Speaking as a Christian, conservative(ish), feminist(ish) woman, I find evolutionary mismatch intriguing because it validates my intuition (shared by many others, I gather) that there is something spiritually damaging about modernity, as we have strayed far from the lives we were created to live. As I believe God created us through evolution, my intuition and the concept of "evolutionary mismatch" are saying pretty much the same thing. I have also found motherhood to be the era of my life that has been the most rich with spiritual growth and that growth has only increased as I have embraced more of a hunter-gatherer mindset, as I understand it.
I really appreciate your non-ideological, thoughtful approach to such interesting questions!
This is fascinating to me. I have never heard anyone frame it as "God created us through evolution" but that feels like a religious perspective I could get on board with. As far back as high school I was being taught that it was the biologists versus the creationists, and I should pick the biology team if I was going to be a serious scientist. But in my experience interacting with people here, I've actually found that people who believe in Nature and in God believe in the same things and just call them by different names. There's a deep respect for the things that make us human. I am also the first to say that motherhood has been an enormous source of spiritual growth, though I guess it depends on what we mean by spiritual growth. It's a very hard thing to put into words.
This is a majority understanding in Catholic circles- evolution is the method or path of creation that God used.
Creationism is (in my experience and estimation) a largely Protestant phenomenon, based on Biblical literalism that stems from a sola scriptura and total depravity viewpoint (the Bible is the only authority, and everything of nature and humanity is so fallen it can’t speak of God). Catholics understand the universe via the sacramental worldview, aka all of nature speaks of God in its beauty and goodness and truth, which means sources outside of the Bible (and outside the Church) can bring us to better understand the world and God. There is a lot of God to be found in nature and biology!
That is very much an evangelical Protestant framing of the creation/evolution debate. I have an MA in catholic theology and can tell you that the Church has no official teaching on whether God used evolution or some other means to create life, including humans. Catholics are free to look at the scientific evidence and come to their own conclusions on the *how* of creation. That said, the priest (whose name escapes me atm) who first theorized the Big Bang was Catholic and most of the Catholics I know have zero problems looking at the evidence and accepting that it points to some
Sort of evolutionary process being involved in life coming to be on this planet. Young Earth Creationists who read the book of Genesis as if it were a science text are the ones who say things like the earth is 5-6,000 years old and dinosaurs coexisted with humans.
I also really resonate with the idea that “God created us through evolution” and while I don’t think I’d have said it exactly the same way, I’ve equated God to essentially “the force of evolution” before. Or perhaps the other way round- “the force of evolution is divine.” Words are tricky in this realm lol. Generally speaking though I have always been someone standing in the middle of the creation vs evolution debate like “why not both??” I literally wrote in a humanities paper in college where we were supposed to tackle some version of this question: “why is it God spoke and created the universe versus the Big Bang? Why not, God spoke and then - bang - it happened?”
I think what I find most fascinating about this entire article and this comment thread both is that the theme is the same: the truth is somewhere in the middle. Peterson is wise about some things, but like all humans there are things he gets wrong or flattens. It’s not creation vs evolution really, it can be both. It’s not evolutionary mismatch vs “unmans are ridiculously plastic and adaptable,” it’s both. It’s not even “women should have jobs” vs “women should stay home and be closely involved with infant and child care. Its BOTH. It’s the messy middle. Which I think is perhaps where you (and definitely where I ) have ended up in the political sphere as well too, Elena. On some issues, more conservative than you ever expected to be, on some still very liberal. It’s a weird place to inhabit, at least in my life, but I’m glad to know there are others out there dealing in the same messy middle space.
Can it be because there are thousands of religions and thousands of gods, and thousands of versions of the world’s creation?
Maybe god did create the world through evolution, but it’s not necessarily my god or your god. It can just as well be Rod, so it seems strange to discuss it in the context of tangible science.
