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THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF EVOLUTION OBADIAH HARRIS P.H.D. THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF EVOLUTION The theory of evolution, when properly interpreted, deepens man’s insight into the meaning of life and elevates his status as a participant in a vast and boundless unfoldment of creativity. The Bible says that God made man but little lower than the angels. Evolution, when rightly understood, does not relegate man to some inferior role, or demote him from some pinnacle of dominion on which he was previously stationed. It adds luster to his past achievements and hope for his future attainments. The right interpretation of this theory imparts to man “a cosmic perspective, a profound understanding of the principles of existence, and the significance of the world process.” It is only if evolution is narrowly interpreted that the error is made of falling into “materialism, skepticism, negativism, etc. which are interwoven into serious problems of contemporary civilization.” Thus, when understood in its deeper meaning, the principle of evolution can make “a positive contribution... 1 to our understanding of life and its significance,” and to the solution of its problems. To find this deeper meaning it is necessary to contrast the theory of evolution with the ancient idea of creation in time. Perhaps some light can be thrown on the idea of creation in time by telling a fable about it which has a very telling point. Once three friends, a doctor, an architect and a politician, went for a walk. They got in to a discussion as to whose profession was the earliest. Said the doctor, “Surely the doctor’s profession is the earliest, because, as you know, God created Eve from a rib taken out of Adam, and to do that he had to make a surgical operation. So the medical art of surgery is certainly the earliest.” The architect then spoke up and said, “No, we must go beyond that. Don’t you know that God created the world out of chaos? It is the profession of the architect to create something orderly, something useful, out of the disorder and chaos and to impose form upon formlessness.” At this the politician hastened to remark: “Ah chaos!–and who made this chaos?” This story calls our attention to the problem of absolute beginning. What is the beginning? Can you imagine any beginning of time? Greek philosophy started with the idea of chaos, and with the idea of God conceived as the spirit of intelligence brooding over chaos, and fashioned out of that chaos the cosmos, the universe. But, as the politician says, “chaos has its beginning too.” That is, if there is chaos or disorder, it pre-supposes some kind of previous state of order that was broken up. 2 THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF EVOLUTION To give a homely example, if a housewife says that her whole house is a mess, she means she has allowed it to fall in to disorder. She does not mean that her house was never in order. Perhaps she got too busy with something else. So we get to no absolute beginning of time by saying, as Greek philosophy did, that the universe came out of chaos. Now let us turn to the theological doctrine of creation in time. We are all familiar with the account of creation in the Bible. The first words of the first chapter of Genesis says, “In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form and void.” That is how the Bible starts, with creation in time, the forming of the world out of void, nothingness. Theology begins with God and nothingness. In other words, theology believes that there was a time when there was nothing, the world did not exist. Nothing existed, and out of that all-pervasive nothingness God summoned into existence this world. But what is the nature of nothingness? Sages and philosophers have pondered this question through all history. Can you imagine how something can come out of nothing? Modern philosophers, including the French philosopher Henry Bergson, have challenged the idea of nothingness. Bergson says that “the notion of absolute nothingness is a contradiction in terms: there must always be some positive reality. Nothing is just a negative idea without objective reality.” What Bergson means is: Who can put his finger or his thought on nothing? 3 You can stop thinking, but cannot think of nothingness because it does not exist. Let us illustrate this, too, with some everyday examples. The same housewife may also say, “I have nothing to eat for supper,” or “I have nothing to wear to the party.” Actually, she probably has a refrigerator full of food and a closet full of clothes. What she is really saying is that there is nothing in the house she wants to eat or wear. Likewise, we may say of a certain man, “There is nothing to him.” By that we mean he lacks certain qualities we expect him to have. We are disappointed in him. But others may see a lot of good qualities in him. Again, suppose you are a farmer. You look at a field with the idea of buying it. But you find the soil is poor and it grows nothing but weeds and wild bushes. So you say “There is nothing there,” and you do not purchase the field because it will not yield the crops you expect to plant. But it is a different story to the field mice who live in their nests there, the birds in their brilliant plumage who flash their wings in the sunlight, the rabbits to whom the vines and bushes provide friendly cover from hawks. Then there are the colonies of ants and other forms of life, even to the earthworms underground. To all of them this wild wasteland is a paradise, a safe refuge, an abode of beauty, a land of plenty. If you buy the field and ravish it with your plow and drench it with pesticides, they will flee; it will be a paradise lost to them. Thus, says Bergson, “Nothingness is a relative idea. It just expresses non-fulfillment of our expectations—a 4 THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF EVOLUTION feeling of disappointment… there may be others who find lots of things where you see nothing.” Let us apply this in the same way to the remotest past, to the question of