The Most Gracious and The Most Merciful
Read! In the Name of your Lord, Who has created (all that exists). Has created man from a clot (a piece of thick coagulated blood). Read! And your Lord is the Most Generous.[1]
Intelligence is the capacity of our rational mind to consolidate and evaluate external stimuli by integrating sensory input with our memory and our programming. Both the quality and the quantity of our memory banks and our central processing unit, our cerebral cortex, depend on the genetic material passed on to us by our ancestors. These essential components are part of the hardware of our brain and express themselves in the number and connectivity of our neurons. Secondary to our genetic inheritance, our environment can affect our intelligence. Both our prenatal physiological development and our postnatal mental environment exert considerable influence on our intelligence. Genetic and environmental factors have a bearing on the quality of the hardware of our brain and thus on our ability to compute accurately and successfully. Severe nutritional deprivation and the resulting deficiencies in brain tissue are a known cause of mental sub-normality. Environmental factors are more apt to degrade than to enhance our mental processes. There is no evidence to indicate that our environment can increase intelligence more than 15%. The built-in degradation of mental processes is the result of entropy, the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This Law of Nature stipulates that all physical and physiological processes exhibit a constant degradation of order and a constant increase in randomness. The Law of Entropy demands that any energy-driven process must increase the randomness of its energy sources and is therefore predestined to diminish its efficiency. The same natural law also decrees that an engine will trend to break down but will not randomly eliminate defects and increase its efficiency. In short: Nature makes it easier to reduce complexity than to enhance complexity. It is inherently easier to degrade brain tissue than to create more complex brain tissue. Enhancements in brain structure require long periods of evolutionary selection, in addition to the availability of extraneous sources of energy. Our temperament effects our emotions and is part of our genetic heritage. It, too, asserts a definite influence on our intelligence. Laziness or lethargy are commonly inherited factors and consequently determine the input available from our environment. A person who is too lazy to study will not benefit as much from education as a highly motivated person with the same level of intelligence.[2]
Other genetic predispositions range from alcoholism to schizophrenia, from musical talent to color-blindness. Our genes are responsible for almost everything and anything that establishes the essence of a particular human being. Almost all human diseases are the result of our genetic predisposition, with the exception of infectious diseases or accidents. We even inherit part of our immunity, our resistance or susceptibility to some infectious diseases. Our brain, including hardware and software, is analogous to a computer, because we have designed computers with the human brain as a model. The methods used by our brain to process information have evolved over eons of time and can thus serve as the basic paradigm of computer technology. No information-processing method that might be superior to the basic architecture of the human brain has offered itself to computer designers. All processing of information involves sensory input, memory, the integration of both, and output.[3]
Our genes determine the quality of our intelligence, our ability to integrate and process information. The level of our intelligence determines how well we cope with changes in our environment. We express the processing capacity of our intelligence by a unit of measurement called the Intelligence Quotient, IQ for short. Our IQ represents the ratio of the measured level of intelligence to the physiological age of the subject, multiplied by 100. Some people are very smart; some people are not very smart. If we compile a large number of individual intelligence measurements, it is statistically inevitable that the graphic display of such results appears in the shape of a bell curve. The bell-curve represents a cross-section of the intellectual capacity of a population group. Caucasians of predominantly European ancestry were the first subjects of standardized intelligence tests. The mean achievement level of these tests was set at 100 and this arbitrary level represents the norm against which the intelligence of individuals and groups is measured. In the past, considerable conflict existed regarding the proportional importance of hereditary factors versus environmental factors, in determining the level of intelligence displayed by individuals or population groups. From the 1960s to the 1990s, a trend prevailed among sociologists in the United States to attribute 80% or even 100% of measured intelligence to environmental determinants, with negligible ascription to heredity. This anomaly was the result of political concessions, demanded by some members of the non-scientific academic community. These persons insisted on a strict interpretation of the Jeffersonian pronouncement that "all men are created equal". Evolution favors higher degrees of specialization in order to deal more efficiently with a change in human environments. Evolution achieves specialization by encouraging higher degrees of complexity. The increase in complexity of the human cerebral complex from Homo erectus to Homo sapiens enabled man to achieve ever-higher levels of intelligence. With higher levels of intelligence, man could deal more successfully and predictably with the ultimate objective of all living organisms: To enhance pleasure and happiness by the rational manipulation or elimination of adverse advents that originally manifest themselves as pain or unhappiness. Large segments of the population have different IQ levels and thus present diverging performance criteria. This knowledge allows us to be more efficient in allocating our resources to a specific task.
We can save much time and effort if we know, on a statistical basis, that a Jewish practitioner of medicine or law has a higher level of performance than a Black practitioner has. The Black professional may have attended the same institution as the Jew. However, the dictates of Affirmative Action laws, rather than the merits of his intelligence and competence may have propelled the academic progress of the Black person. If we desire to enhance our ability to achieve happiness, we need to rely on our intelligence, our rational mind, to help us understand how life really works. It is inefficient and unworthy of our intellect to hope that, somehow, we may bump into happiness just by aimlessly running around in circles. We have to use our intelligence and our acquired knowledge to find ore deposits and to mine them successfully. Only if we use our intelligence to understand the nature of happiness, will we have the opportunity to achieve happiness. A clear understanding of the role intelligence plays in our lives, is an extremely important part our knowledge of how life works and thus, in our achievement of success and happiness.[4]
[1] Holy Quran (96 : 1-2)
[2] http//islamicviews.net.com
[3] Major themes of the Quran by Fazlur Rahman ,1994
[4] http//islamicviews.net.com
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