THE PHILOSOPHY OF CREATION, DARWINIAN EVOLUTION AND THE

ABSOLUTE – JAY DYER

One of the most difficult things for people to readjust to is the counter-intuitive (or seemingly counter-
intuitive) worldview in modified Platonism that I often refer to. This reorientation shifts one’s entire
perspective on the outer, external world, rendering it again a sacred space, infused with the Divine, as
opposed to a brute, “material” realm dominated by chaos, entropy and death. It is understandable why
people prefer this grand narrative (and a depressing narrative it is), despite the protestations of those who
opt for this paradigm that we in the other camp are “weak” for choosing older “fictions” like souls, angels
and God. To be sure, the materialists and servants of delusion of brute “matter” have their own deity –
the impersonal “forces of nature,” but we’ll set that aside for the moment.

It is crucial that the psyche undergo this repentance, metanoia in Greek, and reorienting, as the attitude
mentioned is that of fallen man, viewing his world as one devoid of the supernatural under the guise of
“science.” While the scientific method is certainly a useful tool (I read scientific material frequently), the
lack of philosophical education on the part of that community is appalling. It is precisely the
hubristic impetus of fallen man that impels the hardcore dogmatists of the brute, impersonal forces of
nature cult to stamp out all such ideas – even the slightest inkling by any of their ilk, tending toward the
idea the psyche or mind may not be reduced to chemical reactions, must be swiftly punished.

This is why the discoveries and theses proposed in quantum physics are so disturbing to advocates of
scientism, despite their good faith in future science to resolve all questions with strict rationalism. Never
mind the fact that “reason” itself is nonsensical in the deterministic paradigm of Darwinian naturalism, the
crusaders of modern empiricism are committed adherents of the Holy Inquisition of Scientism, and no
manner of logical argumentation can persuade them otherwise. Those aware of an alternate version of
human history, the Biblical narrative, in which man is a fallen creature in rebellion against his Creator, have
a perfectly rational (indeed, the only rational) explanation of these events – and can even explain why man
himself prefers his own self-imposed servitude, to quote Kant, rather than submission to the doctrine of
Creation.

Creation is crucial because of the implications for the entirety of how man views and operates in the
world. Our worldview will determine the way we act, showing the old adage of lex orandi, lex credendi to
be correct. If the universe is a created reality, then the implications for how things like electrons, matter
and other natural processes work will have vastly different meanings. For example, if there is no Creation,
and the universe is either eternal or illusory, the way we operate will be dictated accordingly. We can look
to history to show us cultures where such a fundamental presupposition dominated, such as Hindu India or
ancient China. In these cultures, the dominance of the Absolute as an impersonal reality, with a multitude
of lesser deities to be supplicated created a vast array of self-destructive practices amongst those
populations. Starvation in India, while cattle roamed free as divine, and a “divine” emperor in China, where
individual subjects had no personal identity. These are merely examples of basic philosophical
presuppositions that undergirded a culture and resulted in a praxisconsistent therewith.

Precisely because these cultures were suffused with the notion that time and the universe was eternal, it
became a trap from which the wheel of time and “materiality” had to be escaped, through meditation, radical
asceticism, or some other form of mystical gnosis. If, on the other hand, “material” reality was a created
reality, and not a self-subsisting eternal principle of its own, and the fundamental framework of the “stuff”
of reality was designed and began at a point in time, the implications would be vastly different. The creation
account of Genesis, for example, presents a very different narrative of history and beginnings than these
other accounts. Although it has been fashionable for the last few hundred years to dismiss the Genesis
narrative as a fictional mythology of numerous blended Ancient Near Eastern cosmologies, the fact is, the
Creation account of Genesis presents a vastly different theology than any other religious account, aside from
even the Egyptian account, which comes close.

This difference cannot be overstated: The biblical account posits that time and “matter” are not evils, traps
or the source of any fundamentally oppositional principle, but are rather goods – inherently good, due to
being created in time by a good God. God, being good, does not “create” evil, as if it had any substantial
or ontological being. All being, in the metaphysical sense, in this sense, is created being, and created with
the potential to receive the higher divine energies or powers of God. In other words, creation was such that
it was placed in a state in which it might be raised to even higher goods, but this does not mean creation
was therefore “bad,” because its initial state was a lesser good. There is no opposition or dialectic between
the good being many, as later western philosophy, and in particular Platonism would posit. This opposition
of the good necessarily being absolutely One (the simple monad), was a Platonic idea that would have its
precedent in ancient far eastern thought.

Even the Hermetica and the Egyptian accounts from the Memphite narrative, for example, include the idea
that creation was spoken into existence by virtue of a divine Logos, yet ultimately, even in the Egyptian
narrative, the overall principle, the ultimate Absolute, is not personal, but an immaterial force. Thus, at the
outset, we are presented with only two possible options for this question – is the Absolute ultimately
(supra)rational and personal, or is the Absolute ultimately an impersonal, chaotic force? There are only two
possibilities here, and once we consider this basic philosophical question, we can extrapolate Darwinism as
clearly a manifestation of the second. Though most Darwinian adherents would be at pains to insist there
is no ultimate guiding principle, the worldview still tends towards the notion of Forces of Nature
determining. This determination, however, is ultimately irrational and impersonal, aside from the
appearance of order, telos and design. (Note that I am not making a classical teleological argument, but a
transcendental version of a teleological argument.)

