History, Evolution, and the Darwin Debate
The Axial Age and the fine-tuning of Greek Tragedy
The term fine-tuning is a ‘design’ term, for some, and a physics term, for others. For me, in this case, it is neither, simple a statement about the precision in evolutionary transformations as seen in the eonic effect, which sometimes looks like a design thesis (it’s not).
Today’s post on the Arnhart series
The question of liberalism and evolution has an ironic resolution in the different study of the so-called ‘eonic effect’.
World history has a deep structure, and its basic core outline shows a non-random pattern. And that includes the emergence of democracy and liberalism.
A theory as crude and dumbed down as Darwinism (or any other reductionist theory) is totally blind to what is going on.
Freedom Evolves? The Discrete Freedom Sequence
The sad thing is the way that proponents of design, because of their absurdly naive religious views, have missed the real design world history, about which we must remain agnostic, foregoing crude design arguments, but not throwing out the perception of non-random processes operating at the most subtle level of historical emergence.
The data of the Axial Age should have been ample warning.
I cannot explain this data, but I can show that world history has an intricate and beautiful deep structure. Darwinism and Social Darwinist ideology always in the background is a dangerous delusion for those in control, and we must fear the swift destruction of liberal democracy once again.
We are left with the uncomfortable realization that greater nature in this historical evolution has twice reinstalled the democracy that man in civilization so swiftly destroys. We can see that a hidden conspiracy has already gravely damaged American democracy. We shall see what the outcome will be.
Reposting link to the web series, The Politics of Evolution:
The real way to consider politics and evolution is via the eonic effect:
http://eonic-effect.net/politics_of_evolution.htm
World history shows a deep structure that makes a mockery of the silly debate over Darwinism and liberalism
For the Fourth Edition of WHEE:
At a time when theories of evolution are under renewed controversy, discussion is hampered by the remoteness of the phenomenon of evolution, and the use of indirect inference to speculate about deep time. Into the void flows the propaganda of Darwinism attempting to control the myth of human origins. The reign of Darwinism is a pretense of dumbed-down science, and one that cannot explain biological complexity, human consciousness, or the evolution of ethics, in a short list of confusions. Read the rest of this entry »
The debate over evolution has continued since the time of Darwin without resolution, in part because it is a metaphysical contest that is conducted beyond the limits of observation. The claims for natural selection have turned into an ideology short of real science, a kind of metaphysical reductionism. The result has thrown the study of history into confusion, and handed an ideological pseudo-science to many with Social Darwinist agendas. History should be the antidote to this kind of speculative excess, for it enforces the discipline of observation at short range, a century or less, something entirely absent in the study of deep time where generalizations about immense intervals of time are taken for granted without direct empirical observation.
A devastating question haunts standard thinking on evolution: Read the rest of this entry »
http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/07/10/nongenetic-selection-and-evolution-flies-use-bacteria-to-adapt-to-parasitic-worms-2/
The usual fiction about Darwinian (non-)evolution.
The statement about cultural evolution is false: check out the eonic effect to see that the real evolution is probably macro-cultural in the sense given: http://history-and-evolution.com
Evolution by natural selection requires three things:
1. A trait shows variation
2. The variation in that trait must be capable of being passed on from parents to offspring (i.e., the variation is “heritable”)
3. The variation in that trait must make a difference in its likelihood of being passed on from parents to offspring. (Usually, but not always, this requires that the trait affect the survival or reproduction of its carrier.)
If all this is true, those forms of a trait that are better at proliferating will gradually increase in a population.
Although these statements are the basis of Dawkins’s book The Selfish Gene, note that the above characterization doesn’t use the word “gene.” Even if a trait has a nongenetic basis, it will evolve, via a form of natural selection, if it satisfies these conditions. Much of cultural evolution works in this way, although there are profound difference between cultural evolution based on cultural natural selection (or selection among “memes”) and biological evolution based on genes.
It is nice to remind us what the ‘Theory’ says, because it becomes unbelievable almosty instantly.
