Symbiotic Existential Cosmology Part 2

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is fundamentally a profoundly evolutionary cosmology, in which the integrative nature of both genotype and phenotype, modified only by small mutational changes, ensures the biosphere as a whole retains unfolding climax stability over evolutionary and cosmological time scales. In a sense it is an account of a voyage, just like Darwin's voyage on the Beagle, leading to "The Origin of the Species", except that this written work is an account of a vision quest into all the subjective, physical, cultural and religious aspects of the existential reality of conscious existence in the natural universe. It is an innovative evolutionary quantum cosmology in which:

(1) Mutations are viewed as quantum uncertain transformations following a non IID sequence which fails to converge to the probability interpretation, modulated by natural and sexual selection, rather than simple randomness (Monroe et al. (2022).

(2) Major evolutionary transitions including biogenesis, the eucaryote endo-symbiosis and our cultural emergence.

(3) Natural and sexual selection of metazoa is mediated by an animal’s subjective conscious volition over the natural world. Sexual selection and its mutual runaway effects in a Red Queen race (Ridley 1993) have also had profound creative influences on evolution pivotal to human intelligence and cultural emergence.

(4) Modular regulatory evolution. See figs 127, 130 & 100, show that transposable elements and endogenous retroviruses which occupy nearly half the human genome, are both capable of mutational insertion of new elements as well as having been utilised in essential symbiotic roles, complemented by supergenes (Arnold 2022).

(5) The organismic development process is also coupled to genetic evolution (evo-devo). Fig 120 shows this in homeotic gene evolution underlying segmental development across the metazoa and fig 122 also shows the approach in the evolution of the human brain as a social neuronal organism.

(6) Biospheric symbiosis: Natural and sexual selection results in the fittest biospheric symbionts, not the most competitive dominant species, exemplified by the eucaryote endo-symbiosis and multiple predator-prey and parasite-host relationships rising to climax diversity.

(7) The mutual coupling of genetic evolution to cultural evolution, with the emergence of culture and language, has resulted in a multilevel selection paradigm in which cultural elements reinforced across generations, also influence genotype and organismic phenotype, and vice versa.

(8) Cosmological symbiosis in which gene-culture-biosphere co-evolution ensures biospheric and human survival.

Gregory Bateson (1972) viewed all three systems of the individual, society and ecosystem as together a part of one supreme
cybernetic system that controls everything instead of just interacting systems. This supreme cybernetic system is beyond the
self of the individual and could be equated to what many people refer to as God, though Bateson referred to it as Mind.

Fig 112: (left) Increase in the ratio of noncoding DNA to total genomic DNA correlates with increasing biological complexity from 0.05 in Nanoarchaeum to 0.983 in Homo. Archaea in yellow, bacteria in blue, unicellular eukaryotes in black, the fungus Neurospora crassa in light grey, plants in green, non-chordate invertebrates in red, the urochordate Ciona intestinalis in yellow, and vertebrates in dark grey. It is key to understanding how higher organisms, through to ourselves, were able to evolve, because single base pair mutations of non-coding DNA are less disruptive, as they don't have to be translated and make only a differential change to RNA and promoter binding. Complementing this, natural and particularly sexual selection is both phenotypic and conscious (Taft & Mattick 2003). This means that humans have only 2.82 times the coding genome of the amoeboid slime mould Distyostellium discoideum and 2.7 times as many genes, with only 2.0 and 1.57 as many compared with the simple roundworm Caenorhabditis elegans. Evolution has thus become a symphony on largely the same genes, as is also made clear in the great gene diversification 3 bya ago in fig 128 . (Right) The deep homology of evolutionary development displays unexpected selection pathways that also stand as the proof of principle of evolution’s creativity. Mammal hairs, each of which have sensory projections to the brain, appear to have evolved from adapted reptilian proto-feathers (Yang et al. 2019) used around the mouth for sensory sensitivity as shown in the pterosaur, resulting in mammalian whiskers as in the cat and mouse, with brain structures exemplified in rodent sensory barrels (inset) resulting in co-evolution with the brain. These then appear to have spread to the bodies of most mammals as hairs. The more advanced, smaller therapsids could have had a combination of hair and scutes, a combination still found in some modern mammals. Reptilian therapsid scutes as shown on the alligators foot (top right) have also been retained in some mammals such as the armadillo (Superina & Loughry 2012). By contrast, Pangolin scales appear to have evolved from hair (Choo et al. 2016)

Five Major Evolutionary Transitions

The Origin of Life – Abiogenesis to LUCA (4.4 – 3.5 Bya)

Fractal biocosmology has already been extensively explored in the cosmology section, in which the evolving universe is highly fecund for biogenesis and leads through a transitional phase of establishing the genetic code and protein translation eventually to arrive at LUCA, our last universal common ancestor, which may have been a progenote, a loosely interacting RNA-based system before the independent emergence of archaea and bacteria as free living cells, fig 99, whose cell membrane components are distinct, with complementary strategies, consistent with the overall time interval above (Grimm & Marchi 2018, Schopf et al. 2017).

The Great Oxygenation Event (GOE) (2.4 Bya)

Although the first life forms depended on a variety of energy sources, including chemical gradients, all ongoing life depends ultimately on photosynthesis. The first evidence for the existence of of molecular O₂in the atmosphere and ocean dates to 3.1-3.5 Bya, consistent with cyanobacterial emergence (Cardona et al. 2018, Jabłońska & Tawfik 2021). The origin of the Great Oxygenation circa 2.45–2.32 Bya coincides with the evolution of colonial multicellular forms of cyanobacteria (Schirrmeister et al. 2011, 2013), in which specialised heterocysts (Flores & Herrero 2009, Kumar et al. 2010) enable fixation of nitrogen at higher oxygen levels, by disabling photosystem II (Cardona et al. 2018). The earliest known akinetes – dormant multicellular cyanobacterial cells (Sukenik et al.2019), are preserved in 2.1 Bya chert from West Africa (Tomitani et al. 2006). The final rise in O₂at 0.8 Bya corresponds to emergence of eucaryote algae and higher plants. Red algae have been dated as far back as 1.6 Bya (Bengtson et al. 2017).

The Eucaryote Endo-Symbiosis – LECA (2.1 – 1.5 Bya)

The eucaryote endo-symbiosis (Imachi et al. 2019) has already been discussed extensively in the cosmology section and forms the greatest evolutionary transition since the origin of life, giving rise to all complex life forms. What is pivotal about this is that it is an evolutionary biological co-adaption to one or more symbiotic interactions between complementary species, but does closely follow the O₂increase set off by the great oxidation as a precursor, consistent with the overall time interval above (French et al. 2015, El Albani et al. 2010, Bengtson et al. 2017). The sheer scope of this transformation can be seen from fig 112 where there is a jump of 25x in total genome, 17x in protein coding genome and 8x in coding genes from the bacterium Rickettsia conorii to the amoeboid slime mould Dictyostellium discoideum, contrasting with the small coding genome expansion since of ~2.8x..

The Cambrian Radiation (541– 521 Mya)

The Cambrian radiation corresponds to the greatest burst of animal complexity and diversity in the evolution of life. Central to this transition is a tipping point in developmental complexity governed by homeotic genes, which evolved in single-celled eucaryotes (Derelle, et al. 2007), but reached a critical transition in the Cambrian radiation, giving rise to all the extant higher animal phyla through developmental evolution. By comparison, the previous Ediacaran fossils show very limited complexity. It has been suggested (Fox 2016, Evans et al. 2022) that a transient rise and then fall in oxygen levels, probably due to emergence of new algae and plants, was associated with a mass extinction of Ediacaran fauna and the rapid rise of animals with active predatory behaviour and intelligence, spreading to the resulting vacant niches. This is consistent with a modern-style marine biosphere rapidly emerging during the Ediacaran and earliest followed by broad-scale evolutionary stasis (Paterson et al. 2019). The rise of land plants has been dated back to 500 Mya (Morris et al. 2018).

Human Emergence and Cultural Evolution (300 – 200 Kya)

The emergence of Homo sapiens, and the rise of human culture and technology, beginning with tool-making and then extending to agriculture and animal husbandry has both transformed the face of the Earth, and with it brought about a new paradigm of cultural evolution, driven by spoken and written language, cultural memes and the advent of social, scientific and political discourse spanning the generations. This is now running a huge risk of causing a mass extinction of the diversity of life, precipitating a potential Fermi self-extinction – the Medea hypothesis (Ward 2009), unless our species can come to collectively enter a state of biospheric symbiosis.

The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis

This places the evolutionary view of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology as lying within the extended evolutionary synthesis (Pennisi 2008, Laland et al. 2014, Buranyi 2022), which includes multilevel selection, transgenerational epigenetic inheritance (Felsenfeld 2014, Benetti et al. 2022, Kabacik et al. 2022), which can affect macro-evolution (Jablonka 2017), niche construction, evolvability, and concepts of evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) comparing the regulatory and developmental processes of different organisms to infer how developmental processes evolved (Gerhart & Kirschner 2007). The inclusion of gene-culture coevolution augments this view, to encompass cultural reproductive processes involving memes – a concept, social process or institution that spreads from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning that can self-replicate, mutate, and respond to selective pressures.

All species have evolved mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity that enable them to respond adaptively to their environments. Some mechanisms of phenotypic plasticity count as evolutionary processes in their own right. The human capacity for symbolic thought provides an inheritance system having the same kind of combinatorial diversity as does genetic recombination and antibody formation. (Wilson et al. 2014).

Culture is phenotypic plasticity that acquired its own intrinsic capacity to change and is now out of genetic control. We don’t expect a flu virus to operate to our advantage, so why should we expect a ‘mind virus’ always to be in our interests? For meme advocates, not only is cultural evolution largely unconstrained by genetic pre-dispositions, but genetic evolution may itself be driven by cultural imperatives (Laland and Brown 2002 319) .

‘Meme’ is the name given to such units of culture and, as some memes are more likely to spread than others, there is a new kind of evolution generated at the cultural level. Somewhat disturbingly, the selection of one meme over another may be of no advantage to the individual human being; rather the meme makes use of us in order to replicate itself. Memeticists suggest that human beings may behave the way they do not because it is in their interests but because their minds have been infected by a cultural virus. Could consciousness be little more than a collection of memes? Are the dominant world religions neither true nor even beneficial, but merely those complexes of religious ideas that happen to be best at spreading? (Laland and Brown 2002 24)

Melkikh A (2014) proposes an extended evolutionary model of partially directed evolution, based on the learning automata theory, which includes a priori information about the fitness space. A potential repository of such prior information is the states of biologically important molecules. notes that many researchers have proposed and explored quantum properties in biology that could effect evolution and have proposed that molecular machines associated with reading DNA exhibit quantum properties.

Josephson & Pallikari-Viras (1991) note the differences between classical and statistical quantum science where results are classically or statistically determined and adaptive living systems where organisms may be able to exploit quantum nonlocality and entanglement through adaptive, rather than universal knowledge:

The first, the method of science, is to retain conformity with the demands of reproducibility and universality by the device of replacing the no longer possible strict determinism by statistical determinism. The outcome of this approach is quantum mechanics. The second, a method that is in general terms favoured by life, involves renouncing the demand for universal knowledge in favour of more specialised and purposeful adaptations to the more limited class of situations that the organism or organisms concerned is liable naturally to encounter in the course of its life.

Laland and Brown note Dawkins’ (1976) original discovery of the term:

He coined the terms ‘replicator’ and ‘vehicle’ to distinguish between the ‘immortal’ genes, which are replicated each generation, and the transient, vehicular organisms that house them. The gene is the archetypal replicator, but Dawkins proposed that a new, frequently insidious kind of replicator has recently emerged on this planet, a mind virus that infects us with catchy concepts and fashionable ideas. “We need a name for the new replicator, a noun that conveys the idea of a unit of cultural transmission, or a unit of imitation. ‘Mimeme’ comes from a suitable Greek root, but I want a monosyllable that sounds a bit like ‘gene’. I hope my classicist friends will forgive me if I abbreviate mimeme to meme.”

The word evolution itself is plagued by a spectrum of meanings. Oxford languages defines it’s scientific meaning as “the process by which different kinds of living organism are believed to have developed from earlier forms during the history of the earth” but more generally it is the gradual development of something, quoting in example: ”the forms of written languages undergo constant evolution. When we come to discuss gene culture coevolution, these two meanings will come into direct conflict. ”It’s etymology underlies this ambiguity arising early 17th century: from Latin evolutio ‘unrolling’, from the verb evolvere (evolve). Early senses related to movement, first recorded in describing a ‘wheeling’ manoeuvre in the realignment of troops or ships. Current senses stem from a notion of ‘opening out’, giving rise to the sense ‘development’.

Charles Darwin used the word in print once only, in the closing paragraph of "The Origin of Species" (1859), and preferred descent with modification, in part because evolution already had been used in the discarded homunculus theory of embryological development and in part because it carried a sense of "progress" not present in Darwin's idea. But Victorian belief in progress prevailed (and the advantages of brevity), and Herbert Spencer and other biologists after Darwin popularised evolution.

Dawkins (1976, 1982) argued that discrete, accurately copied, long-lived “replicators” are necessary for cumulative, adaptive evolution and must have the following characteristics:

Fidelity. The copying must be sufficiently accurate that even after a long chain of copies the replicator remains almost unchanged.

Fecundity. At least some varieties of the replicator must be capable of generating more than one copy of themselves.

Longevity. Replicators must survive long enough to affect their own rate of replication.

Although these statements implicitly assume this process is cumulatively integrative over time, so that snakes do not turn into tigers, thus ensuring the stability of the biosphere over evolutionary and cosmological time scales, this is not specifically expressed and can cause problems when we are dealing with gene culture co-evolution. We know there is a deep truth to this argument because our genomes are full of transposable elements which at all opportunities seek to replicate themselves potentially at the expense of organismic mutation and/or survival. However organisms apply natural and sexual selection as whole genomes and there is more complexity to this picture. Even a simple prokaryote genome that reproduces parthenogenetically will eventually accumulate a lethal load of deleterious mutations by Muller’s Ratchet. Hence recombination between genomes is a virtually universal necessary condition, via conjugation plasmids and viruses in prokaryotes and indexed sexual recombination in eucaryotes.

Dawkins argued that individual genes must be seen as the units of selection in evolutionary processes within sexual populations. This is primarily because the other possible candidates, notably whole organisms and groups, do not "replicate." Stephen J. Gould in "Caring Groups and Selfish Genes" (1977), argued that by contrast genes cannot be units of selection because natural selection is not able to "see" (operate on) single genes, only on whole organisms. Lewontin (1970) had argued that natural selection at any level requires variation, heredity and differential fitness. Hull argued that people had been packing into one concept, "unit of selection," criteria associated with two distinct and equally important roles:

Replicator: an entity that passes on its structure largely intact in successive replications.

Interactor: an entity that interacts as a cohesive whole with its environment in such a way that this interaction causes replication to be differential.

Wilson DH et al. (2014) in noting that humans possess great capacity for behavioural and cultural change, but our ability to manage change is still limited have set out to sketch a basic science of intentional change centred on evolution, introducing a further set of concepts related to cultural evolution:

The human capacity for symbolic thought provides an inheritance system having the same kind of combinatorial diversity as does genetic recombination and antibody formation. Taking these propositions seriously allows an integration of major traditions within the basic behavioral sciences, such as behaviorism, social constructivism, social psychology, cognitive psychology, and evolutionary psychology, which are often isolated and even conceptualized as opposed to one another.

In this sense, a network of symbolic relations that regulates behavior is like a genotype that produces a phenotype. We will call it a “symbotype” to stress the comparison. Like genotypes, symbotypes evolve based on what they cause the organism to do, regardless of the direct correspondence between the mental and environmental relations. As an example, religious and superstitious beliefs might not correspond directly to anything that exists in the real world, but they might still be favored by selection, based on the behaviors they motivate in the real world. … The term symbotype refers not to a single cultural trait but rather to a given set of symbolic relations, which results in an entire suite of phenotypic traits (the phenotype). The term does not presuppose any particular proximate mechanism for the symbotype and does not assume that the phenotype can be atomized into independent traits. Obviously, a great deal of future research will be required to clarify the concept of the symbotype, but it differs importantly from the concept of a meme.

Wilson et al. then cite informational recombination as a key generator of variety, that we have seen in the context of integral genetic evolution. While this is true, it goes little or no way towards establishing the integral stability over long time scales of such processes:

Genotypes, symbotypes, and antibodies share something else – almost infinite variety, based on the recombination of their elements. Much as x genes with two alleles at each locus result in 2x combinations, each potentially producing a different phenotype for selection to act on, a human symbolic system consisting of a few handfuls of “object®sign” relations will be able to derive thousands of combinations, each potentially resulting in a different phenotype for selection to act on (Deacon 1998).

This provides Wilson et al. with their primary thesis that humans have evolved a “quantum leap” in our elaborate capacity for open-ended behavioural and cultural change:

However our symbolic inheritance system and its combinatorial properties arose, the result was a quantum jump in our capacity for open-ended behavioral and cultural change. The best way to see this is by standing back from the “trees” of single scientific studies to see the “forest” of human evolution. A single biological species spread out of Africa to inhabit the globe, adapting to all climatic zones and occupying hundreds of ecological niches, in just tens of thousands of years. Each culture has mental and physical toolkits for survival and reproduction that no individual could possibly learn in a lifetime. Then the advent of agriculture enabled the scale of human society to increase by many orders of magnitude, resulting in mega societies unlike anything our species had previously experienced. The human cultural adaptive radiation is comparable in scope to the genetic adaptive radiations of major taxonomic groups such as mammals and dinosaurs (Pagel & Mace 2004). What else is required to conclude that humans have an elaborate capacity for open-ended behavioral and cultural change?

In this they implicitly acknowledge that not only does the cultural milieu not necessarily optimise natural evolutionary fitness in the biosphere, but that natural fitness cannot now even be defined as an entity in its own right:

It is important to stress that the cultural inheritance system does not entirely supersede the other inheritance systems. … Moreover, the four inheritance systems – genetic, epigenetics, learning, and symbolic thought – have been interacting with one another throughout our history as a species. Genetic evolution and cultural evolution have been shaping each other for a very long time. It is therefore incorrect to say that cultural evolution serves to maximize genetic fitness, as if the latter can be defined without reference to the former.

So we come back to the central question – how does the advent of cultural evolution enhance or diminish that capacity of Homo sapiens to survive on evolutionary time scales in the closing circle of the evolving biosphere?

Because the concept of symbotype bears a superficial resemblance to the concept of meme (Dawkins 1976), a brief comparison is in order. The term meme is sometimes used broadly to refer to any cultural trait. More narrow usages suggest that cultural traits resemble physical genes in various respects, such as functioning as “replicators,” having a physical form inside the brain, or having the capacity to spread at the expense of their human hosts (Aunger 2002; Blackmore 1999). The most recent treatments of cultural evolution recognize the need for a term that describes cultural traits at the phenotypic level; but these treatments depart from other specific concepts that have been associated with the term meme. In particular, it is possible for the replication of cultural traits to be a systemic process without the need for gene-like replicators (Henrich et al. 2008; Laland & Brown 2002). The concept of “evolution without replicators” applies even to genetic evolution (Godfrey-Smith 2000).

They hint at a deep analogy between genetic and cultural evolution:

This merely highlights a deep analogy between cultural ‘inheritance’ and the recombinational complexity of genetic, antibody systems and symbolic thought, but this is not a model for evolution but simply sexual recombination, leaving aside gradual evolutionary change on cosmological time scales due to mutation and selective advantage. Only when we have informational systems which can (1) replicate, (2) be subject to incremental change that is subject to phenotypic differences and selection and (3) the capacity for recombination can we establish a sustainable evolutionary paradigm.

Their answer thus leads to a series of troubling questions regarding not only the lack of a comprehensive integral evolutionary paradigm of gene-culture co-evolution but to the emergence of forms of “evolution” with neither replicators, nor integral stability, and not only in cultural evolution alone, but in genetic evolution as well.

Heinrich et al. (2008) state:

While we agree that the existence of replicators is sufficient for cumulative adaptive evolution, they are not necessary. Any process of cultural transmission that leads to accurate replication of the average characteristics of the population will work. Accurate replication at the level of the gene (or meme) will have this effect, but accurate at the population level can arise for other reasons as well. … Highly accurate, unbiased, genetic replication allows minute selective forces to generate and preserve adaptations over millions of years. Error prone cultural replication, [of one of two mental representations], even when “corrected” by a conformist bias [a group choosing the most common option found in the group], imposes modest, but still significant forces on the cultural composition of the population. Similarly, blending inheritance [e.g. in which an average result not actually present in the set of instances] rapidly depletes the variation in a population necessary for selective processes like prestige-biased transmission to have an effect. But, because the inferential processes that underlie cultural transmission are noisy, it is likely that they can maintain lots of variation. However, this also means that they are likely to create evolutionary forces that act to change the mean, and thus compete with selective forces.

Laland & Brown (2002) take issue with the concepts of replicator versus vehicle, in the context of cultural evolution:

The approach, advocated by Hull (2000) ^{^[38]}, is to describe as replication all cases in which information is passed along largely unchanged regardless of whether the substrate is a brain or artefactual. Replicators are distinguished from interactors (loosely synonymous with Dawkins’ ‘vehicles’), which are the entities that exhibit adaptations, but are characterized by a loss of information.

They also deal with the continuous interactive aspects of cultural evolution:

A major question mark against memes, to which both Dawkins and Dennett allude, is whether they have sufficiently high copying fidelity, or accuracy of reproduction. When discussing meme fidelity Dawkins confesses ‘here I must admit that I am on shaky ground’ (1976, p. 209), and he acknowledges, as an example, that his ideas published in The Selfish Gene resulted from a blending of Trivers’s and his own memes. Similarly, Dennett (1995 355) asks: ‘Isn’t one of the hallmarks of cultural evolution and transmission the extraordinarily high rate of mutation and recombination?’. If memes are constantly passed on in altered forms, can they be described as replicators? This looks quite unlike the particulate, virtually error-free copying of gene translation. At first sight, meme evolution appears so fluid, subject as it is to continuous mutation, blending of memes, and cross-fertilization between lineages, that it is difficult to see how it could generate complex adaptations analogous to the vertebrate eye or hand.

There are at least two counterarguments that have been put forward. The first was expressed most clearly by Dawkins:

It is possible that this appearance of non-particulateness is illusory, and that the analogy with genes does not break down. After all, if we look at the inheritance of many genetic characters such as human height or skin colouring, it does not look like the work of indivisible and unblendable genes. (1976, p. 209). The second counterargument is that, while every version of a meme varies from one person to the next according to each individual’s personal experiences, all memes have a core element that is shared knowledge.

Godfrey-Smith (2000) critiques the classical concept of the replicator in the light of a series of criticisms including those of developmental systems theory:

Criticism of the Dawkins/Hull replicator is found in the work of Paul Griffiths and Russell Gray (1994 298), who are among the proponents of "developmental systems theory" (DST) as a general approach to development and evolution. According to Griffiths and Gray, the replicator/interactor distinction is the product of a "dichotomous" view of evolution and development, where the "dichotomy" involves an illegitimate division between two fundamental types of developmental causes, the "genetic" and the "environmental." Griffiths and Gray claim that the standard replicator/interactor distinction is a "projection into evolution" of dichotomous views of development. … The developmental systems theorists argue that the only thing which actively replicates or reproduces itself is the entire life cycle. They also argue that the life cycle is the relevant unit for evolutionary theory: "the prime unit of evolution (unit of self- replication) is the developmental process, or life cycle." We should conceive evolution as the "differential replication of developmental processes/life cycles”.

He then applies Lewontin’s formulation for Darwinian evolution which does not specifically cite a replicator:

Let us approach this point via Lewontin's formulation of the recipe for Darwinian evolution (1970). Evolution requires a population in which there is variation in phenotype, differential reproduction on the basis of phenotype, and heredity of the traits associated with differential reproduction. Heredity is conceived as a correlation between parents and offspring. As Lewontin says, it does not matter how the correlation is achieved, so long as it exists.

In Lewontin's 1970 discussion, the term "unit of selection" has a simple and thin sense -- the units are just the entities in the population which satisfy his three conditions. These "units" need not be replicators, because in a sexual population there can be a great deal of difference between parent and offspring. Yet if parent and offspring are correlated -- if parent and offspring are more similar than randomly selected pairs of individuals in that population -- then evolution by natural selection can occur. The requirement of heredity in traits affecting fitness is weaker than a requirement that there exist replicators, and heredity is all that is needed for evolution.

The principle of integral evolutionary change is thus reduced to the simple root of heredity ^{^[39]}, much as in Gregor Mendel’s (1866) work. But this studies hybridisation and is thus about indexed recombination across a single generation and thus gives no theoretical model for integral evolutionary change that ensures stability over the cosmological time scales required for avoiding a Fermi paradox extinction.

This is inadequate and symbolises the entire dilemma of memetic cultural evolution being called evolution at all, because the foundation of evolutionary viability on cosmological time scales is the gradual cumulative change of what Darwin called "descent with modification", now known to be caused by intermittent mutational changes at a low level each generation, enabling the genomes of a species to survive on a population scale combined with natural and sexual selection that is the process occurring on cosmological time scales, that has allowed the biosphere to evolve without Fermi paradox, caused by short-term instability. Recombination, as associated with cross-fertilisation of ideas is a single step process to offset Muller's ratchet and provides non of the graduated change to maintain cumulative evolutionary synchrony between evolving species.

The only way this can be resolved to ensure biospheric and human survival is gene-culture-biosphere co-evolution, in which cultural memes acknowledge the cosmological necessity of human genetic and cultural evolution maintaining overall genetic fitness of the biosphere over such cosmological time scales.

Sexual Selection is a Conscious Creative Process

Sexual selection is a conscious process driven by subjective perception and volition. In spiders, birds and humans the female, who because of a much higher parenting investment in eggs and mammalian pregnancy , frequently evolves forms of conscious choosiness that require a male to be able to fulfil diverse physical and behavioural demonstrations of ability, as a genuine indicator of fitness. These exemplify some of the most creative aspects of evolution that have also had a pivotal influence in human intelligence and cultural emergence (see fig 131), where astute female reproductive choice driven by extreme sexual polarisation of reproductive investments in humans due to the demands of human pregnancy. This is the hand of the "Great Mother of All Living" declaring that the evolution of the entire Tree of Life is natural and partly driven by subjective conscious perception and volition. It is sealed in our genes and in the most ancient layers of the Earth’s crust. She leaves her signature in the rocks, in the fossils, in the genetic sequences and in the free flowing phenotypes of organismic regulation. There is no way this founding story of our becoming, the core creation myth of our very existence, can be undone.

Fig 113: Sexual selection in birds and spiders. Sexual selection is almost universally consciously engendered, while natural selection is only partially so, because some natural selection factors are inanimate, while other animate interactions with predators and prey and social interactions are consciously based. Sexual selection enables the female who has to invest much more in eggs than the male evolves to use creative conscious perceptual means to assess genuine indicators of male genetic and/or parenting fitness. This can lead to a runaway Red Queen effect (Ridley 1993), driven by female reproductive choice evolving to become more choosy, as male adaptions become more attractive resulting in beautiful bird plumages (Prum 2017, Jabr 2019). How beautiful they have become attests to the fact that the female bird perceives it and demands it in the same kind of detail we find spell-binding. Top row: the Superb Lyre bird, which in addition to having a mesmerising tail and bridal veil like the peacock (lower right), is required to literally mimic every sound from other birds to chainsaws and construction sites to a squalling baby (1, 2, 3, 4) seducing the female with every sound in the universe surrounding them. Lower left, the Satin bowerbird courtship involves complex two-stage cues in female reproductive choice (Robson et al. 2005). Male South African Weaver Birds similarly construct elaborate hanging nests which avoid predators, to attract mates (fig 141). Lower centre: Peacock spider courtship. The male has to very carefully signal with his hairy mid legs from under her leaf to seduce her willingness to mate, rather than eat him, before fertilising her with his palps. These spiders are really tiny and have even tinier brains as the inset on a human finger illustrates.

Here follow the essential principles:

(1) The natural conclusion of evolutionary biology is that conscious evolution began with the eucaryote endo-symbiosis freeing the cell membrane for quantum sentience and social signalling, so we have to understand how natural selection works seamlessly with consciousness in amoebo-flagellates because they conserved conscious volition for a billion years before brains evolved.

(2) One can take a materialistic view that single celled eucaryotes are just sophisticated automata but that flies in the face of the fact that the same excitation processes in them occur in our neurons and phagocytes. In particular, cellular sentience is at the quantum level sensitively detecting small electrochemical fluctuations, light, physical oscillations and chemical orbital effects corresponding to our existing senses. Moreover a transition would take such responses from procaryote genetic operons to non-linear responses to edge of chaos excitations, justifying the notion of conscious perception. Moreover organisms like Dictyostellium show distinct transitions from the free swimming cellular form of volition to resonant coordinated organismic behaviour in the worm stage of fruiting, showing collective resonant excitation and decision-making characteristic of conscious volition.

(3) Natural selection has to operate at the genetic level and the only way conscious volition can directly influence genetics is through reproductive choice, so conscious evolution becomes the province of sexual selection while environmental natural selection is a mix. This becomes clear in vertebrate and mammal behaviour where sexual selection is the climax process determining evolution of the brain.

(4) This is strongly exemplified in humans, where the female parenting strategy delivering live young via a risky pregnancy and long-term lactation and child rearing is in stark conflict with the male sewing wild oats strategy and the emergence of human intelligence appears to have resulted from neither sex having the upper hand, requiring each to run a red queen evolutionary race of genetic and social intelligence to survive, interrupted only recently by the patriarchal imperative due to male paternity uncertainty.

(5) The key implication is that it is volition and reproductive decision-making and its support in healthy survival in nature that drives what is not just conscious evolution but volitional evolution.

The fact that human culture doesn't yet recognise the huge significance of sexual selection underscores humanity's failure to appreciate conscious volitional evolution, exacerbating the error of materialistic neuroscience failing to recognise conscious volition at all.

Evolutionary Origins of Neuronal Excitability, Neurotransmitters, Brains and Conscious Experience

The discussion of psychedelics in the previous chapters brings us back to a fundamental question. Why does the brain use neurotransmitters such as serotonin in such characteristic ways to do with emotion, wakefulness and sleep, vigilance and reward? This takes us back all the way to the emergence of life and potentially to the cosmological relationships defining the biomolecules, from ATP to RNA, and the various biological amino acids and their elementary amines such as tryptamine and dopamine. The elementary neurotransmitter types, many of which are fundamental amino acids (glutamate, glycine, GABA), or amines derived from amino acids (serotonin, dopamine, histamine, epinephrine) have primordial relationships with the membrane, as soluble molecules with complementary (+) charge relationships with the hydrophilic (–) ends of the phospholipids. Glutamate and GABA are prominent components of both the Tagish Lake and Murchison carbonaceous chondrites and stardust aerogels from the tail of comet Wild 2 , clear evidence for a prebiotic cosmological status. As the two key excitatory and inhibitory neurotransmitters in the human brain, which are also key in myxamoeba fruiting body aggregation, demonstrating their strong conservation, this also gives human consciousness a cosmological foundation.

Fig 114: Murchison amino acids. Biological blue shades. Neurotransmitters red shades.

Tryptophan, the amino acid from which serotonin is generated, plays a key role in the transfer of electric charge in the earliest forms of photosynthesis. In Rhodobacter sphaeroides, there are 39 tryptophan residues surrounding the porphyrin centre. Initiation of the electron transfer reaction by excitation results in a transient change in the absorbance at UVB, near the peak of the tryptophan absorbance band. To make serotonin from tryptophan, oxygen is needed, and in the earliest geological times the Earth's atmosphere had little oxygen. Thus, serotonin is made specifically in unicellular systems capable of photosynthesis and the cellular production of oxygen. Consequently serotonin is up to 100 times more plentiful in plants and animals have ceased to synthesise tryptophan, depending on plants for their supply. This relationship with light continues to this day in human use of melatonin to define the circadian cycle and serotonin in wakefulness and sleep, with light deprivation causing depression through serotonin.

Fig 115: (Left) Evolutionary tree of the human G-protein linked receptors (Fredriksson et al. (2003), with examples highlighted in color. On the α branch are amine receptors - serotonin 5HT1A and 5HT2A, dopamine D1, and D2 (DRD1, DRD2), adrenergic α2a (ADRA2A), muscarinic acetylcholine (CHRM2), trace amine TAR1, as well as rhodopsin (RHO) and encephalopsin (OPM3). On the glutamate branch are metabotropic glutamate mGluR2 and GABA GABBR1. On the β branch is oxytocin (OXTR) surrounded by vasopressin receptors and Ghrelin. On the γ branch are opioid κ and μ (OPRK1, OPRM1). Olfactory (Zozulya et al 2001, Billesbølle et al. 2023) and the non-rhodopsin receptors are linked to their respective points on the rhodopsin family tree.

The fundamental components of the G-protein coupled receptor system, including the canonical GPCR itself appear to go right back to LECA the last eucaryote common ancestor, as they are shared across all major eucaryote branches (Mendoza et al.). From the gene diversity for serotonin receptors, the 5-HT1a receptor is estimated to have evolved 750 million to 1 billion years ago, before the muscarinic, dopaminergic and adrenergic receptor systems (Peroutka & Howell, Peroutka, Walker et al) and long before the Cambrian radiation defining multicellular animals.

As noted by Natoh (1973), "the ionic mechanisms for electrogensis are basically identical to those in nerves, muscles, and receptors of metazoan organisms". Wan & Jékely (2021) describe the ancestral repertoire of eukaryotic excitability and discuss five major cellular innovations that enabled its evolutionary origin, including a vastly expanded repertoire of ion channels, the emergence of cilia and pseudopodia, endomembranes as intracellular capacitors, a flexible plasma membrane and the relocation of chemiosmotic ATP synthesis to mitochondria, which liberated the plasma membrane for more complex electrical signalling involved in sensing and reacting.

Fig 116: Left: Heptahelical rhodopsin receptor in the G-protein coupled family creates a photosynthetic H⁺ ion gradient in Halobacteria provides voltage gradient excitability and ATP to power the cell. Centre: Complement of signalling systems found in Naegleria gruberi (Fritz-Laylin et al. 2010), a free-living single celled bikont amoebo-flagellate, belonging to the excavate group Heterolobosea that diverged from other eukaryotic lineages over a billion years ago, which include some of the most primitive eucaryotes such as Giardia and Trichomonads. Nevertheless it is capable of both oxidative respiration and anaerobic metabolism and can switch between amoeboid and flagellated modes of behaviour, regenerating complete centrioles and flagellae de novo (Fritz-Laylin & Cande 2010). The Naegleria genome sequence contains actin and microtubule cytoskeletons, mitotic and meiotic machinery, suggesting cryptic sex, several transcription factors and a rich repertoire of signalling molecules, including G-protein coupled receptors, histidine kinases and second messengers including cAMP. Apoptotic cell death essential for maintaining multicellular integrity also arose with mitochondrial endosymbiosis (Kaushal et al. 2023), is promoted via the mitochondria, occurs also in single celled eucaryotes (Madeo et al. 1997) and originated in bacterial protection against phages (Koonin & Aravind 2002, Kibby et al. 2023). Lower left Dictyostellium discoideum (a) individual cells eating bacteria, (b) aggregation wave front of cAMP, (c) aggregating to form slugs, (d) slugs, each containing 1000 or so individual amoeba, swimming purposefully and making individual chemotactic decisions coordinated through coherent membrane excitability also showing they can merge and separate, (e) fruiting body and (f) sexual synctium with multiple nuclei, pink (Bloomfield et al. 2019). Lower right: Choanoflagellate cells forming an ancestor of animals, at the transition from single celled organisms to colonies have conserved the amoeboid-flagellate switch (Brunet et al. 2021. Below: The colonial form Choanoeca flexa can invert the colonies in a similar way to tissue layer folding in early animal embryogenesis (Brunet et al. 2019).

This places the emergence of receptor proteins and their neurotransmitters as occurring before the multicellular nervous systems, as cell-to-cell signalling molecules essential for survival, and positive and negative responses to nutrition and danger. The need for multimodal molecular messengers thus arises from the need for cells to have a variety of signalling molecules modulating key motivational and aversive aspects of survival strategy.

It also explains that neurotransmitters originated from direct signalling pathways between the cell membrane and gene expression in the nucleus of single cells, highlighting why changes in gene expression such as that of egr-2 in psychedelics may be central to psychedelic neurotransmitter action, rather than just flow-on excitation. It has also been suggested that key enzymes in neurotransmitter pathways may have become ubiquitous through horizontal gene transfer from bacteria (Iyer et al).

This ancient origin is confirmed by the fact that receptor proteins, second signalling pathways and key neurotransmitters are known to occur widely in single-celled protists. Both Crithidia and Tetrahymena contain norepinephrine, epinephrine, and serotonin (Blum 1969). The ciliated protozoan Tetrahymena pyriformis (Brizzi & Blum, Essman) and flagellated Crithidia fasciculata (Janakidevi et al) utilise serotonin, and the former also metabolises dopamine and epinephrine (Takeda & Sugiyama, Nomura et al). Tetrahymena pyriformis also has circadian light-related melatonin expression (Kohidai et al). In Tetrahymena, intracellular concentrations of serotonin and dopamine vary inversely during logarithmic and stationary phases of growth. These substances are released into the extracellular milieu, probably in response to elevated intracellular Ca²⁺, where they can increase intracellular levels of cAMP. Evidence that GABA could play a similar role comes from the finding that treatment with diazepam, a GABA receptor ligand, elevates the growth rate of Tetrahymena (Lauder 1993). Tetrahymena utilises histamine, serotonin, epinephrine, melatonin, and triiodothyronine can be found in it, as well as peptide hormones, such as insulin, adrenocorticotropic hormone, epidermal growth factor, endocannabinoids, endorphins and c-AMP and GMP. Thus signalling molecules in single celled eucaryotes appear to further long-term adaption through cross-generational epigenetic changes (Csaba 2014).

Trypanosoma cruzi could be induced to differentiate by increased cAMP levels that resulted from addition of epinephrine (González-Perdomo et al). Species of Entamoeba secrete serotonin and the neuropeptides neurotensin and substance P (McGowan et al) and release and respond to catecholamine compounds during differentiation from the trophozoite stage into the dormant or transmissible cyst stage (Eichinger et al) and Plasmodium falciparum malaria replication can be blocked by 5HT1a agonists (Locher et. al). Acetyl-choline and its G-protein coupled receptor have been found in acanthoamoeba (Baig & Ahmad 2017, Baig AM, et al. 2018). This heightens the dual role of such molecules in both intra- and inter-cellular signalling, just as acetylcholine is both a neurotransmitter and induces the secretion of insulin in humans. Elements of the protein signalling pathways, such as protein kinase C, essential to neuronal synaptic contact originated close to the eucaryote origin (Emes et al. 2008, Ryan & Grant 2009). Likewise the Dlg family of postsynaptic scaffold proteins, which bind neurotransmitter receptors and enzymes into signalling complexes originated before the divergence of the vertebrates and arthropods (Nithianantharajah et al. 2012).

Consequently the major neuroreceptor classes have a very ancient origin, with the 5HT1 and 5HT2 families diverging before the molluscs, arthropods and vertebrates diverged, close to the level of the founding metazoa. Sponges, with only two cell types, express serotonin (Wayrer et al) and have been shown to have the critical gene networks to generate synapses, in a pre-coordinated form (Conaco et al). Coelenterates already have all the key components of serotonin pathways, involved in signalling by sensory cells and neurons, despite having only a primitive nerve network (McCauley, Umbriaco et al).

Aggregation of social myxamoeba such as the slime mould Dictyostelium discoidium (video), under exhaustion of food supply, is mediated by by cyclic-AMP, also utilising glutamate and GABAb receptors (Taniura et al. 2006, Anjard & Loomis), forming first a motile slug and then forming a fruiting body via reciprocal serotonin and monoamine oxidase A (maoA) activity (Halloy et al, Goldbeter, Taniura et al, Baskar, Mani & Hyde). MaoA, which degrades serotonin, confers the fate of an organiser to the Dictyostelium tip. Once a tip has formed, serotonin contributes to tip dominance. It inhibits further tip formation, and thus ensures the mound retains the size determined during the earlier developmental stage. This relationship between serotonin and MAOa is precisely retained in humans, as exemplified in MAO inhibitor anti-depressants. The slug motions, including phototaxis, follow a distinct dynamical process from individual amoeba responses (Schlenkrich et al. 1995), indicating a separate collective organismic excitation protocol.

These cells have forms of both short and long-term memory formation (van Haastert 2021, Kuipers 2023), and this collective organism can be sexually diverse. D. discoideum has three different mating types which can mate with any two different sexes. Heterothallic mating occurs when two or more amoebae of different mating types fuse during aggregation to form a multinuclear synctium, which then breaks apart forming binucleate cells leading to one or more giant zygotes, which then release cAMP to attract other cells, engulfing them cannibalistically which serve to encase the whole aggregate in a thick, cellulose wall to protect it. Inside the macrocyst, the giant cell divides first through meiosis, then through mitosis to produce many haploid amoebae that will be released to feed as normal amoebae would. This means that the collective organism is sexually diverse, just as we are. It also means that a sexually diverse but significantly related population engages in sacrificial behaviour for the benefit of the species because the individuals forming the stalk die and do not get to produce spores. In related D. purpureum the slug stage in genetically mixed colonies separates into slugs containing a majority of closely related individuals to avoid cheating (Mehdiabadi et al. 2009). The fact that synctium formation leads to cells having up to three mitochondrial genotypes, when three sexual strains fuse, suggests sexual fusion could have evolved by the endosymbionts to ensure their survival, controlled later by sperm-ovum fertilisation to avoid cytoplasmic genetic warfare. Serotonin thus plays a key role in enabling developmental organisation of reproduction conducive to the survival of the collective sexual organism, rather than individual amoebae.

Both serotonin and external cAMP as well as glutamate and GABA are thus involved in social signalling, mediated by external G-protein linked receptors, despite the fact that in mammals cAMP is an intracellular second-signalling molecule. GABA promotes the release of the peptide SDF-2 which induces spore formation. Glutamate acts via the metabotropic glutamate receptor DdmGluPR as a competitive inhibitor of GABA functions mediated by a GABAb-like receptor and is also able to inhibit induction of sporulation by SDF-2. Lack of glutamate expression delayed aggregate formation and impaired chemotaxis toward cAMP. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that DdmGluPR diverged after the mGluR family-GABAb receptors split but before mGluR family divergence (Anjard & Loomis 2006, Milne & Devreotes 1993, Tanura et al. 2006).

About a third of wild-collected D. discoideum also engage in the symbiotic "husbandry" of bacteria, allowing the "seeding" of the food source at the location of the spore dispersal, which is particularly valuable if the new location is low in food resources. Colonies produced from the "farming" spores also show the same behaviour when sporulating. Some bacteria are sequestered in double membrane bound phagosomes where they are protectively isolated but not consumed. The amoebae preserve their individuality and each amoeba has its own bacterium. Symbiotic farming has a cost benefit trade-off: Those colonies that do not consume all of the prey bacteria produce smaller spores that cannot disperse as widely. In addition, much less benefit exists for bacteria-containing spores that land in a food-rich region, explaining why an ongoing minority of colonies do this (Brock et al. 2011).

Fig 117: Above: Changes in extracellular electric potential of D. discoideum pseudoplasmodial slug (fig 116) moving on the substratum (Kitami 1988). Below: VAMP homology between Dictyostellium and humans (Bennett et al. 2008).

Just as humans and slime moulds share the same basic neurotransmitter pathways, human phagocytes and Dictyostelium share the same pathways for bacterial assimilation and defensive protection (Dunn et al. 2017). This is reflected in the homology of human and myxamoebic SNARE protein VAMP7, or SYBL1 (Bennett et al. 2008), involved in both endosomal vesicle transport and target cell killing by natural killer cells. Syntaxin 7, syntaxin 8, Vti1 and VAMP7 form an an active SNARE complex for early macropinocytic compartment fusion in Dictyostelium (Bogdanovic et al. 2008). Syntaxins drive fusion of synaptic vesicles containing v-SNAREs. and interact with voltage dependent calcium and potassium channels. The myxamoebic versions likewise have sequence homologies with human versions.

Fig 118: Ichthyosporeans Filasterians and Chonaoflagellates have genes for proto-synaptic proteins having extensive evolutionary homology with metazoan and vertebrate (human) synaptic proteins Dlg/PSD-95, Homer and Shank. In single-celled species they are associated with aggregation processes, just as human synaptic protein Dlg/PSD-95 is also active in septate junctions in skin cells (Burkhardt & Sprecher 2017).

Studies of protists that are close relatives of metazoans, like the ichthyosporean Creolimax fragrantissima, the filasterean Capsaspora owczarzaki and the two choanoflagellate species Monosiga brevicollis and Salpingoeca rosetta possess proto-synaptic proteins – synaptic protein homologs although they never developed synapses and neurons that may interact with other proto-synaptic proteins in organisms with no synapses and neurons, in a very similar manner as observed in neurons. Their genomes encode for Dlg/PSD-95, Homer and Shank. Vesicle membrane proteins (e.g. Synaptophysin and Synaptogyrin), proteins involved in exocytosis (e.g. Complexin), and signaling (e.g. CaMKII) are also present in the genomes C. owczarzaki and choanoflagellates. Moreover, voltage-gated sodium and calcium channels were identified in the genomes of choanoflagellates (Liebeskind et al. 2011, Burkhardt & Sprecher 2017).

In metazoans with synapses and neurons, synaptic proteins are functionally diverse and fulfil different roles in other cell types. This seems to be the case for nearly every synaptic protein found in vertebrates. For instance, Dlg/PSD-95 functions as a scaffolding protein and clusters iGluRs to the plasma membrane of postsynapses, but the same protein is an important component of septate junctions in epithelial cells. The protein Homer, which is expressed in the nucleus and binds both to Flotillins in choano-flagellates and to astrocytes in vertebrates highlighting that many proto-synaptic genes may be pleiotropic.

Brunet & Arendt (2016) have explored the incidence of action potentials and Na/Ca ion channels and associated the incidence of action potentials in single celled eucaryotes as stemming from the activation of the eucaryote flagellum. The eucaryote kingdom is divided at or close to the base by the unikont/bikont division of one or two flagella, with animals and plants on opposing branches. Both of these broad groups bear flagella and have action potentials. Close to the root excavata such as Naegleria are known to possess flagella (fig 116). From this point of view excitability including that leading to action potentials is an ancestral feature of flagellated energetic protists. The amoeboid-flagellate switch is also conserved across the choanoflagellates, leading to metazoa (Brunet et al 2021).

Fig 119: Both action potentials (AP) and Na/Ca ion channels capable of delivering them are widely spread across the eucaryote tree, leading to the notion that the founding ciliatedeucaryote possessed action potentials. Notably Dictyostellium lacks flagella and has graded membrane potentials (Brunet & Arendt 2016).

Wan and Jékely (2020) note that fast reaction escape responses of ciliated eucaryote cells such as Paramecium (Schlaepfer & Wessel 2015) to potential threats from illumination changes or mechanical disturbance are usually induced by action potentials – unidirectional electrical pulses involving fast, regenerative changes in membrane potential. They state that while all cells display some electrical activity, phylogenetic evidence suggests that the capacity to propagate action potentials may have been an ancestral eukaryotic trait supported by LECA.

Brunet & Arendt (2016) advance an evolutionary hypothesis for the origin of the depolarization–contraction–secretion (DCS) coupling, the functional core of animal neuromuscular circuits. They argue that such fast reactions may have emerged in response to accidental membrane damage and sudden calcium influx. Based on calcium-triggered membrane depolarization, they infer that the first action potentials evolved alongside the membrane of sensory-motile cilia, with the first voltage-sensitive sodium/calcium channels enabling a fast and coordinated response of the entire cilium to mechanosensory stimuli. From the cilium, action potentials then spread across the entire cell, enabling global cellular responses such as concerted contraction in several independent eukaryote lineages. In animals, this process led to the invention of mechano-sensory contractile cells. These gave rise to mechano-sensory receptor cells, neurons and muscle cells by division of labour and can be regarded as the founder cell type of the nervous system.

A precursor of synaptic transmission occurs in choanoflagellates, where the cells of some species aggregate to form colonies. In these colonies, the cells move water past the colony by beating their flagella. Each of these cells can release transmitters that act on receptors in nearby cells to produce movements of the whole colony (Kristan 2016). At the transition to multicellularity, the fresh water sponge Spongilla lacustris has 18 distinct cell types. Synaptic genes were active in a few of these types, which were clustered around the sponges’ digestive chambers called secretory neuroid cells. X-ray scans revealed that neuroids send out long arms to modulate the activity of choanocytes holding the flagella that drive the sponges high-flow filter feeding currents. They do not have actual synapses but illustrate the evolution of cells specialising in modulating the activity of others (Musser et al. 2021).

Also originating with LECA are key transcription factors responsible for initiating transcription and hence gene expression. Fig 120(1) shows the full spread of these factors across eucaryote diversity, with a large paneucaryotic core complemented by further evolution of TF’s in unikonts, holozoa (animals and amoebas), metazoa (higher animals), fungi, algae and higher plants.

Fig 120: (1) Transcription factors, including homeobox motifs in homeotic genes are widely distributed across the eucaryotes, indicating an origin with LECA (de Mendoza et al. 2013). Separate groups have also evolved in plants animals and fungi. Short terminal repeats representing about 5% of human DNA appear to act as mutable transcription factor "wells" flanking core regulatory sequences that allow a population of transcription factors to collect TFs to effect modulated gene control (Horton et al. (2023). (2) Related homeotic genes are involved in segmentation of both arthropods and vertebrates and also occur in plants (4). (3) Evolutionary tree of homeodomains shows these arose in single celled eucaryotes and diversified in metazoa, fungi and plants (Derele et al. 2007). A more recent study Mantica et al. (2024) comparing insects and vertebrates analyses founding gene complexes in the ancestor of all bilaterians demonstrating the diversity of function arising from early genome duplications. Evolutionary developmental biology (evo-devo) compares the developmental processes of different organisms to infer how these evolved. It is composed of multiple core evolutionary concepts. (1) Deep homology is the finding that dissimilar organs such as the eyes of insects, vertebrates and cephalopod molluscs, long thought to have evolved separately, are controlled by similar genes such as pax-6 (see fig 154). These genes are ancient, and highly conserved among phyla; they generate the patterns in time and space which shape the embryo, and ultimately form the body plan of the organism. (2) Species do not differ much in their structural genes, such as those coding for enzymes; what does differ is the way that gene expression is regulated by the toolkit genes. These genes are reused, unchanged, many times in different parts of the embryo and at different stages of development, forming a complex cascade of control, switching other regulatory genes as well as structural genes on and off in a precise pattern. This multiple pleiotropic reuse explains why these genes are highly conserved, as any change would have many adverse consequences which natural selection would oppose. New morphological features and ultimately new species are produced by variations in the toolkit, either when genes are expressed in a new pattern, or when toolkit genes acquire additional functions. Transposable elements facilitate this through modular regulatory changes in how the toolkit is expressed.

Likewise, the homeodomains (Bürglin & Affolter 2016) originate at or close to the LECA root (Derelle et al. 2007), occurring for example in trichomonads and more diversely in amoebozoa and establishing separate new branches in metazoa, fungi and plants. These provide a genetic skeleton for developmental adaption of higher organisms through regulatory changes of morphogenesis leading to evolution of organismic phenotype of major phylla in constrained forms of regulatory evolution leading to among other branches to the brains of vertebrates, mammals, primates, apes and humans in the processes outlined in fig 120.

A multicellular transition point occurs in Cnidaria such as hydra, where the nervous system is an undifferentiated neural net, yet hydra displays innovative and intuitive multiple modes of locomotion as shown in fig 256, and cnidaria are fully-capable of associative learning (Botton-Amiot, et al. 2023, Bielecki et al. 2023). This attests to the idea that the neural net is self-organising society of sentient amoebo-flagellates , rather than the neurons being relatively trivial integrators , and the neural net / brain design is the causative definer of intelligent consciousness The emphasis thus remains on cellular rather than network intelligence alone (Ford 2009, 2010, 2017).

We thus now turn to higher organism and particularly human brain development. Late in the fourth week, the neural tube develops three distinct bulges that correspond to the areas that will become the three major divisions of the brain: forebrain, midbrain, and hindbrain. Not until the end of week 5 and into week 6 (usually around forty to forty-three days) does the first (chaotically) excitable electrical brain activity begin to occur. During weeks 8 to 10, the cerebrum begins its development in earnest. Neurons proliferate and begin their migration throughout the brain. The frontal and temporal poles of the brain are apparent during weeks 12 to 16, and the frontal pole (which becomes the neocortex) grows disproportionately fast when compared with the rest of the cortex.

Fig 121: Fetal brain development (Konkel 2018) and emergence of resting state activity by fMRI (Schöpf et al. 2012).

The very early leading role in brain development of serotonin expression is laid bare by its sequential expression and elaboration from very early stages and is consistent across vertebrate species. In early mouse embryos, 5-HT derived from the maternal-embryonic circulation activates different 5-HT receptors to control the proliferation, migration, gene expression, and morphogenesis of neural-crest and neural crest-derived cells (Buznikov et al. 2001). 5-HT signaling molecules such as enzymes responsible for 5-HT synthesis and breakdown, 5-HT receptors and the 5-HT transporter (5-HTT) are already expressed in the brain before 5-HT neurons are born (Witteveen et al. 2013).

“The development of serotonin-containing neurons has been extensively studied in a number of animal species, including rat, chick, nonhuman primate, and human. In all species studied the highest functional status of the serotonin system is reached early in development, and adult levels of the system are actually much lower than in the younger animal. Serotonergic neurons are first evident by 5 weeks of gestation and increase rapidly through the 10th week of gestation. By 15 weeks of gestation, the typical organization of serotonin cell bodies into the raphe nuclei can be seen. Serotonin levels increase more slowly throughout the first 2 years of life and then decline to adult levels by 5 years of age. The early arrival of serotonin into target regions, ahead of other monoamines, may regulate the ingrowth and terminal development of other monoamines, in particular dopamine. Because serotonin regulates the maturation of target areas, the amount of serotonin that grows into an area becomes key for further development” (Whitaker-Azmitia 2001).

GABAergic neurons likewise appear early in the development of embryonic brain and spinal cord. GABAergic fibers, apparently ascending from the spinal cord, project through regions of brainstem, midbrain and forebrain where serotonergic, dopaminergic and peptidergic neurons are being generated. An example of trophic signalling between neurons and glia also occurs in the serotonergic regulation of the calcium-binding protein S100, which functions as a serotonergic and GABAergic growth factor in the embryonic brain stem (Lauder 1993).

“Cells of the serotonergic raphe nuclei are generated early in the embryonic rat brain, prior to most of their target cells. As soon as they are formed, these neurons begin to send axons rostrally, where they soon encounter their earliest targets (e.g., dopamine neurons of the substantia nigra). The ability of 5-HT to regulate development of its target cells may be mediated by specific 5-HT receptor subtypes. It has been demonstrated that prenatal exposure to pCPA, or the general agonist 5-methoxytryptamine (5-MT), alters the postnatal expression of 5-HT receptors in rat brain. A recent in situ hybridization study has revealed that embryonic monoamine neurons and other neuronal populations affected by in utero exposure to pCPA express mRNA transcripts encoding 5-HTlc and 5-HT2 receptors. Moreover, the [psychedelic] 5-HT1c/2 agonist DOI promotes growth of cultured embryonic brainstem 5-HT neurons and mesencephalic dopamine neurons”.

Fig 122: (1, 2) Neurogenesis and cellular migration up the glial scaffold to form the cortical layers (Agirman et al. 2017, Paridaen & Huttner 2014, Liu et al. 2023). (3) Serotonin interactions in the mature brain between the Dorsal Raphe and mPFC (Celada, Puig & Artigas 2013). These are also activated I embryogenesis and mediate the organisation of the layered cortex through the Cajal-Retzius cells. Inset: Dopamine and Noradrenalin inputs to dlPFC (Thiele & Bellgrove 2018). (5) Pyramidal cells are complex oscillating cells which have receptors for multiple neurotransmitters in diverse locations from dendrites to the cell body and axon. (6) Connectome of axonal pathways in the brain emphasise its integrated embryonic development as an adaptive cellular process.

5-HT neurons located in the rostral raphe cluster extend profuse axon tracts into the fore- and midbrain. A distant target of the ascending 5-HT projection system within the forebrain is the medial prefrontal cortex (mPFC). The mPFC is the seat of our highest cognitive abilities and known to be involved in attentional processes, working memory and behavioural flexibility. In rodents, the developing 5-HT-positive fibers reach the mPFC, where they initially innervate the marginal zone and the subplate, before massively innervating the cortical plate proper. The 5-HT fibers, found within the marginal zone of the mPFC, are thought to contact Cajal-Retzius (CR) cells, cortical layer I cells secreting the glycoprotein reelin crucial for the correct layering of the cortex (Witteveen et al. 2013). Serotonin’s key function as a organiser of brain development in humans, may thus explain why fetal alcohol syndrome may be precipitated by embryonic serotonin depletion (Whitaker-Azmitia et al. 1996). The 5-HT2a receptor develops more slowly than the 5HT1a. The peak of the 5-HT2A receptor is earlier than the 5-HT2C receptor and the receptor is functional by postnatal day 7 in the rat hippocampus. This time period is too late to influence differentiation, however the receptor may play a role in branching, terminal sprouting, synaptogenesis, and mitogenesis. The role of both the 5-HT1A and 5-HT2A receptors during development suggest that the 5-HT2A receptor acts to release glucose from glial cells and to increase Ca²⁺ levels in neurons.

These actions destabilise the internal cytoskeleton, promoting fluidity and result in cell proliferation and apoptosis, resulting in structural instability. By contrast, the 5-HT1A receptor increases the release of S100β from astrocytes and reduces the levels of cAMP in neurons, promoting an acceleration of differentiation produced by enhancement and stabilisation of cytoskeletal formation, neuronal rest and stability. The 5-HT2 receptor can be referred to as a programmable receptor. Events during development may affect the number, affinity, or function of these receptors in the adult brain. Both prenatal and postnatal stress to the mother significantly increases the number of 5-HT2 receptors in the offspring, even after they have become adults (Azmitia 2001).

Serotonin neuronal autoregulation spans major metazoan phyla from molluscs, through arthropods to vertebrates as well as the human brain:

“Serotonin appears to autoregulate development of cultured 5-HT neurons, and can initiate and autoamplify its own synthesis in hypothalamic cultures. Evidence for an autoregulatory role of 5-HT in vivo comes from the observations that Drosophila mutants incapable of 5-HT synthesis, and adult snails depleted of 5-HT, exhibit aberrant growth of serotonergic axons. Similar effects are seen in rats treated prenatally with the 5-HT receptor agonist 5-MT. Taken together, these studies indicate that altered levels of 5-HT may affect development of the serotorergic system in developing brain. Serotonin also inhibits its own growth through the presence of serotonergic receptors on serotonin terminals possibly 5-HT1b. Thus, serotonin regulates not only the development of target fields, but also its own development” (Whitaker-Azmitia et al. 1996).

This picture confirms that the role of serotonin in nervous system development is strongly conserved from amoebozoa to humans and signals the existence of an ancient conserved regulatory system that evolved in single celled eucaryotes to secure survival of the collective organism, still similarly expressed in us to regulate development. This provides an evolutionary basis for neurodynamic networks to have retained these developmental characteristics, enabling entheogenic serotonin receptor agonists to alter the emotional dynamics of the networks of the ego attuned for organismic and kin survival to promote collective survival, experienced as union the with mind at large. It is also consistent with consciousness emerging at the level of the eucaryote cell.

The developmental paradigm outlined in fig 122 also underlines the fact that the entire network architecture of the brain is the result of a developmental social interaction between specific cell types of neural epithelial cells differentiating into glial and neuronal cell types, which then, in a coordinated sequence, undergo a dynamic state of cell migration where differentiating cells use the glial scaffold to locate their cell bodies in the appropriate places in the cortical layers before sending out dendrites and axons to make contact with the cell types with which they will eventually form the functional brain’s global network.

Cell migration to achieve this has to occur on multiple fronts. In radial migration, Neural stem cells proliferate in the ventricular zone lower in fig 122 (1, 2). The first postmitotic cells to migrate from the preplate become Cajal-Retzius cells and subplate neurons, migrating by somal translocation. The cells are bipolar and attach the leading edge of the process and the soma is then transported by nucleokenisis, via a microtubule "cage" around the nucleus elongating and contracting in association with the centrosome to guide the nucleus to its final destination. Radial fibres (radial glia) can translocate to the cortical plate and differentiate either into astrocytes or neurons. Somal translocation can occur at any time during development. Subsequent waves of neurons split the preplate by migrating along radial glial fibres to form the cortical plate. Each wave of migrating cells travel past their predecessors forming layers in an inside-out manner, meaning that the youngest neurons are the closest to the surface. It is estimated that glial guided migration represents 80-90% of migrating neurons. Most interneurons and Cajal-Retzius cells migrate tangentially through multiple modes of migration to reach their appropriate lateral location in the cortex. Many neurons migrating along the anterior-posterior axis of the body use existing axon tracts to migrate along in a process called axophilic migration. An example is GnRH- expressing neurons, which make a long journey from their birthplace in the nose, through the forebrain, and into the hypothalamus. Neurophilic migration involves the migration of neurons along an axon belonging to a different cell type. Gliophilic migration is the migration of glia along glial fibres.

The resulting picture is that the entire global network structure of the mature nervous system has arisen through the intelligent strategic activity of individual glial and neuronal cells responding to morphogenic, cell identifying and neurotransmitter clues. There is obviously a genetically based adaptive program in play to achieve this, but the resulting complexity is vastly higher than the complexity of the human genome, so it has to take place through individual cells responding intelligently to the cellular signals in their immediate environment. The conscious biological brain remains the most ecosystemically complex diverse "computational" system in the universe and the only one capable of subjective conscious awareness, recent studies of the mouse brain (Yao et al. 2023) and human synaptic proteome (van Oostrum et al. 2023) show vast diversity with no less that 5,300 types of neuron and neuroglia in the with 10¹⁵ synapses over 10¹⁰ very complex non-linear neurons with up to 10⁵ different synapses involving multiple receptor types on each. This is general natural intelligence at the molecular level, at cosmological climax.

As the nervous system matures and active excitable network communication arises, edge of chaos excitability forms a dynamic inducer of network connectivity and synaptic adaption, working through the sensory systems from the outside in, with the retina, modulating the input nuclei such as the lateral and medial geniculate in the thalamus and finally the cortex. This means that the notion of the mature brain as simply a synaptic network where the cells are simple functional modules summing up synaptic inputs and encoding these inputs in an action potential firing rate are gross trivialisations of the neurons and glial cells, whose interactive intelligence has been responsible, not just for ongoing adaptive brain states, but the entire structure and function of the nervous system. There is no evolutionary sense in their regressing to a McCulloch-Pitts zombie state having intelligently generated the entire brain.

The idea of the brain as simply a biological neural network of summative synaptic units with thresholds and long term weighting adjustments is thus a highly incorrect simplification, while the idea of the brain as a social network of participating highly intelligent cells both causing the entire fabric and it collective activity in conscious mental states is the correct one and the one that remains informative about all forms of adaption, learning and memory in which the human brain is involved. Likewise the idea that the neurons are just cellular automata while the networked brain somehow has emergent conscious from its network complexity is a Zeno’s paradox fallacy. Nuclear functions, including genetic and epigenetic modification have been cited as a basis of long term memory whose basis lies in existing cellular memory processes (Miller et al. 2010, Yu et al. 2011, Bernstein 2022).

Fig 123: Electrical and biochemical synapses.

Critical to this is the fact that even the brains of humans consist of an intimately coupled society of intelligent amoebo-flagellate cells communicating via the same neurotransmitter molecules that single-celled eucaryotes use to engage social signalling to ensure the survival of the collective organism. While both ionotropic and metabotropic neuro-receptors and modulators, based on chemical neurotransmitters, form the principal interactive longitudinal network pathways, electrical synapses using gap junctions have also evolved in metazoa (Söhl et al. 2005, Purpura 2014, Martin et al. 2020). But these have not evolved to replace the dependence on biochemical synapses, showing the latter have, throughout multicellular evolution remained essential to organismic survival. The brain has thus, even given the where with all to do so, never evolved to become a purely electrochemical neural net that could be adequately modelled by artificial electrical neural net processes. Electrical synapses do have complementary roles to biochemical synapses, enabling fast resonant activity maintaining synchrony, especially in lateral connections, e.g. in the retina (Trenholm & Awatramani 2022), enabling volume transmission (diffusion through the extracellular space of neurotransmitters that reach remote target cells) and generating electrical fields that are capable of influencing the excitability of nearby neurons. Gap junctions can also pass smaller molecules such as ATP and second messengers, so they are not exclusively electro-chemical. They are also bi-directional, while biochemical synapses are unidirectional. Mixed function chemical and electrical synapses also occur.

The final aspect of this is that the process is not just cellular but is a dynamic fractal from the quantum level to the global brain state. It is operating using wave phase coherence in feedback between continuous and discrete signalling and it is operating at the edge of chaos (King 2014, Teuscher 2022), so its dynamical properties are in a state of self-organised criticality at the quantum level. It is thus in a state of sustained causal uncertainty.

There can be no comparison between the conscious mammalian brain and any externally designed artificial neural net, because the biological one is intelligently designed from the cell up, through the development process, rather than having an externally imposed serial structure, as in a convolutional neural networks, or even random neural nets approximating cerebral circuits, which lack the fractal functionality, thus making machines with subjectively conscious volition, improbable to untenable (Ricci, Cadéne & Serre 2021, Schaeffer, Khona & Fiete 2022, Feather et al. 2023). Artificial neural nets do not currently possess any of the the edge of chaos phase coherence sampling dynamics of the neurodynamic brain.

Fig 124: Upper a convolutional neural net is an externally designed serial causal chain where convolutions of the image are first formed and then a multilayer neural net is entrained on the data to produce a pattern discriminator. The neural nets are simple Hebbian nets connected in series. Lower: An experiment to measure net memory capacity in simple neural nets by iterative synaptic modification designed to have rough quasi-random connections modelled on brain neural networks, tested on active field overlap α (Suárez et al. 2021).

Deep and Dreaming Sleep Across the Animal Evolutionary Tree.

Human sleep runs in cycles descending into deep non-REM States characterised by deep slow waves and periodically rising with increasing frequency during the night to shorter phases of REM (paid eye movement) sleep, where the brain activity closely resembles the waking state but the body is largely paralysed. This is when the rich phases of dreaming occur.

A collection of theories of REM and non-REM sleep have attempted to associate dreaming phases with memory consolidation processes – through specific patterns of neuromodulatory activity and electric field potential oscillations, slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep support system consolidation and synaptic consolidation, respectively. During deep sleep, slow oscillations, spindles and ripples - at minimum cholinergic activity - coordinate the re-activation and redistribution of hippocampus-dependent memories to neocortical sites, whereas during REM sleep, local increases in plasticity-related immediate-early gene activity - at high cholinergic and theta activity — may favour the subsequent synaptic consolidation of memories in the cortex (Diekelmann & Born 2010, Stickgold & Walker 2007). Studies show that people perform better at memorisation tasks when they have had a good episode of REM sleep. The direction and amplitude of rapid eye movements during REM sleep disclose gaze shifts in the virtual world of REM sleep, thereby providing a window into the cognitive processes of the sleeping brain (Senzai & Scanziani 2022). Researchers studying mice have found a causal relationship between REM sleep and memory consolidation (Boyce et al. 2016). The memory enhancements of sleep also appear to be specifically targeted at memories the individual perceive to have future relevance. The mere expectancy that a memory will be used in a future test determines whether or not sleep significantly benefits consolidation of this memory. (Wilhelm, et al. 2011). However, although we often forget our dreams consistent with memory reprocessing taking place, if we are awakened immediately from REM sleep, or our sleep is disturbed, we can often remember complex dreams in their entirety, or even become aware enough to realise we are dreaming and enter a lucid dreaming state.

Deep non-REM sleep has also been associated with consolidation of synaptic connections. Sleep after motor learning promotes the formation of postsynaptic dendritic spines on a subset of branches of individual layer V pyramidal neurons. Such neurons activated during learning of a motor task are reactivated during subsequent non–rapid eye movement sleep, and disrupting this neuronal reactivation prevents branch-specific spine formation (Yang et al. 2014). More generally sleep appears to consolidate motor learning at the burst levels attained immediately after training (Nettersheim 2015). It has also been found that sleep re-calibrates homeostatic and associative synaptic plasticity, believed to be the neural basis for adaptive behaviour, in humans (Kuhn et al. 2016). It has been found that in young people sleep spindles remain in synch with large slow waves, which may enable the prefrontal cortex to encode memories being transferred from the hippocampus, leading to consolidation. In older people disruption of this synchrony appears to lead to loss of memory consolidation during sleep (Helfrich et al. 2017).

Fig 125: Left stages in the human sleep cycle. Top right: Variations in mammalian daily length of sleep. Lower right: Sleep like torpor in Panurginus and inverted Cnidarian.

There is wide variation in the sleep between mammal species. For example a giraffe only sleeps an average of 1.9 hours, both chimps and orangutans sleep longer than humans 9.67 and 9.11, while a tiger slumbers for 15.5 and an armadillo 20.4. As well as depending on metabolic rates, sleep periods, which extend to both the vertebrates and arthropods, can provide a protective role, keeping animals, which are either nocturnal or diurnal, out of the sight of predators during their inactive hours. The extent of the REM phase also varies widely between mammal species. Animals with big brains for their body size need a significantly higher percentage of REM sleep, supporting a role in intelligence and cognitive function (Lesku et al. 2008). Humans have atypically short sleep compared with closely related primates and pack an unexpectedly higher proportion of REM sleep within a shorter overall sleep duration, and do so by reducing NREM sleep, rather than increasing REM. (Nunn & Samson 2018). Notably cetaceans sleep a single cortex at a time, rather than the whole brain to enable swimming.

Fig 126: REM sleep in cats, and jumping spiders

More recent research has highlighted REM phases of sleep running far down the evolutionary tree. They are noted in zebra fish (Leung et al. 2019). Jumping spiderlets have been filmed going through periods of quiescent sleep hanging on a thread, interspersed with short periods of eye movement and leg twitching characteristic of mammalian REM sleep (Rößler et al. (2022). Furthermore, cephalopods, including octupi and squids have been shown to likewise have periods of active sleep in which rapid changes in skin colouration appear to coincide with an active dreaming state (Iglesias et al. 2019, Medeiros et al. 2021) coinciding with a perceived series of encounters as shown in the fig below. This raises intriguing questions about the fundamental role of dreaming consciousness throughout the animal tree despited highly divergent brains of molluscs, arthropods and vertebrates, hinting at a universal form of consciousness in all animal life forms.

Fig 127: Changes in skin colouration in an octopus indicate a dream involving rising from the ocean floor (dark transition) and hunting and eating camouflage.

The Evolving Human Genotype: Developmental Evolution and Viral Symbiosis

To gain an empirical view of how these various evolutionary factors play out in practice, we now turn to examining in detail the evolutionary processes of replication and selection as they apply to our own species.

The double stranded human genome consists of some base pairs, including only ~21,000 protein-coding genes making up around 1% of the genome. More than 80% of the human genome has some active biochemical activity. Although it is currently unknown whether all of this DNA contributes to cellular function, the majority can be transcribed into RNA. Nearly 20 percent of the genome is associated with DNase hypersensitivity or transcription factor binding, identifiable with regulatory regions, of which more than 4 million have been identified (Zhao 2012).

Many of these protein coding genes, including the nuclear core metabolic genes arising from the endosymbiotic

-proteobacteria that became our mitochondria, first evolved in the great archaean expansion 3.2 billion years ago (David & Alm 2010), so that the phenotypic evolution of higher organisms has become a regulatory symphony orchestrating the expression of these genes and later homeotic morphogenetic genes that arose with the first metaphyta in ever more evolved regulatory relationships, through natural and sexual selection based on animal survival and reproduction.

As Gerhart & Kirschner (2007) note:

Regulatory change acts on the repertoire of unchanging core processes to select subsets, which are then externally selected upon. The burden of creativity in evolution, down to minute details, does not rest on selection alone. Through its ancient repertoire of core processes, the current phenotype of the animal determines the kind, amount, and viability of phenotypic variation the animal can produce in response to regulatory change. Thanks to the nature of the processes, the range of possible anatomical and physiological variations is enormous, and many are likely nonlethal, in part simply because the processes have been providing ‘‘useful’’ function since pre- Cambrian times. Phenotypic plasticities, both those evokable by environmental change and those developmental adaptabilities not evocable, are rich sources and favored paths of variation requiring little regulatory change.

Fig 128: Tree diagram of the birth, transfer, duplication and loss of key genes in the redox and electron transport pathways,
in a founding burst of gene evolution between 3.3 and 2.7 billion years ago (David & Alm 2010).

