Abstract:
Contemporary
scientific anthropology proposes a naturalistic conception of human personhood because of
humankind’s place somewhere in the larger evolutionary process of life. Some authors use
the theory of biological evolution to explain phenomena in other areas as well, and due to its
success suggest it has universal application in cultural and religious studies too, as if it were
a theory of everything. Darwin’s idea of a common origin of all life undermined a supposed
superiority of humankind. It signalled the end of an Aristotelian metaphysical notion of
classification and constituted a real blow for classical individualistic anthropology. Dawkins
explains religion in terms of empirical immanent biological processes in the human brain.
He views religious ideas as ‘memes’ that act like an infectious virus in mental processes. His
hypothesis seems to be a relapse into the old Aristotelian pattern. Michael Persinger interprets
religion as an internal physiological state of an individual brain and reduces the language of
mental concepts to physiological states of a material brain. Persinger’s, and also Dennett’s,
materialistic view presupposes a God’s Eye Point of View as an Archimedian perspective
outside the world. If a God exists, the neurologists Newberg and d’Aquili argue that he needs
a point of contact within our brain: the God spot. Sociobiologists Edward Wilson and David
Wilson consider religion a form of group adaptation, because cooperating individuals show
the primary benefits of cooperation and altruistic behaviour, just as social insects. Religion
is an evolutionary support of altruistic instincts and creates a social infrastructure to benefit
a cooperative society. However, social insects merely act on their instincts whereas human
beings can act intentionally even against their primary instincts, because of motives for altruist
practices inspired, for example, by the narratives and concepts of a Christian tradition. The
communion of saints does not take place merely because of a social instinct, but because of the
shared motive of the community as a whole, that is, the body of Christ, which acts altruistically
irrespective of persons, including outsiders!
Description:
Prof. Dr. Luco van den Brom
is participating as research
fellow of Prof. Dr Johan
Buitendag, Dean of the
Faculty of Theology at the
University of Pretoria, South
Africa. This article represents
a reworked version of a
paper read at an Expert
Seminar on ‘Anthropology
in an Age of Science’ with
scholars in Systematic
Theology of the Protestant
Theological University and
the Faculty of Theology of
the University of Pretoria
(on 08 September 2011 in
Pretoria).
