Chapter 8: Progress and Evolution
Contents
I. Introduction: Onward and Upward
III. Evolution and Consciousness
"Given the opportunity, Plato might have said that life arranges itself in hierarchies because the ideal form, Hierarchy, exists in a separate realm, the realm of ideas. All hierarchies in the material world are rough approximations of this idea in the mind of the gods. Aristotle might have sadi that the notion of hierarchy is a 'final cause,' immament within all living things, compelling them to arrange themselves in these ladders of increasing complexity. In Fontana's Alchemy [a computer program abstract of how organisms arise], the hierarchies are more Aristotelian than Platonic; they are not imposed from the top down, they bubble up from below. The world might be a sea of random elements, but with the ability to construct, to take two elements and combine them to make a third, and the ability to recognize when two of the constructions are the same, a hierarchy of organizations can bootstrap itself into existence." (George Johnson, Fire in the Mind, pp. 251-252)
AliasEliot would like you to consider a possible third way of hierarchy-creation: a middle way between both Platonism and Aristotelianism. In this model, hierarchies and complexity form because of two forces acting on the object - an inner drive (the "bubbling up" from below) and an outer push (the "ideal form" all things aspire to). Darwin's natural selection can explain the perpetuation - the "survival" - of the fittest. But how did the very presence of a "fittest" arrive in the first place? Why is life not a relatively flat plain where simple organisms multiply and consume, changing slightly through the ages, but remaining very much in stasis? Why the constant change that forces and forges progress?
Like the creation and manifestation of the material universe, which necessitates the interplay of both subjective and objective - of both self and other - the progressive nature of life requires both inner drive (whether automatic or conscious) and outside force (whether Darwinian competition or universal laws). It is not that life drives progress, or that progress is somehow dictated by an outside "source" (God or physics or what have you). It is the collaboration of subject and object, of inner and outer, personal and universal, that imbues creation with its intrinsic creep toward better, fitter, wiser.
And the practical upshot of this onward-and-upward upward flight? Continue reading below...
Article: The Potential of Evolution
John Stewart, What Is Enlightenment?
A major evolutionary transition is beginning to unfold on earth. Individuals are emerging who are choosing to dedicate their lives to consciously advancing the evolutionary process. They see that their lives are an important part of the great evolutionary process that has produced the universe and the life within it, and they realize that they have a significant role to play.
Redefining themselves within a wider evolutionary perspective is providing meaning and direction to their lives. They no longer see themselves as isolated, self-concerned individuals who live for a short time and then die irrelevantly in a meaningless universe. They know that if evolution is to continue to fulfill its potential, it now must be driven consciously, and that it is their responsibility and destiny to contribute to this.
The most meaningful activity in which a human being can be engaged is one that is directly related to human evolution. This is true because human beings now play an active and critical role not only in the process of their own evolution but in the survival and evolution of all living beings. Awareness of this places upon human beings a responsibility for their participation in and contribution to the process of evolution. If humankind would accept and acknowledge this responsibility and become creatively engaged in the process of metabiological evolution consciously, as well as unconsciously, a new reality would emerge, and a new age would be born. - Jonas Salk
The trend toward increasing cooperation is well illustrated by a short history of the evolution of life on earth. For billions of years after the Big Bang, the universe expanded rapidly in scale and diversified into a multitude of galaxies, stars, planets, and other forms of lifeless matter. The first life that eventually arose on earth was infinitesimal—it comprised only a few molecular processes. But it did not remain on this tiny scale for long. In the first major development, cooperative groups of molecular processes formed the first simple cells. Then, in a further significant advance, communities of these simple cells formed more complex cells on a much greater scale.
A further major evolutionary transition unfolded after many more millions of years. Evolution discovered how to organize cooperative groups of these complex cells into multicelled organisms such as insects, fish, and eventually mammals. Again the scale of living processes had increased enormously. This trend continued with the emergence of cooperative societies of multicelled organisms, including beehives, wolf packs, and baboon troops. The pattern was repeated with humans—families joined up to form bands, bands teamed up to form tribes, tribes joined to form agricultural communities, and so on. The largest-scale cooperative organizations of living processes on the planet are now human societies.
