Every Friday evening I have my club meeting. My club, that is the freemasons’ lodge in Leeuwarden “De Friesche Trouw”. Now one of the members had brought with him a box full of books because he would move to a smaller house and had no place for his books, so we could look and choose what we liked to take home. Of course I was glad and grateful to take with me a book about the role of islands in the evolutionary process. Written by Dick Hillenius, a famous Dutch biologist and poet (yes, these people exist, too). The book was from 1964 but I found it still worthwhile to read, because of my admiration for the author and because since that date no new revolutionary insights about evolution had been discovered. Of course, also Hillenius admits that the evolution theory is still not 100% proven but he says he finds a discussion with someone who rejects evolution theory as “senseless” as a discussion with someone who is convicted of the flatness of the earth.
I am very interested in evolutionary theory and I believe that it’s true, but what always annoys me is that the hard-core evolutionists seem to include to it a kind of “proof” that God doesn’t exist, or at least has no role in creation. That’s why in America the discussion seems to be between “evolutionists” and “creationists” without any possibility in-between. Recently this “third way” seems to have emerged in the form of “Intelligent Design”, but the discussion tries to put it into the “creationists”-faction. I have read the book by the hard-core evolutionist Daniel C. Dennett “Darwin’s dangerous Idea” which I find one big pamphlet against everybody who tries to smuggle any non-empirically testable cause or influence into evolution theory. The core of what it’s all about, I think, is the mutation of genes. The moment a gene mutates is the “moment of truth”, but exactly those moments are extremely hard to investigate. What research reveals, is only the consequences of mutation of genes, and the scholars guess that it must be radiation and other random influences from the environment that causes genes to mutate. One is even capable of effecting genes manipulation by artificially creating a mutation. When reading Hillenius, I got a bit disappointed because he describes in a very detailed and meticulous way how other researchers studied the development of species on islands. It was interesting though to read that islands give rise to evolutionary developments different from mainland developments (more or just less specialisation, development of giants or very small species, absence of predators, how island populations are devastated as soon as humans enter the shores, etc.). The reason for my disappointment was that I found no clues for Intelligent Design or something like it. Gene mutation was still assumed to be random. The questions remain:
1. Why did life start? Was it a necessity, just as the forming of ice when water gets below 0 degrees Celsius? And if so, what caused this to be a necessity, in other words, to what law of nature does the life and the water obey in their becoming alive or frozen?
Dennett thinks that everything in nature follows what he calls “algorithms”: if situation x occurs, then situation y must follow, more or less like a mathematical formula. The point then is to find and calculate the algorithms. But quantum physics show that at the level of elementary particles the phenomenon of “matter” disappears (weightless particles that are not particles by definition, the weird behaviour of radiation, the unpredictability of particle movements, etc. – which even Einstein couldn’t believe when he stated: “God doesn’t gamble”). So maybe the origin of all that exists is only a matter of coincidence? Did, at a given moment, life start with a co-incidental combination of influences, after which a series of algorithms followed leading to you and me?
2. Do the frequency of genes mutation within a given number of generations justify the assumption that evolutionary changes occur in the pace they do, by chance, as assumed by the evolutionists? I suspect that only in a small number of specific cases this has been calculated, as Hillenius writes. In some instances this has been done to analyse the development of a family of species on isolated islands. Some plant flowers imitate the exact colour and form of a female insect, thus attracting male insects for fertilisation. Or, take caterpillars and certain bird species and insects that exactly look like poisonous or dangerous other animals of totally different species, just to avoid predation. What about the endless examples of perfect mimicry? Can these characteristics be developed in a process of random genes mutation in which from many, many billions of possibilities just the right combinations are selected, during a very long, but limited time period?
3. How come that information in some instances seems to be passed from one living individual to another (almost) simultaneously? I tend to believe in “morphic fields”described by Rupert Sheldrake, and also suspected by Karl Jung. The most beautiful example I find the “cloud of birds” or “cloud of fish”: it has been measured exactly that starlings, that in the autumn often form huge clouds dancing through the air, give each other information about flying movements in a faster way than physically possible. This way the cloud seems to be an autonomously moving creature by itself. I myself find it also a miracle, that despite the enormous speed of electronic waves, Google can give you the right Internet-pages containing a bit of specific information (let’s say a typical sequence of five words) from billions of pages within parts of a second. Has it ever been calculated how this is possible? (I don’t suggest that Google is magic).
