Another famous atheist dabbled in these areas, and came to the conclusion that, not only was the explosive growth of the human neocortex probably at the center of what makes us “modern” humans, but that the Bible is remarkably congruent with this thesis.
From Carl Sagan, in “The Dragons of Eden: Speculations on the Origins of Human Intelligence.”
“So far as I know, childbirth is generally painful in only one of the millions of species on Earth: human beings. This must be a consequence of the recent and continuing increase in cranial volume. Modem men and women have braincases twice the volume of Homo habilis’. Childbirth is painful because the evolution of the human skull has been spectacularly fast and recent. The American anatomist C. Judson Herrick described the development of the neocortex in the following terms: “Its explosive growth late in phylogeny is one of the most dramatic cases of evolutionary transformation known to comparative anatomy.” The incomplete closure of the skull at birth, the fontanelle, is very likely an imperfect accommodation to this recent brain evolution.
The connection between the evolution of intelligence and the pain of childbirth seems unexpectedly to be made in the Book of Genesis. In punishment for eating the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, God says to Eve,* “In pain shalt thou bring forth children” (Genesis 3:16). It is interesting that it is not the getting of any sort of knowledge that God has forbidden, but, specifically, the knowledge of the difference between good and evil-that is, abstract and moral judgments, which, if they reside anywhere, reside in the neocortex. Even at the time that the Eden story was written, the development of cognitive skills was seen as endowing man with godlike powers and awesome responsibilities. God says: “Behold, the man is become as one of us, to know good and evil; and now, lest he put forth his hand, and take also of the Tree of Life, and eat, and live forever” (Genesis 3:22), he must be driven out of the Garden. God places cherubim with a flaming sword east of Eden to guard the Tree of Life from the ambitions of man.
Perhaps the Garden of Eden is not so different from Earth as it appeared to our ancestors of some three or four million years ago, during a legendary golden age when the genus Homo was perfectly interwoven with the other beasts and vegetables. After the exile from Eden we find, in the biblical account, mankind condemned to death; hard work; clothing and modesty as preventatives of sexual stimulation; the dominance of men over women; the domestication of plants (Cain); the domestication of animals (Abel); and murder (Cain plus Abel). These all correspond reasonably well to the historical and archaeological evidence. In the Eden metaphor, there is no evidence of murder before the Fall. But those fractured skulls of bipeds not on the evolutionary line to man may be evidence that our ancestors killed, even in Eden, many manlike animals.
Civilization develops not from Abel, but from Cain the murderer. The very word “civilization” derives from the Latin word for city. It is the leisure time, community organization and specialization of labor in the first cities that permitted the emergence of the arts and technologies we think of as the hallmarks of civilizations. The first city, according to Genesis, was constructed by Cain, the inventor of agriculture-a technology that requires a fixed abode. And it is his descendants, the sons of Lamech, who invent both “artifices in brass and iron” and musical instruments. Metallurgy and music-technology and art-are in the line from Cain. And the passions that lead to murder do not abate: Lamech says, “For I have slain a man for wounding me, and a young man for bruising me; if Cain shall be avenged sevenfold, truly Lamech seventy and sevenfold.” The connection between murder and invention has been with us ever since. Both derive from agriculture and civilization.
One of the earliest consequences of the anticipatory skills that accompanied the evolution of the prefrontal lobes must have been the awareness of death. Man is probably the only organism on Earth with a relatively clear view of the inevitability of his own end. Burial ceremonies that include theinterment of food and artifacts along with the deceased go back at least to the times of our Neanderthal cousins, suggesting not only a widespread awareness of death but also an already developed ritual ceremony to sustain the deceased in the afterlife. It is not that death was absent before the spectacular growth of the neocortex, before the exile from Eden; it is only that, until then, no one had ever noticed that death would be his destiny.
The fall from Eden seems to be an appropriate metaphor for some of the major biological events in recent human evolution. This may account for its popularity.* It is not so remarkable as to require us to believe in a kind of biological memory of ancient historical events, but it does seem to me close enough to risk at least raising the question. The only repository of such a biological memory is, of course, the genetic code.” [op cit., pp.63-65]
Despite various differences of nuance and timing I have with Sagan, I find his openness to Genesis as, at least, “mythically” accurate refreshing, given that he is totally steeped in a materialistic worldview, and has no room for God.
