EVOLUTION OF THE HUMAN CAPACITY FOR BELIEFS

Abstract. Evolution of the human capacity for beliefs is considered in relation to the emergence in human phylogeny of the ability to formulate propositions, evaluate their worth as bases for action, and make emotional attachments to them. Most of the relevant capabilities had appeared in primate evolution before the emergence of the Hominidae. The combination of capabilities peculiar to evolving hominines was that involved in the development of language, which ontogenetic evidence suggests began as a tool for implementing intentionality in social interaction and whose subsequent elaboration was associated with later reportorial and narrative uses.     

COSMIC PURPOSE AND THE CONTINGENCY OF HUMAN EVOLUTION

Some understand the evolutionary process as more or less predictable; others stress its contingency. I argue that both Christian evolutionists who have assumed that the purposes of the Creator can be realized only through more or less predictable processes as well as those who infer from the contingency of the evolutionary process to the lack of purpose in the universe generally, are mistaken if the Creator escapes from the limits imposed on the creature by temporality, as the traditional Augustinian account supposes. The notion of “purpose” must itself be reinterpreted in such a case. It makes no difference whether the appearance of Homo sapiens is the inevitable result of a steady process of complexification stretching over billions of years, or whether it comes about through a series of coincidences that would have made it entirely unpredictable from the (causal) human standpoint. Either way, the outcome is of God's making, and from the biblical standpoint may appear as part of God's plan.     

FREEDOM AND DETERMINISM: A CONTEMPORARY DISCUSSION

Abstract. The problem of freedom of the will and determinism is one of the most intriguing and difficult in the whole area of philosophy. It constüutes a paradox. If we look at ourselves, at our ability to deliberate and make moral choices, it seems obvious that we are free. On the other hand, if we look at what we believe about causality (i.e., that every event and thing must have a cause), then it appears that we do not have free wills but are determined. Thus we seem to have inconsistent beliefs. In this paper I set forth and analyze the major contemporary arguments for free will and determinism as well as for compatibilism, the position that tries to combine insights from both theories. I end with a brief conclusion regarding my assessment of the status of the arguments.     

THE SIGNIFICANCE OF EVITABILITY IN NATURE

Assessing the current situation of the religion–science dialogue, it seems that a consensus of nonconsensus has been reached. This nonconsensus provides a pluralistic context for the religion and science dialogue, and one area where this plurality is clear is the discourse on relational models of God and creation. A number of interesting models have gained attention in contemporary theological dialogue with science, yet there is an overriding theme: an emphasis on God's involvement with the world. In this article, I argue that theology has been preoccupied with this emphasis. It is suggested that the theme of the freedom of nature has been underrepresented. This theme of the freedom of nature I argue carries important theological implications. It is suggested that acts or events gain their significance largely by way of being contextualized by the fact that such acts or events could have been otherwise, a realization that might provide the various relational models of God and the world food for thought.     

WILLIAM AMES'S CALVINIST AMBIGUITY OVER FREEDOM OF CONSCIENCE

Reformed Christianity's qualified embrace of freedom of conscience is perhaps best represented by William Ames (1576–1633). This essay explores Ames's interpretation of conscience, his understanding of its relationship to natural law, Scripture, and civil authority, and his vacillation on the subject of conscientious freedom. By rooting his interpretation of conscience in natural law, Ames provided a foundation for conscience as an authority whose convictions are binding and worthy of some civil respect and freedom. At the same time, his Puritan worldview ultimately required the deference of conscience to the superior manifestations of divine law in Scripture and civil institutions. As a result, Ames provided raw ingredients for a theological doctrine of freedom of conscience despite his unwillingness to commend the idea himself consistently. In this way, Ames symbolizes an ambiguity on freedom of conscience characteristic of the broader Reformed tradition.     

