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Bruce Lipton is a cell biologist and former professor at the University of Wisconsin. He has abandoned the conventional scientific view and in his book “The Biology of Belief” he claims that instead of fighting each other for survival as Darwin held, cells actually cooperate to achieve the best outcome in response to external signals from the environment. Recalling his early years and training Lipton says “I was after all a traditional biologist for whom God’s existence is an unnecessary question: life is the consequence of blind chance, the flip of a friendly card, or to be more precise, the random shake of genetic dice”. Darwin talked about “natural” selection thereby implying something which follows the laws of Nature. So we could ask, “What exactly did he mean by “natural”? Did he mean an automatic process or is it part of Nature’s design?” Does this explain how organisms have adapted so well to changes in their environment? Maybe it was set up by some kind of intelligent being? Is it what is called intelligent design? So what is meant by intelligent design? Some people say it is creationism in disguise. Let’s start by discussing creationism. This is a literal interpretation of Genesis. As Bill explained last October, God first created the earth and then he said, “Let there be light”. Later he created the sun and the moon. This is a most illogical sequence and totally at variance with modern scientific knowledge. And, as Bill told us, all this is supposed to have happened only six thousand years ago! I have a fossil at home which is 240 million years old. The universe is said to be 18 billion years old and the earth is said to be 4.5 billion years old. Intelligent design, in fairness, seems to allow for a creator but does not claim the absurdity of a literal interpretation of Genesis. It seems to suggest some intervention by a divine intelligence. This suggests that things don’t just happen by accident as some scientists would have us believe. In fact, many research methods actually consist of looking for patterns which suggest some intelligent cause rather than just a random process. The problem arises when people claim that an intelligent cause is actually God. The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has stated that "creationism, intelligent design, and other claims of supernatural intervention in the origin of life or of species are not science because they are not testable by the methods of science." U.S. District Judge John E. Jones III ruled that intelligent design is not science, that it "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents". This judgement results from the First Amendment to the US Constitution which states, “Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof”. This is why there has been so much trouble in the US as creationists seek to have their beliefs taught in schools thus imposing a religion-based view on others. Intelligent design is not a bad concept per se, and Darwin discovered something important but it was not the whole picture. In fact the Theory of Evolution was first proposed not by Darwin but by Jean Baptiste de Lamarck, a distinguished French biologist. Fifty years before Darwin he proposed that evolution was based on a cooperative interaction between organisms and their environment, a view shared by many modern biologists. Unfortunately Lamarck fell foul of Church authorities who said that his notion that man had evolved from animals was heresy. He was attacked and denounced by a number of churchmen and scientists and his reputation was destroyed. However, his ideas are being reviewed and accepted in a new subject called “Systems Biology”. I would like now to consider two points. The first concerns the “methods of science” and how it is applied to new ideas and the second concerns the degree to which the tenets of religion are being extended to embrace concepts of natural law. Let’s take the first point. I have been writing a book on the subject of subtle energy. In it I have researched and documented many forms of energy which are not yet recognised by science. This started with my enquiries into the true purpose of Newgrange which I believed was surely built for the living rather than for the dead. I have proposed that it was used for healing and divination and that its construction with alternate layers of organic and inorganic materials had a special purpose. It was designed to concentrate a form of healing energy called ‘orgone’ and which was rediscovered by Wilhelm Reich in the 1940s. I went on to state that this form of energy is universal but is not recognised by the scientific method. The problem is that the scientific method required experiments to be repeatable by another person who should get the same results. However modern physics shows us that the observer of an experiment is actually a participant and that this affects the outcome. Also, work done in Princeton and elsewhere has shown how the intention of an observer affects the outcome. Now sensitive experiments involving subtle energy may have a component of intention, for example, the intention to heal. If this is repeated by a person who is sceptical, they may not get the same result. Thus the scientific method, since it excludes the intention of the experimenter, cannot be said to be a valid test. This is especially true of experiments using sensitive measuring techniques or where the experimenter has a preference for a certain outcome. For example, the importance of the placebo effect is well-known and in a study in 2003 it was shown that many drugs are no more effective than the placebos used in the trial. In fact some drug companies are now trying to eliminate from their trials subjects who respond positively to placebos. The drug companies don’t want people who think they will get better! The U.S. National Academy of Sciences has declared that intelligent design is not testable by the methods of science and is therefore rejected although many examples of how organisms develop according to unseen energy and information