We homo sapiens sapiens are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” but why? What’s so special about being human? What makes us unique? And can we equate our uniqueness in the world with the Imago Dei? Experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist Justin Barrett joins Evan Rosa to discuss the image of God as a blueprint for each of us as individuals; human uniqueness as a theological and psychological category; the place of homo sapiens among other species; uniquely human capacities, such as executive function, hypersociality, and acquisition of specialized knowledge; the human biological niche construction—or changing the environment—and how our psychological traits factor; the psychological and biological underpinnings of human culture and the problem of creating cities; and how human technology interacts with our biological niche. This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543.
We homo sapiens sapiens are “fearfully and wonderfully made,” but why? What’s so special about being human? What makes us unique? And can we equate our uniqueness in the world with the Imago Dei?
Experimental psychologist and cognitive scientist Justin Barrett joins Evan Rosa to discuss the image of God as a blueprint for each of us as individuals; human uniqueness as a theological and psychological category; the place of homo sapiens among other species; uniquely human capacities, such as executive function, hypersociality, and acquisition of specialized knowledge; the human biological niche construction—or changing the environment—and how our psychological traits factor; the psychological and biological underpinnings of human culture and the problem of creating cities; and how human technology interacts with our biological niche.
This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit Blueprint1543.org.
Show Notes
About Justin Barrett
Justin L. Barrett is an honorary Professor of Theology and the Sciences at St Andrews University School of Divinity. An experimental psychologist by training, he is concerned with the scientific study of religion and its philosophical as well as theological implications. He is the author of a number of books including Why Would Anyone Believe in God?, Born Believers: The Science of Childhood Religion, and Religious Cognition in China: Homo Religiosus and the Dragon.
Production Notes
This transcript was generated automatically, and may contain errors.
Evan Rosa: For the Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for Faith and Culture. Visit us online at faith.yale.edu. This episode was made possible in part by the generous support of Blueprint 1543. For more information, visit blueprint1543.org.
Justin Barrett: Human uniqueness is not just uniqueness all by ourselves, isolated from the rest of creation, but it really does have something important to do with how becoming human was a special process in relationship to these other plants and animals, and has continued to be so.
You have the chance, human beings, or Imago Dei, of having this really deep lasting impact on the other plants and animals around you. Do that responsibly because not only are you changing them. They're in turn changing you. It's an iterative kind of process. And so there's great responsibility here, but it's almost as if God has invited us into the creative process with him, and it's almost our nature to do that.
We should be thinking of the Imago Dei not as a particular capacity or role or whatever it is that each and every individual human actually makes manifest, but more like the blueprint for the kind of thing that is us. If you look at a housing development, they all look a little different, but they're still manifestations of the same blueprint. And so you might think we've got this great diversity in humans, including diversity that includes things that we might consider pathology or disabilities. That doesn't mean those people are not from that same blueprint.
We're looking for traits that each and every single human being has to have, or each capacity that everybody's got to have and has to have actualized. I think that's the wrong criteria. What we might think is in the mind of God, there's a blueprint for: "this is the Imago Dei, and here's a population that are animals that are in that space and capable of moving even closer to that space and capable of being restored to the work of the Holy Spirit in this life. And the next. Ever approaching that image.
Evan Rosa: This is for the life of the world. A podcast about seeking and living a life worthy of our humanity. I'm Evan Rosen with the Yale Center. For. Faith and Culture. We are fearfully and wonderfully made. The psalmist says, and I think we normally take that to mean us human beings. We're we're kind of a big deal.
But that fear, that wonder, I mean, it gives pause what's behind the fear? What's behind the wonder. There's worlds in those words. Recently in a conversation among some friends, Miroslav Volf pointed out the fact that the Genesis creation narrative. As God creates the heavens and the earth after each step, God saw that it was good, but then you get to the creation of human beings.
So God created humankind in his image. And then what does it say? Well, you might reply, good Sunday School Bible student that you are. Very good, but no, only after a blessing and the creation mandate to be fruitful and multiply and seeing everything that he had made, do we get the evaluation? Indeed, all of it was fair and good.
Which brings us to this question, what is so good about being here? What makes us unique? What makes us wonderfully made? Over the past several weeks, we've been in a series on bringing psychology to theology, and if you've been with us this far, you've heard us introduce normative questions about which ologies, which ways of knowing the world has the final word On human flourishing, we've looked at human purpose and thriving through developmental psychology and attachment theory.
We've considered the psychology of human emotion, spiritual struggle. Anger at God. Intolerance of doubt and ambiguity. We've considered the fact that we're made for relationships and the damage that comes from early deprivation of those relationships. But the common thread is us, US human beings. Us image bearers of God.
This is what makes the overlapping questions of psychology and theology so interesting. Both disciplines are deeply concerned with human species and as my guest today, so aptly put it, if you're trying to build a cathedral, you need a lot of tools. If theology is the master builder of the cathedral of understanding what it means to be human and psychology sure does bring some essential tools to the project.
