"Evil" - the natural outcome of innate brain defects

While assorted religious crazies and insane people foment their fake umbrage at "evil" (some so insane that they go so far as to invent a personality to embody it, e.g. "Satan") more level -headed and rational beings have always been aware it's a con. "Evil" exists, but not as an infinite negative absolute, or personified in an entity, but rather as a dynamic of our own brain.

What people refer to as “evil” is easily explainable in terms of brain evolution. Thus, Homo Sapiens is fundamentally an animal species with a host of animal/primitive instincts residing in its ancient brain or paleocortex.

Meanwhile, the paleocortex sits evolutionarily beneath the more evolved mesocortex and neocortex, the latter of which crafts concepts and language. One clever person has compared this tri-partite brain structure to a car design welding a Lamborghini to a Model T Ford chassis, with a 1957 Chevy engine to power the Lamborghini. If an automotive engineer can conceive of such a hybrid beast, I'd be interested to know exactly how he thinks it would run.

Given the preceding brain structural defect, there is much evidence that the aggregate of human behavior will get progressively worse as the complexity inherent in technological and globalized societies increases, but brain evolution is unable to keep pace with it. Basically, we are a species with the capability of making nuclear weapons and intercontinental missiles – but with Cro-Magnon brains – and a swatch of reptilian tendencies.

Indeed, the mixed brain design, in terms of adaptability to technological society, is already theorized as one major cause of depression and mental illness in such societies (e.g. The Noonday Demon, Chapter 11, ‘Evolution’, p 401)

The behavior resulting from this hybrid brain is bound to be morally mixed, reflecting the fact that we literally have three “brains” contending for emergence in one cranium. Behavior will therefore range from the most selfless acts (not to mention creative masterpieces) to savagery, carnal lust run amuck and addictions that paralyze purpose.

The mistake of the religionist is to associate the first mode of behavior with being “human” and not the latter. In effect, disowning most of the possible behaviors of which humans are capable.- and hence nine tenths of what makes us what we are. Worse, not only disowning these behaviors – but ascribing them to some antagonistic dark or negative force (“Satan”) thereby making them into a religious abstraction.

The neocortex then goes into over-drive, propelled by its ability to craft words for which no correspondents may exist in reality. Suddenly, our “souls” are at risk of being “lost” to “Satan” who will then fry us in “Hell”. In effect, the religionist’s higher brain centers divide reality into forces of darkness and light, just like the ancient Manicheans.

As the divide grows and persists, certain behaviorally idealistic expectations come to the fore, and a mass of negative or primitive actions is relegated to “evil”. Humans tuned in to this Zeitgeist, which is soon circulated everywhere, being to suppress all behaviors that they regard as defective or “sinful”. They don’t realize or appreciate that humans are risen apes, and not “fallen angels”.

Are we all “sinners” as assorted fundamentalist crazies and zealots claim? No, we’re an animal species saddled with a tri-partite brain whose higher centers often become self aware of the gulf between the base, atavistic and primitive behaviors (emanating from the reptilian brain) and the ideal, non-atavistic behavior conceived by the neocortex. The neocortical language centers then craft the term “sin” to depict the gulf between one and the other.

In this context, the concept of “sin” makes eminent sense. Sin emerges as the label placed on specific brands and forms of “evil”. In reality, “Sin” itself is predicated on an exaggerated importance of humans in the universe. Thus, it elevates (albeit in a perverse way) the importance of humans in an otherwise meaningless cosmos. With “sin” the overly self-important and morally smug, self-righteous human has at least the potential of offending his deity – thereby getting its attention – as opposed to being relegated to the status of a cosmic “roach” (which any advanced alien sentience would regard us). "Sin" is thus an attention getter to a Big Cosmic Daddy.

“Sin” then is localized and reactive behavior at the personal, individual level. “Sin” impinges on and affects the deity that so many believe in. Take away the deity, and sin loses its allure and quickly becomes redundant. How can there be “sin” if there is no deity to offend or to notice “sin”? To tote up all the little “black marks” in its “book of future judgment”.

“The Devil” or “Satan” is simply the projection of the most primitive brain imperatives onto the external world. And yes, this imperative (which I will soon get to in more detail) is capable of mass murder as well as genocides. A supernatural Satan need not be invoked here, only the ancient brain residue of reptiles – acting collectively – aided and abetted by a newly perverted neocortex, which now does the reptile brain’s bidding, as opposed to attempting to halt it.

In fundies' parlance, this projected entity is indeed “like a lion seeking someone to devour”. Think of the T-Rex and its insatiable appetite for flesh. Think of components and aspects of the T-Rex brain in each of us. Lying in wait for the right trigger to set it off – like in the Virginia Tech massacre. Now, project that horror and its instincts to tear, rip and kill anything different or vulnerable outside yourself. Voila! We have "the Devil” incarnate. Only really a psychological embolism adorned in reptile tendencies we have within us. So alien and terrifying we have to project it outside to a nameless “Devil”. Too horrific to take ownership of!

