Tenzin Gyatso, the 14th Dalai Lama, is the winner of this year's Templeton Prize,
worth $1.7 million. The Templeton Foundation recognizes him for his
"long-standing engagement with multiple dimensions of science,"
having "vigorously focused on the connections between the investigative
traditions of science and Buddhism," encouraging "serious scientific
investigative reviews of the power of compassion and its broad potential to
address the world's fundamental problems."
Nice! Speaking of science, here's an addendum.
At least when it comes to understanding Darwinian theory, its
limitations and dangers, there are some priests, pastors and rabbis who might
benefit from taking a lesson from Tibetan Buddhism's renowned spiritual leader.
The Dalai Lama's 2005 book, The Universe in a Single Atom,
includes an excellent chapter, "Evolution, Karma, and the World of
Sentience." Check it out -- it reads a little like an update of Alfred Russel Wallace's World of Life.
The Dalai Lama has spent some serious time studying up on
evolutionary theory and talking about it with scientists. He casts a respectful
but markedly critical eye on Darwinian science and scientism.
"On the whole," he writes, "the Darwinian theory of
evolution...gives us a fairly coherent account of the evolution of human life
on earth." Something about that sentence prompts you to expect the coming
"But" or "However," and the Dalai Lama doesn't disappoint.
Philosophically and scientifically, he finds a variety of reasons for
dissatisfaction.
After a discussion of how natural selection operates on genetic
mutations, he writes that it may be a mistake to think of mutations as random:
"that they are purely random strikes me as unsatisfying. It leaves open
the question of whether this randomness is best understood as an objective
feature of reality or better understood as indicating some kind of hidden
causality."
His causes for doubting materialist explanations of life's
development include the question of how life originated, how compassion,
altruism and sentience evolved, and whether Darwinism is testable science:
“Despite the success of the Darwinian narrative, I do not believe
that all the elements of the story are in place....I am not persuaded that
[Darwin's theory] answers the fundamental question of the origin of life.
Darwin himself, I gather, did not see this as an issue. Furthermore, there
appears to be a certain circularity in the notion of the "survival of the
fittest." The theory of natural selection maintains that, of the random
mutations that occur in the genes of a given species, those that promote the
greatest chance of survival are most likely to succeed. However, the only way
this hypothesis can be verified is to observe the characteristics of those
mutations that survived. So in a sense, we are stating simply this:
"Because these genetic mutations have survived, they are the ones that had
the greatest chance of survival."
A truism, obviously.
He goes on to repeat his dissatisfaction with "the idea of
these mutations being purely random events" and cites Karl Popper who
“once commented that, to his mind, Darwin's theory of evolution
does not and cannot explain the origin of life on earth. For him, the theory of
evolution is not a testable scientific theory but rather a metaphysical theory
that is highly beneficial for guiding further scientific research”.
The Dalai Lama identifies the "hidden
causality" guiding evolution's course with karma and
observes pointedly: "From the scientific view, the theory of karma may be
a metaphysical assumption -- but it is no more so than the assumption that all
of life is material and originated out of pure chance." For further study
he recommends a particular tradition in Buddhism:
“As to what might be the
mechanism through which karma plays a causal role in the evolution of
sentience, I find helpful some of the explanations given in the Vajraysana
traditions, often referred to by modern writers as esoteric Buddhism.”
The Dalai Lama finds that an "empirical
problem in Darwinism's focus on the competitive survival of individuals...has
consistently been how to explain altruism, whether in the sense of
collaborative behavior, such as food sharing or conflict resolution among
animal like chimpanzees or acts of self-sacrifices." The problem is
especially notable where altruism "can be observed across species."
He's even got a pretty clear take on the "Why it
matters" question.
“If twentieth-century history -- with its widespread belief in
social Darwinism and the many terrible effects of trying to apply eugenics that
resulted from it -- has anything to teach us, it is that we humans have a
dangerous tendency to turn the visions we construct of ourselves into self-fulfilling
prophecies.”
An application might be that insofar as we think
of ourselves as nothing more elevated or spiritual than beasts, then we'll act
and treat each other that way, bestially.
The Dalai Lama concludes with a discussion of how the
"Darwinian account" leaves out, as "unexamined," the deep
enigma of sentience: "Until there is a credible understanding of the
nature and origin of consciousness, the scientific story of the origin of life
and the cosmos will not be complete."
Well, well. Next time someone tells you that only naïve Biblical
literalism keeps anyone from fully accepting Darwin's idea, or that only
Americans would be so foolish as to think an immaterial source of causality
guides evolution or that material explanations fail to address the mystery of
life's origin, you might want to point out the writings of the Dalai Lama.
Here is a man who has spoken out as forcefully on these subjects
as any major Christian or Jewish leader has done. Arguably, he's done so with
greater clarity and concreteness, leaving little room for those who would
second-guess and reinterpret cloudy, ambiguous expressions.
It could well be that it's precisely the Biblical heritage in the
West, or rather embarrassment at the cartoon version peddled by Darwin
defenders, that keeps many otherwise thoughtful Christians and Jews from
thinking critically about materialist science and its dogmas. Maybe that's why
the Dalai Lama, from an entirely different tradition and unbothered by our
hang-ups and anxieties, feels free to reflect and speak boldly for himself.
-Nelis
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