Agreed Christy. So which human spokespeople did God communicate through apart from in and around Jesus? And how does that work?
Followers of Christ are made new in their relationship with the Heavenly Father by the indwelling Holy Spirit who brings transformation. They are forgiven, freed from a sinful nature, and are called to love and serve to express the fruit of the Spirit.
Are they better? They may have worse marriages, struggle with addictions but have a relationship with God the Father, and empowered by the Holy Spirit bringing change and conviction daily.
Not better simply renewed and saved struggling with sin until full sanctification. Of course, we are called to reflect Christ but our unredeemed bodies cause the problem as stated by the Apostle Paul, hence you will always see inconsistencies in Christians.
Seems a bit… complicated Paul. A bit like a legal document, a formula full of Reform clichés. I’m sure it works for you.
just to clarify if altruism was a consequence of evolution or the other way round. If one has a brain to think one would realize that the process of evolution is not a randomised process but a fine tuned process with a feedback loop called survival fitness. The long time constant and the variability of time constants for individual elements minimises the risk of oscillation of the system.
The coupling of survival fitness between its elements and the extinction of obsolete elements such as the dinosaurs is the ingenious concept of the process as it leads to the desired integrative function of the core functions that are carried over between the elements.
So what is survival fitness. In a primitive understanding of evolution it is understood as the right of the stronger in the battle of survival in preditorial systems. Some people still think it is all about fastest rate of multiplication to outnumber the competition and get resource control. Very few people understand the pinchpoint so beautifully expressed by Jesus in the gospel. Survival fitness is to love thy neighbour like your own. The problem is - as so nicely explained by him - to identify your neighbour. Jesus chose the one who was your “resource competitor” and therefore to some the perceived enemy, modern biology has shown us what the metaphor of Noahs arc told us long time ago, you won’t reach the shore on the other side if you do not take the complexity of the system with you, e.g. a lot of the other species. Told in more modern context one would emphasise the importance of the bees and the ants and other neighbours more easily overlooked than the elephants. So the ability to love thy neighbour is the core regulator of evolution lading to an integrative progression of a system leading to increased complexity.
You could say that nuclear physics has evolutionary origins, or was it a revelation that someone thought up the concept of atoms etc. Where do you think ideas come from? Is your perception of reality created by yourself at random or is it revealed to you? Surely the fallen ones amongst us will insist it to be of their own making and in reflection of their own worldview tell you that Religion was invented not to align other peoples worldview to enable a more meaningful interaction with reality, but in order to control others. It is in what we see in our enemies that reveals our God, the prime mover of our self. That is why some prefer to live in denial of Gods existence.
2 Likes
I would have to say yes, it would, if we mean evolutionary origins of religion. by definition (unless i miss something), if religion was developed via evolutionary means, this means it is entirely a product of human invention, imagination, speculation, and fantasy, all of which influenced as it were by our evolutionary upbringing. If this is what religion is, there is no reason whatsoever to think it has any correlation with actual truth.
By contrast, everything about the Christian faith claims that the things we believe are true because they were, as you noted, revealed by God.
Long ago, at many times and in many ways, God spoke to our fathers by the prophets, but in these last days he has spoken to us by his Son, whom he appointed the heir of all things, through whom also he created the world.
(However, if by evolutionary origins you mean simply the supposed evolutionary origins of mankind, there would be no philosophical difficulty… there’s no reason God couldn’t reveal himself to rational humans that had had evolutionary origins)
3 Likes
His assertion is the same error as one of those that is key to Dawkins’ claim that evolution enables an intellectually satisfied atheism. It’s circular reasoning. The logic of the argument is “The material is all there is, therefore having a material explanation means nothing else exists and everything has been completely explained.” Of course, “when sociobiologists explain” anything may correlate closely with “when pigs fly”, depending on the definition of “explain”. Sociobiology puts out all sorts of explanations of myriad phenomena, but testing them is inherently difficult. Perhaps the best way to highlight its weakness is to do a sociobiological analysis of sociobiology. By claiming that everyone else is merely motivated by evolutionary self-interest, they present themselves as discerning and forthright while making others look bad. Thus, sociobiology is merely an evolutionary ploy.
