The Elimination of Intermediate Varieties: How Evolution Lays the Groundwork for Assigning Rights

Faith & Science Conversation
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Many thanks for this Sy_Gate:
Yo express very well the idea I try to convey.

@Beaglelady: If one implicitly assumes [in the sense of Sy_Gate] that “natural selection” involves “natural deletion” of intermediate varieties as a main ingredient that “has helped us define ourselves”, then the explanation is not biased: I apologize for not having expressed things this way in my comment. And I thank you for having provoked Sy_Gate clarification.

Now Sy_Gate formulates an “important caveat”, you also address in a reply to him. I think this point is worth to be discussed more in depth, and I feel it is somewhat related to the comment by Al Leo regarding “the core of the Christian message”.

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The view laid by this thread is all about humanity’s unique role in a divine Cosmos.

In the course of human history, where humans have only just recently established the idea that fellow humans should NOT be enslaved … imagine what a mess we would have if more similar forms of primates were also in The Mix !!!

It would be parallel to some fictional planet we could imagine where DOGS were in charge… with all the breeds we know present … from feral forms of domestic breeds… as well as still wild wolves … and hyenas… and little yorkies…

Imagine all the versions of Slave-dom theories that such a mix could support?

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I’d like to see the phrase “these evolutionary facts strongly support the idea that evolution is not purposeless but rather lays the groundwork for assigning rights” to “these evolutionary facts strongly support the idea that evolution is not purposeless but rather lays the groundwork for assigning rights, responsibilities, and accountability.” What do you think of this?

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Metaphorically, one can give the branches of the evolutionary bush or tree a reticulate, net-like structure. The width of the netlike material represents the size of the population that can interbreed, and is particularly wide as populations diverge into species.

Of course, as with all metaphors, this one breaks down…

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I think it is a very good suggestion!
It completes well what the essay aims to say.
I think also that your formulation highlights the importance of signs revealing sense of law and moral responsibility to ascertain when the first human persons did appear on earth, that is, were created by God.

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Dear Antoine, the thoughts that you present in the blog are interesting and the idea of arbitrariness in differences between the great apes and usis slightly provocative. Interesting insights! I’d like to ask some further explanatory questions and develop the point. These are in particular on definitions.

One of your lines, ‘’To understand human evolution it is important to avoid the misconception that “currently existing modern humans came from other currently existing species of apes”. But even more important is to realize that modern humans and chimps are two clearly distinct species today because a huge number of intermediate varieties between them disappeared in the past. -

  1. Wat means a species?
    Definition: common biology: major subdivision of a genus or subgenus, related individuals that resemble one another, are able to breed amongthemselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species.

Presume that all our historical relatives existed in our current world. The above biological definition of specie would not hold (since homo Neantherthalis and Homo sapiens could interbred) But can we not avoid the problem by changing the definition of species by ‘’having personality and sufficient reason and morality and law instead of interbreeding’’? If we simply change the definition of specie, would this not solve the distinction and differences between Homo sapiens and other relatives? I’d add that the arbitrariness of humans and chimps now is as well a matter of definitions.

2 What is the cause of extinction?
My second thought is on the concept of disappearance. Or extinction. I find your point on extinction instead of selection plausible to agree with. If we would accept this plausible statement, I wonder what made this massive extinction possible.

Possible causes 1. Environmental changes. 2. Due to inner capacities some do not survive. 2. through engineering through time or some engineer 3. Through gene change (by random mutations for example). Note that 3. Is not likely to be the cause of extinction based on over 90 percent similar DNA between Chimpanzees and humans. If it is cause 2 (god or nature, say either engineer or force why would he let species go extinct instead of preserve and enhance the species?

Extinction instead of the best that survives shines a different light on the subject matter, the statement implicitly stresses the wrongfulness of man to feel superior over other animals such as chimpanzees. The suddenness of the former gradual change between human-like forms and human personalis I would like to challenge the extinction process further.

When these ideas are further presented, the idea of extinction instead of selection may be very plausible to accept.

