I really, really , really don’t think that God would want someone to let his child get killed in the situation we discussedz
Handing a child over to his killer is the very opposite of love.
When a moral system leads to inhuman conclusions there is something wrong with it.
Which is why I said that neither consequentialism nor Kant’s moral imperative is really Christian.
…unless they ride along with other traits. The folly, IMHO, is assuming a system geared toward favoring “what we would like our world to be” vs. “how it is” is necessarily unsustainable. I see it first as the classic ‘is/ought’ fallacy and second, on assigning much higher level of selection and isolation to a trait.
True, but a novel detrimental trait (like true self-sacrifical altuism) is only expected to ride along with other genetic traits if the overall effect on the fitness of the organism is not too severe. And given that, by definition, true altruism involves increasing the fitness of a competitor at the expense of one’s own fitness, the detriment of such a trait is high.
Massively so. Plato built a foundation for his Republic out of “certain noble lies” that were designed to keep people content with their assigned place in the social order. By his own arguments elsewhere, that meant there was destruction built into the system – which has made me wonder if perhaps Republic was meant as satire.
Lying to protect family is social tactics, not strategic underpinning.
Or as in a case from WWII where the children were in a hole excavated under the kitchen, the mother said, “They’re under the table” – entirely true, but entirely misleading.
Ah, but how well we respond or perceive when an act would be ‘true altruism’ rather than similar acts that would create / modify an environment in a way that propagates reciprocal benefits matters, as does the intensity of the selection. How many people actually perform acts of true altruism that have significant negative repercussions for themselves? For example, holding the door open to assist strangers at an International airport likely has negative effects below the ‘noise level’ of events we balance in everyday life. Under daily scenarios and probably in situations where we find ourselves 99.9% of the time, ‘true’ vs. selfish gene altruism likely has little effect.
Psychologically, we may be preconfigured toward ‘familial, non-true altruism’, which served us well in smaller communities and within families. We get hits of endorphins when we do these sorts of things. These may be maladaptive in larger communities but the wiring and complexity of altering that behavior might may be difficult to eliminate. The impulse to sacrifice for family, which can have positive benefits, could be difficult to block when confronted in a similar situation with others.
However, I think we know ‘true altruism’ is already “down-regulated” to some degree. We are generally inclined to sacrifice much more for family and close neighbors & friends than for strangers and ‘outsiders’. We are more inclined toward altruism if the perceived costs/risks are lower. Acts of ‘true altruism’ which have obvious negative effects, remain rarer and seem to require much more external indoctrination to drive at a large scale. So, why does it persist? Could be: 1) Doesn’t express above selective noise in most cases and / or 2) Rides along with a beneficial trait like helping family and neighbors and/or 3) Hasn’t been eliminated from the population yet (which could take a long time).
That’s how Vulcans lie. 
Good thoughts and I agree—although we humans have the ability to consciously override selfish evolutionary impulses and perform truly altruistic acts, such behaviour is apparently rare.
Re your point #1 Its a matter of semantics, but if the act does not decrease one’s own fitness, it is not defined by biologists as altruistic. In your example of “opening the door for someone” or, take another example, of “giving an unrelated homeless person on the street a cup of coffee”. If that coffee is given out of my rich surplus, and does not reduce my own survival or reproduction (it is not biologically “costly” to me), it is not technically biologically altruistic. If, on the other hand, I offer to buy a random homeless stranger a whole month of groceries and, by so doing, cause my own children to not have enough food to thrive—that would indeed be altruism. But such costly acts of generosity towards strangers/ non-kin seem very uncommon.
Re point #2: Seem to be not possible logically. An “altruistic” trait can’t “ride along on Kin or reciprocity” because if there are benefits going to kin or family that would be defined as Kin selection or reciprocity. But maybe you are referring to “psychologically riding on”? In that case see the next point.
Point #3 Yes. This is the usual explanation from evolutionary biologists. To the extent one feels an impulse to help a stranger in a large city, it is a mis-firing of impulses that once were beneficial in smaller tribes/communities in which reciprocity and kin selection were in play. I think Dawkins says that one would expect such impulses to be weeded out by natural selection over time (but presumably humans haven’t lived in large cities long enough for it to have done so).
