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Print January 9, 2014 23 comments

The Stones Cry Out:
Cave Art & the Origin of the Human Spirit, Part 7

Collin Cleary

leonardo-view-of-a-skull-c14893,987 words

Part 7 of 7 (other parts here)

7. The Aim of the Universe

I have argued that man’s nature is to be the mirror of nature, and that this begins in the European caves. As Aristotle and Pico have taught us, man is, in a way, nothing — and all. In his very body he recapitulates the natural forms that surround him, in their essential nature (as vegetable and animal). And in his mind the essences of any and all things come to be, detached from the individuals that embody them. This doesn’t just happen to man — he strives to make it happen; he desires it. As Aristotle famously said at the beginning of the Metaphysics, “All men by nature desire to know.” (Or as one recent translator gives it literally “All human beings by nature stretch themselves out toward knowing.”[1])

It is clear that man occupies a very peculiar place in nature. And it is quite reasonable for us to see nature in the same way that philosophers as different as Aristotle and Schopenhauer conceived it: as a scale or hierarchy of forms, with man at the top. However, this sort of conception is likely to provoke some skepticism. Alan Watts once entertained the amusing hypothesis that all animals think that they are human, meaning that every creature, at some level, thinks that it is the be all and end all of existence. (Certainly cats think this.) Perhaps theories like Aristotle’s are just an expression of human vanity.

But I don’t think so. It is quite reasonable to set man apart from the rest of nature, and, in fact, to see him as the “highest” natural being; the completion or perfection of nature. To understand this, however, one has to see man’s place in the whole. And that means that we must have some kind of theory of the whole — of the nature of nature, or existence itself. I earlier raised the question of whether science can explain the origin of ekstasis, and this is the issue we must now return to. We can explain ekstasis, we can explain why men began to paint and to practice religion and to do philosophy, and we can solve many other mysteries as well (such as the “Cambrian explosion”) if we adopt a new scientific paradigm with greater explanatory power than the materialism we have been saddled with for the better part of four centuries.

I can only briefly sketch out this new paradigm here. But the essential points are the following:

1. The universe is a whole, not a heap. It is an interconnected system, a One, in which everything is related to everything else. (This is the basic claim already made by scientists committed to “deep ecology.”)

2. The whole is tending toward completion, which is achieved when, in a sense, it folds back on itself and gives an accounting, a logos, of itself. The end or telos of the universe is its own self-understanding.

3. The universe’s self-understanding is achieved through the coming-into-being, within the universe, of a creature who recapitulates in his being all the “lower” forms of nature, and who is driven by the desire to know the whole. Through this creature, who is both a product of the whole and its embodiment, the whole confronts itself, and the telos of the universe is achieved.

4. This creature is man.

These ideas are generally attributed to Hegel, who was the first philosopher to clearly and explicitly formulate them (though, as we have seen, they have older roots, and Hegel’s theories are heavily indebted to those of his friend F. W. J. Schelling). Errol E. Harris, a recent exponent of Hegel’s philosophy, has argued that developments in modern science (especially physics) both confirm Hegel’s views, and are only fully intelligible in the light of them. I will very briefly summarize Harris’s views here, which he develops in several volumes.

Following Hegel, Harris argues for a certain type of teleology at work in the universe, though it is quite different from the type that is almost universally rejected by today’s scientists. The older teleology essentially held that creatures have ends or purposes that are established by a transcendent God, pulling the strings from outside nature. The sillier version of this held that God had designed things for human convenience: horses exist to be ridden on, wheat exists so that we can make flour out of it, etc.

The reaction against this view began in the early modern period, with thinkers setting themselves against “Aristotelianism.” In reality, what they were attacking was a corruption of Aristotle’s teleological views. The Philosopher had never held that a transcendent God “designs” purposes into things. However, he did claim that the behavior of things in nature can be explained by the fact that all are acting for one end: the realization, by each thing, of its nature or form. And what prompts them to do this, ultimately, is that all things are unconsciously imitating God, the universe’s only fully actualized being.

