Seth on Darwin and Darwinian Evolution

Titlepic: Seth on Darwin and Darwinian Evolution

What is Seth’s take on Darwinian Evolution? Is Darwin, or the Darwinists, right or wrong? And why would it matter to a student of the Law of Attraction?

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This article is about Seth’s view of Darwin and Darwinian evolution.

The main question I am going to cover is: Is Darwin’s theory of evolution basically correct, or is it basically wrong?

But before I go into those details, let me first do two things. First, I am going to explain why this issue is important to a student of deliberate creation who is trying to perfect the art of using the Law of Attraction to their advantage. And then I am going to quickly present Darwin’s original ideas about evolution, so that we easier can compare them to Seth’s “response”.

PART 1: WHY IS THIS QUESTION IMPORTANT?

The question of Darwinian-type evolution is important for several reasons.

One reason is that this theory has been raised to the skies by an overwhelming amount of professional academic scientists and philosophers. It has gone so far that they boldly claim that “No one doubts that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is correct” [Eldredge 1996, back cover], and that “we are strongly tempted to consider Darwin to be in a very significant sense the Galileo of biology” [Simon 1971, p. 38]. So if Darwin’s theory would be wrong, it would prove that we cannot trust the scientists and philosophers, even when they present us with a theory that is, for all practical purposes, universally accepted in the global academic community.

Another, more important, reason is that the Darwinian evolution story seems to go against the creation accounts found in the Law of Attraction material (“Everything is created by thought [not genes]”). And it also seems to go against the the creation accounts in the Christian and (some of the) Hindu faiths. But that it goes against the Christian creationist stories is only natural, since it was “the Argument from Design that Darwin was addressing” [Ruse 1998, p. 9].

Still another reason why this question is so important is because Darwinian-type evolution is used to explain both human behavior and human culture. In the section named “How Can We Explain Human Behavior?”, Paul Ehrlich seems to be of the opinion that genes somehow influence behavior, and that differences in culture is somehow linked to genes: “genetic evolution and cultural evolution are not independent” [Ehrlich 2000, p. 5]. So where do our thoughts, and beliefs, enter into the picture?

PART 2: DARWIN’S THEORIES

Now let’s look at some of Darwin’s ideas that together may be called Darwin’s theory of evolution.

Darwin’s On the Origin of Species

In 1859 Darwin published his book On the Origin of Species. In its fourteen chapters, spanning 490 pages, he lays out various ideas and observations. Although each chapter is both named and numbered, there is no clear presentation of what the “totality” of his argument is.

And even in the last chapter, called “Recapitulation and Conclusion”, Darwin did not succeed to really summarize his complete philosophical argument in a clear and distinct way.

In any case, whatever his argument really is, we can understand, from those pages, that it is a complex idea, involving many different propositions, presumably meant to work together as a whole. The question is just: Which propositions? What are the core components of Darwin’s account? And how do they work together?

Well, it seems that few people know this, including many so-called “scholars” and “scientists”. For they just speak about “Darwin’s theory of evolution” as if it was just one theory.

But the zoologist Ernst Mayr, who has written many books on evolution and the history and philosophy of biology, explains in his book One Long Argument that Darwin had five main theories in his account of evolution, and that Darwin apparently thought all of these were part of the same story: (1) Evolution as such; (2) Common descent; (3) Multiplication of species; (4) Gradualism; (5) Natural selection [Mayr 1991, pp. 36-37].

The Five Theories

So the five theories (T1, T2, etc.) are:

T1. Evolution as such. As time passes, the world in general is changing (morphing, transforming, etc), and organisms do too.

T2. Common descent. All organisms come from more primitive ancestors, and all of them can be traced back to a single common “basic” life form.

T3. Multiplication of species. When new species are created, it is done either by “splitting” into a new species, or “budding” (geographic isolation).

T4. Gradualism. Species are transformed gradually, not abruptly, into new species.

T5. Natural selection. Every new generation introduces a variation in the genes. The few individuals who survive long enough to mate do so because of their particular gene pool.

Contrary to Darwin’s own idea of these five theories as a “shrink-wrapped package”, the first people who accepted the general idea of evolution (i.e., T1) in the first years following the publication of On the Origin of Species did not accept some of the other four ideas.

Thus, according to Mayr, “This shows that the five theories are not one indivisible whole” [Mayr 1991, p. 37].

PART 3: SETH’S VIEW OF DARWIN’S THEORIES

So now let’s look at Seth’s view of Darwin’s theories.

Seth and ‘Evolution’

Before we begin with Seth’s take on Darwinian evolution, it is important to understand that Seth (just like Abraham-Hicks) talks about “evolution” all the time.

But in most of those places, unless the name of Darwin is mentioned, Seth is talking about his own conception of evolution, not about Darwin’s theory or any neo-Darwinian variant.

Theory One: Evolution as Such

Seth’s overall view is that Darwin’s theory of evolution is, more or less, false. The idea of evolution is, on a very general level, a correct idea. But the real evolution in the universe has nothing to do with Darwin’s biologically-focused speculations.

Rather, the real evolution in the universe is done by consciousness, which is creating, and manifesting matter (Seth Speaks, p. 309):

“Consciousness did not come from atoms and molecules scattered by chance through the universe, or scattered by chance through many universes. Consciousness did not arrive because inert matter suddenly soared into activity and song. The consciousness existed first, and evolved the form into which it then began to manifest itself.”

