? He presumably believes that it evolved in the Darwinian sense, but offers no explanation for how it might have originated. This viewpoint is the exact opposite of what Richard Dawkins, another arch-rationalist, humanist, and promoter of scientism, believes. He is on record as saying that he has struggled long and hard over the question of how altruism could have evolved through Darwinian evolution, and has come up with no satisfactory answer. He has also said: “Much as we might wish to believe otherwise, universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts which simply do not make evolutionary sense”⁹. Perhaps Pinker should consider the possibility that our capacity for sympathy is part of our spiritual nature, an aspect of our soul, the existence of which he denies.

    Since this series of articles is on the theme of mythology, it is interesting that on this issue we can learn much from two ancient myths. The first is that of Prometheus, who was a Titan, neither god nor mortal, but preferred humanity to the gods. He therefore decided to steal fire from Zeus for the benefit of humans, fire symbolising knowledge appropriate only to gods. Although the humans were grateful and praised him, Zeus punished him by chaining him to a mountain, where an eagle feasted on his liver forever.

    Prometheus is an archetypal figure, like Humanists someone who wishes to challenge the spiritual realm, elevate humanity to the status of, and live without the need for, gods. It is no coincidence that the name chosen for its publishing house by the notorious skeptical, scientismist organisation CSICOP was Prometheus Books. (The acronym stands for the Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal.) The story informs us that the spiritual realm will take its revenge.

    The second myth is that of Icarus, son of Daedalus, the creator of the famous labyrinth in Crete. The pair were imprisoned in a tower by King Minos, so that they could not reveal the secret of the labyrinth. An online source continues: “Daedalus managed to create two sets of wings for himself and his son, that were made of feathers glued together with wax. He taught Icarus how to fly and warned him not to fly too high, which would cause the wax to melt, nor too low, which would cause the feathers to get wet with sea water. Together, they flew out of the tower towards freedom. However, Icarus soon forgot his father’s warnings, and started flying higher and higher, until the wax started melting under the scorching sun. His wings dissolved and he fell into the sea and drowned”¹⁰.

    What a great lesson for humans! It is dangerous to fly too high (elevating humans to a status beyond their worth, like the Humanists), and too low, remaining close to the Earth, believing that the material world is all there is, remote from the heavens above, like Pinker. We should fly at a safe level, aware of both realms, and fully aware of our true role in the cosmos.

5. PROGRESS.

    Of course no one can be against progress. We just have to make sure that what is being claimed as progress is indeed true progress. It’s not clear to me that Pinker, despite his claims, achieves this. He is a Professor of Psychology, so I assume that he has no specialist training in biology and cosmology. When he accepts Darwinian evolutionary theory and the Big Bang unreservedly, therefore, we can assume that he is merely taking on trust the word of biologists and cosmologists. He is against taking things on faith, and what is read in books (scripture/Bible), but believes what he reads in biology and cosmology books. Obviously he thinks what he is reading is science. Other definitions are possible but, if we define science as a system of knowledge of the material world based on facts obtained through observation, then neither of these theories qualify as science, simply because no humans of our era were around to observe them. They are therefore modern scientific creation myths, even though ‘Enlightenment’ thinkers consider them to be science.

    Pinker’s book is its own refutation, if the ‘Enlightenment’ has led him to believe the things he does. He says: “Enlightenment ideals, I hope to show are timeless, but they have never been more relevant than they are right now” (Pxv). The ideals of the Enlightenment and science are indeed timeless. His second statement is strangely true, if we add a twist of irony to it. These ideals are relevant today because modern society, as described by him, has abandoned them; he identifies science and Humanism with progress, when they’re actually preventing us from moving forwards.

    The title of his first chapter is Dare to Understand. If only Pinker and those like him would take up this challenge! He says, adapting Immanuel Kant: “One age cannot conclude a pact that would prevent succeeding ages from extending their insights, increasing their knowledge, and purging their errors. That would be a crime against human nature, whose proper destiny lies precisely in such progress” (p7). He fails to notice, somewhat ironically, that this is precisely what his book, which is a manifesto compiled from the ignorance and delusions of ‘enlightened’ materialist science, is attempting to do.

