What are you even talking about? Propositions have truth values. Processes do not.
This makes no sense.
Some humans as well as some animals fight over territory, resources, and mates. Chimpanzees as well as humans wage war. Only humans fight over ideology. But the thing is,only humans are ultimately accountable for their actions, and we have long debates on the morality of going to war. (Look up “Just War theory.”) The various religions are all over the map when it comes to deciding if it is ever justifiable to go to war. We have everything from total pacifists (e.g. Quakers) to war mongers (e.g. ISIS).
btw, I recommend the movie “Hacksaw Ridge.” It’s about a young Seventh Day Adventist man who joined the army during WWII with the understanding that he would be a medic and not carry a gun. Once he started training, however, it was a different story; he was ridiculed and beaten up by fellow soldiers and officers for his pacifist beliefs. When they went to war he served in the battle of Okinawa. True to his beliefs, he never touched a gun, but with his outstanding courage he saved many lives in the heat of battle as a medic.
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I asked the original question that started this thread, and I want to thank you for your participation. You provide an important perspective on the problem.
If I understand correctly, you are drawing an absolute distinction between human morality and evolutionary biology. You argue that biology has nothing to do with morality. Please correct me if I am misunderstanding. But for now, allow me to respond.
On the one hand, I agree with you in that we must be careful about the difference between “explanation” and “justification.” To explain, for example, monogamy in terms of evolutionary biology is different from morally justifying it. To say where it came from evolutionally, or that it emerged out of forces of competition under natural and sexual selection, is not say it is what ought to be done. To offer justification (rather than explanation) for faithful monogamy requires appeal to rules, principles, authorities, or resources that cannot be (directly) derived from biology and that are logically prior to biology. In this sense, human morality transcends (or ought to transcend) biology.
On the other hand, I disagree in that we must somehow reconcile biology and morality. This is the fundamental question I am asking in this thread. Modern science has shown us that we are biological beings. Human nature is biological. Morality, however, has generally been understood apart from biology. This, I argue, is mistaken because we now know that we are, in fact, flesh and blood bodies– evolved biological beings. Ethics must, in some fashion, take account of this - difficult as it may be. The above example of monogamy concerns the plainly biological (thus, evolutionary) functions of sexual intercourse and reproduction. Thus, its morality must, in some way, involve biology.
In our effort to grapple with this problem, we need to avoid the error of “reductionism.” This is a common mistake made by evolutionary biologists, Richard Dawkins and Edward O. Wilson being two prime examples. The mistake is to oversimplify things. It is what has been called the “nothing but” approach. For example, Dawkins says humans are “nothing but” vehicles used by genes to make more genes, and Wilson famously argued that all of the social sciences and ethics too should be “biologized” and ultimately “reduced” down to mere physics and chemistry. Reductionism is much more complex than this, but this is the basic idea.
We should realize that this same error can also occur among theologians and ethicists. We can engage in theological and moral reductionism just as scientists can engage in materialistic reductionism. While you are correct, I think, to say that Christian ethics and evolutionary biology are not necessarily in harmony (precisely the problem we are all discussing), and you are right to warn all of us about how we relate evolutionary biology to morality, I am troubled by your insistence that human morality is strictly separate from biology. By isolating ethics from biology, you are, I suggest, oversimplifying (or avoiding) the problem. This move may seem to solve the problem, but it’s just not that simple. I wish it were, but it isn’t.
Again, thank you for your contributions. I look forward to your response.
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Regarding:
Roger. “The new scientific understanding of Wilson is better science than Dawkins and makes him more willing to work with believers toward as common cause of controlling the pollution of God’s Creation.”
Marvin. “Bees are a good example for a neighbour we better look after.”
I find these comments fascinating. You both seem to be saying that morality extends outside the human realm to include the broader, nonhuman creation. Is that correct?
If you are saying this, here is an opposing view. Traditionally, morality has been understood as dealing only with interhuman affairs. Evolutionary theory supports the idea that morality evolved within the human social context. Christianity has traditionally understood morality as involving only interhuman affairs, animals and nature being peripheral to that. The Bible perhaps contains a few passages that support a moral understanding of our relationship with animals and the broader creation, but this is very limited. Your thoughts?
