Origins Of The Universe and Humanity

A Christian worldview based on cognitive neuroscience, philosophy, and evolutionary psychology.

19 min readJul 6, 2020

Introduction

As I explore my faith and reconcile the sciences with the religious doctrine I decided to make my notes public as a form for active learning and something potentially entertaining and useful for others. I am not stating that I am an expert in the matter. I am simply exploring an interesting topic and using this as a vehicle to solidify my learning and ideas.

Genesis 1

Genesis 1–2 is the biblical depiction of the creation of the universe, the natural world as we know it, the creation of a paradise on Earth, the human species and subsequently humanity, and most importantly the fall from grace following our disobedience.

The Evolutionism Creation perspective proposed by Collin would be the perspective that best aligns with my own belief structures if I were to view the world through the Christian Worldview.

My Worldview is a hybrid between pantheism and a philosophical and psychological interpretation of theism. I believe that the Universe as a God exists, yet I still wrestle with the idea of a personal God as commonly associated with Christianity. Humanity, through my perspective, is the culmination of evolutionary psychology abstracted over time, personal experiences, and sociocultural determined norms. In my perspective, as self-conscious creatures who have the innate ability to contemplate our mortality and ration with the future, it is our humanistic responsibility to care for this world. Unlike our animal counterparts, we are the only species that can and has drastically impacted the Earth negatively.

The Bible is introduced by the first verse of Genesis, “In the beginning, God created the heavens and earth” (Genesis, 1:1, NLV).

Day One

On the first day, He created light and distinguished that from the darkness. He then proceeded to assign names to the new creations calling it light and darkness, day and night. If the light was considered good, then we can assume a priori that darkness is bad. Perhaps not in the literal sense. Pinker proposed that our obsession with creating a narrative between light and dark could have several key evolutionary benefits (Pinker, 2014). One is giving us a vision (Dawkins, 1995). Although the cosmic bodies such as stars and subsequently our moon give light our adaption to thrive in daytime offers significance to the proposed axiom stated in the Bible. Humans likely could have observed that distinction quickly and called that distinction good.

From a self-conscious and psychological perspective, several major contributors to science in the 20th century had a general consensus about Darkness as a symbol in narrative, dream, and perception (Jung & et al., 1969, Petterson, 1999). As a symbol, darkness represented our capacity to deceive, act in an uninhibited manner, and over time the abstraction of bad happening in the darkness, disregarding the increased risk of death from predatory animals and the unknown, was the cause assigning darkness as something bad. That would further back the significance of bringing things into the light. Shining light on things that are known to be bad would serve as a social tool promoting the environment of honesty and accountability which would facilitate cohesion as a group for forwarding propagation (Wild, 2011; Barret, 2016).

“And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good” (Genesis, 1:3–4, NLV).

Day Two

On the second day, God created the oceans and the sky. This day could potentially be a mythical explanation for the creation of the heavens and the earth. Nevertheless, the anthropological significance highlighting the waters and the sky specifically could be interpreted as our innate ability to observe the foundation for life — oxygen and water.

Day Three

On the third day, God said, “Let the waters under the heavens be gathered into one place. Let the dry land be seen.” and continued to say, “Let plants grow from the earth, plants that have seeds. Let fruit trees grow on the earth that bring their kind of fruit with their own seeds.” (Genesis 1:11–2, NLV). This portion of the creation myth is important as we are predominantly land-dwelling creatures. The emphasis on the creation of vegetation is equally important as we were chiefly herbivores before becoming more omnivorous.

Day Four

The creation of the cosmic bodies in the heavens has always been a major topic for creation mythology. In the bible, God is documented stating, “Let them tell the days and years and times of the year” (Genesis, 1:14, NLV). The significance of the cosmic bodies in our pursuit of civilization was quintessential. We depended on the stars for navigation and agriculture. Our ability to find regularity in the chaotic universe by observing the night sky to foster agriculture is no wonder that we instantiated the significance of the cosmic bodies in the narrative of mythology and in the bible. God created the stars to rule the night and he said it was good.

Day Five

Arguably the first moment of consciousness outside of God was created on the fifth day. The order of creation depicted in the bible is interesting because unknowingly (assuming this was not the word or work of God) aligns with the phylogenetic origins of humanity as well. Living creatures gradually increased in sophistication likely originating from sea-dwelling animals to birds to mammals to homosapiens. I will talk about my belief in this in regards to EC later.

