More on evolution

Undercover Black Man questions my views on evolution.

He writes:

Greetings, Mr. Auster…

I’ve been interested in your opposition to the theory of evolution, given that you otherwise place such a high value on rational thought, and especially upon the great intellectual accomplishments of the white West (among which the biological and planetary sciences must rank very highly). I would like you to write more explicitly about the religious thinking (I’m assuming) which leads you away from evolutionism, and to explain why such thinking qualifies as “rational.”

I am no expert on evolutionary science, nor am I a religious person, so I have nothing invested in any particular set of beliefs. But in trying to make sense of the world for myself, a couple of simple observations point me towards evolution, and away from divine creation. So let me put a couple of questions to you, perhaps as a platform upon which you can expound:

1.) Do you accept the conclusion of geologists that the age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old? Do you also accept the scientific belief that the simplest living organisms didn’t appear in the oceans until a billion years ago? If so, how does one rationally (as opposed to relying entirely upon faith) conclude that God created life, when this planet existed for so long with no life at all? Why waste 3.5 billion years or so before getting on with the Divine Project of life on Earth? What is the rational basis for pre-supposing an “intelligent designer” as opposed to random chemical processes taking place over eons?

2.) An extension of this question deals with the belief among anthropologists that modern man (Homo sapiens) emerged only 250,000 years ago. Just considering the history of living organisms on Earth, the existence of humans—that is, the existence of an intelligence capable of understanding life itself—is a very, very recent development. This is humbling for humans to realize. Perhaps that’s why creationism is such an appealing notion; we think so highly of human consciousness, we wish to believe not only that an omnipotent Creator must’ve designed it, but also that this Creator designed the whole planet—all the minerals, all the bacteria, all the plants and animals—just for us, as our domain. Such beliefs make sense for a people who lack the scientific means to determine the age of rocks or to decipher the genetic code, but given the evidence that Man is just a blip on the radar screen of geologic time, does it still make sense? Does it make as much sense as random chemical processes?

3.) I’ve always found it compelling that long-isolated land masses have animal species that exist nowhere else on Earth. Kangaroos in Australia, lemurs in Madagascar, the now-extinct Dodo bird in Mauritius. Darwin found it compelling too; this is how his theory of natural selection came to be. Don’t these odd, isolated species lead one to conclude that life forms adapt, mutate and evolve over time, as opposed to the notion that God created the kangaroo as a kangaroo, God created the Dodo as a Dodo, and God created the lemur as a lemur?

Undercover Black Man

LA to UCM:

> I’ve been interested in your opposition to the theory of evolution, given that you otherwise place such a high value on rational thought, and especially upon the great intellectual accomplishments of the white West (among which the biological and planetary sciences must rank very highly).

Now, in all fairness, this is what I mean by an unwarranted tendentiousness on your part. You’re asking me to defend my opinion on Darwinism, but you set it up by suggesting that the very fact that I disbelieve Darwinism means that I don’t value rational thought.

I don’t think that religious thinking per se led me away from Darwinianism. In the late ‘70s I began to read Darwin and books about Darwin, and the holes in the theory were massive. It was simply not believable. But this where an openness to a religious orientation may have played a role. Since I was not committed to a materialist explanation of the universe, I was not wedded to Darwin. When I began to see the obvious flaws and gaps and “impossibilities” in the neo-Darwinian theory, it was no problem for me to conclude that Darwin was false and that there must be some other explanation. But people who believe that the only truth is the material truth discoverable by material science, people who absolutely reject the idea of any non-material intelligence or Creator, would not be able to accept the fact of the obvious flaws in Darwinism, since without Darwinism, the explanation of life must be non-material. They would therefore have to hold onto Darwinism no matter how many gross flaws there were in the theory. So, ironically, while anti-Darwinians such as myself are accused of having our minds closed to evidence and reason by religious dogma, in reality it’s the Darwinians whose minds are closed to evidence and reason by their anti-religious dogma.

> Do you accept the conclusion of geologists that the age of the Earth is about 4.5 billion years old?

Yes.

> Do you also accept the scientific belief that the simplest living organisms didn’t appear in the oceans until a billion years ago?

I think they say it was longer ago than that, more like three billion years ago.

> If so, how does one rationally (as opposed to relying entirely upon faith) conclude that God created life, when this planet existed for so long with no life at all? Why waste 3.5 billion years or so before getting on with the Divine Project of life on Earth? What is the rational basis for pre-supposing an “intelligent designer” as opposed to random chemical processes taking place over eons?

First, you’re getting the issue backward, because you are acting as though I have a “theory” of my own about how life evolved, involving God’s creation, and that I disbelieve Darwin because I like my theory better, and therefore I must prove the superiority of my theory. But I don’t have such a theory (I do have various personal beliefs and speculations on the subject, yet they do not add up to a theory and are certainly not scientific). So the issue is not whether my (non-existent) theory is better than the neo-Darwinian theory. The issue is whether the neo-Darwinian theory is true.

