The Ongoing Battle Against Darwinism — Moving Towards a New Biology, Part 4
In part 1, part 2, and part 3 I have tried to establish that Darwinian evolutionary theory is not really science, but is rather the atheistic philosophy of scientific materialism, inspired by hostility to religious ideas. It is certainly inadequate to be a full explanation of life as we know it. If one starts from the prior assumption of materialism/atheism, then natural selection becomes the best, perhaps the only, explanation for the evolution of life. If the basic assumption is false, however, then other possibilities can be considered. So, from here onward in the series, I’ll be discussing the alternatives. In this article I’ll outline them briefly, then go into more detail and review them in those that follow.
They fall into two groups. There are those that attempt to remain within an approximately scientific framework, or at least use what appears to be scientific language. Thus we have Systems Theory, Complexity Theory, and theories of Emergence and Self-Organisation. These are not distinct, but all interrelated. The second group believes that all attempts to explain life, and indeed the universe, without the involvement of supernatural elements are inadequate. The best known schools of thought are Creationism and Intelligent Design. There is, however, a third related concept — Creative Evolution.
The common theme in the first group is opposition to mechanistic and reductionist explanations of life, which are typical of what we call the old scientific paradigm, including Darwinism. The basic idea is that at a certain stage of development in an organism, a new, more complex quality emerges which cannot be explained by reference to the previous, more basic parts.
There are some obvious candidates for this, if one starts from the conventional scientific worldview. Firstly, at some point in the long distant past living organisms emerged from inorganic matter for no obvious evolutionary reason. Why would the interactions of atoms or subatomic particles, left to their own devices, lead to the emergence of life? A second example is consciousness, especially self-reflecting consciousness. This seems inexplicable, the Nobel laureate Sir John Eccles describing it as “miraculous”. This has even led some neuroscientists and philosophers to claim that it is an illusion, therefore that our sense of self does not exist, and others to call it the Hard (if not insoluble) Problem.
Equally impressive examples, although less obvious because we take them for granted, are our five senses, especially vision. These would be impossible without the existence of our bodily organs, yet cannot be explained merely by reference to their physical and chemical properties. It would take too long to explain this in detail here, but I’m basing this statement on the work of Sir Charles Sherrington, and Sir John Eccles who wrote: “Is it not true that the most common of our experiences are accepted without any appreciation of their tremendous mystery? Are we not still like children in our outlook on our experiences of conscious life, accepting them and only rarely pausing to contemplate and appreciate the wonder of conscious experience?”¹
Thus emergence is a key concept within Complexity Theory. I haven’t researched the topic in depth, and I’m aware that there are books which have². Superficially, however, there does seem to be a problem. Although the term ‘emergence’ describes recognisable phenomena, can it really explain how or why the new level emerges? Perhaps it is merely a synonym for ‘very hard to describe reductively’. As just noted, consciousness appears to be an emergent property of brain activity, but is this merely another way of saying that science cannot explain consciousness? The use of the term can therefore seem to be like the waving of a magic wand, not contributing to a scientific understanding. It can appear to be hinting at some quasi-supernatural, miraculous element, even if those words are avoided.
The same observation can be made about the term ‘self-organisation’ — the tendency of complex systems to arrange themselves in patterns, apparently according to some plan, and of groups of organisms to behave as if one, for example ant and termite colonies, and even slime-moulds. Where does this power to self-organise originate? This failure to explain is the reason why the second group of theories turns to supernatural explanations to account for such phenomena, and indeed for life in general. Thus we have Creationism and Intelligent Design.
Creationism is usually associated with Christianity and the Bible. There are, broadly speaking, two versions:
- Young Earth, based upon a belief in the literal and infallible truth of the Bible, and the added ages of the Patriarchs found there. (This led Bishop James Ussher to conclude that the Earth was created on October 22nd, 4004 BC.)
- Old Earth, which does not adopt a strict interpretation of the Bible, but nevertheless believes in the same Creator.
An obvious problem arises if the word ‘created’ in Genesis is considered to be ex nihilo, as some of the more extreme Creationists seem to think (those who interpret the seven ‘days’ literally). There is the further problem of monotheism in Christianity; since there is purportedly only one anthropomorphic masculine God, He alone must be responsible for the creation of the universe. To put it mildly, both these scenarios seem unlikely to scientists; they probably conjure up, in the back of their minds, an image of an old white-haired bearded man in the clouds, as in much Renaissance art.