This episode is our last in the series, bringing Psychology to Theology and to go full circle. We'll again hear from experimental psychologist Justin Barrett, if you miss the first installment. Justin is a longtime researcher in cognitive science of religion and the author of a number of books, including Why Would Anyone Believe In God?
And Born believers, the Science of Childhood Religion. He also edited the Oxford Handbook of the Cognitive Science of Religion, and in 2019, he co-founded a new organization, blueprint 1543. Since then, they've been bringing theologians and scientists together to accelerate better contributions to life's biggest questions, and we thank them for making this series possible.
In this episode, Justin and I discussed the image of God is a blueprint for each of us as individuals. We talk about human uniqueness as a theological and psychological category, considering the place of homo sapiens among other species, the uniquely human capacities such as executive function of the brain, a sense of self and regulation and awareness, our hyper sociality and relationality, and our interpersonal theory of mind.
We talk about the intellectual capacities for acquiring specialized knowledge, how to use fire, how to cook, how to teach one another, the human biological niche, construction, or how we change and influence our environment and how that environment feeds back on us. We talk about the psychological and biological underpinnings of human culture and the problem of cities, and finally, how human technology changes our biological niche.
Thanks for listening to this series. I doubt it. The last time we'll talk about psychology and theology after all of this podcast is about seeking and living lives worthy of our humanity. But thanks for coming along on this journey, and thanks for listening today.
We'll see Imago
Justin Barrett: Day. Uh, well that's a fancy Latin term for image of God, but. You might think of capacity or substance kind of views of the, what's the stuff or what are the capacities that make us imago Dei and lots of candidates for that rationality language, ability to love, who knows lots of things.
And then there are those sort of more functional kinds of things, um, or relational ones. So functional things would be stewardship. Yeah. We are those, those creatures that have been asked to have a special role in creation. It's sort of represent God and uh, Exercise stewardship over it. The relational views are saying something like, uh, as the Trinity is this kind of really cozy relationship of three persons in love with each other, we're supposed to be in love with God, in love with each other.
And I think all of these are capturing something that's really interesting. For me personally, I'm attracted to views that you get a little bit of everything. Uh, I think there's been enough theological mystery around this term that. It's helpful to actually start turning to the sciences to say, well, we've got a strong reason to think at least among existing species, and that's important.
Existing species. We're the only ones on this planet that are imago Dei. So using the biblical text as sort of hints point us in other directions. We might look at, well, what does God want of us? What are we told that the good and abundant life is about? And it seems to be about loving God and loving others.
It's about. Caring for the creation, broadly construed, including the human aspects of the creation, as well as the natural order. And then you might think, well, why would God pick the animal that is homo sapiens to do that kind of work? So I'm starting functionally, but then thinking, well, surely there are certain capacities that make that possible.
God does ask us to do things we're not capable of doing. So what are those capabilities or capacities that seem to be the. The ones that facilitate that. And then I think there are a few buckets of traits that humans have that are pretty interesting that enable us to be God's representatives on this.
In this world, are you
Evan Rosa: making a distinction between capacities and traits? Not really. It's still the same, same kind of thing.
Justin Barrett: Yeah. I guess what I have in mind, there are capacities need not be realized. They, they might be something that gets filled in and then it's starts looking like a trait. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But I'm not trying to make a hard distinction there. Mm-hmm. I also want to acknowledge that I find utility in analysis like Nick Walter's analysis that he brings to Imago de, uh, toward the end of his book Justice. Um, where he suggests, I'll paraphrase and hopefully get it right, right Enough, but suggests the idea that we should be thinking of the imago Dei, not as a particular capacity or role or whatever it is that each and every individual human actually makes manifest, but more like the blueprint for the kind of thing that is us.
So you might think that if you look at a housing development, you know, there might be a dozen houses in there that all are built on the same blueprint, but they look a little different because of certain builders decisions or people decide to knock that wall out or put in the double door in the single, or let's add dormers or not, or use this paint or that.
So they all look a little different, but they're still manifestations of the same blueprint. So you might think we've got this great diversity in humans. Including diversity. That includes things that we might consider pathology or disabilities, but that doesn't mean those people are not from that same blueprint.
And I think that gives us hope of thinking in the new heavens and new Earth too. That may be. Will be the sort of souped up deluxe version of whatever the blueprint for me is, right? The fulfilled completed version of the imago Dei as made manifest in sort of this individual. So that said, I don't think we should put pressure on that.
We're looking for traits that each and every single human being has to have. For each capacity that everybody's gotta have and has to have actualized. I think that's the wrong criteria. What we might think is in the mind of God, there's a blueprint for this is imago Dei and here's a population that are animals that are in that space and capable of moving even closer to that space and capable of being restored to the work of the Holy Spirit in this life and the next to be.
Ever approaching that, the image. Do you
Evan Rosa: think that there are any specific areas where contemporary church theology or just the broader human society. Has gotten, has gone wrong with respect to that blueprint and gone wrong with respect to La Magoimago Dei thinking. So are there errors that need correction from psychological research?