He even cites literature in support of a “triune” brain in human neurological hardwiring.
"ON HUMAN NATURE Despite the intriguing localization of function in the triune brain model, it is, I stress again, an oversimplification to insist upon perfect separation of function. Human ritual and emotional behavior are certainly influenced strongly by neocortical abstract reasoning; analytical demonstrations of the validity of purely religious beliefs have been proffered, and there are philosophical justifications for hierarchical behavior, such as Thomas Hobbes’ “demonstration” of the divine right of kings. Likewise, animals that are not human-and in fact even some animals that are not primates-seem to show glimmerings of analytical abilities. I certainly have such an impression about dolphins, as I described in my book The Cosmic Connection.
Nevertheless, while bearing these caveats in mind, it seems a useful first approximation to consider the ritualistic and hierarchical aspects of our lives to be influenced strongly by the R-complex and shared with our reptilian forebears; the altruistic, emotional and religious aspects of our lives to be localized to a significant extent in the limbic system and shared with our nonprimate mammalian forebears (and perhaps the birds); and reason to be a function of the neo-cortex, shared to some extent with the higher primates and such cetaceans as dolphins and whales. While ritual, emotion and reasoning are all significant aspects of human nature, the most nearly unique human characteristic is the ability to associate abstractly and to reason. Curiosity and the urge to solve problems are the emotional hallmarks of our species; and the most characteristically human activities are mathematics, science, technology, music and the arts-a somewhat broader range of subjects than is usually included under the “humanities.” Indeed, in its common usage this very word seems to reflect a peculiar narrowness of vision about what is human. Mathematics is as much a “humanity” as poetry. Whales and elephants may be as “humane” as humans.
The triune-brain model derives from studies of comparative neuroanatomy and behavior. But honest introspection is not unknown in the human species, and if the triune-brain model is correct, we would expect some hint of it in the history of human self-knowledge. The most widely known hypothesis that is at least reminiscent of the triune brain is Sigmund Freud’s division of the human psyche into id, ego and superego. The aggressive and sexual aspects of the R-complex correspond satisfyingly to the Freudian description of the id (Latin for “it”-i. e., the beast-like aspect of our natures); but, so far as I know, Freud did not in his description of the id lay great stress on the ritual or social-hierarchy aspects of the R-complex. He did describe emotions as an ego function-in particular the “oceanic experience,” which is the Freudian equivalent of the religious epiphany. However, the superego is not depicted primarily as the site of abstract reasoning but rather as the internalizer of societal and parental strictures, which in the triune brain we might suspect to be more a function of the R-complex. Thus I would have to describe the psychoanalytic tripartite mind as only weakly in accord with the triune-brain model.
Perhaps a better metaphor is Freud’s division of the mind into the conscious; the preconscious, which is latent but capable of being tapped; and the unconscious, which is repressed or otherwise unavailable. It was the tension that exists among the components of the psyche that Freud had in mind when he said of man that “his capacity for neurosis would merely be the obverse of his capacity for cultural development.” He called the unconscious functions “primary processes.”
A superior agreement is found in the metaphor for the human psyche in the Platonic dialogue Phaedrus. Socrates likens the human soul to a chariot drawn by two horses-one black, one white-pulling in different directions and weakly controlled by a charioteer. The metaphor of the chariot itself is remarkably similar to MacLean’s neural chassis; the two horses, to the R-complex and the limbic cortex; and the charioteer barely in control of the careening chariot and horses, to the neocortex. In yet another metaphor, Freud described the ego as the rider of an unruly horse. Both the Freudian and the Platonic metaphors emphasize the considerable independence of and tension among the constituent parts of the psyche, a point that characterizes the human condition and to which we will return. Because of the neuroanatomical connections between the three components, the triune brain must itself, like the Phaedrus chariot, be a metaphor; but it may prove to be a metaphor of great utility and depth.
[op. cit.; pp.55-56].
I find in comments like these great hints at something which transcends mere metaphor and speaks of something marvelously real.
"Nuff said, for now. Cheers!