The Original theory of ‘Evolution’ is over 2550 years old!

By Mahinda Weerasinghe

(March 04, Colombo, Sri Lanka Guardian) According to the Buddha, all beings obey the Law of Impermanence and all compounds are in a dynamic process of becoming. He did not exclude species from this universal law. Yet Darwinists are studiously ignoring this well documented fact.
Curiously enough, we find that the ‘theories of life’ are dominated by two schools of thought.

On one side of the divide we meet those indomitable creationists. These true believers are convinced that a creator ‘God’ is the initiator of life.

On the opposite side we meet the Darwinists. They it seems have placed all of their ‘eggs in a single basket’. For they invoke ‘Natural selection’ as an ‘explain all’ in order to make clear this subtle and complicated becoming process of species.

Naturally it can be established that, a pound of butter contains a pounds weight by simply weighing it. But the ‘natural selection’ mantra is diffused to say the least. Equipped with this instrument, it is a daunting task for the Darwinians to produce any evidence that a species is either moving up the ladder of survival or directed towards extinction. As a matter of fact, can Darwinist specify at what point of time did an X species ended up as Y species by rearranging its genes.

Incredibly enough it’s taken for granted that, it is through Darwin’s famous work ‘The Origin of Species’ that we first encountered this evolutionary process of species and its shadowy dynamics. Yet upon closer scrutiny, it becomes blatantly evident that those, ‘hangers on’ of the Darwinian version of life, are not any different from their opponents, the true believers.

Indeed, if Darwinists are so certain that ‘natural selection’ is so scientific, then they should lobby the United Nations to get ‘survival of the fittest’ ideology accepted in the affairs of men and nations. They should persuade UN not to interfere in the tribal wars of annihilation and genocide. For surely the ‘fittest’ or the victors will survive, and go on to procreate and send their types further in time and space. Surely Darwinists are not nursing an absurd notion that the human species is a ‘special creation by ‘God’ and should be an exception to the rule, hence needs protection by the League of Nations.

Not only did the word ‘evolution’ derail our thinking from investigating how species metamorphosed but it also put blinkers to our logically and rationally thinking. It also hindered our probing what mechanisms fired this becoming process of species.

My own research indicates that a whole bunch of vital ingredients are missing from the Darwinian model of ‘evolution’. To name a few obvious ones:

1. It lacks an action theory. (Totally ignored by Darwin)

2. An ethical theory is totally left out. (Being purely mechanistic theory of life, it does not give any consideration to ethics as having relevance to the “struggle to survive”.)

3. It does not include a conditioning process or conditional genesis of creatures; hence a gaping hole is created in the theory. (A core Buddhist concept and having momentous significance when understanding the sensory becoming process. This element is totally unknown among the Darwinians).

4. Pleasure and pain principle, which is the core-stimulating factor for directional change of speciation according to the Buddha, is not incorporated in the Darwinian evolution model, though crucial to the sensory becoming process.

5. The phenomenon of ‘Cause and effect’ is of profound and paramount significance when considering the mechanisms of evolution according to sensory becoming. (This is purely a Buddhist metaphysical notion, and an indispensable parameter when analyzing the sensory becoming process. To Darwinians it is merely tantamount to superstition and hence an irrational notion at that).

Yet contrary to the established certainty, Darwin did not produce a theory of evolution as a whole, but merely a theory, that promoted evolution by ‘natural selection’ from accidental variations. Magnified for the sake of clarity, we perceive Darwinism as purporting that the whole of the evolutionary process has taken place among absolute robots, which reproduced their prototypes, with slight accidental variations of form.

The denial of a purpose is Darwin’s distinctive contention. By an automatic or a switch called ‘natural selection’, variations favouring survival would be preserved. Thus sum total of the accidents of life acting upon the sum total of the accidents of variation, provided completely mechanical and material systems by which the changes of living forms are accounted for.

Indeed if we embrace either of these two schools of ‘beliefs’ then we thereby accept that our fate and destiny is fatalistically or mechanistically preordained by forces beyond our control?
In other words we have no power or control over our destiny and at the mercy of external forces! In which case we have to curse ‘God’ for our handicapped psycho physical situation, or bow down to a ‘luck by chance’ accidental process, through which each of us has come into being. If this is a fact we must meekly accept our pathetic circumstances, and subsist before fading out.

Yet no one has asked to be created or begotten. In other words, be one an imbecile or a Darwin, wise man or a disabled one, indeed a man or a mouse, we are the outcome through a ‘naturally selected’ genetical lotto or due to a flight of fancy of an almighty ‘God’.

Due to the addictive power of one or the other sort of determinism, the intellectual world was blinded from investigating the ancient causal theory. There is substantial evidence to prove, that “an evolutionary theory” was first promulgated over 2550 years ago. Only it was not termed ‘evolution’ as such.