THE HUMAN HEARTH AND THE DAWN OF MORALITY

Stunned by the implications of Colagè's analysis of the cultural activation of the brain's Visual Word Form Area and the potential role of cultural neural reuse in the evolution of biology and culture, the authors build on his work in proposing a context for the first rudimentary hominin moral systems. They cross‐reference six domains: neuroscience on sleep, creativity, plasticity, and the Left Hemisphere Interpreter; palaeobiology; cognitive science; philosophy; traditional archaeology; and cognitive archaeology's theories on sleep changes in Homo erectus and consequences for later humans. The authors hypothesize that the human genome, when analyzed with findings from neuroscience and cognitive science, will confirm the evolutionary timing of an internal running monologue and other neural components that constitute moral decision making. The authors rely on practical modern philosophers to identify continuities with earlier primates, and one major discontinuity—some bright white moral line that may have been crossed more than once during the long and successful tenure of Homo erectus on Earth.     

ON THE EVOLUTION OF MORALITY AND RELIGION: A RESPONSE TO LEE CRONK

Abstract. Issue is taken with Dawkins and Krebs's (1978) conception of communication as being by nature manipulative and with Cronk's proposals concerning the evolution of morality, both of which are grounded in evolutionary biology. An alternative view, which recognizes that which humanity has in common with other species but which emphasizes humanity's distinctiveness, is offered to account for religion and morality.     

THE INTERPLAY BETWEEN SCIENCE AND THEOLOGY IN UNCOVERING THE MATRIX OF HUMAN MORALITY

Abstract. Theology and the life sciences are mutually dependent on one another in the task of understanding the origin and function of moral behavior. The life sciences investigate morality from the perspective of the historical and communal dimension of humanity and point to survival as the primary function of human behavior. A Christian ethic of self-sacrifice advances the preservation of the entire human and nonhuman creation and should not, therefore, be objected to by the life sciences. Religion, however, is more than a survival mechanism. It points to a preserving agency beyond humanity and prevents the life sciences from reducing life to its strictly biological side.     

THE CUMULATIVE QUALITY OF CULTURE EXPLAINS HUMAN UNIQUENESS

What explains the unique features of human culture? Culture is not uniquely human, but human culture is uniquely cumulative. Cumulative culture is a product of our collective intelligence and is supported by cognitive processes and learning strategies that enable people to acquire, transform, and transmit information and technologies within and across generations. Technological and social innovations are currently driving unprecedented changes in cultural complexity and diversity. Innovation is a cognitively and socially complex, multistep process that typically requires (cumulative) cultural learning to achieve. I argue that the technological solutions that characterize twenty-first-century innovation can only be explained by understanding both the capacity to learn from and build upon the insights of others and the transmission systems that store the knowledge and technologies of previous generations. Human uniqueness is a product of cumulative cultural learning, transmission, and innovation.     

INTEGRATING EVOLUTION: A CONTRIBUTION TO THE CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE OF CREATION

Abstract. Science has demonstrated that the universe creates itself through its own history. This history is the result of a probabilistic process, not a deterministic execution of a plan. Science has also documented that human beings are a result of this universal, probabilistic process of general evolution. At first sight, these results seem to contradict Christian teaching. According to the Bible, history is essentially the history of salvation. Human beings therefore are not an "accident of nature" but special creations to be saved. With deeper theological probing, it becomes clearer, however, that creation must create itself. The Christian God is the loving God who enters into a loving relationship with human beings if they desire to reciprocate. If creation could not create itself, human beings could not be free. Without freedom to ignore or reject God's love, the central act of the Christian God, the drama of salvation, would become a parody played by marionettes in the hands of a supernatural manipulator. Christians should welcome the fundamental insight brought forth by science that the universe, including human beings, created itself through its own history. This article will try to show that this scientific insistence is required and confirmed by the intrinsic character of the orthodox, Judeo-Christian concept of God. That nature has to create itself, including human beings, secures human freedom and with it, the responsibility for human actions. From this perspective one might better understand the Bible in the light of God's revelation through the book of nature.     

