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ChapterChapterChapterChapter 2222 DawkinsDawkinsDawkinsDawkins’’’’ EvolutionEvolutionEvolutionEvolution TheoryTheoryTheoryTheory SeenSeenSeenSeen fromfromfromfrom

UnificationUnificationUnificationUnification ThoughtThoughtThoughtThought

Richard Dawkins is probably the most influential evolutionist today, taking up themantle from the late Stephen Jay Gould. He recently published The God Delusion,positioning it as a manifesto to deny God.

These days, the theory of evolution is accepted by many as scientific truth aroundthe world. Many religious people, including Christians, also seem to uncritically acceptthe theory of evolution. However, Dawkins has clearly emphasized that the inevitableconclusion of a belief in evolutionism is a thorough atheism, exulting that, “If this bookworks as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.”1

There is a historical tradition of atheism from Greek materialism to theEnlightenment of France. According to Dawkins, however, “Although atheism mighthave been logically tenable before Darwin, Darwin made it possible to be anintellectually fulfilled atheist.”2

Creationism stands in opposition to evolutionism, but the most creation theoriesexpounded have only been those in the Bible or in myth. It is the Christian creationtheory has been most influential, a perspective which Dawkins ridicules:

Nearly all peoples have developed their own creation myth, and the Genesis story isjust the one that happened to have been adopted by one particular tribe of MiddleEastern herders. It has no more special status than the belief of a particular WestAfrican tribe that the world was created from the excrement of ants.3

According to Genesis, God created all things “according to their kinds,” and thekinds of species have been considered as being eternal and invariable from the time oftheir creation. However, Dawkins denies the existence of clearly defined species in hisextreme anti-punctuationist view:

A species never has a clearly defined beginning, and it only sometimes has a clearlydefined end (extinction). . . . The extreme anti-punctuationist sees ‘the species’ asan arbitrary stretch of a continuously flowing river, with no particular reason todraw lines delimiting its beginning and end.4

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In his view, therefore, it is a grave mistake to raise the status of human being to thatof lord of creation. Dawkins insists that there is no discontinuous gap between humansand apes: “I have argued that the discontinuous gap between humans and ‘apes’ that weerect in our minds is regrettable. I have also argued that, in any case, the presentposition of the hallowed gap is arbitrary, the result of evolutionary accident.”5

If there is no discontinuous gap between humans and ape, it is theoretically possiblefor a scientist to make a hybrid of human and ape. If this were to happen, the absoluteethics and morality based on God’s commandments given to people would lose theirmeaning. Furthermore, the structure of many academic disciplines would collapse, asDawkins boasts, “Politics would never be the same again, nor would theology,sociology, psychology or most branches of philosophy.”6

Dawkins further reveals his hostility toward religion and God by saying that theidea of God is a meme, a virus of the mind. He also says that God is like a doctor’splacebo, which is effective in alleviating suffering by the power of imagination. He alsoclaims that it is necessary to protect children from religion, which spread memesbecause children are gullible and vulnerable.

Dawkins openly denies the existence of God and he has declared war on God andreligion. Unification Thought perspective on Dawkins’ evolutionism, and the oppositionbetween the two views, is the subject of this chapter.

I.I.I.I. IsIsIsIs aaaa GeneGeneGeneGene Selfish?Selfish?Selfish?Selfish?Dawkins asserts that one of the fundamental principles of evolutionism is that a

“gene is selfish,” and that “We are survival machines—robot vehicles blindlyprogrammed to preserve the selfish molecules known as genes.”7 He also views thenatural world as “a battleground of replicators (genes),” while admitting, “My ownfeeling is that a human society based simply on the gene’s law of universal ruthlessselfishness would be a very nasty society in which to live. But unfortunately, howevermuch we may deplore something, it does not stop it being true.”8

Dawkins never allows that harmony and cooperation are essential in living beings.A gene is selfish, an individual is selfish, and nature is selfish: “The selfish-herd modelin itself has no place for cooperative interactions. There is no altruism here, only selfishexploitation by each individual of every other individual.”9 Furthermore, “Every one ofthe species in a tropical rainforest consists of a gene pool. . . . A much truer vision, stillpoetic science but good poetic science, sees the forest as an anarchistic federation ofselfish genes.”10

While it is Dawkins’ basic position that the gene is selfish, he has to admit to their

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cooperative aspects: “Genes, however ‘selfish’, must also be ‘cooperative’—in an AdamSmithian sense.”11 The position of Adam Smith invoked here is that economicdevelopment is based on the selfish human mind, but that the whole society isharmonized by an ‘invisible hand’.

Dawkins admits that, “There are circumstances—not particularly rare—in whichgenes ensure their own selfish survival by influencing organisms to behavealtruistically.”12 One such circumstance is ‘kin altruism’. Kin altruism refers to beinggood to one’s own children, or when elder siblings take care of younger siblings, for bydoing so the survival of the shared genes is enhanced. A second example is ‘reciprocalaltruism,’ which refers to the idea that “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours,” soboth sides benefit in the transaction. Third, is the Darwinian benefit of an organismacquiring a reputation for generosity and kindness. Fourth, is the benefit of conspicuousgenerosity as a way of obtaining the support and cooperation of others. Dawkins insiststhat all such altruistic behaviors are in the service of selfish genes:

It is now widely understood that altruism at the level of the individual organism canbe a means by which the underlying genes maximize their self-interest. . . . Genes,though in one way purely selfish, at the same time enter into cooperative cartelswith each other.13

Genes might cooperate in the communal enterprise of building individual bodies,but it is an anarchistic, ‘each gene for itself’ kind of cooperation. The cooperation,indeed, is fragile and breaks down whenever the chance arises.14

There is a fundamental conflict at the level of the genes. But, since the environmentof a gene is dominated by all the other genes, cooperation and ‘networking’ ariseautomatically as a favored manifestation of that conflict.15

Therefore, according to Dawkins, genes are fundamentally selfish, but their selfishgoals are accomplished through cooperation at many levels. When Dawkins firstintroduced the concept of “selfish genes”, he emphasized the selfish aspect in River Outof Eden (1995). There he referred to “an uncoordinated scramble for selfish gain”16 and,“So long as DNA is passed on, it does not matter who or what gets hurt in theprocess. . . . Genes don’t care about suffering, because they don’t care aboutanything.”17

In Unweaving the Rainbow (1998), however, Dawkins recognized that there must

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also be a cooperative aspect to genes. As molecular biologist Shinichi Fukuoka says, itseems that the background against which Dawkins proposed the cooperative aspect ofgenes, is the recent development of genome analysis.18 As the concept of genomebecomes clearer, it becomes clear that each gene is just a paragraph, and the genome asa whole must be considered as the functional unit on which natural selection acts.

