10.15.06
Talkreason on Collins
I have already addressed Collins on altruism but here is an essay/review by Gert Korthof (See his webpage Was Darwin Wrong?) on the issue, at
talkreason.org.
Gerthof’s objections don’t seem to me to be the point, although defending t he Moral Law is problematical for Collins. Both sides have missed the point. The issue of ethical behavior, which is more than altruism as a characteristic of certain behaviors, cannot in principle be explained by Darwinian-style theories. Such theories attempt causal explanations for something that is non-causal, by definition. This debate is forever muddled by the Darwinian fixation on altruism. It really sticks in their craw. Must be economic ideology and guilty behavior of economic Darwinists trying to justify their behavior, n’est-ce pas? There is more to ethical behavior than one character, e.g. altruism. We need a theory that can define the evolution of consciousness, with the will to moral action brought into that (perhaps as ’self-consciousness, i.e something on top of ‘mere’ consciousness which might well show causal behavior).
This question, and its traps, is the classic gateway to the Kantian framework on morality. This has been critiqued by many, but we don’t have to endorse the full details of Kant’s moral discourses to see that he has grappled with the real issues, and the contradiction at the heart of scientific theories. The point is that we don’t have to suddenly bring in divinity to explain morality, and Darwinian failure to explicate morality.
Gerthof doesn’t mention the formulations of population genetics attempting to explain altruism, the whole shtick of pseudo-science too arcane for most of the general public. This was actually the stuff from Trivers/Hamilton et al. that Dawkins doesn’t mention when he wrote The Selfish Gene.
But this cabal of geeks with their evo-dynamics bag of tricks is one of the hidden liabilities of the whole theory covered up in math sophistries the public is too confused to critique (if they even know about it). I, for one, consider such models woefully inadequate to the job, and the promotion of such stuff as grounds for the abolition of religion the most bogus, and quite dangerous, operation of technocratic legitimation con-men.
Sooner or later the Nietzschean consequences of this sly glitz is going to produce another social catastrophe.
So, small wonder that Collins, who is no fundamentalist, gets edgy on this question. Small wonder fundamentalists get edgy. Such people may be ’stupid’ in the eyes of these geeks, but they are salt of the earth enough to smell a rat here, and all the Nobel prize wizmo’s are stuck sucking their nerdish thumbs on advanced math, eyes glazed over.
I should remind Darwinists of the books on String Theory by Smolin and Woit, denouncing a non-experimental physics. Where are the similar books by biologists sounding the same theme on Darwinism?
The Irreducibly Complex Moral Law
The Moral Law is very important for Collins. He describes The Moral Law as ‘the denunciation of oppression, murder, treachery, falsehood and the injunction of kindness (16), almsgiving (5), impartiality (15), and honesty (4). He defends it at all costs as a unique character that separates humans and animals. No Mother Teresa among animals. Furthermore, for Collins the Moral Law seems to be the last and only surviving proof for the existence of God. Why? Having accepted the evolutionary origin of humans without supernatural intervention, for him the Moral Law is the only property that cannot be explained and will never be explained (!) by Darwinian evolution and the human genome. “Selfless altruism presents a major challenge for the evolutionist” (p.27). Is this true? And if true, so what? The Moral Law is evidence for God according to Collins. Why? Because all religions of the world endorse the Moral Law. It is overwhelmingly documented in the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics according to Collins. A number of serious problems arise here.The first problem is a problem of meaning. Collins uses quite different meanings of ‘the Moral Law’. Even worse, he switches meaning without noticing. One meaning he uses is the Moral Law as an “altruistic impulse, the voice of conscience”; a second meaning is “a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way”. To test the first meaning demands empirical evidence of actual altruistic behaviour. To test the second meaning one would simply investigate religious texts. Concerning actual behaviour, Collins focuses on extreme and rare forms of altruism (Mother Teresa) and what I call ’suicide-altruism’ (4) and dismisses moderate but more common forms of altruism. If altruism is an inborn impulse, the Moral Law is apparently weak and easily overruled by selfish instincts and has low specificity (see: witch burning below). To test the second meaning one would simply investigate religious texts. Collins used a second-hand quotation from the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics (6). However, this second meaning has its own problems. The Moral Law as quoted by Collins is a highly selective list of injunctions and denunciations. For example, on one page of the Old Testament high moral principles of peace, justice, and respect for people and property are promulgated, and on the next page raping, killing, and pillaging people who are not one’s “neighbors” are endorsed (7). If his list is biased, it cannot be used as a good test of the existence of the Moral Law. So Collins fails where it should be most easy to prove the Moral Law: religious texts.