“God made the big animals that live in the sea, and every living thing that moves through the waters by its kind, and every winged bird after its kind. And God saw that it was good” (Genesis, 1:21, NLV).

Day Six

Similar to the sea-dwelling creatures, God created the land-based counterparts, including man. God made man in his own likeness. To my best estimation, it is more plausible that we were created in His likeness less in shape and physical form but more incapacity for compassion, love, altruism, justice, etc. He appointed us as head of the Earth and gave us dominion of the land and creatures. It was our divine duty to tend for the earth and guide the creatures accordingly.

I will discuss my opinion about human creation in respect to humanity, relationship with God, and dominion in the subsequent parts of this article.

Day Seven

He had rested from all the work he had done. He sanctified the 7th day as he observed all that he has done. This is a crucial couple of verses as it reminds those who overproduce and work themselves to death to remember that even God took a break, so we sure as hell should too. There is a negative element associated with overworking and a single day of rest can actually increase productivity and morale. Perhaps we noticed this through our observation of humanity over time. We both observed those who overworked and experienced it ourselves. Similarly, we likely felt the pleasures of a rest day and considered that not only pleasurable but also contributed to more efficient production which is good and thus creating the need for it to be sanctified by God.

Genesis 2

God created humanity in his likeness. I do not believe that he means the physical form of his likeness, rather the attributes associated with God such as compassion and righteousness. Since humanity as a whole was created in the likeness of God then our expectations to treat humanity with kindness and respect are obvious.

In the bible, the claim is that humanity was created with the purpose to worship God. Man was able to appreciate all of God’s creations, this showing reverence for the divine creator.

By extension, God bestowed man with the obligation to tend to the garden. It was Adam’s responsibility to name the animals (although created without a name they did not exist). He was charged with caring for the earth and ruling over the land and its creatures.

The last section of Genesis 2 talks about the creation of Eve. If Man was created in the likeness of God then we can assume women are deserving of the same level of respect and dignity as man, as women were created from the bone of Man.

Assuming I was a believer, I would immediately gravitate towards and adopt the EC perspective. The empirical evidence suggesting that the universe is over 10 billion years old would discredit most participants of the YEC group and the OEC group (Spergel, Bolte, & Freedman, 1997). If we subscribe to the empirical evidence, then we can further presuppose that the earth itself was not manifested within the several days as described in the creation myth of Genesis One (Collins, 2019). I will elaborate on this in the creator’s detail next.

My personal belief structure of divinity sits between an agnostic and pantheistic perspective. Growing up in a predominantly Catholic environment I still have a deep reverence for the idea of the Christian God and wrestle with the idea of believing in Him. Taking that bias into consideration, you can continue to read the presentation understanding where my Worldview lies. However, If I had to choose a viewpoint on the origins of the universe I would best align with the EC perspective.

Appending to the previous comment, if we accept the empirical evidence of the natural world as an axiom then we can deduce that both vegetation and animals (life form in general) did not manifest within 3 distinct days. The overwhelming empirical evidence would likely disprove even the most rigid YEC believers. The phylogenetic root of being can be simplified with this image. That focal point called LUCA was likely the result of a perfect mixture of chemicals and according to the literature catalyzed by climate to create the first cell.

Francis Collins said that there is an intrinsic benefit of both religion and philosophy for consciousness and perception of reality, but that perception is rooted in the laws of nature through empirical evidence. Similarly, the Dalai Lama, a global religious icon, shared a similar perspective stating that empirical evidence and the natural laws running tandem with religion is the driving force for human perception of reality. Lastly, Darwin proposed that religion is the cultural and biological evolutionary byproduct.

Since civilization began to emerge we started to contemplate and rationalize our understanding of the universe. The dramatic narrative found in fairy tales, mythology, and religion gave us answers that explained the phenomenology of the cosmic universe, earth, life, consciousness, and self-consciousness. We used narrative to

Pinker proposes that the evolution of psychology allowed the human species to produce a more elaborate imagination. This is a result of humanity becoming conscious in a unique way, we are aware of our own consciousness. The fall in the coming chapters of Genesis is our recognition of the self and mortality. This allowed for the possibility to rationalize the future (Peterson, 1999). Over time humanity observed the concept of delayed gratification and created the narrative of the ability to negotiate with the future. These were byproducts of our unique level of consciousness and our increased aptitude for a more sophisticated image.

