Unnatural Intelligence: Crows and the Father Expose the Cuckoo

Imagine intelligent humans emulating a certain parasite, the cuckoo, under the influence of yet another microbial one with devastating impact on our children? From rather disparate quarters such as psychiatrists, psychologists, parasitologists, evolutionary anthropologists, philosophers and theologians there is an emerging sense that for all our intelligence and knowledge, there is something that has become prevalently off about the human psyche. I am going to call it unnatural intelligence for reasons that will become apparent. For all this intelligence, a certain ancient wisdom has been very largely lost among many. Along the way we will find that there is a connection between parasites and philosophers, brain hemispheres and boarding school, books and depression, cat ownership and unbelief, fatherlessness and faithlessness and between crows and our Loving Heavenly Father. And we will find that there are certain common threads in such a tangled web.

What if I told you that Mary Shelley's Frankenstein was a critique of the supreme propaganda piece by a certain philosopher who was one of the main champions of the mindset associated with this parasitism? What if I told you that between the monster in her story and Dr. Victor Frankenstein it was the latter that had the problematic psyche in the first place? What if I told you that the parasite affecting the fracturing of the human psyche has an accomplice in one of our most beloved pets? We like to think of ourselves as being the highpoint of creation and the pinnacle of evolution (which, as we will see, is theologically and evolutionarily naive). Those with a big head may take umbrage at this, but what if I told you that a bird brain, the crow, can inspire us out of this predicament? What if I told you that considering a certain wisdom in the derided crow, it is, in some respects, created more in the image of God than humans? Now imagine a social parasite that did its thing for the sake of the host parents at the expense of itself. What a strange parasite indeed! It has happened once, as we will see, and in so doing has provided humans with inspiration and much more that goes far beyond what crows can do.