The Allegory of the Evolution/Creation Caves

The famous philosopher, Plato, may have argued, in The Republic, that the natural state of humankind is located, as it were, deep within the darkness of a cave, facing the rear wall, where there is scant information with which to deal and where life is simple to control. In such a state, the human experience is reduced to dim reflections that barely glow off the back wall of the cave. Humanity begins to notice, however, that those reflections are not likely things in themselves, but incomplete echoes of another things that exists elsewhere.

Curiosity leads humans to turn away from the incomplete information that is refracted from the back wall of the cave toward more complete information about the world. In that moment, the world becomes exponentially more complex. While the information is more complete, so is the complexity of  managing new ways of thinking and believing. As humans feed their need for more and better information, the world becomes increasingly difficult to manage and control. Simplicity is lost. Control can no longer be claimed or maintained.

I thought of Plato's Allegory of the Cave last week, as I watched the "debate" between Bill Nye, The Science Guy, and the founder of the "Creation Museum." Unfortunately, neither side participated in the debate in order to find any common ground for discussion. Each side wanted only to prove the other wrong, to demonstrate their own side's correctness. They each rejected the premises under which the other side presented and thought through their argument. The discussion disintegrated into "because the Bible says..." verses "Scientific knowledge teaches that..."

Both sides of the discussion were stuck with their own assumptions about how to arrive at the truth of the universe. The creationist argued theologically. The scientist argued theoretical process. Neither was truly able to demonstrate a single thing to the other side because both exercised under preconceived notions of limited understanding.

If we are ever to achieve a balance between the spiritual and spacial worlds in which we live, I suggest that the conversation must begin with a search for commonality. We can see the differences easily enough. They are reflected off the back wall of the experiential cave to which we have grown comfortable. Until we turn together in an effort to link the spacial and the spiritual, the theological and the theoretical, information about the world in which we live will be sacrificed at the altar of control and simplicity.

While modern Physics may be finding ways to shine brighter light into the depths of our chosen caves, it is still up to us whether or not we turn and learn, coping with the complexity of Higgs boson particles or with something as simple as defining life as both spacial and spiritual. Until that conversation begins, I am afraid that we are likely to remain either "Creationists" or "Evolutionists," but never fully becoming spiritual rationalists.

Let the conversation begin!