Speaker 1: This is episode eighty two of the Christian Research Journal
Speaker 1: Reads podcast Just So Science by Lewis Marcos. This article
Speaker 1: first appeared in the print edition of the Christian Research Journal,
Speaker 1: Volume forty five, number one, in twenty twenty two. The
Speaker 1: Christian Research Journal Reads Podcast presents audio versions of the
Speaker 1: Christian Research Journal articles. To read the full article as
Speaker 1: well as its documentation, go to equipp dot org. That's
Speaker 1: equip dot org.
Speaker 2: Just So Science. This article is by Lewis Marcos and
Speaker 2: is read by an automated voice. Eight years after he
Speaker 2: published his beloved Jungle Book eighteen ninety four, Rudyard Kipling
Speaker 2: wrote another book for children that continues to be read
Speaker 2: a century later, Just So Stories. In these inventive and
Speaker 2: memorable tales, Kipling explains to his readers how the elephant
Speaker 2: got his trunk, the leopard his spots, and the camel
Speaker 2: this hump. The stories, many of which are based on
Speaker 2: folk tales from India and Africa, are great fun. However,
Speaker 2: despite their great imaginative power, they have no basis in
Speaker 2: historical or scientific truth. Derwinian tall Tales. Bookstores today abound
Speaker 2: with would be latter day Kiplings, natural and social scientists
Speaker 2: who tell their own just so stories to explain why
Speaker 2: humans think and desire, behave, and interact the way they do,
Speaker 2: but with one major difference. Whereas Kipling knew his just
Speaker 2: so stories were not true, these writers, who ground their
Speaker 2: cause slash effect explanations in a Darwinian worldview, believe theirs
Speaker 2: are to make matters worse. They don't just think that
Speaker 2: natural selection can explain why our bodies function the way
Speaker 2: they do. They think their just so stories can also
Speaker 2: account for mysterious things unknown in the animal kingdom, things
Speaker 2: like love, virtue, and altruism, as well as our desire
Speaker 2: for beauty, transcendence, and purpose. When modern readers encounter such explanations,
Speaker 2: they tend to shake their heads in agreement, because they
Speaker 2: have been trained to believe that natural selection not only can,
Speaker 2: but must explain all the mysteries of human nature. Having
Speaker 2: your cake and eating it too. The naturalist, the one
Speaker 2: who thinks that all things can be explained and accounted
Speaker 2: for solely based on natural physical mechanical forces, is inconsistent.
Speaker 2: He asserts that nature is structured in a certain way
Speaker 2: naturalism and then tries to hold on to a view
Speaker 2: of reality that demands a supernatural origin for morality, freedom, reason,
Speaker 2: and meaning. In the eighteenth century, David Hume admitted that
Speaker 2: one cannot get an aught. A moral obligation out of
Speaker 2: an is a fact of nature, but that did not
Speaker 2: stop him from seeking to live a moral life and
Speaker 2: expecting the same of others. In the nineteenth century, T. H. Huxley,
Speaker 2: Darwin's Bulldog, reduced human life to physical causes and processes
Speaker 2: over which we have no control, but then rejected determinism,
Speaker 2: insisting that our will is free. In the twentieth century,
Speaker 2: Christian apologist C. S. Lewis taught that naturalism is self refuting,
Speaker 2: for if naturalism is true, then our reason is the
Speaker 2: result of random processes, and we therefore have no grounds
Speaker 2: for trusting our reason, including and especially when our reason
Speaker 2: tells us that naturalism is true. To back up his argument,
Speaker 2: Lewis quotes an evolutionary neo Darwinist named J. B. S. Haldane.
Speaker 2: If my mental processes are determined wholly by the motions
Speaker 2: of atoms in my brain, I have no reason to
Speaker 2: suppose that my beliefs are true, and hence I have
Speaker 2: no reason for supposing my brain to be composed of atoms.
Speaker 2: Needless to say Haldane did not abandon his naturalism to
Speaker 2: day in the twenty first century, Richard Dawkins constantly reminds
Speaker 2: his readers that our world has only the appearance of design,
Speaker 2: while continuing to act and live as if the world
Speaker 2: has the very design and meaning he denies it quantitative
Speaker 2: versus qualitative. The naturalist who would explain all human behavior
Speaker 2: based on Derwinian evolution refuses to acknowledge that the difference
Speaker 2: between the most developed ape and the most primitive man
Speaker 2: is not quantitative but qualitative. As G. K. Chesterton argued
Speaker 2: a century ago in the opening chapter of The Everlasting Man,
Speaker 2: the shift from ape to man is not an evolution
Speaker 2: but a revolution. The so called cavemen who painted reindeer
Speaker 2: on their cave walls were fully human. They were not
Speaker 2: primitive artists, but artists using primitive tools. They were as
Speaker 2: much artists as Michelangelo or Van god or Picasso. A monkey,
Speaker 2: in contrast, does not begin to begin to begin to
Speaker 2: create art. Art marks a leap. A revolution that allows
Speaker 2: for no incremental stages or chance mutations primitive verses advanced.
