A
similar false dilemma is very frequently presented by Darwinists who
speak as if we have a choice in believing in orthodox Darwinism or
believing in biblical creationism, the idea that all of the earth's
species were created only a few thousand years ago. The range of
choices is not at all so narrow. Instead of having just two choices
in regard to what we can believe about the origin of species, you
actually have quite a few belief options you can choose from. In this
post I will describe thirteen such choices.
Background:
The Fossil Record
The
fossil record presents certain constraints on any theory of the
origin of species that follows the principle of, “Let's believe the
past was as it appears to have been.” But as we will see this
constraint is not absolute, because under certain imaginative
theories such a principle might actually be dispensed with.
A
Darwinist will inevitably describe the fossil record as showing
evidence of gradual evolution. But described in the most lean and
objective way, that is not necessarily so. What the fossil record
does seem to show is very strong evidence that species have appeared at scattered times during the past 600 million years.
The
animal kingdom contains about 36 major divisions called phyla. Contrary to
what we might expect under Darwinian assumptions, we do not see most
of these phyla appearing during the past 200 million years, in some
kind of “cone of increasing diversity.” Instead, most of the animal phyla appear between 600 and 500 million
years ago, with no animal phylum appearing after about 500 million years ago.
Option
#1: Darwinism
There
are three tenets of orthodox Darwinism. The first is the belief that
all life has descended from a common primitive ancestor. The second
is gradualism, the idea that species arise because one species slowly
evolves into another species. The third tenet of Darwinism is the
idea that new species appear mainly because of random changes or
random mutations and natural selection.
There
are problems with Darwinism. The first is that we have no direct
observational evidence that any of its three main ideas is correct.
While we have evidence that species appeared at different intervals
during the past 600 million years, this does not prove that such
species evolved from earlier ancestors. Such species might have been
dropped off by visiting spaceships, or created by some divine
creator (to mention two of quite a few possibilities I will discuss). While there is evidence that natural selection can produce
microevolution (typically a kind of pruning effect getting rid of
unfit members of a population), there is no good evidence that an
accumulation of small changes produced by natural selection will
result in a new species or a macroscopic biological innovation. What
we see in organisms is gigantic amounts of organization, but natural
selection is not actually a theory of organization; it's merely a
theory of accumulation (that being the word that Darwin used again and again in describing his theory).
A
very large objection against the idea of evolution by natural
selection is that it cannot explain the early stages (or incipient
stages) of any new biological organ, biological system, or biological
innovation. Such early stages would almost always fail to produce
any reward, so we would not expect that natural selection would cause
them to proliferate because of “survival of the fittest.” An additional problem is that Darwinism offers no answer to the origin of life itself, something that cannot be explained by natural selection (which requires life to first exist).
Option
#2: “Third Way” Naturalistic Gradualism
The
term “third way” has sometimes been used for the idea that
species appear through blind gradual evolution, but that this does
not occur mainly because of natural selection. A
person following this approach may believe that gradual evolution
requires some much more complicated explanation than the simplistic
explanation of random mutations and natural selection. The person may
appeal to some imagined natural principle of self-organization. Or
the person may appeal to ideas such as DNA methlyzation, gene
swapping, or epigenetics. There is a web site listing various
scientists who take such an approach. You could put under this
category a theory such as the neutral theory of evolution.
Option
#3: Biblical Creationism
Biblical
creationism is the idea that species appeared all at once, after
being created by a divine creator, as described by the Bible. When
combined with fundamentalism, biblical creationism typically holds
that all species are no older than a few thousand years. The
principle problem with this option is that it conflicts with the
fossil record, which suggests that species have appeared over a span
of many millions of years.
I may note that it is an error to use the term "creationist" to refer to anyone who has not stated that he believes in the biblical account of creation, because when you do a Google search for "creationism" the first definition you will get is one that specifically refers to the biblical account of creation. This error of calling critics of Darwinism "creationists" is very often used in a dishonest way by Darwinism zealots, who will call any critic of Darwinism a creationist even when such a person has not identified himself as a believer in the biblical view of creation. Such critics are properly referred to as "Darwinism skeptics."
I may note that it is an error to use the term "creationist" to refer to anyone who has not stated that he believes in the biblical account of creation, because when you do a Google search for "creationism" the first definition you will get is one that specifically refers to the biblical account of creation. This error of calling critics of Darwinism "creationists" is very often used in a dishonest way by Darwinism zealots, who will call any critic of Darwinism a creationist even when such a person has not identified himself as a believer in the biblical view of creation. Such critics are properly referred to as "Darwinism skeptics."