Hegel, by contrast, rejects the idea of a transcendent God. He argues that the “God” people have imperfectly approached through myth and theology is actually what he calls “the Absolute,” which he identifies with the universe taken as a totality. However, Hegel does not see the universe as a collection of loosely related (or unrelated) particulars, but, in effect, as an organism. An organism is a unity, a One, made up of parts, but the parts all serve to advance the ends or interests of the whole. Every part is, in some way, necessary, and every part is related to every other, as we find in the individual organs of the human body. Every part or organ derives its being or identity entirely from its place within the whole, and none may be excised or omitted without some possible damage or diminution of the whole.

To press the analogy between the universe and the human body a bit further, Harris (interpreting Hegel) argues that teleology operates on two levels. First, each of the organs in the body “pursues” certain ends. The heart acts so as to pump the blood, the liver so as to detoxify it, etc. But in fact each acts for a further, higher end. The pumping of the blood and the detoxifying of it happen so that the organism as a whole can live, and thrive, and pursue its larger ends.  Now, by analogy, each individual thing (or species of thing) in the universe pursues its own individual ends, but in doing so each thing is also serving the ultimate ends or purposes of the whole.[2] (No creature in the universe is aware that it is doing this — just as the liver is unaware of its larger purpose — save the philosopher, or the scientist whose horizons have been expanded by philosophy.) “Teleology” is thus no more and no less than, as Harris puts it, the “determination of the parts by the whole.”[3]

There is, however, a point where the analogy between body and universe breaks down, and understanding it will allow us to take a major step forward in the argument. In pursuing its ends, the body cannot make or create a new organ when one happens to be needed. The universe can and does do this. The reason is that unlike the human body, the universe is not a static, completed whole; it is actually in process of completing itself. With this observation, Harris actually goes beyond Hegel (while remaining true to his spirit) because Hegel — and Aristotle, and Spinoza, among others — all viewed the various forms of nature as eternal (i.e., they thought that they had always existed). The only “development” that Hegel himself allows is the development exhibited by human history; all change in nature is, for him, merely the reduplication of the same species over and over again.

Unlike Hegel, Harris does believe in evolution, and he explains the coming-into-being of new forms over time as part of the process of the universe (or nature) completing itself and moving toward its telos. Now, to say that someone believes in evolution is not the same thing as saying they believe in Darwinism. The idea that life has evolved, that forms have come into being progressively over time, goes back at least to Empedocles (fifth century B.C.E.). Recall that Darwinism, via the theory of natural selection, can explain why certain forms have proliferated and others have not — but it cannot ultimately explain the coming into being of novel forms. Harris’s neo-Hegelian theory does offer an explanation of this: new forms come into existence as part of the whole’s self-completion, in its progress towards its ultimate end.

If there are apparent “leaps” in evolution, sudden changes, or sudden appearances of new forms, as in the “Cambrian explosion,” we should not be surprised. There is a “pull” involved in evolution, which is the self-development of the whole. In accomplishing this end, the universe brings things into being in ways that may seem sudden and mysterious — so long as we fail to understand “the big picture.” In moving toward its goal of self-completion, the universe gives rise to myriad forms, in a process that Schelling likened, quite plausibly, to artistic creation. (To get a feeling for the truth of this idea, I advise the reader to simply flip through any of the several books that collect the remarkable illustrations from the works of the biologist Ernst Haeckel.)

But what exactly is the telos of the universe? How does it “complete” itself? I have already stated this, of course: the Hegelian position is that the universe is “seeking” awareness of itself. (This is an unconscious seeking, of course, since consciousness — self-consciousness — is its aim, not its beginning point.) This is certainly a grand conception. But why should we believe it? It has an undeniable power to explain the whole — but many pure myths have such a power as well.

Hegel’s argument for this theory is laid out in his Logic, which maintains that the world around us is intelligible as an expression of certain objective forms or ideas.[4] These ideas form an organic system, however, which is only truly complete if it “comprehends itself,” via an idea that is the idea of idea itself (which he calls the “Absolute Idea”). The “system” that is nature is, for Hegel, an expression or embodiment of this system of ideas. Hence, to be complete in reality (not just in idea) it must issue in a being that is self-comprehending, a living embodiment of Absolute Idea. Such a being is man, the only being who seeks knowledge of the whole and, through it, knowledge of himself. Man is capable of knowing nature, but man himself is a natural being. Hence, in man’s self-knowledge, nature confronts itself — and completes itself.

