A Call For Scientific "Devolution

“How many are your works, O Lord! In wisdom you made them all.” Psalms 104:24 (NIV)

“In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” Ephesians 2:2 (NASB)

The last few weeks I have been ravenously devouring the book, American Mania: When More is Not Enough written by evolutionary neuroscientist Peter C. Whybrow. An expose on the science behind greed, gluttony and materialism, Whybrow describes how mankind’s biology has evolved over the last hundred thousand years or so, specifically focusing on the evolution of man’s brain. In the book, Whybrow details the differences between man’s “ancient” brain regions, necessary for function in the far more agrarian, simplistic and communal culture of our ancestors, and our newly “evolved” neural regions developed to cope with our more modernized lifestyles. Through this ancient/evolved understanding, Whybrow unearths some rather fascinating “paradoxes” of the human animal. Ironically, man’s “ancient” biological nature appears not only to conflict with its current evolutionary physiologic state but the modern societal breakdowns of obesity, suicide, depression, addiction, etc. may be due to the discovery that our “ancient” residual biology and psychology is not syncing well to our now “evolved” development. Below are a few of Whybrow’s “paradoxical” comments:

“It is a paradox of progress that during affluent times the drive for material success – rooted in the ancient instincts of survival – can make us sick.” P71

“And here lies the nightmarish paradox of the American dream: in our striving for more, we are discovering a mismatch between the wealth of goods and the technology-rich environment that we have created, and the biological limits of who we are as evolved creatures on this planet.” P106

A recent news article on the CBS Nightly News also alleged that obesity may, in part, be the result of our evolving genetics. But the article went a “paradoxical” step further, hypothesizing that some of the most obese are simply blessed with an crucial “ancient” genetic trait much of mankind has evolved beyond: the physiologic predisposition to store vast amounts of food energy and fat in the body. In times of plenty, this ancient genetic trait went relatively unnoticed, counterbalanced by the calorie burning, metabolic-accelerating raw physical labor of our ancient ancestors. So this genetically-produced trait would have arisen predominantly out of environmental/cultural necessity, with nature and man acting in harmonious function in times of need. Those blessed with this genetic trait were the most likely survivors in food-scarce times of famine, blizzard and the like.

But spurred forward through passivity-producing technologies, physical education cutbacks, 8.1 hours of daily television viewing, fast and processed foods, and other supposedly disparate factors, Americans now live in a semi-sedentary culture. And once again, these “ancient” genetic traits appear to be somewhat “paradoxically” responsible for a portion of America’s staggering overweight and obese statistics. The scientists interviewed fabricated this “paradox” in rats. After changing certain aspects of the rodents’ brain’s functionality they found the altered rats grew fatter and more sedentary. The article spoke of this ancient/evolved phenomenon not as a theory but as a standard and objective fact.

The immediate and shallow surface response of the Christian community is to decry these doctors, scientists and authors for speaking so matter of fact about evolution and not at least sub-noting it as “a theory.” Creationists we might even go so far as to wail: “how far has America gone from its Creator to now promote evolution as its sole source of scientific reality?” But there is something much deeper to uncover through “paradoxical” discoveries such as these. It is not a question of the validity of the scientific findings. When it comes to the human body, most of the scientific, medical and psychological findings about our intricate inner-workings are predominantly sound and critically important. Instead, it is how those findings are concluded and applied through worldviews.

FIRST, THE CONCLUSION

Evolutionists filter scientific discoveries through the following grid: mankind and all physical existence are the byproduct of chance but somehow calculatedly positive evolution. Biologist, author and outspoken Atheist Richard Dawkins asserts that evolution is a highly “non-random process.” So mankind’s immediate existence is a linear part of that “non-random” process – and these “paradoxical” scientific biological and neurological discoveries become pathways into understanding how our “ancient” human ancestors lived, and what we have evolved from. Through this grid, the chasm between ancient and evolved and all of its now semi-scientifically explained disorders (such as addiction, depression, obesity, etc.) must be, by default, ironic hiccups in our gradual evolutionary journey from lower to higher.

But if we filter these scientific and objective findings through the Biblical Worldview, our conclusions are far more potent and pragmatic. We can start by declaring four key foundational (read dogmatic) tenets of this Worldview:

Tenet 1. Existence and mankind have been purposefully created by God, The Creator. Apart from all other existence, mankind is exclusively created in the very image of its Creator.

