Cosmological argument

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cosmological_argument

A cosmological argument, in natural theology, is an argument which claims that the existence of God can be inferred from facts concerning causation, explanation, change, motion, contingency, dependency, or finitude with respect to the universe or some totality of objects. A cosmological argument can also sometimes be referred to as an argument from universal causation, an argument from first cause, or the causal argument. Whichever term is employed, there are two basic variants of the argument, each with subtle yet important distinctions: in esse (essentiality), and in fieri (becoming).

The basic premises of all of these arguments involve the concept of causation. The conclusion of these arguments is that there exists a first cause (for whichever group of things it is being argued has a cause), subsequently deemed to be God. The history of this argument goes back to Aristotle or earlier, was developed in Neoplatonism and early Christianity and later in medieval Islamic theology during the 9th to 12th centuries, and was re-introduced to medieval Christian theology in the 13th century by Thomas Aquinas. The cosmological argument is closely related to the principle of sufficient reason as addressed by Gottfried Leibniz and Samuel Clarke, itself a modern exposition of the claim that "nothing comes from nothing" attributed to Parmenides.

Contemporary defenders of cosmological arguments include William Lane Craig, Robert Koons, and Alexander Pruss.

History

Plato and Aristotle, depicted here in Raphael's The School of Athens, both developed first cause arguments.

Plato (c. 427–347 BC) and Aristotle (c. 384–322 BC) both posited first cause arguments, though each had certain notable caveats. In The Laws (Book X), Plato posited that all movement in the world and the Cosmos was "imparted motion". This required a "self-originated motion" to set it in motion and to maintain it. In Timaeus, Plato posited a "demiurge" of supreme wisdom and intelligence as the creator of the Cosmos.

Aristotle argued against the idea of a first cause, often confused with the idea of a "prime mover" or "unmoved mover" (πρῶτον κινοῦν ἀκίνητον or primus motor) in his Physics and Metaphysics. Aristotle argued in favor of the idea of several unmoved movers, one powering each celestial sphere, which he believed lived beyond the sphere of the fixed stars, and explained why motion in the universe (which he believed was eternal) had continued for an infinite period of time. Aristotle argued the atomist's assertion of a non-eternal universe would require a first uncaused cause – in his terminology, an efficient first cause – an idea he considered a nonsensical flaw in the reasoning of the atomists.

Like Plato, Aristotle believed in an eternal cosmos with no beginning and no end (which in turn follows Parmenides' famous statement that "nothing comes from nothing"). In what he called "first philosophy" or metaphysics, Aristotle did intend a theological correspondence between the prime mover and deity (presumably Zeus); functionally, however, he provided an explanation for the apparent motion of the "fixed stars" (now understood as the daily rotation of the Earth). According to his theses, immaterial unmoved movers are eternal unchangeable beings that constantly think about thinking, but being immaterial, they are incapable of interacting with the cosmos and have no knowledge of what transpires therein. From an "aspiration or desire", the celestial spheres, imitate that purely intellectual activity as best they can, by uniform circular motion. The unmoved movers inspiring the planetary spheres are no different in kind from the prime mover, they merely suffer a dependency of relation to the prime mover. Correspondingly, the motions of the planets are subordinate to the motion inspired by the prime mover in the sphere of fixed stars. Aristotle's natural theology admitted no creation or capriciousness from the immortal pantheon, but maintained a defense against dangerous charges of impiety.

Plotinus, a third-century Platonist, taught that the One transcendent absolute caused the universe to exist simply as a consequence of its existence (creatio ex deo). His disciple Proclus stated "The One is God".

Centuries later, the Islamic philosopher Avicenna (c. 980–1037) inquired into the question of being, in which he distinguished between essence (Mahiat) and existence (Wujud). He argued that the fact of existence could not be inferred from or accounted for by the essence of existing things, and that form and matter by themselves could not originate and interact with the movement of the Universe or the progressive actualization of existing things. Thus, he reasoned that existence must be due to an agent cause that necessitates, imparts, gives, or adds existence to an essence. To do so, the cause must coexist with its effect and be an existing thing.

Steven Duncan writes that it "was first formulated by a Greek-speaking Syriac Christian neo-Platonist, John Philoponus, who claims to find a contradiction between the Greek pagan insistence on the eternity of the world and the Aristotelian rejection of the existence of any actual infinite". Referring to the argument as the "'Kalam' cosmological argument", Duncan asserts that it "received its fullest articulation at the hands of [medieval] Muslim and Jewish exponents of Kalam ("the use of reason by believers to justify the basic metaphysical presuppositions of the faith").

Thomas Aquinas (c. 1225–1274) adapted and enhanced the argument he found in his reading of Aristotle and Avicenna to form one of the most influential versions of the cosmological argument. His conception of First Cause was the idea that the Universe must be caused by something that is itself uncaused, which he claimed is that which we call God:

The second way is from the nature of the efficient cause. In the world of sense we find there is an order of efficient causes. There is no case known (neither is it, indeed, possible) in which a thing is found to be the efficient cause of itself; for so it would be prior to itself, which is impossible. Now in efficient causes it is not possible to go on to infinity, because in all efficient causes following in order, the first is the cause of the intermediate cause, and the intermediate is the cause of the ultimate cause, whether the intermediate cause be several, or only one. Now to take away the cause is to take away the effect. Therefore, if there be no first cause among efficient causes, there will be no ultimate, nor any intermediate cause. But if in efficient causes it is possible to go on to infinity, there will be no first efficient cause, neither will there be an ultimate effect, nor any intermediate efficient causes; all of which is plainly false. Therefore it is necessary to admit a first efficient cause, to which everyone gives the name of God.

Importantly, Aquinas' Five Ways, given the second question of his Summa Theologica, are not the entirety of Aquinas' demonstration that the Christian God exists. The Five Ways form only the beginning of Aquinas' Treatise on the Divine Nature.

Versions of the argument

Argument from contingency

In the scholastic era, Aquinas formulated the "argument from contingency", following Aristotle in claiming that there must be something to explain why the Universe exists. Since the Universe could, under different circumstances, conceivably not exist (contingency), its existence must have a cause – not merely another contingent thing, but something that exists by necessity (something that must exist in order for anything else to exist). In other words, even if the Universe has always existed, it still owes its existence to an uncaused cause, Aquinas further said: "... and this we understand to be God."

Aquinas's argument from contingency allows for the possibility of a Universe that has no beginning in time. It is a form of argument from universal causation. Aquinas observed that, in nature, there were things with contingent existences. Since it is possible for such things not to exist, there must be some time at which these things did not in fact exist. Thus, according to Aquinas, there must have been a time when nothing existed. If this is so, there would exist nothing that could bring anything into existence. Contingent beings, therefore, are insufficient to account for the existence of contingent beings: there must exist a necessary being whose non-existence is an impossibility, and from which the existence of all contingent beings is ultimately derived.

