From Darwin to Eden

A Tour of Science and Religion based on the Philosophy of Michael Polanyi and the Intelligent Design Movement

William B. Collier

• Publisher: Resource Publications
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781532692710, 9781532692727
• eBook ISBN: 9781532692734
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Religion & Science

Who am I? Where did I come from? Where did life come from? How you answer these questions will profoundly impact how you live your life. Professor Collier has compiled into one engaging volume the scientific case for God and theism encased in the philosophy of one of the most brilliant and unusual scientist/philosophers of our age: Michael Polanyi. Few people have the time to survey the full spectrum of the modern intelligent design movement and how it grew out of and interacts with the writings of Michael Polanyi. With this book you can step back and survey the whole scene, and know exactly who you need to read next if necessary. Collier has condensed the critical details of Polanyi and the Intelligent Design movement into a single volume that informs without being overly simplistic, but is also engaging and fun.

1

Introduction:
The World was Flat

“Dr. Collier? May I speak to the class next class period regarding the film we have just seen? I don’t believe it is true and I want to explain to the class why it isn’t.” This was not the sort of request I wanted to hear; particularly coming from a very bright Hungarian Chemistry graduate student; and particularly at the start of my Philosophy and History of Chemistry graduate seminar. My family and I were five months into my year-long sabbatical stay at one of Hungary’s finest chemistry programs at their leading university. Through a long series of unusual events I found myself teaching this weekly graduate seminar to a small class of Hungarian graduate students. I was a chemist, not a historian or philosopher, and so were they. Was it the blind leading the blind or did I have anything significant to say to them? I had just shown them a movie called The Shape of the Earth made by two History of Science professors back in the States. My student was not happy. “The medieval period did believe the world was flat, and I want to show the class why!” I replied, “This movie was made by professional historians who know what they are talking about, are you sure you want to take them on?” We agreed that he would have his chance next class period and I went home worried about what kind of Pandora’s Box I had opened.

At this point your mind may be racing with, “Wait a minute! What do you mean the dark ages knew the world was round and not flat? Didn’t Columbus sail the ocean blue to prove it was round in 1492?” If so, welcome to the crowd. The vast majority of modern western civilization, including many modern scientists; and surprisingly, even some historians believe the medieval period was dark, ignorant, and that they believed the world was flat. Daniel Boorstin, a former Librarian of Congress wrote in a popular book called The Discoverers:

A European-wide phenomenon of scholarly amnesia . . . afflicted the continent from AD 300 to at least 1300. During those centuries Christian faith and dogma suppressed the useful image of the world that had been so slowly, so painfully and so scrupulously drawn by ancient geographers.1

In a later chapter entitled “A Flat Earth Returns2,” Boorstin derides the Christian geographers who plunged the world once again into the flat earth belief. There is one small problem with this. Medievals never believed in a flat earth except for one or two ignored eccentrics. Jeffrey Burton Russell, Professor Emeritus of Medieval History at the University of California, Santa Barbara wrote a fascinating book called Inventing the Flat Earth Columbus and Modern Historians3. His written tweak on modern culture examines in detail how the medieval period believed the world was spherical. The myth of a “Dark Ages” flat earth belief was invented around 1870, established in modern thought through the 1930s, and has persisted in varying degrees until today. It is fairly easy to disprove the flat earth myth. Find a medieval era statue of a king holding the symbol of the divine right of kings in his hand. It will be a “globe” with a cross on top. The globe represents the world as they understood it, and the cross God’s divine right of rule given to the King to rule the “world.” Next, read the late medieval bestseller book, Dante’s Inferno. Here as the reader descends through various levels of hell, we encounter Satan at the very last level, in the center of the earth, where he is neither up nor down as there is no such state in the center of the earth. Dante did not even feel compelled to even explain his spherical worldview to his reader, they already knew it.