Remembered the Friends episode where Ross and Phoebe discuss revolution, and Ross claims there is evidence, there are fossils! And Phoebe says, wow I didn’t know that, but the real question is who put it there and why haha
Just throwing it out there that I was raised in a hippy dippy agnostic household, and this is how I have always viewed evolution too. More of a the divine light of the universe can be seen in nature and in the ways it has changed and evolved over time. It is beautiful and imperfect and perfect all at the same time. I've never understood why random evolution and divine guidance seem like opposites to so many people.
How do you explain the incredible violence of nature then? The world is beautiful, as you say, but also deeply unfair, violent, cruel, and random. I can't square it with the existence of an all-powerful God. I think we are too protected from the violence of nature in the modern world, but life used to involve SO much death and suffering. I was reading this Aka kid's story of his life, and he could name 52 people close to him that had died before he turned 18. So like, if God exists, then he's kind of an asshole, right? My former professor/mentor Robert Sapolsky, whose a hardcore atheist (raised Orthodox Jew, though), said something like "one day I woke up and said to myself, 'the universe is vast and empty and indifferent,' and then everything made sense." I feel that, hard.
I think it’s a common misconception that Christians can’t or don’t believe in evolution. Certainly, some fundamentalist churches teach a very literal interpretation of the creation story in genesis (all things created in 7 24 he periods). Catholics are free to believe in evolution as long as we believe the process was designed and directed by God who created from nothing and that the soul did not evolve (even if the body did) but was created by God. Also that we descended from a pair of human parents. I personally don’t know whether or not I believe in macro evolution of species but I think there’s plentiful evidence of micro evolution and adaptation everywhere. Science and faith are not al all contradictory in my view and many great scientists have been people of great faith.
Yes, as others have mentioned, anti-evolution creationism is more of a thing in certain evangelical, fundamentalist churches- which was in fact the type of church that I grew up in. Since then, I have discovered the wonderful, wider world of non-Protestant theology and I am now Eastern Orthodox.
But I think that religious fundamentalists and hardcore anti-religion materialists are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. They certainly have more in common than either side would kind to admit. Both are rigid, closed-minded, and fearful of giving an inch to their ideological “enemies.”
The only problem I see with evolution, from a Christian perspective, is when it is used to explain away every aspect of human existence, including altruism, transcendental experiences, etc. It’s reductive and boring and rings false, in my opinion.
BioLogos is a neat organization founded by Francis Collins that seeks to bridge the science/religion divide, if you're interested.
It's funny that you choose the words "explain away" in reference to science here, because in my mind, the whole point of science is to be honest about what we don't know. Harari is very articulate on this point in Sapiens. It was a radical shift in mindset for people to admit that we don't actually know anything about the world and to start from a place of zero assumptions. Obviously, that's not always how science works in practice, but it's the spirit of it. Religion, on the other hand, is anchored in "faith," which means it needs you to believe in things without proof, and that opens the door for scriptures, or those who interpret scriptures, to have too much power in saying what's "right" and "true." Although I guess you could make the same argument of "scientific experts" today. It's kind of an inescapable problem, but I guess I prefer things to be grounded in empiricism. Science certainly has answers for things like altruism.
I don't personally see how understanding the nature of the universe could ever be boring. Empiricism and reductionism are often complementary: biology reduces to chemistry, chemistry reduces to physics, and physics reduces to mathematics.
"I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees... All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.” — Richard Feynman
This piece also has me thinking about the relational harm of modernity. Like, evolutionary mismatch being proportional to the unchecked relational harm of "progress". Sometimes I feel like I'm waking up out of a trance when I actually dare to trace my phone back to its origins and reckon with the layer upon layer of extractive harm it required in order for it to exist. I don't believe it's possible to live harmlessly, but I believe modernity is designed to hide relational harm in service to ease, a certain kind of safety, and the pursuit of a frictionless existence. And also the arrogance of thinking that our species is equipped to "fix" anything here! Today's problems are yesterday's solutions and all that. It's the solutionism that gets to me most, across the whole political spectrum. As a mother, I long for the conditions that would make some kind of "motherhood-flow" possible. I want this way more than I want distinct solutions to distinct problems. But, I think creating the conditions for "motherhood-flow" is much less profitable than creating solutions for motherhood problems. Collective allegiance and devotion to "solutions" is the best thing any empire that fuels itself through extraction could hope for. I am inspired by any culture that doesn't organize itself around solving problems, but instead organizes itself around relational integrity (which will necessarily be imperfect). This is actually the opposite of Utopia! Wow, this is the first time I've posted here and I really rambled. I super appreciate your substack Elena!
