Ethics, Lies and Charles Darwin

[studiodekadent]

Authors Note: This article is a continuation of "the psycho-epistemology of Fundamentalism" and "The Appeal of Fundamentalism to the Young" and addresses Fundamentalist Christianity's rise. Again, it is written in an 'ecumenical' spirit, designed to appeal to both Objectivists and non-Objectivists who are nonetheless pro-reason (including those in the pro-reason theological arm of their religions).

Ethics, Lies and Charles Darwin

by Andrew Russell

In two preceeding articles, this author has advanced a theoretical analysis of the cause and appeal of fundamentalist religions. However, abstract ideas are not always blatantly evident. The effect of certain beliefs on the minds of their believers is rarely obvious. However, recent events have provided a wonderful example of the power of ideas (and especially the malevolent power of bad ones). I am specifically referring to the recent Creation-Evolution controversies that ravaged the United States. This article will, in the light of this controversy, address how a concrete-bound mentality approaches ethics and morality.

As stated previously, the fundamentalist sees every passage of scripture as equally important as any other passage, with all passages completely independent of eachother, and all passages to be understood literally. This position implies that there is no important difference between disputing some obscure clobber verse of Leviticus and disputing the ressurrection. During the evolution controversy, "Think-Tanks" (term used loosely) such as the Discovery Institute and fundamentalist evangelicals everywhere set up a similar situation: that one cannot dispute Genesis without disputing the divinity of Christ, or even worse, the existence of God.

A frequent objection to the equation of Intelligent Design advocacy and fundamentalist evangelicals is that Intelligent Design was (and still is) advocated, not just by fundamentalists, but by two annoyingly prominent members of the Roman Catholic Church: Dinesh D'Souza (a conservative political commentator) and Rick Santorum (at that time, a Senator). Catholicism (which includes not just the Roman Catholic Church but also a wide variety of independent and autocephalous Churches) is by no means a monolithic tradition. Indeed, it is one of the most diverse traditions within Christianity, including a multitude of differing theological and philosophical viewpoints. However, Catholic theology has been heavily influenced by the concept of natural theology, i.e. an understanding of the divine based upon reason (both deductivist and empirical reasoning). The most famous exponent of this viewpoint was St. Thomas Aquinas. Regardless, it is correct to say that Catholicism is not a fundamentalist tradition. However, considering that their Church is so deeply influenced by rational theology, both D'Souza and Santorum have tossed out any vestige of reason when dealing with the evolution issue.

Why have both D'Souza and Santorum called for a teaching of Intelligent Design? Both have invoked variants of the "religion for medicinal purposes" argument. Santorum stated that "if we're simply a mistake of nature, then that puts a different moral demand on us. In fact, it doesn't put a moral demand on us." D'Souza, during a debate with Christopher Hitchens, invoked the most infamous declaration of this position, being the Dostoyevsky Gambit: "If God is Dead, Everything Is Permitted." But neither of these arguments have anything at all to do with the truth-value of evolution, indeed all they do is say that "if people believe it, they will commit <insert moral atrocities here>." The position of Santorum and D'Souza however is not in step with that of their Church, given that Pope John Paul II acknowleged that "In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII has already affirmed that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation."

The reference to man's "vocation" is an important one, since it refers to man's natural function (or ultimate end). According to Natural Law (and its direct predecessor, Aristotle's Function Argument), the "goodness" of something is in how well it serves its natural function (i.e. one would call a sword that cuts off heads very well a good sword). According to Natural Law, the function of human beings is to enter the presence of God after death, and that which serves this end is the good. As such, it is an ethical doctrine. Therefore, D'Souza and Santorum are rejecting a position held by the Popes of their own church since 1950. In addition, a glance at the history of secular philosophy will demonstrate that the existence of God is not required in order to propose a moral theory. Indeed, Aristotle's Function Argument (the basis for Natural Law) does not depend on belief in God (Aristotle was agnostic on the subject).

Given that the stance of D'Souza and Santorum is not a Catholic stance, it seems prudent to ask where it comes from. Unsurprisingly, it comes from the fundamentalist strain of Christianity, whose "Discovery Institute" unabashedly advocates the idea that to teach evolution will destroy all morality. Given the focus on the alleged "moral consequences" by D'Souza and Santorum, mirroring their fundamentalist-evangelical allies, skipping over any and all arguments over the truth value of evolution (the few arguments offered by the Discovery Institute have been long-ago debunked), one may ask if they really believe their religion at all or whether they simply regard it as a useful set of lies to get people to follow their morality (Santorum's reference to "moral demands" is telling, as if the only morality he can comprehend is one of barked orders). However, their own psychology is irrelevant, especially considering their position is uncommon in their faith group.

