The evolution that we learn about and explored by Darwin, is the evolution of biological and physical form of man. On account of the recognized depth and grandeur of Darwin’s naturalistic view of man’s creation, we know today, as scientifically proven that the single-celled creatures of the oceans are the predecessors of all more complex forms of life. Darwin defined that the organism that is best able to control both its environment and all of the other organisms in its environment is the most evolved. “Survival of the Fittest” means that the most evolved organism in a given environment is the organism that is most able to ensure its own survival, and most able to serve its self-preservation is, thus, the most evolved. But, in spite of every day growing amount of scientific evidence in its favor, the theory of evolution has never been proven beyond all doubt. It is still argued and debated, hashed and rehashed, the waves of controversy rolling on and on. Though Darwin lacked the modern scientific research tools, but his basic methods have neither been disapproved nor improved upon by the modern sciences. Today, the anthropologists are working to justify Darwin’s claim that the human animal is closest in ancestry to the two African apes, chimpanzees and gorillas. Just as Darwin presented a strictly mechanistic and materialist interpretation of the human species that is free from spiritualism, the anthropologists are researching and speculating upon soul-less skeletons.

Despite the fact that Darwinian view of creation has been embraced by the scientists and the naturalists, more than half the population in USA as well as Europe still don’t accept it. They argue, it undermines human beings’ notion of who they are, from where they came, and for what they are here in this world. Whereas Darwin’s theory is based on rational and scientific investigation, the protagonists of intelligent design are strictly rejecting it on the basis that man is a spiritual animal embedded in a teleological matrix. Some argue that Darwin himself was skeptic of his theory, as recounting in his Autobiography (1876) regarding the development of his religious views that, he was still impressed by, “the extreme difficulty, or rather impossibility, of conceiving the immense and wonderful universe, including man … as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting, I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man, and I deserve to be called a Theist. … [But then] , arises the doubt that can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animal, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusion.”

Our current understanding of evolution results from the fact that man has evolved physically and mentally through his five-sensory perceptions. Seeing physical environment through five-sensory point of view, our survival and evolution is in fact a physical dominance which created many other complexes in man, such as love, hate, desire, fear, and free will. As Darwin explains that biologically evolved man’s social instinct became “the prime principle of man’s moral constitution, since any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts, would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers become … nearly as well developed, as in man.” It is evident that the perception of physical world is limited to our sensory modality. The problems of life in the physical arena generate fear. In his struggle for survival, man hard pressed by the complex of fear, of a persistent danger of being knocked out by the unfavorable environments or by some other species more powerful or more ambitious, was forced to believe in the unknown power. Thus even the historically evolved man also became a believer in a power far and beyond his five-sensory realm. Sociologists agree that man’s complex of fear created myths and religions. This also drags us to a conclusion that human beings whether evolved through ages or were created by a Divine power, were Homo-religious. They started worshiping gods, as soon as they became human beings. The theory of evolution, therefore, cannot divest man the social animal from his temptation to religion.

Another important factor that is not covered by the supporters of evolutionary theory is the “me-ness” of a human being. In every human being, me-ness is not something the brain produces; it is not even the result of human consciousness. This me-ness is identified by the classical Greek philosophers, as well as the theologians, as the ‘soul’ which is not matter, but is underneath our consciousness, the platform on which our consciousness is constructed. Human consciousness emerges from the sense data which is the product of our brain and comes to consist of memory and language. The neuroscientists have proved this beyond any doubt that the stuff of consciousness is brain based and it relies on physical matter. Mark Goldblatt in the journal ‘Philosophy Now’ argues that, “Me-ness is the immaterial potential that justifies the existence of the material body, the little Big Bang insinuated into the Big Bang, the why and what. But all of this [may seem to be] is mere speculation. What’s not speculation that the most dramatic moment in all our lives is one that none of us can recall, the moment in the womb when the self [the me-ness] awakens, without language, without thoughts, [without consciousness], when the light [of life] switches on, when that sense of me-ness dawns. Regardless of where it comes from, regardless of who or what turns the switch, the miracle of that moment is undeniable.” Neither Darwin, nor any modern scientist have explained, nor we can imagine, how me-ness would ever accidentally and spontaneously arise out of organic matter and physical processes, but it doesn’t mean that it didn’t happen. Though the soul is not physical, it is but the force field of our being born and remaining alive. The self, or me-ness is not physical, yet it is the living template of the complete human, the fully awakened personality. There is much more within a complete human being–body, mind, and soul or spirit of a man. There is an unlimited data of imagination, consciousness, intuition, and a lot of unpredictable explosion of human perception past the five senses flowing out of his unconscious and intuitive mind reflecting a natural as well as sacred reverence for life. Darwin’s theory of evolution falls short of the soul in human beings. This is one main reason that more than fifty percent of American do not believe in the theory of evolution.

Another missing link in the theory of evolution is the “Meaning of Life.” Professor David Brink, in the journal, Philosophy Now, argues, “Being a non-religious person I do not believe in ‘Intelligent design’, I am a strong adherent to evolution. Yet I still wonder ‘What is the meaning of life’. After much thought and some reading/learning I have come to the conclusion that the meaning of life is to pass one’s (‘one’ being anything alive, plant or animal) genes or DNA along to the next generation thereby renewing the cycle of life. … But still another question arises, If my meaning of life is true, do you think that man, with his science, can surpass this meaning and redefine the meaning of life?”

T.H. Huxley (1825-95) calling himself ‘Darwin’s bulldog,’ claimed that, “he was prepared to go to the stake if necessary to defend Darwin’s theory of evolution. Nevertheless, he did not think the doctrine of evolution could give us an ethics to live by. He maintained that even if one accepted that evolution has produced creatures with a moral sense such as ourselves, it does not follow that we can look to evolution to define the content of morality.” . . . Mirza Ashraf

Quotes and some views with the acknowledgement of the journal “Philosophy Now.”

1. Aristotle: “Men are good in one way, but bad in many.”
2. Albert Camus: “Man stands face to face with the irrational. He feels within him his longing for happiness and for reason. The absurd is born of this confrontation between the human need and the unreasonable silence of the world.”
3. Socrates: “The unexamined life is not worth living.”
4. Plato: “Philosophy begins in wonder.”
5. Bertrand Russell: “Every proposition which we understand must be composed wholly of constituents with which we are acquainted.”
6. David Hume: “The life of man is of no greater importance to the universe than that of an oyster.”
7. Jeremy Bentham: “A full-grown horse or dog is beyond comparison a more rational, as well as a more conversible animal, than an infant of a day, or a week, or even a month, old. But suppose the case were otherwise, what would it avail? The question is not, Can they reason? nor, Can they talk? but, Can they suffer?”
8. Immanuel Kant: “Nothing can possibly be conceived in the world, or even out of it, which can be called good, without qualification, except a good will.”
9. Soren Kierkegaard: “A crowd … in its very concept is the untruth, by reason of the fact that it renders the individual completely impenitent and irresponsible, or at least weakens his sense of responsibility by reducing it to a fraction.”
10. Jean-Paul Sartre: “Man is condemned to be free.”