My press release again: I have been sending it out to mutiple places. It was an experiment if not being devious in issuing PR’s. But such things backfire, usually. Time to move on to still another version. Meanwhile check out the fourth edition.
At a time when theories of evolution are under renewed controversy, discussion is hampered by the remoteness of the phenomenon of evolution, and the use of indirect inference to speculate about deep time. Into the void flows the propaganda of Darwinism attempting to control the myth of human origins. The reign of Darwinism is a pretense of dumbed-down science, and one that cannot explain biological complexity, human consciousness, or the evolution of ethics, in a short list of confusions. Read the rest of this entry »
No more Mr. Nice Guy: My new press release: http://history-and-evolution.com
At a time when theories of evolution are under renewed controversy, discussion is hampered by the remoteness of the phenomenon of evolution, and the use of indirect inference to speculate about deep time. Into the void flows the propaganda of Darwinism attempting to control the myth of human origins. The reign of Darwinism is a pretense of dumbed-down science, and one that cannot explain biological complexity, human consciousness, or the evolution of ethics, in a short list of confusions.
The result is a parody of the nature of human nature, and an evolutionary fiction passed off as hard data. The result is Darwinian pseudo-science exploiting oversimplification and foisting the abstraction of natural selection onto unseen times and places. Darwinism persists as an ideology disguised as theory, with a Social Darwinist agenda concealed behind the facile claims of hard science. Darwin’s theory is thus suspiciously convenient as a neutralizer of ethical action and serves well as a justification for metaphysical reductionism, scientism, economic ideology, and ideological nihilism.
In a further confusion, Darwinism is under siege from the Intelligent Design movement, in a renewed collision of science and religion. The ancient and honorable design argument is now the agenda of conservative interest groups who are up in arms against Darwinian liberals and secular modernism itself. This perspective, which has coopted the criticisms of many scientific critics of Darwinism, has paralyzed the potential for an orderly paradigm change on the issue of evolution, as the cult of Darwin closes ranks around their limited perspectives. The evolution debate has degenerated into a metaphysical contest over the nature of secularism, and a cult of atheism as a surrogate of the Enlightenment battles fundamentalist theism in a contest fought on the field of evolutionary theories for postmodern sweepstakes.
This situation leaves us suspicious that deception here is deliberate, and that all we are offered on the evolution question is propaganda. Religious and scientific groups have done everything they can to hide the real meaning of evolution. Academic and scientific groups graduating from an educational system dominated by ideology are nonetheless true believers and are able to provide a front of sincerity to the cynicism of this biologico-industrial complex in the era of Big Science.
A new perspective is needed. And we are on our own. Scientific bodies and academic institutions are simply untrustworthy on the evolution question. The Darwin propaganda machine maintains itself through outright distortion and cannot be said to represent even the wish for science. The realm of professionals shows a successful reign of intimidation, making public commentary unbelievable.
A new approach is needed, and is not hard to find. The critique of Darwinism has proceeded beyond public awareness almost from the time of Darwin himself and is a ready resource. If the problem is that we have not observed evolution, then the solution is to observe it. And an unexpected new perspective has emerged from the archaeological revolution that has uncovered an evolutionary dynamic in world history itself: world history, observed at close range, holds the clue if we can understand it. The discovery of the Axial Age is one aspect of this transformation of our knowledge. We see a global process at work in the emergence of civilization in a process of non-random evolution that is non-genetic and almost biospheric in its action. A little detective work can uncover the larger significance of this data, and help us to bring an empirical understanding to the questions of evolution for the first time.
In the light of such data, a devastating question haunts standard thinking on evolution: what if the real force of evolution acts intermittently at high-speed over a range of mere centuries? The vastness of deep time would swallow up such brief episodes and leave no trace whatever. As we examine world history precisely this possibility becomes confirmed, and it shows one of the most obvious solutions to the evolution mystery. We must learn to consider evolution as a chronicle of factual history, remaining wary of the reign of theories disguising the agendas of their proponents. Here world history seen at close range is the bottom line on the evolution question.