Tenet 2. There is an enemy of that Creator (Satan) wholly bent of the destruction of God’s creation or image (mankind).

Tenet 3. In the beginning that creation was perfect, but at the fall of mankind, sin and an unintended form of physical and physiologic entropy entered the created order releasing a Post-Fall state of existence continuing from that moment forward.

Tenet 4. The enemy of mankind is forced to propagate his “Sin and Death” destruction of mankind through mankind’s historical technological, ideological and existential progression.

When these tenets are applied exclusively inside of the theological text, they appear to have the initial crafting of a well laid-out fantasy novel. That is, at least, what the non-theistic brigade would like the world to believe. The standard, non-theistic mantra is “keep subjective religion out of the objective world of science.” But when these supposedly “fantasy” tenets are applied directly into existence itself, their tangible existential reality is unveiled…

Biblical Worldview Conclusion:
God is the Creator of mankind (tenet 1); and through advancements in science, medicine and technology we are perpetually uncovering and discovering greater depths of mankind’s POST-FALL genetic and physiologic nature (tenet 3). As we uncover new facets of God’s human creation we can use these discoveries to interpret with greater degrees of clarity how God intended man, His image, to operate and function. What the evolutionist claims as “ancient” is often that which God “intended.” We can check the validity of these “intended” discoveries through the law structure of the Creator, further unlocking why He has said what He said. For a quick example, God told His nation to leave the edges of their fields untouched so that this percentage of a landowner’s harvest would be left specifically for the traveler, orphan and widow. On the surface this appears to be a moral declaration, strictly an offer of goodwill. But as science, specifically internal medicine, has uncovered the staggering physical ailments specifically linked to Greed, among which are cancer and heart attacks – we begin to uncover a God far more concerned with all of humanity that we once realized. By giving instead of hoarding, greed and all its attached ailments were staved. Note what God assured His people would occur if they followed His law structure to the letter: “you will have none of the diseases you had in Egypt.”

But objective scientific discovery launches us far deeper into the proving the Biblical Worldview. With the exposition of each new supposed ancient/evolved “paradox,” such as those described in the last pages above, science is actually revealing that our current state of existential reality directly conflicts with our own biologic and microbiologic POST-FALL physiology. It is not merely that over sixty percent of Americans happened to be overweight at this historical moment, but that America has developed and sanctioned societal, physical and technological standards no longer fully compatible with our intended post-fall physiology. When we distanced ourselves from our Creator, and more specifically His post-fall law structure, we traveled outside of our intended and protected order of existence, not just theologically but physiologically and holistically. Such would be the reference found in Psalms 104:24 at the beginning of this article: “… In wisdom Thou hast made them (His Works) all.” (italics mine). But using the verse in Ephesians as a hypothetical starting point, we can take these ancient/evolved “paradoxes” a massively strategic step further:

“In which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air, of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience.” Ephesians 2:2 (NASB)

Combining Biblical Worldview tenets two and four uncovers that there exists an ultimate enemy of mankind (Satan, or the adversary) working covertly through unsaved and rebellious humanity (the sons of disobedience). Combining those two tenets with science’s evolutionary “paradoxes” we can postulate that our current state of existence – ideologically, technologically, etc. – has been strategically and deliberately crafted to thrust mankind against its intended psychological nature to intentionally produce breakdowns such as obesity, depression, addiction, disease and other ailments that harm and destroy mankind. For example, the evolutionary grid filters the scientific discovery that each human carries genetic predisposition for certain sinful behaviors and concludes, “that’s just part of being evolutionarily human.” But the through the Biblical Worldview lens we discover that: “our dangerously naive society has been coerced into developing acceptable pathways for our POST-FALL physiology to become furthered and furthered ensnared by its own genetic/physical predispositions!” While one individual may be genetically predisposed to gambling and another alcoholism, as long as both gene-motivated behaviors are provided with readily acceptable outlets, the purposed result of addiction can overtake them both. The Biblical Worldview combined with objective science, unveils that slogans such “Drink, Play (lottery), Gamble, Watch Porn, etc. RESPONSIBLY” are more than just fallacies – they are deliberately dangerous foolishness.

“Let no one say… ‘I am being tempted by God’… but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.” (James 1:13-14, NASB, ellipses and underline mine)

It hasn’t been difficult to do. As we have moved away from God, we have drawn closer and closer to physiologic Pleasure. The Enemy of mankind, is capitalizing on our objective physiological and psychological natures by developing and sanctioning systems and actions that may initially please and enamor, but then ultimately and dangerously conflict with our own physiology.

