How have we constructed the relationship between intelligence and evolution to be and under what constructs are we labouring if our definitions of each term are incomplete, inaccurate or false? Here we present the possibility that our understanding of intelligence and evolution, as well as Science and Religion, have been based, not on truth, but on cogitative philosophical trends.
Moreover, under the intelligence of the current mindset we juxtapose and antithesise Religion and Science – they are seen as opposite to each other. Does this support or hinder our understanding of the truth of our reality? In this article we look at how this juxtaposition has historically undermined our views of intelligence and evolution.
We as a humanity believe there is relationship between intelligence and evolution.
Our current definition of intelligence is based on an intelligence quotient (IQ) associated with the mental capabilities of processing speed, memory and comprehension.
Our current definition of evolution is based on Galton’s interpretation of Darwin and the construct of the survival of the fittest. Only those with optimally adapted bodies and the most competent minds survive and thrive. This is presented by science as being based on nature and hence is endorsed as being completely natural. This ‘natural-ness’ has been used as the justification for competitiveness and for the constructs of superiority and inferiority because science says it’s natural – and science says that nature agrees! In this article we look at whether this makes sense and ask if it is accurate or true.
The construct of survival of the fittest
The survival of the fittest model was promulgated as being based on innate intelligence in Hereditary Genius (Galton,1869) (1)(2). This publication disseminated the view that variations in intelligence were hereditary and passed from parent to offspring. From this emerged the constructs of not only individuals, but also entire races, being superior and inferior and hence ‘naturally’ suited to certain stations and positions in life. This definition of intelligence is at best narrow, and most likely, completely false.
Where does it leave us if our collective definition of evolution is equally inaccurate?
The relationship between intelligence and evolution in ancient times
In the historical period prior to the widespread acceptance of Galton’s views, the Church had held dominance for centuries and so there had been no socially validated construct of evolution since the time of Ancient Greece.
In Greece, concepts of evolution were based on everything in nature having an order and a purpose. Plato, and those who followed, presented that we are by essence the outplay and result of a Master Craftsman, a Fathering God who birthed divine offspring with the precision of pure mathematical and rational perfection (3). The understandings of the Platonic School (established c. 385 BCE) had emerged from, and were founded on, the earlier teachings of Pythagoras (c. 570 BCE - c. 500-490 BCE).
Pythagoras and his school had also presented that true evolution begins when we re-connect with our inner essence, an essence that had been suppressed in favour of the lower, exclusively mental mind. Our inner essence has its own Divine intelligence derived from our Fathering Logos, an intelligence that is neither individuated nor competitive because, by essence, we all have equality of access to an innate universal intelligence. This true to our essence intelligence is a unifying intelligence and aligns our evolution inextricably with the expansion of the Universe, of which we are all an integral part, for how could one aspect of a Divine Unity ever be ‘against’ another aspect of that same Unity? (Yet it is worth noting that this is the premise on which the modern mindset of the survival of the fittest is based.)
The Pythagoreans presented and lived that we are to return to our essence and from there resume our part in this Unity that is Divinely ordered to an exquisite level well beyond our human ken. Being open to and connecting with this universal expansion and its Divine Order are aspects of a greater Science and our true evolution. The aberration into the lower, mental mind is precisely that – an aberration based on the misuse of free will. This lower mind works against universal intelligence and divine order to perpetuate and justify its own constructs of individualism and competition.
Later, post-Aristotelian thought removed the concept of a Fathering God or Logos and the focus became successively more and more about the attributes of the form itself, i.e. the physical body and in particular the brain – the perceived house of the mind. The awareness of, and connection with, our inner essence and of the evolution back to essence was ultimately removed from the prevailing zeitgeist, forming the groundwork for the mindsets that eventually became those of our current times.
The Swing Back to Religion
In Medieval philosophy, the understanding of and connection with the Divine Fathering Logos was corrupted and then conjoined with the christianised religion of the day. The version of God created by institutionalised religion, anthropomorphically pictured as a punitive, older man, often with a long white beard, was seen as the primary cause of all species that exist on earth: it was he who had created the entire natural world in seven days.
The validity of this perspective rests on whether the way God is presented is accurate and truthful –– or not.
It also rests on the religious idea of faith, with little room for science-based observation, nor for an understanding of God that encompasses all equally.
The last 2,000 years have shown time and time again the conflicts and extensive loss of human life that have occurred because of the differing ideas about the nature of God.
Another swing –– back to Science
In the latter part of the nineteenth century, Galton and Darwin then brought mainstream thought back to the modern scientific concept of evolution, which had, nor has, any place for Divine origin. Divine Order and Unity were replaced and usurped in favour of the concepts of the classification of animals, plants and the natural kingdoms. The history and lineage of taxonomy was interpolated with the theory of the origin of these species and god was removed from the picture.
