Things Hidden #7 - Evolution

Greetings from Austin! I welcome the opportunity to bring to you the seventh post of Things Hidden! Episode #7 of the Things Hidden podcast is out now!

You can watch the YouTube by clicking the link here-

The script I wrote for Episode #7 can be found below. This episode is about evolution. If you’ve been following along, you know that evolution has already come up a lot in prior episodes. It is a big part of my faith framework. Most of this episode focuses on the evolution of morality.

Please feel free to reach out with any questions or comments you might have. I continue to have phone calls with folks who reached out after watching Things Hidden and wanted to have a discussion about faith. I welcome those discussions, regardless of your vantage point.

If you want to follow along on socials too, they’re all linked here - https://linktr.ee/thingshidden

Be well.

- Travis

We ready? Let’s do this.

Welcome to Episode 7 of Things Hidden. Things Hidden is an exploration of the intersection of Faith and six factors that surround faith - Religion; Physics; Evolution; Consciousness; Philosophy; and Technological Innovation. The purpose of Things Hidden is to bring people into a closer relationship with God, and through that process coming into a closer relationship with God myself.

Episode 1 was the intro to Things Hidden. Episodes 2, 3 and 4 covered Faith from a bunch of different perspectives. Episode 5 was about religion. Episode 6 was about Physics. If you haven’t listened to those first six episodes, I would strongly encourage you to do that before starting this one. We’re still at the very beginning of Things Hidden, and Episode 1 is definitely the best place to start.

Today we will be talking about Evolution. If you’ve been listening to these episodes, you know that evolution has been a meaningful part of every episode except episode 2. So evolution is a big deal for me. Evolution is a major aspect of my personal faith framework and it comes into play from multiple perspectives.

For the sake of clarity and brevity, we’ll start by summarizing the views I’ve shared on evolution in past episodes, to set the stage for going deeper on the topic today.

I believe Evolution is factually true. I believe humans share a common ancestor with apes. I believe God created evolution and I believe we get a glimpse into the nature of God through evolution. Evolution seems so fundamental to the way the universe works, that it must be very close to God. Evolution is at the core of humanity’s purpose here on Earth.

I believe: 1) Knowing God is the purpose of life. 2) The more advanced a species, the more it can know God. 3) Species advancement requires increased cooperation. 4) Increased cooperation requires a moral framework that promotes agape love. And 5) The life and teachings of Jesus Christ emerges as the best avenue in human history to promote this moral framework, and Christianity has the receipts to prove it. This was the core message of Episode 3.

I believe if we don’t blow ourselves up (or get hit by an asteroid), homo sapiens will quickly evolve away. Humanity COULD go extinct. It is highly likely that our morality, or lack thereof, will be the deciding factor there. In the very near term, we are set to become cyborgs. This looks like it will happen in the next few hundred years. Over a few million years, humans will look nothing like we do now. I believe that if humans keep advancing like we have been over the last few hundred years, technological innovation has the potential to bring levels of abundance that will look like what humans 2,000 years ago imagined heaven would look like.

And so I find it instructive to contemplate the nature of God’s relationship with humanity from these various perspectives. God made the universe 13.8bn years ago and God made evolution. Earth came into existence 4.5 billion years ago. Single celled organisms 3.5bn years ago. Cambrian explosion 538mm years ago. Mammals 170mm years ago. Primates 60mm years. Homo habilis 2mm years. Homo sapiens, about 200k years. We are apes. Apes with technology. I find it helpful in contemplating the nature of God’s relationship to humanity to remind myself that we are evolved apes. And if we don’t go extinct, homo sapiens will further evolve into something else. It certainly appears this is how God made this world.