Thank you for your questions.
Genesis 1:31 (NIV2011)
31 God saw all that He had made, and it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day.
Genesis says that at the end of Creation, on the 6th day, God declared that all that God had done was good. Now we understand that God is still creating, but it still remains that God declared that God said that the universe is “good.”
The first question is, Can something be good and not moral? The answer is No. If God’s God universe is good, it must be moral. If God used evolution to create a good and moral universe, it also must be good and moral.
This does not mean that trees and fish are able to make moral choices. I think it means that the process that created these organisms, Natural Selection, is a moral process guided by God, Who is moral.
The issue is that people have made the determination that Nature is not moral. While it is true that Nature is not a moral being in that it cannot make moral decisions. While this is true, it overlooks the fact that Nature is created by God and God programed Nature to act morally.
In this age of computers we should be able to understand that if humans can program machines to act in a certain way, most certainly God can program nature to act morally. This is what we used to call instincts and conscience.
Dawkins tries to replace instincts with “memes” in the explanation of behavior. Memes are based on genes, while instincts are based on the nervous system. There is no place in Dawkins view of evolution for the brain. It is genes that evolve, not the nervous system or brain.
To say that evolution is moral is to oppose the views of Darwin and Dawkins which say that it is not for the same reasons.
I guess I don’t understand why anyone needs evolutionary biology to understand there is an important physical component to our existence and therefore our morality. The relationship between body/physicality/material world and mind/spirit/soul has been something philosophers and theologians have been discussing for millennia. I totally disagree with the bolded part above. Evolution did not reveal we are physically embodied beings, that has always been obvious and has been something all major world religions have acknowledged and attempted to address in various ways. The New Testament, for example is full of directives of how to deal morally with the desires of our sarx, which in many cases encompasses the idea of natural biological and psychological responses. How does evolution add new information to the discussion?
Do you have any examples in mind of Christian moral errors that a proper understanding of evolutionary biology “corrects”?
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John, you started a great thread, and this post proves you have given it careful thought. I would like to add some insights that bear on the parts of your quote that I have highlighted.
Most of the problems discussed in this thread disappear if we agree to this postulate: Our Human Nature can NOT be traced back to the appearance of the Homo sapiens primate some 200,000 years BP. For the purpose of any discussions of morality and religion, humankind began much later as a Great Leap Forward caused by some (as yet undetermined) epigenetic event and evidenced by an advanced culture that produced sophisticated paintings & sculpture, burials with grave goods, and almost surely complex communication through language. The choice to act against instinct, to create societies that displayed true altruism and brotherly love–i.e.morality–began at this time. However, this gift of Mind & Conscience was to early human recipients (Adam) like “pearls cast before swine.” Sin had entered the world.
Realistically, I don’t expect most biologists to accept my postulate and jump on this bandwagon–at least until the epigenetic mechanism for the ‘brain programming’ that resulted in the GLF becomes more clearly evident. But, for me at least, it eases the burden so easily assumed from Genesis in the belief in a wrathful God who cursed all of humankind for the Original Sin of disobedience. As Christians, it seems more constructive to see Jesus’ role as Christ who leads us to accept the invitation to become imago Dei, even though to do so we must ‘carry his cross’ and transcend the faulty biological nature that evolution bequeathed to us.
Al Leo
Roger, it appears that you and I had quite different outlooks when we read Dawkins books. Having read Teilhard beforehand and accepted his view that the Noosphere was a real extension of the Cosmosphere and Biosphere that preceded it, I accepted Dawkins’ term, “meme”, as a synonym for Teilhard’s concept that Ideas (or Noogenes) were fated to become the “information carriers” in a Noosphere that was going to have as great (or greater) impact on humankind’s future as the DNA/genes that acted in the Biosphere. I consider Dawkins as a very bright but misguided human being who at least had the modesty to admit (in his book, “The Ancestor’s Tale”) that he was totally at loss to explain the Great Leap Forward–when the Homo sapiens brain was suddenly ‘programmed’ to behave as Mind (and thus create ‘memes’.)
