Spirituality In Politics

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Creative Evolution, part 3

    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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

5. Principles of Qabalah, Thorsons, 1999, p78

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

7. William Collins, 2017

8. Oneworld, 2012

9. Starbooks, 1975

10. Penguin, 1975, p318

 

 

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism – Creative Evolution, part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Two observations on the above are:

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

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

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

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

 

Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

5. Quest Books, 2008

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

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

 

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — Intuition, part 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Footnotes:

1. HarperOne, 2016

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

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

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

Reasons to Doubt Darwinism — the Problem of Natural Selection

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

    Dawkins also said:

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

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

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Footnotes:

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

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

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

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

Darwinism, Intelligent Design, Creationism — or Something Else?

    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

Is There a Liberal Conspiracy in Science? — the Case of Sir John Maddox

    I recently wrote an article discussing the 2017 March for Science. One of the protesters, Judy Twigg, a public health professor at Virginia Commonwealth University, was wearing a T-shirt that said “Science is not a liberal conspiracy”.

    Science clearly should be, rather than a conspiracy of any kind, an ongoing unbiased, objective search for truth. Ms. Twigg, however, was obviously protesting, quite sincerely in her mind, against others who were claiming something else. Her slogan therefore raises some interesting questions:

  • is there an actual conspiracy, or does it merely look like that to some people?
  • if true science is not a conspiracy, has it been replaced by scientism, the worship of science?
  • if there is a conspiracy, who is responsible, and what is their agenda?
  • and what does ‘liberal’ mean in this context anyway?

    Here I’m not going to try to answer all those questions, nor am I going to claim that science is a conspiracy, liberal or otherwise. Instead I’m going to look at the reasons why some people might think that.

    I mentioned John Maddox in a recent article¹. He was the editor of the prestigious science journal Nature at the time of a dispute with the Natural History Museum (London) in 1981. The Museum had dared to offer an alternative to Darwinian evolutionary theory called Cladistics. One could argue, therefore, that they were doing what good science should do — be aware of limitations in theories, search for new possibilities, be open-minded. However, an editorial appeared in Nature entitled ‘Darwin’s death in South Kensington’, which included the phrase “the rot at the museum”. If Maddox did not write the editorial himself, he must at least have approved it, and therefore take responsibility².

    He is also well known for an editorial in September 1981, following the publication of Rupert Sheldrake’s book A New Science of Life, describing it as “the best candidate for burning there has been for many years”. He thought that because Sheldrake’s theories of morphic resonance and morphogenetic fields seriously challenged the materialist paradigm dominating modern science.

    Many people, often non-scientists, have a rather idealistic vision of science and scientists. Here, for example, are the thoughts of the comedian Ricky Gervais: “Science seeks the truth. And it does not discriminate. For better or worse it finds things out. Science is humble. It knows what it knows and it knows what it doesn’t know. It bases its conclusions and beliefs on hard evidence — evidence that is constantly updated and upgraded. It doesn’t get offended when new facts come along. It embraces the body of knowledge. It doesn’t hold onto medieval practices because they are tradition”³.

    Sheldrake quotes this passage, and then comments: “Gervais’s idealised view of science is hopelessly naïve in the context of the history and sociology of science. It portrays scientists as open-minded seekers of truth, not ordinary people competing for funds and prestige, constrained by peer-group pressures and hemmed in by prejudices and taboos”⁴ (my italics).

    The two examples above suggest that Sheldrake is closer to the truth than Gervais, and Maddox was the editor of Nature, therefore responsible for deciding what would and would not appear in the journal. Was he a fit person for this task?

    I’m now going to give details of a further example from 1988 which, I hope, demonstrates that Gervais really doesn’t know what he is talking about. He is, however, obviously describing the science that we would like to see operating. (Any quotes in what follows without footnote references are taken from the two books in the bibliography.)

    Maddox is less well known for his role in an episode involving Jacques Benveniste, a distinguished French scientist, a doctor of medicine who then became a specialist in allergy research, research director at INSERM, the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research. He had received the Silver Medal from CNRS, one of the most prestigious French scientific honours. He was a proper, highly qualified scientist.

    He then became involved in a controversy related to the purported memory of water, with implications for homeopathy. A member of his team, Elisabeth Davenas, had brought to him the bizarre results of some experiments she had been conducting. These were hard to believe, so the experiments were carefully repeated over a period of four years in five laboratories in four countries, the original findings being replicated. We can note therefore that the experiments were conducted, as you would hope, with adherence to the scientific method, performed under double blind conditions to eliminate any experimenter bias. Benveniste was a proper scientist, doing true science of the kind which Ricky Gervais approves of.