fields have now been documented. I refer to the work of Rupert Sheldrake who has shown that animals can grow and change their behaviour to include the learned behaviours of other animals in distant regions. He claims that they do this by receiving information through morphic fields. Lawrence Edwards has shown how plants grow according to principles of projective geometry but if they are disconnected from the rhythms of nature their growth is distorted and no longer follows mathematical laws. Mathematics is considered to be the purest form of science and that which best describes the laws of Nature. Bruce Lipton, whom I mentioned earlier, claims that organisms change according to external influences in their environment. Genes and DNA do not control our biology, as Richard Dawkins would have us believe, but according to Lipton, DNA is controlled by signals from outside the cell, including energetic messages emanating from our positive and negative thoughts. Intelligent design is the victim of science because the scientific establishment is not prepared to consider the possibility that plants and animals might evolve through unseen fields of energy and information. I think intelligent design is a great concept and one which is becoming increasingly accepted. However it is never going to succeed under that name because it has also become the victim of religion. This is because religion has gone beyond its original concepts of faith and worship and has ended up considering philosophical issues such as the nature of reality. What I mean is that people of certain religions are seeking to define reality for everyone else. So what about intelligent design? Is it dead in the water? I think we have to give it a new name and slip in under the right-wing religious radar. We can’t use the words ‘intelligent’ or ‘design’. Instead if we are to be able to discuss this subject without raising unnecessary fears, we need a completely different approach. I would like instead to talk about Co-creation. Many things considered supernatural by science are totally natural. Earlier humans could access many talents and abilities which we have lost. We are not the most civilised people who have ever lived. I attended a conference in the US where one of the speakers was an Austrian lady named Riane Eisler. She has won recognition for her work as a social historian and for her book The Chalice & The Blade. In her book she proposes the thesis that society has two possible methods of organisation which she calls the “dominator” model and the “partnership” model. She explains that we have chosen the dominator model. The society we live in is organised on the basis of power and domination. This has evolved over time. In the distant past when there were fewer people in the world, there was an abundance of food and less need for shelter, especially in regions of favourable climate. People were able to live in peace and harmony and they shared their resources equally. Since there were no fears of shortages, it was not necessary to hoard. The concept of building up a store of personal wealth did not exist. As the population of the world increased, more marginal regions of the world were populated and when changes in climate occurred, shortages of food and shelter became apparent. Competition for scarce resources led to conflict and those who were physically strong gained at the expense of those who were weak. The strongest fighters became chieftains and amassed wealth and power. They then annexed neighbouring lands and eventually became kings. They used their wealth and power to exploit others, made their own laws and appointed their followers to enforce their decrees. They formed armies and created a culture which until relatively recently expected most men to go through some form of military training. Men were conditioned to use their superior physical strength and power over other men and also over women. I think you will be interested to know that no military or defensive constructions have ever been found which were constructed prior to the year 2000 B.C. The dominator society started after that with the Iron Age and the making of swords. Society lost its partnership consciousness and violence became the established pattern. People became desensitised and lost touch with their abilities to use natural methods of healing and of divination. When Christianity became established those who had retained a knowledge of these matters were classed as pagans and still are. The word pagan originally meant a county dweller or one who was close to nature. It is becoming clear to many that a knowledge of the world beyond the five senses is natural and desirable and that our so-called ‘normal’ state of awareness is in fact sub-normal. I have explained in previous talks that we create our own reality through our consciousness. Thus we are co-creators with the divine intelligence. We therefore can use our power of visualisation to create a better world. We see nothing but doom and gloom around us at present. This is the result of collective consciousness. If enough people think things will get worse then they will. You only have to look at the stock markets and to listen to analysts talking about a thing they call “sentiment”. If enough of us start thinking and visualising a more positive future then it will happen. We should create in our awareness a more compassionate society not one based materialism. The partnership model is there for us to use as an example. It worked once and it can work again. Intelligent design has provided a mechanism through which we can co-create a better reality. Evolution is real but maybe random selection is not the key to how it works. Random selection involves the survival of the fittest, the dominator model. We now know that evolution is a partnership process. Organisms evolve according to unseen forces and a in a symbiotic relationship with their environment. And evolution is not just about the physical body, it is ultimately about evolving to a level where we experience our own divine intelligence.
© Kieran Comerford |