Richard Milton´s hopeful monster

Richard Milton's "Shattering the Myths of Darwinism" is an anti-Darwinist book, which earned the writer a brief notoriety after a series of conflicts with world-leading evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins. Apparently, Dawkins persuaded a British newspaper not to publish an article by Milton, and wrote a scathing review of his book. Among other things, Dawkins called Milton a creationist ally or dupe.

Milton doesn't call himself a creationist. He's not a Christian fundamentalist, and seems to lack religious affiliation altogether. He even claims to believe in evolution. However, most of his arguments seem to be taken from creationist sources. Since these arguments are anti-evolutionary, they tend to contradict Milton's claim that he does believe in evolution, after all. This in itself was quite enough to anger the Darwinists. By contrast, the creationists were soon distributing Milton's book - I actually bought it from a young earth group in Sweden.

But there's more. Milton liberally makes use of arguments from the works of Melvin A. Cook, without mentioning the salient fact that Cook was a Mormon creationist. This explains one of Cook's more curious arguments: that the matter making up our planet might be over 4 billion years old, thus explaining the radiometric dates, but that the Earth might still be very young. Milton rehashes this argument, apparently without realizing that it's based on Mormon theology. The Mormons believe that matter is eternal, but that the gods didn't fashion the Earth out of this eternal matter until about 6000 years ago. Thus, Milton isn't even sure whether the Earth is old, making it even stranger how he can believe in evolution. Here, Milton in effect sides with "young earth creationists" or near-young earth creationists (such as Cook) against the "old earth creationists"! For a secular, non-Christian writer, this is surely unique.

In the last chapters, where Milton outlines his own alternatives, it seems that he somehow realizes these contradictions. First, he puts forward Lamarckian evolution and even spontaneous generation as alternatives to Neo-Darwinism. I presume the point is that Lamarckian evolution would be faster than Neo-Darwinian evolution, thereby making it possible to simultaneously believe in evolution and a younger Earth. Of course, spontaneous generation is...well, spontaneous. Second, he presents what I take to be his real alternative. Milton somehow believes that there is a conscious energy field or overmind at work in the universe, a force that somehow evolves (?) all living creatures on our planet, making them change at the right time, inducing their behaviour, and so on. The idea is far from clear, but it sounds like a religious concept, perhaps a form of pantheism or deism. In effect, Milton attempts to fuse evolution with special creation, in a manner that sounds similar to the Theosophists, Huston Smith, E.L. Grant-Watson and (I suppose) Owen Barfield. Nothing wrong with that, per se. However, I must say that Milton is much sloppier in his approach...

Milton might not worship the somehow-conscious, somewhat-nebulous Forcefield that brought us here, but functionally it's difficult to see the difference between his conception and the creator-gods of the various religious traditions. Yet, Milton has decided to remain an agnostic. Perhaps he simply wants to be seen as a courageous independent thinker? He is, after all, the patented inventor of...secular young earth near-creationism. If this "hopeful monster" can survive, is another matter entirely!

PS. I dissed this book rather badly when I reviewed it four years ago. This review (posted in 2012) is a more "objective" attempt to approach it. Enjoy. ;-)