The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz made a similar argument with his principle of sufficient reason in 1714. "There can be found no fact that is true or existent, or any true proposition," he wrote, "without there being a sufficient reason for its being so and not otherwise, although we cannot know these reasons in most cases." He formulated the cosmological argument succinctly: "Why is there something rather than nothing? The sufficient reason ... is found in a substance which ... is a necessary being bearing the reason for its existence within itself."

Leibniz's argument from contingency is one of the most popular cosmological arguments in philosophy of religion. It attempts to prove the existence of a necessary being and infer that this being is God. Alexander Pruss formulates the argument as follows:

1. Every contingent fact has an explanation.
2. There is a contingent fact that includes all other contingent facts.
3. Therefore, there is an explanation of this fact.
4. This explanation must involve a necessary being.
5. This necessary being is God.

Premise 1 is a form of the principle of sufficient reason stating that all contingently true sentences (i.e. contingent facts) have a sufficient explanation as to why they are the case. Premise 2 refers to what is known as the Big Conjunctive Contingent Fact (abbreviated BCCF), and the BCCF is generally taken to be the logical conjunction of all contingent facts. It can be thought about as the sum total of all contingent reality. Premise 3 then concludes that the BCCF has an explanation, as every contingency does (in virtue of the PSR). It follows that this explanation is non-contingent (i.e. necessary); no contingency can explain the BCCF, because every contingent fact is a part of the BCCF. Statement 5, which is either seen as a premise or a conclusion, infers that the necessary being which explains the totality of contingent facts is God. Several philosophers of religion, such as Joshua Rasmussen and T. Ryan Byerly, have argued for the inference from (4) to (5).

In esse and in fieri

The difference between the arguments from causation in fieri and in esse is a fairly important one. In fieri is generally translated as "becoming", while in esse is generally translated as "in essence". In fieri, the process of becoming, is similar to building a house. Once it is built, the builder walks away, and it stands on its own accord; compare the watchmaker analogy. (It may require occasional maintenance, but that is beyond the scope of the first cause argument.)

In esse (essence) is more akin to the light from a candle or the liquid in a vessel. George Hayward Joyce, SJ, explained that, "where the light of the candle is dependent on the candle's continued existence, not only does a candle produce light in a room in the first instance, but its continued presence is necessary if the illumination is to continue. If it is removed, the light ceases. Again, a liquid receives its shape from the vessel in which it is contained; but were the pressure of the containing sides withdrawn, it would not retain its form for an instant." This form of the argument is far more difficult to separate from a purely first cause argument than is the example of the house's maintenance above, because here the First Cause is insufficient without the candle's or vessel's continued existence.

The philosopher Robert Koons has stated a new variant on the cosmological argument. He says that to deny causation is to deny all empirical ideas – for example, if we know our own hand, we know it because of the chain of causes including light being reflected upon one's eyes, stimulating the retina and sending a message through the optic nerve into your brain. He summarised the purpose of the argument as "that if you don't buy into theistic metaphysics, you're undermining empirical science. The two grew up together historically and are culturally and philosophically inter-dependent ... If you say I just don't buy this causality principle – that's going to be a big big problem for empirical science." This in fieri version of the argument therefore does not intend to prove God, but only to disprove objections involving science, and the idea that contemporary knowledge disproves the cosmological argument.

Kalām cosmological argument

William Lane Craig, who was responsible for re-popularizing this argument in Western philosophy, presents it in the following general form:

1. Whatever begins to exist has a cause of its existence.
2. The universe began to exist.
3. Therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence.

Craig explains, by nature of the event (the Universe coming into existence), attributes unique to (the concept of) God must also be attributed to the cause of this event, including but not limited to: enormous power (if not omnipotence), being the creator of the Heavens and the Earth (as God is according to the Christian understanding of God), being eternal and being absolutely self-sufficient. Since these attributes are unique to God, anything with these attributes must be God. Something does have these attributes: the cause; hence, the cause is God, the cause exists; hence, God exists.

Craig defends the second premise, that the Universe had a beginning starting with Al-Ghazali's proof that an actual infinity is impossible. However, If the universe never had a beginning then there would be an actual infinite, Craig claims, namely an infinite amount of cause and effect events. Hence, the Universe had a beginning.

Metaphysical argument for the existence of God

Duns Scotus, the influential Medieval Christian theologian, created a metaphysical argument for the existence of God. Though it was inspired by Aquinas' argument from motion, he, like other philosophers and theologians, believed that his statement for God's existence could be considered separate to Aquinas'. His explanation for God's existence is long, and can be summarised as follows:

1. Something can be produced.
2. It is produced by itself, something or another.
3. Not by nothing, because nothing causes nothing.
4. Not by itself, because an effect never causes itself.
5. Therefore, by another A.
6. If A is first then we have reached the conclusion.
7. If A is not first, then we return to 2).
8. From 3) and 4), we produce another- B. The ascending series is either infinite or finite.
9. An infinite series is not possible.
10. Therefore, God exists.

Scotus deals immediately with two objections he can see: first, that there cannot be a first, and second, that the argument falls apart when 1) is questioned. He states that infinite regress is impossible, because it provokes unanswerable questions, like, in modern English, "What is infinity minus infinity?" The second he states can be answered if the question is rephrased using modal logic, meaning that the first statement is instead "It is possible that something can be produced."

Cosmological argument and infinite regress

Depending on its formulation, the cosmological argument is an example of a positive infinite regress argument. An infinite regress is an infinite series of entities governed by a recursive principle that determines how each entity in the series depends on or is produced by its predecessor. An infinite regress argument is an argument against a theory based on the fact that this theory leads to an infinite regress. A positive infinite regress argument employs the regress in question to argue in support of a theory by showing that its alternative involves a vicious regress. The regress relevant for the cosmological argument is the regress of causes: an event occurred because it was caused by another event that occurred before it, which was itself caused by a previous event, and so on. For an infinite regress argument to be successful, it has to demonstrate not just that the theory in question entails an infinite regress but also that this regress is vicious. Once the viciousness of the regress of causes is established, the cosmological argument can proceed to its positive conclusion by holding that it is necessary to posit a first cause in order to avoid it.