The important difference in our two outlooks, as far as this thread is concerned, is that you appear to believe that, if God created through evolution, then both the mechanism and the products of evolution must be morally good. At least that is what comes through to me. But I prefer to think that the concept of moral goodness only makes sense when applied to an intelligent creature that has freedom of choice–a creature that I believe appeared on earth only about 40K years ago (as Adam).
You do make some cogent arguments, tho, Roger. An excellent debater.
Al Leo
Roger, we see some ground nesting mother birds feigning injury, and courting danger to lead a predator away from her chicks, and we conclude that a moral God is guiding her behavior. But elsewhere there is a mother bird with two sibling chicks in the nest, and she watches, unconcerned, as the older, stronger chick pecks the weaker to death. Has God suddenly changed the rules of behavior, and decreed that ‘might makes right’? My training in science advises me that if my proposed explanation has serious exceptions, I should re-examine my data and premises and construct a new hypothesis. Is this not the case with your statement that ‘God teaches the momma bird….’?
Al Leo
These statements are all false. Dawkins is a neuroethologist by training. The statements could not be further from the truth. Readers should ignore them.
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I think the distinction that is important for me is the distinction between deriving morality from biology and contextualizing moral principles in a biological reality. If it is the latter that you are talking about, then fine.
We can’t apply Christian moral principles to our current ethical questions until we have grasped the biological and psychological/neurological facts of the situation. So it is one thing to say “all human life is intrinsically valuable” as a moral principle, but it is another thing altogether to apply that moral principle to the ethical issues involved in abortion, euthanasia, universal healthcare, reproductive technology, etc. Affirming that all human life is valuable doesn’t tell you when human life begins or ends or how much intervention in natural processes is ethical. It doesn’t tell you whether or not Christians should use in vitro to address fertility issues or IUDs to prevent contraception. To apply ethics to those questions you most certainly need to understand the relevant scientific facts.
And in the realm of psychology too, I think there are facts that should inform how Christians counsel people when it comes to applying principles like “honor your father and mother” or “don’t get divorced” or “forgive those who sin against you.” An understanding of the psychological dynamics of addiction, mental illness and depression,and trauma inflicted by abuse are many times necessary in order to know what is the moral response to a specific situation or question.
I am reading a book by Mark Yarhouse about a Christian response to gender dysphoria and transgenderism. He discusses lots of facts and research results that establish the context for an appropriate moral response. Without understanding the reality of the situation, Christians often say stupid stuff and recommend moral choices based on misunderstandings. I’m all for looking to science for context and relevant facts. I just don’t think we can derive or justify morality from scientific facts.
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Stephen,
Thank you for your comment. You say that Dawkins is a neuro-ethnologist by training, but I can find only that he studied ethnology or the origins of animal behavior.
It is clear that Dawkins says that animal behavior, including human behavior, is controlled by its genes. It is also true that he says that he does not believe in the division between mind and body, but the view that the physical (genes) controls the behavior of the organism, including apparently humans.
In The Selfish Gene Dawkins says that the main role of the brain is to control and coordinate the muscles. (p. 49) Also he indicates that the genes built and control the human brain. (p. 54)
Albert, I can see how you thought that Dawkins was talking about the same kind of evolution as Teihard when in fact he was not. Please note my reply to Stephen. Dawkins rejects Western mind/body dualism that informs Teilhard and most of us. He is trying to develop a monist materialistic evolutionary system that rejects rationality. Dawkins driven by a materialist ideology does not have an important role for the brain.
Also Dawkins rejects philosophy as a meaningful discipline. Traditional atheists like Russell built their atheism on philosophy. The New Atheists built their atheism on Scientism and belief that Nature is physical and not rational, nor spiritual.
It’s ethology, not ethnology, also called neuroethology. Dawkins’ technical research was on animal behavior (digger wasps) and evolutionarily stable strategies. Neither he nor anyone else ever substituted memes for instincts or denied that his ideas don’t account for evolution of the brain.
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While most people including scientists think that our minds determine who we are, Dawkins thinks that it is our genes determine who we are. While most people including scientists think that our minds determine how we behave, Dawkins thinks that it is memes that are determined by our genes which determines how we behave.