“Evolution by natural selection is a purely mechanistic theory of change that does not appeal to any sense of purpose or a designer” (4).
Under this view, which persists to this day, everything is random and there is nothing beyond the physically and scientifically validated reality in which we live.
This theory presents that evolution by natural selection works on the three principles of variation, competition and heritability.
In summary, and specifically in relation to intelligence and evolution, variation accounts for what we call individual differences; competition ensures that we must fight and compete with each other for access to resources and so there will always be winners and losers, superiors and inferiors; heritability instructs us that everything is passed on genetically – it’s all in your genes. This focus on the ‘fitness’ of the body leads to the current constructs of genetics and how fitness and other traits are purely hereditary and derived genetically from our physical parents. This is void of any reference to our essence, our divine origin as energetic beings or our part in universal expansion / evolution. We are seen as victims of genetic material, which mutates, often randomly, in a universe that is perceived as separate from us and we from it. We have no part in this universe and are allegedly the only form of intelligent life that has been discovered to date…
Our Current Situation
Even a cursory glance at our philosophical history indicates the vast swings of the pendulum of thought and belief systems; swings that are as erratic and whimsical as are the current changing trends in fashion or the latest models of cars.
Yet each historical period has viewed its beliefs as being absolute fact… facts respectably endorsed by either the clergy or by experts of science – including the belief in a flat earth. Many today consider the flat earthers to have been naïve and uneducated, but how will future generations view 21st century concepts of evolution and intelligence? This is a pertinent matter for all to consider, as well as whether we really want our purpose in being here to be subject to these mental vagaries and thence reduced to the status and value of fickle, academic fashion trends.
This then begs a deeper enquiry about what is truly going on here with these trends and where is the actual truth? What is the truth of our intelligence, the truth about evolution, and how are intelligence and evolution related? More specifically, what is their relationship to education?
Do we want to continue to educate our children and ourselves under the notion that they are nothing more than the product of a series of genetic mutations, many of them ‘random,’ within a system that clearly values the ‘fittest’ superior mental intellect? Or that the bearded old man will ultimately look after them when they die – for good or ill?
Or do we sense within our body that there is a greater truth for all, based not on competition, heredity and survival, but on a far grander, unifying source of intelligence which arises in the first instance from who we are by essence?
The Restoration of Truth
The philosophers of the Ancient World did not have trends. They accessed truth as they lived in daily connection with their inner essence – and truth being a quality and an attribute of this essence.
Nor did they pit science against religion because Truth presents the understanding that Science and Religion, in their divine expression, are inextricably intertwined: they are brothers.
Pythagoras presented that our evolution is entirely based on returning to who we are – to our innermost essence. Re-connecting to this most basic level of the truth of who we are (and who we will always be) then becomes the foundation for re-connecting with the totality of who we are: no mere physical form but a Divinely designed energetic Being who is an integral part of the expansion of the Universe extending far beyond this plane of life.
This is our true evolution – the truth we need to re-establish. This is religion – the re-binding of ourselves back to our innermost, to our source and to all that exists. This is science – the far greater science which restores our connection with the universe as well as with God / our fathering logos.
Our purpose is, and always has been, to express this Divinity.
Or we can persist in the choice to reduce ourselves to a concoction of genetically determined, exclusively human behaviours as we continue to allow the vagaries of the mind-driven aberration to be our only reality.
The truth of our innate divinity, presented by Pythagoras and others, is the truth we moved away from and so this remains the truth that we need to return to.
We literally need to re-Divine ourselves.
What would be the implications of this? If we re-Divine ourselves and connect to our True Intelligence – how would this change our views of intelligence and its relationship to true evolution?
When we re-connect with our Divinity and its intelligence, which includes our whole body intelligence, thereafter, our education system becomes one of delicately balancing our access to our innermost and its practical application to everyday life – the making Sacred of all the skills required to live in the world, as we evolve out of this world and back into the planes of life we long ago abandoned. A return to our origins, a return to true religion, to true science, evolution and our part in the universe.
(1) Heredity Genius: Sir Francis Galton FRS. (2019). Retrieved 20/11/2019 from http://www.galton.org/
(2) Human Intelligence: Francis Galton. (2019). Retrieved 7 October 2019, from https://www.intelltheory.com/galton.shtml
(3) Evolutionary Thought Before Darwin (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy): Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 20/11/2019 from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/evolution-before-darwin/
(4) History of Evolution (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy). (2019). Retrieved 20/11/2019 from https://www.iep.utm.edu/evolutio/