Evolutionary theory and the emergence of moral nature.

The views of morality presented by evolutionary psychology and Christian theology are generally considered mutually exclusive. Love is central to the Christian message, but the self-sacrifice of Christian love seems incompatible with an evolutionary paradigm. This incompatibility, however, stems not from irreconcilable differences, but from an overextension and misapplication of the methodology of evolutionary psychology; no acknowledgement of the transcendent is possible, and morality becomes mere functionality. Within human phylogeny there is an evident ascent of freedom, mind, and moral awareness. This freedom, however, leads to greater interpersonal dependence and vulnerability, which both makes possible and makes necessary moral behavior. The crucial significance of moral conviction and motivation receives its complement and completion within the natural order in the revelation of love through the sacrificial death of Christ. The earthly and the transcendent are unified, as humanity is called into commun ion with a loving God.

Therefore do not be anxious, saying "What shall we eat?" or "What shall we drink?" or "What shall we wear?" For the Gentiles seek all these things; and your heavenly father knows that you need them all. But seek first his kingdom and his righteousness, and all these things shall be yours as well.

Matthew 7:31-2

Throughout the whole of biblical tradition there is an unmistabkable affirmation of the fundamental goodness and deep significance of the created world. The earth and its processes are seen as the setting of a spiritual drama of cosmic proportions where the moral dynamics of human life are recognized as a mirror of a larger meaning. Central to the significance of this drama, and at the heart of the human meaning of morality, is the concept of love.

Life itself is lifted through its alignment with love, a relational existence of profound resonance with the very heart of God-self-giving, creative, at once both generous and generative. Indeed, from the first mention of man it is proclaimed that he is made "in the image of God" and the Gospel of John tells us, "God is love." Love is recognized at once as central to life, uniting the fullness and flourishing of earthly being with its transcendent and eternal significance. The kingdom of God is indeed the kingdom of love, and His righteousness is the right ordering of life, in alignment with the spirit of love. The meaning of morality is its role in the service of earthly life and alignment of that life with transcendent truths; it is at once circled and summed up by the concept of love. In the self-giving that is central to love, the individual locates the terms of completion in moving beyond self. Jesus, whose whole life may be seen as the manifestation of love, says plainly, "Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for his friends."

In contrast to the Christian understanding of the centrality of love in the moral meaning of life, emerging theories of the evolutionary origins of human psychology call into question the significance of the very category of morality and its relationship to transcendent truths. Building on the idea that evolution could preserve only that which works in the service of survival and reproduction, evolutionary psychology casts doubt on the possibility that the human mind is even capable of the clarity and conviction necessary for an authentic morality built on such an exalted idea as the genuine generosity and self-sacrifice of Christian love.

These distinct concepts of the source and significance of human life and its moral meaning have produced a conflict of culture between our religious traditions and our scientific worldview. Notwithstanding the apparent incompatibility of these approaches, there may be a way to reframe our understanding of the evolution of morality such that the central claims of both perspectives are at once preserved and lifted to a higher and more integrated level of description.

A CRITIQUE OF EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY

The concept of evolution was a subject of intellectual debate long before Charles Darwin. Kant himself, a century earlier, had suggested that the universe was a product of slow change over eons of time. Darwin's particular contribution to the theory was his convincing explanation of how evolution works. His idea, based on selective animal breeding, was that nature provides a 'natural selection' through which slight but advantageous differences are preferentially preserved. Although Darwin himself reflected deeply on the origins of the human capacity for moral awareness, it was not until the middle of the twentieth century that evolutionary theories of mind became the subject of serious study. These considerations, now termed evolutionary psychology, are based on the idea that just as evolution has shaped human anatomy and physiology, likewise, where possible, natural selection has shaped our mental processes and behavior. The justification for such an approach was supported by decades of ethological studies i n which highly complex innate behavioral responses were recognized as conferring adaptive advantage in animals.

Evolutionary psychology claims that a wide array of psychological mechanisms, ranging from perceptual categories to preferences in mate selection, have been preserved due to their adaptive advantages. These adaptations collectively form a central core of human nature that is transmitted through genetic heritage. Among these traits, the Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson includes "an aversion to incestuous behavior;" a "deep personal concern for status and recognition;" and a tendency towards social cohesion ("tribalism") (2000, p. R16). Whereas Darwin had originally put an emphasis on the individual organism and its adaptations in the service of survival, evolutionary psychology emphasizes the transmission of adaptive traits to successive generations. This subtle shift of concern moves the focus from the individual organism to the level of intergenerational transmission, from seeing the organism as an integrated whole to a collection of modular mechanisms. As Richard Wrangham writes "the ultimate explanation of an y individual's behavior considers only how the behavior tends to maximize genetic success: to pass that individual's genes into subsequent generations" (1996, p. 22).