The problem with ideas is that they are nor physical or material, they are mental or rational. Since they are not physical, for the materialist such as Dawkins, ideas are not real. To give Dawkins his due he appears to be trying to develop a system that depends solely on the physical (genes) and not on the mental (brain or mind.)
In addition he rules out morality by having natural selection based on conflict and not on mutuality. It makes for an interesting ideology, but bad science because it reduces reality and life to only the physical, which it is not
Again, your characterizations of what Dawkins believes are all contradicted by what he writes. My friendly advice to you is this: stop writing about what you think other people believe, unless you can quote them saying what they believe. When you write falsehoods about Dawkins’ beliefs —or anyone else’s, for that matter — you project an image of careless slander and shallow judgmentalism that I think is inconsistent with who you are. I would encourage you, even challenge you, to commit yourself to avoiding this kind of behavior.
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Al, if I understand correctly, your “Great Leap Forward” hypothesis holds that there was a sudden transition at a point in our evolutionary history in which anatomically and behaviorally modern humans with true moral life appeared. I know of only a few scientists who hold hypotheses like this. I myself don’t know enough to make a judgment. I confess, however, my skepticism. For one thing, how do the Neanderthals fit in? But even if there was such a “GLF,” I don’t see how it would solve the problem. We are still biological beings trying to figure out how to be moral Christians in this complicated world. Sorry for my recalcitrance.
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Christy, thank you for your two responses.
First, you take issue with my statement that morality has “generally been understood apart from biology.” I concede the point. You are correct that all viable moral systems, religious or otherwise, have addressed biological aspects of human life. Perhaps I was thinking of body-soul dualism, which says that humans consist of two separate or separable substances – a material body and a spiritual soul. The soul possesses the functions of reason and free will, hence also the moral faculty, and governs the body. Thus operationally, morality belongs to the spiritual soul, and the body follows. Evolution and modern neuroscience have severely challenged body-soul dualism. Some people have abandoned it and adopted various “monistic” views of human nature – the idea that humans are one thing only – a body (no soul). This, in fact, is my view. So perhaps I was thinking along these lines when I wrote that. But no excuses. I was wrong, and I appreciate you calling me on it.
Second, your comments about the “physicality” of Christianity and the Bible are, in my view, right on. In fact, I see this as a positive and attractive feature of our faith tradition – the most powerful aspect being the physicality of Jesus Christ. The crucifixion is a physical, bloody, and painful affair. Jesus’ body (not soul) is resurrected and in his post-resurrection state he is a physical being – he even eats, a really “biological” thing to do (Lk 24:36-48). So I say amen to your comment.
Third, you asked for examples where Christian moral errors may be corrected by evolutionary biology. So far as I can see, biology does not “correct” Christian ethical theory, but it does, I think, correct its application (as you have suggested – see below). For example, I earlier alluded to the fact that evolution confirms what we already know (or should know) – that we are deeply social beings. We need community with other people in order to be what we are (scientifically speaking) evolved to be, or (theologically speaking) what God intended us to be. Social community is the essential environment for human flourishing and for successful Christian discipleship, and God has provided this community in the church – our social “in-group” of deeply cooperative and altruistic humans that is open to outsiders. Western culture in general and American culture in particular are extremely individualistic. This has profoundly influenced Christianity. Today American churches struggle vainly to cultivate community against individualism, and spirituality is largely understood as an individual, private relationship between me and God. Christian ethics is understood this way: it’s up to me to follow Jesus, when it “ought to be” up to us. Evolutionary biology here supports the authentic New Testament call to be a deep, interdependent, local community of disciples. Individualism has severely weakened the American church, badly distorted Christian spirituality, and devastated our moral witness. But individualism is a cultural norm that is so deeply entrenched in our minds and hearts that there may be little we can do about it, but, at least, maybe evolutionary biology might give us a little more persuasive power.