This brings us to the selfish gene part, which invokes an extraordinary symbiotic evolutionary story over very long time scales. Around 46% of the human genome consists of transposable genetic elements (TEs) and endogenous retroviruses, which can take on a selfish life of their own. The evolutionary distribution of these elements in the human genome is illustrated in fig 100. TEs can be separated into two major classes: DNA transposons and retrotransposons. DNA transposons, making up ~3% of the human genome, can excise themselves from the genome, move as DNA and paste themselves into new genomic sites. Although they are currently not mobilising in the human genome, they were active during early primate evolution, until ~37 million years ago. Retrotransposons duplicate via transcribed RNA intermediates that are reverse-transcribed and inserted at new genomic locations. They consist of two groups, with and without long terminal repeats (LTRs). Human LTR elements are endogenous retroviruses which account for ~8% of the genome, most inserted in the human genome >25 My ago, and their activity is presently very limited in humans, if occurring at all. Nevertheless, HERV-derived transcripts and proteins have been detected in healthy and diseased human tissues, and HERV-K, the youngest, most conserved family, is able to form virus-like particles (Bannert & Kurth 2004). By contrast, the vast majority of human TEs result from the present and past activity of non-LTR retrotransposons, typified by LINE-1 (or L1), Alu and SVA elements, that collectively account for about one third of the human genome. These are the only TEs unequivocally shown to be currently active in humans, as demonstrated by de novo insertions causing genetic disorders (Cordaux & Batzer 2009), including loss of the tail in apes (Xia et al. 2024).

There are >500,000 L1 copies in the human genome, resulting from their continued mobilisation for the past 150 My. L1 elements constitute ~17% of the human genome. There are >1 million Alu copies in the human genome, resulting from their continued activity throughout the past ~65 My. Alu elements have no coding capacity and are, therefore, non-autonomous TEs – “a parasite’s parasite”. Instead, they borrow the processes encoded by L1 elements. There are ~3,000 SVA copies in the human genome, resulting from continued activity throughout the ~25 My of hominid evolution. SVA elements are non-autonomous TEs mobilised by the L1 machinery. Before the autonomous L1 element and its Alu parasite expansions, the genome experienced the autonomous L2 element and its MIR parasite. The current rate of Alu and L1 retrotransposition has been estimated as one insertion every 20-200 births in humans.

We now investigate the ecology, parasitism and symbiotic implications of transposable elements. TEs are not randomly distributed. The genome may be viewed as an ecosystem inhabited by diverse communities of TEs, which seek to propagate and multiply through parasitism, cooperation, and competition. Many elements have evolved mechanisms to target specific loci where their insertions are less detrimental to the host but favourable for their propagation. The success and diversity of TEs in a genome are shaped both by properties intrinsic to the elements as well as evolutionary forces acting at the level of the host species (Bourque et al. 2018 and ensuing paragraphs).

To survive in evolution, TE expression needs to strike a balance – sufficient to promote amplification, but not so vigorous as to lead to a fitness disadvantage for the host offsetting the benefit to the TE. TE-encoded enzymes are naturally suboptimal for transposition and why some TEs have evolved self-regulatory mechanisms controlling their own copy numbers. A variety of host factors are also employed to control TE expression, which includes a variety of small RNA, chromatin, and DNA modification pathways, and sequence-specific repressors such as KRAB zinc-finger proteins. However, many of these silencing mechanisms must be at least partially released to permit developmental regulation of host gene expression programs, particularly during early embryonic development. For example, genome-wide loss of DNA methylation is necessary to reset imprinted genes in primordial germ cells. This affords TEs an opportunity, as reduced DNA methylation often promotes TE expression. There is is also a large body of evidence supporting the idea that horizontal transposon transfer is a common phenomenon that affects virtually every major type of TE and all branches of the tree of life, in addition to endogenous vertical transfer in organismic reproduction.

TEs are an extensive source of mutations and genetic polymorphisms. More than 99.9% of the ~500,000 L1 copies are no longer mobile due to various forms of mutations and truncations. It is estimated that each person carries a set of ~100 active L1 elements, mostly young insertions still segregating within the human population. TEs are associated with genome rearrangements and unique chromosome features. Transposition represents a potent mechanism of genome expansion that over time is counteracted by the removal of DNA via deletion. The rate at which TEs transpose, which is in part under host control, is an important driver of genome evolution.

Fig 129: (Left) LINE-1 RNA mediates binding of Nucleolin and Kap1 to rDNA, promoting rRNA synthesis and ESC self-renewal.

(Right) Pseudogene-mediated production of endogenous small interfering RNAs (endo-siRNAs). Pseudogenes can arise through the copying of a parent gene (by duplication or by retrotransposition). (a) An antisense transcript of the pseudogene and an mRNA transcript of its parent gene can then form a double-stranded RNA. (b) Pseudogenic endo-siRNAs can also arise through copying of the parent gene as in a and then nearby duplication and inversion of this copy. The subsequent transcription of both copies results in a long RNA, which folds into a hairpin, as one half of it is complementary to its other half. In both a and b, the double-stranded RNA is cut by Dicer into 21-nucleotide endo-siRNAs, which are guided by the RISC complex to interact with, and degrade, the parent gene's remaining mRNA transcripts. The mRNA from genes is in red and that from pseudogenes is in blue. Green arrows indicate DNA rearrangements (Sasidharan R, Gerstein M 2008 Protein fossils live on as RNA Nature 453/5 729-32).

To replicate down the germ line L! elements are preferentially expressed in both germ-line tissues and steriodogenic in mice (Branciforte and Martin 1994, Trelogan and Martin 1995). L1 RNA transcripts are generated in several stages of spermatogenesis including leptotene, and in the primary oocytes of females poised at prophase 1 and predominantly become expressed after fertilisation in embryogenesis (Lyon et al. 2010). Most insertions are in somatic cells leading to somatic mosaicism and only a small subset in germ line cells. This could enable somatic stress to have a potential effect on translocation in the germ-line which might enable forms of genetic adaption in long-lived species such as humans (King 1985, 1992). Conversely the SRY-group male determining gene SOX has been found to regulate LINE retrotransposition (Tchénio et. al. 2000).

L1 is highly expressed during early development and plays essential roles in mouse embryonic stem cells (ESCs) and pre-implantation embryos. L1 RNA acts as a nuclear scaffold that recruits Nucleolin and Kap1/Trim28 to repress Dux, the master activator of a transcriptional program specific to the 2-cell embryo. It is required for Dux silencing, synthesis of rRNA, and exit from the 2-cell stage (Percharde M et al. 2018).

L1 elements have also been found to replicate in neural progenitor cells in both the mouse and human and copy numbers have been found to increase in the hippocampus, and in several regions of adult human brains, when compared to the copy number of endogenous L1s in heart or liver genomic DNAs from the same donor. The authors comment that these data suggest that de novo L1 retrotransposition events may occur in the human brain and, in principle, have the potential to contribute to individual somatic mosaicism (Coufal et. al. 2009).

L1s were found to be able to mobilise in mammalian neural progenitor cells (NPCs) isolated from adult rat hippocampus (Muotri et al 2005). During development, neurons migrate from the proliferative zones as hippocampus and subventricular zone toward the surface of the brain to form six distinct histological layers and establish new neuronal networks. Thus, L1-associated mutations occurring in progenitor cells could potentially change the cellular phenotypes in the nascent neurons. L1 retrotransposition was found in the striatum, cortex, hypothalamus, hilus, cerebellum, ventricles, amygdala, and hippocampus. Estimates from human hippocampus, were respectively 13.7 and 6.5 somatic L1 insertions per neuron and glia, respectively. More recently the L1 insertion rate in both neurons and glia from hippocampus and frontal cortex of three healthy individuals was 0.58–1 events per cell. What seems to be certainly clear is that neuronal cells are more permissive for L1 retrotransposition than other cell types in the human body (Macia & Muotri 2017).

Although L1 elements do not have viral infectivity, lacking the envelope genes of retroviruses, there are recorded cases of horizontal gene transfer of L1 elements between species (Ivancevic et al. 2018). The line related bovine B element which also helps replicate a population of alu-like elements, has made multiple interspecies transfers from predators (snakes) to their prey (frogs) through a variety of parasites (Adelson et al. 2009, Kambayashi et al. 2022).

The use of next generation sequencing has provided additional insights into the L1 role in the mammalian brain, which demonstrate that is indeed made of a mosaic of genomes. Mice in running wheels had threefold more L1 retrotransposition than mice in sedentary environments. In human, the expression of L1 retroelements has been linked to several psychopathological conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder and major depressive disorder (MDD). MECP2, a protein involved in global DNA methylation, along with the transcriptional factors Sox2 and HDAC1, is known to form a repressor complex on the L1 promoter region, controlling L1 neuronal transcription and thus retrotransposition. Mutation of MECP2 in humans causes Rett syndrome (RTT), a progressive neurological disorder being considered part of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Terry & Devine (2020) note aberrantly high levels of L1 expression and retrotransposition in Human Neurological Disorders. The activated L1s act as alternative promoters for many protein-coding genes involved in neuronal functions, revealing a hominoid-specific L1-based transcriptional network controlled by DNA methylation that influences neuronal protein-coding genes (Jönsson M et al. 2019).

Ivancevic et al. (2016) have traced the evolutionary tree of L1 back to the founding eucaryotes as L1 elements occur in both plants and animal phylla spanning vertebrates, arthropods, and molluscs such as octopi where L1 transposition has specifically been associated with high-intelligence where transcription and translation measured for one of these elements resulted in specific signals in neurons belonging to areas associated with behavioural plasticity (Petrosino et al. 2022). L1, along with DNA transposons and LTR retroelements are ubiquitous across the arthropod kingdom (Petersen et al. 2019).

Similarly inactive L1 elements have been found to be 'boosters' of one X chromosome in collapse of one of the two X chromosomes in somatic lines that happens in female embryogenesis (Lyon 2000). A subset of young LINE-1 elements, however, is expressed during X inactivation, rather than being silenced. Such LINE expression requires the specific heterochromatic state induced by Xist. These L1s often lie within escape-prone regions of the X chromosome, but close to genes that are subject to X inactivation, and are associated with putative endo-siRNAs small interfering RNAs that silence transposable elements. L1s may thus facilitate XCI at different levels (Chow et al. 2010).

A number of key coding and non-coding RNAs are derived from TEs. Although usually detrimental, there is growing evidence that TE insertions can provide raw material for the emergence of protein-coding genes and non-coding RNAs, which can take on important and, in some cases essential, cellular function. A spectacular example of deeply conserved TE-derived genes are Rag1 and Rag2, that catalyse V(D)J somatic recombination in the vertebrate immune system. Both genes, and probably the DNA signals they recognise, were derived from an ancestral DNA transposon around 500 million years ago.

Fig 130: Left: Telomerase containing an ancient relative of TE reverse transcriptase shows a deep evolutionary link with all retroelements. Centre: The arc gene involved in retrovirus like particles in neural plasticity arose independently from gypsy elements in both mammals and Drosophila. Right: Syncytin essential for the placental membrane has been incorporated across mammals, some marsupials and a placental lizard from retroviral Env genes.

One of the most intriguing examples of TE domestication is the repeated, independent capture of ERV env genes, termed syncytins, which are involved in placentation by facilitating cell–cell fusion and syncytiotrophoblast formation. These multinucleated cells originate from fetal trophoblasts and constitute the boundary layer between maternal and fetal tissue. The major functions of this layer include maternal–fetal exchange and the maintenance of immunologic tolerance toward the developing fetus (Bannert & Kurth 2004). Notably, one or more such syncytin genes have been found in virtually every placental mammalian lineage where they have been sought, strongly suggesting that ERVs have played essential roles in the evolution and extreme phenotypic variability of the mammalian placenta (Lavialle et al. 2013, Cornelis G et al. (2017).

Another example of a viral-sourced activity re-purposed for host cell function is provided by the neuronal Arc gene, which arose from the gag gene from a LTR retrotransposon domesticated in the common ancestor of tetrapod vertebrates. Genetic and biochemical studies of murine Arc show that it is involved in memory and synaptic plasticity and has preserved most of the ancestral activities of Gag, including the packaging and intercellular trafficking of its own RNA (Pastuzyn et al. 2018, Nikolaienko et al. 2018).

Unlike prokaryotes, eucaryote protein-coding genes are interspersed with non-coding introns between the exons that constitute functional pieces of the coded protein which have to be excised before translation. Introns allow for alternative splicing to produce different proteins and enable evolution to be modular and to recombine exons into new proteins, so they are a crucial part of eukaryotic genomes, but their origins are poorly understood. Some lineages exhibit large-scale gains in introns extremely rapidly. This is consistent with a type of element, introners, that create copies of themselves that insert into many genes across the genome, which evolved convergently from many distinct genetic elements, most are consistent with DNA-based transposable elements, and they are disproportionately common in the genomes of aquatic organisms where horizontal genetic transfer is more common (Roy et al. 2020, 2023, Gozashti et al. 2022).

TEs can donate their own genes to the host, and they can also add exons and rearrange and duplicate existing host genes. In humans, intronic Alu elements are particularly prone to be captured as alternative exons through cryptic splice sites residing within their sequences. L1 and SVA (SINE/VNTR/Alu) elements also contribute to exon shuffling through transduction events of adjacent host sequences during their mobilisation. In both mice and humans, the placenta utilises SINE elements (Alu and B1) to form ds-RNA to modulate the immune system in pregnancy to induce type III interferon to avoid viral disease while not inducing rejection of the embryo(s). By pretending it's under viral attack, it keeps the immune system running at a gentle, steady pace to protect the enclosed foetus from viruses that slip past the mother's immune defences (Wickramage et al. 2023). The reverse transcriptase activity of retroelements is also responsible for the trans-duplication of cellular mRNAs to create ‘processed’ retrogenes in a wide range of organisms. The L1 enzymatic machinery is thought to be involved in the generation of tens of thousands of retrogene copies in mammalian genomes, many of which remain transcribed and some of which have acquired new cellular functions. This is a process still actively shaping our genomes; it has been estimated that 1 in every 6000 humans carries a novel retrogene insertion.

TEs also make substantial contributions to non-protein coding functions of the cell. They are major components of thousands of long non-coding RNAs in human and mouse genomes, often transcriptionally driven by retroviral LTRs. Some of these TE-driven lncRNAs appear to play important roles in the maintenance of stem cell pluripotency and other developmental processes. Many studies have demonstrated that TE sequences embedded within lncRNAs and mRNAs can directly modulate RNA stability, processing, or localisation with important regulatory consequences. Furthermore, TE-derived microRNAs and other small RNAs processed from TEs can also adopt regulatory roles serving host cell functions. The myriad of mechanisms by which TEs contribute to coding and non-coding RNAs illustrate the multi-faceted interactions between these elements and their host.

TEs contribute cis-regulatory DNA elements and modify transcriptional networks. Cis-regulatory networks coordinate the transcription of multiple genes that function in concert to orchestrate entire pathways and complex biological processes. There is now mounting evidence that TEs have been a rich source of material for the modulation of eukaryotic gene expression. TEs can disperse vast amounts of promoters and enhancers transcription factor binding sites, insulator sequences, and repressive elements As TE families typically populate a genome as a multitude of related copies, it has long been postulated that they have the potential to donate the same cis-regulatory module to ‘wire’ batteries of genes dispersed throughout the genome. An increasing number of studies support this model and suggest that TEs have provided the building blocks for the assembly and remodelling of cis-regulatory networks during evolution, including pathways underlying processes as diverse as pregnancy, stem cell pluripotency, neocortex development and innate immunity.

We now turn to the overall mutational load of all these processes. Xue Y et al. (2009) set an even lower limit examining the Y chromosome of mutations/nucleotide/generation, giving 90 per haploid genome. Harris & Pritchard (2017) note that due to the combined action error correcting genes, mutation rates are extremely low in humans – about one point mutation per 100 MB or about 60 genome-wide per generation. Give only 1% coding this would imply only around 0.6 coding mutations per generation consistent with the raw assumption of around 0.5.

Feusier J et al. (2019) have provided the following retrotransposition rate estimates for Alu elements, one in 40 births, is roughly half the rate estimated using phylogenetic analyses of one in 20, a difference in magnitude similar to that observed for single-nucleotide variants. The L1 retrotransposition rate is one in 63 births and is within range of previous estimates (1:20–1:200 births). The SVA retrotransposition rate, one in 63 births. While these are more disruptive or retrogene TE insertions, the rates of both are broadly consistent with a viable mutational load under integrative mutational change accompanied by sexual recombination.

This picture has shown us a comprehensive view of how the organismic human genome succeeds in maintaining a balance with its “selfish” TEs, in which feedback between TE transposition, host repression and a wide array of symbiotic evolutionary manifestations have resulted in a co-evolutionary scenario in which the TEs have become (or have always been) essential complements of the host nuclear genome, providing us with the capacity for passing the two cell embryo stage, enabling placental development, contributing to neural plasticity and learning and the very basis of our antibody immunity.

The Evolving Human Phenotype: Sexual Evolution, the Heritage of Sexual Love and Patriarchal Dominion

In “The Woman that never Evolved”, Sarah Hrdy (1981) conveyed a previously unrecognised view of the primate female in the span of her transition to humanity: we are introduced to our nearest female relatives: competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts do. These females compete among themselves for rank and resources, but will bond together for mutual defense. They risk their lives to protect their young, yet consort with the very male who murdered their offspring when successful reproduction depends upon it. They tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy. When “promiscuity” is an advantage, female primates—like their human cousins—exhibit a sexual appetite that ensures a range of breeding partners. From case after case we are led to the conclusion that the sexually passive, noncompetitive, all-nurturing woman of prevailing myth never could have evolved within the primate order.

Human evolution and cultural emergence has thus been marked by a strong influence of female reproductive choice, amid mutual mate choice, accompanying a long slowly developing childhood. This is consistent with our closest sister species, chimps and bonobos having a mix of female exogamy and male clan dominance in chimps, and powerful alpha females in bonobos, where sexual evolution of the clitoris has led to frequent female-female socio-sexual bonding (Fielder & King 2004 A). The eschewing of overt estrus in favour of menstruation in humans, combined with a degree of lunar and menstrual synchrony also leads to female reproductive choice operating strategically to offset male reproductive domination and threats of male infanticide.

Fig 131: Above Left: Chimp, bonobo and human penises compared. Both chimp and bonobo penises have penis bones and neuro-sensitive penile spines (one shown inset top left) with a very short copulatory period. The human penis is notably larger and testes smaller than chimps. Below Left: Bonobo and human clitoris. Bonobos have a large clitoris enabling female-female erotic contact but like chimps have an overt estrus (below centre). The human clitoris is smaller but highly sensitive with more nerve endings than the human penis. Centre and Right: Human pregnancy is a very significant risk and investment to the human female, involving risks of giving birth to a large head, travail vulnerability in late pregnancy, followed by years of breast feeding and early child rearing of a dependent infant. Male and female reproductive strategies are thus examples of sexually antagonistic co-evolution (Fielder & King 2004 D) in which males try to avoid paternity uncertainty by controlling female sexual choice leading to the sex wars and patriarchally driven sexual dominance. Female reproductive choice is thus essential to human evolution to counterbalance this effect. Centre: Infrared imaging of female sexual arousal is accompanied by blood flow to the labia and clitoris just as it is to the penis. This is central to the nature of human courtship and bonding between the sexes.

Indeed human sexual evolution, perpetual socio-sexual receptivity accompanied by ecstatic female arousal, the foregoing ^{^[40]} of overt oestrus in favour of menstruation, the need for human males to demonstrate genuine indicators of genetic fitness, both in a large penis lacking the penile bone of the great apes, and in hunting and social prowess, consistent with XY sex chromosome inheritance, complemented by lunar phasing and menstrual synchrony, attest to an evolutionary emergence of Homo sapiens strongly influenced by female reproductive choice (Fielder & King 2004).

Evidence for such archaic patterns is evident in the practices of founding human cultures, from 19th century accounts of ‘Hottentot’ women refusing sex unless meat is provided, through the Hadza to the Sandawe “twerking” rites by the light of the full moon (King & Fielder 2004 B), sometimes referred to as the “sex strike” (Knight 1991, Power & Watts 1996, King & Fielder 2004). Intense female clitoral orgasm, perpetual sexual receptiveness outside menstruation, the growth of female fatty breasts and neotonous features indicating fecundity and youthfulness and the loss of penis spines and bones, with growth of a large erectile penis in males, also attests to mutual sexual selection in humans enhancing both female sexual attractiveness and males having to give a genuine indicator of genetic fitness during sex.

The emergence of super-intelligence in humans has also been associated with the “mating mind” (Miller 2000), in which men display their genetic prowess in hunting and their social skills in music, story-telling and social humour, while the women make astute social choices of who to get pregnant with, given a mix of good genes and resourcing required to bring up a human infant. Machiavellian social intelligence for strategic bluffing, is also evident in intelligent species, from capuchins to humans. Female sexual selection is consistent with XY sex chromosome inheritance, where the large X chromosome is unique in males but chimeric in females due to double X being toxic, except in the germ line (Turner 1996). This provides a context for males to demonstrate intellectual and social prowess due to their unique X whose genes may also serve reproductive choice in females. The X chromosome contains multiple genes linked to brain function and development, some of which are rapidly evolving, giving support to this idea.

My joint work with Christine (Fielder & King 2004) “Sexual Paradox: Complementarity, Reproductive Conflict and Human Emergence” set out the thesis that the emergence of human culture and super-intelligence arose from a reproductive prisoners’ dilemma of sexual selection game theory where neither sex had the upper hand in terms of their own highly asymmetric reproductive strategies, causing a peacock’s tail Red Queen race of mutual sexual selection for culture and intelligence, centrally mediated by astute female reproductive choice, in a context of mutual mate choice to enhance family stability. Because of the very high costs to mammal females due to having to invest in live birth, the female reproductive strategy is highly skewed towards careful parenting investment. By contrast mammalian male strategies are strongly skewed to fertilising as many females as possible. Hence only 3% of mammalian species are socially monogamous, although not genetically so, due to covert ‘cheating’ by both sexes. Humans are at an extreme for mammals, because of the high risks of delivering a large-headed baby, often as a single offspring, long periods of lactation and child care in a slowly-growing infant, requiring increasing cultural education put these asymmetries at an extreme, leading to sexually-antagonistic co-evolution, manifest in existential conflicts of personal interest. This then becomes the process of sexual selection that is fixing the intellectual benefits of the emergence of language and culture we will see in the next section. It is a view confluent with evolutionary psychology, which we support, as giving expression to evolutionary sexual selection conducive both to human emergence and intelligence, and also to strongly pro-social influences of love consistent with long-term emergent stability.

This is partly underpinned by some beautiful aspects of mammalian sexual chromosome evolution. Mammals have an ingenious sexual genetic scheme to align sexual selection with the effects of the honest egg and the cheating sperm. The female XX and male XY means that the male is haploid X and the female diploid XX. The haploid state provides for maximal selective advantage, because there is just one 'pure' copy of each gene on this entire chromosome, not two interacting copies. When the female embryo begins to divide about the 10 to 20 cell stage, in each somatic cell i.e. apart from the germ-line sex cells, one or other X randomly collapses. So a female brain is single X, like the male, but with a difference - it is a mosaic of cells of two genetic X-identities, those of her father and mother, as in the picture of the tortoise-shelled cat. The male by contrast is endowed with one pure maternal X-dose. When he is good he is very very good - but when he is bad he is singularly retarded. There are at least 8 forms of X-linked male mental retardation because the X chromosome, the hemizygous 'haploid' X is carrying several key genes for brain development at the spearhead of human evolution (Turner 1996).

There are 221 known human genetic defects that can cause mental impairment, some 10% of which reside on the X chromosome, even though it carries less than 4% of known human genes and the complete sequence of the X chromosome (Ross et al. 2005), confirms that an unusually large number of its genes code for proteins important to brain function. Estimates of the increased likelihood of a deleterious mental impairment gene being on the X-chromosome range from 1.9 times through 4.3 times (Inlow & Restifo 2004) to 7.2 times (Zechner et al. 2001) giving it a pivotal role in the evolution of human intelligence. Researchers have also found that in some traits linked to intelligence, such as verbal skills and good social behaviour, male twins were more alike than female twins indicating X-linked genes in which the females are chimeric (Loatet al. 2004).

In our species, where intelligence and social skills are central to success, genes on the X chromosome seem to have evolved rapidly to provide us with the necessary brain power (Check 2005). An explanation goes as follows. As the X and Y diverged from a common autosome pair they each began to accumulate autosomal genes. Ultimately the X and Y diverged to the point where most X genes cannot recombine with Y and become recombined only in female oogenesis. This makes the X one of the most stable in the mammalian genome, for two reasons. Firstly because the genes are expressed in almost exclusively haploid form in males, who have lost the corresponding Y genes, they need to be more strongly conserved according to Muller's ratchet theory. Secondly, mutation rates are much lower in females who produce a relatively small number of primordial eggs early in embryogenesis, as opposed to males, who produce vast numbers of sperm throughout life.

The stability and inheritance of the X may have paradoxically exposed X genes to more intense pressure to evolve. As genes became transferred between chromosomes, those involving intelligence that became transferred to the X become exposed to acute sexual selection by females because in males, the X chromosome genes get a chance to shine, or to fail miserably, each time they pass through the male line. Because a male carries only one copy, any new mutations are revealed in all their glory.

Many of the genes on the X chromosome associated with human brain function seem to have distant relatives with different functions in other vertebrates, such as chickens and fish (Kohn et al. 2004). So in boosting our cognitive abilities, the X chromosome seems to have co-opted a diverse range of existing genes, rather than evolving a new set of genetic sequences for the purpose, posing a paradox of conservatism amid rapid change.

In some instances, geneticists have pinpointed genes on the X chromosome that still seem to be in the process of adopting new roles in the brain. For instance, a gene called JARID1C seems to be evolving from a similar gene called JARID1D, which is found on the Y chromosome. If men inherit a damaged version of the JARID1C gene on their single X chromosome, they develop mental disabilities. The fact that the healthy Y chromosome version cannot compensate for its defective cousin hints that JARID1C is becoming more crucial to the brain as it evolves (Jensen et al. 2005).

Fig 132: (Left) X-linked tortoise-shell gene variation demonstrates X-mosacism in a female cat on a scale where the brain would also be chimeaeric. The confinement of this phenomenon to female felines combined with an elusive contracted genetic element in female somatic cells, the Baar body, was the trigger for Mary Lyon (2000), the discoverer of mosaic X-inactivation to make the discovery (Jegalian and Lahn 2001). (Top right) Darwin Family tree (Turner 1996). His grandfather was the founder of Wedgwood Pottery and his cousin, Galton, was a prolific writer and the founder of the Eugenic movement. The pedigree shown in the figure was said, at the beginning of the century, to indicate that genius is a Y-linked dominant, but it could equally well be explained by X linkage. Charles Darwin received Joshua Wedgwood's X chromosome and therefore his intelligence through his mother (11-3), and Erasmus Darwin's brilliance having reappeared in Francis Galton via his mother (11-7), rather than his father. Mary Howard (1-3), was also related to the Galtons. (lower right) Human X and Y chromosomes.

When the occasional man gets the pure benefit of a fortuitous X complementing his other good brain genes on the diploid chromosomes he may thus become a genius. The irony is that the male never can transmit this heritage to his sons. It is always the maternal X that goes to the son, because to be a son he must have got the paternal Y. Females are thus the progenitors of male prodigies, but the prodigies are doomed ducks. This is the sacrificial saga of the sex gene. The only hope for a male genius is to have daughters! By contrast, females can fortuitously give direct birth to male geniuses. This doesn't mean only males display creative genius. Neither does it deny the capacity of culture and education to mediate natural differences.

A revolutionary idea is that female genes encouraging female sexual selection for intelligence are strongly linked to genes for high intelligence selected for in the male. Early in human evolution, researchers suggest (Zechner et al. 2001), females developed a preference for intelligent males. According to the theory, the genes for super-intelligence and for the preference of intelligent males were closely linked, and so were inherited together. And because superior intelligence also aided survival, the process wasn't kept in check by natural selection — unlike other sexually selected characteristics such as the peacock's tail, which makes its bearers more vulnerable to predators. These X-linked genes then ran away together without any limitation by natural selection, because of the adaptive advantage of intelligence.

Laland’s treatment of sexual selection is a glaring omission in terms of its pivotal role, all the more anomalous, given Darwin's own founding (1871) title on human emergence – “The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex”. When Laland does briefly touch on sexual selection in passing, it is only a brief reference with no implications articulated either for our emergence as a super-intelligent species, or for the effects of our epoch of 'civilized' culture for better or worse:

Even if human mating preferences are learned, socially transmitted, and culture specific, sexual selection will still result. Indeed, culturally generated sexual selection was found to be faster and more potent than its gene-based counterpart. ... experimental data shows that humans copy the mate choice decisions of others, which can lead to the social transmission of preferences for particular characteristics in the opposite sex. ... Given the pervasiveness of cultural influences on human mating preferences, social transmission may exert a powerful influence on the selection of secondary sexual characteristics and other physical and personality traits.

By contrast with the mating mind, his notion of mere social copying of sexual fashion in any of its kinky voyeurisms, provides absolutely no reassurance of any evolutionary benefits for cultural evolution on human sensibility.

Fig 133: A human reproductive bottleneck in Y-chromosome diversity began about 10,000 years ago and continued for several millennia (Karmin et al. 2015). Inset shows 11 independent areas of primal agriculture discovered.

We now move on to much more troubled times. With the transition from the gatherer-hunter phase to the neolithic, the human genetic record (Karmin et al. 2015) shows a profound collapse in Y-chromosome diversity absent in maternal mitochondrial DNA tree. This resulted in the reproductive sex ratio falling from a historical sex ratio of 2 females to each male due to some men not reproducing, while other males had the resources or cunning to sire children with more than one woman, to an effective 17 females to 1 male. Rather than simply being an agricultural Genghis Khan effect of potentates, an explanation for this extreme genetic skewing has been proposed in terms of extreme competition between patrilineal kin groups in the neolithic, preceding and leading into the emergence of major urban cultures, wiping out whole Y-chromosome clades through male genocide and abduction of the females (Zeng, Aw & Feldman 2018).

Jin, Jiyan, Azadi.

Zan. Zendegi. Azadi.

Femme, Vie, Liberté.

زنزندگیآزادی

אישה, חיים, חופש

नारी, जीवन, स्वतंत्रता.

Woman, Life, Freedom.

Frau, Leben, Freiheit.

Γυναίκα, Ζωή, Ελευθερία.

Женщина, Жизнь, Свобода.

女人，生命，自由。

Kvinde, liv, frihed.

Wahine, Ora, Tikanga.

Mujer, Vida, Libertad.

பெண், வாழ்க்கை, சுதந்திரம்.

女性、人生、自由。

여자, 삶, 자유.

This period was then succeeded by the rise of patriarchal societies (Lerner 1986, Sanday 1981) supported by patriarchal religious imperatives that sought to inhibit forms of cultural matriliny in which women brought up children with their maternal family, in favour of patriarchal kinship and reproductive attitudes repressing female reproductive choice in favour of paternity certainty, leading to 4000 years in which the natural paradox between human female and male reproductive strategies, essential for fertile genetic evolution were suppressed in favour of male rights to control womens choices of sexual partner, pregnancy and autonomy, often by oppressive and violent means, from stoning for adultery applied selectively to women who didn’t cry out, through female genital mutilation, including infibulation, enforced veiling, loss of independent ownership rights over land and assets, loss of educational and financial independence, enforced chaperoning of women by their male relatives, and judged half the value of a man in law.

Fig 134: "Woman, Life Freedom": Islam in particular manifests four key aspects of oppressive injustice against women prejudicial to human redemption and survival. Left: a verity of restrictive burqas and niqabs from Saudi Arabia, and Iran. Top centre: Afghanistan. A one-eyed burka, denying a woman binocular vision because two eyes would be too seductive to men. Top right: Egypt: Female genital mutilation, condoned in Islam because Muhammad is said to have said "Reduce but do not destroy", which clitorectomy and particularly infibulation, destroys. Lower row: Stoning in Iran and Afghanistan viewed by a crowd of men:, because Muhammad is said to have tried a Jewish woman for adultery using Deuteronomic law outmoded since before the time of Jesus. Afghanistan. Bride burning. Far right: Iranian women, intentionally shot in the eye by the morality police, for protesting the imposition of the hijab. Top: Ghazal Ranjkesh: "Our victory is not here yet but it's close". Bottom: Elahe Tavokolian "You aimed at my eyes but my heart is still beating. Thank you for taking the sight from my eye which has opened the eyes of so many people. Iranian security forces are targeting women at anti-regime protests with shotgun fire to their faces, breasts and genitals, according to interviews with medics across the country. Doctors and nurses said they first observed the practice after noticing that women often arrived with different wounds to men, who more commonly had shotgun pellets in their legs, buttocks and backs. Systematic society-wide patriarchal religious repression of female reproductive choice is evolutionary suicide, unparalleled in other mammals, where, outside sexual coercion by marauding male bands, female reproductive choice is integral to courtship and essential for long-term evolutionary survival.

All of these practices spanning dominant cultures across all continents and spanning all major religions are contrary to the evolution of super-intelligence, love and sexual choice and the future of culture, the biosphere and human survival.

The Evolving Human Phenotype 2: Past and Future Evolution of the Brain and Human Intelligence

There is clear evidence for increasing brain size and intelligence, as primate evolution has proceeded from monkeys to apes, and finally humans. Genetic studies have found a number of intriguing improvements in neuronal brain structure in the evolution of Homo sapiens from higher apes.

An outstanding example has been the FoxP2 transcription factor gene (Enard et al. 2002), whose mutations can give rise to severe selective language impairment and appears to be associated with fine motor coordination of the larynx. Mutations in this gene are rare, but there has been a double mutation in this gene and the paucity of 'silent' neutral mutations which don't change the protein suggested it was a very recent change, later than 200,000 years ago, which has swept through the population by conferring a major selective advantage. However the evidence for a selective sweep involving FoxP2 is no longer supported by a more extensive study by the original team (Atkinson et al. 2018) and is now known to be shared by Denisovans and Neanderthals, taking it back to at least 600,000 years ago before Homo sapiens and these lines diverged.

An indication of a key genetic switch which may have led to the increasing brain size of the Homo line has come from investigation of the gene family SRGAP2a,b,c, (Dennis 2012) involved in neocortex maturation, which is present in only one copy in chimps as well as other mammals, but has undergone three duplications in humans, the first daughter copy 3.4 million years ago around the time evidence of Australopithecus tool use seems to have occurred, and the second 2.4 million years ago around the time Homo is believed to have split off from Australopithecus and the third about 1 million years ago. The effect of the duplications of truncated copies appears to be that the duplications form a more complex regulatory system, which partially inhibits the action of the the original, leading to a slower growing, larger brain with more complex ramified neurons, which can also migrate more rapidly during embryogenesis, leading to design features consistent with a larger more complex brain (Charrier et al. 2012). Several other brain genes may also prove to be duplicated in humans complementing this discovery.

Fig 135: (Left) A The evolution of SRGAP2, showing the four human genes and the counterposed effects one maturing dendritic spines and another encouraging the formation of more immature spines resulting in a more complex expression. B: Splice variant duplication ARHGAP11B with unique tail enhancing basal progenitor mitosis and neocortical expansion (green). (Right) Evolution of NOTCH2NL and its affect on neurogenesis

A human-specific gene may be responsible for human neocortex expansion due to a single nucleotide change, which introduces a new splice variant. Neocortical neurogenesis involves two main classes of neural progenitor cells, apical progenitors (APs) and basal progenitors which are better suited for maximising neuron production. Accordingly, the evolutionary expansion of the neocortex is associated with an increase in the generation of BPs. The gene ARHGAP11B, which promotes basal progenitor amplification and is implicated in neocortex expansion, arose on the human evolutionary lineage by partial duplication of ARHGAP11A, which encodes RhoGAP. However, the lack of 55 nucleotides in the mRNA, which leads to loss of RhoGAP activity by GAP domain truncation also results in addition of a human-specific amino acid sequence. The 55 nucleotides are deleted by mRNA splicing. Hence, a single nucleotide substitution underlies the specific properties of ARHGAP11B that likely contributed to the evolutionary expansion of the human neocortex (Florio et al. 2016).

A set of three nearly identical genes found only in humans, NOTCH2NL, appears to play a critical role in the development of our large brains (Fiddes et al. 2018). These are found exclusively in humans and appeared between 3 and 4 million years ago, just before the period when fossils show a dramatic increase in the brain sizes of human ancestors. These genes belong to an ancient family of NOTCH genes, discovered in fruit flies and named causing notched wings. The human-specific genes were derived from NOTCH2, one of four mammalian NOTCH genes, through a duplication event that inserted an extra partial copy of NOTCH2 into the genome in an ancient ape species that was a common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees, and gorillas. The partial duplicate was a nonfunctional pseudogene, versions of which are still found in chimp and gorilla genomes. In the human lineage, this pseudogene was revived when additional NOTCH2 DNA was copied into its place, creating a functional gene. Gene conversion was likely responsible for repairing a non-functional version of NOTCH2NL. After it was repaired, but before we diverged from our common ancestor with Neanderthals, NOTCH2NL was duplicated several times, resulting in four genes. Three of the four are active genes that direct the production of truncated versions of the original NOTCH2 protein. A complementary team (Suzuki et al. 2018) also focused on NOTCH2NL because of the importance of its ancestral gene, NOTCH2, in signalling processes that control whether cortical stem cells produce neurons or regenerate more stem cells. And they found that artificially expressing NOTCH2NL in mouse embryos increased the number of progenitor stem cells in the mouse cortex and can substantially expand the population of cortical stem cells, which in turn generate more neurons, a feature expected to distinguish between human and non-human cortical neurogenesis.

The role of micro RNAs which bind to mRNAs and thus are able to initiate a coordinated array of regulatory changes have been implicated in the differences in evolutionary rates of change between humans and chimps. Constitutive gene expression divergence is comparable between humans and chimpanzees. However, humans display a 3–5 times faster evolutionary rate in divergence of developmental patterns. Such accelerated evolution of human brain developmental patterns is twice as pronounced in the prefrontal cortex than the cerebellum, preferentially affects neuron-related genes, and does not depend on cis-regulatory changes, but might be driven by human-specific changes in expression of trans-acting regulators. Developmental profiles of miRNAs, as well as their target genes, show the fastest rates of human-specific evolutionary change. miR-92a, miR-454, and miR-320b are possible regulators of human-specific neural development (Somel et al. 2011).

Brain size has swelled from the 500cc of Australopithecus. Homo erectus and his alter-ego Homo ergaster, went from a 750cc brain to 1250cc. The emergence of modern Homo sapiens, is accompanied by a slight decrease in brain size from an average of about 1500cc to 1400. Although this is well within the range of human variation between 1100 and 2000cc, it does suggest that some form of compactification has taken place. One view of this is that the development of culture and language has made it cognitively easier for the brain to assimilate the world around us. Another suggested (Ridley 2003 34) is that a reduction of aggression may be accompanied by a more neotonic physiology (tending towards embryonic form), as is noted comparing womens slightly smaller brain sizes than men, made up for by a higher proportion of grey matter neurons.

Fig 136: Variations in brain size, with a focus on a recent decrease DeSilva et al. (2021).

However, brain size is only an overall measure of brain complexity and intelligence and the size of the brain has both grown and shrunk in the lead up to the present. An important measure is the relative contributions of grey matter consisting of cell nuclei and white matter consisting of connecting axons. Zhang & Sejnowski (2000) have established a universal scaling law between grey matter and white matter of the cerebral cortex consistently spanning several orders of magnitude in brain sizes across the mammalian kingdom, arising from an evolutionary requirement for compact arrangement of long axonal fibres.

Lüders, Steinmetz & Jäncke (2002) show that among people today, brain size correlates negatively with proportion of grey matter. Women have smaller brains with proportionately more grey matter so their white matter is relatively more efficient. Larger brains have a lower proportion of grey matter so their white matter was bulkier and relatively less efficient and their grey matter wasn’t much larger as might appear from brain size.

As expected, we found a significant sex difference for the absolute volumes of total brain, grey matter, white matter and CSF, with greater volumes for men. Relating these compartmental volume measures to brain volume resulting in proportional volume measures revealed a higher proportion of grey matter in women. No significant sex differences were found for white matter and CSF proportions. However, when the influence of sex was partialized out by regression analyses, brain volume explained 40-81% of the variance of the absolute grey matter, white matter and CSF volumes. Performing these regression analyses for the proportional volume measures revealed that brain volume explained ~16% of the variance in grey matter proportion. Interestingly, the correlation between brain volume and grey matter proportion was negative, with larger brains exhibiting relatively smaller proportions of grey matter. … We suggest that brain size is the main variable determining the proportion of grey matter.

This finding lends moderate support to the idea that some of the recent reduction in brain size could be due to evolving changes to improve the efficiency of axonal circuitry because (a) a larger brain is slower because the axonal routing takes longer, (b) there is a continuing selective pressure against unnecessary brain size, because of the metabolic load of a larger brain which already consumes 40% of the glucose metabolism and (c) because of a large brain size causing greater risks to the baby and mother during delivery.

There are many possible causes to explain such a reduction, changes in body size, diet, domestication reducing aggression. However, there is another major factor that may contribute and that is the negative effect of culture on brain size due to collective intelligence reducing the need fo individual intelligence. DeSilva et al. (2021) note:

Reduction in brain size may not compromise cognitive performance if intelligence is an attribute of the society rather than the individual. Galton first described that the accuracy of decision making by human groups could exceed that of any individual group member. This concept of collective intelligence has since been elaborated in studies ranging from insects to humans. If brain production, maintenance, and operation costs are metabolically significant, then collective intelligence may reduce demands for neural tissue to support individual cognitive capabilities.

We suggest that group cognition lowered the demands for neural architectures required to support some aspects of individual intelligence and decision making. This effect may have become even more pronounced with the advent of writing ca. 5000 years ago, which falls within the estimated 95% CI for the pronounced reduction in Holocene human brain size (Fig 136). During human history, social groups became larger, social interactions more frequent, social networks more complex, and tracking relationships more demanding. A rise in sociocultural complexity was not due to particular individuals becoming more intelligent and culturally skilled, but because of the emergence of collective intelligence resulting from a growing population of interconnected humans and interacting human groups. As group size increases, interactions with a dynamic and exceedingly complex social landscapes result in increased demands on the brain. However, because of the metabolic demands of the brain, there may be limits to feedback loops between social network size and brain structure. If group decision-making generated adaptive group responses exceeding the cognitive accuracy and speed of individual decisions and had a fitness consequence, then human brain size may have decreased as a consequence of metabolic cost savings.

Population size expanded dramatically with the advent of agriculture, beginning ∼10 kyr and grew exponentially from an estimated five million to over 100 million by 3000 years ago. This increase in population coincided with deterioration in individual health and increases in infection rate, pathogenic load, and virulence. It remains possible, then, that the high energetic cost of a heightened immune response, might have been a factor in Holocene brain reduction. In fact, Crabtree (2013a, b) proposed this immunity-for-intelligence trade-off in his controversial “Idiocracy Hypothesis,” though this idea has been criticized on the basis of flawed assumptions (Kalinka et al., 2013; Mitchell, 2013). Gowdy and Krall (2013) draw parallels between the ultrasocial human superorganism, complete with division of labor and “economic organization around surplus” that arose in the Holocene and the sociobiology of agricultural eusocial insects, including some ants and termites.

Crabtree (2013a, b) cites the large number of X-chromosome genes, each of which results in clinical intellectual disability (ID) as an unstable chain of genes, rather than a robust self-compensating network, making the human genome vulnerable to the loss of any of them:

Perhaps the most effective way to estimate the number of genes in humans that are needed for full intellectual function is to rely on studies of X-linked intellectual deficiency (XLID). Because males have only one X chromosome, the effects of X-chromosome mutations cannot be rescued or compensated for by the second copy, in contrast to mutations on other chromosomes. Present studies indicate that mutation of about 215 intellectual deficiency (ID) genes on the X chromosome give rise to XLID and/or emotional disability [1,2]; this represents about 25% of the genes on the X chromosome. Of these, 86 have been characterized and do not seem to be neomorphs (a gain of inappropriate function). This gives a conservative estimate that about 10% of all human genes are implicated in intellectual function. Because mutation of any one of these genes can give rise to intellectual disability, it can be concluded that they do not operate as a robust network, but rather as links in a chain, failure of any one of which leads to intellectual disability. The X chromosome does not appear to be enriched for genes required for intellectual development, and therefore we can extrapolate that between 2000 and 5000 genes are needed for intellectual and emotional function.

Crabtree (2013c, d) has responded vigorously to his critics (Kalinka et al., 2013; Mitchell, 2013). His extension to 2000-5000 ID genes in the whole genome is likely a moderate overestimate because he assumed the X-chromosome was representative of the entire genome, however there are still a very large number of genes involved, so the concern remains real. In fact the X-chromosome does have between 1.9 and 4.3 times as many ID or MR (mental retardation) genes, which in turn attests to a pivotal role for astute female reproductive choice in selecting for super-intelligence cited in the previous section. Hence the repression of this, under patriarchal culture, is very likely to be having a deleterious effect on human intelligence.

A novel test, in which Inlow J & Restifo L (2004), distributed unmapped MR disorders proportionately across the autosomes, failed to eliminate the well-known X-chromosome overrepresentation of MR genes and candidate genes:

It has been proposed that the human X chromosome contains a disproportionately high density of genes for cognitive ability. This proposal generated controversy as well as speculation concerning possible underlying evolutionary mechanisms, including the intriguing suggestion that female mate selection for high male intelligence helped accelerate the rapid rise of human cognitive abilities (Turner 1996; Zechner et al. 2001). Opponents, however, argued that all X-linked recessive mutations are simply easier to map and identify because their phenotypes are revealed in hemizygous males. Countering this view is an analysis (Zechner et al. 2001) showing a 7.2-fold X-chromosome bias for MR genes, whereas genes causing common morphological phenotypes have, on average, only a 2.4-fold X-chromosome bias.

To take this question one step further, we asked whether the apparent X-chromosome overrepresentation among the molecularly identified human MR genes [of around 4.3 times] would disappear if we accounted for the plausible possibility that numerous autosomal loci are “hiding” among the unmapped MR genes. We attempted to overcome the ascertainment bias that favors identification of X-linked genes by making simplifying assumptions that maximize the estimate of autosomal MR genes and minimize the estimate of X-linked MR genes. Even when these very conservative (i.e., biased toward autosomal) assumptions are used to estimate the chromosomal distribution of the unknown MR genes, a 1.9- fold overrepresentation of MR genes on the X chromosome remains. This result supports the hypothesis that the X chromosome contains a disproportionately high density of genes influencing cognitive ability.

Crabtree cites the cultural hive mind we have created, in which selection for individual intelligence is blunted in favour of collective intelligence, as well as demands of urban living in terms of immune competition as a result of epidemic diseases as contributing to intellectual decline:

When might we have begun to lose these abilities? Most likely we started our slide with high-density living, which was enabled by the transformative invention of agriculture. Selection may have begun operating on resistance to the diseases that naturally grow out of high-density living, switching the pressure from intelligence to immunity. It is also likely that the need for intelligence was reduced as we began to live in supportive societies that made up for lapses of judgment or failures of comprehension. Community life would, I believe, tend to reduce the selective pressure placed on every individual, every day of their life. Indeed that is why I prefer to live in such a society.

Several considerations could mitigate the validity of the argument that intellectual and emotional fitness are slowly decaying. For example, genes required for intellectual and emotional function could be needed for early development or even fertility, and would thus be maintained through selection. … Another common counter-argument is that we are under constant selection for our intellectual traits. Intellectual capacity and emotional stability have mating advantages that would reduce the rate at which mutations affecting these traits become fixed in our genome. This is true, but I fear does not take into account the extreme selection required to maintain traits dependent upon thousands of genes with reduced heritability. A hunter–gatherer who did not correctly conceive a solution to providing food or shelter probably died, along with his/her progeny, whereas a modern Wall Street executive that made a similar conceptual mistake would receive a substantial bonus and be a more attractive mate. Clearly, extreme selection is a thing of the past.

Gawdy & Krall’s (2013) thesis is particularly stark, invoking a “hive mind” superorganism status for a human culture heading towards self-extinction:

The current geological epoch has been dubbed the Anthropocene—the age of humans. We argue that the roots of the Anthropocene lie in the agricultural revolution that began some 8000 years ago. Unique human psychological and cultural characteristics were present in our distant hunter–gatherer past, but in terms of the biophysical impact of our species, agriculture represented an unequivocal and decisive evolutionary break. With the transition to agriculture human society began to function as a superorganism functioning as a single unit designed by social natural selection to produce economic surplus. Where environmental conditions were permitted, early human agricultural societies followed the same pattern as a few social insects and exhibited explosive population growth, complex and detailed division of labor, intensive resource exploitation, territorial expansion, and a social organization favoring the survival and growth of the supergroup over the well-being of individuals within the group. Similar economic forces lie behind ultrasociality in social insects and humans—increased productivity from the division of labor, increasing returns to scale, and the exploitation of stocks of productive resources. Exploring the evolutionary mechanisms behind ultrasociality offers insights into the growth imperative that threatens the stability of the earth's life support systems.

Fig 137: Overall Flynn effect begins to decline with marked falls
in word and arithmetic scores (Sundet et al. 2004).

Does this currently mean we have already incurred a significant loss of intelligence? Possibly not but probably a loss of some forms of intelligence related to individual survival. The Flynn effect (Sundet, Barlaug & Torjussen 2004) is the substantial and long-sustained increase in both fluid and crystallized intelligence test scores that were measured in many parts of the world over the 20th century. Test score increases have been continuous and approximately linear from the earliest years of testing to the present. For example, a study published in the year 2009 found that British children's average scores on the Raven's Progressive Matrices test rose by 14 IQ points from 1942 to 2008. There are numerous proposed explanations of the Flynn effect, such as the rise in efficiency of education and better diet, along with skepticism concerning its implications. Some research suggests that there may be an ongoing reversed Flynn effect (i.e., a decline in IQ scores) in Norway, Denmark, Australia, Britain, the Netherlands, Sweden, Finland, and German-speaking countries, a development which appears to have started in the 1990s.

Bratsberg & Rogeberg (2018), analysing the effect in Norway, state that the Flynn effect and its reversal are both environmentally caused and that the trends are not due to a changing composition of families, and that there is at most a minor role for explanations involving genes (e.g., immigration and dysgenic fertility) and environmental factors largely fixed within families and that their influence is negligible compared with other environmental factors. Therefore the Flynn effect provides no reassurance that the underlying genetic basis of human intelligence is not under atrophe.

The outstanding difference between humans and all other species is the emergence of human culture. This introduces new kinds of challenges. Humans are a highly social species, so survival in the jungle has been overtaken by survival in the concrete jungle of human affairs. In many ways this is just as challenging, because Machiavellian intelligence, both creates many social niches and also creates chains of prisoner’s dilemma paradoxes of survival.

But it is also clear that human culture is providing services that are significantly blunting strong selection for individual intelligence on a wide demographic footing. Previously to survive in gatherer-hunter society while cooperating in small bands, the inability to survive in the wild and fend for a family would result in demise. In technological society the diverse intelligence skills required for all aspects of individual survival have been reduced to a much simpler set of options of being trained for a specific and sometimes menial action set, e.g. in an industrial process or routine office role. Human mate selection is no longer driven by astute females seeking brainier males, but macho brawn in the patriarchal mould, with female reproductive choice actively and violently repressed by the religious patriarchy as well.

We are thus fooling ourselves to think we are biologically more intelligent purely on the basis of the culture that we have co-evolved with. We have been overtaken by our own culture. All the products of culture we see, from the pinnacles of scientific discovery, to the elaborate technological processes that have enabled the digital age and a landing on the moon, have not arisen from an increase in individual intelligence, but chain reactions of discovery and manufacture in which a series of small insights create a technological process which then becomes automatically replicated to produce items, from heart-lung machines to cell phones, which we now depend on and can barely comprehend how to use, let alone understand how they are made, or how they work.

Climax Mammalian Intelligence

We are keenly aware that we are more intelligent than apes, but when we examine the brains of elephants and dolphins and whales, which form the climax of intelligence of the Proboscidea and Cetaceans, their brain structure and complexity looks anatomically and physiologically very similar to, or even surpassing that of human brains.

While the large brains of elephants are dominated by cell numbers in the cerebellum so that, while their CNS numbers are much higher than humans, their cortical numbers are lower, however the same is not true for cetaceans. Mortensen H et al. (2014) note:

Possessing large brains and complex behavioral patterns, cetaceans are believed to be highly intelligent. Their brains, which are the largest in the Animal Kingdom and have enormous gyrification compared with terrestrial mammals … we estimated the total number of cells in the neocortex of the long-finned pilot whale (Globicephala melas) brain. For the first time, we show that a species of dolphin has more neocortical neurons than any mammal studied to date including humans. We found that the long-finned pilot whale neocortex has approximately 37.2 × 10^9 neurons, which is almost twice as many as humans, and 127 × 10^9 glial cells.

Fig 137b: (Left) Spread of mammal brains . The mammalian cortex folds more extensively with the volume of thalmo-cortical axons requiring increasing folding to compensate for the basal brain network volume, although primates have a superior ratio of cortical neurons to brain volume (inset fig138b). This is partially compensated for by smaller mammals also having smaller pyramidal neurons by a packing factor close to the square root of the linear size. E.g. a human is about 25 times as tall as a mouse is long and its pyramidal neurons are 1/2 the width, packing 4 times as many into the same cortical area. Hence the mouse actually has more cortical neurons for its relative brain volume than humans (fig 138b) although its cortex is smooth. (Right) Avian (1, 2) and human brains (3-6) compared for pallium/cortical neuronal structure (Güntürkün et al. 2021). Both have a layered structure but in birds this extends all the way to the striatum, while in mammals it occupies only the superficial cortex (1-4 mm mean 2.5 mm), overlaying massive white matter axons. (5) shows Nissl staining to show cell bodies in the visual cortex and (6) Golgi staining to show axons.

There is no basis to the notion that the spread of other mammals have inferior biological intelligence to Homo sapiens. The cerebral cortex is an evolutionary adaption shared by stem and all crown mammal species, with larger brains commensurately more folded to maintain proportionality between the area of the cortex and the increasing volume of basal brain connections. There are no dumb and smart mammals, but simply mammals displaying conscious intelligence, adapted to their ecological roles. What distinguishes humanity is the intervention of language and culture, as externally derived memetic processes, ultimately from the possession of fingers and opposable thumbs, enabling niche manipulation shared by founding primates. Smaller mammals have smoother cortices but similar relative numbers of cortical to basal brain neurons.

Fig 138: Left: Biological intelligence is not revealed or reliably measured by cultural complexity. Brains and cortical neurons of African elephant, Bottlenose dolphin and Human. Centre: Diverse whole brain and cortical neuronal numbers. The blue and yellow macaw forebrain neuronal density 1.9bn is comparable with the pigtail macaque 2.5bn, despite its brain weight being only 20.7g compared with 106g. Inset: The cockatoo and galago each have a brain weighing 10g but the cockatoo has 1.147bn cortical neurons, 54% of the whole brain, compared with 0.226bn in the galago representing 24% of the whole brain in both galago and human.

The key difference between humans on the one hand and elephants and dolphins on the other is human culture, both as language, which I contend in the next section has a strong cultural component as a memetic virus conferring rapidly evolving semantic efficiency; and niche and tool construction, which results in the civilisation that makes us think we are far more intelligent than the rest of life. This is a form of human exceptionalism that is deleterious to our survival.

Elephants have no fingers and no toes and can’t use tools, except with their highly evolved trunks, so it's hard for them to make any kind of records. All cetaceans have the same problem – no limbs at all and no way of making traceable records, so dolphins spend all their time playing sex games, of love and war and have very high intelligence but that’s the limit of their culture and memes are really difficult to come by. Studies of the linguistic basis of cetacean clicks and songs remain uncertain how far these differ from other kinds of animal communication (Eskelinen et al. 2016, Janik 2013, King et al. 2021, Ryabov 2016).

We aren't necessarily more biologically intelligent than elephants and dolphins, except that our line of evolution resulted in fingers, tools and niche construction, and a tear away process of memetic cultural evolution, in which grunts and mothers crooning to their babies resulted, through finely tuned human vocal articulation, just as our use of fingers, resulted in complex language taking over our brains from the outside, as conceptual cultural memetic "viruses" and produced the kind of world we now live in, complemented by our tools and the trappings of village and then urban culture, which is now reducing us to troglodytes of our own making, unless we protect the biosphere.

In fact we can see as parents just how easy it is for language to become established because Homo has another unique physiological “invention” that is as significant as fingers and thumbs were to the first primates – the absurdly expressive human voice box. There is evidence from Homo erectus and ergaster of this evolving long before human culture (Fielder & King 2004). Recordings of ape calls show just how different we are in terms of vocal semantics, although semantics is obvious in primate expressive behaviour eg. Capuchins in fig 158a. Monkeys, such as Vervets have functionally referential alarm calls (Price et al. 2015), but only marginally in apes such as chimps (Slocombe & Zuberbühler 2005). These abilities go back to the lemurs (Walton & Kershenbaum 2019), suggesting humans may have retained expressive vocal traits socially, as well as opposable fingers and thumbs.

We are NOT “hard-wired” for semantic language. It is a rapidly evolving cultural “virus” we communicate, as Kirby and Christiansen (2003, Christiansen & Chater 2008) make clear next section. When we first taught our kids, we said “no” and stopped them and then we said “mama” and “papa” and pointed to each of us just as mother pumas do, to teach their cubs to hunt by example. That is where our kids immediately grasped the elusive concept of “semantic” meaning and it was all over, from there, bar the endless chatting since. Neither are ape kids so different from human kids in terms of family dynamics. Just as the fingers made technology, so the human voice box, paradoxically by a loos rather than a gin of function, lost its air sacs and vocal membranes, allowing our larynx to produce stable, harmonic-rich phonation, ideally highlighting formant changes that convey most phonetic information (Nishimura et al. 2022). The chimp cry right, shows chaotic non-linear bursts, which obscure phonetic communication. Paradoxically, the increased complexity of human spoken language thus followed simplification of our laryngeal anatomy. In turn this has bootstrapped linguistic culture and rational thought, by reverse cultural viral memetic takeover – par excellence, by languages themselves as adaptive representational systems! Thus the combination of fingers and accurate harmonic vocalisation, rather than being a super-intelligent elite, seem to be key to the birth of human culture and human super intelligence.

What is the Future Spearhead of Conscious Evolution?

Comparing humans, dolphins and elephants, we have seen that what distinguishes humans is not just their large brains but their phenotypic ability to give expression to tool use and to thus design new ecological niches exploiting the natural habitat and the species it contains, through processes such as gathering and hunting, and the generation of social cultures associated with language, particularly between mothers and their babies and young children as the key to developmental intelligence, then used widely in the social group to establish and maintain trusting relationships.

This would justify the focus on Homo sapiens itself as the key dominant species in whose evolution the future of biospheric evolution has become entwined, except for the crippling and potentially fatal flaw that human exploitation of the biosphere has become not only a threat to the biosphere as a whole through habitat exploitation, wilderness degradation, wild species destruction, climate crisis, and pollution, not to mention the risks of nuclear warfare, but has also become an ever more brittle instability for humanity itself, due to increasing dependence on technology to drive our ever longer and more tenuous food distribution chains, and our energy demands to keep an increasingly complex global society, prone to multiple tipping points of urban food supply break down, international conflicts arising from increasing scarcity of resources, epidemic disease due to a single large fluid mass society, and the debilitating effects of climate and biodiversity crisis itself. This is now becoming compounded by increasing dependence on unsustainable forms of artificial intelligence, prone to even more brittle break down in the event of any disruption to the social system. This leaves our species completely vulnerable to any major disruption, from an asteroid or cometary strike, through a large magma eruption like that that gave rise to the Deccan traps, severe climate overheating tipping points with loss of the polar albedo and others. It raises the question of whether Homo sapiens has a viable evolutionary future, or whether the biosphere may need to depend on simpler more prolific species, with faster genetic turnover and adaption and shorter reproduction times, from rodents, to cockroaches, or even single-celled eucaryotes, as an ultimate future option for biospheric survival.

In New Zealand Aotearoa, because of its evolutionary isolation the region had no apex mammal predators and only small reptiles, some bats and flightless birds, such as the iconic kiwi, which are now ravaged by rodents, mustelids and possums, meaning that humans have had to take on the burden of becoming apex predators of feral introduced invasive species. One can then ask the question is it worth saving such exceptional species, because species extinction is after all a natural consequence of evolutionary change, as well as new species emergence. But this isn’t about any fundamentalistic naturalist agenda of protecting dumb wild animals, but the entire future of conscious existence on our beloved blue-green planetary paradise we are putting a stake. However any form of intervention to allow species extinctions involves a tortured and complex decision because survival of the biosphere depends not just on an individual species’ reproductive success but on how a climax ecosystem generates robustness to sometimes apocalyptic planetary environmental crisis through the sheer diversity of its interacting niches. It becomes a perilous game to cast lots on evolution itself to try to sustain it from the consequences of human devastation. But are there some species, however threatened, that are really essential?

Fig 138b: Top left: Juramaia a eutherian placental fossil from 160 mya ago in the Jurassic period (Luo et al. 2011) followed by Eomaia 125 mya (Ji et al. 2002). Top right: Dryomomys, 55 mya after the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction, the most primitive primate known from good fossil material. The first known primate fossil, Purgatorius, dating from 65 mya, known only from isolated teeth and jaw. The earliest primate from molecular clocks dates at 90 mya but adapted to take into account fossil evidence it dates to 81.5 mya, well before the Cretaceous-Tertiary extinction (Tavare et al. 2002). Lower row: slender loris, mouse lemur and tarsier. Right: Brains of (a) mouse, (b) tarsier, (c) marmoset, prosimian (d) ring-tailed lemur and (e) slow loris. Anthropoid (f) rhesus monkey,, (g) lar gibbon (h) chimp and (i) human. All primates display cortical folding homology, with greater folding in the larger species to preserve cortical surface to brain volume ratios (Brain Museum). Lower right: Comparison of the log ratios of cortical neurons to brain volume and total neuron count in elephant, lion, pig, capybara, human, chimp, rhesus, gorilla, mouse and marmoset. These show mice and marmosets, despite their smooth brains and small size, share optimal cortical/brain ratios, even compared with humans. In addition mouse CA1 pyramidal cells are only half the dimensions of human ones (top-right) so neuronal densities in small animals are higher (Benavides-Piccione et al. 2020). Small primates are thus ideally placed to evolve compact highly intelligent brains by comparison with other mammalian families. Opposable thumbs for grasping objects are widespread in primates, with strepsirrhine pro-simians having pseudo-opposable thumbs (lower far right). Darwinius masillae, an Eocene primate fossil between prosimian and simian, had hands and feet with highly flexible digits featuring opposable thumbs and halluces (Franzen et al. 2009). The brain to body ratio is high in primates, with rhesus macaques having a similar figure to humans.

Traditional fossil records suggest the mammalian radiation of the dominant placental species occurred only after the dinosaur extinction, implying it took an astronomical intervention to result in the mammalian dominance, primate emergence and hence human evolution, rendering any notion of humanity as a hot evolutionary target capricious. However it is clear the earliest mammal ancestors arose long before this, some 225 mya ago, as small shrew-like species living off small organisms, such as insects (Novacek 1997). There has been continuing debate between molecular clock evidence suggesting an early diversification and fossil evidence existing only since the demise of the dinosaurs. The current picture remains controversial but a picture is emerging of an early genetic origin with little phenotypic diversification in the Jurassic-Cretaceous epoch of the dinosaurs, although the stem and crown placental groups had become established, followed by rapid phenotypic diversification after the dinosaur extinction, as diverse new niches became available (Tavare et al. 2002, Ji et al. 2002, O’Leary et al. 2013, Luo et al. 2011, Halliday et al. 2019, King & Beck 2020), thus explaining the discrepancy. Primates become key for their fingers complementing their brains that became key in human tool use, and cultural emergence, so primates remain key future evolutionary targets.

The most “primitive” primates are the wet-nosed strepsirrhines, consisting of the lemurs of Madagascar, galagos (bushbabies), pottos from Africa, and lorises from India and southeast Asia. Many of the species living today are endangered due to habitat destruction, hunting for bushmeat, and live capture for the exotic pet trade. Strepsirrhines are behaviourally diverse, although all are primarily arboreal (tree-dwelling). In the warmer Eocene there were many species which have become extinct, in our cooler climates, so they could diversify in a warmer world heading back toward Eocene temperatures provided we protect them now. The sister dry-nosed group of haplorhines, including Tarsiers are also targets. Otherwise, in a cataclysmic planetary crisis, we are back to rats and mice.

Implications for the human future, Where could this end up for humanity?

1. Going down the Hive-Mind Rabbit Hole

How far do we want to go down the road of becoming a smaller-brained hive-minded species dependent on our brittle unstable, implicitly unsustainable, machine technology to survive? Given that we are extremely maladapted to the survival of the biosphere in a form that is likely to sustain us long term, this seems to be a terminal Fermi demise.

2. Violating our Evolutionary Paradigm

Human super-intelligence and cultural emergence appears to have occurred in a context of astute female reproductive choice complemented by mutual mate choice. The patriarchal epoch exemplified by Eden asserts an overthrow of this to achieve male paternity certainty. This has resulted in all sorts of negative selective pressures. The current situation is girls of reproductive age not making astute reproductive choices because the media and the group culture preaches a doctrine of macho males and awed females getting laid that is mindless patriarchal fantasy and intelligence suicide. The history of the last 10,000 years already described in the previous section shows diverse manifestations of this. It is deleterious for an XY chromosomal species with a massive polarisation of reproductive risk and investment to culturally repress astute female reproductive choice. Religions are the prime offender and need to be exorcised for their sins, but also the notion of males driving culture reinforced by militarisation and the dominance of men in strategic decision making. This is also a recipe for a downhill slide into oblivion.

3. Biological Intelligence vs Cultural Chain Reaction: Will we split into two species?

The discussion has been on two issues (a) Human brain size changes and (b) are humans the most intelligent species? Most people who claim humans are the most intelligent species, are doing so on the basis of product of cultural chain reaction, but they are denying the influence of culture and claiming it is based on our biological intelligence. These comments are simply reinforcing the fact that we are becoming more and more dependent on cultural chain reaction processes in which many humans contribute a small amount of intelligence to accumulative manufacturing processes as a hive mind and the results look stunning but don’t in any way represent the ongoing demographic level of biological intelligence across the human population as a whole.

Fig 139: The 1-D CA rule 110 is a universal computer (Chen et al. 2012, Cook 2004). How intelligent is it?

If you glance at the cellular automation on the right, you will see a system having no intrinsic intelligence, simply a rule. The 1-D cellular automaton with decimal rule 110, taken from my CA Mac app is able to do incredibly complex things, because it's a universal computer. Give it the right (static) initial conditions, it can produce any result a digital computer can do, including states much more complex than its initial conditions. Its binary code is 01101110 for the eight possible previous three cell states of 0/1. I.e. 111 –> 0 110 –>1 etc. But is it “intelligent"? It’s “natural” intelligence is no more than its binary code plus the arrows above, but its “cultural" intelligence is unbounded above except by np-complete problems that are computationally intractable.

The failure of human society to recognise that cultural production of complexity is not a direct function of individual human biological intelligence on a demographic footing, but of increasingly automated processes that could lead to AI takeover, not because AI got so smart, but because we got so dumb on a demographic basis. Sexual selection involves endless recombination, so unless we form an elite and bifurcate into two species by selective breeding in an equally dystopian Handmaid's Tale, one smart and inventing the technology and the other dumbed down, living like ants, so we are again in serious trouble. Better to merge symbiotically with the biosphere as living beings and actually survive.

Gene-Culture Co-Evolution

(a) The Emergence of Language

The emergence of spoken language has been associated both with female gatherers talking about their relationships down the grape vine while on gathering forays, when the men were out on a hunt, the only sounds of which were disguised animal signals, and with mothers speaking to their babies (Hrdy 2003). Animal studies have also suggested social empathy as a catalyst (Erard & Matcic (2018).

Selective scenarios for the emergence of natural language are bounteous. Language evolved to facilitate cooperative hunting. Language evolved as a costly ornament that allows females to assess male quality. Language evolved as a substitute for the grooming exhibited by other primates when groups got too large. Language evolved to promote pair bonding, to aid mother-child communication, to gossip about others, to expedite toolmaking, as a tool for thought, or to fulfill countless other functions or purposes (Laland 2017 176).

While the basis of language has veered from hardwired concepts such as universal generative grammars, and a battery of cerebral toolkits specifically to articulate and interpret spoken word, based on Broca’s and Wernicke’s language areas, there is no good rationale why a purely genetic and natural selection process in the absence of the evolutionary effect of language itself can provide an explanation. This leads to gene-culture co-evolutionary theories (Kirby & Christiansen 2003, Laland & Brown 2002, Pinker 2010, Deacon 1998, Christiansen & Chater 2008), in which language itself becomes a kind of meme-like parasite provocateur transforming human intelligence, exploding our ecological niches and giving rise to the phenomenon of culture.

[James] Hurford argues that language evolution needs to be understood as a combination of both biological pre-adaptations – that is, biological changes that may not be adaptive by themselves – and learning-based linguistic adaptations over generations. He points to several possible biological steps prior to the emergence of language: pre-adaptations for the production of speech sounds (phonetics), for organizing the sounds into complex sequences (syntax), for forming basic and complex concepts and doing mental calculations with them (semantics), for complex social interaction (pragmatics), and for an elementary ability to link sounds to concepts (symbolic capacity). Once humans were language-ready with these pre-adaptations in place, language systems would have grown increasingly complex due to the process of transmitting language across generations through the narrow filter of children’s learning mechanisms (Kirby and Christiansen 2003).

We argue that [universal grammar] UG could not have arisen either by biological adaptation or non-adaptationist genetic processes, resulting in a logical problem of language evolution. Specifically, as the processes of language change are much more rapid than processes of genetic change, language constitutes a “moving target” both over time and across different human populations, and, hence, cannot provide a stable environment to which language genes could have adapted. We conclude that a biologically determined UG is not evolutionarily viable. Instead, the original motivation for UG – the mesh between learners and languages – arises because language has been shaped to fit the human brain, rather than vice versa. Following Darwin, we view language itself as a complex and interdependent “organism,” which evolves under selectional pressures from human learning and processing mechanisms (Christiansen & Chater 2008).

Laland (2017) highlights the vast difference in vocal fluency that casts humans and monkey species distinctively apart from the relative paucity of such communication in higher apes:

When the natural communication systems of primates are examined, for instance, no straightforward increase in complexity from monkeys to apes to humans is observed. Many researchers characterize great ape communication systems as more limited in range than those of monkeys. For example, monkeys, but not other apes, have functionally referential alarm calls, although whether monkey calls are truly referential like human language remains contested. This particular ape-monkey difference makes biological sense. Great apes are larger and stronger than monkeys, and hence are less vulnerable to predation. Apes almost certainly didn’t evolve referential alarm calls because they had comparatively little to be alarmed about. Indeed, there is little that is learned at all in the vocal communication of nonhuman apes.18 Apes do possess gestures to initiate play, for instance, or when infants signal they wish to be carried—many of these gestures have learned elements. However, apes seemingly do not use their gestures referentially, nor do their gestures exhibit any symbolic or conventionalized features.

Laland ties this to the very earliest phase of human increase in brain size associated with tool-making:

The latest thinking on the evolution of early Homo suggests that increases in brain size were coupled with increased toolmaking and stone transport, dietary expansion, and greater developmental plasticity (the flexible adjustment of development to environmental conditions). This means that there would be plenty to teach, because our hominin ancestors subsisted on a broad omnivorous diet and were reliant on a large number of extractive foraging and tool-using skills. This period in human history was the dawn of cumulative culture, when our ancestors first began manufacturing stone tools, using the flakes to butcher carcasses for food and in a variety of other ways. In other words, it was the beginning of the phase in which (according to our analysis of the evolution of teaching) cumulative culture would help make teaching widely adaptive. Here, then, is a setting in which teaching among close relatives could be beneficial across a broad range of contexts.

In his chapter on the evolution of intelligence, Laland cites the following six factors as key to evolution of human intelligence grouped in three categories, constituting "cultural drive" in turn shaping human genetics: (a) social (social learning, tactical deception) (b) technical (tool use, innovation) and (c) ecological (extractive foraging, diet depth). These are combined into the notion of "primate g" which effectively becomes general intelligence.

Here he has essentially broadened the competitive notion of Machiavellian intelligence, which he still accepts is central, with other obvious mechanisms of feedback including social copying, tool use and foraging, placing an emphasis on social learning, particularly high-fidelity copying, in relation to group size and long generation times, noting that primate longlevity correlates with social learning rather than general intelligence. While acknowledging the role of Machiavellian intelligence, Laland’s lack of awareness of the pivotal role of sexual selection in promoting both intelligence and a loving pro-social society, noted in the previous section raises the question over the assumed benefits of cultural evolution over the sexual selection aspects gatherer-hunter evolutionary psychology, which has sustained us over longer time frames and left a clear imprint in our sexual physiology and pursuit of sexual love.

The crucible for the early language evolution Laland invokes, rather than the small-brained Australopithicenes, with a cranial volume of some 450 cc similar to other apes, would appear to be the major push made by Homo erectus and his alter-ego Homo ergaster, went from a 750cc brain to 1250cc close to our own average size of around 1400cc. Analysis of erectus skulls and the discovery of a hyoid bone involved in speech vocalisation is also consistent with an increasing use of language in erectus (Broadfield et. al. 2001), complementing a 1.6 million year old Homo ergaster skeleton, which does have some evidence of Broca's area (Taylor 1996 41).

