Evolution | Spirituality In Politics

What’s the Point of the Word ‘Evolved’?

28th January 2020

This is a question posed by biochemist Michael Behe, well known critic of Darwinian evolutionary theory, in his recent book Darwin Devolves¹. He invites readers to consider a sentence from an article in Scientific American, “Humans have evolved a sense of self that is unparalleled in its complexity”, then contrast it with “Humans have a sense of self that is unparalleled in its complexity”. He then asks: “what information has been lost by deleting the word ‘evolved’? There have been no studies demonstrating how evolutionary processes could produce a mind with a sense of self… In fact, the word ‘evolved’ in the sentence carries no information. It’s just a science-y, content-free salute to the notion that everything about living beings… simply must have come about by the ordinary evolutionary processes that biologists study” (p23).

He offers further examples:

“Birds like the silky flycatcher… that are mistletoe specialists have evolved a ‘waggle dance’ ”. He again asks what information would be lost if the word ‘evolved’ were omitted: “The word does no real work. It’s pretend knowledge”.
“Every cell has evolved mechanisms that identify and eliminate misfolded and unassembled proteins” (from an article in a very technical journal). Behe comments: “But in fact we have no actual knowledge of how such sophisticated mechanisms could have come about by evolutionary means. We barely know what changes in modern cellular systems would help or hinder their work. Now, reread the quote, this time leaving out the word ‘evolved’. What knowledge has been lost? None at all”.

Behe describes this use of the word ‘evolved’ as a “territorial imperative to plant Darwin’s flag everywhere”, and a “habit of reflexively affirming current evolutionary theory”.

Michael Behe

I was reminded of the above passage as I was reading an article in the current edition of New Scientist, where the author said: “It may seem improbable that life could survive among ice crystals, given its dependence on liquid water, but microbes have evolved ingenious ways of eking out a living in snow”². I’m sure that Behe would say that the word ‘evolved’ in this sentence adds no extra knowledge, and is therefore superfluous. Again, we do not know how such sophisticated mechanisms could have come about by evolutionary means.

The issue is far more important than being merely a careless use of words. As Behe says, the continual use of the word ‘evolved’ subconsciously reinforces the supposed truth of neo-Darwinian evolutionary theory, which says that natural selection acts unintelligently and without purpose upon random genetic mutations. If microbes do indeed have ingenious ways of eking out a living in snow, is it not more reasonable to assume that some intelligence lies behind the process? That is, after all, what ‘ingenious’ means.

The article went on to say that, to the researchers’ surprise, “In the snow they discovered a rich hidden ecosystem of algae, fungi and “bacteria”. One of them, Shawn Brown, is quoted: “I was just blown away by the biodiversity”.

The article further said that “snow microbes play a role in cycling nutrients and carbon. They may be tiny but, given that snow covers a third of land on Earth, they could have an overlooked impact on the planet’s health and climate”. This lends credence to the idea that the Earth is a self-regulating, living superorganism, in accordance with James Lovelock’s Gaia hypothesis, an idea that neo-Darwinian theory considers heretical.

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Footnotes:

1. HarperOne, 2019

2. “Deep and crisp and living: How snow sustains amazing hidden life” by Claire Ainsworth, issue 3261, December 21st 2019. https://www.newscientist.com/article/mg24432611-100-deep-and-crisp-and-living-how-snow-sustains-amazing-hidden-life/

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Creative Evolution, part 3

9th May 2019

This is the latest in a series of articles. It would be helpful to have read them all¹, but essential to have read at least the last one. Otherwise what follows won’t make much sense.

In the second half of the previous one, I was describing how spiritual traditions understand the nature of an organism, that there are several other levels or bodies above the physical body, thus not manifested in the physical world. I concluded by saying that, if these other bodies do exist, it opens up the possibilities that evolution and development might take place at levels different from the physical before emerging into physical form, and that physical processes might be directed from these higher levels.

