Evolving Debate
George Will a champion of Darwinian evolution? Once in a while, the guy surprises (hell, he even takes time to plug author T.C. Boyle and his novel Drop City). In The Washington Post, Will looks at two current documentaries, March of the Penguins and Grizzly Man , while contemplating intelligent design:
"Reality's swirling complexity is sometimes lovely, sometime brutal; its laws propel the comings and goings of life forms in processes as impersonal as Antarctica is to the penguins or the bears were to Treadwell or Alaska was to Drop City North. It is so grand that nothing is gained by dragging an Intelligent Designer into the picture for praise. Or blame."
The entire article is worth reading.
For a much more exhaustive examination of evolution and intelligent design, we can also highly recommend Jerry Coyne's piece in The New Republic. It's a lengthy, but outstanding, read.
posted by Chase McInerney @ 9:47 PM
3 comments
3 Comments:
Chase,
The TNR report requires a subscription to read. But the synopsis starts out with, "Exactly eighty years after the Scopes "monkey trial" in Dayton, Tennessee, history is about to repeat itself ... One would have assumed that these battles were over, but that is to underestimate the fury (and the ingenuity) of creationists scorned...."
And while I haven't read the entire article, since I can't access it, that would appear to lead down the same Scopes-Monkey-Trial-straw-man path as most of the MSM coverage on this issue, i.e. it does not cover the broad array of scientific disciplines involved in ID theory -- and focuses on the narrowband biological evolution debate. So does the George Will column, in an obtuse and roundabout way by reviewing two nature documentaries. I did manage to read in the Daily Oklahoman.
Since even some ID theorists allow for microevolution, and other theists believe in evolution altogether, this media treatment would seem to oversimplify ID theory, to crunch it down to the evolution debate so it can be more easily dismissed (because it threatens the materialist worldview)....
Again I ask, what about other scientific disciplines where theories pointing to a creative intelligence in our cosmos continue to pile up? Such as....
-Theories about "the God gene"
-Rare Earth theory, the bizarre odds that we are on a delicately balanced habitable planet in just the right part of our solar system, with just the right moon satellite oribiting, with just the right sun to nourish us, in just the right quadrant of our galaxy. A location that, by the way, also seems strangely suited to observing the rest of the universe around us.
-"Why God Won't Go Away" neurology
-Big Bang cosmology
-The anthropic principle in physics
-Holographic universe theory
-Recurrent patterns at the macro and micro levels of reality.
-Molecular machines and irreducilbe complexity.
-Consciousness and sentience arising from inert matter.
-The mystery of the mind as a separate entity from the organic brain as explored by neuropsychiatrists (i.e. the way in which the brain manifests the intangible mind as a television manifests sound and pictures).
-The profound revelations of emerging disciplines such as psychoneuroimmunology.
-Scientific research at Duke on the measurable effects of anonymous and long-distance intercessory prayer.
-Quantum physics.
-The impossibly complex code of DNA.
-The incredible symmetry and harmony of mathematics.
-And that's just scratching the surface.
If it all began with the Big Bang, for example -- a singular and inconceivably small point of matter and energy exploded, and in that first split second the known universe was infused with light (i.e. "let there be light") and then expanded into the riot and profusion of reality around you -- where then did it all come from? What started the Big Bang?
That's the sort of consciousness-expanding question we ought to be asking young minds, don't you agree?
I don't know if any of these things are explored in the TNR report. Perhaps they are? And if not, why not? And what do CTTC readers think about these issues, and about these profound questions?
Don't you think George Will's closing statement in his column perfectly encapsulates the materialist worldview, which holds that we need not drag a Creator into the discussion because it's all so "grand" and "sweeping" by itself? This seems to be pretty much the Carl Sagan PBS "Cosmos" line -- complete with turtleneck-clad paeans to the billions and billions of stars.
I myself enjoyed those secular public television hymns to the cosmos in my 1970's boyhood.
But anyone who has ever endured a dark night of the soul -- and here we have to assume that most of us believe we have a soul -- can attest that this worldview ultimately fails us.
If something fails us time and again, one would think the rules of scientific experimentation would apply. Cast aside that which does not work.
Thus, "Man's Search for Meaning." Victor Frankl, who seemed to be pretty much an agnostic when it came to whether we indeed have a "soul" (he seemed to only allow that we have a "will") warned against the dangers of materialistic thinking after he established his "logotherapy" form of pscyhotherapy.
Materialism has no meaning. One must wonder why the human heart craves meaning. Perhaps we have been constructed in that way? It cannot be coincidence that the soul's strivings (which all of us feel in the wee hours) conflict with an atheist's cold musings.
Dragging an active Creator into it seems absolutely necessary.
I can tell by all of the frenzied activity on this thread that CTTC readers are EXTREMELY interested in this topic.
Does the silence on this topic mean CTTC readers are nonplussed by the long list of theories? Could care less? Anyone?
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