A regress can be vicious due to metaphysical impossibility, implausibility or explanatory failure. It is sometimes held that the regress of causes is vicious because it is metaphysically impossible, i.e. that it involves an outright contradiction. But it is difficult to see where this contradiction lies unless an additional assumption is accepted: that actual infinity is impossible. But this position is opposed to infinity in general, not just specifically to the regress of causes. A more promising view is that the regress of causes is to be rejected because it is implausible. Such an argument can be based on empirical observation, e.g. that, to the best of our knowledge, our universe had a beginning in the form of the Big Bang. But it can also be based on more abstract principles, like Ockham's razor, which posits that we should avoid ontological extravagance by not multiplying entities without necessity. A third option is to see the regress of causes as vicious due to explanatory failure, i.e. that it does not solve the problem it was formulated to solve or that it assumes already in disguised form what it was supposed to explain. According to this position, we seek to explain one event in the present by citing an earlier event that caused it. But this explanation is incomplete unless we can come to understand why this earlier event occurred, which is itself explained by its own cause and so on. At each step, the occurrence of an event has to be assumed. So it fails to explain why anything at all occurs, why there is a chain of causes to begin with.

Objections and counterarguments

What caused the First Cause?

One objection to the argument is that it leaves open the question of why the First Cause is unique in that it does not require any causes. Proponents argue that the First Cause is exempt from having a cause, while opponents argue that this is special pleading or otherwise untrue. Critics often press that arguing for the First Cause's exemption raises the question of why the First Cause is indeed exempt, whereas defenders maintain that this question has been answered by the various arguments, emphasizing that none of its major forms rest on the premise that everything has a cause.

William Lane Craig, who popularised and is notable for defending the Kalam cosmological argument, argues that the infinite is impossible, whichever perspective the viewer takes, and so there must always have been one unmoved thing to begin the universe. He uses Hilbert's paradox of the Grand Hotel and the question 'What is infinity minus infinity?' to illustrate the idea that the infinite is metaphysically, mathematically, and even conceptually, impossible. Other reasons include the fact that it is impossible to count down from infinity, and that, had the universe existed for an infinite amount of time, every possible event, including the final end of the universe, would already have occurred. He therefore states his argument in three points- firstly, everything that begins to exist has a cause of its existence; secondly, the universe began to exist; so, thirdly, therefore, the universe has a cause of its existence. Craig argues in the Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology that there cannot be an infinite regress of causes and thus there must be a first uncaused cause, even if one posits a plurality of causes of the universe. He argues Occam's Razor may be employed to remove unneeded further causes of the universe, to leave a single uncaused cause.

Secondly, it is argued that the premise of causality has been arrived at via a posteriori (inductive) reasoning, which is dependent on experience. David Hume highlighted this problem of induction and argued that causal relations were not true a priori. However, as to whether inductive or deductive reasoning is more valuable remains a matter of debate, with the general conclusion being that neither is prominent. Opponents of the argument tend to argue that it is unwise to draw conclusions from an extrapolation of causality beyond experience. Andrew Loke replies that, according to the Kalam Cosmological Argument, only things which begin to exist require a cause. On the other hand, something that is without beginning has always existed and therefore does not require a cause. The Cosmological Argument posits that there cannot be an actual infinite regress of causes, therefore there must be an uncaused First Cause that is beginningless and does not require a cause.

Not evidence for a theistic God

The basic cosmological argument merely establishes that a First Cause exists, not that it has the attributes of a theistic god, such as omniscience, omnipotence, and omnibenevolence. This is why the argument is often expanded to show that at least some of these attributes are necessarily true, for instance in the modern Kalam argument given above.

Existence of causal loops

A causal loop is a form of predestination paradox arising where traveling backwards in time is deemed a possibility. A sufficiently powerful entity in such a world would have the capacity to travel backwards in time to a point before its own existence, and to then create itself, thereby initiating everything which follows from it.

The usual reason given to refute the possibility of a causal loop is that it requires that the loop as a whole be its own cause. Richard Hanley argues that causal loops are not logically, physically, or epistemically impossible: "[In timed systems,] the only possibly objectionable feature that all causal loops share is that coincidence is required to explain them." However, Andrew Loke argues that causal loop of the type that is supposed to avoid a First Cause suffers from the problem of vicious circularity and thus it would not work.

Existence of infinite causal chains

David Hume and later Paul Edwards have invoked a similar principle in their criticisms of the cosmological argument. William L. Rowe has called this the Hume-Edwards principle:

If the existence of every member of a set is explained, the existence of that set is thereby explained.

Nevertheless, David White argues that the notion of an infinite causal regress providing a proper explanation is fallacious. Furthermore, in Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, the character Demea states that even if the succession of causes is infinite, the whole chain still requires a cause. To explain this, suppose there exists a causal chain of infinite contingent beings. If one asks the question, "Why are there any contingent beings at all?", it does not help to be told that "There are contingent beings because other contingent beings caused them." That answer would just presuppose additional contingent beings. An adequate explanation of why some contingent beings exist would invoke a different sort of being, a necessary being that is not contingent. A response might suppose each individual is contingent but the infinite chain as a whole is not; or the whole infinite causal chain to be its own cause.

Severinsen argues that there is an "infinite" and complex causal structure. White tried to introduce an argument "without appeal to the principle of sufficient reason and without denying the possibility of an infinite causal regress". A number of other arguments have been offered to demonstrate that an actual infinite regress cannot exist, viz. the argument for the impossibility of concrete actual infinities, the argument for the impossibility of traversing an actual infinite, the argument from the lack of capacity to begin to exist, and various arguments from paradoxes.

Big Bang cosmology

Some cosmologists and physicists argue that a challenge to the cosmological argument is the nature of time: "One finds that time just disappears from the Wheeler–DeWitt equation" (Carlo Rovelli). The Big Bang theory states that it is the point in which all dimensions came into existence, the start of both space and time. Then, the question "What was there before the Universe?" makes no sense; the concept of "before" becomes meaningless when considering a situation without time. This has been put forward by J. Richard Gott III, James E. Gunn, David N. Schramm, and Beatrice Tinsley, who said that asking what occurred before the Big Bang is like asking what is north of the North Pole. However, some cosmologists and physicists do attempt to investigate causes for the Big Bang, using such scenarios as the collision of membranes.

Philosopher Edward Feser argues that most of the classical philosophers' cosmological arguments for the existence of God do not depend on the Big Bang or whether the universe had a beginning. The question is not about what got things started or how long they have been going, but rather what keeps them going.

Creator in Buddhism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creator_in_Buddhism

Buddhism is a religion which does not include the belief in a creator deity, or any eternal divine personal being. Buddhism's teachings say that there are divine beings or gods called devas and other Buddhist deities, heavens and rebirths in its doctrine of saṃsāra or cyclical rebirth. Buddhism teaches that none of these gods as a creator or as being eternal, though they can live very long lives. In Buddhism, the devas are also trapped in the cycle of rebirth and are not necessarily virtuous. Thus while Buddhism includes multiple gods, its main focus is not on them. Peter Harvey calls this "trans-polytheistic".

