The moral law and socialization

[quote=“Jon_Garvey, post:34, topic:35716”]
I find max. agreement with your post if I take “epigenetic” to mean “all that is not genetic”, including social factors, choices and spiritual factors. As Phil says, we need to recognise the limitations of all biological answers.
[/quote]Yes, this is what makes the most sense to me. Dawkins appears to be amazed and non-plussed by the evidence that humans appeared in a Great Leap Forward, when the evidence is so good that all other life can be explained by neo-Darwinian theory. I’ll bet that his 'tongue-in-cheek explanation that Homo sapiens brain was “programmed” will eventually be clarified when more of epigenetic mechanism become ‘established science’. When this happens, I don’t think it will diminish one whit the idea that God plays a role it it. How can anyone be blind to the fact that Life has developed according to a Purpose. And we, as conscious creatures, are a part of that purpose.

Thanks for the link to your earlier work. Very interesting. You are fortunate in being able to enjoy your family in such a thoughtful way.
Al Leo

Greetings all (I’m a novice here so please extend some grace)…

I tried reading every subsequent comment from @Alli’s original post but my brain started to overload :tired_face:.

@Jay313, I’m not accusing you of being a proponent of abolishing notions of objective morality, but I, too, did infer you hinting to that in your previous statement:

Essentially, we learn the values of the culture, which shape and inform our conscience, so that neither morality nor conscience is implanted in us by God. In my opinion, one cannot argue from the existence of morals to a moral absolute to the existence of God,

Nonetheless, that’s precisely what I’m curious about. If one does embrace the evolutionary creationism framework, how does one account for morality? Is it inherently endowed by the Creator? or can the evolutionary process give rise to morals? If not endowed, doesn’t it then become necessarily relative and not objective?

I took a cursory glance at this open forum and was checking to see if anyone talked about this or raised this question. If anyone has any responses, comments, or even references to share with me concerning my question(s) I’d greatly appreciate it. :smiley:

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@ikem_nachi

If you will permit me to offer my own 2 cents (which is frequently returned as way more valuable than my thoughts) …

Once you have God in the evolutionary process… he is the logical source of morality.

I don’t think it would make much sense to have God working on creating a moral human race … but to think God is indifferent enough to morality that he let’s “evolution decide on the biological basis of morality”. I’m quoting anyone in particular … I’m just imagining what some atheists might attribute to Evolution.

In my personal view, the story of Adam and Eve is the story of God identifying the first hominid to achieve “moral agency” … of knowing right from wrong, and doing the wrong anyway!

In the evolution of the human animal … there had to be a First. There is always a First … if you have the omniscience to look for it…

Treat them as fodder for experiments, you mean!

Hello, ikem_nachi, and welcome to the forum! You aren’t alone with these questions – nor are you the only one who can’t keep up with every discussion even just in a single thread. It’s like trying to drink from a fire-hose sometimes! So realizing (and not caring) that this has probably been addressed thousands of times before, I’ll chime in with my own (hopefully biblically-informed!) thoughts.

I don’t think we do “completely account for” morality. If it is 100% sourced from ourselves and our human cultures as materialists would claim, then it ceases to have any absolute or objective existence. But if it is transmitted through our culture, then that seems to me to be compatible with its also objective existence. So I don’t think the theist need feel threatened with explanations about how morals “came to be” insofar as there may be great explanations about how they are transmitted or even conceived in some earlier proto-civilization. God tells Israel to teach their children the laws – a fairly standard endorsement of moral education right there which wouldn’t make it any less objective. So the evolutionary creationist can accept a God-originated basis for objective morality while simultaneously accepting possible evolutionary explanations for things like altruism and moral development through history; just as we can thank God for our daily food while simultaneously accepting that there are also non-competing mechanical explanations for how food arrives at the dinner table.

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Greetings and welcome! Grace is extended to all except the newly minted “Chief Wikipedia Quoter,” who is a scourge to the forums and a threat to all right-thinking Americans. Hi, @gbrooks9. Haha. When did you acquire the title?

A biological process, such as evolution, cannot account for morality. Consider a newborn infant. The evolutionary process has provided it with a body and a brain. (For the sake of our thought experiment, we’ll assume that both are “normal”.) Remove that child from all human contact until the age of 13. Will the child have any concept of morality? Will the child possess a conscience? The answer to both questions is “No,” so we can safely say that morality and conscience are learned behaviors, which is to say they are not the products of biology, nor are they implanted in us by God. This, of course, means that human notions of morality, as well as our individual consciences, are relative, changeable, and flawed. This does not mean that God’s notions of morality are any of those things.

