Is God the only alternative to Darwinism?

Robert R. writes:

I just read the exchanges between you and Evariste [see this and this]. As I understand it, both of you think that Darwinism CAN’T explain consciousness or even life. Therefore, god must be responsible. Aren’t you precluding the possibility that there can be an explanation for these and it just isn’t Darwinism? Have you ever discussed this? Belief in god seems to me to be sort of throwing up one’s hands and saying “I can’t figure it out, therefore it CAN’T be figured out..” It’s quite possible that this is true—that the explanation for our universe can’t be explained with reference to our universe, alone, in fact I tend to think this is so. But does it NECESSARILY have to be true? I’d like to see you discuss this on your site.

LA replies:

You’re sort of going back to the starting point of discussions that have been going on at VFR for a long time. If Darwinism cannot explain what it purports to explain, then it doesn’t explain it. Reaching that conclusion is not “throwing up one’s hands.” Further, why is believing in God “throwing up one’s hands,” but believing in a universe created by random material processes—is not?

I recommend you delve into the many discussions on Darwinism at VFR, linked in the entry, Anti-Darwinism: a collection, which will address your points fully.

Robert R. replies:

Thanks for going to the trouble of posting all those threads. I’ll read them as time allows. To answer the question, “Further, why is believing in God “throwing up one’s hands,” but believing in a universe created by random material processes—is not?,” I do believe that is a distinction. When one says “God did it,” one is basically saying “Let’s not talk (think) about it.” whereas coming up with a scientific hypothesis or theory that can be tested and proved or disproved is another thing entirely. You don’t agree?

LA replies:

But this is the hoariest materialist prejudice, that to think that there is a God is not to think. If the evidence of the universe points to God, then that’s where it points.

Your argument shows a very common misconception that non-believers have about believers. Non-believers think that believers believe in God because God “explains” things that don’t seem to be explained otherwise. That is not the way most people come to believe in God, in my view. They come to believe in God because they see, sense, experience, feel that God exists. Belief in God does not originate as an explanation for material phenomena, but as a primary experience or perception of spiritual truth.

I’m not arguing at the moment that God exists. I’m just pointing out that people who subscribe to modern, materialist scientism are under the mistaken impression that belief in God is a poor substitute for science. No. People believe in God because God makes sense to them, not because God “explains” otherwise inexplicable material phenomena.

Further, I would say that in most cases even a purely rational belief in God does not come from the thought, “Oh, gosh, science fails to explain Question X to my instant satisfaction, therefore I believe in God.” Rather, a rational belief in God proceeds from a reasoning process which concludes that God’s existence makes sense in and of itself. It is persuasive in its own terms, not just because science seems somehow inadequate.

Robert R. replies:

Good morning, I hope you had an enjoyable Holiday weekend! I wouldn’t suggest that believers believe in God because God “explains” things that don’t seem to be explained otherwise. I would, however, suggest that most believers (excluding intellectuals such as yourself, of course) use God as an excuse for just not thinking about certain matters of causality that science CAN PERHAPS explain in greater depth and detail than it currently does.

Whether science can explain “everything” is, in my view, highly unlikely, but I think it quite possible that it could come up with a causal explanation for life and consciousness.

LA replies:

Ok, when science comes within a million miles of explaining life and consciousness, please let me know. Since it hasn’t done so up to this point, doesn’t that tell you something?

Evariste put it really well: Life and consciousness do not seem to be based in matter at all; they clearly seem to come from another source.

Robert R. replies:

Science may very well not be able to, but there are some very smart people out there, so I wouldn’t write them off yet. However, I cede the larger point—that we probably won’t ever be able to explain the universe (even if we expand the definition of the universe to 12-dimensions, or whatever the latest theory is). In fact, I think our attempts to understand it are about as meaningful as an ant trying to understand the Theory of Relativity. This is the one thing that keeps me from being an atheist (although I don’t accept any revealed religions).

LA writes:

In reading over our exchange, I realize I may not have directly replied to your initial question, “[D]oes it NECESSARILY have to be true [that the universe cannot be the source and explanation of its own existence]?”

I would say the answer is yes, as far as the human mind is capable of understanding such things. If we define the universe as matter and energy, and if all things that we perceive as existing come from something else, then matter and energy have to come from something else, something that is not part of the matter-and-energy universe that we perceive with our senses and with scientific instruments.

Further, the whole scientific world subscribes to the Big Bang. The Big Ban self-evidently implies that the material universe is not the source and explanation of its own existence, though, of course, the scientists (somewhat like Marx prohibiting any question about the nature of man) try to cut off any consideration of what preceded the Big Bang.

Also, you wrote in you initial e-mail:

As I understand it, both of you think that Darwinism CAN’T explain consciousness or even life. Therefore, god must be responsible. Aren’t you precluding the possibility that there can be an explanation for these and it just isn’t Darwinism? Have you ever discussed this?

This is a perennial, but understandable, fallacy that arises in the debate on evolution. People get themselves hung up by thinking that they must choose between just two starkly different possibilities: (1) Live evolvted by Darwinian processes of random mutation and natural selection; or (2) God, in a very anthropomorphic manner, literally created every single species that exists. But as I’ve written there are other scenarios, such as that the main forms of life come from God and exist in potential from the beginning, but that, in the unfolding of these potentialities, life is “self-actualizing,” exploratory, and experimental. This would explain, for example, the existence of closely related but different species, and the wild profusion of methods of reproduction among insects and amphibians. According to this scenario, God did not “personally” and “directly” create, say, the frog species in which the male deposits a sperm packet somewhere (it could be anywhere) on the outside of the female’s body, and the female then opens up her skin at precisely that point and absorbs the sperm packet into her body. Rather, life itself is experimenting with different possibilities that are open to it.

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Ben W. writes:

LA: “Rather, life itself is experimenting with different possibilities that are open to it.”

Why in your mind is life different from God? Paul says in the Book of Acts that we move and have our being in him, ie. God. Aren’t you giving “life” an independent structure and activity? In any case what is “life”—isn’t that an undefined term that can mean anything and everything? Haven’t you accorded to this thing called “life” the same power that Darwin accorded to this thing called “nature?” Why do you feel that you need this category “life” to explain certain things especially since life in all forms has no continuity and dies.

Jesus says that God has not finished working—so he may be creating things every day in parts of the earth we don’t see. And has been doing so on an ongoing basis. Paul says that when Jesus has finished his work (delivering the kingdom to the father), God “will be all in all.” There is no sense that there is a category called “life” of which God is not a part of.

LA replies:

Ben writes, “Aren’t you giving ‘life’ an independent structure and activity?”

Not at all. According to the scenario presented here (which I add is only a speculative scenario, since we do not know how new species have come into existence), everything takes place within God, and the main forms and outlines of life come from God, but all the little directions and byways of evolution are not determined directly by God. In other words, there are fundamental rules of life, and there is improvisation within those rules.

Considering, for example, multiple amplexus in frogs, does it seem to Ben that God said, “Let there be this,” and it was so, and God saw that it was good? Or does it not rather seem that the drive of life, created by God (or, in Meher Baba’s terms, as discussed recently at VFR), the drive of the individualized soul to increase its consciousness and realize itself), is exploring, experimenting, and occasionally going wildly over the top?

Posted by Lawrence Auster at July 07, 2008 11:51 AM | Send