We, and creation itself, actualize the possibilities of the God who sustains the world, towards becoming in the world in a fuller, more deeper way. - R.E. Slater
There is urgency in coming to see the world as a web of interrelated processes of which we are integral parts, so that all of our choices and actions have [consequential effects upon] the world around us. - Process Metaphysician Alfred North Whitehead
Kurt Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem says (i) all closed systems are unprovable within themselves and, that (ii) all open systems are rightly understood as incomplete. - R.E. Slater
The most true thing about you is what God has said to you in Christ, "You are My Beloved." - Tripp Fuller
The God among us is the God who refuses to be God without us, so great is God's Love. - Tripp Fuller
According to some Christian outlooks we were made for another world. Perhaps, rather, we were made for this world to recreate, reclaim, redeem, and renew unto God's future aspiration by the power of His Spirit. - R.E. Slater
Our eschatological ethos is to love. To stand with those who are oppressed. To stand against those who are oppressing. It is that simple. Love is our only calling and Christian Hope. - R.E. Slater
Secularization theory has been massively falsified. We don't live in an age of secularity. We live in an age of explosive, pervasive religiosity... an age of religious pluralism. - Peter L. Berger
Exploring the edge of life and faith in a post-everything world. - Todd Littleton
I don't need another reason to believe, your love is all around for me to see. – Anon
Thou art our need; and in giving us more of thyself thou givest us all. - Khalil Gibran, Prayer XXIII
Be careful what you pretend to be. You become what you pretend to be. - Kurt Vonnegut
Religious beliefs, far from being primary, are often shaped and adjusted by our social goals. - Jim Forest
We become who we are by what we believe and can justify. - R.E. Slater
People, even more than things, need to be restored, renewed, revived, reclaimed, and redeemed; never throw out anyone. – Anon
Certainly, God's love has made fools of us all. - R.E. Slater
An apocalyptic Christian faith doesn't wait for Jesus to come, but for Jesus to become in our midst. - R.E. Slater
Christian belief in God begins with the cross and resurrection of Jesus, not with rational apologetics. - Eberhard Jüngel, Jürgen Moltmann
Our knowledge of God is through the 'I-Thou' encounter, not in finding God at the end of a syllogism or argument. There is a grave danger in any Christian treatment of God as an object. The God of Jesus Christ and Scripture is irreducibly subject and never made as an object, a force, a power, or a principle that can be manipulated. - Emil Brunner
“Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh” means "I will be that who I have yet to become." - God (Ex 3.14) or, conversely, “I AM who I AM Becoming.”
Our job is to love others without stopping to inquire whether or not they are worthy. - Thomas Merton
The church is God's world-changing social experiment of bringing unlikes and differents to the Eucharist/Communion table to share life with one another as a new kind of family. When this happens, we show to the world what love, justice, peace, reconciliation, and life together is designed by God to be. The church is God's show-and-tell for the world to see how God wants us to live as a blended, global, polypluralistic family united with one will, by one Lord, and baptized by one Spirit. – Anon
The cross that is planted at the heart of the history of the world cannot be uprooted. - Jacques Ellul
The Unity in whose loving presence the universe unfolds is inside each person as a call to welcome the stranger, protect animals and the earth, respect the dignity of each person, think new thoughts, and help bring about ecological civilizations. - John Cobb & Farhan A. Shah
If you board the wrong train it is of no use running along the corridors of the train in the other direction. - Dietrich Bonhoeffer
God's justice is restorative rather than punitive; His discipline is merciful rather than punishing; His power is made perfect in weakness; and His grace is sufficient for all. – Anon
Our little [biblical] systems have their day; they have their day and cease to be. They are but broken lights of Thee, and Thou, O God art more than they. - Alfred Lord Tennyson
We can’t control God; God is uncontrollable. God can’t control us; God’s love is uncontrolling! - Thomas Jay Oord
Life in perspective but always in process... as we are relational beings in process to one another, so life events are in process in relation to each event... as God is to Self, is to world, is to us... like Father, like sons and daughters, like events... life in process yet always in perspective. - R.E. Slater
To promote societal transition to sustainable ways of living and a global society founded on a shared ethical framework which includes respect and care for the community of life, ecological integrity, universal human rights, respect for diversity, economic justice, democracy, and a culture of peace. - The Earth Charter Mission Statement
Christian humanism is the belief that human freedom, individual conscience, and unencumbered rational inquiry are compatible with the practice of Christianity or even intrinsic in its doctrine. It represents a philosophical union of Christian faith and classical humanist principles. - Scott Postma
It is never wise to have a self-appointed religious institution determine a nation's moral code. The opportunities for moral compromise and failure are high; the moral codes and creeds assuredly racist, discriminatory, or subjectively and religiously defined; and the pronouncement of inhumanitarian political objectives quite predictable. - R.E. Slater
God's love must both center and define the Christian faith and all religious or human faiths seeking human and ecological balance in worlds of subtraction, harm, tragedy, and evil. - R.E. Slater
In Whitehead’s process ontology, we can think of the experiential ground of reality as an eternal pulse whereby what is objectively public in one moment becomes subjectively prehended in the next, and whereby the subject that emerges from its feelings then perishes into public expression as an object (or “superject”) aiming for novelty. There is a rhythm of Being between object and subject, not an ontological division. This rhythm powers the creative growth of the universe from one occasion of experience to the next. This is the Whiteheadian mantra: “The many become one and are increased by one.” - Matthew Segall
Without Love there is no Truth. And True Truth is always Loving. There is no dichotomy between these terms but only seamless integration. This is the premier centering focus of a Processual Theology of Love. - R.E. Slater
-----
Note: Generally I do not respond to commentary. I may read the comments but wish to reserve my time to write (or write from the comments I read). Instead, I'd like to see our community help one another and in the helping encourage and exhort each of us towards Christian love in Christ Jesus our Lord and Savior. - re slater
What
is eusociality? Sociobiologist and biodiversity scientist E.O. Wilson's
evolutionary epigenetic law is second only to Darwin's law of species adaptation
to survive. It says that successful species will work together and even
sacrifice itself to ensure the larger group's survival. This genetic trait is
known as eusociality and was evidenced again in the terrorist attacks in Paris:
"Chris Cocking says that most people are likely to try to help each other
even in extreme situations. 'There's an assumption that it's everybody for
themselves but that just doesn't happen,' he says."
Pointedly, the Christian faith is centered around one God-man who redeems,
Jesus. That the Christian church as an institution in its best traditions
sacrifices for the spiritual and physical survival of humanity. That the
bible's best passages preach a narrative of like group cooperation to survive.
And that even the Christian story of origins is built upon the eusocial
narrative that humanity is part of something greater than itself. That the way
to achieve our epic constitution unites human spirituality, instead of cleaving
it, so that it is composed of the best of the human nature, filled with
potentiality, finitude, and loss.