Now, Hegel’s proof for these ideas stands or falls on whether he really has demonstrated that his Logic is an organic system of categories that must issue in Absolute Idea. And, further, he is only right about nature and nature’s self-completion through man if the Logic really does provide us with the categories in terms of which nature is truly intelligible. Whether or not these conditions are satisfied is a matter I cannot settle here. Harris is convinced of the viability of the argument of the Logic, but he also argues for the truth of Hegel’s system by appealing to theories and discoveries in modern physics. I can only briefly deal with these, and I refer the reader to Harris’s Cosmos and Anthropos for more information.

Very briefly, then, Harris argues that modern physics demonstrates that there can only be one physical universe. Harris explains that our universe has four dimensions, three are “spacelike” and one “timelike” (as he puts it). And he informs us — again, drawing on contemporary physics — that it has been mathematically demonstrated that the laws of physics are possible only in four dimensional space-time.[5] Further, as many others have pointed out, he discusses the fact that the minutest change in any of the fundamental constants would alter the structure of the universe in such a way that the emergence of sentient life would have been impossible.[6] Thus, if there is only one possible physical universe, and if its fundamental structure is such as to make sentient life possible, an inescapable conclusion suggests itself: there must be some connection between the coming into being of life and the nature of the physical universe as such.[7] The universe, it seems, is “constructed” to give rise to sentient life.

Further, it is obvious that there is a scale of life that amounts to a scale of sentience. It ranges from the paramecium (which is “conscious” only in that it is “irritable” or reactive) — all the way to the scientist or philosopher, who theorizes the whole scale of life itself, and the universe that gave rise to it, and why. It thus seems that the universe is constituted in such a way as to give rise to beings that know the universe. The evolution of forms issues, ultimately, in man, who is capable of understanding the evolution of forms itself. Through him, as it were, the universe turns around and gazes at itself. This is its perfection; its completion.[8] As Harris puts it, “What the scientist discovers is the entire natural process that brings him and his thinking into existence.”[9] Two processes unfold in time and make this possible: the evolution of the biological human form out of earlier forms, and the evolution of human consciousness through history.

The process that leads to the development of philosophy and science — and thus, the universe’s self-understanding — begins in the cave. It begins with the sudden appearance of ekstasis in the Upper Paleolithic, some 40,000 or more years ago. This is, as we have seen, the “Creative Explosion” that scientists find so mysterious. I have likened it, in fact, to the sudden and equally mysterious “Cambrian Explosion.” Seen in the light of Harris’s neo-Hegelian understanding of evolution, neither is mysterious or inexplicable — though both are awe-inspiring.

Suddenly, in the Upper Paleolithic mankind came into possession of a form of consciousness through which nature was able to hold up a mirror to itself. And there followed the long history of mankind polishing this mirror, moving slowly toward more and more adequate forms in which existence could be comprehended (with some wrong turns along the way). From the stylized rhinos of Chauvet to the Phenomenology of Spirit and beyond, our history just is the unfolding of the universe’s self-knowledge.

The Hegelian theory offered here is not a rejection of science. It is, in fact, a scientific theory, a “theory of everything,” to use the term now in vogue among physicists. In fact, as Harris never tires of pointing out, the Hegelian theory is not only compatible with ideas in contemporary physics (e.g., the “anthropic principle”[10]), it provides a framework which can interpret and unify them. The scientific paradigm rejected here is that of Darwinian reductionist materialism — an approach whose root assumptions appear quite antiquated in the light of developments in physics since Darwin’s time. It is now order that appears to be primary in the universe, not disorder, “chance,” chaos, or Vortex. (Hegel knew this, and in fact it has been known since the time of Pythagoras.) And, as both Hegelian philosophy and the anthropic principle of physics suggest, when we reflect upon this order and ask what its purpose is, the answer seems to be the asking of this very question.

