The Flynn Effect
The Flynn Effect supports the thesis that human cultures are processes
involving self-creation. This perspective on human cultures can initiate a
reconsideration of our present purely speculative position on God's activity in
the world. The idea that God is active in the world underpins the "problem
of evil". If God is not active in the world, then the problem of evil is
based on a mistake.
The Flynn Effect shows massive IQ gains in all industrial nations, since
IQ measurement first began in the early 1900's. The Flynn Effect seems to
provide support for the thesis that the mental development of Homo sapiens is a
process involving self-development, or self-creation. It also appears that this
mental development is dependent upon the provision of intellectual challenges.
The most common reaction to the discovery of the Flynn Effect, even the
initial reaction of Flynn himself, is to try to explain the effect away. This
attitude of denial would seem to be a product of a deeply ingrained prejudice
in favour of an assumption of human uniformity, regardless of time, place and
culture. The assumption of human uniformity is a common misapplication of the
Christian idea that all humans count equally in the sight of God.
The Flynn Effect gives rise to the problem that if the present rate of
increase in IQ is projected backwards in time, it makes all but our most recent
ancestors appear intellectually dull. But can it be projected back at the
present rate? I suggest that it cannot. The 20th Century was not only the
Century of the IQ test; it was also a time of significant change throughout the
industrialised world. It saw the destruction of many old certainties, and of
many settled forms of existence. Perhaps the growth of IQ is a response to the
need to exercise our intelligence beyond those demands that are normally made
by a settled form of existence. This would constitute a form of self-creation,
the self-creation of enhanced intellectual faculties.
Dickens and Flynn have argued in the April 2001 Psychological Review,
that the Flynn Effect is the result of an interaction between nature and
nurture, with a modest genetic advantage being turned into a huge performance
advantage because of the feedback between talent and environment. They suggest
that when a person, whose genes make him a bit taller and quicker than average,
begins school, he is likely to be selected for the basketball team and given
extra coaching. His genetic advantage upgrades his environment, and his
enhanced environment then enhances his skill. While this appears true, the
Flynn Effect is not restricted to those who have a "modest genetic
advantage", but appears to be an "across the board" effect. The
feedback effect, identified in a selected case, is broadened by Dickens and
Flynn into the general principle that "Relatively small environmental
differences between generations gain enormous potency just as small genetic
differences between individuals did: They seize control of the powerful reciprocal
causation that exists between cognitive ability and environment." (synopsis of Psychological Review article)
The Flynn Effect appears more likely to be a product of the human
intellectual self-creation that occurs in critically oriented, progressive
cultures. There have been static phases in most cultures, with disturbances of
the status quo being more likely to come from an opposing culture than from an
opposing idea within a culture. There was clearly some development of material
techniques in most cultures, over an extended period of time, but the more
fundamental intellectual opposition of new ideas to old, opposition to ideas
that had previously been almost universally taken for granted, seems to have
begun, in both the Hebrew culture and the Greek culture, in comparatively
recent times - well within the last 4,000 years. That is recent in relation to
the 100,000 years of Homo sapiens. I will return to this development after I
discuss human self-creation.
Self-Creation
As individuals, we all create ourselves to some extent, by our choice of
our actions and reactions. But there is an even more significant sphere of
human self-creation, operating through human cultures. It is self-evident that
every human culture is a process of human self-creation. Humans make cultures
and cultures, to a significant extent, make the humans of that culture. This
process can either remain static or it can become progressive. The people
produced by the process of self-creation of a static culture will differ from those
produced by the process of self-creation operating within a progressive
culture.
Mary Midgley has shown that humans are made in
such a way that they need a culture to complete them. Humans are
culture-producing animals. They cannot live without a culture. A person's
culture provides the necessary matrix for that individual's development. (1978,286)
Fundamental to every culture is a particular world-view. Dix argues that
the roots of culture "are in ideas - a few quite basic ideas -
which the men of any given culture hold in common, or perhaps rather, assume
in common, about the ultimate purpose and meaning of human life as a whole. The
differences between cultures, all embracing as they seem to be on first
examination, are always reducible to the differences between the things
different cultures take for granted about human life". (1967,7)
At root, every culture represents an attempt to understand the world. As
early systems of belief become more coherent, they tend to develop a religious
expression. The same desire to understand the world can ultimately produce
philosophy, and a critical approach to understanding and mastering the world,
as has occurred in the West.
