Why Darwinism Is Fundamentally Irrational

Hegel’s Dialectic leads Darwinian
materialists to embrace contradictions
– not as a bug, but as a feature

by John Wise, PhD

Marx, Darwin and Freud read from the same script written by Hegel. (ChatGPT)

In my last article here, I pointed to the fact that evolution is more metaphysics than science, grounded as it is in the Hegelian dialectic.

What, however, is the Hegelian dialectic?

Two articles in Popular Mechanics, both by Darren Orf, provide an opportunity of exemplifying Hegelian logic, clarifying its meaning and usage, and displaying the contradictory marriage of Darwinian materialism and Hegelian process metaphysics:

Scientists Found a Paradox in Evolution—and It May Become the Next Rule of Biology (Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 24 May 2024).

First, Orf’s older article from 2024:

Across the sciences, rules and laws help us make sense of the world around us, whether applied to cosmic scales or subatomic ones. However, in the biological world, things are a bit more complicated. That’s because nature is often full of biological exceptions, and so “rules of biology” are also considered broad generalizations rather than absolute facts that explain and govern all known life.

Note first the idea of law being expressed here. “Rules and laws help us make sense of the world around us.” There are two levels of meaning here. First, WE (human beings) are MAKING sense. There is in science an active mental component to the formulation of laws and rules, and the laws and rules we make (formulate/theorize and test) are rationalized accounts (stories) of what we observe in nature – the empirical data. Second, however, is the more unconscious assumption on which the process of making sense (science) rests: that there is a sense to be made. It is this last assumption – that there exists in nature an objective rationality to be discovered – that Darwinian biology has systematically and progressively denied for the last century and a half through the adoption of a materialist metaphysics.

The realization that rationality implies rationality[1] (logicians call this a “tautology” and Creationists “common sense”) has been slowly but undeniably dawning on evolutionary biologists as evidence mounts, evoking a Kuhnian crisis in the discipline. It is becoming evident, sometimes even to Darwinian biologists, that rationality is not just in our minds. It is also a real structural component of nature. In other words,

… if science can make sense of nature, then nature must be made from[2] or by[3] Sense.[4]

Darwinian dogma (aka fogma) from its inception denies this obvious rational induction from the evidence. Design and rationality, they contend, are accidental, not intrinsic to nature.[5]

There is, however, another twist or complication in the quotation above, further elaborating what a law of nature means. The laws of physics and chemistry discovered by science are inviolable as exemplified by the laws of thermodynamics, which adequately explain inorganic nature. They are necessary.

Not so the “laws” of biology:

… in the biological world, things are a bit more complicated. That’s because nature is often full of biological exceptions, and so “rules of biology” are also considered broad generalizations rather than absolute facts.

David Coppedge’s excellent article on Darwinian biology’s Physics Envy draws our attention to the fact that there is a divide between the hard sciences (e.g., physics, chemistry) and the soft sciences (e.g., psychology, sociology). Biology, we are left to conclude, lies somewhere on a continuum between the two.[6] The prestige of the hard sciences is well-earned, as they have yielded unprecedented technological control and exponential growth in knowledge of our world. Try as they might, biologists cannot make organic nature conform to necessary laws, as do the hard(er) sciences. In fact,

… it’s almost as if Life has a will of its own!

I invoked necessity intentionally, as now we come to the crux of the matter. The laws of hard science are hard because they reflect the causal necessity of physical reality, its predictable, indeed mathematical, precision.

Life, however, is something else … something more.

Life, we might say, is the irruption of freedom into the necessary world of inorganic nature. And life exists in a clear and undeniable continuum from single-celled to highly complex, free-willed human beings, an ever-ascending continuum of freedom founded in a rigorous determinism.

You have just observed Hegel’s dialectical logic in action.

The contradiction between determinism (necessity) and free-will is dispelled[7] by the realization that they are not different things at all, but mere moments that are overcome in the evolution of reality that is Spirit.[8]

Before we continue with this article, we should pause to note a few very important aspects of Hegel’s process metaphysics – the logic of Darwinian evolution: 1) it is driven by contradiction. 2) it is inexorably progressive, moving ever onward and upward into greater complexity and comprehension, and this is because it is The Process of Self (Spirit) coming-to-consciousness. 3) it is a logic of narratives, of retrospective storytelling. Thus, it can – indeed, it must – account for anything and everything.