My background is in Animal Behavioral Ecology, which by the sounds of it is a bit different from the Human Behavioural Ecology you describe here. In my world, behavioural ecology is the study of animal behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. Basically we go around looking for the weirdest shit animals do and asking ourselves "wtf is the evolutionary benefit of THAT!" And then we go do science to try and figure it out. I am particularly interested in the intersection between animal behaviour and conservation, where mismatch is a crucial concept, as humans have changed the environment at a much faster rate than other species have been able to adapt.
I appreciate that your work approaches questions of evolutionary mismatch in humans with the same curiosity that I would expect to see in the scientific world, and that you acknowledge your biases, where they exist. I also like that you try to validate the experiences of those you suspect are impacted by evoltuonary mismatch, and that you focus your critiques on the ways that systems let people down, rather than criticizing the life choices of individuals.
This is very different from the Jordan Peterson approach of responding to things he doesn't understand with indignation rather than curiosity, and getting confused when people aren't keen to engage in productive conversations with him when he starts by stating that their experiences are invalid. Yeah, it's unnecessarily unkind, but it's also boring and un-scientific.
Just a note on your statement: "I feel pretty comfortable saying that contemporary breastfeeding practices (lower initiation rates, lower frequency, shorter duration) are a case of evolutionary mismatch. Other hunter-gatherer universals like mother-infant co-sleeping have mixed support in modern empirical studies."
As to their evidence base these two exposures (breastfeeding and bedsharing) play in two different leagues as breastfeeding outcomes are easy to measure whereas bedsharing is a whole other story, the "results" are just very hard to measure and mostly controversial anyways (like "attachment security" etc. Also, the few comparative studies are plagued by severe methodological problems...
Your article is very well researched thank you! Herbert
What are some of the positions where you've changed your mind and what made that happen?
I know of feelnlike I've been going through some of a similar trip. Specially with things regarding economics and what kind of a role does the government have to play in our lives
Gosh so many. Like most good liberals, I used to think that policy was the answer to everything. I still think policy has a role to play, but there's no such thing as a perfect policy - everything involves trade-offs. And I now believe that culture is actually the more powerful tool for influencing human behavior in meaningful ways. Although of course policy and culture influence one another. And I am very gung-ho on the centrality of the family, and how everything else is in service of that, which is actually pretty right-coded in modern American culture, for reasons I still don't fully understand. There are some strong cultural family values on the Right that I feel are very healthy, and the Left would do well to pay attention to that.
Re: conservatives. I can't imagine a Burke, a De Maistre, a Leo Strauss, a Donoso Cortès, a Gongora a Goméz Dàvila, a Scruton, a Flannery O'Connor, a Chesterton, etc., being obsessed with evolutionary psychology, even though they might be curious about some alignment, since they believe in the immutability of human nature. Their assumption is the Fall and they seek to understand how there can be a modicum of virtue and flourishing in a world marred by Original Sin.
It's not that I wanted to make a 'true Scotsman' objection, but we need to make a distinction between what the generic self-described right-winger hoi polloi/MAGA with an X handle say and what conservatism actually is, not in the abstract but for the actual conservative conversation going on in the public and digital space. Same goes with liberalism/leftism. Without referring to Locke, Hobbes, Marx, Adorno, Rorty, Rawls, Butler, etc., just to make a few names, it's really hard to engage liberalism/leftism on its own terms...