Finally, in your last post, you write biology can contribute to Christian morality by “contextualizing moral principles in a biological reality.” I think you may be correct here and are on to an important part of a solution to this puzzle. Allow me to quote two Christian thinkers in this area. Evangelical Jeffrey Schloss, biologist at Westmont College, CA, writes: “Religious indifference to the very real constraints of biological embodiment in the name of moral transcendence is an intellectual presumption that subverts – rather than advances – love and genuine spirituality” (“Introduction: Evolutionary Ethics and Christian Morality: Surveying the Issues,” in Evolution and Ethics: Human Morality in Biological and Religious Perspective, ed. Philip Clayton and Jeffrey Schloss [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2004], 19). Roman Catholic theologian Stephen Pope writes: “Christian ethics preaches ethical universalism–that every person is my neighbor–but it seems to be the case that the actual practice of real people, including those who are churchgoing, is closer to the world described by sociobiology than it is to the way of life depicted in the Sermon on the Mount” (Human Evolution and Christian Ethics [New York: Cambridge University Press, 2007], p. 267).
These statements are controversial, but they both point to the same idea you have put forward – that we should consider the characteristics and limitations of evolved human nature when we seek to apply the prescriptions of the gospel to our lives. In an earlier post I tried to argue that Jesus’ call to sacrificial love should be understood in light of the constraints of our evolved propensity to self-interest, or at least, being aware of this propensity might help us to help (love?) one another in our struggle to follow Jesus in obedience to these love commands. So, as you say, evolutionary biology cannot prescribe Christian morals, but perhaps it can help “contextualize moral principles in a biological reality.” This seems to me to be one way (probably not the only way) that biology can contribute to Christian ethics.
Sorry for the length of this post. The problem is not solved, but perhaps we have made a little tiny bit of progress?
Thank you again.
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Not so, Roger
That’s a good assessment.
Roger, I’ve read almost everything Dawkin’s has published, and, with one exception, his philosophy is pretty much as you describe it. However, that one exception, “The Ancestor’s Tale”, is extremely important in understanding the person Dawkins really is. It’s not the image of the confident and self-assured scientist he likes to project. If you cannot get a copy of this book, I could lend you mine. The 600+ pagesthat he devotes to how Darwinian evolution ‘explains’ the varieties of all non-human life on earth would not add much to what you already know of his views. But the two pages he devotes to how Humans appeared is most telling.
He accepts the evidence that anatomically our ancestors who lived before the GLF (~40K yrs. BP) were the same as those who came later; i.e., us. Then he writes: “Perhaps this Great Leap Forward coincided with the sudden discovery of what we might call a new software technique.” Then, further: “Much as I would like to linger around the heady time of the GLF…we must press on.”
Dawkins made a name for himself with his first popular book, “The Selfish Gene”. Realizing he had found a literary gold mine in promoting materialistic science as a replacement for religion, he followed this with a string of books, including his ultimate jewel, “The God Delusion”. Having establishing himself as the leader of the New Atheists, and getting rich in the process, how could he then explain the embarrassing admission he made in Ancestor’s Tale–that Humans are different from all other earthly life–the tiny directionless steps characteristic of Darwinian evolution cannot explain modern humans. We arrived on the scene in a Great Leap Forward. Metaphorically speaking, their brains must have been transformed into Minds by some sort of 'programming". I’ll bet Richard would be glad to buy up all copies of Ancestor’s Tale to prevent his embarrassment from becoming widely known.
Al Leo
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True, the GLF is not accepted by all (or maybe most) scientists. I am depending on the quality not the quantity of my sources.
- Ian Tattersall: a) “Becoming Human”; b) “Masters of the Planet”; c) “The World from Beginning to 4000 BC”
- Simon Conway Morris: “Life’s Solutions–Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe”
3 Christian de Duve: “Genetics of Original Sin”
This book by a Nobel Prize winner is a must read for the BioLogos community. He stresses that the GLF might have been caused by a mutation in one of several “master genes” determining brain size, although it "looks more like a case of evolutionary maturity, waiting only for a triggering flip." As an example of one of these ‘flips’, he, likeTattersall, points to the distance between larynx-to-pharynx as being important in modulating sounds required for sophisticated language (p.114) and also lists all the important improvements in tool-making culture seen at the GLF. There is little doubt that improvements in language led to the improved communications that fostered larger, cooperative societies, and that led to mastery of the planet.
Al Leo
Words I have only heard once or twice on this forum in two years! You’re a swell guy, John.
It was an interesting discussion.