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Life Without Evolution: Rejecting the Darwinian Evolutionary Worldview 

A collection of Research Essays by Nicolas Spencer Brown

 First published online July 2018, last updated Sept 2025

These essays develop historical and ongoing arguments in support of two fundamental assertions concerning the origins of the living world and the nature of mind and consciousness.  Firstly, that Darwin’s Theory of Natural Selection fails to provide a plausible explanation for the origins of biological organisation, for higher-level biodiversity, or for the existence of conscious mind.  Secondly, that the prevailing evolutionary global paradigm is rooted more in materialistic philosophy than in material evidence, and is therefore wholly incompatible with all forms of numinous experience, religious revelation, spiritual learning, and with any notion of moral free will.

The weakest link in evolutionary theory is the presumed mechanism.  Challenges to the adequacy of the established model of common descent through the gradual accumulation of small variations, do not simply come from advocates of creationism and intelligent design; but also from theorists and researchers within the biological sciences who call for an expansion or replacement of old ideas. Yet no alternative mechanism for building the extraordinary structural variety of living forms has been convincingly demonstrated, suggesting that the mystery of biological origins continues to elude material science.  Without a viable mechanism, the status of evolutionary theory is greatly diminished. 

It is generally accepted that material science has so far failed in its attempt to uncover a satisfactory account of the origin of first life.  But there remains an overwhelming resistance towards admitting science’s failure in describing the origin of the genetic code, the origin of biological complexity, the origin of higher-rank biodiversity, and the origin of conscious mind.  Our understanding of the organising principles that direct embryological development also remains very far from complete.  A commonly held conviction that physical science can and will explain all these things has misled many into believing that it actually has.

For those who believe in – or know of – any kind of metaphysical existence, whether it be God, an afterlife, reincarnation, an eternal soul, or just some kind of impersonal cosmic consciousness or purpose, the materialistic dream of one day understanding all phenomena and all experiences in mechanistic terms must be seen to be a delusory ambition.  The scientific method cannot recognise the metaphysical, and the attempt to explain or ‘explain away’ all the workings of the human mind in Darwinian terms has led to the creation of the pseudoscience of evolutionary psychology; a ‘science’ based on fictional adaptationist accounts that can be neither tested nor falsified by any rigorous scientific method.  Furthermore, no mechanistic account can describe how gene-coded proteins are able to direct anything but the most basic of instinctive behaviors.

Ever since the conquest of hearts and minds by Darwinian evolutionary philosophy, which began to take hold in the West in the 1860s, matured with the development of the Modern Evolutionary Synthesis through the 1920s, 30s and 40s, and culminated in the arrival of the ‘selfish gene’ in the 1970s, innumerable authors have questioned its mechanistic principles from the points of view of a wide range of disciplines.  What is perhaps unique in the content of the following essays is the focus on language; in particular, the manipulation of language to blur the boundaries between fact, theory and belief, in order to support an institutionalised dogma.  The term ‘evolution’ has become so loaded with philosophical and pseudoscientific baggage, that it no longer has any clear and precise meaning in either science or philosophy.  The conclusion drawn, which will feel unpalatable to some but liberating to others, is that a better understanding of life – whether it be the history of life, contemporary biology, or the meaning of your own life – is achieved by avoiding the word ‘evolution’ altogether.  By rejecting the cynical and materialistic Darwinian scientific paradigm that has surreptitiously infected global humanity, the reward is to rediscover the spiritual magic and mystery that permeates life and your own life; to rediscover ‘Life Without Evolution’.

Read the full 41 page introduction here: Introduction to LWE 25-1

Choose an essay here: All Essays

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