Some scientists resist the idea that evolutionary psychology,
the concept that our behavior is the result of natural selection, yet they,
along with most people, intuitively accept this concept in one form or another.
To agree means you accept the idea that our behavior evolved, which is in direct
conflict with the ingrained religious teaching of the western world; God made the
universe and all it contains in seven days, what ever that means. Regardless of
this obvious conflict, people seem ahead of science when it comes to this
issue. Scientist insist on proving the obvious, behavior is genetic; chickens
act like chickens, dogs act like dogs, and people act like people.
In addition, people insist they have free will yet freely
use expression such as ‘hardwired’, ‘innate’ or ‘ingrained’, which means we
operate according to what our genes tell us. Some even go so far as to insist
that free will is uniquely human. Did
God give us free will or did we get it from adaptive evolutionary processes. There
is an explanation for God and that is man made God and not the other way
around. Only evolutionary processes can
explain free will. Therefore, the answer as to where our free will came from should
be obvious; it evolved and traceable back to the primordial pools where
biopoiesis started. Thus, “free will” is internal, it is in our genes and our
genes are part of us. If behavior is
genetic, it is part of us. The conclusion is that we are genetic robots. However,
if we are genetic robots we do not have free will.
The shocking thing about evolution is that we are not only still
evolving but our culture, a product of our mentality, is evolving at an ever-accelerating
pace. Our mentality is evolving uncoordinated with our lumbering physical being.
For example, Jody Hey, a professor of
genetics, with much archeological evidence suggested North America was
populated by as few as 70 individuals 14,000 year ago ( report in Daily Mail).
Although we do not have any petrified thoughts to study, we can imagine the
level of mental agility of those 70 individuals compared with modern humans. In
addition, we can compare the physical structure expected of humankind 14,000
years ago with that of today. There is surprisingly little difference
physically or difference in basic behavior (cultural universals) but there was a
great difference in the degree of modification made to innate behavior: call it
fluidity of culture. In other words, the Native Americans greeting the Spanish crews
on the sailing ships looked alike and behaved alike but did not like to think that
they think alike—they had free will. There was hierarchy dominance within the
white tribe on the ships as will as among the greeting Native American tribe
members; however, one felt free to use the term ‘captain’ the other to use the
term ‘chief’.
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