Anyway, at least Ridley is honest in acknowledging the problem, although he doesn't exactly name it or draw out its full implications. But the problem is this: that there is a literally infinite gap between man and animal (even though there is an obvious continuity as well), just as there is an infinite gap between nothing and existence or matter and life.
One can say that this gap is infinite because man intuits the Absolute, or one can say that man intuits the Absolute because of this infinite gap. Either way, once man consciously enters the sensorium of time and space, he is implicitly aware of both Absolute and Infinite, and therefore Love, Truth, Justice, Beauty, Virtue, and Eternity. These are the things that define man, not his genome.
Just so. Thus I agree with John Paul II's observation: "Consequently, theories of evolution which, in accordance with the philosophies inspiring them, consider the spirit as emerging from the forces of living matter or as a mere epiphenomenon of this matter — are incompatible with the truth about man. Nor are they able to ground the dignity of the person. ...” [Italics added]
To me, this statement draws attention to the fact that, at the root of Darwin's theory, there lies an undisclosed and unanalyzed initial presupposition: That all natural phenomena "supervene on the physical, or the material." That is, everything that exists reduces to "matter in its motions." This is hard-core materialism — a philosophical doctrine. Everything in Darwin's theory is premised on the idea that this doctrine is a valid, fully comprehensive model of universal reality.
Darwin's theory is wedded profoundly to the Newtonian view of the Universe: That all natural things ultimately "reduce" to "particles" and "mechanics." There is nothing "more" to be taken into account. This can give you a good description of a machine — but arguably not of a living organism, let alone a human being.
Of course, this begs the question of how life and intelligence can arise from inanimate matter. In fact, Darwin's theory not only has no plausible answers to questions of life and intelligence, but lacks a method by which they can be understood — "they" having been ruled out "from the beginning," in effect, precisely because they are "immaterial things" and therefore not "matter."
And they call Darwinism "biological science!" The very word "biology" means the study of life. Darwinism does not in any sense study "life" (or consciousness), only the historical transformations that already-existent life forms have undergone in the past. As supported by a very recalcitrant and spotty fossil record.
In short, Darwinism is only about how species change, not about what caused them to be living (and intelligent) creatures in the first place. Moreover, as the eminent biologist Stephen Jay Gould has suggested, what is truly remarkable about biological organisms/species is not that they undergo change; rather that there is so much "stasis" in their developed forms over hundreds of thousands of years (in many cases). There is no continuous "evolving" going on here, as Darwin's theory predicts....
Regarding this "remarkable stasis [which] has generally been ignored as no data," Gould quipped, "If they don't change, it's not evolution so you don't talk about it." Which just goes to show how the doctrinal tail wags the scientific dog....
I could go on.... The epistemological critique of Darwin's theory can easily be extended to include its resistance to the assimilation of new ideas from other parts of science, such as complex system theory and causal non-locality (e.g., there are no non-local causes in Newton) and centrality of the observer in quantum theory, etc. Darwin's theory is essentially "rigid" when it comes to assimilating new, breakthrough ideas from other disciplines of science....
But I've run on long enough for now.
In the end, to me, Darwin's theory looks more like a religious dogma than bona-fide science....
JMHO, FWIW.
Thanks ever so much, dear Matchett-PI, for your outstanding essay/post!
p.s.: And thanks ever so much for the outstanding link! (To the inimitable Gagdad Bob....)
Thanks for the ping, BB.
Just as I am not a biblical scholar, I am just as ‘Not a scientist.” As I was reading through your wonderful post and noting my agreement with it, I was sure it had to be you and I rushed to the bottom to verify it. You and Matchett-PI have done an outstanding job. I intend to bookmark this thread and send the URL to many people as a excellent discussion of Science/Evolution vs. Religion/Intelligent Design.
As for my own uneducated point of view, if you accept God as the Ultimate Being and the Creator of All, as I do, then science fits naturally under that tent. If not, then one falls back on science to prove things that are unprovable. That is where the God of Gaps concept comes from. Scientists accuse believers in using God to fill the gaps that science can’t. It seems more logical to me that the gaps are in the science rather than in the continuity of God. God is there for the whole ride, not just to bridge the gaps.
An example is the inability of evolution to scientifically prove the beginning of life or the universe. They postulate a Big Bang and a primordial soup struck by lightening. How is that more scientific than the story told in Genesis? Like Marxism, it attempts to describe things while avoiding God. Neither Marxism nor evolution correspond with reality.
The evolutionists are also undeterred by the evolutionary gaps in the fossil trail and the sudden appearance of a new species without a fossil trail. They look at what exists and proceed backward for their explanation making huge leaps of faith as they go. We believers start at the beginning and proceed forward with our own spiritual evolution while noting the correspondence of the physical world with scripture.
Scientists are also incapable of explaining abstracts other than that they just happened as an unexplained progression of evolution. Has science ever explained love, beauty, music, poetry, the feeling we get from a beautiful sunrise/sunset, a full moon or a cool breeze on a clear summer night? We clearly see it explained in the Garden of Eden and Original Sin which separated the purely spiritual into the physical/spiritual while giving man free will.
I agree with the idea that God set the parameters in the beginning and those parameters included all science from biology, to physics, to mathematics, etc. He also gave us an instruction book, the Bible, as He inspired it through His believers, some who became Prophets.
That makes Newtonian Mechanics and Physics an excellent description of the physical world, and Darwin’s theory based upon them, and Einstein’s quantum physics an excellent predictor of the unseen. As you, or someone, said, Darwin’s assumptions are strictly extensions of Newton and as a result incapable of describing the abstract.
I also think mutations leading to improved survivability is a leap. In most observable cases, mutations lead to increased deformity and death. Also, because of the time involved, it is impossible to prove evolution using the scientific method. When speeding up the process in petri dish research, the scientists introduce a mutation and watch to see what happens. Despite what any of these may seem to prove, they all fall back on the original assumption that such a mutation would have occurred naturally over time if not introduced artificially. Would they have? No one can know.
I see a uniformity in all we know and that uniformity is the forces of subatomic physics. They are operative in the micro and the macro, at low temperatures and high temperatures, etc. They are various forms of electromagnetism. Most set gravity apart as a separate, yet undefined, force but I think at the nub of it it is still a form of electromagnetism. That is the essence of the physical world.
Yet, that energy is also possibly the gateway into the spiritual world. That is God’s energy, created by Him and used by Him to keep all we know together. It is also the secret of the Nirvana. It is that place where the Buddhists, Hindus, Yogis, and others attempt to reach, a oneness with God’s energy. It is also what we feel when we are in direct contact with God, when we truly feel God’s Love, Truth, and Life. It is the essence of the Word. It is the avenue through which we reach God. It allows, through prayer, an intervention into the fixed world in order to shape things our way in seeking and following God’s will.
If there is evolution, it is through that rather than through random mutations and survival of the fittest.
Very well said.
Thank you so much for your outstanding essay-post, dearest sister in Christ!