Eliyahu N. Kassorla
Human Nature and the Social
Order II
Dr. Orme
Rational Basis for
Morality
”וַיְדַבֵּר אֱלֹהִים, אֵת
כָּל-הַדְּבָרִים הָאֵלֶּה לֵאמֹר“…
“And God spoke all these words, saying…”[1]
That is how we all remember reading about how the Ten Commandments were given.
The divine revelation, with all of the Israelites circled around Mount Sinai,
and the basis for Judeo-Christian morality, spoken by God himself as a rule of
law, an idealistic vision of how we should behave. Then the Israelites made a
golden calf to worship, and smiting ensued. The central question is whether our
morality comes from divine law or whether humans do these anyways.
“Thou shalt not commit
homicide,” reads the sixth commandment. It is a very specific statement against
intentional, premeditated, cold-blooded, savage killing. Is it the reason that
we do not kill and murder? Frankly, early civilizations with complex religious
structures had similar judicial codes forbidding the same practices that many
of the Ten Commandments also prohibit. So the Judeo-Christian view that
morality comes from the revelation is untenable. Further, considering that the
Old Testament contains a total of six hundred and thirteen laws, and people are
not overly concerned with Jubilee years or the prohibition against harvesting
the corners of their fields, the fact that a law comes from on high is
coincidental at best.
Human
evolution has been shaped and forged for at least the past 250,000 years. Human
behavior and psychology is built on the blueprint model; survival behavior
coming from reptiles, emotive behavior coming from canids, social behavior from
primates, and lastly our frontal lobes which are uniquely human. Whether it is
believed that God began our evolution or that there is no God and evolution is
an emergent phenomenon, the end result is the same: that our morality is in our
genes. Saying that religion dictates our morality is a fallacious statement,
considering religion is at best 10,000 years old in general, with Judaism
emerging about 3,000 years ago. So why no great immorality? Naturalistic
observations of primate colonies have revealed that when monkeys cheat, the
others remember and are less apt to share the rewards of the group. Cognitive
psychology has revealed that by using a logic puzzle named the Wason four card
task, logical thinking is not something humans are good at; however, by
phrasing the logical statement in a rule-violating cheating context,
performance is hugely enhanced. Perhaps we have been designed for highly social
tasks? Designed by God or designed by evolution? In any case, the history of
morality did not begin with revelation. Religion is what teaches us that
morality comes from God. If it were the case that morality comes from God, then
what accounts for non-Judeo-Christian society’s morality? If the revelation of
the Judeo-Christian God is what brought morality, then non-Judeo-Christian
societies, by default, must be wanton gluttons that murder, rape, and pillage.
But the Buddha teaches that all life is suffering, that self-denial is the key
to enlightenment, and kindness and fellowship are important virtues. And
Hinduism is not made up of murderers and thieves, either; rather it encourages
introspection and reflection.
Adam
Smith, in his exploration in the growth of the economy, notes that
With the growth of the economy comes the increase in
moral behavior. Why is that the case? Adam Smith believed that the economy
drives innovation and industrialization, which makes what was once hard very
simple, and that frees us to introspect and not be immoral out of desperation.
“Every savage undergoes a sort of
Spartan discipline, and by the necessity of his situation is inured to every
sort of hardship He is in continual danger: he is often exposed to the greatest
extremities of hunger, and frequently dies of pure want. His circumstances not
only habituate him to every sort of distress, but teach him to give way to none
of the passions which that distress is apt to excite. He can expect from his
countrymen no sympathy or indulgence for such weakness.”[3]
According to Adam Smith, less
technical and less industrial societies by their virtue of being less developed
have a more rudimentary value system. However, notice that the principle of
natural rights is not violated. Imagine a normal curve[4],
and 68 percent of the people of a given society obey natural law, and 95
percent of the people mostly follow it with a few violations here and there.
Those that tend to violate natural law are the outliers, three or more standard
deviations from the mean! Evolution is meant to be successful, not accurate.
But the way social behaviors emerge from our brains to make and acquire society
helps us to identify cheaters and punish them by social isolation. Thankfully,
we have moved beyond swift death penalties to the more humane, and moral,
institutionalized system of incarceration.
Friedrich Nietzsche, in "The Gay Science", states,
“God is dead. God remains dead.
And we have killed him. How shall we comfort ourselves, the murderers of all
murderers? What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned
has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water
is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred
games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for
us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?”[5]
Nietzsche appears to mean that God is no longer a tenable
explanation for morality. Without the Judeo-Christian moral architecture, we
still do not violate the norms of what we call moral behavior. Nihilism would
become the norm according to Nietzsche because of the lack of divine order. However,
this is in contrast to what is actually seen in the real world when societies
do not base their tenants solely on religious law. If we take a divine law
interpretation, where are our cities of refuge for accidental murderers? Or
should we incarcerate based on negligent homicide?
Religion is good for outlining
best case ideals, but a full knowledge of the biblical texts show that there
are incongruities with what people interpret the meanings to be and what the
scripture actually says.
Religion
is a highly personal experience, is an ideal situation, and can be a good thing
to aspire to. However, there are natural explanations that do not resort to
reduction ad absurdum arguments to explain the occurrence of morality, nor one
that is unseeable. Rather than externalizing morality to an outside force,
morality is an internal force, congenital, and an emergent property of the
brain. Humans are not designed to receive reward later; the nucleus accumbens,
the neurological reward structure, does exhibit activation in anticipation of
reward, but behavior change only occurs when it is later strongly activated.
Humans have an inventory of successful behaviors, just like lions and
antelopes, which have kept us alive as a species. If life is good, then human
biology is designed to produce low levels of aggression, and high levels of
benevolence. When aggression is encountered, aggression increases. When life
begins to diminish in its “goodness,” positivity is reduced in favor of a more
pragmatic behavior pattern. These traits have made humans especially adept at
surviving in less than optimal conditions, and maybe, just maybe – a species
worth saving.
References
Cosmides, L.; Tooby, J. (1992). Cognitive
adaptions for social exchange. New York: Oxford University Press.
Mechon Mamre. The book of exodus.
Retrieved on April 23, 2008. Web site: http://www.mechon-mamre.org/p/pt/pt0220.htm#2
Nietzsche, Friedrich. (1974). The gay
science: with a prelude in rhymes and an appendix of songs. Walter
Kaufmann, ed, trns. New York: Pocket Books.
Smith, Adam. (2000). The theory of
moral sentiments. Amherst, MA: Prometheus Books
Wason, P. C. (1971). Natural and
contrived experience in a reasoning problem. Quarterly Journal of Experimental
Psychology 23: 63–71.
Figures
Figure 1
68% of all data is within one standard deviation from the
mean.
In all sexually reproducing species, traits are distributed
approximately normal. Extreme outlying values for traits are typically selected
against, while successful ones cluster around the mean.
When the environment exerts selection pressure in either
direction, the curve shifts, and the more successful value for the trait tends
to become the new mean.
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