Evolution and Conservation of Species

Design, Purpose and Evolution

By John Taylor; 2009 May 22, Azamat 06, 166 BE

Last week the topic chosen -- not by me -- at our Philosopher's Cafe meeting was "Intelligent Design." This is an old debate, intelligent design vs. evolution, and I am royally tired of it. However one of our group is a Catholic whose faith group have been discussing it, even though intelligent design is an American Protestant initiative.

Still, I found some points fresh and interesting.

One idea that came to the fore during our heated discussion was that this idea of intelligent design is fairly recent. From a faith perspective, design is less important than purpose. Purpose, our reason for being, is really what religion is about. Quasi-scientific arguments for a Designer are a red herring. Deep down, believers accept that there is a purpose in life, the universe and everything. Materialists deny it. Science itself has nothing to say about it either way. Among working scientists polls indicate that there are about equal numbers on both sides.

Arguments from design have never been the strongest of the many kinds of proof of God. Still, believers do hold that there has to be a reason that we are here, that God has a goal and a high destiny for us. Thus, when it comes to purpose Baha'is (and Catholics for that matter), who accept evolution almost completely, have to side with their fellow religious believers that there is a purpose to our existence. Without purpose there would be no God, only deism.

Coincidentally, around the same time a Baha'i friend forwarded to me a record of an email exchange that he was having with a scientist. He held that humans evolved separate and distinct from other higher animals, all the way back to the genetic soup out of which life arose. This idea was not flying with the scientist. She objected to the idea -- long understood as standard Baha'i doctrine -- that human genes never mixed with other species and that we always evolved separately from animals.

Here is a slightly revised version of my response:

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I too have had pressure not to quote scripture when talking to non-believers and I know how hard it is to avoid doing so. This is an unusual case where there are real contradictions that we have to come to terms with.

On the one hand, the latest genetic evidence beautifully confirms the Baha'i position that mankind is one, that the whole idea of races is illusory. The genetic evidence is now incontrovertible. On the other hand, there is no doubt that genetics now directly contradicts the idea, taught as standard Baha'i doctrine, that humans have any genetic distinction from animals, that we somehow evolved in parallel in a sort of genetic apartheid since the beginning of life. DNA evidence is just as strong that we do share most of our genes with chimpanzees, and even yeast, right down to certain quirks and errors in the gene sequence.

Since we have to accept scientific evidence -- and it could not be stronger that humans did have common ancestors with animals -- we have no choice but to revise our understanding of what the Master meant, unless somehow the evidence makes a swift about face.

I have not made a deep study of this, but I did reread the Master's talk at Stanford last year while discussing it with an atheist. Thinking about what Abdu'l-Baha said, I now think that we have no choice but to revise our understanding of evolution to something like: humans at some point reached a level of sophistication where we could reflect the spirit of intelligence, a spirit that has always been on earth since the beginning.

Certainly, if we want to keep our credibility with scientists we will have to make some adjustments with what we regard as authentic but which now is pretty much discredited.

The fact that we have a spiritual heritage is what matters, not our physical heritage, which we share with animals, and, for that matter, plants and minerals. Abdu'l-Baha concern in this address is to establish that humans have a spiritual reality that is part of a deep-down oneness in all things. The physical separation is less important, especially when we recall that He held that the human spirit has always existed on this planet, presumably even before the earth's crust cooled. Possibly the person recording and translating this talk had his or her own biases.

So, in sum, I have revised my understanding and would have no problem accepting what this person is asking you to accept, that we are genetically connected with animals. The important thing is the light that we reflect is not from here but from another, higher realm, the kingdom of God.

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Since writing this, I did some more research on the matter.

I found that the address that I was thinking of was the Stanford address -- though it is interesting too in this context -- but of an address that Abdu'l-Baha gave soon afterwards to a group of free thinkers and atheists called the Open Forum. Here He discusses what he calls "conservation of species," asserting that the stages of the womb (ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny) constitute proof that humans are not inherently part of the animal kingdom. It is very easy to understand conservation of species in such a way that it contradicts what Abdu'l-Baha had just said in Stanford just two days before where the subject was the oneness of all existence,

"Therefore, each phenomenon is the expression in degree of all other phenomena. The difference is one of successive transferences and the period of time involved in evolutionary process." (Abdu'l-Baha, Promulgation, 494)

How does oneness fit in with conservation of species? This was puzzling, but then I did some surfing and found an excellent Wikipedia article called "Science and the Baha'i Faith." (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bah%C3%A1%27%C3%AD_Faith_and_science) It has a section on evolution focusing on the Master's use in the Open Forum talk of the term "conservation of species." It seems that the original Persian word for "species" does not refer to a type of animal, as our English word does. It means something closer to type, station or category.

So, there was no need in the first place for Baha'is to hold that humans always were separate from animals. We are distinct only insofar as we participate in the station of rationality. This raises us to a distinct position above the Kingdoms of God below, animal, mineral and vegetable. As the Master said in the quote above, we are better on in that we evolved faster into a different category, a category that has always existed on this planet potentially.

Indeed to hold that we are genetically separate from other species seems to go against the lesson that the Qur'an draws from the mini-evolution stages that we go through in the womb. It says that we should not "attribute purity to our souls," that is, think of ourselves as hoity-toity and separate.

"He knows you best when He brings you forth from the earth and when you are embryos in the wombs of your mothers; therefore do not attribute purity to your souls; He knows him best who guards (against evil)." (Qur'an 53:32, Shakir tr.)

John Taylor

email: badijet@gmail.com
blog: http://badiblog.blogspot.com/

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