As a Christian, though these ideas are part of evolutionary observation and
corroborated in the bible as epic narratives composed from an ancient
mythological mindset using poetic language, I find comfort in knowing our God
wisely placed these evolutionary instincts into the construct of life both by
decree as well as by sovereign guidance. This observation then would describe
the teleology of evolution - that at a deep level of procreation there are genetic
principles of nurture driven to a concerted end of species survival against all
environmental outcomes. At Relevancy22 this has been written and restated in
dozens of articles for further evaluation.
So then, horrific events like the one witnessed earlier this week in Paris
detail both the evil of a committed nihilistic society believing it must
sacrifice itself by ridding the world of non-groups of unbelievers based on an
errant religious myth of purity/divine acceptance. While at the same time other
religious and non-religious groups work together against this threat to their
own eusocial society's survival. Each evidencing epigenetic characteristics of
survival. This is what is meant as studying humanity from an anthropologic
social behaviorist or biodiversity mode of perspective both from a humanist
and/or a religious viewpoint.
And, I might add, in an odd way, but completely understandable view, the reason
non-group refugees are either rejected or accepted to be aided. I like to think
its consciously based but it must allow for unconscious choices as well driven
either by species survival or species expansion as a postmodern reaction
against past urges. Which is a discussion best left for another time (ReneGirard, mimetic theory, scapegoating & victimization).
Wikipedia - Eusociality - Eusocial animals express complex behaviors, like group decision-making. Evolutionary biologists have asked how and why eusociality has evolved, and what we can learn from eusocial organisms.
Attacks of the magnitude of those that took place in Paris, killing 129 people and injuring more than 400, are extremely rare. The authorities do prepare for these emergencies but what advice is there for ordinary people?
Integral Philosophy is not new. It began back in the 18th and 19th centuries by a group of philosophers and early scientists thinking through the concepts of the ideal and idealism (sic, German Idealism). One could even take Integral Philosophy all the way back to the beginning of philosophy itself when describing it as the love of wisdom. Millenia later Ayn Rand describes her laissez faire capitalism ideal as that which leads to personal happiness. Eastern religion seeks tranquility. Western religion emphasizes personal justice. As a whole, all humans would claim the unexamined life is impractical without the exertion of wisdom and love.
What intrigues me about Integral Philosophy (IP) is its centering in Whitehead's Process Philosophy as IP examines the developing consciousness (conscientiousness?) of postmodern societies struggling with social justice and environmental care. I have long thought, even as I do now, that the social development of religion and humanity is a very evolutionary thing (sic, E.O. Wilson's Eusociality in its comportments of social altruism and societal evolvement):
What is eusociality? Sociobiologist and biodiversity scientist E.O. Wilson's evolutionary epigenetic law is second only to Darwin's law of species adaptation to survive. It says that successful species will work together and even sacrifice itself to ensure the larger group's survival. This genetic trait is known as eusociality
Even though I sometimes wonder if we've progressed at all as human civilizations when comparing the evil of our times with the evil of the ancients. But overall, humanity's literature and art tell us that the soul of the human breast wrests beast with angel, dark with light, ever entangled in confusion between doing "what is best for itself" and "what is allowed without getting caught" (apologies, I'm being cynical here)... between "what is good for the self" and "what is good for others". Wilson's eucsociality says the struggle for personal survival may often submit to the higher struggle for the life of the community when tested.
We live in no less enlightened eras. And though I believe I could make a good case for the steady ethical evolution of civilizations over the years, integral philosophy apparently goes this same route along the lines of societal evolutionary development. It's yet another element a theologian may use when arguing for enlightening unwise generations travelling paths of death affecting not only their own self-involved, short-sighted personas but many the many generations after them.
Overall, Integral Philosophy is a way of embracing all the good out from the historical evolution of humanity and its societies. Certainly IP is concerned with the evolution of consciousness and what this means in relationship to the cosmos at large. But it is also concerned with the greater subject of societal ethics and virtures civilizations have experimented with over the centuries. Both within their citizenry and exterior to themselves in relation to other city and nation states.
Lastly, I'm not big on mysticism, New Ageism, and that sort of thing. I've mentioned this before as I wish to mention it again. Ken Wilber has grabbed hold of Integral Philosophy and seems to have advanced it towards this kind of direction. I left a Wikipedia article on Ken in my post here as well as several other opinions at the bottom of this post after Steve McIntosh's several reviews of IP. Should the Wilber's-of-the-world advance humanity towards love, peace and tranquility with one another than I'm just fine with their teachings.
Maybe not with the humanism of it as a Christian ethicist. But certainly in the sharing of wellbeing with one another I applaud any 'isms embracing humanity with humaneness. In fact, its not much dissimilar with my stand for-and-against Christianity. What is Christian's end results? Peace, Love, Wellbeing? Or War, Hate, and Division. If the latter than throw off this type of worthless religion as those who preach dogmas anathema to mankind's and this world's survival. God is a God of Love. Jesus is the way to inacting God's Love. Jesus' atonement gets us beyond our strifes, fears, and hates.
With that, let's look at what Tripp Fuller's Homebrewed Christianity site debated during the years of 2013-2015 to catch us up. Currently, in 2020, I'm following Matthew T. Segall as an updated version of anything related to Integral Philosophy. Whether Matt is a Christian or not I do not know. I'm still new to this relationship. But I respect him a lot. Matt seems to understand the nub of Christianity and utilizes Alfred North Whitehead's Process Philosophy as central to his understanding of Integral Philosophy. So these are all good beginnings.
Peace,
R.E. Slater
* * * * * * * * * *
Matthew David Segall – Science, Religion, Eco-Philosophy, Etheric Imagination, Psychedelic Eucharist, Ecological Crisis and more…
SegallI (Jesse) recently chatted with one of my favorite ecophilosophers, bloggers, and youtubers, Matthew David Segall.
Matthew is a a doctoral candidate in philosophy and religion at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco, CA. His knowledge of the history of philosophy is expansive and the synthetic approach exemplified in his work is imperative and extremely valuable.
We cover a ton of topics including Matthew’s spiritual and philosophical influences/background, his transition from scientistic atheism to Buddhism to Western Esoteric Hermetic Christianity; his understanding of the relationship between science, philosophy and religion in the west; his interest in Carl Jung, Whitehead, Schelling, and esoteric thinker Rudolph Steiner and how they exhibit what Matt calls “etheric imagination.” We also talk about science and art, psychedelics, consciousnesses and Eucharist, capitalism and the ecological crisis and the talk he’ll be giving at the upcoming Whitehead conference in Claremont this summer.
* February 26th at the Level Ground Film Festival in Pasadena SoCal
* March 4th – Live Podcast w/ Doug Pagitt @the Loft in LA.
