Homo Sapiens and Evolution
It
was pointed out that there is a
fundamental difference between the human
animal and the other animals, or
pre-human forms living and developing . Homo sapiens simply means thinking
man because learning , remembering, knowing, thinking , imagining and creating new ideas,
transmitting knowledge over long distances of space-time makes us human. The basic distinction
therefore marking the human animal is the power to think, to invent, to create new ways of living and developing all kinds
of gadgets and machinery helping
humans in their gradual conquest of
nature. Only humans developed conceptual
thought, articulated and propositional
speech, and also develop a whole
new universe of symbols, which help to interpret and deliver
meaning to human thought and mutual communication
between people. Man is not only a thinking animal , he/she is also a symbolic animal . Human beings live
with awareness of death and the passage of time, and use their minds to unravel and make intelligible their existence: it’s origin, it’s value and
it’s possible destiny. Only human beings
develop moral values as guidelines of
their behavior and only humans develop
some kind of religion. They pray, perform religious rituals and expect some existence beyond the grave. The
human mind reaches toward the Absolute . All those above
characteristics make human beings unique among all other terrestrial
living forms.
However
man is an animal and in many fundamental ways he/she shares
the needs similar to the other animals. He/she is a body, a living organism subject to all the conditions and circumstances of his material and biological existence .
Those needs are imperative and must be satisfied if he/she is to survive in quite often hostile
environment . That’s why man must fight
for food, a place for development, create some form of family life
to prolong his/her existence in children and transmit
life from generation to generation . Most of those needs are simply biological and physiological in nature and
the individual goes through the
stages of life from
birth through childhood , mature development , aging and
dying like any other form of life
on earth.
After Darwin’s book “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural
Selection” published in 1859 most biologists gradually accepted the theory of evolution as the
explanation of the phenomenon of
man as one among so many other living forms
on the ladder of evolution from the most
primitive forms of life like the
bacteria, through gradual increase of
complexity, and almost
invisible changes of different organisms to the appearance of
some highly developed one like the pre-human primates,
to the appearance of man. The
theory of evolution is generally accepted and most biologists are
dedicated evolutionists .
The universe is also a
process in development from the big-bang, that is it’s beginning through gradual formation of subatomic
particles , atoms , molecules and finally galaxies and
constellations of stars . The physicists tell us that the process of development began about
14 and ½ billion years and is
still going on . The universe is in the process of becoming and in constant expanding . The galaxies
move away from each other with
tremendous speed approaching the speed of light . Some galaxies come into existence
and some may
end up vanishing into what astronomers call black holes . Our
galaxy that is the heliocentric system
is very insignificant and by no means extraordinary in any way. Our
earth one of the satellites of the sun
is a small insignificant speck compared to the unimaginable dimensions of the
known universe. The distances
between different stars and
galaxies are so immense that our minds seem to be unable even to imagine the
space time immensity . For example
the speed of light which is the fastest phenomenon in
nature is three hundred thousand kilometers per second or hundred eighty six thousand miles per second. For example when I look at the sky at night and see a star in some place among other stars, the star I am seeing may not exist in reality because what I see
really is the light which is hitting
my retina and it’s source that is the “star” may already a long time not exist. It
shows how limited is the power of our
senses and their perceptions
although we have electronic
telescopes to look far into the distance
in space and also microscopes to look into the infinitely small structure of matter. With
all this our knowledge is and
remains limited and the prospective of
growths of knowledge is practically infinite. How would we see the universe if instead of
our five senses we would have ten
or fifteen ? Would we perceive different aspects of reality?
But
what about the evolution of man?
Biologists belong to two
groups: those who admit evolution and also
the qualitative difference of man
from other highly developed
animals. This group of biologists belong to defenders of some kind of design intrinsic to the living
biological organism and therefore demand
some information at the basis of development of different
kinds of living organism . For those thinkers there is a fundamental difference between man
and other forms of life because
there exists an intrinsic principle in
man spiritual and immaterial. It is the
personality of man , his awareness
and self-awareness and his
intellectual powers with which he is not only able to create concepts , articulated
in propositional speech, but also to acquire analogical knowledge of the
absolute source of all finite reality.