As Dawkins himself explains, a chromosome corresponds to the volume of a book,and DNA is an instruction or a direction written in the book. Therefore, genescorrespond to “pages” (or “paragraphs”) of the book.19 Then, according to Dawkins, itcomes to be that selfish pages fight each other in one book. It is ridiculous.

Attempting to retain the concept of the selfish gene, he restates it as “the metaphorof the intelligent gene reckoning up how best to ensure its own survival.”20 Here he isadmitting that a “selfish gene” is just a figure of speech. However, as science writer YujiTarumi says, the word “selfish gene” promotes the view that the gene itself has a selfishwill, and that it controls the individual so that the gene will prosper.21 Thus, it is theconcepts of selfishness and conflict that Dawkins wishes to promote, and hisrepositioning of the selfish gene as a metaphor is nothing but an evasive answer.

It is clear that Dawkins’ fundamental principle of a “selfish gene” is a mere fictionas a gene is nothing but a paragraph in a book. From the viewpoint of UnificationThought, genes are blocks of information written in DNA code, and this information isfor the construction of the organism.

II.II.II.II. StruggleStruggleStruggleStruggle orororor Harmony?Harmony?Harmony?Harmony?Dawkins makes his views about struggle and conflict clear: “I think ‘nature red in

tooth and claw’ sums up our modern understanding of natural selection admirably.”22

“Universal love and the welfare of the species as a whole are concepts that simply donot make evolutionary sense.”23

However, as Konrad Lorenz stresses, animal fighting is, in general, restrained andgentlemanlike: It is rare for individuals of the same species fight to the death. In mostcases, intra-species fights are between males to obtain or maintain territory, or duringthe breeding season for the right to mate. In such fights, no matter how severely theyattack each other, it is rarely to the death, the fight ends when one of the combatantssurrenders and takes flight.

Dawkins admits this fact of nature: “Although murder and cannibalism do occur innature, they are not as common as a naïve interpretation of the selfish gene theory mightpredict. . . . Whether a naturalist stresses the violence or the restraint of animalaggression depends partly on the kind of animals he is used to watching, and partly on

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his evolutionary preconceptions.”24 He cites the vampire bat to illustrate the twoopposing points of view:

Vampires are great mythmakers. To devotees of Victorian Gothic they are darkforces that terrorize by night, sapping vital fluids, sacrificing an innocent lifemerely to gratify a thirst. Combine this with that other Victorian myth, nature red intooth and claw, and aren’t vampires the very incarnation of deepest fears about theworld of the selfish gene? (italics added)25

To the bats themselves, not only is blood thicker than water. They rise abovethe bonds of kinship, forming their own lasting ties of loyal blood-brotherhood.Vampires could form the vanguard of a comfortable new myth, a myth of sharing,mutualistic cooperation. They could herald the benignant idea that, even withselfish genes at the helm, nice guys can finish first (italics added).26

This is an admission that two different interpretations of nature can appeardepending on philosophy. Dawkins’ viewpoint, needless to say, is ‘nature red in toothand claw’ embodied in his concept of the selfish gene. He says, “Natural selection is theprocess whereby replicators out-propagate each other.”27 That is to say, evolution isdriven through the struggle of genes in the process of natural selection.

Dawkins says that the natural world is “a battleground of replicators.”28 It might besaid that he introduces the theory of struggle from other realms into the realm ofbiology—Heraclitus’ “war is the father of all things,” Hobbes’ “the war of all againstall,” and Marx’s “development through the struggle of opposites.” Succinctly: Dawkins’position is the biological version of the materialist dialectic.

In contrast to Dawkins’ view of a natural world of struggle and conflict, UnificationThought contends that “Nature is the textbook of love.” As Rev. Sun Myung Moonexplains:

The creator made all things for love without exception. Love is the motive for thecreation. The love is not for God Himself, but for serving others. God created allthings by this principle.29

What is the purpose for the creation of minerals, plants, and animals? It is not forhumans to be joyful in seeing their lives. They are created in the image of true love.

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They express true love symbolically or substantially: one from east or west, anotherfrom above or below, and the other from front or back.30

A cheetah captures and eats gazelles. Dawkins emphasizes the cruelty of such life:“We may therefore guess that gazelles suffer horrible pain and fear when they arepursued to the death—as most of them eventually are.”31 In contrast, as seen in thearticle “Cheetah’s mother’s love” in National Geographic (January 2005), strong bondsof love between parent and child are seen in their way of living, a pattern which ispassed on from mother to child.

In the natural world, smaller organisms nourish larger ones by being eaten.However, small beings multiply rapidly and never run out. A lot of plankton isgenerated and becomes food for fish. Small fish multiply a lot and become food forlarger fish. Whales and tuna are at the top of the food chain. The shark, called thegangster of the sea, cleanses the sea of damaged or weakened fish. On land, manyherbivorous animals are born, and they support carnivorous animals. If there were nocarnivorous animals while the herbivores continued to multiply, their food plants wouldbe depleted and they would starve. Plants, herbivorous animals, and carnivorousanimals all coexist while maintaining a balance in their numbers.

