Penelope
weak force testosterone
The simple version of Deism goes like this:
God sets His creation in motion, then backs off and watches it, not interfering. Lets "human morality and reason" take over.
God sets the rules, starts the game, then sits back and indifferently watches the game play out. Lets affective and cognitive environmental-conditioning do the rest.
This sounds a lot like genetics.
Back when, during the concupiscent coital act, your parents biologically conceive you. The primal 'creation of life' is, once again, put into motion.
From here, the aboriginal Deist design will be reiterated.
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But, at conception, what are you?
On some levels, you are a "fully-formed human-being" from Day-1 ... Birth.
(But only in terms of your genetic chromosomes.)
But, biologically, even this is a problematical statement.
And, way back, at the moment of conception?
You are not a whit like a "fully-formed human-being" - you are like nothing human at all.
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The Deist, now, has set in motion a ticking biological clock.
At distinct moments, now and again, along the full-length of that clock's progress, a tiny alarm goes off and the ticking biological clock reads the next-batch of code. If the door to this piece of code says NO on it ("junk code"), the clock moves on. If the door to this piece of code say YES on it, the clock triggers the development of a certain biological feature.
(For instance: a little bump in the upper-torso which will later develop into either a fin or a foreleg or an arm.)
The development of a "fully-formed human-being" is a long Dna process.
This development starts at conception, and does not stop until you die. But ...
- The Deistic hands-on process, while fully-genetic from conception to birth, is less genetically-determined after birth.
- From birth to about your second birthday, the environment plays an increasingly large role - and genetic triggers are much less significant.
- From age 2 until adulthood (adulthood now - in a 2010ce human-beings - arrives at biological age 15), environment plays a predominant role in "forming the human-being" while genetics plays a very small (but still vital) role.
- Starting with adulthood, your genetic triggers now fire extremely infrequently. Environment has become, almost entirely, the determinant of human behavior.
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The ticking biological clock - from your conception till your birth - retraces the 4-billion-year evolutionary development of life upon this planet. Not perfectly, but in an imperfect, synoptic fashion:
From a single-celled creature ... to a multi-celled vertebrate sea-creature ... to a land-animal ... to a ferret-like mammal ... to a primate ... to a hominid-primate.
You relive evolution inside your mother's womb.
The chromosomes in your double-helix are chock-full of "junk code." When the ticking biological clock comes to the gene-door which says on it "start to develop a tail," the ticking biological clock sees a big NO plastered upon that door, and moves on. It does not trigger the "tail-making" code. But you have the "tail-making" code embedded within the double-helix of your genetic material. 80% or more of your genetic-material is this kind of "junk code." Roads not taken, by us humans - but roads which existed somewhere in our deep evolutionary past.
(God did not start from scratch - sorry Genesis 1 - when He designed and built the human being.)
From conception to birth, the game is 99.9% genetic.
(The only environmental factor to impinge on this process regards the health of the mother.)
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The day you are born, you are not a "fully-formed human-being" yet, either. You do not walk, you do not talk. These come with genetic triggers, set off by an internal clock, also.
A chimpanzee is smarter than you are, from the time you are born till you 9 or 10 months of age. A chimp communicates concepts to other chimps with a rudimentary symbolic vocabulary (but does so not via logical syntax). Smarter and more social than you, until your vocabulary surpasses that of the chimpanzee at 40-weeks of age. And sometime before age-2, you will develop a full syntax. You will talk in complete (logical) sentences. You will have mastered language. By age-2, you will have mastered a number of skills. The skills which all homo-sapiens upon this planet share.
Environmental factors - like "imitation" - play an increasingly significant role in childhood development from birth to age-2. But things like walking and talking, are still conditioned by the ticking biological clock - are still awakened by genetic triggers within you.
Millennia of hominid evolution are - from your birth till age-2 - being replayed in this early development of yours.
- At birth, you are like the human's and the chimpanzee's common ancestor from 7 to 3 million years ago, when this ape-like creature first walked upright.
- Later in early childhood development, you develop creativity and caring - as did the tool-making social hominid - the Homo-Erectus of 2 to 1 million years ago.
- 200,000 years ago, the Neanderthal and human branch of hominids went different directions. The meat-eating Neanderthal became a superior hunter, but the human branch began eating shell-fish and vegetables in drought years - not just meat on the hoof. Developed also more advanced tools, body ornamentation, and more sophisticated social organization (which the Neanderthals never developed the genetic code and trigger for). These are all traits which human children develop before the age of 2.
- 40,000 years ago the genetically modern human-being - the homo-sapiens - came into existence, with sophisticated tool-making abilities, language, art, and a genetically novel (playful, curiosity-driven) form of sex-drive. Likewise, by age-2, the developing human child has mastered tools, language, art, curiosity-regarding-genitals - as well as myriad social skills.
The ticking biological clock has given you, by 2 years of age, all the mental abilities of any of your caveman ancestors.
(However, the child's interaction with its physical and social environment, is now playing a major role regarding the focus of this developmental process. That is, a majority of the 'options' - the roads taken or not taken - have been environmentally conditioned, not genetically determined.)
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From age-2, onward, the "affective" and "cognitive" development of the human child get into high-gear. (See Jean Piaget's and Barbel Inhelder's writings upon the "stages of childhood development.")
- Age 2 to 7: you develop your social and mental skills in an ad-hoc manner.
- Age 7 to 11: you develop your social and mental skills in a concrete manner.
- Age 11 to 15: you develop your social and mental skills in an abstract manner.
Development is now highly conditioned by the environment, but each stage has suggestive genetic triggers.
- The social and mental skills which you develop from age 2 to 7 are remarkably similar (as best as can be determined via anthropological and archeological data) to those skills which your "primitive" hunter-gatherer forbearers had developed from 40,000 years ago to 10,000 years ago.
- The social and mental skills which you develop from age 7 to 11 are remarkably similar (as best as can be determined via anthropological and archeological data) to those skills which your "archaic" agriculturalist/herder forbearers had developed from 10,000 years ago to 2,500 years ago.
- The social and mental skills which you develop from age 11 to 15 are remarkably similar (as best as can be determined via anthropological and archeological data) to those skills which your "historical" urban-industrial forbearers had developed from 2,500 years ago to the year 2010ce.
There are probable genetic triggers for the high-water-marks of human development over the last 40,000 years (and from age-2 to age-15). It is not a willy-nilly, accidental process.
(But interaction with the environment has played such a major role within this developmental process, that no breakthrough during your global ancestral past was inevitable ... until it actually happened.)
The ticking biological clock may have suggested the correct path into the future. But your ancestors had to envision and build that path.
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As do you ... regarding the next stage in human development.
(Age-15 to age-{what?}.)
(The year 2010ce to {when?}.)
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Deism - the ticking biological clock ...
What is the next Dna stage in the (affective and cognitive) development of "human morality and reason"?