According to causal theory, all animate and inanimate entities are in a “state of a dynamic flux and changing momentarily.” Change, according to this theory (being the original rational one) is inherent in all “compounded things.” According to the Buddha, all beings obey the Law of Impermanence. “Causes and effects” govern the dynamics of such change. Darwin and his disciples called this change, evolution, The Buddha called it “becoming”. The word “becoming” has more going for it than evolution on several levels.

Thus, existence is not an objective in-itself. Rather, what lies beyond! Existence becomes merely a preamble to a more vital goal. Biological evolution is subservient to a pleasure principle. The net result is creatures with progressively developed sensory potential. Evolution we notice heightens the sensory experience, including the pleasures of seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching and thinking. A closer investigation yields the validation of this extraordinary principle. Sensory additions to the original single celled amoeba, did not necessarily contribute its ability to survive, but it certainly enhanced its capabilities of sensory gratification!

Equipped with this unique theory, if we were to scrutinise the broad evolutionary ladder, we are in for a rude shock: species with ascending orders of sensory complexity of body and mind have really been extending their capabilities of sensory potential and scope, thereby waxing their gratificational prospects!

Humankind, the most advanced product of this sensory struggle, bears ample proof of this natural phenomenon. If we were to compare him with the lower orders of species, it is not hard to spot his ultra sophisticated and balanced sensory paraphernalia, which would have aided him, in reaping untold myriads of sensory stimuli. Eliminate such sensory possibilities and life becomes meaningless and existence an aimless mechanical struggle.

In fact, equipped with the Buddha’s sensory becoming theory, we can effortlessly explain what Darwin termed “evolution.” But then, the none status quo situation of all compounds (including species) is the rudimentary section of his teaching.

If a creature is to achieve the ability of experiencing sensory stimuli, and bring home the necessities of life, he must perform actions. Hence “an action” theory is affiliated to sensory becoming. Actions are conditioned by one’s sensory status and socio-economic and geophysical conditions. All of this becomes comprehensible when woven together using the Buddha’s basic law, known as ‘conditional genesis or as the scriptures popularly termed “The Cycle of Birth, Death and Birth”, but I would simply call it ‘a cycle of becoming’.

On the other hand if creatures are to survive develop and progress they needed an ethical outlook; hence Buddha attached an ethical corollary to his basic sensory becoming theory.

To assert that an individual lacks self-determination and is fatalistically or mechanistically bound is to mock his needs, desires ambitions, and aspirations. Without self-determination, life becomes meaningless and a mechanical struggle, and an inanity, as the mechanistic ‘natural selection’ informs us.

Humankind is not on this planet for the “greater glory” of some none existing ‘God’. Nor does the noble species exist to produce more of its type and to simply send them on further, in time and space. Rather, individuals exist to experience pleasure and pain here, and now.

Now getting back to the two schools of thought, if we investigate meticulously what they bequeath to us, we find that it is nothing but a horror story. The Judo Christian Bible makes abundantly clear the terrible weapon this strange ‘God’ placed in the hands of the true believers. In fact Genesis (IX 2—3) specify what God expects his chosen species to do to the rest of his fellow creatures, the ecology and finally to the world itself.

The fear of you and the dread of you all shall be upon every beast of the earth and upon every fowl of the air, upon all that moveth upon the earth and upon all the fishes of the sea; into your hand are they delivered. Every moving thing that liveth shall be meat for you.

Blow back effects of such injunctions can be observed by all and sundry today and need no elaboration by me.

As for the ‘natural selection’ people, their impact is no better since 1859.
We find in time Darwinism granted nations, groups and individuals a “survival of the fittest” mandate, which effectively justified the suspension of any ethical disposition they owned. It sponsored selfishness, as a prerequisite for survival with ghastly consequences for the global society.

In fact Social Darwinism’s chequered history can be traced back to the master himself. Charles Darwin’s work, “On The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural selection, (subtitled) The Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life” laid the foundation for the questionable theories that were to follow in its wake. Indeed intelligent people deciphered this hazy Darwinian concoction: Darwinian biology and evolutionary theory; Social Darwinism, the evangelistic dissemination of Darwinism; and indeed a pseudoscience called ‘eugenics’.

All of these built on a solid ‘scientific’ edifice; for it justified ‘racial prejudice’ ‘racial discrimination’ and ‘racism’. Such vague, unscientific and polydimensional conceptions justified elitism, hate, racism, tribalism, war, holocaust, colonisation, and a mystical economic destiny for the favoured nations.

Time is here for the global society to explore the alternative sensory becoming process diligently. Indeed it transcended both other schools of thought, at every level, as Buddhist civilisations document. Sensory becoming is not only about peaceful coexistence between nations, but also understanding nature and handling it with care. Failing which, the extinction of the civilization as we know it may not be far off. -Sri Lanka Guardian