Speaker 2: The power of the evolutionary paradigm is so strong that
Speaker 2: it has convinced modern people that the flow of history
Speaker 2: is always progressive and evolutionary. In matter of fact, primitive
Speaker 2: tribes still exist in the world to day. While the
Speaker 2: oldest civilizations we know of Egypt and Babylon were highly advanced.
Speaker 2: The primitive and the urban have always existed side by side.
Speaker 2: Had I, when my son was born, switched him with
Speaker 2: a newborn boy from a stone age tribe in Papua
Speaker 2: New Guinea. My son would have grown up as a
Speaker 2: full primitive, while the other boy would have grown up
Speaker 2: as a full modern. More amazingly, when some one who
Speaker 2: grows up in a stone age tribe is afforded the
Speaker 2: chance to study in a civilized university, he quickly learns
Speaker 2: and adapts without the need for a score of generations
Speaker 2: to evolve his brain. Caveman and missing links, the so
Speaker 2: called cave man was as much a man as any
Speaker 2: stone age tribesman living to day. Apes and monkeys continue
Speaker 2: to be apes and monkeys. Perhaps there was a great
Speaker 2: primate that possessed a hominid shape, but it was a
Speaker 2: primate none the less. The qualitative leap between the unconscious
Speaker 2: hominid and the conscious cave man is not like that
Speaker 2: between two sides of a cavern, but between the Earth
Speaker 2: and the Andromeda galaxy. It is true that in the
Speaker 2: Problem of Pain, Lewis spins a myth of creation and fall,
Speaker 2: in which he suggests that God might have used evolutionary
Speaker 2: forces to shape our hominid form. But he makes it
Speaker 2: clear that that hominid was not human. It was only
Speaker 2: after God breathed the soul into that hominid. There is
Speaker 2: that qualitative leap Chesterton's Revolution that takes place outside of
Speaker 2: time and space, and in violation of both Darwinian gradualism
Speaker 2: and neo Darwinian mutation, that man became man and could
Speaker 2: make judgments of truth, beauty, and goodness, and could perceive
Speaker 2: time flowing past. The missing link is called the missing
Speaker 2: link because it is missing, it continues to be so
Speaker 2: naturally so selected heroes. Now that I have described the
Speaker 2: flawed and contradictory nature of Darwinian just so stories, I
Speaker 2: would like to offer an example of just such a
Speaker 2: story from a recent book that I have enjoyed greatly
Speaker 2: and from which I have gained much insight, Christopher Madougall's
Speaker 2: Natural Born Heroes. How a daring band of misfits mastered
Speaker 2: The Lost Secrets of Strength and Endurance Enough twenty fifteen.
Speaker 2: In choosing this book, I mean no disrespect to Medougal,
Speaker 2: nor do I mean to imply that his book is
Speaker 2: weak or flawed. His book is just one of thousands
Speaker 2: to day that take the exclusive explanatory power of Darwinian
Speaker 2: evolution as a given and expect their readers to do
Speaker 2: the same. A survey of books not selected. Rather than
Speaker 2: choose MacDougall's book, I could have taken up the works
Speaker 2: of Sam Harris or Daniel Dennett, but like their fellow
Speaker 2: New atheist Dawkins, they thankfully reject the racist and eugenicist
Speaker 2: implications of their Darwinian worldview. I could have considered the
Speaker 2: fine work of Jared Diamond, whom I respet beck and admire,
Speaker 2: but his works are so reductive that they border perilously
Speaker 2: close on being anti humanistic. I could have looked at
Speaker 2: the provocative and entertaining work of Oliver Sachs, but the
Speaker 2: stories he tells, far from proving Darwinism, prove that Christianity
Speaker 2: is correct to teach that we are not souls trapped
Speaker 2: in bodies, but in fleshed souls, and that therefore whatever
Speaker 2: happens to our bodies brains has a direct effect on
Speaker 2: our souls minds. I could even have selected the work
Speaker 2: of my personal hero, Jordan Peterson. But though he bases
Speaker 2: many of his bracingly true insights on Darwinian macroevolution, those
Speaker 2: insights only necessitate a microvolutionary belief that God equipped every
Speaker 2: species with adaptation strategies, and that he sometimes reuse those strategies.
Speaker 2: Why heroism makes no Darwinian sense, So woudougle it is?
