Introducing Niamh Middleton

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GAE can be reconciled with a genetically influenced original sin. As I told Joshua I have a genealogical Adam and Eve in my book at the headwaters of humanity, though not de novo. I hypothesise them as the first leader and his wife, whose disobedience impacts on the behaviour of the first group, as well as exile of humanity from ‘the garden’. Think about it. A garden is an artificial environment in which the forces of nature are kept at bay by the gardener, in this case God. This was a perfect garden, in which Adam and Eve lived in harmony with one another, God and nature. Traditional Christian belief holds that Adam and Eve were not subject to natural evils such as illness, accidents, natural disasters and death. Their immortality is understood in my RC tradition as that although they would have had natural lifespans, without having to go through physical death they would have made the transition to a superior, spiritual form of existence (as evidenced in the resurrection). In an evolutionary context, being free from natural evils is the equivalent of being free from the forces of natural selection. In light of their sin of pride and disobedience it becomes clear why the first humans would have to have been exiled from the ‘garden’, which can be understood as a state of being as well as a location. The godlike pride and egoism of the first humans would have led to an unsustainable level of competition for the riches to satisfy them, because there would have been no need for cooperation against the forces of nature. Such unrestricted competition would have produced moral monsters and led to infinite demands on the resources of a finite planet.

As well as explaining the evolution of aggression, the impact of natural selection on the genes of evolving humanity also explains the evolution of love and compassion esp in hominid social species such as ours that had to cooperate against the more dangerous forces of nature. By banishing the first full humans from ‘the garden‘, God would have been limiting the level of evil that could develop. The basic human capacities for love and compassion would have been maintained due to the need for cooperation, although of course the impact of natural selection on our instincts and cognitional abilities, due to our desire for godlike status and rejection of divine guidance, would have made us a far more dangerously competitive and violent species than need have been the case. The salient point is however that the human capacity for love would be maintained sufficiently to provide a strong basis for the transformative and redemptive power of grace sparked by the Incarnation. In some ways it would even have been strengthened due to the necessary evolution of great courage and heroism. Remember what Jesus said “Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends”. In an evolutionary context therefore it’s possible to be optimistic about the future of our species thanks to the Incarnation.

As regards Joshua’s de novo genealogical Adam and Eve hypothesis, as a theologian I can easily theologically integrate it with mine, just they’d have to be at the headwaters of humanity. Won’t go into the finer theological points here, too detailed.

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Welcome @Niamh_Middleton. I believe you are the author of this book, Homo Lapsus (2019):

It seems you have a PhD in theology, a theology lecturer at Dublin City University, and I wonder if you have any familial connection to the theologian Richard Middleton.

Can you tell us some more about the distinctive idea’s you have put forward in your book? Tell us more about yourself?

@jongarvey what do you think?

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Hi Niamh

I don’t find much to disagree with in your summary, except that I’m not sure how much natural selection contributes to our understanding here.

If “genetically influenced original sin” means “naturally capable of sinful actions,” then that is saying no more than a pre-evolutionary theologian like Augustine , who would concur that man was created posse peccare.

If it means any more than that, then Joshua has argued that genetic inheritance is inherently unstable, so any genetic “compulsion” to sin is unlikely to exist, even if it were culpable before God who created it. And I have argued that it would make sin a problem only of the body, potentially remediable by some clever trans-humanist genetic engineer, rather than requiring the substitutionary death of God’s Son.

But I’ve not read your book (and you’ve probably not read mine!), so my comments may be off the mark!

Jon

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Thanks so much Joshua for putting the book details on your site. Yes I am the author of Homo Lapsus and have a PhD in theology. Lecturer in DCU in theology, philosophy of religion and religious education. My main research area is creation/evolution and the religion/science debate overall. I’m not related to Richard Middleton. Middleton is my marital name (maybe he and my husband have a common ancestry though :grinning:). Middleton is not an Irish name. I’ll put the info you requested on the topic page soon.