Dunbar (2022) has a more precise analysis of the features and timing:

Speech requires two key capacities: the ability to produce long exhalations without having to take a breath and the capacity to control the articulation space in the mouth and upper throat by altering the position of the jaw, tongue and glottis. These are under the control, respectively, of the thoracic nerves in the upper chest and the hypoglossal nerve in the base of the skull. … Three other anatomical markers are of interest for speech. One is the position of the hyoid bone that anchors the top of the larynx to the base of the tongue. In monkeys, apes and human infants, it lies high in the throat (which allows them to breathe and swallow at the same time without drowning themselves), but after weaning it drops low in the throat in humans (as a result, adults cannot drink and breathe at the same time). This low position is what allows us to produce certain vowel sounds, and vowels are crucial for human language. The other two indices are components of the inner ear, and hence our ability to hear fine distinctions in others’ speech. These are the area of the base of middle ear bone known as the stapes and the size of the cochlea (the curled-up organ in the inner ear), both of which determine the range of sounds that can be heard. … In fact, these five anatomical markers all appear to switch from primate- like to human-like with the appearance of archaic humans (Homo heidelbergensis) some 500,000 years ago.

Henrich (2017) demurs on the role of teaching in the emergence of language in his review of Laland's book:

I worry that it may overestimate the centrality of teaching and language for social learning, especially early in human evolution. My concern arises from the fact that, although teaching—broadly defined—does exist in some form across diverse societies, most of the research on pedagogy, parenting, and socialization derives from populations that are Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD). In contrast to small-scale societies, WEIRD people rely heavily on intense verbal tuition, positive feedback, and active instructional interventions (3). This bias may skew our understanding of the role played by direct tuition and verbal scaffolding in cultural transmission. Further, numerous social norms, rituals, and technical skills are culturally transmitted without teaching or language (4), especially in small-scale societies.

Henrich (2016) argues that the secret of our success comes from culture, with cultural evolution and genetic evolution driving one another. The result of an immense period of this gene-culture co-evolution is not a "really smart, though somewhat less hairy, chimp", but "a new kind of animal" which has arrived because it is "better to be social than smart". The big difference between baby humans and chimpanzees is not in mastering abstract ideas, like quantity or causality, but that we are "prolific, spontaneous and automatic imitators, even willing to copy seemingly unnecessary or purely stylistic steps”.

Humans are adaptive cultural learners who acquire ideas, beliefs, values, social norms, motivations, and worldview from others in their communities. To focus our cultural learning, we use cues of prestige, success, sex, dialect, and ethnicity, among others, and especially attend to particular domains, such as those involving food, sex, danger, and norm violations. .. Humans are status seekers and aware strongly influence by prestige. But what's highly flexible is which behaviors or actions lead to high prestige. …The social norms we acquire often come with internalized motivations and ways of viewing the world (guiding our attention and memory), as well as with standards for judging and punishing others. People's preferences and motivations are not fixed.

Darwin, the founder of the evolutionary approach, speculated that language was potentially an invention (1904 60): "Man not only uses inarticulate cries, gestures and expressions, but has invented articulate language, if indeed the word invented can be applied to a process completed by innumerable steps half consciously made". Morten Christiansen questions the need to invoke a Chomskian generative grammar. Instead, he argues, language has adapted to utilise more general cognitive processing capacities that were already part of our ancestors' brains before language came along. Among these, he focuses on 'sequential learning' - the ability to encode and represent the order of the discrete elements in a sequence. This ability is not unique to humans: mountain gorillas, for example, use it in the complicated preparation of certain spiky plant foods, where a sequence of tasks is required to remove the edible part. Language, he says, is a 'non-obligate mutualistic endosymbiont' - a kind of evolutionary structure like a 'symbolic virus'. Kirby suggests our brains are not so specifically designed for language and that we appear to be biologically adapted to language because language which evolves much faster than biology has culturally adapted to us, gaining semantic power and representational efficiency as it evolves. It also provides a common explanation for both spoken and written language which has evolved too recently to have arisen from long-term genetic evolution.

Introducing their approach, Kirby and Christiansen (2003 ) note:

There are an enormous number of communication systems in the natural world (Hauser, 1996). When a male Tu ́ngara frog produces “whines” and “chucks” to attract a female, when a mantis shrimp strikes the ground to warn off a competitor for territory, even when a bee is attracted to a particular flower, communication is taking place. Humans as prodigious communicators are not unusual in this respect. What makes human language stand out as unique (or at least very rare indeed) is the degree to which it is learned. From a design point of view, it is easy to see the advantages of providing instructions for building mechanisms for language acquisition rather than the language itself. Human language cannot be completely innate because it would not fit in the genome. Worden (1995) has derived a speed-limit on evolution that allows us to estimate the maximum amount of information in the human genome that codes for the cognitive differences between us and chimpanzees. He gives a paltry figure of approximately 5 kilobytes. This is equivalent to the text of just the introduction to this chapter. Finally, we look at the implications of our work for linguistic and evolutionary theory. Ultimately, we argue that linguistic structure arises from the interactions between learning, culture and evolution. If we are to understand the origins of human language, we must understand what happens when these three complex adaptive systems are brought together.

A meme impels its bearer to broadcast it, and it mutates in some recipients: a sound of a word, or a phrase is randomly altered. Perhaps, as in Monty Python’s The Life of Brian, the audience of the Sermon on the Mount mishears the “Blessed are the peacemakers” as “Blessed are the cheesemakers.” The new version is more memorable and comes to predominate in the majority of minds. It too in mangled by typos and speako’s and hearo’s, and the most spreadable ones accumulate, gradually transforming the sequence of sounds. Eventually, they spell out, “That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. I think you’ll agree that this is not how cultural change works. A complex meme does not arise by the retention of copying errors. If selection does not explain complex design in cultural evolution by itself, then it is of no importance. This is mistaken. There is no doubt that as people acquire and modify beliefs, ideas and values the variation that is generated can be highly non-random, and these non-selective processes shape cultural variation. But so what? Selection occurs anytime there is heritable variation that effects survival or reproduction (transmission).

Various lines of evidence support such optimisation of representational and cognitive efficiency in existing languages. For example dependency length minimisation, in which words which depend on one another come closer in a sentence than random (Futrell et al. 2015), makes it easier to recognise meanings in both spoken and written sentences, although the efficiency of existing languages varies widely. Widely used languages such as English have evolved to simplify changes of tense, person, gender and number to avoid complex conjugation and declension of verbs and nouns. There is also evidence that the root of languages might be partly iconic rather than the arbitrary relationships between sound and meaning of traditional linguistic theories, so that words indicating slowness, descent or negative emotions have a falling pattern of intonation while those with the opposite have a rising one, like down as opposed to up. "Splash" provides a good example of a word whose spoken sound mimics its natural sound.

Fig 140: Evolutionary tree of the Indo-European languages

(Gray & Atkinson 2003).

Languages as different as Danish and Hindi have evolved in less than 5000 years from a common Proto-Indo-European ancestor (Gray & Atkinson 2003). Yet it took up to 200,000 years for modern humans to evolve from archaic Homo sapiens. The latest estimates of the oldest skulls discovered, from the Omo river by Richard Leakey are 196,000 years (McDougall et. al. 2005). Pinker (2003) notes steps of this type in the experiments of Martin Nowak's group in establishing both sequential symbols such as vowels and consonants to form a word and positional syntax in which words describing single events give way to active characterisation of a type of event. Both are adaptive responses to informational crisis as a large number of symbols each associated with a single context or event involves too many similar symbols to adequately discriminate one from another. The emergence of such structures could in turn have enabled the semantic enfolding of the rational mind. Reading written language is clearly such an adaption of visual pattern recognition and other skills.

Corballis (2002) suggests language arose from a selective convergence of these diverse attributes to give rise to semantic language, possibly also accompanied by a convergence of other faculties such as mental perspectives of others, consistent with an early common origin of click sounds (p 106). Gestures like the shrug are also ancient responses, while smiles, and snarls with all their dimensions from appeasement to tooth threatening exposure go all the way back through our primate relatives. Laughter is an example of a central chaotic and explosive emotional response to contradiction, or surprise, which is suggestive of an ancient origin, earlier than language as we know it, in sharing emotional reactions, which also appears to have a basis in sexual courtship and family bonding:

"Women laugh most in the presence of men they find attractive.

Men are the leading laugh getters, women are the leading laughers"

Robert Provine

The advent of semantic exchange would place a huge new evolutionary burden on all areas of the cortex by exploding time, space and society into an historical process in which more and more contexts, individuals and situations came to be named and hence distinguishable from one another. Such a language involution would then place a burden of selection on larger brains which could handle the new and diverse complexities of a world imbued with historical and semantic meaning requiring slowed foetal development and a new awareness of social and sexual relationships and their implications. We can see the germ of this complexity in ape societies, such as grazing gelada baboons, where there are a host of cries indicating all manner of interactions, from courtship, through male competition, to emotional 'social contracts' of mutuality, reciprocation, aggression and reconciliation, as well as group warnings about predators. Among these, sexual courtship and competition are both very strong and also very subtle fleeting yet highly focused influences, as a glance at a female macaque inciting an extra-alpha 'safari' coupling behind the alpha males' backs indicates.

This is also broadly consistent with the fact that brain processing about lexical semantic information

still appears to be a striking advantage for experience-based representational structures (i.e., encoding information about sensory- motor, affective, and other features of phenomenal experience), with little evidence for independent taxonomic or distributional organisation (Fernandino et al. 2022).

This approach to the emergence of language also supports a general role for Machiavellian social interactions, with a core emphasis on reproduction and sexual selection driving the burgeoning complexity of semantic language, consistent with both Geoffrey Miller's sexual selection ideas and honesty and deceit in wider social contracts. Consistent with this view is the fact that the sneakiest monkeys have the largest brains (Byrne & Corp 2004). Dunbar (1996) suggests that, as neocortical size increases, more subtle social and political strategies, such as tactical deception come into play. As a result, lower-ranking individuals are able to find loopholes in the social dominance hierarchy. Their special cognitive capacity makes them able to improve their reproductive success, in spite of lower rank - in line with the Machiavellian Intelligence hypothesis (Whiten and Byrne 1988, 1997). Boehm (1999 182) comments that the political invention of egalitarian society during this process enabled such individuals to forgo or invoke strategies of social deception, suggesting that lower ranking coalitions bluffed or forced their way, as male coalitions of chimps can do, to form large, stable and purposeful coalitions which are at the root of our social egalitarianism, politics and morality.

Laland (2017) brings this whole thesis back to its foundation in gene-culture co-evolution:

I described how the manufacture and use of stone tools may have played a vital role in human evolution by generating coevolutionary feedback between cultural practices and genetic inheritance, and thereby contributed to the emergence of language. Our tool knapping study supported the hypothesis that a gene-culture coevolutionary dynamic between tool use and social transmission was ongoing in human evolution, starting at least 2.5 million years ago and continuing to the present. Indeed, this entire book is one long advocacy for the significance of evolutionary feedback that encompasses a cultural drive mechanism initiated by natural selection that favored accurate and efficient copying. That selective feedback propelled the evolution of cognition in some primate lineages, and ultimately was responsible for the awesome computational power of the human brain. That propensity was fashioned by millions of years of gene-culture coevolution.

(b) Niche Construction, Habitat Destruction Gene-culture Co-evolution and the Anthropocene

Niche construction is a concept from the extended evolutionary synthesis, where species not only exist within an ecological niche existing in the natural environment, but by their own activities alter the niche to promote their own survival. Niche construction can provide both physical and cultural extensions of a species niche. Because in symbiotic existential cosmology subjective conscious volition has physical efficacy, this becomes a conscious intentional process.

Fig 141: Examples of niche construction: Devil's gardens in the Amazon. The ant, Myrmelachista schumanni, which nests in Duroia hirsuta stems, creates devil's gardens by poisoning all plants except its hosts. A worker ant attacks a plant by lethal injection (inset). It bites a small hole in the leaf tissue, inserts the tip of its abdomen, and releases formic acid, which kills the plant. Male South African Weaver Birds construct elaborate hanging nests which avoid predators, to attract mates. A beaver dam. Beavers hold a very specific biological niche in the ecosystem: constructing dams across river systems. Human destruction of the rain forest to make monoclonal palm oil plantations Sabah.

Niche construction is a process by which gene-culture co-evolution can transform the evolutionary process. Examples of niche construction include the building of nests and burrows by animals, and the creation of shade, influencing of wind speed, and alternation of nutrient cycling by plants. Although these alterations are often beneficial to the constructor, they are not always. In the case of Homo sapiens the process has had an unconstrained runaway effect driven by human evolution as a dominant species exploiting the natural environment. The trouble is that human niche construction has become wholesale habitat destruction. Despite climate, habitat and biodiversity crisis leading towards a mass extinction on cosmological time scales, there is no sign that gene-culture evolution is producing the stability required for the biosphere to survive in evolutionary time.

Fig 142: Human niche construction has exceeded all ecological bounds and transformed or destroyed the natural ecosystems to produce agricultural, urban,
mining and toxically polluted landscapes reaching an irreversible degradation of the entire concept of an ecosystemic niche, due to the impact of a single species.

Fig 143: The Anthropocene: Eventually, these processes lead to their own cultural imposition on the planet,
resulting in entirely synthetic “cognitive” rather than “experiential” landscapes (Guardian).

For niche construction to affect evolution it must satisfy: (1) the organism significantly modifying environmental conditions, (2) these modifications influencing one or more selection pressures on a recipient organism, and (3) there must be an evolutionary response in at least one recipient population caused by the environmental modification. Niche construction can be viewed as an evolutionary process that works in conjunction with natural selection. Evolution entails networks of feedbacks in which previously selected organisms drive environmental changes, and organism-modified environments subsequently select for changes in organisms. The complementary match between an organism and its environment results from the two processes of natural selection and niche construction. The effect of niche construction is especially pronounced in situations where environmental alterations persist for several generations, introducing the evolutionary role of ecological inheritance. The development of many organisms, and the recurrence of traits across generations, has been found to depend critically on the construction of developmental environments such as nests by ancestral organisms. Ecological inheritance implies that organisms inherit two legacies from their ancestors: genes and a modified environment.

Niche construction is recognised to have played important roles in human evolution, including the evolution of cognitive capabilities. It is immediately apparent that humans possess an unusually potent capability to regulate, construct and destroy their environments, and that this is generating pressing current problems (e.g. climate change, deforestation, urbanisation). However, human scientists have been attracted to the niche construction perspective because it recognises human activities as a directing process, rather than merely the consequence of natural selection.

Mathematical models have established that cultural niche construction can modify natural selection on human genes and drive evolutionary events in the process of gene-culture coevolution. There is now little doubt that human cultural niche construction has co-directed human evolution. Humans have modified selection, for instance, by dispersing into new environments with different climatic regimes, devising agricultural practices or domesticating livestock. For example, dairy farming created a selection pressure that led to the spread of alleles for adult lactase persistence. Many hundreds of genes have been found to be subject to recent selection, and human cultural activities are thought to be a major source of this selection.

Laland (2017 243) gives a fitting account of the benefits and emerging costs of agriculture as niche construction:

Agricultural practices are examples of cultural niche construction that, as described in the previous chapter, can trigger evolutionary episodes in both the domesticates and, via selective feedback, in the human populations too. Cultural niche constructing processes that contribute to plant domestication include selective collecting, transporting, storing, and planting of seeds; setting fire to grasslands and forest, either intentionally or accidentally; cutting down trees; tilling; weeding and the selective culling of competing species; irrigation; and creating organically rich dump heaps. The skills and information that underlay these processes were passed from one generation to the next through a combination of teaching, imitation, stories, myths, and ritual,51 with the knowledge base regularly accumulating and being updated. Over time, these agricultural practices had an impact on the plants, which underwent a series of dramatic changes, such as major increases in size of the plant or its seeds, faster seed germination, simultaneous ripening of the seed crop, and so forth. The changes benefited both species by increasing the fitness of the plant community and elevating its yield. Sowing seeds in prepared substrates, for example, both induces changes in germination and dispersal mechanisms through inadvertent artificial selection, and helps the tended plants by increasing their likelihood of being included in next year’s seed stock.52 The increased yield, in turn, encouraged humans to perpetuate the practices that maintained or increased plant productivity, thereby triggering natural selection that modified human digestive enzymes. However, the methods of sowing selected seeds and harvesting plants inadvertently imposed selection on the crops that eventually left many inviable when in open competition with wild counterparts, and hence utterly dependent on humans.

The same reasoning applies to animals, where domestication again selected for increased yields of animal products, such as milk, but also a variety of other traits, including lowered reactivity to environmental stimuli and a dependence on humans for survival and reproduction. The protection provided by corrals and pens, and selection of animals that were easy to manage, again modified the impact of natural selection on animal breeds. When removed from anthropogenic settings, that selection left the animals concerned much more vulnerable to predation.

But he is vastly underestimating the jeopardy here. Not only have the selectively bred strains become dependent on humans but they have become mono-cultured, often losing natural disease resistance and the evolutionary diversity that wild plants have to survive on evolutionary time scales. Worse still, the cultivated plant and animal varieties and habitat destruction generally have led to the genetic diversity of the wild relatives being severely compromised, so that the future viability of the entire niche construction of agriculture looks increasingly uncertain unless resolute corrective action is taken. Finally, although agriculture supported a larger population, their nutritional diet was inferior to gatherer-hunter societies and they tended to become smaller and suffered more parasites and epidemic diseases.

Laland & Brown (2002 245-249) note the transition to gene-culture coevolution as a coherent discipline:

Gene–culture coevolution is like a hybrid cross between memetics and evolutionary psychology, with a little mathematical rigour thrown into the pot. Like memeticists, gene–culture coevolution enthusiasts treat culture as an evolving pool of ideas, beliefs, values, and knowledge that is learned and socially transmitted between individuals. Like evolutionary psychologists, these researchers believe that the cultural knowledge an individual adopts may sometimes, although certainly not always, depend on his or her genetic constitution. … Moreover, selection acting on the genetic system is commonly generated or modified by the spread of cultural information.

They place it as a central theoretical construct in the divergent views of differing social science disciplines:

For most social scientists ‘culture’ is a given. The notion that much of the variation in the behaviour of humans is brought about by their being exposed to divergent cultures is so widespread and intuitive that it appears beyond dispute. Culture is regarded as a cohesive set of mental representations, a collection of ideas, beliefs, and values that are transmitted among individuals and acquired through social learning.

In contrast, most sociobiologists and evolutionary psychologists are united by the belief that the transmitted elements of culture exert either a comparatively trivial influence on human behaviour, or that whatever influence they have is so strictly circumscribed by genes that there is no need to take account of the dynamic properties of culture. For human behavioural ecologists, culture is viewed as a flexible system that produces the most adaptive outcome in a given environment and that can be altered over a relatively short period of time in response to environmental change. Others, such as many behaviour geneticists, treat ‘culture’ as the dross that is left over when the ‘more important’ genetic influences on behaviour have been isolated. ‘Culture’ is usually lumped together with individual learn- ing and other environmental effects on behaviour into a ragbag labelled ‘nurture’, to be contrasted with genetic sources of variation.

For proponents of gene–culture coevolution, many of these other biological perspectives are misguided. Too much culture changes too quickly to be feasibly explained by genes, while the fact that different behavioural traditions can be found in similar environments would appear to render environmental explanations of behaviour impotent a lot of the time.

They thus state a convincing case for the approach and both meaningful in biological evolutionary terms and in terms of key cultural forms of evolutionary change:

Our capacity for culture is a unique adaptation. It allows us humans to learn about our world rapidly and efficiently. Human beings don’t have to scour their environment for sources of food and water, devise their own means of communication, or reinvent technological advances from first principles. Our capacity to acquire valuable skills and information from more knowledgeable others, such as parents, teachers, or friends, as well as indirectly via artefacts such as books and computers, furnishes us with a short cut to adaptive (and sometimes maladaptive) behaviour. Advocates of gene–culture coevolution share with memeticists and the vast majority of social scientists the view that what makes culture different from other aspects of the environment is the knowledge passed between individuals. Culture is transmitted and inherited in an endless chain, frequently adapted and modified to produce cumulative evolutionary change. This infectious, information- based property of transmission is what allows culture to change rapidly, to propagate a novel behaviour through a population, to modify the selection pressures acting on genes, and to exert such a powerful influence on our behavioural development.

Democratic Capitalism, Commerce and Company Law

We now turn to how corporate business operates, to try to understand its role in survival of humanity and the biosphere over evolutionary time scales as gene-culture co-evolution. In the interests of private enterprise in a democratic society elected by the common will, the general principle is to allow legal entities to be constructed which can collectively perform the same roles of intentional agency that genetic individuals possess in an evolving human society.

Life has existed on earth for a full third of the universe’s lifetime. The reason for this stability is twofold. Firstly, unlike larger short-lived stars which gave us our rich array of atoms in earlier supernova explosions, the sun is a small very long lived star with only very slowly evolving brightness. Secondly and more pertinently, life is genetic and genetic inheritance and evolution is cumulative over generations. It is also extremely conservative, striving to preserve genetic encoding through error correcting enzymes with evolution occurring only differentially through occasional adventitious beneficial mutation amid recombination to escape Muller’s ratchet.

This means a lion cannot turn overnight into a lamb, nor can a tiger eat an antelope and metamorphose into a shark. However companies possess no such genetic stability and can liquidate their assets in the face of crisis and turn to entirely different occupations, as appeared to be the case when a Canadian fishing firm devastated the cod fishery and then cashed up its stock of assets and entered another kind of business such as prawn farming. They can also consume one another in takeovers to become entirely new corporate giants. This lack of long-terminability.

Moreover the cumulative dynamics of genetic organisms generates long-term ecological relationships, which provide non-linear feedbacks that tend to stabilise complex relationships and increasing species and genetic diversity in biospheric symbiosis. We may consider predators and disease-bearing parasites as evidence for the brutality of nature, but the ecosystemic relationships tell another story. Without predators such as lions, the population of gazelles will enter boom and bust as they eat out all the available fodder leading to their wipeout in escalating episodes of famine. This was intriguingly illustrated in the return of wolves to Yellowstone spurring the recovery of the bears. The removal of the wolves had caused the elk population to explode, consuming all the berries the bears depended on for their vitamins leading to a loss of fitness. But an ecosystem consisting entirely of economic predators cannot survive.

Climax diversity is the cosmological apex of complex system generation, in which human society stands at the pinnacle. We can continue to coexist in this complex system only if we fashion our economic and developmental impacts in a way that maintains the long term stability of the living systems on which our continued existence depends.

By contrast with the cumulative stability of genotype, and incremental evolution by mutation and natural selection, the capitalist economy is based on a purely social model of competing fragmented democracies. Company law stipulates a democratic basis for a group of shareholders to incorporate and sets out a legal and financial basis for them to pursue business based on the two nested democracies of the general meeting and the board of directors who are accountable to the shareholders, at least in principle. In larger companies, there is also a line-managed hierarchy of employees, forming a pyramid from the CEO at the apex down through the executive branch to salaried workers. Outside this framework only the limits of government regulation provide highly varying degrees of protective feedback intended to guarantee a modicum of corporate accountability and responsibility, lacking in company law itself, for example in fair trading acts, clean air acts, and environmental protection acts. However these are in turn subject to political and commercial influence and often act too late to prevent the collateral damage.

Corporate competitiveness, by contrast with genetic mutation and natural selection, is a much more primitive form of selectivity, which does have a degree of survival of the fittest optimisation of efficiency, but in the complete absence of any cumulative genetic mechanism to ensure long term stability. The end results are thus much more prone to the breakdown of ecological complexity into huge conglomerate enterprises, with a high degree of collateral fallout due to short term impacts lacking any long-term foresight, or even any natural feedback mechanisms to ensure at least medium term stability.

Because they are vulnerable to manipulative share trading, companies are prone to mergers and acquisitions by friendly, or often hostile, takeover. These can be by competitors seeking to expand their niche in the market by eliminating competition, or providing collective efficiencies by laying off redundant staff, or they may simply be forays by hedge funds to gain strategic control over large profitable operations, or at another extreme can be asset stripping companies taking an undervalued company to pieces for its assets in plant, property and goodwill.

Fig 144: While the impact of corporate operations is clear in the figures in the anthropocene cultural niches, the lack of responsible corporate action causes other profound unintentional forms of collateral damage. (Left) The Deepwater Horizon oil spill of 2010 shows us how lethal misadventure and devastating environmental damage can occur when corporate responsibility becomes fragmented into self-serving cost-cutting conflicts of interest when large transnational corporations hire other large transnational companies as contractors in highly sensitive engineering projects, given a lack of effective monitoring from the federal government agencies that commissioned the projects in the first place. The Deepwater Horizon oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico on the BP-operated Macondo Prospect, is considered the largest accidental marine oil spill in the history of the petroleum industry. A 2017 report in Science puts the damage at $17.2 bn. The consolidated trial's first phase began on February 25, 2013, to determine the liability of BP, Transocean, Halliburton, and other companies, and to determine whether the companies acted with gross negligence and willful misconduct. As of September 2014 Halliburton has reached a $1.1 billion settlement over its role in the 2010 spill.Deepwater horizon was caused by failures of due care when the regulating officials got into bed with the corporations, causing widespread pollution costing billions of dollars to seal and clean up. (Top right) Dioxin pollution by Hooker Chemical in the Love Canal, Niagra was converted into a Faustian pact, when the land was sold for a nominal $1 to a financially strapped school board on condition no responsibility would be taken by the company for any pollution. In 1978 crusading liberal journalist Micheal Brown discovered an alarming incidence of birth defects among residents living near the site. He advised the local residents to create a protest group, which was led by resident Karen Schroeder, whose daughter had about a dozen birth defects. The New York State Health Department mounted its own investigation and found an abnormal incidence of miscarriages. A survey conducted by the Love Canal Homeowners Association found that 56% of the children born from 1974–1978 had at least one birth defect. In one case, two out of four children in a single Love Canal family had birth defects; one girl was born deaf with a cleft palate, an extra row of teeth, and slight retardation, and a boy was born with an eye defect. Ten years after the incident, New York State Health Department Commissioner David Axelrod stated that Love Canal would long be remembered as a "national symbol of a failure to exercise a sense of concern for future generations." In 1988 United States District Judge John Curtin found Occidental who had taken over Hooker, jointly and severally liable for clean-up costs under CERCLA. In 1995 Occidental Petroleum agreed to pay $129 million in restitution. The real cost of the cleanup is estimated at $250 million. (Lower right)Fifty years ago, children in Newfoundland could catch fish by dipping a basket into the ocean. By 1992 Canadian research vessels were sweeping the seas in vain, finding not a single school of cod in what was once the world's richest fishery. The destruction of the Grand Banks cod is one of the biggest fisheries disasters of all time. Although the cod fishery supported workers for hundreds of years, a variety of changes occurred during the 20th century that made the industry much less sustainable than ever before. Foremost among these were advances in fishing technologies that dramatically increased the ability of fishers to find and harvest large quantities cod. By 1980 the Newfoundland fishery was dominated by three large complexes, each propped up by provincial government funds and bank loans: Fishery Products, Nickerson-National Sea Products and Lake Group. The fear of having to allow foreign fleets into Canada's exclusive economic zone if there was any surplus fish, as stipulated under the law of the sea, ensured the rationale would be that there would be no surplus fish. This is a classic tragedy of the commons enacted by the Canadian federal government for capitalistic purposes. Ultimately the companies supporting this collapse of the cod fishery converted their operations to becoming providers of seafood in the foodservice market, offering shrimps, crab, lobsters, shellfish and fish and fish products including seafood starters, sea cuisines, nuggets, oven ready products, and others to America’s largest restaurant chains and national distributors.

An Economist editorial of 1998 shows that the ease with which companies are born and fail is clearly one reason why Taiwan's total factor productivity had improved faster than that of all other Asian countries since 1960.

In 1991, 40% of Taiwan's chemical output came from firms that did not exist in 1986. One-third of the value of Taiwan's plastics production and half its output of fabricated metal products were also attributable to firms less than five years old. The newcomers established their place in the market by forcing older firms out of business. Firms that had accounted for 58% of Taiwan's chemical production in 1981 had left the business by 1991. In other sectors - including ones which were expanding rapidly overall - the carnage was even worse. Four out of five firms that manufactured clothing, metal products, textiles and plastics in 1981 either closed or changed lines of business over the next decade.

As the successful entrants tend to be more efficient than the firms that die, they boost productivity across the economy. Between 1986 and 1991, total factor productivity - the increase in output due to more efficient use of inputs such as labour and capital - in Taiwan's electrical-machinery industry rose 23.6%. Over a third of that, the researchers estimate, came from new firms pushing out less efficient ones. In the chemicals industry, where productivity growth was slower, a whopping three-fifths of the gain was due to the entry of highly efficient firms and the exit of stodgier ones.

But at the same time, this concrete jungle form of survival of the fittest shows no signs of providing any sort of long-term stability for the people, and the environment in which these companies operate or even for the market conditions on which these industries depend long term. Companies are simply incorporated agents founded by a contractual memorandum of understanding under company law, by their founding shareholders for their collective capital and revenue gain. They have no cumulative stability beyond the boardroom decision-making horizon and as they stand they have no covenant of responsibility to their workers, to the consumers of their products, to the general public and least of all to the natural environment in which they operate. Like a malignant cancer, the only principle on which they depend is relentless growth of income for the investors.

Given this one-sided covenant of corporations only with their internal investors, it naturally falls to governmental regulation, to labour laws, the Clean Air Act, the Consumer Protection Act and other legislation to safeguard society from the deleterious impacts of corporate activity. When the new right call for an unregulated economy because this will increase production and profitability, they are being deceptively disingenuous about the actual purpose of much of such regulation, which is designed to protect society the natural environment and our long-term future from potentially irreversible misadventure intrinsic to the corporate model, not simply to waste ‘our’ money on inefficient government interference.

There is no direct accountability to the workers, to the consumers, to society as a whole or to the planetary environment, unless laws covering questions like air, chemical or other forms of pollution, or environmental or social impacts are transgressed. Moreover the process is an unrealistic one based on pure financial competition, as if it is a society of predators with no prey apart from the living environment of the planet, its biological and non-renewable resources. There is no inbuilt sense of emotion, compassion, or foresight that we expect from live human agents, although these may also act psychopathically over issues of power and wealth.

But we have already seen that cultural evolution is much more rapid and unstable that genetic evolution which in terms of long-term survival remains the only incremental selective anchor that avoids triple witching hour instabilities leading to a Fermi paradox extinction. This leads to a completely unstable economic paradigm where corporations can engage tragedies of the commons (Hardin 1968), in a first-come first-served rush to exploit every profitable resource in sight for the benefit of their shareholders. We start with a model where we have genetic and phenotypic evolution of living organisms. Then we invent culture and witness the growth of gene-culture co-evolution between living organisms and their social culture. But then we introduce a third component, corporations which have no genetic identity but act economically as massively inflated versions of living agents assuming the same powers of autonomous agency we accept for ourselves as members of a free democracy. This means we now also have gene-culture co-evolution and a more insidious phenomenon of corporate-culture coevolution.

This is a primary situation where we have to come to terms with the inadequacy of purely contractual models of corporate agency and redesign corporate and economic investment to bring it into line with sustainable ecological and evolutionary principle of replication under incremental cumulative change subject to selective advantage in a context of overall symbiosis.

Wilson D et al. (2014) address this question in terms of evolutionary mechanics:

The growing scale of human society over the course of human history is increasingly being studied from a multilevel biocultural evolutionary perspective. According to Turchin (2003; 2005), empires tend to originate in geographical regions chronically at war, which acts as a crucible for the cultural evolution of exceptionally cooperative societies. The most cooperative expand into empires, but then cultural evolution within the empires favors practices that eventually lead to their collapse. New empires almost invariably form at the boundaries of old empires, whose centers become “black holes” for cooperation at a large scale. (See also Putnam 1992). In this halting fashion, with much carnage along the way, modern human society manages to function at a remarkably large scale. However, there is enormous room for improvement, especially with respect to global problems such as climate change and the worldwide economy. There will be no between-planet selection, so addressing these problems will require another kind of selection – the intentional selection of policies with large-scale and long-term human welfare in mind. Devising such enlightened policies will require a sophisticated knowledge of evolution. The challenges will be daunting, but at least in principle, the right kind of environmental intervention could cause the difficult to become easy, as is already beginning at the level of individuals and small groups.

A step in this direction is to achieve a consensus that the paradox of elaborate genetic innateness and an elaborate capacity for open-ended change can be reconciled through the concept of Darwin machines. Variation, selection, and heredity comprise an open-ended process capable of adapting organisms to their current environments according to the selection criteria. An evolutionary process built by genetic evolution must be elaborately innate for variation and selection to take place in a way that leads to genetically adaptive outcomes, on average. The immune system is an outstanding example of a Darwin machine that is both elaborately flexible and elaborately innate, providing a guide for how to study the human capacity for behavioral and cultural change. An important implication of Darwin machines is that a capacity for change requires certain forms of stability and homeostasis. For all inheritance systems, a complex system of interlocking processes is required to create variation, select according to certain criteria, and faithfully replicate the traits that have been selected. If this system breaks down, then so does the evolutionary process.

However his two cited examples fall far short of avoiding climate crisis, nuclear holocaust or the mass extinction of biodiversity:

We describe two interventions from the field of prevention science that successfully changed cultural practices at the level of counties, states, and nations. The first intervention reduced the very specific practice of convenience store clerks in Wyoming and Wisconsin illegally selling cigarettes to minors. The second intervention employs a population approach to improving parenting practices, which has been assessed in RCTs at the county level and is in the process of being implemented around the world. These examples fall short of addressing the gravest problems afflicting our planet, but they still show how evolutionary science can be used to accomplish intentional positive change above the level of individuals and small groups.

This has to go much further than Darwinian machines. Homo sapiens is already a natural species evolving by Darwinian principles but it has evolved through intentional selection as a species to dominate and exploit the natural world. The paradigm shift required is that cultural evolution can help bring this dominance to heal in the interests of the survival of the biosphere as a whole in cosmological time scales. We have to be able to turn to culture to achieve this because it is through our cultural heritage that we come to know and understand the potential mass extinction of life an unmitigated Anthropocene will bring about. But to do this, cultural evolution will have to engage a transformative paradigm of long-term incremental change that can balance and complement human dominance with biospheric symbiosis.

As a director of a company devoted to the perpetual conservation and regeneration of a wilderness reserve, that had in the nineteenth century been native reserve land, and was still forested rather than farmed, I have designed a company constitution to care for this land in perpetuity, by drafting a constitution that binds the shareholders in a covenant to protect the land and its flora and fauna, not to sell it or wind up the company without unanimous approval and to pay the costs of upkeep and protection in the event the land is not profitable during any period. All decisions are made by unanimous signed agreement and are binding on the shareholders who can sell only at the consumer price index adjusted nominal value if they want to opt out. This gives an illustration how corporate structures can be given a measure of medium-term stability, albeit still on a much shorter time scale than evolutionary change and liable to demographic shifts in the shareholding as descendants become spread out over the face of the Earth. Commercial law can be redesigned to make financial enterprises a symbiotic part of a sustainable economy rather than a shrinking pool of predators endeavouring to grab the remaining resources before they all become extinguished.

So far, as we have seen, cultural evolution has remained an ephemeral player in the closing circle sustainability stakes, operating on much shorter and more unstable time scales than genetic evolution. Thus none of the processes we have examined, language, religion, or commerce have introduced any stabilising factors to the existential crisis we face.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is designed to do precisely this because it is a comprehensive memeplex, or symbotype, which far from being efficient, as the simple explanation of the Sabbatic Creation endeavours to do, is fully as complex as the living universe itself because it is a true and accurate cosmology of symbiotic existence. By being cosmologically accurate on evolutionary and cosmological time scales, it provides exactly the kind of dire warning that moral religions attempt incorrectly to do about eschatological reality and does so in a fully scientifically validated way that hopefully can stand the test of time.

Science, Religion and Gene-Culture Coevolution

Both science and religion are complex conceptual, symbolic and behavioural systems that cross human generations and have structured cultural influences affecting human survival and reproduction thus forming principal candidates for gene-cultural co-evolution. The scientific description of reality is a complex symbolic and conceptual system and the scientific method involves highly focussed forms of social behaviour associated with discovering the nature of reality around us. Likewise religion is a complex scriptural description that lays claim to an ultimate description of conscious (spiritual) reality accompanied by moral doctrines, devotional ritual and utopian aims of world redemption.

However their methods and approaches are very different and involve very distinct approaches, scepticism requiring proof or confirmation in science and affirmative belief frequently being essential for religious conviction, along with moral imperatives. This means that their mode of cultural evolution are contrasting and have distinct influence of humanity sometimes complementary but frequently discordant and in contradiction to one another. Nevertheless it is possible to give each an evolutionary treatment in terms of complex conceptual systems, either as memeplexes, as Dawkins (1976) put it or symbotypes as DH Wilson et al. (2014) describe.

Science doesn’t evolve by incremental mutation and natural selection, so much as theoretical innovation and empirical discovery, changing the natural context factually, often described as a scientific revolution, or paradigm shift. The standard of fitness tends toward theoretical or empirical truth about the natural and physical universe and the memes are the description of the universe themselves.

Nevertheless the interaction of scientists has been likened to an evolutionary process (Laland & Brown 2002 235):

Hull (1982) believes that scientific communities (e.g. Darwinians) are a collection of interacting scientists that have in common one or more memes (e.g. natural selection, Mendelian genetics, etc.) that are expressed in an evolving conceptual system (e.g. Darwinism). Researchers of today that are part of the Darwinian community have different views from their 19th-century counterparts. What unites them is the notion that they derived their beliefs from pre- ceding Darwinians. But how can we tell whether a scientist is part of a scientific community? According to Hull (1982), in exactly the same way we can tell whether an individual organism is a member of a particular species:

Hull suggests that, to belong within the same lineage, scientists must have gained their information from each other, rather than merely holding similar views. Once such communities of scientists are defined, an evolutionary analysis of the development of ideas can begin. In fact, Hull argues that science is analogous to artificial selection rather than natural selection:

Just as the breeder consciously selects the organisms that he breeds in order to produce desired changes in his stock, the scientist chooses conceptual variants in order to improve his scientific theories. Both processes involve conscious, intentional choices even though many of the results in both cases may be unanticipated. (1982, p. 317)

A related, but more interesting, point is that memetic evolution is sometimes directed and intentional. Hull notes that the characteristic that commentators have in mind when they claim that sociocultural evolution, especially conceptual development in science, is ‘Lamarckian’ is that at least sometimes people actually notice problems and try to solve them. For instance, Pinker states:

Memes such as the theory of relativity are not the cumulative product of millions of random (undirected) mutations of some original idea, but each brain in the chain of production added huge dollops of value to the product in a nonrandom way.

Science also, despite it’s declared commitment to the sceptical principle demonstrates it’s capacity to follow fashionable trend in assumptions that become undeclared beliefs, partly propelled by a publish or perish defensiveness to key mechanistic assumptions such as the physically causal nature of brain processes, when these remain unproven and likely unprovable.

However, it is religious belief and doctrine, and the underlying correspondences with spirituality as a complement, or even a deeper underlying truth than science, where the memetic sting comes to bite, as Laland & Brown (2002) note:

One sinister aspect of the meme’s-eye view is that human beings seem to have been stripped of their ability to chose their own beliefs, values, and ways of life. Apparently, nefarious mind viruses are running our lives. The memes are choosing and manipulating us, not the other way round. Surely this surreal alternative perspective can’t be the whole story? After all, our minds have evolved over millions of years. Wouldn’t evolution at least have fashioned us with an ability to evaluate the alternative options and filter the available information that is adopted? If our bodies have an immune system to quell biological viruses, then shouldn’t we expect our minds to have analogous defences to suppress rogue memes? The stance advocated by some memeticists may be missing some of the underlying complexity to human behaviour. Aunger (2000) identifies a key issue for memeticists to investigate: namely, whether the design in cultural ‘adaptations’ is best described as artificially selected by people to reflect their needs or as the unintended outcome of independent replicators. For instance, has the human brain been shaped to have certain properties that ‘god’ happens to fit, as suggested by Hinde (1999), or is the god concept merely a clever replicator, as Dawkins (1976) says?

In “Why Gods Persist” Hinde (1999) made a cultural field study of the reasons why deities persist in diverse religious and cultural traditions, from Monotheism, through Taoism and Buddhism, to ethnic religions, examining all the reasons from the life hereafter to meaning and morality. One of his major arguments concerned the components of religions (for instance, beliefs, ritual, values, and sociality) and whether the nature of these components could be understood using traditional biological principles.

1. Attribution We all seek to understand what is going on around us, and ‘understanding’ in this context implies attributing events to causes: it is reasonable to suppose that such attempts at explanation aided survival in the environments in which humans evolved.

2. Control, self-efficacy Of course, with the growth of scientific understanding we no longer need to find causal explanations for most natural phenomena, and for many people the need to postulate supernatural forces has been pushed back to events preceding the Big Bang. But while understanding the causes of events is an important contributor to the individual’s peace of mind, it only takes one part of the way: the need to understand is closely related to a second issue, namely the need to feel in control of the events that influence one’s life.

3. Adversity Closely related to the need to feel a sense of control, individuals need a means to cope with persecution, suffering and illness. Religion can help in such situations in several ways. It can assist the sufferer to accept the situation as inevitable, as God’s will, and thus release him from the pain of kicking against the pricks. Alternatively, it can remove the devastating feeling that there is nothing that one can do, for at least one can pray and transfer the responsibility elsewhere.

4. Mortality Yet another major source for the attractiveness of deities lies in the desire for life after death. All organisms are adapted to strive for survival as necessary for reproduction. Even for a believer there may be uncertainty either about the fact of survival or about the nature of future existence, and uncertainty is likely to breed fear. Belief in a benevolent deity and a happy after-life can allay such preoccupations.

5. Relationship factors Humans seek social contact, and loneliness can be an important cause of distress. Indeed the sharing of experience is an important facet of all close relationships. The dissolution of a close relationship or bereavement involves a loss of part of the self-system. We continue to need attachment figures throughout life.

6. Social factors Religious belief is not just an individual matter. Beliefs are more or less shared with others, and there are powerful social forces that ensure that it should be so. There is often a gain to the individual from the sense of community, and a gain to the community from the effect of the shared beliefs on the loyalty of individuals: positive feedback is obtained from the consensual validation by others of the otherwise unverifiable beliefs.

7. The meaning of life Perhaps for many the apparent potency of religion can be encapsulated by saying that it gives a coherent meaning to life, though whether the need for meaning is primary, or depends on some of the issues previously mentioned, is an issue that need not detain us. Some argue that ‘the search for significance is the overarching, guiding force in life’. It is often suggested that the tangible world is inadequate to provide material for the construction of credible compensation for non-available resources of the types mentioned above, that belief in a meaningful universe requires a designing agency, and that religions would lose their appeal if they lost contact with the supernatural.

8. The diversity of the bases of belief In the preceding paragraphs it has been argued that a number of basic propensities, which are probably ubiquitous in humans though differing somewhat between individuals and cultures, are basic to religious beliefs. To the extent that such is the case, religious beliefs can be seen as basically Darwinian.

9. Belief and emotion As mentioned already, in discussing beliefs it is difficult not to give the impression that belief is a solely intellectual matter. Nothing could be farther from the truth. We now know that the cognitive and emotional aspects of human psychological functioning are much more closely interwoven than was formerly thought to be the case, and this is especially important for religiosity. The very fact that religious beliefs involve counter- intuitive phenomena, and that people continue to adhere to beliefs which are contradicted by empirical evidence, suggests that intellectual conviction is not the sole issue.

Hinde's own views were summarized when he said, "‘it does not matter too much what you believe, for many different cultural beliefs bring meaning to believers’ lives (though differences in religious beliefs can lead to horrendous conflict). But what does matter is how people behave." He also hypothesized about the evolution of pro-social groups, saying that groups in which members behave pro-socially and cooperate are most successful despite the conflict between the self and the group that's introduced by pro-sociality. He argued that this conflict was managed by what is commonly called morality.

However, it is Richard Dawkins who really set the meme lynx among the hawks and doves of religion, as Laland and Brown (2002 216) note:

One of the most controversial applications of memetic reasoning has been to account for religion. An organized and socially sanctioned belief in a god is to many people a given and a truth. This belief is not always regarded as something that is a legitimate focus for scientific enquiry. Even among non-believers, the idea that religions could be self-serving and self-perpetuating ideational complexes that hoodwink us into spreading their message is somewhat disturbing. Yet that is precisely what they have been argued to be by advocates of the meme’s-eye view.

This infamous account was first proposed by Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976), and elaborated in later writings. Dawkins argued that cultural selection would favour memes that gang up effectively into super-attractive coadapted meme-complexes, or memeplexes (Speel, 1995; referenced in Blackmore, 1999). Dawkins suggested that we could regard a church, with its architecture, rituals, laws, music, art, and written tradition, as just such a memeplex. He argued that the idea of a god and the religion memes that aggregate around it replicate themselves by providing convincing answers to life’s great questions.

Religions, however, are perhaps much more sinister than that. Dawkins suggested that they appear to employ various tricks, and co-opt other memes that facilitate their replication by the most dastardly of connivances. For instance, according to Dawkins:

an aspect of doctrine which has been very effective in enforcing religious observance is the threat of hell fire. Many children and even some adults believe that they will suffer ghastly torments after death if they do not obey the priestly rules. This is a particularly nasty technique of persuasion, causing great psychological anguish ... The idea of hell fire is ... self-perpetuating, because of its own deep psychological impact. It has become linked with the god meme because the two reinforce each other, and assist each other’s survival in the meme pool. (Italics in original; 1976, p. 212)

Then there is faith: [Faith] means blind trust, in the absence of evidence, even in the teeth of evidence ... The meme for blind faith secures its own perpetuation by the simple unconscious expedient of discouraging rational enquiry. (Dawkins, 1976, pp. 212–13)

In fact, consider every possible trick that memes could employ to increase their frequency and memeticists suggest that such tricks are observed among organized religions (Aaron Lynch, 1996; Blackmore, 1999). They point out that memes would thrive that encouraged credit and praise to be heaped on individuals who read or learn verbatim texts describing the meme-complex; for example, the learning of Bible stories. Children adopt their parents’ memes, hence specific religious memes may encourage having children, discourage abortion or contraception, encourage respect for elders, and discourage marriages between faiths. Memes could increase their frequency through conversions, so the most effective religions would be expected to place a premium on evangelicalism, proselytism, missionary work, and punishment of non-believers. Additionally, any challenge to the meme-complex might be treated extremely severely as, for example, in the case of Ayatollah Khomeini’s fatwa on the author Salman Rushdie.

Blackmore (1999) asks her readers to reflect on why some minor religions went on to become great faiths, while the majority died out with the death of their leader. Her answer is that, of the many religious ideas, only some had packages of memes that were effective gimmicks for propagation, with particularly compelling (and difficult to disprove) explanations for life, and these became the major religions. Citing the work of theologian Hugh Pyper, Blackmore describes the Bible as the fittest of all books. She writes:

Western culture is the Bible’s way of making more Bibles. And why is it [the bible] so successful? Because it alters its environment in a way that increases the chances of it being copied. It does this, for example, by including within itself many instructions to pass it on, and by describing itself as indispensable to the people who read it. It is extremely adaptable, and since much of its content is self-contradictory it can be used to justify more or less any action or moral stance. (1999, p. 192)

Attributing motives to memes is simply an intellectual stance adopted to help envisage which memes might be expected to have evolved. As Blackmore explains, religious memes did not, indeed could not, set out to succeed. She suggests that they were simply ideas and behaviour that had some utility in explaining the world and succeeded where others failed because they had the right combination of mutually supportive ideas that allowed them to be repeatedly passed on. It is worthy of note that there are other evolutionary approaches to understanding religion, many of which stress the advantages that religion bring to the individual (e.g. Hinde, 1999).

Natalie Angier (2002) in a New York Times interview with David Sloane Wilson had this to say of his more sympathetic view of religion, as expressed in “Darwin’s Cathedral” (2002):

Dr. Wilson, a renowned evolutionary biologist, proposes that religion -- with all its institutional, emotional and prescriptive trappings -- ranks as a kind of mega-adaptation: a trait that evolved because it conferred advantages on those who bore it. But whereas evolutionary biologists traditionally view an adaptation as the outcome of a struggle between unevenly matched individuals -- say, between one polar bear with a cleanly cloaking white coat, and another with a slightly less effective form of camouflage -- Dr. Wilson sees religion as the product of group selection at work.

In his new book, Dr. Wilson argues that the religious impulse evolved early in hominid history because it helped make groups of humans comparatively more cohesive, more cooperative and more fraternal, and thus able to present a formidable front against bands of less organized or unified adversaries. By taking an evolutionary perspective on the subject, Dr. Wilson said, religion's twinned record of transcendent glories and shocking barbarities becomes comprehensible and even predictable, though not, perhaps, inevitable for the future.

In his own words he says: “I consider myself a communitarian, and there are many things I admire about religion, but no, I don't believe in God. I tell people I'm an atheist, but a nice atheist.”

Wilson states that he has set out to demonstrate that a church can be thought of as an organism in an evolutionary sense:

True love means growth for the whole organism, whose members are all interdependent and serve each other.

That is the outward form of the inner working of the Spirit, the organism of the Body governed by Christ.

We see the same thing among the bees, who all work with equal zeal gathering honey. —Ehrenpreis [1650] 1978, 11

Religious believers often compare their communities to a single organism or even to a social insect colony. The passage quoted above is from the writings of the Hutterites, a Christian denomination that originated in Europe five centuries ago and that currently thrives in communal settlements scattered throughout northwestern North America. Across the world in China and Japan, Zen Buddhist monasteries were often constructed to resemble a single human body (Collcutt 1981). The purpose of this book is to treat the organismic concept of religious groups as a serious scientific hypothesis. Organisms are a product of natural selection. Through countless generations of variation and selection, they acquire properties that enable them to survive and reproduce in their environments. My purpose is to see if human groups in general, and religious groups in particular, qualify as organismic in this sense.

In summarising his evolutionary case as unifying systems, he notes this could extend to culture as a whole in all its aspects quoting culture itself as a defensive structure against chaos:

Cultures are defensive constructions against chaos, designed to reduce the impact of randomness on experience. They are adaptive responses, just as feathers are for birds and fur is for mammals. Cultures prescribe norms, evolve goals, build beliefs that help us tackle the challenges of existence. In so doing they must rule out many alternative goals and beliefs, and thereby limit possibilities; but this channeling of attention to a limited set of goals and means is what allows effortless actions within self-erected boundaries. —Csikszentmihalyi 1990, 91

This passage claims for culture in general what I have tried to show for religion in particular. The word religion is derived from the Latin “religio,” which means “to unite or bind together” Related words used outside the context of religion are “religate” (to bind together or unite) and “ligature” (the act of tying or binding up). These meanings reflect the essence of the thesis of this book, like a hidden clue that was not discovered until the very end. However, religions are not the only systems that unite people into adaptive groups. I could have written a book on political organizations, business organizations, military organizations, sports teams, family groups, secular intellectual traditions, or even diffuse cultures as adaptive units. We therefore need to develop a general theory of unifying systems of which religion is a special case.

The idea that religions enable larger scale cooperative behaviour is far from unique. Many writers have expressed the view that moral systems in both animal and human societies function to reduce intra-social conflict leading in turn to inter-social dominance (Alexander 1987, Hinde 1999, Wilson 2002).

Nevertheless Wilson in his work (p 105) makes clear why the God-people relationship may not be factual:

The God-people relationship Ask a person to do something and the most likely response will be “Why?” An adaptive belief system cannot simply provide a list of behaviors but must also justify them. It might seem that the justification could be factual and straightforward: “Do this because it is good for you.” However, this approach is unlikely to succeed by itself for a number of reasons.

First, it works best when the consequences of the behavior are well known: “Eat your spinach because it is high in iron and will make you healthy.” Often the consequences of behaviors are not well known, and the most obvious short-term consequences (the bitter taste of spinach) can lead to a different conclusion than the more subtle long-term consequences (the health effects). An adaptive belief system must cope with ignorance in its justification of behaviors.

Second, a belief system that is adaptive at the group level must cope with the problem of cheating, which benefits some individuals at the expense of others within the group. Cheating is genuinely beneficial for the cheater (when he or she gets away with it), and therefore cannot be argued against on the basis of personal benefit. The same point can be made in terms of the “veil of ignorance” that Rawls (1971) used to explain the concept of justice. Ask self-interested people to design a society, subject to the constraint that they will be placed at random within the society, and they will design a just society. However, once placed within the society, they are subject to a different set of constraints and may well want to destroy what they previously created. This problem, which lies at the heart of multilevel selection theory, makes it difficult to justify the behaviors that constitute an adaptive group in terms of personal benefit.

Third, an adaptive belief system must be economical. The beliefs that justify the behaviors must be easily learned and employed in the real world. A fictional belief system that is user-friendly and that motivates an adaptive suite of behaviors will surpass a realistic belief system that requires a Ph.D. to understand and that leads to a paralysis of indecision.

Fourth, a fictional belief system can be more motivating than a realistic belief system. Imagine two individuals competing for a common resource. Even though the facts of this situation are easy to comprehend, regarding one’s enemy as inhuman can be more motivating than regarding one’s enemy as just like oneself.

Fifth, a fictional belief system can perform the same functions as externally imposed rewards and punishments, often at a much lower cost. For example, the usual means of raising money to serve the common good is in the form of taxes. Unfortunately, individuals who avoid paying taxes without punishment are always better off in material terms than solid citizens within the same group. Cheating can be prevented by punishment, but implementing a system for detecting and punishing cheaters can itself be costly. Another solution is to manipulate the cost of cheating in the mind of the average citizen. Groups governed by belief systems that internalize social control can be much more successful than groups that must rely on external forms of social control.

For all of these (and probably other) reasons, we can expect many belief systems to be massively fictional in their portrayal of the world (Wilson 1990, 1995). As I discussed, their adaptedness must be judged by the behaviors they motivate, not by their factual correspondence to reality.

This raises a series of problems:

Firstly do religions evolve and what did they evolve from?

Secondly religions, although they are moral social systems, which enable larger societies to cohere, also claim to be cosmological descriptions of existential reality expressing ultimate truth. If they are “massively fictional”, they run the risk of dominating society and then leading it into an invidious outcome.

Thirdly, the very reasons being advanced why they are advantageous have nothing to do with their inner truth or otherwise, but precisely those self-reinforcing social feedback loops that memeticists cite as principal caveats about the role of religions. Wilson’s five points are essentially social replicator rules and and Hinde’s nine reasons are the very avenues these rules seek to utilise.

Fourthly, the question of morality. Sociobiology teaches us that morality is a function of animal societies in which strategic bluffing occurs designed to inhibit internal competition to result in external dominance and survival. It is not a cosmological imperative. Religion, by contrast asserts morality as a divine principle, ring fenced by virtuous inducements and dire consequences.

Fifthly, while Wilson uses examples such as Calvinism to highlight constructive pro-sociality not requiring oppressive punishments, the history of religion is littered with homicidal punishments, and oppressive edicts presenting no avenue of escape for members, so the notion that religions are more efficient by positive inducement fails the historical test, whenever prescriptive religions show their teeth and claws in their true colours.

Sixthly, the notion that humanity has evolved to be genetically predisposed to spiritual or religious concepts, or that the brain is or is “hard-wired” to do so has not been scientifically established.

Seventhly, although Wilson’s citing of the reformation is an example of a type of evolutionary change within Christianity, paradigm shifts in religions are exceedingly rare over time scales of millennia, because religions are set up to zealously resist evolutionary change or re-interpretation as heresy, apostasy or blasphemy, unlike science where new ideas are assessed on their empirical or theoretic evidence, so that religion attempts to frustrate its own evolution, with the religious assault on evolutionary science, on the basis of the mythical and incorrect Sabbatical Creation, being a suitable case for treatment.

Eighthly Religious Views of Nature and Sexuality are in Fundamental Conflict wth Reality

Ninthly religions, especially evangelical Christianity are in a collision course with nature, in which evolution and the sanctity of the Tree of Life is denied.

Fig 145: The evolutionary tree of religion is rooted in animism (Simon Davies).

The Evolution of Religions and the Consequences

(1) The Evidence for Evolution of Religions from Animism, Shamanism and Ancestor Worship: Religions do display evolutionary relationships over time, due to the cross-infection of ideas, as illustrated in fig 146 and to natural variation, speciation and some forms of syncretic recombination. Buddhism, Jainism and Hinduism, in its many forms, all involve commonalities of world view and emergent movements such as Tantrism have overlapped these traditions. Likewise the Zoroastrian notion of cosmic renovation infected the Hebrew tradition to become Jewish apocalypticism and then the Christian version in the Gospels and Revelation. However evolutionary writers including Rossano (2010), Dunbar (2022) and from a more archaeological perspective Hayden (2003), consistently see the origins of religion in mystical and trance states associated with shamanism and animism, particularly given the vastly longer time scale of gatherer-hunter social evolution.

In fact, one can see that all animals that have evolved an awareness of their agency as biological organisms, including Homo sapiens, ARE animists, because their prime existential crises and fulfilment hinge around the mortal threats, and food and partnership opportunities other animals provide, with other existential crises caused by fire flood and storms featuring as forms of live environmental agency as well. It is only with the evolution of culture and human manufacture that we have come to the notions of creationist theism and our ideas of reality have become surrounded by machines and machine thinking to the exclusion of live agency, which is threatening to subsume us in AI.

Bruce Hayden (2003) in “A Prehistory of Religion: Shamans, Sorcerors and Saints” expresses it thus:

While it is fashionable to use psychological or social models (Durkheim 1915) to explain the origin of religion, these approaches are unsatisfactory for a number of reasons from an archaeological and ecological point of view.

First, the amount of time and effort invested in many religious activities such as the building of Stonehenge are far beyond what one would expect of any simple anxiety-reducing behavior, unless entire populations were extremely phobic. Moreover, high levels of anxiety do not accord with any ethnographers' observations that I am aware of. In fact, ethnographers sometimes re mark on the surprising lack of concern that hunter-gatherers and horticulturalists display about the future.

Secondly developing an inherent tendency to enter into ecstatic or altered states of consciousness must have involved major transformations of the physical structure of the human brain. In ecological theory, such changes are incomprehensible unless they also confer advantageous survival benefits; that is, unless these changes are in some ways adaptive.

Third, it might be argued that the expansion of the brain's neocortex and especially the dominance of the left hemisphere (see Music Is in the Hemispheres, below) were adaptive because they made culture possible at the cost of suppressing functions of earlier parts of the_ brain. In this view, the function of religion is to reduce the stresses between these different parts of the brain.This explanation has a relatively narrow scope, however, accounting only for ritual behavior. In contrast, ecological explanations such as those to be discussed cover a much wider range of behavior, including sharing, alliances, and kinship. In addition, ecological explanations encompass unique types of human behavior that are difficult to understand under other paradigms. Such behaviors include the human reaction to rhythms and their link to rituals, the acceptance of new values presented while in ecstatic states, and the notion of higher principles or beings.

Robin Dunbar (2022) in “How Religion Evolved” clearly expresses this view (Riesz 2022):

At the emotional heart of religion, as Dunbar sees it, is something he calls “the mystical stance”, which includes “a susceptibility to enter trance-like states”, “belief in a transcendental (or spirit) world” and “a belief that we can call on hidden power(s) to help us”. Though sophisticated systems of theology have obviously been built on these foundations, “beneath the surface veneer of doctrinal rectitude lurks an ancient foundation of pagan mystical religion”. One of the key questions is how the original immersive or shamanic forms of religion develop into elaborate doctrinal religions.

Nick Spencer's (2022) review elaborates:

Dunbar is clear that religious practices improve the individual's "fitness". "Active involvement in religion both makes you feel happier and provides you with a level of support that helps you cope." The second key urge takes us beyond this "functional" role. Humans are predisposed towards the transcendent. The "mystical stance" is widespread, ancient in origin, and "part of what it is to be human". Whether through trance states in early "shamanic" religions or less dramatic but still affecting encounters with music, art or nature, the sense of being part of something deeper and more profound than ourselves is near-universal. None of this means that such feelings are necessarily true. Dunbar is clear that doctrinal truth claims, such as about the nature of God or of creation, have played a relatively minor and recent role in the evolution of religion. Rather, it is simply that belief in a spiritual realm or in human purpose or destiny is very deeply ingrained in our nature. Dunbar is clear that the same religious urges that engender pro-social behaviour within the group can also provoke antisocial behaviour outside it — the more I bond with my co-religionists, the less I have in common with those of other faiths. And when religious identity is co-opted by the state, the result can be disastrous.

Fig 146: Left and Centre: Two ancient shamanic portraits cited by Rossano. Left: the 'sorceror' of Trois-Frères Cave (c 14000 BP). Centre: Fumane shaman with antlers (c 25500 BP). Right: The Venus of Laussel (c25000 BP) a representation of the Great Mother, with ochre smeared pubis holding and looking at a horn with 13 menstrual marks (13x28=364), representing the lunar bull and male fertility. Thus we see the patriarchal view of divinity as not arising in the sky God nor in human dominion over nature, but in the sheer spiritual wildness of nature that encompasses both the tiger and the thunderstorm. The shaman manifests the character of a therianthrope – an animal that transforms into a human and vice versa – the power animal, or apotheosis representing our unbounded spiritual nature, exemplified by the San /Kaggen and other trickster heroes, the humble werewolf, and even in an exploded apocalyptic form, by Yeshua and his miraculous apotheosis, Christ.

Matt Rossano (2010), in “Supernatural Selection” places this back to the first worldwide spread of modern humans:

At the same time of the worldwide spread of modern humans we see the first compelling evidence for the religious practices of shamanism, animism, and ancestor worship. Echoing the famous anthropologist Roy Rappaport, my view is that this is more than mere accident. Religion played a nontrivial role in the achievement of distinctively human society. … Thus, where we observe greater ubiquity we can infer greater antiquity: An increasingly widespread trait is likely to be a more ancient one that possibly traces back to the origin of the species. Using this same logic, we can attempt to identify religion’s “primitive” traits.

He discovers the foundations to be ancestor worship, shamanism, and animism, the belief in natural and animal spirits:

Using this approach, three traits emerge: ancestor worship, shamanism, and the animistic belief in natural and animal spirits. Each of these traits represents a “supernaturalizing” of social life—a way in which our ancestors expanded the social world to include a supernatural layer filled with ever- vigilant spiritual monitors.

He summarises his basis for these being the evolutionary source:

Ancestor worship: is widespread across traditional religions in Africa, Asia, the Pacific Islands, and the South American tropics. In his survey of traditional African religions, missionary and religious scholar Geoffrey Parrinder states flatly, “All Africans believe in the ancestors, as ever-living and watchful.” Half a world away, on the Solomon Islands, the same attitude persists among the Kwaio people, for whom daily interaction with ancestors is as routine as eating, drinking, and sleeping. Interacting with the ancestors, however, does not always happen within the context of recognizable rituals. Efe Pygmies regularly interact with ancestors in the forest and in dreams, but they engage in hardly anything that would look to us like worship.

Shamanism: The term “shaman” comes from the Tungus root saman, meaning “one who is excited or raised” or simply “to know.” This reflects the fact that the shaman’s function is to enter an altered state of consciousness wherein he or she connects with spiritual forces in order to gain knowledge or cure illness. The shaman, then, is a spiritual practitioner—a specialist whose job is to interact with the spiritual world.

Animism: The belief in a spiritual force pervading all of nature is common among hunter-gatherers. Powerful animal spirits play a prominent role in the art, myths, and religious beliefs of traditional people as culturally and geographically diverse as the Aborigines of Australia, the Inuits of the Arctic, the Ainu of northern Japan, the Bushmen of South Africa, the Jahai of Malaysia, and numerous native North and South American tribes. Animal spirits were also prominent among the great chiefdoms of pre- Columbian America (e.g., Aztecs, Toltecs, Incas) and the early great civilizations of the Old World (Egypt, Mesopotamia). There are some exceptions and variations. For example, while Aka Pygmies believe in animal spirits, neither Mbuti nor Baka Pygmies do. Instead, Baka Pygmies believe in anthropomorphized “game spirits,” while the Mbuti see the entire forest as a living spirit.

However he neglects the obvious centrality of the Great Mother, fully evident as far back as 35,000 years ago in the Aurignacian in the case of the Venus of Hohle Fels. Rianne Eisler (1987) in "The Chalice and the Blade" summarises the early evidence for the Great Mother:

It would seem only logical that the visible dimorphism, or difference in form, between the two halves of humanity had a profound effect on Paleolithic systems of belief. And it would seem equally logical that the fact that both human and animal life is generated from the female body and that, like the seasons and the moon, woman's body also goes through cycles led our ancestors to see the life-giving and sustaining powers of the world in female, rather than male, form. In sum, instead of being random and unconnected materials, the Paleolithic remains of female figurines, red ocher in burials, and vagina-shaped cowrie shells appear to be early manifestations of what was later to develop into a complex religion centering on the worship of a Mother Goddess as the source and regeneratrix of all forms of life. This Goddess worship, as James and other scholars note, survived well into historic times "in the composite figure of the Magna Mater of the Near East and the Greco-Roman world.

Rossano pinpoints the transition between these early imagistic processes and traditional doctrinal religions:

Anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse argues that religion exists in two modes: imagistic and doctrinal. The imagistic mode is characterized by infrequent, emotionally charged rituals that create the conditions for strong social bonding among participants. This mode encourages private reflection on emotionally arousing events. Its effects typically remain localized and personalized, not conducive to widespread transmission. By contrast, the doctrinal mode facilitates the efficient spread of religious beliefs across a broad population. It does this by stressing frequent, stylized rituals that encourage the rote storage of a common set of actions, stories, and teachings (e.g., the Catholic mass, where the story of Jesus’ last meal is reenacted and his message of sacrifice is revisited). While the doctrinal mode is an efficient tool for transmission, it can also lose its force through tedium. Thus, both modes are believed necessary for a religion to remain vital: the imagistic providing the individual motivation to participate in religious activities, the doctrinal to establish a common set of ideals and behaviors. Whitehouse contends that the imagistic mode is historically more ancient, probably dating as far back as the “religious” cave art of the Upper Paleolithic. I agree, but I suggest that the ritual and emotional roots of the imagistic mode run far deeper than the Upper Paleolithic — to well before the African Interregnum (100000-60000). Conversely, the foundations for the doctrinal mode emerge much later.

This distinction between imagistic spirituality as expressed in diverse forms in the animism section and the doctrinal religion people tends to associate with religion and its social impacts also is the distinction between the source mysticism that underlies all religious inspiration that lies at the seeds of new religions and the prescriptive memes traditional religions apply to their populations to maintain theistic control over human beliefs and actions.

Robin Dunbar (2022) coincides with this evolutionary position:

The earliest forms of religion took the shape of a rather generalized belief in spirits or a form of being that sometimes occupied a transcendental world parallel to the physical one in which we live, but also might occupy the same physical space as we do. In some cases, these spirits had no particular interest in our world; in other cases, they were responsible for causing – or curing – the illnesses that we fall prey to. These older religions are religions of immersive experience, rather than religions of formal ritual with specialists who intercede on behalf of the laity. They are often (but not always) associated with trance states, usually induced by music and dance. In this, they share many underlying features with the mysticism that we find in all the doctrinal religions. By general consensus, mysticism involves direct ecstatic experience of the divine. It is a very personal form of ‘religion of experience’, a sense of immersion in the ineffable, the ‘oneness of being’ as the medieval Christian mystics described it. In its modern forms, these features tend to reflect the particular beliefs of the religion to which the mystic belongs. Mystics from the Christian, Sufi Islam and Sikh traditions will experience this as immersion in the oneness of God, whereas Buddhists experience it as immersion in the luminous universal mind. Sometimes these trance states (often described as ‘visions’) are spontaneous (as seems to have been the case with many historical Christian mystics like St Teresa of Ávila or the German Dominican friar Meister Eckhart); in other cases, trance may be brought on by group rituals, usually involving music (as in the trance dances of the San Bushmen) and sometimes assisted by plant-based psychotropic (or mind-altering) drugs (many South American tribes), or individually by meditative practices (as in the yogic tradition). Because the use of trance in one form or another is so widespread in these animist forms of religions, I refer to them collectively as ‘shamanic religions’, or ‘immersive religions’.

He then notes the transition to doctrinal religion:

At some point, there was a transition to a more formal kind of religion marked by regular places of worship, gods (who sometimes actively intervene in human affairs), religious specialists or priests (who intervene between the community and the gods, in some cases via trance-based rituals), more formal theologies, and moral codes that have divine origins – Moses receiving the tablets with the Ten Commandments directly from God on Mount Sinai, the Prophet Muhammed receiving the dictation of the Koran from God, Joseph Smith receiving the golden plates of the Book of Mormon. Most of these doctrinal religions also have origin stories, often associated with the revelatory experiences of a specific individual as founder – Zoroaster in the case of the Zoroastrians of ancient Persia; Siddhārtha Gautama for the Buddhists; Jesus Christ for Christians; the Prophet Muhammed for Islam; Guru Nanak for Sikhism. Because these religions typically have quite explicit theological doctrines, they are often known as doctrinal religions. They are also known as world religions because most of them now have very large followings spread over most of the planet (notwithstanding the fact that this is actually a very recent phenomenon). The important point to emphasize is that this sequence is not necessarily a process of replacement of one kind of religion by another. It is, rather, one of accretion – one form of religion (a doctrinal phase) being bolted onto the earlier (shamanic or animist) form.

Later, he pinpoints this to the rise of large urban cultures associated with agriculture and animal husbandry:

Six religious traits were mapped across thirty-three contemporary hunter-gatherer societies distributed across southern Africa, South and East Asia, Australia and the Americas, and then the ancestral states of these traits reconstructed statistically. The six traits were: animistic beliefs, shamanism, ancestor worship, belief in an afterlife, belief in local gods who keep to their own domain, and belief in High Gods who interfere in human affairs (Moralizing High Gods). The study found that animism is likely to have been the oldest of these traits, being present, uniquely, in all the cultures in the sample, despite their wide geographical distribution. On the other hand, belief in an afterlife is by no means universal and, along with shamanism and ancestor worship, appears to form a suite of traits that evolved together later. In contrast, belief in High Gods seemed to be completely divorced from all the other traits (very few hunter-gatherers actually believe in High Gods); instead, it seems to be a trait exclusively associated with the rise of agriculture and pastoralism (Peoples & Marlowe 2012, Peoples, Duda & Marlowe 2016).

He also reinforces mysticism and altered states as foundational to all forms of religious tradition (Guerra-Doce (2015):

Mysticism has been a major component of all the major religions. By mysticism, I mean a feeling of divine transcendence that comes over an individual from time to time, sometimes spontaneously, sometimes as a result of deliberately engaging in ritualized activities. It is variously referred to as ecstasy or enthusiasm (from the Ancient Greek word enthousiasmós, meaning ‘possessed by god’). In its most developed forms, it usually involves a sense of drifting into a different plane of consciousness, of becoming so detached from the world of everyday experience as to no longer notice the sights and sounds of the physical world, a sense of losing track of time, of peacefulness – sometimes described in the mystical literature as the ‘stillness of the mind’. These are a susceptibility to enter trance-like states, a belief in the existence of a transcendental (or spirit) world, and a belief that we can call on hidden power(s) to help us. The mystical stance is the belief that we can experience this hidden essence directly only through our minds.

The mystical stance seems to emerge out of two separate, but related psychological components. One is a need to believe in a spiritual dimension to human life. This may well derive from a deep-seated reluctance to believe that death really is death, the end of life and being. The other has to do with altered states of consciousness, both those induced by trance and those that arise from accidents of experience (such as epileptic fits) or the use of mind-altering drugs. ... One survey of 488 ethnographic societies drawn from all continents concluded that no less than 90 per cent incorporated altered states of consciousness into their belief systems. … The experience of trance also bears a close similarity to those that occur during near-death experiences. … In many ways, the archetypal form of trance is the kind found among hunter-gatherers like the San peoples of Botswana and Namibia. The San use dance to trigger trance. Conventionally, it is the men who dance and the women who provide the musical accompaniment by clapping and singing. In most cases, the men dance in a circle until exhaustion sets in, triggering trance ().

In this process, Dunbar (2022) makes a very careful analysis of biological evolution:

Group selection, as the latter is known, requires the differential survival of whole groups and was often viewed as the explanation for altruism or population regulation: some animals don’t breed in order to ensure that the population or species does not exhaust its food supply and go extinct. The problem is that there is no known genetic mechanism that would allow this: any species that behaved in this way would quickly find its altruism undermined by individuals that reproduced selfishly as fast as they could. This is not to say that group selection cannot work. It can, but it requires very high rates of group extinction and very low rates of migration between groups, and so far no study has found rates of group (or even culture) extinction that are anything like high enough to allow it to work. For this reason, biologists look with deep suspicion on any suggestion that benefits might accrue solely for the benefit of the group and against the interests of the individual.

The fact that religion can incur serious costs in terms of self-imposed pain, celibacy and even self-sacrifice has led some evolutionary psychologists and cognitive science of religion scholars to conclude that religion and religiosity cannot be adaptive, but must instead be the maladaptive by-product of traits or cognitive processes that evolved for other perfectly respectable biological purposes.

Animals do not live in groups because they like each other. They live in groups for the specific purpose of solving one or more of the components of fitness. … In all these cases, the benefit arises only because the group exists, but its impact on fitness always accrues at the level of the individual, or even the gene. If the group does not provide a benefit for the individual, individuals will not put up with the inevitable costs of living in a group. Evolutionary biologists refer to this process as group-level (or group augmentation) selection, or more simply as mutualism. This is essentially the same process as that involved in symbioses, where two species live in close harmony with each other, thereby enhancing each other’s survival chances.

