Charles Darwin

The two-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Darwin is being celebrated this year, so it seems an appropriate time to look at his defining work “Origin of Species” from the point of view of a Spiritualist.

There were Naturalists before Charles Darwin of course but there is no doubt that the publication of his book “The Origin of Species” led to them being considered as serious scientists for the first time. It also shocked the world and brought about other profound changes. Indeed some would argue the gradual change it brought in human understanding was one of the most profound. This affected not just the way naturalists thought and were regarded but also how ordinary people viewed religion and the nature and history of humanity itself. Its effect on the rise of materialism as a viable alternative to religion is undoubted. Without it Engels and Marx would have had fewer disciples and perhaps the advent of Dialectic Materialism and Communism would have been much delayed or not been invented at all.

Charles Darwin was advancing a theory but backed by the fossil and other evidence from his researches on the Galapagos Islands and elsewhere, it was very convincing. The Christian church at the time of publication was the most influential and feared power in the Western world, maybe even in the entire world. For this reason Darwin refused to publish for many years, preferring post mortem publication. He knew the awesome influence the church wielded over the careers of scientists. He only published when forced to do so by the threat of pre-emption from a colleague. When “Origin” appeared the church stood aghast and refused to accept Darwin’s interpretation of his investigations and to a degree still does so to this day. Evolution and ‘the survival of the fittest’ ran contrary to the church doctrine that God had created man specially and what’s more, “in His own image”. One can imagine the ribald cartoons at the time depicting the image of God now it was known our closest relatives were chimpanzees!

When I look back and think about the furore created by Darwin, I think how unnecessary it all was. Had the church, driven I suppose by the desire to extend its power and influence, not been so arrogant as to pronounce dogmatically on matters temporal, all this could have been avoided. If only it had always stuck to its spiritual last …! However, this is to ignore human nature. Darwin’s theory of evolution describes the origin and growth of animals and man as physical beings. Because of the unwise utterances of the church and its insistence that it was infallible, his most extreme followers were able to infer that Darwin had proved man to be nothing but a physical being, the latest and to date the most effective adaptation of animal life. In other words he had destroyed God and debunked all things spiritual.

One object in writing this is to persuade you such an interpretation is nonsense and to explain why I believe that. We, as modern human beings, have a great compulsion to compartmentalise our studies, unlike earlier ages where holistic study was considered de rigueur. Although the advent of specialisation has enabled us to learn ‘more and more about less and less’, I sometimes wonder if the price has not been too high. There is no doubt the greater material prosperity of the developed world, as it is called, owes much to this specialisation but the price has been to make many people more selfish and less caring about one another, about life that shares this planet with us and about the environment. The development of material prosperity necessitated people moving from small towns and villages, where ‘everyone knew everyone else’, into large cities where anonymity is the rule rather than the exception. From working in small groups or at home, people now worked in factories and large offices. The trauma caused by these aspects of the industrial revolution has had two major impacts. First it has separated human beings from everyday contact with the natural world and its rhythms and secondly it has separated us from our innate understanding of the essential unity of creation. I believe it has also made many people more dependent on the state and/ or the company and less willing to think for themselves.

Human beings have always felt there is more to life than just the short span spent on this earth. We have always created religions of one sort or another. No race of people in any part of the world has ever been found, who did not as a general religious principle, accept that life continues beyond physical death. Who are we to scoff at the earliest attempts to interpret life in terms of Gods of various forms and accuse such people of ignorance and superstition? Most people, especially in the Western world have accepted the claims of the scientists, physicists in particular, without question. They have been persuaded to view everything in physical terms. If you can’t see, touch, taste, hear or smell something, it doesn’t exist. To be fair one has to add, or measure it with scientific instruments. The problem with this is how can we claim our five physical senses or scientific instruments are adequate in all circumstances? We know our senses are imperfect. There is an enormous range of sound our ears are not designed to hear and the visible spectrum is only a small fraction of the entire spectrum of light and colour. Our senses of touch, smell and taste are just as deficient and scientific instruments must be of limited application because they are designed and built by these same imperfect, deficient human beings. What ingenuousness to accept without question the materialistic claims of scientists and yet in the same breath describe as superstition, the belief there is more to life than material existence!

Lionel

This is an extract from my book "Please God Why?" which can be obtained by visiting www.spiritteach.net