Kind Regards
Niamh

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Do you know that leading evolutionary commentators like E.O. Wilson (biologist and creator of sociobiology which developed into evolutionary psychology) and Michael Ruse ( world leading philosopher of evolutionary science) have pointed out the near identical resemblance between the Darwinian and Christian accounts of human nature? For a theologian the question arises can it really be a coincidence? I think not.Wilson actually wrote the intro to a book called The Genetics of Original Sin. Yes, he and Ruse would see what Christians call sin as part of our biological package and explicable by the impact of natural selection on human nature. Wilson also sees genetic engineering as a solution. But if it was inevitable, then that’s a serious challenge to the concept of an all-loving, all-powerful God, would make him the author of evil. So in my book, I examine the evidence to see if it was inevitable, and conclude that it wasn’t, a choice and or/ series of choices were made. We had free will, and would have been the most intelligently loving and cooperative species on the planet had we obeyed God. Joshua’s hypothesis is very compatible with my argument, and can expand on it theologically in various ways. In my book I also explore the spiritual and cultural dimensions of the choice(s) made, and their implications for our behavioural evolution. Have you heard of the neo-Darwinist concept of evolutionarily stable strategies (ESSs) that show how altruism and aggression are held in a balance to prevent our extinction, in a way that means it’s very difficult for altruism to increase sufficiently to overcome our aggressive instincts? Genetic determinism. That’s why evolutionary scientists like Wilson think genetic engineering of our morality is the only solution, but I think that would lead to a dystopian scenario. Politics, culture and science do have important roles to play in our progress, but I would argue that grace is the most essential factor, along with biblical guidance. I agree with Timothy P. Jackson, Professor of Christian Ethics, who in Evolution, Games and God,(an interdisciplinary book) argues that only Christian agape love can overcome the selfish gene and the selfish meme.

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@Niamh_Middleton

Thanks - that clarifies your aim admirably.

From my experience over the last ten years, I’d venture to suggest that those like Wilson and Ruse reach their evolutionary conclusions about human nature by starting with human nature and working back to a narrative, adaptive, explanation. Because such stories are impossible to invalidate, and even more difficult to confirm, they can explain anything. That accounts for the welter of “studies” in the popular press giving evolutionary explanations for everything from transgenderism to tattoos. Give them a striped leopard, and they can always explain it by adaptation.

Part of the very reason for such accounts seems to be to establish genetic determinism against the more human intuition of free will. So good for you for opposing that: for those who have imbibed the idea that genes rule the roost and are selfish, and the even less solid idea of “memes” as some kind of autonomous entity, the apologetics is worthwhile.

My only hesitation is in accepting that that the sociobiologists and so on have made a persuasive evolutionary case for human behaviour in the first place. Divorced from the emotionally-laden language of “selfishness,” I don’t see that even straight Darwinian theory actually entails selfishness at the level of the process, nor selfishness at the level of outcomes in human psychology. Like Darwin you can express natural selection in the light of Malthus - but you don’t have to, and it’s not the best model.

The more Neo-darwinism becomes subordinated to neutral theory, niche construction, structuralism and the other rich explanations now on the scene in evolutionary theory, the more anachronistic evolutionary explanations for human evil seem (to me) to become. All of them end up, in a theistic worldview, with human beings created as what they are, with self-evident liberty of moral action. Agape still rules all, and the Eden account is still explanatory and prescriptive.

But the Christian doctrine of bondage to sin as a fruit of original choice, whilst explaining the universal prevalence of evil just as well as genetic determinism does, unlike the latter offers the possibility of reversal of the situation without destroying what we are by creation and creating what you rightly describe as a dystopia.

And we agree that grace is the key to unlock that door.

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I have. For a while I was trying to read up on Evolutionary Game Theory (hence EGT), and ESS is the EGT version of the Nash Equilibrium, a strategy such that no individual can do any better without cooperation from others.

I think I agree with Jon; Human behavior is not determined by genetics, but there are influences.

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Hi Jon,

Thanks for your reply! Just a word on the significance of the phrase ‘selfish gene’. It doesn’t literally mean that genes are selfish, just that our virtuous characteristics of altruism/cooperation increase individual fitness, and contribute to survival and successful lives. Which is not to deny that they are great characteristics and the basis for agape love. Unconditional Christian agape love of course transcends all that, and can expose us to danger by making us take huge social risks as Jesus did, leading to his persecution and death.

