Dear Theists

[TheRocketSurgeon]

Sure boss, but what's a rep? 

And what do you want to hear about? Let me guess... Neurodevelopment? Ok!

The brain of infants grows incredibly in the first three years of life. At the end of 3 years the brain is 80% of the adult size brain. Because of this huge growth, infants are very susceptible to outside stimuli. Like ducklings that follow anything that moves, infants follow the face of their mothers. Joyful moments between mom and baby release dopamine, oxytocin and endorphins. All of these are neuromodulators of brain growth. Neurons grow out of the limbic system, to the cortex under the influence of these hormones. They structurally form the mesocortico-limbic system. Mother-infant bonding and mutual gaze communicates joy. This is the first emotion we all felt, and it formed the structure of our brains.

Have you ever been addicted to something? If so, youre activating the same dopaminergic "reward" pathways of the mesocorticolimbic system. Youre longing for joy. 

Think of a beautiful icon of the Virgin Mary and Infant Jesus.

Are they joyful? Be honest.

Are you joyful? Am I? 

Thanks for your rep. I demand that you give it to me. now.

Ha! I like this answer. Gave you a rep for it.

Though I know the Pope has recently stated that evolution is a reality that is "necessary" to Catholic doctrine, I would like to point out that the reason  the brain of the baby has to grow like it does is because we are (more than any of our cousin species) born neurologically premature. As our ancestors shifted from the splayed-leg gait still used by the chimpanzee to a bipedal gait, the pelvic bones "rotated" forward to allow our feet to point in the same direction when standing, a necessary adaptation for long-distance walking/running while upright. (Chimps can "dash" briefly on two legs, but it's tiring for them to do so because their feet point outward from the centerline.) We were bipedal for quite some time before the brains of the late Australopithecus began to enlarge to form the first Homo habilis, and the narrowing of the birth canal due to the change in hip location placed an "upper limit" on how large our heads could be at birth. As a result, we were born increasingly premature, there being a strong selection pressure (because the mothers would die in childbirth, killing both) for those born with the late-development genes. The architecture for the mother-child bonding you described was already there, as we see in chimp mothers with their young, but with the increasing dependency of premature neurological development, it made the mother-child bond more important and, evolutionary biologists hypothesize, led to the pressures that caused us to move away from the "free love" chimp model of sexuality and begin to form monogamous family units.

I find greater beauty in that overall picture than I do staring at a picture of one mother with one infant.