The myth of Darwinism endures because it maintains media dominance, and need not answer to the realm of fact, substituting speculation, and educational indoctrination, for science. In the phrase of Karl Popper it is a metaphysical research program, and not a falsifiable theory. The antidote is a dose of empiricism that can show us the real meaning of evolution. And the irony is that world history itself holds the key to the riddle of evolution. It is right that this should be so. We must refrain from imposing speculations about deep time, which we cannot observe, on our historical chronicle, which we do observe. It is an upside down situation and one that cannot persist without throwing discredit on science itself.
We live in the first generations with enough historical data to detect a pattern of historical dynamics. We see the real evolution of man as the Great Transition, the human passage from evolution to history, in the chronicle of the once and future Origin of the Species, Man.
Darwinism is a theory created to snare stupid people, making them fell smart in the process.
Check out some alternate paradigms
The text for World History And The Eonic Effect Fourth Edition is finally online at Amazon.
Check out history-and-evolution.com for some info on the new edition/
This book has survived through four editions.
When all the other crap passes away this snapshot, a glimpse of evolution, will remain.
If you found the earlier editons hard, this is the edition for you.
Note: the publication date says April 27! Nonsense. And they didn’t allow pre-orders.
The publication date is today. Juen 22! These people always try to sabotage this book somehow.
Note: in the ‘customers who also bought…’ section, they is Heidegger’s Being and Time. And that’s all. Bullshit.
These people are constantly trying to sabotage this book.
Reposted from yesterday:
From the new edition: The Legacy of Darwinism
At a time when theories of evolution are under renewed controversy, discussion is hampered by the remoteness of the phenomenon of evolution, and the use of indirect inference to speculate about deep time. In the face of much criticism from religious Creationists, now accompanied by the Intelligent Design movement, adherents of Darwinism forever defend a flawed theory that has been challenged from its first appearance. The objections of the first reviewers of Darwin’s book, indeed even of T. H. Huxley, the original champion of the theory, were never quite answered in the tide of paradigm change that swept modern culture. The perennial issue is natural selection as the mechanism of evolution. The assumption that evolution occurs, and must occur, at random is the crux of the dispute, one unreasonably confused by the claims of religion versus science.
The rise of molecular biology shows a complexity of structure that cannot easily survive statistical challenges to claims of random emergence. The new genetics and the emergence of developmental biology have exposed the limits of Darwin’s original theory, in the remarkable findings of complex biochemical systems and evo-devo. Therefore the critics, whatever the public pronouncements of Darwinists, have essentially won the debate, and retabled the views of many of Darwin’s predecesssors at the birth of embryology in the generation before Origin. We might proceed on that basis, beyond the distracting cultural politics of evolutionary theories, which now sees the resurfacing of the design theology of the generation of Paley. Nothing in the methodology of science requires us to accept the claims of natural selection as established.
Fourth edition out!
As noted already today, the fourth edition of World History And The Eonic Effect is out, with the cover image already corrected.
Note: the publication date is not April 27, but today June 22! (Idiot publisher)
It is hard to believe a publisher would backdate the publication date by two months. Unbelievable.
The text for World History And The Eonic Effect Fourth Edition is finally online at Amazon.
Unfortunately the printer gave them a wrongly cropped cover image. They also ommiitted the new blurb text. The stupidity is almost hard to believe. It took them six weeks to get it wrong.
Not to worry. Amazon is not sloppy and should correct it by tommorrow. Click here for the
Correct cover image, uploaded in the extra images section.
Check out history-and-evolution.com for some info on the new edition/
If you found the earlier editons hard, this is the edition for you.
Note: the publication date says April 27! Nonsense. And they didn’t allow pre-orders.
The publication date is today. Juen 22! These people always try to sabotage this book somehow.
The wrong cover on the first try. Stop pulling my leg.
http://history-and-evolution.com/TOC/selections.htm
It is incredible, but true, that scientists are confused about evolution because they have never observed it: a complex task requiring the reconstruction, where possible, of very long sequences. Small wonder confusion arises over the superficial action of natural selection.