This claim extends beyond the realm of behaviors that relate in an obvious way to survival and reproduction, to include the most subtle and complex manifestations of aesthetic preference, religious practices, and moral judgments. In the complex social and cultural circumstances of human life, the ability to sustain coherent and cooperative community may be of great benefit to the individual's survival and reproduction. If cooperation is favored by natural selection, then the mental structures that tend to promote cooperation will also be favored. The elements of human life, steeped in tradition, culture, and history, will organize around a set of beliefs and practices that enhance human survival and reproduction. Receiving, sustaining and transmitting these beliefs becomes essential to any society. Thus, Wilson asserts "the predisposition to religious belief is the most complex and powerful force in the human mind" (2000, p. R16).

In making this claim, however, Wilson is not arguing for the reality of the object of religious belief as some kind of transcendent truth, only the functional utility of the belief in benefiting the individual and in sustaining social unity. He explains, "Even though I've taken a little bit of flak from some of the extreme secular humanists for putting the matter this way, I say, 'May our high officials still lay their hands upon the Bible to take the oath."' (2000, p. R16). Wilson sees the primary utility (i.e., adaptive role or benefit) of religious beliefs as providing a sense of 'sacredness' on which principles of personal conviction and social cooperation can be firmly constructed. As such, they form the ultimate grounding for moral precepts that in reality are "principles of social contract hardened into rules and dictates" (Wilson, 1998, p. 250). This idea is expressed by Michael Ruse who writes, "It is important...that biology not simply put moral beliefs in place but also put into place a way of keep ing them up. What this means is, that even though morality may not be objective in the sense of referring to something 'out there' it is an important part of the experience of morality that we think it is" (in Matteo, 1999, p. 42).

Indeed, Wilson claims, morality has no other demonstrable ultimate function than to keep human genetic material intact. This idea, shared in principle by most evolutionary psychologists, is put somewhat more harshly by Robert Wright: "The closest thing to a generic Darwinian view of how moral codes arise is this: people tend to pass the sort of moral judgments that help move their genes into the next generation (or, at least, the kinds of judgments that would have furthered that cause in the environment of our evolution). And there is definitely no reason to assume that existing moral codes reflect some higher truth apprehended via divine inspiration or detached philosophical inquiry" (1994, p. 146).

The objection may be raised that throughout nature, and in human life as well, there are numerous examples of self-sacrifice for the good of others. Evolutionary psychology acknowledges this but discerns beneath the surface appearance of genuine altruism a deeper genetic self-interest. Here the principle of inclusive fitness' is proffered to explain altruism by an indirect benefit to our genetic heritage via our siblings, cousins, and other genetic relatives. An even less directly genetic but universally acknowledged component of our evolutionary psychology is 'reciprocal altruism.' With our remarkable capacity to form coalitions and carry an accurate accounting sheet of social debits and credits, we gain individually from a cooperation that is of benefit to all. One further category of altruism has been proposed, that of 'reputational altruism,' in which good deeds are deemed to not go unnoticed and therefore will redound to personal benefit through general social approval and privileged status. All of these explanations of self-sacrifice, however, undercut the moral meaning of the term altruism. As Robert Trivers comments, "Models that attempt to explain altruistic behavior in terms of natural selection are models designed to take the altruism out of altruism." (in Ridley, 1996, p. 132).

In considering the claims of evolutionary psychology it is immediately evident that they contradict the most fundamental beliefs of Christianity concerning personal, social, and spiritual reality. The very possibility of genuine altruism and a meaningful morality built on love evaporates when their sustaining source in transcendent truth is considered a mere functional fiction. These theories of evolutionary psychology, with their denigration of religious morality, echo the earlier perspectives of the molecular biologist Jacques Monod: "The ancient covenant is in pieces, man knows at last that he is alone in the universe's unfeeling immensity, out of which he emerged only by chance." (in McIntyre, 1999, p. 163).

For all the decisive drama of such a statement, however, from a scientific perspective it is a distortion of the evidence. But even the more moderate claims of evolutionary psychology concerning altruism, morality, and religious reality may themselves be an overextension of the evidence. What is asserted as scientifically supported is often a result of a misleading application of methodology. A closer examination of evolutionary psychology can illuminate where it missteps and perhaps open up an avenue for a more thoughtful application of its fundamental insight. Such a reconsideration might provide an approach more compatible with natural human experience and with the claims of Christian theology.

