Last Week

Last week we expanded our look at sacraments into the realm of values and morals, and saw how scientific materialism understands the basis of ‘correct behavior’ to be derived from the interpretations of ‘evolutionary psychology’.  From this perspective, behavior is ‘correct’ if it fosters our continued participation in the flow of evolution, understood as the continuation of ‘survival’.  The materialistic basis for morality is, then, ‘relative’.

On the other hand, the differences in behavioral standards that can be found among religions are seemingly compounded by the differences between religion and science, and further vary with different interpretations of the evolutionary process itself.  In general, however, each religion considers their behavioral standards as ‘absolute’.

Is it possible to have a coherent interpretation of values and morals?

This week we will explore these two ends of the belief spectrum- materialism and traditional Christianity- in our search for the basis of morals.

Two Orthogonal Viewpoints

I use the word ‘seemingly’ above because the materialistic ‘evolutionary psychological’ viewpoint is based on an incomplete grasp of evolution.  As we saw last week, this understanding restricts the historical timeline of evolution to the most recent phase of ‘biological evolution’.  This narrow approach falls significantly short of the universal perspective proposed by Teilhard.  As we saw in the posts on ‘The Teilhardian Shift’, Teilhard understands evolution as the underlying phenomenon in all of universal history,  from the ‘big bang’ to the present.

The word ‘seemingly’ can be seen to apply because the materialistic ‘evolutionary psychological’ viewpoint is based on this incomplete grasp of evolution.  This understanding restricts the historical timeline of evolution to the most recent phase of ‘biological evolution’ and avoids the rise of biology’s foundation and the subsequent consequences which have resulted from it. This narrow focus falls significantly short of the universal perspective proposed by Teilhard.

Darwin’s theory of Natural Selection only addresses the few billion years which constitute the phase of biological evolution leading to the human person.  Teilhard identifies the nine or so billion years preceding the first cell as the ‘first phase’ of evolution, and the two hundred thousand years (or so) of human existence as the ‘third’.  As we have seen, he goes on to point out how the energy of evolution takes different forms as it proceeds through the three phases in its continuous increase of the complexity of its products.

A first step towards a more comprehensive perspective is to recognize that materialists are correct when they assert that the basis of morality should lie in the continuation of human evolution.  When placed into Teilhard’s more inclusive perspective, however, Natural Selection becomes an ‘epi-phenomenon’ which rides on top of the more fundamental ‘rise of complexity’ that underpins all three phases.  The agency of the first phase can be seen in the precipitation of matter from pure energy following the big bang.  It can be seen as matter goes on to evolve into more complex arrangements leading to the mega-molecules which form the raw material for the first cells.  This phenomenon is only now in the early stages of being addressed by science.  The agency of the third phase by which individual persons and their societies become more complex is also poorly addressed by science, and even there in the form of highly controversial and relatively untestable theories.  Applying the well-understood process of Natural Selection as an explanation of poorly understood human evolution is like losing one’s car keys in the middle of a dark city block and looking for them at the street corner because the light is better.

So the conclusion which should be drawn from science’s discovery that we are products of evolution is less that we are to continue the urge to procreate and survive (essentially to continue to respond to the instinctual stimuli of our reptilian and mammalian brains) but that, in the human person, the energy of evolution is much more manifest in the activity of our neocortex brain, which must be employed to modulate the instinctual stimuli of our lower brains if evolution is to continue through us.

Therefore once evolution is seen in its complete context, from the Big Bang to the present, the evolutionary basis for morality can be expanded to include those principles by which our continued evolution can be assured.

While the materialistic approach to the basis of morals can be seen to reduce standards of behavior to the instincts of our animal evolutionary predecessors, addressing the basis of morals from the traditional perspective of religion also comes with problems.  In many western expressions, morals are understood as laws given explicitly from god in the distant past and recorded in scripture.  As we have seen in many posts in this blog, from this perspective, morals can also be seen more as justifying a post-life reward (or as one theologian puts it,  ”As an escape route from this life”).  The basis of morals as understood by the more conservative western Christian expressions is then ‘absolute’, even if we humans in our sinful state find them difficult to follow.

The Next Post

This week we have contrasted the ‘materialistic’ (‘atheistic’) position with that of the ‘theists’ on ‘how we should be if we would be what we can be’, The materialist, in a limited view of evolution, sees morals as ‘relative’ to ‘survival’, while the theists sees them as dictated by an all-powerful God eons ago and therefore ‘absolute’ and thus necessary for reward in the ‘next life’.

Next week we will explore how a more comprehensive perspective on evolution can be seen to offer a common ground of belief that seems more consistent with both our general religious and scientific understanding of both the universe of our part in it.