“Seth material” search engine (Jane Roberts)

(Even so, as I worked on this appendix I wondered again and again why I was investing so much time in it. The answers proved to be simple once I understood. Then I ended up shocked to discover how little real evidence there is to back up the idea of evolution, and fascinated by the limits of scientific thinking. I was quite surprised at my reactions. Somehow Jane and I always understood, to make an analogy, that Seth’s kind of “simultaneous” reincarnation [or anyone else’s kind, for that matter] wasn’t acceptable in our Western societies at this time in history; we could trace out many reasons why this is so. But some time passed before I realized that our ruling intellectual establishments were advancing notions about evolution that were not proven in scientific terms — then teaching these “facts” to succeeding generations. Finally, the humor of the whole situation got through to me: As some have very clearly noted, in the biological and earth sciences especially, circular reasoning often predominates: The theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution.

He [Darwin] spent his last years proving it, and yet it has no real validity. It has a validity within very limited perspectives only; for consciousness does, indeed, evolve form. Form does not evolve consciousness. It is according to when you come into the picture, and what you choose to observe … Consciousness did not come from atoms and molecules scattered by chance through the universe….

(But to some degree many scientists outside physics regard such esoteric particle relationships as being of theoretical interest mainly within that discipline; the concepts aren’t seen as posing any threat to biology, zoology, or geology, for instance, nor do they tinker with naïve realism. The biological sciences can cling to mechanistic theories of evolution by employing the conservative physics of cause and effect to support their conclusions while being aware, perhaps, of the tenets of particle physics. Such “causal analysis” then proves itself over and over again — a situation I wryly note, that’s akin to the criticism I’ve read wherein the theory of evolution is used to prove the theory of evolution. [I mentioned such circular reasoning near the beginning of this appendix.]

At the same time, it’s worth noting that the second law of thermodynamics is still questioned by some theoreticians — the idea being that it’s impossible to prove a scientific “truth” in each of an unlimited number of instances.