From: beaver.cs.washington.edu!gnosys!backbone.hsu.arknet.edu!TUMLISON
Subject: Re: Environment and native issues
Date: Fri, 21 Aug 1992 21:35:03 GMT

Original-Sender: backbone.hsu.arknet.edu!TUMLISON

> Date:       Thu, 20 Aug 1992 04:01:46 EDT
> Reply-to:   nn.chat%gnosys.svle.ma.us@tamvm1.tamu.edu
> From:       NativeNet%gnosys.svle.ma.us@tamvm1.tamu.edu
> Subject:    Re: Environment and native issues
> X-To:       nn.chat@gnosys.svle.ma.us
> To:         Multiple recipients of list NATCHAT <NATCHAT@TAMVM1.BITNET>

Alan McGowen wrote:
> > Not
> > so long ago,
> > western people all believed that the world was a product of a creator. They
> > were also quite sure that the creation was fairly recent and that species were
> > fixed in nature once created. They were wrong about this;

To which Peshewegunzh replied:

> There are a certain number of unproven and unprovable assumptions that
> all human beings act on, and those who are "scientific materialists" are
> not exempt from their own. Merely asserting something does not make it so;
> as the soviet biologist, Aleksandr Oparin, observed, "Proof in the sense in
> which one thinks of it in chemistry and physics is not attainable in the
> problem of primordial biogenesis."
>
> > "Creationists" still hold out against the teaching of evolution to
> > children, using arguments not unlike Peshewegunzh's about the harmful moral
> > effects of materialism. Apparantly it does not occur to them that moral
> > harm can also sometimes come from obstinate refusal to face facts.
>
> Philip Johnson at UC Berkeley has explained why arguments such as the above
> entertain such totalitarian notions, finding the practical expression of
> dissent so intolerable, with their proponents being willing to resort to force
> in its suppression.
>
> Johnson observes that there is an ideological goal, to make "naturalistic
> evolution a fundamental tenet of society, to which everyone must be
> converted ... if scientific naturalism is to occupy a dominant cultural
> position, it must do more than provide information about the physical
> universe. It must draw out the spiritual and ethical implications of the
> creation story. In short, evolution must become a religion."  Isn't this
> more of the cultural hegemony practiced by Europeans, with a new
> twist but with esssentially the same victims?
>
> > Perhaps Peshewegunzh has no particular quarrel with evolution, but sees it
> > as an expression of the creativity of the Great Spirit. Yet there can be
> > pitfalls with this approach as well.
>
> Although this argument seems to go out of its way to be unrelenting towards
> any spiritually based position, I agree that there are pitfalls with this
> approach. Essentially, I believe that although hiding behind the shibboleth
> of the word "scientific," those so adamant about evolution are motivated
> because of what evolutionist D.M.S Watson spoke of: "Evolution is accepted
> by zoologists not because it has been observed to occur or can be proved by
> logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative,
> special creation, is clearly incredible."

My interest is peaked by this discussion because I find myself
somewhere in the middle.  I hold a Ph.D. in Zoology and have a fairly
strong background in evolutionary biology.  However, I find the
denial of a spiritual component to the human organism illogical.
This of itself may sound illogical (logic in western society seems
overly based on the physical, tangible, "show-me" mentality, whereas
the spiritual realm is deeper and harder to seek - especially if you
have difficulty believing in what you don't see).  One illustrative
argument is this:  At one time, Europeans believed in a supernatural
power.  Humans understood the natural world to a limited degree, but
those things beyond their comprehension were relegated to powers of
the supernatural.  Thus, religions were developed to plead to the
supernatural force(s) for assistance.  As technology developed and
things once ascribed to the supernatural were understood in natural
terms, people realized that there was no need for belief in a diety,
and, as they became educated, further realized that religion was a
mere fabrication to explain the previously unexplainable.  Thus, we
now realize that science will provide all of the answers.  The
fallacy of this argument to explain away religion is based on its
design.  Who set up two categories (natural vs. supernatural) in which
to divide observable realities?  This really is a non-argument.  We
can call all observable events natural, eventually explainable
through scientific inquiry, and still not have validly addressed the
question of a spiritual basis.

Another comment addresses the point of evolution as a religion.  In
general, we teach evolution and creation as separate explanations for
one phenomenon.  Why?  Perhaps readers interpretations of the
arguments given by McGowen and Peshewegunzh shed some light on this.