8. Why Europe?

As noted earlier, Hegel believed that our self-understanding has developed through history. And since our self-understanding just is that of universe, this means that the end or purpose of existence itself is realized progressively, in the historical development of human consciousness. But, notoriously, Hegel believed that the consciousness of certain human groups has not developed at the same rate. This means that, for Hegel, some groups play a more important role in the development of the universe’s self-understanding than others. And the group that, historically, has played the most significant role is, in Hegel’s words, “the Germanic peoples.” Writing of the historical development of human consciousness, he states:

The spirit now grasps the infinite positivity of its own inwardness, the principle of the unity of divine and human nature and the reconciliation of the objective truth and freedom which have appeared within self-consciousness and subjectivity. The task of accomplishing this reconciliation is assigned to the Nordic principle of the Germanic peoples.[11]

However, if one looks carefully at how Hegel uses the expression “the Germanic peoples” one finds that it is so broad as to basically cover all Europeans. However, in discussing the “European spirit” he places a good deal of emphasis on the “Teutonic type.” Thus, while “Germanic peoples” refers to all Europeans, for Hegel the exemplars of the European spirit are the Germanic tribes.

Here is Hegel’s description of the European spirit:

The principle of the European spirit is . . . self-conscious Reason, which is confident that for it there can be no insuperable barrier and which therefore takes an interest in everything in order to become present to itself therein. The European spirit opposes the world to itself, makes itself free of it, but in turn annuls this opposition, takes its other, the manifold, back into itself, into its unitary nature. In Europe, therefore, there prevails this infinite thirst for knowledge which is alien to other races. The European is interested in the world, he wants to know it, to make this other confronting him his own, to bring to view the genus, law, universal, thought, the inner rationality, in the particular forms of the world. As in the theoretical, so too in the practical sphere, the European spirit strives to make manifest the unity between itself and the outer world. It subdues the outer world to its ends with an energy which has ensured for it the mastery of the world.[12]

It is easy to see from this description why Hegel regarded Europeans, out of all other human groups, as playing the central role in the achievement of the ends of the universe. The European spirit takes an interest “in everything,” so as to “become present to itself therein.” In short, it seeks to know the whole — and through this, it finds itself. Note also that Hegel says that the European spirit “makes itself free” of the world. What he means is that it transcends or negates nature. This is just what is involved in the act of ekstasis discussed at length earlier in this essay. But then the European spirit “annuls this opposition” between itself and nature, precisely by finding itself in nature.

Hegel is not claiming that only European man is capable of these things. But he is claiming that Europeans are the exemplars of these preeminently human traits; historically, they have been the vanguard. The difference is mainly a matter of degree, not of kind. The European spirit exhibits, Hegel says, “an infinite thirst for knowledge.” Other peoples seek knowledge, but they do not exhibit the Faustian quality that has made Europeans (including European-Americans) the undisputed world leaders in science and technology — and, I would argue, in philosophy and art as well.[13] One recent, objective study found that over the course of history 97% of all accomplishments in science occurred in Europe and North America. Just four countries — Britain, France, Germany, and Italy — account for 72% of all the major figures in the history of science.[14]

This history of European accomplishment begins in the Upper Paleolithic. As I noted earlier, based on what archaeology has discovered, Europeans began creating paintings and carvings some 30,000 years before anyone else. (European technology – i.e., tools — in the Upper Paleolithic also exhibits a sophistication that we do not find for some time in other parts of the world.) Now, as I noted earlier, when we talk about the “Europeans” of the Upper Paleolithic we have to do so with some caution. We are not talking about Indo-Europeans and Indo-European culture. The caves of France and Spain were painted thousands of years before the Indo-Europeans split off from the original European population. (As mentioned before, genetics shows that 87% of today’s Europeans are descended from the Paleolithic hunter-gatherers who painted the caves.) I am therefore inclined to see continuity here, and to speak of “European culture” as stretching from Lascaux to Chartres, and beyond. Such an outlook is, moreover, almost irresistible. We grasp this continuity intuitively when, as I noted earlier, we perceive — correctly — that there is something ineffably European about the cave art, that distinguishes it markedly from the pre-historic art of other peoples.

But why Europe? Why does ekstasis seem to begin in Europe? Why was there a “creative explosion in Europe, specifically? Again, we must be wary of the tendency to read later, Indo-European cultural traits back into the peoples who painted the caves. Environmental explanations are also fishy. The prehistoric ancestors of today’s East Asians did not deal with environmental conditions markedly different from those of prehistoric Europeans. Yet, the Chinese lagged behind Europe for tens of thousands of years in every area of human endeavor.[15]

It’s difficult to resist casting the issue in theological terms: why was Europe “chosen”? Why was it in Europe that ekstasis suddenly appeared, apparently well before it did so anywhere else? And why was it in Europe that the products of ekstasis — art, religion, philosophy, and science — took flight, as nowhere else on earth? Ultimately, it may be impossible to answer this question. Not all questions are answerable, even in the light of a “theory of everything,” like Hegel’s.