Option
#4: Intelligent Design
Intelligent
design may be very generally described as the idea that species have
appeared after design activity from some intelligent designer. The
term is actually a broad umbrella that covers quite a few diverse
possibilities. A person believing in intelligent design may or may
not believe that the earth's species are descended from a common
ancestor, and may or may not believe in gradualism, the idea that one
species gradually evolves into another. Typically a person believing
in intelligent design will believe that some divine agent is the
intelligent designer, although some believers in intelligent design
say that the nature of the designer cannot be known (perhaps leaving the door open
to some extraterrestrial agent as the intelligent designer).
Option
#5: Origin of Species by Extraterrestrial Actions
The
term panspermia is used for a theory that life originated on Earth
after it came here from space, possibly by comets. The term directed
panspermia is sometimes used for the idea that life originated on
Earth after some spaceship came here and dropped off microorganisms.
There is no reason why speculations about extraterrestrial
involvement in earthly biology be confined to the origin of life. We
can take things further, and speculate that all, most or some species
now existing have originated because of extraterrestrial actions.
The appearances of species we see in the fossil record could have
been mostly caused by extraterrestrial spaceships that dropped off
biological organisms on our planet. Or perhaps only some of the most
hard-to-explain species have originated after extraterrestrial
intervention, including our own species.
This
Option #5 has often been suggested by the popular television show
Ancient Aliens, which often suggests that the seemingly sudden
appearance of human culture may have been the result of tinkering by
extraterrestrials.
The
advantage of believing in Option 5 is that it can reduce some of the
huge improbability problems associated with Darwinism. There are
reasons for thinking that the chance of a species such as mankind
ever appearing because of random Darwinian evolution is less than 1
in a billion. But let us imagine 100 billion habitable planets in our
galaxy. The chance of an intelligent species on at least one of those
planets might have been much better than 1 in a billion. And then
such an intelligent life form might have caused intelligent life to
appear on our planet. Under such a theory, the implausible
improbability may be reduced substantially.
Option
#6: Teleological Gradualism
The
term gradualism refers to the idea that biological species have
gradually evolved from other species. One can believe in such an idea
without believing that natural selection or random mutations are
sufficient to explain why one species would evolve into another
species. An alternate idea is that there is some kind of cosmic
impetus or life-force that drives species towards higher levels of
organization and complexity. We
might think of this in a rather mystical or vitalistic sense. Or we
might think of such a thing as being a kind of cosmic programming.
It
is interesting to note that a divine agent would not necessarily
cause species to come into existence through some special
intervention. Such an agent might create subtle laws and cosmic
algorithms that might cause life to appear and start becoming more
and more organized across the universe. Much of this “cosmic
programming” might be undiscovered by us.
One
can believe in such a thing while also maintaining that natural
selection is utterly inadequate to explain biological complexity.
Option
#7: Origins Agnosticism
The
term agnosticism refers to taking no position on whether or not a
deity exists. The term “origins agnosticism” can be used for the
stance of taking no position as to how biological species arose. An
origins agnostic does not maintain that species arose because of
Darwinian evolution by natural selection, does not maintain that
species through any gradual process of evolution, does not maintain
that species arose because of some special creation, and does not
maintain that species arose because of some form of intelligent
design. The origins agnostic simply answers, “I don't understand
such matters,” or “No one understands such matters” when asked
about such topics.
Given
the limits of human knowledge and understanding, a strong case can be
made that origins agnosticism is actually the most scientific stance
that can currently be taken on the issue of the origin of species.
Option
#8: Philosophical Immaterialism
Most
people take the fossil record and the geological record as something
that force us without any flexibility to believe that the physical
universe existed for billions of years before man appeared on the
scene. But under certain philosophical assumptions, such a thing is
not necessarily so.
One
interesting philosophical theory, surprisingly easy to defend, is
known as idealism or immaterialism. This is the idea that all that
exists are minds or mental experiences, and that matter exists only
as something within the perceptions of mental agents, having no
reality outside of the perceptions or experiences of minds. Under such a theory, what is called the first four billion years of earth's
history undergoes a kind of demotion, becoming something that exists
purely as a perceptual detail or conceptual detail. An immaterialist
may believe that the history of planet Earth really started when the
first humans existed, and first had mental experiences.
To
help get a handle on such an idea, consider a newly created video
game. The initial level of play may involve acting as Detective
Waterson in the detective's living room, with the calendar listing
January 1, 1890 as the date. Inside that living room may be a scrapbook
showing events from Detective's Waterson's childhood, going back to
1860. But that scrapbook is just kind of what screenwriters call
“back story.” The game doesn't really begin in 1860 – it begins
in 1890, with the first day of the player's experience playing
Detective Waterson. Similarly, what we call the Jurassic Era and the
Triassic Era may be mere “back story.” The history of earth –
which actually may be just a history of mental experiences – may
have begun only when the first mental experiences occurred. Under
such a theory, it may be denied that there ever really existed
creatures such as dinosaurs, which may be merely part of a narrative
“back story,” and which may be called never-existent because no
real mind ever perceived them.