Viewed as a science, evolutionary psychology is an effort to explore the formation of the human mind using a limited set of assumptions drawn from evolutionary theory. Darwin's discovery, built on the idea of modification with descent, assumes a source of variations, heritable units to carry specific adaptations between generations, and a force of natural selection that leads to the preservation of advantageous traits. For basic biochemical differences, such as protein structure, it is easy to see how simple genetic mutations could serve as both the source of variations and the basis of heritability. Even at the level of biochemistry, however, there will be constraints in the range of possibilities, natural limitations to the spectrum of viable variations. Not every theoretically ideal adaptation will be achievable due to the chemical constraints of the molecules involved.

For complex behaviors this is an even more complicated matter. The link between biochemistry and biography is an enormous leap and very little is known about the chemistry and neuroscience of this connection. As the range of possible behaviors broadens, as it does dramatically in the human organism, this direct link becomes ever more tenuous. The source of variation, the nature of the actual hereditable units, and whether selective forces operate on the level of psychology all remain speculative. Without these, evolutionary psychology is not truly parallel to evolutionary biology, and, thus, its claims are not scientific truths, but provocative conjectures. Moreover, much of the evidence used to support the theoretical assertions of evolutionary psychology is drawn from inappropriate extrapolation of research on animal behavior to human circumstances. As Jerome Kagan rather drolly states, "there can be no mouse model for human pride, shame or guilt" (1998, p. 161). As such, claims of a highly selected and det erministic genetic basis of specific human behaviors must be carefully and critically evaluated.

Of much greater concern, however, are the overextensions of evolutionary psychology's rightful domain of legitimate proclamation. Evolutionary psychology is a methodology, not a metaphysics. Misapplied, it becomes an extreme form of philosophical naturalism. Categories of good and evil are seen as functional fictions generated for social cohesion, and human freedom is a useful illusion for legislating responsible behavior. There is no capacity for coherent comprehension of motivation, rather we are a cobbled together collection of conflicting impulses and inclinations. Anthony Matteo explains, "Along with our social instincts, selfish instincts also evolved as adaptive mechanisms in different contexts ... The clash between these evolved adaptive mechanisms is the biological root of the moral conflicts we experience" (1999, p. 14). The moral becomes a purely mediating force, not an integrated spiritual or cognitive imperative, but simply a way of balancing a base selfish nature with larger social goals. Morals become redefined as laws of utility. From this perspective there can be no absolute moral standards and no sense in which morals can be 'true.' Motivations are proclaimed as opaque to introspective or intellectual inquiry, and reason is recognized as a ruthless adaptive tool, not a rational calculator or moral guide. From the perspective of evolutionary goals, individual crimes, though socially unacceptable, are more understandable, as are broader social crimes including genocides. Rape is declared a reproductive strategy and infanticide a filter of fitness. All of life is seen as a dynamic of power and self-promotion, a competition without mercy or moral meaning.

Evolutionary psychologists often disclaim the amoral implications of their ideas; they call on us to rise above the process of our origins, though their theory allows little logic for either the freedom or the motivation to do so. The fundamental problem is a philosophical one. Evolution is a useful theoretical tool for understanding many dimensions of biology, but it is not the ultimate arbiter of issues of metaphysics, and it is not a religion (though some of its advocates haul all of reality up to its altar).

Evolutionary psychology provides some interesting insights, but its initial narrow set of assumptions derive not from scientific evidence, but represent philosophical and theological views. As generally applied, it assumes no design to nature, no direction or purpose, no intrinsic meaning to its process. But such assumptions preclude the very categories of values and virtues (at least as these terms are traditionally understood) and are corrosive to human self-understanding. The individual is subsumed into the larger process of genetic proliferation. The practical effect of this is to reduce all human behaviors to value-neutral adaptations (i.e., having no genuine reference to transcendent truths) and deny the spiritual significance of mind and moral culture. One might say it takes the 'psyche' out of psychology.

The problem with these perspectives is that their foundational argument is not so much a proof as it is a tautology. To argue that evolution will preserve only that which sustains life is to draw conclusions from an inevitable connection. Of course the genes must be preserved and life must be sustained; there can be nothing without these fundamental biological processes. (1) But that is not a proof that this is all that life is about or that our entire psychological nature is oriented towards these concerns. Of course life must be preserved but that does not tell us where it came from, why it arose, or what it might be for.

Once we see the limitations of the current assumptions of evolutionary psychology we can look beyond them to the positive contributions of its fundamental insights. Evolutionary psychology returns us to the rootedness of our biological being; it takes seriously the actual biological conditions of human life: its embeddedness within the ecology of nature, its evolved form and functions, and its embodied being. In so doing it holds great promise for increasing our understanding of human nature. Indeed no theory more certainly affirms that there is a human nature. What is needed is to release evolutionary psychology from its limiting assumptions and engage its explanatory power in exploring how freedom and the capacity for moral awareness are anchored in and arise from basic biology and yet beckon beyond to issues of transcendent truth.