Of course, it is true that humans are more motivated by evolutionary self-interest than we tend to realize or care to admit. Trying to see if we can think of a plausible evolutionary explanation for a particular aspect of society, including religion, is not unreasonable. But claiming that such speculation is definitive is unreasonable, as is claiming that having a physical explanation of the process thereby proves that there is nothing more to it than the physical process.
We should remember that God’s directions are not just laws; they are also good ideas. They are not arbitrary hoops, but rather are a guide to what’s good for us. So it is quite unsurprising that altruism and morals can convey evolutionary advantages, especially for a species with the capability of having culturally lasting memories like ourselves. Likewise, any thoughtful person can figure out that having societal rules like don’t kill, don’t steal, don’t lie are good ideas. But these facts do not make they particularly compelling as general moral laws - why shouldn’t I make exceptions for myself if I can get away with it?
7 Likes
Morality is like physics. It’s prevenient. God has to do both, He has no choice. According to what works. Good isn’t what God decides. Good is objective. Like wellbeing. Quantifiable, measurable, not arbitrary. There are indices of morality just as there are of wellbeing.
Can you clarify? I am not sure I understand. Thanks.
Sorry Randy. Morality, the good, good, Love is not subjective. It is absolute. It takes infinitely varied situational expressions which can appear subjective, but they are not. God doesn’t get to decide what they are, He instantiates them as He does physics. Love is always other centred, for the wellbeing of the other. Objectively. Demonstrably.
1 Like
I think in a way that’s true–but as a father (as you’ve expereinced), love isn’t always clear in how we are to work it out.
In the ANE, and in Eastern morality, the good of the clan is considered above that of the individual, as I understand it. It’s not clear to me that morality isn’t at least quite relative. Have you read James K A Smith’s “Who’s Afraid of Relativism”? It’s one of my “ought to read” books.
Therefore mine too! Morality looks relative, subjective, arbitrary and it is, but it’s also measurable, weighable, quantifiable, utilitarian as in a behavioural study, which cuts through the subjective. And yes, it has to be wisely (HAH!) individually, situationally tailored, Marxist fashion; from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
1 Like
Yes, sociologists seem to regard themselves as the only rats outside the operant conditioning Skinner box.
Among social scientists, claims of objectivity, or for the ‘best explanation’ of the social world, represent attempts to relativize all other viewpoints. Social scientists, like other intellectuals, struggle to hold the ‘absolute viewpoint,’ to attain primacy over all other views. They therefore mis-recognize the interested character of their own practices by failing to realize the extent to which their intellectual practices are shaped by the competitive logic of their own cultural fields.
David Swartz, Culture and Power: The Sociology of Pierre Bourdieu
2 Likes
It seems you’ve used “sociologists” by error instead of “sociobiologists”. Were you aware of any of the differences between them? I quite agree with David that “sociobiology is merely an evolutionary ploy.” The same, however, cannot fairly or accurately be said of sociology.
Aa an aside, it would appear that very few sociologists nowadays are followers of Skinner’s psychological behaviourism. That’s several decades out of date by now.
With the inclusion of “reflexivity”, also in Bourdieu, the notion of your “sociologists as rats” needn’t be held. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reflexivity_(social_theory)
You could start here re: anti-evolutionism in sociology. The rabbit hole is a fairly shallow one, though horizontally quite wide. https://www.jstor.org/stable/684459
One item perhaps worth noting here from emeritus biologist Sy Garte, known to many at BioLogos:
“Cells do not decide to improve themselves but rely on evolutionary processes to do so. This is unique to biology.” Garte; Teleology in Evolution
Yes, the uniqueness of such “evolutionary processes” to natural science fields, but not to “other” fields is a major issue here, since the title of the OP involves “religion”, which is not a proper topic of natural sciences.
“Religion” has a “historical origin”, of course, but not necessarily an “evolutionary origin”. Certainly it would be strange to treat “religion” or “theology” in an ateleological sense. Thus, it depends on what a person means by “evolution”, yet again.