He nevertheless takes a strongly affirmative position concerning the reality of cultural evolution:

Another important point to appreciate is that the function of a trait and its mode of inheritance are two separate, unrelated things. Any mechanism that allows a trait to be passed on from one individual to another, whether or not they are biologically related and share any genes, acts in a Darwinian fashion. Learning or cultural transmission is such a mechanism, and hence can be analysed using the same mathematics as is used to explore the evolution of genetically inherited traits. Culture is a Darwinian process, and cultural traits (or even entire cultures) evolve under selection, much as individuals and species do. Culture, however, can evolve both in ways that influence an individual’s biological fitness and in ways that influence the fitness of a given cultural element within a purely cultural world. In theory, there is nothing evolutionarily implausible about a cultural phenomenon driving the genes of the bodies (or minds) that they parasitize to extinction – providing they can jump from one mind to the next (by cultural transmission) faster than they cause each body they inhabit to die.

This leads to some pessimistic views of the evolution of religion:

In general, evolutionary cognitive science of religion has adopted one of two views to explain how and why religion evolved. One is that religion is an unavoidable, and hence evolutionarily largely uninteresting, consequence of the way the human mind happens (or had) to be designed to support other evolutionarily more important functions. Religion is simply the cost that had to be paid in order to maximize evolutionary fitness. Alternatively, it might be an example of cultural evolution exploiting the way the human mind is designed so as to maximize cultural fitness despite the negative effect this might have on the fitness of the individuals whose minds are being parasitized. Both are, as we shall see in the next section, perfectly plausible explanations from a conventional Darwinian point of view.

And Dunbar is under no illusion that religions necessarily benefit the welfare of individuals, because of the dire consequences some religious groups or doctrines entertain, not just in the apocalyptic endings of Jim Jones with cyanide and David Koresh at Waco Texas in conflagration. More than 900 people died in the Jonestown massacre, in Guyana, including some 300 who were age 17 or under:

In the Christian tradition, the Adamite sect in late Roman Egypt insisted on complete nakedness during their services. Others, like the Russian Skoptsy (literally, ‘castrates’) sect, took matters even further, advocating breast and genital mutilation in women and the removal of both penis and testes in men (all performed with red-hot irons) so as to restore their bodies to the original pre-Fall condition of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

However, he is not interested in beliefs, but the overall sociobiological effects of religions on human groups:

Cognitive science of religion provides convincing explanations as to how human cognition underpins many aspects of religiosity and how these might have been exploited for these purposes. However, its focus is mainly on beliefs and so it overlooks some important features of human religious experience that in many ways constitute the core fabric of religion – in particular, ritual and the role that religion plays in creating communities.

In this, he has a positive view, unlinked to any of the sometimes oppressive moral or doctrinal aspects of developed religions, citing the increased sense of belonging, community and mutual support religious groups offer, allowing larger social groups to form and maintain coherence, without precipitating internecine intracommunity violence and schism, noting for example the superior health, happiness and survival statistics of religious groups over non-affiliated.

This can apply both to individual benefits:

One widely articulated view is that religion provides a unifying framework for the world in which we live: it allows us to make sense of our world in a way that enables us to function effectively because we can control its more erratic behaviour. ... On top of that, we never know when we are likely to encounter any of the many more immediate threats to life – predators, plagues and pathogens, poisonous plants, and other humans (raiders).

A meta-analysis of forty-two studies, totalling nearly 126,000 subjects, found that active religious involvement increased the chances of being alive at follow-up by 26 per cent compared to those who never went to church, even when controlling for socio-demographic variables and existing health.

And to societal ones, involving both reputation and punishment of individuals:

In other words, a community that is invaded by even a small number of freeriders will very quickly either become dominated by selfish individuals or will fragment into small inward-looking subgroups. Part of the problem is that we are not naturally prosocial – something that is surely evident from the fact that both secular and religious authorities, not to mention family, constantly have to enjoin us to fulfil our obligations in this respect. … Yet we are, nonetheless, willing to cooperate with, and be casually generous to, strangers. Neither economists nor evolutionary biologists have managed to find a convincing explanation for this, despite several decades of intensive experimental study. The best they have been able to do is suggest one of two possible mechanisms that seem to work: reputation and punishment. … God is a particularly effective threat precisely because He sees everything even when the rest of us might not.

However he also invokes the carrot of commitment that religions also encourage, as a partial antidote to the stick of punishment. And with commitment also comes bonding and belonging. In this mix is a prominent aspect of risk avoidance and risk anxiety which the ordered world view of religions seeks to alleviate, which provides an explanation for both animism and doctrinal religions, with the proviso that in a basis sense the animistic view in gatherer-hunters societies, where risks predominate from natural agents, it has some scientific validity, lacking in later moral high Gods.

Essentially, this proposes that the animal mind is furnished with sensitivities to cues that allow it to detect salient phenomena that have direct effects on biological fitness (the ability to survive and reproduce successfully). For example, being able to infer that there is a predator approaching when hearing the snap of a twig in the forest is beneficial if you want to avoid falling prey to a predator or an enemy. Such mechanisms, they argue, are likely to be risk-averse because it is always better to mistakenly assume that there is a predator approaching than to mistakenly ignore the significance of such a cue when there really is a predator approaching (an example of Pascal’s Wager). As a result, we humans are predisposed to attribute any phenomenon that we cannot readily explain to some mysterious being that we cannot see. There is no question that this effect is widely prevalent in humans: it is redolent in the way we attribute motivations to physical phenomena. We speak of the sea being angry or the sky lowering. On this view, then, religion is an inbuilt error in the biological system.

He also cites a careful, not excessive, degree of supernaturalness associated with religious belief:

Another classic example of this approach is the suggestion that gods are typically ‘minimally counterintuitive’, meaning that they have to be able to break the normal laws of everyday physics – but not by too much, otherwise they just become implausible.

Although he cites religions as enabling the growth of larger coherent societies, spanning the scales of bands 30-50, clans 100-200, tribes 1500 to whole urban civilisations, he is also interested in the ways religious groups nevertheless subdivide and result in schism over time because of the inherent difficulties of maintaining trust and belonging in larger social groups as religions grow. He sees this as also a product of the way doctrinal religions have evolved out of earlier and more immediate forms of animistic, shamanic and mystical rituals and practices that worked well for smaller groups of around 150 or so to whole populations of empires. This means that local churches are prone to invest in charismatic leaders, often criticising increasing elitism and moral corruption in the clergical hierarchy, to re-invoke the more immediate personal experiences of the underlying immanent form of religious experience that motivated doctrinal religions in the first place. Examples of this abound in the suppression of the Gnostics as heretics, the Reformation, the rise of Salafism in Islam and the diverse modern sects from the Quakers to Pentecostalists as well as some of the terminal cults from Jonestown to Waco, Texas.

This has manifest implications concerning the war of fundamentalistic Christian religious groups against science over evolution since Darwin, as we shall see in the eighth section.

Complementing this evolutionary account, Thomas Römer in “The Invention of Gods” illustrates the cultural evolution of Yahweh as the Hebrew high god including his consortship with Asherah, in a transition from a syncretic polytheistic high god to an abstract ruler of the world acting in history.

The scientific historian of crisis, Jared Diamond (2021) points to the greatest power of religion in the civilised era of large agricultural societies being doctrines which enable large societies to remain coherent and dominant:

There are at least half a dozen powers of religious beliefs and among those half a dozen are political. The most straightforward of these political functions which arose only within the last five or six thousand years with the development of complicated political systems, one of those political functions is to justify obedience to kings and priests and emperors in a populist in a big society. In a small human society like the New Guinea societies where there are a few hundred people you know everybody by name there isn't any issue of dealing with strangers but so here you and i have met recently and in the in the in the last short time since we met each other neither you nor I has moved to kill each other, but in new guinea that would be unthinkable if i were at such a short

distance from a stranger.

So you need something special to enable a large society where you encounter strangers to function religion plays an essential role. Religion offers a moral code which says how you're supposed to behave to everybody whether or not they're your fifth cross cousin or not there are like ten commandments every religion has which include thou shalt not kill – thou shall not kill a stranger but under circumstances thou shalt kill if you go to war with those people over there religion says yes you should kill those jerks because they are non-believers they don't have the true religion so religion in the last 5 000 years has acquired some new social political functions namely obey the king don't kill strangers but yes do kill strangers if they believe in the wrong religion. The power comes from the obedience that religion commands and the willingness to sacrifice oneself that religion commands. For example the world trade tower attack people with certain religious beliefs ended up killing 2993 people with other religious beliefs they sacrificed their lives there was enormous payoff in terms of the people killed with other religious beliefs.

He discounts the idea that the universality of religion attests to its truth:

People who are believers would claim that the universality of religion speaks to the real existence of some supernatural phenomena or supernatural existence that everyone is sensing desiring and indeed in tune with. If you do not believe in such supernatural existence you still do have to explain the virtual ubiquity of religion. If one was going to to draw conclusions and take comfort from the ubiquity of religion then you might expect it would be the ubiquity of one religion which is true but in fact every religion maintains all other religions to be untrue that already starts should make you start to be suspicious that that you can't make any arguments about truth from ubiquity. Some would claim that the you can because there is a commonality among those differences you can you can find the the lowest common denominator which in fact is a belief in a transcendence beyond the physicality of our own lives the ubiquity of religion seems to me a really weak defense of religion. There are other things that are that are ubiquitous the use of drugs.

Historian Yuval Noah Harari (2015) author of “Sapiens” (2014) in “Bananas in Heaven” likewise attributes the power of religions to their ability to invoke powerful fictitious “realities” through language:

What gives us this ability to do something no other animal can do? The answer is our imagination. Humans cooperate flexibly in large numbers because humans can create imagined realities together. All other animals use their communication system in order to describe reality. A chimpanzee can say, "Look there is a lion! Run away!" or "Look, there is a banana, let's take it!" Humans can use their language not only to describe reality but also to create new realities, to create fiction. A human can say: "Look there is a lion!" or "Look, there is a banana!" but the human can also say, "Look there is a God above the clouds, and if you don't do what they tell you to do, God will punish you." And if you believe this fictional story then you will do what you are told to do. And this is the secret behind large-scale human corporation. As long as everybody believes in the same fictional stories, everybody obeys the same laws, the same rules, and the same norms. And this is something that only humans can do.

(2) The Cosmological Claims of Religion: All religions lay claim to an ultimate cosmology of existence through their creation accounts. In terms of cosmology, Christianity for example, lays claim to an ultimate authority that is even applied retrospectively back from Yeshua's mission to the Biblical genesis giving him status of alpha and Omega. The Sabbatical Creation of Genesis is a quaint allegory, that passes the meme “efficiency” test with flying colours because it is so concise and endearing but is categorically wrong, both in the timing relationship of Earthly life to the solar system and to the order of the living species themselves. Once the notion of creation is implanted, the temptation to conceive of the universe in terms of creative design becomes almost impossible to overturn. Revelation likewise passes the “more motivating than reality” meme test by being so outrageously hyperbolic destroying the late planet Earth in apocalyptic conflagration leading to the newly created heavenly Jerusalem. This destructive eschatology is not only incorrect, it is diabolically genocidal. It cements nature as completely expendable and leads to a complete disregard for natural or human survival in planetary crisis, to which religious dominion over nature has contributed.

Fig 147: Marduk and Tiamat. The war of order against chaos, light vs dark, good vs evil and male vs female. This is a cosmological fault, as the diversity and complexity of life and consciousness arises at the edge of chaos.

While edge-of-chaos dynamics is pivotal to the way biogenesis, biological evolution and conscious experience, all arise from, cosmological symmetry-breaking, world religions share a motif of the ultimate rule of order over chaos, which becomes a cosmic war against disorder, in the form of evil because, although each cosmology starts out pure, disorder creeps in, resulting in a destructive final renovation of the universe in the end of days. The Vedic cosmology ends in degeneration and annihilation, in the Kali yuga. Buddhist cosmology similarly descends into the Saṃvartakalpa or "Eon of dissolution. In the western traditions we wind up with the Day of Judgment.

Such cosmologies thus invoke divine purity but introduce a cosmological war of order against chaos in a creeping dissolution perceived as primary evil. Just as Marduk the God of civic order is depicted as conquering Tiamat – the ancient Goddess of the Sea that is the symbol of the chaos of primordial creation, so later Near Eastern traditions from Zoroastrian, through Jewish, Christian and Islamic adopted the final solution of the end of days.

The Western notion of eschatological apocalypse originates from the Zoroastrian Frashokereti – a final renovation of the universe, when evil will be destroyed, and everything else will be then in perfect unity with God (Ahura Mazda)..

Premises: (1) good will eventually prevail over evil; (2) creation was initially perfectly good, but was subsequently corrupted by evil; (3) the world will ultimately be restored to the perfection it had at the time of creation; (4) the "salvation for the individual depended on the sum of [that person's] thoughts, words and deeds, and there could be no intervention, whether compassionate or capricious, by any divine being to alter this." Thus, each human bears the responsibility for the fate of his own soul, and simultaneously shares in the responsibility for the fate of the world.

The accompanying story in the Bundahishn, runs as follows: At the end of the "third time" (the first being the age of creation, the second of mixture, and the third of separation), there will be a great battle between the forces of good (the yazatas) and those of evil (the daevas) in which the good will triumph. On earth, the Saoshyant – "one who brings benefit" – an eschatological saviour figure) will bring about a resurrection of the dead in the bodies they had before they died. This is followed by a last judgment through ordeal. The yazatas Airyaman and Atar will melt the metal in the hills and mountains, and the molten metal will then flow across the earth like a river. All mankind—both the living and the resurrected dead—will be required to wade through that river, but for the righteous (ashavan) it will seem to be a river of warm milk, while the wicked will be burned. The river will then flow down to hell, where it will annihilate Angra Mainyu and the last vestiges of wickedness in the universe. In later Zoroastrian texts, it is written that the molten metal will purify the wicked. The righteous will partake of parahaoma, which will confer immortality. Thereafter, humankind will live without food, without hunger or thirst, and without weapons (or possibility of bodily injury). The material substance of the bodies will be so light as to cast no shadow. All humanity will speak a single language and belong to a single nation without borders. All will share a single purpose and goal, joining with the divine for a perpetual exaltation of God's glory. While in the beginning there was one plant, one animal and one human, the variety that had since issued would remain forever. Similarly, the host of divinities brought into existence by Mazda continue to have distinct existences, "and there is no prophecy of their re-absorption into the Godhead.

Notice the ingestion of parahaoma, a form of the soma of the Aryans, with a mythical status as a founding sacramental drink, associated with a number of plant species from ephedra to cannabis, just as Revelation says the tree of life provides monthly fruit and leaves for the healing of the nations.

The eschatological renovation entered Jewish and later Christian thought through the Edict of Restoration, of Cyrus II of Persia (c. 600–530 BC) a proclamation attested by a cylinder seal in which Cyrus authorised and encouraged the return of the Israelites to the Land of Israel following his conquest of the Neo-Babylonian Empire.

Thus saith the LORD to His anointed, to Cyrus, whose right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before him,
and to loose the loins of kings; to open the doors before him, and that the gates may not be shut (Isaiah 45:1).

Christianity introduced a further element into eschatological apocalypse, in the form of the dying saviour. The dying-and-rising resurrection deity is a religious motif often cited from the religions of the ancient Near East, and traditions influenced by them include Biblical and Greco-Roman mythology and by extension Christianity. The concept was first proposed in comparative mythology by James Frazer's seminal The Golden Bough (1890). Frazer associated the motif with fertility rites surrounding the yearly cycle of vegetation. Frazer cited the examples of Osiris, Tammuz, Adonis and Attis, Dionysus and Jesus.

With Attis, Adonis or Thammuz, we begin to close about the Christian altar. Behind them, as behind the slave who was King of the Wood, there looms, scarcely named, the shadow of that other God, who as Son of Man ... died on the tree. And inescapably we are brought to conclude that Jesus the Christ acquired divinity by assuming the attributes of another deity (Bishop 1936).

In Pfleiderer's Philosophy of Religion (1878), he freely adopts a position of 'nature mythology':

The earliest action in the way of worship in the primitive history of mankind, was nothing but a dramatic repetition of the divine life seen in the processes of nature, with a view to taking part in it in a mutual intercourse of gods and men. The usages connected with the spring and autumn festivals in nature-religions everywhere show very plainly an effort to represent the coming and the departure of the deity of life and light, in such a manner that the changing fortunes of the deity may be repeated and experienced afresh in the imitative acts and emotions of their worshippers. Thus in Egypt was celebrated the complaint of Isis for Osiris, in Syria the marriage and the death of the sun-god Melcarth or Adonis, in Eleusis the search and lament for her daughter Core ... in Athens the death and resurrection of Dionysus.

This association was reinforced by Pfleiderer (1903):

The 'animistic' notion of the sacraments did not first make its way into Christianity in the post-apostolic time, but pervades the whole Pauline theology'. What Paul accomplished was to 'ethicize' the 'original enthusiasm' of the early Christians 'which in its original form was closely related to the orgiasm of Mysteries'. In so doing, Paul 'created for the growing Christian Church the elements of its ceremonial, without which no Church religion could arise or maintain itself' ... 'essentially the same myth lies at the origin of the mysteries' of Osiris, Adonis, Demeter and Persephone, and Dionysus, while 'nearly allied to these legends of the violent death of a god are those which tell of the voluntary descent of a god or hero into the underworld and his fortunate return', such as Tammuz (Pfleiderer 1906).

Some of these premises have been debated by Smith (1990), who commented in his critique of Pfleiderer:

In his last work devoted to the topic and published in 1905, Pfleiderer more strongly insists on the parallels between Paul and the mysteries of the dying and rising gods, as well as Paul's creative genius in transforming them into an 'ethical' system, and makes an additional set of arguments. The use of these 'borrowings' was necessary to distinguish Christianity from Judaism. Its 'orgiastic' enthusiasm, now domesticated by Paul, is what freed early Christianity from the rigidities of 'national-legal' Judaism. When this domestication later failed, the 'dangerous one-sidedness' of Gnosticism resulted.

From Pfleiderer's initial publications, although never without challenge, the interpretation, especially, of Pauline myth and ritual as being intrinsically related to the pattern of dying and rising gods, has persisted in some circles of New Testament scholarship. Thus R. Bultmann could continue to declare, in 1965, that Paul's understanding of baptism was grounded in the theology of the Hellenistic-Christian community: which understood this traditional initiation-sacrament on analogy with the initiation-sacraments of the mystery religions. The meaning of the latter is to impart to the initiates a share in the fate of the cult-deity who has suffered death and reawakened to life - such as Attis, Adonis, or Osiris..

But Smith then claimed the the dying God was irrelevant because it was seasonal, while Yeshua's mission was "once and for all":

The death of Jesus is further distinguished from the fate of all the mystery-deities by the fact that it happened once and for all , and is incapable of being repeated cultically; here we have an historical event, there IS a mythical drama.

For in that he died, he died unto sin once: but in that he liveth, he liveth unto God (Romans 6:10).

But this is a false criticism because it was clear that Yeshua's entire mission as described in the gospels is a once and for all mission of apocalypse, and the entire episode played out as a single performance of a Dionysian tragedy in the Greek fertitility tradition, as Hugh Schonfield carefully documented in "The Passover Plot (1965) and is accounted in detail in the Natty Dread chapter. And in the Pauline Eucharist, Christ is reborn anew in every celebration of the Mass.

Regardless, in Christianity, whether expressed in Yeshua's own concepts and actions, or the additions of Paul and later gospel writers, we have the central notion of Jesus as the only begotten Son of God, whose sacrificial death in the crucifixion became a necessary atonement for the forgiveness of sins:

He said unto them, But whom say ye that I am? Peter answering said, The Christ of God. And he straitly charged them,
and commanded them to tell no man that thing; Saying, The Son of man must suffer many things, and be rejected of the elders
and chief priests and scribes, and be slain, and be raised the third day (Luke 9:20)

The synoptic mission account proceeds through a panoply of elements of fertility cult religions. John the Baptist had already had his head served up on a platter as trophy for Salome dancing Inanna's descent at Macherus in front of Herod's generals. Yeshua is then ministered unto out of their substance by the women of Galilee, performing Dionysian miracles, anointed to his doom by a woman alleged to be Magdalen, set at nought in a Roman Saturnalia and cries "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?" echoing both Psalm 22 and the Canaanite cry of Mot to El, on the cross, looked on from far off by the women of Galilee, while cursing the daughters of Jerusalem, is risen on the third day after harrowing hell and ascends to Abba the Father, becoming the only begotten Son of God, later enshrined in the hybrid Godhead of the Trinity.

The sacrificial element appears to be a memetic device to create a Hellenistic religion out of Yeshua's apocalyptic mission, culminating in his death, devised 17 years later in the Pauline epistles, and elaborated 20 years later again in Mark, Luke and Matthew, so that we have little idea of how much of this is Yeshua's own tragic Dionysian Theatre and how much is Paul's Hellenistic revision using Yeshua as a cipher.

There is a glaring contrast between the apocalypse and sacrifice of the canonical gospels and the Gospel of Thomas, which has barely a hint of either, raising further questions over the authenticity of the canonical accounts. When the synoptics say Peter declares Yeshua is the Christ, in Thomas (13) Yeshua denies it: "I am not your master. Because you have drunk, you have become intoxicated from the bubbling spring which I have measured out." The entire apocalyptic expectation is brought into the gnostic present: (51) "His disciples said to him, "When will the repose of the dead come about, and when will the new world come?" He said to them, "What you look forward to has already come, but you do not recognise it." There are only hints of apocalypse, but there is no mention of Christ's returning in power: (79) "For there will be days when you will say, 'Blessed are the womb which has not conceived and the breasts which have not given milk.' " There is only one oblique reference to the sacrificial sacred marriage, whose conclusion is unclear: (61) "Two will rest on a bed: the one will die, and the other will live."

In effect, as in Matthew 25:31 and Revelation, Christ has taken over the role of Saoshyant and become the key administrator of justice, but to achieve this role has had to die a sacrificial death to the Father God, so that sins can be forgiven. In the Avestan source tradition there is no need for this homicide, which comes out of contrasting tradition of mortal sacrifice of the dying God. We thus have a hybrid apocalyptic cosmology founded on two inconsistent notions, the cosmic renovation where each being is free and responsible for their actions, and the resurrected savour whose acknowledgement as Lord becomes the only remedy for the remission of sins, thus providing a fertility tradition short circuity to the purity of Frashokereti. There is no way that this can be validly presented as an actual cosmology of the universe in which we consciously exist and this means the notion of God it presents is at best a syncretic mythopoetic notion, and at worst a disingenuous contrivance to present Christ as the cosmic intercessor with God, in whom we must believe, while God has become sequestered in the background.We thus have a hybrid apocalyptic cosmology founded on two inconsistent notions, the cosmic renovation where each being is free and responsible for their actions, and the resurrected savour whose acknowledgement as Lord becomes the only remedy for the remission of sins, thus providing a fertility tradition short circuity to the purity of Frashokereti. There is no way that this can be validly presented as an actual cosmology of the universe in which we consciously exist and this means the notion of God it presents is at best a mythopoetic notion, and at worst a disingenuous contrivance.

Fig 148: (Left) God blessing the Seventh day (Blake) (Right) Creation of Adam (Michelangelo).
Although God is conceived of as incorporeal, omnipotent and transcendent all conceptions of God are routed through human agency.

To make this more explicit, we need to examine the nature of God as conceived by religions. The notion of deity has arisen from animism, the world view where all natural phenomena are treated as living agency. The earliest such characters are trickster heroes such as the San peoples Kaggen, or mantis – a human-insect-bird therianthrope – or shape-shifter between animal and human form. It is only later that such deities became enshrined in religions as the many deities we know from Kali, Vishnu and Shiva, through Quetzalcoatl, the plumed serpent who rose from his own ashes and also had human form, to El, Asherah, Inanna, Enki, Tammuz, Zeus, Hera and Dionysus. YHVH is depicted as an abstract deity, but nevertheless has all-too-human emotional attributes. Ultimately such deities evolved into the male creator deity of patriarchal monotheism and then to hybrid chimeric forms, such so the Trinity composed of Father, Son and Holy Ghost. Abba as the "Father" returns irreversibly to the anthropocentric mold, with Mary and the dying Jesus ubiquitous as graven images adorning Catholic altars.

Genesis confesses the 'Elohim are in human likeness in a mutual anthropocentric projection, thus typecasting God as a the Creator and Legislator as an anthropocentric projection of human manufacture and governance:

Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: So 'Elohim created man in 'their' own image,
in the image of 'Elohim created he him; male and female created he them (Genesis 1).

The outright 'humanness' of God's personality is likewise manifested in God's palette of mammalian limbic emotions, from love and compassion, through patience, to jealously and wrath. Because Christianity focuses almost exclusively on the personae of Yeshua and Christ, we gain most of our idea of the god of monotheism through the Old Testament.

In the Hebrew tradition, God's love is covenantal, even to the point of tempting the faithful to infanticide:

And it came to pass after these things, that God did tempt Abraham, and said unto him, Abraham: and he said, Behold, here I am. And he said, Take now thy son, thine only son Isaac, whom thou lovest, and get thee into the land of Moriah; and offer him there for a burnt offering upon one of the mountains which I will tell thee of. … And Abraham stretched forth his hand, and took the knife to slay his son. And the angel of the LORD called unto him out of heaven, and said, Abraham, Abraham: and he said, Here am I. And he said, Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou any thing unto him: for now I know that thou fearest God, seeing thou hast not withheld thy son, thine only son from me.

The Psalms reverberate with Yahweh's protective love of His people:

How excellent is thy lovingkindness, O God! therefore the children of men put their trust under the shadow of thy wings (Ps 36:7).

Because thy lovingkindness is better than life, my lips shall praise thee (Ps 63:3).

But thou, O Lord, art a God full of compassion, and gracious, long suffering, and plenteous in mercy and truth (Ps 63:3).

But let all those that put their trust in thee rejoice: let them ever shout for joy, because thou defendest them: let them also that love thy name be joyful in thee.

For thou, Lord, wilt bless the righteous; with favour wilt thou compass him as with a shield (Ps 5:11).

But this love is tempered by the covenant of faith

And Solomon said, O Lord God of Israel, there is no God like thee in the heaven, nor in the earth;
which keepest covenant, and shewest mercy unto thy servants, that walk before thee with all their hearts (2 Chron 6:14).

For the mountains shall depart, and the hills be removed; but my kindness shall not depart from thee,
neither shall the covenant of my peace be removed, saith the Lord that hath mercy on thee (Isa 54:10).

Know therefore that the Lord thy God, he is God, the faithful God, which keepeth covenant and mercy
with them that love him and keep his commandments to a thousand generations (Deut 7:9).

Who is a God like unto thee, that pardoneth iniquity, and passeth by the transgression of the remnant of his heritage?
he retaineth not his anger for ever, because he delighteth in mercy (Micah 7:18).

The jealousy of God is the most outstandingly prominent aspect of his personality in the scriptures:

But ye shall destroy their altars, break their images, and cut down their groves:
For thou shalt worship no other god: for the Lord, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God:
Lest thou make a covenant with the inhabitants of the land, and they go a woring after their gods. (Exodus 34:13)

And I will judge thee, as women that break wedlock and shed blood are judged;
and I will give thee blood in fury and jealousy. (Ezekiel 16:38)

Ye shall not go after other gods, of the gods of the people which are round about you;
(For the Lord thy God is a jealous God among you) lest the anger of the LORD thy God be kindled against thee,
and destroy thee from off the face of the earth. (Deut 6:14)

The Lord thy God in the midst of thee is mighty; he will save, he will rejoice over thee with joy;
he will rest in his love, he will joy over thee with singing (Zeph 3:17).)

However God's love leads to the supplicant bride Israel:

And I passed by you and I looked on you and behold, your time was the time of love. And I spread my skirt over you and I covered your nakedness. And I swore to you and I entered into a covenant with you and you became Mine. She is now washed, anointed, dressed, wrapped, covered, and adorned with silks, fine linen, embroidery, gold, and silver. And you were very beautiful and you advanced to regal estate. And your name went out among the nations, because of your beauty; for it was perfect, by My Splendor which I had set on you (Ezek. 16)

Schwartz (1996) has cutting comment on the above passage:

Ezekiel 16, the extended allegory of Israel as a whore, brings the relation between whores, exile, and monotheism (adultery, defiled land, and idolatry) into sharp focus. It is the story of a child being born and growing up wild and unloved in the field, and when she matures into puberty, of her being owned, sexually and materially, by Yahweh.

What is pivotal to understand here is that this zealous and jealous nature is exactly what was instituted by the forefathers, to ensure that their religion of Yahweh could keep itself distinct from the multitude of religions of the nations on all sides. It's purpose and the allegory of Israel as sacred bride and the allegory of Christ as the Bridegroom in its shadow is NOT the divine presence of God speaking, but the institution of a powerful patriarchal replicative meme designed to have maximally efficient social effect.

Religious believers might try to argue that this is just the flawed human description of God's inscrutable nature, but this is not a defence because we are dealing with a God acting in history, so His actions and commands clearly declare His intended effects, for example at Jericho:

And the city shall be accursed, even it, and all that are therein, to the LORD: only Rahab the harlot shall live, she and all that are with her in the house, because she hid the messengers that we sent. ... And they burnt the city with fire, and all that was therein: only the silver, and the gold, and the vessels of brass and of iron, they put into the treasury of the house of the LORD (Joshua 6).

If we reject the notion that this is God's justice in favour of Joshua's human fallibility, the whole thesis fails including the ten commandments of Moses. But actually it is God's jealous curse of the religions of the nations operating here as it did through to the time of Josiah in fear of the Babylonian invasion:

[Josiah] began to purge Judah and Jerusalem from the high places, and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images. And they brake down the altars of Baalim in his presence; and the images, that were on high above them, he cut down; and the groves, and the carved images, and the molten images, he brake in pieces, and made dust of them, and strowed it upon the graves of them that had sacrificed unto them. And he burnt the bones of the priests upon their altars (2 Chron 34 4-5).

And he brought out the grove (asherah) from the house of the Lord, without Jerusalem, unto the brook Kidron, and burned it and stamped it small to powder, and cast the powder thereof upon the graves of the children of the people. And he brake down the pavillions of the effeminate, which were in the house of the Lord, where the women wove hangings for the grove (2 Kings 23 3).

By contrast, the Christian expression of God's love is sacrificial, rather than covenantal. God's love is imputed indirectly because He sacrificed His only begotten Son to become the intermediary with whom we communicate:

But God commendeth his love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Rom. 5).

What shall we then say to these things? If God be for us, who can be against us? He that spared not his own Son,
but delivered him up for us all, how shall he not with him also freely give us all things? (Rom. 8.)

But God, who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, Even when we were dead in sins,
hath quickened us together with Christ, (by grace ye are saved) (Eph. 2).

For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son,
that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life (John 3).

In this was manifested the love of God toward us, because that God sent his only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through him.
Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation (sacrifice) for our sins (John 4).

For the Father himself loveth you, because ye have loved me, and have believed that I came out from God (John 16).

Centrally the covenantal aspect has been transferred from Yahweh to Yeshua as tangible intermediary:

He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me: and he that loveth me shall be loved of my Father,
and I will love him, and will manifest myself to him (John 14).

Finally we have the intervention of the Holy Ghost as a second intermediary, again leaving the Father remote, although Christians do pray to the Father, in the Holy Ghost, seeking the love and mercy of Christ:

And hope maketh not ashamed; because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost which is given unto us (Rom 5).

But ye, beloved, building up yourselves on your most holy faith, praying in the Holy Ghost,
Keep yourselves in the love of God, looking for the mercy of our Lord Jesus Christ unto eternal life (Jude 20).

Both the Gospel of Thomas and the Synoptics do quote Yeshua as citing the three as one triad, although only the Holy Ghost deserves accusation of blasphemy for transgression:

Jesus said: He who blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and he who blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven;
but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven.." (Thom 44)

However, we know the Christian God of the Trinity is not a cosmological manifestation but a contrivance. In the fourth century, Arianism taught that the Father existed prior to the Son who was not, by nature, God but rather a changeable creature who was granted the dignity of becoming "Son of God". In 325, the First Council of Nicaea adopted the Nicene Creed which described Christ as "God of God, Light of Light, very God of very God, begotten, not made, being of one substance with the Father", and the "Holy Ghost" as the one by which "was incarnate... of the Virgin Mary".

Therefore we have to come to terms with the fact that Christianity is saddled with an impossible cosmologically discordant idea of God, inconsistent with the original nature of the Zoroastrian renovation, forming a short-circuit to forgiveness by belief in Jesus as Lord and Saviour. A critically efficient meme to outmanoeuvre the Hebrew tradition in favour of the Hellenistic view, that then swept through the pagan nations, who were already sympathetic to these ideas, through the agency of Paul establishing the rituals of a Hellenistic religion, founded on Yeshua's apocolyptic mission.

The Christianity of the New Testament is a creative combination of Jewish and Hellenistic traditions transformed into a tertium quid
('a third something'): that is, a reality related to two known things but transcending them both (Aune 1987).

Central to the entire Hellenistic emphasis is the nature of the Eucharist as the founding rite of the Christian religion. According to the Pauline epistles (1 Corinth 11:23–25) and the later gospels, the rite was instituted by Yeshua. During the Last Supper (Matt 26:26–28; Mark 14:22–24; Luke 22:17–20;) he commanded them to "do this in memory of me" while referring to the bread as "my body" and the cup of wine as "the blood of my covenant, which is poured out for many". Ignatius of Antioch (born c. 35 or 50, died between 98 and 117), one of the Apostolic Fathers, mentions the Eucharist as "the flesh of our Saviour Jesus Christ". Two forms are also cited in the first century Didache. In Catholicism, this is elaborated in the doctrine of transubstantiation the turning of the bread and wine into the soma and sangre of Christ. It is expressed in the teaching that Christ is risen from the dead and is alive, so that when the bread is changed into his body, not only his body is present, but Christ as a whole is present ("the body and blood, together with the soul and divinity"). The same holds when the wine is transubstantiated into the blood of Christ. In the reformation Protestant churches rejected this doctrine or amended it to an undefined spiritual presence.

Although God is conceived of as being omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent and omnibenevolent as well as having an eternal and necessary existence and is most often held to be incorporeal, related to conceptions of transcendence or immanence the supreme being, as world creator, and principal object of faith, He is invoked by the faithful as a person in a loving and yet supplicant relationship in the same form as a beneficent yet exacting human leader. Believers are thus conceiving of God in their own experience of relationships with others, regardless of His reality or actual nature and existence, or otherwise. In other words, the idea of God corporeal or otherwise is a human view of emotional and intellectual agency inspired through scriptural belief.

This is not to tell the whole story of divinity, because, as Rudolph Otto (1917) has made clear, these are but the rational dimensions of the Holy:

It is essential to every theistic conception of God, and most of all to the Christian, that it designates and precisely characterizes Deity by the attributes Spirit, Reason, Purpose, Good Will, Supreme Power, Unity, Selfhood. The nature of God is thus thought of by analogy with our human nature of reason and personality; only, whereas in ourselves we are aware of this as qualified by restriction and limitation, as applied to God the attributes we use are 'completed', i.e. thought as absolute and unqualified. Now all these attributes constitute clear and definite concepts: they can be grasped by the intellect; they can be analysed by thought; they even admit of definition. An object that can thus be thought conceptually may be termed rational..

In coming to understand the Holy of Holies that underlies the religious quest and is deeply chthonic to it's superficial memetic nature as a process of social control, Otto ranges through terms such as sacred to find the invent a special term to stand for 'the holy' minus its moral factor or 'moment', and, as we can now add, minus its 'rational' aspect altogether, which he comes to term the numinous which we shall explore later in the context of the brain.

It will be our endeavour to suggest this unnamed Something to the reader as far as we may, so that he may himself feel it. There is no religion in which it does not live as the real innermost core, and without it no religion would be worthy of the name. … For this purpose I adopt a word coined from the Latin numen. Omen has given us ominous, and there is no reason why from numen we should not similarly form a word 'numinous'. I shall speak then of a unique 'numinous' category of value and of a definitely 'numinous' state of mind.

(3) Religion is an Avowedly Memetic Process: Religions are profoundly memetic and are custom designed by their forefathers to have precisely the powerful influence of religious culture over individual interests, personal liberty and even human survival that the memetic detractors express. Notwithstanding their mystical and numinous basis, these are also vehemently opposed by organised religion as disturbing the dominant order. Religion inextricably has two complementary and contradictory natures. It lays claim incorrectly to cosmological ascendancy but at the same time is constructed as an intensely captivating meme system in which the believer comes to serve the interests of the religious complex and its social following, rather than human survival or individual benefit, or true spiritual illumination. This is why religio is to 'bind' as in the Romas fasces. This means Dawkins' warning is not to be set aside. To achieve any long-term viable human culture, and ensure the future of the human species, it is essential that the memetic control of religion over human culture and the human mind is liberated from bondage.

Patriarchal Monotheism

1. Security: God is the generator of cosmological order, out of and triumphal over, chaos, providing ultimate security.

2. Power: God is omniscient, omnipotent Lord, creator and legislator. This is cosmological autocracy, in human image.

3. Belief: Love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength.

4. Compulsion: To turn aside from, or reject the religious path is atheism, blasphemy, heresy or apostasy.

5. Hierarchy: Woman and nature are supplicant to man, as man is to God.

6. Eternal morality: Moral judgment is rewarded and punished in the end of days by eternal torment or salvation.

7. Conflict: This casts order and chaos, good and evil, light and dark as in a state of eternal war, destroying fecundity.

This is a dominant memetic system, enticing by its ultimate security and the notion that loving God is reciprocated by God’s love, along with the ultimate incentive of eternal life resolving all existential uncertainties, but it’s dark under-belly is the ultimate fear of God’s wrath, the condemnation of all human beings as original sinners, the social and physical punishments of one’s flaws being discovered, either by one’s religious neighbours or by God himself leading to dire earthly punishment or eternal torment.

The culturally memetic influence of religion on human evolution, through patriarchal dominance of reproductive choice is profoundly expressed in the amplified reproduction rates of Islam, and following it Christianity, to fulfil their utopian aims of world dominance is expressed in their heightened birth rates over the population as whole (Pew Res).

(4) Natural versus Memetic Morality: We have the problem of morality as an evolved cooperative good versus an oppressive imperative. The sociobiological view of morality is that it is a win-win adaption through group selection which also favours individual survival. Curry et al. (2019) express this in extremely eloquent terms:

Life begins when molecules start making copies of themselves. These ‘replicators’ are ‘selfish’ in the technical sense that they pro- mote their own replication (Dawkins, 1976/2006). They can promote their replication at the expense of other replicators. These competitive interactions have a winner and a loser; one’s gain is another’s loss; they are zerosum games (Maynard Smith, 1982; Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1944).Replicators can also replicate in concert with other replicators (Dawkins, 1998). These cooperative interactions can have two winners; they are win-win situations; they are non-zerosum games. Natural selection can favour genes for cooperation – that is, genes for evolutionarily-stable phenotypic strategies designed to achieve superior equilibria in non-zerosum interactions – and has done throughout the history of life. Natural selection for genes that employ cooperative strategies has driven several ‘major transitions’ in the evolution of life on Earth, including the formation of cells, chromosomes and multicellular organisms (Maynard Smith & Szathmáry, 1995). Natural selection has also favoured genes for cooperation between individuals, in a wide variety of species (Dugatkin, 1997), including humans. Humans descend from a long line of social primates; they have spent 50 million years living in social groups (Shultz, Opie, & Atkinson, 2011), and two million years making a living as intensely collaborative hunter-gatherers (Tooby & DeVore, 1987). This has equipped humans with a range of biological – including psychological – adaptations for cooperation. These adaptations can be seen as natural selection’s ‘attempts’ to solve the problems of cooperation. More recently, improvisational intelligence and cultural transmission (Boyd, Richerson, & Henrich, 2011; Pinker, 2010) have made it possible for humans to attempt to improve upon natural selection’s solutions by inventing evolutionarily-novel solutions – ‘tools and rules’ – for further bolstering cooperation (Binmore, 1994a, 1994b; Hammerstein, 2003; Nagel, 1991; Popper, 1945). Together, these biological and cultural mechanisms provide the motivation for social, cooperative and altruistic behaviour; and they provide the criteria by which individuals evaluate the behaviour of others. According to MAC, it is precisely these solutions to problems of cooperation – this collection of instincts, intuitions, inventions and institutions – that constitute human morality (Curry, 2005, 2016).

Laland (2017) notes that morally prescriptive culture becomes dominant over competitors by force of arms following Richerson and Henrich (2012):

(1) societies with an organized army are more likely to win conflicts than those without, (2) city-states with division of labor and occupational specializations would tend to out-compete those without these innovations, (3) agricultural communities that have devised irrigation systems would flourish more readily than others, and (4) societies with religious doctrines that stabilize within-group cooperative activities will thrive at the expense of those with no gods to help ensure compliance.

Yet he still presents this entire spectre as basically a benign cooperative process, in which the docile members of a conforming society will out-survive their more rebellious colleagues without any reference to the kinds of punishments conservative and religious societies go to the lengths to exercise:

Theoretical analyses suggest that humans should be particularly adept at recognizing, representing, and adopting the local norms of their society, as well as notice, condemn, and punish violations of those norms. For instance, moral norms could plausibly have generated natural selection acting on human genes to favor cooperative tendencies. Individuals who are more inclined to conform to norms would find it "easier to enter larger norm-bound societies and to abide by the rules, than individuals lacking this tendency. These more "docile" individuals would be at an advantage, to the extent that they would be better placed to benefit from the society's technologies and less vulnerable to exclusion or punishment. In turn, a population of more docile individuals could then permit the cultural evolution of more sophisticated and effective norms, and allow groups to maintain more reliable cooperation. A similar mechanism could have favored a tendency of individuals to feel shame or guilt when they violate a social norm.

Haidt & Graham (2007) present theoretical and empirical reasons for believing that there are five psychological systems (MFQ) that provide the foundations for the world’s many moralities:

The five foundations are [1] psychological preparations for detecting and reacting emotionally to issues related to harm/care, [2] fairness/reciprocity, [3] ingroup/loyalty, [4] authority/respect, and [5] purity/sanctity. Political liberals have moral intuitions primarily based upon the first two foundations, and therefore misunderstand the moral motivations of political conservatives, who generally rely upon all five foundations.

They base this on the notion that conservative societies have moral intuitions not recognised by social liberals:

On this definition of morality, conservative opposition to social justice programs appears to be immoral, and has been explained as a product of various non-moral processes such as system justification or social dominance orientation. In this article we argue that, from an anthropological perspective, the moral domain is usually much broader, encompassing many more aspects of social life and valuing institutions as much or more than individuals.

As noted above, Curry et al. (2019) define Morality-as-Cooperation (MAC) as the theory that morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life and have expressed it in the following seven principles:

(1) Allocation of resources to kin (Family Values), (2) Coordination to mutual advantage (Group Loyalty), (3) Social exchange (Reciprocity), (4,5) Contests between Hawks (Heroism) & Doves (Deference) in which agents fairly indicate how far they are prepared to pursue a conflict, (6) Division (Fairness) divide the resource proportionately by bargaining power and (7) Possession (Property Rights) deferring to prior possession.

Curry et al. tested MAC’s predictions by developing the Morality-as-Cooperation Questionnaire (MAC-Q), and comparing its psychometric properties to those of the Moral Foundations Questionnaire (MFQ). They found that over four studies, the results supported the MAC-Q’s seven-factor model of morality, but not the MFQ’s five-factor model. Thus MAC emerges as the best available compass with which to explore the moral landscape.

The upshot of this research is that morality has a valid basis as a win-win that enhances both group and individual survival, on a sociobiological basis where natural selection is paramount, but does not include prescriptive culturally originating religious imperatives of an oppressive nature that invoke dire penalties when they are not observed.

Effectively the five factor MF is presenting conservative morality, which goes further than natural morality of MAC to enforce cooperation by 'altruistic' punishment as practiced widely by prescriptive religions.

Rossano (2010) describes this process as "getting people in line":

I argued that there are two ways for groups to establish and maintain intra- group cooperativeness that extends beyond the boundaries of kin selection, reciprocity, and indirect reciprocity: (1) by motivating people to follow group-based social norms, and (2) and by motivating them to punish those who don't follow social norms. One of the chief sources of this motivation is social scrutiny—the idea that we are being watched and judged by others. Given the close-knit nature of the hunter-gatherer groups from which we evolved, the notion of being constantly watched and evaluated was a familiar one. Experimental work shows that we are hypersensitive to the cues that suggest public observation of our behavior. Furthermore, this same work shows that we are naturally hypervigilant against freeloaders and cheaters who threaten group cohesion and that we have effective means of bringing them into line.

Religious doctrines exploit hypervigilance as actively enforced memes, both by constructive inducement as virtues and destructive moral punishment as sins, in ways that are far more encompassing and punitive than mere social disapproval.

(5) Religious Enforcement of Homicidal Violence: this brings us to the fallacy that religion is just a way of enticing people to cooperate by pro-social incentives. When the crunch comes, religious edicts, laws and punishments are among the most severe and unforgiving. Dismemberment for theft, stoning for adultery, and death for apostasy. While Islam today still displays these homicidal features in full iconic form, none of the patriarchal religions can consider themselves free of these diabolical practices in their long term history. I will address just a few violently homicidal examples that have particularly punished women, to make the situation clear.

Genocide at Medina and Femicide at Mecca

At first Muhammad had lived in peace with the people of Mecca, whose environs such as Taif had shrines to the Goddesses al-Uzza, Manat and al-Lat and for whome the Kaaba was a sacred site for all religious pilgrims and included astral and Christian figures. But when he decided that his verses accepting the three goddesses as intermediaries were a heresy spawned by satanic influence, and began to preach a more firebrand monotheism, this offended the sensibilities of the Quraysh of Mecca and he ended up having to escape to Medina with a small band of followers. There was a large Jewish community at Medina occupying an entire sector of the walled oasis settlement. Many Jews had settled in Arabia from the time of the Roman diaspora. However Muhammad found his new Arab religion, cast in the model of the Jewish heritage, was not respected by the Jews of Medina. Ostensibly, in response to this perceived insult, Muhammad turned the direction of prayer from Jerusalem to Mecca.

The situation soured and finally turned to genocide when the Quraysh of Mecca, angered by his disruptive influence, laid siege to Medina. The plight in the oasis became desperate. Not knowing which side would eventually win, the Qurayzah Jews sent a party to parley with the Quraysh to try to preserve themselves from being overrun by one side or the other and some of them were overheard swearing allegiance. But then in a superstitious misjudgment, the Quraysh deserted the siege when a severe desert storm struck the region. In the aftermath a Muslim friend of the Jews drew his finger over his throat to warn them of their impending fate:

According to Karen Armstrong’s “Muhammad” (1992 206), fearing the Jews might have opened their gates to the enemy, Muhammad appointed a mortally wounded fighter Sa‘d ibn Mu‘adh who was carried to the Qurayzah village on a litter, as judge over their fates:

Sa’d judged that all the 700 men should be killed , their wives and children sold into slavery and their property divided among the Muslims. Muhammad cried aloud: “You have judged according to the ruling of Allah above the seven skies!” He next day Muhammad ordered a trench to be dug in the souk of Medina. Some individuals were spared at the request of the Muslims, but the rest were tied together in groups and beheaded; their bodies were thrown into the trench.

It is probably impossible for us to dissociate this story from Nazi atrocities and it will inevitably alienate many people irrevocably from Muhammad. But Western scholars like Maxime Rodinson and W. Montgomery Watt argue that it is not correct to judge the incident by twentieth-century standards.

But the problem’s are profound: (1) Appointing a mortally wounded man as judge is prejudical. (2) This was an unmitigated genocide because the Jews never actually betrayed the Muslims and never did open their gates, or the story would have been entirely different. (3) In the 21^st century these genocidal standards are still legitimised and applied by Muslims today and Muhammad extolled as a divine prophet in an age where genocide on this scale is a crime against humanity. There was no excuse and no valid rationalisation for this slaughter, and later Muslim history up to the taking of Mecca demonstrates that this killing proved to be unnecessary gratuitous violence for which history needs to judge this tradition.

Ending the period of religious tolerance that had made Mecca a divne pilgrimage destination, Muhammad smashed all the icons in the Ka'aba, leaving only the portraits of Jesus and Mary and ironically, the vagina-like meteoric Black Stone, the most sacrosanct symbol of the old religion. Likewise the images of al-Uzza and Manat and a year later also those of al-Lat at Taif, were destroyed, although the people there initially resisted and raised an army leading to an indecisive siege. Although Muhammad issued an amnesty to those who accepted his rule, a list of prominent opponents were summarily executed. Within two and a half years, Muhammad would pass away.

Nawal el Sadaawi in "The Hidden Face of Eve" notes the effect on women who opposed Muhammad's rule:

"Sarah was a famous slave singer who aimed her barbed words against the Moslems. She was among those whom Mahomet ordered to be executed on the day of his victorious entry into Mecca. In the region of El Nagir, it was recounted that some women had rejoiced when the Prophet died and Abu Bake, the first of the Caliphs, ordered their hands and feet to be cut off. Thus women who dared to give voice to their protest or opposition could be exposed to cruel punishment. Their hands might be cut off, or their teeth pulled out, or their tongues torn from their mouths. This last form of punishment was usually reserved for those who were singers. It was said of these women that they used to dye their hands with henna, brazenly display the seductions of their beauty, and beat time with their fingers on tambourines and drums in defiance of God, and in derision towards the rights of God and his Prophet. It was therefore necessary to cut off their hands and tear out their tongues".

Muhammad was particularly unforgiving to anyone who ridiculed him or his Quranic verses. According to al-Tabari's Alseera Al Nabawiya (2:463) Muhammad explicitly ordered the murder of Om Kerfa (Mother of Kerfa), one of the most revered Meccan matriarchs who was torn in half by camels at the age of 90 for writing poetry ridiculing him:

"She is Fatima daughter of Rabia son of Badir son of Amru al Fazari. Mother of Kerfa married a prince of the tribe of Hathifa and bore for him 13 children the first of whom was Kerfa by whom she is surnamed. All her children became leaders of their tribes. She was the dearest of all Arabs, and an example of honor and pride to them.. It was said if two tribes fought and Mother of Kerfa sent her scholl on a spear that was displayed to both parties, then they would reconcile out of respect for her. She used to annoy the prophet with her poetry so in the sixth year of the Hijra he sent Zaid son of Haritha on a military expedition to kill her in the most heinous of ways. For he tied her legs with ropes and tied each of the ropes to a camel so that she was split in two. She was an old woman when this happened and her head was severed as proof to all that she had died".

Code of Hammurabi

Religious invocations prescribing death for adultery are NOT divinely ordained. In the Code of Hammurabi (c1755-1750 BCE), a cited precursor to Mosaic law, adultery was punished with the death of both parties by drowning, but if the husband was willing to pardon his wife, the king might intervene to pardon the paramour. The law is much fairer in terms of exonerating accused females. Although the stele features an image in relief of Hammurabi with Shamash, the Babylonian sun god and god of justice, this is a secular law ordained by a ruler rather than a religious prophet.

CH 129 If a man's wife be caught with another man, both shall be tied and thrown into the water, but the husband may pardon his wife and the king his slaves.

CH 130 If a man violate the wife of another man, who has never known a man, and still lives in her father's house, and sleep with her and be surprised, this man shall be put to death, but the wife is blameless.

CH 155 If a man have betrothed a bride to his son and his son have known her, and if he (the father) afterward lie in her bosom and they take him, they shall bind that man and throw him in the water.

Deuteronomic Stoning for Adultery

Deut 22:20 But if this thing be true, and the tokens of virginity be not found for the damsel: Then they shall bring out the damsel to the door of her father's house, and the men of her city shall stone her with stones that she die.

Deut 22:22 If a man be found lying with a woman married to an husband, then they shall both of them die, both the man that lay with the woman, and the woman: so shalt thou put away evil from Israel. If a damsel that is a virgin be betrothed unto an husband, and a man find her in the city, and lie with her; Then ye shall bring them both out unto the gate of that city, and ye shall stone them with stones that they die; the damsel, because she cried not, being in the city; and the man, because he hath humbled his neighbour's wife: so thou shalt put away evil from among you.

Multiple other religious crimes, from apostasy and blasphemy to homosexuality and being an unruly son were also punished by stoning, except that, in later times, the caveats became so stringent that it virtually never occurred.

Prior to early Christianity, particularly in the Mishnah, doubts were growing in Jewish society about the effectiveness of capital punishment in general (and stoning in particular) in acting as a useful deterrent. Subsequently, its use was dissuaded by the central legislators.

The Mishnah states:

A Sanhedrin that puts a man to death once in seven years is called destructive. Rabbi Eliezer ben Azariah says that this extends to a Sanhedrin that puts a man to death even once in seventy years. Rabbi Akiba and Rabbi Tarfon say: Had we been in the Sanhedrin none would ever have been put to death. Rabban Simeon ben Gamaliel says: they would have multiplied shedders of blood in Israel.

In the following centuries the leading Jewish sages imposed so many restrictions on the implementation of capital punishment as to make it de facto illegal.

Islamic Stoning for Adultery

The outstanding difference with Islam is that these practices continue to be religiously sanctioned. Four Hadith below show that Muhammad used the Deuteronomic punishment claimed to be for Jewish offenders to instil stoning for adultery as an Islamic punishment, centuries after the practise had been effectively discontinued in Judaism.

Hadith Stoning for adultery al-Bukhari 2:23:413 Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar: The Jew brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from amongst them who have committed (adultery) illegal sexual intercourse. He ordered both of them to be stoned (to death), near the place of offering the funeral prayers beside the mosque."

Hadith Stoning for adultery al-Bukhari 4:56:829 Narrated 'Abdullah bin 'Umar: The Jews came to Allah's Apostle and told him that a man and a woman from amongst them had committed illegal sexual intercourse. Allah's Apostle said to them, "What do you find in the Torah (old Testament) about the legal punishment of Ar-Rajm (stoning)?" They replied, (But) we announce their crime and lash them." Abdullah bin Salam said, "You are telling a lie; Torah contains the order of Rajm." They brought and opened the Torah and one of them solaced his hand on the Verse of Rajm and read the verses preceding and following it. Abdullah bin Salam said to him, "Lift your hand." When he lifted his hand, the Verse of Rajm was written there. They said, "Muhammad has told the truth; the Torah has the Verse of Rajm. The Prophet then gave the order that both of them should be stoned to death. ('Abdullah bin 'Umar said, "I saw the man leaning over the woman to shelter her from the stones."

Hadith Stoning for adultery al-Bukhari 6.:60:79 Narrated 'Abdullah bin Umar: The Jews brought to the Prophet a man and a woman from among them who had committed illegal sexual intercourse. The Prophet said to them, "How do you usually punish the one amongst you who has committed illegal sexual intercourse?" They replied, "We blacken their faces with coal and beat them," He said, "Don't you find the order of Ar-Rajm (i.e. stoning to death) in the Torah?" They replied, "We do not find anything in it." 'Abdullah bin Salam (after hearing this conversation) said to them. "You have told a lie! Bring here the Torah and recite it if you are truthful." (So the Jews brought the Torah). And the religious teacher who was teaching it to them, put his hand over the Verse of Ar-Rajm and started reading what was written above and below the place hidden with his hand, but he did not read the Verse of Ar-Rajm. 'Abdullah bin Salam removed his (i.e. the teacher's) hand from the Verse of Ar-Rajm and said, "What is this?" So when the Jews saw that Verse, they said, "This is the Verse of Ar-Rajm." So the Prophet ordered the two adulterers to be stoned to death, and they were stoned to death near the place where biers used to be placed near the Mosque. I saw her companion (i.e. the adulterer) bowing over her so as to protect her from the stones.

The prescription in Sharia is stoning a woman to death for adultery submerged to her neck so only her head shows:

The penalty for adultery under Article 83 of the penal code, called the Law of Hodoud is flogging (100 lashes of the whip) for unmarried male and female offenders. Married offenders may be punished by stoning regardless of their gender, but the method laid down for a man involves his burial up to his waist, and for a woman up to her neck (article 102). The law provides that if a person who is to be stoned manages to escape, he or she will be allowed to go free. Since it is easier for a man to escape, this discrimination literally becomes a matter of life and death. Article 104 provides that the stones should not be so large that a person dies after being hit with two of them, nor so small as to be defined as pebbles, but must cause severe injury. This makes it clear that the purpose of stoning is to inflict grievous pain on the victim, in a process leading to his or her slow death.

"In Muslim law the punishment of lapidation is only inflicted for adultery. Under Jewish law idolaters or bearers of false witness were also stoned. It is founded not upon the Qu'ran where the only punishment Sura 24:2 is one hundred stripes but upon the traditions where Muhammad is related to have said 'Verily God hath ordained for a man and a woman not married to one hundred lashes and expulsion from their home town for one year, and for a man and a woman having been married one hundred lashes and stoning'." When a woman is to be stoned, a hole or excavation should be dug to receive her as deep as her wallet ... The purpose of the hole is to conserve 'decency' for the female. Neither boulders nor pebbles may be used, so that death is neither mercifully quick nor endlessly prolonged" (Hughes - Dictionary of Islam).

Islamic Death for Apostasy

Hadith Death for Apostasy al-Bukhari 4:52:260 Narrated Ikrima: Ali burnt some people and this news reached Ibn 'Abbas, who said, "Had I been in his place I would not have burnt them, as the Prophet said, 'Don't punish (anybody) with Allah's Punishment.' No doubt, I would have killed them, for the Prophet said, 'If somebody (a Muslim) discards his religion, kill him.'

The prescription in Sharia for Apostasy is death:

Apostasy in Islam is commonly defined as the abandonment of Islam by a Muslim, in thought, word, or through deed. It includes not only explicit renunciations of the Islamic faith by converting to another religion or abandoning religion altogether, but also blasphemy or heresy, through any action or utterance which implies unbelief, including those who deny a "fundamental tenet or creed" of Islam. While classical Islamic jurisprudence calls for the death penalty of those who refuse to repent of apostasy from Islam, the definition of this act and whether and how it should be punished, are disputed among Islamic scholars and strongly opposed by Muslim and Non-Muslim supporters of the universal human right to freedom of faith. According to classical Islamic law, an apostate can only be killed if there are two just Muslim eyewitnesses of the apostasy or if the apostate self confesses, according to some schools, both conditions are required. Jurists allowed flexibility in the application of the death penalty, allowing judges to interpret the apostasy law in different ways,[sometimes, they leniently interpreted it and at other times, they strictly interpreted it.

As of 2014, there were eight Muslim-majority countries where apostasy from Islam was punishable by death, and another thirteen where there were penal or civil penalties such as jail, fines or loss of child custody. From 1985 to 2006, only four individuals were officially executed for apostasy from Islam and unrelated political crimes by governments, but apostates have suffered from other legal punishments as well as extra-judicial punishments which have been inflicted upon them by vigilantes—imprisonment, the annulment of their marriages, the loss of their rights of inheritance and the loss of custody of their children. Mainly, the loss of life has resulted from killings which have been perpetrated by "takfiri" insurgents (ISIL, the GIA and the Taliban).

This is not to exonerate other religions or to focus unjustified blame on Islam. Christianity has been plagued by centuries of religious bloodshed, fomented by obsessive martyrdoms, violent Crusades, religious wars, and centuries of Inquisition seeking to root out heretics from witches, through gnostics, to reformationists and mystics such as Marguerite Porete. All religions from, Buddhism through Hinduism to Zoroastrianism are marked with the blood of homicidal violence. The Bhagavad Gita, for example, is a spiritual treatise set in the context of holy war.

It is estimated that the witch hunts resulted in 70,000 to 100,000 deaths but others have suggested a much higher figure. During the Crusade against the Cathars and Albigenses, after the siege of Beziers alone, 20,000 were summarily executed on the spot.

In 1209, a crusade from Pope Innocent III began against the Cathars. Both Cathars and Catholics were besieged by an army of the Church within the walls of Beziers. On the day of the feast of Mary Magdalen they killed their viscount in the church dedicated to her name and were in turn horrendously punished on the same day for repeating the Albigensian heresy that she was Christ's concubine. When the city fell, the commanding general was asked who to slaughter: heretics, his men assumed, must surely be separated from believers. Their leader's reply was simple:

"Kill them all," he said, "the Lord will know his own". Our forces spared neither rank nor sex nor age. About twenty thousand people lost their lives at the point of the sword. The destruction of the enemy was on an enormous scale. The entire city was plundered and put to the torch. Thus did divine vengeance vent its wondrous rage.

Fig 149: (Left) The Gnostic 'heretics' being led out of Carcassone to be killed for apostasy 1209.

(Right) Auto de Fe in the execution of Anne Hendricks in Amsterdam 1571^{^[41]} Jan Luyken.

The situation was similar in Carcssone:

After discussion, our men entered the town of Carcassonne with the cross in front. When the church had been restored they placed the Lord's cross on top of the tower ... for it was Christ who had captured the town and it was right that his banner should take precedence. ... The venerable abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay went to a great number of heretics who had gathered in one of the houses wishing to convert them to better things, but they all said with one voice 'Why are you preaching to us? We don't want your faith We deny the church of Rome. You are wasting your time. Neither life nor death can turn us from the beliefs we hold.' He then went to see the women gathered in another building but the female heretics were more obstinate and difficult in every way. Simon de Montfort first urged the heretics to convert, but having no success, he dragged them out of the castle. A huge fire was kindled and they were all thrown into it. It was not hard for our men to throw them in, for they were so obstinate in their wickedness that they threw themselves in. Only three women escaped, whom a noble lady snatched from the flames and restored to the Holy Church.

This is also reflected in the tragic execution of Marguerite Porete, the first to die in the auto da fe in Paris:

The Mirror of Simple Souls is an early 14th-century work of Christian mysticism by Marguerite Porete (1996, 1999) dealing with the workings of Divine Love. Written originally in Old French when Latin was the prescribed language for religious literature, it explores in poetry and prose the seven stages of 'annihilation' the Soul goes through on its path to Oneness with God through Love. Enormously popular when written, it fell foul of the Church authorities, who, detecting elements of the antinomian Heresy of the Free Spirit in its vision, denounced it as "full of errors and heresies", burnt existing copies, banned its circulation, and tried and executed Porete in the first Auto da Fé in Paris in April 1310. Marguerite remained silent throughout her trial, with a plain refusal to elaborate, explain nor deny her teachings. Marguerite went to the stake in total silence and endured her firey end in silence. Those watching were moved to tears.

Love in this book layeth to souls the touches of his divine works privily hid under dark speech,

so that they should taste the deeper draughts of his love and drink. — 15th-century English translator's prologue

Norman Cohn (1957) in “The Pursuit of the Millennium” has this to say of the Free Spirit movement:

It was the eternal essence of things, not their existence in time, that was truly God; whatever had a separate, transitory existence had emanated from God, but no longer was God. On the other hand whatever existed was bound to yearn for its Divine Origin and to strive to find its way back into that Origin; and at the end of time everything would in fact be reabsorbed into God. No emanation would remain, nothing would exist in separateness, there would no longer be anything capable of knowing, wishing, acting. All that would be left would be one single Essence, changeless, inactive: one all-embracing 'Blessedness'. Even the Persons of the Trinity, the Brethren of the Free Spirit insisted, would be submerged in that undifferentiated One. At the end of time, God really would be all. Even now reabsorption was the fate of the human soul as soon as the body was dead. On the death of the body the soul disappeared into its Divine Origin like a drop of water which has been taken from a jug and then dropped back into it again, or like a drop of wine in the sea.

As in the earliest days of the movement, one expression of this attitude was still a promiscuous and mystically coloured eroticism. … And it was held that one of the surest marks of the 'subtle in spirit' was, precisely, the ability to indulge in promiscuity without fear of God or qualms of conscience. Some adepts attributed a transcendental, quasi-mystical value to the sexual act itself, when it was performed by such as they. The Homines intelligentiae called the act 'the delight of Paradise' and 'the acclivity' (which was the term used for the ascent to mystical ecstasy); and the Thuringian 'Blood Friends' of 1550 regarded it as a sacrament, which they called 'Christerie'. For all alike adultery possessed a symbolic value as an affirmation of emancipation. To be naked and unashamed, like Adam and Eve, they regarded as an essential part of the state of perfection on earth; and they called this 'the state of innocence'. Similarly the leader of the Homines intelligentiae claimed to have a special way of performing the sexual act which was that practised by Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden.

'The soul', said one woman, 'is so vast that all the saints and angels would not fill it, so beautiful that the beauty of the saints and angels cannot approach it. It fills all things.' For the Brethren of the Free Spirit the soul was not merely destined to be reabsorbed into God on the death of the body; in its essence it had itself been divine from all eternity and was still potentially divine even whilst inhabiting a human body. In the words of the heretical treatise which was found in the, hermit's cell near the Rhine: 'The divine essence is my essence and my essence is the divine essence.... From eternity man was God in God.... From eternity the soul of man was in God and is God.... Man was not begotten, but was from eternity wholly unbegettable; and as he could not be begotten, so he is wholly immortal.' It is in the light of this that one must interpret the recurring assertion of the heretics: 'Every rational creature is in its nature blessed.’

The women of Schweidnitz claimed that their souls had by their own efforts attained a perfection greater than they had possessed when they first emanated from God, and greater than God ever intended them to possess. They claimed to have such command over the Holy Trinity that they could 'ride it as in a saddle'. The Swabian heretics Of 1270 said that they had mounted up above God and, reaching the very pinnacle of divinity, abandoned God. Often the adept would affirm that he or she 'had no longer any need of God’.

By 1320 persecution had driven the movement of the Free Spirit underground; and thereafter the heretical Beghards seem to have done less begging and to have relied rather on a conspiratorial understanding which they were able to develop with certain of the Beguine communities. When a missionary of the Free Spirit approached a community he was immediately taken in and given shelter and food. Under an oath of secrecy the news was sent to other sympathetically disposed communities that the 'angel of the divine word' had arrived and was waiting in hiding. From all sides Beguines streamed to hear the holy man. The Beguines, entranced, would declare him 'a man who had great likeness to God and great familiarity with him'.

The theme of Marguerite Porette's Mirouer des simples ames - Mirror to the simple mind – is the ascent of the soul towards total freedom. The soul progresses through seven stages. The first three are devoted to ascetic self-denial and obedience; after which, in the fourth stage, the soul attains a condition of exultation, in which it is blinded by the radiant light of Love. But though the soul may believe that it has already attained union with God, it is still only at the beginning of its ascent. In the final stage it recognizes its own sinfulness, and the immense gulf that still separates it from that perfect goodness which is God; and at that point God, in an overwhelming flood of love and light, sweeps it into himself, so that the soul's will becomes at one with the divine will. So far, nothing distinguishes this ascent from that known to orthodox mystics. But at the sixth stage divergence begins: the soul is annihilated in the Deity, to the point that nothing exists any more save God. Now the soul sees nothing but itself, which is God; while God sees his divine majesty in that soul. This total identification of the soul with God lies quite outside the experience of Catholic mystics; and so does the seventh and last stage of the ascent, where the soul rejoices permanently, while still on this Earth, in the glory and blessedness which orthodox theology reserves for heaven. This deification of the soul is possible because the soul has existed in God from all eternity. The soul is one with God, as the flame is one with the fire; it comes from God and returns to God as a drop of water comes from and returns to the sea. Indeed God is everything that is; so that in being annihilated in God the soul is reintegrated into its true and original being. It is also reintegrated into that primal state of innocence enjoyed by Adam before the Fall. Thereby it is liberated from the consequences of Original Sin and becomes sinless. Moreover it becomes incapable of sin; for 'this soul has no will but the will of God, who makes it will what it ought to will.' And this in turn means that it is free to do whatever pleases it. The adepts therefore 'do nothing but what pleases them; or if they do, they deprive themselves of peace, freedom and nobility. For the soul is not perfected until it does what it pleases, and is not reproached for taking its pleasure.' Since Love, i.e. God, has taken up residence in the soul, he takes charge of all things and all deeds; so the soul can experience no unease and no remorse. Whatever external acts are done, they are tile work of God, operating in the soul.

(6) Theology, Neurotheology and Religious Psychology

Theology is described as the systematic study of the nature of the divine and of religious belief. Revelation pertains to the acceptance of God, gods, or deities, as not only transcendent or above the natural world, but also willing and able to interact with the natural world and to reveal themselves to humankind. This in its very definition as assuming the entity it is attempting to describe and setting up a stark division between an assumed transcendent divinity, palpable monotheistic and a flawed natural world comprising the diversity of life.

The term Theology derives from the Greek theologia (θεολογία), theos (Θεός, 'god') and logia (λογία, 'utterances, sayings, oracles’) – relating to Greek logos (λόγος, 'word, discourse, account, reasoning'). Greek theologia was used with the meaning 'discourse on God' around 380 BC by Plato in The Republic. Aristotle divided theoretical philosophy into mathematike, physike, and theologike, with the latter corresponding roughly to metaphysics. Latin writer Varro (116–27 BC) distinguished three forms of such discourse: 1. mythical, concerning the myths of the Greek gods; 2. rational, philosophical analysis of the gods and of cosmology; and 3. civil, concerning the rites and duties of public religious observance. In scholastic Latin sources, the term came to denote the rational study of the doctrines of the Christian religion. Christian theology as the study of Christian belief and practice concentrates primarily upon the canonical scriptures and Christian tradition. In Jewish theology, the historical absence of political authority has meant that most theological reflection has happened within the context of the Jewish community and synagogue, including through rabbinical discussion of Jewish law and Midrash (rabbinic biblical commentaries).

Theology considers whether the divine exists in some form, such as in physical, supernatural, mental, or social realities, and what evidence for and about it may be found via personal spiritual experiences or historical records of such experiences as documented by others. A distinction can be made between theology, which is seen as involving some level of commitment to the claims of the religious tradition being studied, and religious studies, which are not tied to any religious tradition and are normally neutral or secular.

Outside monotheism the status of theology is less explicitly defined. Within Hindu philosophy, there is a tradition of philosophical speculation on the nature of the universe, of God (Brahman, Paramatma, and/or Bhagavan in some schools) and of the ātman (soul). Vaishnava theology is involved in classifying and organising the manifestations of thousands of gods and their aspects. Buddhism, which is non-theistic focuses on philosophy rather than theology. In Japan, the term theology (shingaku) has been ascribed to animistic Shinto since the Edo period in Mano Tokitsuna's Kokon shingaku ruihen ('categorised compilation of ancient theology').

Whether or not reasoned discussion about the divine is possible has long been a point of contention, beginning in the time of earlier polytheistic and state deities of Ancient Greece. Protagoras, in fifth century BC, who is reputed to have been exiled from Athens because of his agnosticism about the existence of the gods, said that "Concerning the gods I cannot know either that they exist or that they do not exist, or what form they might have, for there is much to prevent one's knowing: the obscurity of the subject and the shortness of man's life."

Baron d'Holbach (1772), in Le Bon sens, labeled theology "a continual insult to human reason". Lord Bolingbroke wrote in Section IV of his Essays on Human Knowledge, "Theology is a science that may justly be compared to the Box of Pandora. Many good things lie uppermost in it; but many evil lie under them, and scatter plagues and desolation throughout the world.” Thomas Paine wrote in The Age of Reason (1794): "The study of theology, as it stands in Christian churches, is the study of nothing; it is founded on nothing; it rests on no principles; it proceeds by no authorities; it has no data; it can demonstrate nothing; and it admits of no conclusion. Not anything can be studied as a science, without our being in possession of the principles upon which it is founded; and as this is the case with Christian theology, it is therefore the study of nothing.

Ludwig Feuerbach in The Essence of Christianity (1841), for which he was banned from teaching in Germany, said that theology was a "web of contradictions and delusions". The American satirist Mark Twain remarked in his essay "The Lowest Animal": Man is the only animal that loves his neighbor as himself and cuts his throat if his theology isn't straight. ... The higher animals have no religion. And we are told that they are going to be left out in the Hereafter. I wonder why? It seems questionable taste.

A. J. Ayer sought to show in his essay "Critique of Ethics and Theology" that all statements about the divine are nonsensical and any divine-attribute is unprovable: "It is now generally admitted, at any rate by philosophers, that the existence of a being having the attributes which define the god of any non-animistic religion cannot be demonstratively proved. ... All utterances about the nature of God are nonsensical.” Richard Dawkins in an article in The Independent (1993) said: "I have never heard any theologian ever say anything of the smallest use, anything that was not either platitudinously obvious or downright false.”

Religious Psychology Psychology of religion consists of the application of psychological methods and interpretive frameworks to the diverse contents of religious traditions as well as to both religious and irreligious individuals. Psychologists of religion pursue three major projects: 1. systematic description, especially of religious contents, attitudes, experiences, and expressions. 2. explanation of the origins of religion, both in the history of the human race and in individual lives, taking into account a diversity of influences. 3. mapping out the consequences of religious attitudes and conduct, both for the individual and for society at large.

Hegel (1770–1831) described all systems of religion, philosophy, and social science as expressions of the basic urge of consciousness to learn about itself and its surroundings, and record its findings and hypotheses. Freud spoke of religion as an illusion – "a fantasy structure from which a man must be set free if he is to grow to maturity," viewing the idea of God as being a version of the father image, and religious belief as at bottom infantile and neurotic. Authoritarian religion, Freud believed, is dysfunctional and alienates man from himself. By contrast, Jung postulated, in addition to the personal unconscious, the collective unconscious, the repository of human experience and which contains "archetypes" (images that are universal and recur regardless of culture). The irruption of these images from the unconscious into the realm of consciousness he viewed as the basis of religious experience and artistic creativity.