    According to his book, he has been listed in Prospect magazine’s World Top 100 Public Intellectuals, Foreign Policy’s 100 Global Thinkers, and Time magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World Today. On the front cover Bill Gates is quoted as calling it “my new favourite book of all time”, and there are many other quotes inside heaping praise upon it. We are living in dangerous times!

    Click here for the next article, about David Christian.

                                                                                                           Steven Pinker

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Footnotes:

1. Penguin, 2018

2. “Science is Not Your Enemy”, The New Republic, August 19th 2013, p33

3. National Academy of Science, Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, National Academy Press, 1998, p42

4. Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended, Addison-Wesley, 1982, p322

5. Jacobi, The Way of Individuation, (tr. R. F. C. Hull), Hodder & Stoughton, 1967, p35–36

6. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, stanza 5

7. J. P. Moreland, Scientism and Secularism, Crossway, 2018, back cover

8. “Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy?”, Origins Research 16, no 1/2, 1994, p9

9. https://www.azquotes.com/quote/1233216 There it is stated that the quote comes from The Selfish Gene, chapter 1

10. https://www.greekmythology.com/Myths/Mortals/Icarus/icarus.html

    My title refers to, and is almost the same as that of, a book by Steven Pinker, Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress¹. So I have changed ‘for’ to ‘against’, added ‘the’ before Enlightenment, and omitted the word ‘progress’ which, as he says, no sensible person could be against. However, it’s highly debatable whether that is what his worldview and vision are.

    This article is the latest in a series asking whether we can find a new mythology to unite humanity in an attempt to solve the world’s problems. In the previous article, I listed some writers, including Pinker, who are trying to do this from the standpoint of (what they perceive to be) science. He believes that his worldview, as expressed in his title, is this story which can unite humanity: “And the story belongs not to any tribe but to all of humanity — to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist in its being. For it requires only the convictions that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance”. I am indeed convinced of all those things, and I assume all sensible people would agree — you do not have to agree with his ‘scientific’ worldview, or be a humanist to believe in them. The more important question is whether his worldview is true. Unsurprisingly, he believes that it is: “This heroic story is not just another myth. Myths are fictions but this one is true — true to the best of our knowledge, which is the only truth we can have. We believe it because we have reasons to believe it”.

    This is the ‘true’ story, definitely not a fictional myth, we are asked to accept: “We are born into a pitiless universe, facing steep odds against life-enabling order and in constant jeopardy of falling apart. We were shaped by a force that is ruthlessly competitive. We are made from crooked timber, vulnerable to illusions, self-centeredness, and at times astounding stupidity”. The last sentence certainly is true and Pinker, despite his use of the word ‘we’, is obviously not including himself. I will argue, however, that he is an excellent example.

    In response to this tragic scenario, this is the comfort he offers: “We penetrate the mysteries of the cosmos, including life and mind. We live longer, suffer less, learn more, get smarter, and enjoy more small pleasures and rich experiences”². To some this possibly sounds appealing, but is this the best that we can hope for? For many people it will be very depressing because it does not offer true meaning. As I noted in the previous article, after a talk he had given in which he had outlined his ‘scientific’ understanding of mental life and the brain, a student in the audience asked him, “Why should I live?”(p3). Pinker is, of course, an ‘enlightened’ figure, an atheist opposed to spirituality, and therefore does not believe in meaning or purpose in that sense. In this book he says: “If there’s anything the Enlightenment thinkers had in common, it was an insistence that we energetically apply the standard of reason to understanding our world, and not fall back on generators of delusion like faith, dogma, revelation, authority, charisma, mysticism, divination, visions, gut feelings, or the hermeneutic parsing of sacred texts” (p8). Elsewhere he has written: “The findings of science entail that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures… are factually mistaken… We know that the laws governing the physical world… have no goals that pertain to human well-being. There is no such thing as fate, providence, karma, spells, curses, augury, divine retribution, or answered prayers”³. I am not saying that he is mistaken about everything in these lists, but his potpourri, even if we agree that it may contain some superstitious untruths, nevertheless contains some items far truer than those of his worldview. It is not surprising that someone like him would be unable to distinguish between the two. Later in the series I intend to argue that the belief systems of all the world’s traditional religions and cultures are in general far more accurate than Pinker’s, and entail that the findings of (what he calls) science are factually mistaken.