Raynor C. Johnson, whom I consider to be an authority in spiritual matters, expresses this idea as follows. He says that humans participate in at least six levels, that “the soul has acquired and uses a hierarchy of five bodies, or vehicles, or instruments, to serve its purposes”, and that “each body may be regarded as created by, or precipitated from, the one higher above it. The influence of the soul penetrates through all the bodies; the influence of the causal body penetrates through all those below it, and so on”².

Now I’m going to explore whether there is any scientific evidence in support of such ideas, beginning by discussing a book called The Cosmic Blueprint by the physicist Paul Davies³. Even though he has written books with titles like The Mind of God, and God and the New Physics, he does not speak from a spiritual perspective. He is rather a conventional scientist, seeking naturalistic explanations: “I have taken the position that the universe can be understood by the application of the scientific method. While emphasising the shortcomings of a purely reductionist view of nature, I intended that the gaps left by the inadequacies of reductionist thinking should be filled by additional scientific theories that concern the collective and organisational properties of complex systems, and not by appeal to mystical or transcendent principles” (p203).

He is, however, open-minded, will acknowledge genuine problems when he finds them, and does not try to sweep them under the carpet. Having stated the above as his starting point, he concedes immediately that scientific theory comes up against a big obstacle: “The very fact that the universe is creative, and that the laws have permitted complex structures to emerge and develop to the point of consciousness — in other words, that the universe has organised its own self-awareness — is for me powerful evidence that there is ‘something going on’ behind it all. The impression of design is overwhelming”. I wonder what this mysterious ‘something going on’ is!

He does use the term ‘new paradigm’, but in a different sense to how I’ve used it in earlier articles, where I think of it as a reunification of science and religion. He sees instead the need for a revolution in scientific thinking, along the lines of my theme of creative evolution: “Now there is the new paradigm of the creative universe, which recognises the progressive, innovative character of physical processes. The new paradigm emphasises the collective, cooperative and organisational aspects of nature; its perspective is synthetic and holistic rather than analytic and reductionist” (p2).

If the universe is creative, it must be intelligent, and nothing like the blind, unconscious evolutionary process advocated by Richard Dawkins and others like him. (In passing, it is worth noting that such an idea, if true, refutes any notions of deism, a remote God who withdraws after the act of creation. As the epigram to his first chapter Davies quotes Nobel Laureate Ilya Prigogine: “God is no more an archivist unfolding an infinite sequence he had designed once and forever. He continues the labour of creation throughout time”⁴.) The question is, where does the intelligence reside? Is it in nature itself, which is the idea that Davies is exploring in this book? (He frequently uses the term self-organisation, which implies nothing external or higher.) Or does it descend from the higher levels that I was describing above? He actually uses the term downward causation, as does another physicist Amit Goswami, author of Creative Evolution: a Physicist’s Resolution between Darwinism and Intelligent Design⁵, thus suggesting something similar to Raynor Johnson above.

Here are a few random observations and quotes relevant to my theme, that nature cannot be understood without reference to other levels of reality:

The word blueprint in his title is actually reminiscent of the word archetype, as discussed in my previous article. Is there a blueprint (plan, design) for the cosmos?
“Strong organising principles are invoked by those who find existing physical laws inadequate to explain the high degree of organisational potency found in nature and see this as evidence that matter and energy are somehow being guided or encouraged into progressively higher organisational levels by additional creative influences”. He also refers to “some ‘behind the scenes’ creative activity” (p151). What could ‘behind the scenes’ possibly mean from a physicalist perspective, if not a higher level?
Referring to the ideas of physicist David Bohm – I would argue the most spiritual of the quantum physicists – who believes that quantum processes are not random, Davies says that in that case “the whole basis of neo-Darwinism is undermined”, that there is “an internally ordered process of evolution” (p156).
“Strong organising principles — additional laws of physics that refer to the cooperative, collective properties of complex systems, and which cannot be derived from the underlying existing physical laws — remain a challenging but speculative idea. Mysteries such as the origin of life and the progressive nature of evolution encourage the feeling that there are additional principles at work which somehow make it ‘easier’ for systems to discover complex organised states. But the reductionist methodology of most scientific investigations makes it likely that such principles, if they exist, risk being overlooked in current research” (p199).
“The flower analogy suggests the idea of a blueprint — a pre-existing plan or project which the universe is realising as it develops. This is Aristotle’s ancient teleological picture of the cosmos. Is it to be resurrected by the new paradigm of modern physics?” (p200)