The psychology of religion first arose as a self-conscious discipline in the late 19th century, but all three of these tasks have a history going back many centuries. In the 1890s, a "new psychology" emerged in European and American universities which coincided with the establishment of many new psychology laboratories and the appointment of faculty in psychology James (1890). New psychology's novelty was encapsulated by its distinction from philosophy (philosophy of mind in particular) and theology, and its emphasis on the laboratory-based experimental method.

American psychologist and philosopher William James (1842–1910) is regarded by most psychologists of religion as the founder of the field. James distinguished between institutional religion and personal religion. Institutional religion refers to the religious group or organisation and plays an important part in a society's culture. Personal religion, in which the individual has mystical experience, can be experienced regardless of the culture.

Fig 149b: Rudolph Otto and William James

The Varieties of Religious Experience comprises his edited Gifford Lectures on natural theology, concerning the psychological study of individual private religious experiences and mysticism, and used a range of examples to identify commonalities in religious experiences across traditions. Soon after its publication, Varieties entered the Western canon of psychology and philosophy and has remained in print for over a century.

In the Varieties, James explicitly excludes from his study both theology and religious institutions, choosing to limit his study to direct and immediate religious experiences, which he regarded as the more interesting object of study. His chapters span the religions of healthy mindedness versus the sick soul, the divided self, conversion, saintliness and mysticism. James outlines four markers of mystical experience:

Ineffable: the experience is incapable of being described and must be directly experienced to be understood.

Noetic: the experience is understood to be a state of knowledge through which divine truths can be learned.

Transient: the experience is of limited duration.

Passivity: the subject of the experience is passive, unable to control the arrival and departure of the experience.

Moon, Kuza & Desai (2018) note the formative influence of his nitrous oxide experiences on his entire view of religious experience:

In 1874, William James wrote a celebratory review in the Atlantic Monthly of Benjamin Paul Blood's pamphlet The Anaesthetic Revelation and the Gist of Philosophy. He was captivated by the idea that “the Secret of Being” might be accessible with nitrous oxide not just by the academic intellectual but also by the ordinary man. Later, in his essay “On Some Hegelisms” (1882), James described his own experience with nitrous oxide as one characterized by an exhilarating sense of metaphysical awakening. Upon inhalation, he was able to understand first the glory and then the insufficiency of Hegelian thought. For James, the use of nitrous oxide ultimately served a key role in elucidating some of the most central ideas of his life: (1) the value of religion and (2) the universe as pluralistic (as opposed to absolutist, constant, eternal), driven by chance, experience, and change.

He enlarged on this in the Varieties p 373:

Nitrous oxide and ether, especially nitrous oxide, when sufficiently diluted with air, stimulate the mystical consciousness in an extraordinary degree. Depth beyond depth of truth seems revealed to the inhaler. This truth fades out, however, or escapes, at the moment of coming to; and if any words remain over in which it seemed to clothe itself, they prove to be the veriest nonsense. Nevertheless, the sense of a profound meaning having been there persists; and I know more than one person who is persuaded that in the nitrous oxide trance we have a genuine metaphysical revelation.

Some years ago I myself made some observations on this aspect of nitrous oxide intoxication, and reported them in print. One conclusion was forced upon my mind at that time, and my impression of its truth has ever since remained unshaken. It is that our normal waking consciousness, rational consciousness as we call it, is but one special type of consciousness, whilst all about it, parted from it by the filmiest of screens, there lie potential forms of consciousness entirely different. We may go through life without suspecting their existence; but apply the requisite stimulus, and at a touch they are there in all their completeness, definite types of mentality which probably somewhere have their field of application and adaptation. No account of the universe in its totality can be final which leaves these other forms of consciousness quite disregarded. How to regard them is the question,—for they are so discontinuous with ordinary consciousness. Yet they may determine attitudes though they cannot furnish formulas, and open a region though they fail to give a map. At any rate, they forbid a premature closing of our accounts with reality. Looking back on my own experiences, they all converge towards a kind of insight to which I cannot help ascribing some metaphysical significance. The keynote of it is invariably a reconciliation. It is as if the opposites of the world, whose contradictoriness and conflict make all our difficulties and troubles, were melted into unity. Not only do they, as contrasted species, belong to one and the same genus, but _one of the species_, the nobler and better one, _is itself the genus, and so soaks up and absorbs its opposite into itself_. This is a dark saying, I know, when thus expressed in terms of common logic, but I cannot wholly escape from its authority. I feel as if it must mean something, something like what the Hegelian philosophy means, if one could only lay hold of it more clearly. Those who have ears to hear, let them hear; to me the living sense of its reality only comes in the artificial mystic state of mind.

James further comments: I just now spoke of friends who believe in the anæsthetic revelation. For them too it is a monistic insight, in which the other – in its various forms appears absorbed into the One.

“Into this pervading genius,” writes one of them, “we pass, forgetting and forgotten, and thenceforth each is all, in God. There is no higher, no deeper, no other, than the life in which we are founded. ‘The One remains, the many change and pass;’ and each and every one of us _is_ the One that remains.... This is the ultimatum. ... As sure as being—whence is all our care – so sure is content, beyond duplexity, antithesis, or trouble, where I have triumphed in a solitude that God is not above.”

This has the genuine religious mystic ring!

Rudolf Otto (1869–1937), was a German Protestant theologian and scholar of comparative religion. His fascination with non-Christian religions was awakened during an extended trip from 1911 to 1912 through North Africa, Palestine, British India, China, Japan, and the United States. His first book, Naturalism and Religion (1904) divides the world ontologically into the mental and the physical, reflecting Cartesian dualism. He argues consciousness cannot be explained in terms of physical or neural processes, and also accords it epistemological primacy by arguing all knowledge of the physical world is mediated by personal experience. On the other hand, he disagrees with Descartes' characterisation of the mental as a rational realm, positing that rationality is built upon a non-rational intuitive realm.

In "The Idea of the Holy", Rudolph Otto (1917) writes that while the concept of "the holy" is often used to convey moral perfection – and does entail this – it contains another distinct element, beyond the ethical sphere, for which he coined the term numinous based on the Latin word numen ("divine power"). Otto explained the numinous an experience or feeling which is not based on reason or sensory stimulation and represents the "wholly other" – a "non-rational, non-sensory experience or feeling whose primary and immediate object is outside the self." It is a mystery (mysterium tremendum) that is both fascinating (fascinans) and terrifying at the same time. A mystery that causes trembling and fascination, attempting to explain that inexpressible and perhaps supernatural emotional reaction of wonder drawing us to seemingly ordinary and/or religious experiences of grace. This sense of emotional wonder appears evident at the root of all religious experiences. Through this emotional wonder, we suspend our rational mind for non-rational possibilities.

This mental state "presents itself as ganz Andere, wholly other, a condition absolutely sui generis and incomparable whereby the human being finds himself utterly abashed." iI cannot be defined in terms of other concepts or experiences. The subject must therefore be "guided and led on by consideration and discussion of the matter through the ways of his own mind, until he reaches the point at which 'the numinous' in him perforce begins to stir... In other words, our X cannot, strictly speaking, be taught, it can only be evoked, awakened in the mind." Wynn (2022) notes: The Idea of the Holy falls within a paradigm in the philosophy of emotion in which emotions are seen as including an element of perception with intrinsic epistemic value that is neither mediated by thoughts, nor simply a response to physiological factors. Otto therefore understands religious experience as having mind-independent phenomenological content rather than being an internal response to belief in a divine reality.

Neurotheology: The Brain on Religion, Spirituality and Mysticism The neuroscience of religion, also known as neurotheology and as spiritual neuroscience, attempts to explain religious experience and behaviour in neuroscientific terms. Aldous Huxley used the term neurotheology for the first time in the utopian novel Island, in the context of psychedelics. It is the study of correlations of neural phenomena with subjective experiences of spirituality and hypotheses to explain these phenomena. This contrasts with the psychology of religion which studies mental, rather than neural states. Proponents say there is a neurological and evolutionary basis for subjective experiences traditionally categorised as spiritual or religious. From the religious perspective, concerns have been raised that the study of practices such as meditation does not necessarily extrapolate to the broader array of religious and spiritual phenomena (Begley 2001). Newberg's (2017) "Principles of Neurotheology" provides a scientific overview.

In “The Varieties of Spiritual Experience”, Yaden & Newberg (2022) have produced a sequel to James’ “Varieties of Religious Experience”, in which the diversity of spiritual experiences are explored in a modern neuroscience context. These varieties encompass chapters on: (a) Numinous Experiences: Encountering divinity, (b) Revelatory experiences: Voices, visions, and epiphanies, (c) Synchronicity Experiences: “Everything happens for a reason”, (d) Mystical Experiences: Unity and ego-dissolution, (e) Aesthetic Experiences: Awe and the sublime and (f) Paranormal Experiences: Ghosts, angels, and other entities.

Grewal (2012) reinforces the differing tendencies towards religious belief in intuition of the divine and away from belief in god in rational analytic discourse:

Shenhav, Rand and Greene (2011) show that people who have a tendency to rely on their intuition are more likely to believe in God. They also showed that encouraging people to think intuitively increased people’s belief in God. Building on these findings, Gervais & Norenzayan (2012) found that encouraging people to think analytically reduced their tendency to believe in God. Together these findings suggest that belief may at least partly stem from our thinking styles. … Gervais and Norenzayan’s research is based on the idea that we possess two different ways of thinking that are distinct yet related. System 1 thinking relies on intuitive feelings, hunches, shortcuts and other rules-of-thumb while System 2 is based on on analytic thinking and tends to be slower and require more effort. Solving logical and analytical problems may require that we override our System 1 thinking processes in order to engage System 2.

The notions of both God and Vedantic primordial cosmic consciousness appear to simply be aspects of a more ancient intuitive “animistic” type 1 thinking as opposed to type 2 “analytical” thinking. This suggests both God and cosmic consciousness are latecomers in the evolution of the universe, as a product of humans as higher organisms, thinking of the universe as permeated and driven by subjectively conscious agents, as a working intuitive rule of thumb, for survival, without it necessarily making overall analytic sense, particularly when extrapolated onto the entire universe.

The idea of an innate religious propensity in evolution for the good is not so much about transformative mystical states, as the blessings of religious security, for example that conservative morality or the love of God is an innate or evolved 'instinct'. But, while we have found evidence for natural morality in humans, conservative morality presents rather as as a superimposed meme. As we have seen with Marguerite Porete, the mystical people are often cast wearing sackcloth and ashes, or being burned at the stake for their visions. Both the conformist patterns of religious belief and the diverse mystical experience of transcendence have been explored in brain studies. But the propensity discovered scientifically in the brain is that both meditative and psychedelic states are associated with quietening of the default mode network and the relaxing of identity-defining dynamics leading to integrated states of consciousness rooted in first person mystical experience.

The nature of subjective conscious volition over the world around us and its implications is our central existential dilemma because we gain our entire knowledge of the world through our subjective experiences of it. This is the central existential dilemma that animism has always encompassed, and which its offspring in religion and religion’s backroom “soul” in spirituality, seek to reveal. Scientific consciousness research opens the abyss of subjective experience, as the most outstanding unresolved scientific problem in the universe and that is what mystical and visionary propensity is actually about, which both lies at the foundation of religion but is diametrically opposite to it.

There is also a pervasive belief in the idea that all spiritual paths lead to one deeper reality as expressed in the perennial philosophy – a perspective in philosophy and spirituality that views all of the world's religious traditions as sharing a single, metaphysical truth or origin from which all esoteric and exoteric knowledge and doctrine has grown (Huxley 1946). Perennialism has its roots in the Renaissance interest in neo-Platonism and its idea of the One, from which all existence emanates, e.g. to integrate Hermeticism with Greek and Jewish-Christian thought. Ultimately this idea comes down to direct first person mystical experience, contemplative, meditative or entheogenic as the ultimate chthonic illuminating groundswell of numinous reality, unbound from traditional religious assumptions.

Religion raises a serious dilemma for spirituality ^[78] as a pursuit, because most of its perspective is underpinned by assumptions arising from existing religious viewpoints – memes which we now perceive to have a potentially distorting parasitic influence on the nature of spiritual and mystical experiences, even when these are in the first person.

Notions, from God as creator, or legislator, to traditional notions of universal consciousness such as Brahman, all carry type-casting interpretations of spiritual identity. It is one thing to experience forms of transcendence and describe them metaphorically as experiences in terms of notions like Brahman, but it is another thing to a priori declare to third parties that they are evidential facts. They can be empirically verified by mutual affirmation of first person subjective experiences between people in mystical states discovering a commonality, just as the Huichol do experiencing the nierika on the peyote hunt. One of the great advantages of entheogenic experience is that it does not have to come with any pre-conceived spiritual assumptions although it is frequently associated with spiritual movements. To have any real potential to understand the nature of consciousness deep in the well of non-ordinary experience, it is absolutely necessary for the spiritually inclined to cleanse themselves of all 'parasitic' memes, such as assumptions about the nature of God or divinity, if they hope to experience genuine moksha, or samadhi.

In fact discarding memes is central to meditative practices promoting ego loss and is integral to the entheogenic effects of psychedelics. Anil Seth (2019) has argued that all perception is a form of controlled predictive hallucination evoked by the conscious brain. Dreams fall even more clearly into this category as well as claims about waking entheogenic visions, for which the term hallucinogen is a synonym of psychedelic. This implies that all religious beliefs in God are robust conceptual hallucinations reinforced by memes of affirmative belief, which are thus not physically or cosmologically real. Erasing personal history is a technique advocated by Carlos Castaneda (1968), who also sees man's idea of God as a robust transfixing "hallucination", that stymies the vision quest, while spirit is an ally to be enticed and commanded in its pursuit:

Warriors know that the assemblage point is the place where perception is assembled within the structure of the luminous cocoon; the assemblage point is the crucial feature of human beings as luminous entities. Warriors know that they must train themselves to do two transcendental things: first, to conceive of the assemblage point, and second, to make that assemblage point move. Warriors know that their assemblage points become dislodged from their original positions through confrontations with the nagual. Warriors know that man's idea of God is one of the most sturdy aspects of the human inventory which binds the assemblage point to its original position. The spirit is an abstract which warriors know without words or thoughts, yet without the slightest desire to understand it, warriors recognise and command the spirit; they beckon it, they entice it, they become familiar with it, and they express it in their acts; when warriors command the spirit, they in essence command the movement of the assemblage point. (Tomas 1995).

This is a scientific consciousness research question – what is the actual connection between brain states and spirituality generally? The neuroscientist Vilayanur Ramachandran (Ramachandran & Blakeslee 1998) referred to the part of the cortex between the limbic system and amydala, on the one hand, and the temporal cortex on the other as the ‘god spot’. The amygdala is the organ of emotional dynamics, from fight and flight, through paranoia to ecstasy, joy and fulfilment. The temporal lobe contains our sense of semantic and symphonic significance. Temporal lobe epilepsy can generate profound spiritual and religious feelings, experienced as states of epiphany by the subject or complex dream like situations. The neuroscientist Michael Persinger had had a similar experience using targeted temporal lobe stimulation, which came to be called the God helmet. This taps into neural circuits associated with the tempero-parietal junction, involving the sense of self which have come to be associated with the default mode network.

However, Aaen-Stockdale (2012) notes:

As Vilayanur Ramachandran, himself a proponent of a temporal lobe link, says, ‘the changes that have triggered these patients’ religious fervour could be occurring anywhere, not necessarily in the temporal lobes’ (Ramachandran & Blakeslee, 1998, p.187). Neuropsychiatrist and expert on near-death experiences, Peter Fenwick concludes: ‘It is likely that the earlier accounts of temporal lobe epilepsy and temporal lobe pathology and the relationship to mystic and religious states owe more to the enthusiasm of their authors than to the true scientific understanding of the nature of temporal lobe functioning.’

Robin Dunbar (2022) notes that the default mode network is associated both with mentalisation, and the ability of an individual to maintain a rich group of interpersonal associations:

The default mode network (including the theory of mind network) is a group of brain regions that interconnect directly with each other through major fibre tracts (the bundles of neurons that provide the wiring of the brain). It involves four main brain units. The prefrontal cortex right at the front of the brain (an area broadly associated with both rational thought and the interpretation of emotional cues), the temporo-parietal junction (a small region just behind and above the ear where the parietal and temporal lobes meet that is strongly associated with responses to living beings), parts of the temporal lobe (the brain’s sausage- like extension along the side just inside the ear, associated mainly with memory storage) and the limbic system, especially the amygdala (which is responsible for processing emotional cues). This large neural network is heavily involved in interpreting social and emotional cues, and in managing our relationships. … We and others have shown, in a number of neuroimaging studies, that the size of the network correlates with both your mentalizing competences and the number of friends you have.

He then goes on to suggest this relates to two completely different types of religious engagement:

To explore the mentalizing bases of religious belief in more depth, nearly 300 people were asked to complete a set of questionnaires that measured their mentalizing skills, the effectiveness of their agency detection mechanism, their schizotypal tendencies and their religious beliefs and behaviours (religiosity). Agency detection is the tendency to attribute human (or at least sentient) traits to non-living matter. Schizotypal thinking is the tendency to have unusual perceptual experiences (seeing ghosts or hearing voices) and disorganized thought processes, and has been explicitly linked to religiosity. The results of this study suggest that mentalizing positively influences religiosity quite independently of agency detection and schizotypal thinking, both of which are extremely closely correlated. In fact, people who are predisposed to schizotypal thinking tend to have an unusually active hyperactive agency detection mechanism. This suggests that you can be religious either because you are prone to seeing visions or because you can reflect deeply on the mental states of God in his transcendental world. This is interesting because it suggests there might be two types of religious people who engage in two very different types of religion – reactive religion and reflective religion, or as I put it in Chapter 1, shamanic/immersive religion versus doctrinal religion (Powell et al. 2010, 2012).

But the default mode network is also associated with ego-consciousness rehearsing strategies to deal with imagined crises, which can become obsessive in depressive people. Paradoxically, a reduction of activity in the default mode network was noted by Carhart-Harris et al (2012a) in experiments with psilocybin experiences, associated with peak spiritual experiences in which the distinction between self and other became blurred and has become signature of study of the psychedelic experience.

Fig 150: (a) Accentuation of the default mode network including the precuneus (p) and tempero-parietal juntion (t) on resting state and reduction on experimental tasks (Raichle & Snyder 2007). (b) Left: Consistent reduction in default mode network activity left in psilocybin (Carhart-Harris 2012a) and right engaging Awareness, Loving-Kindness, and Concentration meditations (Brewer et al. 2011). Note the increased richness of the psilocybin effect. Right: Study of Carmelite nuns shows activity more consistent with focused concentration (Beauregard & Paquette 2006 ) lacking quiescence of the precuneus. (c), (d) Brain networks to and from the precuneus (Zhang & Li 2012, Wikipedia)

Here are a few key points from Wikipedia's Precuneus page:

Functional imaging has linked the precuneus to the processes involved in self-consciousness, such as reflective self-awareness, that involve rating one's own personality traits compared to those judged of other people.

Electrical stimulation of the anterior portion can induce an out of body experience.

It has been suggested that together with the posterior cingulate, the precuneus is "pivotal for conscious information processing".

It has been suggested to be the 'core node' or 'hub' of the default mode network that is activated during "resting consciousness" in which people do not engage intentionally in sensory or motor activity. This involvement in the default network is suggested to underlie its role in self-consciousness.

In addition, it is one of the areas of the brain most deactivated during slow-wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep.

The temporo-parietal junction is also known to play a crucial role in self–other distinctions processes and theory of mind (ToM). Damage to it has been implicated in having adverse effects on an individual's ability to make moral decisions and has been known to produce out-of-body experiences (OBEs).

Kabalistic Ein-Sof is like Brahman as formless archaic ultimate reality, but of course Ein-Sof is far more recent, dating essentially from 1000 AD so belief in primitive YHVH came first and then people later in the overlap of Gnostic, Kabalistic and Eastern thinking ,which is also permeated with Neoplatonism had to make a regress to explain the ultimate numinous experience in terms of the formless infinite, out of which all form emerges.

Now suppose we think of my “soul" meeting Brahman in my psychedelic moksha, as a singular peak experience. Neuroscience shows this comes back to the precuneus which seems to harbour our notions of self.

Idealistic i.e. consciousness first notions of cosmic mind and infinite formless deity are actually a neuroscientific product of the mystical state, so the only way we can really understand them is to elucidate their basis both physically in neurobiology and subjectively in conscious experience together, understanding that these are NOT just two sides of the same coin as Ram suggests in neutral monism, but a deep revelatory interactive process. Symbiotic Exstential Cosmology above all aims at cosmic understanding in which these two complements together – consciousness and universe – are the only way to realise the revelatory condition because it's a manifestation of cosmology, not just spirituality.

The mere fact that these peak states can be provoked both by meditation and particularly under influence of entheogens means that they are influenced by physical circumstances in the brain, not just supreme conscious forces and indeed whether Kabalistic, Vedic or psychedelic mystical experiences, they are indisputably neurobiological in origin, so the organismic living biological organ is essential to mystical samadhi and moksha experience. WE know this is how the rishis discovered the notion! This is why Symbiotic Exstential Cosmology says Brahman is emergent asymptotically as a cosmological climax in the biota, rather than naive notions of a transcendent spiritual super-agent.

Now the key to this is that the mystical state represents an envelope of all the consciously experienceable dimensions of reality. It’s not just the quantum vacuum or ZPF because that’s just a bunch of integrated force field virtual particle fluctuations. It’s the full internal model of reality invoked in subjective consciousness by the integrated brain state. This has a potentially unbounded spectrum of attributes spanning all those cortical columns which aren't just mindless unconscious physics but are the climactic quintessence of conscious complexity the entire universe is giving expression to.

In particular, the precuneus, which is hard to explore experimentally by EEG and fMRI because its deep in the central fissure, carries all the representations of self and other integrated with all the sense modes and connected widely e.g. to the insula and other areas.

This means that the infiniteness and beyond form of the ineffable experience is being mediated through the vast experiential degrees of freedom of the precuneus nexus and in particular the notions of both soul and ultimate cosmic consciousness are interactive dynamic features of the precuneus representation which when it is usually active in waking life represents the polarity of self and other but when quiescent in meditation and psychedelic moksha are representing Brahman and the atman interacting telepathically in the near death experience.

Trying to divorce the living brain and the entire physical universe and our organismic biological nature as of no account besides spiritual transcendence is an anthropocentric degeneracy of the total reality, that neglects the formative role of the universe and its forces of nature rising to critical climax in the evolving conscious biosphere. There is absolutely no point in having a physical universe and then turning around in frank denial and calling it just a mindless mechanism in favour of superstitious idealism. Quantum reality has a central part to play in this, but it is ALL the brain processes that evoke subjective consciousness through quantum uncertainty, not just Hameroff and Penrose's microtubules that may not have the claimed role at all.

This is why my experience says the conscious universe is in its own becoming, and "infinite" consciousness began as vestigial primal subjectivity in the vestigial inflationary universe and there is no primordial super-conscious skeleton in the closet of reality but us here and now trying to learn to take responsibility for our pivotal role in the divine comedy and that all the myths of a preordained deity or preexistent cosmic mind devoid of substance are as degenerate as the myth of a reductionistic mindless universe.

Griffiths et al. (2006, 2008, 2018) have showed that psilocybin can induce genuine mystical experiences, resulting in beneficial effects lasting months later and combined the use of psilocybin with meditation and other spiritual practices, in quantum change experiments of lasting benefit, echoing the way in which movements such as the Native American Church and the Union Vegetale provide a spiritually conducive context to engender positive outcome.

Justin Brewer has also found a similar default mode reduction in people meditating (Brewer et al. 2011). Zen meditation studies (Pagnoni et al 2008, Ritskes et al 2003) in which subjects are asked to switch from a verbal task to contemplation show transient activity consistent with the default circuit which is more quickly suppressed by experienced meditators more effectively inhibiting verbal thought. Tibetan Buddhists performing compassion meditation for other people's suffering show specific activation in limbic regions including cingulate cortex and insula, consistent with an empathic response to another's pain (Lutz et al 2008). This presents the central arena of neuroscience research on "mystical experience" with or without a religious context.

There are also studies reporting a variety of changes in brain activity resulting from religious and contemplative activities. Patrick McNamara (2009) in "The Neuroscience of Religious Experience" makes a claim that religious believers show a superiority of integrated self-hood, associated with an 'anatomical overlap between the brain sites implicated in religious experience and the brain sites implicated in the sense of Self and self-consciousness'. It is this anatomical overlap that explains how religious experience can facilitate the transformative process of the self.

McNamara (2002) claims people engage in religious practices, in part, because these activate the frontal lobes:

Activation of the frontal lobes is both intrinsically rewarding and necessary for acquisition of many of the behaviors that religions seek to foster, including self-responsibility, impulse and emotion modulation, empathy, moral insight, hope, and optimism.

This claim is specious, as frontal lobes are essential for all activity. Critiquing his thesis Schjoedt (2011) states:

McNamara's claim that there is overlap between the brain sites implicated in religious experience and those implicated in the sense of self and self-consciousness rests on two postulates: (1) that the 'executive Self' can be identified as a neural entity in specific regions of the brain; and (2) that the neural correlates of religious experience can be identified as a consistent set of activations in these regions. Although McNamara is clearly well informed in terms of functional neuroanatomy, he fails to make a convincing argument for his first postulate regarding the existence of the self as a controlling entity at the neurological level. This is unfortunate because his claim that religious experience decenters the self from its control over body and cognition in order to contemplate and optimize the self rests on this assumption. Furthermore, with respect to his second postulate, since the data currently available do not afford a description of religious experience as a uniform category, it is difficult to see how this evidence can support McNamara's general understanding of the nature and function of religious experience.

McNamarra's hypothesis, as summarised in his own words, would clearly make methamphetamine the "God" molecule:

To intensify the 'god effect' in people already attracted to religious ideas, my studies revealed, all we had to do was boost the activity of the neurotransmitter, dopamine, crucial for balanced emotion and thought, on the right side of the brain. But should dopamine spike too high, murderous impulses like terrorism and jihad could rear up instead.

He incorrectly implicates psychedelics as dopamine agents when their activity is on serotonin 5HT2a receptors coupled to mGluR2 metabotropic glutamate receptors and displays a prejudice against traditional forms of religious practice such as shamanism, treating the renowned Huichol use of peyote as superfluous to their spiritual tradition: :

The Huichol Indians practice a form of ecstatic religion, but you do not need peyote or any other drug to experience religious ecstasy. Most scholars of religion believe that the earliest forms of religion were "ecstatic" – that is, religious practices were designed to induce a transformation in the sense of Self to commune with the gods, to experience a sense of euphoria and well-being, and to acquire new personal powers (such as the power to heal others, foresee the future, or communicate with the spirit world). The combination of self-transformation, joy, well-being or euphoria, and personal power defines the ecstatic religious mind and the essential psychological elements in all religions.

Although he claims he is "not very religious" (Kreiter 2011), McNamara (2014) strongly advocates religion, as a means for cultural control of human nature, even to the point of selecting for genetically compliant populations and avoiding adolescent risky behaviour (McNamara et al. 2010), consistent with religion as a defence against perceived autonomous risk:

I think one of the things that religion does when it's working properly is it strengthens the prefrontal lobes. All those practices that the religious people tell their adherents to do — like prayer, ritual, abstaining from alcohol, controlling your impulses — strengthen the ability of frontal lobes to control primitive impulses. … If you've got a cultural system that produces people who are reliable, who cooperate, who are relatively honest and trustworthy, who can control their impulses, who are good parents, who abstain from ingesting addictive substances — if a cultural system does that on a consistent basis over the centuries, that's a pretty valuable system.

Mario Beauregard and co-researchers (Beauregard & Paquette 2006) have similarly explored the neural activity of Carmelite nuns entering oneness with God and report fMRI activations in areas in very specific frontal, parietal, temporal and basal areas consistent with directed control. In doing so, they have unfortunately invented a criterion they call RSME:

The main objective of this novel domain of research is to explore the neural underpinnings of religious/spiritual/mystical experiences (RSMEs). These experiences relate to a fundamental dimension of human existence and are frequently reported across all cultures. One of the basic assumptions of spiritual neuroscience is that RSMEs are brain-mediated, as are all other aspects of human experience. With respect to this issue, it is of paramount importance to fully appreciate that elucidating the neural substrates of these experiences does not diminish or depreciate their meaning and value, and that the external reality of "God" can neither be confirmed nor disconfirmed by delineating the neural correlates of RSMEs.

While I support the non-materialist view of consciousness, in Beauregard's introduction to "The Spiritual Brain" (Beauregard & O'Leary 2007) he states an unashamed quasi-religious agenda:

Our book will establish three key ideas. The non-materialist approach to the human mind is a rich and vital tradition that accounts for the evidence much better than the currently stalled materialist one. Second, non-materialist approaches to the mind result in practical benefits and treatments, as well as promising approaches to phenomena that materialist accounts cannot even address. Lastly—and this may be the most important value for many readers—our book shows that when spiritual experiences transform lives, the most reasonable explanation and the one that best accounts for all the evidence, is that the people who have such experiences have actually contacted a reality outside themselves, a reality that has brought them closer to the real nature of the universe.

However RSME conflates what anyone can see are diverse and potentially conflicting notions, with religion at one extreme promoting moral avoidance of risk and mysticism at the other invoking first person transformative experiences which religions may perceive to be disruptive to the status quo or even heretical. While they state these to be "Neural correlates of a mystical experience in Carmelite nuns" their tasks were both memorisation:

In the Mystical condition, subjects were asked to remember and relive (eyes closed) the most intense mystical experience ever felt in their lives as a member of the Carmelite Order. This strategy was adopted given that the nuns told us before the onset of the study that "God can't be summoned at will." In the Control condition, subjects were instructed to remember and relive (eyes closed) the most intense state of union with another human ever felt in their lives while being affiliated with the Carmelite Order.

Notably (Beauregard & O'Leary 2007) focus on mystical states connected only with religion and psychedelics are mentioned only once associated with "other cultures":

Mystical experiences can be grouped into general categories; most fall into one of three general types: monistic mysticism, pantheistic mysticism, and theistic mysticism. Monistic mysticism is the mystical experience of sensing that the created universe revolves around a center from which everything issues. In pantheistic mysticism mystics sense that the entire external world is the ultimate power and the experiencer is part of that power. In theistic mysticism one senses the presence of the highest power in the universe or a power from beyond the universe…….Now, from a scientific perspective, the proposition is quite simple. Either there are levels of consciousness that give us greater insight into our relationship to the reality underlying our universe or there aren't. If they exist, we can either reach them or we can't. If we do reach them, we either learn something or we don't……Why access deep and unusual levels of consciousness? Mystics' explanations depend on their spiritual and other commitments, but there is a common thread. They believe that some fundamental facts about reality can never be correctly understood apart from observations made at this level. If mind is a fundamental character of the universe, as mystics believe, then the investigation must involve at least some experiments of mind-and the only mind mystics can volunteer is their own. (Beauregard and O'Leary 2007, pp. 182-184)

The differences in brain activity they detected were:

Significant loci of activation in the right medial orbitofrontal cortex, right middle temporal cortex, right inferior and superior parietal lobules, right caudate, left medial prefrontal cortex, left anterior cingulate cortex, left inferior parietal lobule, left insula, left caudate, and left brainstem. Other loci of activation were seen in the extra-striate visual cortex. These results suggest that mystical experiences are mediated by several brain regions and systems.

These are not dissimilar to the cited results of Newberg et al. (2003) in which Franciscan nuns were at prayer involving the internal repetition of a particular phrase:

Compared to rest, the prayer state showed increased rCBF in the prefrontal cortex (PFC), the inferior frontal lobes, and the inferior parietal lobule (IPL). In addition, the rCBF change in the left PFC showed an inverse correlation with that in the ipsilateral superior parietal lobule (SPL). Changes in SPL activity were interpreted as reflecting an altered sense of the body schema experienced during the prayer state.

Nickel et al. (2001) likewise reported that:

During religious recitation, self-identified religious subjects activated a frontal/parietal circuit, composed of the dorsolateral prefrontal, dorsomedial frontal and medial parietal cortex.

Travis & Parim (2017) produced similar results for transcendental meditation, which appear to be inconsistent with other forms of meditation and with the association with mystical states in quantum change experiences:

Regression analysis of years TM practice and self-reported transcendental experiences (lack of time, space and body sense) during meditation practice was flat. Those practicing Transcendental Meditation for 1 month reported as much transcending as those with 5 years of practice. ... The comparison of eyes-closed rest/task and TM practice/task identified similar areas of activation: theta and alpha activation during rest and TM in the posterior cingulate and precuneus, part of the default mode network, and beta activation during the task in anterior cingulate, ventral lateral and dorsolateral prefrontal cortices, part of the central executive network. In addition, comparison of rest and TM identified higher beta temporal activation during rest and higher theta orbi-tofrontal activation during TM. Thus, it does not seem accurate to include TM practice with meditations in the category of Focused Attention, which are characterized by gamma EEG and DMN deactivation.

Each of these studies show activations broadly consistent with both ordered religious thought. In the Carmelite case, anterior cingulate activity is actually increased, inconsistent with the default network reduction associated with mystical experience. Again this is a memory task, quite different from having a direct transformative experience in the forms shared by the entheogenic research and meditative states reported above.

In contrast and more consistent with the entheogenic and meditative studies, Brick J et al. (2012) report:

A frontal-parietal circuit related to spiritual-religious experiences, and specifically that a decreased focus on the self (i.e., selflessness), is associated with decreased right parietal lobe functioning, serves as the primary neuropsychological foundation for spiritual transcendence.

Much earlier Kokoszka (1999) had proposed two categories of altered conscious states – Superficially Altered States of Consciousness (SACS) and Profoundly Altered States of Consciousness (PASC). PASC are accompanied by extremely strong positive emotions and are experienced with significantly less feelings of cognitive disturbances than in SASC. PASC occur mainly in the context of religion, whereas SASC in everyday life, solitude, and poor well being, but these predate the current neuroscience research involving non-religious mystical states.

Miller (2004) notes of quantum change experiences that these are not necessarily religious, but still transcendent:

"The person typically experiences mystical quantum change passively, not a product of personal will or control, and has a difficult time expressing the experience in words. They usually are intensely positive, joyful experiences, and often the person senses the presence of an awe-inspiring transcendent Other. Often there is a noetic element of revelation, a sudden knowing of a new truth. An experience of unity is common; for example, an ineffable oneness with all of humankind, with nature, or the universe. In these respects, the mystical type of quantum change is similar to common reports of near-death experiences (Lorimer 1990).

However none of these studies go any way towards confirming a transcendental hypothesis for traditional religious practices as a divine manifestation.

Newberg (2016), in the context of Judaism, highlights three dilemmas about how the religions may relate to cognitive processes each of which point to unresolved existential ambiguities:

Willfulness: Willfulness is another important brain process related to religion, and particularly Judaism. There is a strong sense of the willfulness of God and also the willfulness of a person. The notion of free will is an important element of Jewish tradition, and this is based heavily on our brain's ability to perceive that sense of willfulness.

Love and anger: Religions can foster great love and cohesion among congregants. But religions can also espouse fear and anger at those who do not adhere to the same religious beliefs.

Existence: The final cognitive process to be mentioned is the existential process which helps us to identify things which do and do not ex- ist. At this point, cognitive neuroscience has not identified the areas of the brain that help us to perceive what is real and what is not. Clearly, the human brain can do this, but the brain can also be fooled such as when we are entertained by a magician. The existential process is critical in the larger dialogue regarding God since many people believe in God's existence and many do not. How is it that one brain can be absolutely convinced God exists while another brain, looking at the same world, can be absolutely convinced God does not exist?

Thus while free-will is central, the love-hate cohesion-division axis remains unresolved, as does the entire existential status of God..

(7) Religions display Extreme Paradigm Change Resistance. In a diversity of religions, almost impossible barriers are erected to prevent natural paradigm innovation.

Jesus is represented in the Gospels and Revelation as a super-human son of man become the cosmic Son of God as alpha and omega the beginning and the end of the entire created universe. This is an intentional construction of the church fathers, arising out of the Hellenistic heroic tradition, emphasised by Yeshua’s Dionysian miraculous nature and laced with warnings of false prophets that he will return on the right hand of Power.

Muhammad is likewise cast as the final prophet, with prophetic pretenders accused of blasphemy. To give an example, the Bahai faith has three central figures: (1) The Báb (1819–1850), a herald who taught that God would soon send a prophet in the same way as Jesus or Muhammad, and who was executed by Iranian authorities in 1850. (2) Baháʼu’lláh (1817–1892) who claimed to be that prophet, was born in Iran and was exiled due to his adherence to the messianic Bábí Faith. In 1863, in Iraq, he first announced his claim to revelation from God, and spent the rest of his life in further imprisonment in the Ottoman Empire. (3) His son, ʻAbdu'l-Bahá (1844–1921). At the age of eight his father was imprisoned during a government crackdown on the Bábí Faith and the family's possessions were looted, leaving them in virtual poverty. His father was exiled from Iran, and the family went to live in Baghdad. They were later called by the Ottoman state to Istanbul before going into another period of confinement. He remained a political prisoner there until the Young Turk Revolution freed him in 1908 at the age of 64. The Baha’i Faith is the largest religious minority in Iran, but the Islamic government has never formally recognised the Baha’is. The persecution of Baha’is is largely due to the perceived political threat posed to the Islamic state by another widely practiced religion. Iranian laws protect the human rights of religious minorities, except those that conspire against Islam. In direct opposition to the Baha’i belief that all religions are important components of a larger world religion, Iranian officials, religious leaders and the media position the Baha’is as a direct threat to the practice of Islam and the survival of Iran.

The few major paradigm revolutions that have occurred, remain outstanding for their violence. The transition of Hebrew worship to Christianity was achieved only through Yeshua’s crucifixion during times of apocalyptic conflict. Likewise the transition to Islam was accompanied by a genocide of Jewish men in the souk of Medina. By contrast, Buddhism emerged from the Hindu tradition apparently without bloodshed. Even smaller shifts such as the Reformation, which maintains the core principle of Christian faith unchanged, occurred during tumult, corruption and violence. Finally we come down to the endless religious sects, numbering in the hundreds to thousands.

(8) Religious Views of Nature and Sexuality are in Fundamental Conflict with Reality

While Symbiotic Existential Cosmology doesn't deny outright that some form of super-consciousness could be co-eval with the universe, it does consider that existing religious traditions and concepts of God are in conflict with symbiotic climax living diversity as the central expression of consciousness found in the biota. The idea of absolute cosmological morality ordained by a monotheistic God or by Karmic Law flies in fundamental conflict with the biological and eco-systemic reality that morality is an evolved sociobiological trait, to aid inter-social dominance, by inhibiting intra-social competition, founded not in prescriptive rules and their transgression, but an intuitive sense of fair play.

Fig 158a: In a fairness study video by Frans de Waal, socially acquainted capuchins are offered either cucumber or grape if they give the experimenter a stone. If they both receive cucumber, both are happy but the moment one gets a grape and the other gets only a cucumber, fair play is violated and the disadvantaged one on the left gets mad and throws the cucumber at the experimenter, hitting them on the left shoulder.

Natural morality arises from a sense of “fair play”. Intelligent animal societies engage in strategic bluffing to try to gain social advantages, and animals, from large-brained monkeys like capuchins and macaques, as well as dogs and intelligent birds, quickly gain a long-term understanding of one another’s personalities, to ensure fair play, and react with hostility in forms of altruistic punishment if they sense they are being “played” by another. Capuchin species, like humans, also adopt cultural traditions of tool use (Barrett et al. 2018). Capuchin monkeys respond strategically to multiple scenarios (Smith et al. 2019) requiring both coordination (Assurance Game) and anti‐coordination (Hawk‐Dove Game), beneficial cooperation with a temptation to defect (Prisoner's Dilemma) and an environment requiring changing strategies within short temporal proximity (Alternating Economic Game). Likewise Macaques show adaptive strategies of social engagement depending on individual prowess (Zhao et al. 2023). These attest to both an intuitive sense of morality and the capacity for the same forms of conscious decision-making volition, we describe as free-will, but they are NOT religiously ordained!

Founding human societies that have lived for millennia in small bands, spend a great deal of time assessing one another’s character and trustworthiness in social interactions and discussions round the camp fire, so that they know who they can depend on in times of crisis. This, not divinely ordained doctrine, is the foundation of human morality – something I call "verifiable trust".

As discussed in the next section, our longest standing culture, the San Bushmen , do not invoke the notion of absolute morality, but rather an acceptance of the value of sexual opportunities, amid a sense of practicality that applies to issues like sharing versus stealing which directly affect the harmony and stability of the small bands upon which everyone’s lives rely, while the deities are not morally prescriptive and are not cast in terms of absolute good and evil.

When a missionary inquired into a Bushman's ideas of good and bad he was told

it was 'good' to sleep with another man's wife, but 'bad' if he slept with yours.

It is only with the emergence of dominant human culture in larger urban societies, succeeding the gather-hunter epoch, where there is no longer any natural biospheric feedback on defection, that individual choices become subsumed under religious doctrine to enable large societies to dominate others, by repressing individual choice through punitive doctrine in the dictated common interest, but at a high cost.

Both Creationism, the widespread religious notion that the universe was created by a divine act of God and that of the Day of Judgment, as a final act, likewise arise from the emergence of human manufacturing culture, involving tools, weapons, wheels and struts for building, surrounded by animal husbandry and agriculture, so that we arrive at notions of God creating humanity by moulding from clay, breathing life into the dust of the Earth through prana, or the verbal commands that leaders invoke – “Let there be light!”

Fig 158b: The Code of Hammurabi 1792-1750 BCE shows both that, although “ordained” by Shamash, the Laws were codified by a secular ruler Hammurabi, not a priest as Moses was, and that the very notion of judgment under the law, is a creation of culture, not deity.

Likewise the notion of a day of judgment is a cultural construct of an urban society having established prescriptive laws, which are then invoked scripturally as divine prohibitions such as "thou shalt not commit adultery", as in Moses' Ten Commandments and both Deuteronomic Law and its predecessor, the secular Code of Hammurabi. Religions do articulate moral prescriptions that figure prominently in evolutionary strategy, and so exemplify underlying natural morality. The Hebrew "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth" is a highly successful prisoners' dilemma strategy of tit-for-tat, which however leads to cycles of defection, refined in later more generalised notions, such as the silver and golden rules "do not do unto others what you would not have them do unto you" pronounced by Rabbi Hillel, reciting the Torah standing on one foot, and Yeshua's assertive "do unto others what you would have them do unto you", cited by Jesus as both the law and the prophets.

Nevertheless Isaiah's notions of absolute compassionate righteousness do result in root contradictions with nature:

But with righteousness shall he judge the poor, and reprove with equity for the meek of the earth: and he shall smite the earth with the rod of his mouth, and with the breath of his lips shall he slay the wicked. And righteousness shall be the girdle of his loins, and faithfulness the girdle of his reins (Isa 11 1-5).

These notions of divine justness are unnatural and immediately become a religious invocation to assert a reversal of biospheric diversification into animals and plants, carnivores and herbivores:

The wolf also shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them. And the cow and the bear shall feed; their young ones shall lie down together: and the lion shall eat straw like the ox. And the sucking child shall play on the hole of the asp, and the weaned child shall put his hand on the cockatrice' den. (Isa 11 6-8).

Fig 158c: Isaiah 11 Inset and in the far distance,

the cockatrice, a mythical winged dragon.

There is no such thing as natural evil, because evolution promotes biological diversity and biospheric abundance even through the rough justice of tooth and claw and parasites and disease. Just as plants directly fix incoming solar energy and animals have evolved to live off their consumption, thus favouring plant diversity by animals evolving to consume the weedy species also aiding plant seed dispersal and promoting fertilisation, so carnivores act to keep the herbivores from boom and bust of pastoral famines, and the Red Queen race of parasites and prey has given rise to organismic sexuality to resist epidemic extinctions, by introducing individual variation, when parthenogenesis is unviable long-term due to Muller’s ratchet of mutational decay. Inevitably, although with some irony, this has resulted in the dilemma of organismic mortality, but sexual reproduction is the most altruistic form of reproduction conceivable, without which higher species could not have evolved. These all attest to a much wider, wilder reality in nature than any God of righteous order would ordain to occur.

But the above passages are enclosed in emphatic parentheses by what Christians claim to be a key prophecy of Christ, stemming from King David's father Jesse as a Davidic messiah, consecrating his cosmic destiny from the very origin:

And there shall come forth a rod out of the stem of Jesse, and a Branch shall grow out of his roots:
And the spirit of the Lord shall rest upon him, the spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the spirit of counsel and might, the spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord (Isa 11 1-2).

They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord,
as the waters cover the sea. And in that day there shall be a root of Jesse, which shall stand for an ensign of the people;
to it shall the Gentiles seek: and his rest shall be glorious (Isa 11 9-10).

Taking a step back, we see that one of the most compassionate and harmonious visions of the prophets, claimed to be evidence for the cosmological coming of Christianity are founded on the root violation of natural diversity.

But the entire edifice of Monotheistic cosmology is set around a false notion of the entire universe and space-time itself as a moral test of Homo sapiens as an elite, quasi divine encultured species, in dominion over a brutal nature of tooth and claw that cannot tell good from evil, by a creator deity that then destroys the entire universe in a "Day of Judgment" over the sins of each and every human being to an eternal life of divine pleasure and fulfilment in Heaven or to be cast into the fires of Hell. This is where the religious violation of nature becomes all-encompassing and diabolical. This entire claim is erroneous because it is in central conflict with the way the natural universe manifests, in which there is no over-weaning rule of moral order, but emerges from complexity at the edge of chaos.

Like cultural laws of judgment, the concept that animals do not have "free will" to make astute judgments over their fates to survive and care for their offspring is not a divine law separating humans as elite from animals, but a distorted product of human language and culture and the knowledgable ability of human beings to choose to transgress culturally and religiously ordained doctrine, which other animals do not, despite being subjectively conscious intentional sentient beings, just as we are. This right of autonomous choice, which we humans associate with free will, is also the very foundation of democratic protest and social paradigm change.

Turning to the troubled question of sex as the source of biological immortality in the eternal afterlife, one quoted Jewish opinion, the least divergent from the view of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, runs as follows:

The simple answer, as others have already pointed out, is that there is no sex in heaven because heaven refers to a nonphysical existence and sex is a physical activity. Nevertheless, traditional sources often describe the pleasures of Heaven in corporeal terms. The Zohar, in one passage, says (if I recall correctly) that every night the souls of righteous husbands and wives join together in sexual congress. Traditional Jewish sources indicate that sexual desire is actually rooted in a deeper spiritual drive, and that the pleasure of physical sex is only a pale reflection of the pleasure achieved through fulfilling that true spiritual desire. It is important to understand that "Heaven" actually plays a relatively minor role in the Jewish understanding of the afterlife. The ultimate destiny of the afterlife is the resurrection, when the physical world will be perfected and the righteous will return to eternal physical life in this world. In that world, sexual intercourse will certainly be possible, but the need and desire for physical pleasure will no longer exist.

Fig 158d: Christian views of heaven and Hell (see also Memling’s “Day of Judgment” fig 209. Top: Christ the Redeemer in Glory with the Heavenly Host Niccolo Circignani Il Pomarancio (1588) and The Pilgrims ascend, (c 1910) from "The Pilgrim's Progress," John Bunyan. Bottom: The Last Judgment - Giovanni da Modena, depicts the fate of Muhammad, bound to a rock in Hell, centre right, being clawed by demons. It has been the subject of a thwarted terror attack. Stairway to heaven “Jacob’s Ladder” William Blake.

The Christian view, that in heaven, there is no sex, no children, just winged angels, stems from the Eden account. Although the sabbatical creation of Genesis 1 is by no means the oldest chapter of the Bible and was possibly crafted in the Exile in refuting the Babylonian creation from Tiamat and Marduk, to appease the dictates of Cyrus in accepting the return of the Jews, the Fall from Eden, is ancient, ostensibly written around 950 BCE. In it humanity is implied to have lost their innocent divinity at the hands of Eve heeding the Serpent and persuading Adam to eat the forbidden fruit "to make one wise". Their loss of innocence, covering their genitals with fig leaves then sets in motion the Fall:

And I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed

it shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel

Unto the woman he said I will greatly multiply thy sorrow and thy conception

in sorrow thou shalt bring forth children and thy desire shall be to thy husband and he shall rule over thee

And unto Adam he said Because thou hast hearkened unto the voice of thy wife and hast eaten of the tree

of which I commanded thee saying Thou shalt not eat of it

cursed is the ground for thy sake in sorrow shalt thou eat of it all the days of thy life

Thorns also and thistles shall it bring forth to thee and thou shalt eat the herb of the field

In the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread till thou return unto the ground

for out of it wast thou taken for dust thou art and unto dust shalt thou return

And Adam called his wife's name Eve because she was the mother of all living

Unto Adam also and to his wife did the LORD God make coats of skins and clothed them

And the LORD God said Behold the man is become as one of us to know good and evil

and now lest he put forth his hand and take also of the tree of life and eat and live for ever.

ואיבה ׀ אשיתבינךוביןהאשהוביןזרעךוביןזרעההואישופךראשואתהתשופנועקב׃ס

אל־האשה אמרהרבהארבהעצבונךוהרנךבעצבתלדיבניםואל־אישךתשוקתךוהואימשל־בך׃ס

ולאדם אמרכי־שמעתלקולאשתךותאכלמן־העץאשר
צויתיךלאמרלאתאכלממנוארורההאדמהבעבורךבעצבוןתאכלנהכלימיחייך׃

וקוץ ודרדרתצמיחלךואכלתאת־עשבהשדה׃

בזעת אפיךתאכללחםעדשובךאל־האדמהכיממנהלקחתכי־עפראתהואל־עפרתשוב׃

ויקרא האדםשםאשתוחוהכיהואהיתהאםכל־חי׃

ויעש יהוהאלהיםלאדםולאשתוכתנותעורוילבשם׃פ

ויאמר ׀ יהוהאלהיםהןהאדםהיהכאחדממנולדעתטובורעועתה
׀ פן־ישלח ידוולקחגםמעץהחייםואכלוחילעלם׃

This curse of יהוה (Jehovah) has multiple components:

(1) Enmity between woman and man and their seed invoking sexually-antagonistic co-evolution.

(2) Biological conception and birth, with women travail in the pains of childbirth.

(3) Patriarchal domination by the husband over the wife, repressing female reproductive choice.

(4) Adversarial dominion over nature in conquering the wilderness in animal husbandry and agriculture.

(5) Biological mortality – dust to dust.

(6) Adam names Eve for her fecundity of all life, as the mother of all living, initiating sexual reproduction.

(7) God clothes them in the tokens of civilisation.

(8) God admits that good and evil are the products of the Gods themselves who both know good and evil and have immortality, so the Tree of Immortal Life is withheld. Hence nature in Eden was not of itself evil, even from the human pair, neither was it necessarily for sex itself, until they eat the forbidden fruit and had knowledge of transgressing Yahweh’s prohibition.

These in themselves constitute a massive frontal attack on natural cosmology. The ultimate conclusion, nevertheless is that natural evil does not exist, but good and evil emerge from culture and religion, due to the loss of biospheric symbiosis in the cultural epoch, in which human cultural psychopathy has no antidote, except by obeying the moral commandments of prescriptive religion. This leaves the actual status of both sexual reproduction and mortality unclarified, and is in effect cursing nature for the link between the two, while it is clear this is the curse of the gods. Sex thus becomes recognised as the source of biological mortality, and woman as the cause of it all, targeted by Augustine as the “devil’s gateway”.

Jesus is claimed in the Gospels to have recognised Eden in rejecting divorce:

But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female. For this cause shall a man leave his father and mother, and cleave to his wife; And they twain shall be one flesh: so then they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder (Mark 10).

When they asked him which one of seven brothers who wedded a wife on Earth and died would marry the wife in heaven, Jesus answered unto them (Matt 22:29):

Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God.

For in the resurrection they neither marry, nor are given in marriage,

but are as the angels of God in heaven.

Πλανᾶσθε μὴ εἰδότες τὰς γραφὰς μηδὲ τὴν δύναμιν τοῦ Θεοῦ.

ἐν γὰρ τῇ ἀναστάσει οὔτε γαμοῦσιν οὔτε γαμίζονται ἀλλ' ὡς
ἄγγελοι ‹θεοῦ› ἐν τῷ οὐρανῷ εἰσιν.

This results in the notion that there will be no sex in Heaven in the epoch of eternal life, so that people as angels have wings to fly in the "heavens", but do not and cannot be said to have sex, or to reproduce offspring. This becomes a tragic fallacy of divine thinking, because the natural creative process of sexual variation and the evolution of novelty, just as Homo sapiens evolved from the primates, loses all meaning and any explanation. Timeless eternal life in heaven is inconsistent with the temporally elapsing physical universe in which we consciously exist and the biological reality of the biosphere in which humanity coexists. You can neither think, nor experience, let alone pronounce the Logos, unless time elapses. It is inconceivable for all the organisms born throughout cosmic history to have eternal life, in an imaginary Heaven, as angels dancing on the head of a pin. By contrast the generations of life ARE perennially immortal, through recombinational resilience against mutational entropy. It is fallacious cosmology to envisage that innocent people of all ages, babies to centenarians in their dotage, will go to heaven to become eternal angels of not any given biological age at all, each with wings to fly in the heavens, when we know that outer space is a vacuum where wings provide no lift.

This patriarchal view emerged from a Yahwistic Hebrew context in which circumcision was the required male sacrifice to the abstract male deity, invoking male sexuality itself as the sacred procreational force:

At that time the Lord said unto Joshua, Make thee sharp knives, and circumcise again the children of Israel the second time. And Joshua made him sharp knives, and circumcised the children of Israel at Gibeath Haaraloth – the hill of the foreskins (Joshua 5).

Fig 158e: Timna: Hathor Egyptian period, Phallic Teraphim and 'Nehustan' from Midianite period.

This occurred despite Jewish descent being through the mother, having been so since the time of Laban, when the teraphim or house gods were stolen by Rachel hiding them under her menstrual skirts to found Jacob’s patriliny:

Then Laban went out of Leah's tent, and entered into Rachel's tent. Now Rachel had taken the images, and put them in the camel's furniture, and sat upon them. And Laban searched all the tent, but found them not. And she said to her father, Let it not displease my lord that I cannot rise up before thee; for the custom of women is upon me. And he searched, but found not the images (Gen31).

Overthrowing a tolerant phase of Arabic culture, in which in Mecca was a pilgrimage centre for diverse beliefs, Muhammad ordained the smashing of the 360 astral idols, including images of Jesus and Mary, leaving only the black stone, believed to be of astronomical origin in the Ka’aba when there and in the surrounding centres such as Taif, were shrines to the three Goddesses al-Lat, the ancient consort of al-Llah noted in inscriptions in the Sinai desert, along with al-Uzza and Manat, who had figured prominently in Nabatean Edom in the time of Yeshua were overthrown. Islam under Muhammad, attempted to solve the dilemma of inconsistency of eternal life with sexual desire and natural reproduction of biological offspring, by focussing on the sexual pleasure of men as an ultimate enticement, turning heavenly femininity into kohl-eyed houris, celestial virgins recreated anew every day, whose bodies were translucent, so you could see right through to the marrow of their bones, but whose vaginas were nevertheless overflowing with flesh and blood enticing pleasure and delight for men with eternal erections to assuage, especially martyrs.

Fig 158f: Top: “The Harem” depicting 72 kohl-eyed houris Thomas Rowlandson and “The Dream of the Believer” Achille Zo. Lower: Persian miniatures of houris and the seven layered heaven dating back to Sumeria and Inanna Goddess of Heaven echoing the 360 astral idols originally in the Ka’aba and the banat Allahal-Lat, al-Uzza and Manat, as accounted in the satanic verses (Armstrong 1991 113).

Allah's Apostle said, "When the Day of Resurrection approaches, the dreams of a believer will hardly fail to come true” Abu Huraira

In Islam, heaven is utterly sexy for men, with 72 houris, or black-eyed virgins made pure anew every day:

Everyone will have two wives from the houris, (who will be so beautiful, pure and transparent that)
the marrow of the bones of their legs will be seen through the bones and the flesh (Hadith Al Bukhari).

" لاَ تَحَاسُدَ، لِكُلِّ امْرِئٍ زَوْجَتَانِ مِنَ الْحُورِ الْعِينِ، يُرَى مُخُّ سُوقِهِنَّ مِنْ وَرَاءِ الْعَظْمِ وَاللَّحْمِ "..

Flesh and blood women, when they go to heaven become houris:

An old woman came to the messenger of God and asked, O Messenger of God make dua that God grants me entrance into Jannah. The Messenger of God replied, "O Mother, an old woman cannot enter Jannah." That woman started crying and began to leave. The Messenger of God said, "Say to the woman that one will not enter in a state of old age, but God will make all the women of Jannah young virgins. God Most High says, 'Lo! We have created them a (new) creation and made them virgins, lovers, equal in age (Al-Hasan Al-Basri)

Every male admitted into heaven will be given eternal erections and wed to 72 wives, each having libidinous sexual organs (Sunan Ibn Majah):

There is no one whom Allah will admit to Paradise but Allah will marry him to seventy-two wives, two from houris and seventy from his inheritance from the people of Hell,
all of whom will have desirable front passages [lubricious vaginas] and he will have a male member that never becomes flaccid (i.e., soft and limp) (Abu Umamah Zuhd).

" مَا مِنْ أَحَدٍ يُدْخِلُهُ اللَّهُ الْجَنَّةَ إِلاَّ زَوَّجَهُ اللَّهُ عَزَّ وَجَلَّ ثِنْتَيْنِ وَسَبْعِينَ زَوْجَةً ثِنْتَيْنِ مِنَ الْحُورِ الْعِينِ وَسَبْعِينَ مِنْ مِيرَاثِهِ مِنْ أَهْلِ النَّارِ مَا مِنْهُنَّ وَاحِدَةٌ إِلاَّ وَلَهَا قُبُلٌ شَهِيٌّ وَلَهُ ذَكَرٌ لاَ يَنْثَنِي ".

“I Don’t Want My Husband to Have Heavenly Maidens”, responds to a faithful woman’s dilemma, under the banner of a veiled but seductively adorned figure::

I have read many hadiths and qur’anic verses regarding that men will be given the hoor al ayn (Heavenly Maidens) in Paradise. I believed that I was going to work on my faith together with my husband and Inshallah we would be together in Jannah. After reading more about the hoor al ayn, I just feel like I want to be single again and so I do not have to worry about meeting my husband in Paradise if I don’t have one. It kills me from inside knowing that the one I truly love will be given other women just because of their lust of women. I’m sorry but, aaothoobillah, it disgusts me. I always thought there will be no filth in Jannah, and that lust is a feeling of filth, so why will that exist there? Would it be permissible for me to separate from my husband? I feel like if I had no attachment with a spouse, then Inshallah I wouldn’t need one in the hereafter.

The female Muslim counsellor Zainab bint Younus asserts:

The Hoor al-Ayn (heavenly maidens) is merely one small part of the many, many rewards of Jannah. Indeed, each believer who enters Jannah will need only think of what they want, and it will be given to them. We as believing women will receive greater than anything we can imagine in comparison to the heavenly maidens. This thought should bring a great deal of comfort to our hearts. In Islam, sexual desire and feelings of lust are not considered evil or filthy; rather, they are part of our creation, as both men and women, and there is nothing wrong about having such feelings. Ask Allah to ease your heart, to renew your faith in Him, and to make you amongst the people of Jannah – with your husband.

But there are very serious contradictions in this carefully crafted view of Heaven under a male God with seemingly miraculous powers to solve all the glaring contradictions between an avowedly patriarchal religion, in which women are half the value of a man, veiled and in bondage to their male relatives and under pain of death by stoning for any autonomous reproductive choice, while men are granted explicit, unlimited, eternal sexual pleasure, and women are either consigned to be translucent houris, or given unspecified, undocumented substitute rewards.

The foundation contradictions remain. What is the meaning and purpose of unabated male sexual desire to copulate, in an eternal heaven where sexual reproduction no longer occurs? Why not higher conscious experiences of divinity transcending mere sexual infatuation, as occurs in samadhi and agape?

But the destructive anti-nature of the eschatological end-of-days becomes profoundly acute and devastating in the Day of Judgment, where in the Christian Revelation ἀποκάλυψις (apokalypsis) of John of Patmos, nature is needlessly assaulted in a triage of all life after which, the Earth and its biosphere are entirely destroyed::

Fig 158g: The Angel’s trumpet calls in Revelation invoke the triage of all living creatures to herald Christ’s return:

The first angel sounded, and there followed hail and fire mingled with blood, and they were cast upon the earth: and the third part of trees was burnt up, and all green grass was burnt up.

And the second angel sounded, and as it were a great mountain burning with fire was cast into the sea: and the third part of the sea became blood; And the third part of the creatures which were in the sea, and had life, died; and the third part of the ships were destroyed.

And the third angel sounded, and there fell a great star from heaven, burning as it were a lamp, and it fell upon the third part of the rivers, and upon the fountains of waters; And the name of the star is called Wormwood

And the fourth angel sounded, and the third part of the sun was smitten, and the third part of the moon, and the third part of the stars; so as the third part of them was darkened, and the day shone not for a third part of it, and the night likewise.

And the fifth angel sounded, and I saw a star fall from heaven unto the earth: and to him was given the key of the bottomless pit.And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth: and unto them was given power, as the scorpions of the earth have power. And it was commanded them that they should not hurt the grass of the earth, neither any green thing, neither any tree; but only those men which have not the seal of God in their foreheads.

This might sound like temporary respite at least for the plants, but the destruction doesn’t stop there, going on to releasing homicidal plagues of heavenly angels who pour out the vials of the wrath of God upon the Earth, leading to the battles of the Great Whore of Babylon, Ishtar the reviled symbol of female-inspired fornication, and the Beast amid cosmological conflagration and the battles of the forces of light and darkness.

Time itself stands still in absolute eternity:

And the angel which I saw stand upon the sea and upon the earth lifted up his hand to heaven, and sware by him that liveth for ever and ever, who created heaven, and the things that therein are, and the earth, and the things that therein are, and the sea, and the things which are therein, that there should be time no longer (R 10).

Fig 150h2: "His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns".
Would you buy a used car from this man?

The avenging Lord of divine justice eventually appears:

And I saw heaven opened, and behold a white horse; and he that sat upon him was called Faithful and True, and in righteousness he doth judge and make war. His eyes were as a flame of fire, and on his head were many crowns; and he had a name written, that no man knew, but he himself. And he was clothed with a vesture dipped in blood: and his name is called The Word of God. And the armies which were in heaven followed him upon white horses, clothed in fine linen, white and clean. And out of his mouth goeth a sharp sword, that with it he should smite the nations: and he shall rule them with a rod of iron: and he treadeth the winepress of the fierceness and wrath of Almighty God. And he hath on his vesture and on his thigh a name written, KING OF KINGS, AND LORD OF LORDS (R 19).

The final Judgment takes place, referring to the book of life shared by many traditions:

And I saw a great white throne, and him that sat on it, from whose face the earth and the heaven fled away; and there was found no place for them. And I saw the dead, small and great, stand before God; and the books were opened: and another book was opened, which is the book of life: and the dead were judged out of those things which were written in the books, according to their works. And the sea gave up the dead which were in it; and death and hell delivered up the dead which were in them: and they were judged every man according to their works. And death and hell were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death. And whosoever was not found written in the book of life was cast into the lake of fire. (R 20)

Fig 158h: “The number of the beast is 666” William Blake.

All ultimately culminating in the complete destruction of both Heaven and the “late planet” Earth, in favour of a heavenly Jerusalem:

And I saw a new heaven and a new earth:

for the first heaven and the first earth were passed away;

and there was no more sea. And I John saw the holy city,

new Jerusalem, coming down from God out of heaven,

prepared as a bride adorned for her husband (R 21).

This itself is a travesty of the Song of Songs, which became in the Hebrew tradition, due to Rabbi Akiva the allegory of YHVH and the Bide Israel, then converted by Pauline Christianity into Christ the Bridegroom and the Church, all of which are a travesty of the ancient Hieros Gamos of sexual fertility.

There follows no renewed biosphere but just scintillating urbanisation in the form of a heavenly city of Jerusalem, with a lone plant in the midst bearing fruits for the healing of the nations of humanity:

And he shewed me a pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb.

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits,

and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations.

Fig 158i: The Tree of Life in the new Jerusalem with the twelve gates, the throne of the lamb, and the twelve monthly fruit for the healing of the nations conflating the transcendent and the physical into a contradictory fantasy (Heavenly Jerusalem from Apocalypse 13th

Thus by implication and scriptural neglect, nature and the biosphere is consigned to the flames of warfare of “good” in the persona of Christ as an avenging ”Lord” on a horse against all the forces of other beliefs such as Ishtar, and the dark fallen angel of Satan, or Iblis or the Beast whose number is 666 χξϛ in Greek, although in Islam it is 616. The sheer scriptural neglect of nature is starkly highlighted by the failure of John of Patmos to mention wha has happened to the diversity of life mentioning “creature” only once for those in the ocean, and animals not at all except for the locusts of Hell, themselves not natural organisms, the domesticated horses of the apocalypse and the white steed of Christ.

It is clear that the source of an eternal concept of evil in opposition to good arises from religion itself, not nature, or humanity as such. The Origin of Satan, Elaine Pagels (1995) describes the social history, of a multifaceted adversary, running from the Hebrew notion of an angelic messenger of God sent to test ad impede, to the War Scroll's dark angel Mastema, created for the pit who rules in darkness, whose purpose is to bring about evil and sin. These accounts make clear how the concept of a war between good and evil is a dark creative product of the religious imagination. Revelation notes a past war in heaven in which Satan was cast into the world that tells of a fundamental schism within divinity itself, into dual polarities of dark and light:

Fig 158j: War in Heaven. Inset of The Haywain Triptych Hieronymus Bosch

And there was war in heaven: Michael and his angels fought against the dragon; and the dragon fought and his angels, And prevailed not; neither was their place found any more in heaven. And the great dragon was cast out, that old serpent, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him (R 12).

References to the Day of Judgment in Islam, likewise feature cosmological cataclysm, and death and resurrection of all, with the Muslims succumbing to a cool wind, avoiding the horrors of impending death and destruction of the Earth:

When is the day of resurrection? So when the sight becomes dazed,

And the moon becomes dark, And the sun and the moon are brought together,

Man shall say on that day: Whither to fly to? By no means! there shall be no place of refuge!

With your Lord alone shall on that.day be the place of rest (Quran 75:6).

When the trumpet is blown with a single blast and the earth and the mountains are lifted up and crushed with a single blow,

then, on that day, the terror shall come to pass, and heaven shall be split (9:13–16).

When the sun shall be darkened, When the stars shall be thrown down

When the seas shall be set boiling, When the souls shall be coupled, ...

When the scrolls shall be unrolled, When heavens shall be stripped off,

When Hell shall be set blazing,When Paradise shall be brought nigh

Then shall a soul know what it has produced (81:1,2,6,7,10-14).

The resurrection then leads to the judgment:

As for the one who is given his book in his right hand, he will say:

Take and read my book. I knew that I would be called to account.

And he will be in a blissful condition (Q.69:19–21) ….

But as for him who is given his book in his left hand, he will say:

Would that my book had not been given to me

and that I did not know my reckoning! (Q.69:25-26) …

Seize him and bind him and expose him to the burning Fire!(Q.69:30-31

But Islamic Heaven rather than the Heavenly city is a cultivated Edenic garden paradise, with fountains and plants but nothing like the wilderness of natural living diversity. The Quran suggests there are grapevines, date-palms and pomegranate trees in Paradise, and many others, but these are cultivated fruit-bearing plants that lack thorns:

There will be a success [Paradise], gardens and grape yards [78:31-32] In them [both will be fruits, date palms and pomegranates [55:68]. In them be every kind of fruit in pairs" [55:52] Among thornless lote-trees, among Talh trees with fruits piled one above another, In shade long-extended, By water flowing constantly, And fruit in plenty [56:27-32] Reclining upon the couches lined with silk brocade, and the fruits of the two Gardens will be near at hand [55:54].

A scattering of real and fictional animals such as the winged Buraq (that figured in the journey from Mecca to Jerusalem and up through the heavens and back by night) and the hoopoe hat brought new to Solomon about Bilquis the Queen of Sheba, are also mentioned in the Quran in Paradise. In terms of their place in the earthly hierarchy, animals are mentioned with humans and jinn. on the day of reckoning, all creatures will rise up and have justice for any wrong that was done to them, including animals. However, only humans and jinn will be judged on their actions and go on to the afterlife. Animals are viewed as creatures that are deemed to be in a state of constant worship and do not have free will. Like cultural laws of judgment, this concept is not divine, but a product of language and culture and the knowledgable ability of humans to choose to transgress culturally ordained doctrine, which other animals do not, despite being subjectively conscious intentional sentient beings, just as we are.

Fig 158i: A Mindanaoan Muslim Buraq.

Ideas of the afterlife evolved through cultural and religious interaction, from a common place of the dead into binary visions of good and evil – Heaven and Hell. The original Hebrew view of the afterlife was Sheol שְׁאוֹל an underworld place of darkness and gloom, the great rendezvous of all the tribes and families, where all the dead lay, sharing features of Greek Hades and the Babylonian Arallû, which gradually evolved into separate compartments for the good and bad (Pearson 1938) . In the time of the Kings, Gehenna became a hell, in which the wicked were tormented with fire, named after Gehinnom גֵיא־הִנֹּם the valley surrounding old Jerusalem and the site of the Tophet תֹּפֶת, where some kings of Judah were believed to have sacrificed their children by fire. It is noted in the Talmud as a place of purification, rather than eternal damnation, after which one is released from further torture.

The end of days notion of a Day of Judgment involving the alternate fates of heaven and hell was first pictured by Zoroaster as the cleansing fire of Ahura Mazda burning out the ignorance of Angra Mainyu in our first full model of the nature-violating hell fire and damnation later pictured in apocalyptic scenarios, from Revelation to the Quran. The paradise of Zoroastrianism is attained the fourth day after death by crossing the Bridge of the Separator, which widens when the righteous approach it. The righteous soul crosses the bridge and is met by a beautiful maiden who is the physical and feminine embodiment of all his good works on Earth. He is then escorted into the House of Song to await the Last Day.

Fig 158j: Zoroastrian Chinvat Bridge and the Judgment. Yazidism, a religion having roots in Iranic pre-Zoroastrian religion whose population Islamic state attempted to commit genocide upon, also cites an actual Silat bridge in Lalish that leads to the most holy Yazidi shrine. It symbolizes the connection and crossing over from the profane earthly world to the sacred, esoteric world. As in Zoroastrianism, the Silat Bridge in will also play a role at the end of times in Yazidism (Kreyenbroek 2005 39).

On this day, everyone will be purified and live in a new world absent of evil and full of youthful rejoicing. But for the less than righteous, the bridge turns on its side and becomes like a razor. The god Mithra is there with a scale to balance the good and evil deeds done during one's lifetime, and if evil deeds prevail, then the soul is tormented by an old hag before it falls off the bridge into a hell of purification worse than Dante's inferno, portrayed in the Vision of Arda Viraf.

Islamic traditions share the concept of Hell (Jahannam) with its seven enclosing gates, the record of deeds, the weighing of the soul, and the test-bridge, which widens for the righteous but narrows to a knife-edge for sinners so they all in the fire. al-Llah (in his mercy) reserves the power to save those whom he wills and to look favourably upon those for whom Muhammad intercedes. He has fixed a limit to the suffering of believers who have sinned either through past human ill deeds, by acts or the emotional afflictions caused and vice versa. However, for unbelievers, who refuse to acknowledge their Creator, there is no hope of final redemption from the fire.

However note carefully that the Zoroastrian hell was only a temporary state before one became purified and entered the paradisiacal realm, so although the fires of purification were gruesome in the extreme, the idea of eternal damnation is a perversion of the entire purification concept. Like Upanishadic and Buddhist traditions, Zoroastrianism seeks integration of the psyche through purification of faults, not eternal damnation.

Reincarnation is the evolutionarily-preposterous idea that the souls of humans and animals as well are reincarnated intact in another sentient being – in metempsychosis – the transmigration of the soul. In Buddhism it is the ego grasping at life which causes reincarnation, rather than the soul or self (atman). This means the progression of the psyche, supposedly towards enlightenment, is in root conflict with the natural diversity of life, and its biological evolution as we now know it to be 2,500 years later. Reincarnation cosmology is a mistaken consequence of the difficulty of achieving true enlightenment and is as inconsistent with both empirical biology and natural evolution, as is creationism and its offspring intelligent design.

The problems of nature, the soul, morality and doctrine are likewise particularly acute in Eastern religions, where an absolute moral law of karma is associated with reincarnation, in which animals and humans are conflated, in imagining animal incarnations as resulting from past human ill deeds by acts or the emotional afflictions caused and vice versa. Reincarnation cosmology is a mistaken consequence of the difficulty of achieving true enlightenment and is as inconsistent with natural evolution as creationism and its offspring intelligent design is.

Fig 158k: Human and human-animal reincarnation.

Reincarnation is the evolutionarily-preposterous idea that the souls of humans and animals are reincarnated intact in another sentient being – in metempsychosis – the transmigration of the soul. In Buddhism it is the ego grasping at life which causes reincarnation, rather than the soul or self (atman). This means the progression of the psyche, supposedly towards enlightenment, is in root conflict with the natural diversity of life, and its biological evolution as we now know it to be 2,500 years later.