This last ability creates the
underpinning of religious beliefs . In all other respects man is subject to the laws of biological evolution.
The second group of biologists explains evolution of humans as
just another form of life , not different in any significant way from other living organisms . They maintain that human intelligence differs from the intelligence of men- like- primates only in degree but not otherwise . They draw the conclusion
that all activities and accomplishments
of man can be explained without the
rest by
the size and complexity of the
brain and it’s physiological and neurological functioning .
The bigger the brain , the more complex the neural interconnectedness of the
different centers in the brain , the more
intelligent behavior is
developing in the human being.
The important thing is that they do not deny the difference between man and higher primates but they
admit only the difference in
degree and not in kind . This explanation
ultimately is based on scientific reductionism and the assumption that all reality
including man must be
explained as matter in the process of change.
It is crucial to see
the consequences of such interpretation of evolution
of man. If man is nothing else
but matter in movement , anything
spiritual or immaterial is simply automatically
rejected as unreal. The consequences of
this view again, although seemingly
concerning man and his nature only, have very radical impact on the
question of the existence of God. The radical evolutionists admit only
what the scientific methods show
. That is the conviction that only scientific knowledge is true knowledge and
consequently no other forms of knowing are accepted as
valid and sound means to reach
reality . This is radical naturalism and
materialism which to the radical
evolutionist is the basic fundamental outlook on reality . Therefore the evolution of man is presented as only one
among many forms of matter in movement although living matter
. The consequences of such interpretation of evolution lead of course to radical atheism . In the monotheistic
religions God is considered an immaterial , supernatural
, creator of all reality through His Omnipotent power to
makes something non-existent to become a being . Creation is absolutely unique and proper exclusively to the infinite power
of God . All finite beings material or not
are creatures that is dependent entities maintained
in existence by the continues act
of creation. Creation did not begin
some fourteen and ½ billion years
ago as physicist believe but it is a
continues maintenance of each even the
smallest being in existence and in it’s
action . God is Infinite Spirit , Immaterial and
not discoverable directly by human senses or even
by direct intellectual insight . As
such God cannot be the object of
any scientific investigation because science
requires some form of sense experience ,
measurability and repetition
of the experiments . God therefore although eternally present is beyond the reach of any scientific method of investigation. The only way to know something about God is the philosophical analysis of the nature of being as such and even
then human knowledge about God always
remains on philosophical level only
analogical in it’s very essence. It is obvious therefore that
if man is nothing else but a
little in degree only not in kind
higher primate animal, religion , knowledge of God, and any talk
about supernatural spirit or
soul is already from the
beginning radically rejected .
The central question here is whether science explains
or is able to explain reality. There are those who believe that science
would help towards complete understanding of all that is. All problems , sooner or later will be solved completely by science. The word “science”
became very ill defined in meaning
and extremely charged with emotions. It is applied to all fields of
human knowledge and all kinds of all unsuitable subjects as the new idol of
contemporary man. This attitude is the
reason also of interpreting the nature of man within the
context of evolution of life as homo sapiens
the higher thinking animal. The word higher used
here indicates that in comparing the “ intelligence” of animals and
the mental accomplishments of man,
there is no fundamental
difference between the two. In most activities we share our way of living with other forms on the
planet. Animals, birds, reptiles, fish and even insects also struggle for power
the way humans do. They organize themselves in social groups, many build
shelters, nests, and some control their
environment by ingenious inventions .
Not only that, but some of them collect wealth . They fight , they procreate, and their sense perceptions in many cases are
far sharper and better than human sense perceptions . Nevertheless neither the individuals or the group of the
animals make any substantial progress , discover new ways of acting, and
basically remain on the same fundamental instinctual level of living .