Speaking as a Christian, conservative(ish), feminist(ish) woman, I find evolutionary mismatch intriguing because it validates my intuition (shared by many others, I gather) that there is something spiritually damaging about modernity, as we have strayed far from the lives we were created to live. As I believe God created us through evolution, my intuition and the concept of "evolutionary mismatch" are saying pretty much the same thing. I have also found motherhood to be the era of my life that has been the most rich with spiritual growth and that growth has only increased as I have embraced more of a hunter-gatherer mindset, as I understand it.
I really appreciate your non-ideological, thoughtful approach to such interesting questions!
This is fascinating to me. I have never heard anyone frame it as "God created us through evolution" but that feels like a religious perspective I could get on board with. As far back as high school I was being taught that it was the biologists versus the creationists, and I should pick the biology team if I was going to be a serious scientist. But in my experience interacting with people here, I've actually found that people who believe in Nature and in God believe in the same things and just call them by different names. There's a deep respect for the things that make us human. I am also the first to say that motherhood has been an enormous source of spiritual growth, though I guess it depends on what we mean by spiritual growth. It's a very hard thing to put into words.
This is a majority understanding in Catholic circles- evolution is the method or path of creation that God used.
Creationism is (in my experience and estimation) a largely Protestant phenomenon, based on Biblical literalism that stems from a sola scriptura and total depravity viewpoint (the Bible is the only authority, and everything of nature and humanity is so fallen it can’t speak of God). Catholics understand the universe via the sacramental worldview, aka all of nature speaks of God in its beauty and goodness and truth, which means sources outside of the Bible (and outside the Church) can bring us to better understand the world and God. There is a lot of God to be found in nature and biology!
That is very much an evangelical Protestant framing of the creation/evolution debate. I have an MA in catholic theology and can tell you that the Church has no official teaching on whether God used evolution or some other means to create life, including humans. Catholics are free to look at the scientific evidence and come to their own conclusions on the *how* of creation. That said, the priest (whose name escapes me atm) who first theorized the Big Bang was Catholic and most of the Catholics I know have zero problems looking at the evidence and accepting that it points to some
Sort of evolutionary process being involved in life coming to be on this planet. Young Earth Creationists who read the book of Genesis as if it were a science text are the ones who say things like the earth is 5-6,000 years old and dinosaurs coexisted with humans.
I also really resonate with the idea that “God created us through evolution” and while I don’t think I’d have said it exactly the same way, I’ve equated God to essentially “the force of evolution” before. Or perhaps the other way round- “the force of evolution is divine.” Words are tricky in this realm lol. Generally speaking though I have always been someone standing in the middle of the creation vs evolution debate like “why not both??” I literally wrote in a humanities paper in college where we were supposed to tackle some version of this question: “why is it God spoke and created the universe versus the Big Bang? Why not, God spoke and then - bang - it happened?”
I think what I find most fascinating about this entire article and this comment thread both is that the theme is the same: the truth is somewhere in the middle. Peterson is wise about some things, but like all humans there are things he gets wrong or flattens. It’s not creation vs evolution really, it can be both. It’s not evolutionary mismatch vs “unmans are ridiculously plastic and adaptable,” it’s both. It’s not even “women should have jobs” vs “women should stay home and be closely involved with infant and child care. Its BOTH. It’s the messy middle. Which I think is perhaps where you (and definitely where I ) have ended up in the political sphere as well too, Elena. On some issues, more conservative than you ever expected to be, on some still very liberal. It’s a weird place to inhabit, at least in my life, but I’m glad to know there are others out there dealing in the same messy middle space.
The messy middle is almost always where we find the truth, IMO!
Can it be because there are thousands of religions and thousands of gods, and thousands of versions of the world’s creation?
Maybe god did create the world through evolution, but it’s not necessarily my god or your god. It can just as well be Rod, so it seems strange to discuss it in the context of tangible science.
Remembered the Friends episode where Ross and Phoebe discuss revolution, and Ross claims there is evidence, there are fossils! And Phoebe says, wow I didn’t know that, but the real question is who put it there and why haha
Just throwing it out there that I was raised in a hippy dippy agnostic household, and this is how I have always viewed evolution too. More of a the divine light of the universe can be seen in nature and in the ways it has changed and evolved over time. It is beautiful and imperfect and perfect all at the same time. I've never understood why random evolution and divine guidance seem like opposites to so many people.