Buddhist texts also posit that mundane deities such as Mahabrahma are misconstrued to be a creator. Buddhist ontology follows the doctrine of dependent origination, whereby all phenomena arise in dependence on other phenomena, hence no primal unmoved mover could be acknowledged or discerned. Gautama Buddha in the early Buddhist texts is also shown as stating that he saw no single beginning to the universe.

In spite of the mainstream non-theistic tradition in Buddhism however, some writers such as B. Alan Wallace have noted that some doctrines in Vajrayana Buddhism can be seen as similar to some theistic doctrines of creation.

Early Buddhist texts

Damien Keown notes that in the Saṃyutta Nikāya, the Buddha sees the cycle of rebirths as stretching back "many hundreds of thousands of eons without discernible beginning." Saṃyutta Nikāya 15:1 and 15:2 states: "this samsara is without discoverable beginning. A first point is not discerned of beings roaming and wandering on hindered by ignorance and fettered by craving."

According to Buddhologist Richard Hayes, the early Buddhist Nikaya literature treats the question of the existence of a creator god "primarily from either an epistemological point of view or a moral point of view". In these texts the Buddha is portrayed not as a creator-denying atheist who claims to be able to prove such a God's nonexistence, but rather his focus is other teachers' claims that their teachings lead to the highest good.

According to Richard Hayes, in the Tevijja Sutta (DN 13), there is an account of a dispute between two brahmins about how best to reach union with Brahma (Brahmasahavyata), who is seen as the highest god over whom no other being has mastery and who sees all. However, after being questioned by the Buddha, it is revealed that they do not have any direct experience of this Brahma. The Buddha calls their religious goal laughable, vain and empty.

Hayes also notes that in the early texts, the Buddha is not depicted as an atheist, but more as a skeptic who is against religious speculations, including speculations about a creator god. Citing the Devadaha Sutta (Majjhima Nikaya 101), Hayes states, "while the reader is left to conclude that it is attachment rather than God, actions in past lives, fate, type of birth or efforts in this life that is responsible for our experiences of sorrow, no systematic argument is given in an attempt to disprove the existence of God."

Narada Thera also notes that the Buddha specifically calls out the doctrine of creation by a supreme deity (termed Ishvara) for criticism in the Aṇguttara Nikāya. This doctrine of creation by a supreme lord is defined as follows: "Whatever happiness or pain or neutral feeling this person experiences all that is due to the creation of a supreme deity (issaranimmāṇahetu)." The Buddha criticized this view because he saw it as a fatalistic teaching that would lead to inaction or laziness:

"So, then, owing to the creation of a supreme deity men will become murderers, thieves, unchaste, liars, slanderers, abusive, babblers, covetous, malicious and perverse in view. Thus for those who fall back on the creation of a god as the essential reason, there is neither desire nor effort nor necessity to do this deed or abstain from that deed."

High gods who are mistaken as creator

The high god Brahma is often seen as an object in devotion in Buddhism, but he is not seen as a creator nor does he have eternal life. This depiction of the deity is from the Erawan Shrine in Bangkok, Thailand.

According to Peter Harvey, Buddhism assumes that the universe has no ultimate beginning to it, and thus sees no need for a creator God. In the early texts of Buddhism, the nearest term to this concept is "Great Brahma" (Maha Brahma) such as in Digha Nikaya 1.18. However "[w]hile being kind and compassionate, none of the brahmās are world-creators."

In the Pali canon, Buddhism includes the concept of reborn gods. According to this theory, periodically the physical world system ends and beings of that world system are reborn as gods in lower heavens. This too ends, according to Buddhist cosmology, and god Mahabrahma is then born, who is alone. He longs for the presence of others, and the other gods are reborn as his ministers and companions. In Buddhist suttas such as DN 1, Mahabrahma forgets his past lives, and falsely believes himself to be the Creator, Maker, All-seeing, the Lord. This belief, state the Buddhist texts, is then shared by other gods. Eventually, however one of the gods dies and is reborn as human with the power to remember his previous life. He teaches what he remembers from his previous life in lower heaven, that Mahabrahma is the Creator. It is this that leads to the human belief in Creator, according to the Pali Canon.

A depiction of the Buddha's defeat of Baka Brahma, a brahma god who mistakenly believed he was all powerful creator. Wat Olak Madu, Kedah.

A similar story of a high god (brahma) who mistakes himself as the all-powerful Creator can be seen in the Brahma-nimantanika Sutta (MN 49). In this sutta, the Buddha displays his superior knowledge by explaining how a high god named Baka Brahma, who believes himself to be supremely powerful, actually does not know of certain spiritual realms. The Buddha also demonstrates his superior psychic power by disappearing from Baka Brahma's sight, to a realm that he cannot reach and then challenges him to do the same. Baka Brahma fails in this, demonstrating the Buddha's superiority. The text also depicts Mara, an evil trickster figure, as attempting to support the Brahma's misconception of himself. As noted by Michael D. Nichols, MN 49 seems to show that "belief in an eternal creator figure is a devious ploy put forward by the Evil One to mislead humanity, and the implication is that Brahmins who believe in the power and permanence of Brahma have fallen for it."

The Problem of Evil in the Jatakas

Some stories in the Buddhist Jataka collections outline a critique of a Creator deity which is similar to the Problem of Evil.

One Jataka story (VI.208) states:

If Brahma is lord of the whole world and Creator of the multitude of beings, then why has he ordained misfortune in the world without making the whole world happy; or for what purpose has he made the world full of injustice, falsehood and conceit; or is the lord of beings evil in that he ordained injustice when there could have been justice?

The Pali Bhūridatta Jātaka (No. 543) has the bodhisattva (future Buddha) state:

"He who has eyes can see the sickening sight,

Why does not Brahmā set his creatures right?

If his wide power no limit can restrain,

Why is his hand so rarely spread to bless?

Why are his creatures all condemned to pain?

Why does he not to all give happiness?

Why do fraud, lies, and ignorance prevail?

Why triumphs falsehood—truth and justice fail?

I count you Brahmā one th'unjust among,

Who made a world in which to shelter wrong."

In the Pali Mahābodhi Jātaka (No. 528), the bodhisattva says:

"If there exists some Lord all powerful to fulfil

In every creature bliss or woe, and action good or ill;

That Lord is stained with sin.

Man does but work his will."

Medieval philosophers

Madhyamaka philosophers

In the Twelve Gate Treatise, the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna works to refute the belief of certain Indian non-Buddhists in a god called Isvara, who is "the creator, ruler and destroyer of the world."

A later Madhyamaka philosopher, Candrakīrti, states in his Introduction to the Middle Way (6.114): "Because things (bhava) are not produced without a cause (hetu), from a creator god (isvara), from themselves, another or both, they are always produced in dependence [on conditions]."