* March 13 & 14th at Villanova University, PA. The End of Religion? Faith in a Postmodern Age. Featuring Jeff Robbins, Merold Westphal, and John Caputo
* March 18th in Chicago – Theology Nerd Bootcamp w/ Tripp & Scott Paeth
* March 19-21st in Chicago at Progressive Youth Ministry Conference. EPIC live podcast on Friday night sponsored by our friends at Phillips Theological Seminary
Integral philosophy has been receiving a good deal of attention within the progressive Christian community recently. And because I’m both a “progressive follower of Jesus” and an integral philosopher, Tripp Fuller asked me to write a brief blog post on the subject to accompany the podcast discussion between he and I that will appear on the Home Brewed Christianity website. So what follows is a simplified description of the emerging integral perspective as I understand it.
Integral philosophy is a spiritual philosophy of evolution that emphasizes the evolution of consciousness and culture as a central factor in the process of evolution overall. Integral philosophy itself has evolved over the last century through the work of Henri Bergson, Alfred North Whitehead, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Ken Wilber, and others. This philosophy also draws on the discoveries of developmental psychology and other social sciences, and it has been influenced by related forms of social philosophy, such as the widely respected work of German philosopher Jürgen Habermas.
Although these founders of integral philosophy differ on many points, they have all recognized that a greater understanding of consciousness is the key to a more complete conception of reality.
While the concept of consciousness is easier to illustrate than define, a common sense definition of human consciousness includes a person’s thoughts, feelings, intentions, values, memories, and sense of self. Consciousness can be understood as the inside of human experience, what it is like to be and know ourselves; and this sentient personality, this original identity, is also the unique subjective presence through which others know us.
What makes integral philosophy compelling and important is its demonstration of the connection between the personal development of each person’s values and character, and the larger development of human history overall. Through its insights into the evolution of consciousness and culture, integral philosophy offers realistic and pragmatic solutions to the growing global problems that are increasingly threatening human civilization. That is, from the perspective of this philosophy, every problem in the world can be understood, at least partially, as a problem of consciousness:
...It follows that the solutions to seemingly intractable problems, such as environmental degradation and climate change, nuclear proliferation and terrorism, hunger and overpopulation, unregulated globalization and gross inequality, can all be effectively ameliorated by raising or changing the consciousness that is continuing to create (or failing to prevent) these problems.
Human consciousness can evolve in a wide variety of ways. It can be raised or evolved by increasing empathy and compassion, by cultivating knowledge, understanding and forgiveness, and by building political will and the determination to achieve social and environmental justice. Consciousness can also be raised by enlarging people’s estimates of their own self-interest, by expanding their notions of what constitutes “the good life,” and by persuading them to appreciate new forms of beauty and truth. The developed world’s relatively recent acceptance of women as the social equals of men provides a good example of how the human condition can be improved through the evolution of consciousness.
According to integral philosophy, however, the evolution of consciousness is largely dependent on the evolution of human culture. When humans evolve their culture through new agreements or new forms of organization, this results in a corresponding growth in human consciousness. Through the “network effect” of cultural transmission, when one person has a conceptual breakthrough or new realization, this advance can be shared with others. And as new discoveries or new skills are adopted within a larger cultural context, such advances become refined and reinforced. Consciousness and culture—the individual and the group—thus co-evolve together.
This understanding of the co-evolution of consciousness and culture leads to another central tenet of integral philosophy, which recognizes the sequential emergence of values-based stages of human cultural development. That is, integral philosophy’s view of cultural evolution sees history as unfolding according to a clearly identifiable developmental logic or cross-cultural pattern that influences the growth of human society. This developmental logic need not be construed as a “deterministic law of history,” or as implying a strictly unidirectional course of cultural development, but it does reveal a recurring theme in humanity’s narrative story. The unfolding of this theme or pattern results in a dialectical structure of conflict and resolution, which is created by the interaction of specific worldview stages or levels of historical development.
Integral philosophy’s insights into the evolution of consciousness and culture may be of particular interest to progressive Christians because of the light this new perspective sheds on the unique historical challenges now faced by Christianity. Tripp and I begin to unpack the relevance of integral thinking for progressive Christianity in the podcast that will accompany this blog (in the next 2 weeks), and I hope we will be able to continue our discussion in the time ahead.
---
STEVE MCINTOSH J.D. is a leader in the integral philosophy movement and author of the new book, Evolution’s Purpose, as well as the acclaimed 2007 book, Integral Consciousness. He is also a co-founder of the new think tank: The Institute for Cultural Evolution. In addition to the think tank and his work in philosophy, McIntosh has had a variety of other successful careers, including founding the consumer products company Now & Zen, practicing law with one of America’s largest firms, working as an executive with Celestial Seasonings Tea Company, and Olympic-class bicycle racing. He is a graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and the University of Southern California Business School, and now lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two sons. For more on his work, visit: www.stevemcintosh.com
This is my second “guest blog” here on Homebrewed Christianity. The first one, titled: “What Is Integral Philosophy?”, drew a response from Emergent Church thought leader Tony Jones, over at the Patheos website, titled: “Why Does Integral Philosophy Sound Like New Age?”. I was not aware of this until Tripp Fuller alerted me to Tony’s blog, and in connection with Tuesday’s podcast interview on Homebrew, Tripp invited me to respond with the following.
First, let me say that I’m glad my blog got Tony’s attention. My purpose in making media with Tripp is to help cross-pollinate the integral and emergent movements because there is a lot of overlap and I think we are natural allies. As a follower of Jesus myself, I’m reaching out to progressive Christians because I know it is easy to get the wrong impression about the credibility and usefulness of integral philosophy, and I want to correct that. In my books I draw heavily from the work of Philip Clayton, Holmes Rolston III, John Haught, David Ray Griffin, and of course, Whitehead and Teilhard. And I’ve found that the main difference between the integral perspective and progressive Christian theology is integral’s focus on the evolution of consciousness and culture. Building on progressive Christian theology in my latest book, Evolution’s Purpose: An Integral Interpretation of the Scientific Story of Our Origins, I contend that this distinctive integral understanding of the evolution of consciousness can in fact be established through academically credible arguments (the book was endorsed by Rolston and Haught).
Second, I agree with Tony that the convoluted chart at the top of his blog post does not help our cause. However, in addition to being a form of philosophy, integral is also a popular movement. And those who have sought to popularize the integral perspective have often times schlocked it up. As I argue in the podcast with Tripp, the teachings that make integral interesting and accessible to a popular audience are the same ones that over-simplify it and make it seem more like pop psychology than serious thinking.
Ken Wilber, however, is another matter. I am not a “fanboy” of Wilber (using Tony’s phrase), but my work is certainly indebted to many of Wilber’s insights. Wilber is a complicated figure because he is both a philosopher and a spiritual teacher. And in my 2007 book, Integral Consciousness and the Future of Evolution, I critique Wilber for failing to distinguish integral philosophy from his Vedanta/Vajrayana belief system, and for playing fast and loose with the serious scholarship of others. Although I identify myself as an “integral philosopher,” I don’t consider myself a “Wilberian.” Integral Consciousness includes a chapter on “The Founders of Integral Philosophy,” which makes clear that Wilber is part of a line of integral thinkers who have all sought to understand the spiritual implications of evolution.