Interestingly, some authors turn these concepts back on themselves and arrive at mind-boggling conclusions. The authors of the book ‘Mean Genes” for example, make the case that genetic imperatives often drive the most fundamental (epigenetic) morality. The hybrid brain in this sense is merely the facilitator of the genes’ imperatives. Perhaps there is a method behind the “madness” of the brain’s disjunctive function: To aid and abet a primal, epigenetic morality.

On the local level, the genetic imperative means I protect my family first in the event of disaster. The welfare of others is secondary, given limitations of time and resources. It is my family’s genes that must prevail. To the extent they do, epigenetic morality is satisfied. A certain pool of genes has increased its survival value.

In the larger societal sense and deformed to an extreme, the epigenetic imperative leads to horrors such as the Holocaust, where Jews were depicted as inimical genetic “aliens” to “true Germans” and the German Fatherland. (In a trip to Germany in 1985, I still found a number of WWII era Germans who accepted this.) And hence could be dispensed with as serious threats, once their own humanity was removed. Likewise, the genetic imperative running amuck explains the Rwandan genocide, where Tutsis could be dispensed with as the “genetic aliens” to the REAL Rwandans, the Hutus. (In this case, Hutu talk radio played a key role in spreading the memes for the epigenetic morality- another reason why we may be well advised to bring back the "Fairness Doctrine" in this country - to allow opposing viewpoints to be aired in the same time spots as the most off the wall talk radio screeds.)

Examining these genocides at the detached, objective level one cannot but help notice the analogies with ant (or bee) species that invade the habitats (e.g. hives) of others, kill them, make off with their queens and seize their resources.

In this sense, the epigenetic morality and imperative emerges as the real “god” articulated in the Bible, while the perfecto, “goody two shoes” posturer (invented later by the clever, angelic leaning neocortex) is the fake. This was the contention of author Lloyd Graham in the last chapter of his book, ‘Deceptions and Myths of the Bible’, 1979.

For example, as Graham observes (p. 315):

“Satan is matter and its energies and the (Temptation of Jesus in the desert) story is but a mythologist’s way of telling us…that in the inanimate world matter and energy dominate….The only consciousness here is the epigenetic and this is – as yet- wholly incapable of controlling violent forces. This explains why our imaginary God of love and mercy allows these forces to destroy us”.


Graham’s depiction of the material and epigenetic god is one embedded in carnal lusts, revenge and avarice – so how can humanity be any different?

As Graham earlier notes (p. 272):

“Man owes God nothing, not even thanks. Whatever is, exists because of necessity and not divine sufferance. And whatever exists suffers because of nondivine Causation. Our world is full of suffering, tragedy, disease, disaster, pain; we demand a better reason than religion has to offer.”

Perhaps for this reason, Graham insists that it is the de facto “creations” – humankind- who are the genuine authors of workable morality (“dynamic justness” not moral justice) not the claimed “Maker”.

Religious scholar Elaine Pagels makes much the same point in her book, ‘The Gnostic Gospels’ pointing out that the Gnostics regarded the biblical deity as a degenerate sub- being which they called “demiurgos”.

Of course, the Christian reading this will no doubt chime in: “What about free will? Can we not resist the epigenetic imperative?”

Maybe, but it’s by no means clear that any such entity as “free will” exists other than in limited domains. (E.g. I have the “free will” to choose a vegetarian diet over an all mear diet)

Even Einstein, writing in his marvelous book ‘Ideas and Opinions’ was suspicious that humans were genuinely free agents. As he noted:

“The man who is thoroughly convinced of universal causation …..has no use for the religion of fear and equally little for social or moral religion. A God who rewards and punishes is inconceivable to him for the simple reason that a man’s actions are determined by necessity – internal and external- so that he cannot be responsible….any more than an inanimate object is responsible for the motion it undergoes"

The beauty of atheism is that it dispenses with both demiurgos (the petulant genetic “evil god”) and “Satan”, and atheists emerge as grown up enough to assume responsibility for their own actions, rather than whining that “the devil made me do it” or worse, projecting Satanic motives and attributes onto fellow beings. (We know where that sort of demonization leads!) We know the real “devil” inheres in those untamed genetic imperatives, and we also know that to the extent we are self-aware – we can often defeat the more parochial and self-serving tendencies and sometimes aspire to greatness. Leap-frogging and circumventing our human limits.

Thereby we can avoid blaming every major human tragedy and back step on some imagined supernatural “dark force” permeating existence and just waiting to catch us unawares.

There is a dark “force” in the cosmos and we call it “dark energy”. But it is something that can be discerned by physics and has no supernatural attributes. Intelligent humans would do best to invest their time investigating the nature and mystery of dark energy, rather than squandering time on silly phantasmagorias and fabrications of the mind like “Satan” and “evil”.