Vincent

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Your post is quite inspiring. I feel that your covenantal theology may be a very good complement to the approach I propose in the Essay. So I would like to ask you to expand a bit more about what do you mean by “covenantal” in the context you refer to: “Humans turned against God…”

Quantum mechanics is certainly relational. I would like to suggest you read this paper:

And tell me whether my view therein fits to what you have in mind.

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Bro. @AntoineSuarez,

Thank you for your very challenging paper. It will take me some time to read and digest it.

I do not know if I would ascribe “free will” to nature, but I see that nature has a structure which is both determinate and non-determinate. Humans also have this kind of structure and this gives us the ability to have free will. We do not choose where we are born or who are parents are, but we can choose to move from where we are or stay where we are. We can choose to live for God or live for ourselves.

This choice to live for God or ourselves is the choice the Original Couple made and they chose to live for themselves. God gave them life and gave them everything they needed. God put only one restriction on what they could do, and this was for their own good.

This was not a covenant in a formal sense, but it was an agreement or understanding between two parties. The Man and the Woman believed the lie of the serpent that God was oppressing them and broke the covenant by eating the fruit of the Tree of then Knowledge of Good and Evil.

It was not that they did not have head knowledge what was evil, they knew that eating the fruit was evil. What was new was that they experienced evil in their own lives by doing what was wrong, betraying the confidence God had in them. They committed sin and thus experience the consequences of sin, fear, shame, and spiritual death. They now had existential spiritual knowledge.

Science says that modern humans originated as more than a pair, a community living is a particular ecological niche. I have no problem with this. I would say that Adam and Eve were not the first biological humans, but they were the first physical, mental, and spiritual humans.

Of course that Adam and Eve were not their names and they were more representation than literal.

I hope this clarifies. I would also suggest my essay, God and Freedom (Free Will) on Academia.edu.

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The parable of the Good Samaritan applies certainly now and always to each and every Christian. However, in my view the “dual plague in Syria” you refer to comes from the denial of the foundation of Law: If you define the fundamental personal rights by the belonging to a subgroup of humankind you can’t help falling in arbitrariness. The best way to make America great again is likely to promote again respect for the foundation of Law (which is also “the core of the Christian message”, as you stress) in policies regarding international relationships, scientific research, human reproduction, immigration, among other areas.

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The “covenant” interpretation you propose seems to strengthen the “legal background” of Genesis 2-3. I think this may be a further reason for setting the creation of the first human persons by God at the origins of civilization, that is, at the time when signs for moral responsibility and the sense of law appear.

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Antoine,

Many thanks for presenting these insights into a broad and fascinating topic. I would like to share a thought triggered by your statement that

“One can say […] each new personal member of Homo sapiens was biologically identical to his non-personal precursor. The discontinuity happened at the spiritual level and induced outcomes like the emergence of civilizations.”

I agree that the most fundamental difference between homo sapiens (if not an ancestor) and homo personalis, say, played out at spiritual level, and at that point the matter is beyond discussion. But next to that, couldn’t we say that one inherent distinction between animals and persons is that the latter are free to sin? That is to say that the defining distinction between homo personalis and precursor homo sapiens (or other) was that the former could sin.

If that is granted, consider that sinning requires self-awareness, inasmuch as only if self-aware can I perceive a difference between my actions and the actions demanded by God, that is, can I perceive some measure of what would constitute the non-sinful action, and act differently nevertheless. Therefore homo personalis had to be self-aware, because only so could s/he have sinned.

Clearly, the fact that somebody sleeps at some point in time (or is in a coma, or under drugs, etc) and thereby has impaired awareness in no way diminishes his overall self-awareness. Actually, looking at the person’s life as a whole, like a comic book with many scenes that are connected in a strict sequence but now lay open and present at once before me, I can only conclude that being self-aware in practice means being self-aware at some point in time.