Proverbs 1:18 states: “But they lie in wait for their own blood; They ambush their own lives.” (NASB, underline mine)

But don’t just take the Bible’s word for it:

The percentage of Americans now suffering from anxiety disorders has risen from around 18 percent to somewhere in the neighborhood of thirty one – in a total of five short years. The fastest growing market for anti-depressants is: preschoolers. The physiologic “high” of pornography has now been associated neurologically with the same effects as cocaine usage, and the porn addiction rate is escalating daily. The condition HPV uncovered that free and consensual sex can be physiologically linked to cancer and infertility. Before the sexual revolution of the sixties there were only five documented Venereal Diseases; that number has now risen to around forty (renamed “Sexually Transmitted Diseases” in the process). Obesity now racks over two-thirds of the U.S. population, leaving millions suffering from its intended result of Heart Disease and Diabetes.

Have the ancient/evolved “paradoxes” increased… or has the enemy’s strategy?

The scientific revolution started with a “big bang:” Newton asserted that an unattached God created a clockwork universe left to spin on its own. But through the scientific and technological advancements of last three centuries filtered through the Biblical Worldview we are instead discovering that it is the enemy who attempts to hold the clock. Winding it tighter and tighter through our ideological and technical “evolution” in hopes that the stress build-up fractures and implodes on its internal human components. And these strategic discoveries are repeatedly being uncovered through the very community bent on removing God from science! Evolutionists are constantly and consistently proving God; His intended nature for mankind and the enemy’s nearly-uninterrupted perpetuating strategies against humanity, and we can’t see the correlations and the life-altering changes we must make because we discredit their findings and their character since they aren’t quoting our book chapter and verse.

But our pseudo-religious, separatist disdain and accompanied silence has led to a far more diabolical and perpetual stratagem:

… THEN, THE APPLICATION

Let’s go back to the evolutionary grid once again. By the very nature of its namesake, evolution is a positive chain of linear events. A “highly non-random” process moving from “chaos to order.” Quoting the highest order of New Atheist, Richard Dawkins, once again: Darwinian Natural Selection claims that life “increases slowly in complexity through natural degrees.” So these evolutionary “paradoxes,” appearing to be linearly negative, become situations to remedy. Once again, science is often the savior of these paradoxes: For example, anti-depressants capable of producing the neurotransmitters seratonin and dopamine, create false physiological responses in the neurochemistry of its users. It is important to understand what was just said: These drugs literally trick the brain into feeling it has a false sense of hope and satisfaction where there is none. Stomach stapling physically and dangerously alters the internal anatomy of the overweight individual wishing to lose the visible physical after affects of living in a semi-sedentary, fat-propagating culture. New drugs that stave HPV attempt to alter the natural physical/chemical internal environment of a woman so that she can continue to engage in sexual activity without the same amount of risk. Seriously untested forms of plastic and laser surgery cut and carve out areas of the human anatomy that don’t fit the computer-enhanced standards of men and women on America’s magazine covers. Women are even removing internal ribs to look like the world’s most emaciated supermodels.

In one of the most Anti-Kingdom books ever put to print, “The Aquarian Conspiracy,” author Marilyn Fergusson avows: “Real revolutionary activity (Without Marx or Jesus, Jean-Francios Revel), consists of transforming reality, that is in making reality conform more closely to one’s ideal.” But these champions of secular humanism and scientific monism failed to understand what “reality” they are unwittingly transforming. In an effort to conform reality more closely to their intended secularized Utopian ideal, we are now having to chemically and physically alter humanity itself to function and cope inside our new heralded secular societal state!

It was the atheistic evolutionists that once claimed Christians were maliciously attempting to re-craft society to fit their dogmatic religious ideologies. Instead, we are now discovering that evolutionary science is recasting physiologic humanity to fit its faulty presuppositions!

Blinded by a pro-pleasure, anti-fundamental, pseudo-scientific agenda, evolutionists are not looking at their scientific discoveries in terms of how they must change the evolving society, but in how to change the un-evolved human animal. The problem lies not in the conclusions in the science labs and centers, but when and how these conclusions are applied into the fabric of reality. It is not that we are merely attempting to coerce society to embrace this evolutionary ideal. We are being physiologically conformed to an evolutionary fallacy.

Put simply: We are re-making (physiological) man in our own (ideological) image.