Dawkins considers that all living beings are equal in position and that it is pitilessand cold-hearted for animals and humans to kill and eat other animals. His emphasis isthat nature is misery: “During the minute it takes me to compose this sentence,thousands of animals are being eaten alive; others are running for their lives,whimpering with fear; others are being slowly devoured from within by raspingparasites; thousands of all kinds are dying of starvation, thirst and disease.”32

However, it is incorrect to view all living beings in the same position. Whenanimals eat plants, do the plants feel pain? When larger fish eat smaller fish, do theyfeel pain and fear? No, they don’t. When herbivores are eaten by carnivores, they feelfear and pain on a rudimentary level. However, such fear and pain cannot be comparedto that of human beings when they are attacked and killed. It is proper to think: Whensmaller animals are captured and eaten by larger animals, the smaller ones aresupporting the larger ones by being absorbed, and sacrificing themselves to the largerones. It is not good to treat and kill animals cruelly, but it is not a merciless act to eatanimals with appreciation for their sacrifice.

III.III.III.III. AreAreAreAre WeWeWeWe VehiclesVehiclesVehiclesVehicles forforforfor Genes?Genes?Genes?Genes?Concerning the origin of life, Dawkins writes, “At some point a particularly

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remarkable molecule was formed by accident. We will call it the Replicator. It may notnecessarily have been the biggest or the most complex molecule around, but it had theextraordinary property of being able to create copies of itself. This may seem a veryunlikely sort of accident to happen.”33

Later in life’s history, he says, “Replicators began not merely to exist, but toconstruct for themselves containers, vehicles for their continued existence. Thereplicators that survived were the ones that built survival machines for themselves tolive in.”34 Dawkins calls these survival machines “vehicles” for the replicators.

The vehicles for the replicators then became more complex, becomingchromosomes, bacteria, then cells and later, many-celled bodies. Nowadays, after theend of four billion years of development, these replicators “are in you and in me; theycreated us, body and mind; and their preservation is the ultimate rationale for ourexistence. They have come a long way, those replicators. Now they go by the name ofgenes, and we are their survival machines.”35

In Dawkins’ view, humans are survival machines programmed to propagate copiesof genes. The genes “are the replicators and we are their survival machines. When wehave served our purpose, we are cast aside. But genes are denizens of geological time:genes are forever.”36 Dawkins’ basic position can be summarized as: In the beginningwas the gene, and the gene is forever. Dawkins’ vehicle theory is shown in figure 2.1.

In the Unification Thought view, every entity has the dual characteristics ofsungsang and hyungsang. Sungsang is the mind or internal directive nature, whilehyungsang is the body or the external form and structure. The relation betweensungsang and hyungsang can be thought of like that of radio wave and radio receiver: ifsungsang is the radio wave being broadcast, hyungsang corresponds to a receiver, suchas a radio or television set. In the relation of sungsang and hyungsang, hyungsang is thecarrier or vehicle of the sungsang. In living systems, the DNA (genes) is hyungsang,which receives and carries the “life wave.”

There exists a life field in the universe, and the universe is filled with life waves.DNA (genes) catches life waves. Therefore, DNA (genes) is the vehicle of life. Whileliving on earth, humans attain spiritual growth through their physical lives. Whilegrowing spiritually, love is cultivated and completed. In this view, the DNA (genes) is avehicle of life, and life is a vehicle of love. God’s creation was performed motivated bylove. Therefore, it is not “In the beginning was the gene, and the gene is forever,” butrather “In the beginning was love, and love is forever.” Unification Thought view ofvehicle is shown in figure 2.2.

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IV.IV.IV.IV. TheTheTheThe ExtendedExtendedExtendedExtended PhenotypePhenotypePhenotypePhenotypeAccording to Dawkins, the effect of a gene appears as the external phenotype, and

the phenotype is a representative of the gene. Genes fight each other for their survivalinside of the individual, and outside individuals fight each other for their survival. Thus,the phenotype is the battlefield, and the genes are in the headquarters.

Dawkins explains the Central Theorem of the Extended Phenotype: “An animal’sbehavior tends to maximize the survival of the genes ‘for’ that behavior, whether or notthose genes happen to be in the body of the particular animal performing it.”37Therefore,the effect of the gene reaches not only to the animal in which the gene is located, butalso to other animals. Dawkins explains the process by which the power of the genereaches out to other animals as follows:

The locus of primary gene power is, therefore, the cell, in particular the cytoplasmsurrounding the nucleus in which the gene sits. . . . The phenotypic expression of agene is then, in the first place, its influence on cytoplasmic biochemistry. In its turn,this influences the form and structure of the whole cell, and the nature of itschemical and physical interactions with neighboring cells. This affects the build-upof multicellular tissues, and in turn the differentiation of a variety of tissues in thedeveloping body. Finally emerge the attributes of the whole organism.38

Not all the phenotypic effects of a gene are bound up in the individual body inwhich it sits. . . . The gene reaches out through the individual body wall andmanipulates objects in the world outside, some of them inanimate, some of themother living beings, some of them a long way away. With only a little imaginationwe can see the gene as sitting at the centre of a radiating web of extendedphenotypic power. And an object in the world is the centre of a converging web ofinfluences from many genes sitting in many organisms. The long reach of the geneknows no obvious boundaries. The whole world is criss-crossed with causal arrowsjoining genes to phenotypic effects, far and near (italics added).39

The gene in the individual body is like a transmitter of the radio wave, and thepower extends outwards over a considerable distance. For example, a beaver dam is anextended phenotypic effect of beaver genes, and in this sense “beaver lakes are extendedphenotypic effects of beaver genes.”40 In the case of large lakes, the influence of thebeaver genes can reach out over several miles.

A cuckoo lays its egg in the nest of other birds, such as robins or reed-warblers, and

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lets them incubate the egg and raise the cuckoo chick. Dawkins says this is also anexample of an extended phenotypic action over a distance by the cuckoo genes.