Shantideva (c. 8th century) in the 9th chapter of his Bodhicaryāvatāra, states:

'God is the cause of the world.' Tell me, who is God? The elements? Then why all the trouble about a mere word? (119) Besides the elements are manifold, impermanent, without intelligence or activity; without anything divine or venerable; impure. Also such elements as earth, etc., are not God.(120) Neither is space God; space lacks activity, nor is atman—that we have already excluded. Would you say that God is too great to conceive? An unthinkable creator is likewise unthinkable, so that nothing further can be said.

Yogacara philosophers

The 5th-century Buddhist philosopher Vasubandhu argued that a creator's singular identity is incompatible with creating the world in his Abhidharmakosha.

The Chinese monk Xuanzang (fl. c. 602–664) studied Buddhism in India during the seventh century, staying at Nalanda. There, he studied the Yogacara teachings passed down from Asanga and Vasubandhu and taught to him by the abbot Śīlabhadra. In his work Cheng Weishi Lun (Skt. Vijñāptimātratāsiddhi śāstra), Xuanzang refutes a "Great Lord" or Great Brahmā doctrine:

According to one doctrine, there is a great, self-existent deity whose substance is real and who is all-pervading, eternal, and the producer of all phenomena. This doctrine is unreasonable. If something produces something, it is not eternal, the non-eternal is not all-pervading, and what is not all-pervading is not real. If the deity's substance is all-pervading and eternal, it must contain all powers and be able to produce all dharmas everywhere, at all times, and simultaneously. If he produces dharma when a desire arises, or according to conditions, this contradicts the doctrine of a single cause. Or else, desires and conditions would arise spontaneously since the cause is eternal. Other doctrines claim that there is a great Brahma, a Time, a Space, a Starting Point, a Nature, an Ether, a Self, etc., that is eternal and really exists, is endowed with all powers, and is able to produce all dharmas. We refute all these in the same way we did the concept of the Great Lord.

Others

The influential Theravada commentator Buddhaghosa also specifically denied the concept of a Creator. He wrote:

"For there is no god Brahma. The maker of the conditioned world of rebirths. Phenomena alone flow on. Conditioned by the coming together of causes." (Visuddhimagga 603).

The 7th-century Buddhist scholar Dharmakīrti advances a number of arguments against the existence of a creator god in his Pramāṇavārtika, following in the footsteps of Vasubandhu. Later Mahayana scholars such as Śāntarakṣita and Kamalaśīla continued this tradition.

The 11th-century Buddhist philosopher Ratnakīrti at the then university at Vikramashila (now Bhagalpur, Bihar) criticized the arguments for the existence of God-like being called Isvara, that emerged in the Navya-Nyaya sub-school of Hinduism, in his “Refutation of Arguments Establishing Īśvara” (Īśvara-sādhana-dūṣaṇa). These arguments are similar to those used by other sub-schools of Hinduism and Jainism that questioned the Navya-Nyaya theory of dualistic creator.

Vajrayana doctrines

Adi Buddha Samantabhadra, a symbol of the ground in Dzogchen thought.

Some Vajrayana Buddhist teachings have been seen as being similar to theistic views by various writers.

B. Alan Wallace writes on how the Vajrayana concept of the primordial Buddha (Adi Buddha), who in some scriptures is viewed as one with the tathāgatagarbha, is sometimes seen as forming the foundation of both samsara and nirvana. This view, according to Wallace, holds that "the entire universe consists of nothing other than displays of this infinite, radiant, empty awareness."

Furthermore, Wallace notes similarities between these Vajrayana doctrines and notions of a divine creative "ground of being". He writes: "a careful analysis of Vajrayana Buddhist cosmogony, specifically as presented in the Atiyoga tradition of Indo-Tibetan Buddhism, which presents itself as the culmination of all Buddhist teachings, reveals a theory of a transcendent ground of being and a process of creation that bear remarkable similarities with views presented in Vedanta and Neoplatonic Western Christian theories of creation." He further comments that the three views "have so much in common that they could almost be regarded as varying interpretations of a single theory."

Eva K. Dargyay also notes that the Dzogchen tantra called the Kunjed Gyalpo ("All Creating King") uses symbolic language for the Adi-Buddha Samantabhadra which is reminiscent of theism. However, Jim Valby notes that "Kunjed Gyalpo and Sattvavajra are not gods, but are symbols for different aspects of our primordial enlightenment. Kunjed Gyalpo is our timeless Pure Perfect Presence beyond cause and effect. Sattvavajra is our ordinary, analytical, judgmental presence inside time that depends upon cause and effect."

Regarding the term Adi Buddha, Vesna Wallace notes:

when the Kalacakra tradition speaks of the Adibuddha in the sense of a beginningless and endless Buddha, it is referring to the innate gnosis that pervades the minds of all sentient beings and stands as the basis of both samsara and nirvana. Whereas, when it speaks of the Adibuddha as the one who first attained perfect enlightenment by means of imperishable bliss, and when it asserts the necessity of acquiring merit and knowledge in order to attain perfect Buddhahood, it is referring to the actual realization of one's own innate gnosis. Thus, one could say that in the Kalacakra tradition, Adibuddha refers to the ultimate nature of one's own mind and to the one who has realized the innate nature of one's own mind by means of purificatory practices.

According to Alexander Studholme, the Kāraṇḍavyūhasūtra presents the great bodhisattva, Avalokiteśvara, as a kind of supreme lord of the cosmos. A striking feature of Avalokiteśvara in this sutra is his creative power, as he is said to be the progenitor of various heavenly bodies and divinities. Alexander Studholme, in his monograph on the sutra, writes:

The sun and moon are said to be born from the bodhisattva's eyes, Mahesvara [Siva] from his brow, Brahma from his shoulders, Narayana [Vishnu] from his heart, Sarasvati from his teeth, the winds from his mouth, the earth from his feet and the sky from his stomach.'

Avalokiteśvara himself is seen, in the versified version of the sutra, to be an emanation of the first Buddha, the Adi Buddha, who is called svayambhu (self-existent, not born from anything or anyone) and the "primordial lord" (Adinatha).

 

Adaptive radiation

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

 

Four of the 14 finch species found in the Galápagos Archipelago, which are thought to have evolved via an adaptive radiation that diversified their beak shapes, enabling them to exploit different food sources.

Part of a series on
Evolutionary biology
Darwin's finches by John Gould

Characteristics

Four features can be used to identify an adaptive radiation:

1. A common ancestry of component species: specifically a recent ancestry. Note that this is not the same as a monophyly in which all descendants of a common ancestor are included.
2. A phenotype-environment correlation: a significant association between environments and the morphological and physiological traits used to exploit those environments.
3. Trait utility: the performance or fitness advantages of trait values in their corresponding environments.
4. Rapid speciation: presence of one or more bursts in the emergence of new species around the time that ecological and phenotypic divergence is underway.