THE SOLUTION: A CALL TO SCIENTIFIC “DEVOLUTION”

The purpose of this article is not to place blame, but to provide solutions. This is a call to the Christian scientific, medical and psychological leaders to embrace their evolutionary counterparts, but to filter scientific findings through a “Devolutionary” grid. Through the Biblical Worldview, we understand that after the Fall (Genesis 3) mankind has not been evolving, but devolving, perpetually moving from higher state to lower. It is not necessarily (on the surface) a mental of physical devolution, but a physiological one. But not all the blame lies on entropy’s doorstep. It is a Devolution being capitalizing on by the enemy of mankind, attempting to remove man from his God-intended and designed physiological nature, by using mankind’s POST-FALL physiology against him and creating a perpetual yet semi-natural cycle of destruction.

A “Devolutionist” both accepts and challenges evolutionists’ physiological findings, but filters conclusive findings through this strategic devolutionary grid – boldly unlocking both reality of God’s intended nature and design for humanity and the tangible reality of the Enemy of mankind through, among other things, his “paradoxical” tactics. Using the objectivity of the evolutionist’s findings (but not conclusions), “Devolutionists” have the tangible and credible evidence to petition for serious and necessary societal change. Not strictly for reasons of theological morality, but for reasons of physiology, psychology and societal wellbeing. Biblical Worldview scientists have solutions, they are just not seeing them accurately because they are too bent on disproving the findings of evolutionists. The focus has been on what has happened in the past, not on illuminating the present. In an apologetic battle between who’s right and who’s wrong, physiologic humanity has been left to suffer.

Armed with the physiological and psychological findings of evolutionary scientists, the Daniel Project will repeatedly uncover that “Devolution” makes far-more scientific sense. Devolution provides explanations for humanity’s statistic-fueled “paradoxes.” Evolution simply creates more (many of which begin with the label: “side effects include…”). With each new scientific discovery the evolutionist says, “what can we learn new about our evolving physiology or ancient devolved nature from this.” Devolutionists mine new discoveries for their strategic significance. The evolutionist looks for new answers; the devolutionist knows the answers are already there and uses existence itself to confirm them. Evolution attempts to build its own system, with devolution the system is already built. Evolution looks for bricks to build its ideological edifice. Devolution has the existential bricks and blueprint; it merely needs the mortar. Evolution recasts humanity and patterns it after ideology, devolution builds and stabilizes humanity by exposing coerced ideologies. Evolution is individual-centric; devolution is humanity-centric.

WHAT WE MUST DO

“We face a choice that is starkly simple: we must change or be changed. If we fail to change for the better, then we will be changed for the worse.”
Wendell Barry, Sex, Economy, Freedom & Community p12

As keepers and professors of the life-transforming power of Biblical Worldview, we must become far smarter and more strategic. The Daniel Project is devoted, not to attacking evolutionists, but radically studying their scientific findings and filtering them through the True worldview of existence. Producing tangible and vital responses and solutions capable of positively affecting holistic society and humanity – not just the church. We encourage you to study and consume the literature and physiologic/paradoxical findings of some of the world’s evolutionary scientists. Our book resources will provide you with some excellent material to digest. But take evolutionary science’s findings back into the right worldview. Embody the term “devolutionist” around your friends, coworkers, associates and professors and watch the difference in thought-provoking response that is generated, especially as you are able to use evolution-oriented findings as your frame of initial reference. (1)

But more pragmatically, the Daniel Project needs leaders in these scientific fields to partner with us to further corroborate our conclusions and add greater depth and dimension to our hypotheses. The enemy of mankind is desperately hoping humanity never awakens to this reality. In fact, the scientific community was the enemy’s most necessary non-theistic battleground and victory, because science is more accurately unlocking both our God intended and post-fall nature through each physiologic discovery. Evolutionists can merely uncover “paradoxes,” and in doing so conform the individual to our perpetually devolving society; causing greater numbers of individuals to become recast into a new, though unintended, physiologically destructive state. But devolutionists can uncover strategies. And through the proclamation of these strategies, transform the society back toward a state in which our physiology no longer conflicts with our fallacious and strategically destructive ideologies. Those last two sentences remind me of a verse… I’ll let you now mine it for its strategic significance:

“Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind” Romans 12:2 ESV

(1) The Daniel Project will show in future articles how the creation and adoption of new terms and language radically changes the mindset of a society.