What about beings we would consider human persons even if they may never be fully self-aware? I am thinking of unborn children (and I recall picking up the notion that babies first recognize themselves as distinct from their mothers only sometime after birth), children with severe neurological disorders like microcephaly, etc. With that in mind I would be forced to say that the mere possibility of developing self-awareness at some point in time means the individual as a whole is self-aware and therefore free to sin.

So I am tempted to say that if an individual of homo at some point in time had the structures in place that could support self-awareness, then s/he would have to be considered self-aware for the purposes of being capable of sin. That would make that individual a person automatically. Since we cannot yet pinpoint what is the physical structure that confers the self-awareness, I guess it is acceptable to say that individuals differing only in that structure would be biologically identical, but I find it possible to say there is a biological, albeit very subtle, discontinuity along with the spiritual one.

Thanks.

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The world view of Teilhard de Chardin you refer to has been acknowledged by the last three Popes and quite explicitly by Benedict XVI.
I too endorse this appraisal.

By contrast I think Teilhard’s view on original sin is objectionable, but discussing this issue in depth would require an essay on its own.

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Dear Antoine,

Beautiful thoughts - natural deletion instead of natural selection. We hope to hear and get more details about God’s intervention in future by you. It could help bringing about a good synthesis of science and faith.

Regards, Varun, Bhaktivedanta Institute, Kolkata, India

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Vincent, I think the solution you propose is in line with the idea I try to convey in the Essay:

We cannot define humanity by means of biological concepts alone; from a strict biological perspective the beginning of Homo sapiens is arbitrary. So we define humanity as a species or living form whose development is ruled by morality and law. However the foundation of law is that personal rights are defined through the belonging to humanity and not to a subgroup of humans. This requires that there is a clear observable basis allowing us to establish which creature is human and which is not. But such a distinction is only possible because of the evolutionary deletion of intermediate varieties. So to define humanity you need to invoke the sense of law, but for establishing a coherent legal order you need the gap between humans and non-humans.

Because of this gap you are not allowed “to point at other humans and declare them to be not quite human”. And if you do this, you cannot prohibit other humans from pointing at you and declaring you to be not quite human.

Sy_Garte has formulated things very appropriately in his post of Jan 21: [quote=“Sy_Garte, post:19, topic:27852”]
As I read it, the point of this essay is to remind us of a number of things, such as that it is we who define biological terms such as species, humans, alive, etc. And that natural deletion (which is one specific form of natural selection) has helped us define ourselves.
[/quote]

Nonetheless I prefer to say that natural selection is the remains of natural deletion.

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If I understand well you maintain:
If human animals (Homo sapiens individuals) became human persons (Homo sapiens personalis individuals), there must be a biological (albeit very subtle) discontinuity along with the spiritual one.
Otherwise one could also claim that unborn children and babies (and even sleeping adults) are human animals but not human persons, because they become self-aware adults without any biological discontinuity.

I would like to answer as follows:

One has to distinguish between the time when the first human persons were created and the times thereafter.

An organized civilization is a sufficient condition in order to ascertain awareness of moral responsibility and the sense of law. In this sense it is safe to set the existence of human persons at about 3500 BC. But the creation of human persons would also be acceptable at an earlier age, if one could convincingly refer to qualities that reveal the presence of persons capable of being guilty of sin before the emergence of organized civilizations.

Once we have identified that human persons exist at least since the origins of civilizations, we can look for their bodily characteristics. It appears that these characteristics are today clearly distinct from those of animal forms where persons have not been identified. That means that now we can distinguish between human persons and non-personal animals by only looking to bodily characteristics (inclusive DNA). If we now find uncontacted beings not living in a clearly organized civilization, we can assess today purely on bodily characteristics their belonging to humanity. That means we can decide whether they are human persons or not. Similarly, looking to bodily characteristics we can assess that unborn children, babies and sleeping adults belong to humanity, and therefore have the status of human persons.

So I endorse the view that law is an essential ingredient of metaphysics: For ascertaining the ontological status of a body A (whether it is a personal body or not) it does not suffice to look at the individual features of A but it is important to establish whether A belongs to a species which already contains persons or not.

