“Prominent scientists are speaking out against Darwinian evolution, and they’re not even creationists.”

This article brings up a lot of points to be dealt with for creationist opponents.

It’s first of all encouraging that a number of researchers are indeed, despite real threats to their livelihood, going with at least a portion of the data instead of with the “standard consensus.” Obviously we do not agree with everything they say, but tip of the hat when one is deserved.

That brings up a second point, that the standard consensus is powerful and can be career-breaking. A great portion of any politicized science is simply a turf war. And that leads to a third point that is critically important to us; notice how AiG makes a big deal of the turf war. It is, in effect, a letter to all of us of how it’s important to disagree without being disagreeable, as the old proverb says.

Michael Behe’s new book, Darwin Devolves, which I am half way through, refers to this growing dissatisfaction among the scientific elite (and young up-and-coming scientists) with Neo-Darwinism. In my opinion it will eventually be replaced by a cosmic pan-psychism, but we’ll see.

Behe’s “The Edge of Evolution” is available on digital audio book at my library, and I’ll probably get it soon. I actually want to read Darwin, too.

Tyler, do you mean Behe’s book, or Origin of Species? I read the latter, and my general impression was that Darwin writes well, but his conclusions at the end of each chapter suffer a lot from the “non sequitur” “Deus ex machina” technique, where nothing quite follows, but he goes with it anyways.

I mean “Origin of Species.” My problem is that I really, really find science uninteresting. I hate reading anything on it. I need to read Darwin and Behe, but I suspect I’ll hate them just because I never enjoy reading this subject matter.

Darwin is actually a very engaging read—remember his degree is in theology, not science. Now Newton, that’s difficult, and not just because it’s in translation. (he wrote originally in Latin)

In my opinion it will eventually be replaced by a cosmic pan-psychism, but we’ll see.

@Paul: Interesting to read that. Do you have any authors you’ve seen trending that way?

When I read Jordan Peterson’s Twelve Rules for Life (just to get a sense of what all the hype is about), and subsequently tried to find out exactly what he thinks of God, he’s really squishy on any kind of theology proper, but I almost got the sense that he thought of our consciousness as almost the universe looking back at itself. Not that Peterson is in the hard sciences.

Michael,

I don’t have any mainline scientists who I can quote, but I believe the multiverse theory (which is embraced by e.g. Eugene Koonin) wedded to the coming migration away from Neo-Darwinism (though I wouldn’t give a timeline), plus the research coming from the Near-death experiences community, will set people’s minds in that direction.

A philosopher who has gone this way is Richard Tarnas, author of the important book The Passion of the Western Mind. His book Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View is a rigorous combination of philosophy, science and astrology (yes, astrology). Since the history of religions shows a tendency towards pantheism I personally think this way will flourish in our irrational times.

But I’m guessing here

Thanks for the pointers.

I’m not terribly surprised that astrology could get thrown in. If you’re a pure materialist, sure, astrology is ridiculous. But if you start with a mysterious universe that already includes some kind of soul-matter dualism in the primorial state, it’s not prima facie silly to think that the alignment of the stars may constitute the universes’s “self-expressiveness” or something. Bringing it back to Jordan Peterson, he unblushingly gives a lot of credence to the meaning of dreams, as if our dreams give us access ot the deep structures of our situation and being that we might not think of during conscious periods.

Peterson is more a disciple of Jung than Jesus