Nevertheless, it seems, at first sight, that Darwin’s theory T1 is correct. How can that be so?

Well, that is only because the formulation of theory T1 does not explicitly state that material causes are the only causes that are accepted by Darwin. No non-material (metaphysical) causes are included by Darwin.

Thus, if we restate theory T1 to include that tacit premise, we will have something like this:

T1a. Biological evolution as such. As time passes, the world in general is changing (morphing, transforming, etc), and organisms do too. And this change is due to material causes only. No metaphysical events are involved in this causation.

Therefore, Seth is explicitly stating that Darwin’s T1a theory is upside down. It’s consciousness (thought) that creates the evolution of the world, and of all species; it’s not biology or matter.

Theory Two: Common Descent

Seth explicitly points out that theory T2 (Common descent) is wrong (Seth Speaks, p. 310):

“Specifically, complicated physical forms are not the result of previous simpler ones. They all exist in larger terms at once.”

So no physical organisms come from more primitive ancestors, and none of them come from a single common “basic” life form. In other words, our forefathers were not monkeys, according to Seth.

Theory Three: Multiplication of Species

Since Seth says that consciousness evolves form (see “Theory One” above), there is little to add here. Thus, different species are not created simply by Darwin’s proposed “multiplication of species”.

Theory Four: Gradualism

Seth does not accept the gradualism theory of Darwin. This is because Seth already has stated that consciousness creates matter (cf. the section “Theory One: Evolution as Such” above).

This is, of course, not to say that Seth denies that physical beings, to some observers, may seem to (gradually) evolve. But such an observation is, of course, just a theory. And theories are not always true.

In a discussion about physical biological life, Seth talks more about heredity (The “Unknown” Reality, Vol. 1, p. 60):

“It is truer to say that heredity operates from the future backward in the past, than it is to say that it operates from the past into the present. Neither statement would be precisely correct in any case, because your present is a poised balance affected as much by the probable future as the probable past.”

Although this explanation may be hard to digest for some readers, I do not really have the space here in this article to dive into the concept of “simultaneous existence” that Seth talks about in many places.

But it is important to understand, at least, that Seth (just like Abraham-Hicks) is observing our world from the Non-Physical dimension (i.e. away from our physical space-time environment), and therefore has a different kind of vision compared to our own.

Theory Five: Natural Selection

In terms of theory five (T5), Seth states that Darwin’s gloomy perspective is wrong (The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events, p. 157; my square brackets):

“Darwinian and Freudian views see him [man] as part of a flawed species in which individual life rests precariously, ever at the beck and call of the species’ needs, and with survival as the prime goal — a survival, however, without meaning.”

So Seth points out, in another place of the book, that the whole perspective of Darwin is flawed, in that the idea of “survival of the fittest” (and other ideas in the same vein) does not take into account the quality of life (p. 22):

“[there has been] little probing into the question of what makes life worthwhile. Quite simply, if life is not worthwhile (louder), no species will have a reason to continue.”

And Seth continues on the next page to say (p. 23; my square brackets):

“Despite all ‘realistic’ pragmatic tales [such as Darwin’s] to the contrary, the natural state of life itself is one of joy, acquiescence with itself — a state in which action is effective, and the power to act is a natural right.”

In other words, Darwin’s theory is built on the wrong premises.

CONCLUSION

Seth’s overall opinion about Darwin’s theories is that they are wrong.

This then verifies, for a student of the Law of Attraction who accepts Seth as an authority, that most scientists (in various academic disciplines) are wrong about Darwinian evolution.

This information then, more importantly, also supports the student’s beliefs about the Law of Attraction, since Seth’s stance is now fully compatible with the Law of Attraction: for thoughts create reality, not genes.

Chris Bocay

REFERENCES

  • Darwin, Charles (1859), The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. London, England: John Murray, Albemarle Street. [Link to book]
  • Ehrlich, Paul R. (2002), Human Natures: Genes, Cultures, and the Human Prospect. Harmondsworth: Penguin Books. [Link to book]
  • Eldredge, Niles (1996), Reinventing Darwin: The Great Evolutionary Debate. London, England: Phoenix. [Link to book]
  • Mayr, Ernst (1991) One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Modern Evolutionary Thought. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. [Link to book]
  • Roberts, Jane (1994), Seth Speaks: The Eternal Validity of the Soul. A Seth Book. San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing; and Novato, CA: New World Library. [Link to book]
  • Roberts, Jane (1995), The Individual and the Nature of Mass Events. A Seth Book. San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing. [Link to book]
  • Roberts, Jane (1996), The “Unknown” Reality. Volume One. A Seth Book. San Rafael, CA: Amber-Allen Publishing. [Link to book]
  • Ruse, Michael, ed. (1998) Philosophy of Biology. Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books. [Link to book]
  • Simon, Michael A. (1971) The Matter of Life: Philosophical Problems of Biology. New Haven and London: Yale University Press [Link to book]

Copyright © 2023 by Chris Bocay. All rights reserved.

First published: Sun 27 Mar 2022
Last revised: Fri 12 May 2023

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