From the Intro to the fourth edition of WHEE:
The Eonic Effect: A dose of empiricism The revolution in our knowledge of world history has uncovered something that must challenge the Darwinian assumptions about random evolution and natural selection. As we extend the scale of history to the scale of five thousand or more years, the empirical given of the historical development of civilization in a remarkable portrait of spontaneous self-organization shows us something that Darwinism cannot explain, and, further, the result looks like a complex hybrid of history and evolution. Instead of botched theories that distort our thinking we can follow the empirical outlines of episodes of evolution using periodization and descriptive analysis
.
The previous link http://whyevolutionistrue.wordpress.com/2010/06/21/were-adam-and-eve-real/ cites this essay at Biologos: http://biologos.org/blog/adam-and-eve-literal-or-literary/
I find it hard to grasp that liberal non-fundamentalist Christians at this point could still get stuck here, but the perception of history created by the Old Testament is no doubt to blame, despite the subtle nature of that text.
Please without fail sit down and real the material on the eonic effect at history-and-evolution.com, especially the material on the Old Testament and the Axial Age. http://history-and-evolution.com/whee/intro1_1.htm
You will note the double character of the Old Testament: the book was written over a period of time, several centuries, in a very complex history partially unraveled by Biblical Criticism, and the nearly final version seems to have crystallized around the period of Josaiah, then actual text we have set by the time of Nehemiah/Ezekiel two centuries later.
The tale is a ‘universal history’ and ends up thus bifurcating in half: from t=0 to the about the time Abraham, and everything after that. The first part is mythical, and everything after Abraham is (pseudo-)historical. Abraham and Moses, et al., might well have some historical basis, but there are partially mythologized.
In fact, the real division is about -900 BCE and everything before that. Again much of that history onward might be pseudo-history, but its basic format is different from the first part of the Old Testament: it is the history of an actual Canaanite culture, divided into North and South, and their eventual demise at the hands of the Assyrians, and their successors.
Simple as that. Note that this is about the period after -900 BCE, which doesn’t include Abraham and Moses, and the two latter are on shaky grounds, but just as Achilles just might reflect a distant historical someone, so Moses just might reflect a real person, how we have forgotten. It ought to be obvious that the first part is tacked onto the second, but I guess it is not obvious to devout Jews/Christians.
This leaves the status of Solomon, and David, et al. in limbo, also, like Moses. It seems there were real persons, but that their history, before -900 BCE, just before, is borderline history, turned into myth.
It is no accident that the rest approaches historical chronicle (and is almost boring as a result). Good archaeologists should challenge this point, but the chronicle aspect does reflect a reasonable historical substrate with fair correlation. As we get closer to -600 BCE the record becomes more historical still and reflects known events in the Middle Eastern milieu.
Note that the core section of the Old Testament from ca. -900 to -600 with another extension from -600 to -400 reflects almost exactly the pattern of the so-called Axial Age and is studied in detail in the so-called ‘eonic model’ at the link at history and evolution.com. The correspondence is so exact that we can infer roughly what is going on here: we see the effect of the Axial Age in a small corner of Canaanite, and the gestation and birth of a world religion, albeit still in its ‘tribal nationalistic’ form.
Sadly, yet optimistically, this new account will not take with traditionalists and will make better sense to postreligious secularists who can grasp the subtety of the eonic model.
The result is far more remarkable than the miracles-and-myth ‘Hollywood’ religion of the OT in its traditional form. And the study of the Axial Age shows the context on a Eurasian basis of what is happening.
Sadly neither Darwinists, New Atheists, or traditional religionists of monotheism will be able, it seems, to figure out what the Old Testament is really talking about.
Canaan and ‘Israel/Judah’: The Old Testament Riddle
A post sent to the History & Theory listserve, in a discussion about historical theory.
Subject: RE: Postkantian history (the history that theory can explain)
Before pursuing postkantian history, it might be well to ask, what was Kantian history? We cited one paragraph, the first, from Kant’s famous essay on history which was essentially a question about finding an historical dynamics that is also an expression of the issue of free will. But, for sure, if you can manage to not sink in postkantian quicksand there are any number of approaches to history in German Classical Philosophy.