You cannot talk about God for long at all before the concept of morality pops up. There are no major world religions that do not have a moral code as a foundational aspect of that religion. As such, morality is a huge part of why I see Evolution as being so crucial to the examination of Faith in God. If I would have done one more “petal” on the Things Hidden infographic, it would have been morality. But there is no need for an additional “petal” on the Things Hidden graphic, because morality tucks perfectly into Evolution. Morality evolved through evolutionary, natural selection processes, because morality is required for cooperation and cooperation is an adaptive trait. Let me say that one more time because it is a foundational point. There is no discussion of God without a discussion of morality. And morality evolved through evolutionary, natural selection processes, because morality is required for cooperation and cooperation is an adaptive trait. Cooperation without morality is fragile and limited in scope. Humans never would have reached the incredible levels of cooperation we have today without a sophisticated moral framework in place.

Before we get further down the path, let’s define the term morality. It’s interesting when you go looking for a broadly accepted definition amongst domain experts, you won’t really find one. For our purposes here today, we’ll define morality as the principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior. Morality encompasses the rules, standards, and principles that guide species conduct and determine what actions are permissible, obligatory, or forbidden.

There is some disagreement about the origins of morality. And there is some disagreement about the nature of morality in animals other than humans. When looking for “moral” behavior in other animals, scientists usually focus on evidence of empathy in the wild. And that evidence is present. Empathy has been repeatedly demonstrated in dolphins, in whales, in elephants, in corvid birds and in rats. Once you step up to primates, you get even more sophisticated displays of morality. And then once you step up to humans, you get drastically more sophisticated displays of morality.

There is compelling research that points to something called spindle neurons, which are found only in humans, great apes, whales, dolphins and elephants. Spindle neurons are found in the anterior cingulate cortex and the fronto-insular cortex. Spindle neurons developed to transmit signals about social interactions and emotional responses. There is good reason to believe these neurons play a crucial part in those animals' ability to feel empathy, and their rarity in nature explains why the trait of empathy is also so rare. It is fair to say that the overwhelming majority of animals simply do not have the hardware for morality. Their brains are too simple to even be able to start down the path of morality. Human brains do have the hardware for morality. And we have the hardware for far and away the most complex forms of morality found on Earth. And this hardware is crucial to our relationship with God. Humans EVOLVED our ability to contemplate the existence of a higher power and a Creator of this universe. And humans EVOLVED the ability to contemplate how we should treat one another in the context of believing in a Creator of this universe.

Primatology is the study of primates. It is a fascinating field of study, for a bunch of different reasons. First off, primates are our closest ancestors. Genetically, humans are 4% different than chimpanzees. 4%. The groups that primates form, particularly chimps and bonobos, have many similarities to the groups that humans form. Their social structures are complex and intricate in similar types of ways that our social structures are complex and intricate.   

The types of morality that primates display have interesting parallels to the types of morality we see in humans. There is a particularly captivating aspect to this that is supported by the work of primatologist Richard Wrangham and others. Wrangham highlights a process in apes called “coalitionary proactive aggression”. This process describes the relationship between the alpha male chimp of a group and the subordinate beta male chimps of the same group. The beta males have the ability to gang up on and hurt or kill an alpha male, at little or no cost to themselves. The alpha male realizes this, and thus an equilibrium of actions and reactions forms between alpha males and the rest of their group. Wrangham’s view is that this interplay is essentially the cradle of human morality. I find that fascinating. There are competing views to this coalitionary proactive aggression, so it’s not like it’s an open and shut explanation. But when I chew on that idea for a while, and observe the world around me, it does strike me as compelling.

That said, the type of morality that humans have formed is unique to our species. It has a level of sophistication to it that is only possible with humans’ level of cognition. Human morality is heavily based on reputation. Reputation requires names, and the ability to identify someone and know their reputation without ever having met them. This level of sophistication to a moral structure requires advanced language. Advanced language belongs to humans and humans alone.

You can’t talk long about the evolution of morality without talking about moral relativism. Moral relativism is a primary component of moral philosophy. Simplistically, moral relativism is the view that moral judgements, values and principles are not objectively or universally true, but instead are valid only in certain contexts, like cultures or historical periods. There is much disagreement amongst philosophers about this subject.

When it comes to moral relativism, I cannot help but be drawn to the interplay between morality and scarcity. The two strike me as being closely intertwined. The idea that there can be rigid absolute moral truths regardless of the backdrop of scarcity does not make intuitive sense to me.