This unmistakable trend is the result of many repetitions of a process in which living entities team up to form larger-scale cooperatives. Strikingly, the cooperative groups that arise at each step in this sequence become the entities that then team up to form the cooperative groups at the next step in the sequence.
It is easy to see what has driven this long sequence of directional evolution—at every level of organization, cooperative teams united by common goals will always have the potential to be more successful than isolated individuals. It will be the same wherever life arises in the universe. The details will differ, but the direction will be the same—toward unification and cooperation on a greater and greater scale.
Life has come a long way on this planet. When it began, individual living processes could do little more than influence events at the scale of molecules. But as a result of the successive formation of larger and larger cooperatives, coordinated living processes are now managing and controlling events on the scale of continents. And life appears to be on the threshold of another major evolutionary transition: humanity has the potential to form a unified and inclusive global society in symbiotic relationship with our technologies and with the planet as a whole. In the process, “we” (the whole) will come to manage matter, energy, and living processes on a planetary scale. When this global organization emerges, the scale of cooperative organization will have increased over a million billion times since life began.
If humanity is to fulfill its potential in the evolution of life in the universe, this expansion of the scale of cooperative organization will continue. The global organization has the potential to expand out into the solar system and beyond. By managing matter, energy, and living processes on a larger and larger scale, human organization could eventually achieve the capacity to influence events at the scale of the solar system and galaxy. And the human organization could repeat the great transitions of its evolutionary past by teaming up with any other societies of living processes that it encounters.
We are the product of 4.5 billion years of fortuitous, slow biological evolution. There is no reason to think that the evolutionary process has stopped. Man is a transitional animal. He is not the climax of creation....We are set irrevocably, I believe, on a path that will take us to the stars - unless in some monstrous capitulation to stupidity and greed we destroy ourselves first. - Carl Sagan
John Stewart is a senior labor relations policy advisor with the Australian government and an external member of the Evolution, Complexity, and Cognition research group of the Free University of Brussels. He is the author of Evolution's Arrow: The Direction of Evolution and the Future of Humanity.
Article: Evolution and Spirituality
Malcolm Hollick
The theory of evolution has set scientists against conservative Christians ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. This on-going war of attrition prompts several questions: Why is evolution so controversial? What is the theory of evolution, and how is it changing in the light of recent research? Is the theory really incompatible with religious belief? Or is there a middle-ground in which science and spirituality can live harmoniously together?
Why is evolution such a hot issue?
To fundamentalist Christians, the Bible is the inspired Word of God which should be interpreted literally. It tells us that God created the universe in 6 days, and some analyses of biblical texts suggest that this happened just several thousand years ago. These ‘truths’ are challenged by the idea that the cosmos and life have evolved in a continuous creative process over billions of years. Worse, most scientists seek to explain existence and life without reference to a designer or creator, thus undermining faith in God. Less directly, the religious backlash may reflect rejection of the scientific doctrine that life is a meaningless, purposeless accident. In the face of this nihilism, fundamentalism provides reassuringly certain answers to life’s big questions.
To scientists, evolution has become the final battleground on which they must defend the freedom from religious dogmatism, bigotry and intellectual repression that they have fought so hard to win over the last few centuries. There is fear of a return to the dark days when truth was determined by priestly authority rather than reason and experiment, and even, perhaps, of renewed persecution by a modern Inquisition. Sadly, in their crusading zeal scientists such as Richard Dawkins – author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion - often mount the platform of dogma and authority from which religion has so recently been displaced.
At one level, then, this is a turf war between rival High Priests. At another level, it’s a debate about life’s greatest questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? and Why am I here?
Evolution and Intelligent Design
As our scientific understanding grows, it seems more and more evident that evolution is a fundamental principle of the cosmos – but not necessarily in the way we currently think of it. The term is actually used in two different senses. The first refers to a gradual process of development or growth that leads to a more advanced or complex form. Thus, the universe is said to have evolved to its current state from the intense energy of the Big Bang. The second meaning relates to the biological process first described by Darwin by which species of living things change from generation to generation, leading to the emergence of new species.