    William Provine is another writer who thinks along similar lines: “There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans, either”⁴.

    There is a spiritual adage of which I’m very fond: “There is no religion higher than truth”. So I am not one of those who believe that people should turn to religion and spirituality because they offer comfort, escapism in the face of the tragic human situation. If what Pinker, Provine, and others like them, say is true, then we should accept it and live our lives accordingly to the best of our ability. However, it is my belief that what they say, apart from some details, is not true, which is why such ideas have to be resisted at all costs; it is only a truly spiritual vision that can unite humanity. So in the next article I’ll offer a response to Pinker’s book.

(click here for part 2.)

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Footnotes:

1. Penguin Books, 2019

2. The quotes so far can be found on pages 452–3.

3. “Science is Not Your Enemy”, The New Republic, August 19th 2013, p33

4. “Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy?”, Origins Research 16, no. 1/2, 1994, p9

   This article is the latest in a series — for links to the earlier ones, please see under Mythology on the Blog Index Page.

    My theme is the search for a new mythology to inspire and unite humanity. People obviously have a need for such unifying stories, because even materialist, atheistic Enlightenment scientists, who would obviously consider the ancient myths with which we are familiar to be false beliefs belonging to a bygone, pre-scientific age, have recognised their importance, and try to create such stories from what they perceive to be scientific truths.

   

    Some of the stories (myths) they tell are Darwinian evolutionary theory (now known as the neo-Darwinian Synthesis), the belief that consciousness is a by-product (epiphenomenon) of the brain, and the Big Bang, which is definitely a creation myth (whether it is true or not is debatable). I believe that the first two are false, and that the third, even if it is true, was arrived at following some fallacious scientific thinking, and has therefore been embraced too enthusiastically¹.

    Here are some examples of scientists and scientific writers who use these probably false ideas to create a modern mythology:

•  Edward Wilson, the American pioneer of sociobiology and prominent atheist, who “argued that evolution both explained why humans needed religion, and supplied the best religion achievable in a secular world. In the late 1970s, in On Human Nature, he told how scientific materialism ‘presents the human mind with an alternative mythology that until now has always, point for point in zones of conflict, defeated traditional religion. Its narrative form is the epic, the evolution of the universe from the big bang’. Twenty years later, in Consilience, he came back to the idea that ‘people need a sacred narrative… If the sacred narrative cannot be in the form of a religious cosmology, it will be taken from the material history of the human species’ ”².

• biologist Ursula Goodenough who said: “The big bang, the formation of stars and planets, the advent of human consciousness and the resultant evolution of cultures — this is the story, the one story, that has the potential to unite us, because it happens to be true”³.

• science writer John Horgan, who believes that we are coming to the end of science in that we have discovered just about everything important, talks about the impressive narrative of how we came to be: the big bang, DNA, natural selection, Darwinian evolution. He says: “My guess is that this narrative that scientists have woven from their knowledge, this modern myth of creation, will be as viable 100 or even 1,000 years from now as it is today. Why? Because it is true”⁴.

• David Christian, who wants to create a human family, and believes that we need a unifying story based on science. In his book Origin Story⁵ he tells the orthodox scientific myth, as outlined above.

• Steven Pinker, whose book Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress⁶, tells the same story. His myth is that the vision he offers is the answer to humanity’s problems.