    The findings appeared to confirm the central claim of homeopathy — the weaker the solution, the more powerful its effect. They “provided strong evidence that the method of preparing highly diluted homeopathic solutions would be likely to produce a modified water that carried biological activity (hence a memory), even though there were no molecules of the original solute present. His experiments also demonstrated that this biological activity can be transmitted to otherwise neutral water through an electromagnetic device”.

    I should note at this point that any suggestion that there might be some truth in the theory of homeopathy is anathema to orthodox science, a heresy, something that gets materialists hot under the collar because of the possible repercussions for the accepted laws of biochemistry. In Britain there have even been demonstrations outside chemists selling homeopathic remedies, based on the claim that they don’t work and are therefore fraudulent⁵.

    A paper was prepared for publication in Nature, claiming: “specific information must have been transmitted during the dilution/shaking process. Water could act as a template for the molecule, for example, by an infinite hydrogen-bonded network, or electric and magnetic fields… The precise nature of this phenomenon remains unexplained” (my italics).

    The paper was accepted, but Maddox took the unprecedented step of placing an editorial addendum at the bottom of the article: “There is no physical basis for such an activity. With the kind collaboration of Professor Benveniste, Nature has therefore arranged for independent (note that word) investigators to observe repetitions of the experiments. A report of this investigation will appear shortly”⁶.

    Let’s have a look at how ‘independent’ these investigators were. Maddox went himself — we can tell how open-minded he was from his reactions to the Natural History Museum’s ‘heresy’ and Sheldrake’s book. He arrived with Walter Stewart, a well-known quackbuster, and James Randi, a professional magician dedicated to exposing fraud. The latter was a fanatical, sceptic materialist, as can be seen from the subtitle of his book Flim-Flam: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions⁷, and his membership of the notoriously sceptical organisation CSICOP (Committee for the Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal).

    Were a magician and a quackbuster, with no relevant scientific training, the best possible team to assess the subtleties of such experiments, which had already been replicated by other professional scientists? Does this not suggest that Maddox’s true intention was not to assess impartially the validity of the work, rather to discredit it at all costs?

    Elisabeth Davenas performed four experiments in front of them, one blinded, all of which, according to Benveniste, were successful. However the team disputed the findings and changed the experimental protocol, Stewart insisting on carrying out some of the experiments himself and changing some of their design even though he was apparently untrained in these particular experiments. “Under their new protocol, and amid a charged atmosphere implying that the INSERM team were hiding something, three more tests were done and shown not to work. At this point, Maddox and his team had their results and promptly left”⁸.

    Nature then published a report entitled ‘High dilution experiments a delusion’. “It claimed that Benveniste’s lab had not observed good scientific protocol. It discounted supporting data from other labs. Maddox expressed surprise that the studies didn’t work all the time, when this is standard in biological studies — one reason Benveniste had conducted more than 300 trials before publishing”. “They expressed dismay that two of Benveniste’s co-authors were being funded by a manufacturer of homeopathic medicines”, when industry funding is standard in scientific research. Rather than insinuate fraud, they should have produced actual evidence of it.

    Benveniste’s response was feisty, and I would say appropriate: “Salem witchhunts or McCarthy-like prosecutions will kill science. Science flourishes only in freedom”⁹.

    Unfortunately, the scientific world believed Nature rather than Benveniste — it is, after all, a prestigious journal — and this episode had a devastating effect upon his career. “INSERM refused to listen to Benveniste’s objections about the quality of the Nature investigation and prevented him from continuing… Letters poured in to Nature and other publications, calling his work ‘dubious science’, a ‘cruel hoax’ and ‘pseudo-science’ ”. We might wonder whether these terms could be applied more appropriately to Nature’s investigation.

    The result was that Benveniste’s funding was curtailed, his laboratory closed down and he himself lost his post — all a direct consequence of his scientific study of (ideas related to) homeopathy.

    Here are some of the key points which show why the arch-materialist Maddox was so alarmed:

  • molecules communicate with each other in oscillating frequencies (not through chemical exchange). Cells rely on electromagnetic signalling at low frequency.
  • action at a distance, “a ‘cascade’ of electromagnetic impulses travelling at the speed of light”. Two molecules are then tuned into each other, even at long distance, and resonate to the same frequency. A medium enabling the molecules to speak to each other nonlocally and virtually instantaneously.
  • water behaves mysteriously — when closely packed together, atoms and molecules exhibit a collective behaviour, (thus something like a superorganism).
  • “water is like a tape recorder, imprinting and carrying information whether the original molecule is still there or not”. “Water molecules organize themselves to form a pattern on which can be imprinted wave information”¹⁰.