In the last few decades, systems sciences have revealed that many quite simple non-living systems have the ability to organize themselves into new structures and processes. Good examples are mixtures of chemical reagents which develop spatial patterns of concentration, or ‘chemical clocks’ in which the concentration varies rhythmically over time. In such systems, tiny disturbances may be sufficient to trigger evolution to a new, but unpredictable, stable state. At the cosmic scale, self-organization led to the emergence of matter, stars and galaxies, life and consciousness in a process of continuous creation. Many scientists now believe this reflects an as-yet undiscovered ‘law of complexification’ that drives cosmic evolution.
Most controversy, however, centers on the evolution of living things, which Darwinian theory portrays as a two-stage process. First, random genetic mutations create variations amongst the organisms in a species. Second, natural selection weeds out those variants which are less well suited to their environment. In this way, new traits arise by chance that either die out or spread through the population. Individual organisms and species are powerless victims of this process.
This picture of evolution is being challenged from within science as well as by creationists. Research is revealing that organisms have considerable influence over their destiny, and continually strive to transcend their current forms and environmental constraints. It has been demonstrated that not all mutations are chance events, many arising from ‘experiments’ in which the organism switches specific genes on or off, or even modifies its own genes. And some learned behaviours actually may become encoded in the genes and be inherited by offspring – an idea that was branded as rank heresy until recently.
Similar challenges are emerging with regards to natural selection. It is now clear that, rather than being passive victims of environmental conditions, organisms actively modify their environments and pass on those changes to their offspring just as human parents may pass on the house they have built to their children. For example, countless generations of earthworms created the soil which now forms a perfect habitat for earthworms.
Further, studies of development from single cell to maturity are showing that the process is not controlled by master genes as current theory suggests, but is coordinated by self-organising processes that involve the organism’s structure, biochemistry, electromagnetic fields and environment as well as its genes and gene expression. Thus natural selection is not an all-powerful creative force as it is usually portrayed. Rather, it can do no more than select from a menu of alternatives made possible by self-organization, and then fine-tune these structures and processes.
Darwinian theory also represents natural selection as a fierce competition for survival between organisms. But organisms depend totally for their survival on being part of a harmoniously cooperative ecosystem – the interactive whole that provides their nutrition, shelter from harsh weather, conditions for reproduction and so on. From this perspective it is the most cooperative, or symbiotic, that survive, not the most competitive.
Intelligent Design theory challenges Darwinian evolution on different grounds. It focuses on characteristics of organisms that appear to be too complex to have evolved by chance, and hence require the involvement of an intelligent designer. This ‘God of the gaps’ strategy has been used by supporters of divine creation ever since Darwin’s day. And it is a story of forced retreat, step by step, as science’s understanding has increased.
Intelligent Design gains indirect support from a number of mainstream studies that have concluded there has not been enough time for random mutations and natural selection to produce life as we know it today. However, as we have seen, the emerging evolutionary science does not rely on chance and necessity but includes the active involvement of organisms themselves. It seems likely that, in time, science will be able to explain all aspects of the evolution of life – but the explanation will be very different to the simplistic Darwinian theory.
So where does this leave us? To me at least, the evidence is overwhelming that evolution is a fundamental property of the cosmos; that life has evolved, and is still evolving, in a continuing creative process; and that, far from being at the mercy of blind forces, life is substantially master of its own destiny. Does this mean that there is no room for belief in a creative God or Spirit? Far from it. By combining ancient spiritual wisdom with the insights of modern science, we can reveal a far richer and more complete picture of the cosmos.
The Ultimate Mystery and Gnostic Cosmology
In their book Jesus and the Goddess, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy describe Gnostic beliefs about creation. The Gnostics, who were contemporaneous with the early Christians, recognised that there is a Mystery at the heart of existence; that, no matter how far back scientists trace cause and effect, there will always remain the questions: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “Where did that come from?”