ERS sure looks like “an evolutionary ploy” to me, just as @paleomalacologist said of “sociobiology”, rather than a legitimate research program that operates on a “level-playing field”.
The sense, taste receptor of the sacred, the numinous; existential angst, awareness of mortality married to human desire with cognitive bias, hyperactive agency detectors is all fully, totally, solely evolved. Religious behaviour, including making up religious stories, emerges from that.
One would hope that things have moved on in the 31 years since.
Abstract
The general failure of sociologists to understand, much less accept, an evolutionary perspective on human behavior transcends mere ignorance and ideological bias, although it incorporates a good deal of both. It also includes a general anthropocentric discomfort with evolutionary thinking, a self-interested resistance to self-understanding, and a trained sociological incapacity to accept the fundamental canons of scientific theory construction: reductionism, individualism, materialism, and parsimony.
Ah, so in your sophisticated view religious behaviour “emerges” from HADD (a psychologist BioLogos actually supports came up with this), which is supposedly a natural evolutionary product of a meaningless universe that did not have human beings in mind. HADD just happened. Why? It doesn’t matter because the main point is that there is no Mind behind the universe. All “religious stories” are just made up. That’s the view of ERS. It sounds like you’ve drunk their coolaid, Klax, yet you seem to believe in the “religious stories”, while the colleagues whose work you are protecting with your perspective, don’t - they’re all atheists & agnostics in ERS. How’s it taste?
Yes, it gets much worse since then. He was trying to get sociologists to think “evolutionarily”!
No doubt, Klax is thinking: if only those sociologists from 30 years ago would “evolve” to become “contemporaries”, everything would no doubt “improve”, right? I’ve seen this exact same misnamed thing stated by “evolutionary sociologists” within the recent days! It’s a mis-presumption of “progress”; another way to speak about it is called “historicism”.
You might actually call “social change” by the mislabel “evolution”, Klax, and even insist upon it, in your amateur sociologists’ language-creative POV. In fact, that’s the BioLogos thing to do also, apparently: to REMOVE THE LIMITS on evolutionary thinking as much as possible. The “theistic evolution” approach at BioLogos then turns into “theistic evolutionism”; a sign of decadence, exaggeration, and divergence with theology. Do you think BioLogos doesn’t accept evolutionary sociology, Klax?
Otherwise, the ranks of the evolutionary sociologists are as full of atheists and agnostics as the ranks of ERS fanatics. I’d suggest being careful to you, Klax, though it seems you’d just turn around and say that you’re there (with those evolutionary sociologists, reportedly less than 1% of sociologists) to convert them with your “theistic evolution”, whereas every single one of them would ignore you, marginalize you, silence you, and mock you when you’re not around because you’re just smuggling-in theology as an “add-on” afterthought, not at the start of the conversation.
ERS is an in-house academic attack on religion by people claiming to take it seriously … as “outsiders”. They study it as non-believers in it; as believers that both “religion” and theology are entirely man-made. Are you actually choosing to support their language, Klax? It would seem so.
If BioLogos is not aware of who these people are, go here - this is the first time this site has been linked at BioLogos and according to a search, the first time D.S. Wilson’s hyper-evolutionist site TVOL has been referenced here: https://thisviewoflife.com/
8 times (out of 12 total) in the current BioLogos archive Darwin’s use of “this view of life” has been cited. Simpson’s TVOL (1964) was cited once, by “Eddie”, now at Peaceful Science. But no one here has addressed or acknowledged that the This View of Life website & “movement” EVEN EXISTS. That’s a very curious oversight to this purveyor of the landscape of actors involved in the conversation. Could someone please offer an explanation for the gap?
Wilson’s Evolution Institute has been mentioned only twice at BioLogos, positively, by Moderator @pevaquark regarding “social Darwinism” (!). It frankly does not appear that BioLogos is aware of what they’re getting themselves into in these fields, if they’re promoting Evolution Institute’s works on “new social Darwinism” or ERS. Yikes, is all I can say at this discovery. 
What are you going on about here Gregory? Here’s one of my posts previously and it sounds like you’re trying to link me and indirectly biologos up with social Darwinism as it’s historically been used. That would be, a tad dishonest.
2 Likes