Another Failure of Religion

One of the most spectacular failures of creationism—indeed, of theistic evolution, or any kind of religious explanation of the world—is the inability to explain human nature and human instincts.

The monotheistic religions, which trace human nature back to the Garden of Eden, present the following explanation for what human nature is like. God created Adam and Eve as almost perfect people. They were adapted, physically and mentally, to living in a garden where all their physical needs were met. I say almost perfect because, according to the most conservative literalists, there were two problems. One was that Eve was gullible, and the other was that Adam had this tendency to do what his wife told him to do. So when the serpent told Eve to eat the apple, she just couldn’t resist. Sort of the primordial version of the irresistible expensive handbag, I suppose. It was therefore really her fault that Adam ate the apple; he trusted his wife too much. And from that point forward, human nature has been primarily evil. Sometimes more evil, as with Cain, and sometimes less, as with Abel.Sometimes more, as with Nimrod, and sometimes less, as with Noah. But even the good people had flaws, such as Noah getting drunk. And even evil people have a deep yearning to go back to the garden. Therefore, from a conservative religious viewpoint, human nature is a complex mixture of good and evil.But what kinds of good and what kinds of evil? Religion gives us no way to understand this.

But evolution presents a different picture. Science reveals humans as an evolutionary product of cave-man days. Our bodies and minds are adapted to prehistory, to a time before agriculture, to a time when the availability of food was unpredictable; when we had to run a lot to catch prey or to keep from becoming prey; when we had to be constantly aware of danger; when the only way to survive was to fight our enemies and form intimate alliances with our friends; when the way to evolutionary success was to stop at nothing to leave as many offspring as possible.

We have numerous adaptations to these particular prehistoric conditions. We have strong appetites, which make us eat as much food as we can when it is available, and to store what we do not use as fat; we crave salt so that we can sweat a lot when we get hot; we have a strong sense of awareness of the world around us, which makes us suspicious of every little movement; we are both honest and deceitful; and we have an overwhelming craving for sex. We hate and we lust and we love more strongly than logic could possibly dictate. That is, human instinct is a complex mixture of gluttony, craving, suspicion, lust, hatred, and love. And there is an evolutionary reason for each of these instincts.

Many of the problems that we have today result from the fact that our bodies and minds still work in prehistoric ways, even though these adaptations are now dangerous. Gluttony, with its attendant medical problems, results from our bodies preparing themselves for a famine that never comes, and makes us fat and diabetic; craving for salt so that we can sweat while we run away from non-existent predators now gives us high blood pressure. Anxiety and worry result from focusing on dangers that modern society has largely eliminated, and finding new things to worry about, giving us mental problems that cavemen probably did not have. Today we could get by on altruism and honesty alone, but we still have the habit of violence and deceit. And the things that cavemen had to do to get a mate would land us in jail today.

According to religion, sin is just random bad stuff that happens to be against the will of God. And righteousness is random good stuff that happens to meet God’s approval. We pursue sin because the devil makes us do it. But according to evolutionary science, both what we call sin and what we call righteousness evolved during cave man days.

Both conservative religion and evolution explain human nature as a complex mixture of good and evil. But only evolution gives specific explanations. Evolution gives specific explanations of why humans have gluttony, cravings, anxieties, and violence. If you ask a religious person why we are tempted by gluttony, he or she can give no explanation.  Why do our brains make us crave rich food and sugar and salt? Are these just arbitrary temptations that God has imposed on us as punishment for Eve sweet-talking Adam into eating the apple? And why are we almost crazy with sexual desires? Religious people can only tell us that the devil makes us do it.

According to traditional religion, the cave man days never existed. When Adam and Eve were in the Garden, they did not have to stuff their faces with food, because the Garden had no food shortages; they did not have to crave salt, or be paranoid, because there were no wild beasts to run away from; they certainly did not need a sex drive strong enough to fight off competitors, because they were literally the only people in the world. Then, when Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden, almost immediately there was agriculture and herding (Cain and Abel, respectively). Humans went straight from sinlessness into civilization. In Biblical chronology, there is no period during which gluttony, cravings, paranoia, and sex drive would have been adaptive. These instincts went straight from being nonexistent to being unnecessary.

Jeremiah 17:9 says that the human heart is evil and desperately corrupt, and that only God can understand it. So there. Just give up and don’t try to understand it.

There can be no religious basis for explaining why we get sick and why we have mental problems. But there are detailed evolutionary reasons for these things. And that explanation is that ninety percent of the time Homo sapiens has existed has been in a cave-man environment, the existence of which religion denies.

Why Genesis is Wrong, Even Figuratively, Part One: Human Nature

Most readers of this blog know that the creationist insistence on a literal reading of Genesis is completely wrong. One reason for this is that they are picky about which parts they take literally and which parts they consider figurative. They say the Genesis days are 24 hours but they do not believe the “firmament” is actually firm, as implied in the original Hebrew of Genesis 1, or that rain falls through the “windows of heaven” as stated in Genesis 6. Same old, same old, I won’t bore you with this.

What I consider more interesting is that Genesis is wrong even as a figurative picture of the universe, life on earth, and humankind.

One example of this involves human nature, human evolution, and the origin of society. Christian evolutionists (they do exist) have struggled to figure out which stage of human evolution was represented by Adam and Eve. They believe God made Adam from the “dust of the ground,” but that this phrase refers to matter, which includes DNA and cells. Perhaps, they speculate, that there was a point in history in which the spirit of God infused itself into an existing animal species, Homo sapiens. For centuries, even conservative Bible believers have speculated about the existence of “Pre-Adamite” humans.

