Some argue that faith and morals are evolutionary, that we acquired a
conscience as a vital part of our survival package. They assume that it is
vestigial: a relic of our march to human maturity, no longer required – and yet
it was never more needed.
Others argue that religion is redundant as it only causes conflict. Yet
atheism is evidently
a far greater threat to our survival, with Stalin and Mao claiming more lives
than all the wars combined.
Paganism was never far behind that and
while it had a form of religion it really was a man-made ethos not worship of
an independent creator. As such, it was filled with far more esoteric hocus-pocus than was
ever attributable to theism.
The final chapter of humanity will see the rise of a world religion,
because global planners know that we need to believe to survive, so
they will regulate what we believe. It happened before, under
Constantine, so watch this space.
If faith and morality is evolutionary, we would not know it was so
We
would just be that way. Yet we are aware of moral choice. That is not an
evolved state.
When a snake attacks a mouse, it does so instinctively, coiling,
preparing, pausing and completing a myriad calculations that result in a
strike. It never asks whether the mouse has a family to go home to or if it was
a poor, downtrodden, orphan mouse.
Its only moral consideration relates to its need to survive. Hence moral
choice is not selective to evolution. It is not needed.
The core hypothesis of evolution is survival of the fittest. As such, the
more intuitive instinct and the highest required moral selector, is survival
and that would then opt for expediency over aestheticism. It would kill or
subdue to gain the advantage.
C S Lewis argued that we are more inclined to evolve negatively - C. S.
Lewis.
He saw that evolutionary naturalism seemed to lead to a deep and
pervasive skepticism and to the conclusion that our unreliable cognitive or
belief-producing faculties cannot be trusted to produce more true beliefs than
false beliefs.
Charles Darwin had similar reservations as he wrote in a letter to William Graham in 1881: But then with me the horrid doubt
always arises whether the convictions of man's mind, which has been developed
from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value. Would anyone trust in the
convictions of a monkey's mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?
Renowned philosopher,
Alvin Plantinga, developed his thesis on naturism and evolution in 1993.
His argument began
with the observation that our beliefs can only have evolutionary consequences
if they affect behavior. Thus natural selection does not select for true
beliefs, but for advantages.
He distinguished the
various theories of mind-body interaction into four categories:
- Behavior that is not caused by beliefs at all.
- Beliefs that influence behavior but not by virtue of their semantic content.
- Beliefs that affect behavior, but where we don’t adapt, as in “I am scared to go there, but I won't take steps to manage the cause of my fear”.
- Beliefs that affect behavior and are adaptive, but may still be false.
Well, his ideas are
complex to grasp, let alone convey.
C S Lewis had the
epiphany that turned him to faith
He argued, cynically, that the universe is
cruel, then asked, “But how do I sense that?”
His question was
honest. If we are evolved then we would be evolved to that level of utility
that serves our need for survival.
The ant lives in a
smaller universe than ours. His world is limited to a heap and a sizable
community, whose collective consciousness relates to food and seeing off their
enemies, and in both of those pursuits that seem to be altruistic.
They care about the
community because the community is their life and only through its
collectiveness will they survive. There is just too much to do to go it alone.
However, that is as
far as it goes. They have no sense that the world around them is cruel. They
don’t care. They only have their own world and that works. Awareness of the wider
world or the anteater or other threats is incidental.
In a sense we are also
in an ant-heap. We know enough to make that work for us and that should be
enough. Who cares about life beyond us, be it green men from Mars or a creator?
If we are only in this
to exist, then we will only worry about such things if they pose a threat to
our continuation. Yet we are aware of our world in its universal context, we
have a need to explore that and we have a deep spiritual and moral awareness.
Thus we do know that
the universe is harsh and we also know all about love, justice, peace, mercy,
life and death. We have those values because God set them in us.
There is such universality
to the essential moral code
We must presume an external influence. Even remote societies favor honor, fidelity and respect for life. Those values are
written into the fabric of our created being from birth. Paul confirmed it in
Romans 1 and 2.
However, the choices relating
to all that are ours to make and so we do, whether to kill or let live, to
steal or to give back, to grow or cut down, we are equipped with the means to
choose and that is something no other species has.
No other creature has
evolved such sentience. By species we remain specific. Breeding across species
is impossible. “That which we are, we are”, to quote Tennyson’s Ulysses.
We are “One equal
temper of heroic hearts, made weak through time and fate, yet strong in will to
strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield”. We are the crown of creation, full
of value, intuition, wisdom and ingenuity, way beyond the essence of survival.
(c) Peter Missing @ Bethelstone.com
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