Second, your question assumes (for the sake of questioning) the existence of a divine creator, but then you subject this divine creator to YOUR suppositions of how he must act! Don’t you think that’s silly? If he is a divine creator, don’t you think he may be dealing with larger issues in the creation of the earth and of life than you can appreciate?

Third, the earth has had to go through a LOT of changes before it could support life, and then more and more complex forms of life. The environment in the early earth could not support life at all. The earth’s environment is now vastly more peaceful, stable, and refined than it was billions of years ago, when it consisted of hot rock and molten lava. After seas formed, the seas could support very simple one-celled species. That was the case for two or three billion years. Then about 600 million years ago, there was the Cambrian Explosion, in which all of the non-vertebrate phyla appeared within a few million years. [Note: Actually the Cambrian Explosion may have occurred in a single instant of time. The five to ten million year period commonly given for the duration of the Cambian explosion is simply the margin of error in the radio-carbon method of determining the age of rocks.] Maybe the oceans needed to develop certain characteristics before they could support such life forms. Similarly, the earth during the age of dinosaurs could probably not have supported the high mammals and man—it supported dinosaurs. The plants (there were no deciduous trees), the atmosphere, the very “feel” of the earth at that time, everything was different. That entire age of the earth had to pass away before mammals started to evolve. Then, moving up to the near present, the last ice age vastly changed the earth in ways that made human civilization possible, i.e., it shaped and sculpted the earth, created many river valleys.

What I’m trying to get at, not very clearly, is that there is a holistic relationship between the earth’s environment and the kind of life the earth will support at any time. The earth had to evolve, and life had to evolve. Just as a person grows from infancy through childhood to adulthood, life forms have passed through a variety of higher and higher forms, culminating in the higher mammals and man. At the same time, obviously, not all evolution leads to the “higher”; there are all kinds of branches in the tree of life.

Your basic premise is that if there is a divine creator, he must simply create everything all at once, and therefore if everything was not created all at once, that disproves a divine creator and proves Darwinism. In saying this, you are making a mistake very common among Darwinists, which is to believe that Darwinism is equal to evolution, so that it’s a choice between Darwinism and young-earth creationism. This misses the possibility of evolution which is non-Darwinian.

So let me emphasize again that (1) I accept that evolution (i.e., the appearance of different and more complex species over eons of time) exists, and (2) I do not have any idea of HOW those new species appeared. I assume that in some manner they came out of God, but as to HOW that happened, I haven’t the foggiest. I have speculations: Were there special creations at key moments, interspersed with longer periods of natural developments within a given species? Is there an evolving Oversoul that takes the form of more and more complex species? Does life have its own “intelligence” built into it, which slowly unfolds its potentialities in ever higher forms? But that’s all they are, speculations. As I said, I am convinced of just two things: there was evolution, and the Darwinian explanation of evolution is impossible.

Also, maybe it’s God’s way that things develop by stages.

> I’ve always found it compelling that long-isolated land masses have animal species that exist nowhere else on Earth. Kangaroos in Australia, lemurs in Madagascar, the now-extinct Dodo bird in Mauritius. Darwin found it compelling too; this is how his theory of natural selection came to be. Don’t these odd, isolated species lead one to conclude that life forms adapt, mutate and evolve over time, as opposed to the notion that God created the kangaroo as a kangaroo, God created the Dodo as a Dodo, and God created the lemur as a lemur?

Why should geographical isolation and the existence of different species on different continents preclude divine creation? If anything, God likes particularity (as suggested by his choice of the most particular of all people, the Israelites, as the people to whom he first revealed himself). You’re assuming that if there is a God, that he must create everything the same everywhere. Why? You’re assuming the existence of God for the sake of discussion, then you presume to say HOW this God should proceed. Do you see the humor of this?

You should read the Book of Job, especially the last part when God speaks to Job out of the whirlwind and reproves him for speculating on God’s motives and reasons.

Also, given the fact of evolution, i.e., the appearance of different species over time, it makes entire sense that on geographically isolated continents, the species that appear would be different. Darwin assumes this difference must be due to natural selection. But if we assume that there is (in some manner we cannot conceive) an intelligence that drives life forward, and that life is the expression of a creative will, then it is just as possible that the basic potentialities of life vary in their responses and in the forms they take in different physical environments. What Darwinists cannot explain is the sheer creativeness of life, all the things in life that are obviously not the mere product of an organ or feature being “naturally selected” because it helped its possessor live longer and have more offspring. Biological life shows a superfluity of forms and “life-styles” which make it obvious that more is going on than mere utility. But Darwinianism reduces everything to utility. According to Darwin, the only reason that any biological organ or feature exists is that it helped its possessor live longer, or helped it attract a mate. This is a view of life that is both manifestly false in itself, and intellectually deadening to those who subscribe to it.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 14, 2006 06:40 PM | Send