Last week was a big one for the human family tree — it grew by a million years. With considerable splash the media announced that our oldest ancestor was Ardi, short for Ardipithecus ramidus, an upright walking hominid who lived 4.4 million years ago. A female skeleton was put on display that demotes Lucy, another female skeleton that became famous as the oldest hominid, dating from only 3.2 million years.
As usual when such stories about evolution reach the front page, religious believers are quieted. Unless you have absolute faith in Genesis, there is irrefutable evidence that physical life developed by stages. Ardi wasn’t exactly a newcomer. The first remains, in the form of a single molar, had been found in Ethiopia in 1992, and for seventeen years teams of specialists determined a host of facts about this new species. For example, walking upright had already been developed four million years ago, along with tree-climbing, and an omnivorous appetite for almost any kind of food, plant or animal.
Indirectly creationists were handed a sliver of a concession. Ardi isn’t apelike. We aren’t descended from monkeys, once again laying to rest the most shocking theory that used to circulate in common parlance. By walking upright over four million years ago, the earliest hominids were already on an evolutionary track separate from even chimps and gorillas, our nearest genetic cousins, who locomote with a different kind of gait known as knuckle-walking.
Yet it’s what we don’t know about our ancestors that’s the most thrilling. Nothing in the fossil record, no matter how many dozen specialists study it, explains the trait that makes us human. It’s not walking upright or learning to mate for life (some anthropologists speculate that this was already developing with Ardi and Lucy). It’s not the opposable thumb and forefinger, which have long been touted as the one great advantage we have over all other primates.
The dominant trait that makes us human is our self-consciousness, which will never be viewed in the fossil record, because it’s invisible. Being self-conscious, human beings became curious about ourselves and where we came from. That’s why we study chimps but they don’t study us. Other primates have had the same millions of years to become self-conscious. Somehow it never caught on beyond a certain basic level, while we on the other hand grew more self-conscious over time. When the Buddha looked inward and Christ preached a gospel of love, those were evolutionary steps in human awareness.
Evolution has reached the point where there’s no more physical development left for us. Escaping the rule of survival of the fittest — that no longer applies to a species that takes care of its weak and sick — human beings entered the era of survival of the wisest. Survival of the wisest means using our consciousness in the highest way possible, for peace, shared resources, the eradication of disease, and increased happiness.
In terms of self-consciousness, the next great leap won’t be in any of these areas, however. It will come when we figure out how brain cells work. Neuroscientists, like their colleagues in anthropology, keep staring at what’s visible when the secrets of the brain are clearly invisible. Where is memory imprinted in a neuron? What is the self, which appears to have no identifiable location in the brain? How do vibrating molecules striking the eardrum turn into words that convey meaning? When photons stimulate cells on the surface of the retina, how do mere electrical impulses in the visual cortex create the world we see?
Inside the brain there are no sounds or sights. When you hear music, your brain remains completely silent. When you gaze at a sunset, your brain remains totally dark. The study of cells and tissues, like the study of fossils, offers clues about the mystery of consciousness, yet a great divide has yet to be crossed. We need a Darwin of consciousness, a seminal mind who grasps the mind itself. Only then will Ardi and Lucy make sense. Because right now they don’t. The creationists are defending a rear-guard position that will never be true. At the same time, so are the materialists they oppose. Consciousness is the creative force we have yet to unravel. It creates sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. Which means that the real thrills are yet to come, when we look inward to discover the most mind-bending thing of all: Consciousness is the basic building block of life and the prime mover of the universe.
Published in the San Francisco Chronicle
The link between creationists and Darwinists is that evolution did happen, but it was not random or without purpose. Rather there was always a Spiritual gene of the elightened human being,passed on, waiting to be evolved and expressed…
The Bible notes the first awakening of this Spiritual gene in a human, almost 6000 years ago, and that is why the Bible counts a little less than 6000 years since "man" was created, because man=Spritual, self conscious human! Less than 6000 years ago Adam asked the question: What is the meaning of life? Why am I here?
