Art.2 My religious manifesto: Evolution.

If you haven’t read my first, introductory, article (link), I strongly recommend you do in order to better understand this article, my motivations and my concerns.

Evolution.

It is a common misconception that Darwin came up with the idea by himself, out of the blue. There is a long history in evolution and remarkably, many philosophers before him had thought of it. It was only until Darwin that evolution became empirically relevant and therefore science. The philosophy of evolution (note I used the word philosophy and not science) is a concept that can be traced back to ancient, pantheistic Brahmins (hindu society). They believed a ‘consciousness’ or Brahma, lived in everything, constantly guiding. They also believed in successive reincarnations (or transformations) of the soul into beings of progressive complexity until it was human, a fair skinned human actually. This esoteric concept of purpose and the soul spread through Ancient Greece with the likes of Pythagoras, Plato and Thales. Combining the holistic approach of Brahma to the analytical mind of Pythagoras, this philosophy took on a greater meaning and became a science of the soul and a philosophy of human origin or as we will simply call it here, the philosophy of evolution.

Up until Charles Darwin, this brahmin-inspired evolution remained an important school of thought, from Thomas Aquinas to Voltaire, and the progression of the soul was adopted by most religions. This progression entails an ultimate purpose through a journey from worst to best life on earth. By this philosophy, a soul in the body of someone poor is not as advanced as the soul of someone rich. Other factors also need to be taken into account in this system: race, gender, sexual orientation, ect. This spiritual dogma has remained implicit in most religions and has been the fuel for much of the racism/classicism/patriarchy our society is plagued by. This very system of inequality and discrimination we fight against, is the essence of the soul system, and by extension God’s system.

Now this is what science says about evolution. Humans did not transform from Apes, they diverged from Apes from a common ancestor. In other words, they evolved from the common ancestor, just as the Apes themselves also evolved from the common ancestor. Evolution is not progress, it acts through natural selection, which has no ultimate design. Natural selection is simply the force of nature that explains why some animals die in the same environments where others thrive . If an animal survives in an environment and reproduces successfully, its’ genes will be passed on. The successive passing of those genes with high fidelity (random mutations in genes is very rare but happens!) means the animal is well suited for that particular environment. If the environment changes (a new predator, change in climate or lack of food), then either the animal becomes genetically inadequate for those new challenges and dies (extinction) or those random mutations (but also epigenetics and learned behaviour), allow for an adaptation to the new environment and the animal survives (it ‘evolved’).

I simplified the scientific theory but for the average reader, I think this is enough information to get the concept across.

By now I’m hoping the reader has made two crucial observations. First, I hope you can see the purpose vs. no purpose conundrum. This is the complexity that studying science brings to religion. I’ve been hearing constantly that science and religion walk hand-in-hand but as you can see, it’s not that straightforward!

Secondly, I hope you saw the inherent anthropocentrist (human centrist) bias when considering human nature in philosophy. The Brahmins, for example, are unable to imagine a world where humans are on the same pedestal as any other animal. I can only assume the Brahmins, and later other religions, used the concept of progressive reincarnations of the soul (or any soul system really) as a means to explain the existence of other animals (or disease and natural disasters) and their purpose to humans. Anthropocentrism is a cornerstone of religion and the belief that we need God but that God also needs our veneration is the epitome of that.

So my internal conflict on evolution boils down to this: is true religion the supremacy of mankind (God’s stewards of the earth) or are humans no more special than an ant or an eurkaryotic cell? Or in other words, is there a purpose or no purpose to human evolution. This question shakes my religious foundations to the core and is essential to how I proceed in the future as a neuroscientist. In my field, this would mean turning the evolution of human cortical development, one of Mankind’s least understood and most spectacular mysteries, into an ordinary and intended development, leaving science merely chasing shadows of its own existence. This would also require some serious reflection on our understanding of God’s morality (natural selection is ruthless, so is God ruthless?) and the inherently discriminatory soul system (are all humans not the same in God’s eyes?)

I encourage my readers to think long and hard about this.

Until next time and to prepare you for the next topic, I’ll leave you with this question: Is religion an inherent necessity for mankind and if so, why did God create the necessity to believe in Him?