Back to the black monolith again, it seems. Back to das Ereignis. Sometimes, the Absolute moves in mysterious ways.

Notes

[1] Aristotle, Metaphysics, trans. Joe Sachs (Santa Fe: Green Lion Press, 1999), 1 (980a21).

[2] This theory is, in fact, structurally similar to Aristotle’s two-tiered understanding of teleology — with the difference that Hegel immanentizes God by making him/it identical with the whole.

[3] Errol E. Harris, Cosmos and Anthropos (Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press International, 1991), 71.

[4] These are not forms or ideas in the Platonic sense. Hegel believes that they exist, but not “apart” from the things that express them. (They may be thought apart, however.) In this, Hegel is quite close to Aristotle.

[5] Harris, 49.

[6] Harris, 50–51.

[7] Harris, 50–51.

[8] This does not imply that no new forms will come into existence after man, or that present forms will not change. After the climax of a story, things often continue to happen until the actual end. Man is the climax of the story of creation — unless there is in fact some higher form of consciousness, carrier of a still more adequate expression of the universe’s self-knowing, which has yet to appear.

[9] Harris, 143.

[10] This is, of course, a controversial idea in physics, and it has been expressed in a variety of forms (some “strong,” some “weak”). Harris discusses these ideas at length in Cosmos and Anthropos.

[11] G. W. F. Hegel, Elements of the Philosophy of Right, ed. Allen W. Wood, trans. H. B. Nisbet (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 379 (§ 358). Italics in original.

[12] Ibid., 45. I have rendered Geist as “spirit,” however, rather than Nisbet’s choice of “mind.”

[13] I am perfectly willing to admit, as I have in other essays, that there are profundities in so-called “Eastern philosophy.” The problem, however, is that these texts or movements are called “philosophy” — i.e., understood on analogy with Western philosophy — only very loosely. Western philosophy is animated by a spirit of individualism: each man searches for truth, placing nothing above the judgment of reason. “Eastern philosophy” mostly eschews argument and critical thinking, and its adherents are expected to accept the claims of sages without question.

[14] These figures come from Charles Murray’s Human Accomplishment, cited in Ricardo Duchesne, The Uniqueness of Western Civilization (Leiden-Boston: Brill, 2011), 292–93.

[15] See my review of Ricardo Duchesne’s The Uniqueness of Western Civilization.

 

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23 comments

  1. Sandy says:
    January 9, 2014 at 8:02 pm

    Trying to come up with something resembling an intelligent comment on your enlightening series of essays I stumbled across a remark by C H Douglas who would agree with Hegel whom you said rejects the idea of a transcendent God.
    Douglas wrote “Only when Christianity became, as it did, purely transcendentalist, was it felt to be fairly respectable and fairly safe.

    1. Collin Cleary says:
      January 10, 2014 at 10:40 am

      Thank you, Sandy. Very interesting.

    2. Jaego says:
      January 11, 2014 at 12:28 am

      It did? What about the Incarnation? And as far as Nature: God is incarnate in the Universe as the Universe. Pantheism? No PanENtheism, since He is Transcendental as well.

  2. Fisherman says:
    January 9, 2014 at 8:17 pm

    Isn’t this the Cosmotheist point of view?

    1. Collin Cleary says:
      January 10, 2014 at 10:40 am

      Basically, yes.

  3. Remnant says:
    January 10, 2014 at 4:14 am

    This was a rich, brilliant and fascinating series of articles. I look forward to reading more of Colin’s work.

    1. Collin Cleary says:
      January 10, 2014 at 10:41 am

      Thank you!

  4. yule says:
    January 10, 2014 at 9:03 am

    Great essay.

    I’d like to see a more-involved discussion on why the author believes that (1) the Cro-Magnon cave artists were males despite the recent report on handprints that he mentions, and (2) why it matters to his bigger thesis or theses that they were men. That is, what if they had all been women, every single one of the cave artists? Would it change anything in the bigger picture here?