That ‘challenge’ from Kant was a question in search of an answer. But that is a very hard question. Read the rest of this entry »
Comment on World History: the clue to evolution
The sense that world history can show us the clue to (human) evolution is counterintuitive, at first, but only because we are so conditioned to the Darwinian perspective that makes evolution purely genetic. Genetic fundamentalism is probably wrong at all crucial points. We need some evidence of ‘evolution’ in a process transcends genetics. World history provides us with that evidence.
Comment on Detecting teleology
Good comment from S. Smith (which I can’t endorse, but his point is, regrettably, well-taken, the obscurity of causation certainly matches that of teleology).
What can help is a close look at a directional system, which is strongly indicative of a teleological system. We can’t draw a teleological conclusion unless we are at the ‘end of time’, or the end of the system, here history, but we are not, so…
Smith’s point can be seen by asking, What caused the Axial Age? ??? Nothing caused it, as to antecedents. It shows a stage of directionality, hence the suspicion of teleology.
The eonic effect shows all the pieces of the puzzle and requires long and thorough study.
Note that the ‘eonic model’ is kantianized: the temporal stream shows causation, the phenomenon, or perhaps, pace Smith’s objection, direct successiveness, while the noumenal aspect conceals, we suspect, the teleological process behind the directionality, which manifests in a discrete series. Teleology is ambiguous as to temporal succession, beyond space and time.
No wonder Darwinists are totally confused.
Stephen said,
June 1, 2010 at 9:45 pm
We could argue that we cannot detect causation, for the every same reasons.Because actions on symmetry work just fine in both time directions, these actions say very little about the absolute drive of a one-way causation.
Hume also noted that causation did not emerge from reasoning, he felt our notions of causation came from experience. I am saying Hume did not go far enough. Even science cannot declare a one-way causation to be fundamental. The second law is found restricted to an extreme level because it is unable to get beyond the activity of sending and receiving without equivocation. The argument is airtight!
This has everything to do with vitalism and freewill! Vitalism and freewill are self-evident, and hence they are part of a reality that cannot be fully explained by a mere mechanics. Mechanics cannot explain life because it is life/mind that coopts mechanics. Mechanics can only explain a shell that covers part of reality, but science should be interested in all reality rather than pretend that even life is mechanical.
Intent has to do with active information that points to a contrived ending. I think we can detect teleology, because we humans are able to recognize intent indicating that felt emotionality conforms to a universal grammar. It is only some science that finds itself unable to recognize this reality, and so some science is seen venting an emotionality that betrays its own assertions.
The new fourth edition of World History And The Eonic Effect takes a new and simpler approach to the issue, less theoretical, and more focussed on world history: http://history-and-evolution.com/
I suddenly realized that people are ignorant of world history. Thus any attempt at theory is hopeless from the start. And the influence of Darwinism has been so deadening that the significance of history is lost, suppressed would be a better word. And religious historicism is not much better. That makes communication hard, when Christian historicism claims one group, and Darwinism another. The result is the endless confusion/collision of biologists who have misplaced evolution, and religionists (Christians) who have misplaced history.
A simple chronicle outline, however, is enough to see ‘evolution in action’ behind the form of outer history.
Coming this summer!
Why does English literature, viz. the Romantic movement, show a peak clustered near the ‘Great Divide’?
The third edition is going out of print in a few days, download the material now: The eonic effect…
We already linked to Dembski’s post at UD: Ulrich Mohrhoff on the Hindu alternative to materialism and ID, and there is another link:
Beyond Natural Selection and Intelligent Design: Sri Aurobindo’s Theory of Evolution
Ulrich J Mohrhoff
Abstract
An outline of Sri Aurobindo’s theory of spiritual evolution is presented. Ultimate Reality relates to each world (ours need not be the only one) as the substance that constitutes it, as a consciousness that contains it, and as an infinite joy that expresses and experiences itself in it. In our world, Ultimate Reality is “playing Houdini,” enchaining itself as best it can, challenging itself to escape from self-created darkness and inertia, to rediscover its true self and powers, to affirm itself in conditions that appear to be its very opposite. Sri Aurobindo calls the process by which these conditions are created “involution.” Once we have a sufficient grasp of this process, we are in a position to understand the true nature of evolution, which is not finished: man is a transitional being, his greatness lies not in what he is, but in what he makes possible.