The second problem is that actual behaviour in humans never counts against the existence of the Moral Law, which makes the Moral Law practically irrefutable. When discussing the Moral Law in humans, Collins preferentially uses the Moral Law in the meaning of a ‘divine command’ or an impulse and only in the meaning of ‘actual behaviour’ when it supports his thesis. The effect is, that no matter how large the gap between actual behaviour and the command, this does not affect the existence of the Moral Law in humans. But in humans there is a huge discrepancy between knowing what is good and doing what is good (8). The gap between knowing and doing is so huge that it leads to the infamous “problem of pain”. “It is widely agreed that what C. S. Lewis termed “the problem of pain” is one of the most significant obstacles to Christian belief” (9). Collins himself writes “that a large fraction of our suffering is brought about by what we do to one another” (p.43), which establishes again the discrepancy between the Moral Law and our actual behaviour. This would necessitate more modest claims about the Moral Law.
When discussing the Moral Law in animals, Collins uses it in the sense of actual behaviour. He cannot do otherwise, because one cannot ask animals about their knowledge of right and wrong. In animals there is only actual behaviour to observe. But this creates a double standard. Above that, it is not right to expect from the theory of evolution to explain an ill-defined and biased list of religious denunciations and injunctions regardless real-life behaviour. The theory of evolution is concerned with actual behaviour. In a sense Collins is right that “Selfless altruism presents a major challenge for the evolutionist” (Darwinist). Indeed, the mainstream view is: “As it was realized that natural selection should favour behaviours that benefit the individual rather than the species it belongs to, explaining the occurrence of altruistic behaviours has become one of the central problems in evolutionary biology.” (17). However, contrary to Dawkins’ selfish pitiless universe, the actual behaviour of animals towards genetically related individuals can certainly be altruistic and, famously, this has been theoretically derived from Darwinian principles by W. D. Hamilton. A recent overview of all theoretical models of cooperation and altruism in animals is: (18). Finally, it is just as easy to come up with anecdotal examples of true altruism in animals (see Frans de Waal: 11), as to come up with rare or unique cases of true altruism in humans such as Mother Teresa. However, even a million Teresa’s still amounts to less than 0,1% of the human population. Let’s not forget that even an extreme altruist is an egoist because he/she has to kill in order to stay alive. Humanity does not need extreme forms of altruism, but it does need the ability for peace-making, conflict resolution and forgiveness. “Forgiveness is sometimes touted as uniquely human, even uniquely Christian, but it may be a natural tendency for cooperative animals” (14).
The third problem: Collins does not clearly distinguish between the supposed inability of Darwinism to explain Moral Law and the proof that God placed the Moral Law in humans. The divine origin of the Moral Law does not logically follow from the hypothetical inability of Darwinism to explain altruistic behaviour. That would be a variant of the God-of-the-gaps explanation. Collins rejects that type of explanation when dealing with ID. So, it is amazing that he involves it here. What is ultimately the difference between Michael Behe’s Intelligently Designed Irreducible Complexity and Collins’ Moral Law? Collins could escape the failure of indirect evidence by providing direct evidence. What is the direct proof that the Moral Law derives from God? Is it derived from God because the Bible and other holy texts state the Moral Law? Then he has to prove that God directly inspired the Bible. Unfortunately, Collins knows “that the tools of science are not the right ones to learn about Him. (…) the evidence of God’s existence would have to come from other directions, and the ultimate decision would be based on faith, not proof.” (p. 30). Anyway, do we need God to be moral? In pre-Darwinian times philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) already argued that we do not need God to behave morally.