4. Dawkins suggests that living creatures are only “vehicles for the genes”, so my genes are more important than myself. What does this mean to my self-concept?
Dawkins seems also to suggest that it would be better if mankind would abolish religion. He is one of the hard-core evolutionists who adhere to the religion of atheists (they would call themselves atheists) because nothing in nature indicates the existence of God: everything is calculable or demonstrable and if it isn’t then it’s a product of mere random chance. Nevertheless these people, mostly scholars and very intelligent biologists, cosmologists, medical professors etc., follow the norms and values of their society. They obey the ten commandments, not by instruction but because they have internalised these norms and values, are polite, won’t hurt anybody, in short, they behave like religious people as well. Confronted with this fact, they will answer: yes, that’s the best way to survive, it follows evolutionist laws. And falling in love or being touched by a piece of music they call a “chemical process” in their brains, and they can identify the brain area where religious experiences are “taking place”. Well, I see it more like this: nature is, no matter how it originated, a given fact that I a, confronted with. I myself am a piece of nature, consisting of the same matter and radiation processes as the physical world I have to cope with to survive. But the graceful thing is that this nature watches itself through my senses, I am a “sense of nature” myself, nature uses me as a sense (or lense?). Prof. Dawkins and prof. Dennett are enabled by nature to “discover” for themselves that there are no indications for the existence of a God. Next time I will publish on this blog a discussion between the theatre hero Faust and a simple farmer’s daughter Gretchen (of course by my hero Goethe) about Who is God. It will be clarified that many people who think there is no God, do have an idea of God but different from the God-concept (if I may use this expression) they see around them as shown by “religious” people and leaders. Goethe writes somewhere that the great philosopher Spinoza was called an atheist because he saw God everywhere, and not only as a Superbeing residing in a place called heaven.
5. How do I fit ethical concepts such as “good” and “evil” into evolutionary theory? I have not the slightest idea.
These are questions that are maybe senseless for many people, but one way or another I refuse to believe that the Great Answer already has been given. I hope I can come back with these (and maybe more) questions and possible (parts of) answers.
I am very interested in evolutionary theory and I believe that it’s true, but what always annoys me is that the hard-core evolutionists seem to include to it a kind of “proof” that God doesn’t exist, or at least has no role in creation. That’s why in America the discussion seems to be between “evolutionists” and “creationists” without any possibility in-between. Recently this “third way” seems to have emerged in the form of “Intelligent Design”, but the discussion tries to put it into the “creationists”-faction. I have read the book by the hard-core evolutionist Daniel C. Dennett “Darwin’s dangerous Idea” which I find one big pamphlet against everybody who tries to smuggle any non-empirically testable cause or influence into evolution theory. The core of what it’s all about, I think, is the mutation of genes. The moment a gene mutates is the “moment of truth”, but exactly those moments are extremely hard to investigate. What research reveals, is only the consequences of mutation of genes, and the scholars guess that it must be radiation and other random influences from the environment that causes genes to mutate. One is even capable of effecting genes manipulation by artificially creating a mutation. When reading Hillenius, I got a bit disappointed because he describes in a very detailed and meticulous way how other researchers studied the development of species on islands. It was interesting though to read that islands give rise to evolutionary developments different from mainland developments (more or just less specialisation, development of giants or very small species, absence of predators, how island populations are devastated as soon as humans enter the shores, etc.). The reason for my disappointment was that I found no clues for Intelligent Design or something like it. Gene mutation was still assumed to be random. The questions remain:
1. Why did life start? Was it a necessity, just as the forming of ice when water gets below 0 degrees Celsius? And if so, what caused this to be a necessity, in other words, to what law of nature does the life and the water obey in their becoming alive or frozen?
Dennett thinks that everything in nature follows what he calls “algorithms”: if situation x occurs, then situation y must follow, more or less like a mathematical formula. The point then is to find and calculate the algorithms. But quantum physics show that at the level of elementary particles the phenomenon of “matter” disappears (weightless particles that are not particles by definition, the weird behaviour of radiation, the unpredictability of particle movements, etc. – which even Einstein couldn’t believe when he stated: “God doesn’t gamble”). So maybe the origin of all that exists is only a matter of coincidence? Did, at a given moment, life start with a co-incidental combination of influences, after which a series of algorithms followed leading to you and me?
