Intelligent Design?
The Argument from Design
The Christian will maintain that the universe does not merely exist but its existence shows perfect design. There is an order and balance which point to its having been designed by a higher intelligence, and that this higher intelligence is God. But there are some problems with this argument.
Firstly, how does the Christian know that it was his God who is behind creation? Perhaps it was the gods of non-Christian religions who designed and created the universe.
Secondly, how does the Christian know that only one God designed everything? In fact, as the universe is so intricate and complex we could expect it to need the intelligence of several, perhaps dozens, of gods to design it. So if anything the argument from design proves that there are many gods, not one as Christians claim.
Next, we would have to ask, is the universe perfectly designed? We must ask this because if a perfect God designed and created the universe, then that universe should be perfect. Let us first look at inanimate phenomena to see whether they show perfect design. Rain gives us pure water to drink but sometimes it rains too much and people lose their lives, their homes and their means of livelihood in floods. At other times it doesn't rain at all and millions die in drought and famine. Is this perfect design? The mountains give us joy as we see them reaching up into the sky. But landslides and volcanic eruptions have for centuries caused havoc and death. Is this perfect design? The gentle breezes cool us but storms and tornadoes repeatedly cause death and destruction. Is this perfect design? These and other natural calamities prove that inanimate phenomena do not exhibit perfect design and therefore that they were not created by a perfect God.
Now let us look at animate phenomena to see whether they reveal perfect design. At a superficial glance, nature seems to be beautiful and harmonious; all creatures are provided for and each has its task to perform. However, as any biologist will confirm, nature is utterly ruthless. To live, each creature has to feed on other creatures and struggle to avoid being eaten by other creatures. In nature, there is no time for pity, love or mercy. If a loving God designed everything, why did such a cruel design result? The animal kingdom is not only imperfect in the ethical sense, it is also imperfect in that it often goes wrong. Every year millions of babies are born with physical or mental disabilities, or are stillborn or die soon after birth.
Why would a perfect creator God design such terrible things? So if there is design in the universe, much of it is faulty and cruel. This would seem to indicate that the universe was not created by a perfect all-loving God.
Venerable Sravasti Dhammika
In the western world there are two opposing views of the origins of the species - theological (creationism) and scientific (evolution).
Creationism Creationists believe that species are unchanging and derive their forms by reference to a divine blueprint. Theology has long been dominated by the ideas of the Greek philosopher Plato, who taught that the species were invariant, deriving their characteristics from reference to 'essences' or 'ideal forms' which were fixed, eternal and inherently existent. To a Creationist a rose is a rose is a rose, and would smell as sweet by any other name. There is no way a rose bush could fade into a strawberry plant, or a cherry tree, or a tangle of brambles, or a mountain ash, or a raspberry cane, or a hawthorn bush, or an apple tree. These are all totally distinct and immediately recognisable species - separate types of plant with nothing in between. Theologians base their time reckoning on the chronology of the Bible which states that the world all its species were created in six days of a single week around 4004 BC .
Evolution Evolutionists believe that species arose by gradual change from simpler forms. Strawberry plants, cherry trees, blackberries, raspberries, hawthorns and apples all have a family likeness because they all arose from a common ancestor, which resembled a primitive rose. Hence botanists call this plant family the ROSACEAE. Similarly all primates (including humans and apes) have a common ancestor. Going back further, all species of mammals diverged from a common ancestor, and so on into the dim and distant past until we reach one common ancestor of all lifeforms, which originated the DNA coding which is universal for all plants, animals, fungi and bacteria on earth.
Consequently, to evolutionists the biological species concept does not reflect any underlying reality. A species is purely a snapshot of an interbreeding population of organisms at a particular epoch in time, and as time progresses the characteristics of that population will gradually change in response to selective pressures. Buddhism Buddhist philosophy is evolutionary and thus agrees with the scientists rather than the theologians. Buddha taught that all things are impermanent, constantly arising, becoming, changing and fading . Buddhist philosophers consequently rejected the Platonic idea of production from 'ideal forms' as being the fallacy of 'production from inherently existent other'.
According to most schools of Buddhism there is nothing whatsoever that is inherently or independently existent.. The two main creationist objections to evolution are:
1 Disagreement with Genesis
2 Blurring of the theological distinction between human and animal
Neither of these pose any threat to Buddhist philosophy. The first objection is based on the need to maintain the truth of a particular creation story in order to preserve the underlying basis for all Biblical truth. This is not a worry to Buddhists because there is no corresponding Buddhist creation myth, and Buddhist philosophers have always accepted that the universe is many hundreds of millions of years old. The second theological objection is that evolution states that there is a continuum between ape and man, ie human and animal.(A favourite anti-evolutionary slogan is 'Don't let them make a Monkey of You!). This is not a problem for Buddhists, who believe that both humans and animals possess sentient minds which survive death.
However it is a major problem for theologians. The church has always taught that only humans have immortal souls, whereas animals are automata whose minds cease at death. Humans and animals were created separatedly and hence are totally different types of being. But if there was a gradual transition between animal and man, as the evolutionists claim, then such theological beliefs fall apart. The theologians are left with three alternative unpalatable viewpoints: - Both humans and animals are and always have been automata (the materialist's position). - Both humans and animals are sentient beings whose minds survive death (the Buddhist position) - At some arbitrary date in the past the ape-men were suddenly equipped with souls. The undermining of the doctrine of the distinction of human from animals is probably an even greater threat to the theological viewpoint than doubt about the literal truth of Genesis, and does much to explain why theologians of any persuasion have never been able to come to terms with what Daniel C. Dennett [REF 1] has described as Darwins's Dangerous Idea.
Evolution and dukkha.
No matter what philosophical knots the theologians may be forced to unravel, from the Buddhist viewpoint the theory of evolution has considerable explanatory power, in particular demonstrating why dukkha (the sensation of unsatisfactoriness) is a pervasive experience of all sentient beings throughout the evolved biosphere.
- Sean Robsville
[REF1] Daniel C. Dennett, 1995; Darwin's Dangerous Idea, publ Penguin, ISBN 0-14-016734-X
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