The Neo-Darwinists that we spoke of in the last mailing have developed the logic implicit in Darwin's theory of biological evolution to its utmost extent. The emergence of, say, the human race isn't the result of the unfolding of some great preformed plan; instead, it is the accidental end result of a whole chain of events, involving all sorts of material phenomena and organisms, stretching right back to the beginning of time. Human beings need not have existed at all. Any alteration in the nature of the environmental challenges facing life as it emerged over the past millions of years could arguably have produced a totally different result.
Well, this is what they say . . . and in terms of the classical Darwinian theory it would seem to be correct. There is no overriding purpose winding its way through the genes of a whole sequence of intermediate creatures and leading intentionally and ultimately to humanity. If we are shaped at all, then it is by the environment, and the whole series of problems it poses for life as it emerges. The accidental factors that allow some species, or some members of species, to survive in situations where others go down to extinction are the very things that give creation its 'ultimate' form.
As I say, this is the Neo-Darwinian contention . . . and the consequences arising from that contention. But it all depends on the continuing validity of the classical Darwinian model—something over which there is still much debate in scientific circles.
Now, in general, the Neo-Darwinian scientists and philosophers tend also not to emphasise the implied creative role of the environment in the classical scheme of things, for such a thing allows for the possible re-emergence of the idea of purpose in a new guise; i.e. God may not have crammed the plans for the eventual emergence of human beings in the very first cell created, but he could achieve much the same result by orchestrating the environment in suitable ways.
And this is the great no, no of modern materialist or atheistic philosophy and science, whether in relation to the gene or the environment. There is no room for purpose or meaning in their scheme of things. To speak of either is to allow the possibility of a way back in for the existence of God and for religion. And this is why they are so intent on denying any role to purpose or meaning in the universe—beyond, that is, the limited purposes of conscious beings—and insist instead that everything has come about purely by accident.
I raised the question in my last posting as to whether the atheism was a consequence of science, or the particular variant of science we are discussing a consequence of atheism. In my opinion the latter is predominantly the case. The atheists and materialists have embraced classical Darwinism primarily because it seems to reinforce their beliefs, or the lack of them. Nor is there any room for agnosticism on the matter. Under the new dispensation one is not allowed to park one's doubts or personal beliefs off-campus, as it were. Materialist philosophy and science now hold the soapbox, and unless you can explain and justify your opinions in terms purely of mechanistic science then you are likely to be shouted down.
I asked a philosophy lecturer once—the same one as mentioned in an earlier posting—what would happen to meaning in the absence of belief in God, and her reply was along the lines that we will create our own meanings. Possibly what she said was that we would create our own meanings, in the plural. I don't exactly recall, but in any event the result would be the same.
Now in the world of men, the world of four dimensional reality, there are no fixed meanings. Everything changes over time. But in relation to the bigger questions—the 'What's it all about?' type questions—the search is for a meaning (let's capitalise it: a Meaning) that stands outside the limitations of space and time. A transcendent Meaning, never changing, and that explains once and for all the basis and the purpose of existence.
If we were to look at it, say, from the Christian point of view—and here I am, as the Yanks say, to some extent 'winging' it; for I am not at all qualified to speak in this department. But, as I say, if we were to look at it from the Christian viewpoint, then it would seem that the Meaning of life, and of everything else that is, could be summed up basically as follows: God exists; the universe and all that it contains, including human life, was created by God—and created to a purpose, which purpose involves man's submission to and cooperation with the Will of God, as ultimately made known through Revelation.
Another way of looking at it is that God and the Will of God provide the fixed and unchanging amphitheatre within which the small contingent dramas and meanings of human life are constantly coming into production and then passing away.
The problem for the rational materialist and his point of view is that where there are meanings there can be no meaning. The seven or so billion human beings in the world do not speak with a unified voice—in fact there are some seven billion individual voices. And with each voice potentially an individual meaning. Even if by some miracle (and here we are really entering the world of fantasy) everybody in the world could agree on a shared meaning, it would only have currency during the lifetime of those who had framed it. There is no way it could be made binding on subsequent generations, each of which would under the logic of the Neo-Darwinist agenda be free to come up with its own meanings, general and individual.
The other point, of course, is that if meanings are to be purely the product of mankind, then one man's meaning is basically as good as another's. In the world of man-made meanings, what is there to distinguish Hitler's meaning from Christ's, Gandhi's from Mao's, the Buddha's from Lenin's? They are all human meanings, and since there is no ultimate Meaning, one is arguably as legitimate as any other.
The cry of course will go up that any overarching secular meaning must at root be humanitarian. But why should this be so? Secularism and atheism and materialism have plundered the storehouses of the revealed world religions for many of their moral ideas—ideas which, whatever the doctrinal differences that may lie between them, are more or less commonly shared among all the great religions. But from the philosophical point of view this is, of course, no justification for the validity of such ideas. All ideas, whether they are at root humanitarian or involve the triumph of the will or the race or the class, have to justify themselves independently before the court of 'reason'.
And basically in the materialist world of Godless 'accident', there is no fixed and immovable starting point for 'reason', no unchallengeable position from which one with any certainty can argue, either backwards towards or forwards from, to the effect that, for example, logically such-and-such a thing is true, because, in turn, such-and-such another thing is true . . .all leading back ultimately to some fixed and undeniable assertion that by its very nature must be true, and that acts as a foundation plinth for everything else.
Describing the 'flaw' that lies at the foundations of all seemingly rational chains of argument, a flaw which he describes as 'the premise about the limits of rationality', the philosopher William Warren Bartley goes on to detail how this 'premise—which arises out of the need to stem an infinite regress and from the fact that arbitrary dogmatic commitment seems to be the only way to do this—can be explained as follows. No matter what belief is advanced, someone can always challenge it with: "How do you know?" and "Give me a reason." Unless this procedure is to go on forever, it must be halted at a "standard," "criterion," "ulimate presupposition," "end," or "goal" whose authority is simply accepted' (The Retreat to Commitment: William Warren Bartley, Chatto and Windus, 1964).
In other words, to the extent that most religions take their ultimate stand on some form of revelation, the rationalists do much the same thing, except that instead of revelation it involves some subjective starting point of their own, a process, from the point of view of reason, as logically flawed as that of their religious opponents. While Christians, for example, ground their religions ultimately in the God of Revelation, the materialist rationalists, while all the time denying the fact, ground theirs instead in some metaphorical 'god' of their own subjectivist choosing.
One might get the impression from this posting that, compared to religious authoritarianism, the left-liberal agenda offers the posibility of a broader smörgåsbord of alternative beliefs and meanings. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, it arguably offers less.
The fact is that there must generally always be a prevailing worldview, a consensus, whether arrived at voluntarily or enforced. The present struggle isn't between an authoritarian Church (or churches) and a more liberal 'let it all hang out' philosophy. Rather it is between two authoritarianisms, one theistic, the other atheistic.
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