THE EVOLUTION OF FREEDOM AND MORALITY

When we look back at the evolutionary process we are at once struck by both its continuity and creativity. At every level and layer the unfolding of the diversity of forms and functions reveals new and previously unseen dimensions of nature and so revises our understanding of the nature of nature. The very word for nature in Greek, physis (from which we get our words physics and physician) comes from the root, phuo, "to sprout," "to grow," to become;" and in Latin the root from which we get our word nature nasci means "to be born." Yet, amid this extraordinary profusion of forms and diversity of functions we can discern a trajectory of ascent toward qualities and capabilities that culminate in the emergence of personal existence: freedom, mind, and moral awareness.

Although evolutionary accounts often stress the contingency of development, it is more likely that the earliest phases of life were highly determined by specific conditions and constraints. Only certain combinations of chemicals with particular properties could form the structural and functional elements necessary for the continuity of life. (2) These few, highly constrained specific molecular elements in turn became the foundation with which all further complexity had to develop in coordinated and complementary integration. Looking back over nearly four billion years of evolution it is astonishing to realize that these early life forms set the platform for an absolutely extraordinary proliferation of possibilities and the emergence of an increasing flexibility and freedom within the phenomenon of life. (3)

At its most primary level, freedom within nature is foreshadowed as a widening range of possibilities, of choices for change. In most accounts of evolution the emphasis is placed on survival and continuity of the species. In its most extreme form, this argument is framed in terms of "selfish genes" that seek only their own preservation, all change to the organism being an accommodation to necessity. This idea is implied in the title of Matt Ridley's book The Red Queen (a Lewis Carroll character who stays in one place by running as fast as she can) in which he explains the variation produced by sexual reproduction as adjustments serving the overall stability and continuity of the species. In actual life, however, there is a dynamic balance between stability and the production of variation. At the borders of the environment (4) of any population will be conditions less hospitable into which specific variations may successfully survive and extend the range of the species. As beneficial mutations accumulate, a sp ecies itself may subdivide and generate a multitude of separate species. This drive in the direction of diversity creates an exploratory edge within a species that extends the realm of life into a greater range of environmental conditions.

Moreover, species do not only evolve for simple adaptation, but for flexibility of response; they evolve for evolvability, favoring adaptations that themselves provide the platform for further flexible evolution. Evolutionary theorist Daniel McShea explains that selection for evolvability increases the number of "modules" or "independent developmental units" (1998). This trend towards toward an increasing number of independent but interrelating units is apparent in the history of life: first as an increasing number of genes; then as distinct body segments, such as the head, thorax and tail; and then as dedicated neurologic systems. These units themselves are subject to the same evolutionary trends, including evolvability and complexity. As each becomes more complex, it develops the potential to produce new independent developmental units. Evolvabilty breeds complexity and "complexibility". Life does not remain static and constrained; there is a thrusting outward, a probing for possibilities for ever further p roliferation into new realms of opportunity. In the broadest view, it is not stable forms (neither 'selfish genes' nor discrete species) that characterize the nature of life, but exploration and extension, not mere multiplication but diversification widening the range and realm of ways of being in the world. (5)

The most basic level on which this capacity for "freedom" expresses itself in biology is at the level of mutation. The variations tossed up by the coding sequence of DNA create a diversity of potentially adaptive phenotypes that are essentially biological experiments. This strategy works very well in rapidly reproducing organisms. A single bacterium, for example, which has a limited ability to adjust to a changing environment, can produce tens of thousands of varied offspring within a few hours. This does not just insure stability and continuity, but successful response to changing conditions and capability for a more extended range of proliferation. Indeed, specific mechanisms exist to assure adaptability and evolvability. Certain bacterial species have several forms of DNA polymerase, the enzyme that replicates the generic information during cell division. Each of these forms of DNA polymerase has a different rate of accuracy of replication, assuring more or less production of diversity. Amazingly, stress t o the cell will induce expression of DNA polymerases that produce more mutations ("errors" of replication), and thus, species diversity. (6) This allows an adaptive radiation of new forms in response to circumstances of adversity.

While early life forms adapted through a multitude of variations produced by reproduction and mutation, more complex systems of adaptation soon evolved that allowed individual organisms to adjust to changing environmental conditions. At the most basic level this "freedom" began to emerge with an increasing range of vital powers of awareness and action. With the early emergence of brains more than 500 million years ago, more primary capacities of selective perception and locomotion in simple organisms were transcended by programs of integrated organismal response, innate reflex arcs of nerves and muscles triggered by external stimuli. These in turn allowed the extension of life into more varied and challenging environments. Whereas the oceans had provided a more or less stable chemical context and constant temperature, the ascent to dry land required more complex regulation of water and temperature but opened a vast new range of opportunities for the extension of life. (7) This in turn led to further refinemen t of integrated motor and endocrine programs elicited by complex situations and circumstances-the basis of the emotions. Emotions had their evolutionary origins in the physiological processes of body regulation, the postural and visceral changes that place the organism in a condition of readiness of response. (For example, anger involves increased muscle tension and protective posture.) They are a repertory of built-in survival strategies, evolutionarily selected through eons of organismal experience.