How do you explain the incredible violence of nature then? The world is beautiful, as you say, but also deeply unfair, violent, cruel, and random. I can't square it with the existence of an all-powerful God. I think we are too protected from the violence of nature in the modern world, but life used to involve SO much death and suffering. I was reading this Aka kid's story of his life, and he could name 52 people close to him that had died before he turned 18. So like, if God exists, then he's kind of an asshole, right? My former professor/mentor Robert Sapolsky, whose a hardcore atheist (raised Orthodox Jew, though), said something like "one day I woke up and said to myself, 'the universe is vast and empty and indifferent,' and then everything made sense." I feel that, hard.
I think it’s a common misconception that Christians can’t or don’t believe in evolution. Certainly, some fundamentalist churches teach a very literal interpretation of the creation story in genesis (all things created in 7 24 he periods). Catholics are free to believe in evolution as long as we believe the process was designed and directed by God who created from nothing and that the soul did not evolve (even if the body did) but was created by God. Also that we descended from a pair of human parents. I personally don’t know whether or not I believe in macro evolution of species but I think there’s plentiful evidence of micro evolution and adaptation everywhere. Science and faith are not al all contradictory in my view and many great scientists have been people of great faith.
Yes, as others have mentioned, anti-evolution creationism is more of a thing in certain evangelical, fundamentalist churches- which was in fact the type of church that I grew up in. Since then, I have discovered the wonderful, wider world of non-Protestant theology and I am now Eastern Orthodox.
But I think that religious fundamentalists and hardcore anti-religion materialists are, in many ways, two sides of the same coin. They certainly have more in common than either side would kind to admit. Both are rigid, closed-minded, and fearful of giving an inch to their ideological “enemies.”
The only problem I see with evolution, from a Christian perspective, is when it is used to explain away every aspect of human existence, including altruism, transcendental experiences, etc. It’s reductive and boring and rings false, in my opinion.
BioLogos is a neat organization founded by Francis Collins that seeks to bridge the science/religion divide, if you're interested.
It's funny that you choose the words "explain away" in reference to science here, because in my mind, the whole point of science is to be honest about what we don't know. Harari is very articulate on this point in Sapiens. It was a radical shift in mindset for people to admit that we don't actually know anything about the world and to start from a place of zero assumptions. Obviously, that's not always how science works in practice, but it's the spirit of it. Religion, on the other hand, is anchored in "faith," which means it needs you to believe in things without proof, and that opens the door for scriptures, or those who interpret scriptures, to have too much power in saying what's "right" and "true." Although I guess you could make the same argument of "scientific experts" today. It's kind of an inescapable problem, but I guess I prefer things to be grounded in empiricism. Science certainly has answers for things like altruism.
I don't personally see how understanding the nature of the universe could ever be boring. Empiricism and reductionism are often complementary: biology reduces to chemistry, chemistry reduces to physics, and physics reduces to mathematics.
"I can appreciate the beauty of a flower. At the same time, I see much more about the flower than he sees... All kinds of interesting questions which the science knowledge only adds to the excitement, the mystery and the awe of a flower. It only adds. I don't understand how it subtracts.” — Richard Feynman
This piece also has me thinking about the relational harm of modernity. Like, evolutionary mismatch being proportional to the unchecked relational harm of "progress". Sometimes I feel like I'm waking up out of a trance when I actually dare to trace my phone back to its origins and reckon with the layer upon layer of extractive harm it required in order for it to exist. I don't believe it's possible to live harmlessly, but I believe modernity is designed to hide relational harm in service to ease, a certain kind of safety, and the pursuit of a frictionless existence. And also the arrogance of thinking that our species is equipped to "fix" anything here! Today's problems are yesterday's solutions and all that. It's the solutionism that gets to me most, across the whole political spectrum. As a mother, I long for the conditions that would make some kind of "motherhood-flow" possible. I want this way more than I want distinct solutions to distinct problems. But, I think creating the conditions for "motherhood-flow" is much less profitable than creating solutions for motherhood problems. Collective allegiance and devotion to "solutions" is the best thing any empire that fuels itself through extraction could hope for. I am inspired by any culture that doesn't organize itself around solving problems, but instead organizes itself around relational integrity (which will necessarily be imperfect). This is actually the opposite of Utopia! Wow, this is the first time I've posted here and I really rambled. I super appreciate your substack Elena!