    There are two follow-ups worthy of notice:

  • Professor Madelene Ennis of Queen’s University in Belfast, originally sceptical, tried the experiments along with a large pan-European research team, with a view to disproving Benveniste’s results once and for all. She became a convert, however, after obtaining similar results. McTaggart speaks for Benveniste: “If negative, her results would have been published in Nature, thereby forever consigning his work to the trash heap. Because (the team’s) results agreed with his, they were published in a relatively obscure journal, a few years after the event, a guarantee that no one would really notice”.
  • Of many scientific double-blind, placebo-controlled studies of homeopathy which lent support to Benveniste’s findings, “the most unassailable were carried out in Glasgow by Dr David Reilly (who) showed that homeopathy works for asthma, with all the usual checks and balances of a pristine scientific study”. This persuaded the journal The Lancet to publish the results, but an editorial simply refused to accept them, saying: “the dilution principle of homeopathy is absurd; so the reason for any therapeutic effect presumably lies elsewhere”.

    On the basis of this example, whose view of science is closer to the truth, Gervais’s or Sheldrake’s? Once upon a time it was science which challenged the dogma of the Church. Now it seems that certain scientific beliefs have acquired the status of unchallengeable dogma, despite what Gervais claims. How does a bigot, someone so against proper scientific enquiry, become editor of a prestigious scientific journal? Was Maddox a fit and proper person? Who appointed him? Was he censured or fired for his appalling behaviour in the Benveniste incident? Why was he knighted?

So, is science a liberal conspiracy? Certainly not very liberal, in the case of Benveniste, rather fascistic. But is there an actual conspiracy? Bilimoria seems to think so:

  • “This episode encapsulates, without exaggeration, the typical reaction of the ‘secret police of establishment science’ when faced with inexplicable observations that lie outside the parameters of the mechanistic/molecular paradigm. The armoury of suppression includes the illegitimate use of legitimate scientific tools such as statistics, fake attempts at duplicating their results by ‘experts’ (sometimes anonymous), persecution, false rumours, slander and the abuse of financial and institutional power. It is a truism that establishment scientists operate under an illusion of scientific objectivity with blind faith in a reductionist approach using mechanistic laws… The greater the pursuit of scientific power (with attendant money, fame and position) the more is truth compromised”.
  • “The fact that a scientist in England could terminate the research of a famous scientist in France shows the savage clout and manipulative control that can be wielded by establishment scientists in positions of supremacy. The very fact that Benveniste’s work called forth such a hysterical comeback from the establishment shows that the latter felt extremely threatened. It virtually ‘proves’ that Benveniste’s findings were very plausible, for who would bother to shut down someone’s laboratory if the result were inconsequential and of no import?”
  • “The demise of Benveniste’s work signals a real blow to the scientific advancement of complementary medicine. One cannot but wonder whether the move to stop further research into homeopathy was driven by the fear that if success in this field could be shown in the public eye to have been scientifically proven and published, the drug industry would suffer a serious downturn in profits with far-reaching conclusions”.

    If there is not actually a conspiracy involving real people plotting somewhere, even if that sometimes appears to be the case, then there must be a strong drive, possibly unconscious, in many scientists to behave in this appalling way. Maddox’s attitude is certainly not an isolated example. How could this be explained? If not a conspiracy, it would seem that the meme of scientific materialism, a highly contagious cultural virus, has infected the minds of many so-called scientists.

    Or is there perhaps an actual conspiracy? With people like Maddox in charge of Nature, it is easy to understand why some people might think that.

There is also an Appendix below, following on from footnote 5.

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Bibliography:

The Field, Lynne McTaggart, HarperCollins, 2001, chapter 4, p60f

The Snake and the Rope, Dr. Edi Bilimoria, Theosophical Publishing House, 2006, Appendix B

 

Footnotes:

1. for full details of the brief summary which follows, click here.

2. Issue 289, February 26th 1981, p735

3. “Why I’m an atheist”, Wall Street Journal, December 19th 2010

4. The Science Delusion, Coronet, 2012, p27

5. These people are ignorant of the facts, for homeopathic theory has been confirmed many times, using proper science. (See the Appendix below for further information, if interested).

