Reviews of "Interrupting Behavioral Evolution" by David J. Pope

Reviews of Interrupting Behaviorial Evolution

In 1780 Benjamin Franklin wrote "The rapid progress true science now makes occasions my regretting sometimes that I was born so soon. It is impossible to imagine the height to which may be carried, in a thousand years, the power of man over matter. O that moral science were in a fair way of improvement, that men would cease to be wolves to one another, and that human beings would at length learn what they now improperly call humanity."

There have been enormous increases in the progress of true science, and the power of man over matter has been clearly established. Franklin's lament for the poor state of moral science anticipates Pope's provocative challenge to us by more than two centuries, but that in itself helps to establish that we are being held in a sociocultural timeout.

Pope invites and impels us to think: What IS human nature? Have we interrupted behavioral evolution? What is science? What is faith? What do I believe? Why do I believe it?

And to hark back to Franklin, how can we learn humanity?
-Milton D. Hakel, Professor and Ohio Board of Regents Eminent Scholar Ph.D., Industrial/Organizational Psychology

"Each generation has to rethink it's relationship to ultimates. Although the creeds have helped Christians cling to dimensions of truth with which great minds wrestled aeons ago, sometimes it's their very language which constrains our creative thought. David Pope asks us to rethink the imponderables by placing new names on our lips and engaging the muse in new definitions of reality. Is there such a thing as a transcendent dimension? A world of the spirit? An influence from beyond? Or are we shaped only by our biology, our emotions, our experience? Pope presses us to reassess our moorings. The possibility is that after thinking things through with him, we will choose to remain where we were. It is also possible that we will embrace alternative realities and claim new horizons. Such is the benefit of creative thinking. We need to challenge ourselves more often. Thank you, David."
-David Zersen, D.Min., Ed.D. President Emeritus, Concordia University at Austin

This layman is using his license to do theology in a way that not only satisfies the best of his Lutheran tradition but deeply satisfies unconventional me as I read it. David Pope knows full well that Jesus taught and showed those around him how to behave in communion with Spirit; and he also knows that such a worldwide vision is our first and last great hope.
-John P. Cock, author of seven books on contemporary spirituality

Pope focuses an evolutionary lens on the troublesome nature of the human "spirit" that has emerged from our extended historical courtship with superstition and magical thinking. He sees an intriguing solution to our vast self-centered communal stasis, in an accurate account of that poorly developed aspect of the human condition that Jesus sought to illuminate and cultivate--a dynamic that probably needs to be rediscovered by each generation so we can truly commune as members of one human family. In his search for the deeper aspects of our spiritual nature. Pope's thought ranges from the darker corners of human evolution to the potentials of our deeper nature.
-Jaak Panksepp (author of Affective Neuroscience)

Nikos Kazantzakis, the great novelist and thinker, poetically describes human beings as centaurs, with hoofs planted in the ground and heads striving for the stars. Always we are drawn by what Kazantzakis calls, “a great merciless Cry,” drawing us toward higher planes. He says that the next great struggle is to unsheathe ourselves from our animal scabbards. (Nikos Kazantzakis, Report to Greco, pp. 291-292, in John B. Cobb Jr., God and the World, Westminster, Phila., 1965, p. 53). In his mystical way, Kazantzakis is describing “process philosophy,” picturing “God” – if you will – as the insistent cosmic pull forward in the inexorable evolutionary process.

It is this juncture in humanity’s evolution with which David J. Pope is grappling in his essay, Interrupting Behavioral Evolution. Pope is a modern man. He is monistic; in his view there is no room for magic or superstition, or any natural/supernatural dichotomy

David Pope is an intellectual who, with a questing mind and independent study has crafted a well-reasoned philosophy of life which he spells out in this essay. Pope is very much a twenty-first century person who has come to grips with science and the realities of evolution. This work also reflects a spiritual journey, in which he has struggled with the Jesus of his childhood and has found a core which he can affirm while discarding vestiges of the supernatural. The historical Jesus who he has retained is, indeed, his “Christ of faith.”