So is integral philosophy “New Age”? This, of course, is a term of derision (a term that has also been applied to the emergent church movement as I recall). A less pejorative term would be “progressive spirituality.” And progressive spirituality certainly has its lowbrow and tawdry elements; but of course so does Christianity. The progressive spiritual milieu, however, also includes intellectually respectable figures, including nominal Christians like Thomas Berry and Matthew fox.
The integral perspective may appear to casual observers to be a form of progressive spirituality because it has emerged out of this culture. But integral philosophy pushes off against and attempts to transcend the abundant shortcomings of progressive spirituality. And in my attempt to do just this in my writing, I’ve found the work of Clayton and the other contemporary theologian/philosophers mentioned above to be very helpful.
Tony writes that he has avoided looking into integral philosophy because of its lack of academic recognition. Yet even though there are a number of professional academics actively working to improve integral’s image in academia, I do not expect these efforts to bear much fruit in the near term. In my humble opinion, mainstream academic philosophy is largely in default regarding its duty to society. It’s been culturally irrelevant for decades, and has become so cramped and pinched that it is now only of interest to narrow specialists.
This same situation prevailed at the beginning of the Enlightenment, when the academic philosophy of the time (Scholastic Aristotelianism) had become stale and irrelevant as a result of its becoming the handmaiden of religion. Early Enlightenment philosophy was not only ignored or disfavored, it was illegal—Spinoza had to flee Amsterdam in the middle of the night to avoid being arrested for his writing. And now, most of academic philosophy has become similarly stale; this time as a result of becoming the handmaiden of science. The reactionary scorn heaped on atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel’s recent book, Mind and Cosmos: Why the Materialist Neo-Darwinian Conception of Nature Is Almost Certainly False, provides a good example.
Thus it should come as no surprise that unorthodox forms of philosophy are emerging now to try to move forward in ways that are otherwise blocked by the materialistic prejudices of the academy. So even though most of us integral writers strive for intellectual rigor in our scholarship, we do not expect mainstream academia to validate our transcendence of their way of thinking. When it comes to entrenched identities, even the best argumentation is not persuasive.
To conclude, regardless of our limited prospects within mainstream academia, I do hope to persuade Tony and others in the emergent church movement that integral is worthy of more than a “drive-by dismissal.” Admittedly, a full-throated defense of integral philosophy cannot be adequately accomplished in a short blog post, or even an hour’s podcast, and I suspect my upcoming interview with Tripp will raise additional questions and objections. But hopefully it will at least pique your interest. And if it does, I invite you to visit my website and check out my books. Once you give it a fair hearing, I trust you will agree that this new way of seeing can be highly useful for our mutual work of furthering the progress of spirituality in general, and the teachings of Jesus in particular.
* * * * * * * * * *
God, Integral Philosophy, Non-Dual thinking and Spiral Dynamics w/ Steve McIntosh
It is time to discuss a robust affirmation of God in conversation with non-dual thinking, spiral dynamics and integral philosophy. Steve McIntosh is back on the podcast for the fun. We discuss his new book The Beauty of the Infinite and after you hear this conversation I suggest you get your ‘click’ on and get the book headed your way.
If you are down for some fun consider joining Steve and me at Enfolding Spirituality conference here in Redondo Beach, along with Don Beck, Rob Bell and plenty of others.
Steve McIntosh is a leader in the integral philosophy movement and author of the new book on spiritual experience: The Presence of the Infinite (Quest 2015). Steve is also author of Evolution’s Purpose (SelectBooks 2012), and Integral Consciousness and the Future (Paragon House 2007).
He currently works as President and Co-Founder of the nonprofit social policy organization: The Institute for Cultural Evolution. In addition to this think tank, and his work in philosophy, McIntosh has had a variety of other successful careers, including founding the consumer products company Now & Zen, practicing law with one of America’s largest firms, working as an executive with Celestial Seasonings Tea Company, and Olympic-class bicycle racing. He is an honors graduate of the University of Virginia Law School and the University of Southern California Business School, and now lives in Boulder, Colorado with his wife and two sons.
Integral theory is a school of philosophy that seeks to integrate all of human wisdom into a new, emergent worldview that is able to accommodate the gifts of all previous worldviews, including those which have been historically at odds: science and religion, Eastern and Western schools of thought, and pre-modern, modern and post-modern worldviews.
Integral theory builds on the foundations of evolutionary theory. Evolution is well established by science and is non-controversial for anyone with a modern or post-modern worldview. We know from ever-more sophisticated observation and analyses that the cosmos burst into being about 13.8 billion years ago, first as energy then as matter, arising as atoms and molecules that formed the heavenly bodies, including our home planet, Earth.
On Earth we know that molecular evolution continued, creating cells (life!) then organisms which grew in complexity, from amoebae to sponges to fish to reptiles to mammals, culminating in the human being, the most complex entity in the known universe.
The whole process of evolution is accelerating exponentially: if all of known time is seen as a 24-hour day, life showed up in the last three hours, mammals in the last three minutes, and human beings in the last 1.5 seconds. The pyramids were built .07 seconds ago and Hey Jude was written .0007 seconds ago.
Integral theory posits that evolution is not limited to the exterior forms of reality (matter and organisms), but is also evident in the interior spaces of reality, namely in the development of culture and consciousness.
An integral view of history maintains that the collective consciousness of the human race has evolved through pre-modern, modern and post-modern structures, and is emerging into a new structure of consciousness, the integral stage, which is characterized by an ability to think and act from multiple worldviews.
EXCERPTS FROM A VIDEO SERIES ON THE BASICS OF INTEGRAL THEORY
Here are some excerpts from a series of videos I was invited to create with Nomali Perera and Lee Mason of Practical Integral. Enjoy the short clips and I encourage you to watch the full videos here.
AMERICAN attitudes toward our gay and lesbian relatives, friends and co-workers are changing so dramatically that the Pew Research Center ranked this shift as the first historic milestone among 13 changes that researchers identified over the past year.
TODAY, two major evangelical voices—and two highly respected observers of American religious life—are joining in the launch of a new book: A Letter to My Congregation. The four are …
* KEN WILSON, author of this book-length letter, which he wrote to his large congregation in the Midwest to explain why even devoutly evangelical Christians should welcome gay, lesbian and transgendered men and women.
* DAVID P. GUSHEE, based at Mercer University, where he is a theologian and author widely read in evangelical congregations. Most significantly, Gushee decided to publicly change his stance on this issue in the opening pages of Ken Wilson’s new book. (His Wikipedia entry.)
