What the Mind Can't Hold
The Bicameral Mind and A Theo-Evolutionary View of Human Nature
As I research and think about my book on the nature of beliefs, my views of what it means to be human have changed, and one could say, with pun intended, evolved into something that can be seen as not only more positivistic, but one matching the natural sciences. However, this is not rooted in modern thought but goes back to my study of Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas, albeit not in a rigid fundamentalist way that many Thomists might interpret them. However, what is really at stake is that any kind of anthropology dictates how we govern and treat ourselves and others. In other words, anthropology affects politics and ethics, and this is no small thing. Let me explain.
Sin Nature is Not Natural
I would argue that modern Christian anthropology, in the Western world, has been dominated by a view of sin nature, where we are seen as deeply flawed individuals who could only be redeemed by God’s saving work. The extent of the sin is dependent on which denomination and theological framework one chooses. But generally, we have inherited sin from birth and that only Christ’s death could bring justification to the sinner. On one extreme we have the Reformed tradition that sees people as having very little choice but to sin and therefore only God giving the grace (sola fides) to allow the person to accept Christ in the first place. The other side is perhaps provides more free will in Ana-baptist traditions for people to become believers and be baptized on their own conscious decision. But along this spectrum the problem is that sin is dealt with through some kind of justification of the guilt of the believer. This is where the problem lies, not in the theories alone, but the practicalities. If original sin is taken away through either baptism, sacraments, or confession, then why is there sin still present?
Has the age of the church, Christendom, or Christianity relieved humanity of either the “wages of sin” or the inheritance of sin? I would answer no. Even though we have slowly progressed as a species in the two millennia since the founding of Christianity, we have much racism, cruelty, and violence to be dealt with. Mega corporations have replaced empires, and dictators have replaced emperors for control. We continue to justify the sinner and neglect the “sinned-against” in the ways in which governments, institutions, and communities continue to harm others, the land, and other animals. This is because we see ourselves as something separate in this way. Sin is this inherent “separation”; it demarcates the difference that is not real. We talk about the “sinner” and the sin as if it can be something that can be analyzed in a lab and studied, but these are theological constructs just as race is a social construct.
The Real Sin
The language of sin has secular roots. My dissertation was over the Eastern Fathers’ view of sin and modern Minjung (Korean) theological interpretations of healing. That is to say, I know sin. The word in both Hebrew and Greek simply means to “miss the mark” and used in sling and archery references. It was said that a Hebrew sling thrower could hit the hair on an enemies’ beard without “missing the mark.” This word was then applied to “missing the mark” of what God intended for people. So to sin was simply to do what God did not want for a person. But then this became a religious classification that the cult of Israel used in their ceremonies. So there was the “holy” and the “profane,” the “sacred” and the “sinful.”
The prophetic religious tradition tried to course correct by telling the priests and Kings, those in power, that sin was really neglecting the poor and treating orphans and widows badly. The idea of welfare or well-fair was rooted in the word “shalom” or “peace.” This was the idea of the “welfare of the city” as Jeremiah 29:7 puts it. It was not a liberal view of government handouts created by Reagan, but something deeply Judeo-Christian. This was the same prophetic tradition that Jesus continued to draw from as he criticized the view of sin in his day.
Jesus saw the Pharisees and Sadducees of his time demarcating the so called “sinner” from the sacredness of their society. This was how they formed Jewish communities, to take a Girardian view of scapegoating. There were those upstanding members, the religious people who could go to temple and synagogue and there were the “sinners” who did not. But these were those who really held the society together: the sex workers, the shepherds, the butchers, the tanners and leather workers, all those who were ritually impure. So these were the “sinners” that are often referred to in the Gospels. When we get to Paul’s letters and his talk of sin and sin nature, that’s another story altogether. Paul was dealing with the sins of those within the church, the greed, avarice, gluttony, and whatever goes with being in community together. He was not explicitly writing down a systematic theology of human nature in his letters, even though he might have possessed one. But later theologians have helped him do so. Nevertheless, Paul was one of many theologians writing what Christians call the New Testament.
Needless to say, too few in the modern Church and modern theologians have spent time helping Christians understand the differences. We simply lumped sin up into one thing and said: “People are sinners. People need Jesus. Done. And also, go to church.” That’s really the sad state of Christian anthropology in a nutshell. People then either struggle with sin, which really means their vices, in the church or end up leaving the church and get help through therapy or “self-help.” This is the real sin. Too often churches have little to offer besides religious education. Many churches have failed to become a place of healing and restoration for many people and rather places of continued hurt and the perpetuation of sin.
Theo-Evolutionary Imagination
What if we were more than flawed people? What if we were people with desires for good, attempting to reach their desires, but often not understanding how to because of a combination of understanding, practice, and a view of themselves that allows them to flourish. We as humans have a progression, albeit not always upward, toward human brain integration. This is the nature of our bicameral brain and mind. We are not only governed by “reptilian” and prefrontal cortex, but also the left and right regions of the brain. In Julian Jaynes’s The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, he proposes self-awareness is not an ancient evolutionary trait, but is a “recent cultural construct born out of language and metaphor.”
