| EVOLUTION: More surprising to me as I consider | | | | flood into the breach. They should also stop assuming |
| where my intellectual head-space has been on this | | | | that nothing is really known about human beings until |
| issue, which is central to theological ideal; is the fact | | | | the spirit of scientific reductionism gets to work. |
| that I have become more of a creationist. Skeptics | | | | Students of the human sciences have, after all, been |
| may say that God doesn't exist and I am inclined to | | | | learning things alongside scientists ever since modernity |
| agree he/she isn't within our purview to limit and say | | | | began. Among the things they have learned are that |
| we know; HIM, or even what it is that really goes on, in | | | | humans are individuated persons within the bonds of |
| the world about us. It would be difficult to say there is | | | | culture and cultural roles, and that as recipients and |
| any one humanistic discipline or theology that fits with | | | | transmitters of cultural meanings, they are bound |
| my perception. Teilhard de Chardin's 'templates' and | | | | together with others in ways no less meaningful and |
| 'quantum many worlds' join Lamarckian science, that | | | | valuable than the ways promoted by strongly dualistic |
| requires uncertainty and values mystery and | | | | religions. By the same token, it would be helpful if |
| uncertainty principles with purpose. In the final analysis | | | | advocates of the interpretive disciplines would |
| you can put me in whatever 'cubby-hole' you want | | | | abandon a tacit assumption sometimes found among |
| and therell be agreement and respect for the truth | | | | them that nature is so constituted that it can never |
| therein expressed. I see a lot of people sounding like | | | | accomodate the rich and meaningful cultural |
| they disagree and yet I see little difference except | | | | phenomena humanists are dedicated to protecting, and |
| when they seek personal gain by it. Surely science has | | | | that therefore cultural phenomena 'ought never' to be |
| given a great deal of support to the concept of | | | | allowed to slip comfortably into naturalism. Humanists |
| consciousness existing in the very smallest parts of | | | | seem to have internalized this belief from their |
| energy, and in the ways it performs what was once | | | | reductionist enemies, whose commitment to |
| considered miraculous, or magical. Here are the | | | | materialism is generally inseparable from their resolve |
| thoughts of two very scientifically oriented people from | | | | to show up large parts of culture, especially religion, as |
| MIT in a book called 'Darwinism Evolving': | | | | illusions. These opponents, we may safely say, take in |
| "They also made it harder for the scientific worldview | | | | each other's laundry." (7) |
| to be received with equanimity by other sectors of | | | | Ego and protecting territory abound in the internecine |
| culture. Indeed, since the reducing impulse undermines | | | | warfare that academics who seldom DO anything, |
| fairly huge tracts of experience, people like Wallace, | | | | often fight over. Meanwhile the real DOERS explore |
| who feel deeply about protecting phenomena they | | | | the boundless and awesome 'waves of the |
| regard as existentially important, frequently conclude | | | | marvellous'. (8) We should accept even the ridiculous |
| that they have no alternative except to embrace | | | | possibilities that come to mind as having merit or |
| spiritualism, and sometimes even to attack the scientific | | | | avenues to understand, rather than constantly fighting |
| worldview itself, if that is the only way to protect | | | | to make black and white answers that support our |
| important spheres of experience that have been | | | | ego and limit the people who put forward possibilities. |
| ejected from science's confining Eden. In response, | | | | The real rule should be something along the line of 'if it |
| scientists and philosophers who feel strongly about the | | | | hurts no one, why not enjoy the possibility? There are |
| liberating potential of a spare, materialistic worldview | | | | ample evidences that every supposed correct point of |
| began to patrol the borderlands between the | | | | view or paradigm is short-lived unless backed by force |
| high-grade knowledge scientists have of natural | | | | and some kind of authority that limits rather than |
| systems and the low-grade opinions that in the view of | | | | supports god and his/her purpose. Then an open-mind |
| science's most ardent defenders, dominate other | | | | obtains new insight and finds the templates of reality |
| spheres of culture and lead back toward the | | | | even in exploring what first appears to be utterly |
| superstitious and authoritarian world of yesteryear. | | | | absurd. I admit I often have found the idea of |
| 'Demarcating' science from other, less cognitively | | | | creationism absurd, and yet as I said at the start of this |
| worthwhile forms of understanding was already a | | | | entry I am now on the side of creationists through |
| major feature of Darwin's world. A line beyond which | | | | evolutionary forces with intentional creative inputs in |
| the Newtonian paradigm could not apply was drawn at | | | | the Intelligent Design or Interventionist mode. The next |
| the boundary between physics and biology. We have | | | | entry will seem absurd to most people and few will |
| seen how hesitant Darwin was to cross that line and | | | | think it deserves inclusion in a segment purporting to |
| what happened when he did. Twentieth-century | | | | have anything to do with science. I must include it in |
| people are sometimes prone to congratulate | | | | honest presentation despite the ridicule most people will |