Justin Barrett: Well, I'll tell you, um, I have my suspicions that we have gone wrong.
Evan Rosa: Yes. So do I and I, I mean like in just the way that I think a blueprint model would help to correct. For instance, with over intellectualizing, for instance, the imago Dei over intellectualizing would, would seem to cut out. The population of the severely mentally disabled from, from participation in the imago Dei, and that would be a severe problem.
So, I mean, what are you seeing?
Justin Barrett: So are, are you, let me just be clear. So are you asking me do I think that people are thinking wrongly about the imago Dei or that I. There are certain features of, say, contemporary human society that are in some ways frustrating. The imago Dei. The former. The former thinking wrongly.
Evan Rosa: Yeah. Thinking wrongly about it. And then, and then that perhaps leading to even larger systemic problems or, or symptoms that are expressing
Justin Barrett: Well, I was, I, I do, as I already sort of hinted at, I have concerns about, Trying to locate the imago Dei in just one or a small number of traits or capacities that then every human being has to have or not, and that counts you in or out.
Not only does that create problems for people with disability perhaps, but also. At different points in, in development, you might think, well then infants who don't have some of these capacities, are they Imago? They're not imago Dei then, is that what we wanna say? Well, that doesn't seem right. Or somebody suffering from Alzheimer's, well, that doesn't seem right.
So I'm not attracted to those ideas. That's where the blueprint idea is, something like that. Right. I also, I do worry a little bit about merely, so a popular turn in theology, at least it seems from things that I've been reading and hearing Popular turn has been really emphasizing the relational. Idea of the imago Dei, and that's a nice corrective against a sort of strictly individualist kind of idea or a strictly kind of intellectual idea.
But it worries me in its own way. It worries me because, well, on a number of things, I think textually, it's not all that well supportive if that's all there is to it. We often hear these kind of things, well, you know, Let us create man in our image. Oh, look, it's the Trinity speaking to itself, which that's not clear that that's what's going on in their alternative plausible interpretations, male and female, you know, he created them.
Oh, well look then that sort of, that there's diversity there and that they have to love each other. That's part of it. Well, I'm not denying that that's, Part of it, but saying that is it, at least from certain kind of biological and psychological perspectives, that seems insufficient because, well, look, lots of animals are created, male and female, lots of animals, even parabond.
So the males and females hang out together for a long extended period. Some do a better job of it in terms of proportion of their life than humans do. Mm-hmm. So does that make them a magoimago Dei suddenly? That doesn't seem quite right. That's right. I
Evan Rosa: mean, there's gotta be like some joint criteria that like mutually have to be satisfied.
Yeah, it sure feels that way. And you don't, and, and it's also the case that, uh, it's, so I like the, the holistic picture that you're presenting of Magoimago Dei, which it, which suggests that you. Rather start with, start with the species, at the species level and, and members of what you might call a human community, rather than starting with an analysis and then looking from within that community and saying, oh, this, this member of the community fits the, fits our analysis, but this one doesn't.
Instead you, I mean, would it be right to say that like you're creating a standard or some kind of, you're, you're placing your analysis by. By looking at the community that's being addressed in the scriptures and then doing research on that community to identify what makes it unique, what makes it appear to image the,
Justin Barrett: the creator.
That's right. And I think it's an iterative process. So we'll start with the, the scripture and theological treatments of, of the relevant scripture in the broader. Theological context. Then look at, well, how can the relevant sciences help us sort of sharpen our thinking along these? And then let's return and reexamine the text and reexamine our theology angle.
Let's keep doing that and hopefully things get more and more focused. And I think that liberates us from some, some problems we don't need to have. Like it's tempting to think that the word human or Adam. Depending on where we are in the Bible, more humanity have to map perfectly onto the idea of imago Dei and perfectly onto the idea of homo sapiens, homo sapiens, and ESP and homo sapien sapiens.
Those are biological terms that were created for different function, and let's not assume that there has to be a perfect mapping between. The population of animals that God picked out as his imagers and the same population of animals that biologists today want to identify as homo sapiens. Mm-hmm.
Especially homo sapien sapiens. It could end up being either narrower or broader. Right. Yeah. Interesting. So, so it could be that, no, actually what is referenced in scripture, there is God picking out maybe the entire homo lineage, which then predates homo sapiens, let alone homo sapien sapiens. So Homo Neandertals may be then imago de, or maybe even Homo erectus.
So we don't know where those boundaries are. Maybe. Maybe. So it's maybe broader than homo sapiens, which is yet
Evan Rosa: another reason to think holistically about the category of imago Dei, rather than try to come up with a very specific analysis first.
Justin Barrett: Yeah. Oh, and especially one that's too slavishly tied to, oh, it's gotta fit the bi.