Something in his heart awakened. The answers came to him and he wrote the first known Kabbalah book, called "The Angel Raziel"…
In Hebrew the word for man is Adam, which comes from the word "dome"=alike to the Creator (the quality of Love and complete awareness)
The wisdom of Kabbalah gives us the inner interpertation of the Scriptures and also enables us to put everything else in perspective. Science, evolution, they are all part of the picture.
The next step, or leap according to this wisdom is the evolvement of the sixth sense, or higher consciousness, that will enable us to perceive the greater reality. A person evolves this sense in a process of inner work and observation, through working with the authentic books and teacher, connecting with others (in the aim of reaching Love thy neighbor as thyself) and with the Creator (our own higher Self ).
(Authentic materials and teachings can be found at http://www.kab.info)
I agree with Tal. We're always boxing ourselves into false choices:
A. you believe in evolution and eschew any talk of God as a weakling's plea.
B. you believe in creation and pray that naysayers are soon dispatched to face their creator to give account for their wanton beliefs.
This is a cruddy little situation we get ourselves into. All the time wedged between two false choices.
In truth, the creation story as depicted in the Bible is more than likely an account of a deep psychological struggle between hunter-gatherers and farmers, a battle of two competing stories. And yet it is lore that is woven into our very DNA. Our very way of describing both science and religion stems from this lore, from language inextricably linked to our primative stature.
So, knowing this, why do I get on my hands and knees every morning and pray to a God that doesn't exist? Why does the ape man called Dana comply with a religious edict? Because I sense connection on a much deeper level than some mere ideology in a way that works well for me. Because I know the difference between the words 'license' and 'freedom'. Because God may know me better than do I.
Marx lamented that religion was the opiate of the masses. I guess he thought that religious folk were stupid.
But I just think that liking pain is weird.
Hey, ironically, maybe the battle between creationists and evolutionists is yet another creation story in the making!
That I love God has little to do with the reward of heaven or punishment of hell; I love God simply because I can!
Okay. Enough. Time to go to bed.
I know Deepak it looks like you look for the differences instead of the similarities….Deepak why are you so angry at people with people whom do not agree with your ideas, models, assumptions, reality etc….
you quote Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj when you call "Consciousness is the basic building block of life and the prime mover of the universe"
Creationist would call it God….Deepak lighten up.
By the way at your suggesstion I am reading I Am That by Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj…..It is tremendous he is the man!
'Evolution has reached the point where there's no more physical development left for us.' DC
That is an oxymoron. We must, as a species evolve to keep up with the new 'super-bugs' and toxic foods and waste. That is where our Darwinism theories will still apply.
'….Deepak why are you so angry at people with people whom do not agree with your ideas, models, assumptions, reality etc….'TV
That is called opion, and he is entitled to it. In my humble estimation, he is simply speaking his beliefs. Just like when an Evangelical states 'Oh no, I'm not a Catholic" but they have the same team mascot. We feel the need to be exacting in out thoughts and we highlight the differences, not to be contrary, but simply to be clear in the statement.
'That I love God has little to do with the reward of heaven or punishment of hell; I love God simply because I can!'DS
I am with Dana in this opinion. I have had a life of extreme experiences. Once, as my husband was literally beating me to death I cried out "Forgive him God, for he knows not what he does" and my husband was lifted off of my body by some invisible force and flung into a closet (I was in ICU for 8 days). Why do I bring this up? Because I was raised secular. We had no God. It was this exact moment in 1984 that I had a notion of a higher good force out there in the ether.
Religion has remained a spectator sport. But I have faith! I have faith in history, I have faith in energy, I have faith in nature. There is a peace and a sense of being of something quite grand when we bow our heads or throw our heads back and simply allow union of whatever it is we are join with whatever it is…
So is it nature vs. nuture, or creationism vs. evolution? Who knows?!?! But hey, we forgot to mention the aliens!
Namaste'
Man, Tamara.
You rock more than words could ever convey!!!!!!!!
Very nicely written!