    I’m just asking. I personally find it much more plausible that they were men.

    I’d also like to hear more of the author’s thoughts on Indo-European origins, a major issue he glances over in this essay. (I do realize it’s beyond the scope, but Mr. Clearly’s sentence “We are not talking about Indo-Europeans and Indo-European culture. The caves of France and Spain were painted thousands of years before the Indo-Europeans split off from the original European population” is highly intriguing.)

    1. Collin Cleary says:
      January 10, 2014 at 5:42 pm

      On the handprints: see one of the endnotes to part 6 of my essay. The study that claims the cave artists must have been women is laughably weak.
      Had the artists been women, it would change nothing in terms of the big picture: the universe coming to consciousness of itself. But the details of how that happens would be completely different. For in the universe we live in (as opposed to one we might imagine) it is males primarily who are the originators of art, religion, philosophy, and science. This is not the result of historical accident or culture: it’s that way among all human groups, in all times. It is due to inherent physiological differences between the sexes. This is not to say that there cannot be female artists, scientists, etc. But men will always outnumber them. So, the task of actualizing the universe’s self-awareness has been allocated to men primarily — Western men.

  5. Lucian Tudor says:
    January 10, 2014 at 12:10 pm

    Collin Cleary, you’ve written a respectable series of articles here. I want to mention one thought I had since the series is apparently complete: I think it would be interesting to see you address the arguments of Ludwig Klages, who argued from an alternative Pagan perspective that it is not Logic but Life which is the defining aspect of the cosmos and the human being. I am not implying that I agree with Klages (who I believe ends up being too much of an anti-rationalist, even if his life-philosophy has some agreeable points), but I think that if you argue the Hegelian perspective that, as a Pagan, it would be beneficial to the philosophical discussion to address the opposing viewpoint from Klages.

    1. Collin Cleary says:
      January 10, 2014 at 5:48 pm

      I have never read Klages. But I imagine there is more to his argument than you mention here. Is “life” the defining feature of human beings rather than logic? But what does that mean? Tadpoles, chimpanzees, and alligators are alive. How can “life” be the defining — i.e., distinguishing — feature of human beings?
      I should also say that I am not sympathetic to an “irrationalist paganism.” Belief in the importance of reason — including the belief that it is the defining feature of humanity — is quite pagan. Plenty of pagans have held this view — e.g. Aristotle. But, as I said, I’ve not read Klages so I really can’t adequately respond to your suggestion.

      1. Lucian Tudor says:
        January 10, 2014 at 8:48 pm

        I was unaware that you were not familiar with Klages. You are correct to assume that what is called “Life” in his philosophy is different from “life” in the common sense of the term (even though there is a relationship). Klages belongs to general categary of thought we call “vitalism”, although obviously different “vitalist” thinkers tend to have disagreements with each other. I mention Klages in particular because he is one which I am more familiar with. Klages’s concept of Life is defined very well in Joseph Pryce’s overview of Klages’s philosophy: “On the Biocentric Metaphysics of Ludwig Klages” (online here: http://www.revilo-oliver.com/Writers/Klages/Ludwig_Klages.html), which I think does the best job of summarizing it that I have yet seen. I recommend that you read it, and if you are willing, it would be nice to see you write a response to it.

  6. rhondda says:
    January 10, 2014 at 3:58 pm

    I enjoyed this series Dr. Cleary. Here I thought the men were all out Berserking while the women were at home decorating. (tongue in cheek) The feminist Max Daschu is claiming just about all pre-historic art was made by women Goddess worshipers.
    I just think the art is beautiful and incredibly spiritual.

  7. Dark Henry says:
    January 11, 2014 at 6:23 am

    Mr. Cleary,
    Very interesting series. In oen of the previous sections you dismissed out of hand that the “Cambrian explosion” could be understood in the light of Intelligent Design, aka God. Beyond the fact that you seem to follow Hegel and other philosophers/scientists which do not rely on Christianity for understanding the universe, you did not explain why the intelligent design approach could not work. Would you mind to comment on it?