On the other hand, he mentions an example to deny the action of genes. In theformation of a termite mound, the individual worker is not following specific geneticinstructions. Rather, each worker is responding to local stimuli emanating from thework already accomplished.

Presumably, an individual termite working on a little corner of a big mound is in asimilar position to a cell in a developing embryo, or a single soldier tirelesslyobeying orders whose purpose in the larger scheme of things he does notunderstand. Nowhere in the single termite’s nervous system is there anythingremotely equivalent to a complete image of what the finished mound will look like.Each worker is equipped with a small toolkit of behavioral rules, and is probablystimulated to choose an item of behavior by local stimuli emanating from the workalready accomplished, no matter whether he/she or other workers accomplishedit—stimuli emanating from the present state of the nest in the worker’s immediatevicinity.41

In discussing bees and termites that make large families, he says, “It is theenvironment, not the genes, that determines whether an individual termite, say, becomesa reproducer or a sterile worker.”42 How are such concepts of Dawkins dealt with inUnification Thought?

As for gene action at a distance, it is odd to say that instructions are generated fromgenes like a radio wave from an antenna that reach out for several miles. Is the genesuch a strong generator of genetic waves? From the viewpoint of Unification Thought,DNA is the hyungsang aspect of life activity, and there is life itself as the sungsangaspect. The life of an individual is connected with the life field that fills the universe.When this life field reaches DNA, it reads the information of the DNA, and guides theliving being to grow and act in accordance with the instruction of the information.

The life field itself contains the plan of each individual living being. Therefore, forthe life field to read the DNA information of an individual means that the information inthe life field is collated with the information in the DNA of the individual. Then, the lifefield sets to work when the collation is made.

Seen from the viewpoint of the action of the life field, the long arm of the extendedphenotype of Dawkins can be understood. In the case of the beaver’s dam, the life fieldreads the plan of the dam from the beaver’s gene, and guides the beaver to make the

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dam. In the case of a cuckoo’s using a reed-warbler as a foster parent, the life field readsthe genes of the cuckoo and the reed-warbler and guides them to cooperate with eachother.

In making a termite mound, Dawkins says, workers accomplish their mission bybeing influenced by a part of the surrounding mound that has already been completed.Nevertheless, a plan or an instruction to guide the workers is still necessary, eventhough they are not aware of it. It is reasonable to think that the life field itself reads thetermite’s genes and thus can guide termite workers to form a mound.

In addition, the life field, which has read and understood the plan of a termite’s orbee’s colony, guides the termites or bees to become a queen, or to become infertileworkers. It is not the physical environment makes them do so. According to Dawkins,the power of a beaver’s genes reaches across an entire lake, while the power of atermite’s genes hardly reaches itself and the other termites nearby. Doesn’t this seemstrange? It is reasonable to understand that the life field, which reads the plan of abeaver’s dam or a termite’s mound, leads them to do so.

Harold Saxton Burr, who was a professor of anatomy at the Yale University Schoolof Medicine, proposed the existence of such a life field:

The life field, the invisible field of electric force, enables every living being to growaccording to its design. All living beings whether fungi, plants, or animals, are bornand formed according to this eternal blueprint. They constantly receive variousmessages coming from far away places in the universe. The waves they effectinstantly cover the entire earth.43

According to Burr, the life field is akin to a jelly-mould or an invisible life-mouldthat guides the external matter involved. He says:

Nature keeps an infinite variety of electro-dynamic ‘jelly-moulds’ on her shelveswith which she shapes the countless different forms of life that exists on this planet.L-fields have been detected and measured not only in men and women but also inanimals, trees, plants, seeds, eggs, and even in one of the lowest forms of life,slime-moulds.44

Burr also says that “it is the L-field which gives direction to the energy flow, theresult of which is a pattern of organization.” However, he says that “one of the keyproblems of modern science is that of organization or of the design of living systems.”46

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Shoji Makishima, who was a physical chemist at Tokyo University, challenged theproblem of the pattern of organization. According to him, the pattern of organization isan anti-entropy phenomenon which science could not have dealt with, and he proposeda “pattern dynamics” using topology.47

Seen from Unification Thought, the life-mould proposed by Burr and organizationalpatterns proposed by Makishima derive from God’s plan or blueprint for living and non-living beings. In other words, cosmic life carries God’s plan or blueprint for all thingsand guides them to appear, grow and multiply.

According to Burr, the life field receives messages, or blueprints, coming from faraway in the universe. In Unification Thought, however, a blueprint also exists in DNA,and through the collation of a blueprint in the life field and that in DNA, a “mold ofinvisible life,” or a three-dimensional blueprint, like an image made by a hologram, isformed around the individual.

It can be said that the extended reach of the phenotype proposed by Dawkinstestifies, from the materialistic point of view, to the existence of the life field, whichinvisibly guides living beings. Dawkins’ view of the power of the gene reaching a longdistance is compared in figure 2.3 and figure 2.4 with the Unification Thought view ofDNA (genes) as the receiver or carrier of the life wave.

V.V.V.V. WhatWhatWhatWhat IsIsIsIs Meme?Meme?Meme?Meme?According to Darwinism, genes were produced in the primitive organic soup, the

evolution of living beings commenced, and finally human beings were born. Moreover,Dawkins says that a new ‘soup’ appeared as the human brain, and in this memesappeared as a new type of replicator that multiplied there. Dawkins states that memesmultiply using brains as their vehicles just as genes multiply using bodies as theirvehicle:

Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to bodyvia sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leapingfrom brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be calledimitation.48

According to Dawkins, memes are viruses of the mind that leap from mind to mindlike computer viruses: “Our minds are invaded by memes. . . . Cheshire Cat-like, memesmerge into our minds, even becoming our minds.”49

Discussing the variety of memes, he comments that the “belief in life after death

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meme” and the “God meme” have spread throughout history and around the worldbecause of their great psychological appeal:

