We live in an age where the advancement of material knowledge via scientific discoveries has begun to encroach on the spiritual life of mankind. Where once religion offered essence and principle, today people only see outward forms and literal interpretations. Devoid of all higher meaning, scriptural text becomes nothing more than traditional assuagement by means of rote. Perhaps this is enough for the lay person of faith, or for a plurality of people contented by the fact that true knowledge is beyond their intellectual capability to grasp it, and so belief will overcome doubt and all is good. Similarly, and with equal certitude, those scientifically inclined among us will gravitate heavily toward the physics, math, biology, and empirical method they understand to try and explain the same fundamental questions. Why are we here? What is the meaning of life? Yet they have fallen into the same ignorant paradigm which transforms their task into that Sysiphus, forever destined to push that stone up the hill. Life's great mystery will not be found at the bottom of a test tube! Instead of concerning themselves with what is attainable by modern scientific means (and modern is the emphasis here since traditional science [although long since lost to us] offered much of the sacred knowledge we ascribe to religion) such as the drag coefficient or Planck's constant, scientific minds posit forth a theory that ultimately will redeem mankind through their hard labors. Finding no higher meaning in the lab, they disavow the "folk ignorance" of the layman and replace "God" with "Physics" and sleep well at night. Are the fundamental questions answered by such supplanting? I posit that they are not, but it is easier to accept what you do know as the only Reality, than to methodically search for outward answers to inner questions and watch the stone roll back down the hill.
This is perhaps why those of Judeo-Christian heritage have flocked in droves to "New Age" concepts as well as Eastern philosophies. The answers they seek stare them in the face, yet they have lost sight of this forest by focusing on the trees, and have thus moved on to another forest in a land unknown to them. Where Moses and Jesus lack answers, surely Lao Tse and Buddha will pick up the slack! If not them, perhaps Darwin, or Hubbard, or Hawking, or Sagan. The outward search continues to the detriment of the inward development.
To see a vast and complex universe before your eyes and try to search for our place in it, this is the human task. If we are but molecular accidents floating on a spec of galactic dust, or we are created in an image of a Divine source, the final answer lies within. How one gets there, that is the journey of life. How silly and ignorant it is to proclaim ownership of total truth to oneself and deny it to others. This is the infantile diametric which now surrounds our argument, that one side is correct and the other is wholly ignorant, and here are the "facts" to prove it! My original post suggested that this "versus" scenario is the most ignorant of all, and belies no understanding of higher principles. I leave the rest to the judgment of our dear readers.
And now on to the Specific Rebuttals to Harrow's diatribes:
"[W]hat he (unfairly) describes as a deficit in Darwin's theory - which is to describe the origin of life from nonlife in purely scientific/mathematical terms." - Jason
The only scientific/mathematical proof for the above which could possibly be inferred is the concept of zero. As in, absolutely zero evidence or corroborating theory as to "the origin of life from non-life." A deficit indeed. One would readily admonish the work of Copernicus if he were to title his works On the Origin of the Solar System, and then arrogantly proceed to provide absolutely no theories on the actual origin of the solar system. Sound familiar to you, dearly evolved by Natural Selection? So the defense offered here to Darwin is that I misquoted his title (which is a poor assault on reason, as I only shortened the title to the commonly known and referred to title, as evidenced by the very link Jason provided. Notice both image of the cover of the book, and the title of the actual article. I guess the authors of that site were just wrong...,) and also that if the title is indeed what I said it was, it's definitely not what Darwin must have meant. Speciation, you see. Truly grasping at air here.
My reference to the work of Kaufman was to underscore that there is vast subtlety to the field of scientific inquiry as the answer to fundamentally spiritual questions. His work is titled At Home in the Universe, which is an apt summary for his own personal search for spirituality among the science he has committed his life to. Here I will quote a few passages from his work which will underscore my point:
"How Darwin and his theory of evolution by natural selection devastated all of this [worldly hierarchy based on the scriptural 'God']! ...[W]e have trouble with the implications, man as a result of a chain of accidental mutations, sifted by a law no more noble than survival of the fittest...[R]andom variation, selection sifting...Here lies the brooding sense of accident, of historical contingency, of design by elimination...We are just one of the fruits of this ad-hocery. Were the tape played over, we like to say, the forms of organisms would surely differ dramatically. We humans...need never have occurred. So much, too, for Paradise." (Ibid. pg 7)
It is clear that he sees the deficiency in the above reasoning, and refuses to accept his own mortal insignificance. Atheist or not, he shall not go gently into that good night.
