Evolution and Spirituality

Introduction

The theory of evolution has set scientists against conservative Christians ever since Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Recent skirmishes reported in New Scientist magazine include:
•    A US Federal Court ruling in 2005 that the alternative theory of intelligent design, put forward by believers in creation by God, is a religious belief and should not be taught in Pennsylvania schools;
•    The distribution less than a year later of intelligent design resource packs to all secondary schools in Britain; and
•    The convening by the Pope last year of a seminar to resolve growing divisions on evolution within the Catholic Church.
This on-going war of attrition prompts several questions: Why is evolution so controversial? What is the theory of evolution, and how is it changing in the light of recent research? Is the theory really incompatible with religious belief? Or is there a middle-ground in which science and spirituality can live harmoniously together?

Why is evolution such a hot issue?

To fundamentalist Christians, the Bible is the inspired Word of God which should be interpreted literally. It tells us that God created the universe in 6 days, and some analyses of biblical texts suggest that this happened just several thousand years ago. These ‘truths’ are challenged by the idea that the cosmos and life have evolved in a continuous creative process over billions of years. Worse, most scientists seek to explain existence and life without reference to a designer or creator, thus undermining faith in God. Less directly, the religious backlash may reflect rejection of the scientific doctrine that life is a meaningless, purposeless accident. In the face of this nihilism, fundamentalism provides reassuringly certain answers to life’s big questions.

To scientists, evolution has become the final battleground on which they must defend the freedom from religious dogmatism, bigotry and intellectual repression that they have fought so hard to win over the last few centuries. There is fear of a return to the dark days when truth was determined by priestly authority rather than reason and experiment, and even, perhaps, of renewed persecution by a modern Inquisition. Sadly, in their crusading zeal scientists such as Richard Dawkins – author of The Selfish Gene and The God Delusion - often mount the platform of dogma and authority from which religion has so recently been displaced.
At one level, then, this is a turf war between rival High Priests. At another level, it’s a debate about life’s greatest questions: Who am I? Where did I come from? and Why am I here?

Evolution and Intelligent Design

As our scientific understanding grows, it seems more and more evident that evolution is a fundamental principle of the cosmos – but not necessarily in the way we currently think of it. The term is actually used in two different senses. The first refers to a gradual process of development or growth that leads to a more advanced or complex form. Thus, the universe is said to have evolved to its current state from the intense energy of the Big Bang. The second meaning relates to the biological process first described by Darwin by which species of living things change from generation to generation, leading to the emergence of new species.
In the last few decades, systems sciences have revealed that many quite simple non-living systems have the ability to organize themselves into new structures and processes. Good examples are mixtures of chemical reagents which develop spatial patterns of concentration, or ‘chemical clocks’ in which the concentration varies rhythmically over time. In such systems, tiny disturbances may be sufficient to trigger evolution to a new, but unpredictable, stable state. At the cosmic scale, self-organization led to the emergence of matter, stars and galaxies, life and consciousness in a process of continuous creation. Many scientists now believe this reflects an as-yet undiscovered ‘law of complexification’ that drives cosmic evolution.

Most controversy, however, centers on the evolution of living things, which Darwinian theory portrays as a two-stage process. First, random genetic mutations create variations amongst the organisms in a species. Second, natural selection weeds out those variants which are less well suited to their environment. In this way, new traits arise by chance that either die out or spread through the population. Individual organisms and species are powerless victims of this process.

This picture of evolution is being challenged from within science as well as by creationists. Research is revealing that organisms have considerable influence over their destiny, and continually strive to transcend their current forms and environmental constraints. It has been demonstrated that not all mutations are chance events, many arising from ‘experiments’ in which the organism switches specific genes on or off, or even modifies its own genes. And some learned behaviours actually may become encoded in the genes and be inherited by offspring – an idea that was branded as rank heresy until recently.

Similar challenges are emerging with regards to natural selection. It is now clear that, rather than being passive victims of environmental conditions, organisms actively modify their environments and pass on those changes to their offspring just as human parents may pass on the house they have built to their children. For example, countless generations of earthworms created the soil which now forms a perfect habitat for earthworms.
Further, studies of development from single cell to maturity are showing that the process is not controlled by master genes as current theory suggests, but is coordinated by self-organising processes that involve the organism’s structure, biochemistry, electromagnetic fields and environment as well as its genes and gene expression. Thus natural selection is not an all-powerful creative force as it is usually portrayed. Rather, it can do no more than select from a menu of alternatives made possible by self-organization, and then fine-tune these structures and processes.