The subjective feelings of emotions are evolution's later additions in the service of the inner life of awareness and purposeful desire. Within a rising scale of feeling and self-awareness, sensory perception and action come to be motivated and coordinated into more complex and sustained patterns of response by an inwardly felt sense of appetite or desire. The philosopher of biology, Hans Jonas, considers this the essence of animal life: "[The animal] emancipates itself from its immersion in blind organic function and takes over an office of its own: its functions are the emotions. Animal being is thus essentially passionate being." (1966, p. 106). The unconscious process of plant life becomes the immediate awareness and response of animal life.

These legacies of our animal ancestors are preserved in human beings while transcended by voluntary intentional actions guided by associative memory, analytical reason, and conscious aspiration. This completes a trajectory of freedom within the phenomenon of life. The flexibility of variations in form and function afforded by genetic mutation has been transcended by the freedom of action afforded by individual organismal intention. What began in the earliest life forms as chance mutation played out against the constraints of chemical properties has, through the course of evolution, progressed to adaptive indeterminacy and integrated purposeful being.

This entire evolutionary process of creative extension stretching forth to ever increasing degrees of freedom reflects the interplay of the possibilities and potencies within living matter manifest amid the constraints and opportunities of the natural world. In both physical and mental adaptation, the evolutionary process reflects an ever more complex complementarity between organisms and the challenges of the environment; freedom emerges in response to the opportunities within the order of nature. Although chance may generate the multitude of mutations and recombinations tossed up to the filter of natural selection, their preservation is not random or arbitrary. In the words of Leon Kass,

Ought we to be surprised, should we regard it as an accident, that, in a visible, odorous, and sounding world the powers of sight, or smell, or hearing once they appeared should have been preserved, magnified, perfected? Likewise with intellect. However accidentally intellect first appeared, is it surprising that it should have been preserved in a world of cause and effect, past and future, means and ends, all of which can be brought into consciousness and used to advantage in a being endowed with memory, a sense of time, self-awareness, and the ability to order means to ends in securing the future? (1985, p. 273)

This increasing freedom and capability within the individual organism, mediated and made possible by the order of nature, is itself extended by the extraordinary adaptive benefit of the creative imagination. Here mutations of matter are transcended by permutations of mind, the self-generated production of possibilities independent of the constraints of immediate reality. The symbolic mind, which is capable of detaching image from object and thereby recombining images in new ways, can envision scenarios and sequences (detached from time and space) to anticipate their implications and outcomes. The neuroscientist Antonio Damasio suggests that human consciousness has evolved to serve as a kind of filter to evaluate the alternatives tossed up by the imagination. This is yet another powerful form of freedom in which the organism can imagine possibilities and try them out (in a kind of dress rehearsal) without the expense of time and risk of resources in the process.

The capacity for imagination, however, goes far beyond adaptive anticipation. Imagination is not mere memory or imitation, but envisioned creation. Forming mental images, maintaining them in the mind and achieving their realization, signifies intention, planning, and implementation of ideals. The first recorded moment of true creativity occurred in our prehuman ancestors 1.5 million years ago: there, in the fossil record, the simple chipped tools found in layers representing a million years of hominid history are suddenly transcended by an artifact that bespeaks a cognitive leap, the production of the hand axe. "These symmetrical implements, shaped from large stone cores, were the first to conform to a 'mental template' that existed in the toolmaker's mind" (Tattersall, 2000, p. 61) This is perhaps the first intentional innovation: the bringing into being of an imagined ideal. What began as the visualization of an axe within a stone would become, in another million and a half years, the capacity to generate t he images and ideals of a complex technological and moral culture.

This imagining and realizing of ideals is the fullest manifestation of human freedom. Whereas most creatures exist in an unbroken immediacy of life, humans have the freedom to draw the past into the present from learning stored as memory and the freedom to draw the future into the present though the creative imagination. The immediacy of animal existence becomes the mediacy of human consciousness. Together with the ceaseless drive to organize the unexplained ('the cognitive imperative'), the capacities to calculate, extrapolate, and recombine are used to reconfigure that which is into that which could be.