chaos or nothingness as the beginning. “That is just a human way of thinking. We are expecting to find a certain kind of order, a certain kind of structure. If we don’t find it, we say that there was nothing.” If the structure of the world, as we now think and expect it to be, did not exist, then we say there was nothing; but the truth is there is always some kind of positive being with some kind of order and structure; so neither the philosophic idea of chaos nor the theological concept of nothingness can lead us to an absolute beginning. Such is the conclusion of science. This is the scientific attitude, the evolutionary perspective. Science believes that the world process is a beginning-less and endless perspective, [that it] is going through different types of order, different types of formations, configurations, arrangements and rearrangements which are changing from time to time. So actually, while the cosmos and the world may have emerged from a different configuration or order than we now have, there was never a time when there was absolutely nothing. It is only when we do not find a particular pattern, order, or configuration that we say there is nothing or chaos. When we reject the idea of absolute nothingness, we grasp the meaning of evolution, of the perpetual advance of life and nature. Evolution thus “rejects the theological idea of creation out of nothing and the idea of creation of the world in time.” 5 Charles Darwin demonstrated by empirical evidence “that all the many varieties or species of living things on earth today are the result of a long and gradual process of evolution. They did not always have the form they have now. Every kind of living thing has behind it a long history of change and development; of slow, gradual and continuous growth. So scientific evolution says that man as he is now, once did not exist. First, it says, there were lower animals, then higher animals, then man appeared as the most developed species of today. So it is that the evolutionary perspective “questions the ordinary religious ideas and [repudiates] the notion of creation in time.” The materialistic or mechanistic theory of evolution advanced by Darwin was further elaborated by the philosopher Herbert Spencer. He said that life can be ultimately analyzed into forms of matter and motion; that is, into physical and chemical forces. These materialistic and mechanistic theories of evolution were applied to many fields, such as psychology, economics, and social development. There arose, for instance, the school of behavioristic psychology. It says that what we call human intelligence is merely the mechanistic response of the body to the changing circumstances of nature. Karl Marx applied this materialistic concept in his interpretation of the growth of civilization. He sought to explain the whole historical order in “terms of material forces or economic factors.” The economic forces are reflected, he said, “in the means of production and the conflicting interests of the 6 THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF EVOLUTION different social classes.” It is said that Marx wanted to dedicate his book, “Das Capital,” to Darwin, but could not get Darwin’s permission. These views rise from the narrow concept of evolution which causes men to fall into the trap of “materialism, skepticism, and negativism.” With the pronouncement of the theory of evolution, some of the ancient traditional ideas lost much of their significance. Evolution bolstered by astronomy brought rejection of the theological dogmas that man is the center of this earth of ours and that the earth is the center of the solar system. It is now accepted that there are countless solar systems, very possibly with worlds among them, inhabited by beings who may be as intelligent and developed or more so than we are—so far beyond the realm of speculation that man is now exploring outer space in an endeavor to find, among other things, whether such other worlds exist with intelligent life upon them. Certainly the creativity of God is not limited to this one world of ours which, as Aurobindo said, is like a flicker of God’s eyelash. The Bible says that man shall have dominion over the beasts of the filed, but he is reaching out now for dominion over outer space where the stars wheel in their courses. Thus we begin to see how through evolution and science generally the vistas and possibilities of humankind have not diminished, but expanded. Nevertheless, the theory of evolution at first caused a deep chasm between religion and science. The philosopher Nietzche declared: “God is dead.” What he really referred to is the “traditional anthropomorphic conception of God.” 7 His statement was needlessly negative. The rejection of the traditional concept of God and the right understanding of evolution does not annul the higher values and truths of life. It is not necessary to understand evolution in a materialistic way. Herbert Spencer, himself, for example, was a very religious man who believed in the existence of an absolute, an infinity beyond the capacity of the mind to know, which is what theology believes concerning God. Evolution can be understood in a creative way. We can “reconstruct our idea of God on a different basis, on a broader and sounder basis.” The disregarding of super naturalistic ideas does not call on us to deny and be skeptical about “higher spiritual values.” It means we must deepen our conception of spiritual values. It means that we gain a deeper insight into the meaning of life, and the nature of reality, in harmony with the latest development in science, in psychology, in philosophy, etc. Now let us consider evolution in this broader aspect, what is known as creative or emergent evolution. It acknowledges “the element of truth in the evolutionary process but tries to understand it on a deeper foundation.”