"Since Darwin, we turn to a single, singular force, Natural Selection, which we might as well capitalize as though it were a new diety... I shall argue in this book that this idea is wrong [emphasis added]. [E]merging sciences of complexity begin to suggest that the order is not all accidental, that vast veins of spontaneous order lie at hand...Profound order is being discovered in large, complex, and apparently random systems. I believe that this emergent order underlies not only the origin of life itself, but much of the order seen in organisms today...If this is all true, what a revision of the Darwinian worldview will lie before us! Not we the accidental, but we the expected. [emphasis added]" (pg. 8)
Rage, dear Kaufman, rage against the dying of the light!
"Darwin's assumption, I will try to show, was almost certainly wrong...Selection cannot assemble complex systems." (pg. 152)
"Such limits begin to demand a shift in our thinking in the biological sciences and beyond...It is not only on random landscapes that selection fails. Even on smooth landscapes, in the heartland of gradualism, just where Darwin's assumptions hold, selection can again fail and fail utterly. Selection runs headlong into an "error catastrophe" where all accumulated useful traits melt away." (pg. 183)
But wait, there's more "Atheism" to come from this guy;
"[E]volution of co-evolution itself are the work of an invisible choreographer [emphasis added]. We seek the laws that constitute that choreographer. " (pg. 209)
"As if by an invisible hand, all the co-evolving species appear to alter the rugged structures of the landscapes over which they evolve such that, on average, all have the highest fitness and survive as long as possible. We are not sure how this invisible hand works." (pg. 234)
But wait, there's more!
"If science lost us our Western paradise, our place at the center of the world, children of God, with the sun cycling overhead and the birds of the air, beasts of the field, and fish of the waters placed there for our bounty, if we have been left adrift near the edge of just another humdrum galaxy, perhaps it is time to take heartened stock of our situation...If the theories of emergence we have discussed here have merit, perhaps we are at home in the universe in ways we have not known since we knew to little to know to doubt...I would rather life be expected in this unfolding since the Big Bang than that life be incredibly improbable in the timespan available. I am heartened by the posibility that organisms are not contraptions piled on contraptions all the way down, but expressions of a deeper order inherent in all life. [emphasis added, albeit superfluously] " (pg. 304)
As as if this weren't enough of a rebuttal to your absurd claims that his arguments are in your favor, he leaves me with a quote of both Einstein and the BIBLE! I love irony.
" 'The Lord is subtle, but not malicious,' said Einstein...we are unlocking some kind of secrets, to all of you making your ways by your own best efforts and best lights... In the beginning was the Word -- the Law. The rest follows, and we participate. [emphasis added again]" (pg. 304)
For being a secular humanist atheist scientist, this guy sounds an awful lot like he's searching for spiritual answers. In sum, I say again that he 'reconciles the dilemma with a degree of efficacy.' The dilemma of course not that of science vs religion (as you so foolishly assumed) but that of finding oneself outside of the "versus" paradigm and satisfying both your mind and your heart.
Of Frithjof Schuon, one of the greatest spiritual luminaries and thinkers of the 20th century, don't take my word for it. T.S. Elliot , having read Schuon's Transcendent Unity of Religions, opined that "I have met with no more impressive work in the comparative study of Oriental and Occidental religions." But perhaps T.S. hadn't yet gotten to chapter on Saurumon in Lord of the Rings, and thus lacked a basis for comparison.
If your only valuation of a person's argument depends on his credentials among 'academia', then I offer this from Huston Smith, the academic authority on the study of religions at the academic level:
"The man is a living wonder; intellectually à propos religion, equally in depth and breadth, the paragon of our time. I know of no living thinker who begins to rival him..."
Quite an endorsement, I would say.
Fin.
No comments:
Post a Comment