Today’s Post

After seeing last week how religion can be seen as an evolving phenomenon, this week we will begin an overview of the eleven posts that look at this evolving phenomenon in the light of Teilhard’s insights into how evolution continues its rise of complexity through the human species. If we are evolving, what role can religion be seen to play in the process?

Our treatment of this subject can be seen in the posts from 10 December2015 (The Continuation of Evolution in the Human) to 14 April, 2016 (Religion and Stability).

The Continuation of Evolution in the Human Species

Before looking at religion’s role in human evolution, it is necessary to see this evolution holistically. Teilhard’s insights into such a comprehensive view place evolution at the heart of the ‘coming-to-be’ of the universe from the ‘big bang’, some fourteen billion years ago, to the present day. As we saw previously, the phenomenon which unites the three major phases of the universe’s evolution, matter, life and reflective life, is that of increasing complexity. In every step of each of these three major stages, and in the transition of each stage to the next, more complex products emerge from the unification of ancestral products in such a way as to increase their complexity.

The key to understanding how evolution continues through the human, he asserts, is simply to recognize how the rise of complexity can be seen to take place in human history.

The problem, of course, is that any observations that we make about ourselves is, by definition, relative to ourselves, and hence subjective in nature, and this subjectivity makes it difficult to stand back and observe with any amount of objectivity. This hesitation can be clearly seen in science’s insistence that not only is evolution absent in the scientific theories of changes of matter leading up to the cell, but that evolution after the cell is the result of ‘Natural Selection’, which itself is driven by ‘chance’ and ‘necessity’. Further, this narrow view of evolution in which the agency of ‘complexification’ is ignored, reduces science’s treatment of the human person to either an ‘epiphenomenon’ or perhaps predicated on a ‘non-existent’ consciousness which is merely the result of random neuron firings.

As Ian Barbour puts it in his book, “Religion and Science’:

“Something radically different takes place when culture rather than the genes becomes the principal means by which the past is transmitted to the future and when conscious choice alters that future.”

   Thus, something new comes into play with the human: the capability of being aware of consciousness, and this results in the ability to choose, and this ability manifests itself in the two emerging styles of human thinking, science and religion.

Teilhard and many others (such as Jonathan Sacks, whom we saw last week) also point out that these two evolutionary branches of thinking at first seem to be just other ‘branches’ on the tree of life, similar to those occurring for millions of years. Teilhard and Sacks both note that at their bifurcation points, the two branches are indeed different, but that they emerge as a result of evolving skills of thinking. Sacks notes how they are related to the more recent evolution of left brain activity, and both point to the potential of ‘reconnection’, or as Teilhard puts it, “confluence after fluorescence”.

Thus, as Teilhard sees it, science’s understanding of atomic and molecular structure, and biology’s understanding of Natural Selection aren’t incorrect, simply incomplete. While these clearly play a part in cosmic evolution, once the phenomenon of ‘complexification’ is factored in, they can now be seen as ‘harmonics’ of a ‘fundamental’: second order effectors riding on top of the first order of increasing complexity.

With The Rise of the Left Brain, is Religion Still Relevant?

With Teilhard’s perspective of human evolution as a subset of cosmic evolution, and Sacks’ insight into the bicameral brain’s evolution, what sense can be made of religion?

Detractors of religion offer much to defend their stance. Richard Dawkins in his book, “The God Delusion” offers a sobering but undeniable picture of the ills to be found in the history of organized religion. The most prevalent attitude of these detractors seem to favor a future shorn of all religious belief: one of complete dominance of the ‘left’ brain, with disdain for any thought rising from intuition experienced by the ‘right’ brain. Such right- brained modes of thinking, such as those found in art and music, are sort of ‘patched in’ to these beliefs, but are strictly prohibited from affecting legal or scientific thought. Governments in which this ideal has been prominent, such as the communist regimes of Russia and China offer proponents of religion much to argue against.

Supporters of traditional religious modes of thinking, those who would eschew ‘left’ brain modes and rely exclusively on the intuitional modes of the ‘right’, with their fundamentalism, supernaturalism and ‘anti-intellectual’ approach to thinking, give the materialists much ground for opposition.

Add to this the frequently publicized polls that show a distinct decline of religious belief in the West, and it would seem that religion as an evolutionary phenomenon has passed its prime’. How can it be seen as relevant today?

Understanding Religion From the Perspective of Evolution

Teilhard understood religion’s role in evolution when he stated:

“To explain the workings of the universe we must understand the forces and process by which it comes to be, and this understanding must include the human person.”

   With that simple statement, the relationship between the two modes of thinking is established: a complete understanding of the universe requires an understanding of how the human person fits into it. This perspective isn’t limited to Teilhard; many thinkers have intuited that since there is only one reality, all modes of thought must be brought into confluence if they are to address it.

In the beginning, as we saw last week, humans have always attempted to understand their part in life so they would know how to negotiate it. The earliest insights manifested themselves in beliefs, rituals and laws which not only helped each person to better understand themselves, but insured the connection to a society which would in turn support their existence. This wasn’t as much a ‘left vs right’ brained activity, as it was one to support the development of thinking which could be protected from instinctual impulses from the ‘lower’, reptilian and limbic, impulses that had served our nonhuman ancestors so well. As Richard Rohr puts it

“It was necessary for us to move beyond our early motivations of personal security, reproduction and survival (the fear-based preoccupations of the ‘reptilian brain’) … to proceed beyond the lower stages of human development.”

This “proceeding from the lower stages’ is indeed the action of continuation of universal evolution in the human species.

Religion, for all its imperfections, can certainly be seen to be a belief system which supports just that. But, given these many and obvious imperfections, as well documented by detractors of religion, how can religion be seen as specifically contributing to the process of our evolution?

The Next Post

This week we began an overview of the eleven posts on the evolution of religion in which Jonathan Sacks’ understanding of how the evolution of human thinking can be seen in the evolution of religion from its earliest beginnings to the emergence of Christianity.

Having begun this look into religion’s role in human evolution, next week we will articulate this role in a little more detail.