Conditions

Adaptive radiations are thought to be triggered by an ecological opportunity or a new adaptive zone. Sources of ecological opportunity can be the loss of antagonists (competitors or predators), the evolution of a key innovation or dispersal to a new environment. Any one of these ecological opportunities has the potential to result in an increase in population size and relaxed stabilizing (constraining) selection. As genetic diversity is positively correlated with population size the expanded population will have more genetic diversity compared to the ancestral population. With reduced stabilizing selection phenotypic diversity can also increase. In addition, intraspecific competition will increase, promoting divergent selection to use a wider range of resources. This ecological release provides the potential for ecological speciation and thus adaptive radiation.

Occupying a new environment might take place under the following conditions:

1. A new habitat has opened up: a volcano, for example, can create new ground in the middle of the ocean. This is the case in places like Hawaii and the Galapagos. For aquatic species, the formation of a large new lake habitat could serve the same purpose; the tectonic movement that formed the East African Rift, ultimately leading to the creation of the Rift Valley Lakes, is an example of this. An extinction event could effectively achieve this same result, opening up niches that were previously occupied by species that no longer exist.
2. This new habitat is relatively isolated. When a volcano erupts on the mainland and destroys an adjacent forest, it is likely that the terrestrial plant and animal species that used to live in the destroyed region will recolonize without evolving greatly. However, if a newly formed habitat is isolated, the species that colonize it will likely be somewhat random and uncommon arrivals.
3. The new habitat has a wide availability of niche space. The rare colonist can only adaptively radiate into as many forms as there are niches.

Relationship between mass-extinctions and mass adaptive radiations

All genera

"Well-defined" genera

Trend line

"Big Five" mass extinctions

Other mass extinctions

Million years ago

Thousands of genera

Phanerozoic biodiversity as shown by the fossil record

A 2020 study found there to be no direct causal relationship between the proportionally most comparable mass radiations and extinctions in terms of "co-occurrence of species", substantially challenging the hypothesis of "creative mass extinctions".

Examples

Darwin's finches

Darwin's finches are an often-used textbook example of adaptive radiation. Today represented by approximately 15 species, Darwin's finches are Galapagos endemics famously adapted for a specialized feeding behavior (although one species, the Cocos finch (Pinaroloxias inornata), is not found in the Galapagos but on the island of Cocos south of Costa Rica). Darwin's finches are not actually finches in the true sense, but are members of the tanager family Thraupidae, and are derived from a single ancestor that arrived in the Galapagos from mainland South America perhaps just 3 million years ago. Excluding the Cocos finch, each species of Darwin's finch is generally widely distributed in the Galapagos and fills the same niche on each island. For the ground finches, this niche is a diet of seeds, and they have thick bills to facilitate the consumption of these hard materials. The ground finches are further specialized to eat seeds of a particular size: the large ground finch (Geospiza magnirostris) is the largest species of Darwin's finch and has the thickest beak for breaking open the toughest seeds, the small ground finch (Geospiza fuliginosa) has a smaller beak for eating smaller seeds, and the medium ground finch (Geospiza fortis) has a beak of intermediate size for optimal consumption of intermediately sized seeds (relative to G. magnirostris and G. fuliginosa). There is some overlap: for example, the most robust medium ground finches could have beaks larger than those of the smallest large ground finches. Because of this overlap, it can be difficult to tell the species apart by eye, though their songs differ. These three species often occur sympatrically, and during the rainy season in the Galapagos when food is plentiful, they specialize little and eat the same, easily accessible foods. It was not well-understood why their beaks were so adapted until Peter and Rosemary Grant studied their feeding behavior in the long dry season, and discovered that when food is scarce, the ground finches use their specialized beaks to eat the seeds that they are best suited to eat and thus avoid starvation.

The other finches in the Galapagos are similarly uniquely adapted for their particular niche. The cactus finches (Geospiza sp.) have somewhat longer beaks than the ground finches that serve the dual purpose of allowing them to feed on Opuntia cactus nectar and pollen while these plants are flowering, but on seeds during the rest of the year. The warbler-finches (Certhidea sp.) have short, pointed beaks for eating insects. The woodpecker finch (Camarhynchus pallidus) has a slender beak which it uses to pick at wood in search of insects; it also uses small sticks to reach insect prey inside the wood, making it one of the few animals that use tools.

The mechanism by which the finches initially diversified is still an area of active research. One proposition is that the finches were able to have a non-adaptive, allopatric speciation event on separate islands in the archipelago, such that when they reconverged on some islands, they were able to maintain reproductive isolation. Once they occurred in sympatry, niche specialization was favored so that the different species competed less directly for resources. This second, sympatric event was adaptive radiation.

Cichlids of the African Great Lakes

The haplochromine cichlid fishes in the Great Lakes of the East African Rift (particularly in Lake Tanganyika, Lake Malawi, and Lake Victoria) form the most speciose modern example of adaptive radiation. These lakes are believed to be home to about 2,000 different species of cichlid, spanning a wide range of ecological roles and morphological characteristics. Cichlids in these lakes fill nearly all of the roles typically filled by many fish families, including those of predators, scavengers, and herbivores, with varying dentitions and head shapes to match their dietary habits. In each case, the radiation events are only a few million years old, making the high level of speciation particularly remarkable. Several factors could be responsible for this diversity: the availability of a multitude of niches probably favored specialization, as few other fish taxa are present in the lakes (meaning that sympatric speciation was the most probable mechanism for initial specialization). Also, continual changes in the water level of the lakes during the Pleistocene (which often turned the largest lakes into several smaller ones) could have created the conditions for secondary allopatric speciation.

Tanganyika cichlids

Lake Tanganyika is the site from which nearly all the cichlid lineages of East Africa (including both riverine and lake species) originated. Thus, the species in the lake constitute a single adaptive radiation event but do not form a single monophyletic clade. Lake Tanganyika is also the least speciose of the three largest African Great Lakes, with only around 200 species of cichlid; however, these cichlids are more morphologically divergent and ecologically distinct than their counterparts in lakes Malawi and Victoria, an artifact of Lake Tanganyika's older cichlid fauna. Lake Tanganyika itself is believed to have formed 9–12 million years ago, putting a recent cap on the age of the lake's cichlid fauna. Many of Tanganyika's cichlids live very specialized lifestyles. The giant or emperor cichlid (Boulengerochromis microlepis) is a piscivore often ranked the largest of all cichlids (though it competes for this title with South America's Cichla temensis, the speckled peacock bass). It is thought that giant cichlids spawn only a single time, breeding in their third year and defending their young until they reach a large size, before dying of starvation some time thereafter. The three species of Altolamprologus are also piscivores, but with laterally compressed bodies and thick scales enabling them to chase prey into thin cracks in rocks without damaging their skin. Plecodus straeleni has evolved large, strangely curved teeth that are designed to scrape scales off of the sides of other fish, scales being its main source of food. Gnathochromis permaxillaris possesses a large mouth with a protruding upper lip, and feeds by opening this mouth downward onto the sandy lake bottom, sucking in small invertebrates. A number of Tanganyika's cichlids are shell-brooders, meaning that mating pairs lay and fertilize their eggs inside of empty shells on the lake bottom. Lamprologus callipterus is a unique egg-brooding species, with 15 cm-long males amassing collections of shells and guarding them in the hopes of attracting females (about 6 cm in length) to lay eggs in these shells. These dominant males must defend their territories from three types of rival: (1) other dominant males looking to steal shells; (2) younger, "sneaker" males looking to fertilize eggs in a dominant male's territory; and (3) tiny, 2–4 cm "parasitic dwarf" males that also attempt to rush in and fertilize eggs in the dominant male's territory. These parasitic dwarf males never grow to the size of dominant males, and the male offspring of dominant and parasitic dwarf males grow with 100% fidelity into the form of their fathers. A number of other highly specialized Tanganyika cichlids exist aside from these examples, including those adapted for life in open lake water up to 200m deep.

