Book Review: “Thriving with Stone Age Minds: Evolutionary Psychology, Christian Faith, and the Quest for Human Flourishing” by Justin L. Barrett with Pamela Ebstyne King

Thriving with Stone Age Minds is a fascinating journey into looking at a combination of evolutionary psychology and Christian faith.

First, this book is not located in the space of debating Christianity and evolution. It simply assumes mainstream science is correct and that Christianity remains viable given that. Frankly, that makes the book more useful, in my opinion, than it would have been if it spent pages trying to justify those premises. There is an introductory chapter that goes over some basic assumptions and background knowledge necessary for at least diving in to the later chapters.

Next, there’s the question of what it means to “thrive.” The definition is more complex than a reader may think, especially when one is attempting to balance both evolutionary and Christian theological assumptions. Thriving in this space means there can be gaps in understanding, and that finding a niche means more than successful procreation and passing on of genetic code. Humans also tend to expand into whatever space they find and modify nature to suit their needs; this creates a kind of nature-niche gap that is crossed repeatedly by humans, but might not also yield thriving.

The authors go over various features of human anatomy and what those features might suggest about human nature. For example, humans have large white sclerae in our eyes that allows others to see where we’re directing our attention. The nature-niche gap also refers to how quickly humans are moving various aspects of our lives ahead of nature. For example, our nutrition is linked to our evolutionary past, when finding sugar and fat-rich foods would have been important sources of large nutritional importance; but they are hyper-abundant now and our bodies and minds haven’t been trained or evolved to combat this massive availability.

Some focus of the book is on contrasting the pace of revolutionary change and adaptation and the extremely rapid advancement of technology and–tying into the above–diet and availability of food. Evolutionary psychology can help us understand some of the gaps in understanding and the necessity of learning more about how technology is changing our minds and bodies. Each chapter has a number of ways to focus on the concept of thriving and tying it into both Christian theology and evolutionary biology.

Thriving with Stone Age Minds is a highly recommended read. It rewards careful reading and spurs quite a bit of thought.

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SDG.

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