However, there appears to be no abrupt point in human evolution in which an animal species became suddenly spiritual. Christians in science who try to reconcile Genesis and evolution have had a devil of a time.

And, I believe, they need not bother. The picture of human origins in Genesis is all wrong. It depicts a primordially sinless human race, which experienced “The Fall,” after which humans had a sinful nature. There has never been a time when humans or any of our evolutionary ancestors have not been fighting and killing one another. As far back as you look, you find what we would call sin. Recently, it was reported that one of the Homo heidelbergensis bodies in Sima de los Huesos in Spain was a murder victim at least 350,000 years ago.

And, furthermore, the Christian story depicts humans as falling not only from primitive sinlessness but into modern depravity, or “original sin.” That is, that modern human nature is evil, unless the person has the Spirit of God living in him or her. But this cannot be true. Human nature is not entirely evil. Human nature is characterized by (imperfect) goodness and altruism within groups—cooperation, even love. It is also characterized by genocidal evil between groups. Human nature has both.

So, for example, good Jewish soldiers under Joshua could carry out genocide against Canaanites with not a second thought, because the Canaanites were outside their group. Good Christian Massachusetts pilgrims could slaughter Pequot villagers with scarcely a second thought because the Pequots were not in their group. (I say scarcely, because in his own record of the events, William Bradford was actually bothered by the screams of the Native Americans as they burned or were shot; however, in God’s name, he suppressed those inconvenient humanitarian thoughts.) In the Confederacy, until recently revered by the state of South Carolina and still worshiped by hundreds of thousands of Christian racists, Christian men and women could torture slaves because they classified slaves as “other,” in particular as property rather than persons. As Jon Stewart and associates said, it is difficult to kill a person, but easy to kill a heretic.

One reason we know the Bible is wrong about human nature is that those religious humans who supposedly have the Spirit of God living in them are no better than any other humans, on the average. Conservative Christians are no more or less likely than anyone else to commit fornication, adultery, financial crimes, etc. The constant stream of Christian televangelist scandals is no different than revelations of scandals in any other group of people, except that televangelists proclaim themselves to be morally superior. Reverend Ted Haggard’s homosexual partner was not bothered by the relationship itself, but by Haggard’s hypocrisy—that’s why he spoke out. If there is an indwelling Spirit, it has no overall effect on Christians compared to non-Christians. I know good Christians and good non-Christians and so do you.

There actually is some good news in human history. Humans have gradually (on the whole, not in every individual instance) expanded their compass to include more and more humans in their group. Who could forget the Wedgwood medallion of the early 19^th century, depicting a slave in chains, with the words, “Am I not a man and a brother?” Including slaves in our human family is the only reason they ever got freed.

Therefore, the real picture of human history has been a gradual widening of humanitarianism rather than a sudden Fall from sinlessness into depravity. Furthermore, much and perhaps most of this expansion has occurred in the last few hundred years, long after the completion of the New Covenant and the founding of the Christian Church. In Christian doctrine, New Testament principles as expounded by Jesus were the ultimate expression of goodness, and there has been no improvement since that time.

Consider, for example, Christopher Columbus, about whom I will write as we get closer to October 12. When Columbus tortured and enslaved Native Americans, he was either evil or not. If we believe that the Bible condemns such actions, then Columbus was evil, and we cannot do such things today because they are evil. But if we believe that Columbus was a hero who brought the light of Christianity to the heathens, then he was not evil, and we should be able to do such things today.  No Christian should say “It was OK for Columbus to do those things but it would be wrong for me to do them,” because that implies that during the two thousand years since the New Covenant began God somehow changed the rules.

An evolutionary view, in contrast, would say that since the time of Columbus we have widened our compass of humanitarianism. We can say the standards of good and evil are different now than in Columbus’ day. We cannot condone Columbus (he should have known that rape and murder were wrong) but we can perhaps understand him better. Unlike us, he was raised to think that anyone who was not a member of his holy Catholic Church should die.

In conclusion: Genesis is wrong about human nature and its origin. Genesis implies, even figuratively, that primitive humans were sinless, and modern humans are depraved unless God saves them. An evolutionary view indicates that human nature has always been both good and evil and that morality has evolved.

What’s Different about Humans?

Lots of answers to this question but I am focusing on one particular thing. The natural world is a constant struggle of all against all, but this struggle is quite different from the worldwide violence that humans have created.  What is different about natural vs. human struggle?

The struggle for existence in nature can sometimes be very violent, and can (especially for victims of parasites) gruesome. But usually what you see in nature is a struggle that can be called “I will outgrow you” or “I will out-reproduce you” or “I can do better than you” rather than “I will kill you.” Natural selection, the engine of evolution, is not always bloody; it is competition.

Consider a forest. You look all around you, and you see green leaves. If you look closely, and at the right time, you will also see herbivores such as caterpillars. The leaves produce toxins, and the caterpillars tolerate them, resulting in a balance that ends up, by chance rather than by design, allowing both of them to survive and even flourish. This is struggle for existence but not violence. You can feel peace in a forest but not, of course, on a battlefield or the scene of an ISIS terrorist attack.

In contrast, you cannot hear a single day of news without being confronted with violence, sometimes unspeakable violence, all around the world. Humans, perhaps uniquely among all species, have gone far beyond the Darwinian struggle for existence and gone into what can only be described as evil. Humans, unlike other animal species, are not content with simply out-competing another person. In this sense, the religious people might turn out to be right, that humans, alone among species, are fallen.