Today’s Post

Last week we saw how religion is not the only cultural artifact which calls attention to the energy of evolution in our lives, and how our very Western culture itself is infused with such recognition.  Looking at sacraments in the context of human values and morals, this week’s post addresses the materialistic position on morals and their basis.

The Basis of Morals

Humans do not generally agree on the best way to make sense of their existence.  Among the many religious expressions, there is wide divergence on understanding human ontology: do we emerge from a process of evolution or creation in a generally linear way, or are our lives simply repetitions of previous lives?  Are we doomed to complete extinction when we die or in some sense do we continue existence on a separate plane, and if so will we retain our personal uniqueness or be dissolved into an impersonal ‘cosmic all’?  Is there a ‘way’ to live life to the fullest, or is each life sufficiently unique and autonomous to ignore traditional behavioral guidelines?  Is the basis for morals ‘universal’ or unique for each person?  Are morals ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’?

Whichever of the many beliefs about existence we claim, such beliefs come with their own specific standards of behavior.  The last few posts have explored the concept of ‘sacraments’, in which certain beliefs about existence manifest themselves in the form of behaviors which are thought to be ‘normative’ to human existence.  In participating in these behaviors the concept of sacraments suggests that we are acting in a way which is more resonant with the basic flow of energy by which our lives, and hence our society, and ultimately the universe, unfolds.  The idea of the sacraments suggests that there is indeed a ‘way’ to live life to the fullest.

While this perspective is certainly resonant with our secular approach to the reinterpretation of religious beliefs, it is obvious that belief in the basis of morals is quite diverse across the patchwork quilt of Christianity, much less the wide ranges found in other parts of the world.  It seems equally obvious that such a wide diversity of standards for behavior can be traced to the divergence on beliefs of human ontology.  If we disagree on how to make sense of our existence, frequently expressed as a difference in the belief in god, our standards for behavior will be strikingly different.

From the Materialist Viewpoint

A similar divergence can be seen in the increasing disagreement between ‘theists’ and ‘atheists’.  At least in the west there seems to be an increasing number of individuals who, instead of disagreeing on the nature of god, disbelieve in the existence of god itself.  This disbelief frequently manifests itself in disbelief not only of the traditional concepts of love, sin, death, etc, but in the existence of meaning itself.  Such a philosophical trend is often seen as the only logical conclusion which can be drawn from the findings of science.  Science’s theory of evolution is a case in point.

In the phase of evolution that emerges with the onset of living things, the ‘biosphere’, it is a common idea that the living things which emerge within are ‘selected by evolution’.   This idea is based on the theory of Natural Selection which sees the evolutionary process of living things as guided by the principle that they are ‘selected’ by the criteria of ‘survival’.  In this perspective, new entities which emerge in the history of evolution are either successful in surviving their environment and thus go on to continued procreation or they are unsuccessful and fade from the ‘tree of life’ as it continues to develop.

Many scientific thinkers attempt to extend this rationale to humans.  While generally agreeing that ‘morphological’ evolution still continues in humans (physiological changes) they understand that a more meaningful metric of human evolution can be found in the organization of human society, with its laws and culture.  Thus a common approach to articulating this metric is to understand the structures of human edifices in terms of their ‘evolutionary selection’.  In other words, the value of a given philosophical, legal or cultural idea can be judged by its contribution to continuing the survival of the human species.  Even in the human, evolution is still ‘selecting’ us.

In the scientific approach to making sense of things, therefore, concepts such as meaning, values and their associated standards of behavior, carry much less weight.  Although science does not directly address such things some modes of science, such as evolutionary psychology, touch upon the ‘correct way’ to live.  Evolutionary psychology reduces the basis of human action to the precepts of Darwin’s theory of ‘natural selection’, in which each of our personal choices either act in support of the ‘principles’ of evolution or act against them.  Since the key principle of evolution is understood as ‘survival’, human actions are considered to be ‘correct’ when they increase both our personal survival (so that we can contribute our genes to the ‘gene pool’) and that of our species (so that the species does not become extinct).  Since this mode of science proposes behavioral correctness, it is effectively proposing values and morals consistent with this standard.

Further, since those morals and standards of behavior are relative to our unfolding understanding of evolution, they themselves unfold over time.  Therefore since such understanding is quite diverse, personal morals can then be different for different persons.  Morals are therefore ‘relative’.

The Next Post

This week we continued to expand our view of sacraments, morals and values to the basis of ‘correct behavior’, and seen how the materialistic perspective is based on science’s proposition that the basis of biological evolution is ‘survival’.   Next week we will contrast this materialistic approach to the traditional religious view of this basis, and explore how our secular reinterpretation approach can bring these two seemingly contradictory viewpoints into synergy.