Interesting! But isn't so much of human relational integrity in hunter-gatherer societies actually about solving practical problems?
My background is in Animal Behavioral Ecology, which by the sounds of it is a bit different from the Human Behavioural Ecology you describe here. In my world, behavioural ecology is the study of animal behaviour from an evolutionary perspective. Basically we go around looking for the weirdest shit animals do and asking ourselves "wtf is the evolutionary benefit of THAT!" And then we go do science to try and figure it out. I am particularly interested in the intersection between animal behaviour and conservation, where mismatch is a crucial concept, as humans have changed the environment at a much faster rate than other species have been able to adapt.
I appreciate that your work approaches questions of evolutionary mismatch in humans with the same curiosity that I would expect to see in the scientific world, and that you acknowledge your biases, where they exist. I also like that you try to validate the experiences of those you suspect are impacted by evoltuonary mismatch, and that you focus your critiques on the ways that systems let people down, rather than criticizing the life choices of individuals.
This is very different from the Jordan Peterson approach of responding to things he doesn't understand with indignation rather than curiosity, and getting confused when people aren't keen to engage in productive conversations with him when he starts by stating that their experiences are invalid. Yeah, it's unnecessarily unkind, but it's also boring and un-scientific.
Just a note on your statement: "I feel pretty comfortable saying that contemporary breastfeeding practices (lower initiation rates, lower frequency, shorter duration) are a case of evolutionary mismatch. Other hunter-gatherer universals like mother-infant co-sleeping have mixed support in modern empirical studies."
As to their evidence base these two exposures (breastfeeding and bedsharing) play in two different leagues as breastfeeding outcomes are easy to measure whereas bedsharing is a whole other story, the "results" are just very hard to measure and mostly controversial anyways (like "attachment security" etc. Also, the few comparative studies are plagued by severe methodological problems...
Your article is very well researched thank you! Herbert
What are some of the positions where you've changed your mind and what made that happen?
I know of feelnlike I've been going through some of a similar trip. Specially with things regarding economics and what kind of a role does the government have to play in our lives
Gosh so many. Like most good liberals, I used to think that policy was the answer to everything. I still think policy has a role to play, but there's no such thing as a perfect policy - everything involves trade-offs. And I now believe that culture is actually the more powerful tool for influencing human behavior in meaningful ways. Although of course policy and culture influence one another. And I am very gung-ho on the centrality of the family, and how everything else is in service of that, which is actually pretty right-coded in modern American culture, for reasons I still don't fully understand. There are some strong cultural family values on the Right that I feel are very healthy, and the Left would do well to pay attention to that.
Re: conservatives. I can't imagine a Burke, a De Maistre, a Leo Strauss, a Donoso Cortès, a Gongora a Goméz Dàvila, a Scruton, a Flannery O'Connor, a Chesterton, etc., being obsessed with evolutionary psychology, even though they might be curious about some alignment, since they believe in the immutability of human nature. Their assumption is the Fall and they seek to understand how there can be a modicum of virtue and flourishing in a world marred by Original Sin.
I don't know much about these thinkers.
It's not that I wanted to make a 'true Scotsman' objection, but we need to make a distinction between what the generic self-described right-winger hoi polloi/MAGA with an X handle say and what conservatism actually is, not in the abstract but for the actual conservative conversation going on in the public and digital space. Same goes with liberalism/leftism. Without referring to Locke, Hobbes, Marx, Adorno, Rorty, Rawls, Butler, etc., just to make a few names, it's really hard to engage liberalism/leftism on its own terms...