The evolutionary basis of morality
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 secular perspective on morals and their basis.
The Basis of Morals
Humans do not generally agree on the best way to make sense of their existence, much less the most effective way to conduct their lives. Among the many religious expressions, for example, there is wide divergence on understanding human ontology: do we emerge from a generally linear process of evolution or creation, 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, standards for the conduct of human life ‘absolute’ or ‘relative’?
Whichever of the many beliefs about human life 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 which is resonant to the rise of evolutionary energy within us, and which will lead to ‘fuller being’.
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 in the West and even more so in the wide ranges of belief 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 about human ontology. If we disagree on how to make sense of our existence, frequently manifest 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 a ground of being itself. This disbelief frequently manifests itself in disbelief not only of such traditional concepts as love, sin and morality, but in the existence of meaning itself. Such a philosophical trend is often seen as the only logical conclusion which can be drawn from basing our personal accommodation of life on the provable findings of science. Science’s theory of evolution is a case in point.
In the case of universal ontology, as a general rule science avoids the term ‘evolution’ to address the process by which its Standard Model articulates the universe’s increasing complexification as molecules emerge from clusters of bosons upwards through atomic structures. While this model tracks this ‘rise’ of matter, for example, and implicitly acknowledges the increase of complexity which emerges in this emergence, it offers thus far no term which identifies this obvious phenomenon. Further, many scientists vehemently object to using the term ‘evolution’ to describe the eight billion year process by which the universe effects highly complex molecules from bosons. While they have no term for the process itself, they insist that the term must be restricted to the biological processes addressed by the Theory of Natural Selection.
In the phase of evolution that emerges with the onset of living things, the ‘biosphere’, it is a common scientific concept 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 extend the rationale of Natural Selection to evolution as it continues through the human species. While generally agreeing that ‘morphological’ evolution still continues in humans (physiological changes due to changes in DNA) they posit that Natural Selection continues its work of ‘survival’ via cultural means found in the organization of human society. Not only does this approach offer a partial understanding of how changes take place in human society, it notes how such changes are occurring much faster than those found in morphology. Thus a common approach to articulating this mode of evolution is to understand the structures of human edifices in terms of their ‘evolutionary selection’. In other words, as envisioned by Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Selfish Gene”, a given philosophical, legal or cultural idea can be seen as a ‘meme’, which performs the same function in human culture as the gene in cellular evolution. The evolutionary value of memes are judged by their contribution to the continuing 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 Darwinistic 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 (and our ‘memes’ to the ‘meme pool’) and in doing so insuring that the species does not become extinct. Where 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’. Still further, as in the case of genes, a wide diversity in memes may well be necessary to insure a rich ‘meme pool’ to enhance our survival potential. From such a perspective, ‘relativity’ among morals is necessary to insure that human evolution produces the diversity necessary for nature to take all possible avenues of development, thus continuing the ramification that has been seen across the wide expanse of biology. To evolve, therefore, we must ‘diverge’.
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.