Perhaps the most difficult problem to resolve without reference to higher levels is that of morphogenesis: “Among the many scientific puzzles posed by living organisms, perhaps the toughest concerns the origin of form. Put simply, the problem is this. How is a disorganised collection of molecules assembled into a coherent whole that constitutes a living organism, with all the right bits in the right places? The creation of biological forms is known as morphogenesis, and despite decades of study it is a subject still shrouded in mystery. (He was writing in 1989, and science can make quick progress. I would be surprised, however, if significant progress has been made since then on these issues.)

“The enigma is at its most striking in the seemingly miraculous development of an embryo from a single fertilised cell into a more or less independent living entity of fantastic complexity, in which many cells have become specialised to form parts of nerve, liver, bone, etc. It is a process that is somehow supervised to an astonishing level of detail and accuracy in both space and time.

“In studying the development of the embryo it is hard to resist the impression that there exists somewhere a blueprint, or plan of assembly, carrying the instructions needed to achieve the finished form. In some as yet poorly understood way, the growth of the organism is tightly constrained to conform to this plan. There is thus a strong element of teleology involved. It seems as if the growing organism is being directed towards its final state by some sort of global supervising agency” (p 102).

“If there is a blueprint, the information must be stored somewhere, and the obvious place is in the DNA of the original fertilised egg, known to be the repository of genetic information. (This would be the standard neo-Darwinian explanation.) This implies that the ‘plan’ is molecular in nature. The problem is then to understand how the spatial arrangement of something many centimetres in size can be organised from the molecular level. Consider, for example, the phenomenon of cell differentiation. How do some cells ‘know’ they have to become blood cells, while others must become part of the gut, or backbone? Then there is the problem of spatial positioning. How does a given cell know where it is located in relation to other parts of the organism, so that it can ‘turn into’ the appropriate type of cell for the finished product?

“Related to these difficulties is the fact that although different parts of the organism develop differently, they all contain the same DNA. If every molecule of DNA possesses the same global plan for the whole organism, how is it that different cells implement different parts of that plan? Is there, perhaps, a ‘metaplan’ to tell each cell which part of the plan to implement. If so, where is the metaplan located? In the DNA? But this is surely to fall into an infinite regress”.

Davies continues to discuss further difficulties if the blueprint is genetic, then says: “The real challenge is to demonstrate how localised interactions can exercise global control. It is very hard to see how this can ever be explained in mechanistic terms at the molecular level” (p104). If that is true, then we presumably have to look to other higher levels in order to explain this very real phenomenon.

He goes on to observe that the traditional mechanistic, reductionist approach is based on the particle concept of physics, but that particles as primary objects have been replaced in physics by fields. He notes, however that “so far the field concept has made little impact on biology” (p105). He then suggests a possible solution to the above problem: “A possible escape is to suppose that somehow the global plan is stored in the fields themselves, and that the DNA acts as a receiver rather than a source of genetic information” (p106).

I would suggest that this is indeed the case, or at least that such an idea, if true, fits neatly with the idea of downward causation as expressed by Raynor Johnson above. Are these ‘fields’ a scientific way of describing what spiritual people call etheric or astral bodies, or even the soul?