* PHYLLIS TICKLE, a scholar and journalist who is highly respected for her books, magazine articles and lectures about trends in American religious life. (Her Wikipedia entry.)
* And, TANYA LUHRMANN, based at Stanford University, where she is a leading anthropologist studying religious movements—including the Vineyard denomination in which Ken Wilson is a pastor. (Her Wikipedia entry.)
In this daring and compassionate journey of faith, the Rev. Ken Wilson apparently becomes the first pastor of a large evangelical congregation in America to so publicly reverse centuries of condemnation of gays and lesbians—and bring his congregation with him in welcoming gay and lesbian members at all levels of the church.
With the launch of this book, many people nationwide are asking: How did Ken Wilson do this?
In today’s interview you will learn: He did it by slowly and carefully studying the Bible, praying about these matters and talking with families in his congregation. The result, according to early online reviews of his book, “adds incredible freshness and insight” to a debate that threatens to tear churches and families apart. Reviewer David C. Sinclair writes that Ken “shows us a way forward that embraces our differences.… And, most importantly, he cogently argues for unconditional inclusion as we seek God together.”
* * * * * * * * *
HIGHLIGHTS OF OUR INTERVIEW WITH KEN WILSON
ABOUT ‘A LETTER TO MY CONGREGATION’
DAVID: The Pew Research Center reports that we’re at a historic turning point on this issue, based on their tracking of data nationwide. But, beyond all that data, what have you seen from a pastor’s point of view? Can you see and feel the change among the people you encounter everyday?
KEN: Yes, 10 years ago, as an evangelical pastor I didn’t know gay people and a lot of the people in my congregation would have said they didn’t know gay people—but that has shifted dramatically. Now, most people say they have at least one gay friend. And, even more importantly, for young people this is a non-issue. Of Millennials who leave the church, a large number leave over the church’s exclusionary stance on LGBT people. Young people just can’t understand that exclusion. They know plenty of LGBT people personally and they don’t want to be part of a church that excludes their friends.
Now, this has become a big issue for parents who have children who are affected by this in various ways. They’re losing their kids over this question, whether those kids are LGBT themselves or they know and care about someone who is. The question for men and women in the church becomes: Do I care so much about the ideology of this issue that I’m willing to lose my children over this? This is an issue where parents and their children are absolutely affected everyday in local congregations.
I had a small group of people from our church who reviewed an early version of this letter with me. We went around the room and asked each person to tell us: What’s my personal stake in this conversation?
Every single person had a gay friend or loved one or family member and each one told the group—often with tears in their eyes—how much this mattered to them. This included people who accepted gay relationships and people who still had moral questions about gay relationships. We all were affected. This really is a historic change.
DAVID: I’ve been a journalist covering religion in American life for nearly three decades and I believe it’s accurate to say that you’re the first pastor of a large, evangelical church to go public about such a dramatic change on this issue with your congregation coming along on the journey. Millions of readers know that Rob Bell and Brian McLaren have changed in their public stance on this issue, but that was after they had left their congregations.
For readers wondering about this claim, I want to clarify: We’re talking about large, traditionally evangelical congregations and pastors who have gone so public in reversing their LGBT policies with their congregations. I’m not seeing them, at this point. If you’re out there reading this, please email us at www.ReadTheSpirit@gmail.com
But, having said all of that, let me ask: Are you aware of anyone else we should mention here?
KEN: I’ve been looking, too, and I am aware of some other evangelical congregations across the country that are moving in this direction. I don’t want to name them because they’re still on this journey and they’re not wanting to go public right now. And, just like you, David, I’d love to find and talk with others who are on this journey. I’d love to learn from them about how to do this—and how we can help others to do this.
‘The eyes of the world …?’
DAVID: Since David P. Gushee is also putting his name on the line with this book, the two of you were invited to speak at the California LGBT film festival, called Level Ground, last week. The festival was covered in the Los Angeles Times and other news media. Do you feel the eyes of the world are upon you?
KEN: No, I don’t feel that way and I don’t want to focus on the psychological pressure. My first responsibility is to lead my church through this transition successfully. Yes, I know there is a lot at stake here. There are many evangelical pastors out there whose hearts are inclined to go in this direction, but they can’t even begin to talk about this. I think once we can demonstrate that, yes, it can be done—then I think there are going to be many evangelical congregations that will follow. Before long, there is going to be a strong and growing expression of evangelicalism in America that is making space for gay people.
DAVID: How do they start? I can imagine a lot of readers of this interview—and readers of your book—wanting to know: How did Ken do it? How can I start this process?
KEN: The first thing is to convince pastors that they should give themselves permission to start asking the questions. There are so many pastors and other church leaders who want to do that, but they are inhibited from even starting the process. They see this as a “loser” issue for them. They don’t see any way to build a coalition around this—no way to build a consensus in their congregation. So, they don’t even start lifting up the questions that their hearts want to ask.
DAVID: You found the courage. Now, you have opened up the conversation in your church to a point at which you realize how deeply many families care about this issue. But we’re talking here about the very first, private steps—the first moral questioning. Give us a little sense of how that began for you.
KEN: Well, for me, I asked myself: Why am I willing to make so much space in the church for people who are remarried after divorce—despite the Bible’s very strict teaching against that—and I’m not willing to make space for gay and lesbian people? And I kept asking myself: Why does this particular moral stance of the church about LGBT people cause so much harm?
‘Is this really the teaching of Jesus …?’
DAVID: Let’s talk about the harm. In your book, you make an eloquent appeal: We can’t keep waiting on this issue. We can’t keep kicking these questions down the road. Every day, real people are being harmed by the church’s rigid condemnation.
KEN: When I started pondering these questions, I realized that this particular stance of the church really is harmful. When a married man in a congregation has an adulterous affair with another woman—and he’s confronted about it—we don’t have suicides as a result. But, we do have teenagers committing suicides at higher rates when they are part of congregations that have these exclusionary teachings about homosexuality. Is this really the teaching of Jesus when our exclusion of people is contributing to a rise in suicide?
DAVID: These are tough questions for evangelical leaders to ask. There’s a lot of fear around even raising the questions, isn’t there?
KEN: The church is an anxious system. It’s organized around the most anxious members, including those who threaten to leave if exclusionary policies aren’t upheld. In fact, pastors become so anxious about these members that we tend to overestimate how many in the congregation share these views.
‘My worst fears …’
DAVID: You were afraid, right?
KEN: I had a lot of fear about this! I dreaded it! And, you know what? My worst fears have not been realized. Not even close to my worst fears. Yes, I have lost some key people and, yes, we have lost some income over this and it has affected attendance—but not nearly as badly as I had expected.
If you’re a pastor, it’s easy to exaggerate the fear. As pastors, we have to find ways to duck out from under this big cloud of fear that surrounds this issue.