Before roughly 3000 years ago, when people told stories, such as the Illiad there was no reflexive “I.” Stories were driven by plot elements and not by interiority of characters. This is because the right hemisphere of the brain was what dictated much of one’s actions. It was like one’s “god” and spoke to people, helping them make choices and handled stresses. The left side of the brain took care of language and communication. So one side helped to govern the other directly. The right brain commanded. The left brain executed, through language and information.
However, because of societal evolution, the right side was projected outward, creating religion and the “gods” while the left side was directed inward toward introspection. So the human moved from certainty, knowing exactly what to do because of the dictates of the right brain, toward faith. In many ways, this was to adapt to the advancement of civilization from nomadic tribes with individuals all making their own decisions for their own interest to tens of thousands together and the need for external governance. So religion and empires, priests and kings became what the right brain once was for the person. Faith replaced certainty. Theology took care of an immediate decision governed by what the right brain said to the left.
But what did we lose in return for this new brain? We lost a sense of knowing what we needed. In our instinct to survive, we lost the ability to come in contact with a deeper consciousness. Those who talked to themselves, have hallucinations, and terrorized by “voices” were classified as schizophrenic. But then, those who reject religion also come back to the ideas of meditation and hearing the “still small voice” to guide their actions rather than religious institutions and governments. The real problem is not that we now have a subjective “I” (We don’t need to go back to hearing the gods in our heads), but that we don’t know how to fully integrate the dictates of “external authority” and our inner commanders. Those who retreat back to the right ruling hemisphere for advice are seen as the prophet, maverick, lone-ranger cowboys and those who do not are given to authoritarianism, religious extremism, and corporate control. This is because the later wants the immediate certainty of the old right brain, but also the “faith” these institutions provide.
AI and the Bicameral Mind
It has been observed that AI is like that left hemisphere that receives the commands and prompts from the right side of the brain. Whereas AI is largely a passive tool, it requires prompting from a user to do something. Analogously, we act as the right brain (command) and the Large Language Models (LLM) acts as the left brain (executive/slave). There is no internal subjective reflection because the AI does not have a closed loop between the two sides.
The reason why humans have the ability to reflect is because of the inherent friction between the left and right sides of our brains. Because we subverted the function of the left brain, humans came to think of ourselves in this subjective term. We reflect, wonder, pause, consider before we act. This is the nature of consciousness. The AI simply acts. Have you ever seen an AI work? It does something even if you are typing in a reflective question. It cannot not do this unless you explicitly tell it to. This ability to not have a closed loop is the reason why, no matter how good AI gets, it cannot become sentient.
Back to Human Nature - Why a Theology?
Well, the irony is that in producing a “god” out there, there is an explanation for the creation of religion and even Christianity, but there is still need for some kind of divine source. The atheist can say that religion was a projection of one hemisphere of the mind, but also has to still live with that hemisphere. There is no way that they can escape that primitive need for certainty. It’s an itch they cannot scratch as any attempts to do so fall back into totalitarian politics or reliance on science or even AI for certainty.
This is where the reflective “I” is useful. We are no longer chased by sabertooth tigers and have to make stressful, life or death decisions, although many of us, especially with children feel like we do so everyday. Rather we have space to operate in the both/and, that is, the integration of both our bicameral minds and our old/new brain. We can learn to imagine ourselves as people who both can access good decision making parts of ourselves and live in community with other, not having to rely on the dictates of a set religion, societal standard, or political view. Remember, these are all projections of the right brain. Rather, we can bring them together as a whole, because we all are whole people. Separateness, like the language of sin/grace or black/white, are only constructs in our minds. We can construct a new language and therefore a new way of living and being around them.
Lastly, because we only know in part what our mind experiences of the world; our lives are not entirely limited to what the brain can filter. In other words, the irony in understanding that religious beliefs are projections of a certain hemisphere of the brain, does not nullify the fact that people can inspire others to live in loving and divine ways. It also does not take away the experiences of the divine. Does it really matter whether these sources come from inside ourselves or outside ourselves? When I eat strawberry ice cream, is the “flavor” strictly within the strawberry itself, or am I too receiving what to me is “strawberry”? There is the strawberry and there is the experience of the strawberry. The same goes for all my other senses (I speak about this in my book).
This can be said about religious experiences. Knowing the origin of religious belief does not lose the mystery that the mind also craves. We were not only created for survival and certainty. Our brains evolved because it needed more. There is reality and there is what our minds designates as a reality.
Knowing the difference will make a world of difference. Moreover, we can help people to see that their desires are grounded in a need to both have a faith that is healthy and have some certainty over their lives. For religion to work, it cannot continue to be a place where dictates are given ex cathedra because the populace demands it, but where pastors and priests can help people learn about themselves and fully integrate as human persons. This means helping people live in communities peacefully and trust that their desires, hopes, and aspirations have good intent. And to show them that their beliefs need a foundation of hope, peace, and healing, rather than despair, retribution, and wrath, which bring about continual harm to others.
If we see our lives as Thomas Hobbes describes: “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,” then we might need a government just as nasty and a religion just as brutish to control us. However, if we are honest and discover how we have been formed, created, and growing toward something more, we might just become the people we want to be.
Please share if you are able. Please leave a comment, since this helps the algorithm. Thank you for your kindness and support. - Phuc