09/15/2007 | Хвізик

читаєш і диіуєшся. Ніби солідний журнал, а веде дискусію на такому низькому рівні - і це РЕДАКЦІЙНА стаття.

Nature, vol 447, p. 753 (2007)

Evolution and the brain

With all deference to the sensibilities of religious people, the idea that man was created in the image
of God can surely be put aside.

The vast majority of scientists, and the majority of religious people,
see little potential for pleasure or progress in the conflicts
between religion and science that are regularly fanned into
flame by a relatively small number on both sides of the debate. Many
scientists are religious, and perceive no conflict between the values of
their science — values that insist on disinterested, objective inquiry
into the nature of the Universe — and those of their faith.

But there are lines that should not be crossed, and in a recent
defence of his beliefs and disbeliefs in the matter of evolution, US
Senator Sam Brownback (Republican, Kansas) crosses at least one.
Senator Brownback was one of three Republican presidential candidates
who, in a recent debate, described himself as not believing
in evolution. He sought to explain his position with greater nuance
in a 31 May article in The New York Times, in which he wrote: “Man
was not an accident and reflects an image and likeness unique in the
created order. Those aspects of evolutionary theory compatible with
this truth are a welcome addition to human knowledge. Aspects of
these theories that undermine this truth, however, should be firmly
rejected as atheistic theology posing as science.”

Humans evolved, body and mind, from earlier primates. The ways
in which humans think reflect this heritage as surely as the ways in
which their limbs are articulated, their immune systems attack viruses
and the cones in their eyes process coloured light. This applies not
just to the way in which our neurons fire, but also to various aspects
of our moral thought, as we report this week in a News Feature on the
moral connotations of disgust (see page 768). The way that disgust
functions in our lives and shapes our moral decisions reflects not just
cultural training, but also biological evolution. Current theorizing
on this topic, although fascinating, may be wide of the mark. But its
basis in the idea that human minds are the product of evolution is
not atheistic theology. It is unassailable fact.

This does not utterly invalidate the idea that the human mind is,
as Senator Brownback would have it, a reflection of the mind of God.
But the suggestion that any entity capable of creating the Universe
has a mind encumbered with the same emotional structures and
perceptual framework as that of an upright ape adapted to living in
small, intensely social peer-groups on the African savannah seems
a priori unlikely.

In Brownback’s defence, it should be acknowledged that these are
deep waters. It is fairly easy to accept the truth of evolution when it
applies to the external world — the adaptation of the orchid to wasps,
for example, or the speed of the cheetah.

It is much harder to accept it internally
— to accept that our feelings, intuitions,
the ways in which we love and loathe,
are the product of experience, evolution
and culture alone. And such acceptance
has challenges for the un believer, too.
Moral philosophers often put great
store by their rejection of the ‘naturalistic fallacy’, the belief that because
something is a particular way, it ought to be that way. Now we learn
that untutored beliefs about ‘what ought to be’ do, in fact, reflect an
‘is’: the state of the human mind as an evolved entity. Accepting this
represents a challenge that few as yet have really grappled with.
It remains uncertain how the new sciences of human behaviour
emerging at the intersections of anthropology, evolutionary biology
and neuropsychology can best be navigated. But that does not justify
their denunciation on the basis of religious faith alone. Scientific
theories of human nature may be discomforting or unsatisfying, but
they are not illegitimate. And serious attempts to frame them will
reflect the origins of the human mind in biological and cultural evolution,
without reference to a divine creation. ■