As regards free will, in Christianity it’s acknowledged that while we still have free will, it has been damaged by original sin. Augustine went so far as to say we are helpless against certain temptations without grace. Think of Oscar Wilde who said “I can resist anything except temptation” :laughing:. Genetic determinism sheds light on our temptation difficulties, but is best interpreted within a Christian context in which the two viewpoints mutually expand upon one another. Why for example do our consciences make us feel guilty? Purely naturalistic theories of human behaviour cannot explain our spiritual dimension, which quite clearly exists. What convinces me most that natural selection is the main mechanism of evolution (which is still the scholarly consensus in science) and has shaped our behaviour to a significant degree is its explanatory power for much human behaviour, especially male/female relationships and the evolution of patriarchy. And Genesis makes clear that the loss of harmony between Adam and Eve was the cause of our overall loss of harmony with one another and with the environment. The loss of harmony between men and women means that Trinitarian harmony cannot be fully revealed in our diminished imago Dei. A combination of Christianity and evolutionary science gives us a greatly expanded view of human nature that I believe can facilitate a new phase in our moral progress.

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Agree, not totally genetically determined. I go into that in detail in my book. For example, natural selection cannot explain our concepts of justice. We have to understand ourselves morally as a combo of body and spiritual soul. But ns certainly shaped us to a significant degree, and sheds great light on the theological concept of concupiscence, which in Christianity is considered the main cause of sin. Though of course natural selection’s excessive impact on us in that regard was caused by our spiritual flaws. It’s concupiscence that Wilson and Ruse focus on.

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Welcome @Niamh_Middleton, your perspective is refreshing and easily digested. It will be nice to hear more. I can tell you are going to make me study…I have lots of questions, but will let the conversation unfold for a bit first.

I wholeheartedly agree with this, good to have you here.

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Experiments have shown that some monkeys have a concept of justice. How does that affect your ideas?

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Should’ve said cannot fully explain. It can to a large extent, I mean we have all kinds of built in mechanisms for detecting and punishing cheating! Totally explicable by natural selection. And Darwin wrote brilliantly about the evolution of conscience in an intelligent and compassionate social species like us. I’ve written about that in great detail in my book. It was a huge influence on Freudian psychology and via Freud has influenced the Catholic theology of conscience. Great contribution to our moral knowledge. But can’t explain everything. Like we are a naturally hierarchical species. Is it a coincidence that democracy emerged in a Christian culture? Philosophers like Bertrand Russell think that Luther’s insistence on the rights of individuals to follow their consciences made a significant contribution to its establishment. And the Christian insistence that we are equally loved by God.

And then there’s the Marxist notion of equality. Even though Marx was an atheist, Jurgan Habermas, the most prominent philosopher of the Frankfurt school, has written that the Marxist concept of equality could only have emerged in a culture grounded in the Jewish ethic of justice and the Christian ethic of love. The reason communism didn’t work is cos Marx’s teaching is really a spiritual one. Yet the combo of socialism and capitalism in Europe (social democracy) has given the most just societies in the world. Still have a long way to go of course.

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Perhaps not, but that’s closer to the intended meaning than your own interpretation.

Genes, being non-sentient, are neither ‘selfish’ nor ‘altruistic’. But the nature of reproductive strategies is such that the genes that perpetuate are those that most effectively cause themselves and their copies to be duplicated, regardless of how fit individuals are or how ‘successful’ their lives. Effective spreading can be achieved by causing altruism/co-operation (but only with organisms that share the same genes), but also via parasitism, piggybacking, or turning organisms into short-lived brainless spore-factories. The Coronavirus genes are currently demonstrating one strategy, but they’re hardly being altruistic or contributing to successful lives.

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But if individuals aren’t ‘fit’ they are less likely to pass on their genes. The ‘fittest’ males have the most offspring so pass on more genes than the average male. (Think of Genghis Khan). And what about incels? Apparently due to modern female economic independence a growing number of young males are involuntarily celibate, so not passing on their genes. Also the behaviours generated by reciprocal altruism (those who help others are more likely to get help from others, which during evolutionary history increased our chances of survival) and kin selection (we are hardwired to love our families, esp kids to the extent of making great sacrifices for them). That’s because they share our genes, so their successful survival and reproduction means our genes are being passed on.

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This is the sort of “history of ideas” connection between religion and modernity that I’ve been putting forward here for years now (albeit using examples different from your own), but such connections are aggressively disputed here by the atheist posters, who are convinced that the rise of modernity needed no help from no Biblical theists nohow. We will see how well your suggestion fares!

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Can I ask what you think of the term evolutionary creationism?