Knowing Hegel as I do, I was instantly drawn to the title, “Scientists found a paradox in evolution – and it may become the next rule of biology.” “Paradox” is another word for (an apparent) contradiction, right? And now the proposal is that the contradiction become a rule or “law” of evolutionary biology. Not surprising, as evolutionary biology stands on contradiction and is logically driven by contradiction. If this sounds like the Hegelian dialectic we just observed in action, it should.

But there is more Hegelian fun to be had here.

At first glance, this new rule—called “selectively advantageous instability,” or SAI—seems to defy the underpinning assumptions of life in general, and pushes against the current assumption that life craves stability and a conservation of resources.

Again the language of contradiction. Life values stability. What’s contrary? Life values instability. When you put these two propositions together in a particular (Hegelian) way you can account for more data without falsifying your previous assumptions, despite (in fact because of) the contradiction.

… “SAI is essential for life,” Tower said …. “This can favor the maintenance of both a normal gene and a gene mutation in the same cell population, if the normal gene is favorable in one cell state and the gene mutation is favorable in the other cell state.”

These states allow for greater genetic diversity, which in turn can make organisms more adaptable. Many cell components also favor a short lifespan, as this actually helps promote cell health. This indicates that SAI in these components is a necessary biological function.

Et voila!

Evolution maintains and increases its explanatory power. This ‘evolution of evolvability’ guarantees that life will balance all the variables perfectly in order to maximize its outcomes. Also notice that consciousness has invaded the cell, which now “favors” a shorter lifespan. As materialists, they deny purposive action and conscious decision-making, but  as Hegelian logicians they invoke both at every turn.

Contradiction, contradiction, and more contradiction.

Even the simplest cells contain proteases and nucleases and regularly degrade and replace their proteins and RNAs….

Construction and demolition, death and life – a whole host of contradictions dance together in a carefully orchestrated balance to ensure the triumph of life in its eternal striving for greater perfection. There are no real boundaries, no real contradictions; every thing (apparent stasis) is simply a moment in the grand evolutionary flux that is our universe.

Another piece of evidence supporting SAI’s ubiquity and its candidacy as a new “rule of biology” is that it crops up in other well-known concepts, including chaos theory and ideas of “cellular consciousness.”

It’s not a bug; it’s futureware.

Cellular consciousness? Chaos theory, which discovers that even disorder is ordered? What happened to materialism, random mutations, the fortuitous birth of life in a warm pond, and the denial of the supernatural and conscious agency? Today’s evolutionary theory is no longer a materialism devoid of appeals to mystical forces. Rather, real scientific evidence has driven evolutionary biology into a crisis. Either abandon materialistic monism or evolutionary (Hegelian) logic.

Evolution is dead. Evolutionary “science” has killed it. How’s that for a contradiction?[9]

You can’t square a circle and maintain its shape.

Or can you?

If we are expecting evolutionary biologists to simply throw in the towel and admit defeat, think again. That’s not how scientific paradigms change. Even if the evidence is against you, you can always tell a story to make it fit.

While warranting a response of its own, our next article by Darren Orf strikes a surprising evidentiary note that inductively demands an Omniscient Architect:

The Computational Limit of Life May Be So Much Higher Than We Thought, Scientists Say (Darren Orf, Popular Mechanics, 2 May 2025).

… a theoretical physicist at Howard University claims that aneural eukaryotic cells could process information up to a billion times faster than typical biochemical processes…. theoretical physicist Philip Kurian argues that … all … neuron-based estimations of life’s computational abilities … have woefully underestimated the true abilities of biological brains.

Why? Due to …

emerging evidence that biology and quantum mechanics may not be as mutually exclusive as scientists originally thought.

Apparently, scientists are finding evidence for something I have long speculated to be true – that consciousness and rationality are in some way entangled with what happens at the quantum scale. In effect, human brains are warm and wet quantum calculators that Orf says “far exceed the computing power of even the most advanced quantum computer” produced by human beings today – something that scientists would have declared impossible[10] – like the preservation of soft-tissue from dinosaurs – only a short time ago.

These discoveries of near-infinite complexity at the nano-scale and the bio-integration of quantum effects are not a problem if we are studying a masterpiece of divine engineering. But how can materialistic naturalism explain this? Is evolutionary faith shaken to its core?