Behind every culture, religion or philosophy,
stands the fundamental need of all humans to arrive at some understanding of
the world, to achieve a world-view. With the development of critical thinking
within a more advanced culture, there is a parallel need for the underlying
world-view of the culture to continue to be developed in an intellectually
satisfying fashion.
The dramatic negative effect of a long-standing, settled form of
existence, over an extended period of time, was brought home to me in my
contacts with Australian Aborigines in the 1950's. Prior to AD1788 the
Aborigines had maintained a settled form of existence for some 50,000 years, in
isolation from the rest of the world. While they had to deal with both
different and changing physical environments, they maintained a uniform belief
system at the core of their culture. This core culture was maintained
throughout Australia, while the original language split into some 300 different
languages. The stability of this belief system appears to have had a limiting
effect on Aboriginal development.
The Aboriginal belief system was maintained in parts of the Australian
Outback until the 1960's, when "enlightened opinion" sought to treat
Aborigines as if they were no different from Australians of European descent.
The destruction of the traditional cultural system with its beliefs, social
supports and restraints, followed rapidly.
Prior to this destruction of their culture, the dignity and bearing of
tribal Aborigines was a matter of comment. That dignity was apparent despite
material poverty. Their dignified bearing had its origin in their
belief-system. This belief-system provided a false perspective on the world,
but as a culture it constituted an "ideal type". It told its members
who they were, what they were and what the world was all about. There does not
appear to have ever been any internal challenge to the fundamental ideas of
this culture. There was certainly no external challenge until AD1788. This
absence of any intellectual challenge to the accepted status quo had some
detrimental effects.
The application of Piaget's concepts of mental development to tests of
full-blood Aborigines at Hermannsburg in Central Australia in the 1960's,
showed that "a number of children who had attended school for up to eight
years still showed consistent non-conservation" which, according to Piaget's
theory "would indicate a pre-operational level of thinking, implying an
inability to form logical concepts or to apply logical operations to the
organization and systematisation of concrete data . . . affecting the level of
logical thinking in all areas." (M.M. de Lemos,
1973,83)
The Hermannsburg tests were carried out by M.M. de Lemos.
His paper is republished in The Psychology of Aboriginal Australians
(1973) Kearney & Os. In the group of 80 children tested by de Lemos in the 1960's, half the children were full
Aborigines. The other half was seven-eights
Aboriginal, having had a white great-grandfather. The environment of both
groups was identical. The children with a trace of European ancestry showed
markedly better performances in the tests, appearing to have somehow inherited
some of the intellectual capacities of their white ancestor. M.M. de Lemos suggests that "the significant differences found
between the part-Aboriginal and the full-Aboriginal children tested at
Hermannsburg suggest that there may be genetic factors which could have
contributed to the retardation of conservation in those (full-Aboriginal)
children." (1973,85)
As a process of human self-creation, the Aboriginal culture was
essentially static. This static culture stands in clear contrast to that of
Europe. European cultures have been dynamic, from time to time, particularly
during the last 3,000 years. Both the Aboriginal culture and the European
culture appear to have produced lasting genetic effects on their people.
Intellectual Development
The present intellectual development of the West had its origin in the
effects of two sets of new ideas that were initiated by the Hebrews and the
Greeks. Both cultures departed radically from the contemporary pattern of
explaining the world. This contemporary pattern of explanation had postulated
the activity of a pantheon of Gods. These Gods were primarily the
personifications of natural forces.
In the Hebrew culture Moses, about 1300BC, postulated a new type of
divinity, a monotheistic God of compassion. This idea was developed within the
Hebrew culture. The Hebrew God was concerned with moral action, and
particularly with justice among men. In Greece the Pre-Socratics, beginning
with Parmenides about 500 BC, proposed a more remote God, one who had no
concern for the world. The Greek thinkers gradually abandoned the Gods of the
Olympian pantheon, as they adopted a more critical attitude to the world. The
revolutionary, but divergent, ideas developed in these two dissimilar cultures
were brought into contact by Alexander's conquest of Palestine.
Alexander had set out to conquer the known world with the intention of
spreading Greek culture, rather than of simply founding an empire. He
considered himself to be, in some sense, the son of Zeus-Ammon, the
Greek-Egyptian God of fertility. This was despite the fact that he had been a
pupil of Aristotle. Before Alexander set off to conquer the known world in 334
BC, he did not hold the usual festival in honour of the God of battles, but
instead dedicated his festival to the nine Muses, the symbols of Greek culture.
