At Stockport in July Brian Gane of Central Lancashire Humanists spoke about Morality: a Tale of Three Evolutions.
“If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe” said Carl Sagan. The Big Bang resulted in the evolution of the universe. Gravity pulled together matter to make stars and eventually material from stars made planets. Under the right conditions amino acids were formed leading, after 3 billion years, to the Human Brain. Some examples of evolutionary stages include Pikaia which had the beginning of a spine and may have been related to the common ancestor of all vertebrates. Eusthenopteron lived in the mouth of rivers and moved into the shallows, developing a neck, lungs and stubby fins which eventually extended into limbs. Aconthostega was among the first vertebrate animals to have recognizable limbs. Tulerpeton lived in shallow waters and breathed air. Its limbs were stronger than the fins from which they developed and it could lift its head giving it an advantage over other animals whose heads only moved side to side.
The animals that survived the dinosaurs were very small shrew like creatures which developed into modern mammals. Human beings have 96% genes in common with chimpanzees. Humans are more intense and better at reading faces than chimps are. As chimps have no whites to their eyes it is difficult to see where they are looking.
Brian claims that morality begins with early humans and he considered three moral clusters which contribute: co-operation, empathy and justice. Humans are born with a co-operative streak and this is shown by the behaviour of young children who are eager to help where they can. They would pick up items that someone had dropped accidentally, but would not pick up an item that had been thrown in anger. Examples of co-operation are when taxes are paid to obtain infrastructure etc that would not be possible for individuals. The ultimate in co-operation is the CERN project, funded by 10 countries and employing scientists from 100 countries. Threats to food supplies leads to tribalism in early humans. In modern times gangs and political organisations take over this role.
Small children tend to get upset if companions are upset. If a child is put with an upset child he/she will join in. Laughter is also infectious. Smiling results in a release of hormones into the blood. People with big smiles tend to live longer than those who rarely smile.
A sense of good and bad begins at about 4 months of age and a sense of fairness is a very powerful emotion. Some issues where unfairness has been addressed, at least in part, are slavery, health care via the NHS, women’s rights, the labour movement. Gay rights and the legal system.
Legal systems have been internationalised. Interpol has reciprocal arrangements with other countries, and the International Criminal court was formed in 2003 to put on trial those people accused of war crimes or crimes against humanity whose own countries will not or cannot put them on trial. The United Nations encourages Jaw Jaw rather than War War. The EU has the European Court of Justice and the European court of Human Rights.
The Brain has three levels of morality.1. Basic Instincts about In-Groups( Co-operation, empathy and sense of justice), and 0ut- Groups(tribalism), 2.Individual caring, 3. Societal caring (evolution of social norms). There is an expanding circle from the Human Family to International events.
According to Steven Pinker there has been a decline in violence from biblical times to the present day. And that in many areas (e.g. homicide, war and poverty) we are doing better than previously.
We are all connected.
On 11 January Guy Otten, GMH Secretary, looked at the evolutionary origins of religion. He mapped the evolution of early man from 6 million years ago to the present day, highlighting the factors that led to the growth of religion. He correlated changes in the brain of our ancestors with the development of the conditions that led to the growth of religion. The elements of intelligence mapped were 1. general intelligence which includes learning by trial and error and associative learning, 2. social intelligence which involves the ability to infer the mental states of others, 3. technical skills relating for example to the use of tools, 4. awareness of the natural world and 5. language skills. Evolutionary psychologists believe that modern chimps are likely to resemble our ancestors from 6 million years ago.
At that time they would have had some intelligence, such as minimal technical skills, for example using sticks to reach into bee hives for honey, and some awareness of the natural world, but the various kinds of intelligence were separate. They would have lived in groups and would not have had any language skills as we know them. Guy talked through the changes to the brain at different periods: 4 million years ago with the appearance of the first early hominines, 1.8 million years ago and the emergence of Homo Erectus, 500 thousand years ago when Homo Sapiens and Neanderthals appeared. The brain grew in size, there were advances in technical skills, tools were becoming more advanced, and social and communication skills were developing. Our ancestors gradually moved out of Africa and by the Stone Age reached remote places such as Southern England. By 100 thousand years ago the areas of intelligence in Homo Sapiens started to overlap, with the barriers between different parts of the brain weakening. At that time Homo Sapiens could for instance think about the social world using technical ideas or the natural world using social ideas. This accompanied the development of language, a higher level of consciousness, and a growth of imagination, all caused by cross-fertilization of the formerly separated intelligence domains. At this time there is evidence of art in the form of beads, necklaces, figurines and burials with grave goods.
Guy talked about the role that the quick reactions of animals play in ensuring sensory responses to threats and their survival generally. When language abilities are developed, words can describe dangers. In addition, language can also facilitate the sharing of knowledge of technical skills about hunting and tool making. With the development of language came story telling, which played an important role in these societies. Pre-scientific humans, grappling with phenomena that they did not understand, developed stories about hunting, battles with large animals, changes in the environment, weather phenomena, shortage of food, illness and death, and warfare. Stories about exaggerated mythical ancestors and mysterious forces that caused events, agents of harm and agents who could save, were also common. These advances in human thinking set the conditions for the growth of religion. Religion in this sense is a belief in non-physical beings. Variants of belief systems involved individuals who claimed to be able to communicate with the spirit world. Evidence of this type of religion appears at the dawn of recorded history with burials in Egypt from 3100 BCE of the Pharaohs with everything they needed to live in the afterlife. The burial of the Chinese Emperor Qin Shi Huang in c 210-09 BCE with his Terracotta warriors to defend him in the afterlife provides a further example. There were also rituals in the ancient world designed to propitiate the gods. These form the origins of church services today, which generally include prayers to the deity. Shamanic types of religious thinking had their own cosmologies to answer questions about the earth’s origins. Guy questioned whether their ideas are any different qualitatively from those of the Abrahamic faiths.