I said above that Davies does not have a spiritual agenda, but tries to restrict his thinking to the realm of science. At a conference of scientists and mystics, however, he said that “Teilhard (de Chardin)’s belief in a creative progressive cosmos has at last been vindicated”. If he is sticking by his first statement, he is therefore saying that a creative progressive cosmos is true science! If he is correct, that would be a nail in the coffin of neo-Darwinism: “There will always be some scientists who’ll see in the creative cosmos nothing but a pointless charade. Others, however, will find these new developments deeply inspiring and it will confirm their belief that there is a meaning behind existence”⁶. Meaning! Thus teleology, that neo-Darwinian heresy.

Footnotes:

1. for a guide, see under Evolution, Doubts About Darwinism, New, on the Blog Index page.

2. The Spiritual Path, Hodder & Stoughton, 1972, pp 13–14

3. Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1989

4. ‘The Rediscovery of Time’, in Science and Complexity, ed. Sara Nash, Science Reviews Ltd., 1985

5. Theosophical Publishing House, 2008

6. ‘The Cosmic Blueprint: Self-Organizing Principles of Matter and Energy’, in The Spirit of Science from Experiment to Experience, David Lorimer (ed.), Floris Books, pp 74, 96

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Creative Evolution, part 2

26th April 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

5. Principles of Qabalah, Thorsons, 1999, p78

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

7. William Collins, 2017

8. Oneworld, 2012

9. Starbooks, 1975

10. Penguin, 1975, p318

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism – Creative Evolution, part 1

26th April 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Two observations on the above are:

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

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

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

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

Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

5. Quest Books, 2008

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

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

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Intuition, part 1

10th April 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Footnotes:

1. HarperOne, 2016

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

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

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

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — the Problem of Natural Selection

28th March 2019

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Dawkins also said:

“The Darwinian theory is in principle capable of explaining life. No other theory that has ever been suggested is in principle capable of explaining life”.

“The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity”⁴.

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

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Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Creationism — or Something Else?

27th March 2019

In the past I have written several articles on the theme of evolution and Darwinism¹. Readers of these will know that I find Darwinism, specifically the neo-Darwinian synthesis, unsatisfactory. I am now going to begin a new series, Reasons to Doubt Darwinism, which will follow on from these previous articles.

These are the possible approaches to the scientific problem of life:

the neo-Darwinian synthesis — the revised version of Darwinism following on from an understanding of genetics. Scientists on the whole prefer this because it offers a naturalistic, materialist explanation.
Intelligent Design, which is against the neo-Darwinian synthesis, usually from a Christian perspective, although the arguments are scientific
Creationism, based on a literal interpretation of Genesis
attempts to reconcile Darwinism with Christianity. Two with which I am familiar are Creation and Evolution, by Alan Hayward², and Creation or Evolution: Do We Have to Choose? by Denis Alexander³.
milder forms of Darwinism. There is the interesting case of the eminent zoologist Sir Alister Hardy, who claimed to be a believer in the neo-Darwinian theory, yet refused to accept the materialistic, atheistic implications. He believed in the reality of spiritual experience, not specifically from a Christian perspective. This is a quote from the jacket of Darwin and the Spirit of Man⁴: “The assertion that Darwinism must lead inevitably to a materialistic interpretation of life is essentially both reductionist and unbalanced… So Sir Alister’s argument is that Darwin’s doctrine must be enlarged — added to in such a way that its significance for man’s understanding of himself must undergo a striking change. Man’s spirituality must be regarded as a real and essential part of his make-up”.
other non-materialist, spiritual explanations not based on Christianity. In my view, they are the most credible of these alternatives.

A discussion of the above will be the inspiration for the forthcoming series. Before beginning, however, I thought it would be a good idea to make a few clarifying remarks:

The neo-Darwinian synthesis is closely allied with a materialistic philosophy and atheism. One could almost say that neo-Darwinism, with its insistence on blind forces, random genetic mutation, and lack of purpose, is atheism in disguise. Hence Richard Dawkins’s well known statement: “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist”. This is why, from my perspective, it cannot be accepted. It is possible that some genuinely scientific aspects of Darwinism may be valid, if we remove the philosophical baggage.