• Julian Huxley, who in Essays of a Humanist⁷ builds a philosophy of ‘Evolutionary Humanism’ upon a foundation of Darwinian evolutionary theory, “affirming the unity of mind and body… affirming the continuity of man with the rest of life, and of life with the rest of the universe; naturalistic instead of supernaturalist, affirming the unity of the spiritual and the material; and global instead of divisive, affirming the unity of all mankind” (p77). The last idea sounds quite spiritual, although it is hard to see how he arrives at this conclusion, given what he believes.

      If this story is as true as these writers believe, why has it not already united humanity? The things that they say are true (the big bang, Darwinian evolution, the advent of consciousness) are all arguably, and probably, false. Perhaps we need a new mythology based upon a better, true science, and the myths of ancient times.

    Also, even if all these ideas are true, there is still nothing really inspiring about them. How can scientific ‘facts’ fulfill Joseph Campbell’s first function of mythology, the mystical or metaphysical: “to waken and maintain in individuals a sense of fascination, awe and gratitude in relation to the mystery dimension of the universe, so that they recognize that they participate in it, since the mystery of being is the mystery of their own deep being as well; to open the heart and mind to the divine mystery that underlies all forms, the experience of life as a tremendous mystery”⁸.

   Seemingly in agreement, Goodenough says that “a cosmology works as a religious cosmology only if it resonates, only if it makes the listener feel religious” (also Pxvi). She says that the purpose of her book is “to present an accessible account of our scientific understanding of Nature and then suggest ways that this account can call forth appealing and abiding religious responses” (Pxvii). How can Enlightenment science do this, since its avowed purpose is to find naturalistic, rational explanations for the perceived mysteries of life, and is therefore actually opposed to this function?

    At the beginning of his book Steven Pinker tells an interesting story. He had just given a talk in which he had “explained the commonplace among scientists that mental life consists of patterns of activity in the tissues of the brain. A student in the audience raised her hand and asked me: ‘Why should I live?’ ”(p3). This could be interpreted as, “If what you say is true, I might as well commit suicide”, which shows just how inspiring scientific ‘truth’ can be. Pinker says that the student was not actually suicidal, rather that she was suggesting that life is pointless, if the modern scientific worldview is true (therefore equally uninspiring). He says: “I mustered a reasonably creditable answer”, obviously in line with his belief in the Enlightenment, Reason, Science, and Humanism. It would be interesting to know how impressed the student was.

    In the next articles in the series I’ll be offering critiques of some of the books mentioned above. Click here for the next article.

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Footnotes:

1. I’ve written a series of articles on this theme. For the most relevant to my current point, click here. 

2. I haven’t read these books. This is a quote from a chapter by Jon Turney called “What is Life About?” in Big Questions in Science, ed. Harriet Swain, Jonathan Cape, 2002, p223.

3. The Sacred Depths of Nature, OUP, 1998, Introduction, Pxvi

4. The End of Science: Facing the Limits of Knowledge in the Twilight of the Scientific Age, Jonathan Cape, 2002, p16

5. Allen Lane 2018

6. Penguin Books, 2019

7. Pelican Books, 1966

8. Here I’m quoting the second article of this series.

    This article follows on from one which explores the value of mythology (click here).

    I am working from the assumption that ancient myths contain profound truths, if we can unravel their symbolic meaning. I love this statement by the Perennial Philosophist Ananda Coomaraswamy: “Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words”.

    So, what are myths, and how did they originate? Possible explanations are:

• they emerged from a creative source in the unconscious, like dreams, therefore without the involvement of consciousness. (We receive dreams but have no influence over their content.) They are messages from beyond.
• they were created consciously by seers, adepts, initiates, who were perhaps intending to conceal their secret, hidden knowledge beneath a veil of symbolism and allegory. (It is also possible, however, that a figure like a shaman or recognised seer had a visionary experience, which was then accepted by a whole tribe or culture.)