It's, well, no bi biologists using those species boundaries are doing different work. So why assume there'd be a one-to-one mapping? Yeah. It could also be narrower. So this makes some folks uncomfortable, but. You could think that what we're, that, what we're reading in the biblical text is God acting locally to have a global impact, which is a repeated pattern throughout scripture, right?
I mean, we even think the incarnation is a very local event where a first century Jewish man, right, is having this global impact. But we see that time and time again, God working locally to have a global impact, not just on humanity, but all of creation. Yeah. And so sort of playing that backwards, you might think at least one possibility is that the text is referring to God's picking out a particular subset of what biologists might call homo sapiens and say, look, you are I, I'm starting something, a special kind of relationship with you and this lineage.
Now that's gonna make some folks uncomfortable. And there's some theological sort of challenges there, but at least it's a possibility. And there are other sort of mid grounds like, yes, God did that, and everyone who is alive today are descended of those people. Well, that's a possibility as well. So there are lots of possibilities.
And I guess what I'm encouraging us to do is not think, not either press the biology in the service of the theology or make the theology too quickly responsive to the biology. Thinking in a more gentle, iterative process of sort of sharpening our thinking when you're bringing all of the relevant human sciences together with the best of our biblical interpretation and theological analysis.
Evan Rosa: Yeah. One direction to go is human uniqueness and, and looking at, at, at the success of our species, so to speak of this. And so do you read. The kind of proclamation of imago Dei for this lineage of this species, however you wanna read that is, is that a kin or synonymous with uniqueness? Like you are the special category of of being that I am imprinting my image upon?
Justin Barrett: Yeah. I do find looking at human uniqueness useful as long as we're bearing in mind that. Again, that is possible that what we're seeing even in the biblical text is only the directly relevant revelation to those who are left. I put it that way because it could have been that at one point in the Earth's history, there were multiple species of beings that God had a special relationship with and he said, and you're my imager and so are you.
Yeah, but none of the others are left. I think that's a real possibility. A CS Lewis sort of entertained something similar to that Right In out of the silent planet. Yeah. Right. He imagines Mars has populated with three of the sentient beings that in some sense are imagers. And as I recall, one even hunts the other.
Ah. Or something like that. Yeah, yeah. Which is kind of, that's right. Whoa. Okay. You're shaking my paradigms here, but you might think, well, is, is he just stretching our thinking or did he have intuitions like Yeah, human beings and Neanderthals sort of modern humans. And Neanderthals actually coexisted at the same time.
He may not have known that. Lewis may not have known that. And maybe actually modern humans actually helped encourage the extinction of the aerosols. And could both of those populations been. Magoimago Dei, is it possible that even Lean Anders saws never fell, whereas modern humans did? Oh yeah. Okay. Great question.
Crazy thoughts. That's so crazy. But, but we're left with just us. Yeah. So what are the traits that seem to set us apart that might plausibly make God say, okay, and these are the folks that are gonna represent me on this earth. They're gonna be my stewards of this creation, if you like that view. And I think these other interpretations of imago Dei give us hints, things to look at, like the sociability of humans.
So what makes humans unique, at least for my money, they're sort of three big, big buckets of, I'm gonna emphasize the psychological traits. Yeah. Or psychobiological traits, as opposed to things like opposable thumbs and. Being relatively hairless or bipedal, which are interesting actually in their own rights and maybe part of the whole story.
But I'll focus on three kinds of psychological buckets. The first of which I'd said the jargon in the field is executive functioning. And this is often associated with prefrontal cortex kinds of activities. But what that executive functioning broadly construed is trying to capture is the idea that. We seem to be able to reflect on certain kinds of possibilities of the world around us.
Think about our what's going on, think about our thoughts in a conscious way, and based on those thoughts, actually even guide our behaviors. So inhibit our desires, desire new desires, control ourselves, resist temptation or deliberately succumb to temptation. Lots of interesting kinds of. Interplay that we think of as sort of the intellectual life of humans, but also that self-control pit is really important.
Yeah, right.
Evan Rosa: So there's both agency, which is like in the control element, but also something like logos or something like that in the representational or meta representational bit. Thoughts about? Thoughts about thoughts? And I realize that there's another layer of sociality, but I don't know how, how much of that is gonna factor in the, in the.
Prefrontal cortex.
Justin Barrett: Yeah. These three buckets that I wanna talk about, they really kind of overlap in some important ways. And you're, you're foreshadowing where I want to go next. But then the first bucket is these sort of executive functions that self-control is a big part of that. But of course the self, you have to have, have a sense of self.
Yeah. And you have to, I think, probably have some kind of thought about what it is that I'm controlling. Otherwise, it is some kind of self-regulation, but every biological system regulates in a sense. This is different. We're picking out a self. I have a self. I'm thinking about myself. I'm thinking about what myself is about to do or not do.
I'm thinking about myself's thoughts. I'm thinking about myself's desires. Maybe I decide I have gotta desire. I don't want to have, well, how am I gonna change that? And so forth and so on. Those seem to be really unusual traits in the animal world. It's possible. That no other animal actually does that sort of thing.