There are four factors predisposing to negative karma: (1) very few people gain enlightenment in a given lifetime, (2) religion laments endless ego suffering, (3) humanity is threatening its own survival through our selfishness and exploitation of nature and (4) Vedic religions invoke the cumulative descent into the Kali Yuga, or Samvartakalpa. This gives karma a negative entropic influence, weighing down an organism’s capacity to survive due to negative factors, both in their inner constitutions and environmental circumstances. This becomes a tragic error of conception that raises a huge question over the permanence of the eternal soul in all religious traditions. Of course you might consider that the plants are giving us such good karma for keeping us alive using solar radiation, but being reborn as a plant? Here the sublime becomes the ridiculous.

The very notion of karma as an actual reality would thus place a huge moral drag on the evolutionary process, because an organism becomes unable to optimally adapt to and survive in the existing environment due to causal competition by past karmic factors putting a brake on reproductive and survival strategies, mutation and natural selection. It is also misappropriating nature as the generator of conscious life in favour of spiritual elitism over life itself.

It is particularly easy to see how Eastern religions, in which cosmic consciousness is perceived as transcendent over material nature, will perceive the soul, as the conscious continuum dominant over the natural living body. But the view is also shared by Orphic religion and Platonic philosophy, so it pervades Western thought as well, an idea also shared by Nietzsche, Schopenhauer and Kurt Gödel. Such transformations have an ancient heritage in animism, where everything is alive and human and animal identities are frequently exchanged. Many of the San trickster heroes such as Kaggen are thieranthropes that physically transform between human and animal.

Consequently, because of the continuity of rebirth and the intactness of the soul, there is no barrier to humans being reincarnated as animals and vice versa. Moreover your supposed identity is just a shell an exchangeable garment, so you are not even a human but just an eternal avatar, or in Buddhism a recycling ego grasping at life. A human who is lazy may be born as a sloth but the unique features of their soul remain latent until a later lifetime:

Reincarnation is a theory central to the religious practice or spiritual beliefs of millions around the world. We often hear stories of people remembering their past lives, but usually they tell of previous lives as humans. In some cases however, there are instances in which a person remembers stories of their past life as animal. When we realise that we have been born countless times, in various human and non-human forms we can begin to develop compassion within our minds and appreciate all forms of life to a greater degree. This leads to a harmonious relationship with various sentient beings, and the environment in which we all live (Tsem Rinpoche).

Reincarnation between humans and animals is thus not just confined to Eastern religions such as Vedanta, Buddhism and Jainism, but was shared by ancient Greeks including Pythagoras, Empedocles, and Plato. In “Dumb Beasts and Dead Philosophers” Catherine Osborne (2007 43-62) explores how moral claims can become counted as true, and how they can be discovered or acquired. Was Aristotle right to see continuity in the psychological functions of animal and human souls? The question cannot be settled without taking a moral stance:

Souls of individuals circulate (or transmigrate) from body to body, and can reappear in the bodies of other creatures. Since the soul remains the same (the same individual) from one life to the next, this has the consequence that the soul of animal x (say, my current dog) is the same individual soul as the soul of human being y (say, my deceased grandfather, or William Shakespeare). So long as there are no constraints on who can become what, it seems that we can then generalize and say that all dog souls are potentially human souls, and so are all worm souls, all frog souls, and all wasp souls. It is not just the ugly toad that might be your handsome prince in disguise. … A Pythagorean could consistently maintain that the soul is essentially the same soul, retaining all the fully developed human capacities, even though in its present condition, reincarnated as, say, a worm or a bird, it is unable to display the latent characteristics it possesses. And it follows that to claim that the similarity between species lies in the soul rather than the body allows for a far more radical identity between human and animal souls, a similarity that is not conned to minimal stimulus response or pain sensation of the sort often invoked in modern attempts to include the beasts in the same moral sphere as human beings.

But this idea is completely at odds with the principles of biological evolution and physical cosmology itself, where it subsumes the act of birth, impeding new innovation, just as creationism does. It leads to counterfactual conclusions about the population of sentient beings in the universe. What IS a sentient being? Where does a colony of cells end and an an organism begin? It would have disastrous consequences if it were true. The entire conservatism of species evolution based on our genomes depends on dogs giving birth to dogs, perhaps with a few tiny mutations, not sharks, humans or worms. The number of insects on earth vastly outnumber the mammals. The number of bacteria are inestimable. There are no reasonable boundaries where such a process would begin. If worms, why not amoebae, bacteria, or viruses, or even molecules? It is clear that reincarnation is a morally invoked philosophy that files in the face of all observational empirical evidence, based on treating sentient beings as simply conscious entities having no grounding in biological or genetic identity.

It is a condescending insult to the sanctity of biological life for human religious and cultural traditions to impose a false moral cosmology that treats animals as inferior karmic conditions of existence, with the same intrinsic flaws as Monotheistic dominion over nature, by divinely ordained human beings. Such beliefs are utterly damaging to the integrity of the biosphere and the key role it plays in ensuring human survival.

(9) Naturality versus Spirituality

Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father. (Gosp. Thomas 3)

‘His disciples said to him, "When will the kingdom come?" Jesus said, "It will not come by waiting for it. It will not be a matter of saying 'here it is' or 'there it is'. Rather, the kingdom of the father is spread out upon the earth, and men do not see it”.’ (Gosp. of Thomas (113)

Taken in the context of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, Jesus is saying:

(ai) life is enlightened in all the species and their symbiotic biospheric niches, (ii) existence is both subjectively conscious and physically real and (iii) it is we who are the enlightened ones too if we just come know ourselves and

(b) the physical reality is the enlightened paradisiacal kingdom lying before us, not an illusory heaven.

It’s to do with integrating conscious experience and the natural world, not a transcendent spiritualrealm. This is the opposite of Vedanta because it recognises the species are distinct, not just conscious sentient beings. Even the Upanishad of the Great Forest just uses nature as a backdrop for samadhi. I don't accept the “Father" notion, but the crux is that natural existence and the diversity of life comes first – primero uno – prima facie – not a human renunciation tower of elite inner mental states like zeno’s paradox heading to turtles all the way up as Vedanta does.

I am forced to preach this, like I’m standing on the last shore of Earth which is where I precisely am, in the antipodes, because no one in this industrial world of AI thinking is even remotely concerned about dumb animals or biodiversity preservation and would just as rather have a neural networked cartoon reality than protecting life itself.

John Kinneman: I think I hear what you are concerned about - a natural spirituality where there is, aside from all our striving, nothing more to gain than a genuine and aware life as a full experience itself, without the need or possibility of a "better place" in heaven. That better place is right here with better understanding, Is that a fair summary?

Your reply was only about the human quest and natural existence in the living universe as opposed to religious heavens and eternal life, but the preservation of life and other living beings appears to have become absent entirely. I don’t see how ethics can have any meaning unless we can be awash in the flux of life and feel what we are doing for life as a whole is right for life as a whole. That’s enlightenment in action, not a paradise just for ourselves as some begrudging acceptance of physical reality still adhering to human supremacy in dominion over nature.

Note that I said life is already enlightened in all the species and their symbiotic biospheric niches. That brought me back to what distinguishes human cultural “intelligence” from life as a whole. All mammal brains have evolved to deal with irreducible uncertainty in survival in their environmental existential crisis state. The only species that is not in its biospheric niche is humanity because our niche has undergone such excessive reconstruction that we have become technological culture. Now there’s a reason for this. The bodies of every other species are streamlined ecologically, to be fit for purpose, so dolphins, no matter how smart, have only fins and their culture is sexual and their actions apex predatory swimmers. Elephants have no fingers just stout stump feet and have a super proboscis but it can’t write or use a laptop. All apex predators are phenotypically streamlined for purpose and the herbivores too.

So the overwhelming conclusion is that primates have two unique evolutionary inventions as I have mentioned. Firstly fingers and opposable thumbs and secondly referential alarm calls that are species and context specific and need to be vocalised accurately. Human culture arose from these two unique adaptions that go all the way back to the lemurs, but humans are the only large ape species that have retained finely tuned vocalisations. Existence is universally semantic. A mother puma teaches her young by semantic example hunting while they watch. All mammals and smart birds have this generalised semantic sense and finely tuned vocalisation is an intrinsically semantic affair as Vervet monkeys demonstrate while the other great apes can mount only rough grunts and chutzpah cries.

So what we have become is a product of runaway memetic cultural feedback results of these two bodily attributes that are not a product of superior human intelligence but the reverse – human cultural intelligence is a peacock's tail red queen race between culture and nature as a result of fiddling fingers and referential alarm calls forming a gigantic resonating memetic feedback process that became human social culture and then, from the poison arrow head and the wheel, to chemical and industrial technology and then the internet and AI. We are the victims of a reverberating echo chamber of viral memetic culture, so now we are surrounded by machines rather than living organisms and are trying to recreate the One to unite us all to find our way back to Eden, while our culture is biospherically unsustainable, propagating itself in pastimes like the wild animal markets and bushmeat trade, mutually assured nuclear destruction and climate and habitat crisis.

Thus there is no excuse for calling any well-adapted mammal or bird a dumb animal or lesser than elite human culture. A mouse has as good a cortical neuronal count ratio to its whole brain neuronal count as a human and a far higher cortical neuronal count to brain volume, so it is in principle as intelligent as a human except for overall size, but then it has eight times as many pyramidal cells in the same volume of tissue. Birds like parrots and song bids have about a five-fold higher pallium neuronal count for size than equivalent mammals including humans.

We see these animals as dumb because they don't have a cultural language like us, but that’s because they are highly adapted to their biospheric niche. There is no point to ethics or morality, if it is just a recipe for human species elitism even if it feels okay and certainly not if it is based on rational thought alone.

Now what’s the acid test of all this? A thing I think is key is that the emphasis in both Vedanta and all religio-spiritual accounts in the “scriptures” including Monotheism aren't reality itself, but just a cultural description of what men think. You may choose to extol them as higher knowledge, or the wisdom of the saints and sages, but they are not natural accounts, or accounts of untrammelled nature, but accounts of the disconnected human psyche caught up in the feedback loop of cultural reification perceiving deep spiritual reality in elite human conscious states extrapolated onto the universe as a whole as God and cosmic consciousness. But you can't substitute the description of reality, which may seem to be essential wisdom, for realty itself.

No greater illusion can you have than thinking the Vedas are an ultimate source of reality when we know they are above all a cultural description, not reality itself. They are no closer to reality than a physicalist description of neural network activity is. By reading them as trusted sources of wisdom and insight, we are simply confessing to our inability to submerge ourselves in the deep wilderness and know ourselves as the cosmos knows us. This is simply applying the acid test of true naturalness. Anything that we can primarily identify as cultural is part of our cultural peacock’s tail. We can't assume scriptures are trusted sources, or the true intimations of divinity because they are deeply biased by the shimmering tail of culture. Elite spirituality is intrinsically flawed and obviously so. Before we can understand any of the superficial descriptions of reality, like the scriptures, we need to plunge ourselves deeply into the wilderness of conscious experience beyond all towns and countries, not clutch at the straws of wisdom in the literature for want of personal knowing. Only then can we come back and reappraise the scriptures and see them as they are with their own unique mix of the knowledge of other peoples' experiential journeys of discovery and know how near or far they actually are from the natural condition that is emergent from the cosmos itself and is ultimate realty in the raw.

This apples to all utopian visions, from the noosphere, which lays claim to a spiritual ascendency of thought over nature and life itself, to all technological utopias, in which artificial or hybrid intelligence is conceived as the future of cosmic intelligence and the foundation of existence. If any such notion invokes deprecation life of the evolving biological biosphere and is founded on cultural notions per se it needs to be assessed accurately for what it is and found wanting from the wilderness perspective. We can't even begin this quest unless we submerge ourselves so deeply in the flow that we are totally and completely engulfed.

The first and hardest acid test is simply to rescue biodiversity back from the brink of mass extinction. That’s the ethic of conscious survival. It’s not altruistic, its mutual and it's necessary. I don't see we have any kind of "optional" cultural ethics about this. This is the problem of "the Kingdom lies before us but men do not see it" in full cultural technicolour.

John: I don't see how bio-naturalism in SEC addresses the influence of consciousness on nature or its role in nature.

Chris: Nature is consciousness incarnate in living diversity. What you call "bio-naturalism” is the responsibility to life we inherit by realising this. We cannot be enlightened unless we take full personal responsibility as the conscious sentient guardians of life for who and what we are as a species, because otherwise we are psychopaths and our culture will self-destruct. Life has risen to climax in biospheric symbiosis, in which diversity is the key to fertile fecundity. We emerged in a biosphere where life thrived because animals were eating plants and carnivores were eating herbivores and diseases were raging when species over-reproduced. Without the diversity that arises from evolution at the edge of chaos, humanity would never have evolved. So for every second of this incarnate existence we need to protect, not just conscious life, but the genetic and phenotypic diversity that preserves it in future.

Subjectivity is coeval wth the cosmic origin so may manifest in natural phenomena like storms and all life. How can we tell a hurricane is not subjectively aware since we can't even experience one another's consciousness? But full sentient consciousness as we know it emerged in the eucaryote endosymbiosis which is the second great becoming after the origin of life itself, when the cell membrane became freed for sentient edge of chaos excitability. Life is not just a molecular accident that made RNA and organic robots. The symmetry-broken forces of nature are the mandala that is the true Veda. Physics is the sacred law that shows us in biology how we consciously arose and what our ultimate role and responsibilities to life as a whole are in the universe. This is the full cosmic Mahayana, not the spiritual hinayana. Full consciousness is a living property of eucaryote cells that rises to conscious sentience in us through intimate social coupling of neurons and neuroglia as resonating social cellular systems a billion years later. The way molecular biogenesis and living evolution work is as a fractal climax of the four forces of nature interactively rising to consummation. It is the climax and pinnacle of natural cosmology and life is the holy grail of consciousness, so that the entire universe can become aware and know itself as we also are known of ourselves.

We do have an existential role and that is to protect the living diversity of life as a whole. It’s not ethics, it’s the joyous cosmology of existence. Until I can say prima facie and get a cognisant response, we are still at ground zero from here to there. That’s why I said I was standing a lone voice on the last shore of Earth!

John: So, you are saying the highest ethic is diversity. Indeed ecologists have made this argument, but it is hard to support in any absolute sense, i.e., as the primary value. Diversity has increased and decreased without human involvement. There is probably a floating optimum diversity for some arbitrary measure of biosphere function at any given state of the biosphere, but not a general goal of increasing, decreasing, or stable diversity. The idea of diversity as a universal, "prima facie" value of life was popular in the 70's but that turns out to be relative along with every other natural value. The thing is humans are doing the valuation -- nature seems happy with whatever state it is in and any status has multiple possible futures. The core ideas in the Vedas and Upanishads are looking for the deepest principles having discovered that all values based on form are relative. Thus Maya. Going beyond any measure of good or bad state or form, Veda concludes that the main principle in material existence must be cycles.

Chris: Nature is not “happy” in the state it is currently in, of an impending human caused mass extinction, already causing acute stresses. I’m not supporting diversity in an absolute sense, but as a cosmological process in becoming our realisation. Yes biodiversity is neither constant nor is it a simple rising exponential like the human delusion of the GNP. But all the previous serious reductions in diversity were astronomical or tectonic mass extinctions. They weren't because life was “happy” to suffer a mass extinction. Individual organisms are simply striving to reproduce and care for their young in an uncertain perilous world. You can’t turn a blind eye to the sixth mass extinction by humanity, by claiming samadhi shows everything is relative (maya) and that things just go up and down karmically in cycles.

Fig 150o: The solar system formed 4.57 bya ago and Life on Earth has existed for 3.5 bya, but the chemical elements required multiple previous supernovae go back some 10 bya in a universe of some 13.5 bya. There have been five catastrophic mass extinctions due to astronomical and tectonic crises which take millions of years to recover from. A sixth is happening as we speak.

Saying as an elite human ecologist that life doesn’t care if it lives or dies is expedient negligence. You know that life on Earth has taken a good quarter of the universe’s lifetime and had to be preceded by multiple supernova events to generate the atomic diversity of the Oort Cloud, going back some 8-10 bya in all. Every significant decline is a mass extinction and we are already committing an awful near-Fermi extinction as we speak. To say nature seems happy with whatever state it is in is elite cultural condescension. How is nature supposed to respond? Tell that to a mother lioness who is trying to teach her cubs to hunt and not starve! Are the lions supposed to weep and gnash their teeth? You know the answer in full crisis. The weeds, rodents and parasitic fungi take over and the biosphere darkens and makes fragile human culture unliveable. But you are pretending that climax diversity in Paradise on the cosmic equator is not even a cosmological reality, so you need to refresh your cosmological world view in the fractal biogenesis in figure 1. Yes it transcends all the pretensions of spiritual ethics just as the edge of Chaos transcends the universal good.

John: Your description of edge of chaos in mathematics and neuroscience gives me some clues to your view. But the ontology is still very weak. Chaos, like all other metrics, are descriptions or models, and as such they will never measure experience itself. Only a meta-level can describe it, but still not have it. So my question is why the metrical view of chaos should be thought to tell us anything at all about ethical and moral dimensions.

Chris: It's not the metrical view of chaos at issue, its the edge of chaos as a cosmological principle and it's a definitive counter-example to the ethical and moral delusion of a benign rule of order in Vedantic and religious belief and it IS cosmic-ontology: Being exists at the edge of chaos, not in a hypothetical regime of benign or imposed spiritual order. It's manifested in cosmic inflation as the source of symmetry-breaking into an expanding universe, in the cosmic web, in galactic gas clouds and astronomical collisions, the molecular dance of biogenesis, permeates mutational evolution and is the crest of neurodynamic consciousness in environmental and existential uncertainty. The ontology of being arises from the edge of chaos. Order is by its dynamic nature tyrannical and leads to stasis and extinction – even cyclical regimes of order have annihilating attractors. The remaining asteroids have chaotic orbits lacking resonances with those of the other planets, because those that did have periodic mode-locking all suffered astronomical collisions. Yes the edge of chaos is a description of reality, but so is science and the Vedas and all scripture too. We need to learn from and respect the edge of chaos cosmology of life, not assert a priori that the Vedas say it all comes around in all too oppressive cycles of divine order, any more than the stark division into heaven and hell of Monotheism.

The forces of nature predispose the universe to interactive climax through their non-linear charge dynamics just like the non-linear simple deterministic examples of the Lorenz flow, resulting in the butterfly effect, but in a hugely more overwhelming quantum molecular process. Biogenesis happens as a far from equilibrium dissipative system and all life flows from it on the same basis. We are “negentropic” organisms by virtue of free energy sources. We don't and can't impose order on the chaotic entropic universe, because it’s cutting off the hand that feeds us life. We have to accept that all life’s processes are dissipative edge of chaos phenomena and that's how life and conscious life can come into being and continue to exist. Hence pure spirituality seeking the rule of order is hubris.

We can imagine that human activity is a force for order, making controllable technology and industry that seems to tame the wilderness, but it’s all hubris of the most foolish kind. If we take the entire flux of assumed order-inducing human activities on the planet, including industrial manufacture and the silicon revolution, they are completely offset by a huge increase in entropy from fossil fuel burning that cannot be sustained. Even solar and wind technology are simply robbing the biosphere directly or indirectly of its radiant energy sources which matters less but is still a rort. So the whole delusion is a house of cards and it certainly doesn't establish an example of order constraining the laws of nature.

Life is a non-equilibrium quantum molecular dynamical system at the edge of chaos. The plants are complex far from equilibrium living “solar panels” generating glucose, so they grow in fractal scale, but they don't impose order on chaos. All animal species act to reduce order, either by eating plants, or other animals. Fungi stand in the middle, coopting parasitic and saprophytic roles. Bacteria, archaea and protista likewise. Nowhere do you find any meta-causalities imposing order on an otherwise chaotic universe. Life works within and with the existential milieu. There is some sense in the notion of autopoiesis as an abstraction of homeostasis that describes how the organism evades death and entropic decay teleologically, so you can elucidate the ways in which life accrues entropy reduction from free energy to enable organismic survival. But none of it is order imposed on chaos.

If you look at the information content of the human genome of 3x10⁹ base pairs, it is a vanishing fraction of the complexity of the 10¹⁰ neurons with 10¹⁵ synaptic connections. Embryogenesis from the zygote to the organism is an exercise in utilising edge of chaos to bootstrap the fractal complexity of the human organism. You can trace this in some detail but a lot of it remains mysterious because it uses all the principles of symmetry-breaking that the standard model of physics can induce, from the two-cell stage on. It’s a fallacy to imagine that genetic coding specifies brain structure. What we know is that waves of cellular migration by neurotransmitter type pass through the cortex each giving rise to successive symmetry-breaking that organises the five to six layers of the cortex by some 100 neuronal types, Many of these, like the 5HT1a neurons, still play a key role in cortical activation and inhibition of consciousness. The process completes before birth in chaotic neurodynamic excitations, working from the sensory organs, backwards through the thalamic ganglia to the cortex, that enable the networks to develop a sense of “community” functionality.

So I’m trying patiently and gently to nudge you all to completely let go of your delusions of spirituality as ultimate transcendent order because it is unsustainable in the universe in which we consciously exist and a deleterious soft-sell for doctrinal oppression at the next stage.

Yesterday I picked up the 2022 edition of Patrick McNamara’s “Cognitive Neuroscience of Religious Experience”. What is signal about this is that he is a staunch supporter of religion in the brain and has previously been disparaging about psychedelic mystical experiences. Suddenly this edition has a full chapter on psychedelics which is an excellent overview ending focusing on psychedelic ”entity” experiences, which may be sourced in him having had a DMT experience. These entities are in many forms the equivalent of my meeting with Brahman that evoked SEC as an inspirational response. Now what is pivotal is that I experienced Brahman both as ultimate reality and as an Ishvara-like semi-divine entity. Claiming Nirguna Brahman is the featureless source and Saguna is the manifest secondary aspect, is fundamentalistic twaddle. The vision is just a divine vision and that's it. It is corrupt and wrong of the rishis to have a samadhi where at great effort, they touch the edge of this overwhelming phenomenon and then claim the universe is made by cosmic consciousness, or that moral karma pervades the universe, or that divine order rules, or that it will all end in annihilation until the new cycle in a universe doomed to spiritual groundhog day.

The reality is we are and have become through our biospheric dominance, the cosmological guardians of the generations of life who have lost our way in religious fixation and spiritual and utopian capitalistic laissez-faire pretensions. We need to (1) experience each vision with no presumptions and (2) save the future diversity of life from our own destruction so that future generations can know and experience this ultimate joyous cosmology unfolding.

John: Writing this response was difficult. It is a very complex issue and treacherous territory. You should know first that I am a strong conservationist, even having risked my life in Africa in active wildlife protection and conservation efforts. I support a Gaia worldview and advocate for animal rights, having had a number of conversations with Jane Goodall and Mark Beckoff. We are indeed in the 6th and most rapid mass extinction event in known history of the Earth.

The total numbers nearing 40-50% species loss have not yet exceeded prior natural extinctions, but the rate of loss is much greater that previous extinction events, and projections are clearly dire. This is the first unnatural extinction event, caused by human activity. So, again, in technical terms, nature has seen it before, but we haven’t as a global society. Globally, 50% of the usable land has been converted to human use. We've doubled fixed nitrogen inputs exceeding natural use capacity and creating dead zones. We've doubled CO2 inputs creating a climate crisis and global range shifts that affect all natural populations as well as agriculture - our own food supply. So we do now have controlling interest of the Earth Corporation. The Wild Foundation has a program advocating for “Nature Needs Half”, since most measures of human dominance (biodiversity loss, land use conversion, CO2 inputs, fixed nitrogen inputs, etc.) have us on a 50:50 par with nature.

Even ecologists don’t have a simple answer, although many think they do. The Vedic / Deep Ecology view is that there really isn’t a line between human and natural, thus we have to manage both by the same principles, derived from a deep introspection of who we are first, and therefore projecting that backwards into evolution to understand what nature is. That is not an anthropomorphic exercise, it is being informed by the unique view we have into the Self that each living creature has of its own. It is our only way of studying and understanding that aspect of existence. So, I think my initial reaction was that these things are not about what nature wants, they are about what we should want. It has to be linked to human values both to recognize the problem and to find the solution, because other measures are inadequate and can be ignored. I think to be an advocate of living nature we need to work on the human mind to correct our perceived separation from nature. Nature will find a balance with human activity. Its the human species that isn't behaving adaptively. So let’s learn from nature.

I also believe in spiritual values that emerge in natural life, populations, and ecosystems. Each natural system has an essence that can be felt; what I would say is a sacredness that emerges from complex system qualities, not numbers. I think it emerges mainly with time that a system has had to develop complex internal relations, for example, an old growth forest. There was one in Hawaii I used to stop at returning from work. I could get a sense of eternity instantly there - it was palpable. Spirituality is always associated with a sense of the eternal, and that’s what emerges when nature is allowed to evolve its complexity. What is spiritual and what is worldly? Spiritual is called "real" by some, but what is meant is eternal. The world is temporal. I also think other creatures sense this internal difference as part of their identity, as we do but certainly differently. I think all creatures have some sense of the eternal, that it even figures in their health and prosperity. Just because it is more-so with us doesn't mean we can deny it for other species. So I think that is the aspect we need to respect and protect. The other measures will follow. Maybe the Jains go too far, but they make a point. Still, this sense of the eternal, the divine; it is transcendent. The material presence of life probably builds toward manifestation of eternal qualities if not disturbed. But along the way it endures all manner of setbacks and change, affording no material outcome as a reliable indicator of health and wellbeing except to let it take a natural course. The thing is we can’t let nature take a natural course unless we do also — we’re too involved. I think we have to re-learn from nature what it means to be fully human. The needed study is of the human condition.

Chris: That’s a great account of the dilemma of the biosphere and I agree with you in all the intricate details of the problem and of course I agree wholeheartedly with you in your closing statement. So let's move on to deal with what it means to be fully human. Some of this I have covered before but I am setting it into the record now, because in writing it as a coherent biodiversity record, I discovered several things about it that explain karmic events including how biospheric jihad arose through the AP article below.

First before engaging the treacherous territory of biodiversity conservation, let me engage with what I would call naturalistic spirituality which I hold to be the true spirituality of living existence, not contrived by Vedic scripture or intimations of omniscient and omnipotent godly rule, not cultural morality designed to control human folly, but immanent and transcendent nature. I critique only pure spirituality as an anthropomorphic cultural delusion of human ascendence over nature, not spirituality itself.

We take a step back to the late 1980s, when I was doing mushrooms in the Opuhi meeting house. This is a wild and beautiful wilderness peninsula we bought together, but NZ is a nation-wide problem for all native species because Aotearoa was even more isolated than Madagascar and Australia and had only lizards and birds and a great eagle as apex predator, the largest raptor on Earth, that the Maoris killed off early on. Consequently every feral animal, including stoats, possums, rats, cats and dogs can wipe out our native birds, particularly our most iconic species the kiwi, which is a voracious feeder with a long neck and bill. In addition, NZ is one of the most farmed lands on Earth, so the North Island has lost the vast majority of its great Kauri forests to the lumber trade and they are now subject to an imported lethal parasite Our land was a last bastion of nature on the coast of the Coromandel and we still hear kiwis, but for the last 30 years we fear we are hearing their last call, despite poison baits, possum and stoat traps and banning dogs. One unassuming dog in Northland managed to wipe out 500 tagged kiwis in a nature reserve at a sitting because one chomp on their neck crushes their lungs and they suffocate. What is extremely frustrating is that attempts to erect a possum barrier cross the tip of our peninsula has been met with vehement resistance from the farming and hunting lobby, poison drops are opposed as well even though they are helping the native species and Buddhists feel unable to control feral animals because vermin are simply conscious sentient beings with no distinction from the kiwis, so they don't protect the native species.

One moonlit night I had a vision that goes as follows. Here's the song: 'Elohim

We are living ... on the open road

and we are carrying ... such a heavy load.

The arms of destiny ... are open in despair,

cause man is killing the creatures ... and poisoning the air.

We are whispering ... across the heavens

and all the creatures ... they echo in reply.

We are the very blood ... of the tree of life.

We are the void and the shining light.

We are the eternal gypsy spirits of the universe.

We have been here since it all began.

We will outlast its final passing.

We are here to free the heart of man.

Now this is clearly related to what you are talking about when you say "spirituality". It is clearly about the eternal, from alpha to omega, and it saying that we are somehow all eternal spirit beings on an endless journey and that all of life is consciously sensitive to this as we are as conscious human beings. And it's saying exactly what you are saying about liberating humanity in freeing the heart of man.

But there is a paradox here. In the mushroom state I am an avatar and what I am experiencing is a vision that is telepathically aware with all life that has ever existed and will ever exist in future everywhere all at once, as a kind of “Fourier hologram of all souls” and I am one of them here incarnating, as I lie in the long grass among the crickets in the moonlight, listening to the waves breaking on the shore far below. No matter how ephemeral and transient mortal life is, somehow this is the quintessence that is the healing of all existential angst. To know this is to stand beyond the mortal coil and know that whatever, forever this is the joyous cosmology of eternal existence.

But the beautiful thing is that I can experience this as a state of inspired grace without having to say "I saw the face of God" or that this is the Gospel you have to believe, to have faith, or that Brahman or Vishnu pre-conceived it all, because its just the nature of naturalistic spiritual reality to see, know and experience these astounding things, and to invoke the words and sing it with one's haunting heart and soul and later make a production out of it with my son Heath to give expression to it. It doesn't have to become religious doctrine because any time we want, we can go back into the visionary state and know this again and maybe in quite a different way. That's the divine luxury of the visionary condition. It's what Aldous Huxley tried to express in Island as an equally apocalyptic tale of downfall.

Note also there is no “megaGod” ruling this "spiritual realm" with a rod of adamant. It is we who are the avatars visiting the incarnate condition to bring the universe alive. We don't need to claim it's all a dream of Vishnu or that the universe was made by un-manifest Nirguna Brahman. We are already the deities and can take life as it comes. We don't need to talk about sin or the day of judgment, or moral causality because we ARE the spirits on the journey of awakening existence.

Now you came to the 1992 Rio convention quoting chatGPT "The Earth Summit held in Rio de Janeiro in 1992 was a pivotal moment for global biodiversity conservation. At this summit, the Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) was opened for signature, marking a global commitment to conserve biological diversity, promote sustainable use of its components, and ensure the fair and equitable sharing of benefits arising from genetic resources."

Now that's not quite what happened, because the US failed to ratify it and never has since and still stands as merely an associate member, because of the desire to own the natural genomes of planet Earth for US capital exploitation in a tragedy of the commons you also referred to in Garret Hardin’s work.

So on 19th July 2001 to mark the near decade of non-compliance I posted on Yahoo the lyrics to another much more dreadful ditty "Jihad The Song of the Biosphere" disquietingly sung in odd fives ... in a descending refrain like the Delphic oracle brooding over poison laurel, in which the sins of the father GHW Bush in failing to ratify Rio were visited on the son GW Bush in failing to ratify Kyoto. This was utterly karmic arising directly out of an AP posting in the local newspaper, so it isn't some hideous twist of my own deranged psyche.

The Hollywood Syndrome - Is the US the Global Satan ? Associated Press/NZ Herald Jun 2001 MAYBE George W. Bush has done the world a favour. When he renounced the Kyoto treaty on greenhouse emissions (because it would hurt America) he helped to peel away the mask of sanity from Uncle Sam, revealing him for what he is, in all his savagery and nonchalance a glutton and a psychopath. Forget the Taleban, Gaddafi or the beastly Saddam Hussein, it is the United States that is out of control the wildest rogue nation of all.

Here is an excerpt of the lyrics:

You tell us tales of hollywood

of star wars and the common good

you told us global warming

was a litany of lies

factory chimneys were the prize

you claim all living creatures are your intellectual property

you fail to ratify every treaty, which doesn't give you more

have I heard this all before?

when it comes to the final struggle

jihad of the biosphere

there's only one true rogue nation

the great American shaitan

big brother, you are Uncle Sam.

walking in the twilight down in the valley of shadows

when will you comprehend

the damage you have wrought ... in your indiscretion?

can we undo the death trance you have set in motion?

will you discover the fabric of love that ignites us?

can we embrace the ocean of life that unites us?

all our lives long this journey has been our destination

if we get this one wrong

will there be any chance for restoration

if we waste the last shoreline

can there be any way to resurrection?

can we touch the sky?

can we fly so high

we'll pass right to the other side

and never fall in flames?

will we ever be the same again?

we'll become the living soul

the primal source the shining goal

the beginning and the end of life

the happiness and the pain

can we bear it all again?

Then 55 days later, on the 11th Sep 2001 at 1 am, as I prepared to go to bed, we all sit up transfixed watching in real time, the very events of the jet liners passing right to the other side of the WTC towers and falling in flames. Suddenly the song had become a dark prophecy of the genocide in New York, walking in the twilight valley of shadows of the smoke and ashes of the devastation, and the painful recovery process in the "fabric of love that unites us", capped off with "can we bear it all again?" anticipating the then mayor of New York saying "the number of casualties will be more than any of us can bear". Even more disquieting "we'll become the primal source the shining goal" as if the narrator IS the terrorist seeking the face of al-Llah, as if my "spirit" has ranged over all the collective consciousness the event evoked, with the driving force of the rhythm dulcimer evoking the cruising planes' arrival at ground zero, all locked ultimately into the impending mass extinction of the biodiversity of planet Earth caused by human folly.

Here is the video version of the song: Jihad: Song of the Biosphere

If you have the patience to watch it in full you will also see all the implications of Israel and Palestine today echoing out of the second intifada, showing today's plight continues.

Next we come to the writing of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, which is equally karmic.

I had stopped taking mushrooms for seven years because I was long sighted and had acute closed angle glaucoma, which can explode one’s eyeballs overnight and had been causing me to become half-blinded when psychedelics dilated my pupils, stopping the flow of fluid in the eyeball from escaping. But then I was given a complete lens replacement in both eyes, which corrected the condition, so to find the answer to life, the universe and everything I took a half-dose of quality dried mushrooms that I grow myself, when needed, from spores.

This encounter adds another completely new dimension to the spiritual vision quest. I meditate and fall down into the epiphany of being like a jewelled chamber and there in the midst of it is Brahman both as ultimate reality and as the avatar persona engaging me, just as in a near death experience telepathically informing me that I must go back into my incarnation and save life throughout the universe, because, without mortal life caught incarnate in flagrante delicto in the centre of the cyclone of reality, Brahman is as vulnerable as I am because without mortal sentient beings to witness their presence the eternal ‘Elohim are just as vulnerable as self-doomed humanity if the diversity of evolving life is allowed to be seriously depleted or liquidated, just as we cannot be sure the physical universe itself can exist without conscious observers of it, so it is not just life on the biosphere of Earth, or the human species that depends on it, but the entire cosmos that is at stake as Brian Cox warned on BBC ver the climate crisis that the extinction of life on Earth might rob the galaxy of its meaning.

There are whole dimensional layers to this experience. Firstly it is a confirmation of what psychedelic researchers call “entities” or supernatural agents (SAs) which are visionary agents having a sense of veridical agency, just like other people we meet in waking life. They are not imagined or imaginary and veridically possess all the tokens of autonomous agency and personality.

Tagliazucchi et al. (2016) found that the DMN, salience and FPN or fronto-parietal executive function network and the thalamus showed increased global connectivity under the drug but decreased within-network integrity. The increase in global connectivity observed under LSD correlated with subjective reports of ego dissolution. The authors suggested that increased cross talk between DMN, salience and FPN, when these individual networks are not functioning normally, could blur boundaries between self and world in such a way as to lead to ego dissolution, mystical experiences and the experience of SAs. … The SA was considered to be a conscious being (96 percent), intelligent (96 percent), benevolent (78 percent), sacred (70 percent) and had agency in the world (54 percent). Most respondents believed that the SA was absolutely real, not hallucinated, with 72 percent believing that the entity continued to exist after their encounter. It is the nature of such quantum change experiences that the reality continues long after the experience as a definitive encounter.

So these are not just hallucinations while religious or pure spiritual experiences are real. In fact one can assert that they are more real both experientially and because they present new confounding insights that contradict or unravel pre-conceived religious and scriptural assumptions. They are an experience of true moksha outside our incarnations accessible to all, just as the Huichol traverse the nierika portal to the realm of the spirit ancestors.

There are also profound spiritual and religious paradigm shifts involved. Central here is that eternal Brahman is declaring with the utmost compassion: (a) that the mortal coil is the centre of the cyclone of reality, because, unlike the spirit realm it is both physical and conscious. (b) That mortal conscious existence is a/the central phenomenon of existence, not an imaginary spiritual heaven or cosmic mind making the universe. (c) That the solution to our existential dilemma and the meaning of existence is right here and now in the universe in which we consciously exist, to save and flower life in all its dimensions and assist the unfolding of a deeper and deeper biospheric consciousness so that the universe can come fully alive and aware of its own divinity. (d) That it is because we are organismically mortal sexual beings that we are making this journey of grace in our incarnations to heal the universe, and because we can’t take it with us when we go, all the problems of egotism dissolve and rather than renunciation of living existence as Buddhism teaches, we achieve this by embracing life to the full in full integration with life as a whole as compassionate avatars of existence.

This is why we are mortally sexual and have to be so, for complex sentient life to exist in the entropic universe, and no matter what our hopes and intimations of eternal immortality might be, we can fulfil these in our vision quests because through the biospheric sacraments, we are also the spiritual avatars of reality, so that any one of us could pronounce the Kingdom that lies before us but men do not see it, although the birds and fish precede us.

It is not the Vedas, nor is it Monotheism, but a radical transformation of the traditions to bring life to the very centre of the holy grail of existence. It doesn’t assert that God or the cosmic mind made the universe but accepts physical reality and conscious existence as they are found empirically to be, while providing an avenue to true enlightenment biospherically through the living sacraments that are themselves and affirmation of the sacramental path that founded both the Vedas and the Christian sacramental tradition of soma and sangre.

This isn’t just a second best option to religious heaven to have to live in the mortal coil, it is how the avatars of the cosmos come into being in biological participation, so that existential reality can exist and come into being more and more fully in the great consummation of Paradise on the cosmic equator in space-time.

There is no greater Mahyana than this, because it accepts and flows intimately with life as a whole, rather than renouncing it and shares all its ecstasy, joy, redemption, pain, suffering and annihilation in naked lunch in ultimate reality on the lawn of time and celebrates all its offspring throughout our generations forever.

So the consequence of this moksha epiphany that formed Symbiotic Existential Cosmology as a thing already conceived in the few moments of my meeting with Brahman like Fred Hoyle’s story of “The Black Cloud” trying to inform humanity at light-speed the true nature of existence at such a pace that no human mind could take it in without blowing a fuse, going into convulsions and keeling over is the true spirituality of nature itself.

To me there is no case to answer, about whether or how to save the diversity of life. It’s a visionary sine qua non. It pulses in every vein in my body and issues from the pores in my skin and the very prana, vitality or psyche that I breathe. We must protect the diversity of life, as a whole, not just so that humanity will survive in the biosphere, so that the conscious universe can flower on Earth over evolutionary time scales in which forms of consciousness we have not yet conceived can come into being. I must communicate this far and wide like mushroom spores. We are not the end of the road. Apocalypse is the covers being thrown off reality in the unveiling of scientific, psychedelic, sexual and spiritual revolution that is us finding our true calling to protect life in its natural diversity so that new experiences new life forms and new forms of cosmic consciousness can emerge.

The search for meaning in existence IS the vision quest and its resolution is natural existence, not a religious imaginary hegemony, nor a fragile technological utopia, which robs the Earth of its evolutionary fecundity for all time and leaves the tattered ashes of a Fermi self-extinction, or a whimpering hinayana of weeds, vermin and diseases amid a hothouse climate that could become like Venus, beautiful to behold in the night sky, but a deathly realm of acidic lightning storms and unliveable scorching wastes.

I am lord of two ways. I am master of up and down.

I am as a man who is a new man, with new limbs and life,

and the light of the Morning Star in his eyes.

And I, I am on the threshold. I am stepping across the border.

The central initiative to save humanity and the biosphere from a human-induced Fermi self-extinction needs to be articulated as a quantum change of heart and mind, which also has an integral spiritual value and is the true meaning of life, the universe and everything. This needs to be the primary sacrosanct objective of human culture, as a cultural, economic and ecological necessity. The principal catalytic arena of this process has to arise from a dedicated group of people conveying their certainty that this is the core issue causing our existential crisis and spreading the certainty to others that this is a win-win that is the only way forward that is consistent with our own long-term survival and the survival of our blue-green planet as we know it.

We are heading at near light-speed to a mass extinction of life. Wild species biomass has been reduced to a level inconsistent with evolutionary survival and species extinction rates are already apocalyptic on time scales of a good 50 millions years, taking us back long before humanity existed. Greenspoon et al. (2023) conclude that all wild land mammals alive today now have a total mass of only 22m tonnes. Humanity now weighs in at a total of around 390m tonnes. Domesticated species, such as sheep and cattle, in addition to other hangers-on such as urban rodents, add a further 630m tonnes. Thus as of 2023 all wild land mammals represent only 22/(390+630)=0.02 or 2%. The figure has risen from 22.5 2to 46 times from 2018. This is simply unsustainable and is not even taking into account endangered and vulnerable species with already low populations. Human induced zoonotic diseases including both covid-19 and the fungal plague wiping out amphibians worldwide are becoming a burgeoning risk to ourselves and all species on Earth.

We are failing to keep species essential to humanity in a robust genetic and ecological state. Both crop and horticultural plants and domesticated animals are selected for productivity rather than genetic robustness. Hyper-productive monoculture is the central basis of productivity. Many plant crops are either cloned, fast growing hybrids or increasingly genetically engineered. Many have become divorced from their natural habitats, which have in turn been all but erased by habitat exploitation. Fruit and vegetable species are increasingly seedless and lacking their wild disease resistance and nutritional value. Domestic animal species are selectively bred to the point where they are unable to cope in the wild. Rare species of medicinal or exotic dietary value are hunted to near extinction.

The future evolution of humanity and our ability to survive as a species is lethally uncoupled from biospheric survival. The interaction of climate, habitat and biodiversity, needs to be understood as a single interactive crisis coupled to lose-lose futures for human economics, health and survival. Arresting climate crisis requires biodiversity and particularly forest conservation to be a primary sine qua non of survivability to avoid desertification of the great tropical rainforest basins as well as the bordering savannahs and great agricultural grasslands. In turn, stabilising climate crisis is essential so that major biomes don't become pushed beyond their sustainable climate and expire.

1. The future of "intelligence" is confounded by an inability to understand the difference between machine "intelligence" and biological consciousness. This leaves human society conceptually naked and critically vulnerable to AI takeover, by successive waves of unemployment while humans themselves are being selected for "hive mind" rather than retaining their natural species autonomy. AI is not self-generating as all externally designed and manufactured mechanistic processes are, but is reducing the autonomy of human culture to slave-like dependence as we speak.

2. Cultural utopias are dystopias which are constitutionally fragile to instability and prone to multiple forms of Fermi self-extinction, from over-exploitation, crises disrupting fragile food supply lines, warfare and economic boom and bust, let alone acute climate crisis, mass biospheric extinction, and mutually assured nuclear holocaust. Cultural evolution is memetic rather than genetic and has no long-term conservation principles, by comparison with cumulative genetic evolution.

3. Human genetic evolution is driven by unsustainable cultural forces, such as male control of the female reproductive choice supporting human super-intelligence. Prescriptive religions are systematically out-reproducing unaffiliated populations, and social dynamics generally do not support astute reproductive choice abetting and optimising human evolution. Notions of a splitting between a genetically enhanced or engineered elite and a disadvantaged proletariat in a hand-maid's tale scenario are not viable futures.

4. We stand at the threshold of true enlightenment, thanks both to meditative traditions and the biospheric sacraments, but full enlightenment is rare to anecdotally apocryphal. If we are not already "there" in terms of human enlightenment, we need to have some concept of the human evolutionary future in terms of super-intelligence and the value and meaning of conscious existence, including the visionary state, which we don't currently have articulated.

5. Therefore we need to preserve biospheric diversity, not for diversity's sake itself but to ensure the Earth's biosphere remains able to respond to astronomical, tectonic and human-induced crises which could cause a mass extinction in which the megafauna and Homo sapiens would be prime victims, because of inherent cultural fragility and loss of our survival skills in the wilderness.

6. Central is preserving a third to half the Earth's habitats in as close to a wilderness state as possible, given local populations. Vast areas need to be dedicated and human populations encouraged, taught and compensated for adapting to live with living diversity, without exploiting vulnerable species beyond their natural limits.

7. A backstop position needs to be preserving those species which have the genomes to evolve into cultural species in future. For example the founding prosimians existed through the mass extinction that wiped out the dinosaurs. The most “primitive” primates are the wet-nosed strepsirrhines, consisting of the lemurs of Madagascar, galagos (bushbabies), pottos from Africa, and lorises from India and southeast Asia. Many of the species living today are endangered due to habitat destruction, hunting for bushmeat, and live capture for the exotic pet trade. Strepsirrhines are behaviourally diverse, although all are primarily arboreal (tree-dwelling). In the warmer Eocene there were many species which have become extinct, in our cooler climates, so they could diversify in a warmer world heading back toward Eocene temperatures provided we protect them now. The sister dry-nosed group of haplorhines, including Tarsiers are also targets. Otherwise, in a cataclysmic planetary crisis, we are back to rats and mice.

8. A world agreement is essential to decommission all nuclear weapons, with ballistic missile technology devoted to avoiding astronomical impacts. A strategy for protecting against a lethal nearby supernova irradiation events also needs to be enacted.

Chris: Can humanity exist without the biosphere?

ChatGPT: No, humanity cannot exist without the biosphere. The biosphere encompasses all living organisms on Earth and the environments in which they live, including the atmosphere, hydrosphere (water bodies), lithosphere (solid earth), and the interactions between them. Humanity depends on the biosphere for essential resources such as clean air, water, food, and raw materials. Additionally, the biosphere regulates Earth's climate and provides ecosystem services like pollination, nutrient cycling, and waste decomposition, which are crucial for human well-being. If the biosphere were to collapse or significantly degrade, it would lead to catastrophic consequences for humanity. Without the biosphere's support systems, human survival would be severely compromised, making it impossible for humanity to exist in its current form. Therefore, it's vital to recognize the interconnectedness between humans and the biosphere and work towards sustainable practices to protect and preserve it.

John: I agree with ChatGPT's response. So, we both think humans should respect and protect nature, and I presume we both do that to the best of our ability at any given time. My point was it is already in the hands of every individual but not everyone makes that choice, not enough, in fact, because the result is still accelerating extinction and degradation of ecosystem health. Other than education, including moral education (not preaching), I don't know what can persuade more people and institutions to take it seriously. CIRES, where i am still affiliated, has been at the forefront of climate change research and policy, including IPCC membership, obviously giving the warning. But the science is still being soft pedalled by "stakeholders" who have made a different choice driving us into the crisis. We don't know how to fix the biosphere, we can't directly change people's minds, and as Garret Hardin said there is no known technical solution. Education and experience (perhaps harsh experience if we don't learn from education) are the only ways we learn, right? But I want to be optimistic and believe there is some knowledge or experience that will turn the tide. Even a long-shot "hypothetical" idea [like informatics] seems better than none at all, although I don't know that either, its just what I can do.

Chris: What is the difference between this AI strategy causing mass collateral injury and death in Gaza and using phosgene and chlorine in the First World War, or bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki in the Second? The difference is not about morality or Israel or Hamas, but as you say the difference between biological consciousness and machine intelligence.

John: Your second question is also well posed. Where is the boundary? In these prior examples, whether it counts as evil or not, the decision was human. If one only looks at results, that doesn't matter. But I actually agree with your previous statement that all of it comes down to personal choice and accountability (and thankfully for those who choose to be accountable to their own higher awareness). So that's the difference. It isn't a decision that should be made by anything but an intuitive human being because at the very least humans are accountable to themselves. AI is not. There is moral accountability at least for that one person even if insulated from social scrutiny. Personal responsibility is the key, I think. Is that not also your view?

(10) The Evolution of Creationism and the Religious War of Evangelical Christianity against Evolutionary Science

Eugenie Scott (2009) notes the gradual evolution of Christian ideas of creation from existing philosophical ideas:

From Aristotle came a view of nature that focused not only on form but also on function. Aristotle wrote of the purpose of nature: why something existed, not just what form it took. The rain falls to make the grass grow. Deer have long legs to run away from predators. These ideas also influenced Christian theology: humans exist because they had been created by God to worship God. Explaining something by its purpose is known as teleology.

Reflecting his view of immutable forms, Aristotle classified plants and animals in terms of kinds of organisms that could be ranked in a linear “great chain of being,” or “scale of nature” (scala naturae). This essentialist view fits very comfortably with the Christian doctrine of special creationism. ... The doctrine of special creationism incorporated these Greek ideas—the hierarchical ordering of nature and of design and purpose—and included the Christian idea of an omnipotent, omniscient creator who stood outside of nature. In the theology of special creationism, God created the universe at one time (taking six days in the most common view, although, as discussed in chapter 3, gap creationism considered two special creations) in essentially its present form. God created living things as we see them today for a particular environment and way of life. God also created stars and galaxies as we see them, and the planet Earth as we see it today, as the home of human beings and the creatures over which we have been given dominion and stewardship.

Many Christians and Jews had been considering the idea of the creation history as an allegory (instead of historical) long before the development of Darwin's theory of evolution. For example, Philo, whose works were taken up by early Church writers, wrote that it would be a mistake to think that creation happened in six days, or in any set amount of time. Augustine of the late fourth century who was also a former neoplatonist argued that everything in the universe was created by God at the same moment in time (and not in six days as a literal reading of the Book of Genesis would seem to require).

Scott (1998) notes that for most of European history, educated people blended the Christian and Greek views and concluded that the world was stable and largely unchanging, however with the discovery of the New World contradictions emerged:

The conception of nature as stable—and known—was troubled by the European discovery and exploration of North and South America and Oceania from about 1500 to 1800. The age of exploration exposed Europeans to huge unknown natural areas. Even if Columbus died thinking he had discovered a route to the Orient, it soon became clear to others that the animals, plants, people, and geological features he had encountered were truly from the New World.

In 1665, Isaac La Peyrère produced the first version of gap creationism, proposing an explanation for these newly discovered peoples that was compatible with the Bible. He proposed that Genesis records two creations, the first being described in Genesis 1, and the second—the Adam and Eve creation—in Genesis 2. Native Americans, Polynesians, Australian Aborigines, and anyone else not specifically mentioned in the Bible were descendants of the first, or preadamite, creation. The preadamites were also the source of Cain’s wife—solving another theological problem. In the second, Adamic creation, Genesis 2 and following, God created anew, and Adam and Eve were the progenitors of the more familiar human beings in Europe, Asia, and Africa. Unfortunately, this theological view generated problems of its own, raising the issue of whether preadamites were innocent of original sin. Presumably so—as they were unrelated to Adam—but then, were they in need of salvation by Jesus?

An appreciation also grew for the nature of geological processes such as sedimentation and erosion; the understanding that nature was dynamic rather than static began to grow as knowledge of the natural world – from geology as well as biology – increased through the 1700s and 1800s.

Fig 151: Darwin's tree of life from his notebook was vestigial, but his observational science, including that of his Galapagos finches was superb.

Ronald Numbers (1998) notes Darwin himself citing Creationists only a day after the publication of “Origin of Species”:

When Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859, the term "creationist" commonly designated a person who believed in the special creation of a soul for each human fetus, as opposed to a traducianist, who believed the souls of children were inherited from their parents. ... Nevertheless, just one day after the Origin of Species appeared, Darwin employed the creationist label to refer to opponents of evolution. "What a joke it would be" he wrote to Thomas Huxley "if I pat you on the back as you attack some immovable creationist”.

In 1873, Asa Gray published an article in The Nation saying a "special creationist" who held that species "were supernaturally originated just as they are, by the very terms of his doctrine places them out of the reach of scientific explanation" and in 1880 he briefly contrasted Darwinism with "direct creationism”.

Fairbanks (2020) notes that Darwin had no access to Mendel’s experiments confirming heredity, although they were contemporaries:

Mendel and Darwin were contemporaries, yet the path connecting them during their lifetimes was entirely a one-way street: Mendel was familiar with Darwin’s books, having read and annotated German translations of them, whereas all available evidence indicates that Darwin knew nothing of Mendel.

This meant that Darwin had a fallacious idea of how heredity occurred although it didn’t affect the validity of his findings and theory:

Darwin himself favored a blending type of inheritance in which particles (which he called gemmules) from all parts of the parents’ bodies would flow to the reproductive organs, where they would be blended and passed on to offspring. But natural selection could not be combined with blending inheritance or various models on which acquired characteristics are inherited because such mechanisms would reduce genetic variation each generation (Scott 2009).

The effect of Darwin's discovery was to face the highly evolved diversity of Christian denominations with an existential crisis over the dilemma of how far to concede the natural evidence of both geology and biological evolution and how much to resist it in fundamentalistic terms. Robin Dunbar's (2022) research on the continual schismatic splitting of religious denominations around the sociobiological realities of human trust and belonging thus becomes the underlying theme for the evolution of Creationism, just as it has for religion as a whole. This spells out two important features of the Creationist movement: (1) It is reactive to a prior scientific discovery after the fact and (2) Although it claims to an older religious tradition, the evolved forms of Creationism today all date from ideas developed after Darwin which are thus newer kids on the block and cannot lay claim to ancient mandates.

Indeed Creationism, as a Christian concept is not shared by Jewish people who also founded the Sabbatical Creation, but tend towards a dual reading of science and scripture: For Orthodox Jews who seek to reconcile discrepancies between science and the creation myths in the Bible, the notion that science and the Bible should even be reconciled through traditional scientific means is questioned. To these groups, science is as true as the Torah and if there seems to be a problem, epistemological limits are to blame for apparently irreconcilable points. Reform Judaism does not take the Torah as a literal text, but rather as a symbolic or open-ended work. Aviezer (2010) and Slifkin (2006) for example, publish on the subject of Torah and science allowing for divine guidance within an evolutionary paradigm.

Main-line Protestants and the Catholic Church have reconciled modern science with their faith in Creation through forms of theistic evolution which hold that God purposefully created through the laws of nature, and accept evolution. Some groups call their belief evolutionary creationism.

This means that a majority of Christians accept evolution. A 2017 poll by Pew Research found that 62% of Americans believe humans have evolved over time and 34% of Americans believe humans and other living things have existed in their present form since the beginning of time. Another 2017 Gallup creationism survey found that 38% of adults in the United States inclined to the view that "God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years" when asked for their views on the origin and development of human beings, which Gallup noted was the lowest level in 35 years.

Given the fact that Pew research in 2017 also found that over 80% of people in the US identified as Christians, this majority also applies to Christians in particular.

Fig 152: Left 2018 Pew Research on US views of evolution. Right: Acceptance of evolution is diminished in the US
where evangelical groups wield partisan political influence over democracy 2008 (see Hecht 2006).

A theory of theistic evolution (TE) – also called evolutionary creation – proposes that God's method of creation was to cleverly design a universe in which everything would naturally evolve. Usually the "evolution" in "theistic evolution" means Total Evolution – astronomical evolution (to form galaxies, solar systems,...) and geological evolution (to form the earth's geology) plus chemical evolution (to form the first life) and biological evolution (for the development of life) – but it can refer only to biological evolution.

Fig 152b: 2009 Pew research. Left: In the US 83% of the general public believes in God and 95% in God or a higher power. By contrast among scientists only 33% believe in God and a bare majority of 51% in God or a higher power. Right: 87% of scientists contend natural evolution resulted in humans and another 8% allow for some divine influence, and only 2% believe in creation, while among the general public only 32% believe in natural evolution and 31% believe humans were created as is in 2009 whereas only 18% did by 2017 (above). Clearly a scientific education and experience convinces people that natural evolution is real and the general public's view is driven by both religious belief and lack of scientific experience.

Some scientists and many theologians, consider science and religion to be two compatible and complementary fields, with authorities in distinct areas of human experience, so-called non-overlapping magisteria, in which they see ultimate origins and meaning being addressed by religion, but favor verifiable scientific explanations of natural phenomena over those of creationist beliefs.

However evangelical movements staunchly resisted, as Numbers (1998) details:

In 1899 Dawson, the last major nineteenth century scientist to defend special creation died. ... About the only Americans left debating the merits of special creation were conservative, often evangelical Christians. In the early 1920s the most concerned critics of human evolution launched a movement to eradicate the offending belief from the churches and schools of America. But throughout the so-called "Fundamentalist Controversy" their goal remained the elimination of evolution, not the promotion of a particular doctrine of creation. ... Evangelicals had still reached no consensus about the correct reading of genesis 1 although even the most conservative commentators had come to terms with the antiquity of life on Earth and a deluge of local or geologically superficial significance.

The Scopes Trial, formally The State of Tennessee v. John Thomas Scopes, and commonly referred to as the Scopes Monkey Trial, was a 2025 American legal case in which a high school teacher, John T. Scopes, was accused of violating Tennessee's Butler Act, which had made it unlawful to teach human evolution in any state-funded school. Scopes was unsure whether he had ever actually taught evolution, but he incriminated himself deliberately so the case could have a defendant. Scopes was found guilty and was fined $100 (equivalent to $1,500 in 2021), but the verdict was overturned on a technicality. The trial revealed a growing chasm in American Christianity and two ways of finding truth, one "biblical" and one "evolutionist". Author David Goetz writes that the majority of Christians denounced evolution at the time. The trial publicised the Fundamentalist – Modernist controversy, which set Modernists, who said evolution was not inconsistent with religion, against Fundamentalists, who said the Word of God as revealed in the Bible took priority over all human knowledge. The case was thus seen both as a theological contest and as a trial on whether evolution should be taught in schools. The trial escalated the political and legal conflict in which strict creationists and scientists struggled over the teaching of evolution in Arizona and California science classes.

Since then, like all forms of cultural evolution, Creationism has evolved into diverse, and partially conflicting forms, often in reaction to resistance in the courts to fundamentalism and disguising religious doctrines as science:

1. Young Earth creationists believe that God created the Earth within the last ten thousand years, with a literalist interpretation of the Genesis creation narrative, within the approximate time-frame of biblical genealogies. Most young Earth creationists believe that the universe has a similar age as the Earth.

2 Old Earth creationism holds that the physical universe was created by God, but that the creation event described in the Book of Genesis is to be taken figuratively. This group generally believes that the age of the universe and the age of the Earth are as described by astronomers and geologists, but that details of modern evolutionary theory are questionable, and comes in several types:

(a) Gap creationism posits that the creation period, as described in the Book of Genesis, involved six literal 24-hour days, but that there was a gap of time between two distinct creations in the first and the second verses of Genesis, which the theory states explains many scientific observations, including the age of the Earth.

(b) Day-age creationism is a metaphorical interpretation of the creation accounts in Genesis. It holds that the six days referred to in the Genesis account of creation are not ordinary 24-hour days, but are much longer periods (from thousands to billions of years). The Genesis account is then reconciled with the age of the Earth. Proponents of the day-age theory can be found among both theistic evolutionists, who accept the scientific consensus on evolution, and progressive creationists, who reject it.

(c) Progressive creationism is the religious belief that God created new forms of life gradually over a period of hundreds of millions of years. As a form of old Earth creationism, it accepts mainstream geological and cosmological estimates for the age of the Earth, some tenets of biology such as microevolution as well as archaeology to make its case. In this view creation occurred in rapid bursts in which all "kinds" of plants and animals appear in stages lasting millions of years. The bursts are followed by periods of stasis or equilibrium to accommodate new arrivals. These bursts represent instances of God creating new types of organisms by divine intervention. The view rejects macroevolution, claiming it is biologically untenable and not supported by the fossil record, as well as rejects the concept of common descent from a last universal common ancestor.

3. Creation science, or scientific creationism, is a pseudoscience that emerged in the 1960s with proponents aiming to have young Earth creationist beliefs taught in school science classes as a counter to teaching of evolution. Common features of creation science argument include: creationist cosmologies which accommodate a universe on the order of thousands of years old, criticism of radiometric dating, explanations for the fossil record as a record of the Genesis flood narrative and explanations for the present diversity as a result of pre-designed genetic variability and partially due to the rapid degradation of the perfect genomes God placed in "created kinds" due to mutations.

4. Neo-creationism is a pseudoscientific movement which aims to restate creationism in terms more likely to be well received by the public, by policy makers, by educators and by the scientific community. It aims to re-frame the debate over the origins of life in non-religious terms and without appeals to scripture. This comes in response to the 1987 ruling by the United States Supreme Court in Edwards v. Aguillard that creationism is an inherently religious concept and that advocating it as correct or accurate in public-school curricula violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment. One of the principal claims of neo-creationism propounds that ostensibly objective orthodox science, with a foundation in naturalism, is actually a dogmatically atheistic religion. Its proponents argue that the scientific method excludes certain explanations of phenomena, particularly where they point towards supernatural elements, thus effectively excluding religious insight from contributing to understanding the universe. This leads to an open and often hostile opposition to what neo-creationists term "Darwinism", which they generally mean to refer to evolution, but which they may extend to include such concepts as abiogenesis, stellar evolution and the Big Bang theory.

5. Intelligent design (ID) is the pseudoscientific view that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." Its leading proponents are associated with the Discovery Institute, a think tank whose wedge strategy aims to replace the scientific method with "a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions" which accepts supernatural explanations. This trend is replicated by the UK's Truth in Science and Centre for Intelligent Design, whose prominent figures are Christians who espouse the same pretence to be focussing on the science, rather than religion, but also explicitly support theism and and like the Discovery Institute, attempt to influence the educational curriculum. ID originated as a re-branding of creation science in an attempt to avoid a series of court decisions ruling out the teaching of creationism in American public schools, and the Discovery Institute has run a series of campaigns to change school curricula. In the US, teaching of intelligent design in public schools has been decisively ruled by a federal district court to be in violation of the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In Kitzmiller v. Dover, the court found that intelligent design is not science and "cannot uncouple itself from its creationist, and thus religious, antecedents," and hence cannot be taught as an alternative to evolution in public school science classrooms under the jurisdiction of that court. This sets a persuasive precedent, based on previous US Supreme Court decisions in Edwards v. Aguillard and Epperson v. Arkansas (1968), and by the application of the Lemon test, that creates a legal hurdle to teaching intelligent design in public school districts in other federal court jurisdictions.

Irreducible and Specified complexity Irreducible complexity claims certain biological systems cannot have evolved by successive small modifications to pre-existing functional systems through natural selection, because no less complex system would function. Irreducible complexity has become central to the creationist concept of intelligent design, but the scientific community regards intelligent design as pseudoscience and rejects the concept of irreducible complexity. Irreducible complexity is one of two main arguments used by intelligent-design proponents, alongside specified complexity. Specified complexity attempts to claim patterns that are both specified and complex must be designed, where a specified pattern is one that admits short descriptions, whereas a complex pattern is one that is unlikely to occur by chance. The concept of specified complexity is widely regarded as mathematically unsound and has not been the basis for further independent work in information theory, in the theory of complex systems, or in biology. It is contradicted by edge-of-chaos systems, from cellular automata to biology, where complexity can become generative.

Fig 153: Intelligent design is a biospherically-destructive religious concept based on applying human design and manufacture to divinity. Intelligent design is externally imposed order and it has restrictive consequences on the types of structures that can be produced, which are completely different from natural organisms, which evolve and are bootstrapped from a minimal amount of genetic information interactively in embryogenesis. Because the notion is falsely conceived on the basis of human exceptionalist religion, the entire concept is destructive to nature and biodiversity, because intelligent design applies only to the designed system and there is no spontaneously-interactive ecosystem guaranteeing recycling of natural decomposed components to new living systems. The evolution of intelligent design, is illustrated left in the Buick emblem: The intelligent designer creates each individual design de-novo, having only the same general concept. Because there is an external designer following their own predilection, there is no absolute requirement for a new design to depend in any significant way on the form of the predecessor. Both development and evolution are fundamentally a product of the designer only and not the design itself. In successive generations, one Buick shield can become three and then an Eagle. By contrast, natural evolutionary change is gradual and cumulative and leaves the fingerprint of its variation in the genomes of the ancestors and their descendants. Creationists try to finesse this discordance between the evolutionary tree of life and intelligent design by claiming God has created the universe to look like it has evolved. Corporations, and technological innovation all follow the feigned 'evolutionary' protocols of intelligent design.

Mikulecky (1999), conveyed by Brian Josephson, demonstrates just how far externally designed machines are from the nature of living systems:

BA machine needs a builder; it can not effect its own construction. This is the idea captured in the concept of "component systems" (Kampis, 1991) and other related ideas. Rosen (1991, 2000) has laid a nice foundation for this manner of thinking. As early as 1958 he began to imagine the way life has to come about. As time progressed, the answer he saw was revolutionary. Evolution is a process that defines itself as a system. ... Living things are not like machines at all. Machines are built from the bottom up out of parts constructed to add to each other in a supportive way. It is tempting to look at a machine and glibly say that the whole is more than the sum of the parts and think one has said something. ... This led to the modeling relation, the identification of some formalism that would define that sum, and the recognition that in every speculation about these matters models are involved. ... This led to a clear definition of what a machine is and how a machine relates to its parts. Once that was accomplished, it became obvious that living systems relate to their parts in entirely different ways. Evolution, as does the mature organism, must be seen as the evolution of function in the form of functional components. What is more, the functional components, because they are defined by the momentary context, are not permanent features in an evolving system. To the extent that a developing system mimics its evolution the same is true for it. How can this be realized? The key to a system evolving to become an organism is that it must reach some point where it achieves all three of metabolism, repair, and replication.. We have never designed a machine like this and for very good reason. We build machines to last. One of the first and most crucial aspects of the evolving living system was its failure to last! It was in a condition of being torn down as fast as it was being built up and this is what allowed it to evolve. ... Both construction and destruction are systems properties. The systematic tearing down allows rebuilding, replication and evolution.

Witzany (2020), conveyed by Hal Cox, complements this by emphasising the modular structure of the genome and its viral contribution qualify our idea of mutation in ways which promote evolutionary innovation:

Primarily, life is a process. The main characteristic of this process is the coordinated organization of complex interactions that we see as protein-based organisms of three domains of life, their reproduction, and metabolism all mediated by complex interwoven gene regulation as a result of communication. … Without RNA world agents, no cellular gene regulation could take place. Without viruses and related infectious agents, these capabilities of RNA stem-loop group behavior as gene inventors and regulators would not have been integrated into cellular host genomes. ... Therefore, we must ask whether mutation ("error replication") is the correct term to desígnate genetic variation in the future. Error replications, which in most cases means DNA damage without successful repair, is an empirical fact but does not play important roles in genetic innovation. Evolutionary relevant genetic variations are the result of natural genome editing by competent agents such as viruses and RNA networks with their inherent competence to generate and modify nucleotide sequences. This is competent nucleotide sequence editing. In contrast to former convictions, this is an agent-based interaction process, which is far from statistical mechanics and biochemical kinetics. Instead of error replication, we should use now "genetic innovation," which much better fits to the empirically documented events. Darwinian evolution then could be revised to "innovation and selection."

The creationist agenda and concepts such as irreducible complexity constitute a sustained assault on the verified science of evolutionary change now confirmed in extraordinary detail in the Human Genome Project and ensuing genetic studies of diverse species from our last common ancestor of life to Homo sapiens. My research overview: "The Tree of Life: Tangled Roots and Sexy Shoots Tracing the genetic pathway from the Last Universal Common Ancestor to Homo sapiens” (King 2021c) examines the genetic evidence exhaustively, proceeding in the shadow of the Human Genome Project for the next 20 years up to the present, examining every stage of genetic and phenotypic evolution from the last common ancestor of all life (LUCA) to ourselves.

John Horgan (2019) in reviewing Quammen (2018) in “Was Darwin Wrong?” clearly states that ensuing scientific discoveries have not undermined the validity of Darwin’s findings:

But Archaea do not pose a challenge to Darwinian theory, our understanding of how species originate and evolve. I would compare Archaea to a revision in our model of galaxy formation in the early universe, which does not threaten the basic big-bang framework.

Now we know that variations have many causes, including mutation, endosymbiosis, genetic drift, sexual recombination, epigenetic factors and, yes, horizontal gene transfer. But all variations, whatever form they take, serve as fodder for natural selection, which remains the primary evolutionary force, and which Darwin (and Wallace) discovered.

Tangled is in both the title of Quamen's book “The Tangled Tree: A radical new history of life” (2018) and my 2000-2020 overview, so their theses clearly coincide.

Creationist and religious “intelligent design” proponents, such as Michael Behe, also raise fundamental questions about integrity of intent. Both science and the law require there not to be manifest conflicts of interest, because these fundamentally compromise the quality of an evidential account. So is it right to enter into avowed Christian creationist doctrine masquerading in the name of science in the pursuit of true meaning? Eugenie Scott for example coined the term "Gish gallop" to describe a fallacious Creationist rhetorical technique which consists of overwhelming an interlocutor with as many individually-weak arguments as possible, in order to prevent rebuttal of the whole argument. Michael Behe's (1996) claims about the irreducible complexity of essential cellular structures have been rejected by the vast majority of the scientific community, exemplified by opponents such as Jerry Coyne (2009).

Coyne (1996) in review, wryly comments on the inverse problem of genes which appear badly designed, pointing out that Behe invites the conspiracy that the designer may have designed some things to look like evolution:

Responding to observations of non-functional genes and inefficient molecular processes, Behe theorizes that the Great Designer has goals beyond functionality: "Features that strike us as odd in a design might have been placed there by the designer for a reason -- for artistic reasons, for variety, to show off, for some as-yet-undetectable practical purpose, or for some unguessable reason -- or they might not." One should add the "puckish reason": to confuse future biologists by making things look as though they evolved. … Like all scientific creationists, Behe keeps quiet about the identity of the Great Designer, but the author's professed Roman Catholicism offers one clue. … The book will no doubt be widely cited by Biblical creationists who will tout its message of design wile ignoring its timid acceptance of evolution and its view of the creator as Cosmic Prankster. If the history of science shows us anything, it is that we get nowhere by labelling our ignorance 'God'.

Fig 154: Deconstructing Irreducible Complexity !: The Camera Eye Top left: Naturally occurring pit eyes show all forms of intermediate in the formation of the camera eye. Top Right: A compound eye on an insect leg elicited by a mouse pax gene involved in vertebrate eye development, demonstrating evolutionary homology at the genetic level between the arthropod and vertebrate developmental pathways. Lower left: Evolutionary tree of pax genes spans the metazoa. Lower right: Small camera eye in coelenterates (yellow arrow) and the camera eye in Dinoflagellates, which possess an eyespot ocelloid, complete with lens and retinoid organelle (lower right) and may have in turn inherited this functionality from cyanobacterial chloroplasts via red algae. Detailed analysis shows it to be a compound endosymbiotic structure involving both a mitochondrial 'cornea' and red-alga plastid derived retinal body comprising stacked wave-form membranes derived from chloroplast thylakoids surrounded by pigmented lipid droplets. This shows just how readily evolution can “create” an eye!

Behe is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture. The Center for Science and Culture (CSC), formerly known as the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC), is part of the Discovery Institute (DI), a conservative Christian think tank. The Center for Science and Culture serves as the hub of the intelligent design movement. Nearly all of prominent proponents of intelligent design are either CSC advisors, officers, or fellows.

Creation science presented the theological argument from design with assertions that evolution could not explain complex molecular mechanisms, and in 1993 Michael Behe presented these arguments in a revised version of the school textbook “Of Pandas and People”. In “Darwin's Black Box” (1996) he called this concept irreducible complexity and said it made evolution through natural selection of random mutations impossible. This was based on the mistaken assumption that evolution relies on improvement of existing functions, ignoring how complex adaptations originate from evolving changes in function, and disregarding published research. Evolutionary biologists have published rebuttals showing how systems discussed by Behe can evolve, and examples documented through comparative genomics show that complex molecular systems are formed by the addition of components as revealed by different temporal origins of their proteins. In the 2005 Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District trial, Behe gave testimony on the subject of irreducible complexity. The court found that "Professor Behe's claim for irreducible complexity has been refuted in peer-reviewed research papers and has been rejected by the scientific community at large.”

The Intelligent Design Wedge Strategy

The sheer deceit of the Creationist self-transformation into the Intelligent Design movement is carved out in an internal Discovery Institute manifesto – The Wedge Strategy (1999) – that was leaked and appeared on the Internet in 2000 now held at the National Center for Science Education. This shows the agenda is not the pursuit of true knowledge of the universe and nature but to spearhead by divisive stealth, fundamentalist Christian culture as a utopian theocratic initiative, in contradiction to transparently formed opinion. The Discovery Institute's disingenuous attempt to distance itself from its own leaked agenda and pretend it is now "scientific" can be found here.

Robert Pennock (2000) in "Creationism and Intelligent Design" explains:

Guided by the Discovery Institute’s “Wedge strategy,” the ID movement aims to overturn evolution and what it sees as a pernicious materialist worldview and to renew a theistic foundation to Western culture, in which human beings are recognized as being created in the image of God.

The ID Movement calls its strategy for defeating evolution “the Wedge.” Its target is not just evolution, but also the materialist philosophy it believes props up science and is the de facto “established religion” of the West. The organization hopes to affect a renewal in our culture of Judeo-Christian theism, in which man is again understood as created in God’s image.

The legal idea behind the ID Wedge is to begin with a minimal position that can get into and pry open such a legal crack.