I’d say God doesn’t “want” the child to die or for us to lie. God doesn’t want the murderous person to threaten or kill the child. But God allows all of these options. I think we should follow natural moral law and not try to go beyond the objective system he sustains and upholds. I don’t think we are doing God favors by performing immoral actions in the name of good. God is more than capable of taking care of the children he allows to be murdered. He is also far more capable of stopping it from occurring than a mother telling lies.
Of course. This should happen only over your own dead body.
********************************************************
And since the issue of utilitarianism came up in here several times, I’ll post section 8 of the morality thing I have been working on in here:
8) Subjective Morality and Utilitarianism
If morality is not an objective part of reality that is discovered but instead is constructed by humans on the basis of social value, it tends to collapse in parts to pragmatism or utilitarianism. The Catholic Philosopher Peter Kreeft said the following of subjective morality:
“There are no moral absolutes; we may kill or lie or torture if that’s the only way to get a better result in the end. Only if there is an all-wise and all-good and all-powerful God writing the story of human history can we say that our job is to obey the absolute commandments God gave us and let the resulting chips fall where they may, even if those chips, those consequences, would be bad, because God will pick up the pieces. The justification for framing an innocent man, for torture, for Hiroshima, for “Sophie’s choice” (Have you seen that movie?) is utilitarianism, or consequentialism: the end justifies the means—if there is no God. If He does not exist and commands us to obey His laws always and promise to take care of the consequences, then we have to take care of the consequences. So atheism naturally leads to pragmatism, utilitarianism, relativism.”
If morality is subjective and based on value or social utility, human beings cease to be sacred ends in themselves; they more easily become variables or chess pieces for the “greater good” of society. This means we could justify sacrificing one innocent to save two innocents –all other things being equal – and commit other moral horrors in the name of pragmatism and or utilitarianism. I recognize that not atheists are strict utilitarians and note that many Christians often appeal to utilitarian principles. Utilitarianism is often considered an objective morality by its proponents in that its central principle is taken to be something true about the world. Good is defined in terms of that which increases happiness or utility. I do not think bare utilitarianism can traverse the is/ought divide and even if we tie utilitarianism into natural law, its foundational principle leads to all sorts of internal problems. Since society and human views do change, it turns out that the same action can both be good and bad at different times throughout human history. In this sense, I consider utilitarian morality subjective in its output. I think these are the chief logical difficulties with utilitarianism. What follows are classic examples demonstrating how utilitarian thinking can lead to viewing actions as good that many people understand as immoral.
Difficult Thought Experiments for Utilitarianism
· The Sheriff’s Dilemma: suppose a violent crime was committed, and the town is on the brink of a riot that will destroy the community and cost dozens of lives. The Sheriff knows the real killer escaped but he has a homeless drifter in a jail cell. Would it be ethical for the sheriff to frame this innocent person in order to stop the riot and save multiple lives? Utilitarianism says yes.
· The Organ Harvesting (Survival Lottery): Bioethicist John Harris proposed an alarming scenario. A surgeon has five patients who will die by the end of the day without organ transplants (heart, liver, kidneys, lungs). Suppose a healthy traveler walks into the clinic for a routine checkup and he is a perfect tissue match for all five dying patients. A cold calculus suggest it would be ethical to murder and harvest the organs of this one person if it saved the life of the other five individuals. After all, five is greater than one. A variation of this is suggest a lottery where when your number is called, you are expected (and forced) to give up your life (organs) to save the lives of multiple people in need.
· Omelas by Ursula K. Le Guin: The city of Omelas is a paradise like the Garden of Eden. Everyone is healthy, happy and leads a wonderful life. There is a catch, however. A single child must be trapped in a basement starved, terrified, and abused. If this child is released or is ever comforted in any way, the city’s utopian state will instantly evaporate. We have to ask subjective moralists: is it ethical to torture one child to ensure the happiness of millions?
· The Coliseum: if we could put one Christian in the Coliseum to be eaten by a lion this would be very painful to the person. Yet 50,000 spectators would gain intense joy from watching this. Wouldn’t that make it good then? It appears as if utilitarian thought is perfectly fine with torturing people for entertainment. And I note that for some early Christians, to die as a martyr was a badge of honor. In the second century, the Roman Governor of Asia Arrius Antoninus appears frustrated by how willing some Christians were to die for their beliefs. Though he dispatched a few, he famously said: “Oh you ghastly people . . . If you want to die you have cliffs you can jump off and nooses to hang yourself with.”
