In 1803, before Charles Darwin was even born, his grandfather Erasmus Darwin published a lengthy poem celebrating the beauty of the evolutionary history of all life on earth...
Here's a small excerpt from "The Temple of Nature":
http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Darwin/temple1.html
"ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nursed in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing."
Hmmmm... I thought Evolution was all about objective science and reason prevailing over faith-based dogmas?
How did these guys already 'know' Evolution was true *before* the advent of scientific theories supposedly demonstrating it? A feeling, a hunch, an educated guess?
Actually the Darwins and other students of the Enlightenment were simply resurrecting an ancient dogma.
Briefly stated, this ancient dogma is the "alchemical" view of nature.... a thoroughly mystical belief that nature itself has the power to transform itself from an initial primitive state into all the diverse physical forms we see today.
"Proposals that one type of animal, even humans, could descend from other types of animals, are known to go back to the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610 – 546 BC) proposed that the first animals lived in water, during a wet phase of the Earth's past, and that the first land-dwelling ancestors of mankind must have been born in water..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought#Antiquity
Evolution is a hidden dogma, a mystical, quasi-religious creation narrative that was held to faithfully by the very progenitors of our modern scientific institutions. The 'learned societies' of the 17th-19th centuries, the students of the Enlightenment that propelled the ancient "nature as creator" dogma into the modern age. And for all the scientific progress these societies and institutions have made, the essential idea of Evolution (Nature as creator) was never and will never be up for debate within them.
The Evolutionary creation story - the unfolding of all of the diversity of nature by the intrinsic power of nature itself - will simply be revised and refined as knowledge increases. But that fundamental belief in Evolution is not allowed tobe questioned. It would be like Christian institutions questioning whether the Bible is inspired by God. The very question negates the assumption the institution is built on.
In some cases, we'll actually see this dogma freely admitted. Take modern "Origin of Life" (abiogenesis) studies for example. Within our scientific institutions, it is simply taken for granted that IT HAPPENED. "Nature created life, we just need to figure out how.". Only the HOW is to be questioned, but never IF it happened. Here we have this ancient dogma exposed for all to see. And we see that the scientific institutions are not even equipped to question that central dogma that nature is the creator of all things.
It's not hard to see... this shouldn't even be controversial if we're being honest with ourselves... It's just a hard pill to swallow for people who were sold flimsy "science vs. religion" mythology all their lives by these same authorities.
Here's a small excerpt from "The Temple of Nature":
http://knarf.english.upenn.edu/Darwin/temple1.html
"ORGANIC LIFE beneath the shoreless waves
Was born and nursed in Ocean's pearly caves;
First forms minute, unseen by spheric glass,
Move on the mud, or pierce the watery mass;
These, as successive generations bloom
New powers acquire, and larger limbs assume;
Whence countless groups of vegetation spring,
And breathing realms of fin, and feet, and wing."
Hmmmm... I thought Evolution was all about objective science and reason prevailing over faith-based dogmas?
How did these guys already 'know' Evolution was true *before* the advent of scientific theories supposedly demonstrating it? A feeling, a hunch, an educated guess?
Actually the Darwins and other students of the Enlightenment were simply resurrecting an ancient dogma.
Briefly stated, this ancient dogma is the "alchemical" view of nature.... a thoroughly mystical belief that nature itself has the power to transform itself from an initial primitive state into all the diverse physical forms we see today.
"Proposals that one type of animal, even humans, could descend from other types of animals, are known to go back to the first pre-Socratic Greek philosophers. Anaximander of Miletus (c. 610 – 546 BC) proposed that the first animals lived in water, during a wet phase of the Earth's past, and that the first land-dwelling ancestors of mankind must have been born in water..."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_evolutionary_thought#Antiquity
Evolution is a hidden dogma, a mystical, quasi-religious creation narrative that was held to faithfully by the very progenitors of our modern scientific institutions. The 'learned societies' of the 17th-19th centuries, the students of the Enlightenment that propelled the ancient "nature as creator" dogma into the modern age. And for all the scientific progress these societies and institutions have made, the essential idea of Evolution (Nature as creator) was never and will never be up for debate within them.
The Evolutionary creation story - the unfolding of all of the diversity of nature by the intrinsic power of nature itself - will simply be revised and refined as knowledge increases. But that fundamental belief in Evolution is not allowed tobe questioned. It would be like Christian institutions questioning whether the Bible is inspired by God. The very question negates the assumption the institution is built on.
In some cases, we'll actually see this dogma freely admitted. Take modern "Origin of Life" (abiogenesis) studies for example. Within our scientific institutions, it is simply taken for granted that IT HAPPENED. "Nature created life, we just need to figure out how.". Only the HOW is to be questioned, but never IF it happened. Here we have this ancient dogma exposed for all to see. And we see that the scientific institutions are not even equipped to question that central dogma that nature is the creator of all things.
It's not hard to see... this shouldn't even be controversial if we're being honest with ourselves... It's just a hard pill to swallow for people who were sold flimsy "science vs. religion" mythology all their lives by these same authorities.