I’ll give you a simple example. There is a level of extreme scarcity where infanticide, the killing of a newborn baby, could be viewed as morally virtuous. Under any conditions of even the most moderate abundance, killing a newborn baby is absolutely terrible. The deciding factor is the backdrop of scarcity. Many such examples like this.

So all this stuff is a pretty major area of research and discussion that spans evolutionary psychology, anthropology, moral philosophy, economic history and the like. There are highlights worth hitting. First - Peter Singer introduced the concept of an “expanding circle of moral concern”. Singer traces how moral consideration has historically expanded from immediate kin to tribe, to nation, to all of humanity and eventually to non-human animals. Singer argues that expansion is not arbitrary but is enabled and driven by material security. In subsistence societies, moral obligations were limited to those who directly contributed to survival. If you didn’t pull any weight, you were not a moral concern.

Just take a moment and envision what life must have been like for the large majority of the human population before agricultural - every day is just “don’t die. Don’t let the kids die.” On repeat. It’s good to keep in mind how much abundance we have in our daily lives compared to that sort of existence. Indeed, the agricultural revolution, which started about 10,000 years ago, was a complete gamechanger for humanity. For the first time, some amount of surplus began to be available for a growing portion of the human population. That surplus allowed for the consideration of the elderly and the disabled. It allowed for the emergence of specialized roles like priests and artists.

Singer's framework says that as scarcity decreases, the marginal cost of helping others also drops, while our capacity for empathy remains constant, or even grows, through education and exposure. I find that compelling.

Christopher Boehm did work on “reverse dominance hierarchies” that is similar to Wrangham’s “coalitionary proactive aggression”. Boehm’s work finds consistent evidence of aggressive egalitarianism, or equalness, amongst hunter-gatherer groups. These groups would actively suppress any emergence of hierarchies through gossip, ridicule, ostracism and in some cases assassination. Fascinatingly, in pretty much every instance, when surplus emerges, hierarchies immediately form. The availability of a surplus means that someone ends up in charge of the surplus. And whoever that guy is, probably ends up in charge. Surpluses lead to hierarchies. Hierarchies require more complex moral codes.

Sarah Blaffer Hrdy’s central insight is that humanity’s unique moral capacities were forged by the challenges of raising infants under scarcity. Human infants are famously extraordinarily difficult to keep alive and raise to adulthood - arguably more difficult than any other animal. Mothers in scarce environments could not raise children on their own - they needed “cooperative breeding” also called “alloparenting”. As the saying goes, it takes a village.

Hrdy’s work sees this alloparenting during scarcity as crucial to the forging of human morality. Human infants needed to be appealing to multiple caregivers, which led to enhanced social awareness and emotional signaling. Incredibly, humans developed a large white area around the pupils of our eyes. This is unique among all primates and it allows for the tracking of gaze and intention through the eyes. That’s a trait that is decidedly disadvantageous against enemies, so the advantages it gave for cooperation must have been paramount. Additionally, alloparenting created complex webs of reciprocal obligation. It created moral debts and sophisticated moral accounting - who helped who, when and how much. Hrdy’s view is that this cognitive machinery, forged in scarcity, became the basis for broader human morality.

The last perspective I want to bring up on morality and scarcity is “WEIRD” morality. W-E-I-R-D. White, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic. WEIRD morality. A view has emerged, primarily through Joseph Henrich, that this particular group of people experienced such drastic abundance relative to historical norms, that a unique flavor of morality emerged in response to this backdrop of abundance. WEIRD people have defining features - they are more analytically minded, more holistic in perception, more willing to trust strangers, more prone to guilt vs shame and view themselves much more individualistically. Fascinatingly, Henrich posits that the WEIRD morality conditions can ultimately be traced back to western Europe Christian churches in the middle ages. The Catholic Church prohibited cousin marriage, which greatly undermined the traditional clan structure. This in turn led people to build relationships with strangers, and create markets, guilds and voluntary associations, which led to the emergence of a new type of morality.