While most creatures are pushed by biological and ecological circumstances, we are pulled into the future by our dreams and images of fullest flourishing. Human beings are best described not by the equations of physics, but by the "sprouting" of physis. From the human capacity for imagination and the drive to pursue the possible comes something unprecedented in the history of nature: the freedom of coherent aspiration, of a moral ideal. The human assent to a coherent moral ideal is the fullest extension, the culmination of the most fundamental force in living nature. As Leon Kass writes, "Desire, not DNA, is the deepest principle of life." (1994, p. 48).

The story of life began within the constraints of chemistry and has ascended to the open possibility of an imagined ideal. Whereas the earliest life forms adapted by mutation and reproduction, the proliferation of a multitude of new forms, human beings are the culmination of an evolutionary trend with exactly the opposite strategy of survival. The production of variation is transcended by flexible internal adaptation, a multitude of short-lived organisms gives way to a distinct and defined "self," a long-lived, highly complex, and integrated individual being that adapts not by intergeneration al genetic mutation but by a built-in freedom and flexibility of response. We are made not for a particular niche, but for unpredicted possibility, for comprehension and control, for flexibility and freedom in thought and action.

The freedom to produce an ideal is complemented by the necessity to do so. Without guidance, freedom is randomness: "unless some options are more significant than others, the very idea of self-choosing falls into triviality and hence incoherence." (Taylor, 1991, p. 37). Freedom must be in the service of life or it would not have been preserved within the evolutionary process of natural selection. From the perspective of biology, moral awareness is an adaptation to govern and control choice in conditions too diverse or complex for genetically based fixed action responses. The very point of morality is that it cannot be directly encoded in the genes. It is tied to freedom and flexibility, to our individual agency living into and acting on our world, ensuring the full flourishing of life.

Freedom is an agent in preserving and extending functioning in new ways, but depends on the foundation of the functioning of our minds and bodies. Because this freedom is built on a fragile complexity of organized matter, it is at once an independence from determinism and a dependence on physical structure. Flexibility has been purchased with specificity, complexity, and vulnerability. As Jonas writes, "Life is just that mode of material existence in which being has exposed itself to dependence (of which metabolism itself is the prime form) in exchange for a freedom closed to the independence of stable matter" (1966, p. 104). Our dependence on metabolic function both needs and allows our freedom of movement and action: "Thus animal metabolism makes mediate action possible; but it also makes it necessary. The animal, feeding on existing life, continually destroys its mortal supply and has to seek elsewhere for more" (Jonas, 1966, p. 105). This trend of intertwined increases in dependence and freedom reached it s fullest expression in the human; as our dependence deepens, our freedom extends.

The central freedom of human being, that of individual intention, exists within the context of our highly refined neurological structuring. The full realization of the potential within the nervous system, however, requires an extended developmental period. The infant, when born, is still at an early stage of neurological maturation. Indeed, the brain does not complete myelineation until adolescence. This long developmental latency makes humans necessarily needful and vulnerable. Yet, this dependence also allows the freedom of flexible neurological development. By allowing our brains to form in the world and not in the womb, we become more attuned and adaptable to the world itself.

This flexible adaptation, however, incurs another dependence. Human neurological development requires not merely time, but social interaction. Humans raised outside the context of a dependent sociality rarely survive, and when they do, their freedom and consciousness have been compromised. Feral children, raised by animals, are primordial, prelinguistic, and premoral. Even children that receive appropriate nutrition, but not love or community concern (e.g., the children of the Romanian creche), cannot fully flourish; the deprivation of community stunts development and blunts intelligence. As the evolutionary theorist Jeff Schloss points out, "Parental care, for example ... is sufficiently internalized in mammalian females that, where it cannot be adequately discharged, extreme stress and death may result." (2000, p. 179). Human existence, then, is necessarily a social existence. (8) The full manifestation of freedom, mind, and moral awareness requires sociality. As Charles Taylor writes, "The genesis of the h uman mind is ... not 'monological', not something each accomplished on his or her own, but dialogical." 1991, p. 33).

This dependence of freedom on sociality does not simply constrain freedom, but channels it into a higher form of freedom: relational being. The relationality of human life creates both the possibility of and the need for the synergistic realities of language, culture, and complex cooperation. Indeed, only through sociality and cultural communion can the images to guide flourishing be created and maintained. Both our consciousness and our conscience are profoundly oriented towards other people. Taylor writes, "Reasoning in moral matters is always reasoning with someone" (1991, p. 31) The very root of our word conscience in Latin means "joint or mutual knowledge." "Consciousness" has the same root; its current meaning was originally included in the term conscience, meaning "consciousness of moral sense." Moral thinking, indeed, is at the central core of the cognitive convergence we call consciousness.

The development of consciousness and the moral community it makes possible are built on the most fundamental features of our unique form of human embodiment.

