Monkeys and Morality

On two separate occasions recently, I've found myself embroiled in friendly debates with colleagues over the issue moral relativism. The conversations have both begun with discussions of the pros and cons of Darwinian evolution. Most of my peers in the scientific world will readily defend Darwinism as scientifically proven fact (however, see the Discovery Institute for articles and discussion by academics who find Darwinism unconvincing). I am no young earth special creationist by any means, and my objections to Darwinism don't necessarily stem from my religious convictions. I just see no convincing evidence that one species has evolved into another by accumulating minute genetic changes over vast expanses of time. This is certainly not seen in the fossil record. In fact we find the opposite case in the Earth's record: thick rock sequences representing long periods of time, in which the fossil organisms remain virtually unchanged. Michael Behe, in his book Darwin's Black Box has explained how many of the supposed steps in evolution are what he calls "irreducibly complex." For example, the development of the eye is thought by Darwinists to have evolved in small increments from a light-sesitive spot in lower organisms into the image-forming, color-differentiating eye that most humans enjoy. Behe describes the myriad biochemical reactions and processes that must take place at just the right time in order for the light entering the eye to be transferred to the brain and interpreted as an image with some bearing on the seer's environment. Evolution by increments is not viable here, because all the components necessary for vision must appear together. There is no selective advantage in having an eye that doesn't work. The odds of all of these components appearing simultaneously by random mutations are about the same as that of putting one million monkeys in front of one million typwriters and hoping one of them eventually happens to come up with an exact transcription of Hamlet.

In spite of this evidence against Darwinian evolution, materialist scientists remain convinced that unguided evolution has occurred, because they see the present state of life on Earth, and realize that it had to have become this way somehow. And this is where the real problem with Darwinian thinking occurs - at the very beginning. Proponents of evolution begin with the belief that no higher being can be involved in the workings of the world, and so they have to construct a story to explain how that might have happened. It is a tiring and desperate task imposed on the proverbial monkeys.

This is the point at which my recent converstions have become the most interesting. If human life is the culmination of accumulated random physical and chemical reactions and genetic mutations, with no guiding hand behind it, then life is inherently purposeless. We are here by accident, and your life and mine have no intrinsic value other than what you or I choose to place on it. While this may seem like very enlightened thinking on the surface - each person's beliefs are equally true and should be equally respected - we don't have to follow the train of thought very far before we start seeing that it is an unworkable philosophy. One has only to wonder if this relativist idea is universally true: if it is, then it violates the very principle it proposes, that everyone makes up his or her own beliefs as they see fit. If it isn't true for everyone, then my belief that truth is absolute must be admitted, meaning that as soon as contradicting beliefs are encountered, at least one of them is wrong.

Even disregarding these logical difficulties, the path of moral relativism which Darwinism leaves us to wander ends at a chasm we can not easily cross: the moral principles we live by become nothing more than preferences exactly analaogous to our taste in music or favorite colors. As long as most of us define morality similarly, there are no problems. But what do we say to the psychopath who feels no moral reservation against brutally killing innocent people? We have no reason to abhor mass murder, rape, slavery, and child abuse. In the end morality gets imposed on us by whomever has the most power to enforce it. Hitler, Stalin, Mao...these men were merely following Darwinism to it's logical conclusions, like it or not.

We cannot possibly live with this conclusion. We all recognize that life has intrinsic value. This is why our hearts break when we read stories about babies abandoned in dumpsters being cared for by stray dogs. Once we admit that life does have value, we must conclude that it has purpose. Purpose creates value, and you can't have one without the other. If life does have some meaning, there must be someone to mean it. Suddenly we find ourselves in the hand of God, and we can relinquish our grip on chance and time as the mother and father of life. The monkeys can leave their typewriters and go happily back to the trees.