Nonetheless, I also claim that in the state of righteousness before the Fall the human persons were endowed with spiritual powers that preserved their bodies from suffering injury, illness, and death. In this sense there is “biological discontinuity” as well between the state of righteousness of the primeval human persons and their state after the Fall, as between the state of human animals and the state of primeval righteousness. However there is no “biological discontinuity” between the state of human animals (Homo sapiens individuals) and the state of human persons (Homo sapiens personalis individuals) after the Fall, even when these recover the state of grace through Baptism.

Notice that according to my explanation the transformation of Homo sapiens into Homo sapiens personalis affects a population of several millions when it is finished. Assuming that there is biological discontinuity along with this “spiritual transformation” looks like invoking a “miraculous intervention” of God, somewhat in line with Intelligent Design. I think one can consistently explain things without invoking such a “miraculous intervention”.

In any case you cannot detect “awareness of moral and legal responsibility” (and thereby “capability of being guilty of sin”) through brain imaging of ancient populations. By contrast this capacity is revealed for instance by the Shuruppak tablets containing contracts for selling houses and fields.

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This is what I have maintained in my previous posts: Homo sapiens became human persons in a Great Leap Forward–a change that might not be evident in the DNA sequence but rather some subtle epigenetic ‘programming’ of how the brain became Mind.[quote=“AntoineSuarez, post:35, topic:27852”]
In this sense it is safe to set the existence of human persons at about 3500 BC. But the creation of human persons would also be acceptable at an earlier age, if one could convincingly refer to qualities that reveal the presence of persons capable of being guilty of sin before the emergence of organized civilizations.
[/quote]
Why not accept the beginnings of human persons at about 40,000 B.C. when Homo sapiens began to bury their dead with grave goods? They obviously were thinking of an afterlife. Might they not also have been thinking of sending a loved one back to their Creator? Why are Christians so enamored with the concept of a Fall that we emphasize that the appearance of Sin is the true marker of our Origin? Why not emphasize the Gift of Conscience?

The Programmed Mind did promote a much closer cooperation between humans, which led to the formation of ‘organized civilizations’ and to our species becoming Masters of the Planet. BUT, it also produced a downside: We must now listen to a Social Conscience–not necessarily obey it, but we are affected by it. Accepting homosexual marriage is a recent example. Our (ex)president Obama, like many Christians, admits that acceptance came only gradually, after societal pressures prevailed. (Sorry. Getting off topic.)
Al Leo

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Albert,
You address two important points:
“Burials” and “subtle ‘epigenetic programming’ ”.
I would like to answer as follows:

Funerary rites alone do not prove belief in eternal life and responsibility toward God: materialist and atheist regimes entomb their leaders in pompous mausoleums; the burials of Lenin and Stalin were probably among the most pompous funeral ceremonies in History. Was Joseph Stalin and the Politburo “thinking of sending a loved one back to their Creator” when they gave instructions to build a mausoleum for Lenin’s embalmed remains?

By contrast, funerary pictures like the “Weighing of the Heart” in the ancient Egyptian “Book of the Dead” clearly express the idea of the soul being judged after death, and reveal awareness of moral responsibility.

The “true marker of our Origin [as persons]” is NOT Sin but vestiges revealing sense of law. But such vestiges are a sufficient condition to ascertain the presence of primeval humans capable of being guilty of sin, as Genesis says Adam, Eve, Cain, Abel were.

On the one hand you suggest that Homo sapiens became human persons in a Great Leap Forward through some biological discontinuity consisting in “subtle epigenetic programming”.

On the other hand you propose “to accept the beginnings of human persons at about 40,000 B.C.”

Before continuing our conversation I would like to ask you:
Do you have any evidence or data proving that personal humans today (Homo sapiens personalis) are “epigenetically” different from non-personal humans at about 40,000 B.C. (that is, Homo sapiens before they became persons)?