The word evolution is often misused. It means merely change over time, and a spiritual world-view has no problem accepting evolution in that sense. In the modern debate, however, it has become equivalent to Darwinism, or the neo-Darwinian synthesis, thus implying that to deny evolution is to accept some form of Creationism or Intelligent Design.

Creationism should not be confused with Intelligent Design. Creationism is a religious movement, whereas Intelligent Design is a scientific argument, (although its advocates tend to be Christians). Darwinian critics tend to lump the two together, saying that Intelligent Design is Creationism in disguise, in an attempt to confuse the issue and discredit ID.

Any version of Darwinism is ultimately unsatisfactory because, even though it can explain the evolution of life once it has started, it cannot explain the origin of life, nor can it explain the emergence of consciousness.

It is not clear, however, what the best alternative theory is. Let’s consider Intelligent Design. To state the obvious, it consists of two words. So the emphasis can fall on either. Advocates of ID stress the ‘design’ element. That’s fine up to a point, but the problem is that, under the influence of Christianity, this might suggest a specific supernatural deity coming up with plans, in the manner of a human creative artist, or scientific experimenter. This is possible — divine imagination is an interesting concept, depending on how you understand divinity. It should also be noted that the world we inhabit often gives that impression — even staunch Darwinians accept that organisms give an overwhelming impression of design. Many people find the idea of such a Creator hard to accept, however, and I therefore prefer to stress the ‘intelligent’ element, and put the design element onto the sidelines. There is indeed strong evidence for intelligence in nature. The question then becomes how to understand the nature of this intelligence, and how to explain the appearance of design. This is where various spiritual traditions can help.

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Footnotes:

1. For details, see under Evolution in the Blog Index.

2. Triangle, 1985 revised 1994

3. Monarch, 2008

4. Collins, 1984

Darwinism — Just-so Stories

29th December 2018

I have recently been reading Jean Hardy’s book A Psychology with a Soul which is about Roberto Assagioli’s system of Transpersonal Psychology, Psychosynthesis (1). In chapter 16, The Nature of Science in Psychology and Psychotherapy, she discusses philosopher of science Karl Popper’s ideas about open and closed systems of thinking . A closed system of thinking is one “that is so comprehensive that no happening in the world can disprove it. A Marxist would have his or her own interpretation for anything that occurred, just as the Freudian would have his or her own quite different one; whatever happened, each would leave the scene with his or her conceptual world intact” (p168).

Such persons are therefore impervious to any evidence which contradicts their worldview. Thus we see that preconceptions dictate the interpretation, whereas it should be obvious that evidence and observations lead to interpretation and theories. It seems, however, that for some people this is very hard to put into practice.

Hardy goes on to suggest that natural science is such a closed system, “that though a particular piece of evidence may be able to disprove a particular theory, the scientific way of conceiving the world persists: that underneath the modern framework of natural science there are also persistent, value-laden, hard-to-contact assumptions about the human situation”.

The scientific way of conceiving the world that she is talking about is the philosophy of materialism. This was expressed most forcefully, and in my opinion ridiculously, by the Harvard professor Richard Lewontin: “We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs… in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism… Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door” (2).

He makes use of the term ‘just-so stories’, which is appropriate because they are something that Darwinism is often accused of using. Once the truth of Darwinian evolutionary theory is assumed, then it is always possible to come up with an explanation for anything without needing to prove it. The argument goes along these lines: some aspect of modern human psychology is described, which is followed by a statement like this: “There must have been some point in evolutionary history when…”

This ruse was exposed very clearly by the former senior palaeontologist at the Natural History Museum, Colin Patterson. When asked by a reader of his book Evolution why he had not included any direct illustrations of evolutionary transitions, he replied that none could be given with certainty: “It is easy enough to make up stories of how one form gave rise to another, and to find reasons why the stages should be favoured by natural selection. But such stories are not part of science, for there is no way of putting them to the test”.

