That Old Magic - Evolutionary Psychology, Part I

Bonnie Alba

Your answers to the following questions will show, partly at least, what you believe and how you think about yourself and the world around you.

Door #1: Am I a material, physical body with an advanced animal brain? I respond to myself and the world around me solely from preprogrammed evolutionary-genetic makeup and environmental factors which influence how I react and behave in certain ways? My thinking life is part of the brain matter; and when I die, that’s the end?

Door #2: Am I an immaterial mind-soul who lives in a physical brain-body? I have a unique self-conscious awareness? I think, imagine and doubt, my private thought pattern-life is unknown to anyone else unless I communicate it outwardly? My mind-soul will survive death?

Depending on your basic worldview in accordance with your answers, if you see yourself in number one, then you will disagree with this article. If number 2, you mostly likely will see the merits of it.

The old study of the mind and mental-emotional processes of man has now transitioned into what first was called Sociobiology (E. G. Wilson) to the modern term Evolutionary Psychology. Proposing to connect the dots between man’s natural selection, adaptation, and behavioral history, psychologists are postulating ever extravagant theories of behavior. Based on what? Not one single shred of genetic, chemical or other biological evidence has been shown to prove or disprove the existence of self-aware consciousness.

Today’s scientists see no boundaries in proposing their singular unethical theories. An extreme example is Princeton University professor Peter Singer who publicly advocated sexual relations between humans and animals, otherwise called bestiality. By his own admission, he is attacking the “Judeo-Christian tradition” that teaches that “humans alone are made in the image of God.” He maintained that evolution has thoroughly refuted the biblical account and that “We are animals.” Therefore “sex across the species barrier ceases to be an offense to our status and dignity as human beings.”

Another: Cornell biologist William Provine tells university students that the Darwinian revolution still has another frontier to conquer, all its moral and religious implications. He says, “There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will.” I wonder how he is able to function in the real world?

You see, the theory of evolution that some scientists hold as their mantra cannot explain in any shape or form the consciousness we all individually have. Atheist professor Colin McGinn noted: “How can mere matter originate consciousness? How did evolution convert the water of biological tissue into the wine of consciousness? Consciousness seems like a radical novelty in the universe, not prefigured by the aftereffects of the Big Bang. So how did it contrive to spring into being from what preceded it?”

Even he made a mistake in his wondering. “...how did ‘it contrive’...?” As if somehow “it” preceded “itself” in order to arise at all. This in itself requires something intelligent in the preceding of “it”.

British evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane acknowledged that, “If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions of the atoms in my brain, I have no reason to suppose that my beliefs are true...and hence I have no reason for supposing my brain [mind] to be composed of atoms.”

As Nancy Pearcey pointed out, there is a logical flaw in the theory of evolutionary psychology. “For if all our ideas are products of evolution, then so is the idea of evolutionary psychology itself. Like all other constructs of the human mind, it is not true but only useful for survival.”

Therefore, Darwin’s theory is also a produced-in-the-brain idea which threatens to overtake all of humankind to dissatisfactorily explain all things. Mechanical and physical evolutionism cannot explain man’s self-awareness, that conscious part of us which thinks outside the physical realm.

This is the giant question left open: Are we just matter, dust, water and chemicals; materialistic mammals with well-developed animal brains? Or are we also endowed with an extra something, the mind-soul? Those who hold only to physicalism must still live in the real world of their own self-aware consciousness. Who has not experienced the knowledge of free will, ability to know and choose right and wrong, good and evil, morality and immorality, life and death. This is not an evolving mechanism and remains outside of the construct of material science.

So who are you? When someone says “Nature is all there is, was, or ever will be” what is your response? Door number one or two? My question is “How is number one beneficial for the progress of mankind?” That is, “with or without man seeking to interfere with natural evolution?”

[stay tuned]
© 2005 Bonnie Alba
balba2@earthlink.net

Sources:
“Total Truth,” Nancey Pearcey
“How Now Shall We Live?” Charles Colson, Nancy Pearcy
“Discovery Institute,” www.discovery.org/crsc