The Miracle of Life
Jeremy GayedA little less than two years ago, I watched my wife give birth to our daughter Jane. I won’t go into detail; suffice it to say that the process of labor and delivery is in turns anxiety-ridden, horrifying, disgusting, and, ultimately, mind-boggling. The greatest miracle in the “miracle of life” is that any survivors remain when it’s all said and done.
Our next child is due to be born tommorow, and, if she’s anything like her father, tommorow she will arrive. I’m once again steeling myself for the gory endeavor, preparing to witness the human bodies of my wife and new child do things that they ought not be able to do.
During the course of these mental preparations, I’ve been faced by the plain oddity of human feelings. Take, for example, my distaste for the horrors of the delivery room. Why do I feel that way? What is the cause? What, if anything, is the purpose?
I can only think of two sets of presumption from which to start considering these questions (if anyone can think of a third, I’d be grateful to hear it). From a secular perspective, my horror must have a biological cause. There can’t be a purpose in my feelings in and of themselves, because the absence of god amounts de facto to the absence of purpose, even a purpose as basic as biolgical survival. There can only be causation. What, then, is the cause? Does my horror, if shared by men generally, create some advantage for the human species, or would it have created such advantage in the past? If so, what advantage?
Evolutionary theory (which has a much firmer footing in science than any other attempted history of life on earth, particularly the spotty efforts of “creation science”) can speculate that my horror might be the result of a genetically programmed reaction that persisted because it served the good of the species, but I have trouble deducing what that good was (perhaps to reduce cannabilism or infanticide by discouraging men from attending birth?), and, more importantly, I have trouble understanding how such a reaction could be perpetuated genetically. What part of dreading the goriness of labor specifically (not gore in general; it’s an unusual year if I don’t shoot, gut, and eat a large mammal or three) would result in greater reproductive success for its sufferer? How can a proclivity for a particular emotional reaction to a particular sort of event be passed on genetically such that an evolutionary explanation is even coherent?
The other starting place is religious. From a perspective that accounts for God, and particularly for man as a creation rather than a genetic accident, my feelings might have purpose as well as causation. It may be that my horror is caused in the evolutionary sense described above; but from a religious perspective it is also possible that my feeling exists for a reason other than ensuring reproductive success. It could be, for example, that part of loving my wife includes horror at witnessing her in pain–not because that feeling results in greater reproductive success (although it might), but rather because that feeling serves the larger purpose of feeling love as part of understanding God. Oddly, my feelings themselves practically insist that they transcend the mere causation that might explain such things as having two legs rather than four, or hair rather than fur, and, from the importance most people place on their feelings, most people appear to share the same unspoken assumption.
I’m not laying this out as a iron-clad apologia. I am saying that we humans tend to ignore, take for granted, or minimize the many unexplained oddities that attend being human. We become so familar with these curiosities that we stop seeing exactly how curious they are. Feelings–and the strange way in which feelings are universal across cultures and simultaneously highly individualized–are one of the strangest. Maybe our feelings are merely caused and we have not the wit to understand the web of biological history that caused them. But if our feelings themselves are any guide, they have purpose rather than mere being. At the very least, if God is part of the equation, our feelings are much more readily explicable, and more certainly imporant. If that’s the case, we owe it to ourselves, and to the Creator of purpose, to discover what the purpose is and how best to fulfill it.
October 9th, 2007 at 9:32 am
While I agree with your conclusion that our tendency to ascribe meaning to our feelings is only truly meaningful if a god exists, I think you’ve left a gaping whole in your reasoning vis-a-vi evolutionary theory. To wit: it’s not just biological organisms or even just biological populations that evolve — societies also evolve.
David Sloan Wilson’s “Darwin’s Cathedral” is a truly excellent explanation (from an atheist’s point of view, yes, but it’s an intelligent, measured point of view, not a putrid screed like Dawkins’ “The God Delusion”) of this.
You may feel revulsion at Maija giving birth in large part because you have been conditioned to feel that. This kind of conditioning could be widely present in societies around the world because it somehow conferred survival advantages on those societies.
This is also a big part of Wilson’s answer to the Christian argument that the prevalence of a common morality argues for a common moral law on which they are based. You don’t see societies where stealing or killing are approved of, for instance, because those kinds of societies don’t succeed nearly as well as societies where such behavior is proscribed, and the “common moral law” societies thrive and other societies go extinct. Not an ironclad case, but certainly a more three-dimensional and compelling case than the purely genetic evolutionary theory you present.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:46 am
First: congratulations on the baby!
Second: I think that horror at witnessing birth can serve an evolutionary purpose. We as humans tend to have an evolutionarily supported horror and disgust at the sight of any bleeding wound or major physical trauma - it helps us avoid getting such wounds and it also discourages us from wasting resources on the doomed. Horror surrounding the birthing process would be a subset of that horror at the sight of any physical trauma. Particular horror in the face of birth would also serve to keep men away from the birthing room. That would, in turn, reduce their guilt if their wife died or suffered a lot, which would make it easier for them to continue having (reproductive) sex with her (or her successor) frequently, which would in turn result in the man being more likely to have more children after the first one. Thus, a feeling which kept men away from women who were giving birth might be selected for. (I think that it is only recently, since childbirth stopped being so deadly, that any cultures have included fathers in the room where women are giving birth. Quite frankly, I think it would be extremely foolish to allow them there if the death rate were still 20%. What man, on actually seeing his wife die in childbirth, wouldn’t feel horrible guilt at the idea of so risking another woman? He might feel guilty regardless - but it would be worse, and the horror more visceral, if he actually witnessed it.)