‘A healer’s heart …’
DAVID: This took time. This book describes a journey with your congregation that began years ago. How long ago?
KEN: Phyllis Tickle is a big part of this story from the very beginning. Our Vineyard church in Ann Arbor began working with Phyllis Tickle on prayer about 10 years ago. Our church helped Phyllis to promote praying The Divine Hours and we became an online host for the Divine Hours. She visited our congregation in 2005 and, as I got to know her, she became a personal confidant. I would send her prayer updates as I began experiencing a significant shift in my own prayer life. Eventually, my wife Nancy and I were invited to their home outside Memphis. And that’s how I met Dr. Sam Tickle, Phyllis’ husband, a leading doctor in the Memphis area and, some years ago, one of the first to begin treating people in the AIDS crisis.
A a result of all this, Sam and Phyllis had a lot of gay and lesbian friends and they took us to a church that was filled with gay and lesbian and transgendered people. It was as if someone had gathered a congregation of sexually excluded Christians and I was just taken aback by the clear presence of Jesus in that assembly of people. The cognitive dissonance I was experiencing—as a traditional evangelical pastor—was just through the roof! I credit Dr. Sam Tickle with really helping me in this journey. He was so obviously a compassionate and caring physician and Christian and he related to people with a healer’s heart that was just infectious.
DAVID: Everyone on the cover of your book played a role in this journey, including Dr. Tanya Luhrmann, the famous scholar and researcher. Tell us how your paths crossed.
KEN: Tanya is a world-class anthropologist who had done research on how evangelical spirituality mediates an experience of God. She studied this in Vineyard churches and I became aware of her work. I read her book When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God and I thought it was brilliant. Her book helped me to be a better pastor and I got to know Tanya herself through a gathering of Vineyard scholars, where we both talked about her book.
‘Describing a journey and inviting others …’
DAVID: You found many of Tanya’s ideas to be very helpful, especially the questions she raises about how a person can communicate a personal spiritual journey to others. You also worked with a prayer exercise Tanya provided and, in the midst of that exercise you found your method: writing a letter.
KEN: How would I communicate all of this? I thought a lot about that. And, I decided to write out the whole process of what I was going through as a pastor struggling with these questions. Through this letter, my struggle could become a representative struggle for others. I wasn’t writing an argument. I was describing a journey and inviting others to accompany me.
DAVID: Then, I also want to ask you about David P. Gushee, who dramatically decided to go public with his own change on this issue in the opening pages of your book. How did that come about?
KEN: I met David Gushee in 2006 through another issue we were working on. We were in a gathering of evangelical leaders with top-level environmental scientists—people like E.O. Wilson—to talk about climate change and environmental concerns.
So, I had known David and I had worked with him on that environmental issue. He is the co-author of Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context, which is a top book in evangelical seminaries. I liked that book, too, but the one section I thought was weak in Kingdom Ethics was the section on homosexuality. I called David and I said, “I love your book, but I have questions about this one section. It feels to me like you’re just rehearsing the traditionalist views.” And I asked him, “Where are you on this—now?”
He told me that someone close to him had come out as gay and his views were changing. I sent him the manuscript of my letter, then, hoping that he might say something like: Well, I don’t agree with Ken’s conclusion, but this is a legitimate part of the conversation. That was as much as I could hope.
DAVID: Instead, you got a shock.
KEN: It was a shock! His reply was: “What can I do to help you?” And, then, he wrote such a powerful Foreword to the book. I mean, I was feeling way out on a limb here and it was such a blessing that he came forward and was so supportive of this. I’m a pastor. I’m not the kind of scholar that Dr. David P. Gushee is. And yet he stepped forward and has been so supportive of the whole thing.
‘Who wants to go up against 2,000 years …?’
DAVID: The Pew Research Center captures the historic opportunity we all have, right now, to help people make a transition on this issue. In just 10 years, Pew reports, Americans have gone from less than half of us saying “homosexuality should be accepted by society” to 60 percent today! Then, there’s another dramatic jump when the question is asked another way: “Is same-sex marriage inevitable?” Then, more than 7 in 10 Americans say: Yes.
Those two answers show us millions of Americans who are in turmoil on this issue. Millions know this change is coming—but still can’t find a way to accept LGBT people as a part of society. One of the brilliant strategies in your book is to say: Church members don’t have to be united in our personal moral conclusions—but we must unite in welcoming people into the church. Am I saying that correctly? You’re not demanding that everyone immediately agree on moral acceptance, but you are saying that it’s time for the church to fully welcome LGBT people.
KEN: Right. The problem is that so many people in the evangelical community—and in the faith community in general—want to find a way to accept and include gay and lesbian people, but they have serious questions based on their faith tradition. Who wants to go up against 2,000 years of Christian consensus on an issue? But, already, many people do know that our hearts are telling us something else. People are realizing that, even if they don’t fully understand how to think through this issue, there’s a more serious question we’re facing: the do-no-harm test.
‘What is the Good News of Jesus?’
DAVID: Yes, Pew explains this shift in American experience. This has become personal for Americans nationwide. Pew reports that a huge number of people—7 in 10 Americans—say they know “some” or “a lot” of gay or lesbian people. In other words, we know who we’re hurting if we condemn gay and lesbian people. They’re our friends, our family.
KEN: Right, we’re talking about a lot of people! And, this issue is the tip of a much, much bigger iceberg, which is the branding of Christianity—ever since the rise of the Religious Right—as this movement of people who primarily are “against things” and, even worse, as a movement that is “against people.”
Christianity is losing followers in America because of this. What’s at stake is more than just individuals with gay friends. What’s at stake here is how Americans make friends with Jesus. The bigger question is: How can the church promote human flourishing? Have we reduced the message of Jesus to a rigid list of things that people are forbidden to do—or, worse yet, to a list of people we’re mad at? Are we just a movement that stigmatizes and excludes people?
We’re really asking is: What is the Good News of Jesus? What does Jesus stand for?
DAVID: These are the emotionally wrenching questions you’re hearing from families, as a pastor, right?
KEN: Exactly. I began to realize this when parents started coming to me privately as their pastor, telling me that a teenage son or daughter thought they were gay. I saw how much fear, how much distress—and how much harm—was happening in these families. I began to realize: Something is wrong with this picture.
Parents were having to choose between their faith and their own children. This was a profound problem! Of course, some parents tried to adopt the approach of “loving the person but hating the sin,” and that might sound like a nice bromide if you’re not actually living in these relationships. In real lives, in real human relationships, that is such an alienating thing to say.
The truth is: There are gay young people in all congregations, whatever the congregation teaches about homosexuality. So, we’ve got a dangerous situation here when we condemn and exclude people. Just look at the data on suicide rates. As a pastor, I began to realize: This can’t be the fruit of the Spirit. There’s something wrong here.
‘The Gospel is an invitation.’