6. Editorial 1988, 313:818

7. Prometheus Books, 1982

8. for this quote and what follows, see McTaggart, pp64–65

9. Nature 1988, 334:291

10. The third and fourth of the bullet-points are referred to by McTaggart in relation to the work of two Italian physicists, Giuliano Preparata and Emilio Del Giudice, thus not Benveniste himself, but relevant to his thinking.

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Appendix

    In the article I have referred to the work of Benveniste’s team, the replication of his results by five different laboratories in four countries, the conclusions of Professor Madelene Ennis, Dr David Reilly, and Giuliano Preparata and Emilio Del Giudice. Following the Benveniste incident:

  • “in 1992, the Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology held a symposium… examining the interactions of electromagnetic fields with biological systems”¹.
  • “Numerous other scientists have replicated high-dilution experiments”².
  • “several others have endorsed and successfully repeated experiments using digitized information for molecular communication”³.
  • “Benveniste’s latest studies were replicated eighteen times in an independent lab in Lyon, France, and in three other independent centres”.

Footnotes to Appendix:

1. A. H. Frey, ‘Electromagnetic field interactions with biological systems’, FASEB Journal, 1993; 7: 272

2. References are:

  • M. Bastide et al., ‘Activity and chronopharmacology of very low doses of physiological immune inducers’, Immunology Today, 1985; 6: 234–5
  • L. Demangeat et al., ‘Modifications des temps de relaxation RMN à 4MHz des protons du solvant dans les très hautes dilutions salines de silice/lactose’, Journal of Medical Nuclear Biophysics, 1992; 16: 135–45
  • B. J. Youbicier-Simo et al., ‘Effects of embryonic bursectomy and in ovo administration of highly diluted bursin on an adrenocorticotropic and immune response to chickens’, International Journal of Immunotherapy, 1993; IX: 169–80
  • P.C. Endler et al., ‘The effect of highly diluted agitated thyroxin on the climbing activity of frogs’, Veterinary and Human Toxicology, 1994: 36: 56–9

3. References are:

  • P. C. Endler et al, ‘Transmission of hormone information by non-molecular means’, FASEB Journal, 1994; 8: A400;
  • F. Senekowitsch et al., ‘Hormone effects by CD record/replay’, FASEB Journal, 1995; 9: A392

Time for a New Paradigm — Two Interesting Scientists

    The new paradigm I’m referring to is an ongoing theme of mine — the reunification of science and religion.

    I have been reading a book called Cosmos, Bios, Theos¹. In it 60 prominent scientists were asked their view on the fundamental questions:

  • what was the origin of the universe?
  • how did life begin?
  • where do humans come from?
  • do you believe in God?

    There is much that I could quote, but here I’ll just refer to two interesting responses. Professor Christian B. Anfinsen, Professor of Chemistry and joint winner of the 1972 Nobel Prize for Chemistry, says that he believes in the Big Bang, that the origin of life was “an inevitable consequence of the evolution of the universe, physically speaking”, that homo sapiens “developed from lower forms by… processes of mutation and selection”. A spiritually minded person might well have objections to much of this, these responses suggesting that he is an orthodox scientist with the expected modern beliefs. When asked about the existence of God, however, he replies: “I think only an idiot can be an atheist”. (Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett etc., take note.) “We must admit that there exists an incomprehensible power or force with limitless foresight and knowledge that started the whole universe going in the first place. Such a process may have occurred many times earlier, and, indeed, must have, and will very likely occur again in the future”.

    This sounds more like the Ancient Wisdom teaching found in Hinduism — the Divine Mind, and a process of evolution and involution — a truly spiritual response.

    Anfinsen goes on to quote Einstein: “That deeply emotional conviction of the presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible Universe, forms my idea of God”². I have heard Richard Dawkins claim on a radio programme that Einstein was an atheist. Don’t let anyone tell you that and let them get away with it.

    Many modern (materialist) scientists say that science and religion are incompatible and irreconcilable. Professor Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker, an eminent physicist, says: “I think the relationship between religion and science should be friendship. In the last resort their messages might turn out to be identical, but this would mean both of them would have to mature. At present I feel that just in friendship they should ask each other critical questions. Religion might ask science whether scientists understand the immense danger into which they bring the world, mankind, and the living world on our earth, if they do not take their responsibility for the future as their first duty. On the other hand, science should ask religion, in all friendship, whether it is not resting on concepts which are outmoded by five hundred years or more. Both of them ought to mature and they would be far closer to each other than they realize today”.