Certainly not to the degree that humans do. So this is the first bucket is this executive, executive functions. The second bucket is the so social kind of thing. Of course, lots of social animals, but we seem to be unusually hyper social in some important respects. One of those is our ability to individuate lots of other individuals.
And carry on personal relationships with them. We are dependent on the relationships in a unique way. So we are a slow maturing species by the, our babies are born premature in a sense, and there's a reason for that. If they were born fully mature, they could not get out of the birth canal. And that's part of us being bipedal.
So actually the bipedal was interesting. Yeah. But so babies are born a little bit premature. Their brains are still flexible and plastic, we say, which means they can acquire lots of new information, but that means they're also dependent on parental and other caregiving investment in a way that we don't see in other species.
We also grow up in communities then that are mutually supportive in investing each in each other. Again, on that personal level, personally, individuating, lots of non-relatives living together even, and this, while again, we see this in other species, it seems to be taken to a whole new level in humans, this sort of hyper sociality and has a different quality.
Now, some of those executive function kinds of things, they, they facilitate that so, An area that gets a lot of players. This, these thing, these capacities and traits called theory of Mind, the ability to read other people's mental states, as it were, uh, based on their gestures, their posture, their tone of voice, their facial expressions.
I'm constantly trying to read what are you thinking and wanting and perceiving maybe even, what are you thinking about me and about what I'm thinking, wanting. And maybe really importantly, how can both of us be thinking and attending the same thing? It's called joint attention. And that joint attention then facilitates teaching.
I can learn from you much more efficiently if you are checking in on my mental states as it were, and then giving me information relevant to my mental states, not your mental states. That's part of our sociology and that executive functioning that we can sort of reflect on each other's mental state.
Evan Rosa: That can even be pre linguistic. Absolutely. The teaching element. So it's not, so it's a form of pre linguistic communication. Would is the right term innate
Justin Barrett: for you? I don't like to use the terminate it very much just because I think it carries baggage with it that's Sure. For a lot of people suggest present at birth, and I don't mean that, I like to use the term in some ways it's more casual, but natural.
And by that I just mean it's tied to a developmental stage. It, it comes about as a typical, normal part of human development. Yeah. By virtue of being an ordinary human living in ordinary human environments, we develop these capacities in a fairly predictable sort of way. It's, but that teaching bit is also facilitated by just how docile we are as animals, and that's part of our social nature.
Is, I mean, we're impressed with how much humans can do cruel things to each other. But the truth of the matter is most of the time we're interacting with people who are not our kin. In a fairly gentle, kind of benign way. We tolerate that. We do a, a stranger can walk up to us and say, Hey, what's up? And we don't lash out at them.
We don't physically attack them. And if they say, well, you got the time, we tell 'em what time it is. We tend to actually be very helpful. If stranger asks for directions, we give them directions. We actually don't see that a lot in other. Animals, particularly other primates, right? If a chimpanzee from the other, from a different band of chimpanzees walks up, especially male, on male chimpanzees, it's, it's go time.
We are gonna fight at least a lot of the time, right? We're actually pretty peaceful. We are a docile, maybe self domesticated kind of animal, which says something
Evan Rosa: about her ability to think about the thoughts of another individual and ties it and realize it's not, it's not, we don't have to view it only from the lens of survival.
Justin Barrett: That's right. Or threat danger. And even if we have a fear response, we can override that fear response. No, no. This person looks like they don't mean any harm. Okay. As opposed to better be safe than sorry, off 'em now. No, we don't have to go there. That's part of it. Part of it is probably interesting feedback loops in terms of our hormonal system and everything else where.
We just, we, we aren't quite as range driven as lot of species. Cause we don't have to be, I
Evan Rosa: wonder if this is an interesting connection. Not, we don't have to go too deep into it, but, but this is where like developing attachment filters and styles in those same early, early stages of development are, are, are, are beginning to help an individual of the species function in just the way that you're describing that allows for the higher level.
Cognitive interactions that, so that we're going beyond mirror covering turf and aggress aggressing against one another.
Justin Barrett: That's right. We don't have to think of ourselves as just rugged individuals who are gonna rise and fall depending on the threats and opportunities that are presented to us individually, because we also have relationships that help stabilize us, that give us secure basis to explore from.
Uh, you referenced attachment, that's one of those. Attachment theory is a psychological theory that is drawing on the idea that we may have. It's usually talked about as an evolved system. For regulating our interactions with the world by way of how we have formed a relationship with, especially our pri, our early primary, first kinds of relational objects is sometimes the language, but we mean usually mom, um, caregiver, but typically it's mom.
Evan Rosa: Sure. I realize there's some that's a little fraught. Is is It is. I mean, especially after the 20th century research. Has kind of evolved into more egalitarian
Justin Barrett: it, it has, but you know, nine times out of 10, mom is still the, the, the first person that that baby is forming some kind of an attachment. And there are biological reasons for that.