This array of religious thinking developed in many parts of the world into the polytheisms of ancient history and still prevails in parts of the world today. From polytheism came monotheism, as was the case with Judaism and Islam, with belief in one god being just the latest development of magical thinking about the spirit world. There is an association with primitive people and religion and the cargo cult in Melanesia is a case in point. In Vanuatu there is a cult that believes that Prince Philip is a god. Guy pointed out that all religious thinking and beliefs in gods emanates from the same beginnings and are completely unfounded evidence wise. He argues that when one puts the evolution of religion into perspective one can see a history of some 60 thousand years with religious thinking persisting and different religions coming and going. Guy concluded that there was little reason to think that the current dominant religions would last indefinitely but we should be mindful that at this point we only have a few hundred years of scientific thinking to aid this turnaround.
The February Stockport meeting saw Adam Benton give a presentation entitled Evolution in the Everyday: How the past 7 million years influences everything we do. Adam studies evolutionary anthropology at Liverpool University and runs a blog http://www.evoanth.net/ He is a long time attendee of Skeptics in the Pub but has never asked a question. This was his first public speaking engagement. For someone new to speaking in public he gave a very impressive performance.
To Adam evolution is everything. Living things change over time, animals reproduce with variation and, as some variants are better able to survive, more children are born to them and those variants become more common. Humans evolve because we’re animals too.
Working backwards in time Adam first considered the present day to 66 years ago (basline 1950). Just like all primates we have good vision (on the whole), the same basic body plan, opposable thumbs and nails instead of claws. Just like apes we have no tails but we do have some unique features: we walk upright, we’re (mostly) hairless, extensive tool users and super smart. Chimps, gorillas, orangutans and Gibbons all share a common ancestor with us.
50,000 years before the present our great (x1660) grandparents were what we now call cave dwellers. They were still primates, still apes and still fully human. They were bipedal, hairless, tool users and smart. They were able to plan and had specialised tools. They also mass produced tools implying ability to teach. They were flexible enough to use new materials and they used symbolism in the form of cave art. They were hunter-gatherers and built houses out of mammoths, presumably bones and skin. Caves were sacred places. Like us they met up with friends. It is thought that Venus figurines were a sort of secret handshake.
Nothing much was different in the life of Cro-Magnum man, except we had a lot of friends: Hobbit, Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Hominin-X. For the most part Neandertal man was similar to humans but shorter and squatter to preserve heat. They had old-fashioned skulls with brow ridges no forehead and no chin.
Everyone has their roots in Africa, but non-Africans have 3% Neanderthal DNA. In total 30% of Neanderthal DNA lives on in us. Some of these genes have aided survival giving rise to different shades of white skin and an immunity boost. Some have been harmful leading to Lupus, biliary cirrhosis, Crohn’s disease, smoking behaviour and type 2 diabetes.
A million years ago our great (x33,330) grandparents were categorised as Homo Erectus as represented by Narikotome boy. His skeleton is very modern but his skull isn’t. Homo erectus started with a 600ml brain, (cf, chimps 400 ml and Humans 1.3 litres) but was still capable of making tools such as the multipurpose hand axe. Their brains doubled in size before extinction. Living in groups requires brain power to remember relationships. Humans are good runners particularly over distance but can over heat in midday sun. The need to keep cool led to our being naked.
Two million years ago our great (x66,000) grandparents were living more like apes. Handy Man had a body adapted for life in the trees. He was smaller, had longer arms and more-curved fingers. His brain was only slightly bigger than a chimp. But he was still doing human stuff. Making tools, even simple flakes of rock, requires much skill and dexterity. These evolved into hand axes with much the same height/width ratio as a modern mobile phone. The hand evolved very early on. Some apes make tools and some modern apes have been trained to make flakes.
Three million years ago our great (x100,000) grandparents, as typified by Lucy, were well adapted for life in the trees with long arms and fingers but stared to spend a lot of time on the ground. Traits which evolved to help were a non-grasping toe and changed to the knees to bring the centre of gravity over the legs.
Paranthropus, a more heavily built species, was an actual grazer eating grass and bushes.
Five million years ago we come to the start of our story. Early hominins share many similarities with modern apes. They lived in trees, had grasping toes and long arms. There were several species living at this time. They were upright but in the trees, and needed arms for swinging, which is the reason we can raise ours. Climate change broke up the rainforests forcing them on the ground.
Adam had some very interesting replica skulls, from each of the periods discussed, which he handed round for us to examine.
He also discussed the problems of dealing with creationists who attempt to undermine evolution when they can. Many of them are racist, quoting bible accounts of Shem, Japheth and Ham to justify slavery and servitude.
Evolutionary psychology could be amazing but is too often WEIRD (Western Educated Industrialised, Rich, Democratic), and can be falsified by non-weird studies.
“You have been and are being evolved. There is grandeur in this view of life. . . “
“. . . from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been and are being evolved “
“We are risen apes not fallen angels”