2. Do the frequency of genes mutation within a given number of generations justify the assumption that evolutionary changes occur in the pace they do, by chance, as assumed by the evolutionists? I suspect that only in a small number of specific cases this has been calculated, as Hillenius writes. In some instances this has been done to analyse the development of a family of species on isolated islands. Some plant flowers imitate the exact colour and form of a female insect, thus attracting male insects for fertilisation. Or, take caterpillars and certain bird species and insects that exactly look like poisonous or dangerous other animals of totally different species, just to avoid predation. What about the endless examples of perfect mimicry? Can these characteristics be developed in a process of random genes mutation in which from many, many billions of possibilities just the right combinations are selected, during a very long, but limited time period?
3. How come that information in some instances seems to be passed from one living individual to another (almost) simultaneously? I tend to believe in “morphic fields”described by Rupert Sheldrake, and also suspected by Karl Jung. The most beautiful example I find the “cloud of birds” or “cloud of fish”: it has been measured exactly that starlings, that in the autumn often form huge clouds dancing through the air, give each other information about flying movements in a faster way than physically possible. This way the cloud seems to be an autonomously moving creature by itself. I myself find it also a miracle, that despite the enormous speed of electronic waves, Google can give you the right Internet-pages containing a bit of specific information (let’s say a typical sequence of five words) from billions of pages within parts of a second. Has it ever been calculated how this is possible? (I don’t suggest that Google is magic).
4. Dawkins suggests that living creatures are only “vehicles for the genes”, so my genes are more important than myself. What does this mean to my self-concept?
Dawkins seems also to suggest that it would be better if mankind would abolish religion. He is one of the hard-core evolutionists who adhere to the religion of atheists (they would call themselves atheists) because nothing in nature indicates the existence of God: everything is calculable or demonstrable and if it isn’t then it’s a product of mere random chance. Nevertheless these people, mostly scholars and very intelligent biologists, cosmologists, medical professors etc., follow the norms and values of their society. They obey the ten commandments, not by instruction but because they have internalised these norms and values, are polite, won’t hurt anybody, in short, they behave like religious people as well. Confronted with this fact, they will answer: yes, that’s the best way to survive, it follows evolutionist laws. And falling in love or being touched by a piece of music they call a “chemical process” in their brains, and they can identify the brain area where religious experiences are “taking place”. Well, I see it more like this: nature is, no matter how it originated, a given fact that I a, confronted with. I myself am a piece of nature, consisting of the same matter and radiation processes as the physical world I have to cope with to survive. But the graceful thing is that this nature watches itself through my senses, I am a “sense of nature” myself, nature uses me as a sense (or lense?). Prof. Dawkins and prof. Dennett are enabled by nature to “discover” for themselves that there are no indications for the existence of a God. Next time I will publish on this blog a discussion between the theatre hero Faust and a simple farmer’s daughter Gretchen (of course by my hero Goethe) about Who is God. It will be clarified that many people who think there is no God, do have an idea of God but different from the God-concept (if I may use this expression) they see around them as shown by “religious” people and leaders. Goethe writes somewhere that the great philosopher Spinoza was called an atheist because he saw God everywhere, and not only as a Superbeing residing in a place called heaven.
5. How do I fit ethical concepts such as “good” and “evil” into evolutionary theory? I have not the slightest idea.
These are questions that are maybe senseless for many people, but one way or another I refuse to believe that the Great Answer already has been given. I hope I can come back with these (and maybe more) questions and possible (parts of) answers.
4 comments:
Sorry I've messed up a couple of posts. I'm having some difficulty with the links I wanted to include. Anyway, I agree that evolutionary theories do not disprove God's existence. On the other hand, people of faith who reject evolution are in error. I believe the answers to these questions require thoughtful synthesis of data freom several disciplines rather than polarized positions that reek of superiority and self-righteous attitudes.
Evie, I remember you had some recommendations about evolution theory literature but I cannot find them anymore in your comments. Can you please post a comment with these recommendations? There was also a book you reviewed in your literature blog.
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