We're not just from this world

The book We Are Not Only From This World by Hoimar von Ditfurth (1921–1989) from 1981 examines the question of how the theory of evolution can be reconciled with religious conceptions.

Definitions

Ditfurth understands evolution (development) not only to mean the biological origin and development of species (plants, animals, humans) according to Charles Darwin , but also geological evolution (planets), chemical evolution ( amino acids ) and cosmic evolution (stars, galaxies ).

The central message of most religions is the belief in an afterlife.

The misery

Ditfurth is not of the opinion that the Bible is wrong with its thesis of the existence of an afterlife. Supra-individual knowledge - as it is religion - is based on a cause, a knowledge (in the case of religion on the hereafter) that extends beyond the everyday experience of man. Only for people today with their scientific and social knowledge are the mythological images, necessarily medieval, with which the Bible works, have become unacceptable and mutate increasingly into superstition. Jesus Christ (4 BC to 30 AD) never actually walked across water and his ascension was never an elevator-like movement in three-dimensional space. The people in the Middle Ages were aware of the mythological interpretation of the pictures, today's people wrongly took the pictures at face value. Worse than superstition is the Bible's commandment to humans to be fruitful, to multiply and to subjugate the earth. In the age of overpopulation and the overexploitation of nature, this becomes deadly nonsense.

Evolution as an act of creation

Because of this assumed incompatibility (medieval worldview as the carrier of biblical texts vs. today's, scientifically shaped worldview), Ditfurth establishes the following connection between religion and natural sciences: Evolution is the moment of creation. With this connection the problem of the “elucidation” of God from this world, this world, is avoided. Where the world functions naturally, according to natural laws, there is no need for God. But if the world is still in the process of being created (creation in nacendo ), God is still at work today, so there is no present day "far from God" (God created the world and since then it has worked solely on the basis of natural laws).

Evil in Creation

If evolution is identical with creation, it can also be explained why there is evil - the devil - in the creation of God, this world, in the form of wars, hunger, ignorance. This world is just not finished yet, it is still developing, so mistakes are not only conceivable, but natural, because otherwise this world would have already become perfect, already created and people would actually be in paradise, in the hereafter.

The course of creation

If this world is still in the process of creation, if the course of creation cannot be foreseen and if it does not only proceed according to deterministic laws (" Laplacian demon "), then there is the possibility of a free, moral decision / responsibility (either "good" or "good") Being "bad"). Both are possible. But the attitude sometimes encountered in believers, placing their hopes entirely on the hereafter and doing more or less nothing in the here and now (this world), since “it is useless anyway” or “God's will” is based on the wrong one Assumption of a supposed distance from God. "This misunderstanding leads to a strategy of overcoming this world, to turning away from it, and has thus brought about the danger of a social and humanitarian failure of the Christian church and made 'escape from the world' a Christian slogan."

The beauty in creation

According to Ditfurth, the hereafter appears to people in the form of the biblical texts and the appearance of Jesus Christ, Mohammed (570–632) and Buddha (563 BC to 483 BC). Ditfurth sees another indication of the existence of the afterlife in music. (Contemplative) music, part of the spiritual world, is difficult to put into words and yet “somehow beautiful”. And that is what one actually expects from the hereafter, from paradise, that it is heavenly beautiful and not evil or troubled by laborious moral decisions, just as this world is perceptible. However, there will never be more than evidence of the existence of an afterlife. The scholastics of the Middle Ages have shown that there is no proof of God , that there cannot be ( Dietrich Bonhoeffer (1906–1945): “A God who is, is not”). "Because a God who can be arrested with inner-worldly logic would therefore also be a thing in this world."

The cosmic framework of creation

Evolution, which Ditfurth understands as an act of creation, does not only take place on planet earth. Due to the anthropic principle adopted by natural scientists, it can be assumed that evolution takes place in the entire cosmos. The anthropic principle means the fine coordination of all natural constants and laws with one another in such a way that evolution can take place at all and not e.g. B. the development stopped minutes after the Big Bang, z. B. because too much hydrogen melted into helium and such a phenomenon as the sun would have become impossible. According to the Drake equation , one can estimate that there are around a billion civilizations in the cosmos (assuming not too pessimistic). According to Ditfurth, humanity is one of these billions of civilizations. "But it remains indifferent to the act of creation if we should leave this development process - the act of creation remains equally valid." Because in the cosmic context, Ditfurth believes, humanity is insignificant. Ditfurth sees two reasons for mankind to leave the act of creation: the ecological collapse of the earth's biosphere (recognizable since the 1970s (forest dieback)) and the danger of a nuclear world war of apocalyptic proportions.