Hardly …

Kurian said in a press statement … “Physicists and cosmologists should wrestle with these findings, especially as they consider the origins of life on Earth and elsewhere in the habitable universe, evolving in concert with the electromagnetic field.”

Never forget that Hegelian reasoning is a retrospective producer of narratives. Wherever and whenever stuff happens Hegel’s dialectical logic will preserve the story, as contradiction is the very engine of its “progress.”

Footnotes

[1] Logically, if A, then A, or A = A; this is another of the laws of (Aristotelian, not Hegelian) logic – the Law of Identity – denied by Hegelian logic. The Law of Identity establishes real boundaries. Another way to state it is that “a thing is what it is, and not another thing.” For Hegel something is what it is and everything else, too. This is a consequence of his idealist monism. Individual things are merely moments in the evolving process that is Rationality – Spirit.

[2] This is the Hegelian or pantheistic viewpoint. Philosophers would call this immanentism – the idea expressed well by Carl Sagan in the statement, “The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be.” That is, there is nothing outside it.

[3] This is the theistic or creationist viewpoint. It asserts the reality of a transcendent – a reality beyond or outside the immanent reality in which we exist.

[4] That these two understandings exhaustively define the options is not a false dichotomy. The notion of emergence, to which evolutionary theorists constantly resort is not a third way but a self-deceptive denial that the logic of evolutionary emergence is pantheism or, perhaps more properly, pan-psychism.

[5] If the contradiction isn’t obvious, allow me to point it out. Secular science theorizes (believes) there is no rationality/design in the origin or structure of the universe, but they act as if there is. Science is nothing if not a search for an account that makes sense of the world in both ways mentioned above, the first being predicated on the second, that there is a sense to be made.

[6] Or does it? Perhaps it is often rather a mix between science properly so-called and something else.

[7] The German word Hegel uses for this action is aufhebung, a term whose meaning is itself paradoxical, as it signifies both to cancel and to preserve. Determinism (the thesis) is canceled by its contradiction (or antithesis) – freedom. BUT … and this is the crucial point, freedom and necessity are preserved in the realization that both are true from the higher perspective that sees their unity – Spirit.

[8] Of course this isn’t the whole story, as Hegel’s story will also (like Darwin after him) spin out in such a way as to include inorganic nature in the continuum. For Darwinians this part of the story – Origin of Life research – has proven an unmitigated disaster, a constant embarrassment, and the clearest indicator that the whole program is a non-starter. The magic incantation of deep time to make the evolutionary story “work” requires an asymptotic approach to eternity to be even remotely plausible – “only” 13.8 billion years is statistically irrelevant to what is required.

[9] As Christians, theists and otherwise rational agents, we (with certain qualifications) must demand a return to the law of non-contradiction, a return to real boundaries, logical and empirical. Life is not death, nor is being nothingness, as is required by Darwinian evolution. God created a great deal of complexity and variability within bounded limits. Fail to respect the limits and the result is nonsense.

[10] A quote from this article: “Biology and quantum mechanics typically don’t mix, and for good reason. Artificial quantum systems generally require ultracold, approaching-absolute-zero temperatures to run, as qubits are incredibly sensitive to disturbances (this is why quantum computers also contain robust error correction measures). So, the warm and chaotic environment of, say, a human brain, is far from ideal for quantum processes.”

John Wise received his PhD in philosophy from the University of CA, Irvine in 2004. His dissertation was titled Sartre’s Phenomenological Ontology and the German Idealist Tradition. His area of specialization is 19th to early 20th century continental philosophy.

He tells the story of his 25-year odyssey from atheism to Christianity in the book, Through the Looking Glass: The Imploding of an Atheist Professor’s Worldview (available on Amazon). Since his return to Christ, his research interests include developing a Christian (YEC) philosophy of science and the integration of all human knowledge with God’s word.

He has taught philosophy for the University of CA, Irvine, East Stroudsburg University of PA, Grand Canyon University, American Intercontinental University, and Ashford University. He currently teaches online for the University of Arizona, Global Campus, and is a member of the Heterodox Academy. He and his wife Jenny are known online as The Christian Atheist with a podcast of that name, in addition to a YouTube channel: John and Jenny Wise.