"Intelligent Design", What HPB thought

"Helena Blavatsky, in 1888, was the first person to use the phrase "intelligent design" to convey her understanding of evolution.

"She used the phrase to convey the idea that the evolution of the species was guided by an underlying purposeful intelligence in nature. This intelligence is different from the "God" of theistic religions. Orthodox science opposes the whole notion of any intelligence design and insists on chance without any guiding direction. This makes her view a distinct alternative to both religion and science. "

from:
http://www.blavatsky.net/

Andrew,

It is fascinating to hear that HPB coined the term intelligent design. (I didn't know that she was the one who coined that term.) But I feel that evangelists have hijacked the term, and made it their own. I prefer the term emanationism, to fit in between creationism and Darwinism. I think the term emanationism describes what HPB was trying to say.

Yes, our universe is the result of intelligent design, but it still makes us want to say that the universe was "created." I think the phrase "was created" still gives the wrong connotation as to what actually happened. Do you agree?

We use a lot of platitudes and commonsense statements in our everyday speech that have come down to us from many sources, not the least of which is from religion. When we use god, for instance, whether cursing or in general use, we all mean something different from the theological (Theosophical) conception of god. The Bible, also, has given us a plethora of metaphors that we use everyday, even when we don't recognize them as such. Sometimes terminology gets in the way of our trying to speak clearly, and sometimes it helps. Emanate is a much better word than create, but we seldom use it in ordinary conversation. Should we junk our commonsense words and try to use only proper terminology, as in science, or should we stick to what we "know"? I don't really know myself.

"Emanate is a much better word than create, but we seldom use it in ordinary conversation."

--> I think a lot of this has to do, as you are saying, with what people are familiar with. Everyone is familiar with the biblical image of God sitting on a cloud and having a long white beard, ala Zeus. It will take a long time before people are comfortable with anything except the idea that God created the universe. But this is exactly what Theosophy is attempting to do. Let's see how well Theosophy succeeds at such a seemingly impossible task.

about intelligent design, Alice A. Bailey says that all matter in this universe is intelligent. hence it would do the intelligent thing and the result would appear as intelligent design.

a long time ago, it occured to me that everything in the universe is hidden in, and emanates through, one phenomenon-chance. In other words, there is no such thing as chance! It is only a word the uninitiated use to explain (without really explaining) the inner working of the universe. The more i say the more confusing it will sound. full stop. but it keeps going and going...

I saw an item on a theosophical blog entitled; 'evolution, intelligent design, creation and theosophy'; really, there is no 'conflict' between the ideas when viewed theosophically. The evolution is spiritual, from consciousness, from thoughts. The Darwinian notion that mutations are undirected, by chance and random is slowly being 'blown out of the water' (rightly so) by the pursuit of ID proponents who, whilst in the main envisage the 'creator' to be a seperate entity, are doing good work challenging the 'science' (term used loosely) of the Darwin model of evolution.

Aside from the wonderful spiritual science work of Steiner of course, I think Michael Denton as a 'mainstream', speculative biologist has come the closest to postulating something close to a theosophical view within a scientific framework (in his Nature's Destiny' book) of the origin and diversification of life on earth when he proposes a cosmic script within nature and likens protein folding to crystallisation for example.

Welcome to the forum.

A nice online summary of the Theosophical view vs. the debate by W. Thackara is found here:

Evolution & Creation

Jon

IMO, the "problem" is not whether or not we come to be by intelligent design, which, I think, no Theosophist disagrees about, but whether or not there is an "Intelligent Designer" aka "god" or "God." There have been many candidates for this honor over the millions of years of mankind's existence, but the West seems to have unanimously "elected" Yahweh and/or Jesus for this particular position. Of course, Allah comes in a close second. The East seems to have opted for "Heaven" or some other abstract symbol-title. I still think that we, as Theosophists, have to fall back on the solid saying "There is no religion higher than truth," than to try to elect some god or other. This, for the time being, satisfies me, and I will be happily, or perhaps unhappily, surprized if I find any sort of god-person(ality) after my time on earth is over. Any other stance, it seems to me, leads to infinite regression, which is inane and/or insane.

I still hold to this conclusion after the recent death of my much beloved father. I know where his body lies, but I know nothing for sure about his soul (Atma-Buddhi-Manas). R.I.P, Dad.

This post has been edited by bupanishad2012 on Dec 30 2009, 11:59 AM

Hi, Hardwick, and welcome to the Forum. When you get a chance, please tell us a little bit about yourself. Where in the world are you? Have you been a Theosophist a long time?

I agree that Darwin's idea of undirected mutation is wrong. The question is, who or what does the directing. Many of us reject the idea of an Almighty God with whom we can have a personal relationship with. Fortunately, Theosophy provides us with a third choice.

Andrew,

The way I see it, Yahew was the Fifth Race Manu who literally chose the Jews (hence the idea they were the chosen people, which they were) to be used as the tribe from which the Fifth Race was created. Unfortunately, Yaweh got "promoted" to the Almightly, and we have had to deal with this mistaken "promotion" ever since.

Thank you Jon.

That WAS a good summary - very good, thanks.

Hi, I am a 45 year old chap in the UK, with a wife and daughter. I work as a computer analyst programmer.

I have been a Theosophist for only about 7/8 months when I discovered the works of Blavatsky and Steiner. I started my journey to Theosophy when, after 40 years as an 'agnostic', the more I thought about nature, the more that scientific materialism started to seem wholly inadequate as a world view and philosophy. I started to study religion and philosophy until I discovered that there is indeed 'no religion higher than the truth'.

Hardwick,

Are there any ideas in Theosophy which do not fit into your own personal belief system?

That's a good question. It's not really a matter of theosophy fitting into my belief system, I have been developing a belief system (if you like) ever since it became perfectly clear to me that undirected, chaotic, random, 'chance' forces could not create what we experience in the universe, and theosophy is the only belief system that pulls all issues I personally struggled to make sense of (evolution being spiritual for example) into a coherent whole.

However, I am new to this 'world view' and am still studying. I have yet to really come to terms with just exactly who Jesus Christ was/is in this context (I accept that he was an esoteric teacher, but how pivotal his arrival on earth was I am unsure) and also, re-incarnation and creation still seem somewhat vague concepts to an extent - in terms of how it works.

Incidentally, Nick, your views re Yahew are very interesting, kind of makes sense doesn't it?

Hi Hardwick, it’s good to meet a fellow-Brit on this forum. Have you sampled the Theosophical Society yet?

Intelligent design is a good description, although perhaps it detracts slightly from the concept of free will. How much choice do we have if we are simply ornaments in a cosmic design plan? Some people get over this by referring to humankind as co-creators. To the extent that theosophy is based on the principle of panentheism this might be true in a very limited sense, but I feel it elevates us beyond our station. Creation implies there was nothing before, which is what Dzyan tells us, but then everything did emanate from the Ray of Light that flashed into the essence of Matter. But if the Universal Force is the sum total of everything, did it design itself? All of which illustrates the limitation of mere words. I prefer to think of the endless sequence of ‘creations’ as a natural phenomenon, and that evolution within these cycles is nudged along by beings from a higher plane.

Andrew, I am sorry for the loss of your father. Perhaps it doesn’t matter that we don’t know for sure what progress his soul is making, but theosophy provides a framework based on karma and reincarnation that gives me a big enough picture. I don’t expect to meet God when I die but I do expect to enjoy/suffer a few more lifetimes.
Harvey