Morality and conscience are universal, but the “rules” within individual consciences are not universal, even within the same moral culture. Paul himself speaks of strong and weak consciences, as well as a person’s conscience developing and often hardening. Since conscience is thus variable within individuals in a group, and variable even in one individual over his/her lifetime, conscience therefore could not be a feature of the Imago Dei implanted directly into man by God. If it were obtained in that manner, wouldn’t everyone’s conscience be identical, since it derived at birth from the same unchangeable source? Likewise, if conscience was implanted in us by God to function like an instinct, then our individual consciences would not change and develop, just as birds do not gradually decide to fly east rather than south. Conscience therefore is only human and imperfect, although God sovereignly uses it to restrain evil, just as he likewise uses governments, another flawed invention of human culture, for that same purpose.

An absolute, unchangeable, perfect moral standard does exist, but it resides in the mind of God, not the mind of man. It is a subject of special revelation, not general revelation. Christ revealed to us God’s final word on ethics and morality. All that came before him were mere shadows and figures.

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@Jay313, you crack me up!

I acquired the title when I discovered that most of the best Wikipedia articles (the ones with gravitas) were festooned with footnotes to citations I never would have found on my own.

The best of the best Wiki articles are designed to steer you to books that can be accessed by Inter-Library Loans (at your public library and almost always for Free!) or via Google Books or - - horrors - - at your local book store.

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This comes close to expressing my worldview, Jay. Except for one problem: Christ may have given us THE final word on the ethics that God desired humanity to follow 2,000 yrs. ago, but Jesus could only show us the way to the additional ethics needed as humankind ‘advanced’ since then. Bioethics is one example. It may seem ethical to use ‘genetic engineering’ to eliminate the scourge of a genetic disease, such as Huntington’s, but we must extrapolate Jesus’ teachings to be sure genetic engineering is not used for trivial ends.

There are other arguments that could be made that the ethics proper for a given time in history may be different from those God has in mind as His Final Word. Darwinian evolution was based largely on the Malthusian principle that extinction of a species could only be avoided if the rate of procreation could at least keep up with the many routes of dying; disease, accident, warfare, etc. For prehistoric hunter-gatherer clans who needed to migrate often, this proved to present problems to females who were pregnant or with nursing neonates. There are reports of Australian aborigines who reluctantly resorted to infanticide as the answer. Today there is a debate on the morality of any form of birth control, based, presumably, on the OT story of the sin of Onan. It can be argued that Family Planning (via birth control) is morally acceptable in God’s long range plan for humankind, since the danger of extinction of Homo sapiens by that route is highly unlikely, while our role as stewards of all life on earth may be enhanced by it.

As Christians, we believe that Jesus does show us the way. But he didn’t make it a Slam Dunk or give us a GPS.
Al Leo

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True. God’s word alone is insufficient for ethics. Simply possessing the Bible is not enough. Simply reciting the Scripture doesn’t always tell me what I should do.

I like John Frame’s approach, tri-perspectivalism. In his Doctrine of God, rather than the traditional categories of systematic theology, Frame discusses God’s attributes under three general headings that correspond to his covenant name – YHWH, the LORD. These are God’s authority, control, and presence. In ethics, these correspond to the normative, the situational, and the existential frames of reference.

God expresses his authority in his Word. That is the normative. It informs us what we should do. Nevertheless, the word of God is of no help if we cannot apply it to our situation. (All theology is application.) Thus, we are forced to apply the word, which is to say, to take the situation into account and decide what to do. This situational perspective corresponds to God’s aspect of control, which he exerts in all situations.

The problem that arises next is that God looks at any and every situation from all possible perspectives, for he is infinite. We, being finite, have only one frame of reference, our individual perspective, which means we may err in two possible directions – assessing the situation or the word of God. Thus, the more perspectives we can gather on a situation, the closer we draw to God’s infinite perspective, and the greater our chance of choosing wisely. “Wisdom is found in a multitude of counselors,” as Proverbs says.