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The term “evolutionary creationism” has come into vogue lately among certain Christians favorable to evolution. On their account, the older term, “theistic evolutionism,” put the emphasis on the wrong place: it suggested that the person believed in evolution (presumably on the strength of scientific evidence), but then tacked “theistic” on, almost as an afterthought, as if to say: “Yes, I accept evolution, but don’t worry, I’m also a Christian.” The new term puts the emphasis on creation rather than evolution, as if to say, “Yes, I’m a creationist, in the sense of believing that God created the world, but I believe that God’s mode of creation was an evolutionary process rather than a series of discrete miracles.”

It thus tries to eliminate the theme of “creation versus evolution” which tends to run through discussions of origins. So someone like Denis Lamoureux can say that he is “creationist,” not in the sense that Ken Ham is, but in the sense of someone who believes that God created the world. The idea of the Christian scientists who use the term is to show that they are not embarrassed to affirm God as Creator.

I have nothing against the new term in itself; the question is what are its contents. Is it any clearer what God does in “evolutionary creationism” than it was in “theistic evolutionism”? I’m not sure that it is. Indeed, the early theistic evolutionists, back in the period after Darwin, often seemed to imagine God as “guiding” the process of evolution toward his planned ends; modern “evolutionary creation” almost never asserts that kind of guidance. Ask ten evolutionary creationists today what God does in evolution, and you will get at least nine vague, non-committal answers.

I have no theological objection to the term itself. God is capable of creating things through natural processes, if he chooses. The question is whether or not those natural processes would need some sort of supplement, some sort of additional intelligent guidance. They might, or might not; but I am not convinced by any account I’ve seen here or elsewhere that evolution can do what it supposedly did without planning or guidance.

You’re no relation to the Old Testament scholar with your surname, are you?

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Let’s turn that around. Is there anything about the history of life that convinces you it must have been guided?

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The term “evolutionary creationism” has come into vogue lately among certain Christians favorable to evolution. On their account, the older term, “theistic evolutionism,” put the emphasis on the wrong place: it suggested that the person believed in evolution (presumably on the strength of scientific evidence), but then tacked “theistic” on, almost as an afterthought, as if to say: “Yes, I accept evolution, but don’t worry, I’m also a Christian.” The new term puts the emphasis on creation rather than evolution, as if to say, “Yes, I’m a creationist, in the sense of believing that God created the world, but I believe that God’s mode of creation was an evolutionary process rather than a series of discrete miracles.”

It thus tries to eliminate the theme of “creation versus evolution” which tends to run through discussions of origins. So someone like Denis Lamoureux can say that he is “creationist,” not in the sense that Ken Ham is, but in the sense of someone who believes that God created the world. The idea of the Christian scientists who use the term is to show that they are not embarrassed to affirm God as Creator.

I have nothing against the new term in itself; the question is what are its contents. Is it any clearer what God does in “evolutionary creationism” than it was in “theistic evolutionism”? I’m not sure that it is. Indeed, the early theistic evolutionists, back in the period after Darwin, often seemed to imagine God as “guiding” the process of evolution toward his planned ends; modern “evolutionary creation” almost never asserts that kind of guidance. Ask ten evolutionary creationists today what God does in evolution, and you will get at least nine vague, non-committal answers.

I have no theological objection to the term itself. God is capable of creating things through natural processes, if he chooses. The question is whether or not those natural processes would need some sort of supplement, some sort of additional intelligent guidance. They might, or might not; but I am not convinced by any account I’ve seen here or elsewhere that evolution can do what it supposedly did without planning or guidance.

You’re no relation to the Old Testament scholar with your surname, are you?

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I have written Homo Lapsus for all who are interested in the controversies between religion and science, especially in relation to human origins. The passage of time has led to the development of a perspective on human nature in Darwinism that is almost identical to that of Christianity. As a result, leading evolutionary biologists such as E.O. Wilson are now claiming that the Genesis explanation for moral evil as being due to an “original sin” is redundant, since evolutionary science can explain the inevitable evolution of traits such as greed, aggression and the lust for power. What if however it wasn’t inevitable? In my book I argue, based on the evidence from evolutionary biology, primatology and paleoanthropology that it wasn’t, and suggest that rather than offering an alternative explanation for evil, evolutionary science could be providing empirical evidence for a doctrine of revelation. Evolutionary biology, primatology and paleoanthropology can certainly shed great light on how our deleterious traits evolved and by implication how they can be overcome with the help of supernatural grace. Another issue addressed in the book is the now very open theological question “Who were Adam and Eve” which is the main focus of Joshua’s book, and for which he provides a hypothesis that is open to various theological adaptations and could be a game changer in the theology of our origins.

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