He also stripped himself of almost all his material possessions, retaining
"only my hopes". (Weigall, 1933. 134-45)
Alexander succeeded in spreading Greek culture, but it was mainly the
advent of Christianity that caused the divergent world-views of Jew and Greek
to be brought together into a new synthesis. This synthesis was triggered by
the Christ-event, which posed a significant challenge to both the Jewish and
the Greek world-views. The Christ-event ultimately gave rise to the first ever
gatherings of intellectuals from around the known world. These were the early
Church Councils, called to try to make sense of the Christ-event. This Conciliar process has been continued up to the present day.
The intellectual approach to the resolution of theological problems, initiated
within these Councils, ultimately gave rise to the Universities, and provided
the environment for the development of Western science.
Prior to the industrial revolution and the subsequent introduction of
universal education in the West, during the late 19th Century, these
intellectual developments were restricted to a small
elite. IQ measurement was probably introduced not long after those developments
had begun to have a measurable effect. It would seem that the Flynn Effect
should not be projected backward in time much further than the latter part of
the 19th Century.
Old Ideas of God
Every culture has at its foundation some understanding of the world, the
world-view that forms its belief-system. This belief-system often finds
expression in a religion. In the Mediterranean world, the Gods of pre-Christian
religions were usually the personifications of natural forces. This had the
unintended benefit that it enabled early European traders and travellers to
identify their Gods with the Gods of another country.
This stage of the personification of natural forces was never reached in
Aboriginal Australia. The Aboriginal belief system had no Gods. In the
Aboriginal world-view it was their ancestors who had formed the world, and they
themselves participated in the maintenance of that formation through their
ritual ceremonies. Theirs was a world without change. When the Endeavour first
entered Botany Bay, in 1770, it was ignored by the Aborigines, who continued
with their fishing. As Joseph Banks reported from the Endeavour, one old woman
"often looked at the ship but expressed neither surprise
or concern". There was no room for a sailing ship in the Aboriginal
world-view.
Most other people had Gods that were active in the world. Every natural
event was related to the activities of some God. The idea of active Gods was
thus a fundamental religious concept. The idea of God acting in the world was
retained with the development of monotheism. This is clearly the case with
Judaism and its derivatives, Christianity and Islam. It is this idea of an
all-powerful God who is active in the world, which gives rise to the problem of
evil.
The Problem of Evil
The "problem of evil" has been summarised as follows: If God
is all-powerful, loving and good then he can do what he wants (in the world)
and will do what is morally right. This means that he both could and would
prevent human suffering - but he does not. The existence of evil thus becomes a
problem.
One response to the problem of evil is the suggestion that God fails to
prevent some particularly grievous human suffering, such as the Holocaust, in order
that some unspecified greater good might be achieved. This suggests that there
is a sound reason why God cannot interfere in the world in particular cases, as
this interference would frustrate the achievement of this unspecified greater
good.
This response might be on the right track, but we would then have to ask
what could be special about some particular cases and not others. Perhaps God
cannot interfere in the world in any case, without frustrating the achievement
of some greater good. What could this greater good be? Perhaps there is a link
between the question of the nature of this possible greater good, and the
question as to whether God is active in the world.
The idea of a God or Gods being active in the world is an ancient one.
It arose prior to the development of critical thought among humans. It has been
maintained despite the growth in the application of critical thought to many
disciplines, including Theology. However critical thought has seldom, if ever,
been applied to the assumption that God is active in the world, until very
recently.
I do not deny the necessity of a God. As I argued in "Why is there
anything at all?" a self-existent entity, a God, is the best explanation
of the existence of contingent entities. The question is not whether God
initiates the world but whether, and to what extent, God intervenes in the
world process, once it has been initiated.
While there was a pantheon of Gods, there was room for the blame for
evil to be passed around, and even for evil Gods. One inevitable consequence of
the idea of a single God, who is active in the world, is the development of a
concept of a demi-God, a Satan, to account for evil. The greater the degree of
emphasis placed on the activity of God in the world, the greater the emphasis
that has to be placed on the evil demi-God. Thus Islam, the monotheistic
religion that places the greatest emphasis on the exercise of the will of God
in the world, needs a Great Satan to account for evil.
