Abstract
Scholars often believe that evolution is a random process of development obeying specific rules and leading to predictable results. Biological evolution, however, is very specific: it is on the one hand a process of natural law subject to the strict process of inheritance, and on the other hand it is also a historical process on account of a selection exerting pressure on varieties, in the course of which successful genetic combinations are selected. Any theory of religious evolution, therefore, has to make clear which mechanisms are responsible for the change of religions and whether in fact we can note varieties and whether a selection takes place.
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Notes
- 1.
Aristotle distinguished between potential and actual characteristics of matter; he contrasts the matter as potentiality to the form as realisation (entelechy). The transformation of matter to entelechy is caused by a primeval cause, a divine principle. From this must follow that the potential condition of matter should be regarded as a precursor to its actual form. A lower level of development is potentiality compared to a higher level, which represents its realisation. Consequently, animate and inanimate nature can be regarded as a developmental line, which was represented by a ladder from matter (inanimate nature) to the pure form. Corresponding to their degree of perfection, dependant on the presence of metabolism, emotions, and logic, Aristotle organised organic nature in a linear fashion along the developmental scale according to which plants, demonstrating the presence of metabolism only, are less perfect than animals, who in turn are less perfect than man, the only creature to possess logic. The transition from the potential to the actual form of matter is teleological and suggests a linear and fluid transition from inanimate nature to primitive forms of live to nature’s most highly developed form, man (Lovejoy 1964).
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In order to explain the mechanisms of this change, Lamarck had to revert back to unproven, partially outdated knowledge: he believed it possible to assume that the first primitive organisms were and still are created by abiogenesis. These so-called infusiorans, mono-cellular organisms, were then understood to have developed into the complex organisms as represented by higher taxa over the course of long periods of time. The main drive behind this species transformation was the organisms’ inherent drive to perfection: the path from a mono-cellular entity to a highly developed vertebrate – after uncountable generations – was thus preconditioned and inherent in the respective organism itself.
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This is important for current models of religious evolution, which frequently use ahistoric arguments (Wunn et al. 2015, pp. 7–12).
- 6.
This process is today known as meiosis (Jurmain 2002, pp. 70–73).
- 7.
The German cytologist Walter Flemming had made the cell’s nucleus visible for light microscopic study through colouration and had called it chromatin, facilitating the subsequent discoveries of the filiform alignment of the chromatin, the so-called chromosomes, and their segregation (Oeser 1996, p. 112). See also Storch and Welsch (2004, pp. 49–52, 297) for chromosomes and amitosis.
- 8.
Cf. esp. Mayr (1988).
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Wunn, I., Grojnowski, D. (2018). Evolution – What Is It?. In: Religious Speciation. New Approaches to the Scientific Study of Religion , vol 6. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04435-0_2
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