Finally, there is the existential perspective, which reflects God’s presence in and with his people. The existential perspective is the witness of the Spirit with our spirits, which is to say: Do we feel – internally within ourselves, accompanied by prayerful consideration of the Word and the perspectives of others – that we are making the right choice? This is another way of speaking of conscience, of course, but the procedure I’ve described for the Christian is a method of “purifying” the conscience, informing it and reshaping it by the word of God and his body, the church. That is perhaps the closest we can come to wisdom acquired in truth and Spirit in this life.

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This is how I interpret the (not often emphasized) Catholic teaching that when it comes to difficult moral dilemmas in individual cases, such as family planning, decisions must ultimately be made in accordance with one’s individually informed conscience. My wife and I faced this with her first pregnancy. We had confided with her (Catholic) obstetrician that we hoped to have six children. But after she was in labor for three days and hadn’t dilated sufficiently, he took Kathy by C-section. They had not developed the “Bikini Cut” in those days, and we were advised that if we still hoped for a large family, a spacing of at least two years between pregnancies was mandatory, and the ‘rhythm method’ was not dependable enough. And complete abstinence was not our idea of a loving union. This was the way we first confronted Situation Ethics–normally considered a derogatory term, but, as you point out, one that fits comfortably with a Christian Faith that accepts evolutionary creation. If God created humankind as a ‘finished product’, then fixed ethics would constitute a sort of ‘User’s Manual’. All kinds of evidence points to God planning on humankind’s growth, with our moral standards changing accordingly. If I am correct in this, then the change in morals should be more demanding, not less–leading to more empathy and less selfishness.
Al Leo

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You might enjoy my speculation about some as-yet unpublished research on Homo naledi in this thread.

@Jay313,

I have to apologize for not realizing the full measure of what you were talking about!

“Chief Wikipedia Quoter” ?!?!? << What the ?!?!?

I thought you were just being devilish … but when cruising through my profile this morning … my jaw dropped…

I saw it! I had no idea it was “Official” !!!

And, I presume, there’s really no place else where that august title can even be seen. It’s sort of like being
named " ‘Most Average’ " of Faces", on a lozenge shaped concrete plaque, in Latin, installed in a basement closet!

But I will receive any titles awarded to me with humility and with deep gratitude that virtually nobody really knows.

But, one good point: my contract renewal leverage with Wikipedia has just received a terrific bump!

Here are some more oddities about my profile:

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Haha. It’s pretty much right next to your name. Don’t know how you’ve missed it. But you’re scaring me now. Is there a title next to my name that only I can’t see? (This opens up a whole new can of worms …)

@Jay313:

Oh for goodness sake!!!.. I didn’t even see THAT!!!

When I’m scanning down a thread, I look for Jehovah staring down at his best creation to date … Neanderthalensis!

Now mind you, he still had some of his best work coming due with H. Sapiens sapiens!

But since my vertical scrolling is based on the image … rather than any words, I don’t even have to read any text (which would be a little dubious when scrolling down at close to the speed of “mental” - - in order to locate my last post in a long thread, or the newest post !

So now I’m looking at that concrete plaque every day of my life … Hmmmm. Okay, I know what to say:

“Ladies and Gentlemen, I have no other honorifics that I could treasure more.” < True Statement

I wonder who I need to pay to get an additional honorific (any) - so that I don’t have to count the former assertion as unavoidably true?

This explains a lot. Here’s George, just scrolling through threads without reading any text, looking for the last thing that he had to say … Lol.

@Jay313,

Hey, big fella… I think you forgot the “Just kidding!” font. :confused:? :open_mouth: [ :unamused::unamused::unamused: ] :wind_blowing_face:

You know as well as I do that in a long thread, it’s easy to lose your bearing in a discussion. And I certainly didn’t say anything about not reading anyone else’s posts. I don’t need to read my posts - - I wrote 'em! Do you think I have a reputation for not reading people’s posts?

Sometimes its good to know how far down a new posting is, to gauge the likelihood that he/she has not read the whole thread, or one’s last posting.

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hmmm, I wonder who put that there…:wink:

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thanks for explaining your emoji, George. I always wondered what that was.

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@jpm

Please pass the word along to Brad … I just got a counter-offer from Wikipedia … I’ve been renewed for another 5 years !!! Woo Hoo …

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It is possible that the soul is created at the moment of conception. We now have evidence that well over half of all conceptions are spontaneously aborted (by God?). If we add intentional human abortions to God’s abortions, then billions and billions of unborn souls are . . . someplace. Ever wonder about the personality of a person who has ever been born and lived on this earth?

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