Gnostics believed that the ultimate Mystery is One; an undivided whole that is pregnant with potential consciousness. In some indefinable way, this Mystery wanted to know itself, to become self-aware. But consciousness and self-awareness require both a knower and what is known, an observer and what is observed, a subject and object, a witness and experience. Hence, in order to know itself, the Mystery had to split into two, thus introducing duality into the primal Oneness. This has variously been described as the split between God and Goddess, Spirit and soul, One and many, Being and becoming, Eternal Perfection and evolution. This first split was followed by a cascade of further divisions through which Cosmic Consciousness brought the universe into existence, shaping the potential of the mysterious One into energy, matter, life and consciousness as we know it.
This myth suggests that the purpose of the universe is to achieve full self-awareness. What this means can be illustrated by analogy with a wheel that has a central hub connected by spokes to many separate segments of rim. Cosmic Consciousness is fully aware of itself as the hub at the centre, and of all the conscious beings in the universe represented by the segments of the rim to which it is connected by the spokes. But each segment of the rim, each separate being, is aware only of itself and the hub to which it is linked by a spoke. Complete self-knowledge would require all parts of the rim, all beings, to awaken to their true nature as integral parts of the one wheel.
The exact way in which this evolutionary goal will be achieved was left undefined by the One at creation because true self-awareness would not be possible if the nature of spirituality and the path to this cosmic goal were predetermined. There are many possible forms that cosmic self-knowledge can take, and the One left us with creative freedom to choose our own ways.
From this Gnostic perspective, the universe is in continual creation. Rather than making the universe according to a fixed and final design, the One set in motion an exploratory, experimental process. Not only is the outcome of this process unknown, but also we and all other evolving creatures are co-creators with the One, and all matter is imbued with the Spirit and Consciousness of the One.
Conclusion
As far as we can tell, evolution is one of the most fundamental characteristics of our universe. It is a process of continual, creative change, development and transformation; a continual striving of matter and life to transcend its present state, to become something more than it is – more complex, more diverse, more conscious.
How is it that such a wonderful, creative process has come to be seen as anti-religious, non-spiritual? Evolution is a beautiful, mystical process that, for me, reveals all the wonder and power and creativity of Spirit. It is a way of creating that leaves us genuine freedom to understand the universe, and to co-create it by working with the processes and laws of nature. It reveals the hand and mind of God, whilst leaving us free to create our own myths and metaphors of the ineffable Mystery.
Excerpt: Baha'u'llah and the New Era, p. 122
Dr. J.E. Esslemont
A great stumbling block to many, in the way of religious unity, is the difference between the Revelations given by the different Prophets. What is commanded by one is forbidden by another; how then can both be right, how can both be proclaiming the Will of God? Surely the truth is One, and cannot change. Yes, the Absolute Truth is One and cannot change, but the Absolute Truth is infinitely beyond the present range of human understanding, and our conceptions of it must constantly change. Our earlier, imperfect ideas will be by the Grace of God replaced, as time goes on, by more and more adequate conceptions. Bahá'u'lláh says, in a Tablet to some Bahá'ís of Persia:
"O people! Words are revealed according to capacity so that the beginners may make progress. The milk must be given according to measure so that the babe of the world may enter into the Realm of Grandeur and be established in the Court of Unity."
It is milk that strengthens the babe so that it can digest more solid food later on. To say that because one Prophet is right in giving a certain teaching at a certain time, therefore another Prophet must be wrong Who gives a different teaching at a different time, is like saying that because milk is the best food for the newborn babe, therefore, milk and nothing but milk should be the food of the grown man also, and to give any other diet would be wrong! 'Abdu'l-Bahá says:
"Each divine revelation is divided into two parts. The first part is essential and belongs to the eternal world. It is the exposition of Divine truths and essential principles. It is the expression of the Love of God. This is one in all the religions, unchangeable and immutable. The second part is not eternal; it deals with practical life, transactions and business, and changes according to the evolution of man and the requirements of the time of each Prophet. For example....During the Mosaic period the hand of a person was cut off in punishment of a small theft; there was a law of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, but as these laws were not expedient in the time of Christ, they were abrogated. Likewise divorce had become so universal that there remained no fixed laws of marriage, therefore His Holiness Christ forbade divorce. According to the exigencies of the time, His Holiness Moses revealed ten laws for capital punishment. It was impossible at that time to protect the community and to preserve social security without these severe measures, for the children of Israel lived in the wilderness of Tah, where there were no established courts of justice and no penitentiaries. But this code of conduct was not needed in the time of Christ. The history of the second part of religion is unimportant, because it relates to the customs of this life only; but the foundation of the religion of God is one, and His Holiness Bahá'u'lláh has renewed that foundation."