So, the abstracted patterns of human behavior were observed over time. We are hardwired to learn. We are hard-wired to remember things as well. We abstracted things that were “good” and things that were “bad” — perhaps in correlation to propagation, survival, and luck. Nevertheless, we associated those patterns with narrative like religion and used that to create culture and doctrine to follow that would foster the inoculation of the maturation process in relation to others (society) (Peterson, 1999). According to Lisa Barrett, a neuroscientist, to lower our Allostatic Load we created belief structures that essentially represented probabilistic outcomes of our behaviors. So, we once again used that as a reason for creating a narrative to make sense of those abstracted archetypes and positive valence probabilistic behavioral patterns. it is most metabolically efficient to believe (Barret, 2016).

Lastly, the luck element of my proposition was from the Skinner Box study. The study was conducted on pigeons however a later study was performed with humans. The premise of the experiment is to release some external stimuli (positive reward) in a pre-set interval and over time the participants, both humans, and pigeons associated the behavior they performed immediately prior to receiving the reward as a ritual (Huitt, W. G. , 2016). This is my personal idea, so I have no claim to explain if this was the causation for the ritual-cultural elements associated with religion, but it was another potential factor for why we do things the way we do it.

The Sovereign God of The Universe

In Genesis alone, God was depicted as being the sole creator of the universe thus deserving of praise, worship, and reverence. His attributes were also listed, whereas in Psalms 145 more attributes are listed. However, the Bible suggest that God is just, righteous, all-knowing, omnipresent, eternal, and unchanging.

The Holy Trinity may be misconstrued as a polytheistic religion however the trinity is representing the same singular God within three separate forms: the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Throughout the bible, the trinity is confirmed and in relevance to our study, Genesis 1–2. God is depicted saying “Let Us” implying that the trinity was present in the beginning.

The secular perspective I have of God after considering the various origin viewpoints would be unchanged. I desire the ability to believe with the God of the Bible but I cannot reconcile the belief with my understanding of empirical evidence and rational explanation. I do think that the Trinity offers great utility for the believers an nonbelievers alike. We have a loving paternal figure who beckons his children to obey but still allows for the ability of choice (Jung, 1969). So he is protective but not tyrannical. The Son is the human version of the father still attaining the same attributes while being perceived as more compassionate and forgiving. Especially since we know that the ultimate sacrifice was the catalyst for salvation. Similarly, the Son is instantiated in history as a living person. This would make the narrative more compelling appending to the existing logos of God. Lastly, the Holy Spirit is considered a substrate of our collective unconsciousness. When we pray on the spirit we are calling forth to consciousness a “spirit” that was usually dormant. The hemodynamic response of prayer in fMRI correlated the prayer mode with the prefrontal cortex of the brain. The discovery in addition to Peterson’s claim would suggest that we are using our ability to think objectively in the framework of God. We can observe situations more “clearly” with an objective lens. The inference would suggest that our innate ability to know what is right from wrong is the culmination of years of evolution, observation of environmental exposure, and personal experiences of their respected outcomes.

God is the eternal creator of the universe. Making Him eternal creates a logos like element associated with his actions. If he supersedes everything then he must know everything and thus everything he does (assuming he is, in fact, benevolent) is good. So, we would be wise to listen to him and never presuppose our authority over him. I think I will spend time on a separate article extrapolating my thoughts on God himself. I believe that having a higher-order above you is immensely beneficial. Even the most atheistic individuals are still largely agnostic. Even if their disbelief is present they often still subscribe to a higher order of being to dictate their behavioral patterns is it pertains to society, or otherwise run the risk of being excommunicated or worse, murdered.

Creation of The Universe

Order

Creating chaos from an order based on a social estimation would symbolically represent the cohesion and cooperation between the members of a group. It could be an innate observation and primordial understanding of the order we live in within the infinite world of possibilities. The slightest variance in our physics alone could result in the inability to sustain life, much less create. However, Peterson and Jung share a similar perspective on the symbolic importance of chaos and order. They both analyze the situation from a psychoanalytical perspective and to Jung's estimate we are acting out a collective consciousness (Jung, 1969; Peterson, 1999). Peterson appends to that presupposition by relating chaos and order to the balanced symbol of Taoism — yin, and yang. He extracts common mono myths in the narrative around the globe and religions. He inferred that that order also represents the domain of the known and chaos is the domain of the unknown (Peterson, 1999). Another group of Canadian neuropsychologists used meta-data supplemented with their own study to validate Petersons claims on the premise that more research is required before affirming the claim (Smith, et al., 2022).