Along similar lines, creationists have begun to lobby to simply teach the controversy about evolution or to get alternative theories taught, purportedly to encourage critical thinking or respect academic freedom. In keeping with the ID strategy, such proposals initially are introduced in vague, seemingly innocuous language and only later is the wedge driven in deeper. Two recent cases illustrate the point.

THE ID WEDGE

The guiding philosophy and strategic plans of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture (CSC) are laid out in the Wedge document, an internal Discovery Institute manifesto that was leaked and appeared on the Internet in 2000. The CSC was previously named the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture (CRSC). The Discovery Institute modified the name in 2002. Graphic banners for the CSC have also been modified over the years so that its religious underpinnings are less overt. However, the Wedge manifesto makes these explicit, laying out the CSC’s fundamental beliefs: “The proposition that human beings are created in the image of God is one of the bedrock principles on which Western civilization was built. Its influence can be detected in most, if not all, of the West’s greatest achievements, including representative democracy, human rights, free enterprise, and progress in the arts and sciences. Yet a little over a century ago, this cardinal idea came under wholesale attack by intellectuals drawing on the discoveries of modern science. Debunking the traditional conceptions of both God and man, thinkers such as Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, and Sigmund Freud portrayed humans not as moral and spiritual beings, but as animals or machines who inhabited a universe ruled by purely impersonal forces and whose behavior and very thoughts were dictated by the unbending forces of biology, chemistry, and environment. This materialistic conception of reality eventually infected virtually every area of our culture, from politics and economics to literature and art”.

The preamble concludes with a statement of the ID movement’s overarching goal: “[It] seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies,” aiming to replace this with a “theistic understanding of nature”.

Philosopher Stephen Meyer, one of the earliest leaders of the ID movement who helped define the movement’s attack against evolution and naturalism and its revival of what he calls “the God hypothesis”, is Director of CSC, and the Wedge document echoes many of the fundamental positions he and Philip Johnson laid out.

The prevailing fact remains that, for all the attempts to advance creationism or intelligent design over and above natural evolution, there is not a single instance anyone can cite, or has cited, as an actual verified example of creation in the natural world that has to have come from direct intervention in nature. No paper has been published in the peer reviewed journals. No news announcement on TV. If there were, our entire world view would be shattered overnight.

We now examine in detail the notion of irreducible complexity. This is not the overall fractal complexity of organisms and tissues, which are clearly the most complex interacting systems in the universe, but carefully chosen examples of biological systems that look like manufactured human machines, but could not apparently function in the way they now appear to do unless all their interactive parts are in place. This is a false notion because evolution is modular and functional genetic elements can be coopted in new ways for example by gene duplication and exon recombination resulting in adoption of entirely new functions by integrated gene systems, as illustrated in fig 156. Furthermore topological changes such as gave rise to the camera eye do have a continuous set of transitional examples, as illustrated in fig 154.

One of the most incontrovertible arguments against intelligent design (ID) being demonstrated by irreducible complexity (IC), drawn attention to by Aviezer (2010), conveyed by Joshua Ben, is that of H. Allen Orr (1996). Orr's critique is a devastating theoretical attack. The fractal view of all living systems, particularly organismic tissues, as noted above, is irreducibly complex, which I'm sure we all appreciate from all the evidence in Symbiotic Existential Cosmology. But this means that evolutionary systems are examples of irreducibly complex (IC) systems which evolve, so Behe's claim that this is ID because evolution can't occur is wrong in an obvious fatal theoretical way. Orr states the core argument as follows:

First it will do no good to suggest that all the required parts of some biochemical pathway popped up simultaneously by mutation. Although this "solution" yields a functioning system in one fell swoop, it's so hopelessly unlikely that no Darwinian takes it seriously. As Behe rightly says, we gain nothing by replacing a problem with a miracle. Second, we might think that some of the parts of an irreducibly complex system evolved step by step for some other purpose and were then recruited wholesale to a new function. But this is also unlikely. You may as well hope that half your car's transmission will suddenly help out in the airbag department. Such things might happen very, very rarely, but they surely do not offer a general solution to irreducible complexity.

Behe's colossal mistake is that, in rejecting these possibilities, he concludes that no Darwinian solution remains. But one does. It is this: An irreducibly complex system can be built gradually by adding parts that, while initially just advantageous, become— because of later changes—essential. The logic is very simple. Some part (A) initially does some job (and not very well, perhaps). Another part (B) later gets added because it helps A. This new part isn't essential, it merely improves things. But later on, A (or something else) may change in such a way that B now becomes indispensable. This process continues as further parts get folded into the system. And at the end of the day, many parts may all be required.

The point is there's no guarantee that improvements will remain mere improvements. Indeed because later changes build on previous ones, there's every reason to think that earlier refinements might become necessary. The transformation of air bladders into lungs that allowed animals to breathe atmospheric oxygen was initially just advantageous: such beasts could explore open niches—like dry land—that were unavailable to their lung-less peers. But as evolution built on this adaptation (modifying limbs for walking, for instance), we grew thoroughly terrestrial and lungs, consequently, are no longer luxuries—they are essential. The punch line is, I think, obvious: although this process is thoroughly Darwinian, we are often left with a system that is irreducibly complex. I'm afraid there's no room for compromise here: Behe's key claim that all the components of an irreducibly complex system "have to be there from the beginning" is dead wrong.

This elucidation is universal to major transitions, from abiogenesis to the eucaryote emergence. In the eucaryote endosymbiosis, we know this resulted from the symbiotic integration of the two extant branches of life, archaea and bacteria, to form the energetic mitochondria, but this was accompanied by additional changes, the cell nucleus, sexual reproduction and cellular sentient excitability, but the very success of the eucaryotes means that all trace of the precursor organisms has been wiped off the face of the Earth, so the entire eucaryote organism appears to be irreducibly complex, except for the evident fact that the mitochondria are endosymbionts so we know this catastrophic merger actually took place. The same applies to abiogenesis, where we examine the living mechanisms from DNA/RNA replication, ribosomal translation and even the synthesis of individual nucleotides and this looks irreducibly complex, but in every scientific breakthrough in this area, the evidence implies (1) individual nucleotides didn't assemble from their phosphate, ribose and hetercyclic components but these arose from a more deeply chaotic spontaneous process involving unrecognised precursors, (2) that replication didn't use pristine RNA, or DNA, but hybrid molecules, (3) that coded ribosomal translation to proteins didn't impossibly arise de novo but in association with a more primitive RNA-protein hybrid world where simple polypeptides were catalysed by RNA binding. All these attest to the evolution of irreducible complexity in many stages, by new non-essential advantageous functions becoming essential over time.

John Rennie (2002) then editor of Scientific American , stated in no uncertain terms in: “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense” several of the main misconceptions of creationists and religious “intelligent design”, stating categorically why for example the notion of irreducible complexity advanced by Behe and others is contradicted by evolutionary evidence.

Microevolution looks at changes within species over time – changes that may be preludes to speciation, the origin of new species. Macroevolution studies how taxonomic groups above the level of species change. Its evidence draws frequently from the fossil record and DNA comparisons to reconstruct how various organisms may be related.

One can be even more emphatic about this. The human genome project and associated research into ape and Neanderthal and Denisovan genomes has laid bare our evolutionary relationship with other primates. While this uses fossil evidence to identify the sources of ancient genomes, the genetic evidence on its own right is incontrovertible evidence that humanity was not created de novo but evolved not just from apes but from monkeys as the Alu transposable element causing the loss of our tails makes clear (Xia et al. 2024). No longer can creationist or intelligent design proponent in any shape of form, credibly claim that humanity is in any way set apart from the macroevolutionary process that generated the diverse species of our biosphere. One doesn’t any longer have to be accused of being an atheist defector against the true “faith” to accept the inevitable, fundamental truth of Darwin’s discovery.

Responding to the claim that evolution, particularly macro-evolution, is unscientific, because it is not testable or falsifiable and makes claims about events that were not observed and can never be recreated he says:

The historical nature of macroevolutionary study involves inference from fossils and DNA rather than direct observation. Yet in the historical sciences (which include astronomy, geology and archaeology, as well as evolutionary biology), hypotheses can still be tested by checking whether they accord with physical evidence and whether they lead to verifiable predictions about future discoveries. For instance, evolution implies that between the earliest-known ancestors of humans (roughly five million years old) and the appearance of anatomically modern humans (about 100,000 years ago), one should find a succession of hominid creatures with features progressively less apelike and more modern, which is indeed what the fossil record shows. But one should not—and does not—find modern human fossils embedded in strata from the Jurassic period (65 million years ago). Evolutionary biology routinely makes predictions far more refined and precise than this, and researchers test them constantly.

Fig 155: Protein and species divergence linearly correlate.

Responding to claims such as Pitman’s that molecular evolution and the origin of key proteins remains unestablished, Rennie cites the linear correspondence between species divergence time scales and the genetic divergence of key proteins.

Responding to Behe’s irreducible complexity argument, citing the work of Kenneth Miller’s (2004) ‘The Flagellum Unspun: The Collapse of "Irreducible Complexity”’, Rennie says the following:

What is true of the mousetrap, [Behe] says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whiplike cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. The proteins that make up a flagellum are uncannily arranged into motor components, a universal joint and other structures like those that a human engineer might specify. The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues and that bespeaks intelligent design. He makes similar points about the blood’s clotting mechanism and other molecular systems.

Yet evolutionary biologists have answers to these objections. First, there exist flagellae with forms simpler than the one that Behe cites, so it is not necessary for all those components to be present for a flagellum to work. The sophisticated components of this flagellum all have precedents elsewhere in nature, as described by Kenneth R. Miller of Brown University and others. In fact, the en- tire flagellum assembly is extremely similar to an organelle that Yersinia pestis, the bubonic plague bacterium, uses to inject toxins into cells. The key is that the flagellum’s component structures, which Behe suggests have no value apart from their role in propulsion, can serve multiple functions that would have helped favor their evolution. The final evolution of the flagellum might then have involved only the novel re- combination of sophisticated parts that initially evolved for other purposes.

Kenneth Miller (2007) frames Behe’s claim as follows:

Irreducibly complex structures, such as the bacterial flagellum, could not have evolved because they lack any selectable function until all of their component parts are in place. As he wrote, “any precursor to an irreducibly complex system is by definition non-functional”, since every part of such a system had to be in place for natural selection to favour it. Therefore, such structures must have been designed.

Since Behe’s “Black Box” and Rennie’s commentary, research has proceeded apace and the situation has now become clearer. The bacterial flagellum and the type 3 secretion system injectosome (fig 156) have a common evolutionary origin, with the flagellum emerging slightly earlier. This means the genes involved are capable of evolving in multi-functional ways which are unapparent when one looks only at the flagellum.

Fig 156: Deconstructing Irreducible Complexity 2: The Prokaryote flagellum: Top: Common evolution of the bacterial flagellum and type 3 injectosome ATPase family (Diepold & Armitage 2015). Lower: The simpler but fully effective archaeal “archaellum” (Abby & Rocha 2012) is also a rotary flagellum with a completely separate evolutionary origin in type 2 secretion systems evolutionarily related to type IV pili (Faguy et al. 1993) found in gram negative bacteria which act to facilitate genetic recombination by extruding DNA from a donor cell to a recipient and also have a twitching motion promoting bacterial movement. The motor can clearly self-assemble from identical subsections. Inset: the ATPase universal to life generating ATP from ion gradients is also a multi-step rotary motor.

Tracing back the origin of the flagellum before its current origin, Pallen & Matzke (2006) in “From The Origin of Species to the origin of bacterial flagella” note that the individual proteins have evolved from a simpler structure by gene duplication and diversification:

It is clear that all (bacterial) flagella share a conserved core set of proteins. Of the forty or so proteins in the standard flagellum of S.typhimurium strain LT2 or E. coli K-12, only about half seem to be universally necessary. This reduced flagellum is still a challenge to explain, but if one accepts that all current flagellar systems diverged from their last common ancestor (the ur-flagellum), why stop there? All flagellins show sequence similarity indicative of common ancestry (homology). But then all flagellins also share homology with another component of the flagellar filament, the hook-associated protein 3 (HAP3) or FlgL (as is evident from the application of InterProScan to FlgL from E. coli). Therefore, although the ur-flagellum contained flagellin and HAP3, these two proteins must have evolved from a common ancestor in a simpler system that contained only one flagellin-HAP3 homologue. Similarly, six proteins from the rod (FlgB, FlgC, FlgF and FlgG), hook (FlgE) and filament (HAP1/ FlgK) show sequence similarities indicative of common ancestry. Therefore, the flagellar rod–hook–filament complex has clearly evolved by multiple rounds of gene duplication and subsequent diversification, starting from just two proteins (a proto-flagellin and a proto-rod/hook protein) that were capable of polymerization into an axial arrangement.

At the same time, three years before Behe’s work Faguy et al. (1993) discovered that the archaeal rotary archaellum had evolved independently, in fact from the bacterial type 4 pilus - a quasi-viral element involved in promoting genetic recombination and gliding motion. The archaellum is simpler than the bacterial flagellum, but is fully efficient at promoting archaeal movement by rotary action and doesn’t pose any irreducible complexity and indeed is a product of horizontal genetic transfer between bacteria and archaea, emphasising how tragically incorrect the selective evidence and manufactural arguments of intelligent design are, even in their most sophisticated iterations.

Reindl et al. (2013) note the distinctness and functional self-assembly of the archaellum:

Critically, this structural work indicated that the archaeal appendage lacks the central channel through which pass the subunits, to be added at the distal end of the growing structure in the assembly of the bacterial flagellum. The archaeal flagellum, therefore, is more closely related to bacterial type IV pili than flagella. Type IV pili are known to mediate twitching motility via an assembly/disassembly mechanism. It was also demonstrated for the halobacterial structure that its rotation is dependent on the hydrolysis of ATP further setting the archaeal motility apart from bacterial flagella, which use the proton motive force for their rotation. At one hand, FlaI is essential for the assembly of the archaellum filament, and on the other, it is responsible for the rotational movement.

Thus the rotary flagellum has evolved not once, but twice, through horizontal transfer in the tangled roots of the tree of life. In the same way, fig 154 above, shows stages in the involution of the optical cavity towards forming a full camera eye and shows that the induction of eyes from sea anemones, through arthropods to vertebrates have a common evolutionary basis.

In 2005, while testifying for the defense in the Dover trial, Behe claimed under oath that the book had received a more thorough peer review than a scholarly article in a refereed journal. Four of the book's five reviewers (Michael Atchison, Robert Shapiro, K. John Morrow, and Russell Doolittle) have made statements that contradict or otherwise do not support Behe's claim. In the same trial, Behe eventually testified under oath that "There are no peer-reviewed articles by anyone advocating for intelligent design supported by pertinent experiments or calculations which provide detailed rigorous accounts of how intelligent design of any biological system occurred." (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District/4:Whether ID Is Science, p88).

Behe also claimed that every component of the irreducibly complex vertebrate blood-clotting system had to be present for the system to work properly. Doolittle (2004), upon whom Behe based much of his discussion of blood clotting, described it as misrepresenting a simplified explanation he had given in a lecture, and presenting a fallacious creationist miscalculation of improbability by omitting known options, which contributed to the original publisher turning down the book for publication :

Many years ago, when I was a graduate student in biochemistry at Harvard, I entered an essay in a prize competition in which submissions were made anonymously by pseudonym. The essay was entitled "The Evolution of a Unique Enzyme System: The Comparative Physiology of Blood Coagulation," and the immodest pseudonym I used was Charles Darwin. The gist of the essay was that, whereas vertebrate blood coagulation is an extremely complex process, and although at first glance no part of the system ought to be viable without the entire ensemble, it nonetheless ought to prove understandable in terms of natural selection. I pointed out that it was unlikely that the entire melange of enzymes and protein substrates evolved in one fell swoop. Instead, three processes had been at work. First, there was a series of gene duplications of the sort that had recently been observed for hemoglobins. Second, there were the simple point mutations we know today as amino acid replacements. Finally, mechanisms were brought into play that controlled the amounts of the various homologous factors. I suggested that the presence and role of these three mechanisms could be evaluated by comparing blood clotting in various organisms, particularly earlier diverging animals that might have simpler systems. To this end, I began an experimental program dealing with blood clotting in all sorts of creatures, wrote my Ph.D. dissertation on the subject,1 and, indeed, have devoted the intervening 35 years to the general subject of proteins and their evolution. Now it appears that I have wasted my career. In Darwin's Black Box, Michael Behe has concluded that blood clotting--Behe's "favorite pathway," as Allen Orr puts it – is simply "too complex to have evolved." Worse, he has taken one of my own articles to illustrate his view.

Fig 157: Putative evolution of nine proteases involved in generation and destruction of fibrin clots by a small number of domainal exchanges. The proposed root protein is a four-kringle protease, prototypical genes for which are found in the sea squirt genome (Doolittle & Jiang 2003). Right: Chimps have 24 chromosome pairs but humans only 23 because human chromosome 2 arose by two smaller ape chromosomes joining end on end. Such changes are major but translocations can also occur in humans without causing disabilities, although with some reduced fertility (Stankiewicz 2016).

This caused Doolittle to spearhead work that would clearly settle this matter and Doolittle & Jiang (2003) found the Puffer fish Fugu has a simplified but functional clotting system, contradicting irreducible complexity and that, while the sea squirt, Ciona intestinalis, did not turn up any orthologs derived from a single ancesrral gene for these 26 factors, paralogs from gene duplication and/or constituent domains were evident for virtually all of them, implying a root origin.

Miller (2007) notes: That argument collapsed when Doolittle & Jiang (2003) showed that the puffer fish, Fugu, lacks at least three clotting factors and still has a workable system. Such failures in the science of the argument helped to send intelligent design to a defeat in the Dover trial, and they haunt it still.

In “The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism”, Behe (2007) attempts to calculate the "edge of evolution" – the point at which Darwinian evolution is no longer an efficacious agent of creative biological change – by taking into account the number of mutations required to "travel" from one genetic state to another, as well as population size for the organism in question. He argues strongly for common descent of all life forms on earth, including that humans and chimpanzees have a common ancestor, however he claims that the mutations required for bridging the higher levels of taxonomy are not possible without design. He concludes that purposeful design plays a major role in the development of biological complexity, through the mechanism of producing "non-random mutations", which are then subjected to the sculpting hand of natural selection. The argument hinges on the low probability of an organism having two or more simultaneous mutations to yield some advantage for the organism and large numbers of microbial organisms achieving little in the way of evolving new proteins and binding sites.

Dawkins (2007) notes his incorrect dependence on random mutation as the dominant force in evolution:

Behe correctly dissects the Darwinian theory into three parts: descent with modification, natural selection and mutation. Descent with modification gives him no problems, nor does natural selection. They are “trivial” and “modest” notions, respectively. The crucial passage in “The Edge of Evolution” is this: “By far the most critical aspect of Darwin’s multifaceted theory is the role of random mutation. Almost all of what is novel and important in Darwinian thought is concentrated in this third concept.” Far more important for Darwin was the nonrandom process whereby some survived but others perished. Natural selection is arguably the most momentous idea ever to occur to a human mind, because it — alone as far as we know — explains the elegant illusion of design that pervades the living kingdoms and explains, in passing, us.

Two further reviews of this work underline the mathematical errors and lack of fundamental understanding of such processes on Behe’s part. Sean Carrol (2007) in “God as Genetic Engineer” puts it this way:

He argues that the generation of a single new protein-protein binding site is extremely improbable and that complexes of just three different proteins “are beyond the edge of evolution.” But Behe bases his arguments on unfounded requirements for protein interactions. He insists, based on consideration of just one type of protein structure (the combining sites of antibodies), that five or six positions must change at once in order to make a good fit between proteins—and, therefore, good fits are impossible to evolve. An immense body of experimental data directly refutes this claim. There are dozens of well-studied families of cellular proteins (kinases, phosphatases, proteases, adaptor proteins, sumoylation enzymes, etc.) that recognize short linear peptide motifs in which only two or three amino acid residues are critical for functional activity [reviewed in (7–9)]. Thousands of such reversible interactions establish the protein networks that govern cellular physiology. Very simple calculations indicate how easily such motifs evolve at random. If one assumes an average length of 400 amino acids for proteins and equal abundance of all amino acids, any given two–amino acid motif is likely to occur at random in every protein in a cell. (There are 399 dipeptide motifs in a 400–amino acid protein and 20 × 20 = 400 possible dipeptide motifs.) Any specific three–amino acid motif will occur once at random in every 20 proteins and any four–amino acid motif will occur once in every 400 proteins. That means that, without any new mutations or natural selection, many sequences that are identical or close matches to many interaction motifs already exist. New motifs can arise readily at random, and any weak interaction can easily evolve, via random mutation and natural selection, to become a strong interaction (9). Furthermore, any pair of interacting proteins can readily recruit a third protein, and so forth, to form larger complexes. Indeed, it has been demonstrated that new protein interactions (10) and protein networks (11) can evolve fairly rapidly and are thus well within

the limits of evolution.

Kenneth Miller (2007), himself a practising Roman Catholic, in “Falling over the edge” takes an even more stringent view of the discounting evidence:

Behe cites the malaria literature to note that two amino-acid changes in the digestive vacuole membrane protein PfCRT (at positions 76 and 220) of Plasmodium are required to confer chloroquine resistance. From a report that spontaneous resistance to the drug can be found in roughly 1 parasite in 10^20, he asserts that these are the odds of both mutations arising in a single organism, and uses them to make this sweeping assertion:

“On average, for humans to achieve a mutation like this by chance, we would need to wait a hundred million times ten million years. Since that is many times the age of the universe, it’s reasonable to conclude the following: No mutation that is of the same complexity as chloroquine resistance in malaria arose by Darwinian evolution in the line leading to humans in the past ten million years.”

Behe, incredibly, thinks he has determined the odds of a mutation “of the same complexity” occurring in the human line. He hasn’t. What he has actually done is to determine the odds of these two exact mutations occurring simultaneously at precisely the same position in exactly the same gene in a single individual. He then leads his unsuspecting readers to believe that this spurious calculation is a hard and fast statistical barrier to the accumulation of enough variation to drive darwinian evolution. It would be difficult to imagine a more breathtaking abuse of statistical genetics. Behe obtains his probabilities by considering each mutation as an independent event, ruling out any role for cumulative selection, and requiring evolution to achieve an exact, predetermined result. Not only are each of these conditions unrealistic, but they do not apply even in the case of his chosen example. First, he overlooks the existence of chloroquine-resistant strains of malaria lacking one of the mutations he claims to be essential (at position 220). This matters, because it shows that there are several mutational routes to effective drug resistance. Second, and more importantly, Behe waves away evidence suggesting that chloroquine resistance may be the result of sequential, not simultaneous, mutations (Science 298, 74–75; 2002), boosted by the so-called ARMD (accelerated resistance to multiple drugs) phenotype, which is itself drug induced.

A mistake of this magnitude anywhere in a book on science is bad enough, but Behe has built his entire thesis on this error. Telling his readers that the production of so much as a single new protein-to-protein binding site is “beyond the edge of evolution”, he proclaims darwinian evolution to be a hopeless failure. Apparently he has not followed recent studies exploring the evolution of hormone-receptor complexes by sequential mutations (Science 312, 97–101; 2006), the ‘evolvability’ of new functions in existing proteins — studies on serum paraxonase (PON1) traced the evolution of several new catalytic functions (Nature Genet. 37, 73–76; 2005) — or the modular evolution of cellular signalling circuitry (Annu. Rev. Biochem. 75, 655–680; 2006). Instead, he tells his readers that there is just one explanation that “encompasses the cellular foundation of life as a whole”. That explanation, of course, is intelligent design.

Behe’s own Biology Department at Lehigh University published a statement repudiating Behe's views and intelligent design. The statement reads as follows:

Department Position on Evolution and "Intelligent Design” The faculty in the Department of Biological Sciences is committed to the highest standards of scientific integrity and academic function. This commitment carries with it unwavering support for academic freedom and the free exchange of ideas. It also demands the utmost respect for the scientific method, integrity in the conduct of research, and recognition that the validity of any scientific model comes only as a result of rational hypothesis testing, sound experimentation, and findings that can be replicated by others. The department faculty, then, are unequivocal in their support of evolutionary theory, which has its roots in the seminal work of Charles Darwin and has been supported by findings accumulated over 140 years. The sole dissenter from this position, Prof. Michael Behe, is a well-known proponent of “intelligent design.” While we respect Prof. Behe's right to express his views, they are his alone and are in no way endorsed by the department. It is our collective position that intelligent design has no basis in science, has not been tested experimentally, and should not be regarded as scientific.

The deconstruction of “intelligent design” also applies to biogenesis, where both nucleotide formation and ribosomal translation have been proved to have counter-intuitive precursors, demolishing irreducible complexity.

Fig 158: Chemical bifurcations consistent with the genetic code’s formation.

The deconstruction of “intelligent design” also applies to biogenesis, where both nucleotide formation (fig 93) and ribosomal translation (fig 94) have been proved to have counter-intuitive precursors, demolishing irreducible complexity. Another far-fetched claim made by Stephen Meyer who helped found the Center for Science and Culture (CSC) of the Discovery Institute is that the genetic code is now a free and arbitrary code determining protein structure that is not dependent on chemical differences among the bases and that therefore this needs intelligent design in the form of the mind of a “programmer”. This is fundamentally incorrect. Anyone who looks closely at nucleic acids can see that the four bases – purines A & G and pyrimidines T/U & C each have subtly different chemical properties and the biological amino acids do as well. So the notion that the genetic code needs a mind is false because, like all the other attributes of claimed irreducible complexity, the genetic code evolved from simpler irreducible forms of amino acid catalysis based on intrinsic chemical bifurcations like my analysis (King 1982) right. This is not a disproof, as the origin of the genetic code remains to be fully elucidated, but it shows the kind of chemical affinities which could have led to its current form.

Here’s another non-sequitur deflection blaming William Dembski, a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture (CSC), responsible for the debunked notion of specified complexity who is a mathematical theologian and should know better:

“According to Dembski, extremely improbable events that also exhibit ‘an independently recognisable pattern’

invariably result from intelligent causes, not chance”

It doesn’t matter how improbable a series of events is, if it has a recognisable pattern then it probably results from causes, but intelligent causes?

Consider the prime number distribution: π(N) ~ N/log(N), where π(N) is the prime-counting function (the number of primes less than or equal to N) and log(N) is the natural logarithm of N. This means that for large enough N, the probability that a random integer not greater than N is prime is very close to 1/log(N). Consequently, a random integer with at most 2N digits (for large enough n) is about half as likely to be prime as a random integer with at most N digits. In other words, the average gap between consecutive prime numbers among the first N integers is roughly log(N).

So the primes very slowly get extremely improbable for very large N and they do show a recognisable pattern – no factors other than themselves and 1. But do the primes arise from intelligent causes? Only if you say God invented the integers and the laws of addition and multiplication, then the primes are automatic. But that’s so basic its basal below intelligent. Does anyone have an alternative to addition, which is as basic as counting? And multiplication is just iterated addition!

An example of evidenceless propaganda presented as an academic blockbuster is the Hoover Institution video Mathematical Challenges to Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, hosted by Peter Robinson on "Uncommon Knowledge". It is also prominently cited in the Discovery Institute's magazine Evolution News. In their own words: The Discovery Institute started Evolution News in 2004 to counter all the fake news in the debate over Darwin and intelligent design. Since then, the audience for the English version has grown from a few thousand to more than a million users a year. This deceptive magazine title is a warning to the unwary.

The first thing to point out is that this video was NOT a "balanced" discussion between opponents and defenders of evolution at all, but rather three opponents of evolution with minimally varying views all opposing it. The notion that they are "good people" also has a Trumpian Republican implication as we shall see several times over later.

The mathematical challenge is ill conceived. the probabilistic arguments are specious and basically pulled out of thin air with massive powers of 10, forming no kind of accurate assessment of molecular dynamics at the quantum level or bearing any relation to biological reality. They are also vestigial opinions, not analyses.

Sungchul Ji notes: “I viewed this video and I disagree with Stephen Meyer. He thinks mathematics has proven that Darwinism (defined as chance origin of life) is wrong because the probability of life originated by chance is almost negligible and he cites 1 out of 10⁷⁷. He is assuming that the traditional mathematical approaches that have been successful in studying simple systems and disorganized complex systems apply to studying organized complex systems and this assumption, I think, is untenable”.

The discussion claimed that neo-Darwinists thought most of the DNA was junk and the fact it wasn't junk was claimed to be an argument for intelligent design. This is a preposterous claim because we now know non-coding DNA is integral to evo-devo evolutionary developmental concept in higher organisms which creationists despise. We also know half the human genome consists of transposable elements constituting an evolutionary parasito-symbiosis with coordinated evolutionary implications. Non-coding DNA has become the hallmark of higher organism evolution because it permits coordinated regulatory developmental variation on a small subset of protein genes’

There isn't a single statement that has any evidential basis as a critique of evolution and simply constitutes three avowed critics expressing personal attitudes and opinions without presenting any evidence that could remotely be regarded as a scientific position. Given the 2.9 million views, this is outstandingly manipulative. The lack of any scientific citations is signature.

An analysis of the contributors is thus in order, each with a representative video. This makes a glaring case for extreme bias. Berlinski and Meyer are both DI – ID fellows with pronounced Christian conservatism and anti-atheism credentials. Gelernter has cloned off Meyers Darwin's Doubt to form his own variant views also rejecting evolution.

David Gelernter: The Danger of Crusading Atheists

Gelernter is known for contributions to parallel computation in the 1980s. He is in addition known for his views against women in the workforce, saying working mothers were harming their children and should stay at home. As a measure of his extreme right wing views, Peter Thiel nominated Gelernter for the Science Advisor to the President position under Trump. His rejection of the scientific consensus regarding anthropogenic climate change and evolution is also noted.

In July 2019, Gelernter challenged Darwin's theories. In Giving Up Darwin a review of Stephen Meyer's book Darwin's Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design, which Gelernter wrote for the Claremont Review of Books, Gelernter stated that he does not accept modern evolutionary biology. On the other hand, Gelernter stipulates he "cannot accept" intelligent design either, saying that "as a theory, it would seem to have a long way to go." In "A Response to David Gelernter's Attack on Evolution", Patheos, August 26, 2019, Bob Seidensticker writes: "Let's subtitle this story, 'Guy who made his career in not-biology is convinced by other not- biologists that Biology's core theory is wrong.' Computer scientist and mathematician Jeffrey Shallit wrote: "Gelernter's review was not published in a science journal, but in a politics journal run by a far-right think tank. His review cites no scientific publications at all, and makes claims like 'Many biologists agree' and 'Most biologists think' without giving any supporting citations. So, not surprisingly ... Gelernter makes a fool of himself in his review, which resembles a 'greatest hits' of creationist misconceptions and lies."

David Berlinski: Atheism and its Scientific Pretensions David Berlinski author of The Devil's Delusion: Atheism and Its Scientific Pretensions asserts that "a great many men and women have a dull, hurt, angry sense of being oppressed by the sciences. They are frustrated by endless scientific boasting. They suspect that ... the scientific community holds them in contempt. They are right to feel this way." With Darwin's theory of evolution as a point of departure, he takes scientists to task for their anti-religious assumptions and explores the conflict between the scientific community and those with firmly held religious beliefs.

An opponent of biological evolution, Berlinski is a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, a Seattle-based think tank that is a hub of the pseudoscientific intelligent design movement. Berlinski shares the movement's rejection of the evidence for evolution, but does not avow intelligent design and describes his relationship with the idea as: "warm but distant. It's the same attitude that I display in public toward my ex-wives." Berlinski is a critic of evolution, yet, "Unlike his colleagues at the Discovery Institute,...[he] refuses to theorize about the origin of life."

Stephen C. Meyer: Theistic Evolution Meyer presents the case against Theistic Evolution. From the event "Theistic Evolution: A Scientific, Philosophical, and Theological Critique," hosted by Biola University. Meyer has been described as "the person who brought ID (intelligent design) to DI (Discovery Institute)" by historian Edward Larson, who was a fellow at the Discovery Institute prior to it becoming the center of the intelligent design movement.

Larsen is quoted by Chris Mooney in his book: Mooney C (2005) The Republican War on Science Basic Books:

And then there’s the aforementioned Stephen C. Meyer, a Cambridge history and philosophy of science Ph.D. who seems to have developed ID’s philosophical critique of modern science to begin with. A conservative Christian with a background in Republican politics, Meyer has been described as “the person who brought ID to DI” by historian Edward Larson (who was a fellow at the Discovery Institute prior to its antievolutionist awakening). Seeking to institutionalize the ID movement, Meyer turned to the late timber industry magnate C. Davis Weyerhaeuser, a major funder of Christian evangelism in the U.S. through his Stewardship Foundation. Weyerhaeuser provided key “seed money” to establish the Discovery Institute’s ID program, according to Larson.

Meyer is also a “university professor” at Palm Beach Atlantic University, in West Palm Beach, Florida, a “Christian liberal arts college” that puts its professors in what can only be described as an intellectual straitjacket. According to the school’s “Guiding Principles,”

Mooney introduces the book with the following quote which is very apt to the Creationism/ID debate:

"The success of science depends on an apparatus of democratic adjudication—anonymous peer review, open debate, the fact that a graduate student can criticize a tenured professor. These mechanisms are more or less explicitly designed to counter human self-deception. People always think they’re right, and powerful people will tend to use their authority to bolster their prestige and suppress inconvenient opposition. You try to set up the game of science so that the truth will out despite this ugly side of human nature" (Steven Pinker)

Cornelius Hunter (2021), again a Fellow of the Discovery Institute's Centre for Science and Culture, takes an unapologetic position, in which he subsumes scientific empiricism to theistic dominion:

In both Darwin's thought and later development of the theory of evolution, theological concerns have been viewed as serving in a range of possible roles. However, the theological concerns have consistently been viewed as, ultimately, subservient to empirical science. In the end, science has the final say regarding the content and evaluation of the theory. Here, this paper demonstrates the failure of this model. Theological concerns do have primacy over the science. They motivate the development of evolutionary theory, and they control the interpretation of the empirical evidence and justification of the theory. It is more accurate to view evolution as a theological research program.

Ian Thompson (2011) notes the way Darwin’s experience of nature precipitated his religious doubts:

Charles Darwin (1809-1882) was predisposed at an early age towards naturalistic explanations but still took seriously Paley’s arguments from design. Then Darwin conceived that gradualist processes of natural selection were responsible for producing the great variety of biological species and also the appearance of design within them. In this way, he was able to counter Paley’s argument. Even the possibility of natural processes was presumably sufficient to rebut his inference about God. Darwin was effectively advocating a deism, because, he said, he did not want any God to exist that would be responsible for the suffering, predation and parasitism, etc., which he saw everywhere in nature. Others point out that if God was not involved, there could be no reason given for retaining a divinity at all. Darwin was claiming that God does not influence the world after creating it, and such claims reduced public support for theism.

Darwin’s critique is particularly true of intelligent design. If God designed dolphins as animals, like us of climax intelligence, why did he design them to commit rape and torture smaller mammals for sport? We know the answer to the former is sexually antagonistic co-evolution, just as it is enacted by the human patriarchy in FGM and stoning for perceived adultery, and the answer to the latter is evolutionary diversification – into archaea, bacteria, plants, animals and fungi and then among animals, on to the herbivores and carnivores, and we know the carnivores, to survive, have to sharpen their hunting skills through almost obsessive practice. But this is also a comment on the religious ideal of God as love and peace.

But Thompson (2021), who is an unapologetic Christian nuclear physicist, takes it much further than intelligent design, to assert the right and necessity to amend natural laws at will:

One common alternative to the theory of natural selection is the theory of intelligent design. The intelligent design theory, however, is deliberately limited, as it does not attempt a causal explanation. It tries to develop techniques to examine physical organisms and then to determine whether or not that examination provides evidence for the existence of an intelligence in the coming to be (or design) of those organisms. Strictly, it is neutral on whether the intelligence is God or whether it might be previously-existing extra-terrestrial beings who have (say) genetically-engineered the organism. ... Intelligent design theory has generated an extraordinary amount of animosity from mainstream (naturalistic) scientists. They often accuse it of being false. Then they simultaneously accuse it of being non-scientific because non-falsifiable! By comparison, theistic science is advocating a much stronger theory than intelligent design since it cannot be neutral about ‘the nature of the designer’. We start from the assumption that God exists, as being itself and life itself.

There are many scientists who do profess religion and think that theism and Darwin’s theory can co-exist. This compatibility is possible since theism means to them that God sustains the world, and Darwin has described how creatures in the world have functioned and developed together. This view, however, is equivalent to deism, not theism. It holds that God is not involved with the world once its operation has started (except, perhaps, in special events such as the founding and/or culmination of new religions). Once ‘laws of nature’ are assumed to be inviolate, Darwinism can accommodate such deistic views. Within our new scientific theism we are unable to follow Darwin, in either the naturalistic or deistic world views. When God sustains the universe, this is not accomplished ‘at a distance’ by ‘merely sustaining’ the universe according to laws of physics but (we now conclude) by the presence of God in some degree. There can be no power without substance and no substance without present existence. This means that any sustaining action of God in the world will necessarily require the reception of life from God, not abstractly but as a substance really existing. This life is not always according to fixed physical laws. It necessarily has spiritual and mental components that will be effective if a suitable receptive form (e.g. a human form) is present. The fitness of a living organism is not purely a function of its interactions with the physical world and other organisms. It depends also and at least on the fullness of its reception of life from God. This implies that, within a proper theism, it is impossible to have a purely naturalistic account of evolution. Fitness, and hence selection, are not entirely natural. They are subject also to spiritual and mental considerations.

Thompson (2022) is even prepared to invoke notions that would seek to violate the foundations of physics:

I propose that the fine-tuned parameters of quantum field theory (masses and charges) can be varied locally in order to achieve ends in nature. This is not adding extra forces to nature but rescaling the forces which already exist. The unit of electric charge e is built into the fine-structure constant α=e^2/ℏc ~ 1/137. Some physicists have already proposed varying α slowly over the age of the universe. Some kind of variation, therefore, is conceivable in physics. Now, we propose to vary it over micro-seconds and within living organisms. … I have shown how iterative forward and reverse steps in metric time can be used to influence intermediate variations in the vacuum permittivity to move charged bodies to achieve specific targets at a later time. This is analogous to processes of mental planning. This a start of a theory for how mental or spiritual influx could have effects in nature. Furthermore, these effects on permittivity should be measurable in biophysics experiments. With this proposal, we see after some centuries how ‘final causes’ could once again be seen active in nature.

I can accept bidirectional flow forwards and backwards in time in the sense of advanced and retarded quantum transactions, in which the unfolding future can be consciously anticipated for our survival. I have thought, visioned and written exhaustively to conceive and explain how these two can fit together seamlessly in the brain-mind and retain the natural universe intact. In my opinion it is the key to the middle way of conscious survival and consummation in a surviving biospheric universe. I can't and won't rightly accept spiritual causality acting over and above natural substance without a shred of empirical evidence except a priori belief in God. It leads to the loss of balance, the loss of nature and the loss of life.

I’m an existential empiricist, of both spirit and substance, to add to my existential realism that reality is evidential. Hence we do not assume God exists without evidential experience. If it walks like a duck and flies like a duck, Occam’s razor implies to test if it is a duck and see first if the duck hypothesis quacks. If someone tells me God has love, jealousy, wrath and compassion, I say He talks and acts like a mammal with a limbic system, not a dragon , spider, or scorpion. If God is claimed to have wisdom I see this also as a human attribute of learning and experience. A spiritual scientist should then seek a contradiction and ask: “Wait, this thing is conceived to be omniscient and omnipotent, immanent and omnipresent". But then we are reminded that all these “divine” attributes are those of hyperbolic projection of human nature – conceptual, through Logos to manufactural power. So I come reluctantly to the conclusion that God is a hyperbolic projection of a mammalian and in fact an all too human “psyche”.

Prominently cited by Rational wiki as one of three showcase works of creationist pseudoscience, is Mike Pitman’s older (1985) “Adam and Evolution: A Scientific Critique of Neo-Darwinism”. A New Scientist review by P T Saunders (1985) in "Another case for Creationism" notes the importance of distinguishing the fact that evolution has occurred from arguments about how it occurred. He notes that, although Pitman addressed the problem of complex structures, including both the eye and the origin of cytochrome c, showing the Neo-Darwinist explanation of macroevolution to be somewhat "flimsy", he was unconvincing about the alternatives and has clearly failed in his chief aim. Like all creationists, masquerading as “intelligent design”, he has tried to hide his religion to appear scientific:

He is less convincing however in putting forth his alternative as his only real argument is that anything that has not yet been adequately explained by science counts as evidence for creationism. He also makes it very easy for himself by never specifying what sort of creator he has in mind. All we can infer is that the creator is omnipotent enough to produce all sorts of marvellous things, but is limited enough, or lazy enough, to have restricted himself to a limited number of archetypes … The case he puts against the fact of evolution is even weaker. The fossil record does indeed contain gaps, but is is nowhere near as poor as Pitman would have us believe. Geological strata cannot be adequately explained in terms of the relative ability of different organisms to escape the rising waters of the Biblical Flood. … Pitman clearly fails in his chief aim. ... His confident assertion that the Jesuit geologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin perpetrated fraud not only at PIltdown, but also at Choukouten where the Peking man was found and subsequently disappeared is to say the least contentious.

His defamatory traduction of Chardin is unfair because it was Woodward's later reconstruction that included ape-like canine teeth. In August 1913, Woodward, Dawson and Teilhard de Chardin began a systematic search of the spoil heaps specifically to find the missing canines of a skull found there. Teilhard de Chardin soon found a canine that, according to Woodward, fitted the jaw perfectly. A few days later, Teilhard de Chardin moved to France and took no further part in the discoveries. However, the intrigue continues (Lukas 1981, Thackeray 2016, 2019). Neither is there record of his fraud over the Peking man. Defaming the cherished author of the evolutionary noosphere, himself a devout Jesuit priest, is an unconscionable attack on other Christians.

Prominently cited by Rational wiki as one of three showcase works of creationist pseudoscience, is Mike Pitman’s (1985) “Adam and Evolution: A Scientific Critique of Neo-Darwinism”. A New Scientist review by P T Saunders (1985) in "Another case for Creationism" notes the importance of distinguishing the fact that evolution has occurred from arguments about how it occurred. He notes that, although Pitman addressed the problem of complex structures, including both the eye and the origin of cytochrome c, showing the Neo-Darwinist explanation of macroevolution to be somewhat "flimsy", he was unconvincing about the alternatives and has clearly failed in his chief aim. Like all creationists, masquerading as “intelligent design”, he has tried to hide his religion to appear scientific:

His defamatory traducing of Chardin is unfair because it was Woodward's later reconstruction that included ape-like canine teeth. In August 1913, Woodward, Dawson and Teilhard de Chardin began a systematic search of the spoil heaps specifically to find the missing canines of a skull found there. Teilhard de Chardin soon found a canine that, according to Woodward, fitted the jaw perfectly. A few days later, Teilhard de Chardin moved to France and took no further part in the discoveries, so he was not involved in the fraudulent claim. Neither is there record of his fraud over the Peking man. Defaming the cherished author of the evolutionary noosphere is an unconscionable attack by a closet creationist on another Christian and those who see life and its evolution as sacred.

Mike Pitman: The Tao, Logos, Shabda, Kalma etc. are the power that drives creation (at its highest level will-power). They are the Way. And following this Path or Way leads to its Source. The Way is to heighten consciousness; it has nothing, essentially, to do with religious practices. Eventually Consciousness (stripped of mind and matter as far is ascent is concerned) is realised as the Creator. In other words, the Creator is (at present unrealised) in you.

Chris King: It is interesting the way, no matter how diverse religious paths have become, from Buddhism and Taoism, to Monotheism, Vedanta and Animism, in Mike’s description what ultimately emerges is the Creator of Creation!

Mike: Also, the body itself is seen by all faiths as a prison of the soul. The phrase used was 'soul incarcerated in the flesh' (Lat. carcer, enclosure hence prison). The very reason for prayer and meditation (Jewish form or any other) is to escape from or obtain release from this material, that is, bodily realm.

Chris: The body is NOT a prison. Incarnation is the bearer of life. Anyone following this line of yours is promulgating a Faustian pact with martyrdom. Moksha is not death but the source of life’s reflowering.

Mike: Many years ago, I met Sai Baba in Chennai. I was, although the audience was huge, given a seat near the front. At one point a boy sang a hymn and, as if to touch his head in blessing, Sai Baba reached out. But before reaching that place a shot of dust left his fingertips and scattered as it lost momentum. I was astonished and for a split second wondered if I was seeing things when a gasp arose all round saying 'Vibhuti'. Thus, I knew many had also simultaneously witnessed this. Those who may have power to materialise or adjust material circumstance, such as healers or those whose wish is to engender faith in others other than by telepathic means, are unlikely to want to waste time repeatedly showing off their tricks to satisfy scientific sceptics. From their perspective, why bother?

Chris: I also witnessed Sai Baba’s “feats” in India. He was also renowned for sweets appearing from his images. He claimed to be the “Kalki Avatar” – the final Vishnu ending the Kali Yuga, but he has passed away and the Kali Yuga is still very much with us. So what are a few stereotyped “miracles”, when there is a living world to save, or the universe could lose all sense of conscious meaning? That’s why I am leaving a trail for others to follow in my “magnum opus” Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, when I am gone.

Mike: Explain yourself. Clearly and succinctly.

Chris: Physicist Brian Cox notes on the BBC ahead of COP26 warned that: "Unique events that led to civilisation mean its demise could ‘eliminate meaning in the galaxy for ever’. He is right and the conclusion is that this is not just what we are doing to ourselves and the diversity of life as a whole, but the living galaxy and the universe. Particularly if you believe abiogenesis is impossible!

Mike: There are many reasons that the abiogenetic notion is vanishingly improbable (far greater than the 10^-59 at which science normally draws the line between possibility and impossibility). However, the phase of ‘chemical evolution’ is critical so that normal ‘scientific’ response to fact is to start recreating lists of order of chemical appearances. Hope, here in the form of speculation, never dies! Your postings concerning abiogenesis and the so-called Cambrian explosion make an interesting but, since you were not there, entirely speculative account of what you have been told happened or, rather, to satisfy your basic assumptions, must have happened in some way or other.

Chris: You can't claim biogenesis is impossible and then disregard the necessity of protecting life in this planet, because in your scenario you have no guarantee it can emerge from the slime somewhere else. If a Creator had made life as it is, the universe could be teeming with clockwork crocodiles that can't evolve, but that’s not what we see out there. The only life we know of is evolving here on Earth, so we need urgently to protect it.

Mike: This unnecessary reference prompts me to surmise that, if your unique, overweening and, you claim, drug-induced gospel requires chemical evolution as a sine qua non, this might be the reason for your reflex negativity towards those who, like me, do not buy your story.

Chris: The fact that biogenesis is necessary for the evolution of complex conscious life is not a reason for you to accuse me of reflex negativity. I am astutely critical of anyone who adheres to the delusory notion that life is dispensable in the Creator’s Eschaton. Yes you are a cited pariah in the work!

Mike: There is one Bible-basher (his own bible) … who is forever with the wrath of fulmination pulpitting about fundamentalist ideas such as a Creator but who never ever gives answers to questions asked of such rhetoric.

Chris: Now who could that possibly be?

Mike: Although no doubt admirably researched from its own perspective, others do not have time to read (over 200 pages usually starts a publisher frowning).

Chris: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is currently 492 pages My Hebrew Bible is 1586 pages, so I still have a long way to go! The universe is not a trivial matter. It’s not a "Mickey Mouse" theistic fait accompli. Unlike religious and cult leaders who depend on miracles, it is a fully evidenced path to realisation to reflower the planetary biosphere and redeem the human species from self-extinction. People are going to discover it and they are going to ask searching questions.

Mike: Your mind is fertile but uncontrolled. It jumps and flies everywhere. In this case you are exhibiting a typical unwillingness to confront what you see as an existential threat and deal with it consistently.

Chris: I gave you precise critiques. The existential threat is to humanity in terms of a Fermi extinction driven by religious eschatology, not to me personally.

Here is his stated position in 2022:

'Theological evolution' comes in two main forms - deistic, where some Deity touches the fuse and let's life develop as per the scientific explanation and theistic, where the view that a God-of-the-gaps (your perturber?) is responsible, instead of mindless mutation, for the same gaps as evolution-of-the-gaps addresses. This is the BIOS view. It is practically compatible with materialism except for invoking God's guidance of genetic program as opposed chance (scientific atheism's creator).

Wait! Some Christians, overawed by the apparent authority of science, decided either God lit the fuse and then, metaphorically, stepped 'outside' his creation (Darwin's sometime position called deist); or that he whimsically tinkered either genetically or to produce novel forms ex nihilo (called theistic evolution). There is no more evidence for deistic or piecemeal theistic evolution than for the implementation of a coherent ecological program for planet earth.

Anyone reading Symbiotic Existential Cosmology can understand that Mike Pitman, in addition to traducing the majority of Christians who adhere to theistic evolution, as following a delusory compromise, as well as 98% of biological scientists, is asserting that there is no evidence for "implementation of a coherent ecological program for planet earth", in complete contradiction to the entire evolution of the biosphere over 3.5 billion years and any role for the biosphere in scientific or religious cosmology and in future human survival, something we should all be diametrically opposed to for our survival as a species, and it comes piled on top of religious notions of divinely-ordained human dominion over nature, toxic to the future of life as a whole.

The problem with religious intelligent design is that it pretends to be scientific to gain credibility, while hiding the nature of the designer to avoid accusations of creationism. This is a defunct cosmology because intelligent design, without revealing the nature of the designer critical to the complete cosmology is fallacious and defunct. Ian Thompson’s work, by contrast is trying to create an unlikely physics to shoehorn theism into the driving seat, by twisting the laws of nature in sleights of hand.

So there is another principle that becomes paramount and that is the underlying motivation of the proposer. “Underlying" says it all in poetic terms. Under (occluded) lying (misrepresenting). If a person is simply in the pursuit of true knowledge, they don't have a second agenda driving the ferry across the Styx. This is critically important because unveiling reality is an unstable process and subject to fixed illusions. The Ultimate quest is to understand reality as it is – empirically truthful and correct i.e. right as opposed to righteous.

This question of motivation pervades the notion of teleology, so the existential scientist in me says this is disingenuous. It is seeking to assert a hidden order into the edge-of-chaos of existence so that everything will "turn out right" in the eye of the beholder. It is stereotyped, well-meaning, sterile and clipping the wings of fecundity, or more correctly FGM clipping the gonads of diversity. If I stand for life overflowing across the generations forever, I have to stand for fecund wildness and not try to tame reality in our own hopeful image. I have to say बस “Bas” “enough”! Let nature be!

Nancy du Tertre: I am curious how you have concluded that we can’t ever possibly be an advanced AI version created by some “god” or, said otherwise, some other earlier, more powerful, capable, insightful being(s). I am guessing you hold a soft spot in your intellect for the concept that humans are “special.” Even AI has already shown glimmers of consciousness and thus perhaps a soul that must be artificial not “real” because mankind created it instead of some Higher God. So what’s the difference between a real and not real soul? I would like to know.

Chris: I conclude soul is a notion, rather than an entity, or fact of existence because when soul came up in our expert group discussion, it proved to be a chameleon with diverse conflicting views among people of what soul is conceived to be. That’s elementary empirical evidence for soul not having consistent existential status. I reject notions of soul connected with the pursuit of eternal life after death which I see as promissory spiritualism in defence of the biological facts of life which is that lie is perennially immortal but individual organisms are mortal because sexual recombination to make complex variety is the only way conscious life can exist in the entropic universe, and this heals the dilemma of ego suffering, which Buddhism attempts to solve by renunciation of life, by devoting ourselves to life as a whole because “we can’t take it with us when we go”, so mortal life heals the existential dilemma by giving back to life as a whole and eternal religious visions are both fallacious and lead to extreme forms of temptation to evil.

Nancy: I’m on board with your focus on the divinity of life and existence. I treasure life and being in this glorious planet in all of its diversity. But my guess is that once I die I won’t be here except as physical dust and a roaming soul/spirit. Therefore death is relevant to my limited understanding of total existence.

I asked you the question about whether humans might be the equivalent of AI creations by a more technologically advanced race of beings to see if you could admit to our obvious ignorance and inability to answer that question. I can’t automatically discount it as a possibility. Nor should you.

Chris: One can't envisage any kind of created scenario unless we ignore the cosmological and evolutionary evidence for life. In any forensic investigation we have to respect the evidence at face value, not fool ourselves with a climate of denialism. The fingerprints of biogenesis are written in cosmic symmetry breaking, the molecular clouds of Orion and the lost sea vents on the ocean floor. DNA evidence for the evolution of life abounds in each of our genomes and every genome on Earth and coincides with the geological record. Denial is futile.

Evolution is resplendently creative. Creation is pathetically sterile. Intelligence and all AI by comparison with the sheer de novo unfolding of living conscious evolution is bound in a conceptual straight jacket. The genetic evolution of our biosphere is a parallel processing quantum supercomputer whose scope reduces chatGPT to triviality.

Nancy: We don’t want to believe that our divinity could be just a base technology. That would be devastating. Ego crushing. However, we will go far enough to say that God was the one who created us. So on some level we do admit to being someone else’s creation! But we keep it all in the Divine group of spiritual stuff. Not mundane technology. We need to believe in our own sacred existence because our life and identity are indeed sacred to us.

Chris: God and soul are just two of many animistic visions we can entertain around the campfire, some helpful but many delusory and damaging. I don't mind if you choose to believe in God at your peril but you can’t make any claim that I admit to being someone else's sterile creation or attempt to deny it out of hubris. I am choosing to be compassionate of life because I am of the source – wild, primal, untrammelled and unconditioned beyond all towns and countries. Evolution and biogenesis are like that too.

You need to consider the consequences of creationism by comparison with the creativity and fecundity of life. Creation is a wholly sterile notion that can't stand on its own two feet, or six if you are an insect! You may consider belief in God is divine but disbelief in the ultimate sacredness and creative autonomy of life is a Faustian pact with death itself.

Nancy: I hear ya! I spend more time loving Nature and its “fecundity” than almost anything else. I don’t spend much time, if at all, thinking about who or what created what. Not my bailiwick. Out of my league. But I do regularly express gratitude and appreciation for this wonderful “pleasure dome” that I have been able to experience. I thank God. Gratitude rebounds on itself regardless of what you believe in. Feels good. Enhances good health. Makes one feel connected to all that is.

Chris: I checked on the computational power of the biosphere and it is hands down the most powerful supercomputer ever likely to exist, let alone survive on this planet. Landenmark, Forgan & Cockell (2015), in "An Estimate of the Total DNA in the Biosphere", calculate the computational power of the biosphere to be up to 10¹⁵ yottaNOPS (yotta = 10²⁴), or 10³⁹ Nucleotide Operations Per Second (NOPS), about 10²² times more processing power than the Tianhe-2 supercomputer, then the fastest in the world, at on the order of 105 teraFLOPS (tera = 10¹²). Tech Review in 2024 asserts that the current fastest, Frontier, runs at 1 exaflop or 10¹⁸ floating-point operations per second, so we arrive at a current figure of 10¹⁸ times the computing power of the fastest super-computer today, which although designed on low power consumption still uses the electricity of a town with thousands of houses. Functional biospheric computational power may be significantly less. The percentage of any given genome being transcribed at any given time depends on the reproductive and physiological state of each organism, and at the current time we cannot reliably estimate this for all life on Earth. If all the DNA in the biosphere was being transcribed at reported rates, taking an estimated transcription rate of 30 bases per second, then the potential computational power is as above.

The biosphere super-computer is an organic quantum computing process operating from the level of single molecules, in both nucleotide replication and mutational change, both of which operate at the level of orbital wave functions in forms of spatial parallel superposition computing, as evidenced in protein folding rates and enzyme quantum tunnelling.

Lingam, Frank & Balbi (2023) suggest a more conservative current difference of 109 between information transfer in the biosphere and the technosphere as a whole. However, under the admittedly equivocal assumption of sustained exponential growth, which is profoundly unlikely, they find that information transmission in the technosphere could potentially surpass that of the biosphere ∼90 years in the future. The current world population is 8x109 and there are 3x109 base pairs of human DNA, so current technosphere information corresponds to that of one DNA base, or one person alive, but comparison with the entire human population. The likelihood of growth of the current technosphere by a factor of 109 remains specious.

Thus there is no conceivable possibility of any form of AI achieving anywhere near the computing power of the natural intelligence (NI) that generated conscious life on Earth. No – it didn’t create it, which would be a dead duck – it spawned it creatively through mutational evolution and natural selection, sexual fertility and embryogenic development, so we are – wait for it – autonomously conscious sentient beings!

The only problem for human designs to manipulate and control everything, is that this computer is a law unto itself and loves to simply refine evolutionary fertility and awareness so we can't harness it to control nature. We still have no idea that AI could ever be conscious, but NI has already done it and done it so well that here we are. And we really don't need AI to solve our problems at all. It’s just a pipe dream of elite human hubris to manufacture something so intelligent in mechanistic terms we can claim we have invented God, in the process, making human gainful human employment a feature of a forgotten age. All we need is good medical science to improve the quality of life and to stop trashing the planet, take the living sacraments among the crickets in the moonlight and wonder at the fabulous awesome “nature" of existence.

Chris Nunn: Interestingly many mystics, especially Sufi ones, come to suppose that they are God. Is that fantasy only or a very partial truth?

Chris King: It’s both ultimate reality as it is experienced numinously and spiritual fantasy if it is subsequently represented in a world view of divinity.

Nearly all spiritually minded people seem to veer towards an elite vision that embraces a hierarchical view of order invoking deity in some form or other, whereas I am of intimate symbiosis with the diversity of life and see it as key to our survival and how the universe evolves to climax consciousness, through the biota, rather than disembodied divinity. I see conscious mortal life as the ground zero embodied manifestation of the All, which is not an independent godhead imposing a divine order on supplicant nature as creatura and think that’s what our ancestors conceived of in their animistic world view that preceded religion. I identify with the All and experience it as a symbiotic eternal merging, which is pretty much what the Sufi’s do and the Rishis.

Erwin Schrödinger (1944) quotes Persian Sufi mystic Aziz Nasafi:

“On the death of any living creature, the spirit returns to the spirit world and the body to the bodily world. In this way however, only the bodies are subject to change. The spiritual world is one single spirit who stands like unto a light behind the bodily world and who, when any single creature comes into being, shines through it as through a window. According to the kind and size of the window, less or more light enters the world. The light itself however remains unchanged”.

That to me is right on the edge. It’s not really defining God, just the light of oneness, but it’s starting on the road to the Godhead so a bit precarious. I don't want to take it that far, because I see psychedelics as a way people can enter the nierika and experience the numinous for themselves. It’s not a panacea or an enlightenment pill, and needs to be accompanied by all the traditional skills of meditative repose (mindfulness and annihilation as Marguerite Porete put it beautifully in “Mirror to the Simple Soul” before being burned at the stake for her vision). Sacramental mysticism opens the doors of perception so we can see into the mystery a lot more deeply, without any assumptions, so its as close to a pure reality quest as the empirical method can provide, just like the LHC.

I think that helps humanity become able to have mystical oneness without doctrine so we can all witness the Ultimate reality in the raw and return with tales of our journeys. It also comes with an implicit message of symbiosis because it is mysticism through species interdependence, but it also comes with a deep symbiotic moksha – an interdependence spiritually with life as a whole, because in the very nature of the experience, we as a species are humbly at one with all life in the cosmos. It’s not a lesser moksha because pure spiritual training and discipline tends to breed an attitude of elite mind-dominant mysticism that invokes a hierarchical view of renunciation of incarnate existence, rather than a complete merging with the abundance life as a whole.

The Gospel of Thomas is indeed the visionary inside story of Yeshua’s life experience. The synoptics and John are by contrast the outer, secondary apocalyptic account.

(2) Jesus said, "Let him who seeks continue seeking until he finds. When he finds, he will become troubled. When he becomes troubled, he will be astonished, and he will rule over the All.

(3) Jesus said, "If those who lead you say to you, 'See, the kingdom is in the sky,' then the birds of the sky will precede you. If they say to you, 'It is in the sea,' then the fish will precede you. Rather, the kingdom is inside of you, and it is outside of you. When you come to know yourselves, then you will become known, and you will realize that it is you who are the sons of the living father.

(77) Jesus said, "It is I who am the light which is above them all. It is I who am the all. From me did the all come forth, and unto me did the all extend. Split a piece of wood, and I am there. Lift up the stone, and you will find me there.”

In both 2 and 77 it is “the All” and the way Jesus uses it is not to "rule over all”. This is critical, as the inner path has Jesus referring to the All in very much the way Brahman in my moksha epiphany is envisaged and we need to learn from it and respect it. I would wager that the Father in 3 is equivalent to the All in the light of 2 and 77.

If one avoids trying to fudge the physics, as Thomson does to facilitate theistic causality operating independently of physical causality, and reflects on the transactional quantum interpretation, we already have overlapping advanced and retarded trans-causality in quantum physics under special relativity without any contrived assumptions and we don't yet know how to unravel how and whether conscious experience can use this to anticipate, although the sustained use of conscious volition by all brains appears to confirm a selective advantage to subjective conscious volition over the physical universe. Life is already doing this and we need to respect life prima facie and not contrive a divine cosmology without clear subjective or objective evidence to support it, because if we don't respect the life and the diversity of life we do have as the primary manifestation within us, we will surely end up here:

(70) Jesus said, "That which you have will save you if you bring it forth from yourselves.

That which you do not have within you will kill you if you do not have it within you.”

That which we have is life itself as long as it lasts. Guard it! Protect it! Love it humbly in all its diversity, not with spiritual ascendancy! The sanctity of life comes first. Once biodiversity is saved, we can consider all our hopes and fears for divinity.

“Richard Dawkins admits Darwinian presuppositions against God” is a two-minute video interview with Richard Dawkins and Francis Collins the ex-leader of the Human Genome Project, who is also a devoted Christian. The video, rather than exposing Dawkins as biased by his evolutionary “beliefs”, casts him in an almost visionary light, “I am in love with the idea that it is possible to explain complex things in terms of simple things. Darwin’s great gift was to show that big complex things can come into existence by an explicable, understandable, beautiful, elegant process of gradual evolutionary change and that’s such a beautiful idea and that inventing a big complex thing, which God must be if he exists, throws a ruddy great spanner in the way of that beautiful Darwinian concept”. He is being honest about his own predilection, which is natural and naturally beautiful. In so doing he has transformed from a “boorish scientist” into an artist-musician of life’s becoming and shown he has genuine spiritual character.

The fundamental problem with creationism is that it is the most extreme violation of Occam's razor possible. Evolution is a natural and elegantly simple process of quantum perturbation and natural and sexual selection, showing how great complexity can ensue from underlying simplicity. To invoke a creator Deity cites the ultimately complex to explain the natural, so it's the worst conceivable logical option in terms of Occam's razor. That's why affirmative belief is a trap to avoid, particularly if we are dealing with sensitive unstable processes like subjectively conscious mysticism.

But when we turn to Francis Collins, who despite being a sincere well-meaning famous scientist, we have a real problem: “whatever ability we humans have to try to imagine what God is really like if God exists and I believe he does, has got to be so completely pathetic compared to the reality of that complexity and that awesome capability of that physicist and mathematician – a mind – I think of God as a mind, not as some greater guy in the sky, which is an unfortunate image foisted on generations of believers – I don't think God has gender and think God is a mind that is capable of things that you and I cannot possibly imagine”.

Collins (2009) in “The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief” espouses theistic evolution or evolutionary creation, which he prefers to call BioLogos – that one can "think of DNA as an instructional script, a software program, sitting in the nucleus of the cell”, is talking about a very exploded version of an extremely intelligent human mind that can, not only understand the laws of nature, but literally conjure up the entire cosmos. He is also an evangelical Christian believer, believing in the Christian idea of deity as a Trinity – Jesus as the son, Abba as the father and the Holy Ghost and the whole historical happening focussed on Jerusalem in the year zero as a reality, or at least as something he can accept and worship in church and take the Eucharist upon. The assumption of Yeshua’s mission setting up the context for him as Son of God to orchestrate the Big Bang 13 billion years beforehand is putting the cosmological cart before the horse and most scientists would find it more than a hard to accept willy nilly.

Collins isn’t hailing Vishnu, the sustainer, who is the archetype of the intelligent deity dreaming Brahma out of the lotus in his navel, but the Christian Trinity, so this “mind” is not the cosmic God but the Christian deity. If he has discovered the true God of reality, why is it still latched onto the Christian doctrine? Why isn’t he now reciting mantras and doing deep transcendental meditation? It is consciousness itself, not intelligence, that is primary. And what of Lakshmi? Francis says his God is neuter like the Holy Ghost – a neutral mind. This is a human believer making God in his own image while still believing in evangelical Christianity as a religious movement with ambitions of religious conversion. How does this intelligence translate into how space-time and the forces get created ex nihilo? No explanation is forthcoming, because the initial assumption of God is omniscient, unimaginable and inexplicable. We have come to understand that intelligence is something that emerges within nature, it’s part of life and living species, so we have a contradiction, and it needs more than intellectual intelligence to evoke the entire Universe at large.

If one tries to invoke a deity that is consistent with the natural universe, as we now know it, one ends up with a super-intelligent super-conscious agent, as Francis Collins suggests, evoking the laws of nature and evolving life, not just a man with wooly hair who says "let the Universe begin", so deity has to be refashioned post-hoc as the “provocateur” of the universe as it evolves in all its complexity, not just defining the laws of nature, but creating space-time and all that exists within it. If this is the kind of deity such religious people claim we need in the modern universe, to fill their credibility gap, why would this deity also invest Yeshua with super-human status in Jerusalem 2000 years before, in an enactment of a tragedy of sacrificing his only begotten son? The two concepts of deity are entirely inconsistent. This shows just show significantly even highly intelligent belief can confound empirical discovery.

Eastern religions try to do this by realising the physical universe as aggregations of consciousness into grosser forms, but this is problematic to realise in any more than an allegorical dream time sense. We know that the standard model of physics arising from symmetry-breaking and the symmetries of the colour and electro-weak forces are interactively predisposed to fractal biogenesis and evolution explains the ongoing story and is an explicable account that makes scientific sense, as Richard Dawkins explains. Putting a creator God into the universe must must at least involve realising the laws of nature, but the elegant symmetries, and symmetry-breaking of the standard model and the complementation of chaos and order could easily invoke a mandala-like creation, rather than a linguistic Logos.

Upanishadic teachings invoke Brahman as Ultimate Reality, not God; the Hindu tradition is polytheistic, consistent with reincarnation rather than creation; and Buddhism is non-theistic and doesn’t accept a creation deity as the basis of its cosmology, although Hindu and Buddhist tantra does admit diverse deities and dakinis. Neither of these centrally oppose the evolutionary principle. Even Judaism doesn’t assert these evangelical creationist ideas, which is predominantly feature of evangelical Christianity and some Muslim groups. The notion of a creator deity in conflict with natural evolution is thus unique to Monotheism and Christianity in particular.

If we are thinking cosmologically, the human spiritual tradition is thus not consistently theistic, so there is really no way to justify asserting a creator on the basis of world religion as a manifestation of spiritual reality, so we end up with an evangelical contingent from the Christian tradition trying to claim the mantle of the God of Creation. That is not honest cosmology, or honest belief, because it is claiming a cosmological status, when such beliefs are supported only by one, or a few religions constituting a significant minority of the world population, so even if deity is conceived as manifest in humanity, monotheism is clearly not the root condition of even highly developed religions. One thus can't legitimately claim a creator deity as having human spiritual cosmological status.

The claim that the male “Father” god of creation has manifest in history as a succession from primitive beliefs, through “pagan” polytheistic deities such as Zeus and Vishnu to the one abstract God Yahweh who then fully manifests in Yeshua’s mission in the Trinity of Father, Son and Holy Ghost is a contrived patriarchal manifestation of cultural hubris in denial of spiritual diversity. Given this diversity, ALL religious traditions have to be seen to be at best allegorical accounts and not a description of the actual cosmology of the universe in which we consciously exist. No post-hoc contrivance in the light of the scientific discovery of the universe as we now know it, to invoke the universe at large as being created by a super-conscious super-causal agent has valid empirical explanatory power over nature.

This doesn't mean I don't accept the cosmic mind is a transcendent reality, or see it as anything less than a riveting revelation, but human and biospheric survival in the universe dictates that it is and has to be a symbiotic reality, in which we, and the biota as a whole, are the incarnate embodiment, of cosmic consciousness and the All, Brahman, or mind at large is the full conscious realisation. This is not a lesser Illumination but is cosmologically true to the universe and consciousness as it is experienced empirically.

For me, even the standard model of physics is awesomely beautiful in its diverse symmetries and I haven't lost faith in the inscrutable symmetry-breaking that TOEs invoke either, despite their failure to uniquely define the universe out of many configurations, so we could well have a Taoist or mandala like big bang “creation”, that is neither manufacture, nor a logos of verbal naming by a mere command – let there be Universe – the ultimate disingenuous simplicity hidden in an assumed agent of ultimate complexity!

It is because we are mortal that we are the full embodiment of “divinity” and we must needs to step up and fulfil the messianic quest of the Unveiling in our lifetime with no prior assumptions. That is what taking personal responsibility in the universe means. The mortal condition is ground zero. It’s the full monte. The divine condition by contrast is ethereal. We can think of the divine condition and the universe as a dream of Vishnu emergent in Brahma creating – Brahman ultimate reality – but the fully fleshed consciousness is mortal life itself. We manifest the All to the extent we merge with Brahman, but because we are mortal, we have to resolve the cosmic problem in our own mortal span. This means no egotistical advantage can prevail, because we can’t take material gains with us when we go, so we have to apply our entire personal responsibility for the benefit of the universe and life as a whole. Nothing else furthers.

In our planetary apocalypse, this is biocrisis, climate crisis, nuclear crisis and the covers being thrown off reality in the whole make-or-break planetary rite of passage, or extinction, we are facing in real time in this anthropocene transition from which we don’t know whether life, or human life, will even survive the next century, or millennium, given human impact. Our covenant with the All is to redeem the entire Universe – in our context the living planetary biosphere. We aren’t just unveiling our own visionary light but the Apocalypse of reality itself. The time is now. This is it! Carpe diem!

The Human Genome Project and all the genetic sequencing done since, lays bear the entire genetic, and even epigenetic skeleton of the Tree of Life that has shaped us all. There is no way to play casting lots on the garments of the Tree of Life by religious believers once these discoveries have been made. It is futile and dangerous to allow a religion with an vowed agenda of reinforcing the Sabbatical Creation, an endearing allegory that is manifestly incorrect in multiple ways, to create disinformation that the Tree of Life, which even Revelation declares to be sacrosanct, can be "blasphemed" against, as a false construction of materialistic science. I use blasphemed here intentionally because this has both a scientific and a religious dimension.

In the midst of the street of it, and on either side of the river, was there the tree of life, which bare twelve manner of fruits,

and yielded her fruit every month: and the leaves of the tree were for the healing of the nations (Rev. 22:2)

I will in no way do commerce with any conservative Christian apologist with an avowed fundamentalist agenda to cut the branches off the Tree of Life, by denying macro-evolution, even if masquerading in the guise of science to highjack the pursuit of true knowledge, so proponents of all forms of Creationism are well advised not to lay down the markers of a foundation dispute over this, lest they sully the credibility of their enterprise.

This is why I spent the last three months developing Symbiotic Existential Cosmology into a fully fledged extended evolutionary account including gene-culture co-evolution to specifically turn the tables on the Christian fundamentalist agenda to destroy the evolutionary basis of the Tree of Life from which we all come, in favour of an unscientific Christian doctrinal cannon, by detailing how religions themselves have evolved, and now Creationism as well, so those that cast the first stone are themselves evolutionary sinners. The fact the 98% of biological scientists support the truth of evolution is evidence that their intimate experience of nature is conclusive to those who investigate it and the evidence presented here confirms, in each cited case that adventitious mutation filtered by natural and sexual selection are indeed sufficient to result in the evolution of the tress of life documented in geological, archaeological, genetic and phenotypic history.

Fig 159: Predatory Creationism attempts to devour

the evolutionary fish of the Tree of Life..

New Wine in New Bottles

Jesus said: "It is impossible for a man to mount two horses or to stretch two bows. And it is impossible for a servant to serve two masters; otherwise, he will honor the one and treat the other contemptuously. No man drinks old wine and immediately desires to drink new wine. And new wine is not put into old wineskins, lest they burst; nor is old wine put into a new wineskin, lest it spoil it. An old patch is not sewn onto a new garment, because a tear would result." (Gospel of Thomas 47).

Creationism is old wine in old bottles,

that treats the evolving diversity of life with just such contempt.

Religious “Intelligent Design” is old wine in old bottles, falsely labeled

as new and fresh, when they have become vinegar and gall.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is new wine in new bottles.

It respects science, yet transcends materialism

It rejects dominion over nature and sanctifies conscious life immortal.

To cast the unfolding diversity of life in the old bottles of creation would

doom the overflowing abundance of life's evolving diversity,

to the Day of Judgment, of a human-induced Fermi self-extinction.

I serve no master, neither am I yours, but if you want life to survive,

you need to drink from the bubbling spring which I have measured out (G of Th 13).