I think it comes down to the lack of appreciation western society has
for the inter-relationships of all things.  Science (not just
evolution) is essentially a religion.  We teach that it is *not*
because religion is a set of beliefs that cannot be tested, whereas
science is based on falsifiable hypotheses.  Science purifies itself
as more study is applied (it seems to me that religious beliefs also
go through this metamorphosis, particularly within the individual but
also within the body of believers over time).  As Peshewegunzh notes,
science is based on assumptions.  We assume that the data represent a
random sample, that our experimental designs are almost flawless,
that any statistical inference we may draw (based on probability
distributions) are not due to chance.  Finally, science can only
disprove or *fail to disprove* an hypothesis.  The popular media
often tells us that science has *proven* something, but this cannot
be true of studies that rely on inferential statistics.  If we find
significant results, we have failed to disprove the hypothesis, and
we then *accept* the alternative hypothesis.  Acceptance depends on
having *faith* that assumptions, data, design, and statistics have
shown something to be valid that really is - i.e., science in based
on faith, the essence of religion.

> > There was almost certainly nothing inevitable
> > about humans, and if the evolutionary history of the earth had been even
> > slightly different from what it was, there would be no humans at all on it
> > today.
>
> Given that we are here, this is speculative, especially as the mechanisms
> by which such a history would have occurred have not been discovered.
>
> > Considerations such as these have to be taken into account together
> > with the idea that humans are spiritually unique. The history of life in
> > no way suggests that we were the purpose of the whole thing. As Julian Huxley
> > is supposed to have said when a bishop asked him what his study of biology
> > had taught him about the Creator: "He has an inordinate fondness for Beetles."
>
> One could as easily say that he must have an inordinate fondness for
> bigots, since our history with the multitude of Europeans has born out the
> sad fact that they have been in the majority. I prefer to agree with
> Frederick Douglass, great champion of freedom and former slave who said,
> "The man who is right is a majority," recognizing that spiritual and moral
> development do count for a great deal, however numerous are those without
> it.

This (hard core) evolutionist's philosophy also is intriguing.  At
one time people supposedly believed that everything was very ordered
by some supernatural power, and that it was all part of one grand
design, with purpose.  Evolutionary thought sometimes suggests that
it is all random, as McGowen inferred about Huxley with reference to
"fondness for beetles".  McGowen mentioned (in a previous article)
that "the history of life in no way suggests that we were the purpose
of the whole thing."  I must add that it also in no way suggests that
we were not.  To say either way on this issue based purely on the
history of life is to impose philosophical, rather than scientific,
interpretation on the data.  We generally use *our inability* to
predict as the basis for describing a phenomenon as random.  It is
sometimes, then, our inadequacy that makes us incorrectly or
unrealistically interpret things.  As a case in point, random events
are considered to be chaotic (unpredictable).  Yet, the new
mathematics of chaos and "random walks" is beginning to perceive
of randomness as being *ordered*.  Could the Great Spirit just be
smarter than we are?

> >         I respect traditions which hold that the world is
> >         sacred and that humans have special responsibilities within it,
> >         but this is not the traditional western religious view of the earth:
> >         -- made for man's dominion.
>
> What I perceive is that the great misuse of the earth has occurred during
> the last two centuries, actually accelerating as the influence of spiritual
> values on human beings worldwide was either abolished or made irrelevant
> to the ordinary pursuits of life. In European terms, it could be said that
> the profane has been substituted for the sacred in almost every area.
> It has been the materialists - the scientists, the industrialists, the
> socialists, the bureaucrats - who have used their considerable power
> to create blindly this massive nest fouling. Looking for salvation from
> the same sources is like a dog returning to its vomit. The dog has
> no hope of any spiritual insight, of course.

I would bring into question here the last lines of McGowen's
statement. I agree with what he says, and it is a good point, but for
thought I would like to note that the "traditional western religious
view" is not neccesarily the same as the "biblical view."  This is
where cultural values over-ride spiritual ones while claiming
identity.  Dominion could (and I think does) invoke responsibility.
As Peshewegunzh wrote some time ago in an article about Christianity
and Native Religion "Now, the children of the Europeans need to learn
the real meaning of things from us."  Native American understanding
of the environment and the place of humans in it is, I think, much
deeper than the materialist dominant society.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Renn Tumlison
Dept. of Biology
Henderson State University
Arkadelphia, AR  71999

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