Darwinian theory also represents natural selection as a fierce competition for survival between organisms. But organisms depend totally for their survival on being part of a harmoniously cooperative ecosystem – the interactive whole that provides their nutrition, shelter from harsh weather, conditions for reproduction and so on. From this perspective it is the most cooperative, or symbiotic, that survive, not the most competitive.

Intelligent Design theory challenges Darwinian evolution on different grounds. It focuses on characteristics of organisms that appear to be too complex to have evolved by chance, and hence require the involvement of an intelligent designer. This ‘God of the gaps’ strategy has been used by supporters of divine creation ever since Darwin’s day. And it is a story of forced retreat, step by step, as science’s understanding has increased.
Intelligent Design gains indirect support from a number of mainstream studies that have concluded there has not been enough time for random mutations and natural selection to produce life as we know it today. However, as we have seen, the emerging evolutionary science does not rely on chance and necessity but includes the active involvement of organisms themselves. It seems likely that, in time, science will be able to explain all aspects of the evolution of life – but the explanation will be very different to the simplistic Darwinian theory.

So where does this leave us? To me at least, the evidence is overwhelming that evolution is a fundamental property of the cosmos; that life has evolved, and is still evolving, in a continuing creative process; and that, far from being at the mercy of blind forces, life is substantially master of its own destiny. Does this mean that there is no room for belief in a creative God or Spirit? Far from it. By combining ancient spiritual wisdom with the insights of modern science, we can reveal a far richer and more complete picture of the cosmos.

The Ultimate Mystery and Gnostic Cosmology

In their book Jesus and the Goddess, Timothy Freke and Peter Gandy describe Gnostic beliefs about creation. The Gnostics, who were contemporaneous with the early Christians, recognised that there is a Mystery at the heart of existence; that, no matter how far back scientists trace cause and effect, there will always remain the questions: “Why is there something rather than nothing?” and “Where did that come from?”

Gnostics believed that the ultimate Mystery is One; an undivided whole that is pregnant with potential consciousness. In some indefinable way, this Mystery wanted to know itself, to become self-aware. But consciousness and self-awareness require both a knower and what is known, an observer and what is observed, a subject and object, a witness and experience. Hence, in order to know itself, the Mystery had to split into two, thus introducing duality into the primal Oneness. This has variously been described as the split between God and Goddess, Spirit and soul, One and many, Being and becoming, Eternal Perfection and evolution. This first split was followed by a cascade of further divisions through which Cosmic Consciousness brought the universe into existence, shaping the potential of the mysterious One into energy, matter, life and consciousness as we know it.

This myth suggests that the purpose of the universe is to achieve full self-awareness. What this means can be illustrated by analogy with a wheel that has a central hub connected by spokes to many separate segments of rim. Cosmic Consciousness is fully aware of itself as the hub at the centre, and of all the conscious beings in the universe represented by the segments of the rim to which it is connected by the spokes. But each segment of the rim, each separate being, is aware only of itself and the hub to which it is linked by a spoke. Complete self-knowledge would require all parts of the rim, all beings, to awaken to their true nature as integral parts of the one wheel.

The exact way in which this evolutionary goal will be achieved was left undefined by the One at creation because true self-awareness would not be possible if the nature of spirituality and the path to this cosmic goal were predetermined. There are many possible forms that cosmic self-knowledge can take, and the One left us with creative freedom to choose our own ways. 
From this Gnostic perspective, the universe is in continual creation. Rather than making the universe according to a fixed and final design, the One set in motion an exploratory, experimental process. Not only is the outcome of this process unknown, but also we and all other evolving creatures are co-creators with the One, and all matter is imbued with the Spirit and Consciousness of the One.

Conclusion

As far as we can tell, evolution is one of the most fundamental characteristics of our universe. It is a process of continual, creative change, development and transformation; a continual striving of matter and life to transcend its present state, to become something more than it is – more complex, more diverse, more conscious.

How is it that such a wonderful, creative process has come to be seen as anti-religious, non-spiritual? Evolution is a beautiful, mystical process that, for me, reveals all the wonder and power and creativity of Spirit. It is a way of creating that leaves us genuine freedom to understand the universe, and to co-create it by working with the processes and laws of nature. It reveals the hand and mind of God, whilst leaving us free to create our own myths and metaphors of the ineffable Mystery.