“Do you believe in evolution?’ Is a question Baha’is sometimes get when introducing their faith to others.  Evolution can mean several things so its helpful to parse out those meanings.  In the broadest sense, evolution means the change and development of things over time.  For that definition, Baha’is are most certainly evolutionists. Indeed, it can be said that one of the fundamental concepts of Baha’u’llah’s revelation is the evolution of all things. The central theological concept-progressive revelation- is that there is evolution in religion and revelation to meet humanity’s evolving needs.  The Baha’i writings frequently make reference to the dynamic and evolving nature of all reality- not just material- but also social and spiritual.  That aspect is therefore one of the unique and distinguishing elements of Baha’u’llah’s revelation.

On the biological level, evolution means the change and development of biological organisms over time, and that also the Baha’i writings explicitly accept.  Baha’u’llah taught that the universe and our earth are “ancient” and that our current reality evolved to be what it is after long stretches of time.  So none of these aspects of evolution are problematic for Baha’is. 

The part of Darwin’s theory of evolution which is potentially problematic for Baha’is is the same part that is problematic for all people who believe their lives have some higher purpose- that the process of biological evolution is completely random.  Darwin’s theory remains controversial because it presupposes that the entire process of biological evolution is mindless. Before Darwin, it was a basic belief of philosophers, scientists, and theologians, that the world was “designed”- that it was simply too marvelous to have come into being on its own.  Darwin’s theory challenged that because it proposed a mechanism- random mutation and natural selection with survival of the fittest- that could create the appearance of the world being designed without their being an intelligent force behind it.  The so-called “modern synthesis” is that random mutations of DNA  create new biological features that then confer upon an organism a selective advantage. The organism with the new feature then comes to dominate other organisms without that feature, leading to the evolution of that family of organisms over time.

Within that modern idea of Darwin’s theory, natural selection and survival of the fittest is not all that problematic for the question of ultimate purpose in life. It is now recognized to be part of the evolution of everything. Cars evolve because a feature that is initiated by one company is eventually adopted by all others because people choose to select and buy a car with only that feature.  NFL teams evolve their styles because a feature of their play style- West Coast offense, for instance- provides a competitive advantage leading one team to dominate until all teams begin to adopt that advantage. Of course, in those examples, the generation of the new feature is not random. Some creative intelligence- an automotive engineer or a football coach- creatively develops a new idea and begins to implement it. The source behind the evolution is thus intelligence, not randomness. 

Its really the idea that new features come into being randomly that is most controversial for the Darwinian mechanism, both theologically and scientifically. On the theological front- completely random processes would make biological evolution truly mindless, and therefore Darwin’s theory would be a challenge to any belief system that supported the idea of human purpose- including all religion.   If it were true, all the features of humanity- including our rationality- would be the outcome of a blind process and our entire lives would be ultimately meaningless. There are some people who believe that biological evolution was completely random but still hold to the idea of human purpose, but it’s clearly a challenging philosophical hurdle to maintain both ideas simultaneously. 

Occasionally, you will hear a scientist declare in the public space that Darwin’s theory is “settled science”, or that it is not at all controversial within the scientific community. That is largely true, certainly when it comes to whether biological organisms evolve over time or that natural selection is part of that process.  Those aspects are not controversial and were settled in the 20th century, if not the 19th. The part that remains problematic is that the generation of new features of organisms- that then come to dominate other organisms without that feature- is completely random or mindless.  It is not a question of why new features create a selective advantage, but how new organisms evolve those new features in the first place.  Darwin’s modern synthesis assumes its random, but there are serious questions about how that could be possible. Since that is also the crux of the matter theologically, it can truly be said that Darwin’s theory remains controversial for good and rational reasons. 

So is the generation of new biological forms random?  That is the tough nut to crack. Certainly some mutations would seem to be  random, but is that the underlying process that leads biological forms to have a new feature? The more we have learned about molecular biology, the more evident it is that organisms- even really simple ones- contain extraordinarily complex and integrated systems with all parts depending on each other for proper functioning.  How dose one random mutation lead to improvement in an organism if all parts depend on each other?  Wouldn’t a random event in an integrated system be almost certainly detrimental to the organism?  And how did these integrated systems evolve in the first place, when it seems that one part doesn’t have any value without the other part to which it is integrated? If only one part of a system has no selective advantage without the other, you would need both to happen simultaneously for something valuable to come of it- but the probability of two  synergistic mutations to happen simultaneously and both provide advantage is vanishingly small- so small that there is not enough time in the history of the universe for it to likely occur. That has led increasing numbers of thoughtful people- both scientists and laypeople- to conclude that our world could not have come into being mindlessly- that it requires some degree of planning to get the integrated physical and biological systems that create and sustain life. 

In the last post, we highlighted Dr Stephen Meyer, who is a particularly good explainer of these problems in modern science.  In the talk below, Dr Meyer outlines why he has come to believe that the basis of biological structures is information, and therefore ultimately intelligence.  If you are interested in these issues, his talk is definitely worth a listen.