Most people have a hard time believing that existence appeared out of nowhere. So they turn to available worldviews that incorporate purpose and meaning, which are generally religious. This has resulted in a deep split between a strict materialist worldview and other worldviews that see some intelligence within existence. They justify their respective positions by reducing the issues to a polarity between religious spirituality and secular materialism. This conflict cuts to the foundation of how and why existence exists. At one extreme are “arguments from design,” on the other side are materialist, evolutionary perspectives. (In the seeming middle are those who say God designed evolution, which is really just a more sophisticated argument from design.)
The vital questions are “purpose versus purposelessness” or “meaning versus meaninglessness.” Purposelessness is abhorrent to intelligent design believers; purpose is anathema to most of traditional science. The materialist scientists have no truck with what they consider the anthropomorphic indulgences that the “designers” exhibit. They focus on the absurdity of a transcendent God—an easy target. Intelligent “intelligent designers” rail against science’s narrow vision, its refusal to give any real explanation for the extraordinary confluence of statistically improbable events and finely tuned, coordinated configurations of exacting precision down to mathematically unimaginably small sub-atomic levels that allow this universe to be at all.
Design advocates point out that science can only prove design does not fit a very narrow scientific paradigm. Materialist scientists in turn say that without science as a baseline for truth and objectivity, any flight of fancy is possible. Obviously these two positions operate out of separate worldviews with different conceptions of “proof.” Scientific worldviews only address what is falsifiable and provable by the scientific method. But the scientific assumption that no intelligence is involved in the construction of the universe is likewise not provable by science.
Our approach to evolution cannot ultimately be proven in the ordinary sense of proof. This is because “proof” is always embedded in a worldview, and thus is always circular. So we speak to reasonableness and “most-likelihood.” After all, these are all one has to go on when the moorings of science prove insufficient to deal with life’s important questions and issues.
How this topic is viewed has vital consequences. Let’s first agree that evolution of some sort operates within the play of existence. The view we are putting forth features an intelligence without a designer or a specific design. We find that this perspective gives a better explanation of the evolutionary process, including where humanity finds itself at this historic and dangerous evolutionary moment. It is also a source of hope, offering a realistic possibility that we are facing an inevitable evolutionary challenge that can be met.
Does greater complexity in evolution entail improvement? Of course, the easy way out is to refuse to link evolutionary change with improvement, claiming that values are simply manufactured by human needs—evolution’s fancy way of giving humans a survival edge because it allows us the illusions of purpose and meaning that give impetus to social change when necessary.
Scientific reductionists believe that all explanations could be reduced to the laws of physics—if we knew enough. Both scientific reductionists and emergentists argue that because on a purely physical level the cosmos constructs increasing complexities that both replicate and evolve, life and then consciousness would necessarily likewise appear, given a proper environment to do so. In other words, because of the way evolution works, statistically speaking, given the right combination of chemicals in the right environment, life is bound to appear. And then, because consciousness has some significant evolutionary survival advantages, it, too, would come forth at some point. Seeing that life and consciousness have evolved, this argument in retrospect seeks an essentially mechanical explanation free from any hint of intention or purpose—because where would the purpose come from? Purpose would introduce a mystery that science assumes is unwarranted.
However, science typically does not inquire into where this vector toward complexity comes from and why different qualities emerge out of more complex configurations. Instead of addressing why a particular arrangement of chemicals in a particular “soup” brings forth life, science just observes and states that it does. The same is true for consciousness: it does seem to emerge from life at some point, although just why and even where it emerges are murky questions. Are amoebas conscious, or plants, or ants, or snakes, or apes? And then there is the self-reflecting consciousness of humans, which seems paired with an evolutionarily new linguistic ability. Did this, too, necessarily emerge simply because language gives social animals enormous facilities in cooperation, which in turn enables humans to out-compete other species?