    1. Collin Cleary says:
      January 12, 2014 at 8:55 pm

      I actually do explain why I reject “intelligent design”: “‘God’ is more uplifting an explanation than ‘chance’ (and it does have the advantage of making order primary, rather than disorder – which, I shall argue, is the more reasonable position). But ultimately it is really no more clarifying than ‘chance.’ ‘It’s chance’ means ‘things just happen for no reason.’ ‘God did it’ means ‘things happen for a reason, but we can’t understand it.'”
      Intelligent design is simply not an intellectually satisfying theory. Moreover, it is not a theory put forward by objective researchers who find themselves driven to it by the weight of evidence or logical necessity. It is advocated by religious enthusiasts, some of whom have advanced degrees, who are already committed to belief in God. The theory is open to all the objections that have been raised in the past to the “argument from design” (especially Paley’s “watchmaker” version of the argument). Also, it basically appeals to the tired, old, jejune conception of God as a kind of Big Handyman or Artificer in the sky. All in all, a very intellectually dissatisfying theory, put forward for fishy motives.

      1. Lucian Tudor says:
        January 14, 2014 at 10:32 am

        Mr. Cleary, if that is your only argument against intelligent design, than I must say that your argument is not only unconvincing, but also boring. It is a rather old tactic I have seen often employed by atheists. Your argument speaks of logic and evidence but does not provide any evidence or logic as to why one should not believe in intelligent design. In short, your argument does not rely on evidence, but simply the lack of it. In any case, personally, I have always found that one needs more than “logic,” “evidence,” and “science” to understand the world and life.

        1. Lucian Tudor says:
          January 15, 2014 at 5:23 pm

          As Dark Henry implies, religious belief does not have to impede proper scientific study. However, to add to my previous statement, science in the sense that we speak of studies the properties of the material universe; it necessarily cannot assist in understanding or proving much about the spiritual realm. Anything in religious philosophy which makes use of science ultimately only derives a concept from scientific theory, but it is not based in it (for example, one asserts that a divine force created life, and references the fact that we cannot scientifically find the ultimate origin of life as a support; the belief that life was created by a divine force is not based on the condition of scientific knowledge, it is only given a partial support by it). Furthermore, science and rationalistic thought only provides us with a limited understanding of the universe; what they provide is completely valid, but as many philosophers – such as Eliade, Klages, Benoist, Evola, etc. – have already convincingly argued, the religious, spiritual, and/or metaphysical ways of thinking and perceiving the universe and existence provides another, very important source of understanding. And we should not assume that they are not reconcilable.

      2. Dark Henry says:
        January 14, 2014 at 3:44 pm

        Biochemistry and molecular biology are practically destroying neo-Darwinian macroevolution. But in fact is it is not just biochemists and molecular biologists who are calling the bluff macroevolution is, it is also paleontologists, geneticists, mathematicians and other scientists.
        A good summary can be found at:
        Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution by Michael J. Behe
        The author is a biochemistry professor at a prestigious US university.
        http://www.amazon.com/Darwins-Black-Box-Biochemical-Challenge/dp/0743290313
        In a few words: New Darwinism can explain why moths change colors from generation to generation (microevolution). It cannot explain why moth exist. It cannot prove either that man came from ape, came from fish, came from amoeba, came from unicellular organism, etc, etc.
        Of course that Neo-Darwinism/macroevolution is rubbish does not mean that the Universe was created in 7 days of 24 hr each. It just point out that there is no scientific explanation to the origin of life, or the diversity of species, e.g. Cambrian explosion, not to mention the origin of the universe. So Intelligent Design has to be considered.

        1. Jim says:
          January 14, 2014 at 11:09 pm

          To Dark Henry: you said “…there is no scientific explanation to the origin of life, or the diversity of species, e.g. Cambrian explosion, not to mention the origin of the universe. So Intelligent Design has to be considered.”

          But if we accept ID, what then? Do you recommend further investigation, using scientific methods, to understand the origins of life, diversity of species, etc.? Or are you proposing that labeling those processes as products of ID is sufficient as far as explaining them goes?

          Also, isn’t the use of ID as an explanation simply pushing the problem back an additional step, but still having the same array of questions; i.e., we still don’t know how life originated, species diverged, but somehow ID did these things…if we ask how, aren’t we back at square one? Not attacking, truly wanting to read your take on these questions.