Then why were some of us taught that the medieval period believed that the world was flat? What else have I not been told about? This is a very good question. Russell’s book gives a history of how the flat earth myth happened and some good guesses as to why; chronological snobbery, philosophical worldview agendas, the power of a popular fictional book to establish truth in the mind of the reader, etc. There are lots of possible reasons and they will all have some role to play in our discussion of the philosophy of science and how it affects our societal view on who we are and how we came to be.

Every society, at every age of man, has had to deal with its own very ethnocentric view of itself, and some self-imposed myths regarding how the world works and came to be. They can be found in very surprising places and sometimes be difficult to dislodge. The Christian view of humanity gives a succinct view of why this is so—we are sinners and really hung up on ourselves and our own culture. But how does this play into modern science and philosophy? Good question, let’s find out.

Oh, what happened to the Hungarian student? He showed up in class the next week and did not mention a thing. I asked him after class why he didn’t bring the topic up again. “I checked it out on the internet and found out you were right,” he said. Sigh.

1. Boorstin, The Discoverers, 100.

2. Boorstin, The Discoverers, 107.

3. Russell, Inventing the Flat Earth.

2

Philosophy First

“Plato!” The student exclaimed, “Someone is messing around with my wife! I have clues as to who it may be!”

“Wait” replied Plato, “Examine yourself, are your motives pure in this matter?”

The student replied, “Well, I am pretty mad about this.”

“Is your searching out of this problem noble?” the teacher asked.

“But there is nothing noble about messing around with my wife!”

“Will this advance truth in the world?” the great instructor asked.

“I guess not.” mumbled the frustrated student.

“Then why are we pursuing this conversation?”

“I see; you are right; sorry that I bothered you about such a trivial matter.” The student sadly turned to aimlessly wander off.

“Remember my friend, if a matter is not noble, true, and worthy of consideration it benefits no one.” said the great one.

The student turned gazed at Plato fully and said, “Thank you my teacher” and then walked away to ponder greater issues. Plato quietly turned to resume his lecture, relieved that he had not been found out.

While this fictional story is amusing, it does express the suspicions many people have regarding philosophy. But such thoughts need to be counter-balanced with the concept that there is no such thing as a philosophically neutral or totally objective worldview. Like it or not, we perceive this world with a particular viewpoint that is unique to us, our culture, and our times. Am I advocating a relativistic approach to life and philosophy? Absolutely not. But truth is hidden in our worldviews, and we must be careful in sorting through our presuppositions if we are going to find it. A brief look at important philosophical concepts can clear away confusion in controversial issues because it helps us see the lens through which we view the world. It helps us to better analyze the ideas of others.

What is philosophy? The Greek meaning of the word is love of wisdom. A modern definition would say that philosophy is concerned with the ultimate questions and the ultimate answers. Some would argue that true philosophy is the search for truth. You could break the disciplines of philosophy into the following areas. 1—Truth . . . Epistemology or how do we come to know? 2—Reality . . . Metaphysics or what is the nature of the world? 3—Value . . . Axiology or what are values and where did they come from? Before we finish with this book we will find ourselves dipping into many of these areas. Let us look briefly at the first area where it can help us understand the origins issue better.

Epistemology, how do we know anything? What are some of the ways we come to know? Some philosophers have compiled a list like this.

1—empiricism	You come to know through your senses
2—rationalism	Reason and rationality is the way; your mind is better than your senses
3—naturalism	The material world is all there is, so knowledge is found through its investigation
4—logic	You use logic to find truth from your initial presumptions
5—existentialism	You choose your values and way of finding your true knowledge.
6—revelation	Knowledge is revealed through a divine or unknown source

Looking at a list like this for the first time can be very instructive. If you have grown up in a modern western culture it is eas...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Preface
• Acknowledgements
• 1. Introduction: The World was Flat
• 2. Philosophy First
• 3. The Society of Science
• 4. In the Beginning
• 5. Cells, Machines and Biochemistry
• 6. Primordial Soup
• 7. Science and Metaphors
• 8. Change and Evolution
• 9. Cambrian Explosion and the Tree of Life
• 10. Macroevolution
• 11. View from the Bottom
• Bibliography