I will cheerfully listen to anyone who can seriously try to explain the difference between evolution and involution, but I must confess at this point that I tend to skulk away from the concept of involution. It smacks of a late response to secular skepticism, an attempt to recast ‘creationism’ in a philosophical concept that was free of theistic implications, and abstract enough to sound profound. The reality is that it is a distorted translation of some ancient concept that meant something else.
In any case, we never observe involution. All we see is the spontaneous appearance of complexities that are hard to account for.
We never observe involution behind the veil of the noumenal boundary to the phenomena of evolution. ‘Involution’ is, I think, a confused take on the ‘mechanism’ of evolution, which is beyond observation.
Look at the Axial Age: it looks like involution is at work. But in fact it makes better sense to think in terms of evolution.
Involution as a concept is good example of the way that secular Indian religious figures will corrupt their own tradition.
Someone find the history of the term, and its correlates, if any, in ancient thought.
I wouldn’t mind someone trying to debate this. But I fear the concept of involution has already been invested in false authority, which means there is still another group of religious idiots with whom I will not be on speaking terms.
The issue then is ‘evolution as phenomenal manifestation before a boundary of a noumenal limit’. It is the latter that is confused with involution.
In the eonic effect, speaking of human evolution, the distinction is ‘System Action’ and ‘Free Action’. The first is macroevolution, and the second is technically ‘microevolution’, better called ‘history creation’ as ‘free action’ realizing ‘system action’. Think of a play, an involution from some source, an author, and its realization as ‘free action’ by actors as their ‘evolution’, not a very good example, but it might help to see how artificial is the concept of ‘involution’. So drop it.
My usage is better: consider the Axial Age. It is a System Action that is macroevolutionary, but its sources spring from behind a noumenal limit that is expressed by individuals as ‘free action’. This distinction is the reason why the myth of the age of revelation is so confused, yet won’t go away. The larger Action is real, but unobserved, all we see is the free action of men (ancient Israelites) creating a primitive religion. This mixture of high and low in primitive religion creation is the source of our perplexities as we look backward. The careful accounting of the distinction in my eonic model can help to sort out the two levels.
The concept of involution won’t help here.
A selection from the fourth edition of WHEE
We discuss evolution in the abstract, without ever quite knowing what evolution is. A dose of empiricism might help!
The Eonic Effect: A dose of empiricism The revolution in our knowledge of world history has uncovered something that must challenge the Darwinian assumptions about random evolution and natural selection. As we extend the scale of history to the scale of five thousand or more years, the empirical given of the historical development of civilization in a remarkable portrait of spontaneous self-organization shows us something that Darwinism cannot explain, and, further, the result looks like a complex hybrid of history and evolution. Instead of botched theories that distort our thinking we can follow the empirical outlines of episodes of evolution using periodization and descriptive analysis.
Evolution in history? It is not clear at first how we can bring the idea of evolution in history itself. In fact, any process of developmental emergence is ‘evolution’, and the question is rather what relation this has to the earlier descent of man. The answer is that the relationship is most probably direct, and that world history can therefore suggest something to us about man’s emergence.
A selection from the fourth edition of WHEE: Selection: In Search Of History
New website makeover for the Fourth Edition of World History And The Eonic Effect, which will be out soon.
This time you have to read the book: it is no longer so theoretical. All you need to do is follow the contours of world history to see its deep structure.
In Search of History
The third edition of WHEE is going out of print this week, so download the material if you want it.
The new edition will less theoretical, more of a mere ‘world history’ in cameo.
The relationship of evolution to history is a simple logica derivation, but so far most Darwinists can’t seem to handle it.