Footnotes:

(1) Arkana, 1989

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

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

29th December 2018

At least, that’s what I prefer to call it, even though it is meant to be a science museum, and seemingly once was. I am going to begin a series of posts which will describe its transformation, and therefore explain my reasons for calling it that. This should interest anyone following the debate between Darwinian evolutionary theory and theistic alternatives, including Intelligent Design. This is just a brief introduction.

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

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

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

I am not saying that this science museum began under the influence of Christianity, but I do think that it was a genuine science museum, i.e. open-minded and objective, showing exhibits, not promoting one particular line of thought. In the following articles, I’ll relate some of the moments which were significant in its transformation into a Temple of Darwinism. For the time being I’ll just note that at the time of the exhibition in 2009, the statue of the founder Richard Owen was replaced by one of Darwin, at which time the transformation from museum to temple was complete.

Footnotes:

(1) Routledge, 1985, new edition 2002

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

(3) Unwin Hyman Ltd., 1989

The Earth as a Superorganism — Further Thoughts

25th December 2018

This post follows on from several articles on this theme, for details of which see footnote (1).

The idea of the earth as a superorganism re-emerged in modern times with the work of the independent scientist James Lovelock and his Gaia hypothesis (2). This was developed further by the spiritually oriented writer Peter Russell in The Awakening Earth (3).

When Lovelock published the first edition, where he described the Earth as a kind of self-regulating, living organism, he was attacked by biologists who said that this could not have emerged through a process of natural selection, thus contradicting Darwinian theory, the dominant biological paradigm. Even worse, “one critic referred to it scathingly as a fairy story about a Greek goddess” (4). These are statements typical of modern materialist, Enlightenment science for, as Lovelock says, “the idea of Mother Earth or, as the Greeks called her, Gaia, has been widely held throughout history and has been the basis of a belief that coexists with the great religions” (5).

Nature at the time was seen as “red in tooth and claw”, and “survival of the fittest” was a key idea in a struggle for survival. This viewpoint may seem true at one level to a casual observer. From a higher perspective, however, taking into account the whole picture from the point of view of Gaia, this brutality can perhaps be seen as cooperation in nature; the death of one creature enabling another to survive would be an essential ingredient in the ongoing process of life. Lynn Margulis, a colleague of Lovelock and fierce critic of Darwinism, believed something along those lines, and developed the concept of symbiosis, or cooperation in nature.

New material on this theme is now being added. Peter Wohlleben has recently written The Secret Network of Nature (6). Here are some quotes from his introduction:

“Nature is like a giant clockwork mechanism. Everything is neatly arranged and interconnected. Everything has its place and its function”.
“All animals and plants are part of a delicate equilibrium, and every entity has its purpose and role in its ecosystem”.
“Nature is much more complex than a clock. In nature, not only does one cog connect with another: everything is connected in a network so intricate that we will probably never grasp it in its entirety” (his italics).

As an example, he describes the role of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. They may appear as murdering predators to us (red in tooth and claw), but Wohlleben shows how they play an essential role in maintaining the balance in the ecosystem (symbiosis). They were eradicated from the park in response to pressure from ranchers. This enabled the elk population to increase, the consequence of which was that “large areas of the park were stripped bare by the voracious animals. Riverbanks were particularly hard hit. The juicy grass by the river disappeared, along with all the saplings growing there. Now this desolate landscape didn’t provide enough food even for birds, and the number of species declined drastically”, for example, beavers disappeared. When wolves were reintroduced, they again preyed on the elks, and things began to return to normal (pp5–6).

This just goes to show what happens when ignorant humans, who understand nothing of the above, and who have lost all sense of their connection to nature, are allowed to act, motivated purely by their own selfish interests.

If the Earth is indeed this intricate superorganism, it is hard to see how this could have arisen through the blind, random, purposeless processes that neo-Darwinians assure us are the reality of evolution. That is obviously the reason why those biologists reacted so strongly to Lovelock’s hypothesis. If each individual planetary citizen recognises that he or she is the equivalent of one of its brain cells, we can act accordingly, and start to take responsibility for the healing of Gaia.