It [meme] provides a superficially plausible answer to deep and troubling questionsabout existence. It suggests that injustices in this world may be rectified in the next.The ‘everlasting arms’ hold out a cushion against our own inadequacies which, likea doctor’s placebo, is none the less effective for being imaginary. These are some ofthe reasons why the idea of God is copied so readily by successive generations ofindividual brains. God exists, if only in the form of a meme with high survivalvalue, or infective power, in the environment provided by human culture.50

In Dawkins’ view, a meme is substantial, not insubstantial: “A meme should inprinciple be visible under a microscope as a definite pattern of synaptic structure.”51 Ameme resides in the brain and has its associated phenotype:

The phenotypic effects of a meme may be in the form of words, music, visualimages, styles of clothes, facial or hand gestures, skills such as opening milk bottlesin tits, or panning wheat in Japanese macaques. They are the outward and visible(audible, etc.) manifestations of the memes within the brain. They may beperceived by the sense organs of other individuals, and they may so imprintthemselves on the brains of the receiving individuals that a copy (not necessarilyexact) of the original meme is graven in the receiving brain.52

From the Unification Thought view, the meme proposed by Dawkins correspondsto an idea or a concept in the mind. Dawkins’ view that memes continuously propagatethemselves in the brain is similar to the Hegelian dialectic that ideas and conceptsdevelop by themselves through their contradictions in the human mind or in God’s mind.However, neither ideas nor concepts develop by themselves in the mind.

Our mind has the apperception of intellect, emotion and will as a united being.Centering on heart (or love), a thought (or plan, scenario, design) is formed through thereciprocal interaction between the apperception and the images in the mind (ideas andconcepts). Ideas or concepts are resources in the mind for thinking. Therefore, ideas orconcepts do not, and cannot, develop by themselves, but rather they are created anddevelop through their recombination by engagement with the apperception of the mind.

Dawkins says that the idea of God is a meme. If this is the case, it can also be saidthat the idea of “the denial of God” is also a meme, and that this meme is building a nest

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in the brain of Dawkins, and he is trying to energetically propagate it.Dawkins says that a meme resides physically in the brain, and that it is, in principle,

visible under a microscope. However, a meme is different from a gene, which physicallyexists, and it is impossible to detect a meme itself physically, since an idea or a conceptdoes not exist in the brain, but rather exists in the mind of the spirit self. We recognizethe idea and the concept through the interaction of the mind and the brain, whereby thephysical action such as electric current or chemical flow appears in the brain, but it isimpossible to detect an idea or a concept itself physically.

Dawkins says that human beings are meme machines as well as gene machines.However, he says, “We have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth,can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators.”53

This raises a problem. How can human beings, who are meme machines ruled bymemes, rebel against memes? Dawkins takes the same line as Freud, who claimed thatthe human mind is originally an id (Es), which corresponds to the jungle of wildanimals, and that an ego, which corresponds to the cultivated land surrounding thejungle, appears in the human mind. He concluded that the id should be suppressed bythe ego. In this case, then why did the ego appear in the human mind, and not in animals?It is because humans have a spirit self wherein resides the spirit mind, whereas animalsdo not have a spirit self and, therefore, they cannot have egos.

Similarly, it is a leap of logic to claim that human beings, who are meme machines,will come to dominate the memes. In order to control memes in one’s mind, a spirit self,wherein resides the spiritual apperception, is necessary.

VI.VI.VI.VI. CanCanCanCan NaturalNaturalNaturalNatural SelectionSelectionSelectionSelection ClimbClimbClimbClimb MountMountMountMount Improbable?Improbable?Improbable?Improbable?According to Dawkins, “Core Darwinism, I shall suggest, is the minimal theory that

evolution is guided in adaptively nonrandom directions by the nonrandom survival ofsmall random hereditary changes.”54 Thus, the motive force of evolution is naturalselection. Dawkins insists that natural selection has created us:

Chimp and human, lizard and fungus, we have all evolved over some three billionyears by a process known as natural selection. Within each species, someindividuals leave more surviving offspring than others, so that the inheritable traits(genes) of the reproductively successful become more numerous in the nextgeneration. This is natural selection: the non-random differential reproduction ofgenes. Natural selection has built us (italics added).55

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Dawkins says that we need to understand natural selection, to understand its basicqualities. One of these qualities, as he views it, is that natural selection is positive andconstructive:

Natural selection is positive and constructive. It is no more negative than a sculptorsubtracting marble from a block. It carves out of gene pools complexes of mutuallyinteracting, co-adapted genes: fundamentally selfish but pragmatically cooperating.The unit that the Darwinian sculptor carves is the gene pool of a species (italicsadded).56

Dawkins also attributes the quality of “improvement” to natural selection. He usesas an example the ear, where a part of the skin became sensitive to vibrations andevolves into the ear by step-by-step improvements:

How did ears get their start? Any piece of skin can detect vibrations if they comeinto contact with vibrating objects. This is a natural outgrowth of the sense of touch.Natural selection could easily have enhanced this faculty by gradual degrees until itwas sensitive enough to pick up very slight contact vibrations. At this point it wouldautomatically have been sensitive enough to pick up airborne vibrations ofsufficient loudness and/or sufficient nearness of origin. Natural selection wouldthen favor the evolution of special organs—ears—for picking up airbornevibrations originating from steadily increasing distances. It is easy to see that therewould have been a continuous trajectory of step-by-step improvement, all the way(italics added). 57

What about the eye? Is it random errors and natural selection, which are supposedto make step-by-step upward improvements, that has brought about appropriatelyharmonized upper and lower eyelids, a well-modulated iris diaphragm to control theamount of sunlight, eyelashes to prevent dust to come into the eye, blinking to preventthe cornea to become dry, a variably focused transparent lens, a correction mechanismagainst aberration, and so on?