It has been apparent to me for 40 years that to achieve any real benefit for the world, I will have to defend science and the scientific method on evolution against religious attempts to assert belief in the place of discovery, while at the same time laying siege to science over freeing subjective consciousness from materialistic incarceration. For me this is a truly religious calling that has to be done by cosmological truth to nature, by setting a new paradigm of truth speaking to nature. To remind you of this, please look in detail at my own Tree of Life, which contains a citation requiring it not to be used to advance creationist claims, because that is exactly what I found was happening shortly after I released it on the internet.

His disciples said to him, "Who are you, that you should say these things to us?" Jesus said to them,

"You do not realize who I am from what I say to you, but you have become like the Jews,

for they (either) love the tree and hate its fruit (or) love the fruit and hate the tree." (Gosp. Thom. 43)

In the light of this, I conclude that:

(a) evolution from LUCA to Homo occurred naturally through mutation and natural and sexual selection, without any other assistance than the nature of the quantum universe and sentient volition in natural and sexual selection,

(b) there is zero empirical evidence for any need for "divine intervention" in the evolutionary process,

(c) evolutionary science is continually revealing new evidence that irrevocably unhinges all such claims almost as soon as they are made, and thus

The triple kernel of Symbiotic Existential Cosmology:

The core principle:

(a) (i) I affirm consciousness as primary, (ii) I accept the universe is necessary, (iii) I recognise evolution is natural.

(b) Subjective conscious volition has efficacy over the physical universe.

This hard-won "trinity" might seem simplistic, but it's a root experiential observation, concerning the natural universe, whose significance can't be over-estimated, just as subjective conscious physical volition can't be

In the light of this, I conclude that:

(b) there is zero empirical evidence for any need for "divine intervention" in the evolutionary process,

(c) evolutionary science is continually revealing new evidence that irrevocably unhinges all such claims almost as soon as they are made.

Fig 160: Symbiotic Existential Cosmology as a triple-nested symmetry-breaking complementarity. Nature filling Wheeler's self-observing universe.

The figure illustrates the essential sacredness of life immanent over all forms of spiritual transcendence. On the right is JA Wheeler’s self-observing universe, confirming that the physical world needs subjective consciousness to manifest, just as the divinity of cosmic consciousness needs life to become manifest. The mass-energy dynamics of cosmology leads from cosmic inflation to the heat death or big crunch, but the quantum complexity dynamic rises to climax in living systems in which conscious biological brains are the apocalyptic epitome.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology says there are three essential components to the cosmos not the two of science and spirituality, or matter and consciousness. The physical aspect is cosmology, the subjective conscious inspiration is existential and the living reality that makes it all possible as the unifying factor is symbiosis.

Therefore trying to unify science and religion is neither the point of the exercise, nor does it directly address redeeming the apocalypse of symbiotic failure of humanity. Wholeness needs to be fully embodied in living diversity. Then we can live essentially immortally throughout our generations forever, as long as the living universe lasts and unfold the great I AM of the universe ever more deeply discovering and manifesting itself in cosmic conscious awareness. While Vedanta subsumes life into the supremacy of consciousness and gross matter, failing to respect life’s evolving material diversity as sacred in and of itself, Monotheism actively demotes life to humanity being overlord, as a King to his subjects veering into a clockwork orange creation.

The apocalyptic crisis the world faces is due to a failure of humanity to abide by the symbiotic basis of the living biosphere, deprecating the status of life, leading towards a self-induced Fermi extinction, so there is no way of simply trying to fuse science and belief without respecting life as the sacred manifestation of embodied consciousness that overflows the crack between the visionary and physical worlds. Symbiosis is no simple question ,because it involves all processes, including predation and parasitism, in the edge of chaos climax symbiotic diversity of our biosphere.

The totality of existence and our survival can be secured only by integrating consciousness, nature and the universe into one symbiotic whole, not transcending or subjugating one aspect to another. The most vulnerable of these right now is nature. Scientific materialism seeks to explain everything from without, reducing consciousness and nature to a "lifeless" machine. Pure spirituality seeks an answer in transcendent consciousness, but in the process deposes nature and the universe to a menial status, akin to a clockwork design in creationist views, and a thought in the mind of God, or a dream of Vishnu in others. Many of us do this in more subtle ways, through imagining noospheric forces, higher beings, supernatural influences, or that supreme consciousness conceived nature and the universe.

The role of entheogenic mysticism is to regain biospheric and cosmological balance. That balance is Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, in which the three are a united whole. The entheogens evolved, so that we can survive as an intelligent species in our home biosphere. Many of us are still too proud to admit to ourselves that entheogens have this sacred evolved role to aid all of us. Through entheogenic mysticism, we regain this symbiotic integration of subject, object and nature as one. No materialistic, or spiritual path on its own can ever achieve this. We all need Symbiotic Existential Cosmology more than we can even begin to comprehend. Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is the Rosetta Stone of reality, translating the three 'languages of existence' – consciousness, nature and the universe into a unified whole.

Meaning and value. We cannot place any confidence in the notion that meaning and values can be independently defined, enticed, or induced any more than a universal morality can. All three seem to be part of the creative process we are or should be undertaking, not defining in advance. Just as creationism begets a sterile clockwork view of imposed nature and degenerating cosmology, that can neither admit biogenesis nor evolution and cannot replicate embryogenesis, which is self-generating in a way that cannot be externally imposed, so any attempt to assert a cosmic good from outside, life or outside the universe, cannot achieve more than a degenerate end.

The idea of an externally induced blessed realm contradicts the way life autonomously rises to climax, which is in its overall symbiotic diversity, arising from evolution at the edge of chaos, not any externally induced universal "good". We know this is the nature of karma itself as well, as rough justice in the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. In this a threatened native kiwi has to have a different significance value from a feral rodent or mustelid that consumes its eggs, irrespective of both being conscious sentient beings.

Climax life depends on its apex predators as key to the fertility of the entire ecosystem, keeping it balanced in a state of self-organised criticality. We need to relearn our essential beings, for it is we, not the rest of life that has lost its/our way. We thus need to learn from life and preserve its climax unfolding and not assert our notions of "universal good", even Brahman, Ein Sof or the 'Elohim onto the diversity of life itself. I see this as a form of naturalistic epistemic humility, in the perennial long-term survival of life as a whole. This is the remedy and the respite, because in all honesty, in the mortal coil of the physical universe, conscious sentient beings can't take it with us when we go..

The Noosphere, Symbiosis and the Omega Point

The noosphere is a philosophical concept developed and popularised by the Vladimir Vernadsky, and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. Vernadsky defined the noosphere as the new state of the biosphere and described as the planetary "sphere of reason". The noosphere represents the highest stage of biospheric development, its defining factor being the development of humankind's rational activities. The word is derived from the Greek νόος ("mind", "reason") and σφαῖρα ("sphere"), in analogy to "atmosphere" and "biosphere". Vernadsky and de Chardin developed two related but starkly different concepts, the former being grounded in the geological sciences, and the latter in theology. Both conceptions of the noosphere share the common thesis that together human reason and the scientific thought has created, and will continue to create, the next evolutionary epoch as part of the evolutionary chain – geological to biological to mental.

The term noosphere was first used in the publications of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in 1922 in his Cosmogenesis. Vernadsky was most likely introduced to the term by a common acquaintance, Édouard Le Roy, during a stay in Paris. Both Teilhard de Chardin and Vernadsky base their conceptions of the noosphere on the term 'biosphere', developed by Edward Suess in 1875.

In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. It is a study area of the Global Consciousness Project. In contrast to the conceptions of the Gaia theorists, or the promoters of cyberspace, Vernadsky's noosphere emerges at the point where humankind, through the mastery of nuclear processes, begins to create resources through the transmutation of elements. It is a study area of the Global Consciousness Project, a parapsychology experiment begun in 1998 as an attempt to detect possible interactions of "global consciousness" with physical systems. The project monitors a geographically distributed network of hardware random number generators in a bid to identify anomalous outputs that correlate with widespread emotional responses to sets of world events, or periods of focused attention by large numbers of people. According to Kurzweil's (2005) and Vinge’s (2013) technological singularity hypothesis, the noosphere would be in the future the natural environment in which 'human-machine superintelligence' emerges to reach the point of technological singularity, critiqued as a crisis of the noosphere (Lahoz-Beltra 2014).

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1955, 1959) perceived a directionality in evolution along an axis of increasing Complexity/Consciousness. For Teilhard, the noosphere is the sphere of thought encircling the earth that has emerged through evolution as a consequence of this growth in complexity/consciousness. As a result, he sees the "social phenomenon [as] the culmination of and not the attenuation of the biological phenomenon." These include legal, educational, religious, research, industrial and technological systems. In this sense, the noosphere emerges through and is constituted by the interaction of human minds. He argued the noosphere evolves towards ever greater personalisation, individuation and unification of its elements. He saw the Christian notion of love as being the principal driver of "noogenesis", the evolution of mind. Evolution would culminate in the Omega Point — an apex of thought/consciousness – which he identified with the eschatological return of Christ.

Fig 161: Teilhard de Chardin’s eschatology (left) and cosmology (centre) from John Morton’s works.

(Right) Symbiotic Existential Cosmology – Paradise on the Cosmic Equator in Space-time.

The Phenomenon of Man was published in 1955 but the text was written in the 1930s, and achieved publication only posthumously. Chardin's view of evolution is absolutely visionary. He respects the scientific opinion on natural evolution but does not disregard the possibility of directed effects. He is utterly respectful of nature and awed by the species diversity:

Anyone who wishes to think in terms of evolution, or write about it, should start off by wandering through one of those great museums – there are four or five in the world – (at the cost of efforts whose heroism and spiritual value will one day be understood) a host of travellers has succeeded in concentrating in a handful of rooms the entire spectrum of life. There, without bothering on names , let him surrender himself to what he sees around him, and become impregnated by it: by the universe of the insects whose “reliable” species are counted in the tens of thousands; by the molluscs, thousands more, inexhaustibly variegated in their marblings and their convolutions; by the fishes, unexpected, capricious and as prettily marked as butterflies, by the birds, hardly less extravagant, of every form, feather and beak; by the antelopes of every coat carriage and diadem. … And to think that all we see are merely the survivors What would it e like of all the others were there too? In every epoch of the Earth, on every level of evolution, other museums would have displayed the same teeming luxuriance. Added together, the hundreds of thousands o names in our catalogues do not amount to one millionth of the leaves that have sprung forth so far on the tree of life.

He specifically supports macroevolution, the key target of creationists:

Since the heroic times of Lamarck and Darwin, the favourite argument employed against the transformists has always lain in pointing out their incapacity to prove the birth of a species in terms of material traces ‘Admittedly you show us’ say these objectors ‘a succession of varying forms in past ages and we will even concede that you are able to demonstrate the transformation of those forms within certain limits. But however you put it, your first mammalian is already a mammal, your first equine is already a horse. Accordingly, though there may well be evolution within a given type, we see no new type produced by evolution’. So the increasingly rare survivors of the ‘fixed species’ school still contend. … Nothing is so delicate and fugitive by its very nature as a first beginning . As long as a zoological group is young, its characters remain indeterminate, its structure precarious and its dimensions scant. It is composed of relatively few individual units and these change rapidly.

He sees biological evolution as intimately entangled with the rise of consciousness, in a form of panpsychism:

From an inward point of view, constantly confirmed by ever-increasing harmonies, the different objects of science become visible in proper perspective and in their true proportions. And at the heart of life, explaining its progression, the impetus of a rise in consciousness. … How can life respect determinisms on the without and yet act in freedom within? … To write the natural history of the world, we should need to be able to follow it from within. It would thus appear no longer as an interlocking succession of structural types replacing one another, but the ascension of an inner sap of consolidated instincts. Right at its base the living world is constituted by consciousness clothed in flesh and bone. From the biosphere to the species, this is nothing but an immense ramification of psychism seeking for itself through different forms. That is where Ariadne’s thread leads us if we follow it to the end.

He admits this view may be too Lamarckian for some but regards it as integral by conscious selection:

In various quarters, I shall be accused of showing too Lamarckian a bent in the explanations, of giving an exaggerated influence to the Within, but remember that an essential part is left to the Darwinian play of external forces and to chance, but strokes of chance which are recognised and grasped – that is to say psychically selected.

This becomes the key to his transition to the noosphere, the cultural ‘thought sphere’ he conceived as bringing about the union of spiritual consciousness in a social, cultural and spiritual coalescence:

We have seen and admitted that evolution is an ascent towards consciousness. That is no longer contested even by the most materialistic, or at all events by the most agnostic of humanitarians. Therefore it should culminate forwards in some sort of supreme consciousness. But must not that consciousness, if it is to be supreme, contain in the highest degree what is the perfection of our consciousness-the illuminating involution of the being upon itself? … The consciousness of each of us is evolution looking at itself and reflecting upon itself.

Fig 161b: Tree of Life from Chardin (1955) from Cuénot. Cuénot's genetic studies on mice, followed in the footsteps of Mendel’s on plant genetics, but were cut short when German troops invaded the town of Nancy, where he kept his mouse colony. After the First World War he never returned to his studies on mice and moved on to designing a theory of evolution, halfway between en vogue French Lamarckism and Darwinism.

But Chardin’s vision ultimately leads to the cosmic Christ, even the intimation of an evolutionary entheogenic sacramental Eucharist:

To live and develop the Christian outlook needs an atmosphere of greatness and coherence. … In a pluralistic and static Nature, the universal domination of Christ could strictly speaking still be regarded as an extrinsic and superimposed power. In a spiritually converging world this ‘Christic’ energy acquires an urgency and intensity of another order altogether. If the world is convergent and if Christ occupies its centre then the Christogenesis of St. Paul and St. John is nothing else and nothing less that the the extension, both awaited and unhoped for of that noogenesis in which cosmogenesis – as regards our experience – culminates. Christ invests himself organically with the very majesty of his creation. … To be able to say literally to God that one loves him not only with all one’s body, all one’s heart and all one’s soul but with every fibre of the living universe – that is a prayer that can only be made in space-time.

Evolution has come to infuse new blood, so to speak into the perspectives and aspirations of Christianity. In return, is not the Christian faith destined, is it not preparing , to save and even take the place of evolution?

Susan Rakoczy notes that on his desk Teilhard had a picture of the Sacred Heart and “My Litany”:

"The God of evolution, The Christic, the Trans-Christ

Sacred Heart … the motor of evolution

the heart of evolution, the heart of matter

The heart of God … the world-zest.

The activant of Christianity … the essence of all energy.

Heart of the world’s heart, Focus of ultimate and universal energy

Centre of the cosmic sphere of cosmogenesis

Heart of Jesus, heart of evolution, unite me to yourself."

What “taking the place of evolution” is, in the anthropocene age of the mass extinction of biodiversity, is anyone’s guess, as we shall see from more recent utopian versions of the noosphere, in the era of the world wide web and artificial intelligence.

Henri Bergson's "L'évolution créatrice" (1907), was one of the first to propose evolution is "creative" and cannot necessarily be explained solely by natural selection through a vital force which animates life and fundamentally connects mind and body. In 1923, C. Lloyd Morgan took this work further, elaborating on an "emergent evolution" which could explain increasing complexity (including the evolution of mind). Morgan found many of the most interesting changes in living things have been largely discontinuous with past evolution. Therefore, these living things did not necessarily evolve through a gradual process of natural selection. Rather, he posited, the process of evolution experiences jumps in complexity, in a qualitative punctuated equilibrium. The emergence of human culture facilitated a quickening of evolution in which cultural evolution occurs more rapidly than biological evolution, consistent with gene-culture co-evolution in the light of human impact on the biosphere.

The idea can be contrasted both with the Gaia hypothesis where the Earth is an organismically responsive dynamical system, if not pushed beyond irreversible tipping points, and utopian concepts of technological human dominance. Rosemary Radford Ruether (1992). in "Gaia & God" has an insightful commentary on Chardin later in this work..

Wilson DS (2021), in a supportive review of De Chardin’s ideas, conveyed by Brian Josephson, notes:

He has been largely forgotten by modern evolutionary scientists but remains widely read by those who are inspired by his vision of conscious evolution leading to a planetary superorganism. This working paper examines the major tenets of Teilhard’s vision from a modern evolutionary perspective in an effort to integrate “hard” evolutionary science with conscious efforts to manage cultural change.

In fact Teilhard was a panpsychist and saw consciousness as emergent in all the universe in a manner completely confluent with Symbiotic Existential Cosmology:

The apparent restriction of the phenomenon of consciousness to higher forms of life has long served science as an excuse for eliminating it from its models of the universe. ... It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves an 'interior' appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent. This is enough to ensure that in one degree, or another this 'interior' should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is necessarily a double aspect to its structure, that is to say in every region of space and time – in the same way for instance as it is granular: co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things.

The consequent picture of the world daunts our imagination but it is in fact the only one acceptable to our reason. Taken at its lowest point particulate matter is more than the swarmings so so marvellously analysed by modern physics. Beneath this mechanical layer we must think of a 'biological' layer that is attenuated to the uttermost, but is absolutely necessary to explain the cosmos in succeeding ages. The within, consciousness and spontaneity – three expressions for the same thing. Here and throughout this book, the term 'consciousness' is taken in its widest sense to indicate every kind of 'psychism' from the most rudimentary forms of interior perception imaginable to the human phenomenon of reflective thought.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology shares this picture of conscious evolution and it is also precisely the aim of this discussion – to determine to what extent this cosmology and Teilhard’s viewpoint fulfils the ability to engender a sustainable noosphere. Wilson further notes:

The noosphere was not just the increasingly dominant physical presence of humans on earth, but also had a mental component. Teilhard emphasized “the psychic phenomenon of hominization” in the form of freedom of choice, foresight, and the ability to plan and construct. In the Phenomenon of Man, he describes humankind as “evolution becoming conscious of itself”.

Yet gene-culture co-evolution and the notion of emergence of language as a memetic “virus” is a natural sociobiological co-evolutionary process, that is not teleological in the sense that “hominization” implies.

Wilson justifies the qualitative punctuated transition between the biosphere and noosphere in terms of multilevel selection and major evolutionary transitions.

Multilevel selection (MLS) is acknowledged as a legitimate accounting method for evolutionary change. Higher-level selection is a significant evolutionary force in many species and especially in the case of human cultural evolution, as elaborated in more detail below. Social insect colonies and a growing list of other animal societies are studied as superorganisms, complete with social physiologies and groups minds. The concept of Major Evolutionary Transitions (MET) affirms Teilhard’s account of human cultural evolution but also goes beyond it in important ways. The concept follows directly from MLS theory. Most social species are a mosaic of selfish traits that evolve by within-group selection and cooperative traits that evolve by between-group selection. However, the balance between within- and between-group selection is not fixed but can itself evolve. When mechanisms evolve that sufficiently suppress the potential for disruptive within-group selection, between-group selection becomes the dominant evolutionary force and the group becomes so cooperative that it qualifies as a higher-level superorganism.

He then advances a valid argument that cultural history has had such sudden transitions due to the rise of dominant powers and wars between them, with new cultures emerging from the conflict zones: Peter Turchin explains human history as a series of METs in a way that maps nicely onto Teilhard’s account.

However he then draws a conclusion about the eucaryote symbiosis between bacteria and archaea:

But METs are not restricted to human cultural evolution. The concept originated with the symbiotic cell theory of Lynn Margulis, in which nucleated cells evolve not by small mutational steps from bacterial cells but as cooperative communities of bacterial cells. Even the origin of life might be explained as communities of cooperative molecular reactions.

This is a biologically incorrect extrapolation, which is misleading. Firstly the eucaryote endosymbiosis was in no way in conflict with gradual mutational change, which was essential to arrive at the point where the endo-symbiosis to form the mitochondria actually occurred and swept aside its precursors in the radiative adaption of newer fitter eucaryote life forms. Secondly it was not just a community of bacteria, but a symbiosis between the two quite disparate and complementary kingdoms of bacteria and archaea, who had diverged before becoming cellular DNA-based organisms. It is manifestly untrue that nucleated cells do not evolve by small mutational steps – they all do – and the only transition of similar significance that has occurred occurred since, is the entry of chloroplasts into the plant kingdom. It is also unclear either of the cells in the transition were nucleated, which is a step that may have arisen through a further symbiosis with a double-membraned DNA virus. Neither the -proteobacterial cousins of the mitochondria are nucleated, nor are the Asgard cousins of the founding archaean.

The statement also treats the endo-symbiosis as merely an incidence of a major evolutionary change, without recognising symbiosis is the “live-or-die koan” of the anthropocene, not just an incidental example of pro-sociality.

Hence, Teilhard was wrong to state that coalescing events are restricted to human cultural evolution. That said, the concept of METs in both biological and human cultural evolution fits easily within his overarching evolutionary epistemology and it remains true that conscious evolution is restricted to humans.

Wilson states that conscious evolution is restricted to humans, an opinion that appears to have no empirical basis and contradicts Darwin’s own insight on animal free-will:

"To see a puppy playing [one] cannot doubt that they have free-will"

and if "all animals, then an oyster has and a polype.” (Darwin ex Smith 1978)

In Wilson et al. (2014) it is noted that:

Human evolution increasingly is seen as a major transition, similar to the evolution of eukaryotic cells, multicellular organisms, and eusocial insect colonies (Boehm 1999; Maynard Smith & Szathmary 1995; Sober & Wilson 1998; Wilson 2011a).

It is fair and correct to see human cultural emergence as a major evolutionary transition, but a fair standard of this is the effect it has on the biosphere as a whole. Thus the origin of life and the eucaryote transition are two outstanding examples. Multicellularity is a more gradual transition, with a variety of transitional species still in existence and the major gene systems already present in single celled species. Insect colonies are not a major evolutionary transition of the biosphere as a whole, and the human transition will qualify only if we can bring ourselves into a state of sustainable survival as a species rather than our own extinction coupled with a mass extinction of biodiversity as a whole, so without being unduly pessimistic, as Symbiotic Existential Cosmology stands to resolve this question, the jury remains out on the human evolutionary future.

It is thus true that biogenesis and the eucaryote endo-symbiosis were major evolutionary transitions and that the anthropocene is rapidly becoming another such transition, but as things stand, it will qualify as an evolutionary epoch only if it presents a sustainable paradigm of human co-evolution with the biosphere on cosmological time scales. There is simply no evidence that such a transition to stability is occurring and gene-culture coevolution of itself, whether applied to commerce, science, language or religion remains an unstable short-term process, inadequate to sustain such a transition to long-term sustainability without a symbiotic human world view.

There are two principal difficulties with the concept of the noosphere. Firstly in many of its utopian forms it invokes simply n age of intelligent thought and technological supremacy via a super-computational singularity that becomes a form of culture replacing nature and effectively leaving it in the dust of history, as an intermediate biological stage between geological and mental. While Teilhard envisaged humanity as a manifestation of biological evolution and not the end of it, the notion of the major evolutionary transition actually signals the phase transition of the Anthropocene, in which human impact on climate, habitat and biodiversity has rapidly become unsustainable.

The second difficulty is that it invokes a convergent unification of consciousness as a teleological process, in conflict with the actual realities of both evolutionary and neurodynamic processes operating at the edge of chaos (Teuscher 2022), which is how the natural universe actually works and is in empirical disagreement with what we are culturally experiencing in real time. Yes there are good pro-social patterns in human interaction that we can associate with the original virtue of our founding gatherer-hunter ancestors, as manifest in the references above cited in Wilson et al. (2014). It is these features we do need to tap to ensure a stable future for humanity.

This is cultural evolution at the edge of chaos, not the neat, simplistic, teleological convergence to “Christ consciousness” originally conceived. This invokes all the complexities of strategic deceit and Machiavellian intelligence exponentiated in a manner that makes verifiable trust a major challenge to incorporate, let alone to achieve spontaneous, autonomous psychic unity without oppressive uniformity. Yes it is compensated for by a hugely enhanced capacity to use these interconnected facilities to research and unearth the ‘truth’, that have become singularly powerful, as this research work attests, but the conclusion remains clear.

Darwin’s position on teleology remained ambiguous. Lennox (1993) notes that he did occasionally mention final cause explicitly, but only in limited contexts, like the two forms of primula flowers where the final cause is already manifest – to favour intercrossing, not a long-distant horizon, like humanity being pre-conceived in the age of the dinosaurs:

The meaning or use of the existence in Primula of the two forms in about equal numbers, with their pollen adapted for reciprocal union, is tolerably plain; namely, to favour the intercrossing of distinct individuals. With plants there are innumerable contrivances for this end; and no one will understand the final cause of the structure of many flowers without attending to this point.

Darwin associated teleology with selection:

It is generally acknowledged that all organic beings have been formed on two great laws - Unity of Type, and the Conditions of Existence . . . . On my theory, unity of type is explained by unity of descent. The expression of conditions of existence, so often insisted on by the illustrious Cuvier, is fully embraced by the principle of natural selection.

Darwin speaks of the principle of natural selection "fully embracing" conditions of existence; and Thomas Huxley of a "wider teleology based on the fundamental proposition of Evolution." Asa Gray, on the other hand, read divine design into Darwin's teleology in a way that disturbed Darwin deeply.

The emergence of the internet, and world wide web and the explosion of digital technology has indeed created a cyber space, which at first had all the hope and inspiration of the global village. But we know real world evolution, both biological and cultural occurs at the edge of chaos and with the global village came other spectres – the decline of traditional media, in favour of an ever expanding thicket of disinformation, political subterfuge, false internet identities, hacking, droid armies seeking to purvey trojan horses, and ransomware, amid incipient AI takeover, in which societies and individuals alike, instead of gravitating toward a collective consciousness, have become ever more finely divided, splitting not just political parties, but local communities, families and partners. In the words of the I Ching, “the bed is split up to the skin – misfortune” (Wilhelm ed 1960 Splitting apart line 4).

Without the inclusion of human symbiosis with the diversity of life as a whole, in gene-culture-biosphere co-evolution the entire concept of the noosphere or “thought-sphere”, as it actually is, runs the direct risk, like any other utopian vision, of human intellectual dominance in the technological era, or even the loss of manifest conscious reality in favour of it-from-bit abstractions of reality, not actually manifest in conscious experience itself, simply providing a fast track to a Fermi paradox extinction, through unremitting short-term instability, ungrounded to the evolutionary diversity of life in cosmological time scales – the Medea hypothesis (Ward 2009).

By comparison with Symbiotic Existential Cosmology, Teilhard’s concept appears in its simplicity to be a more efficient transformational vision that looks more direct and more fulfilling in its immediate teleological convergence to a state of unmitigated grace. But the key to locking in this prospect is cosmological symbiosis with the long-term evolutionary and cosmological process that underpins the entire manifestation, not leaving it behind in an ever accelerating process of human cultural transformation that assumes that the biosphere will look after itself, without alleviating the human impacts this very process of cultural change is causing. Teilhard argued that the Omega Point resembles the Christian Logos, namely Christ, who draws all things into himself, who in the words of the Nicene Creed, is "God from God", "Light from Light", "True God from true God", and "through him all things were made". In the Book of Revelation, Christ describes himself thrice as "the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end"

Tipler, along with co-author physicist John D. Barrow, defined the "final anthropic principle" (FAP) in their 1986 book The Anthropic Cosmological Principle as a generalisation of the anthropic principle: Intelligent information-processing must come into existence in the Universe, and, once it comes into existence, will never die out. One paraphrasing of Tipler's argument for FAP runs as follows: For the universe to physically exist, it must contain living observers. Our universe obviously exists. There must be an "Omega Point" that sustains life forever.

The trouble with the spiritual viewpoint is twofold. Firstly as we have seen, it carries the distorting weight of religious memes. But secondly it looks to the end point rather than the living process. In the hurtling rush to divinity, all eyes point to the sky and forget that the journey is the destination. The psychedelic view is that the destination is the journey. It is the trip mortality takes across the Styx, deeply aware of its eternal psyche, and its immortal link in the web of life, making best use of the fleeting time available to do that good thing in the best of all possible worlds.

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology also looks to this future of grand unification, but neither as a Christological parousia, which memeticists will immediately recognise as the nemesis of cosmological truth, nor as a simple annihilating final observer as Tipler invokes, but a long experiential journey of discovery into the abysmal depths of conscious experience, in full fecundity of spontaneity, over millions and billions of years, if we take due care of the long-term survival of life, enabling the conscious universe to fully realise itself through the biota it took most of its lifetime to manifest. In this way the journey to Omega is a very long deepening unfolding – the extraordinary vision quest of all our lifetimes, eternally strung from alpha to Omega in the process, amid the reflowering of the diversity of life anew in evolution into forms unconceivable in the simplicity of the Omega point as an eschatological singularity. This is Paradise on the Cosmic Equator in Space Time, where all the good things come to pass!

Not only is the journey long, but the cosmic mind is realised and manifest through the evolving biota of the universe, because we are the conscious beings fully embodied in the quantum universe through our brains. The evolving conscious brain-minds of the biota form the natural interface for the cosmic mind to become fully manifest in the universe. Omega is a state of being, not an endpoint, it is the heightening conscious process extending though space-time, not the end point of time, as in eschatological cosmologies and the Noosphere Christology. The flaw of the eschatological view is that history and experience are consumed, and natural life is abandoned in the pursuit of Omega .

Religions, particularly Monotheism, but also the Eastern traditions to a degree, are obsessed with the eschatological singularity of the Godhead, of Brahman, of eternal life in maha-samadhi now, of the day of Judgment, of the new Jerusalem achieved by the triage and destruction of all life, to be moulded anew by God the creator, the legislator of laws like Sharia and of compulsive moral commandments like not to take the name of the Lord in vain.

The Phenomenon of Man, Revised: Evolution and I.T. versus Extinction in the years to come

Paul Werbos (2019) invokes a radical revision of Chardin’s theory, claiming to change it in the light of our state of knowledge, concerning natural selection, intelligent systems, and dark matter, also driven by concern about the future survival of our species, just as Symbiotic Existential Cosmology is. The difficulty is that it stems from three assumptions, each of which are hypothetical (1) that natural selection is inadequate to address humanity’s propensity for Fermi extinction, when the actual problem is culturally driven, accentuated by the patriarchy (2) consciousness is conflated with “intelligent systems” which may be either artificial or biological and (3) the notion splits physical reality between quantum electrodynamics and the living biosphere against the hypothetical notion of dark matter, as soul or spirit:

This paper presents the noosphere species theory -- a radical revision of de Chardin's theory, as is necessary to account for what we now know about natural selection, about the mathematics of intelligent systems and about the great ocean of dark matter and energy connecting the galaxies of our cosmos. The noosphere species theory still emphasizes the possibility and need for a growth in spiritual collective intelligence, but it offers more details on how this growth could be supported and accelerated, and it faces up to the reality that our particular noosphere might or might not survive the difficult challenges arising now. And yet, it accepts that we are not alone.

He critiques Chardin’s failure to offer a scientific basis for spiritual energy, and asserts that science and particularly quantum electrodynamics cannot explain spiritual experiences. This is trading a critique of the entire functional scope of biological evolution up to conscious life, against a hypothetical notion that dark matter, which we don’t know the basis of and which interacts with normal matter only by gravitation is actually a spiritual force intrinsic to conscious existence. If this were the case why hasn’t it manifested itself in obvious ways, other than claims of psi and qi, and what implications does it have for a cosmic order potentially dictating the entire course of cosmic history?

The first problem with de Chardin’s formulation is that he does not offer a possible physical scientific basis for the flow of spiritual energy (like charisma, qi, mana) which is central to all authentic spiritual traditions around the world, even though he wrote about his deep personal acquaintance with that energy. What mainstream science really knows about the atoms which make up our bodies, and the quantum electrodynamics (QED) which describes most of their interactions, simply cannot explain anything like the spiritual experiences common to all major cultures on earth or even that small subset verified in the laboratory.

But this problem is about all of subjective conscious experience, as Symbiotic Existential Cosmology makes clear, not just spiritual charisma, psi or qi. He follows this with the assertion that, no matter the physical basis of dark matter, particulate, or otherwise, that it IS the Aristotlean substance underlying consciousness and higher “spirit”:

We may debate whether dark matter is made up of fields, or of particles, or of a mix of the two, but in any case it is what Aristotle would call the “substance” underlying higher forms like spirit, and all aspects of mind or consciousness which do not use atoms as their substance.

He then predicts that the noosphere is an “organism” of pure intelligence, with body, brain and immunity:

The noosphere species theory clearly does not guarantee that the human species or any part or product of the human species will survive the challenges of this century, as they play out over the next few thousand years. It predicts that the noosphere has a “body, brain and immune system” (among others) which will play an important role, which are the product of billions of years of evolution making them far more helpful than random chance, but that does not provide a guarantee. ... Are noospheres like fish or like bonobos, who have a better chance of survival? We don’t know, but we do know that we face very severe risks as a species, and we know that soul is only one of the underlying forces which will shape our destiny.

He targets four key existential threats to our species, but considers that “mundane” natural selection is insufficient to the task of avoiding extinction by at least one. This is in conflict with the fact that the acute vagaries of the existential crisis facing the planet and our biosphere are culturally, not naturally propelled and remain fully within our capacity as a biological species to address if we simply accept the existential threats as primary priorities to resolve. The use of “mundane” echoes Buddhist pessimism towards everyday existence, as an inferior realm of mortal suffering:

I believe that the biggest four threats now, in order, are: (1) nuclear war and misuse of nuclear technology in general; (2) extinction due to future release of H₂S from the oceans, due to climate change; (3) misuse of biotechnology; and (4) the “Terminator” scenario for AI, which could happen in many different ways if my own work in that field is misused by people who do not understand the underlying principles. … Unfortunately, the normal process of evolution by mundane natural selection on earth suggests relatively little hope that humans could avoid extinction by at least one of these four mechanisms. Ecosystems which seem relatively stable, after billions of years of world-spanning species being deleted, normally go unstable when large, random changes are made in the relations between organisms.

Research by Sally Quinn of Census and research by the World Bank got much deeper into the drivers of fertility, and found that population growth in advanced nations in recent years was slowed, not by rises in income as such, but by four key variables: (1) women’s empowerment and education; (2) availability of public health, especially the whole range of family planning; (3) urbanization; and (4) cultures which do not force women to have children. … These efforts can be of great value to reduce instability in the next few centuries, but natural selection is still very much at work. ... Some aspects of genetic selection require millions of years to have any effect, but it is well known that a mere 7 to 10 generations are enough to cause massive changes in the mix of genes already “well known’ to biology; genes related to sexual behavior and aggression are certainly among those genes.

He then treats the noosphere as a “willing agent”, like a God, a dark nature spirit, or a higher level intelligence, similar to Hoyles “Black Cloud” (1957) that can be channeled, or appealed to, but claims this requires collective intelligence we currently lack, both spiritual and “mundane”, which seems to encompass physical, biological and everyday reality:

To the extent that we try to channel the will of the noosphere, the challenge is to provide societies which really support a high level of collective intelligence and personal spiritual growth, which requires a high level of education, diversity, freedom and dialogue. It requires designing both formal and informal education and research systems in a way which fully incorporates these bottom line values. Given the great and growing power of the noosphere, those of us who do not choose to work with it may encounter many strange surprises and unnecessary difficulties, as in any bad alchemical marriage. A higher level of collective intelligence, both spiritual and mundane, would be essential to improving our chances of rising with all the threats to existence of the human species.

He cites the IT and internet revolution as a means to create a new world order through an advanced social contract, while automated artificial intelligence systems take over the functional activity of the economy:

We are now at the early stages of a massive growth in the use of Information Technology (IT); unless there is some kind of massive war and return to dark ages (which itself would raise our chances of extinction and impede spiritual growth), we need to plan for a world in which all flows of money, all corporations and many other activities will be redefined as files in the emerging global Internet of Things (IOT). This redefines the nature of what it means to create a new, viable social contract for nations and for the world. … Manifestos for a human-friendly internet have started to appear, but unless we do the hard work of translating them into actual system specifications for the emerging foundations of hardware and software, it will all be like the pious words one often hears before an organization starts creating a disaster. The enemy here is a kind of entropy, which can only be overcome by a maximum use of consciousness and intelligence in concrete, mathematically grounded design implementing very basic mathematical, ethical and spiritual principles.

The noosphere then becomes a model of a dark matter ecology spanning the galaxies, in which some have become space-age noospheric brains, suggesting that they may even have been the source of the ten commandments and the US Constitution and that a new social contract will be implemented by artificial intelligence:

As a general matter, I doubt that the earth is the first planet in this universe to reach this adolescent stage of its development, when its survival is at risk. I would expect that noospheres which have survived in this cosmos have strongly developed “brains,” which support intelligence and mind, and “immune systems,” which encourage the kind of social contracts and rules which make it possible to survive difficult times like ours. Could it be that the “Ten Commandments” were the best social contract or covenant which could be communicated to foster such things, and to foster intellectual growth, at the early time when they appeared? ... Could we be entering a new era, when a more sophisticated Gen 3 social contract, implemented in advanced IT, is essential to survival through the next phase of our growth?

Werbos then interprets our psyches as Jekyll and Hyde characters of good and evil and suggests only the “angelic” part associated with “soul” and “dark matter” survives death while our bodies, decay as part of the “infernal” realm:

I interpret the manifesto of Akhnaton declaring the sun as the One God as an attempt to channel the nervous system part of the Sol noosphere, the vast neural network in which our personal “souls,” our common ideas and archetypes all reside as subsystems.

A key aspect of this theory is that we humans are what Dante called “half beast, half angel” – a symbiotic life form, such that part of us is the system of atoms which science now understands far better than most people know, and part is dark matter. It is also what Rosicrucians have called an “Alchemical marriage.” Some marriages are good, and some are dysfunctional. Another aspect is that there exists more mature life and mind beyond our solar system, “in the heavens’.

In the remainder of this paper, I will use the term “soul” to refer to the “angel” side of us, that part of us made primarily of dark matter, a part of the noosphere. Section 2 of this paper will give my own personal views on what this means in practical terms for us as humans, either as individuals or as agents in history. … The noosphere species model essentially predicts that when we die the Alchemical marriage also ends, leaving one part alive but only one part. What is the destiny of that part? … Some mystics claim that the answer to that question varies a lot from person to person, depending on what they level of development they have achieved in their lifetime. The noosphere species model basically predicts that this is true. More precisely, it predicts that our lifetime and training will lead us towards a fate like the left side of figure 2, or the right side, or a mix, depending on what we learn as a whole system of brain and soul.

This “alchemical marriage” is not symbiosis in any biological form, which requires each party to be in a beneficial relationship to maintain evolutionary stability. The notion of the noosphere is then invoked as a “cosmic computer” involving “back-propagation” that is somehow is construed to evoke psychic phenomena and qi:

First, I have found that the noosphere species concept does more than just justify the idea of psi and soul at an abstract level. The idea that the “brain” of the noosphere is governed by the same universal mathematical laws which apply to any intelligent system turns out to be very useful in finding order in an otherwise very chaotic and diverse ocean of information. For example, if we accept that growth and adaptation of the noosphere brain is governed by modulated back-propagation, just like higher biological and computer intelligent systems, and we recognize that the word “qi” is simply a subjective way of talking about the (several types) of modulated back-propagation operating in the noosphere, we can more easily adapt to the reality that we are a part but not the rulers of an extremely large and intelligent system.

Mystical experience is cited, but only in terms of our demise and the context of astral planes, rather than knowing primary ultimate reality:

Some mystics claim that the answer to that question [of life after death] varies a lot from person to person, depending on what they level of development they have achieved in their lifetime. The noosphere species model basically predicts that this is true. More precisely, it predicts that our lifetime and training will lead us towards a fate like the left side of the above figure [the day of the dead] , or the right side [a leafless tree], or a mix, depending on what we learn as a whole system of brain and soul. … Many mystics talks about “planes of existence,’ like travel to astral planes and so on. The noosphere species theory would interpret these important and valid experiences as experiences in a realm less real than our mundane world of atoms, experiences in something like an internet chat room of the noosphere.

Like psychedelic experience, higher states of meditations and qi are assumed to involve sensory overload, rather than emptiness or bliss, but these experiences are claimed to simply be information transcending quantum reality:

At a higher level, when we enter into states of “meditation” where we really feel ourselves as part of the noosphere, the vast mind connecting our entire earth or solar system, and respond to the values and feelings and thoughts at that level, we can become channels for that higher qi, which will continue at least as long as life on earth continues, and perhaps even more. It requires great discipline over time to learn to cope with the resulting “firehose of information”. None of this requires accounting for the quantum mechanical aspect of noosphere level intelligence, but once we do, it is somewhat easier and more natural to think of it as an ocean of information across space time and the cosmos rather than a firehose or volatile kaleidoscope.

I don’t accept as verifiable, this derogation of the brain and of QED in relation to a “dominant” dark matter “soul”:

A key aspect of the noosphere species theory is that the dominant partner in the brain-soul interface is the soul or dark matter side. Thus in attempts to connect traces of psi with data like brain recordings, we should not expect to find anything like a psychic reception or transmission organ in the brain or the peripheral nervous system.

Communicating in 2023, Paul has steadfastly maintained his viewpoint:

I have expressed uncertainty and ignorance about many, many things. When my wife asks what I am most certain of, in these realms, different from conventional wisdom, I point to two things:

(1) That we humans (and some others) are deeply connected as parts of a larger living system, our local noosphere, which is made more of dark matter than of ordinary familiar "QED matter".

(2) That qi is real, and essential in many ways to our future, also based on dark matter.

The whole issue of HOW we humans could make a quantum jump in our level and quality of connection to our local noosphere (and to the Spirit of the Deep, to whatever extent we can make real)... that's big. ... What can the great intelligence of our own noosphere contribute to giving us some hope where otherwise there might be none? ... If so, how can we work with that intelligence to improve the odds both for us and for her/him/it? ... The reality of time, and of "macroscopic Schrodinger cats", is an important and inescapable aspect of our relation with our noosphere.

But what if the collective consciousness is itself unstable because of unresolved conflicts? This is not just a rhetorical game. I really seriously believe that the ideas developed by Freud and Jung for understanding and helping with deep internal schisms apply to our entire noosphere as well... to what Jung called "the spirit of the times." (I give thanks again to the person I bcc who pointed me to Jung's Red Book.) The deep schism between oversimplified narrow versions both of science and of "religion" is one very important example. Our entire noosphere is like an adolescent going through growth pains and stresses which might well kill.. her? him? it? ... I hope that many of you share my conclusion that human potential includes brain, body AND "soul" (referring to capabilities and life beyond what is visible with QED physics), and that greater development of human potential is urgently needed now to give us a chance of surviving as a species in the face of new challenges which could kill us all before the end of this century.

Grand Challenges This Century – Quantum leap in attaining human potential, including our connections to each other & our noosphere (soul, qi) the rise and fall of civilizations clearly and visibly reflects the interaction of several key input variables, including money (as Marx rightly observed but with no understanding of modern production functions), DNA, and the role of our inputs and outputs to and from our noosphere, the larger system of life and intelligence embodying our entire solar system.

I regret my earlier error in underestimating the importance of quantum intelligence in understanding what our noosphere is doing and what it is capable of, and how we can best improve our relations with it. It is not omnipotent, but the power of changing scenarios is very great. … Recent world events (see my usual fears, still in play) have led me to compare the entire noosphere of our solar system -- all of us, our souls and other creatures like us -- to a small fish in a big aquarium, which will probably not survive -- but should STILL give full rein to our(its) primary deepest impulses -- to survive (as a noosphere, as all of us together), to grow and to understand our environment.

Here I really find the concept of a patent claim connected with "AGI which achieves a level of consciousness beyond what any mammal brain possesses" to be a diabolical over-reach into the realms of Dr. Strangelove, but here is is all conscious biological life in the firing line, not just the Soviet Union:

THE NEXT REALLY BIG STEP FORWARD in technology, and in building AGI which achieves a level of consciousness beyond what any mammal brain possesses, is even more basic than MQED0. CaQED used **WITH THE OLD" models of wave function collapse, assumed in most of Quantum S&T "QuIST" work today, is already powerful enough to implement all three levels of Quantum AGI as covered in my new patent pending on that area. That physics might be called CaQED0.

Needless to say, I find this entire concept to be an imaginative, but contrived leap which teems with unverifiable assumptions and leaves us in a similar position to traditional religions, in which nature is regarded as degenerate in and of itself, and in which there is a struggle between ascendent spirit and an “evil” world of suffering, amid traditional concepts of an individual soul.

I have concerns about forms of spiritual elitism associated with an occluded notion of an intellectual noosphere which cuts the diversity of life out of the redemption loop in favour of a technological utopian worldview. Your Bangalore paper, mentions four great fears, but lists only three, and fails to mention mass extinction of biospheric diversity as a concern in its own right.

Four Great Fears (“Existential Threats”) SURVIVAL:

– Internet/AGI/IOT if we fail to reach Sustainable Intelligent Internet (SII)

– Climate extinction, all of our species and many others

– Misuse (1) of nuclear tech (e.g. werbos.com/NATO_terrorism.pdf) and (2) biotech, e.g. “Borg”

You mention extinction but only associated with climate crisis and focused on humanity’s risk. Biodiversity extinction is not just a question of climate, it is also a product of wholesale habitat destruction, pollution, the spread of feral species, genetically destructive monoculture of our essential food and medicinal species, burning of the great forests and the simple fact that the biomass of humans plus farm animals is now some 46 times higher than all wild land mammals put together. This in itself is unsustainable and will kill us in the long term unless we recognise the primacy of protecting the diversity of life as numero uno.

It raises a real concern that your world view is anthropocentric and at the same time seeks to realise forms of artificial intelligence which you seem to believe can also become fully subjectively conscious. Your paper defines the word “consciousness” as “consciousness qua mind”, an emergent property of an intelligent system such as a brain or a soul or a new type of intelligent computer system which a few of us now know how to build (Werbos 2022).

Afterthoughts on the Noosphere

Symbiotic Existential Cosmology invokes a very different spectre from The Phenomenon of Man, Revised. Like Chardin’s original Phenomenon of Man, it is natural, accepts the sacredness of evolving conscious life and our ability as subjectively conscious sentient beings who are volitional agents able to transform the living universe and protect the immortality of the diversity of life from a human-caused Fermi extinction. Rather than appealing to Gods, or dark forces, it confirms that we as conscious agents not Gods or spirits are transformative of reality; it extolls the resplendence of natural enlightenment achieved through entheogenic meditation, freeing each and every one of us from the travail of the mortal coil and sees psychic powers as simple manifestations of the sensitive mystical condition, rather than a superficial end in itself. We are (hopefully) mid-flight on a conscious evolutionary journey with a vast living future to experience. If we learn to undertake this journey without immediate climatic crisis, biodiversity extinction or nuclear self-destruct, we could/should have another billion years to unfold the deepest dimensions of the conscious condition in us or in another progenitor species in fulfilling the flowering of the conscious universe and enabling the mind at large to really come alive in us and in all life.

Human hubris keeps gravitating, either to technological or spiritual Utopias, in which experience just becomes information, or God’s will, and survival just becomes an algorithm, or religious accounts, in which humanity has dominion over nature, as God has dominion over us, and seeks union with God, at the expense of our incarnate responsibility to participate in the flowering of conscious life throughout the universe over vast cosmological episodes, all of which are there for us to experience and realise over these vast stretches of time spanning space-time itself, if we bring forth what we have within us, rather than seek a short quick route to annihilation. The lesson of the snowflake is that the omega point end product is death of the growth process. Yes each whole beautiful flake grew and became eternal in space-time as a whole, but the journey IS the destination, so the destination IS the journey, not the end.

If we pass off the awe and wonder of existence, as it has already come to pass in enabling humanity to evolve and life with us, to ask the existential questions we do, and for us to experience the scent of a flower, the shimmering rainbows off a butterfly’s scales, the singing of the crickets in the moonlit grass, and the ecstatic joys of sex – to know that we know that we know that we are aware that we are aware, and to dream, and to have entheogenic visions, then we should settle for paradise on the cosmic equator and live our transient mortal lives in symbiosis with the totality of existence, because everything we do for life as a whole will further and flower, but nothing else shall, or can.

No utopian pretence of technological dominion in the age of thought, no religious pretence of the will of God – just I/we ourselves bearing witness to the truth of existence and the un-utterable gift this is, even in times of great pain and torment, traversing the Styx between birth and death at the centre of the cyclone, in the best of all possible worlds. If we stuff this up, as we so easily could, that will be it for life, the universe and everything – God included, unless there is conscious life elsewhere, which we don’t yet know. We are the interface of the cosmos – that’s what conscious mortality is. Without conscious life, neither God nor the Universe can manifest. The Godhead is realised through the biota. We are sorely needed, we are the pivot. Life IS the Axis Mundi, not a disposable option along the way.

^{^[1]} This document is an informational spore, finer than a mustard seed, for free circulation in intact form, to illuminate through a creative commons.

All quoted research is cited to the original authors, consistent with the principles of academic review in the widest pursuit of knowledge.

^{^[2]} perennial lasting or existing for a long or apparently infinite time; enduring or continually recurring. From Latin perennis ‘lasting the year through’

+ -ial. Oxford languages. The term is used to indicate lasting throughout the lifetime of conscious existence in the universe.

^{^[3]} Author Email: dhushara@dhushara.com Web: dhushara.com This article is open commons CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Please distribute.

^{^[4]} efficacy – the ability to produce a desired or intended result. Latin: efficere accomplish.

^{^[5]} The cosmic web has also been raised as a possible source of fractal complexity (Vazza & Feletti 2020).

^{^[6]} The approach of SED is guided by the hypothesis of the existence of the (random) zero-point radiation field, ZPF. This rather more elaborate approach goes through a statistical evolution equation in phase space, to arrive at a description in x-space, in which the dissipative and diffusive terms are seen to bring about a definitive departure from the classical Hamiltonian dynamics.

^{^[7]} I am not suggesting that everyone should take these agents to achieve such states, but just that they need to be respected as having these potentials for existential insight by society as a whole. Neither am I recommending that people take them without expert guidance, at least at the outset. Neither am I suggesting they be taken by minors, until the age of full adult legal consent.

^{^[8]} Veridical – truthful, coinciding with reality. Etym. "speaking truth" Latin veridicus "truth-telling, truthful," from verum "truth,"

neuter of verus "true" + dic-, stem of dicere "to speak".

^{^[9]} Natural selection has shaped our perceptions to be, in the typical case, accurate depictions of reality, especially of those aspects of reality that are critical for our survival. “People could not orient themselves to their environments, unless the environmental information reaching them through the various sense organs offered a perception of space that corresponds to their physical “reality.” Such perception is called veridical perception – the direct perception of stimuli as they exist. Veridical perception also causes a person to experience changing stimuli as if they were stable: even though the sensory image of an approaching tiger grows larger, for example, one tends to perceive that the animal’s size remains unchanged. One perceives objects in the environment as having relatively constant characteristics despite considerable variations in stimulus conditions” (Britannica, APA).

^{^[10]} empirical based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

Etym. Greek empeirikos, from empeiria ‘experience’. Observational empiricism is appropriate for verifiable physical investigation

and experiential empiricism for veridical conscious affirmation.

^{^[11]} efficacy – the ability to produce a desired or intended result.

^{^[12]} This use of Kali is as a demon distinct from the Goddess Kālī, who like Brahman is conceived of as “ultimate reality”.

^{^[13]} animism – the belief that all things – animals, plants, rocks, rivers, weather systems etc. possess a distinct spiritual essence – as

animated and alive.

^{^[14]} “Humanity is doomed” All countries 56%, Australia 50%, Brazil 67%, France 48%, Finland 43%, India 74%, Nigeria 42%, Phillipines 73%, Portugal 62%, UK 51%, USA 46%

^{^[15]} dharma – the eternal and inherent nature of reality, regarded in Hinduism as a cosmic law and in Buddhism the nature of reality

regarded as a universal truth.

^{^[16]} Hieros gamos or Hierogamy (Greek ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage") is a sacred marriage that plays out between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities

^{^[17]} Galileo despite being excommunicated for his science, was still a devoted Catholic and a traditional patriarch. He never married his children's mother and deemed his daughters unmarriageable, and soon after Virginia's thirteenth birthday he placed both girls at the Convent of San Matteo, where they lived the rest of their lives in poverty and seclusion. By contrast Galileo's son Vincenzio, who was born in Padua like his two sisters: Virginia and Livia, was named after his grandfather, and after his mother's death, his birth was legitimised by the Grand Duke of Tuscany. Virginia was Galileo's first child, born in Padua, Italy the same year that the Dominican friar Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake in Rome for insisting that the Earth travelled around the Sun instead of remaining motionless at the centre of the universe. Although none of Galileo's letters are known to have survived, 120 of Maria Celeste's exist. These letters, written from 1623 to 1634, depict a woman with incredible brilliance, industry, sensibility and a deep love for her father (Sobel 1999).

^{^[18]} veridical – coinciding with reality (Oxford Languages). Mid 17th century: from Latin veridicus (from verus ‘true’ + dicere ‘say’) + -al.

In psychology – of or relating to revelations in dreams, hallucinations, etc, that appear to be confirmed by subsequent events

^{^[19]} Vitalism is the belief that "living organisms are fundamentally different from non-living entities because they contain some non-physical element or are governed by different principles than are inanimate things”. Where vitalism explicitly invokes a vital principle, that element is often referred to as the "vital spark", "energy" or "élan vital", the vital force or impulse of life, a creative principle held by Bergson to be immanent in all organisms and responsible for evolution, which some equate with the soul.

^{^[20]} Arthur Schopenhauer concluded that the inner reality of all material appearances is Will. Where Immanuel Kant had concluded that ultimate reality - the "thing-in-itself" (Ding an sich) - lay beyond being experienced, Schopenhauer postulated that the ultimate reality is one universal will.

^{^[21]} intentionality – the fact of being deliberate or purposive. mental states (e.g. thoughts, beliefs, desires, hopes) which consists in their being directed towards some object or state of affairs. Intentionality is chosen rather than causality to include the effect of will complementing physical causes.

^{^[22]} No not take too much stock by Castaneda’s writings. His accounts of mushrooms and peyote are unreliable and he gathered a cult following of a troupe of woman writers, who appear to have died or committed suicide in Death Valley after he died.

^{^[23]} Weltanschauung – a particular philosophy or view of life; the world view of an individual or group: welt "world" (see world) + anschauung "perception" (related to English show). William James (1868)

^{^[24]} This article and the complementary one “Natty Dread and Planetary Resplendence” were co-conceived out of a quantum change experience evoked by psilocybe mushrooms. Taken together they inform a sacramental paradigm shift towards planetary survival.

^{^[25]} psychedelic “mind-manifesting" psychē (ψυχή, “soul"), dēloun (δηλοῦν, "to make visible, to reveal”), as opposed to hallucinogenic – inducing hallucinations and psychotomimetic (psycho- mind + mīmētikós, imitative) mimicking psychotic behaviour/personality.

^{^[26]} Feynman notes in his Nobel address: “I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, ‘Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass’ ‘Why?’ ‘Because, they are all the same electron’!” “suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space – instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the plane corresponding to a fixed time, we would see many, many world lines and that would represent many electrons, except for one thing. If in one section this is an ordinary electron world line, in the section in which it reversed itself and is coming back from the future we have the wrong sign to the proper time – to the proper four velocities – and that’s equivalent to changing the sign of the charge, and, therefore, that part of a path would act like a positron.” “But, Professor”, I said, “there aren’t as many positrons as electrons.” This became the basis of his representation of positrons as electron holes and for the entire Feynman diagram approach to quantum field theories.

^{^[27]}David Bohm’s (1952) pilot wave theory posits a real position and momentum for a particle such as a photon guided by a particular non-local form of pilot wave. It illustrates a form of hidden variable theory which does not require collapse of the wave function, but the predictions hold only for a situation where no new particles are created with new degrees of freedom during the trajectory. Its interpretation is thus inconsistent with the Feynman approach, where the transition probability includes all paths and all possible virtual particles created and annihilated during the transition. To the extent that its predictions coincide with those of quantum mechanics, phenomena, from weak quantum measurement (Kocsis et al. 2011) to surreal Bohmian trajectories (Mahler et al. 2016) can also be interpreted correctly by entanglement using standard quantum mechanics.

^{^[28]} The approach of SED is guided by the hypothesis of the existence of the (random) zero-point radiation field, ZPF. This rather more elaborate approach goes through a statistical evolution equation in phase space, to arrive at a description in x-space, in which the dissipative and diffusive terms are seen to bring about a definitive departure from the classical Hamiltonian dynamics.

^{^[29]} moksha – derived from the Sanskrit word muc (“to free”), the term moksha literally means freedom from samsara (existential illusion). This concept of liberation or release is shared by a wide spectrum of religious traditions, including Hinduism, Buddhism, and Jainism.

^{^[30]} Synesthesia: a perceptual phenomenon in which stimulation in one sensory or cognitive mode leads to experiences in a second mode.

^{^[31]} This follows in line with the filter theories of Henri Bergson Matière et Mémoire (1896) and William James Human Immortality. (1898)

^{^[32]} Bob Jesse and Bill Richards are co-authors of Roland Griffith’s 2006, 2008 mystical experiences studies.

^{^[33]} entheogen – "god (theos) within", is a psychoactive substance that induces alterations in perception, mood, consciousness,

cognition, or behaviour for the purposes of engendering spiritual development or otherwise in sacred contexts. (Wikipedia)

^{^[34]} holotropic “wholeness seeking” – states which aim towards wholeness and the totality of existence – e.g. Brahman–atman.

^{^[35]} epistemic humility – a posture of scientific observation rooted in the recognition that (a) knowledge of the world is always interpreted, structured, and filtered by the observer, and (b) scientific pronouncements must be built on the recognition of observation's inability to grasp the world in itself.

^{^[36]} science – “what is known, knowledge (of something) acquired by study; information;" also "assurance of knowledge, certitude, certainty," from Old French science "knowledge, learning, application; corpus of human knowledge" (12c.), from Latin scientia "knowledge, a knowing; expertness," from sciens (genitive scientis) "intelligent, skilled," present participle of scire "to know," probably originally "to separate one thing from another, to distinguish," related to scindere "to cut, divide" (from PIE root *skei- "to cut, split;" source also of Greek skhizein "to split, rend, cleave," Gothic skaidan, Old English sceadan "to divide, separate"). Etymonline

^{^[37]} empirical based on, concerned with, or verifiable by observation or experience rather than theory or pure logic.

Etym. empiric via Latin from Greek empeirikos, from empeiria ‘experience’, from empeiros ‘skilled’ (based on peira ‘trial, experiment’).

experimental late 15th century ‘having personal experience’, also ‘experienced, observed’: from Latin experimentum practical experience

^{^[38]} Organisms are commonly regarded as: (1) phenotypes that interact with their environments, that survive, reproduce, and pass on genes and (2) the entities that are ‘produced’ by genes. Hull (personal communication) argues that his notion of ‘interactor’ is significantly different from Dawkins’ ‘vehicle’. As in (1), Hull’s regards his concept as a populational notion (the population of entities that directly interact with the external environment), while Dawkins’s ‘vehicle’, as in (2), is regarded as more embryological (vehicles are the entity that replicators produce).

^{^[39]} heredity (n.) "the passing on of physical or mental characteristics genetically from one generation to another" Etym. 1530s, "inheritance, succession," from French hérédité, from Old French eredite "inheritance, legacy" (12c.), from Latin hereditatem (nominative hereditas) "heirship, inheritance, an inheritance, condition of being an heir." Legal sense of "inheritable quality or character" first recorded 1784; the modern biological sense "transmission of qualities from parents to offspring" seems to be found first in 1863, introduced by Herbert Spencer.

^{^[40]} It has been claimed that concealed estrus is not an evolved trait but an underlying primate condition and that overt estrus is an evolved trait due to sexual and social selection e.g. in chimps and bonobos (Laland & Brown 2002 13), as the majority of primate species, including most apes, do not reveal their time of ovulation.

^{^[41]} Anneken Hendriks was an Anabaptist of Friesland, living in Amsterdam. Through treachery she was taken prisoner by the city officials. Because she held fast to her faith, she was severely tortured on 27 October 1571, with the intent of learning from her the names of other Mennonites. But even this ill treatment could not make her recant, and consequently she was put to death on the town square (Dam) on 10 November 1571. The execution took place in an unusually cruel manner. Anneken was tied to a ladder; her mouth was filled with gunpowder, and in this condition she was carried from the city hall to the ignited stake and thrown into the flames. She was fifty-three years old and an ordinary woman who could neither read nor write. In her sentence she was condemned because "she was married according to Mennonite custom, and at night in a country house." The Martyrs Mirror records that there is a song concerning her, but gives no further information, apparently meaning the song found in the Dutch hymn book Veelder-hande Liedekens (1569), which begins "Ick moetu nu gaen verclaren, Watter t'Amsterdam is geschiet" (I must now declare to you, What took place at Amsterdam).

^{^[42]} The approach of SED is guided by the hypothesis of the existence of the (random) zero-point radiation field, ZPF. This rather more elaborate approach goes through a statistical evolution equation in phase space, to arrive at a description in x-space, in which the dissipative and diffusive terms are seen to bring about a definitive departure from the classical Hamiltonian dynamics.

^{^[43]} “It is interesting to note that the surrealist movement in art claimed that there was more to reality than mere outward manifestations. There was a deeper reality (literally surreal means super reality) that lay behind outward appearances. When the word surreal is used with its intended meaning, then surreal trajectories is the correct term to describe them! Unfortunately [Englert et al.] use the term in a pejorative sense” (Hiley et al.)

^{^[44]} idiosyncrasy a mode of behaviour or way of thought peculiar to an individual idiosunkrasia, from idios ‘own, private’ + sun ‘with’ + krasis ‘mixture’.

^{^[45]} veridical – coinciding with reality (Oxford Languages). Mid 17th century: from Latin veridicus (from verus ‘true’ + dicere ‘say’) + -al.

^{^[46]} ergodic– relating to, or denoting (e.g. chaotic) systems or processes with the property that, given sufficient time, they include or impinge on all points in a given space and can be represented statistically by a reasonably large selection of points.

^{^[47]} satori – sudden enlightenment Oxford Lang. See also subitism derived from the French illumination subite (sudden awakening).

^{^[48]} singulare tantum a noun which appears only in the singular form – objects which may in principle be counted but are referred to as one.

^{^[49]} In physical cosmology, the Copernican principle states that humans, on the Earth or in the Solar System, are not privileged observers of the universe. (Wikipedia)

^{^[50]} Large Hadron Collider responsible for discovering the Higgs boson completing the standard model of physics, fig 29.

^{^[51]} animism (Latin: anima, 'breath, spirit, life')

^{^[52]} It is empirically true that global heating “punishes” humanity in clear functional terms, but not as a moral punishment in the religious sense. Gaia may even have full agency in a sense we don’t yet appreciate. “Why not?”, as physicist Brian Josephson commented to me citing James Lovelock. The question we have to ask is this: Is a tornado less alive than a prokaryote? A prokaryote is tightly controlled as a genetic process and likely not conscious, but a thunder storm is in a sense more alive in the way our brains are dynamically. If alive means primitive subjectivity then a thunder storm should be accepted as alive in that sense. Any physical system capable of unstable autonomous dynamics is a candidate. Attributing agency in this way might have a deeper basis in consciousness understanding quantum reality from personal experience. What kind of form tornado or Gaia secret life might take is no easier to estimate than the putative "free will" of a quantum. But it IS an empirical question!

^{^[53]}perdido –lost, done for, ruined, defeated or about to be killed etc. Cambridge Dictionary

^{^[54]} Advaita Vedanta (Sanskrit: अद्वैत वेदान्त –"non-duality"), propounded by Gaudapada (7th century) and Adi Shankara (8th century), espouses non-dualism and monism. Brahman is held to be the sole unchanging metaphysical reality and identical to the individual Atman. The physical world, on the other hand, is always-changing empirical Maya. The absolute and infinite Atman-Brahman is realized by a process of negating everything relative, finite, empirical and changing. All souls and their existence across space and time are considered to be the same oneness. Spiritual liberation in Advaita is the full comprehension and realization of oneness, that one's unchanging Atman (soul) is the same as the Atman in everyone else, as well as being identical to Brahman.

^{^[55]} Brihat Bṛhat (बृहत्).—a. (-tī f.) [बृह्-अति (bṛh-ati)] (1) Large, great, big, bulky; (2) Wide, broad, extensive, far-extended (3) Vast, ample, abundant

(4) Strong, powerful (5) Long, tall (6) Fullgrown (7) Compact, dense (8) Eldest, or oldest (9) Bright. Aranyaka (āraṇyaka) "produced, born, relating to a forest" or rather, "belonging to the wilderness". It is derived from the word Araṇya (अरण्य), which means “wilderness".

^{^[56]} velada soirée, nighttime meeting, literally a shamanic mushroom vigil Spanish velar Latin vigilō ("to watch, guard”) as in vigilant.

^{^[57]} This article and the complementary one “Natural Entheogens and Cosmological Symbiosis: Solving the Central Enigma of Existential Cosmology” were co-conceived out of a quantum change experience. Taken together they inform a sacramental paradigm shift towards planetary survival.

^{^[58]} eschatology the part of theology concerned with death, judgement, and the final destiny of the soul and of humankind.

Greek eskhatos ‘last’ + -logy.

^{^[59]} Inanna the Queen of Heaven’s descent into Hell, stripped one by one of her seven veils, by the Galla of her sister Ereshkigal’s domain of Hell, before returning to let them sacrifice her beloved husband and partner Dumuzi for usurping the sovereign’s powers in her absence, only to have him resurrected and sacrificed seasonally as a God of fertility.

^{^[60]} “Matthew collected the logia in the Hebrew dialect and each one interpreted them as best he could."

^{^[61]} Matthew’s Greek uses ἐπιθυμέω (epithūméō) to set one's heart on a thing, desire, covet. Passion has a more benevolent sexual meaning

involving infatuation and love, but the Greek πάσχω (páskhō) is "to suffer, to be acted on, to undergo, experience” rather than an act, or desire.

^{^[62]} Titled in recognition of The Dialogue of the Saviour (Robinson 1990).

^{^[63]} Koine Greek 'Common Greek', also known as Alexandrian dialect, common Attic, Hellenistic or Biblical Greek, was the common supra-regional form of Greek spoken and written during the Hellenistic period, the Roman Empire and the early Byzantine Empire.

^{^[64]} Akiva (50-135 CE) was instrumental in drawing up the canon of the Tanakh. He stoutly defended the canonicity of the Song of Songs, (as the Holy of Holies) and of Esther, despite it being an allegory of Ishtar. He was executed by the Romans after the Bar Kokhba revolt. Akiva said of Bar Kochbah 'This is the King Messiah'. Johanan ben Torta retorted: "Akiva, Grass shall grow from your cheeks and yet the son of David shall not appear”.

^{^[65]} I noticed in writing this that this expression comes from Matt 13:35 claiming Yeshua is revealing his deepest insights, right after Yeshua pronounces the parable of the mustard seed, which is also quoted in Thomas 20. The parable says the Kingdom of Heaven (not the Christian religion) is effectively the seed of the greatest herb, the Tree of Life in whose branches the birds lodge.

^{^[66]} Hieros gamos or Hierogamy (Greek ἱερὸς γάμος, ἱερογαμία "holy marriage") is a sacred marriage that plays out between a god and a goddess, especially when enacted in a symbolic ritual where human participants represent the deities.

^{^[67]} The grandson of one of the founders of Tel Aviv.

^{^[68]} shekhinah שכינה "dwelling" or "settling" and denotes the indwelling of the divine presence of God manifest in the tent of Sarah, also linked to ruach ha-kodesh רוחהקודש, the divine influence of God over the universe or living creatures i.e. Holy Spirit.

^{^[69]} Weltanschauung – a particular philosophy or view of life; the world view of an individual or group: welt "world" (see world) + anschauung "perception" (related to English show). William James (1868)

^{^[70]} I have always defended the Song of Songs as the most fertile expression of the Sacred Reunion but for this, a Zionist woman from Tsvat threatened to report me to Mossad as a Gentile “thief in the night”. Our dialogue is recounted in my song Black Rose – video.

^{^[71]} In Christianity, the Holy Ghost, or Spirit, is the ultimate reality not to blaspheme against: “ Jesus said: He who blasphemes against the Father will be forgiven, and he who blasphemes against the Son will be forgiven; but he who blasphemes against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either on earth or in heaven.” (Thom 44, as in Mark 3.28, Luke 12.31, Matt 3.28 with the exception of the Father). The grammatical gender of the word for "spirit" is feminine in Hebrew (רוּחַ, rūaḥ), neuter in Greek (πνεῦμα, pneûma) and masculine in Latin (spiritus). The neuter Greek πνεῦμα is used in the Septuagint to translate the Hebrew רוּחַ. Holy Spirit was equated with the feminine Wisdom of God by two early Church fathers.

^{^[72]} efficacy – the ability to produce a desired or intended result.

^{^[73]} Albedo is a quantity that indicates how well a surface reflects solar energy. ... the "whiteness" of a surface, with 0 meaning black and 1 meaning white. A value of 0 means the surface is a "perfect absorber" that absorbs all incoming energy.

^{^[75]} Weltanschauung is used as an English word, from the German because the English worldview is too vague and not comprehensive enough. (For anschauen = to look at, rather with the meaning "to take a good look at", for schau = to show, display, as opposed to blicken = to look, or aussehen from sehen = to see). Primarily it means a way a person looks at the phenomenon of life as a whole. Some people (particularly those who have not lived very long) have not formed any broad (inclusive, even "sophisticated") view of life. Others consider a large number of factors before forming their overall view — maybe in their seventies — of the phenomenon of human existence. Typically a person's Weltanschauung would include a person's philosophic, moral, and religious conclusions — including e.g. the duality of spirit and matter — and perhaps their conclusions about the origins of the universe and of the development of life.

^{^[76]} According to Hesiod, when Prometheus (fore-sight) stole fire from heaven, Zeus, the king of the gods, took vengeance by presenting Pandora to Prometheus' brother Epimetheus (hind-sight). Either Pandora or Epimetheus opened the jar left in her care containing sickness, death and many other unspecified evils which were then released into the world, or the lost blessings of the Gods as the other story goes. Though she hastened to close the container, only one thing was left behind – usually translated as Hope.

^{^[77]} According to Arthur Schopenhauer, it is the laws of nature that arise from a transpersonal will, not the will from the laws of nature. Felt volitional states are the irreducible foundation of both mind and world. For Schopenhauer the inner essence of everything is conscious volition – that is, will. Nature is dynamic because its underlying volitional states provide the impetus required for events to unfold. Even in the absence of all self-perception mediated by the sense organs, we would still experience our own endogenous, felt volition. Will is indeed free because it is all there ultimately is.

^[78]Spiritualitas L. from spiritus n. which means 'the breath of life', also psyche, or soul. Traditionally, spirituality referred to a religious process of re-formation which "aims to recover the original shape of man", oriented at "the image of God" as exemplified by the founders and sacred texts of the religions of the world and within early Christianity to refer to a life oriented toward the Holy Spirit and broadened during the Late Middle Ages to include mental aspects of life. In modern times, the term broadened to refer to a wider range of experience, including esoteric and religious traditions. Modern usages refer to a subjective experience of a sacred dimension and the "deepest values and meanings by which people live", often in a context separate from organised religious institutions. It may involve belief in a supernatural realm beyond the ordinarily observable world, personal growth, a quest for ultimate or sacred meaning, religious experience, or an encounter with one's "inner dimension"..

^{^[80]} Esther (Ishtar), the beautiful Jewish wife of the Persian king Ahasuerus (Xerxes I), and her cousin Mordecai (Marduk), persuade the king to retract an order for the general annihilation of Jews throughout the empire. The massacre had been plotted by the king’s chief minister, Haman, and the date decided by casting lots (purim). Instead, Haman was hanged on the gallows he built for Mordecai. When word of the planned massacre reached Esther, beloved Jewish queen of Ahasuerus and adopted daughter of Mordecai, risked her life by going uninvited to the king to suggest a banquet that Haman would attend. –. Now it came to pass on the third day, that Esther put on her royal apparel, and stood in the inner court of the king's house, over against the king's house: and the king sat upon his royal throne in the royal house, over against the gate of the house. And it was so, when the king saw Esther the queen standing in the court, that she obtained favour in his sight: and the king held out to Esther the golden sceptre that was in his hand. So Esther drew near, and touched the top of the sceptre. Then said the king unto her, What wilt thou, queen Esther? and what is thy request? it shall be even given thee to the half of the kingdom. And the king said unto Esther at the banquet of wine, What is thy petition? and it shall be granted thee: and what is thy request? even to the half of the kingdom it shall be performed. Then answered Esther, and said, My petition and my request is; If I have found favour in the sight of the king, and if it please the king to grant my petition, and to perform my request, let the king and Haman come to the banquet that I shall prepare for them, and I will do to morrow as the king hath said. Then Esther the queen answered and said, If I have found favour in thy sight, O king, and if it please the king, let my life be given me at my petition, and my people at my request: For we are sold, I and my people, to be destroyed, to be slain, and to perish. Then the king Ahasuerus answered and said unto Esther the queen, Who is he, and where is he, that durst presume in his heart to do so? And Esther said, The adversary and enemy is this wicked Haman. Then Haman was afraid before the king and the queen. And the king arising from the banquet of wine in his wrath went into the palace garden: and Haman stood up to make request for his life to Esther the queen; for he saw that there was evil determined against him by the king. Then the king returned out of the palace garden into the place of the banquet of wine; and Haman was fallen upon the bed whereon Esther was. Then said the king, Will he force the queen also before me in the house? As the word went out of king's mouth, they covered Haman's face. And Harbonah, one of the chamberlains, said before the king, Behold also, the gallows fifty cubits high, which Haman had made for Mordecai, who spoken good for the king, standeth in the house of Haman. Then the king said, Hang him thereon. So they hanged Haman on the gallows that he had prepared for Mordecai.