Malawi cichlids

The cichlids of Lake Malawi constitute a "species flock" of up to 1000 endemic species. Only seven cichlid species in Lake Malawi are not a part of the species flock: the Eastern happy (Astatotilapia calliptera), the sungwa (Serranochromis robustus), and five tilapia species (genera Oreochromis and Coptodon). All of the other cichlid species in the lake are descendants of a single original colonist species, which itself was descended from Tanganyikan ancestors. The common ancestor of Malawi's species flock is believed to have reached the lake 3.4 million years ago at the earliest, making Malawi cichlids' diversification into their present numbers particularly rapid. Malawi's cichlids span a similarly range of feeding behaviors to those of Tanganyika, but also show signs of a much more recent origin. For example, all members of the Malawi species flock are mouth-brooders, meaning the female keeps her eggs in her mouth until they hatch; in almost all species, the eggs are also fertilized in the female's mouth, and in a few species, the females continue to guard their fry in their mouth after they hatch. Males of most species display predominantly blue coloration when mating. However, a number of particularly divergent species are known from Malawi, including the piscivorous Nimbochromis livingtonii, which lies on its side in the substrate until small cichlids, perhaps drawn to its broken white patterning, come to inspect the predator - at which point they are swiftly eaten.

Victoria cichlids

Lake Victoria's cichlids are also a species flock, once composed of some 500 or more species. The deliberate introduction of the Nile Perch (Lates niloticus) in the 1950s proved disastrous for Victoria cichlids, and the collective biomass of the Victoria cichlid species flock has decreased substantially and an unknown number of species have become extinct. However, the original range of morphological and behavioral diversity seen in the lake's cichlid fauna is still mostly present today, if endangered. These again include cichlids specialized for niches across the trophic spectrum, as in Tanganyika and Malawi, but again, there are standouts. Victoria is famously home to many piscivorous cichlid species, some of which feed by sucking the contents out of mouthbrooding females' mouths. Victoria's cichlids constitute a far younger radiation than even that of Lake Malawi, with estimates of the age of the flock ranging from 200,000 years to as little as 14,000.

Adaptive radiation in Hawaii

An ʻiʻiwi (Drepanis coccinea). Note the long, curved beak for sipping nectar from tubular flowers.

Hawaii has served as the site of a number of adaptive radiation events, owing to its isolation, recent origin, and large land area. The three most famous examples of these radiations are presented below, though insects like the Hawaiian drosophilid flies and Hyposmocoma moths have also undergone adaptive radiation.

Hawaiian honeycreepers

The Hawaiian honeycreepers form a large, highly morphologically diverse species group of birds that began radiating in the early days of the Hawaiian archipelago. While today only 17 species are known to persist in Hawaii (3 more may or may not be extinct), there were more than 50 species prior to Polynesian colonization of the archipelago (between 18 and 21 species have gone extinct since the discovery of the islands by westerners). The Hawaiian honeycreepers are known for their beaks, which are specialized to satisfy a wide range of dietary needs: for example, the beak of the ʻakiapōlāʻau (Hemignathus wilsoni) is characterized by a short, sharp lower mandible for scraping bark off of trees, and the much longer, curved upper mandible is used to probe the wood underneath for insects. Meanwhile, the ʻiʻiwi (Drepanis coccinea) has a very long curved beak for reaching nectar deep in Lobelia flowers. An entire clade of Hawaiian honeycreepers, the tribe Psittirostrini, is composed of thick-billed, mostly seed-eating birds, like the Laysan finch (Telespiza cantans). In at least some cases, similar morphologies and behaviors appear to have evolved convergently among the Hawaiian honeycreepers; for example, the short, pointed beaks of Loxops and Oreomystis evolved separately despite once forming the justification for lumping the two genera together. The Hawaiian honeycreepers are believed to have descended from a single common ancestor some 15 to 20 million years ago, though estimates range as low as 3.5 million years.

Hawaiian silverswords

A mixture of blooming and non-blooming Haleakalā silverswords (Argyroxiphium sandwicense macrocephalum).

Adaptive radiation is not a strictly vertebrate phenomenon, and examples are also known from among plants. The most famous example of adaptive radiation in plants is quite possibly the Hawaiian silverswords, named for alpine desert-dwelling Argyroxiphium species with long, silvery leaves that live for up to 20 years before growing a single flowering stalk and then dying. The Hawaiian silversword alliance consists of twenty-eight species of Hawaiian plants which, aside from the namesake silverswords, includes trees, shrubs, vines, cushion plants, and more. The silversword alliance is believed to have originated in Hawaii no more than 6 million years ago, making this one of Hawaii's youngest adaptive radiation events. This means that the silverswords evolved on Hawaii's modern high islands, and descended from a single common ancestor that arrived on Kauai from western North America. The closest modern relatives of the silverswords today are California tarweeds of the family Asteraceae.

Hawaiian lobelioids

Hawaii is also the site of a separate major floral adaptive radiation event: the Hawaiian lobelioids. The Hawaiian lobelioids are significantly more speciose than the silverswords, perhaps because they have been present in Hawaii for so much longer: they descended from a single common ancestor who arrived in the archipelago up to 15 million years ago. Today the Hawaiian lobelioids form a clade of over 125 species, including succulents, trees, shrubs, epiphytes, etc. Many species have been lost to extinction and many of the surviving species endangered.

