Episode Details

Human evolution is hard to take for some Christians, especially when we claim that humans have been climbing up the evolutionary ladder in the moral sense.

It was only a few years ago that Pew Research found roughly one third of Americans believe that “humans have existed in their present form since the beginning of time” (and in case the obvious really needs to be said, this means they completely deny human evolution) and then went on to show that most of that opinion comes from the Evangelical camp.  If one third deny human evolution, then that means two thirds accept human evolution, right? 

But do they? Fully?

Probably everyone in that two thirds camp would agree that we’ve been evolving in the biological and cognitive sense.  Our bodies and brains emerged out of the genetic mixing bowl of life, and we’ve got a ton of science to back up that claim. Those are two lines in the sand that we in this camp find easy to step over.

And we’ve also been evolving religiously, theologically, and spiritually during that whole time as well.  In addition to the mountain of evidence for biological and cognitive evolution, we also have a mountain of evidence for this aspect of human existence.  But some of us in the two thirds camp might be just a little bit hesitant to fully accept that third aspect of human evolution, and to step over that third line in the sand.

But then we come to a fourth aspect of human existence: our morality and ethics.  This is where I find a substantial number in our two thirds camp suddenly stop marching with us and say “hold on a minute there.  That’s perhaps a step too far.”  And their explanations often include references to dropping nuclear bombs in the 1940s, or something along those lines.

In this episode, we look at statistics and history over the past fifty thousand years that show how the human species has NOT been getting more murderous or destructive over time (when you take into account the number of people on the planet at any given time), but that we HAVE been becoming more compassionate, respectful and helping. As you listen to Scott and I talking about this, open up this link that documents global death rates due to war,

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