Speaker 2: But let me say again what a wonderful book Natural
Speaker 2: Born Heroes is. If you are interested in the legacy
Speaker 2: of ancient Greece, the Greek theater of World War Two,
Speaker 2: the nature of heroism, or the newest breakthroughs in health, diet,
Speaker 2: and exercise, you will enjoy this book. If, like me,
Speaker 2: you are interested in all four, then it is a
Speaker 2: must read. At the core of the book are questions
Speaker 2: of perennial importance. What prompts people like the British and
Speaker 2: Cretin rebels, who risked all to literate Crete from the
Speaker 2: Nazis to perform self sacrificial acts of heroism, and how
Speaker 2: are they able to accomplish those acts physically? Though he
Speaker 2: goes on to suggest all manner of just so Darwinian
Speaker 2: stories to account for the heroic altruism of the Cretins.
Speaker 2: Medougal begins by confessing that natural selection alone cannot explain
Speaker 2: why people do such things. Even Charles Darwin found heroes bewildering.
Speaker 2: Darwin's great gift to science was simplifying all life to
Speaker 2: pure mathematics. Your one and only goal on Earth is multiplication.
Speaker 2: Everything you do, every instinct you have, is an evolutionary
Speaker 2: urge to make babies and behind as many copies of
Speaker 2: yourself as possible. From that perspective, heroism makes no sense.
Speaker 2: Why risk a grave for someone else if there's no
Speaker 2: guarantee of a biological payoff? Dying for your own kids,
Speaker 2: smart dying for arrivals, genetic suicide, evolved bodies. Maybe. In
Speaker 2: trying to account for this Darwinian conundrum, Madougle tells fascinating
Speaker 2: stories about how our bodies are capable of far more
Speaker 2: than we might think. The elastic fascia connective tissue that
Speaker 2: runs through our body is remarkably tough and resilient, and
Speaker 2: we can run off the fat stores in our body
Speaker 2: for a remarkably long time, our fight or flight instincts
Speaker 2: can be channeled, and our fascia retains a physical memory
Speaker 2: of what we once did and can do again. Could
Speaker 2: some of these physical capabilities have evolved in a group
Speaker 2: of hominate primates, perhaps, but as I explained above, those
Speaker 2: hominids were not human. Madougle does make convincing arguments that
Speaker 2: early hunter gatherers had these physical skills, But those hunter
Speaker 2: gatherers were as fully human as the caveman artists of Lasco,
Speaker 2: and in any case, they still exist today side by
Speaker 2: side with modern evolved humans. Evolved souls impossible. It is
Speaker 2: true that our bodies are equipped to perform heroic and
Speaker 2: altruistic deeds, and that our instincts often allow us to
Speaker 2: call on that equipment in situations of great stress and danger,
Speaker 2: but that does not explain why we choose consciously to
Speaker 2: perform altruistic deeds rather than run away, which our bodies
Speaker 2: are equally equipped to do. It is also true that
Speaker 2: our decision to choose the way of altruism is often
Speaker 2: instilled in us by myths and legends passed down by
Speaker 2: our ancestors. But those stories were passed down by human
Speaker 2: beings who were themselves conscious agents, and who made conscious
Speaker 2: choices that very often ran counter to the instinctual demands
Speaker 2: of their bodies. Perhaps a Darwinian scientist will someday come
Speaker 2: up with a way to account for the chemical composition
Speaker 2: of the DNA by means of natural selection. Even if
Speaker 2: he succeeded in doing so, however, he would still be
Speaker 2: unable to account for the non physical information that is
Speaker 2: front loaded on to those chemical strands, the real root
Speaker 2: of heroism. Near the close of his book, Medougal questions
Speaker 2: a nonagenarian survivor of the cret and Resistance as to
Speaker 2: why he and his fellow freedom fighters acted so altruistically.
Speaker 2: The answer he received strikes in with the power of
Speaker 2: a divine revelation, and he assures us that he will
Speaker 2: never forget that rare moment of illumination. But the answer
Speaker 2: that is revealed to him points not to the ironclad
Speaker 2: laws of natural selection, but to a uniquely human legacy
Speaker 2: of people, primitive or modern, hunter gatherer or urban who
Speaker 2: so transcended their biology and their animal instincts as to
Speaker 2: achieve an ethical spirit and a moral imagination qualitatively different
Speaker 2: from anything in the animal kingdom. When you live in
Speaker 2: a place like this, small by itself. You're brought up
Speaker 2: to give help, not wait for it. When your neighbor
Speaker 2: needs something, he needs you the person he knows, not
Speaker 2: the army, not the police. You, And if you're not there,
Speaker 2: someday you'll have to look him in the face and
Speaker 2: explain emphasis in original. Madougal, for all his great insight
Speaker 2: into the way the human body works, cannot reduce heroism
Speaker 2: to the Darwinian goal of multiplication. Nor can his just
Speaker 2: so stories account for why he and all of us
Speaker 2: are so powerfully drawn to the actions of heroes that
Speaker 2: we cannot stop writing and reading engaging books like natural
Speaker 2: Born Heroes.
Speaker 3: Thank you for listening to another episode from the Christian
Speaker 3: Research Journal Reads podcast, which provides audio articles of Christian
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