Evolution by natural selection does not make sudden leaps creatingmacroevolutionary steps; evolution is gradual and cumulative. Concerning thisaccumulative aspect of natural selection, Dawkins states, “There is a ratchet, such thatsmall gains are saved,”58 and “Cumulative selection, by slow and gradual degrees, is theexplanation, the only workable explanation that has ever been proposed, for the

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existence of life’s complex design.”59

Cumulative evolution through natural selection can be compared to the climbing ofa mountain: A climber climbs up a mountain, which seems impossible to scale, wearingshoes with ratchets, step by step and finally reaches the summit. Dawkins explains:

In Climbing Mount Improbable, I expressed the point in a parable. One side of themountain is a sheer cliff, impossible to climb, but on the other side is a gentle slopeto the summit. On the summit sits a complex device such as an eye or a bacterialflagellar motor. The absurd notion that such complexity could spontaneously self-assemble is symbolized by leaping from the foot of the cliff to the top in one bound.Evolution, by contrast, goes around the back of the mountain and creeps up thegentle slope to the summit: easy! 60

If the climbing is gradual, cumulative, and step-by-step, then what might be itsmechanism? Concerning this point, Dawkins explains that natural selection is a positiveprocess, as we can see in the two processes of co-evolution and co-adaptation, which arebased on the mutual interaction of genes. Thus, the mountain of evolution is graduallyclimbed through the mutual interaction of genes. Dawkins explains:

Co-evolution—arms races, the mutual evolution of genes in different gene pools—isone answer to the skeptic who thinks natural selection is a purely negative process.The other answer is co-adaptation, the mutual evolution of genes in the same genepool. . . . At the gene level, as we have seen, selection puts together harmoniouscomplexes, not by choosing whole complexes but by favoring each part of thecomplex within gene pools that are dominated by the other parts of the complex(italics added).61

Unification Thought’s critique of, and alternative explanation, to Dawkins’assertion is as follows: In contrast to Dawkins’ “gradual evolution through cumulativenatural selection,” Unification Thought proposes a “step-by-step creation through theengagement of creative force.” Unification Thought is in accord with Dawkins in hisassertion of a gradual and step-by-step ascension. Natural selection itself, however, hasno power of ascension; it only selects what has already ascended. Even the ascension ofa small step, with just a small improvement, requires some creative force with design.

Dawkins says that evolution occurs through the mutual interactions of genes—between genes of different individuals, or between genes in a gene pool of each

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individual—without any purpose. This is no different from the materialist dialectic,which holds that development occurs through mutual interactions between opposites,without any purpose.

Today, such a way of thinking prevails throughout the academic world. It is widelyheld that things develop through mutual interactions between elements withoutrecognizing any purpose. This is the viewpoint of brain scientists, who claim that mindappears through interactions of neurons in the brain. However, it is not reasonable to saythat something appears and develops merely through mutual interactions betweenelements without purpose. This is almost an “interactionist belief.”

In Unification Thought, things appear and develop through harmonious give andreceive actions between correlative elements that are centered on a purpose with aninherent design (plan). A chicken egg has the purpose of becoming a chicken through itsdesign (plan), and by means of the harmonious give and receive action between theembryo on the one hand, and the yolk and white on the other, the egg hatches, and achick is born. An apple seed has the purpose and the design (plan), of becoming anapple tree with fruit, and through the harmonious give and receive action between itsembryo and albumen, the seed sprouts, grows to become a tree, and produces fruits.

Whenever a new being or a new quality appears through the interaction betweenelements, a field of force is necessary behind the interaction. Even if a TV set isequipped with complex circuits of semiconductors, no image or sound will appear if theradio waves from the broadcasting station do not reach it. In the physical world, withthe engagement of the Higgs field, particles with mass appear and four kinds offorces—the weak force, the strong force, electromagnetic force, and gravity— emergethrough the give and receive actions between particles. Similarly, in the living (organic)world, under the influence of the life field, life activity appears through the mutualinteractions between the various elements in the cell. There is no case where thingsdevelop, or new qualities appear, only through mutual interaction between elementswithout the engagement of a field behind it.

Dawkins says, “Like a river, natural selection blindly meliorizes its way downsuccessive lines of immediately available least resistance.”62 However, it is no morethan a dogma to insist that an improvement occurs through blind interactions withoutany element of purpose or design.

The evolution by natural selection emphasized by Dawkins is only a philosophicalperspective, an interpretation. Dawkins himself admits this fact saying, “The theory ofevolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is inprinciple capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity. Even if the

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evidence did not favor it, it would still be the best theory available!”63 However, it is afalse theory since it is merely an application of the false philosophy of dialecticalmaterialism to the field of biology. We can now apply the viewpoint of UnificationThought to the concepts discussed in Dawkins’ Climbing Mount Improbable.

The Biblical book of Genesis states that the tree of life and the tree of theknowledge of good and evil were at the center of the Garden of Eden. The tree of lifesymbolizes a man (Adam) who has completed the ideal of creation, and the tree of theknowledge of good and evil symbolizes a woman (Eve) who has completed the ideal ofcreation. The plan for their perfection was visualized in God’s mind before the Creation.

Thus, God first made the plan for the two human beings. Then, taking this humanimage as a model, and by abstracting from and transforming it, God conceived theimages of various animals and plants, from higher beings to lower beings, Then, byabstracting from and transforming the images of animals and plants, God conceived inHis mind the images of heavenly bodies, atoms, elementary particles, and finally light.Therefore, the formation of the plan was made in a “descending of the mount of theideal of creation,” wherein human beings are at the top. Plato, who saw the world ofIdeas centering on human beings, presented the world in such a way as the “descendingof the mount of ideas.”

After the formation of the scenario (plan) of Creation, the phenomenal world wascreated in accordance with the plan, but in reverse order. The universe started with theBig Bang explosion of light, the various heavenly bodies were formed, and finally thespecial planet Earth appeared. After a while, on the Earth, living beings appeared,starting from single-celled organisms and then, moving from lower to higher multi-cellular living beings, and finally human beings appeared. Therefore, the creation wasmade in such a way as to be the “climbing of the mount of the ideal of creation.”

