RE: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

The neocortical hardware for the intellect, not the soul, although I think
they go hand in hand, and one is needed for the other.

The cortex of the human brain is advanced, however it's obviously not just
size or gyrification.the dolphin and elephant show that.

Man has the ability to speak, and this ability is incredibly powerful (and
equally dangerous). However I believe that there is evidence that even this
ability is not necessarily evolutionarily advanced - one mutation in one
gene turns speech off.

Walking upright, opposable thumbs, forward facing eyes, enhanced neocortex,
intellectual capacity, AND a spirit.

From: David Opderbeck [mailto:dopderbeck@gmail.com]
Sent: Tuesday, February 24, 2009 8:08 AM
To: James Patterson
Cc: David Clounch; asa@calvin.edu
Subject: Re: [asa] Two questions...Ayala's article

Well -- as I understand it, no one is quite sure what, if any, structural
change in the brain set Homo Sapiens Sapiens apart from its predecessors.
If you want to define the imago Dei primarily by brain structure, you're
probably not helping your cause empirically. It's true that there seems to
be a "cultural jump" in the paleontological record 40kya or so ago, but
again, the meaning and significance of that, as I understand it, is hotly
disputed good discussions of this: Ian Tattersall: The Fossil Trail: How
We Know What We Think We Know About Human Evolution; J. Wentzel Van
Huyssteen, Alone in the World: Human Uniqueness in Science and Theology,
and Christopher Kaiser, Toward a Theology of Scientific Endeavor).

David W. Opderbeck
Associate Professor of Law
Seton Hall University Law School
Gibbons Institute of Law, Science & Technology

On Tue, Feb 24, 2009 at 8:54 AM, James Patterson <james000777@bellsouth.net>
wrote:

Sapiens had the neocortical hardware.

Sent from my iPhone

On Feb 24, 2009, at 12:13 AM, David Clounch <david.clounch@gmail.com> wrote:

On Mon, Feb 23, 2009 at 5:43 PM, David Opderbeck <dopderbeck@gmail.com>
wrote:

Dave Clounch, I'm not sure about what your concern is. Personally, my view
of human nature is one of "holistic dualism." I think human beings have a
"spiritual" nature -- the "soul" -- that is more than the aspects of the
"human" that are reducible to biology. At the same time, I think human
beings are a "whole," not merely "embodied souls." Given this, I think it's
likely that there are aspects of human nature that simply cannot be
investigated by science. I would suggest that, at the very least, the first
true humans -- Adam and Eve -- were imparted this spiritual nature and that
it was subsequently propogated throughout the biological human species. I
don't think this has anything to do with genetics.

Surely PZ Meyers and other materialists would beg to disagree? And
wouldnt they say they do this on scientific grounds? Why would they
be wrong merely because some theologians say they are wrong? What
sort of belief system is dualism? Is it a
secular idea? Or something reserved for church?

Thinking just a bit out of the box for a moment,
let me ask this: Could this imparted spiritual nature have been given
to Chimpanzees or some other species rather than homo sapiens? Or did
homo sapiens have some supporting resources that other species didn't
possess?

Think of it as software. One wouldnt be very successful trying to run
a higher level desktop operating system (such as Vista or RedHat
Enterprise Linux) on a linkysys wireless-G router because the 200
MHz ARM processor is too slow and there just are not enough resources
there in the box. So homo sapiens may possibly be the physical
prerequisite of the human mind or race. Doesn't genetics have a lot
to do with that? Genetics might not be the cause but it might be the
prerequisite to the "imparting" of special cognitive abilities.

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Received on Tue Feb 24 23:17:58 2009