BIOLOGY AND THE THEOLOGY OF THE HUMAN

We will consider two Christian responses to the enormous advances in recent years in the connected sciences of genetics, evolutionary biology, and biochemistry, a dualist one by Pope John Paul II and an “emergentist” one by Arthur Peacocke. These two could hardly be more different. It would be impossible within the scope of a brief comment to do justice to these differences. What I hope to do instead is more modest: to draw attention to troublesome ambiguities in some of the key concepts on which discussions of human uniqueness depend, to recall very briefly some of the difficulties philosophers have encountered in their attempts to define the relation of the human powers of mind to the material capacities of body, and finally to ask what the theological significance of all this is.     

EDUCATION,SOCIAL CREATIVITY,AND THE EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

The evolution of society, the transcendence of existing social structures, and how society creates itself rests in a function of education. In this article the author examines education's work as that of social creativity. The need for pedagogies of “educate hope” and “imaginative possibilities” is explored. Social epistemology and social imaginary are discussed as dimensions of social creativity within the postmodern society. The aesthetic imperative in education is argued as important to developing the capacities and capabilities in youth to imagine alternative future possibilities of democratic society. The author concludes by examining the role of education in the evolution of society.     

THE COEVOLUTION OF HUMAN ORIGINS,HUMAN VARIATION,AND THEIR MEANING IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY

Ideas about biology, race, and theology were bound up together in nineteenth‐century scholarship, although they are rarely, if ever, considered together today. Nevertheless, the new genealogical way of thinking about the history of life arose alongside a new way of thinking about the Bible, and a new way of thinking about people. They connected with one another in subtle ways, and modern scholarly boundaries do not map well on to nineteenth‐century scholarship.     

EVOLUTION OF RELIGIOUS CAPACITY IN THE GENUS HOMO: ORIGINS AND BUILDING BLOCKS

The large, ancient ape population of the Miocene reached across Eurasia and down into Africa. From this genetically diverse group, the chimpanzees, bonobos, gorillas, and humans evolved from populations of successively reduced size. Using the findings of genomics, population genetics, cognitive science, neuroscience, and archaeology, the authors construct a theoretical framework of evolutionary innovations without which religious capacity could not have emerged as it did. They begin with primate sociality and strength from a basic ape model, and then explore how the human line came to be the most adaptive and flexible of all, while coming from populations with reduced genetic variability. Their analysis then delves into the importance of neurological plasticity and a lengthening developmental trajectory, and points to their following article and the last building block: the expansion of the parietal areas, which allowed visuospatial reckoning, and imagined spaces and beings essential to human theologies. Approximate times for the major cognitive building blocks of religious capacity are given.     

THEISTIC EVOLUTION IN THE POSTGENOMIC ERA

How to reconcile the theory of evolution with existing religious beliefs has occupied minds since Darwin's time. The majority of the discourse on the subject is still focused on the Darwinian version of evolutionary theory, or at best, the mid‐twentieth century version of the Modern Synthesis. However, evolutionary thought has moved forward since then with the insights provided by the advent of comparative genomics in recent decades having a particularly significant impact. A theology that successfully incorporates evolutionary biology needs to take such developments into account, because range of truly viable options among the many versions of theistic evolution that have been proposed in the past may narrow down when this is done. Here I present these previously underappreciated strains of contemporary evolutionary thought and discuss their potential theological impact.     

NATURE MAKES AN ASCENT FROM THE LOWER TO THE HIGHER: GREGORY OF NYSSA ON HUMAN DISTINCTIVENESS

This essay explores the way in which early Christian writers held an eschatological understanding of what it is to be human, something that is to be attained, through the transformation of death and resurrection, and something that requires our assent. In this context, the article offers a new reading of the late fourth-century work entitled On the Human Image of God (otherwise known in English as On the Making of Man) by Gregory of Nyssa. It argues that Gregory structured his text in parallel to the three parts of Timaeus’ speech in Plato's dialogue. The resulting picture sees creation as a dynamic ascent from the lower forms of life to the higher, a growth which is recapitulated in the life-span of each human being, and also the growth of the human race into the totality of human beings that together constitute the human being in the image of God, the body of Christ.