And was repeatedly amazed about how latent thoughts connect when you give them room to roam. In the past year I have increasingly found myself spending more and more time in front of my TV, Xbox, and computer, commanding the world to entertain me in every moment of free time. I have made a conscious effort to minimize this, and it has been highly beneficial.
So on my run today I wasn’t thinking of much at all, I was just putting one foot in front of the other and enjoying the smell of the fresh rain. Then on my way back this article came to mind. I read it while in my Jeremiah Exegesis class. It has nothing to do with Jeremiah, but honestly, I am not finding the prophet to be too enthralling at the moment.
I was first rather offended by the article, writing the author of as an arrogant asshole at the time, and still think that he/she was at the least an obtuse provocateur who immediately isolates half the population in his language. Further, I highly disagree with his argument that highly intelligent people will go against biological urges of paranoia and in turn embrace atheism (which resembles more a series of assumptions more than anything), largely because he bases this upon an IQ difference of 103 to 97. Yet, it has been proven numerous times that IQ testing varies by as much as 15 points depending on a variety of factors. In this study the author makes extremely broad assumptions on 6 points?
Yet, despite this, it is interesting to note his findings concerning intelligence creating novel values which overcome biology. Essentially what he is arguing is that “humans are evolutionarily designed to be conservative, caring mostly about their family and friends, and being liberal, caring about an indefinite number of genetically unrelated strangers they never meet or interact with, is evolutionarily novel.” The author goes on to explain a variety of novel beliefs and behaviors which s/he identified in the studied population, but what struck me most was its correlation with the Biblical narrative.
Upon thinking about the Biblical Narrative I began to see many of what the author proclaims as “Liberal” views. Namely, the narrative is repeatedly calling the people of God to be a liberal community beyond race and creed. While tribalism was certainly present in ancient Israel, a necessary aspect of cultural constriction which I was thinking about last time, they were repeatedly called by God for something greater. God was not calling them to enclose within themselves, to care for only one another and their genetically related offspring. I mean they were to be a light to the world. The entire Promised Land was hinged upon them taking care of the widow and orphan! This sounds pretty “Liberal” to me based upon the authors definition.
As the narrative continues, Jesus pushes the community more. While his ministry was effectively for only the Jews, which some may claim to be a “conservative” movement. He was essentially rallying a community into which his Apostles could invite the world. While the functioning of the early church has repeatedly been idealized, there was certainly a “liberal” desire in their attempts to sell everything and provide for all who had need. They were impressed to care for those beyond their families and to love their enemies.
Further, the narrative as a whole testifies to the felt presence that biology is not the final determining factor. With the narrative expressing the feeling of a “broken humanness” it is not necessarily arguing for the platonic dualism of a sinful flesh and a heavenly purity. Instead, it appears to be arguing that there is something more; that there is some “novel existence” beyond biology. There was a felt presence even in the ancient Israelite community that our biological drives were not the complete story. Instead we were capable of something greater.
Jon, correct me if I am wrong in reading this authors argument, but it seems the Biblical narrative can be read in a correlational way, suggesting that there is much more room for dialogue than the author suggests.
1 comment:
As a matter of statistical fact, it may be true that liberals and atheists tend to have higher IQ's, but I don't really see anything useful coming out of this. Obviously, hitting someone on the head with "you're too dumb to understand", especially when the spread of IQ points is only like 5, is not a persuasive argument. I think the author of the study had an interesting hypothesis, and found some evidential support, but I personally wouldn't put much stock in this one way or the other.
As far as the biblical narrative goes, I would agree with you that in many ways, the old testament embodies a codified version of "evolutionary familiar" impulses, while the new testament advocates more of the "novel" (and liberal) concepts, like universal love and compassion, etc.
And as a final note, this study would also seem to indict highly intelligent people in unnaturally cruel and unusual acts (which would also be "evolutionarily novel"), like patricide / fratricide / suicide / genocide. It would be interesting if he opened up his study to look at these as well.
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