There is no actual evidence of any activity of God in the affairs of the
world, following its creation, other than involvement in the initiation of
life. Life would appear to have needed the introduction of additional
information, of a new intrinsic ordering principle that is not to be found at
the level of inert matter.
On the other hand, once the assumption has been adopted that God is
active in the world, there are no events that cannot be interpreted as evidence
of God's activity,. The Hebrew interpreted all events
from the perspective of the activity of their God. When things went well for
them it was because God had aided them. When things did not go well, they were
being punished for their failures. Every event could be interpreted to support
the initial assumption that God was active. It was only during Hitler's
Holocaust that the Jews began to ask questions about God's apparent lack of
activity.
Evil and the Imperfection of the World
The problem of evil is not the only problem in our understanding of God.
We also have to ask why would an omnipotent, all-knowing, good and perfect God
make such an imperfect world that He had to intervene in it constantly? It does
not make a great deal of sense.
Once monotheism had developed, the imperfection of the world became a
problem. The Hebrew answer, in the story of Adam and Eve, was that God made the
world perfect, but man destroyed that perfection. But God made man, so the
responsibility would seem to stop with God. Is there a better answer to the
riddle posed by the antinomy between a perfect God and an imperfect world?
Patrick Madigan has provided a brief history of the attempts to explain
the relation between God and the world. He shows that the Greeks, from
Parmenides on, had been able to reason up to a realm of true being, or God, but
none of them had been able to connect this realm with the world of appearances.
(1988,27) The world of appearances was too imperfect.
Aristotle also adverted to the imperfection of the world when he
concluded that if God did produce a world, it could not be significantly
different from God. But the world he experienced was significantly different.
The history of the problem of the imperfection of the world is the history of
the attempts to get around Aristotle's conclusion that God could only produce a
world that was not significantly different from God.
Aquinas' response to Aristotle was an attempt to avoid this conclusion
and instead to identify God's motive for the creation of the world of
appearances. Madigan summarises Aquinas' conclusion as "Thus, as far as he
can (for like produces like), God will create another 'god', the closest
approximation to himself. There is a limit as to how far this can be achieved
when using creatures; but this still seems the best (or least inadequate)
description we can give of God's project" (1988,104)
Aquinas' conclusion stems from his concept of mankind as a mere
creature, rather than as a product of a process involving self-creation. Rather
than try to avoid Aristotle's conclusion that God could not cause a world that
was significantly different from God, I seek in "The Process of the
Cosmos", to justify this conclusion. The core argument of "The
Process" is summarised in my "Why is There Anything
at All" (2002).
When a theory in science is confronted with a problem that the theory
fails to resolve, the response is to critically rethink the theory and to try
to devise a theory that does solve the problem. The response to similar
problems in theology, has tended to be to label the
problem a "mystery" that calls for the exercise of "faith"
rather than the exercise of critical thought. The existence of the problem of
evil, and the problem of the imperfection of the world, is a clear indication
that our theories concerning God's motive in creation, and concerning any
subsequent activity of God in the world, need to be rethought.
It is clear that God is necessarily beyond any human categories, so that
we can never fully grasp the concept of God. That does not mean that we can
never have any idea of God at all. The universe is rational, and it is
reasonable to assume that God is rational and acts rationally. The persistence
of evil in the world demands a rational explanation.
No explanation of evil will ever be adequate while we continue to assume
that God is active in the world. I have shown this to be a primitive idea that
lacks evidence. It is not the product of critical thought. We inherited the
idea from the Hebrews, who were pre-metaphysical. The Hebrews lived in a
totally different world. Their ideas were based on a totally different
world-view from ours.
Aristotle argued that God could not cause a world that was significantly
different from God. If we accept his argument, we have to ask how God could
cause a world that was similar to God in its mode of existence and in its
creativity, freedom and goodness?
It is clear that God cannot directly create such an entity. A created
entity is totally unlike God in its mode of existence. God can only initiate a
process involving free self-creation, a process that could conceivably give
rise to an entity that was similar to the self-existent God in its mode of
existence and in other characteristics.
Can the Cosmos be understood as a process involving self-creation? A
process is a coherent and purposeful series of activities. Our present knowledge
of the Cosmos allows it to be understood as such a process. What do we now know
about this apparent process? Let us consider some of that present knowledge.
