It was my intention to write a short comment on a column “Design? Yes. Evolution? Yes. Contradiction? No. Why the controversy?” in Bliss, a Dutch magazine, but the more I read on the author of the article, Ervin Laszlo, the longer my article became. Then the second part of the column got published and I discovered that Ervin Laszlo’s theory transcends ordinary Creation Theory and Intelligent Design. What a mess. I had to split the article in two; the first part is a comment on the column by Ervin Laszlo and the second part (to be published later this week) is on the man himself.
Why did I set out to write a comment on my blog? Well, I can’t comment in the magazine nor on the accompanying website. You will find all links in the resources section at the end of the article.
Intelligent Design in Belgium
Intelligent design and creation theory are almost a non-issues in Belgium. Mieke Vanhecke, the CEO of the Flemish Catholic Schools (VSOK – Vlaams Secretariaat van het Katholiek Onderwijs) is on record saying that catholic scientists have accepted evolution theory a long time ago. So, no creation theory or intelligent design in Belgian schools, not even in the Catholic ones.
Once or twice during the past years it made the news when an organization send books on creation theory or intelligent design to schools, but such initiatives are mostly ridiculed or criticized and the books end up in the waste paper bin.
An initiative in 2005 by the Minister of Education Maria van der Hoeven in The Netherlands, a more protestant country, was so heavily criticized that she immediately withdrew her proposal.
So, it’s basically a non-issue here and I hope it stays that way.
Bliss
Bliss is a free, Dutch magazine for people who dare to make choices in The Netherlands and Flanders, the Dutch speaking part of Belgium. It is available at health food stores, wellness centers, golf clubs, cultural centers, …
The contents: ads, ads masked as articles, ads masked as recipes, the occasional feel-good article that I couldn’t link to an ad, and columns. The ads are for books, courses, supplements, lotions, tees, quantum pendants, fairs, psychic readings, … Let’s be clear on this, some of the articles are good reads and provide some info on food and supplements, but the majority is hot air and snake oil.
What compelled me to write about Bliss, was a column by Ervin Laszlo.
Design? Yes. Evolution? Yes. Contradiction? No. Why the controversy?
Is the title of a 2-part column written by Dr. Ervin Laszlo in Bliss (May en September 2010). This is about the column, the next article is reserved for Ervin Laszlo. In the magazine he is introduced as a doctor, scientist, philosopher, musician and author. Some research online revealed no medical or scientific degrees; he is a Doctor of Philosophy, a philosopher of science, but that doesn’t make him a scientist.
The original article is in Dutch, but I found the English version on Ervin Laszlo’s site.
The debate among conservative Christians, Muslims, and Jews (the “creationists”) and natural scientists and the science-minded public (the “evolutionists”) centers on biological evolution. But on a deeper look, it concerns the universe in which life has evolved—or in which it was created. And, as I will argue, on this level there is no contradiction between design and evolution: both are equally needed to explain the facts.
An example is the relationship between a cheetah and antelope. According to Laszlo it is impossible that cheetahs and antelopes have evolved to what they are today without a design to start with. He makes the classical mistake to limit the choice to design versus accidental. As it is impossible that the evolution of the cheetah and antelope is accidental, or the result of accidental mutations it must have been designed like this from the start. This theory is debunked in Evolution for Dummies, need I to say more? It is called co-evolution and predation.
Ervin Laszlo feels very confident:
That view marks the classical Darwinist position, still championed by a few (though always fewer) mainline biologists. Richard Dawkins, for example, insists that the living world is the result of processes of piecemeal trial and error, without deeper meaning and significance.
So it is up to Richard Dawkins and his band of merry men to hold the fort, to stop the barbarians at the gate?
It must be more, because the time that was available for evolution would not have been sufficient to generate the complex web of life on this planet merely by trial and error.
3.8 billion years is not enough for evolution to take place! Could it be that as a creationist he works with a different time scale, a couple of thousands years up to ten thousand years maybe?
I guess you could call it trial and error from a certain point of view. Some random mutations (trial) occur within a species and over a period of time some mutations prove to be more successful than others, they survive and the others die out (error). A better description would be survival of the fittest, natural selection or just evolution. The biggest mistake is to consider evolution a complete random process; it’s random mutations followed by non-random selection. You can even see for yourself how it works; just give the “Blind Watchmaker” applet a try (program runs quite nicely, but you have to close the browser window to close it).
Blind Watchmaker
Then Laszlo introduces Fred Hoyle‘s theory who compared the random emergence of even the simplest cell to the likelihood that “a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.” It is also known as Hoyle’s fallacy and is quite similar to the infinite monkey theorem and has been debunked over and over again. Fred Hoyle was a great scientist, but he was an astronomer and way out of his league on biology and evolution.
The most part of my article is based on the first part of the column as it appeared in Bliss; I only got the second part 2 days ago and it gets even fuzzier.
The creationist position would be the logical choice if—but only if—scientists would persist in claiming that the evolution of living species is a product of two-fold serendipity. But at the cutting edge, scientists no longer claim this. Post-Darwinian biologists recognize that the evolution of species is far more than the chance processes classical Darwinists say it is.
Who are these cutting edge scientists, these post-Darwinian biologists? Are they real scientists and biologists, as in exact or hard sciences? Or are they scientists in the way Ervin Laszlo is portraying himself as a scientist, but who are in reality philosophers of science, or theologians of science?
Leading-edge scientists realize that the evolution of organic species is an orderly, highly coordinated process, even if it’s not mechanistic and deterministic. The evolution of the living world is part of the great wave that created particles from the underlying virtual-energy and information field misleadingly called ”vacuum” (and is better called unified field, nuether, or Akashic field).
Now he lost me completely. How many theories can you mix in one article? Why didn’t he add quantum into the mix? These particles, are they also known as midichlorians?
For someone who refers so much to Richard Dawkins, Ervin Laszlo should really pay more attention to his books and documentaries. I am new to the skeptical writing thing, but am I correct to assume that creationists and the like don’t do a lot of reading outside their comfort zone?
I am getting a lot more respect for Richard Dawkins and other prominent skeptics every day. You can make up a crazy theory in 5 minutes, but thoroughly debunking it takes days or even weeks.
| A lie can run around the world before the truth can get it’s boots on. |
| James Watt |
Resources
- Blind Watchmaker Applet
- Bliss magazine (Dutch)
- Design? Yes. Evolution? Yes. Contradiction? No. Then Why the Controversy? by Ervin Laszlo
- Evolution for Dummies by Greg Krukonis and Tracy Barr
- Wikipedia on Akashic records
- Wikipedia on Ervin László
- Wikipedia on Hoyle’s Fallacy
- Wikipedia on Infinite Monkey Theorem
- Wikipedia on Intelligent Design
- Wikipedia on Intelligent Ontwerp (Dutch)
- Wikipedia on Maria van der Hoeven (Dutch)
- Wikipedia on Timeline of evolution
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