Our particular evolved human form with the physical and mental categories that we share, provides a common "language" of mental categories, emotional responses and shared needs. Lakoff and Johnson state, "The mind is not merely embodied, but embodied in such a way that our conceptual systems draw largely upon the commonalities of our bodies and the environment we live in." (1999, p. 6). These common characteristics are the basis for intelligible communication, mediated by the crucial process of empathy, which enables genuine social community; In such community, an individual develops a sense of self as well as an awareness of the interpersonal nature of others.

Simply defined, empathy is the ability to identify with and understand the situations, motives, and feelings of another. In this sense it is a shared meaning that is much more general than the notion of mere "sympathy." It is a form of intersubjectivity in which the observer actually participates in the feelings of the other. Neurologically, the process of empathy seems to works as follows. An emotional state such as anger generates in an individual visible manifestations of facial expression. Observing such facial expressions subtly activates in the observer the same muscular movements and nervous system responses which together constitute the physical grounding of an inwardly felt subjective state that would be represented by such a facial expression. We experience this for example when we see someone yawn or grimace in pain. Such physical response in the observer translates into the corresponding emotional states; thus, establishing an empathically shared psycho-physiological state between the observer and the one being observed.

This empathic intersubjectivity provides the patterning for personal identity and the platform for cultural awareness. From earliest infancy; there is an interactive engagement between mother and child that sustains a shared conversation of reciprocating rhythm, and unifying emotional resonance. The long period of childhood dependency assures that social stimulation plays a formative role in the maturation of the mind. This in turn builds the ties of attachment and the nonverbal foundations upon which language will later be built. This primary grounding of communication and trust based on shared biology, bridged by empathy; and built by personal interaction, provides the foundation for language, moral awareness, and community of culture.

With language we move beyond the imperatives of the present to the creative constructions of cultural meanings and values. We weave an interpretive story; rich with ideals and aspirations, a narrative by which we navigate the world. In this frame the social significance of self is placed within a pattern of moral meanings and transcendent truths. Anthropologists have noted a common theme throughout cultures that places human freedom and moral courage as a central significance within cosmological narratives. In every culture, rites or rituals that relate to self-mastery and heroic action are given special importance and honor. Here the basic needs of biological existence, social community, and human freedom converge in a struggle of moral meaning.

Every evolutionary psychologist agrees that the human capacity for social cooperation has provided for the success of our species. But this cooperation, of necessity, at times requires self-denial and self-sacrifice. This is evident wherever such sacrifice is absent, as in circumstances of conflict without conciliation, bitterness without forgiveness and misfortune without mercy. Here the truth of Matthew 7:3132 is most clearly evident, the deepest benefits of human cooperation hinge on an issue of faith, that of believing in and seeking love as a higher value. It is indeed in seeking first the kingdom of God that all else is granted unto us.

This raises the fundamental question of the foundation for faith: what is the source for the conviction and the motivation to believe in and act on love as the most primary reality? The freedom and dependency of empathic being allow the moral, but they also open avenues for exploitation and destruction. While genuine acts of self-sacrifice and altruistic concern are made possible, little prevents the power of prestige from being preferentially sought. From a biological perspective, prestige is shorthand for social status, and implies an unimpeded extension of self-will. Its psychological manifestation as pride preempts the positive possibilities of empathy.

Torn between the pull of pride, the private lures and longings of self-will, and the aspirations of the communal ideal, the fundamental question arises, "In whose image are we made?" Pascal had recognized the full significance of this question and had warned that those who sought God apart from Christ, who went no further than nature, would fall into atheism. The natural world, with its strife and struggle, poses a question that it cannot answer: How can there be both suffering and love? Yet with this question, the deepest meaning of the material world is open to understanding. All of creation, and its evolutionary ascent to mind and moral awareness, may be recognized as a kind of "living language" in a drama of the deepest spiritual significance. The entire cosmic order of time and space and material being may be seen as an arena for the revelation of Love, for the creation of a creature capable of ascending to an appreciation of its Creator; but more profoundly, for the reaching down, the compassionate cond escension of Love Himself;

There within the human form with its capacity for empathy, for genuine communication, moral truth was revealed in matter; the Image of God was borne within a body. In the face of Jesus was made evident the face of Love, and most specifically in his suffering on the cross. Those who looked upon him felt his pain, yet recognized his righteousness and knew the injustice of his plight. In this the transcendent was revealed in and through the immanent; nature and God were joined and the cosmos was restored in its intelligibility. The fullness of Love was revealed in human form.

In that moment of human history, all of creation was lifted to another level of meaning. All of the evolutionary struggle, the seeming futility of suffering and sacrifice and death itself was raised to the possibility of a participation in a greater meaning. Christian faith is a faith in Love, an affirmation of the overarching goodness of life. It is here that, while decisively denying the pessimism, cynicism, and amoral implications of evolutionary psychology, Christianity may at once affirm the reality and positive significance of the evolutionary process. In the emergence of moral nature, humanity is called into communion with the very life of God, the life of Love.

