On Evolution of God-Seeking Mind
Consider the myriad of religious, social, and psy-
chological support systems, the ability to commiser-
ate, the diversions from morbid thoughts that have
been developed throughout history, to mitigate and
anesthetize that awareness (Becker 1973; Brown
1959; Hocart 1954). We have evolved, somehow, to
function with a minimum of morbid thoughts, busy
from day to day, planning for the future, and confi-
dent that we will live to see it. A human “requires
‘understanding’ not only of his world of survival, but
eventually of the immaterial world of thought that
is the creation of the increasing complexity and sub-
tlety of his own process of cognition” (Laughlin/
Mcmanus/d’Aquili 1990, p242). By communication
and demonstration, we pass on “immaterial world
of thought” survival supports to our children, as
they become aware of self and death (Donald 1991;
Langer 1982). Newly aware hominids would have
lacked such supports, lacked the linguistic ability to
communicate and commiserate, and hence, would
have less confidence and less ability to function in
survival tasks than they had before.
That you and I will die is as plain as the proverbial
“nose on your face”, and as difficult to look at. To
avoid damaging that cognitive inner eye, we tend to
look at our death much as we look at the sun: periph-
erally. As with the near impossible act of putting our
hand into fire so as to feel the heat, we face the near
impossible act of putting our thoughts into death so
as to “feel” it. Indeed, we go to great lengths to avoid
such activities. Becker shows us that the entirety of
human psychology is rooted in a massive attempt at
denial of death. As he describes the difficulty; “the
fear of death must be present behind all our normal
functioning, in order for the organism to be armed
toward self-preservation” (Becker 1973, p16). A
growing body of terror management theory suggests
that “the most basic of all human motives is an in-
stinctive desire for continued life, and that all more
specific motives are ultimately rooted in this basic
evolutionary adaptation” (Pyszczynski/Greenberg/
Solomon 1997, p1), and that, over thousands of
years, culture has developed to manage the existen-
tial terror brought on by awareness of mortality. “But
the fear of death cannot be present constantly in
one’s mental functioning, else the organism could
not function” (Becker 1973, p16). There are aspects
of our individual death that we dare not look at and
other aspects that we cannot look at. For example,
try to imagine yourself dead; where would the you
who is looking be? There seems to be no place from
which this “imagining” could be emanating (Flew
1993). We are able, through most of our lives, to put
aside our individual death, to act as if it were not
there, or as if we might change the reality of its ex-
istence in good time. Indeed, there are diverse hu-
man-devised systems that allow us to do so, elabo-
rate systems of belief in some continuity of existence
after death, and simpler systems involving ways of
looking at “reality” so that “the finality of death does
not exist at all” (Hocart 1954, p87). Our imagina-
tion is well designed to make use of such systems to
redirect our morbid thoughts and our unpleasant
sensations. We seem quite able to countermand the
external senses when this suits our purpose, to alter
sensory information and thus revise the world that
would otherwise be seen, heard, and touched (Koes-
tler 1964). “Mental images have the power to affect
us in many of the same ways as our perceptions of
reality. Consequently, our imaginations can afford
us a means of experiencing loss and then being able
to rejoice in still having the ‘lost’ object” (Vickio
1994, p611).
In “Can the Subject Create His World?” Metzger
gives an historic overview of ideas suggesting that
the world, or some significant part of it, is created by
mental acts. He is interested in perception rather
than imagination, and he concludes that “percep-
tion is not a way of adding new facts to the world—
this is the task of art and invention—but to find what
there is before perceiving begins, which has not yet
been found by the present perceiver” (Metzger
1974, p67). Part of what there is that has not yet been
found is in the task set for imagination; perception
and imagination coexist and function simulta-
neously. No other animal has developed such ability
to willfully embellish sensed information, to per-
ceive that which is not sensed, to deny that which
is, to fantasize, to hallucinate, or to imagine things
that have never existed and things that may never
exist; no other animal has the linguistic ability to
communicate such things. No other animal has
shown the need for it; indeed, for others, these abil-
ities would be impediments to survival. Other ani-
mals might, for survival purposes, behave so as to
deceive others. Only humans seem capable of self-
deceptive images, since only humans have evolved
with imagination: reality-distorting input to the
brain and nervous system. Examples of intentions in
the literature of human self-deception include:
avoiding pain and painful reality, evading trauma,
and seeking comfortable beliefs (Martin 1997). All
these would apply to newly aware-of-death homi-
nids who had the nascent imagination with which
to achieve such self-deception. The senses and ner-
vous system of higher animals, including humans,
Evolution and Cognition ∣ 10 ∣ 2002, Vol. 8, No. 1