Christianity and Evolution

Christianity is remarkably successful even with Bertrand Russell's famous non-endorsement. The first 4 Commandments define the hierarchy with Alpha who gives protection in return for loyalty. The final 6 reinforce Tit-for-Tat, the old strategy of reciprocal altruism, eroded over the past millennia perhaps by higher population densities in combination with shifting social ties, and rampant opportunities for Cheater tactics.(1) Still, we are supposed to gain psychic comfort from our Large Anchor who -- consistent with Stephen Suomi's recommendations for the mothering of hyperactive little Rhesus -- gives us absolute backing along with very clear boundaries.(2)

However, Christians may be Christian, but they are also hominid and contain the same evolved preferences, perhaps based on sensory mechanisms, for the lively, the large, and the novel. Thus, Christian organizations sometimes lose individual focus just as our physicians do. Churches get bigger, parking lots override the lawn, and the PA system needs more amps.

Pastors may want to "hire an assistant" but that usually does not mean splitting 300 members into two groups of 150 each. It means splitting functions so that each pastor does different things for each of 300 people. Not a good solution for churches or for schools or for any of our other organizations that want to nurture closeness. If Robin Dunbar and others are correct when they compare the size of mammalian brains with the size of social groups that are formed, then humans are optimal for groups of about 150 people.(3)

State institutions, university medical centers (4), HMOs, and public schools coexist with Christianity and Christian organizations can have the same bloated structure as formal government organizations. Economic and political power can be functions of size; few manic theologians can resist having a larger structure or more enrolled members, even while losing the little children.

K-Selection is one survival strategy that describes the conservative behaviors that appear when population is near the limits of environmental resources. Cooperation (you do for me and I will do for you) becomes elaborate and formalized; there are fewer children and greater investment in each one. The opposite extreme - r-selection -- describes tactics for new environments and few occupants. There is more altruism (gifts offered without thought of compensation), more offspring, and less investment in each of them. The r-selection tactics can be summarized as "Use it up (environment) before it changes."

Our culture is presently interesting because I see more K-selection rules for physical resources (perhaps its original context) while r-selection abounds at the level of social relationships. Salesmen, whether for insurance companies, phone companies, and religious persuasions have a very rich field from which to eat, a field of people. Kids (spin-off subsidiaries) are spawned everywhere and cheating abounds. Likewise, for recruiting drives for church membership.

Evolved mechanisms, our Psychological Adaptations, make us more comfortable in smaller groups where reciprocity can be maintained. As a result, smaller fundamentalist groups (some of them rotating meetings in members' homes) thrive and smaller private schools nibble at the large public grapefruits just as mammals did in the company of dinosaurs. As smaller organizations merge into larger, opportunities develop for smaller ones to appear again to meet the original needs but with new labels.

A "flow through, dissipative" structure" might be described in which a continuous churning occurs between small things being born, growing into big things, and then fragmenting under survival competition from smaller things. I suspect that organizational Christianity, despite the respect traditionally given to simplification and individuality, has also been suckered by supernormal stimuli whether in the domains of congregations or leaders.(5)

Evolution has the promise to remind us of the virtues of smaller, of continuity in relationships, of mutual loyalty, of reciprocity. And "evolutionarily informed Christianity" should respect both our hominid and our spiritual nature, perhaps by recognizing them explicitly and using those understandings to manage itself.

NOTES:

1) Large populations can be maintained under authoritarian structures only if people don't relocate very often. Formal cooperation (rules and contracts) grows as population approaches the limits of environmental capacity; cooperation, however, depends on continuity of relationships.

2) Suomi comments in Segerstrale & Molnar, "Nonverbal Communication: Where Nature Meets Culture, "...high-reactive infants, reared by unusually nurturant attachment figures are remarkable precocious socially and typically rise to the top of their group's dominance hierarchy."

3) You might try confirming this by checking the number of active names on your Rolodex or information manager (after you discard people you haven't contacted for 3 months) or by careful study of organizations within a large school. "Departments," "teams," and "tracks" are a way to carve a block of 600 students into manageable quarters. Robin Dunbar "Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language" devotes a chapter to the brain size x social network correlations. Highly readable ... $14 from Harvard University Press.

4) Pennhurst was a residential facility that housed as many as 3000 mentally retarded adults at one point. It was a bloated testament of altruism turned cancerous. Erosion in Tit for Tat (within the institution as it became too large) and changes in the fitness landscape (competition for state money) did to Pennhurst as it does to other large, rigid organizations. That institution, despite its original Christian intent, properly closed in 1986. See Kauffman, S. (1995) At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity. NY: Oxford for a discussion of large organizations and the survival problems inherent in responding to multiple, fractional markets. Perhaps also reflected in our current national political scene.

Replies:

There are no replies to this message.

| Behavior OnLine Home Page | Disclaimer |

Copyright © 1996-2004 Behavior OnLine, Inc. All rights reserved.