· Ticking Time Bomb: Could we justify the torture of a terrorist’s innocent child if we believed it would reveal the location of a ticking bomb?
The scary thing is that for a strict utilitarian, if the sheriff in the above example refused to frame an innocent man for the good of many, he actually behaved immorally. It is the same with Arrius Antoninus. The strict utilitarian would consider his action immoral, not because he had people executed merely for being Christian, but because he did not execute all of them who so desired to become martyrs for Christ and failed to increase their happiness. These thought experiments are not just abstract puzzles. History is replete with examples of moral crimes committed by individuals and groups in power in the name of the greater good.
· The American Eugenics Movement: the US Supreme Court justified sterilization of the “unfit” to protect the greater good of society. Here is a quote from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. (Buck v. Bell 1927) that famously defended such sterilization with pure utilitarian logic: “It is better for all the world, if instead of waiting to execute degenerate offspring for crime, or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent those who are manifestly unfit from continuing their kind.”
· Nazi Germany’s Euthanasia Program: Nazis had a very narrow view of humanity based on a strict utilitarian lens. The image here is from a widely circulated magazine Neues Volk, which featured a disabled man. The headline read: “60,000 Reichsmarks is what this genetically defective man will cost the people over his lifetime.” It was a time of war and the implication was clear. Killing him was the most prudent option. The magazine also featured mentally incapacitated children juxtaposed with healthy ones. The United States Holocaust Museum reports: “In a 1934 speech, for example, Walter Gross mourned those “poor creatures” who are “no joy either to themselves or others. They are a burden throughout their miserable existences.” Hundreds of thousands of forced sterilizations occurred.
· The Bombing of Hiroshima: The justification for dropping an atomic bomb on Hiroshima was based on a mathematical calculation to save lives. President Truman said in a letter, “I knew what I was doing when I stopped the war that would have killed a half a million youngsters on both sides if those bombs had not been dropped. I have no regrets and, under the same circumstances, I would do it again – and this letter is not confidential. ” In order to save a quarter of a million combatants and end the war, a bomb was dropped that destroyed a city ultimately killing ~140,000 people – mostly civilians
None of these leaders woke up and twirled their mustaches saying, “Let’s be evil today,” For them, the ends justified the means. They were securing the future as they understood it. Now it should be noted that many crimes against humanity are actually committed by humans who accept objective morality. We must reject these actions just as strenuously –even if they attribute them to God. These examples most often occur where one group of humans sees another group as less human or sub-human. Humans have enough trouble getting things right from the perspective of objective morality. If humans lack intrinsic meaning and purpose then objective morality is impossible. Such a posture does not lead to moral optimis. If we are not all equally created in the image of God with inalienable rights, we are often left to judge actions by their utility in achieving what we believe is human flourishing. I propose being wary of such systems as ethics can quickly be turned into arithmetic where subjective morality not only permits atrocities, it demands them. It becomes very easy do what is evil in the name of good. The Christian, like the natural moral law theorist, does what is right because it is the right thing to do. Not because a cost-benefit analysis led to a certain option that is more aligned with our personal desires. For Christians we put our trust in God, do what is right and let the chips fall where they may.
Hi. Great discussion. Thank you.
One thing about Dawkins…. He’s historically been of the “selectionist” camp in evolution, placing selection as the main cause of most traits in an organism.
Could be. Humans have relatively small generic variation and have been rapidly increasing in population. So, not subject to a lot of selection. I think we can see that true altruism was already being modulated before large communities, with cultural tendencies to favor family over community, and then over ‘outsiders’.
Wouldn’t raising children be considered an altruistic act? If so, that is not very rare. In another thread here I just made a post on Subjective Morality and Infanticide and noted the widespread nature of the practice all throughout the world into modern times.To me, raising a child you don’t have to seems like an act of altruism.
Vinnie
If we stick to altruism as considered in evolutionary biology…
Raising your own children is a perfectly selfish act (selection-wise). Raising children that aren’t related could be altruistic or selfish, I suppose, depending on whether you expect the children to help you or others in your family later.
