British philosopher Neil Thomas, author of Taking Leave of Darwin (2021), offers some thoughts in this first of a series:
Strange as it might at first appear, Darwinism, when viewed from a philosophical perspective, might more accurately be understood as a late sub-branch of ancient speculative thought than as science in the more rigorous, modern sense of that term. Indeed, some classically educated contemporaries of Darwin saw in his ideas little but a 19th-century rehash of thoughts that they had once studied in ancient Greek and Latin authors in their university days. “I cannot understand why you scientific people make such a fuss about Darwin. Why, it’s all in Lucretius,” harrumphed Victorian educator and poet Matthew Arnold to a biology professor in his circle.1
For the ancient Greek writer Epicurus and his later Roman follower, Lucretius, the entire mystery of the world’s awe-inducing complexity was to be sought in different shapes and objects generated at random by the chance interaction of elements.
Neil Thomas, “Charles Darwin and the ghost of Epicurus” at Evolution News and Science Today (January 25, 2022)
One way of looking at it: Darwinism enabled thinkers to retain the thought of Epicurus and Lucretius when, in general, the thinkers themselves were forgotten.
Although Darwinists assume, indeed adamantly insist, that reductive materialism is true,
,,, despite the seemingly unshakable Darwinian belief that reductive materialism is true, the fact of the matter is that science itself, particularly advances in Quantum Mechanics, have falsified their belief that reductive materialism is, or can possibly be, true.
As Werner Heisenberg himself stated, “I think that modern physics has definitely decided in favor of Plato, (i.e. against Epicurus). In fact the smallest units of matter are not physical objects in the ordinary sense; they are forms, ideas which can be expressed unambiguously only in mathematical language.”
And as Eugene Wigner himself once stated, “while many philosophical ideas “may be logically consistent with present quantum mechanics… materialism is not.”
Perhaps the clearest empirical falsification of reductive materialism is the following delayed choice experiment that was done with atoms, (instead of being done with photons of light as it is usually done).
As lead researcher and physicist Andrew Truscott stated, “It proves that measurement is everything. At the quantum level, reality does not exist if you are not looking at it,”
As should be needless to say, atoms not existing until we measure them is a direct experimental falsification of the Darwinians’s atheistic belief that material particles are the ultimate substratum upon which everything else is based..
Moreover, although Darwinian materialists may falsely, and adamantly, insist that all of science is based upon the presupposition of reductive materialism and/or ‘methodological naturalism’, the fact of the matter is that atheistic materialism had NOTHING whatsoever to do with the founding of modern science.
In fact, to the consternation of atheists, it is found that modern science, far from being based upon materialistic presuppositions, was born directly out of Judeo-Christian presuppositions, and that modern science is still very much dependent on presuppositions that can only be grounded within the Judeo-Christian worldview.
Stephen Meyer, in his recent book, “Return of the God hypothesis”, lists the three necessary Christian presuppositions that lay at the founding of modern science in Medieval Christian Europe as such.
As Paul Davies himself honestly admitted, “even the most atheistic scientist accepts as an act of faith that the universe is not absurd, that there is a rational basis to physical existence manifested as law-like order in nature that is at least partly comprehensible to us. So science can proceed only if the scientist adopts an essentially theological worldview.”
Thus, directly contrary to what Darwinian atheists repeatedly try to claim, all of science, every nook and cranny of it, is based on the presupposition of Intelligent Design and is certainly not based on their presupposition of reductive materialism and/or methodological naturalism.
Moreover, insisting on naturalistic explanations, i.e. methodological naturalism, (over and above Theistic explanations), no matter what the empirical evidence says to the contrary, ends up driving science itself into catastrophic epistemological failure.
Thus, although the Darwinian Atheist and/or Methodological Naturalist may firmly believe that he is on the terra firma of science (in his appeal, even demand, for naturalistic explanations over and above God as a viable explanation), the fact of the matter is that, when examining the details of his materialistic/naturalistic worldview, it is found that Darwinists/Atheists themselves are adrift in an ocean of fantasy and imagination with no discernible anchor for reality to grab on to.
It would be hard to fathom a worldview more antagonistic to modern science, indeed more antagonistic to reality itself, than Atheistic materialism and/or methodological naturalism have turned out to be.
Thomas’ writing reminds me of a quip by Howard Cosell: Why use a one-syllable word when a four syllable one will suffice….”
ChuckyD, so your response to Thomas exposing Darwinism as, basically, a rehashed, long scorned, philosophy from the ancient Greeks, rather than as being a hard and testable science, is to complain that he is using too big of words to do so?
It seems that someone who uses Charles Darwin name as his blogging handle would be a bit more concerned with what Neil Thomas is actually doing to Darwin’s theory. Namely, dismantling it piece by piece via placing it in its proper historical, and philosophical, context.
Your supposed literary criticism aside, I find his historical and philosophical criticisms of Darwin’s theory to be VERY well informed and, frankly, devastating to Darwin’s theory.
Yet, here you sit ChuckyD, playing the black knight to the hilt, impervious to it all, and defiantly saying ’tis but a scratch’.
Affirmative, BA. “I’ve had worse”
BA77@ 3
Pretty much. It’s not a science book, so it doesn’t really bear on contemporary evolutionary biology. It simply carries on DI’s attacks on Darwin. Ironically, the first headline on UD as I write this, introduces a brand-new book called Darwinian Racism: How Darwinism Influenced Hitler, Nazism, and White Nationalism , also published by the Discovery Institute Press. Talk about piling on………