Re: [asa] Quoting Darwin out of context

In a message dated 8/13/2006 5:19:20 AM Eastern Standard Time,
gregoryarago@yahoo.ca writes:
I wonder if most people out there think 'choice' is an evolutionary
adaptation? The brain gets big enough and then one special day, poof!, a choice is
made, forever defining human history?

Gregory

Yes, I think "choice" is an evolutionary adaptation. I wrote a paper on it.
Here's an excerpt.

If Adam and Eve’s eating of the forbidden fruit from the Tree of the
Knowledge of Good and Evil is the pivotal event that marks the Biblical transition
from one consciousness to another and we are to apply a Darwinian perspective to
the text, we must ask: what is the corresponding pivotal event that marks the
scientific evolution from one consciousness to another? What do scientists say
about “the beginning?”
Scientists claim irrefutable evidence that some time around 4 million years
ago man’s hominid ancestors left the safety of the jungle canopy for the open
African savannas. Over countless generations they evolved to walk upright on
two legs. Once their hands were free and they could manipulate objects
skillfully, man’s ancestors made tools and began to learn sophisticated survival
strategies. One of the things they did was use the new tools and the learned
strategies to methodically kill others of their own kind. When a number of
individuals were required to manufacture and deploy an effective tool or mount an
effective strategy, again over countless generations, our ancestors evolved speech
to facilitate communications. They learned to tolerate one another in greater
numbers in their efforts to organize and defend themselves from other groups of
early men.
The escalating conflict caused by the freeing of the hands for technology
naturally selected for bigger brains that could juggle more behavioral
alternatives. The behavioral repertoire expanded rapidly. As the behavioral repertoire
expanded, man found himself consciously choosing from among a growing number of
behavioral alternatives and his unique sense of self emerged; a consequence
of having to consciously juggle many behavioral alternatives in his struggle
for survival.
The consciousness that emerged from the evolutionary expansion of the
behavioral repertoire is unique in the scope of its potential behavioral
alternatives. Imagination resides in consciousness and we boast that man is only limited
by his imagination. There is a distinct disadvantage, however, to having many
behavioral alternatives. You no longer know what choices to make. Decisions had
been fixed to a much greater extent in the prior state of consciousness,
behavior was regimented and instinctual, a manifestation of inborn tendencies that
were unlearned responses to stimuli. Now behavior would be learned one life
at a time and more and more behavioral choices would be consciously made rather
than reflexively intuited.
Then the pivotal event(s) in human evolution corresponding to Adam and Eve’s
eating of the forbidden fruit is the expansion of man’s behavioral repertoire
accompanied by the rapid evolutionary growth of the brain culminating in man’s
knowledge of good and evil.
What Genesis does not specifically say about either of man’s two states of
consciousness is easily inferred from the Biblical text. According to Genesis,
in man’s original state, before:
 
The rapid expansion of the behavioral repertoire
The enlargement of the brain
And the emergence of self-consciousness

He generally knew what to do and had little or no sense of self. Without
self-consciousness, he did not continuously ponder his own mortality and from that
we can assume his ability to imagine fear was severely limited.
In man’s current state, again according to Genesis, he often doesn’t know
what to do, he does the wrong thing, he is self-conscious and he hides from God.
Those scientific categories of instinct and acquired behavior are embedded in
this religious language. If you behave instinctively you intuit what to do
and do not have to make a decision based on what you have learned previously. An
organism that behaves instinctively cannot behave otherwise and does not make
conscious mistakes. On the other hand, if you rely on acquired behaviors you
have learned, you must consciously choose from among many possible behavioral
alternatives in any given situation. You are prone to error and your awareness
of that fact generates ontological anxiety.
Given these few lines from the Bible, literally read, it is clear that if one
wanted to attain the original state of consciousness, the one intended by the
Biblical text, one would have to abandon one’s self-consciousness and learn
to intuit appropriate behavior. I believe I am reading Genesis correctly when I
say that one could then stand in God’s presence without fear. This is
consonant with theology for despite countless artistic renderings of a celestial
Eden, the Catholic catechism defines heaven very simply as -- being in the
presence of God.2
            The hunger for spirituality, then, is the natural desire of an
evolved self-conscious mind to return to a time (the beginning) and a place
(paradise) before men made tools and plotted the murder of other men, before the
dawn of self-consciousness, when behavior was intuitive and a “man” could
stand in the presence of God without fear. In the Gospel of Thomas, Jesus says,
 
             “When you disrobe without being ashamed… you will not be afraid.
”3
            
Jesus’ words in this Nag Hammadi text from 1st century Egypt dovetail
remarkably with the nature of the fall in Genesis. The fall brought shame and fear
(self-consciousness and ontological anxiety). Returning to God (by abandoning
the “self”) would remove them.

From:
True Religion, Biblical Symbols from a Darwinian Perspective

rich faussette

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Received on Sun Aug 13 10:19:09 2006