Regardless, the primary focus of creationists is ethics. The vast majority of the creationists are fundamentalists. Fundamentalism is a manifestation of a concrete-bound approach to scriptures. The question is: how does a concrete-bound mind approach moral questions? Thankfully, the recent controversy provides some wonderfully illustrative examples of the cognitive degeneration that fundamentalism inflicts on moral thought.

As stated before, the concrete-bound person cannot properly use abstractions. Specifically, they can only treat abstract principles as if they were perceptual objects. As such, to a concrete-bound mind, principles cannot have a context (i.e. they cannot only apply in a specific set of circumstances), because if there are "ifs, ands or buts" then the principle has 'failed' one test and hence it is completely false. As a result, a concrete-bound mind requires acontextual ethical principles. This implies that, when judging another person morally, the concrete-bound person considers only what that person did. The concrete-bound does not factor into account the precise context of the situation, the intentions of the actors, or any other mitigating factors; not only does doing so require abstract thought, but it would (to the concrete-bound) 'disprove' the principle. Consider, as evidence, the following quote from a fundamentalist website: "If evolution is true, abortion, euthanasia, pornography, genocide, homosexuality, adultery, incest, etc., are all permissible" (http://www.eaec.org/cults/evolution.htm). Note that none of these moral edicts have any clarifying or contextual factors at all! Ifs, ands, buts, whys, are all ignored, because to a fundamentalist, they cannot have any relevance to "absolute" moral principles.

The other important point is that the Christian ethical principles of both Double Effect and Natural Law (both of which are inherited from the Thomist tradition) can provide contexts within which many of the above alleged moral atrocities are acceptable. Natural Law, as stated before, is derived from Aristotle's Function Argument. Double Effect states that in a situation where an action can result in two outcomes (one good and one evil), then it is permissible to perform that action if the motivation is to achieve the good outcome (the evil outcome is an unintended side-effect). For example, a last-resort abortion to save the life of the mother is permitted under Double Effect. It can also be argued that Euthanasia, as a last resort method of pain relief, is also permitted. Pornography can also have a double effect of relieving sexual frustration (and hence potentially preventing sex attacks on women) as well as providing sex education (and hence allowing younger people to make informed decisions about, for example, the use of protection), although this would apply only to the consumers rather than producers of pornography. The fact that multiple animal species exhibit homosexuality shows that widespread condemnation of the orientation as "unnatural" is incorrect, and that if one accepts the demonstration of love and affection as legitimate functions of sexual actions then homosexual acts, if backed by true affection and care, are not ipso-facto contrary to Natural Law (nor is contraception, premarital consensual sex, or potentially even adultery if the marriage was coerced or other similar circumstances exist). Genocide has no justification, although the idea that evolution permits it is a complete and utter lie, and as for Incest, there is an evolutionary answer for why almost everyone finds the mere thought revolting (specifically, our senses of smell can detect people with very different immune system genetics, meaning that the sexier one smells to another, the stronger the immune system of any potential children will be).

As such, one can see that not only is the concrete-bound morality of fundamentalism based on a fantasy of acontextual morality, but that it contradicts a very prominent and influential Christian school of thought. But the question is now "why?" Why do the concrete-bound fundamentally desire this acontextual morality? What is it in their psychology that drives them to only consider "moral demands" as "morals"?

As stated in the immediately previous article, the concrete-bound psyche is driven by two forces; a fear of fallibility and a resentment of mental effort. The fear of fallibility is a result of a subconscious realization that to know or to not know is a life or death matter (given the role of the mind in human existence), and the resentment of mental effort is based on the fact that abstract thought is volitional. This fear and resentment are tied to inescapable facts of the human condition and are hence understandable, but by no means is giving into these feelings inevitable. Regardless, a concrete-bound approach to morality manages to satisfy both this fear and this resentment. The resentment is cured simply by providing a means of moral judgement that requires absolutely no abstract thought whatsoever. No need to take circumstances and context into account at all, merely a list of things declared "bad." This turns moralizing into a manifestly easy task which even pre-schoolers can perform.