This WEIRD morality has produced significant achievements - reduced violence, expanded cooperation, concern for universal welfare, technological innovation. It is fair to say that WEIRD societies are the “furthest along” in most all of the ways we measure human flourishing. Lower rates of violence, higher reported life satisfaction, greater gender equality, greater personal freedom, less corruption - all present in WEIRD societies. There is a strong argument to be made that things are indeed going better in WEIRD societies than elsewhere.

But there are exceptions. Oil-rich countries like UAE and Qatar have abundance without WEIRD morality. Japan and South Korea achieved abundance while maintaining more collective values. Same with Scandinavia. And there are downsides to WEIRD societies. Mental health crises. Loneliness epidemics. Environmental destruction. Declining birth rates. These are all costs of WEIRD morality.  

A question of causality arises - does abundance lead to WEIRD morality, or does WEIRD morality lead to abundance? It’s hard to know for sure, but it SEEMS like there is a virtuous cycle here - WEIRD morality begets abundance, and more abundance leads to increased WEIRD morality.

So what? What is the takeaway from all this discussion of morality and scarcity? One takeaway is that the human species has covered tremendous ground in a relatively short period of time. Currently, our species is in the midst of breathtaking advancement via technological innovation. The global population chart looks like this, and note that it is in log scale (graphic 7-1). The global life expectancy chart looks like this (graphic 7-2). The global inflation-adjusted GDP per capita chart looks like this (graphic 7-3). Noticing a trend here?

This is the defining feature of our time. Let me say that one more time. The tremendous advancement of abundance we are currently experiencing is THE defining feature of our time. We had millions and billions of years of evolution that was forged in extreme scarcity. And now, both in America and the world at large, the leading cause of death is essentially gluttony.    

Admittedly, 9% of the world’s population have been effectively left behind, still living in extreme poverty, which is defined as <$3/day. But that 9% today was 30% in 2000 and 50% in 1970. So the situation is rapidly improving, even though there’s still work left to do to help the least of these. Because that’s what we’re talking about here, right? The least of these. Jesus tells us to help the least of these. Whoever is exposed to the most SCARCITY, that’s who should be having at the top of the list to help. Help that comes from those of us with ABUNDANCE.

This is why Jesus’ message to help the least of these, and even to love your enemy, is so transformative. The teachings of Christ call us to address wherever the MOST scarcity is. Because at a certain level of scarcity, you really can’t expect people to act all that selflessly. If you are starving. If your baby is starving. You are purpose built through billions of years of evolution to rob and kill to feed yourself and your baby. This is not a character flaw, it is a survival mechanism. 

Christ calls us to have altruism, to have agape love. But when faced with a certain level of scarcity, it is virtually impossible to have agape love. “Give to everyone who asks” as Jesus commands in Luke, would have been suicide for the vast majority of human history. “Love your enemy” contradicts every instinct forged by millions of years of intergroup competition. This is the expanding circle of moral concern that Singer talks about. As your immediate needs become consistently met, with excess, you can begin to think about the needs of others. That is agape and it is a monumental step for humanity.

Fast forward to today, and humanity is at a unique crossroads - technological innovation has brought abundance but has also brought the ability for humans to inflict mass casualties on one another. Both of these are set to continue in the near future - we will see technological innovation drive increased abundance and also drive an increased ability for a single bad actor or small group of bad actors to inflict enormous damage on others.

When you combine this with people exposed to high degrees of scarcity, you have the potential for a “desperation multiplier”. 

Desperation is born of scarcity. People that do bad things mostly come from bad situations. Certainly not all, but most. Hitler, Stalin and Mao all had brutally violent fathers. Nearly every serial killer ever experienced significant childhood trauma. Terrorism, the kinds of actions where one or a few people can injure or kill many people, is mostly forged in the places on Earth with the highest scarcity. In 2023 the UN reported that 92% of new Islamic terrorist group recruits cited poverty, not faith, as their primary motive for joining.

A brilliant, radicalized person from extreme poverty has nothing to lose; a justified grievance in getting dealt a terrible hand in life; motivation for maximal impact to gain personal significance; and now, access to tools of mass devastation through technology. This is unprecedented.