    The former seems more likely, for myths share a symbolic language similar to dreams — they appear to have much in common. Keiron Le Grice talks about the mythogenetic zone, meaning the place where myths originate¹. This, of course, merely gives it a name; it does not help us to understand its nature. Mythologist Joseph Campbell also seems to agree with the first hypothesis; he says:

• “…myth is the secret opening through which the inexhaustible energies of the cosmos pour into human cultural manifestation”².
• Myths are “spontaneous productions of the psyche” that “touch and exhilarate centres of life beyond the reach of vocabularies of reason and coercion”³.

    The Jungian writer James Hillman agrees: “Just as we do not create our dreams, but they happen (his italics) to us, so we do not invent the persons of myth and religion; they, too, happen to us. The persons present themselves as existing prior to any effort of ours to personify. To mythic consciousness, the persons of the imagination are real”⁴.

    The less well-known Luis Alvarado also agrees, describing myths as “spontaneous creations of the psyche…, soul’s way of explaining ourselves to ourselves and our universe to ourselves”⁵.

    It would seem therefore that myths are collective dreams for a whole culture. There then remains the question of transmission; how exactly did they appear in ancient cultures? It seems hard to believe that an ancient myth arrived simultaneously in the consciousnesses of various individuals, whether through dreams or other means, although this would fit with Carl Jung’s understanding of the collective unconscious. Could there have been special individuals who received a mythological story in its entirety, which was then accepted by their community? This also seems unlikely. The question seems to me therefore to be something of a mystery.

    If myths are spontaneous products of the collective psyche, then we humans cannot create them consciously. Myth creation in this sense is not happening currently, so perhaps we have to assume that the age of myth creation is past. Or do we? It seems that we still have a deep need for them, because of the functions they serve, witness:

• the attempts by various scientists to construct a new mythology out of what they perceive to be the truths of modern science. (This will be the subject of the next article in the series.)
• the obsession with Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter etc., which, as Le Grice points out, cater “to a deep hunger for transcendence, inspiration, and enchantment, transporting us to a world in which human actions have a profound cosmic significance, a world that calls forth great heroism, and that elicits through its high drama the activation of the deepest virtues and powers… Our experience of a mythic reality is therefore restricted to… the confines of the movie theatre, or to the pages of a novel. As the credits roll or when we turn the final page of a book, so our participation in a world of meaning and enchantment comes to an end. We return to a world that could not be more different — a secular world, dictated almost exclusively by the practical concerns of everyday life”⁶. 

    If the age of myth creation is indeed past, it seems that we may have to find ways to create our own.

    Click here for the next article in the series, Modern Scientific Attempts.

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Footnotes:

1. Keiron Le Grice, The Archetypal Cosmos, Floris Books, 2010, p45

2. The Hero with a Thousand Faces, Fontana, 1993, p3

3. Creative Mythology: the Masks of God, volume 4, Penguin, 1991, p4

4. Re-Visioning Psychology, HarperPerennial, 1992, p17

5. Psychology, Astrology and Western Magic, Llewellyn, 1991, p52

6. as footnote 1, p31

Keiron Le Grice: “Through the stories of myth, people in all times and all places have explained their relationship to the mystery of life, to the gods, to nature, to the cosmos, and to each other”. Myths reflect “the accumulated wisdom of the human race”¹.

Ananda Coomaraswamy: “Myth embodies the nearest approach to absolute truth that can be stated in words”².

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    This article is the first in a series, following on from a brief introduction. My purpose is a search for a mythology which might unite humanity, a common story to help us deal with the present crises facing us.

    In the distant past mythology had great value. As the quotes above indicate, societies were inspired and drawn together by their myths, which provided unifying stories, a vision around which people could cohere. Mythology thus gave a sense of meaning, was an inspiration; it was part of a religious outlook, providing a spiritual connection to the cosmos, and the supernatural. Such myths now seem antiquated to many people, irrelevant in modern times. As Keiron Le Grice puts it: “Myths are thought to be explanatory stories created by the pre-scientific mind and are thus deemed outmoded, having now been superseded and replaced by the factual accounts of science… the rise of science supposedly dispelling earlier ignorance and putting an end to childish beliefs in supernatural causes”³.

