{"id":14311,"date":"2017-10-11T18:12:05","date_gmt":"2017-10-12T01:12:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=14311"},"modified":"2017-10-11T18:12:05","modified_gmt":"2017-10-12T01:12:05","slug":"a-not-so-brief-history-of-humankind","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/a-not-so-brief-history-of-humankind\/","title":{"rendered":"A Not So Brief History of Humankind"},"content":{"rendered":"

Just as people were never created, neither, according to the science of biology, is there a \u2018Creator\u2019 who \u2018endows\u2019 them with anything. There is only a blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose, leading to the birth of individuals.\u201d[1]<\/strong><\/a><\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring. \u2026 The universe is all that therever is and ever was and ever shall be.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Carl Sagan<\/em><\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/em>I remember waking up on December 20, 1996 and reading in the paper that Carl Sagan had died. I felt sorry for him but I thought, \u201cWell – — – – he knows now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yuval Noah Harari\u2019s Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind <\/em>is not so brief in one way \u2013 human beings of the genus Homo have existed for 2.4 million years according to him. He says that the surviving species to which humans now belong \u2013 Homo sapiens – have been around for only 150,000 years. He says that 100,000 years ago at least six species of humans inhabited our planet.<\/p>\n

Harari has little evidence other than one finger bone to back up his claims. About how the brain evolved to its massive size he says, \u201cFrankly, we don\u2019t know.\u201d (p. 10) About how communication appeared he says, \u201cWe\u2019re not sure.\u201d (p. 23) Maybe it was a matter of \u201cpure chance.\u201d (p. 24) More mere guesses appear on pages 69, 71, (\u201carchaeologists have yet to unearth the evidence\u201d), and many more places. Harari has only 14 pages of footnotes compared to Peter Frankopan\u2019s 115 pages of footnotes. It isn\u2019t only Harari\u2019s antipathy to religion that leads to difficulties for me with his book, but his carelessness, exaggeration and sensationalism. I\u2019ll take Dr. Frankopan\u2019s history.<\/p>\n

In spite of that those negatives, there were some interesting thoughts to chew on:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. His treatment of \u201cImagined orders\u201d reminded me of Benedict Anderson\u2019s \u201cImagined Communities\u201d.[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Anderson\u2019s communities were \u2018imagined\u2019 but that did not mean that they weren\u2019t real. The \u2018imagined\u2019 part was the image that people had of their nation in their minds.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    Harari\u2019s imagined orders \u00a0\u201cexist only in our minds.\u201d (p. 127) In Harari\u2019s imagined order the people are kept in line by never admitting that the order is imagined. They are educated into believing in a shared myth. The myths shape our desires, and in our culture today we have been shaped into consumerists. (Vincent Miller, Ross Douthat, and William Cavanaugh come to mind here.) We can\u2019t help our desires. Harari is rather pessimistic. Even if a renegade broke out of the imagined order, she would only find \u201cthe more spacious exercise yard of a bigger prison.\u201d (p. 133)<\/p>\n

      \n
    1. I found myself in agreement with Harari that there are many more religions today than just the traditional ones. We are largely living in an increasingly secular culture and people are just as fervent in their faith in liberalism, Communism, capitalism, and nationalism as they are in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. One key idea is that in all religions an \u201cus vs. them\u201d idea develops. Hitler was especially effective in using that to promote his religion \u2013 Nazism.<\/li>\n
    2. In light of our recent trip to South Africa I found his comments on \"\"<\/a>\u2018hierarchy\u2019 to be apropos. Imagined orders divide \u201cpeople into make-believe groups, arranged in a hierarchy.\u201d (p. 149) Hierarchies are established by those in power. Whites enjoy liberty that they deny to Blacks and Native Americans. Men benefit from power over women whom they leave disempowered. Many rich obtain their wealth from the poor who have little power.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

      Reflecting on this as a Christian, I have to say that the Church should be ashamed that she used the Bible to justify the claim that slavery of blacks is natural and correct.<\/p>\n

      Harari notes that women today have more freedom than in the past. He demonstrates that patriarchy cannot be based on \u2018unfounded myths\u2019 rather than biological facts. So, \u201cwhat accounts for the universality and stability of this system (patriarchy)?\u201d (p. 178) I\u2019d like to know that answer to that myself.<\/p>\n

        \n
      1. In his section on \u201cThe Capitalist Hell\u201d Harari gives a caricature of a greedy shoemaker. Harari assumes that all owners of businesses will mistreat their employees. We discussed market systems (Max Weber, Karl Polanyi) and I still believe that if a society was truly run on Christian principles, employees would get a fair deal.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

        Thanks to the Industrial Revolution and technology the \u201cpie\u201d is getting bigger and there is more to share. If Christians lived with the principle of servanthood, the poor would get a fair share.<\/p>\n

          \n
        1. \"\"<\/a>Harari spent a lot of time talking about happiness. But should happiness be the goal of life? Here again, something said in South Africa comes to mind. When we were on the bus going to Guguletho Deon encouraged us to wave at the people we passed. Someone said, \u201cThey look happy.\u201d Deon said, \u201cBut they would not want you to ask if they are happy. They would want you to ask if they are well.\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

          Finally, Harari gets around to considering the future. He talks about the return of the Neanderthals. He says that life as we know it may be replaced by bioengineered humans, and \u201camortal\u201d (not immortal) cyborgs. Perhaps there will be inorganic \u201clife\u201d. We just await a singularity like the Big Bang. Perhaps a new Dr. Frankenstein[3]<\/a> will create something superior to us. (p. 462)<\/p>\n

          So we have come full circle to Harari\u2019s bleak idea about human life. If life is indeed just a trip through some alternate realities ending in annihilation, then what is the meaning of it all?<\/p>\n

          Then the Lord spoke to Job out of the storm. He said, \u201cWho is this that obscures my plans with words without knowledge? Brace yourself like a man; I will question you, and you shall answer me. Where were you when I laid the earth\u2019s foundation? Tell me, if you understand.<\/em>\u00a0 Job 38:1-4<\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

           <\/p>\n

          [1]<\/a> Yuval Noah Harari. Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind (London, UK: Vintage Books, 2011). 123.<\/p>\n

          [2]<\/a> Benedict Anderson. Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism <\/em>(New York, NY: Verso Books).<\/p>\n

          [3]<\/a> In one of my undergrad classes I wrote a paper on Mary Shelley\u2019s book. I took \u201cabiogenesis\u201d as my topic. I knew better than to quote from the Bible to my secular professor. I went to the library and got books by atheist scientists. The honest ones admit that no one has ever produced life out of non-life. Neither can they explain where the material came from for the Big Bang. They don\u2019t know how order came from chaos. They can\u2019t explain nuclear binding force.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

          Just as people were never created, neither, according to the science of biology, is there a \u2018Creator\u2019 who \u2018endows\u2019 them with anything. There is only a blind evolutionary process, devoid of any purpose, leading to the birth of individuals.\u201d[1] \u00a0It is far better to grasp the universe as it really is than to persist in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":83,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[760,763],"class_list":["post-14311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-harari","tag-sapiens","cohort-lgp7"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14311","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/83"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14311"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14311\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":14315,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14311\/revisions\/14315"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}