I recently asked ChatGPT to explain the difference between Meher Baba's teaching about evolution and Darwin's theory of natural selection. I was surprised that it got it quite wrong. The way AI programs work is they scour the internet for what is written on a topic and regurgitate it, often with very good grammar. But if other people have misunderstood or misrepresented something, it will robotically mirror those falsehoods as true. It has no way to study something and discern.
For this reason I want to re-clarify the difference between Baba and Darwin on evolution. Meher Baba does not agree with Darwin about the control mechanism of evolution. He does not say it is random mutation and natural selection. Baba agrees that evolution has occurred, but says it has an entirely different cause.
Baba is not talking about "another level" of cause. He disagrees with Darwin. Baba and Darwin cannot be right at the same time, a common misconception about what Baba taught. They are mutually exclusive. Either Darwin was right about the cause of the origin of species or Baba was.
While Baba's teaching on the force behind evolutionary change does not agree with Darwin's, he does not teach Intelligent Design. In Baba's teaching, an intelligence could not have designed evolution, because it is the kind of intelligence required to do such things that is part of what evolved. In Baba, while there was originally Infinite Intelligence in a cosmic sense, it was not the kind of intelligence that can think, though that capacity was a latent potential in it. The ability to think and consciously realize thoughts was what the evolutionary process largely took place to bring about. So Baba definitely did not teach Intelligence Design.
However, Baba also did not teach the Darwinian principle that evolution is random, purposeless, aimless, and accidental, or that it continues once human form is reached. Baba teaches that evolution occurred to bring about the human form to bring about the capacity for God-realization.
Darwin concluded that evolution lacks any directionality or purpose. It occurred through random accidents. Darwin did not appear to notice that over the course of evolution, consciousness is always increasing and never regressing. Baba points out what anyone can see if they take notice, that consciousness increases over evolution, and he says this is the real underlying drive behind evolution. Evolving consciousness must constantly forge more and more complex media for its expression. And this is the subconscious underlying driver of evolution.
ChatGPT also said another falsity. It said what is commonly taught, that random mutation and natural selection as drivers of evolutionary change is scientifically observed and proven. This misconception about science is a relic of what has come to be called 'scientism.' In the field of philosophy of science, which played a major role in philosophy in the 20th century, it has been realized that science is theory laden (See Norwood Hanson's Patterns of Discovery). This means scientific procedures and its emphasis of specific facts and not others are often directed by its theories, rather than the other way around. It has also been realized that science works within changing explanatory paradigms when seeking and interpreting data (See Thomas Kuhn's Scientific Revolutions). In other words, science, including scientific observation and interpretation, is far less objective than most people realize.
I have frequently brought up an example to show this. The most common example given of observed evolution in schools is the example of the 19th century peppered moths that changed from mostly white to mostly black over time due to the trees in a certain forest becoming darker due to soot from London smokestacks, allow birds to better see and pick off the white ones.
This is supposed to be an example of natural selection observed. In Baba, evolution refers to new species evolving, not the color of a species being selected through culling. The color didn't change. Rather the white moths were simply culled from the gene pool. To conflate this with evolution is lazy thinking. This is not an example of the origin of a new species. For Baba's teaching on evolution see his main book God Speaks: The Theme of Creation and Its Purpose.
I am surprised that ChatGPT got this wrong, because the difference between Baba and Darwin is prominently stated in the Introduction to the Second Edition of God Speaks.
The very force of evolution of form becomes, not a random selection of the fittest, but a result of the necessity of the residues of experience to express themselves through increasingly more complex instruments. The evolution and perfecting of consciousness is itself described as the entire purpose of Creation. (God Speaks, 1973 2nd edition, p. xxxi)
I wish to add and emphasize what some do not understand about Baba's teaching on evolution. Baba is not talking about a second 'spiritual' evolution occurring concurrently with biological evolution. Baba is speaking of the only evolution that is, which includes biological. He is not describing 'another level' of Darwin's. For Baba, Darwin't theory of natural selection is simply wrong.
And, in regard to the evolutionary process, it is well to remember always that the beginning is a beginning in consciousness, the evolution is an evolution in consciousness, the end, if there be an end, is an end in consciousness. (Ditto)
You don't have to believe Baba on this, but it behooves one to know what he taught, and not pretend he gave a teaching consistent with a more popular and common narrative. And incidentally, for the many who likely don't know this, Darwin's theory, along with our current theory of reductive materialism, is no longer universally accepted by intellectuals. Philosopher Thomas Nagel, professor emeritus at New York University, expresses his skepticism boldly in his 2012 book: Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False. Other professors, such as professor of mind David Chalmers, have come close to suggesting ideas quite close to the evolution of perception concept I have talked about.
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