Caribbean anoles

Anole lizards are distributed broadly in the New World, from the Southeastern US to South America. With over 400 species currently recognized, often placed in a single genus (Anolis), they constitute one of the largest radiation events among all lizards. Anole radiation on the mainland has largely been a process of speciation, and is not adaptive to any great degree, but anoles on each of the Greater Antilles (Cuba, Hispaniola, Puerto Rico, and Jamaica) have adaptively radiated in separate, convergent ways. On each of these islands, anoles have evolved with such a consistent set of morphological adaptations that each species can be assigned to one of six "ecomorphs": trunk–ground, trunk–crown, grass–bush, crown–giant, twig, and trunk. Take, for example, crown–giants from each of these islands: the Cuban Anolis luteogularis, Hispaniola's Anolis ricordii, Puerto Rico's Anolis cuvieri, and Jamaica's Anolis garmani (Cuba and Hispaniola are both home to more than one species of crown–giant). These anoles are all large, canopy-dwelling species with large heads and large lamellae (scales on the undersides of the fingers and toes that are important for traction in climbing), and yet none of these species are particularly closely related and appear to have evolved these similar traits independently. The same can be said of the other five ecomorphs across the Caribbean's four largest islands. Much like in the case of the cichlids of the three largest African Great Lakes, each of these islands is home to its own convergent Anolis adaptive radiation event.

Other examples

Presented above are the most well-documented examples of modern adaptive radiation, but other examples are known. Populations of three-spined sticklebacks have repeatedly diverged and evolved into distinct ecotypes. On Madagascar, birds of the family Vangidae are marked by very distinct beak shapes to suit their ecological roles. Madagascan mantellid frogs have radiated into forms that mirror other tropical frog faunas, with the brightly colored mantellas (Mantella) having evolved convergently with the Neotropical poison dart frogs of Dendrobatidae, while the arboreal Boophis species are the Madagascan equivalent of tree frogs and glass frogs. The pseudoxyrhophiine snakes of Madagascar have evolved into fossorial, arboreal, terrestrial, and semi-aquatic forms that converge with the colubroid faunas in the rest of the world. These Madagascan examples are significantly older than most of the other examples presented here: Madagascar's fauna has been evolving in isolation since the island split from India some 88 million years ago, and the Mantellidae originated around 50 mya. Older examples are known: the K-Pg extinction event, which caused the disappearance of the dinosaurs and most other reptilian megafauna 65 million years ago, is seen as having triggered a global adaptive radiation event that created the mammal diversity that exists today.

Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nothing_in_Biology_Makes_Sense_Except_in_the_Light_of_Evolution 

 

Mosaic medallion in the floor of the main hall of the Jordan Hall of Science, University of Notre Dame.

"Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" is a 1973 essay by the evolutionary biologist Theodosius Dobzhansky, criticising anti-evolution creationism and espousing theistic evolution. The essay was first published in American Biology Teacher in 1973.

Dobzhansky first used the title statement, in a slight variation, in a 1964 presidential address to the American Society of Zoologists, "Biology, Molecular and Organismic", to assert the importance of organismic biology in response to the challenge of the rising field of molecular biology. The term "light of evolution"—or sub specie evolutionis—had been used earlier by the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin and then by the biologist Julian Huxley.

Overview

Dobzhansky opens with a critique of Shaikh Abdul Aziz bin Baz, the then Grand Mufti of Saudi Arabia, for holding a belief based on scripture that the Sun revolves around the Earth. Dobzhansky asserts that "it is ludicrous to mistake the Bible and the Koran for primers of natural science. They treat of matters even more important: the meaning of man and his relations to God." He then criticizes the early English antievolutionist Philip Henry Gosse – who had proposed that fossils were created in the places where they were found – for blasphemously implying that God is deceitful.

As he had said in his earlier presidential address, "If the living world has not arisen from common ancestors by means of an evolutionary process, then the fundamental unity of living things is a hoax and their diversity is a joke." These two themes of the unity of living things and the diversity of life provide central themes for his essay.

Dobzhansky used the example of the adaptive radiation of Drosophila fruit flies (blue arrows) on Hawaii.

Addressing the diversity of life on Earth, Dobzhansky asks whether God was joking when he created different species for different environments. This diversity becomes reasonable and understandable, however, if Creation takes place not by the whim of the Creator "but by evolution propelled by natural selection." He further illustrates this diversity from his own investigation of the widely diverse range of species of fruit flies in Hawaii. Either the Creator, "in a fit of absent mindedness," created many species of fruit flies in Hawaii, or the fruit flies that arrived on the islands, diversified to fill a wide range of vacant ecological niches.

He illustrates the unity of living things using the molecular sequence of cytochrome C, which Emanuel Margoliash and Walter M. Fitch had shown to be similar in a wide range of species, including monkeys, tuna, kangaroos, and yeast. This unity is further illustrated by the similarity of the embryos of different species. Either God deliberately arranged things "to mislead sincere seekers of truth" or these similarities are the result of evolution.

Dobzhansky concludes that scripture and science are two different things: "It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology."

One response to this paper was a paper by Stephen Dilley, "Nothing in biology makes sense except in light of theology?". This argued that Dobzhansky's arguments all "hinge[d] upon sectarian claims about God’s nature, actions, purposes, or duties"—claims that in Dilley's view required more justification and appeared mutually incompatible.

The underlying theme

The underlying theme of the essay is the need to teach biological evolution in the context of debate about creation and evolution in public education in the United States. The fact that evolution occurs explains the interrelatedness of the various facts of biology, and so makes biology make sense. The concept has become firmly established as a unifying idea in biology education.

The phrase

The notion of the "light of evolution" came originally from the vitalist Jesuit priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whom Dobzhansky much admired. In the last paragraph of the article, Dobzhansky quotes from de Chardin's 1955 The Phenomenon of Man:

(Evolution) general condition to which all theories, all hypotheses, all systems must bow and which they must satisfy henceforward if they are to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which illuminates all facts, a curve that all lines must follow. (p. 219 of The Phenomenon of Man)

The phrase "nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution" has come into common use by those opposing creationism or its variant called intelligent design. While the essay argues (following de Chardin) that Christianity and evolutionary biology are compatible, a position described as evolutionary creationism or theistic evolution, the phrase is also used by those who consider that "in biology" includes anthropology, and those who consider a creator to be unnecessary, such as Richard Dawkins who published The Selfish Gene just three years later.

Quotations

I am a creationist and an evolutionist. Evolution is God's, or Nature's method of creation. Creation is not an event that happened in 4004 BC; it is a process that began some 10 billion years ago and is still under way.

— Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (1973)

Does the evolutionary doctrine clash with religious faith? It does not. It is a blunder to mistake the Holy Scriptures for elementary textbooks of astronomy, geology, biology, and anthropology. Only if symbols are construed to mean what they are not intended to mean can there arise imaginary, insoluble conflicts.... the blunder leads to blasphemy: the Creator is accused of systematic deceitfulness.

— Theodosius Dobzhansky, "Nothing in Biology Makes Sense Except in the Light of Evolution" (1973)