The fear of fallibility's effects are even more dreadful. As they are exposed to the unfortunate skepticism of the postmodern age, their fear is provoked and brought to the surface. This makes them desire the kind of "absolute" knowlege that cannot exist, i.e. acontextual intrinsic moral knowlege. Fundamentalism claims to have it. It promises the faithful knowlege, knowlege that is infallible, inarguable, applicable to any context and situation and culture without the need for any thought. And yet, this "solution" to the fear of mental fallibility is strangely counterproductive. At least on some level, a fundamentalist must see that there is a problem. Modern society frequently confronts them with situations that question the 'absoluteness' of their morality. Since the fundamentalist has so much riding on the validity of their moral theories, and since their theories are structured so as to make a single mitigating factor invalidate the theory, the experience of doubting these theories causes extreme discomfort. As such, the fundamentalist will try to fix it. In order to avoid the fear of mental fallibility, they must silence every potential objection. As such, they will only read books from the fundamentalist perspective. They will congregate with other fundamentalists, creating a veritable subculture isolated from the discomforting mainstream. This behaviour can be seen amongst the American Evangelical community quite prominently. But no, even an isolated subculture is not enough, since contact with the mainstream (that challenges their values) is utterly inevitable. They just have to remove any possible challenge to their value system, they cannot permit a single context, a single mitigating factor, anything at all that prevents them from saying "X is wrong, full stop." When Christopher Hitchens mentioned, in his atheist polemic "God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything," that believers seem incapable of leaving him alone to his atheism, he identified the true consequence of the fear of fallibility that is the root of fundamentalist approaches to religion.

And so fundamentalists could never tolerate evolution. To accept the theory of evolution would be to reject the whole methodology of fundamentalism, and hence every proposition based upon it. To accept evolution would destabilize their entire psyche, which insulated itself from its fear of fallibility and resentment of intellectual effort with a wall of clobber verses.

In the end, the creation/evolution debate demonstrates the moral beliefs of Fundamentalism in incredible clarity. To them, ethics requires nothing more than a long list of "no's," all of which referring to concrete acts. The fundamentalist desires a morality that removes all effort from moralizing, by being impervious to circumstances, contexts, intentions or anything complicated (entailing the rejection of Christian ethical principles that do require the understanding of circumstances, contexts and intentions). In the end, the fundamentalist mentality cannot tolerate any possibility that even a single position contained within the bible is flawed, for that will shatter every other position. This is why evolution, to them, destroys all morality.

[BaalChatzaf]

Studiokant writes:

As stated before, the concrete-bound person cannot properly use abstractions. Specifically, they can only treat abstract principles as if they were perceptual objects. As such, to a concrete-bound mind, principles cannot have a context (i.e. they cannot only apply in a specific set of circumstances), because if there are "ifs, ands or buts" then the principle has 'failed' one test and hence it is completely false. As a result, a concrete-bound mind requires acontextual ethical principles. This implies that, when judging another person morally, the concrete-bound person considers only what that person did. The concrete-bound does not factor into account the precise context of the situation, the intentions of the actors, or any other mitigating factors; not only does doing so require abstract thought, but it would (to the concrete-bound) 'disprove' the principle. Consider, as evidence, the following quote from a fundamentalist website: "If evolution is true, abortion, euthanasia, pornography, genocide, homosexuality, adultery, incest, etc., are all permissible" (http://www.eaec.org/cults/evolution.htm). Note that none of these moral edicts have any clarifying or contextual factors at all! Ifs, ands, buts, whys, are all ignored, because to a fundamentalist, they cannot have any relevance to "absolute" moral principles.

Ba'al Chatzaf replies:

A principle is a universally quantified assertion. If it has a falsifying instance, it is false. This is a basic principle of Logic. As to considering what people did, do, or how they behaved this is all we KNOW. It is impossible to know a person's intention which is a private process taking place in that person's brain. We can only know externals when dealing with other folks. We can know what they said, what they wrote, what they did on a specific occasion. That is all we get. We get the phenomenon, the observable event, the observable property. Everything else is inference, or hunch or guess.

Ba'al Chatzaf

[studiodekadent]

A principle is a universally quantified assertion. If it has a falsifying instance, it is false.

However, principles also have specific contexts, i.e. they apply to certain situations. A principle can be formulated as: "given circumstances C, act X performed for reason Y is wrong." Fundamentalists cannot stand the variables C and Y, they want to simplify moral decision making down to "the morality of a decision is a function of X and X alone."

As to considering what people did, do, or how they behaved this is all we KNOW. It is impossible to know a person's intention which is a private process taking place in that person's brain.

That does not mean the processes within the mind of the actor are morally irrelevant. As to whether or not we can say that these processes are impossible to determine, these processes are often important in legal cases (i.e. the difference between first and second-degree murder), so although they aren't determinable by simple observation, you cannot say that this makes them irrelevant.