Students entering college today do so at a time when Charles Darwin’s
prediction, recorded in the last chapter of The Origin of Species has
come true. Darwin predicted:
"In the distant future I see open fields for far more important
research. Psychology will be based on a new foundation, that of the
necessary acquirement of each mental power and capacity by gradation.
Light will be thrown on the origin of man and his history."
That is bold. He saw a distant future in which everything about human
psychology was understood in terms of evolution. Darwin left nothing in
doubt – “each mental power and capacity” means every topic in every
Psychology textbook. According to Darwin, all mental activity, even that
which Christians think of as our God-likeness, is ultimately nothing
more than a “mental power” or “capacity” that we acquired, bit by bit,
over a very long time, through variation and natural selection.
Darwinian evolution, when applied to human psychology and taken to its
logical and necessary conclusion, explains our consciousness, our
morality, our capacity to make decisions and judgments, religious
experience, love, empathy, altruism, hate, greed, dreams, and everything
else that makes us human, in terms of evolved problem solving
mechanisms. Darwin’s future is today. Students taking Psychology in
college today do so at a time when Evolution is seen as the unifying
explanation for all of Psychology.
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