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ToE a blow to the idea of god?
in Philosophy
If natural selection can explain life and its evolution, why introduce god or any other factor?
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Remember 2500 years ago, the Buddha was already talking about other worlds, the universe etc. Also natural selection and evolution can be explained by dependant origination.
Um... plus god or other factors do offer easy explanations to things we don't understand, and things we feel deep within us. A God of the Gaps.
What is it that "selects" exactly?
Now we should stop with all these science vs religion debates ... of which there seem to be many recently... and get to work with the tools we have.
The Eight-fold path.
Project duality. Since there is a self there has to be an other.
God is just a big other. We are all born theists. We all believe in some kind of other or some kind of objectivity. Even our doubt is a reaction which in turns solidifies the external. All our little theories on how this world works is just more fuel for the dualistic view that we project onto this world.
This isn't to say there is no god but rather god is arisen due to our ignorance.
But forget the god concept and let's work with something more concrete say like our friends or parents.
To us they seem so real, so solid, so fixed. These aren't even ideas we hold but rather we feel this in our bones, in our basic sense of intuition of this world. Of course they're real,
Solid, etc.
See this is the same duality proposing god and self. The same bond we are projecting, interpreting and living with.
This solidity we give things is the cause to all our suffering.
We are completely ignorant of this. And for the most part I don't see
Many people breaking through to see the voidness of all these reference points we project.
And in many cases it freaks people out. It's a hard pill to swallow. Intellectually it's a nice idea. Oh everything is unreal. But if one really sees it for a minute even for a second they can't handle it.
Oh and truly many people come to god as a social element.
We cling to all our little ideas until we're
Fearless enough to drop all of it and to be authentic with our condition. And this condition is the god principal we are all seeking, except without the dualistic lense. No who, where, when, it, etc.
This whole world and its condition is the truth body of the buddha and each luminous arising is the magical display. Completely empty, yet completely vivid.
Science and God are not far apart. Both signify mystery and the unknown. Both different means to express and recognize the unknown.
Buddhism isn't about that though. It is about suffering and the end of suffering. Not about ontological stance on whether the TOE or if God is real/unreal, etc. Even if we understood everything and we recognized that God was real, would our condition change? Would our basic ignorance change? Can knowledge take away our basic sense of suffering/stress?
This isn't to dismiss these ideas, but rather we should all examine our motivation/intention for studying and practicing Buddhism. And to find God, to find the answers the universe are all valid but completely secondary because Buddhism deals with perception itself.
My long ass rant is finished.
Why you think that means there shouldn't be such discussions, however, I don't understand. And if you don't want to participate in them, then don't. There are lots of discussions here on the forum just I stay out of, sometimes because they don't interest me, other times because I am bored with the repetitiveness of them.
But, you do make a valid point that we have the tools to work with our lives, either with or without such debates.
Looking back at human history, both ideas about the origins of life have been present in some shape or form since at least the beginning of recorded history. In ancient Greece, for example, one can find philosophers who held what can be considered rudimentary theories of evolution. The same goes for Buddhism, e.g., when taken literally, the creation myth in DN 27 can be seen as an attempt to give a naturalistic explanation of the origins of life and the universe, and the Buddha gives what can easily be interpreted as a rough theory of evolution in that the physical characteristics of the mythological beings in question change due to environmental changes and interactions.
That said, many who study human history (particularly anthropologists) believe that the idea that an unseen being or beings created, controlled, and/or influenced the natural world came first, in the midst of our prehistorical evolution, and was a fairly sophisticated idea, stemming from early observations of the natural world for which early humans developed creative ways of explaining. Changes were observed, and many early humans hypothesized that invisible spirits were responsible for some of them, partially due to the perceived distinction between immaterial and material phenomena (e.g., mind and matter), and partially due to early humans conceiving themselves on more or less equal footing with other animals, plant life, and natural forces based upon early, animistic beliefs (e.g., see Ideas That Changed the World by Felipe Fernandez-Armesto).
I think that by taking a broader look at the history of ideas, it becomes a bit clearer how these kinds of ideas not only influenced the political, social, and cultural environments in which they arose (i.e., in the early days of human history and evolution), but how they have continued to influence much of our thinking in modern historical times as well, albeit in more sophisticated and innovative forms. Regardless of their objective validity, they're an integral part of our cultural, intellectual, political, and social history, and I think it's at least worth appreciating them from this point of view. Changes in our thinking take time to evolve, just like everything else.
As for whether the theory of evolution is a blow to the idea of God, it certainly makes the idea less necessary. The more we can explain from a naturalistic point of view, the less God is needed as an explanation. Moreover, Darwin's theory of evolution can be seen as an alternative to, and rejection of, Aristotle's implicitly teleological doctrine of form and actuality, which is the basis of certain theological arguments for God. However, due to the limits of what we can observe, the idea of God as a first cause (e.g., as the instigator of the big bang) and the architect of the natural laws of the universe, including evolution and natural selection, can't be entirely ruled out, which leaves room for these sorts of ideas to have a place in the broader discussion, though not as much in the laboratory.
Just my two cents.
Natural selection, in fact, though like the mills of God in grinding slowly and grinding small, has few other attributes that a civilized religion would call divine. . . . Its products are just as likely to be aesthetically, morally, or intellectually repulsive to us as they are to be attractive. We need only think of the ugliness of Sacculina or a bladder-worm, the stupidity of a rhinoceros or a stegosaur, the horror of a female mantis devouring its mate or a brood of ichneumon flies slowly eating out a caterpillar.
Besides, who says that "God" didn't have anything to do with it?