[22] There can be no doubt that life is a process of evolution, of constant changes, inner and outer. The face of nature undergoes constant changes, so do individual human beings. If you look within yourself you can see how you have changed, are changing and hope to change spiritually, intellectually, ethically. History reflects many changes in the international and social order. Therefore, we cannot doubt that evolution, 8 THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF EVOLUTION the process of growth, the rise of new forms, qualities, values, higher planes of intellectual, ethical and spiritual attainment, is an indubitable fact of existence. But this does not mean that evolution is mechanistic or materialistic. The changes occur, but what causes the changes? What causes the new and larger quality and power, unprecedented forms and unpredictable values, the fresh and new development? It was to explain this that the new theory of emergent evolution has been advanced, a modification of the original theory, a creative modification. Let us apply this new theory to the case of human reason. The appearance of human reason marked the emergence of a new and higher power on the evolutionary scene. The mind of the animal is a step above many lower forms of life; but the mind of reason of the human being is far above and different from the animal mind. An impassable gulf separates them. When you realize that such higher qualities have emerged in the past and are emerging into being now, you ask yourself, “What is the power responsible for their newness, for the fresh appearance?” Obviously, this is not and cannot be just a physical or mechanistic process, a random result of groupings of matter and motion. A mechanical process, as we know, always operates in the same mechanical way. The most advanced computer is always a computer. “Life, mind, spirit, etc., are not mere complexities of matter and motion.” The power which produces these changes “must be something… infinitely rich in quality and potentiality… capable of bringing into manifestation spiritual powers 9 and characteristics, intelligence and reason, etc.”[24] This infinite power is what guides and controls evolution. So in this way we reconstruct the idea of God as the source of creative evolution, emergent evolution. Thus you gain a profound conception of God on a deeper foundation, a deeper insight into the Divine Power. In this reconstruction, we realize, first of all, that God cannot be logically defined by human thought. If we did so we would, like the theologians, set up an anthropomorphic idea of God; but with our new insight into evolution, we see God as the superconscient creative power. The Divine is at the center of the cosmic system, and capable of manifesting ever-new qualities and forces and powers and values. But we do not attempt to limit the Divine to this, because He is multi-dimensional in nature, multiform in character, beyond any logical ideas or mental expressions. He is richer than all the spiritual powers of which we are aware. We also reconstruct the old theological values. In creative evolution, man is not the center of creation. But if we have the right understanding of life this does not demean or degrade the human being. Instead of being proud or self-conceited, we will see ourselves cast in a nobler role—that of an active participant in the significant problem of world evolution. Evolution repudiated the idea of God as external to the world. That idea is an anachronism today. God is beyond, but also in the world. He is involved in the world as the “creative principle which is at the center of the universe, and is capable of manifesting itself in infinitely diverse 10 THE CREATIVE ASPECT OF EVOLUTION ways…” which is unfolding itself more and more in the process of evolution, in the historical order, in the flux of time. In this diversity, the principle advance of evolution now is and will be a heightening of consciousness. Rational man has appeared through the expansion of intellect, and spiritual man will appear by the growth of the soul in man. That is why Christ said, “The Kingdom of God is within you.” When we understand God in this way, “the objections of science and philosophy are met.” God at the center of the universe is the re-vitalizing, renewing power of the world, who guides and controls the evolutionary process. If anyone asks, “What is the nature of the divine creativity?” and asks whether it should be called Life Force, Cosmic Will, Creative Logos, Universal Mind, etc., we may well reply that it is “human stupidity to ascribe any specific nature or determinate essence to God.” We may describe the Divine from different standpoints and in different ways, all of which have a relative validity; but the Divine essentially transcends all specific forms, essences and structures. That is why the ancient Hebrews would allow no statues or graven images of God. As infinite creativity, God is also absolute freedom. He is personal and impersonal, one and many, in and beyond the world. He guides us to perfection, light, and the immortal. The process of evolution is now in travail with the production of still higher powers and values in human existence, namely, the embodiment of supra-mentality in divinized manhood on earth. In this higher manhood will be “the overflowering of the Divine 11 in collective humanity,” and the emergence of a new world order of peace, progress and unity. This was the kind of evolutionist that Christ was. He taught that men had to be born again to enter the Kingdom of God. They had to evolve, change to something different and of a higher order—something unprecedented. When he was pressed to answer how this could be, to give a description, he answered, “Do not marvel that I said to you that you must be born anew. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes or whither it goes; so it is with everyone that is born of the spirit… if I have told you earthly things and you have not believed, how can you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended from heaven, the son of man.” Thus did Christ teach that man who has been born of the mind will yet be born of the spirit, and the world society that now is will be born into the Kingdom of God on earth. 12 ILOSOPH I N CH IV RESEAR ERSITY AL O C F PH U 2001 The University of Philosophical Research 3910 Los Feliz Boulevard Los Angeles, CA 90027 www.uprs.edu