Just because something serves an evolutionary purpose, however, does not mean that it doesn’t also serve a larger spiritual purpose. Whether or not you believe that evolution created life, natural selection indisputably occurs today. If you believe in an omnipotent, creator God and accept that natural selection occurs, then it makes sense accept that God laid down the laws for natural selection just as much as moral laws. It therefore seems likely that, if God exists, the process of natural selection would be skewed to encourage, rather than eliminate, spiritual virtues like love and empathy. In the case of a man’s feelings on witnessing childbirth, I would think that the biological web would be secondary to the spiritual purpose behind them.
October 16th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
I really can’t see the evolutionary argument for a man’s feelings of repulsion at his wife giving birth. I think there would be a significant increase in survival rate if someone were with the woman as opposed to giving birth alone. These feelings would probably have developed before a sophisticated society were formed in which one could expect the presence of some sort of doctor. Repulsion at blood and injury in general is not a good survival mechanism. If there is any chance of help for the injured party, it’s the unaffected neighbors who will be of use, not the ones who run away in terror and revulsion. Evolutionary explanations are not just about thinking of a plausible way for a trait to effect survivability and reproduction but about finding the most effective result of a trait. If a trait has minor benefits but major hindrances, then the trait will not be selected. The bad effects of repulsive feelings toward child birth seem to outweigh the good effects. Of course, to know this for sure, you’d need a mathematical metric with which to measure a trait’s effects on reproduction, which any biological evolutionary theory that I have seen lacks (except of course for simple mathematical models).
October 17th, 2007 at 8:39 am
Excellent point, John. Reminds me of the joke about the biologist’s calculator.
October 18th, 2007 at 8:56 am
Obviously, just finding an explanation doesn’t make it true. But look at the way cultures on this planet operate. Cultural patterns that are common across boundaries of geography and time are likely to reflect biological behavioural traits that have actually been selected for. Women don’t give birth alone in indigenous societies - typically, they give birth with other women helping them. There’s been a lot of research about the way women in different societies, past and present, give birth, and it almost always involves female relatives, midwives and/or medics who are not related to the mother. I’ve never heard of an indigenous or ancient society where the father was present for the birth. The absence of men in birthing rooms suggests that male revulsion in the face of childbirth would not be a big evolutionary disadvantage, the way you suggest it would. Human evolution largely took place in prehistory, and prehistoric humans didn’t live in isolated groups, mom, dad, baby, and wilderness. They lived in somewhat larger groups, where older, experienced women were there to help younger women in childbirth. Thus, men avoiding the birthing room in order to avoid psychological reactions against their wives’ pain could be advantageous without having an answering disadvantage.
October 21st, 2007 at 3:56 pm
Anne presents an argument which I was also considering. Men need not be present for the mother to have assistance. If women feel less revulsion than men in the birthing room, it carries some weight, but I cannot speak to this.
However, Anne’s argument for common cultural patterns as support for natural selection seems to be circular in reasoning. Correct me if I am wrong, but I read your comment like this:
Presupposition: natural selection pressures exist.
1. Natural selection encourages patterns/actions/etc. benefiting the survival of individuals and their societies.
2. Cultural patterns exist which are common to multiple partially isolated societies which appear advantageous for survival.
Conc: Therefore, since natural selection exists and brings out advantageous patterns, and advantageous patterns are present, natural selection exists.
Also, to Jeremy, to state that “the absence of god amounts de facto to the absence of purpose” seems terribly important to me for more conversations than just this one. This conclusion is not intuitive to me. Perhaps you could flesh this out for my sake?
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:27 pm
to state that “the absence of god amounts de facto to the absence of purpose” seems terribly important to me for more conversations than just this one. This conclusion is not intuitive to me
Its intuitive to me, so dunno if I can help. But my first thought is this: purpose is something that requires a will. Our pre-intellectual feelings, like disgust and such, cannot have a purpose unless there is a God who willed them.
October 23rd, 2007 at 10:41 pm
I think Adam hit the heart of it, but I’ll try to expand. The Oxford English Dictionary defines purpose as “the reason for which something is done or something exists.” A purpose is essentially a reason for being. Reasons don’t have an independent existence, they are created through intention and will. An intention and will that creates purpose for an object definitionally must be so superior to the object that it has the moral right and practical ability to define the telos of the object.
“Purpose” needs to be distinguished from “preference.” Preference is also forumlated as a function of intention and will, but it does not require superiority. For example, I can have a purpose for my dog, because I have the moral right and practical ability to define her reason for being. For my wife, my children, and even for myself, I can have only preferences.
So human purpose only exists if there also exists a being with intention, will, and both the moral right and practical ability to define telos for human beings. In other words, purpose can only exist if God exists. In still other words, “the absence of god amounts de facto to the absence of purpose.”
November 9th, 2007 at 11:18 pm
I don’t know if I entirely buy the idea of the evolution of a society. It seems to me that any selection that happens in a society is done conciously by the society’s members. If we’ve learned that it’s better not to have fathers in the maternity room, we have to make a rule about it and pass it down to the next generation who will probably question it and possibly will have to learn it for themselves before they enforce it. The depression taught American society that saving money is a good practice to have, but with the average household carrying some $8000 in credit card debt, this lesson seems to have passed away. I would agree that societies learn things and that bad practices can kill a society, but I think “societal evolution” is a distinctly different phenomenon from biological evolution. To a certain extent, genes remember things for good while societies have to relearn what they know every generation.
December 19th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
every one have a reason!!!okei!!!man cant born a baby but he have a responsible to guide his family and every woman suffer while she is pregnant but after that the fellings is very happy and heart warming because after all the new life is there!!!