The fourth problem is an awfully embarrassing one: the Moral Law leads to a justification of witch burning. Amazingly, this happens on the same page (page 24) right after the definition of the Moral Law! I give a full quote of the passage in order not to misrepresent Collins’ view:
“In some unusual cultures the law takes on surprising trappings - consider witch burning in seventeenth-century America. Yet when surveyed closely, these apparent aberrations can be seen to arise from strongly held but misguided conclusions about who or what is good or evil. If you firmly believed that a witch is the personification of evil on earth, an apostle of the devil himself, would it not seem justified to take such drastic action?”
The scary things I observe here are that witch burning apparently follows from the Moral Law, and that firm belief in highly abstract concepts is a justification for torture and killing. Shockingly, Collins highest priority seems to be to show that witch burning does not refute or invalidate the Moral Law and he does not bother to tell his readers that he is unconditionally against all torture of all human beings or against the death penalty. The ‘aberration’ seems to be that they burned the wrong people and that the Moral Law they tried to follow is good. The implication would be that Christians today more accurately know which people they have to burn. At the time they only got a few minor details wrong. The existence and the value of the Moral Law is not refuted. Collins completely overlooks that witch burning is not an aberration of otherwise clear and sound concepts and principles. In my view the aberration is in the abstract and fictional nature of the religious concepts such as ‘witch’, ‘personification of evil’, ‘apostle of the devil’. There is the problem. There is the danger. An ordinary criminal could have been imprisoned or have a painless and quick death penalty. What is the harm done by witches to their neighbours? In order to burn people alive one needs: 1) religion 2) a powerful church and 3) abstract concepts like ‘witch’ in the first place. It seems that Steven Weinberg was right: “With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” Collins provides on these pages the best evidence of the dangers of fictional, abstract concepts so characteristic of religion. He completely fails to attempt a scientific analysis of this kind of behaviour, instead he is part of the problem and he is completely carried away by abstracts concepts himself. Witch burning could be a case of xenophobia, turn a single individual of ones own community into an enemy and dehumanize it in order to kill it in the most brutal way (10). The most mysterious thing is that he is the same person who spend a year of his life in Africa as a medical doctor to cure sick people and was the discoverer in 1989 of the mutation that causes the genetic disorder Cystic Fibrosis (CF), which opened the way to a cure for that potentially fatal disorder.
The fifth problem: Collins implicitly makes animals morally inferior because only humans received the Moral Law (from God). Animals did not receive the Moral Law (12). Otherwise, humans would not be unique in that respect. This is an inescapable logical conclusion from Collins view of the origin of the Moral Law. Moreover, I think it is a fundamental dogma of the Christian religion that humans are morally superior to animals; that humans did not invent that morality, instead it came out of the blue sky; and that there are no precursors in animal behaviour. The problem with this anthropocentric view is that it is a dogma and is not open the empirical findings. Research of animal behaviour shows there is continuity between animals (primates) and humans. Animals do show altruistic behaviour and cooperation (12). This should not surprise Collins, because he knows that continuity exists at the genetic level between humans and other species. Amazingly, Collins problems with the Moral Law arise out of a failure to accept that humans are an evolved species including their behaviour characteristics. For me this animals-are-inferior-view is another deep (emotional) reason to reject Christianity (13). Francis, please read for a start Frans de Waal’s Our Inner Ape (11). The search for human-like behaviours in primates is quite similar to your search for human-like genes in animals! Frans de Waal wrote: “Christianity urges us to love our neighbor as ourselves, clothe the naked, feed the poor, and tend the sick. It is good to realize, though, that in stressing kindness, religions are enforcing what is already part of our humanity.” (p. 181) and as Michael Shermer described it succinctly: “Evolution created these values in us, and religion identified them as important in order to accentuate them” (14)