Obvious biological reasons. Yeah. Yeah. The baby has already been with mom inside the hormonal exchange is happening like right away. Exchange listening to mom's voice. Yeah. Just being, yeah. Nutrition, everything. The babies come out, they're used to mom's voice more than anybody else's most of the time. And.
And then of course if mom's is nursing the child, there's automatic physical contact and nutritional needs being met and so forth. So mom is usually the object there. And if mom is. Appropriately responsive to the needs of the baby and or the other caregivers, right? Appropriately responsive to the needs of the baby.
Create a safe space for the baby to then explore the world around, doesn't act in a capricious or disinterested kind of way. Then babies typically would then develop what we usually term a secure attachment, and from that, a secur secure attachment, then they can more confidently explore the world around them, not in a reckless way.
But in a, okay, I'm gonna try out a relationship with this stranger or with that weird new place, mom, is this okay? I'm gonna check back. Mom's like giving me all the cues that, go ahead. I'm like, all right, I can, I can explore this. And this seems to color our relationships with other people to a, a large extent.
What that means then is if I run into a stranger, I don't have the temptation to react if I'm securely attached to react just with fear, because I've learned that. No, no. I've got these other safe people who kind of have my back, if it will, even if they're not here right now that I can return to if there, if there really is trouble.
Of course, that's just one mechanism. There are probably dozens of these that have helped domesticate humans in a sense, and made us really docile happy to interact with each other even if we're not related with each other. Which then facilitates teaching. And then that all contributes to sort of this third bucket that I referenced, and that is the acquisition of specialized knowledge.
You might think that's weird. You might call it expertise. One of the things that is really striking about humans as a species is that we've invaded so many different ecological niches. How have we done that? It's not because. We're especially biologically adaptive like we are mutating all of the time, right?
So that's not it. It's maybe in part that we're kind of pretty smart, but there are other really smart animals that haven't done this. So arguably part of it is being really smart, but part of it is being so as well as that sort of smart executive function. Part of it is that sociality thing. It put those two things together.
Now we can teach each other, we can learn from each other, and then we can inquire in more localized knowledge. We can basically share the cost of invading new spaces or facing new problems like no other species. And a big part of that may be teaching, so we can teach each other what we need to know, and we learn from each other in a way.
That we don't see in other species. Yes, other animals can socially learn, but it's not remotely clear that other animals intentionally teach, particularly intentionally teach those that they are not related to. And all of that is made possible by those other two buckets. So then we can develop all of this specialized knowledge.
And we can pass that on to others, and that helps us figure out, well, what's good to eat here? How do I prepare this so that it's food? From that, then, I mean, that kind of capacity enables us to then master things like fire, which then allows us to. Basically externalize our food preparation and digestion a little bit more.
Also, mastering tool sets, right? Choppers and things so we can start eating these animal fats and proteins that otherwise would be dangerous. It could poison us when they're cooked, not so much and they're easier to digest. Why is that important? Well, those amino acids and fats are great for building big brains.
So you can see there's a feedback mechanism then, They also help us to have smaller guts cuz we don't need to do so much of the digestion internally. So that means we can invest those calories in again, building those big brains. Yeah. So all of these different things, all of these different mechanisms, those three buckets of psychological traits interact with our biology in such a way that we may have, our species line may have gotten on this sort of runaway feedback loop.
That's part social, it's part cognitive, it's part relational, and it's part biological. And suddenly we're a very different species and it's so
Evan Rosa: directed, it looks like to, so we're very goal oriented as a species as well. And, and I, I wonder how that ties back in even to like the element of dominion that some people are interpret in some of the early, at least early genesis literature that where some of the image language comes from have dominion over.
Over creation and be a, a sort of vice regent is, is one theological word for, for thinking about this. You talk about in terms of niche and specialized learning technologies, perhaps. Yeah, that's right. But that looks like they're for the sake of something as well. Looks like there we're very goal directed.
Justin Barrett: We are very goal directed. Part of that is that executive function thing. We need to actually think about what's my goal, what's my purpose, what's my aim? Because unlike most other species, lots of species, right, are more instinct driven. They have much more narrow niches. So instincts are good enough to get going.
We have to figure out problems. We need to solve them. And notice I've also made reference a number of times to the kinds of external things we need, including like eating other animals and so forth. Arguably that relationship with other animals is, is a huge part of what makes us interesting too. Sure.
All animals are living in some kind of niche where they're interacting with others. Humans, especially in recent millennia, have also started domesticating other animals and plants. That's fascinating. That is part of the human story, is living in close connection with these other plants and animals in a very special way.
You know, uh, dogs for instance, right? They're, they looks like from fossil records and burials, they may have been our buddies for 30,000 years. That's just fascinating and there's reason to think that we have really importantly and impacted their right. We've selectively bred them and so forth, and we've changed what kind of an animal a dog is absolutely.