More interesting is the theory of Intelligent Design, the supernatural alternative to Creationism. There are probably different shades of opinion within this movement, but the best version is a scientific argument, distinct from Creationism, even if some atheist critics seem incapable of understanding the difference. The argument says that the complexity of living organisms shows overwhelming evidence of design, but leaves completely open the questions of the nature of the designer and the process of design. That is not to say, of course, that some advocates are not Christians or from other faiths, but these beliefs do not enter the argument. (Or at least they are not supposed to. One possible exception will be mentioned below.)
We can consider the two parts of Intelligent Design separately. It seems obvious to everyone except ardent materialists that life is the product of intelligence of some kind. The term ‘intelligent’ seems therefore relatively uncontroversial. Even the atheist, and severe critic of Darwinism, Sir Fred Hoyle wrote a book called The Intelligent Universe. The problem is that the word ‘design’ again summons up an image of an anthropomorphic creator God. A similar image turns up in Freemasonry, which talks about the Great Architect of the universe. If, however, we think of these terms merely as powerful metaphors, then the problem disappears, and we are left to contemplate the intelligence and teleology that life obviously displays, without needing to speculate how these arose.
My own position is that Intelligent Design, when understood as I’ve just described it, is the only plausible explanation for life. Once we free ourselves from the Christian perspective including its monotheism, we can consider other alternatives, including Hinduism, Paganism, other spiritual traditions and esoteric schools. All these describe a hierarchy of levels for each organism, and also various discarnate entities inhabiting a multi-leveled universe: deities, angels, spiritual intelligences, elemental beings. Any or all of these may be responsible for the plans or blueprints of what appears at the material level. The problem, from a scientific perspective trying to understand the nature of life, is that we cannot directly see the operations of any of these hidden influences.
In addition to Creationism and Intelligent Design, there is also the term Creative Evolution. This is the name of one book by the philosopher Henri Bergson, and another by Amit Goswami. His subtitle is A Physicist’s Resolution between Darwinism and Intelligent Design. So he is obviously setting himself apart from these other two supernatural alternatives, and focusing upon the relevance of quantum physics to the debate.
Such ideas may provide a synthesis which brings together all the alternatives that I’ve mentioned so far. I’ll be discussing them in the articles which follow.
BREAKING NEWS
Stephen Meyer is a well known figure in the Intelligent Design community, and prominent member of the Discovery Institute, the purpose of which is to promote the theory of ID. He has a new book coming out soon called Return of the God Hypothesis: Three Scientific Discoveries That Reveal the Mind Behind the Universe. There is nothing too controversial in that title from a spiritual perspective; that is what the great religions have been saying for centuries. However, the advance publicity says that “Meyer goes further, revealing a stunning conclusion: the scientific data support not just the existence of an intelligent designer of some kind — but the existence of a personal God”.
The Discovery Institute is getting very excited about this book. All this leads one to wonder whether there is some kind of Christian agenda behind their Intelligent Design movement, which is not to say that their scientific arguments in favour of ID are not compelling.
The term ‘personal God’, however, is very slippery. One hears it in different contexts, and the speaker or writer seems to assume that we will all know what is meant. But what exactly does it mean? The most frequent use seems to be to imagine God in some sense equivalent to a person, with thoughts, emotions, and motives, also a being with whom one can have a personal relationship. The implication is that God is vaguely in line with the portrayal in the Old and New Testaments of the Bible. However, the great Eastern religions, and Western spiritual traditions other than Christianity say something completely different, that the ultimate reality is an impersonal mind, pure consciousness. Especially feisty on this point is the Theosophist Edi Bilimoria who, seeking a reunification of science and religion, says that “there are four crucial misunderstandings 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”³.
It will be interesting to see what arguments, and what “scientific data” Meyer produces!
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I hope you have enjoyed this article. I have written in the past about other topics, including spirituality, metaphysics, psychology, science, Christianity, politics and astrology. All these articles are on Medium, but the simplest way to see a guide to them is to visit my website (click here and here).
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Footnotes:
1. Facing Reality: Philosophical Adventures by a Brain Scientist, Springer-Verlag, 1970, p 1
2. for example:
- John H. Holland, Emergence: From Chaos to Order
- P. Clayton and P. Davies (editors), The Re-Emergence of Emergence: The Emergentist Hypothesis from Science to Religion
- Paul Humphreys, Emergence: A Philosophical Account
3. The Snake and the Rope, Theosophical Publishing House, 2006, p 239