    I agree with his final conclusion, but am not quite so sure about the route by which he arrived there. He thinks the main thing that science can learn from religion is related to questions of morality and ethics; he does not seem to think that science has anything scientific to learn from the ancient religions (in contrast to Fritjof Capra, who found parallels to quantum physics in Hinduism, Taoism, and Buddhism).

    He does not say precisely which concepts he thinks are outmoded. He is “quite satisfied (scientifically) with the origin of life as described by modern theories of molecular biology”. However, he goes on to bring quantum physics into the picture: “The question then is, what are molecules? Quantum theory, I think, would be fully in agreement with the idea of what I call a spiritualistic monism, that is, that there is not something which is not living and beside which there is life which ought to be explained, but that the basic essence of the universe is to live”³.

    He therefore seems to be saying that the universe is a living organism, which is what ancient spiritual traditions were saying a lot longer than 500 years ago. He obviously doesn’t think that this is an outmoded religious concept, although materialist scientists might disagree.

Footnotes:

1. Edited by Henry Margenau and Roy Abraham Marghese, Open Court, 1992

2. pp138–40

3. pp128–129

The Misuse of the Word ‘Science’

    In 1946 George Orwell wrote an interesting essay Politics and the English Language¹, in which he explained how many words are used “in a consciously dishonest way. That is, the person who uses them has his own private definition, but allows his hearer to think he means something quite different”. He was writing about politics, and was focusing at that point on the word ‘democracy’. When I read that sentence, however, I immediately thought of how the word ‘science’ is sometimes misused in this way. It was interesting therefore that a few lines later Orwell included as an example ‘science’ in a list of otherwise political words although, unfortunately, he did not go on to explain how he thought it was being misused. I’ll therefore come up with an example of my own. (The event I’m going to discuss is no longer topical, but the underlying theme — how people can use words to make themselves sound good when the truth is less pleasant — is still very relevant.)

    In April 2017 there was a worldwide March for Science. The main event took place in Washington DC, but there were 600 other events in towns and cities around the world. Included in the mission statement was this quote: “Scientists work to build a better understanding of the world around us. Science is a process, not a product — a tool of discovery that allows us to constantly expand and revise our knowledge of the universe. In doing so, science serves the interests of all humans, not just those in power”². If that is the case, it is reasonable to ask why on earth we would need such a march. Since no one could possibly be against such a science, what was the march’s real purpose? What was lying behind this rather bland slogan?

    It wasn’t easy to find out. New Scientist magazine, which was openly in favour of the march, noting that “some critics were being irritated by the lack of a coherent answer from organisers”, in an editorial asked “What does the March for Science really stand for?³” In the following issue they noted that there was a “perceived lack of a clear message”. If the organisers themselves were not clear about the purpose of the march, and could not give a coherent answer to a reasonable question, suspicions arise about their real motives.

    In the absence of any clear direction from the organisers, the protesters were free to demonstrate for or against anything that took their fancy. Some variously said that they were marching to: stop funding cuts; promote gender equality; raise awareness of climate change; safeguard scientists from attacks; protect science education; oppose anti-science rhetoric; defend the theory of evolution. When expressed in those terms, this on the whole sounds reasonable. Lurking beneath the surface of these soundbites, however, was there a suggestion of an alternative agenda? If you are for science, what exactly is it that you are against? After all, a march for science could be seen merely as a celebration. Indeed there were funk, soul and jazz musicians performing between the speakers. Why was the word ‘protest’ used then, suggesting that they thought the march was actually against something?

    Here are a few random observations.

    An indication of the confusion amongst all those involved was that the organisers claimed that the March was “not political”. It’s not clear what they meant by this since there were public speeches, and the protesters certainly didn’t get the message; if you are marching with banners and placards, it’s hard to see how you can call what you are doing non-political, one placard reading: “Scientists, Speaking Truth to Power”. Also, the march seemed to be a thinly disguised attack:

  • on Trump in the USA. The march was conceived at the Women’s March on Washington, which took place a day after, and in protest against, Donald Trump’s inauguration on January 21st. Originally the protest was going to be called the Scientists’ March on Washington, an obvious reference to the Trump protest.
  • on the Brexit vote in Britain. The British protest defended the status of ‘experts’. This was an obvious reference to the politician Michael Gove’s comment during the referendum campaign, that “people in this country have had enough of experts”. The British organisers were therefore overtly criticising the vote to leave the European Union.