And this is what Christ was talking about when He said to help the least of these and love your enemy. Every person lifted out of extreme poverty could be one less potential bioterrorist. Every community with hope could be one less terrorist recruitment hub. They say a chain is only as strong as its weakest link. A society is only as prosperous as its poverty. That is why we are obligated to lift up those in need.

Moving on, I want to touch on the treatment of animals vs the treatment of humans. There is obviously a large gap between how most of society views the killing of animals vs humans. For most people, eating a steak is a treat and eating a human is one of the most abhorrent things imaginable. The reasoning behind this is multifaceted. Part of it is a legacy issue. The story of the evolution of life on Earth is a story of species exploiting other species. Living things consume other living things in order to stay alive. This is the way of this world.

Another aspect is our perception of how an animal, say a cow, experiences consciousness. The cow’s memory and the strength of the cow’s social connections are two major drivers for the morality of killing a cow. It is “the most” wrong to kill a human vs a dog or a cow or a chicken because the human has the strongest social connections and those connections have the strongest memories. You kill a child, the mother mourns for the rest of her life. You kill a cow, does its mother even realize its child is dead? Imagine if someone you loved died, and you could only mourn them for the rest of that day. And the next day you and everyone else they’ve ever known forgot they ever existed. Would that fundamentally change how we view the morality of killing another person?

It is noteworthy that most people consider it MORE morally wrong to kill a cow and incinerate the carcass than to kill a cow and divvy up the meat amongst humans to eat. So there seems to be a moral acknowledgement in the value of eating meat for nourishment. I can imagine how our views on eating meat might change over the coming decades. I eat a lot of meat. Lots of beef, lots of fish. I eat a ton of eggs. I can definitively say I feel and perform much better when I’m eating meat on a regular basis. At this time, I do not trust lab grown meat. But I could imagine at some point down the road, perhaps a few decades, where lab meat is totally safe and indistinguishable from actual meat. It might even be BETTER tasting AND better for you than real meat. At that point, what is the “right” moral consideration to be made?

We’ve gone quite far on evolution without discussing genetics at all. Frankly, part of that is because I really don’t understand genetics very well. It’s a complex area of study. Genetics is also a very new area of study. DNA’s role in genetics wasn’t discovered until 1944. The double helix was discovered in 1953. So we’re talking about a really young field of study. But science has made some astounding discoveries in this short amount of time.

The DNA in a single human cell, when stretched out, is about 6 feet long. That means if you took all the DNA from every cell in a human body and laid it out end to end, it would stretch 67 billion miles.

DNA’s error checking system is 99.999% accurate. Cells copy 3 billion DNA letters every time they divide, yet they only make 1 error per billion letters. That’s like copying the entire Encyclopedia Britannica 200 times and making one typo. How crazy is that?

The genetic code is universal across all life on Earth. From bacteria to blue whales, every living thing uses the exact same genetic language. Crazy.

My takeaway from these crazy facts, and many more like them, is that it all seems to imply…creation. I can’t help but think that. It’s so complex. So mindblowing. So intricate. It’s totally mindboggling that genetics ACTUALLY works like it does. The way DNA works is honestly insane. And it really, really strikes me as…created. If it was created, there is a Creator.

The last topic I want to address today is the intertwinement of evolution and culture. These two forces are intimately intertwined. And crucially, culture has the ability to affect change MUCH faster than natural selection. There is a concept called “gene-culture coevolution”. Gene-culture coevolution describes the process by which cultural practices act as selective pressures on our genes. People with genetic variants that help them thrive in specific cultural environments will have more reproductive success. Over time, this can change the genetic makeup of populations which in turn further influences cultural practices.

Lactose tolerance is the most famous example here. Populations with a long history of dairy farming developed the ability to digest milk without getting sick. Having this ability in turn allows the person to consume more calories and have more reproductive success. Similarly, many asians experience “asian flush” when they drink alcohol - red in the face, rapid heartbeat and nausea. This is a genetically-driven allergic reaction to alcohol. When asian cultures first began fermenting rice 7-10,000 years ago, this flush gene began appearing about the same time. Alcoholism reduces reproductive success, so people with asian flush that prevented them from drinking would be more likely to reproduce. Pretty cool huh?