But there are many, many more problems for positing ultimate reality or the Absolute as an impersonal
force. If ultimate reality is impersonal and chaotic, then all localized events, phenomena and objects are
also devoid of any ultimate meaning. Language, mathematics, logic, etc., are thus also annihilated as merely
mental fictions, or at best some cosmic force we do not yet understand (yet still impersonal!). These
servants of chaos and abyss are like a cartoon character, sawing off the limb he’s sitting on, to spite his
opponent. If ultimate reality is impersonal, then the thread that links all facts, ideas, objects, patterns, etc.,
is not real. It is a fiction of man’s chaotic, impersonal mental chemical reactions. There is no order or pattern
actually out there in external reality, and the so-called regularity of nature upon which science is built,
induction, is merely a mental projection or interpretation. Such devastating questions, of course, are the
very reason “science” (or scientism) has chosen to discard philosophy as “useless.” However, these
questions do not go away, nor does science determine reality by some will to power dismissal of philosophical
questions. The mere fact that “scientists” dogmatically mandate that no one can ask questions about why
or what happened before the so-called Big Bang shows how ridiculous they truly are.

When this is considered, Creation becomes the only logical and philosophically coherent position, as it makes
perfect sense of the very principle of coherence itself – as an objective reality. Despite the
Darwinian/scientistic rationalist insistence they alone hold the keys of reason, they have dug a pit they
themselves have fallen into, to quote Psalms. Reason, coherence, pattern recognition, mathematics and
logic are not mental constructs, but undeniably operant principles in the objective, external world. This is
how bridges are built, words bring about communication, and the principle of induction makes science
possible. This is also how geometry is math in space, and music is math in time. Precisely because these
principles work in the world to build amazing logic machines, like computers, we can see the basic
presuppositionsof the reductionistic naturalist are false. And this point cannot be left unstressed either –
the problem at work between someone who espouses such views and, say, myself, is that we have
fundamentally opposed beliefs – presuppositions – from the outset. My presuppositions govern my
worldview, as do the presuppositions of the naturalist. However, we cannot both be correct, as our basic
beliefs are fundamentally at odds.

This is why I continually return to the question of objective metaphysical principles as the means by which
to engage the opponent and modernity as a whole. Our disagreement begins with Creation and what the
world is. For me, it is guided by an Omniscient, Omnipotent, Omnipresent God, and all the stuff of reality
has its ground in a single Divine Mind. Reality is, at base, rational, although that rationality is infinite, so it
transcends my finite reason. Regardless, it does not make God irrational, it makes Him supra-rational, which
means there are plenty of things I must learn analogically. In contrast, for the opponent, reality is ultimately
irrational, with no meaning, telos, or guiding principle. It just is, and that brute nihilism is something he
must continually confront as he seeks to make reason, science and math function as a supposedly mental
fiction in the external world.

The world, for this person, is not something to be ruled as a steward under a good God, but a dark, chaotic,
nihilistic, empty place upon which meaning must be imposed, not discovered. This is precisely why scientism
has so often succumbed to brutality and the rape of nature, despite its never-ending claim to worship Nature
and exalt “environmentalism.” It is the impetus of social Darwinianism to ultimately seek the destruction of
nature, as nature is not a sacred manifestation of the Divine Mind and Beauty, but a harsh ruler to ultimately
annihilate and “perfect” (through transhumanism and the synthetic rewrite). However, if we in theology are
correct, this grand plan is doomed to fail because man is not a god who determines meaning and objective
reality. Man is a steward of God, made with the plan to be made divine and immortal in God’s way, and not
in fallen man’s rebellious way.

The recent discoveries of quantum physics are a bright sign, however, as the theses that consider the
fundamental substrate of reality to be information, as we see in DNA research and in quantum perspectives
of subatomic reality. Discoveries about the “holographic” model of reality are merely confirmations of the
platonic models of psyche and idea as the fundamental substrate of reality. We are witnessing a revolution
that runs completely contrary to the empirical British Royal Society narrative we have so long been fed, and
it truly represents the fall of the old Enlightenment empiricism. However, the new agers and the think tanks
have already jumped on board, and already we have a plethora of new age bologna seeking to hijack
quantum physics for all manner of nonsense. As you might already imagine, I would simply remind readers
that the critiques applied to absolute impersonalism equally apply to the new agers hijacking quantum
physics. The fact that the fundamental substrate of humans and “matter” are information, and to be more
specific, energetic information speaks to a worldview in which we need an infinite, omniscient Mind to string
together all the facts, if you will. Without an infinite Mind linking all the particulars, the connections we
make are illusory. But for metaphysics and philosophy and science to work, we need a rational, linking
principle for all of reality. We need something to hold all this substrate, all these patterns, all these principles
together – and the human mind is not enough, since it is finite.

However, there is an Ancient Tradition in Genesis, a Creation narrative, that explains reality as the Creation
of a loving God, and as a reflection of eternal principles and archetypes in His mind – called logoi, that are
all one in His Logos, or Word. In Genesis 1, the universe is spoken into existence, through divine fiat, and
contains within it, a fundamental meaning. That fundamental informational meaning, exemplified in
something like DNA, is grounded in the eternal, and from thence derives its meaning. Man, as a creature
of God, can thus make advances and learn about the world, even though he and it are fallen, as they
progress back towards union with God, and the eventual renewal of all things in God. Only in this paradigm,
with these presuppositions, are science, reason, meaning, logic and mathematics even possible and
coherent. In this sense, our minds are little mirrors of the Divine Mind, a little world, that can contain the
many. For more insights along these lines, see the recommended video below by Johanon Raatz.