Good

This section is simply to remind the reader that the order constructed from chaos is good. His creations were good. Life itself is good. Living is good. Before the fall all was created in harmony. There was a utility for everything on the earth and balanced in perfect synchrony with each other — with chaos and order. This section is circa the fall since we have not discussed the following chapters of Genesis, yet.

The Garden

The garden was a paradise. It was the throne room for God where he dwelled with his people, Adam and Eve (Hiles, et al., 2015). The garden was the perfect example of order from chaos. The garden is the bridge between chaos and order. Nature is chaotic but a garden is a manicured, managed version of chaos. Then the tree of life was important. Peterson amongst several anthropologists proposes that the implications are because the primordial man once lived in the trees. Also, trees bear fruit, and prior to cooking, that was our primary source of nutrition. The tree of knowledge of good and evil is also significant. The tree could confirm my claim that God is not a tyrannical archetype of the paternal character. He is the abstracted ideal of abstracted ideals. So he will protect and give freedom of will. He will beckon us close to him, yet he leaves us the option to turn to hell. That is a just and fair God. The Garden could simply be a representation of the relationship of humanity with God.

Creation of The Humanity

Human Body

This description of the origin of humanity is uniquely juxtaposed to the other creations depicted in Genesis. The creation of the first human was described as followed, “Then the Lord God made man from the dust of the ground. And He breathed into his nose the breath of life. The man became a living being” (Genesis, 2:7, NLV). The body is important as it houses the Spirit as a temple. We are equally spirit and body.

Call to Worship

I will borrow ideas from Marcus Aurelius when he describes God from his perspective as a stoic. The Stoic perspective aligns with the Taoist ideology as well. There is a whole and that is the universe. The Whole is their synonymous word for God and Divinity (Aurelius, 2020). Both chaos and order, good and evil, reside in the Whole. So to show reverence and gratitude for the Good and to neglect the Bad is no different than to disrespect the Whole all together. To have one, or even the possibility of one, the opposite is necessary. Even if life is perfect, without a dichotomy to compare it too, there is no measure of Good therefore the Good cannot be revered. Tying the analogy back to Christianity, God is righteous, gracious, and just. He gives human autonomy and we, as seen over time in the Abrahamic stories and in recent history, have a proclivity to ruin our opportunities and degenerate back into chaos like the people of Babylon, Egypt, Cane, and Adam. So, we should worship in moments of despair with equal amounts of energy as we do when we are experiencing seasons of prosperity. This uses a useful tool to remain humbled and practice gratitude. It also offers hope as a tool to bargain with the future (fate in stoicism, God in Christianity). That is when the covenants come into play.

Regarding the personal relationship, we observe God dwelling with his people in his Temple — His throne room. Back to verse 7 of Genesis 2, humans were created uniquely different from animal counterparts. We possess his breath and only we are composed in his image. Since he is making his presence known, and we are the only creations built in his image, then we can deduce that he wanted to establish a relationship with us personally. According to the Bible, the purpose of man was to know and worship God while obeying his commandments in fear of His wrath (Hiles & et al., 2015). Our earliest commands were to tend to the garden, produce kin, and avoid the tree of knowledge of good and evil.

Tend to the World

To my best estimation, the significance of being commanded to tend to our garden is to recognize that the Good of His creation is a miracle and a blessing. So if we cannot improve the world then we should do our best to at least maintain it. Maintenance of chaos from the order is the only way we can sustain society and thrive. I believe that is the importance of this command by God. Then our superior intelligence means that we should care for the godly creatures created by God. We are more intelligent than them so we should do all we can to position them to survive and thrive as well, “expanding the garden”. Just as God who is far more intelligent than we are caring for us like his sheep, we too shall do the same.

Multiply

“Adam’s role to serve and to keep the garden was to lead to the expansion of the garden” (Hiles & et al., 2015).

This is where the balance of chaos and order comes back into play. Readdresing the cohort of neuroscientists who studied novelty in the brain experience that we have adapted to have a greater response of novelty in the right hemisphere while the hemodynamic response in the left hemisphere is activated predominantly when exposed to known information, greater capacity for rationalization thus our intelligent interpreter of novelty once the stimuli have been processed by the lymphatic more primordial systems (Smith & et al., 2002). If this discovery is proved correct then we are neurologically hard-wired to balance and comprehend chaos and order. So our innate ability to represent that process in the narrative is Divine in of itself. Therefore, our command to expand the Garden is both the Darwinistic explanation of gene propagation but also represents our purpose. Our purpose is to grow, expand, learn, be challenged, and explore unknown territory physically, spiritually, and mentally.