For humans, culture is now more powerful than evolution. And I think by this point you know how impactful I believe evolution to be. THAT’s how powerful culture has become for humans. Culture has transformed human ability in a single generation - evolution takes hundreds or thousands of generations to produce a significant change. Culture allows for a child born today to have full access to all of human knowledge - you don’t need to encode that knowledge in DNA, over millions of years - you can just look it up on your phone! Humans don’t have wings, but we fly. Humans don’t have gills but we explore the ocean floor. Culture has allowed humanity to rapidly transcend biological limitations. Genetic evolution moves at snail's pace in comparison.

Culture is self-amplifying and culture is cumulative. Each generation builds on the innovations of all the prior generations. That’s what makes the pace of culture increase at an increasing rate. We all feel this in our lives in various ways. There were millennia between agricultural and writing. There were centuries between printing and computers. There were decades between computers and smartphones. There are months between new versions of LLMs. You feel that, right?

That’s not to say biology doesn’t matter anymore. That’s not true at all. All of the raw ingredients of culture - capacity for language, social learning, abstract reasoning, cooperation. These are all products of genetic evolution. But the balance of impact has shifted decidedly towards culture. It’s easy to take the impact of culture for granted. Culture truly is the water in which we swim. Our entire existence is layer upon layer upon layer upon layer of culture.

Education. Careers. Families. Dwelling. Food. Religious beliefs. War. It’s all culture. Why do you eat three meals a day? Why do you wear clothes even when it’s hot? Why do you feel awkward in an elevator with strangers? It’s all culture. Love might feel biological, but why do you marry for love and not strategic alliance? Parenting feels instinctual, but how do you decide whether to breastfeed or whether to sleep in the same bed as your baby? Emotions feel innate, but why do you tear up when you listen to that one Ed Sheeran song? It’s all culture. Money, nations, laws, fashion, status - we made all of these cultural constructs up. Imagined them out of thin air. They exist because we collectively agree that they exist. And yet, they have as much or more power over our daily lives as gravity, or chemistry. How crazy is that?

It’s incredible how impactful culture is while also seeming so… invisible. Culture truly is Things Hidden. Each of us, every day, performs hundreds of cultural scripts and we don’t even think about it. How close to stand to someone. How to take turns in conversation. What the appropriate facial expression to make is. Layer upon layer. Every facet of life. When you start to chew on it, it can get a bit unanchoring. It makes you start to call into question free will and the idea of a “self”. And then it gets even weirder when you realize that your entire concept of a “self”, is, in fact, cultural.

The last point I want to make is this - morality is cultural. This is obvious when you stop to think about it. Morality is intertwined with evolution of course, just like all aspects of culture. But morality is cultural. What we deem good or bad or right or wrong is up to US. Each generation. Sure we get handed a morality from the prior generations, but as we discussed, culture can move fast. It moves fast now. And with the breakneck pace of technological innovation that we are currently experiencing, culture is set to move even faster still.

And morality has never been more important than it is right now. There has never been more at stake. If we have our morality reasonably well-situated, technological innovation can deliver a level of abundance that will look like what humans 2,000 years ago imagined heaven would look like. The outcome could be truly utopian, the outcome could be Ready Player One, or the outcome could be somewhere in the middle. We could end up like Star Trek, or we could end up extinct. In either case, the outcome will likely depend on our morality.

Ok. That’s it. We covered a lot here. Many of these topics are deep and we barely began scratching the surface. But hopefully we formed some nice jumping off points for future discussions. There are many experts on the topics we discussed today that I’d love to have on as future guests.

The next episode will be about Consciousness - the wackiest of all the “petals” of Things Hidden. If you enjoyed this, hit like and subscribe. If you want to sign up for the blog, it’s in the description. If you’re looking for the online community, it’s coming soon. If you know someone that would be interested in Things Hidden, send this to them. I really appreciate your time, and I wish you the best.