AUTHORS

HURLBUT, WILLIAM. Address Program in Human Biology, Bldg. 80, Inner Quad, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. Tit1e Professor of Human Biology. Degree: MD. Specialization. Convergence of biotechnology, medicine, ethics.

KALANITHI, PAUL. Address Program in Human Biology, Bldg. 80, Inner Quad, Stanford University, Stanford, CA 94305. Title Researcher

Degrees: MA, English, Stanford University. Specia1izations: Reconciling biological understanding of human person with life as experienced.

(1.) One is reminded of God's first commandment "Be fruitful and multiply" and Christianity's insistence on an inseparable relationship between love and sexuality. Life is not about survival and reproduction, survival and reproduction are about life--i.e., the means for life are not the meaning of life.

(2.) As we venture forth into space in our search for other life forms we are gaining a greater appreciation for the highly particular chemicals and conditions that are essential for the emergence of life. Earlier speculations of silicon based life or macromolecules of inheritance not built of nucleotides have been quieted by more thoughtful recognition of the unique properties of the fundamental components of life on earth.

(3.) Current estimates for the number of species on earth are in the range of 10 million to 100 million. Based on the fossil record it is thought that living species account for less than one percent of all the species that have ever lived.

(4.) 'Environment' may be understood more broadly to include the social and behavioral environment of a species.

(5). This process allows not just the production of greater diversity within a species and greater numbers of species, but an ever greater ecology of coordinated life forms (in mutuality of parasitic and symbiotic balance) which in turn provides the platform for further diversification.

(6.) One doesn't have to consider too long to imagine what the "selfish genes" think of these change provoking enzymes. Genes here seem to be serving life, not vice versa.

(7.) Creating a stable interior temperature essential for highly controlled metabolic processes was already prefigured in the governance of chemical concentrations in the cell's interior. An essential early development in the history of life was the formation of a semipermeable membrane surrounding the cell that allowed stability of internal concentrations of chemicals and pH. Further developments allowed compartments within the cell for control of cell processes and highly specific enzymatic control over chemical reactions within the cell.

(8.) Even the basics of birth demand human cooperation. The large size of the human brain and changes in the pelvie bone structure associated with upright posture result in a painful, difficult and dangerous childbirth. Even today in certain pretechnological societies, mothers die in twenty percent of births. According to anthropologist Karen Rosenberg, chimps hide at the time of birth; humans seek assistance." The bringing of a human life into the world becomes an inherently moral process. (in Fischman, 1994 p. 1062)

REFERENCES

Coyne, J, (2000). Of vice and men. The New Republic. 222(14), 27 - 33

Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes' error. New York: Grosset/Putnam.

Damon, W (1999). The moral development of children. Scientific American. 281(2), 72 - 78.

Fisebman, J. (1994). Putting a new spin on the birth of human birth. Science. 264, 1062-1063

Jonas, H. (1966). The phenomenon of life. New York: Harper & Row.

Kagan, J. (1998). Three seductive ideas. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.

Kass, L (1994). The hungry soul. New York: Macmillan.

Kass, L (1985). Towards a more natural science. New York: The Free Press.

Lakoff, G., & Johnson, M. (1999). Philosophy in the flesh. New York: Basic.

MacIntyre, J. (1999). Evolution's fatal flaw. Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. 51(3), 162-164

Matteo, A. (1999). The light of reason: Evolutionary psychology and ethics. Science and Spirit. 10(2), 14-15,42

McShea, D. (1998). Possible largest scale trends in organism evolution: Eight live hypotheses. Annual Review of Ecological Systems. 29, 293-318.

Richards, R. (1987). Darwin and the emergence of evolutionary theories of mind and behavior. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Ridley, M. (1996). The origins of virtue. New York: Viking.

Schloss, J. (2000). Wisdom traditions as mechanisms for organismal integration: Evolutionary perspectives on homcostatic laws of life. In W. Brown, (ed.), The science of wisdom and the laws of life. Templeton Foundation Press, 153-183.

Tattersall, I. (1998). Becoming human. New York: Harcourt Brace & Company.

Tattersall, I. (2000). Once we were nor alone. Scientific American. 282(1), 56-62.

Taylor, C. (1991). The ethics of authenticity. Cambridge: Harward University Press.

Wilson, E.O. (1998). Consilience. New York: Alfred A. Knopf.

Wilson, E.O. (2000,January I). Talking about tomorrow: Edward O. Wilson [Interview]. Wall Street Journal. R16, R18.

Wrangham, R. & Peterson, D. (1996), Demonic males. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Wright, R. (1994). The moral animal. New York: Random House.