Under
such a doctrine of immaterialism, we may need to postulate some
non-human mental reality as being the source of human mental reality.
Under an immaterialist perspective, all attempts to postulate
physical or biological causes for the origin of humanity are
mistaken. The thinking goes along the lines of: we are purely mental,
and the cause of us must also be purely mental.
Option
#9: The Idea Our Planet Is a Technological Simulation
The
idea has been widely discussed that we may be part of a computer
simulation created by extraterrestrials. Under such a theory, we
remove biological evolution as the cause of humanity, and replace
such an idea with the idea that extraterrestrial programmers are the cause of
humanity.
This
idea has many difficulties. One is that it kind of pushes off into
the far horizon the question of how minds could ever originally
appear. If we are the result of extraterrestrial programming, then
any evidence claimed for evolution disappears, becoming just “part
of the illusion” or “part of the simulation.” So we are then
left with the question: how could these extraterrestrials that
programmed our simulation ever have appeared? You can't cite
evolution if your assumption has made earthly evolution just “part
of the simulation."
Option
#10: Hyper-Dimensional Migration of Species
Modern
science fiction often talks about space-time wormholes, allowing an
instantaneous passage from one part of space to another part of
space. Such a concept is higher speculative. Engaging in similar
speculations, we may postulate that reality may consist of numerous
different dimensions or universes, and there may be portals or
wormholes that allow transit from one dimension or universe to
another.
Such
a possibility may suggest a strange theory about the origin of
species. The theory is that many, most or all species have
originated in some other universe or other dimension, and have
somehow migrated to our planet, after some organisms passed through
some wormhole or portal. There might be some reason why such a
wormhole or portal might open up very rarely, perhaps only once every
few million years.
A
disadvantage of such a theory is that it kind of pushes off to the
horizon the ultimate reason as to why species originated, since no
explanation is provided as to how they might have originated in some
other dimension or other universe.
Option
#11: Cosmic Learning
A
problem with Darwinism is that it asks us to believe in occurrences
that seem all-too-unlikely to have occurred given only the
non-creative and non-organizational factors of natural selection and
random mutations. But let us imagine something that might increase
the chance of natural evolution. We can imagine that the universe
somehow has a mysterious ability to learn and remember when
incredibly improbable fortunate things happen. So imagine billions
of galaxies each containing billions of planets. There might be only
1 chance in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 that a particular
biological innovation would anywhere in the universe. But once that
biological innovation had occurred, this might somehow be like some
trick that the whole universe had learned. The odds of such an event
might then suddenly decrease, going from 1 chance in
1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 to something like 1 chance in 100.
Then we might suddenly see that biological innovation occurring with
great ease all over the universe.
I
have no idea of how such “cosmic learning” might work, but
conceivably some theorist might flesh out this vague suggestion. One
possibility might be to imagine that the universe itself has a kind
of mind, to some degree.
Option
12: Biological Innovations from Unknown Previous Earthly Civilizations
An
interesting rarely considered possibility is that our civilization
may not be the first high-technology civilization to arise on our
planet. It could be that many millions of years ago some technical
civilization arose on our planet. Almost all traces of such a civilization
could have been lost because of geological activity. If an earlier
civilization had existed on Earth, it might have engaged in genetic
engineering, creating new forms of life. Some of the species that now
exist may have been created by such a civilization.
Option 13: The Origin of Species by Less-Than-Divine Spiritual Entities
Yet another possibility is that one or more species (possibly mankind) were created not by the creator of the universe, but by some poorly understood spiritual entities of lesser power. Possibilities include angels, demons or any other hypothetical spiritual entities such as mysterious disembodied spirits. Appealing to such a possibility may have the advantage that it defeats all arguments along the lines that an omnipotent power would not have created creatures so flawed as humans are. If humans were created by less-than-divine spiritual entities, we can draw no conclusions about whether the creations of such entities would be perfect.
Conclusion
We
have seen that there are many possible belief options regarding the
origin of species. I have listed thirteen, and some more imaginative
thinker could probably add five or ten more.
There is another factor to consider, which expands the possibility set further. This is the fact that few of these possibilities are mutually exclusive. It is possible that multiple causal factors were involved in the origin of species, and that some species appeared for one reason, and other species appeared for others. For example, it could be that all earthly species arose for some particular reason, and that humanity (with so many unique characteristics) arose because of some very different reason. When we consider the possibility that species may appear because of a combination of two or more of the 13 items I have listed here, then the total set of belief possibilities would seem to be in excess of 25.
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Option 11 is Sheldrake's morphic resonance.
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