Mr. Pope has come to a position which is akin to process theology or philosophy. Process philosophy sees a power or force pulling the evolutionary process forward. Many process theologians consider this pull of the future “mind,” or, as Kazantzakis calls it, the “great Cry we call God,” because of the infinite complexity inherent in the evolutionary process.

Humanity, as with all life forms, is in the process of evolving out of less developed forms. Denial of our animalistic roots (e.g. notions of special creation of humans, or “mind” controlling our emotions) serves as blinders to keep us from seeing that our morality and our “commandments” are not given from above. Instead they are the institutionalizing of our pre-human and early human socialization. Although modern humans have an abundance of technology, we are little changed from early civilizations. Indeed, like centaurs, our hoofs are in the ground, even as we are also struggling to new levels, with our heads reaching for the stars.

As a performing artist, a distinguished pianist, Mr. Pope understands from personal experience that the aesthetic nature senses that the creative muse comes from “outside oneself.” He notes that Bach and Brahms interpreted this “otherness” in terms of God-given inspiration. Rather, Pope holds that our aesthetic nature is a function of the human nervous system, a fact with which convinced evolutionist would agree. Pope’s excursion into aesthetics has significance for his understanding of “spirit” as a higher quality in the evolution of humans, as he later clarifies.

Pope fears, as does this writer, that we “clothed apes” are set to destroy ourselves with the fruits of our technology. This is exacerbated by superstitious religion and sense of the magical, which sees things other than they are.

The author offers a model which he lifts up as a “salvation” from our grotesque dysfunctionalism. Here he turns to the person of Jesus of Nazareth and attempts his own “quest of the historical Jesus,” to get behind all the supernatural accretions that have beclouded his person and mission to get to the heart of Jesus’ spirituality. Pope does not perceive Jesus as God becoming man, but rather he operates with a “christology from below.” Pope’s Jesus is akin to the Jesus in the thought of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin in his The Phenomenon of Man, who sees him as the breakthrough of what humans can become as we are drawn forward toward what Teilhard calls the “Omega Point,” the telos of the evolutionary process.

Pope offers a Jesus who has a unique communion with spirit.” He refers to the early idea of “adoptionism,” which held that Jesus was invested with the “Spirit” at his baptism.

Pope views Jesus as what modern scholars call a “teacher of wisdom,” who had deep insight into the realm of the spirit. Although Jesus perceived this spirit as outside himself (as the aesthetic sensibility is often experienced), this, to the author, is a higher fruit of the humanization of human beings. It is intuited by humans and brought to full consciousness by Jesus. This spirit was not just an alternative among superstitions, but was transparent to those around Jesus. Later followers of Jesus did not know him in person, but experienced the dynamic in themselves and others. This was called the Holy Spirit, which they assumed this was a supernatural entity rather than a concrete part of the universe.

Pope says, however, that Jesus is suggesting that it is through communion with spirit – a world-wide communion – that we can actually achieve the goal of such synergistic human behavior. Just as the aesthetic emotion is perceived as outside ourselves, but in reality is an activity of our central nervous system, so it is also the case with our communion with “spirit.” It feels like it comes from outside ourselves, but it comes from within ourselves. So it was with early followers of Jesus. Beyond the individual, it was – and is - practiced in small group sessions, which has an additional dynamic as participants remember what Jesus shared with them. It is interpreted as an “other” presence, but need not be shrouded in supernatural conceptions. This is a phenomenon rising out of ourselves, not out of a God.

This phenomenon, the author holds, could be crucial for the future of our species: a world-wide communion with spirit. This experience of spirit, he holds, is the ultimate binding force in the human species. What the religious sector has done with spirit as a supernatural force combined with their end of the world mythology has led to serious behavioral issues which can lead to our destruction. If, however, we are all in a world-wide spiritual communion, this could be a nurturing rather than a destructive force. Pope imagines that “it might be just like heaven.”

David Pope is to be saluted for drafting his philosophical/theological creed in light of his existential journey. We look forward to conversations with him in the future where we stretch our minds and, like centaurs, tread the ground with our hoofs and raise our heads toward the stars.
- Thomas W. Strieter, M. Div., S.T.M., Ph.D.

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Reviews of Interrupting Behaviorial Evolution