We now know with reasonable certainty that the universe and time began
with the Big Bang, some 14 Billion years ago. It began in relative simplicity
and proceeded to become more complex, producing this planet with its capacity
to support life, some 4 Billion years ago. Matter appears to have had its own
intrinsic organising principle that led to that complexity. The law-governed
nature of the physical world is the evidence for such a principle. Matter
appears to develop in complexity in a process involving self-organization.
Life on Earth began about 4 Billion years ago. Life is formed from
matter, but it carries additional information. Life begins in a simple form,
and develops or evolves in complexity. Life also appears to have its own
intrinsic organising principle, leading to the evolution of complexity. The
evolution of life appears to be opportunistic, in contrast to the more
deterministic development of matter. Life has a greater degree of freedom to
self-organise, or self-create.
Following the development of vegetative and instinctive life, conscious
animal life evolves, ultimately producing Homo sapiens about 100,000 years ago.
Conscious animal life has greater freedom to evolve and occupy available niches
than does vegetative and instinctive life. Homo
sapiens has an even greater freedom to evolve
culturally, and a great diversity of cultures evolve. Each culture has the
freedom to develop in its own way, involving human self-creation.
All human cultures have mores, or rules, but some of the rules of many
ancient cultures are less than moral. There is a gradual development, which still
continues, towards more moral rules and laws. The Hebrew was the first culture
to begin to focus on moral behaviour, after Moses. The development of morality
in Greece appears to be associated with the development of philosophy. (Kelly
1999, Ch. 4) Moral development is a totally free process. Humans know what they
ought to do, but they are free to do either good or evil. As Nicolai Hartmann puts it, "The moral law commands, but
it does not compel." Humans are free to become more moral, through their cultures,
but are under no compulsion to do so.
Human moral-cultural development is a totally free process. It could
lead to the production of a society that is freely self-created, fair, creative
and good. If it is to be freely self-created, there can be no outside
interference. God can not interfere in this process. If God did interfere in
this process, this would frustrate the possible self-creation of a communal
entity that is similar to God. So God does not interfere.
The "problem of evil" is based on a mistake. It is based on
the mistake that God is active in the world. I earlier summarised the problem
of evil as follows: If God is all-powerful, loving and good then he can do what
he wants (in the world) and will do what is morally right. This means that he
both could and would prevent human suffering - but he does not. The existence
of evil thus appears to be a problem.
We can now see that the problem stems from the unfounded assumption that
God can intervene in the world. Without that assumption there is no problem of
evil. The reason why God does not intervene in the world is to enable the
continuation of the process of the self-creation of a communal entity similar
to God. This has to be a free process. The continuation of this process is the
hitherto unspecified greater good that negates the problem of evil.
This thesis also provides the resolution of the problem of the antinomy
between a perfect God and an imperfect world. This resolution was not available
to Aristotle. Aristotle had not envisaged a creative linear process of this
type. He understood the category of process on the biological model, a circular
pattern of constant repetition rather than a linear process evolving from a
beginning to an end. In philosophy, the idea of a creative linear process was
first developed by Hegel. The development of this concept is considered in my
"The Search for Meaning" (2000).
Western culture had its origin in Christendom. Christendom was
fundamentally based on a 4th Century explanation of the Christ-event. This
explanation provided intellectual satisfaction to the West in less critical
times. But this explanation is no longer intellectually satisfying. It needs to
be rethought, as suggested in my "Evolutionary Christology" (2001).
As the old explanation looses its credibility, Western society begins to
exhibit symptoms of cultural disintegration. The "problem of evil"
may have been resolved in one sense, but without an intellectually satisfying
explanation of the foundational event of our culture, other "problems of
evil" may increase.
Bibliography
De Lemos M. (1969) "The Development of
Conservation" in The Psychology of
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Dickens W. & Flynn J.R. (2001) "Heritability Estimates vs.
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Review Vol 108, No. 2 (April 2001)
(Synopsis of this at http://www.brook.edu/dybdocroot/views/articles/dickens/
)
Dix Dom G. (1967) Jew and Greek Westminster, Dacre
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Kearney G. E And Os. (Eds)
(1973) The Psychology of Aboriginal
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Kelly A. B. (2001) "An Evolutionary Christology: Teilhard de Chardin And Beyond" in The Examined Life Vol. 2, Issue 7, Fall
2001
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