The religion of God is the One Religion, and all the Prophets have taught it, but it is a living and a growing thing, not lifeless and unchanging. In the teaching of Moses we see the Bud; in that of Christ the Flower; in that of Bahá'u'lláh the Fruit. The flower does not destroy the bud, nor does the fruit destroy the flower. It destroys not, but fulfills. The bud scales must fall in order that the flower may bloom, and the petals must fall that the fruit may grow and ripen. Were the bud scales and the petals wrong or useless, then, that they had to be discarded?
Nay, both in their time were right and necessary; without them there could have been no fruit. So it is with the various prophetic teachings; their externals change from age to age, but each revelation is the fulfillment of its predecessors; they are not separate or incongruous, but different stages in the life history of the One Religion, which has in turn been revealed as seed, as bud and as flower, and now enters on the stage of
fruition.
Excerpt: Foundations of World Unity
Abdu'l-Baha, p. 84
Religion is the outer expression of the divine reality. Therefore it must be living, vitalized, moving and progressive. If it be without motion and non-progressive it is without the divine life; it is dead. The divine institutes are continuously active and evolutionary; therefore the revelation of them must be progressive and continuous. All things are subject to re-formation. This is a century of life and renewal. Sciences and arts, industry and invention have been reformed. Law and ethics have been reconstituted, reorganized. The world of thought has been regenerated. Sciences of former ages and philosophies of the past are useless today. Present exigencies demand new methods of solution; world problems are without precedent. Old ideas and modes of thought are fast becoming obsolete. Ancient laws and archaic ethical systems will not meet the requirements of modern conditions, for this is clearly the century of a new life, the century of the revelation of the reality and therefore the greatest of all centuries. Consider how the scientific developments of fifty years have surpassed and eclipsed the knowledge and achievements of all the former ages combined. Would the announcements and theories of ancient astronomers explain our present knowledge of the sun-worlds and planetary systems? Would the mask of obscurity which beclouded mediaeval centuries meet the demand for clear-eyed vision and understanding which characterizes the world today? In view of this, shall blind imitations of ancestral forms and theological interpretations continue to guide and control the religious life and spiritual development of humanity today? Shall man gifted with the power of reason unthinkingly follow and adhere to dogma, creeds and hereditary beliefs which will not bear the analysis of reason in this century of effulgent reality? Unquestionably this will not satisfy men of science, for when they find premise or conclusion contrary to present standards of proof and without real foundation, they reject that which has been formerly accepted as standard and correct and move forward from new foundations.
The divine prophets have revealed and founded religion. They have laid down certain laws and heavenly principles for the guidance of mankind. They have taught and promulgated the knowledge of God, established praiseworthy ethical ideals and inculcated the highest standards of virtue in the human world. Gradually these heavenly teachings and foundations of reality have been beclouded by human interpretations and dogmatic imitations of ancestral beliefs. The essential realities which the prophets labored so hard to establish in human hearts and minds while undergoing ordeals and suffering tortures of persecution, have now well nigh vanished. Some of these heavenly messengers have been killed, some imprisoned; all of them despised and rejected while proclaiming the reality of divinity. Soon after their departure from this world, the essential truth of their teachings was lost sight of and dogmatic imitations adhered to.
Inasmuch as human interpretations and blind imitations differ widely, religious strife and disagreement have arisen among mankind, the light of true religion has been extinguished and the unity of the world of humanity destroyed. The prophets of God voiced the spirit of unity and agreement. They have been the founders of divine reality. Therefore if the nations of the world forsake imitations and investigate the reality underlying the revealed Word of God they will agree and become reconciled. For reality is one and not multiple.