    A second problem is that myths are sometimes interpreted literally as actual historical events, rather than how they were intended, symbolically or allegorically. For example, some Christians actually believe that Adam and Eve were the first two humans. Apart from being so obviously wrong, such a foolish attitude supplies ammunition to those who wish to denigrate the importance, and underlying truth, of mythology.

    Joseph Campbell, probably the greatest mythologist of all time, thought that a proper mythology served four functions⁴, saying that in the great living traditions these functions were served simultaneously and harmoniously:

1. the mystical or metaphysical. To waken and maintain in individuals a sense of fascination, awe and gratitude in relation to the mystery dimension of the universe, not so that they live in fear of it, but so that they recognize that they participate in it, since the mystery of being is the mystery of their own deep being as well. To open the heart and mind to the divine mystery that underlies all forms… the experience of life as a tremendous mystery.

2. the cosmological. To formulate a cosmological image of the universe that will be in accord with the knowledge of the time, the sciences and the fields of action of the people to whom the mythology is addressed.

3. the sociological. To validate, support and maintain the norms of the moral order of the society in which the individual is to live.

4. the psychological or pedagogical. To guide the individual, stage by stage, in health, strength, and harmony of spirit through the whole foreseeable course of a useful life. Through knowledge of oneself and the cosmos, to guide the individual towards spiritual enrichment and self-realization.

    I’m going to focus on the second and fourth functions. Following my introduction, I received a response from Colin Jay Treiber who suggested that we would need a new cosmogony before the appearance of a new mythology⁵. I suggest that the second function addresses this concern; we have to be sure that our new mythology incorporates the best scientific knowledge of our time (and also the best metaphysical knowledge). The problem is that modern science is engaged in a battle between an old paradigm of atheistic materialism, and a new paradigm which recognises its inadequacy, is not afraid to think outside the box, and not afraid of spiritual explanations, a true understanding of the universe. It goes without saying that the new mythology must be in accord with this new paradigm.

    Turning to the fourth function, if Campbell is right, then mythology plays an important role. Modern western society, far from being healthy and strong, seems plagued by depression, addictions, eating disorders and obesity, self-harm, obsessions, compulsions, neuroses. All these can be subsumed under the general heading of ‘mental health’, which is currently a major issue in Great Britain, and probably elsewhere. Interestingly, Carl Jung attributes such problems to a lack of mythology: “We imagine we have left such phantasms of gods far behind. But what we have outgrown are only the word-ghosts, not the psychic facts which were responsible for the birth of the gods. We are still as possessed by our autonomous psychic contents as if they were gods. Today they are called phobias, compulsions, and so forth, or in a word, neurotic symptoms”⁶.

    We could then move on to social issues like gang culture, random stabbings, mass murder — whether inspired by terrorism, or otherwise in the case of school shootings. And in the world of politics, just consider the quality of persons we are offered as leaders in the United Kingdom, the USA, and elsewhere. There seems to be something terribly wrong with modern societies. Could we not learn something from the ancients and their myths? As Le Grice says: “The loss of a spiritual perspective, and with it a growing sense of the meaninglessness of life, lies behind many of the social and psychological ills of our time” (p31).

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    “Despite the great achievements of modernity, something immeasurably important has been lost. With the rise of our technological consumer society, collectively we have lost a sense of the sacred purpose and the encompassing spiritual context of life. We have lost the awareness that human lives are rooted in a deeper reality transcending concrete individuality, an insight that was fundamental to most civilizations, and that gives to human existence a more deeply sustaining sense of meaning and purpose”.

    “We seem to have no valid mythology that might turn the focus of our attention to the spiritual dimension of life and in so doing counterbalance the one-sided rationalism and materialism of our time… Society is no longer shaped by a guiding mythic narrative. The Western world has lost its living connection to myth”⁷.