Imago Dei

Lastly, I want to discuss the significance of being defined in the image of God. The Bible highlights my defense for the bible as not being misogynistic. The Bible claims that since Man and subsequently women were created in the image of God, then we are both worthy of value and dignity. I believe that we were spiritually created in His likeness. This means with His spirit we possess the same attributes of God, assuming that we can call upon His power through prayer or worship. Although we have fallen we still hold his spirit and subsequently, his image, within. This is like the Yin Yang symbol, once again revealing the similarities that I (re-)discovered between religion through my travels abroad. The symbol depicts the whole comprised of both good and evil, chaos, and order. Yet, we see that a bit of chaos and order resides on both sides of the symbol. This is to say, although we have sin innate within us ever since the fall of Humanity, we still possess His likeness within, meaning we can be redeemed, saved, and purified.

Going back to the human body. Throughout scripture, it is noted that we are walking temples. Just as God walked with man in the garden as his throne room, we too shall maintain the Garden within since god is walking within us.

Summary

My perspective best aligns with the evolutionary creationism perspective, assuming that I was a believer. Otherwise, my perspective would best reflect a hybrid of pantheistic rhetoric and the more agnostic ID viewpoint, while still maintaining a deep reverence for theology and its psychological utility for humanity over time.

Since I adopt the EC viewpoint I affirm that based on the empirical evidence currently presented to us, the earth is old, the universe is much older, and the story of Genesis one was not to be taken literally. Evolution was a result of millions of years of natural selection.

The sovereign God was eternal prior to his creation. Therefore he is sovereign. His attributes include but are not limited to all-knowing, omnipresent, just, faithful, compassionate, and fair. He is comprised of the Holy Trinity as loosely introduced in Genesis One. The father is the paternal abstract version of god, the son is the human version instantiated in history and the spirit resides within acting as the moderator between God and Man giving us power and strength while also being the source of life and salvation.

Humans were created in his Image thus meaning they attain His Holy attributes. As a result, we are superior to the surrounding lifeform as well. Therefore we can build a relationship with God, praise his creation in religious fervor, and tend to his Garden as shepherds.

Lastly, caring for His creation is a command given to Adam and Eve. It is the humanistic responsibility to maintain and expand the fruit of His divine creation.

I am still wrestling with the idea of God and what that looks like for me personally. I can explain away the creation of religion and use empirical evidence to explain what the narrative of creationism was attempting to explain. However, the probabilistic outcome of the habitable order that we live in is miraculous in itself. Our ability to be conscious and self-conscious is divine. So, perhaps those can be explained by science but the creation of that science can be redirected back to a god or more specifically the Christian God. Much more work is needed to be done on my end. For now, I will likely continue to create these periodically as I wrestle with faith. Regardless, I want to subscribe to the various philosophies and dogma of religions to become the best version of myself possible. It is a daunting endeavor but it is a journey that I am prepared to take.

I hope it was entertaining and possibly educational. These are once again my notes recomposed in a text. I am not claiming expertise in the subject matter.

References

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Collins, F. (2019, January 08). How is BioLogos different from Evolutionism, Intelligent Design, and Creationism? — Common-questions. Retrieved June 26, 2020, from https://biologos.org/common-questions/how-is-biologos-different-from-evolutionism-intelligent-design-and-creationism

Dawkins, R. (1995). River out of Eden: A Darwinian view of life. New York, NY: Basic Books.

Jung, C. G., Franz, M. V., & Freeman, J. (1969). Man and his symbols. New York: Dell Publishing.

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Huitt, W. G. (2016). Skinner Box. Retrieved June 27, 2020, from http://www.edpsycinteractive.org/papers/skinnerbox.pdf

Pinker, S. (2014). The Evolutionary Psychology of Religion. Retrieved June 27, 2020, from https://ffrf.org/about/getting-acquainted/item/13184-the-evolutionary-psychology-of-religion

Smith, S. D., Tays, W. J., Dixon, M. J., & Bulman-Fleming, M. B. (2002). The right hemisphere as an anomaly detector: evidence from visual perception. Brain and cognition, 48(2–3), 574–579.

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