| themselves for being above these quaint Victorian | | | | attribute to it, and me. |
| battles. They may have less reason to do so, | | | | EXORCISMS: - No, I don't believe it has anything to do |
| however, than they think, for the fact is that throughout | | | | with devils and those who project such evil images |
| our own century, the same sort of battles, with | | | | and intents. These people are the ones who claim only |
| emotional overtones no less charged, have been | | | | they can exorcize the very devils they manufacture, in |
| waged at the contested line where biology meets | | | | the hallucinatory and delusional or vulnerable people |
| psychology, and more generally where the natural | | | | they treat. 'The Devils of Loudon' by Aldous Huxley |
| sciences confront the human sciences. Dualisms | | | | exposes these Catholic masters of the art of |
| between spirit and matter, and even between mind | | | | deception. That doesn't mean there are no spirits or |
| and body, may have been pushed to the margins of | | | | dimensional entities with consciousness. To say such a |
| respectable intellectual discourse. But methodological | | | | thing would fly in the face of all the science we have |
| dualisms between what is covered by laws and what | | | | presented. The soul would have no immortality as the |
| is to be 'hermeneutically appropriated' are still very | | | | Keltic Creed and Mandukya Upanishads that Eugene |
| much at the center of our cultural, or rather 'two | | | | Wigner thinks explains quantum reality tells us is real. |
| cultural', life. Cognitive psychologists and | | | | To deny such phenomena is the kind of thing |
| neurophysiologists are even now busy reducing | | | | reductionists in love with logic and certain of their |
| mind-states to brain-states, while interpretive or | | | | omniscience will assure us they know. How can |
| humanistic psychologists are proclaiming how | | | | shamans create herbal concoctions that chemists |
| meaningless the world would be if mind is nothing but | | | | can't create? How can we doubt the actual results of |
| brain. Interpretive anthropologists are filled with horror | | | | the 'dowsers' and Tesla's great achievements from |
| at what would disappear from the world if the rich | | | | visions or his 'non-force info packets' which allow such |
| cultural practices that seem to give meaning to our | | | | 'free energy' to be manufactured in something called a |
| lives were to be shown to be little more than | | | | vacuum. NASA assures us the ingredients of life are |
| extremely sophisticated calculations on the part of | | | | everywhere and that could even include a vacuum. |
| self-interested genes. Conflicts of this sort would have | | | | What kind of avoidance of fact or 'easy answers' do |
| given Darwin stomachaches almost as bad as the | | | | you have to find in order to explain away reality and |
| ones he endured over earlier demarcation | | | | what you can observe with your own eyes? You |
| controversies. | | | | would have to attribute the construction of 'henges' or |
| The rhetorical pattern of these battles is still | | | | the Nazca Lines to aliens or gods! |
| depressingly similar, in fact, to Huxley's confrontation | | | | We don't reject these possibilities but they would only |
| with Wilberforce. Hermeneuts ridicule scientists like | | | | serve to enhance the probability of spirits that can |
| Hamilton, Dawkins, and Wilson when they suggest that | | | | possess our physical and complex body with all of its |
| nothing was ever known about social cooperation until | | | | conscious atoms and coordinated centers of energy |
| biologists discovered kin selection. Reductionists in turn | | | | known as chakras. The science and medicine of the |
| criticize hermeneuts, now transformed largely into | | | | ancients assures us that these things exist and these |
| 'culturists,' for bringing back ghosts and gods, just as | | | | scientists have a solid track record of performance. |
| their nineteenth-century predecessors were taxed with | | | | They DO the things others can't explain - then they |
| being 'vitalists' every time they said something about | | | | explain how 'chhi' or Shakti is in every part of |
| the complexity of development. Humanists identify | | | | everything in the universe, and have suffered the |
| scientists with an outdated materialist reductionism. | | | | guffaws of know-it-alls who are usually wrong. This |
| Scientists insist that hermeneutical intentionality is little | | | | energy with consciousness is open to direction and will |
| more than disguised religion. | | | | avail the trapped or confused soul without awareness |
| Perhaps, a way out of this fruitless dialectic between | | | | and unwilling to go on with life, an opportunity to hang |
| the 'two cultures', can be found if each party could | | | | on as ghosts or in the bodies of those they have |
| give up at least one of its cherished preconceptions | | | | shared life with. Sorry to disappoint the authors of |
| {Or just give up the science that rejects certain facts | | | | 'Darwinism Evolving' but I knew this was fact even |
| in favour of convention or the 'Toilet Philosophy'.}. It | | | | before 500 watts were extracted from a vacuum by |
| would be a good thing, for example, if heirs of the | | | | machines built on the principles of Tesla. Those of us |
| Enlightenment would stop thinking that if cultural | | | | who have first hand knowledge of 'the waves of the |
| phenomena are not reduced to some sort of | | | | marvellous' like Bucky Fuller and Einstein need no peer |
| mechanism; religious authoritarianism will immediately | | | | approval from those who deny god, the soul and ESP. |