But how much is the cows too? I mean, we've cows as well. Species, almost. That's right. The orach is gone, but the cow is here. And in fact, there are more cows now than there ever were. Oros, which are their ancestral species. And of course, grasses, corns, things like these various grasses get selectively bred.
They become corn or rice. And to the point that some of these can't even replicate themselves anymore without human intervention. Yeah, and it
Evan Rosa: looks fascinating. That's just an example of, of creating culture. It
Justin Barrett: is an aspect of creating culture, but in a way that starts to have these interesting kinds of resonances, I think with the biblical text, because one of the things that's striking to me is that the biblical text, It has a setting that seems right, Adam and Eva in the garden that they need to care for.
It already starts to sound horticulturalist, but one of the things we learned about Kane is that he plows the earth. He's an agriculturalist, not just a horticulturalist, he's an agriculturalist. So there's this sort of setting already of having impact on nature around us in an interactive kind of way.
That part of part of this sort of, Selected narrative, right? The, the, the, the key players in this narrative in the Bible right, are, are a kind of animal that already is in an interaction with the other plants and animals, right? Adam names the animals. There's something really interesting going on there, and I can't help but think that if we start looking at that more carefully, there's some, I don't know, some theological pager to think in terms of.
Human uniqueness is not just uniqueness all by ourselves, isolated from the rest of creation, but it really does have something important to do with how becoming human was a special process in relationship to these other plants and animals and has continued to be so. And there's something interesting being reflected in that idea of, yeah, you have the chance human beings or imago Dei.
Of having this really deep lasting impact on the other plants and animals around you do that responsibly because not only are you changing them, but they're in turn changing you. It's an iterative kind of process, and so there's, there's great responsibility here, but there's, there's also this sort of interesting creativeness, right?
Yeah. We made dogs. We made cows in some really important ways. They're helping to make us too. Yeah. But it's almost as if God has invited us into the creative process with him, and it's almost our nature to do that, and it creates a very
Evan Rosa: unique contextual scenario that's so very particular because of the kind of like originative choices that human beings even make for better or worse, that continue to create those feedback loops and, and keep things open.
In some of our remaining time, I want, I wanna talk a little bit more about, about relationality and sociality, especially just getting you to say why you hate cities. Why do you hate cities? Justin cities are cool. They have tall buildings, elevators. You get to see really far everybody's close togethers so you can party.
All right. Why do, why
Justin Barrett: do I hate sitting? It's so efficient. Okay. There's, there's the psychological reason why I hate cities and there's the sort of my post-hoc rationalization. The psychological reason in my own sort of autobiographical reasons is I think that, I mean, I grew up in more small town rural environments and so in some ways I'm just more comfortable with that.
No doubt that's coloring my, my view on these things. But why am I at least. Cautious about cities, if not sort of hate them. Part of that is because humans, again, like all species, we engage in a process that biologists call niche construction. Okay? That is we change the environment that our offspring have to survive and thrive in.
Okay? All, all species do this, it seems to one extent or another, but humans take this to a really extreme level, right? We can radically change the environment. And thereby radically change the environment in such a way that it changes the selection pressure on our offspring. So what, well, one of my concerns is if we change things too quickly, we sort of run away from our natural endowment.
So that, uh, here's just a cute, I don't know if this is a cute example or not, but I've read recently that there's reason to believe that the reason why, if you sort of ask the typical orthodontist. You know, a majority of Americans living American kids or so forth need orthodontist work a majority. But if we looked a hundred years ago, they didn't.
And actually some interesting studies have been done, apparently, even looking at the dental configuration and the jaw configuration of in deceased people in graveyards in Scandinavia, compare them to contemporary Scandinavians. It's important because you've got a relatively homogenous gene pool with relatively strong continuity.
So the. Descendants of the same people. So you can't chalk this up to jeans. And the jeans really haven't changed, but they've gone from really great teeth, really great sort of teeth configuration in their mouth to really crummy. Well, what's going on there? And at least one hypothesis is, well, it has to do with how we've changed our diet, what we're chewing on.
We don't know. We don't let our babies na on bones. We give them pre-blended foods and so forth, and so they don't develop the same jaw muscles. Their mouths don't develop the same way. So actually our jaws have gotten smaller. And my point with that example is that we have changed the environmental conditions in a way that our genes haven't caught up with.
And it's leading to negative consequences on a really fundamental part of human existence. And that is eating. Our mouths are not as good for eating as they were a hundred or 150 years ago because of things we've done to the eating environment and sort of around us. Okay. And we could probably multiply these examples back to cities.
Cities seem to be pressing people to live in proximity to each other that our. Our nature, if you will, is just doesn't seem equipped for. We seem to have natural, uh, rings of intimacy in our social relationships. So this is worked by Robin Dunbar and his colleagues among others have suggested we've got fairly predictable little tears of intimacy.
Five individuals as our sort of closest buddies, and then sort of a out encompassing that you've got 15 that are still close friends, and then about 50 plus or minus a whole bunch of really good friends. And then about 150 personal relationships, plus or minus about 50. So big broad variability around these, but still regular.