    There is a suspicion that the march was, up to a point, against religion. One placard read “Science — A Candle in the Dark”. I wonder what “the Dark” was a metaphor for. The master of ceremonies was the soul musician Questlove. He said: “It’s been frustrating to watch as certain forces in our society try to squelch science, or their refusal to believe in it or propose alternative realities and facts”. Who was he talking about there? If not religious people, it would have to be those challenging climate change research. In either case, whatever you may think about those alternative claims, is he advocating the suppression of legitimate debate, the intelligent free thinking that the organisers said the March was seeking to promote? It is not possible to squelch science, if it is the search for truth. It is possible, though, to criticise some things that certain scientists say.

    Was the march really about free thinking, science in the pursuit of truth, or was it about the maintenance of orthodoxy? An honorary co-chair and front man for the Washington march was Bill Nye. Stephen Meyer noted that he was the perfect choice:

  • “March organisers have paid lip service to critical thinking and ‘diverse perspectives’ in science. However, Nye is a good example of someone who promotes science as a close-minded ideology, not an open search for truth. He attacks those who disagree with him on climate change or evolution as science ‘deniers’. He wouldn’t even rule out criminal prosecution as a tool”.
  • “Cajoling the public into giving their minds over to the ‘experts’ is Mr. Nye’s specialty”.

     Meyer concludes: “The March is about demanding that science, and the public, conform to expectations and embrace only orthodox ideas on evolution, climate change, and more”⁴.

    Gareth Sturdy, a teacher in London, made similar observations: “The self-selecting weekend warriors in London last Saturday didn’t speak for scientists, and they certainly didn’t speak for science. This wasn’t a celebration of science, but of scientism: the attempt to adopt science as an all-embracing ideology and push it beyond its purview. The pretence towards a fictitious global consensus and the fear of dissenting opinions had more in common with the medieval church than the Enlightenment. The whole basis of science is continual questioning and argument. Alternative views are the lifeblood of the scientific disciplines… Contrary to what the marchers believe, the most serious threat to scientific thinking today is themselves: people who seek to exploit science to defend themselves from ideas that frighten them”⁵.

    David Klinghoffer commented: “Being ‘pro-science’ has become a bizarre cultural phenomenon in which liberals (and other members of the cultural elite) engage in public displays of self-reckoned intelligence as a kind of performance art, while demonstrating zero evidence to justify it”⁶.

    Here are some of the other messages on the placards:

  • “Science Pursuing the Truth”. That is somewhat debatable; many ‘scientists’ seem determined to promote unhesitatingly a materialist, atheist, worldview.
  • “Saving the World”. I wonder whether the carrier of this placard remembered that scientists were responsible for creating nuclear weapons.
  • “Science is the Answer”. To what exactly?

    Obviously, there is a limit to what one can say on a placard, but surely the protesters could have come up with something better than these meaningless soundbites. The organisers’ mission statement, among other things, said this: “We support science education that teaches children and adults to think critically, ask questions, and evaluate truth based on the weight of evidence”⁷. It would seem that there is a great need for this, especially among the organisers and protesters themselves.

    “In today’s world, blind and unthinking deference to ‘The Science’ has become as much a part of Western culture as unquestioned deference to ‘The Church’ used to be”⁸. It’s a shame that those involved in the March for Science could not see this.

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Footnotes:

1. http://www.orwell.ru/library/essays/politics/english/e_polit

2. https://www.marchforscience.com/mission-and-vision/

3. issue 3122, April 22nd 2017. It is interesting, but perhaps not surprising given the magazine’s title, to note that New Scientist was not at all bothered by this, and positively celebrated the lack of a coherent message, saying: “To draw numbers worthy of public attention, the events will have to attract a broad coalition of supporters with disparate views on the proper role of science”, and “diversity of concerns and voices is a strength, not a weakness, when it comes to mass protest. Decide for yourself what science stands for, stand up for it — and stand together”.

4. https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/04/stephen-meyer-bill-nye-is-perfect-talking-head-for-a-march-against-science/

5. http://www.spiked-online.com/newsite/article/five-reasons-the-march-for-science-was-a-dumb-idea/19729

6. https://www.evolutionnews.org/2017/04/science-as-cargo-cult-more-thoughts-on-the-march-for-science/

7. https://www.marchforscience.com/mission-and-vision/

8. The Science Delusion, Peter Wilberg, New Gnosis Publications, 2008, back cover

In Defence of Magical Thinking

    That is the title of a book by Medium writer Jack Preston King, which is an anthology of some of his articles. His subtitle is Essays in Defiance of Conformity to Reason. There is one article with the same title as the book, which has the subtitle What if Magical Thinking is the Key to Spiritual Development? I’ve been reading the book recently, and here I am writing in support of his ideas, hopefully adding relevant material.