DAVID: You’re sure to draw a lot of criticism, along with all the appreciation that’s sure to come your way, as well. What final thought do you want to leave with readers—critics and supporters of your work?
KEN: I hope that people who care about the church will ask themselves: Don’t we care about the harm being done to vulnerable people? Do we really want to sacrifice our children? Is that the message of Jesus? Or, is the Gospel an acceptance of us that is so powerful that it is life changing? And, as a result, we want to invite others into the company of Jesus. I think the Gospel is an invitation.
---
VISIT our resource page for the new book, which includes all three introductions by Gushee, Tickle and Luhrmann … plus much more! Order a copy of the book, right now, from Amazon (via links with this interview)—or use the links in the resource page to order from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or other online retailers. Bookmark our resource page for the book, because—in coming weeks—we will be adding free Discussion Guides.
PLEASE share this interview with friends. You are free to republish this interview as long as you include the credit line (see the italic line at the end of this post). Or, you can share this by using the blue-”f” Facebook icons or the tiny envelope-shaped email icons.
The red-billed scythebill, a woodcreeper from the ovenbird family, has a long, curved beak. Photo: Joseph A. Tobias
Competition May Not Be the Driving Force of Species Diversity After All http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2014/03/bird-evolution/ by Emily Singer, Quanta Magazine
March 18, 2014
In 1982, a few large ground finches took up residence on the tiny island of Daphne Major in the Galapagos. Compared with the island’s existing population of medium ground finches, the invaders had an advantage: large beaks that could more efficiently crack open the seeds of the Jamaican feverplant, one of the island’s biggest bird food bounties. The newcomers began to flourish, eating many of the seeds and forcing the diminutive natives to forage for smaller options.
The two kinds of birds lived in relative harmony until 2003, when a two-year drought decimated the food supply for both species, pushing them to the brink of starvation. The bleak conditions favored a subset of medium finches that had smaller beaks; they had never been able to crack feverplant seeds, and their diet consisted solely of small seeds. Free from competition with the large ground finches, the smaller-beaked members of the medium finch clan survived the drought and passed along their petite features to the next generation. The average beak size in medium ground finches shrank in a swift and lasting change to the species. Peter and Rosemary Grant, biologists at Princeton University who have been studying Galapagos finches for 40 years, tracked the change, publishing their results in Science in 2006. It became a textbook example of an evolutionary tenet known as “character displacement.”
In Darwinian evolution, organisms compete for resources, and the winners get to pass their genome to future generations. According to these rules, two similar species using the same resources in the same environment will be forced to compete with each other. If both are to survive, they will need to become more distinct from each other over time. The famous naturalist E. O. Wilson, along with collaborator William Brown, dubbed this pattern character displacement in the 1950s and proposed that it explains much of the diversity among the world’s organisms.
Joseph Tobias, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University, suggests
that character displacement may not be as common as previously
thought. Photo: Andre Baertschi
“It’s one of the main Darwinian ideas for explaining why species are different,” said Joseph Tobias, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford University. But some scientists, including Tobias, are now questioning the data supporting character displacement as a driving force in the evolution of diversity. A report published last year examining 144 studies found that few met the strongest criteria for character displacement. Scientists often failed to rule out other possible explanations, for example, or to show that the change resulted from a heritable trait. And in February, Tobias and collaborators published a large-scale study in Nature that questions how widespread character displacement is in nature. Focusing on ovenbirds, a family of birds that, like Darwin’s finches, have evolved different beak sizes, they found little evidence that character displacement was responsible for differences in the species if the ages of the species are taken into account. That is, given enough time, species tend to diverge, or become more different from each other, even without interspecies competition.
Tobias and Peter Grant, among others, contend that robust examples of character displacement are relatively rare. If that indeed means that the phenomenon itself is rare, rather than just difficult to reliably detect, scientists would need to reconsider the role of competition in the evolution of diversity.
“We’re not saying that character displacement doesn’t occur, but it’s probably rarer than people think,” Tobias said. “The implication of our study is that almost all of the species differences [in ovenbirds] that people have attributed to character displacement are actually the result of time.”
Home in the field view the provocative claim with skepticism. “I don’t think this spells the death of character displacement,” said Daniel Simberloff, an ecologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville who wasn’t involved in the project. “We need a lot more studies to know if this is a general phenomenon.”
A Swinging Pendulum
Like many scientific theories, character displacement has gone in and out of favor. After Wilson and Brown coined the term in the 1950s, “just about everyone saw it everywhere,” said Jonathan Losos, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard University whose 144-study review published last year examines the history of character displacement. “Any difference between coexisting species was attributed to competition.” But often there was little supporting it, and by the 1980s, the pendulum had swung the other way.
“It was a contentious period,” said Yoel Stuart, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Texas, Austin, and co-author of the review with Losos.
In response to some of the criticism, scientists adopted more stringent criteria for concluding that character displacement was truly driving two species to become more different from each other. According to these guidelines, researchers should rule out other drivers of diversity, such as random chance or subtle differences in the two species’ habitats. Studies of character displacement should also show that the species under study truly compete, and that the differences among species, such as smaller beaks, are a heritable trait. In the 1990s, character displacement regained popularity as more rigorous studies emerged.
Anolis lizards in the Lesser Antilles tend to be medium-size if they live on an island without lizard competitors,
like this Plymouth Anole, but either small or large if two species share an island. Photo: Jonathan Losos
Losos’ studies of Anolis lizards in the Lesser Antilles highlight a major challenge in studying character displacement — different evolutionary histories can result in the same ecological pattern. In work published in 1990, Losos reported strong evidence that character displacement among lizards in the northern islands had resulted in the islands having one smaller and one larger species. The southern islands similarly had habitats with one large and one smaller species of the lizards. However, the likely explanation for this situation in the south was that the animals were two different sizes when they arrived. Without knowing the history of when two species come together, determining the forces at play can be difficult. The end result of both processes looks the same. “That’s one of the biggest sticking points in these studies,” Losos said.
Character displacement remains popular today, but some scientists insist that stronger evidence is needed to show that this phenomenon is the true driver of differences among competing species. “I think people have gone overboard and returned back to the state of play in the ’70s where people see character displacement everywhere,” Losos said, though he thinks that today’s studies present better evidence than their 1970s counterparts. Despite a huge proliferation in the number of potential examples of character displacement, conducted more rigorously than earlier efforts, fewer than 40 percent of the 144 studies that Stuart and Losos reviewed met most of the gold standard criteria. “With 20 years of rigorous research, we still have few cases,” Stuart said.
Peruvian Glaciers to Bolivian Deserts
An avid bird watcher from the age of 11, Tobias has traveled to the plains of Patagonia, Bolivian deserts and the high cloud forests of Panamanian volcanoes and has spied on about 5,000 species, more than half of the world’s birds.
These explorations revealed a pattern familiar to any naturalist: Where two similar species live in the same habitat, they are generally more different than species that live apart, said Tobias, now 44.
