{"id":26144,"date":"2020-02-28T02:34:34","date_gmt":"2020-02-28T10:34:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dminlgp\/?p=26144"},"modified":"2020-02-28T17:45:30","modified_gmt":"2020-02-29T01:45:30","slug":"imago-dei-or-adams-nature-choose-carefully","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/imago-dei-or-adams-nature-choose-carefully\/","title":{"rendered":"Imago Dei or Adams Nature – Choose Carefully"},"content":{"rendered":"

Another fun book by Steven Pinker this week. The Blank Slate is another volume that attacks certain modern assumptions about the nature of individual human beings.[1]<\/a><\/p>\n

In education and social anthropology, modern prevailing views are based on the expanded work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dryden[2]<\/a> and more recently by Margaret Mead.[3]<\/a>\u00a0Rousseau was responsible for the concept of the Noble Savage \u2013 the idea that humans outside civilisation are good and peaceful,[4]<\/a> followed closely by Gilberts Ryle\u2019s \u201cthe ghost in the machine\u201d; a view that declares if the machine (human) behaves badly, we can blame the ghost \u2013 there\u2019s nothing wrong with the design of the machine. In both cases, Pinker argues strongly that the Noble Savage and Naturalism are logical and observable philosophical fallacies. Likewise, he goes on to dismantle the legendary Margaret Mead and her ideologically driven ethnography of Pacific and South-East Asian peaceableness, and more particularly her obsession with free sex \u2013 go Margaret Mead \u2013 none of which was ever found to be true.[5]<\/a> Pinker claims that aggression is part of the human makeup, together with opposing tendencies that foster common good \u2013 peace is a transaction between power. Of Mead\u2019s research, he says, \u201cImagine anthropologists studying the peaceful Europeans between 1918 and 1938\u201d.[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

All of this writes Pinker, has led to the common misconception that humans all begin with a raw blank slate \u2013 nothing is formed, and there is yet no ghost in the machine. And to believe so is dangerous to individuals and society because it blinds us to obvious pathological realities in mental health and the way certain personalities (which are geno-inherited) shape the way people live more than their cultural\/parental formation. A key example is sociopathy and psychopathy \u2013 they are no culturally induced. It also blinds us to natural aggression from evolutionary pathology as a survival mechanism. When the chips are down, even the most educated and informed resort to inherited social and creaturely baselines.<\/p>\n

In essence, Pinker claims we are not blank slates, rather we are delicious cakes made of inherited ingredients that shape who we will grow to become. More importantly, those pre-existing traits determine how we will interact with learned data and ongoing life experience.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not difficult to see why Pinker is controversial in an age of often unreflective progressive thought. Here are some of his standout quotes:<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople all over the world have reflected over the futility of violence; at least when they are evenly enough matched with their adversaries that no-one can prevail.\u201d[7]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWith violence, as with so many other concerns, human nature is the problem, but human nature, is also the solution.\u201d[8]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cInequality of outcome cannot be used as proof of inequality of opportunity unless the groups being compared are identical in all of the their psychological traits.\u201d[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cWe should not be sending gifted women (or men) the message that they are less worthy and less valuable to our civilization, lazy or low in status, if they choose to be teachers rather than mathematician, journalists instead of physicists or lawyers instead of engineers.\u201d[10]<\/a><\/p>\n

Regarding the notion that genetics and peers are sometimes more powerful than parenting in a child\u2019s life he writes, \u201cPeople hope to God that it isn\u2019t true. But the truth doesn\u2019t care about our hopes. And sometimes it forces us to revisit those hopes in a liberating way.\u201d[11]<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From a Christian perspective, I have no issue with Pinker\u2019s outcomes on the Blank slate idea. The same issues have been debated in theology for centuries, albeit under different names \u2013 freewill vs predestination or free will vs determinism. Again, it\u2019s currently popular in progressive theology to remove the concept of original sin because the clean slate feels better. It feels better to see every child as given cleanly by God, but our historic biblical theology informs us differently \u2013 we carry two images in tension, the image of God and the image of Adam. Do away with either of those, and we fall down the theological rabbit hole of Augustine and Pelagius (think Pelagian heresy), John Chrysostom, Cyril of Alexandria and John Cassian. Fortunately, Pinker only does away with the Imago Dei, kindly leaving the religious with his version of Adam in three rules: 1st<\/sup>, behavioural traits are heritable. 2nd<\/sup>, the family is less influential than genes. 3rd<\/sup>, complex human behaviour cannot be discerned by rule 1 and 2.[12]<\/a><\/p>\n

Is Pinker right? I don\u2019t know! Lots of it makes sense but his abrupt and somewhat direct style does feel uncomfortable, but then he does warn the reader that facts are not feelings. For example, he says, stereotypes are not random and\/or wrong as most people assume but they are often quite accurate and confirmed by statistics. Again, blacks being more likely to be on welfare; Jews have higher average income; business students more conservative than art students, women more likely to want to lose weight; men more likely to swat a fly with their hands.[13]<\/a> All that has got to get you into trouble, and it does. Psychologists discuss these kinds of things, while I live in the more ordinary world of managing relationships and these topics don\u2019t manage too well.<\/p>\n

Pinker\u2019s book does have the feel of victim blaming in a section on rape and sex.[14]<\/a> Though it\u2019s not the intention, it can be read that way. Again, the book is also filled with soft science in the sense that it bounces from psychology to philosophy and anthropology to fill out his own insights. However, in fairness, all social sciences are soft science and every social science writer practices the same academic boundary-crossing. I guess that means one shouldn\u2019t use Pinker as a handbook \u2013 even an atheistic handbook. There is also an element of ad hominem argument where he overemphasised the \u2018other camp\u2019, mainly politically left-leaning academics, and that is beneath him; but as the media are fully aware, \u2018nice\u2019 doesn\u2019t sell. Finally, I think he underrates the effect of parenting. Yes, there is a great deal of truth that child development is more than parenting, but there is a redemption to love that often outweighs genes and peers, and that wee miracle gets a bit lost in the competing arguments over human nature. I might just stick to theology.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature<\/em> (UK: Penguin, 2003).<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> Ibid. 11f<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Ibid. 26 & 56f<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Ibid. 24f<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Ibid. 56ff<\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Ibid. 57<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Ibid. 333<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Ibid. 336<\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Ibid. 353<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Ibid. 359<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> Ibid. 397<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Ibid. 372<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Ibid. 204<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Ibid. 369<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Another fun book by Steven Pinker this week. The Blank Slate is another volume that attacks certain modern assumptions about the nature of individual human beings.[1] In education and social anthropology, modern prevailing views are based on the expanded work of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, John Dryden[2] and more recently by Margaret Mead.[3]\u00a0Rousseau was responsible for the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":124,"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":[1790,1805],"class_list":["post-26144","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-steve-pinker","tag-the-blank-slate","cohort-lgp9"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26144","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\/124"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=26144"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26144\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":26158,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/26144\/revisions\/26158"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=26144"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=26144"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.georgefox.edu\/dlgp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=26144"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}