Man however possesses a new way of
life, the power
of inventiveness , symbolic
communication and thinking , articulated and propositional speech , logic
, mathematics and technological
production of all kinds of
machinery . All of this creates the universe of man . Man is also aware of his limitations , his transition of life , the presence of suffering, aging, all kinds of sickness and the inevitable death . Man is a
searcher for meaning and the only known living being praying, and adoring some kind of divinity or God. The basic difference between other animals and humans
is man’s concern for the meaning of his/ her life. All the above characteristics point directly
to the immaterial spiritual principle in man which does not exist in
other animals .
The
conclusion therefore is obvious. The difference
between man and other forms of life, even those highly developed forms
is the difference in kind, in essence ,
not only in some small degree.
Evolution seems to be
a well-founded scientific theory although it has many weak points, for example the Cambrian
explosion which remains unexplained
until now. The most fundamental question
discussed here is the
gap between the concept of man in the philosophy of being and the Christian
idea of man . For example : in
Christianity there is the dogma of
man’s personality:
1. Man alone is made in the image of God and having a spiritual aspect he/her has
the dignity of special creature
of God.
2. The dogma of man’s special creation , the
origin of a human race cannot be
explained on purely natural basis in
the process of reproduction but requires an intervention of the Divine causality.
3. The
dogma of individual immortality of each human
person that means that the human soul is capable of subsisting
after the decomposition of the human body and needs reunification with the body in God’s resurrecting action and,
4. Finally man possess free will and is
responsible for his/her relationship to God’s will and he/she has the
power of free choice between good and evil, between loving his/her Creator or
turning against Him.
Evolution seems to be a well
established scientific theory and as
such it is like any other phenomenon the effect of God’s action. The existence of
God is proved by metaphysical
arguments : The Prime Mover, the First Cause and the
Cosmic Intelligence. The Judeo Christian God has all those attributes plus personality. There is one God and three Persons in One God. The crucial
point however is that God, the Creator revealed Himself to humans as a Person to created persons. Only a Personal God established
the covenantal relationship with
the Patriarchs of the Old Testament (Abraham and his descendants) and the choice of Moses and God’s revelation to
Moses on Mount Sinai) . The liberation of the Jews from the oppression of Egyptian slavery was the
first phase of the liberation from the power of sin and death accomplished
by God the Second Person of Trinity, Jesus
Christ, who became incarnate God in flesh
. Christ , the God-man was in everything
human except sin . The redemption accomplished by Christ is far
greater than the exodus of the Jews from Egypt because Christ’s redemptive action on the Cross embraced all mankind and gave
the possibility of anyone who
believes in Him of Eternal life in a resurrected body. In
Christianity man is created as an image
of God.
This image does not relate to the
bodily form but to the inner spirit . Man is a person and as a person he/she can relate freely and meaningfully to the Personal God.
The observational data which we
mentioned above concerning the nature and activities of homo sapiens clearly
show that the human soul is qualitatively different from the other animals, even the highest primates.
1. Abstract thinking
2. Articulated speech
3. Propositional language
4. Self-consciousness and self-knowledge
5.
Search for the meaning of existence
6. Freedom of choice and judgment
7. Awareness of eternity and death
All
the above show that man is a person endowed with intelligent knowledge, conscious of moral obligation and values and also able
of self-control and evaluation of himself as moral agent. Objective moral values and human conscience make of human beings responsible agents.
None of the above is found among other animals . That is why the human
soul or form is different in
kind from those of the souls of lower
animals
.
It is important to remember that
evolution although it is the well-founded
scientific theory is nothing more but
scientific theory, and consequently
subject to modification , change or even replacement with the progress of
science. Homo sapiens as a
partner with God in the adventure of
existence is called
to eternal life granted to him/her through the grace of God . Being however free
human beings have the ability to
turn hostile to God . Lying to themselves
and not willing to acknowledge their
hostility to God and their own depravity they will try to
create their own theories and pseudo-explanations of the
meaning of life. All atheistic attitudes ultimately are based on unproven assumptions
that the only reality is somehow
material and no other can be admitted. However
one must always remember that this materialistic dogma has never been convincingly proven by
anyone although it in many points violates
the fundamental principles of sound thinking.
Leszek Figurski
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