Idiot: Mystic Tom Frame on questions supposedly Darwinism cannot answer

Copernicus's demonstration that the Earth was not the centre of the universe was a significant blow to human pride. But Charles Darwin's conclusion that human beings were not unique in the natural world seemed to demolish any pretence that men and women were special.

Early interpreters of Darwin's work were plainly ill-equipped to deal with the ramifications of this potentially devastating message. Since religion based its claim for God's existence squarely on the evidence of design in nature, denial was one of the few options available.

It took more than 30 years for theology to perceive that evolution might, in fact, disclose an even more creative God, and that Darwin had actually paved the way for more profound theological thought.

Both religious belief and evolutionary theory continue to contend for the hearts and minds of men and women. For some commentators, there are only two choices available to thinking people: theism or atheism. Either God exists and there is some divinely inspired purpose in human life, or God does not exist and humans will make what they can of life.

There is, in my view, a range of other positions.Evolutionary theory does not explain everything we want to know about the natural world or human life, and some of what evolutionary theory purports to explain it hardly elucidates at all. While we might know how some things occurred we still want to know why. Most importantly, why is there something rather than nothing?

So how does a Christian account for the origin of life and the emergence of religious faith in the light of evolutionary theory? Some continue to insist Darwin was simply wrong, basing their world view, as before, on the creation narratives in Genesis. Others have decided his theories have been largely discredited and alternatives are presently being devised. Still others accept he was mostly right and his theories have been verified.

Evolutionary theory requires creation to be understood as a continuous process rather than an isolated act in the distant past. In this view, God creates in and through natural processes.

I share the conviction of Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeontology at the University of Cambridge: nature controls the course of evolution but convergence, implying a higher purpose, controls nature.

Conway has argued evolution is not arbitrary and if life were to evolve again, it would look very much as it does now.

The physicist Freeman Dyson said: "The more I examine the universe and study the details of its architecture … the more evidence I find that the universe in some sense knew we were coming."

These lines of reasoning do not prove God's existence but they offer a movement towards the best possible explanation for what can be observed and understood of the natural world. I must concede that much remains unknown.

But as the 2006 Templeton Prize winner John Barrow (a scientist) remarked, religious conceptions of the universe "are not the whole truth, but this does not stop them being part of the truth".

The problem I face is weariness with science-based dialogue partners like Richard Dawkins. It surprises me he is not chided for his innate scientific conservatism and metaphysical complacency. He won't take his depiction of Darwinism to logical conclusions. A dedicated Darwinian would welcome imperialism, genocide, mass deportation, ethnic cleansing, eugenics, euthanasia, forced sterilisations and infanticide. Publicly, he advocates none of them.

Even his much-publicised atheism lacks commitment and courage. It is a cultural preference rather than a philosophical conviction. Nietzsche and Camus believed the death of God would be revolutionary and terrifying. Jean-Paul Sartre said "atheism is a cruel and long-range affair". All that Dawkins can offer is a revival of old-fashioned secular humanism, whose hopes and aspirations are summarised in John Lennon's insipid 1971 composition Imagine.

Sustained consideration of Darwinian theory has raised a number of new questions for me. When does design become domination? Why did God create human beings as objects of divine favour, "a little lower than angels" (Psalm 8, verse 5), lay a good life out before them in which they could live in harmony with the creator and other creatures, and then include within them the capacity, even propensity, to behave otherwise?

I know the textbook answers to these questions, because I have offered them to inquiring students. But the easy answers are of limited value. Would knowing why there is something rather than nothing make a difference to life? I would once have said 'no'; I now say 'yes', even though the why remains elusive and might be forever.

I find the materialist atheism of some rational sceptics harder to accept than theistic belief, and cannot make sense of my life in this world without believing in God and providence. Crudely naturalistic science leaves no room for poetic truth, refuses to honour any spiritual element in physical things and cannot accept the existence of a human soul.

Such science is also inhibited from asking whether life has any meaning, as this would require stepping outside the processes that led its practitioners to the point of questioning. Evolution might account for the story of life's beginnings and progress, but it cannot explain its origin nor cast any light on its destiny.

Tom Frame is Professor of Theology at Charles Sturt University. This is an edited extract from his new book, Evolution in the Antipodes.

LNK
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Idiot: Mystic Tom Frame on questions supposedly Darwinism cannot answer PgkowJT

Idiot: Mystic Tom Frame on questions supposedly Darwinism cannot answer PgkowJT

The superstitious mystic is intellectually dishonest, to say the least...

But hey, what can one expect from a deluded mystic anyway...
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“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual, crime.”-- Max Stirner
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Idiot: Mystic Tom Frame on questions supposedly Darwinism cannot answer

Idiot: Mystic Tom Frame on questions supposedly Darwinism cannot answer

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