    None of what follows is intended as a rejection of reason, which is a very useful tool when used correctly. I wish merely to point out that it is limited, and that its value is overestimated by its advocates, since it cannot alone lead to a complete understanding of how the universe works.

    Some people think otherwise. For example, Richard Dawkins has established a Foundation for Reason and Science, and Steven Pinker has written a book entitled Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress. They think that reason and logic are the only tools which science can use to unlock the universe’s secrets. There would be a problem, however, if there were levels of reality, and phenomena, which are actually irrational, which I suggest is the case. For example, Carl Jung describes the psyche as irrational. Richard Dawkins, conveniently for him, does not believe that the psyche, in Jung’s sense, exists.

 

    Lothar Schäfer, who at the time of the following quotes was a Professor of Physical Science, discusses the issue in some depth. He says: “Compatibility with reason is (an) essential aspect of the procedures that we use to establish facts… They will not be accepted if they make no sense. There are laws of thinking correctly, which are summarised in logic, the science of valid reasoning. If it does not conform to logic, it cannot be accepted as a verification of fact”. This suggests that reason and logic should reign supreme. However, he then adds the following reservations:

  • “As it turns out, all propositions about reality and all techniques of establishing facts take a lot for granted, and the means of observation and reason that we employ in deriving facts are not as clearly and distinctly factual as the feeling of certainty that they evoke.
  • “For example, as to the desired rationality of established facts, the concept presupposes that the logic of the universe must in some ways conform to the logic of the human mind. Why that should be so is by no means self-evident”¹.

    He says later that common sense “typically tells us what cannot occur. It is a sense of what is absurd; it tells us what will not happen, rather than what will happen… The problem with this view is that reality is counterintuitive. Common sense is in accord with some of reality but not with all of it”. He offers Einstein’s relativity and the phenomena of the quantum world as two such examples of reality contrary to common sense, therefore counterintuitive²... (Appropriate synonyms for ‘counterintuitive’, I suggest, would be irrational and illogical.)

    Here are some quotes, explaining why he says this, beginning with Einstein, who once said: “science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature”. If that is correct, then reason must be an inadequate tool. Reflecting upon this inability, he also said: “All these fifty years of conscious brooding have brought me no nearer to the answer to the question ‘What are light quanta?’ Nowadays every Tom, Dick and Harry thinks he knows it, but he is mistaken”³. Even the reasoning powers of the genius Einstein could not solve this mystery!

    Turning now to quantum physics, there are several relevant quotes which indicate exactly how irrational the new experimental results appeared:

  • “Exploration of the atomic and subatomic world brought them in contact with a strange and unexpected reality. In their struggle to grasp this new reality, scientists became painfully aware that their basic concepts, their language, and their whole way of thinking wereinadequate to describe atomic phenomena. Their problems were not merely intellectual but amounted to an intense emotional and even existential crisis” (Fritjof Capra).
  • “I remember discussions with Bohr which went through many hours till very late at night and ended almost in despair; and when at the end of the discussion I went alone for a walk in the neighbouring park, I repeated to myself again and again the question: Can nature possibly be so absurd as it seemed to us in these atomic experiments?” (Werner Heisenberg)
  • “I think it is safe to say that no one understands quantum mechanics” (Richard Feynman).

    In similar vein, parapsychologist Dean Radin says:

  • “It took years to reconcile what I was seeing in those experiments at Bell Labs with what my formal education had led me to expect. I hadn’t realised just how deeply I had accepted the assumptions of conventional science until I came face-to-face with experimental results that ‘shouldn’t be’. At times I became a bit frightened when I started to think about the implications”.
  • “One day, as I was complaining to a friend about the results of the experiments, I said, ‘I just can’t imagine how this can be!’ My friend calmly replied, ‘Well, it sounds like you’re limiting yourself’ ”.
  • “The difficulties in reconciling ‘magic’ with science were caused entirely by my prior beliefs. The moment I imagined that some aspects of science would simply expand to accommodate psi, and that most established scientific principles would remain the same as before, suddenly there was nothing left to reconcile”.
  • “Many very interesting facets of the world are just left out of science altogether… The scientific worldview is far from complete”⁴.

    It would seem that these are the problems you encounter if you restrict yourself to trying to understand the universe purely through reason. Interestingly, like Jack Preston King, Radin calls the new discoveries ‘magic’.