Rings of intimacy that we're sort of good at managing. So it looks like our minds, our social abilities are, are still geared around about 150 individuals. What happens then when you live in huge cities and you're interacting with way too many people, then you can possibly have personal relationships with?
Well, you need other strategies for dealing with that. Great strategies are to put people in groups and then treat them in groupish ways instead of as individuals. That's an efficient thing, but you can already see there's some dangers there. Absolutely. Or ignore each other. That's another strategy, and we see that in cities all the time.
That's right. Or dehumanize each other. We don't really count. So there are lots of strategies that humans probably are naturally gonna gravitate towards in high density, big population environments, just because human psychology is not meant for that kind of population size or density. That's just the social part, let alone anxiety levels going up.
Well, why? Well, too much, too many lights, sounds, and so forth are stressors on us. Again, our bodies haven't adjusted to that. Uh, there's beginning to be more and more research suggesting that the amount of light around is disrupting our sleep. That's creating negative feedback cycles on anxiety levels and our ability just to adapt to these changing environments.
All of this adds up to cities are a bad idea. And, and there's some evidence that actually right, people die sooner in cities and so forth. And if it weren't for country folk continuing to move into cities, cities would dry up because they're not replacing themselves and people do die younger, and there's more violence in cities.
And, and I don't think this is purely accidental, so I'm worried about urbanization. I wish we'd say, whoa, whoa, whoa. Can we just make these smaller cities, smaller towns healthier, instead of trying to drive everybody into these big cities? Because I don't think that's making us healthier, but maybe I've got this wrong.
I don't know early days, but I think we should treat these things with great caution, but not just cities, all kinds of technological advancements where they seem great, they're seductive to us, but they may be changing us in ways that we don't anticipate. Well, I
Evan Rosa: think that is an, an extremely important thing to note that that one way that we, that our creative capacities, that our technological capacities, Whether we're operating on other living species or operating on ourselves, we're so prone to jump into those technologies, begin to use them, apply them far and wide, whether it's a city or a cell phone.
Yeah. Um, and we, but we do so prior to consulting psychologists and ethicists, um, that's right about about. The effects. So we, we only now getting to a point where we can look at a decade or so of research on the use of individualized screens that can be held a foot from your face. That's
Justin Barrett: right. And there are all these apparently negative kinds of unintended consequences there.
And
Evan Rosa: we don't have the kind of research sample, the data sample that we would need to be able to make good recommendations yet about what you ought to do. But of course, everybody is just kind of, Tends to like just adopt the new technology.
Justin Barrett: More frightening. We are starting to get data that look pretty negative.
Yeah. And as far as I can tell, it's not changing anybody's behavior. We just go, oh, well that's the new, that's the new norm. I guess we're, we're, we're stuck. Let's see if we can find a way around that. So we keep creating new problems for ourselves and the technology industries do just keep writing us promissory notes.
Oh, we'll fix that one next. And they're like, well actually I think you're more concerned about making money. Or, I mean, that's not everybody. I mean, some are really, they're just, wow, we can do this. Let's do it. Right? I mean, then we're in the Jurassic Park problem, right? Just because we can doesn't mean we should.
Evan Rosa: Got Dr. Ian Malcolm there.
Justin Barrett: Absolute insert audio clip here.
Evan Rosa: Jeff Goldblum,
Jeff Goldblum: If I may. Um, I'll tell you the problem with the scientific power that you're, that you're using here. Uh, it didn't require any discipline to attain it. You know, you read what others had done and you, and you took the next step. You didn't earn the knowledge for yourselves, so you don't take any responsibility for it.
You stood on the shoulders of geniuses, uh, to accomplish something as fast as you could, and before you even knew what you had, you, you patented it and packaged it and slapped it on a plastic lunchbox, and now we're selling it. Yours sell it. Well,
John Hammond: I, I don't think you're giving us our due credit. Our scientists have done things which nobody's ever done before.
Jeff Goldblum: Yeah, yeah. But your scientists were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, that they didn't stop to think if they should.
Evan Rosa: Justin, I, I wish we could just go forever cuz you are delight and um, again, I'm so grateful.
Justin Barrett: Well, thanks. Thanks for talking with me. Appreciate it.
Evan Rosa: That's a wrap.
Justin Barrett: Alright.
Evan Rosa: For The Life of the World is a production of the Yale Center for. Faith and culture at Yale Divinity School. This episode featured experimental psychologist Justin Barrett, production assistance by Macy Bridge, CA Young and Logan Leadman. Special thanks to Justin Barrett and our friends at Blueprint 1543 for making this series possible.
I'm Evan Rosa and I edited and produce the show. For more information, visit us online at faith dot Yale dot edu where you can find past episodes, articles, books, and other educational resources that help people envision and pursue lives worthy of our humanity. And since you're listening to the end of the show, What should you do after this?
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