Fuller and Ruse debate the ID question, with Uncommon Descent’s commentary
The ID question is pretty simple: noone knows. Dembski’s work, with a considerable snow job of advanced math or fancy footwork math, which proves nothing, is basically a plausibility argument reborn on a higher plane, but still a plausibility argument, not a proof of anything. The ID folks (I usually refer to them as the ‘ID gang’) have the impudence to suggest that certain people don’t understand the design thesis, as if they now controlled it, and as if the books of such as Dembski had invented a new science.
Still, in a way, Fuller is right, to the degree that dogmatic denunciation of design thinking by Darwinists has a hollow sound at this point.
The design argument has many antecedents and an arch-critic, Kant, who nonetheless seems to exempt a kind of demiurgic artificer of the world, not the same as ‘god’ (this merely mentioned in passing in a few passages). Whatever the case, Kant’s critique of metaphysics is a reminder of things unknowable, and no matter how hard we try we won’t advance beyond a plausibiliity argument.
The irony is that the natural selection argument is a disguised design argument: a funny watchamacallit selects forms via adaptationist scenarios, and constructs/designs all sorts of preposterous complexities, and this at random, a curious sort of design process.
We have never truly observed natural selection to do much of anything, certainly not the VERY HARD problems, like that of consciousness.
I can only recommend the study of the eonic effect, which shows mechanism and design in an elusive unity beyond easy understanding. Both sides in the debate are arguing abstractions. They have never seen evolution in action, something we can get a glimpse of in world history. Once seen, these piddling theories of the ID gang (I am having a relapse, using the term ‘ID gang’ a mere paragraph after swearing off it) and the truly lunatic social darwnist thuggery of the Darwin folks (‘gang’ in the true sense, like the ‘billy the kid’ gang)
To me the obvious design in nature is hard to pin down: it can be very seemingly smart without being ‘intelligent’ because there is no known active agent involved at the level of consciousness. . I am still not sure what Behe really said, such is the veil of sophistry that surrounds the term ‘specified complexity’. He is right that pure chance can’t construct the extraordinarily complicated structures we find in nature. But that is not proof of an intelligent design process, though it seems to suggest natural teleology, in Kant’s phrase.
Try both sides of this argument with the eonic effect, and you will realize that the design argument fails for the age of revelation, but often seems to work for everything else, in the stupefying subtlety of the Axial Age, among other things. But you can’t say what metasociological variables a design entity is manipulating. What exactly is the ‘desgin’ of the Axial Age? It looks designed, maybe, if you can imagine a ‘designer’ manipulating sociological variables (I can’t actually). The explanation here using the idea of a designer would have to explain why ‘god’ would leave antisemitism to fester in a religion of revelation. This kind of example forces us to look for a completely different explanation for the undoubtedly remarkable Axial Age Israel phenomenon, a tall order.
The answer from most scientists would be, eh? don’t see a thing.
That’s a bad character reference for ‘design’: it fails with the Old Testament. It doesn’t make sense to say that a designer stands behind the Old and New Testaments. Such a designer would be a gnostic horror. The gnostics hinted as much!
So that’s a problem. Darwinism, seen in this light, is totally far off from explaing evolution. It is not even in the ball park. Natural selection visibly retards advance in world history as the various thuggeries eliminate real innovation and turn everything in a kind of bloody sports contest.
As per the previous post on David Shenk’s book on genius vs genes, we should mention the obvious relationship of much, but not all, that we call genius with the eonic effect.
Consider the correlation of creative breakthroughs with the eonic sequence and we will see that while potential is important the dynamic occasions in the eonic series are crucial.
Symphony of Emergence
The issue of Kant’s Challenge is discussed online here:4. IDEA FOR A UNIVERSAL HISTORY, chapter four of World History And The Eonic Effect
I review a book of essays, from Cambridge University Press on Kant’s essay on history: The mystery of Kant’s challenge and the evolution connection
It is a bit outrageous that this book was written without reference to my solution to ‘Kant’s Challenge’ from that essay, but then again it was probably no accident. The Darwin Establishment has reached the Kant community, it seems, and turned them all into stone, mum on the Darwin question. Kant could hardly have been a Darwinist, so we have Kant’s scholars pretending otherwise, or otherwise silent on controversial questions.
One more reason why it requires outsiders to do the work of frozen academics.
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