EVOLUTION, CREATIONISM AND OTHER MYTHS

Evolutionary theory is in trouble. Proponents of orthodox Evolutionary Theory, don't realize the weakness of their arguments, some of which border on religious blind faith. This now familiar story (Midgley) is repeated with increasing frequency, especially in America's current "intelligent design" debate. Vine Deloria, a Native America scholar, jumps in and pulls no punches in lambasting most viewpoints and offering no "comfort to religious fundamentalists or evolutionists." However, although he makes some interesting points with his uncompromising approach, he also indulges in much unjustified criticism, cavalier scholarship, and what the dust jacket aptly calls "rage." For example, although citing a smattering of relevant evolutionary, cosmological and theological literature, from Gould and Sheldrake to Peat, Barbour and Kuhn, he admits to relying heavily on newspaper articles, and so makes mistakes. American paleontologists become British. (Evolution?). A late musician and dinosaur sculptor friend of mine is cast as an "evolutionist" spokesperson. News to me! Ironically, Deloria chides that judges in curriculum-deciding court cases may have "picked up their knowledge of scientific theory" from newspapers and magazines- as he admits doing! His charge that "almost everyone" does this is unjust. Many have already worked this territory, circumspectly and with a genuine desire to understand how the universe works. Thus, we are all in the evolutionary-understanding quest together and should be mutually tolerant. Even of those whose wacky paradigms that veer wildly off track tell us something of the problem. Deloria is more or less on track in chapters on "the primacy of science, " "the logic of evolution" and "the nature of religion" but steams off the rails on Earth History describing geologist as having "incestuous" self-congratulatory relationships with evolutionary biologists. Thus, he dismisses most of geology as misguided, boring uniformitarianism and substitutes wild Velikovskian upheaval and catastrophism. As a geologist I politely "rage" back. Geologists have authored many theories of abrupt change such as meteorite impacts and punctuated equilibrium. Ironically he cites both! Today, evolutionary biology loves genes and shuns affairs with fossils. Nonetheless macroevolution's evidence for the Origin of species manifests in the deep time fossil record (Grasse)- not in most modern microbiology labs where incest is impossible (or inevitable?) because all reproduction is asexual! Deloria's chapter "the Nature of History" is again incongruous with his more sensible chapters. For 20 pages he explores odd theories of astronauts (gods) visiting the Sumerians before concluding "I do not believe in the ancient astronaut thesis, contrary to what …many reviewers will insist." So I mediated instead on intriguing alternative ideas about the "genesis of the gods" as humans emerged from their inward, unconscious, archaic, ESP state to become "the first physical-self realized men- the mythical and legendary gods" erupting into the exterior sense dominated world (Long). In this thesis the gods are not extraterrestrial astronauts but the human consciousness vanguard: liaisons who convey fantastic messages of sensory experience from the outer physical world and the inner psychic world (as today's adults can do with children). It's all about consciousness. Deloria cites David Foster in suggesting that scientific breakthroughs are "almost all of a mystical nature." Josephson, Ravindra and Polyani have made similar observations. (Long equates this with discovering what we already know unconsciously. Intuition?). Deloria reminds us that evolution tries to answer basic religious questions by substituting "mindless directionless process for divine creative wisdom." Religious concepts of direction are bound to the Christian concept of linear, historical time. By contrast, few non-western traditions bother to separate God or "religion from the rest of human knowledge and experience." Here, I again recommend Gebser who showed how the mental-rational consciousness structure is predisposed to abstract separations: revelation from reason, church from state. But, such separation is followed by reintegration as in meiosis and recombination, or the aforementioned reintegration of inner psyche and outer sense worlds. But, like Deloria, we fall into this mental trap if we champion "other" magic or mythic traditions as better, rather than different. Yes, we are all in it together. These different structures of consciousness coexist globally, and can be accommodated only by understanding that different modes of perception fit different circumstances (Schad, Harmon, Laszlo). Deloria seems aware of this principle in citing the Macro, Meso and Micro paradigms of Hans Kung, but I was confused by his handling of the paradigm. Final verdict? More rage than sage. Defenders of rational science are likely to brand Deloria a wacky, conspiratorial, neo-creationist, while thoughtful spiritual seekers will likely turn away from the flailing. Perhaps the best one can say is that the book is symptomatic of the confusion that accompanies cultural paradigm shifts. Like his purportedly misguided victims Deloria is evidently also unsure of perennial truths. They are, alas, veiled by rage.