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Antoine:
You make some very good points, and I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to “bounce some ideas” off a mind as well prepared as yours. Taking them in order:

(1) Burial with ivory beds (which took an estimated 3,000 hours of preparation) indicates a level of love and caring not seen in previous hominids, but it is not as clear evidence of belief in an afterlife as is the burial with stone blades of exquisite craftsmanship. That one’s beloved would need tools certainly indicates a belief life after death, but the concept of eternal life and responsibility to one’s creator had to wait some tens of thousands of years to develop to the stage you mentioned of Egyptian moral judgement. I believe you will agree that the preservation of spiritual concepts over a period of 40,000+ years of pre-history is almost impossible, and yet several experts in cave art have dared to speculate that by putting such striking images of the animals they depended upon deep inside caves where they would only be seen by strongly motivated viewers, these ancestors of ours were creating mystery. asking: where did they come from; where did we come from? Speculation? Surely; Idle speculation? I think not.
(1a) Unlike the pyramids of Egypt, which honored the pharaohs who did believe in an afterlife, the mausoleums of Stalin and Lenin are memorials to the power they wielded in this life. It seems that many of the CroMagnon burials were not of powerful clan leaders but of ordinary, but beloved, folk.

(2a) Ian Tattersall in “Becoming Human”: “Truly a new kind of being was on earth”. And further: “Modern Homo sapiens is a totally unprecedented entity, not simply an improved version of its ancestors.” Then: “Burials with grave goods indicate a belief in an afterlife…Incontrovertible evidence for existence of religious experience.”
(2b) In his book “Genetics of Original Sin” (Chpt,16) Nobelist Christian de Duve makes some interesting suggestion in a section: "The wiring of the brain is an epigenetic phenomenon". Currently the biological mechanism of such a ‘rewiring’ is unknown, but almost surely this Gap will be filled in. One area of research that looks promising in this regard involves the brain methylome, as described by Gabel & Greenberg, Science V.341, 626-627 (2013). DNA methylation in mammalian genomes regulates gene expression, but it seems to have an added function in the brain where it is important in the maturation of neurons in the process of development. In the frontal cortex, methylation profiles are altered as synapses develop and are matured all the way from the fetal to the adult stage of life. In others words, this may be the mechanism by which the brain ‘hardware’ is being newly connected, i.e. ‘programmed’ by information acquired not from DNA but directly from the environment (in utero to old age) and by language from other humans so endowed. This epigenetic evolution is clearly Lamarkian in nature, rather than Darwinian. And it is purposeful, not the result of chance.
Antoine, I hope your will continue to critique these ideas of mine. Perhaps they need more than just ‘polishing’, but I think Christianity can stand a critical review if it is to remain relevant for thousand of years into a rapidly changing future. During my career I have seen too many Catholics turn to science for all the answers.
Al Leo

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Dear Albert it is a pleasure for me to continue this conversation with you.

If you don’t mind I would like first to focus on (1) and (1a). However I am not sure I understand correctly your quotation above.

I certainly agree with the following view:
If the cave paintings around 30,000 BC had been expression of “the concept of eternal life and responsibility to one’s creator”, then among these paintings one should also found such that correspond to the stage of moral judgement and sense of law we find in vestiges at Summer and Egypt at the origins of civilization.

Please tell me whether you agree or not with this view.

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Hi Antoine
It is unfortunate that ideas (noogenes, memes) do not fossilize. Apparently both of us would like to follow the progress of humankind from the first evidence of self-consciousness to the point of moral judgement and sense of law. I am not surprised that it took as much as 30,000 years. I agree with Tattersall (quoted previously) that burial with costly grave goods is good evidence of a belief in an afterlife. The reason our remote ancestors placed such beautiful paintings of animals so deep in difficultly accessible caves is not as easily explained. Did it have roots in the occult? Or is it just that the more accessible paintings weathered away?

In any event, I get satisfaction from the evidence, ever so slight, that the very first humans were aware that they were creatures and owed their existence to some all-powerful Creator.
Al Leo