Ditfurth sees an existential necessity for an afterlife in the reality of an inconceivably large number of other forms of consciousness ( intelligences , existences) in the cosmos. “The hope for an end-time realization of truth in the world [the hereafter] can certainly not be based on ... [human existence] alone. ... By the end of all days [in approx. 60 billion years] the human line of evolution will bear the stamp of its special, individual history. "" But could they all taken together [the extraterrestrial forms of consciousness] ... Prove at the end of time large enough to conclude evolution with an act of knowledge that grasps the truth of the whole cosmos? "

The hereafter - timeless eternity

From the perspective of the hereafter - "sub aspectu aeternitatis" - there is no longer any development over time (evolution) according to Ditfurth. The perfect, “the truth”, could not become even more perfect. Everything, “all in all” (1 Cor 15:28), is timelessly beautiful.

In other words: Time does not play a role in the hereafter (anymore). Evolution began with the Big Bang , and that was about 10 billion years ago. From the perspective of the hereafter, this is only a moment. That is why Ditfurth also calls it “the moment” of creation. “From this beyond, existing in timelessness, the chronologically successive events in our world would not necessarily be separated from one another in any way.” “... the development history of inanimate and animate nature [is] the form ... in which we 'from experience creation inside ', which is' from outside', from a transcendental perspective, in truth therefore, the act of a moment. "

Quotes

Natural science is the continuation of philosophy by other means.
The puzzle is not how creation came about, but why it takes place.

Remarks

↑ Mental functions (intelligence, imagination, ability to learn), which humans see anthropomorphically linked to their own brain, have, on the contrary, existed since the beginning of evolution in the form of the “spiritual principle”. “Here, too, reality looks completely different from what our thinking habits, derived from our self-awareness, lead us to believe.” “The modern cultural philosophy teaches that the knowledge contained in cultural [and religious] behavior can be more intelligent than the sum of experience stored in individual brains . ”“ FA von Hayek (1899–1992) pointed out in a ... noteworthy contribution ( The Three Sources of Human Values (1979)) that the system of behavioral rules we called culture was originally probably much more intelligent than that Thought of man about his environment. Our brain is capable of absorbing culture, but not of creating culture. ”“ In the opinion of the well-known state philosopher and Nobel Prize winner, there is 'knowledge without a brain' in the cultural field. ”
↑ "drug and alcohol addiction, a renaissance superstitious attitudes and practices in many varieties that spread especially among young people feel the futility of life, seduced by even the silliest of champagne program (if it promises only the discovery of a sense), all are obvious withdrawal symptoms (according to religiosity ( religio = consideration, following (on))). "(superstition = belief despite better knowledge)
↑ "Since the days of Job every believer has had to deal with the question of how the imperfection of the world can be reconciled with the omnipotence of God."
↑ Hans Jonas writes: “But as it is, the thinking, speaking and appearing life of this one [Jesus Christ] ... has given the whole further process ... a direction that it would not have taken without him [Jesus] ... The law consists only in the fact that when a stone falls into the water, wave circles [according to natural law] spread from there. The law of nature knows nothing about whether, when and where someone will fall. "( Power or powerlessness of subjectivity?, P. 138/139)
↑ Ditfurth prefers the term "biotic principle" ("life principle") because of the strategic independence of the anthropic principle from humans. The universe was not created for the purpose of producing humans after about 13 billion years.
↑ Ditfurth puts forward the thesis that the spirit (manifests itself in the human being in the form of (self-) consciousness) has developed together with matter and physical energy fields since the beginning of evolution (Big Bang) about ten billion years ago Subject to evolution. The mind as a psychic quantity is categorically different from the spatial-material quantities. The theory of knowledge , particularly the evolutionary epistemology , has found that the human mind (consciousness, mind) which in itself world recognizes only imperfect and incomplete. For example, the electron appears to the human mind, depending on how it is viewed, once as a wave and another time as a particle. There are also things that are completely beyond human knowledge, e.g. B. radio waves or the fact that the speed of light is constant. "[We] discover phenomena behind which causes are hidden that must lie outside the world defined by our knowledge horizon." "I believe that one can understand the existence of consciousness, the phenomenon that we have become conscious of a part of this world and of ourselves is to be seen as a consequence of the fact that we no longer belong exclusively to this three-dimensional world of our everyday experience. As a result of the fact that our generation, on its evolutionary wandering stretching over geological epochs, is once again on the point of crossing the realm of the ontological limits that have been drawn up to now . ”In the ancient texts this process is expressed in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. (Paradise to be understood here as a mythological paraphrase for an ontological level in which the (early) man was safe in his instinctive existence, which was broken with the appearance of human consciousness.)

