Evolutionarily Yours

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amygdala, brain, depression, evolution, frontal lobes, God, Human Biology, image of God, medicine, mind, neural pathways, PTSD, science

Long time readers here, know that I suffer to a degree with SAD, seasonal affective disorder. During these past couple of weeks, with temperatures hovering near or below zero most days, I’ve spent time sitting at the window, since blessedly the sun was out most days.

I handled the intense cold and resultant miseries rather well, and was mostly upbeat and happy during our self-imposed snowbound exile.

With the return yesterday of vastly warmer temperatures, I found myself strangely depressed and grouchy. It got me to thinking, and you know what that means–I have something to say.

I’ve said often enough that one of the reasons why I can see God’s hand in creation so very clearly, is that life is tenacious. Spotting a lone dandelion growing in the cracks of an old sidewalk proves that. It seems that evolution does it job in providing mechanisms that protect our lives in various circumstances.

I came to the conclusion, that this was just one more instance of that. In the midst of the perceived “danger” the brain somehow protects us from the depression that such events should precipitate. After the danger is past, the natural depression descends since we can now afford to give attention to it. 

This led to something I remembered from a three part show on PBS regarding the brain and how it functions. The Emotional Life describes a variety of brain mechanisms, often illustrating the working by showing dysfunctional brains where the mechanism is faulty.

One such is the amygdala, that small portion in our more primitive brain that operates to alert us to danger. A life-protecting mechanism in and of itself, it prepares us for “fight or flight,” flooding our bodies with adrenalin. This information is then sent to the frontal lobes, site of our rational cognitive thinking.

Here is where the problems begin. The prefrontal lobes examine the evidence and assess the danger. However, they are behind the game at this point. The amygdala is already in action, and the pathways from frontal lobe to amygdala, are not direct as they are from amygdala to frontal lobe. They are convoluted, containing a fairly round about way of getting there.

The amygdala thus functions to push the body to respond before the frontal lobes can get the information back to it, that it can relax. It has already poured forth its adrenalin. Interesting you say, but so what?

The commentator suggested that this portion of the brain, the FL to A pathway is not yet evolutionarily developed. We are on the way to a better connection, but not there yet. Evolutionarily speaking, it was better to be ready to act than to mull it over first. Makes perfect sense.

A couple of other fascinating things also are explained. It probably comes as no shock to most people that during a crisis (something fear inducing or terrorizing), we seem to have heightened senses. We hear, see, smell, feel, taste, more acutely. This apparently has something to do with the adrenalin or other chemicals that are released during such crisis conditions.

This means, that every single thing that happened during the moment of terror is exquisitely recalled in perfect detail. One can literally, upon proper cuing, smell the smells, and hear the sounds. Of more serious consequence, the memories are literally seared into memory. This has important implications for PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). Here a particularly frightening episode is  cued, and the person feels for all practical purposes as if they are once more actually there, within the event again.

Each and every recall brings on the adrenalin flow and the terror is relived in 3D . For years, given the military’s desire to downplay the disorder, and because we knew very little of the inner workings of the mind, no real treatment was effective. Now there is some hope. Namely, the patient is forced to recall and describe again and again in detail what they are experiencing. And the frontal lobes slowly help the person accept that the signals are but memory. In other words, the patient’s own mind signals back sooner that all is well.

In time, hundreds of thousands of years no doubt, we will have the capacity to shut down the amygdala much quicker when there is no real danger present. So we live with the disorders that faulty connections allow for now.

Why is any of this interesting? Well quite simply to me, understanding the inner workings of my mind is one of my ways of understanding God. I have come, over time, to the conclusion, that being made in the “image of God” can only mean having a brain that thinks like God’s does.  Surely we all recognize that God is not the image of Michelangelo’s in the Sistine Chapel. Yet most of us do recall that image when we think of God.

Yet, I believe God is not corporeal but spirit. As such it would seem to me that we would have no reference point at all to “think” of God unless our minds were similar in nature. This is not to say that God does not have multiple “minds” each designed to the species (earth bound or otherwise). And in some sense, the evolutionary development of the human brain moves toward a more God-like orientation as it develops. Cats, as far as we know, don’t meditate on God, humans do.

It suggests to me that we are moving toward God as we move away from war, hate, anger, anxiety, selfishness, vanity, sloth and all those “sins”. As our brains develop, we move away from them as well. The frontal lobes take over and are the cop on the block, as it were.

Which is all to say that I appreciate my brain for its protection of my psyche during the great ice age just endured, saving my “depressing” day for a “safe” one. I look forward to the day when my brain doesn’t need this safety net, but can control itself by reason. Evolutionarily speaking the time needed is but a drop in the ocean of time. See ya there!