Dawkins asserts that elimination and substitution of replicator genes is necessaryfor evolutionary advance by natural selection:

Accepting Eldredge and Gould’s belief that natural selection is a general theory thatcan be phrased on many levels, the putting together of a certain quantity ofevolutionary change demands a certain minimum number of selective replicatoreliminations. Whether the replicators that are selectively eliminated are genes orspecies, a simple evolutionary change requires only a few replicator substitutions. Alarge number of replicator substitutions, however, are needed for the evolution of acomplex adaptation.64

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In Unification Thought, living beings were planned through the transformation andabstraction of the image of human beings. We would thus expect that, in the process ofevolution (actually creation), the injection of new genes, as the reverse process ofabstraction, occurred as well as the transformation (elimination and substitution) ofgenes. In addition, there is the injection of new genes beforehand into a lineage, inpreparation for higher living beings, without the immediate manifestation of theirfunction.

The more conflict there is in a society, the sooner it will fall into ruin. This wasillustrated by the collapse of Communism that is based on the materialist dialectic. Inmodern Communist China, the class-struggle theory—that is, development throughstruggle—has been abandoned. Darwinism, promoted by Dawkins as the mutualstruggle between selfish genes without any purpose or design, will lose its allure inbiology just as the materialist dialectic has lost its allure in politics.

VII.VII.VII.VII. IsIsIsIs NaturalNaturalNaturalNatural SelectionSelectionSelectionSelection thethethethe Creator?Creator?Creator?Creator?Dawkins says that natural selection is a magnificent crane that elevates life:

“Natural selection is the champion crane of all time. It has lifted life from primevalsimplicity to the dizzy heights of complexity, beauty and apparent design that dazzle ustoday.”65

Enzymes, which are supposed to be created by natural selection, perform thousandsof sophisticated chemical transformations in a cell. In a manmade chemical factory,hundreds of different chemical reactions may be going on at the same time, but they areseparated from each other by “walls” into compartments such as flasks and reactors. Aliving cell, however, has a similar number of chemical reactions (and probably more)taking place inside of it simultaneously, with each reaction being catalyzed by its ownspecial enzyme. Dawkins explains the work of enzymes:

An enzyme is a very large molecule whose three-dimensional shape speeds up oneparticular kind of chemical reaction by providing a surface that encourages thatreaction. Since what matters about biological molecules is their three-dimensionalshape, we could regard an enzyme as a large machine tool, carefully jigged to turnout a production line of molecules of a particular shape. Any one cell, therefore,may have hundreds of separate chemical reactions going on inside itsimultaneously and separately, on the surfaces of different enzyme molecules.Which particular chemical reactions go on in a given cell is determined by whichparticular kinds of enzyme molecules are present in large numbers. Each enzyme

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molecule, including its all-important shape, is assembled under the deterministicinfluence of a particular gene (italics added).66

In his view, natural selection created mitochondria—the powerhouses of the cell—whose complex chemical activity is unmatched by any human chemical factory:

The area afforded by these membranes is much larger than you’d think from theoutside appearance of mitochondria, and it is used. The membranes are theproduction lines of a chemical factory—more precisely, a power station. A carefullycontrolled chain reaction is strung out along the membranes—a chain reactioninvolving more stages than those in any human chemical factory. The result is thatenergy, originating in food molecules, is released in controlled steps and stored inreusable form for burning later, wherever it is needed, anywhere in the body.Without our mitochondria, we’d die in a second (italics added).67

Is it possible that natural selection would have produced such marvelous enzymesand intricate mitochondria? In Dawkins’ view, however, natural selection is the bestchemist, much greater than any human chemist. He also says that natural selection is thebest genetic engineer, and human beings have just started to learn the techniques thatnatural selection has invented.

The legal definition of gene manipulation in Britain is ‘the formation of newcombinations of heritable material by the insertion of nucleic acid molecules,produced by whatever means outside the cell, into any virus, bacterial plasmid orother vector system so as to allow their incorporation into a host organism in whichthey do not naturally occur but in which they are capable of continued propagation.’But of course, human genetic engineers are beginners in the game. They are justlearning to tap the expertise of the natural genetic engineers, the viruses andplasmids that have been selected to make their living at the trade.68

However, is it reasonable to think that natural selection has such creativity? Let usconsider the motive force of evolution in the context of developments in evolutionarydevelopmental biology called evo-devo.

In comparing human DNA and chimp DNA, about 98.8 percent of their sequencesare identical, with a difference of just 1.2 percent. According to Sean B. Carroll, aleading proponent of evo-devo, “The sets of genes for making these animals and

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humans are very similar; the differences in form between them, both great and small,must lie in how they are used—or, as we will see in one case, not used.”69 Genes are justelements that are unified and manipulated by other mechanisms behind them.Furthermore, he says that “neither natural selection nor DNA directly explains howindividual forms are made or how they evolved.”70

Then what is the driving force of evolution? According to evo-devo, every animalhas a tool kit of master genes, some of which are the recently-discovered Hox genes.There are arrays of switches nested around the tool kit genes that give the instruction toactivate the tool kit genes. The conclusion of evo-devo is that “switch evolution” hasdriven the course of evolution. According to evo-devo, the tool kit genes were around atleast 50 million years before the Cambrian Explosion, and that genetic switches evolvedduring the period. This conclusion contradicts the concept that the Cambrian Explosionhappened through the mutation of genes and natural selection at the time of theExplosion.

Carroll insists that natural selection inserted information into the genetic switchesduring the 50 million years before the Cambrian Explosion. But one of the basic tenetsof Darwinism is that “Evolution has no foresight.” It is unreasonable, therefore, fromthe point view of Darwinism, to suggest that natural selection prepared tool kit genesand genetic switches for the Explosion during 50 million years before it actuallyhappened, since natural selection is merely the action of selecting the fit and discardingthe unfit at the time that the random errors occur.