The question of the emergence of something seemingly new out of something old lies at the heart of whether something besides purposeless and totally indifferent mechanisms are going on within the makeup of existence. In other words, is some kind of intelligence embedded in the very structure of existence itself that moves within the vectors of evolution to construct complexities, and even more, to bring about emergent qualities—including life and consciousness?
The vital questions are “purpose versus purposelessness” or “meaning versus meaninglessness.” Purposelessness is abhorrent to intelligent design believers; purpose is anathema to most of traditional science. The materialist scientists have no truck with what they consider the anthropomorphic indulgences that the “designers” exhibit. They focus on the absurdity of a transcendent God—an easy target. Intelligent “intelligent designers” rail against science’s narrow vision, its refusal to give any real explanation for the extraordinary confluence of statistically improbable events and finely tuned, coordinated configurations of exacting precision down to mathematically unimaginably small sub-atomic levels that allow this universe to be at all.Design advocates point out that science can only prove design does not fit a very narrow scientific paradigm. Materialist scientists in turn say that without science as a baseline for truth and objectivity, any flight of fancy is possible. Obviously these two positions operate out of separate worldviews with different conceptions of “proof.” Scientific worldviews only address what is falsifiable and provable by the scientific method. But the scientific assumption that no intelligence is involved in the construction of the universe is likewise not provable by science.
Our approach to evolution cannot ultimately be proven in the ordinary sense of proof. This is because “proof” is always embedded in a worldview, and thus is always circular. So we speak to reasonableness and “most-likelihood.” After all, these are all one has to go on when the moorings of science prove insufficient to deal with life’s important questions and issues.
How this topic is viewed has vital consequences. Let’s first agree that evolution of some sort operates within the play of existence. The view we are putting forth features an intelligence without a designer or a specific design. We find that this perspective gives a better explanation of the evolutionary process, including where humanity finds itself at this historic and dangerous evolutionary moment. It is also a source of hope, offering a realistic possibility that we are facing an inevitable evolutionary challenge that can be met.
Does greater complexity in evolution entail improvement? Of course, the easy way out is to refuse to link evolutionary change with improvement, claiming that values are simply manufactured by human needs—evolution’s fancy way of giving humans a survival edge because it allows us the illusions of purpose and meaning that give impetus to social change when necessary.
Scientific reductionists believe that all explanations could be reduced to the laws of physics—if we knew enough. Both scientific reductionists and emergentists argue that because on a purely physical level the cosmos constructs increasing complexities that both replicate and evolve, life and then consciousness would necessarily likewise appear, given a proper environment to do so. In other words, because of the way evolution works, statistically speaking, given the right combination of chemicals in the right environment, life is bound to appear. And then, because consciousness has some significant evolutionary survival advantages, it, too, would come forth at some point. Seeing that life and consciousness have evolved, this argument in retrospect seeks an essentially mechanical explanation free from any hint of intention or purpose—because where would the purpose come from? Purpose would introduce a mystery that science assumes is unwarranted.
However, science typically does not inquire into where this vector toward complexity comes from and why different qualities emerge out of more complex configurations. Instead of addressing why a particular arrangement of chemicals in a particular “soup” brings forth life, science just observes and states that it does. The same is true for consciousness: it does seem to emerge from life at some point, although just why and even where it emerges are murky questions. Are amoebas conscious, or plants, or ants, or snakes, or apes? And then there is the self-reflecting consciousness of humans, which seems paired with an evolutionarily new linguistic ability. Did this, too, necessarily emerge simply because language gives social animals enormous facilities in cooperation, which in turn enables humans to out-compete other species?
The question of the emergence of something seemingly new out of something old lies at the heart of whether something besides purposeless and totally indifferent mechanisms are going on within the makeup of existence. In other words, is some kind of intelligence embedded in the very structure of existence itself that moves within the vectors of evolution to construct complexities, and even more, to bring about emergent qualities—including life and consciousness?
by Diana Alstad and Joel Kramer, Guernica | Read more:
Photo: Hubble Space Telescope courtesy of NASA, ESA, STScI, J. Hester and P. Scowen (Arizona State University)
