Re: only 50 genes away
George Murphy (gmurphy@raex.com)
Wed, 21 Oct 1998 07:53:57 -0400
Glenn R. Morton wrote:
>
> At 07:00 AM 10/20/98 -0400, George Murphy wrote:
> >Glenn - Thanks for the reference. I can hardly speak for anti-evolutionists,
> >but the question you pose is part of a larger one which also arises with
> AI &
> >cloning. Is there any spiritual parallel to the Turing test? That test
> gives >us a way (or a proposed way) to test for intelligence, but some
> would maintain
> >that that isn't identical with the potential to have "true fear of God and
> >faith in God". How would we test for the latter?
>
> I think behavior is the only test. That is why I put so much emphasis on
> the behaviors seen in the hominids. I believe you are spiritual because
> you do spiritual things i.e., engage in spiritual behavior. To me, when I
> see what appears to be spiritual behavior among earlier hominids as early
> as 400,000 years ago, I have to apply the same test to them that I apply to
> you. Consider if you found this in the Brazilian jungles what fear would
> strike your heart:
>
> "But Mania's most intriguing find lies under a protective shed. As he
> opens the door sunlight illuminates a cluster of smooth stones and pieces
> of bone that he believes were arranged by humans to pave a 27-foot-wide
> circle.
> "'They intentionally paved this area for cultural activities,' says Mania.
> 'We found here a large anvil of quartzite set between the horns of a huge
> bison, near it were fractured human skulls.'" ~ Rick Gore, "The First
> Europeans," National Geographic, July, 1997, p. 110
>
> This is from Bilzingsleben, a 400,000 year old village, yes village with
> huts, hearths at the hut doors, work areas where they fashioned tools out
> of wood and the cultural area. If this isn't a spiritual Turing test I
> don't know what is.
>
> There is also the Golan Venus (Berekhat Ram figurine) from 300,000 years
> ago which is a partially carved figure of a human female.
This type of evidence is certainly significant for paleoanthropology, but some
questions arise in applying your criterion to putative present day clones, computers, or
genetically modified chimps. Your examples give _a posteriori_ evidence for some type
of religious sense. I.e., we look at the artifacts we've found and decide they have a
religious character. But what _a priori_ criteria would we set up for a modified chimp
&c _before it comes into the lab to be tested_? Would we have to wait & see if - & how
- it buried its dead? Or whether it built some sort of sanctuary/shrine &c?
Note that those possibilities would imply a _communal_ dimension to
spirituality. & that's probably correct, _pace_ the excessive individualism of a lot of
American protestantism.
BTW, we should bear in mind that a lot of evidence for early human religion
seems more like evidence for a distorted spirituality, as in Romans 1. That's probably
what, as Christians, we should expect.
George L. Murphy
gmurphy@raex.com
http://web.raex.com/~gmurphy/