“The underlying assumption is that it’s because of character displacement,” he said. But Tobias began to doubt that assumption after coming across exceptions to the pattern. A study of Amazonian antbirds, for example, revealed that two species that compete for resources use very similar songs. “There may be many scenarios where competition does not produce divergent selection” and may in fact drive the opposite pattern, in which a specific characteristic starts to converge, Tobias said.
In 2007, Tobias and collaborators launched their in-depth study of ovenbirds, a diverse family of small, insect-eating birds that live mainly in South America. Different ovenbird species have adapted to rocky ocean shorelines, snowy mountains, scorched deserts and tropical rainforests. Like finches, ovenbirds have a variety of beak sizes and shapes, an important indicator of food preference that makes them ideal for studying evolution. In ovenbirds, “some [beaks] are long and down-curved, like a scythe, for probing into crevices in tree bark,” said Jason Weir, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Toronto who was not involved in the study. “Others have short dagger-like bills.”
Most studies of character displacement have focused on only a few species, but Tobias’ team compiled information on 350 ovenbird lineages, including species and subspecies, culling data from a vast set of resources: bird specimens from museums; recordings of bird songs, some more than a century old; geographical data collected during expeditions and from other sources; and a highly detailed evolutionary history of ovenbirds. “The scope of the study is pretty amazing,” said Stuart, who was not involved in the research.
To study the role of competition in evolution, Joseph Tobias and collaborators mapped out the evolutionary
relationships and variation in beak size among 350 lineages of ovenbirds. Image: Joseph A. Tobias and D. Seddon
For each lineage, the researchers compared the youngest, most closely related species living in the same area and the youngest, most closely related species living in different areas. When they looked at the data, they found a pattern that Darwin and most biologists would have predicted — the lineages living together were more different than those that lived apart.
But Tobias and colleagues suspected that species that cohabit tend to be older than those that live apart. That’s because new species usually form in isolation, so it makes sense that the youngest don’t typically share habitats, Tobias said. This pattern was familiar to some evolutionary biologists, but Tobias said few ecologists had considered the implications. “You can’t just compare things living together with those living apart,” Tobias said. As a species ages, it has more time to evolve, so “you have to take into account how old they are,” he said.
When the researchers accounted for the age of each ovenbird lineage — an unusual step in studies of character displacement — the differences vanished. “We find no evidence there is any kind of bump up in differences between lineages that come together,” Tobias said.
Instead, they found that the youngest species living together tend to be much older than the youngest species with distinct habitats; the former split from their common ancestor an average of 10 million years ago, compared to approximately 4 million years for the latter.
he researchers concluded that diversity isn’t driven by competition between cohabiting species. The differences they see may simply be the result of species having more time to evolve. “An important finding of their study is that it takes a long time for these species to diverge enough to be able to invade each other’s geographical range with little or no competitive interaction,” said Peter Grant, who was not involved in the study.
Indeed, previous research by Tobias’ team suggests that ovenbird species only start to overlap geographically once they are different enough to peacefully coexist. Species with the most similar beaks and ecologies took longest to cohabit, Tobias said. “It’s not necessarily that evolution isn’t happening; it’s just not driven by interaction among species,” Tobias said.
Evolution in Action
Having plunged itself into an evolutionary debate, the ovenbird study has received mixed reviews. Many experts applaud its unprecedented scope and the effort to look at the large-scale effects of evolutionary forces. “The overarching question they pose is an important one in evolution,” said David Pfennig, an evolutionary biologist at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. One of the biggest issues in evolutionary biology is understanding how microevolutionary processes, mechanisms that happen within species, influence larger ecological patterns, he said. To what degree do they explain broad observations, such as the diverse range of body shapes we see? By looking at many species of ovenbirds, “this is one of the few studies that gets directly at this issue,” Pfennig said.
But some say it’s too soon to conclude that the findings will hold true more broadly. “All we can say is that there isn’t a strong signal for [character displacement] in this taxonomic group,” Weir said. “But it’s an extremely interesting starting point to explore this in other groups.”
It’s also difficult to rule out character displacement in this group of birds entirely. Pfennig points out that the traits that Tobias’ team examined in ovenbirds are mostly morphological — beak and leg size. But it’s possible that competition among species has driven the birds to evolve different behaviors, such as foraging during different times of day. “Many species undergo this kind of divergence,” he said.
The one behavior that Tobias’ team studied — bird song — did appear to shift in response to competitive species, but in the opposite direction than traditional character displacement would predict. Birds with overlapping ranges tended to have more similar songs, a pattern of convergence rather than divergence. Ovenbirds sing for largely territorial reasons, warning other birds to stay out. Tobias theorizes that a signal recognized by both the singer’s species and related competitor species deters more birds. This may represent a different flavor of character displacement, in which certain characteristics are driven to become more similar.
The findings also highlight the need to take evolutionary history into account in studies of character displacement, an issue that has been ignored in the past, largely because that data was hard to come by, Weir said. Many of the existing studies held up as examples of character displacement “are invalid without a time component,” he said.
Catching evolution in action, as the Grants did with their finches, is a powerful alternative, because researchers don’t need detailed evolutionary histories. “The real advantage is that you can actually see what happens,” Losos said. Theirs and other recent studies have demonstrated just how quickly evolution can occur, making it feasible to measure changes as they unfold. “Years ago, we thought evolution was too slow to see these things change, but it’s not,” Losos said. “Evolution can occur rapidly when natural selection is strong.”
One of the best opportunities for catching character displacement in the act comes from the study of invasive species. “We have inadvertently set up situations where character displacement might occur by introducing species that might be competitors,” Losos said. Despite the shortfalls of many existing studies, he said, “I am convinced that character displacement is a common phenomena.”
Scientists predict that the ovenbird study will provoke a round of similar research in the next few years to test whether the same pattern — that species differences are mostly linked to the age of the species rather than competition among species — is true in other groups. Tobias and collaborators are already expanding their approach to many more of the world’s birds, including other members of the roughly 1,200 species group known as suboscines. (Ovenbirds belong to this group). They also plan to study character displacement and other evolutionary questions for the 5,500 species of passerines, which encompass more than half the world’s bird species. The effort will rely on evolutionary maps currently under construction by researchers at Louisiana State University and elsewhere.
Scientists hope that in the next 10 years, studies that take species age into account, as well as the invasive species efforts that Losos describes, will clarify the role of competition in the evolution of diversity.
“My overall opinion is that character displacement may be fairly common,” said Peter Grant, whose studies of Galapagos finches are considered one of the strongest demonstrations, “though far from universal [and] generally small in magnitude.”
---
Original story reprinted with permission from Quanta Magazine, an editorially independent division of SimonsFoundation.org whose mission is to enhance public understanding of science by covering research developments and trends in mathematics and the physical and life sciences.