Starving your own offspring could be a selectively optimal outcome if it allows the parents to survive and improves later reproductive success. This is not uncommon in nature.
Side excursion: If you want some interesting reading on how competing interests create a state of perpetual conflict, look up work on how selection can drive males to favor larger fetuses (putting more demand on the females) while females may optimize for having more (over time) but smaller fetuses.
So if our lens is natural selection, it is a self-serving act of genetic propagation? We are lumbering robots evolved to preserve selfish molecules? But if our lens is human experience and moral philosophy, it is one of the most demanding and selfless acts we can do?
Honestly, this is where discussions of evolution become very confusing to me. What the heck is a selfish molecule? I can understand describing molecules as polymers or. monomers, in terms of their geometry or shape (long chains or rings) and so on. But I would never think to describe a molecule as selfish or altruistic. So what does it really mean? Apparently, many would say evolution has no teleology whatsoever at the deepest level, but that seems to be the only way it is ever described or talked about to me. A water molecule doesn’t care if it evaporates or dissociates.
Vinnie
Yes, agreed. And, by the way, I am also of the ‘selectionist’ camp, being trained as a behavioural ecologist. So, I think Dawkins has a lucid way of explaining evolution, although not competent in his grasp of religion/philosophy– the way he conflates methodological and philosophical naturalism.
Dawkins has said that he regrets the title “selfish gene” (it was a catchy phrase promoted by his publisher) because he never intended to imply that a single molecule (or gene) coded for selfishness per se–yes, that is certainly simplistic. Rather, this was just biological jargon/shorthand to emphasize that organisms compete for resources and so natural selection will favour behaviours (however coded for in the genome), that maximize one’s genetic contribution to the next generation relative to competing genotypes/phenotypes.
Yes, and hi @Vinnie , my Ph.D. was actually on “siblicide” in American Kestrels–where parents use hatching asynchrony to set up a competitive hierarchy among the nestlings, and if food supply happens to run short, the oldest nestlings kills off the smallest. Its a paradox, but sacrificing the “runts” in such cases is selected for because it ensures at least a few of the brood survives, rather than the food being divided equally and all the offspring starving.
I understand Dawkins would not think a molecule could be selfish as it is a generally stupid idea. But even organisms “competing” for resources seems quite teleological to me. Let me use an example:
The majority of rain in the mid latitudes starts as ice crystals in clouds. Ice crystals in a cloud grow as surrounding supercooled liquid water droplets freeze to them on contact (due to differences in saturation vapor pressure). Some ice crystals will grow more than others, but I wouldn’t describe them as in “competition” for the supercooled water. It is purely about what ice and supercooled water is where and how each is moving. Are we saying the ice crystals that grew were “better suited to their environment” than the supercooled water droplets that contacted them? What is it about underlying biology that makes us use such terms? What am I missing?
Aside: Teleology in biology is something that needs to be very carefully defined and mulled over. Elliott Sober and others have written about what it is (and what it isn’t) under context of biological evolution. I don’t have any references at hand right now but “Elliott Sober Teleology evolution”
I don’t recall if Sober has retired. He was a professor in the Philosophy of Science at U Wisconsin. I think his book “Philosophy of Biology” was pretty illuminating. (Probably a slog for people not activity interested in the field, however, but it is a short book)
I think what is different with the ice crystal case is that water molecules aren’t limiting, so the various types of crystals are indeed not competing (as opposed to the case of biological/natural selection). I’ve personally never heard of such molecular development being called “selfish” although maybe chemists use that jargon?
Also, an ice crystal does not pass on coding for how it formed to “the next generation of ice crystals”…i.e., there are no persistent “replicators” in that case, in contrast to biological genes/ DNA which is replicated and passed on through the generations.
No, I’m just trying to understand the underlying chemistry of evolution which I assume is considered mindless by biologists who tend to only look at efficient and material causes – in the same way cloud microphysics is mindless.
Because raising ones children was just defined as “a selfish act selection wise.” Im trying to understand what is being claimed.
“Let your conversation be always full of grace, seasoned with salt, so that you may know how to answer everyone.” -Colossians 4:6
This is a place for gracious dialogue about science and faith. Please read our FAQ/Guidelines before posting.