    Please click here for the next article in the series, Where Do Myths Come From?

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Footnotes:

1. The Archetypal Cosmos, Floris Books, 2010, p29, p73. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in this issue.

2. This quote is found on many sites on the internet without stating the original source.

3. as footnote 1, p277

4. Here I have combined and paraphrased two sources, Joseph Campbell speaking on the first CD called Thresholds of Mythology in the series The Inward Journey, East and West, (the Joseph Campbell audio collection), and Keiron Le Grice’s account (p39f) based on Campbell’s writings from other sources.

5. Here is the full text of the relevant part of his response: “This is a theme which I have similarly put consistent thought into, although from a slightly different angle. I believe it is a cosmogony, rather than a mythology, which is first needed. For human beings first need to gain a conscious understanding of our place within the cosmic order of being (which we are capable of). Then, only after we accurately understand our connectivity to the greater universe will the stories and narratives which spread and reinforce this understanding emerge. The mythologies therefore will come after, and they will also be highly personalized to geographies and groups of people (although probably less personalized than in the past given our growing uniformity)”.

6. The Secret of the Golden Flower, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1962, p113

7. as footnote 1, p27–28

    By coincidence, I was preparing a series of articles about the need for a new mythology which might unite humanity, when Jack Preston King published an article on Medium.com on the same theme¹.

    Jack says: “Humans require meaning to survive. It is not enough to simply live. We must know why we live, what it all ‘means’. But finding that meaning, measuring the depth, quality and purpose of our lives, requires a greater context, a ‘frame’ of meaning within which our lives can be judged… Traditionally, these larger models of reality have been found in religion, in mythologies that purport to explain the nature of reality and of humanity, and all significant connections and interrelations between them. Such ‘absolute’ models have long offered human beings both a way to understand the world and a way for individuals to live meaningfully in relation to that world. But what happens when the traditional models break down? When our experience of reality changes and they no longer allow us to meaningfully orient our lives? We must find new models — and fast, if we hope to survive”.

    Jack goes on to discuss the thoughts on this theme of theologian Paul Tillich, who calls our current age the Age of Spiritual Anxiety, locating (as Jack puts it) “the roots of our anxiety in the breakdown of the religious, social, political and cosmological ‘absolutes’ that once neatly framed our lives”.

    Traditionally Western Culture “placed Man at the center of Creation, named him ‘made in God’s image’, and guaranteed him a central position in the vast cosmic scheme. But the flowering of science as a social force in the 19th Century, and the rapid advance of technology throughout the 20th, began to chip away at that model”. Tillich: “The earth had been thrown out of the center of the world by Copernicus and Galileo. It had become small… a feeling of being lost in the ocean of cosmic bodies and among the unbreakable rules of their motion crept into the hearts of many… It had to take into itself the deep anxiety of nonbeing in a universe without limits and without humanly understandable meaning”. JPK: “And we fell into anxiety. In the absence of a universal mythology in relation to which we could measure meaning, we began to suspect the worst — that maybe, just maybe, there wasn’t any meaning to be had. That if we were to scratch the surface of life, we might find beneath it — not God or Truth or Absolute Reality — but simply nothing”.

    This is, of course, what many modern philosophers and scientists are trying to persuade us is the case, for example:

• Bertrand Russell: “All these things (atheistic materialism), if not quite beyond dispute, are yet so nearly certain, that no philosophy which rejects them can hope to stand. Only within the scaffolding of these truths, only on the firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the soul’s habitation henceforth be safely built”.
• Richard Dawkins: “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference”.

    All of the above sets the context for my series of articles. I shall be exploring:

• the nature and purpose of mythology
• the falseness of the modern viewpoint, and the inadequacy of the stories and myths with which it is trying to replace traditional ones

…and seeking a new mythology, a unifying story based upon true science and spirituality, which will refute the modern view.

    Click here for the next article, The Importance of Myth

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Footnote:

1. What If Life Really Is a Game? And God is as Anxious About it as You Are?