          1. Dark Henry says:
            January 15, 2014 at 2:59 pm

            I doubt you can prove the existence of ID -i.e. God- scientifically. Thus we should keep doing research even if we believe that God created the universe. What we know now is so little anyway that generations and generations of humans will be able to find new things. No contradiction in it. That is what the Church did during the Middle Ages and gave birth to what we know call the University. It was not the liberals or communists who created the university and the pursue of truth and understanding of the universe for its own sake.
            I don’t get your last point though, about “pushing the problem back”. Just seek for the scientific truth without hidden agendas.
            Many “scientists” today just follow the herd and are very PC. Some independent minded people have been shunned from key positions. And if they cannot fire them because they got tenure and have prestige, like Michael Behe and others, then they ignore them. Why is that most people have heard of Richard Dawkins but not of Michael Behe?
            The hermetic ideology of some scientist like Dawkins is so fanatically anti-God and anti-religion, that they become religious themselves, worshiping Neo-Darwinism which such fruition, intensity and faith that even Tomas de Torquemada would admire.

  8. Peter Quint says:
    January 11, 2014 at 9:34 am

    Her is G. K. Chesterton’s poem “The Secret People” from A. K. Chesterton’s book “The New Unhappy Lords:”
    They have given us into the hand of new unhappy lords,
    Lords without anger and honour, who dare not carry their swords.
    They fight by shuffling papers; they have bright dead alien eyes;
    They look at our labour and laughter as a tired man looks at flies.
    And the load of their loveless pity is worse than the ancient wrongs,
    Their doors are shut in the evening; and they know no songs.

  9. Jannik says:
    January 11, 2014 at 2:00 pm

    Thanks for an excellent series of articles. This is really CC at its very best.

  10. Jim says:
    January 13, 2014 at 3:33 pm

    It seems to me that there is considerable risk of slippage in switching perspective back and forth between conditional realities and transcendental, overarching theories. In conditional terms, for example, the route between two points (spatial, temporal OR conceptual) is mediated by restraints, and subject to qualitative distinctions, and conditioned by point of initial departure and states of awareness en route. In then turning to abstract and transcendent explanations, the ones that overlay and summarize the territory that was conditionally traversed, the focal points of the conditional reality are no longer relevant, in fact may lead to grave misunderstanding.

    e.g. Conditionally, I concur that European man displays a marked spirit of inquiry and a capacity for making a non-personal distinction upon the environment. But if he was *first* to do so, why does that matter? Is being “first” a transcendent quality? Is Chinese art (for example) lacking in ekstasis? On the contrary, Chinese art displays many qualities of aesthetic and philosophical interest. That is no slight to european art. But if Europe was “first”, again, in a process of becoming (the universe “realising” itself), what is the ultimate value of that “first-ness”, if it did not influence the development of the “other”? Is being first important, in some qualitative way, or is it meaningful merely to ‘us”, based on socially transmitted hierarchies of attributed importance?

    If universal self-fulfillment through reflection is a transcendent “purpose”, why do so few exponents of humankind arrive at it? Isn’t it just as likely to be a by-product of a socially driven brain-power increase? Even a less-than fruitful one, that has never, say, prevented a war?

    I tend to think these Hegelian principles are a well-placed substitute for a more risky, because so scarcely tangible, figure of “God”, one that re-invests man with a sacred role. The idea of “purpose” itself is probably suspect; “utility” or even viability being a more likely type of outcome. History and pre-history are littered with failed species and mal-adaptive behaviors. Were they all birthed from a drive towards consciousness and universal self-contemplation?

    A trip through the commercial zones of most American cities reveals a profoundly ugly landscape of wires, signs, rusty cars and peeling paint on deteriorating structures. Yet we are thousands of years from the caves. Are we closer to expressing the Universal realisation, or did we pass it a while back and are now descending back into chaos? If the Universe acheives it’s own contemplation, is its work done? What about the myriad species and individual members still populating and procreating? Are they part of an unfolding purpose?
    Is the cave art beautiful? Yes. Does it display a great leap forward, in terms of technics and conceptualisation skills from the ability of higher primates? Yes. Was it inevitable or even neccesary? Does it fit into an overarching process that can be demonstrated to possess transcendent purpose? Not at all sure.

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