literature

Hoimar von Ditfurth: In the beginning there was hydrogen. (1972)
Hoimar von Ditfurth: We are not only from this world. (1981)
Hoimar von Ditfurth: So let's plant an apple tree . (1985)

Web links

Hans Küng on Hoimar von Ditfurth: We are not only from this world. Der Spiegel 42/1981, October 12, 1981
Science and Religion - Example of a Conversation Between Science and Religion. (Excerpts from the book) Central for teaching media on the Internet
Larger text excerpts ( memento of March 24, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) at scribd.com

[1] Mental functions (intelligence, imagination, ability to learn), which humans see anthropomorphically linked to their own brain, have, on the contrary, existed since the beginning of evolution in the form of the “spiritual principle”. “Here, too, reality looks completely different from what our thinking habits, derived from our self-awareness, lead us to believe.” “The modern cultural philosophy teaches that the knowledge contained in cultural [and religious] behavior can be more intelligent than the sum of experience stored in individual brains . ”“ FA von Hayek (1899–1992) pointed out in a ... noteworthy contribution ( The Three Sources of Human Values (1979)) that the system of behavioral rules we called culture was originally probably much more intelligent than that Thought of man about his environment. Our brain is capable of absorbing culture, but not of creating culture. ”“ In the opinion of the well-known state philosopher and Nobel Prize winner, there is 'knowledge without a brain' in the cultural field. ”

[2] "drug and alcohol addiction, a renaissance superstitious attitudes and practices in many varieties that spread especially among young people feel the futility of life, seduced by even the silliest of champagne program (if it promises only the discovery of a sense), all are obvious withdrawal symptoms (according to religiosity ( religio = consideration, following (on))). "(superstition = belief despite better knowledge)

[3] "Since the days of Job every believer has had to deal with the question of how the imperfection of the world can be reconciled with the omnipotence of God."

[4] Hans Jonas writes: “But as it is, the thinking, speaking and appearing life of this one [Jesus Christ] ... has given the whole further process ... a direction that it would not have taken without him [Jesus] ... The law consists only in the fact that when a stone falls into the water, wave circles [according to natural law] spread from there. The law of nature knows nothing about whether, when and where someone will fall. "( Power or powerlessness of subjectivity?, P. 138/139)

[5] Ditfurth prefers the term "biotic principle" ("life principle") because of the strategic independence of the anthropic principle from humans. The universe was not created for the purpose of producing humans after about 13 billion years.

[6] Ditfurth puts forward the thesis that the spirit (manifests itself in the human being in the form of (self-) consciousness) has developed together with matter and physical energy fields since the beginning of evolution (Big Bang) about ten billion years ago Subject to evolution. The mind as a psychic quantity is categorically different from the spatial-material quantities. The theory of knowledge , particularly the evolutionary epistemology , has found that the human mind (consciousness, mind) which in itself world recognizes only imperfect and incomplete. For example, the electron appears to the human mind, depending on how it is viewed, once as a wave and another time as a particle. There are also things that are completely beyond human knowledge, e.g. B. radio waves or the fact that the speed of light is constant. "[We] discover phenomena behind which causes are hidden that must lie outside the world defined by our knowledge horizon." "I believe that one can understand the existence of consciousness, the phenomenon that we have become conscious of a part of this world and of ourselves is to be seen as a consequence of the fact that we no longer belong exclusively to this three-dimensional world of our everyday experience. As a result of the fact that our generation, on its evolutionary wandering stretching over geological epochs, is once again on the point of crossing the realm of the ontological limits that have been drawn up to now . ”In the ancient texts this process is expressed in the expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise. (Paradise to be understood here as a mythological paraphrase for an ontological level in which the (early) man was safe in his instinctive existence, which was broken with the appearance of human consciousness.)