Some think that evo-devo has clarified how genetic switches and Hox proteinsdetermine the shape of animals such as butterfly wings. However, as Carroll admits,evo-devo has clarified only one moment in the course of an animal’s development, andthat each pattern evo-devo describes is as a still photo to a movie. Carroll says that alarger “network” is necessary to make the body of animals:

Larger sets of interconnected switches and proteins form local “circuits” that arepart of still larger “networks” that govern the development of complex structures.Animal architecture is a product of genetic regulatory network architecture (italicsadded).71

What is the larger network? It is exactly the entire plan of the organism. At thispoint, it becomes necessary to admit a plan or a design, which determines the form andthe function of the individual species. While Carroll insists on Darwinist evolution bynatural selection, contrary to his intention, evo-devo has established the existence of a

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plan or a design that underlies the evolution of living beings.Carroll states that the key actor of evolution is the genetic switch, and the switches

are exactly “hotspots of evolution,” and the evolution of humans is brought about by theevolution of the switches.

Switches are key actors in both dramas here—development and evolution. . . . It isthe switches that encode instructions unique to individual species and that enabledifferent animals to be made using essentially the same tool kit. And switches arehotspots of evolution—they are the real source of Kipling’s delight—the makers ofspots, stripes, bumps, and the like (italics added).72

It is only logical that switch evolution would be important in the evolution ofhumans as well. Everything in our bodies is a variation on a mammalian or primatetemplate. Thus, I believe that the weight of the genetic evidence is telling us thatthe evolution of primates, great apes, and humans is due to changes more in thecontrol of genes than in the proteins the genes encode (italics added).73

At this point, we can ask just what is it that turns the genetic switches on or off?Carroll says that tool kit proteins turn the switches on or off, and the tool kit proteins arealso controlled by genetic switches. Furthermore, he says that “the important point toknow is that the throwing of every switch is set up by preceding events, and that aswitch, by turning on its gene in a new pattern, in turn sets up the next set of patternsand events in development.”74 After all, every switch is set up by preceding events(genetic switch), and it goes around in circles. Science writer, Masataka Watanabesummarizes his idea as follows:

Carroll calls the arrays of genes, which are common in making various animals’bodies, tool kit genes. In addition, he claims that the genetic switches hold the keyin making different bodies using this common tool kit. Genetic switches are genesthat line up around each tool kit gene. These genes manifest themselvesappropriately at particular time and place in an individual species, generatingproteins through the translation process. These proteins turn the switches of the toolkit gene on, and the specific shape of a species is formed (italics added).75

Then, what makes “the genes [genetic switches] manifest themselves appropriately”?This is an aporia that cannot be solved through materialistic argument. It can be solved,

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however, if we admit the existence of the life field, which is working behind genes. It isthe life field which controls the on and off state of the genes.

According to Darwin: “It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourlyscrutinizing, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting thatwhich is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working,whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being inrelation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.”76 Dobzhansky compared naturalselection to a composer; Simpson, to a poet; Mayr, to a sculptor; Huxley, to Shakespeare;and Dawkins, to the best scientist (the genetic engineer). Putting together all of theirviews, the conclusion is that evolutionists regard natural selection as equal to theCreator. In other words, they have elevated natural selection, which is merely a functionof selecting the fit, to the position of the Creator.

VIII.VIII.VIII.VIII. TheTheTheThe EncounterEncounterEncounterEncounter ofofofof DawkinsDawkinsDawkinsDawkins andandandand UnificationUnificationUnificationUnification ThoughtThoughtThoughtThoughtDawkins equates natural selection with the Creator. In other words, Dawkins steps

into the realm of God with his view of natural selection, while denying God. He doesnot admit a God with personality. However, he does face God, the Creator.

We can find similarities between Dawkins’ evolution theory and UnificationThought creation theory in terms of the appearance of things. Dawkins proposes“gradual and accumulative evolution,” while Unification Thought proposes a “step-by-step creation.” Dawkins claims that “evolution is driven through the conflicts of selfishgenes,” while Unification Thought claims that “the creation occurs through theharmonious give and receive action (injection, elimination, recombination etc.) ofgenes,” centering on purpose and accompanied by the design (logos). Dawkins claimsthat “we are vehicles of genes,” while Unification Thought claims that “genes arevehicles of life, and life is a vehicle of love.”

Dawkins says that gene power reaches out to a distance, as a radio wave istransmitted from the broadcasting station, giving rise to the extended phenotype.Unification Thought, however, understands that the life field is engaged in the mutualinteraction with genes, giving rise to an invisible mold, whereby the individual speciesis shaped.

Dawkins says that the replicator, called a meme, multiplies in the brain and leapsfrom brain to brain like a virus, while Unification Thought considers that ideas orconcepts are not products of the brain, but they are in the spirit mind, where they areformed or synthesized by the apperception of our intellect, emotion and will. A conceptor an idea is conveyed from mind to mind in a conversation between two persons, while

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the mind and brain of each person are engaged in a give and receive action.Finally, Dawkins claims that evolution is the “climbing of mount improbable” by

natural selection, while Unification Thought claims that creation is the “climbing of themount of the ideal of creation.”

It can be said that Dawkins has followed the path of Creation from the standpoint ofmaterialism. At the end of The Ancestor’s Tale, Dawkins says:

I suspect that many who call themselves religious would find themselves agreeingwith me. To them I would only quote a favorite remark that I overheard at ascientific conference. A distinguished elder statesman of my subject was having along argument with a colleague. As the altercation came to an end, he twinkled andsaid; ‘You know, we really do agree. It’s just that you say it wrong!’ I feel I havereturned from a true pilgrimage.77

If only Dawkins would cease clinging to the standpoint of materialism and admit tonatural selection as being God’s work, an intriguing agreement will emerge betweenDawkins’ evolution theory and Unification Thought creation theory.

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Fig.2.1. Dawkins’ Vehicle Theory

Fig.2.2. Unification Thought View of Vehicle

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Fig.2.3. Dawkins’ Long Reach of the Power of the Gene

Fig.2.4. Unification Thought View of DNA as the Receiver of Life Wave