    There is a further problem. Who gets to decide what is rational, logical, common sense, counterintuitive? The answer given by a dedicated materialist who does not believe in the paranormal, the supernatural, the magical, for example Richard Dawkins or James Randi⁵, will be very different from the one given by Jack Preston King or me. Some of the things that such people consider impossible are:

  • ESP — telepathy, clairvoyance, remote viewing, precognition, psychometry, psychokinesis
  • spiritual healing, homeopathy, dowsing, astrology, alchemy
  • out-of-body experiences
  • divination: Tarot readings, I Ching consultations, runes
  • belief in synchronistic events
  • ghosts, fairies, demons

    This list may not be exhaustive, but that is enough to make the point. Let’s suppose, merely hypothesise for a moment, that all of these are actually real, not the fantasies of some misguided individuals still living in the past, rather the skills of those who have freed themselves from the limitations of the rational, ‘scientific’ mindset. If science is meant to be a search for an understanding of the true nature of the universe, wouldn’t we be missing out on an awful lot if we rejected all these as mumbo-jumbo⁶? Wouldn’t we be holding science back in its quest?

    I’ll repeat some material from a recent article of mine about the scientist Brian O’Leary. He says that he was once “a typical ‘left-brained’ academic — rationalistic, reductionistic, deterministic, materialistic (who felt he) had the universe and its laws mastered”. Then, as a result of an ESP experience, “my hard-earned scientific belief system was irreversibly shaken”. What he had previously considered ‘poppycock’ “turned out to be true”.

    His revised worldview is: “In confronting ‘unexplainable’ phenomena, what I learned was that we — scientists and lay people alike — had isolated ourselves in an invisible box of our own making… We had painted ourselves into a conceptual corner that kept us from asking the most basic questions about ourselves and the universe. As a result we had become prisoners of our own limiting beliefs. Science itself had become a religion, with mechanistic materialism as the Supreme Dogma”⁷.

    Or, as the poet William Wordsworth put it:

“…trailing clouds of glory do we come, from God, who is our home: Heaven lies about us in our infancy! Shades of the prison-house begin to close upon the growing Boy”⁸.

    Perhaps materialists consider the items on my list irrational and impossible precisely because they are so trapped in the prison of their own minds. (Remember the advice of Dean Radin’s friend above.) They say “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”, even when abundant evidence exists.

    Spiritual traditions have always considered intuition and imagination to be faculties higher than reason. They also believe that all humans potentially have ‘magical’ powers, which can be acquired as part of a spiritual training. For example, the third founding principle of the Theosophical Society is “to investigate unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in humanity”. (Let us not forget that the genius Isaac Newton was a dedicated alchemist who, there is reason to believe, succeeded.)

    It is not surprising, given their beliefs, that people like Richard Dawkins, Steven Pinker, James Randi, the late Christopher Hitchens⁹, and many others I could mention, have not discovered these latent powers.

    In conclusion, let me just remind you of the subtitle of Jack’s article¹⁰: What if Magical Thinking is the Key to Spiritual Development? Here is a quote from it: “And if, in fact, God, angels, the Blessed Virgin, pagan deities, and even spooky things like extraterrestrials, ultraterrestrials, demons, ghosts, fairies, etc. are real camouflaged components of our environment, capable of meaningfully impacting our world and our lives, shouldn’t we all want to be aware of that?”

Footnotes:

1. In Search of Divine Reality: Science as a Source of Inspiration, University of Arkansas Press, 1997, p17

2. ibid. p132

3. in a letter to M. Besso

4. The Conscious Universe, 1997, new edition HarperCollins, 2009, pp338–9

5. the magician and paranormal ‘debunker’ who wrote Flim-Flam: Psychics, ESP, Unicorns and other Delusions, Prometheus Books, 1982

6. Francis Wheen, for example, has written How Mumbo-Jumbo Conquered the World

7. The Second Coming of Science: An Intimate Report on the New Science, North Atlantic Books, 1992, Foreword Pix.

8. Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood, Stanza 5

9. who said: “The cause of my life has been to oppose superstition. It’s a battle you can’t hope to win — it’s a battle that’s going to go on forever. It’s part of the human condition”. Quoted on Medium by Erman Misirlisoy PhD: https://medium.com/@ermanmisirlisoy/your-brains-battle-between-science-and-superstition-8ff37742682f

10. https://medium.com/@beyondtherobot/in-defense-of-magical-thinking-c24f9cb95e