Richard Lloyd Jones: In 1831, a young man with a weak stomach set off for five years as an unpaid naturalist on board the HMS Beagle. The conclusions he reached on this momentous voyage changed how we saw the world and our place in it. There was only one problem. Charles Robert Darwin was wrong. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones. Today, I'm Thinking with Somebody Else's Head. We'll begin the exploration of one of the most influential ideas in science over the past 200 years, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.
Many of us know that title of Darwin's book, but I suspect not many know the subtitle, Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life. To Darwin, this struggle was relentless and devoid of divine mystery. To Darwin, divinity was out, blind process was in. Darwin's machine was no more than genetics plus time. No need for design, much less a need for a designer.
If we adhere religiously to Darwin, and I use that word deliberately because accepting Darwin takes no small measure of blind faith, actually exactly like the religious dogma he felt his theories would replace. If we stick to Darwin, we know that all men and chimps are relatives, although presumably not in the let's make sure we invite bonzo-to-the-wedding sort of way, and that plants, animals, and everything else descend from a common ancestor.
This is accepted by virtually everyone. But there are some serious metaphysical holes in Darwin's much-touted theory. Anyone who attacks the origin of the species normally does so from the point of view of missing evidence, lack of missing links, breaks in the fossil record. I want to come at it from another angle. To do this, we have to consider a metaphysical tenet. Nothing derives from the lesser to the greater, from the sea to the tree, so to speak.
This is how we can understand this. Nothing can develop from the inferior, the atoms, cells, tissues, nerves, to the superior, eyes, wings, hearing, locomotion. A bird doesn't fly because it was an animal that developed advantageous wings slowly over billions of years. A bird has the wings complete. And here's the metaphysical point, has always had the complete wings, because it was created right out of the chute as a creature that would fly.
It was the universal idea that came first, and then the constituent parts were organized accordingly. Well, to help us understand this a little better, here's my favorite metaphysical researcher, Cesar Soós, to join us again. Cesar, the essential idea suggested by Darwin's observations is that there was nothing, and then slowly the constituent parts began to, by random chance, mind you, join together. And when there was just the right combination, presto, life spontaneously erupted.
How would you see this?
Cesar Soós: This concept of evolution is against common sense. If you take a lot of bricks, for example, and you throw them up in the air, they will never come down in the form of a house. Darwin's idea is similar to thinking that the bricks would be put together as a house by themselves. The idea is that within matter is contained the laws.
That would allow the matter to develop, mutate and eventually evolve into another species. And it is exactly here that Darwin's theory of evolution is metaphysically mistaken. The particular things are organized by an energetic field around them and not, as evolutionists believe, that the particular things are self-organizing according to environmental stimuli. So, this energetic field already contains all the finished forms complete, which then are manifested in the material realm.
In other words, the lesser never creates the greater, but it's the other way around. The lesser always derives from the greater. This is an immutable metaphysical law which applies to matter, crude or biological matter.
Richard: Metaphysically, then, what can seem to be random and disorganized at the physical level is actually organized and designed at a higher level. This reminds me of the Kirlian photographs taken of a tree seed, which show a fully formed tree shape, energetically speaking, inside the seed.
This means the tree, the universal idea, already exists as an energetic shape that manifests through the particular, in this case, the seed. The randomness of Darwin's evolution has always bothered me. I mean, why would chemicals and cells and atoms start to organize in a new way to form a new organ slowly over time? Always science gets lost in this idea, doesn't it, that it's the small particles that unite mysteriously to create large and sophisticated organic elements.
Cesar: But look, Richard, this is so logical. Because, for example, when you have a lot of parts and you want to make a car, you first have the idea of the car inside your mind. And then you begin to take the carburetor and the driveshaft and the pistons and little by little bring order to the chaotic bunch of parts that you have in front of you.
By the time you finish the car, it is as close as possible to the image you had in your mind before. So we can say that you captured the image of the car from the surrounding energetic field that then became a physical reality through your work. So always the greater creates the lesser and the greater is something metaphysical because it is an idea and this idea you cannot prove until you bring it into the physical.
In this sense, we can say that thought contains the car's potential. The physical car is a consequence of an abstract thought put into practice.
Richard: But let me return to something I said at the beginning, too. Darwin's theory suffers greatly from, among other things, the religious adherence to it. This permits no analysis of its incorrect metaphysical structure. But one of its most persistent fallacies is that all developments in a species, all modifications, all adaptations, occurred for only one reason—survival.
This view reduces all the magnificence of life to something rather mundane and, frankly, unattractive. All of the magic and mystery and wonder of life is squeezed out and only the instinct for survival remains. This reveals the massive envy humanity has for any sort of organizing principle, or, dare I say it, organizer. And it's another big hole in their theory, right Cesar?
Cesar: For example, if you have a theory, to be correct it must explain all the arguments the others might raise against it.
Evolutionism does not explain some crucial points, for example, the sense of arts. The artistic sense that human beings have, do they come from evolution too? According to this evolutionary theory, the species develop abilities in order to survive. Human beings do not have at all the necessity of creating art because of survival. So how can evolutionism explain that? The need for arts seems to be much more a fulfillment of the soul rather than the animal instinct of survival.
So you see, arts elude Darwin's logic. This is a flaw in the theory, which demands a better explanation. Also, the very idea of evolution from one species to another is wrong because we have never seen this. What we have observed so far are mere adaptations, but within the same species, never from one species to another. Animals can adapt themselves because, of course, your RNA can influence your DNA to a certain extent.
So if you go from one region to another, you can adapt yourself according to the environment. But the question is, would you really change your being to something else? The essence of what you are? No, you will always be a human being, you know. I,
Richard: for one, feel very grateful for that. Because thinking with Darwin's head has led us to diminish our experience of life to that of an animal and his instincts.
But worse, Darwin convinced us that we were evolving when in fact we're far from what we should be. I'm Richard Lloyd Jones.
