Involution / Evolution

Posted by Daniel O'Connor Permalink Comments (1) TrackBack (0)

Thanks to Marginal Revolution for raising the issue of evolution vs. creationism and offering this interesting perspective:

• The scientific evidence for evolution is solid but it doesn't follow that creationism is irrational in the way that many evolutionists assume. Creationism follows rationally from theism. I recognize that this argument is not likely to please many people. The evolutionists fear to question the premise while modern/moderate theists fear to question the conclusion.Thus for someone who knows, really knows, that god(s) exists (and there are many people who claim to know that god(s) exists) then some form of creationism (see the extension) follows as a rational deduction from the premises. It's no point telling these people that creationism is unscientific because given the premise that god(s) exists creationism is scientific. If god(s) exists then evolution is almost certainly false, if not in every particular then surely in the grand claims of a undesigned nature.

I generally agree and I think Alex has his finger on two underlying value systems that have been described rather well by various psychologists, particularly Clare Graves and his students Don Beck and Chris Cowan, who designate them DQ-Blue and ER-Orange. Bottom line: People who see, think, judge, and act primarily through one or the other of these value systems will find it very difficult to resolve their ideological differences. More to the point, we are far more likely to find devout creationists centered at absolutistic DQ-Blue and devout evolutionists centered at multiplistic ER-Orange.

But what about the prospect of an integral theory that bridges and unites the essence of both evolution and creationism? What if the pattern that we observe as evolution was the explicit unfolding of an implicit pattern of latent potentials previously involved in the human and natural world? What if we and our world are simultaneously involved or enfolded Spirit and evolved or unfolded Matter, Life, Mind, etc.? This hypothesis was beautifully articulated nearly 100 years ago by Sri Aurobindo in The Life Divine. # posted by Tusar N Mohapatra Sunday, September 18, 2005: 3:44 AM 0 comments