Safe in His Hands

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God, image of God, theology

Everyone envisions God. Even those who come down on the side of no God, have in mind some form of being that they deny. Each of us must struggle with our religious heritage, or lack of it, our experiences, our education and our cultural mores in formulating our personal God.

No doubt some of that is dictated by the way in which we choose to view our faith tradition. Those in traditions whether formal or informal, which are rigid and set in stone, tend to have rigid notions of God that can never be changed. Change denotes wrongness and for some, all the reason needed to chuck the entire enterprise. Most atheists were former believers who have been forced to admit that what their tradition teaches cannot be in some respect true. For some, this means the end of all faith. For most of us, it simply means that we are growing up.

My own theology has been stated more than once here. I believe that God is indeed omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent. I believe that God created out of Himself by calling creation into being. I believe he ordered the rules of the universe, those physics principles we have uncovered to date, and perhaps some we have yet to uncover.

Out of the primeval “stuff,” natural laws took over, and in the end, systems, stars, planets naturally arose. On some of these planets, life naturally arose, and eventually through a natural process of evolution, something we understand through the lens of 150 years of peer-reviewed study, sentient beings came forth.

Some of those sentient beings evolve to true self-hood, and then what I think is a natural next step: the wondering of how and why they came to be. At that first moment, I imagine God smiling broadly, though I don’t image God as a corporeal being.

I image God as the hand that reaches out in wonder and awe, and lifts up its creature, much as you or I might gingerly pick up a newborn puppy or kitten. So fragile, yet alive. So filled with promise, yet still not able to relate to it’s surroundings. We hold it tenderly, carefully, upholding it safely, and marveling at it. We do not expect anything from it for many months yet, but we are hushed in our joy at this being.

So I see God, holding us, calling to us, waiting with the patience only God can exhibit, waiting, waiting until we look up and wonder why, how, when. God stands ready to begin our spiritual conversation. We have the choice to hear and respond.

That conversation can remain as child to parent, and would seem to in the case of those who demand a God of sharp edges and finite rims. A God that is unchanging, and can be elicited merely by reading a series of writings. Such a God is most limited, most human actually, and not at all mine as it were.

But there are many choices, and each of us makes ours.

There is the avenger God. I know lots of people who love this God. They are frustrated with “how so many people get away with it,” being bad. They don’t see the punishment meted out in this life, but trust that their God will take care of business in the next. The Hitler’s and Madoffs, and criminals will get theirs, they tell themselves. It is not a perfect answer, for they dearly wish to see the ruin of these people, but it probably keeps them from being homicidal.

There is the legalistic God. Lots of people adhere to this model. God, through his “word” set down a whole lot of rules and regulations for living. Follow these, and you get a reward. Don’t and, well you waste your time pretty much. Non-Christians fare badly in this model, as do any who are from churches not deemed “original.” God often becomes the church itself, so following another tradition is walking away from the truth. Ritualistic incantations must be done “accurately” or they are ineffectual. God requires the exact words, and in the right order.

There is the Judge God. Here God puts each person on trial at death, and the scales of justice determine where you go. Those that have on balance done more good than ill, go up, the rest go down. Lots of otherwise “not so spiritual” people see God this way, and I suspect do charitable work in order to up their “good” score.

There is the relationship God. Here God conceives of his creation as precious opportunities to experience life through. God graciously calls us to our Spirit selves, and if granted permission, God works through us for the betterment of all humankind. We are, as creature, in a learning mode, trying our best to fathom this Creator and discern how best to love Him. We recognize that our relationship of I-Thou is meant as a model for how we act in the world.

There is the watchmaker God. God put the watch together, in the universal sense, and sits back or moves on to greener pastures. He has no further part to play, but life simply moves along as best it can. This is a rather pessimistic view, and frankly functions about as well as atheism. In other words, you might as well believe in no God as this one.

There is a God of much bigger things. God is Oneness itself. Planetary concerns are trivial and small in comparison to the grand work that God is engaged in. We will share in this work when we move on after death. Or there is no work, but full communion of minds. In which case, it most resembles I would guess Buddhism.

I imagine you can guess how I envision God. I have no doubt that there are a hundred variations on these themes and plenty of others as well. We are unique creatures, each of us, and no doubt, we are right to see God in our own unique way. But I maintain, that how we envision our Creator probably says more about us as creature than it does about God. What are you learning about you by the way you see God? It’s a good thing to explore something.

Just sayin’.

(The picture, if looked at carefully suggests a hand formed by the clouds)