Recently the Brazilian cinemas exhibited a science fiction movie, Lucy. This movie speculates about the human ability to utilize the full potential of its brain. In the film, Lucy, played by Scarlett Johansson, with an overactive brain, makes a return trip to the beginnings of life on Earth. The high point of this "trip" occurs when modern Lucy finds the Lucy of the past, in a location nearby the place where she probably died, and became the best-preserved ancient fossil that we have news ⁽¹⁾. The date of this fossil suggests the period of 3.2 million years, having been discovered in the desert of Afar (Ethiopia). After identifying its sex, the researchers responsible for the discovery gave it the name of Lucy, named after the well-known song by Lennon/McCartney: Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds. Creationism considered the age of Eve in approximately six thousand years, Adam would be a few hours older even though Lucy is far from being the mother of mankind. As shown in the Book of Spirits ⁽²⁾ and Genesis ⁽³⁾ and also informed by the book Biology ⁽⁴⁾, Mankind is much, much older than we, Bible readers, suppose, considering the History of Creation. 

What is the current position of creationism?

How does creationism and evolutionism debate this matter?

And what is Spiritism's position in this regard?

Creationism is a religious doctrine that states that man was created done, directly by a divine action. This statement is maintained from ancient Judaism, and Christianity inherited this dogma, which clearly opposes the notion that human life would stem from a process of natural selection. 

The "intelligent design" 

Darwin assumed that natural selection has a long history (Dawkins), presumably initiated from the agglutination of some carbon molecules, moving in a broth favorable to the emergence of the first living beings. To deny that something like this has happened is to deny that these events are millions of years old. It causes a black out on reasoning and, unlike the fiction film about the acceleration of the use of the resources of the brain it suggests, instead, its underperformance. 

However, creationists have not given up defending that their doctrine of the creation of man directly by God should be taught in school. There was a precedent, which occurred in 1925 in the state of Tennessee that promulgated a law forbidding the teaching of evolution in public schools. In a small town called Dayton, a teacher was sentenced by quoting evolutionary theory in the classroom. This trial lasted eleven days and it had a big impact and became known as the "monkey trial". Later, American creationists proposed a supposedly scientific version as opposed to the theory of Darwin's natural selection, seeking its acceptance in the school curriculum. 

The project was born from attempts to the Supreme Court, by some religious Americans. They proposed that schools taught creationism alongside with the evolutionary theory. Since all petitions were unsuccessful, the effort has focused on demonstrating that there is a scientific creationist theory, demonstrated in the book Of Pandas and People (see Wikipedia). This book ⁽⁵⁾ tried to replace all terms as "creation" or "creationism" with the words "intelligent design". Creationists start from a premise supported by science itself and also used in the Spiritist doctrine, especially in The Spirits' Book, that "there is no effect without a cause." This statement leads to another, that every intelligent effect would have an intelligent cause. If such arguments are logic and capable of sustaining scientific based corollaries, then what is the misconception of creationists? Would Spiritism incur in the same error? Such issues will be discussed below. 

The natural selection of Darwin 

The central idea of "intelligent design" is to identify any phenomenon that cannot be well explained by science, which always seeks to explain natural phenomena in terms of the relation between "natural forces". This possibility relates these phenomena to other forces not considered in the research. Therefore, the "intelligent design" is used as an alternative to natural explanations for the origin and diversity of life. Those who defend the existence of an intelligent design seek to identify signs of intelligence that relate to the notion of a designer. The great complexity of living systems would not be totally "unveiled" by materialistic science, requiring thus another science. Scientists and American judges who stand opposed to the notion of "intelligent design" remember that, since its formulation, approximately 20 years ago, that "science" has not published any peer-reviewed studies in scientific journals. 

The search for an intelligent cause to explain Nature's intelligent phenomena could bring a new dimension to this battle between evolutionism and creationism; however, creationism would have to abandon the notion, which is its base: the concept of the biblical God.

Spiritism also starts from the premise that every intelligent effect must necessarily derive from an intelligent cause. However, the Spiritist argument about God's existence remains within philosophy and has no intention, regarding this specific matter, of doing science. Moreover, Spiritism accepts Darwinian natural selection and understands it as one of the attributes of creation, which far from disparaging God, only magnifies Him. (See The Path of Light ⁽⁶⁾, Emmanuel.) 

Life and Universe, are they products of chance? 

The spiritual doctrine does not approach the religious anthropomorphism; quite the contrary, it rejects it. This can be inferred by the way the organization given to The Book of Spirits, where Kardec selects as the first question of his work, What is God? By avoiding the use of "who", Kardec wisely avoids the pitfalls of the anthropomorphic notion of a God created in our image and likeness. Spiritism also does not accept the scientific argument that life and the Universe would be products of chance. In the Spiritist vision, life and the Universe are the result of the action of God, who is infinite and has as attribute the incessant creation, but does not act by trial and error, as it occurs with the biblical Yahweh. 

The search for the intelligent design seems to reproduce actions that can become repetitive between deists and theists. The biblical God, with such contradictory characteristics between good and evil, seems to "push" people into a materialistic position. Even if the creation story is interpreted in its metaphorical sense where each day represents hundreds of thousands of periods, there are almost invariably contradictions between what is metaphysical in the text, and what is a mere description of the social organization of the people of Israel. On the other hand, the materialist scientists seem overly concerned to demonstrate that God is not present in creation and, with some exaggeration, make constant professions of faith by displaying a kind of fundamentalism "believers of disbelief".

It seems evident, therefore, that unlike Lucy, heroine of the movie with the same name, believers and unbelievers, all of us, have not yet used more than ten percent of our brain capacity. And as God must have other plans for humanity, beyond the quarrel over whether He exists or not, I think that one day not too far away we will make better use of the resources of our brain.

References: 

(1) Lucy is the only human fossil with 40% of original reconstruction, the most complete

found so far. As for longevity, shortly after another fossil appeared with the age of 4.4 million years

(2) Dawkins, R (2009). The big story of evolution. Sao Paulo: Companhia das Letras.

(3) Kardec, A. (S.D.) The Book of Spirits. Sao Paulo: Publisher Bookstore Allan Kardec (LAKE).

(4) Kardec, The (S.D.). The Genesis, the miracles and predictions according to Spiritism. Sao Paulo: Editora Bookstore Allan Kardec (LAKE).

(5) Davis, P. and Kenyon, D. (1980) Of Pandas and People: the central question of biological origins. Foundation of Thought and Ethics (FTE). Richardson (Texas).

(6) Emmanuel / Xavier, F. C. (1939). The path of light. Brasília (DF). FEB.