Where Do Christians Get Their Morality?

Where Do Christians Get Their Morality?

Ask a random Christian where his morality comes from, and you are likely to get one answer out of a few that are commonly given. Many fundamentalists believe that God is the source of all morality. Without God, they say, humans would not know right from wrong, and we would be living in total moral chaos. More moderate Christians often offer a more deistic explanation. God created humans with an innate sense of right and wrong, and even without his direct intervention, we know what we ought to do because he has placed his moral laws in our hearts.

Some Christians believe that morality is absolute. There are things that are always wrong, and things that are always right. The ends do not justify the means in any case, and we ought to trust God to work things out when it appears that we are doing something harmful by “doing the right thing.” Even outside of Christianity, there is a prevalent belief that morality exists on some kind of higher philosophical plane, and that it is proof of humanity's separation from the animal world. We are different in kind from the animals because we have morality.

I'd like to examine these claims in light of both philosophy and science to see if any of them hold any water. In the end, I hope to convince you that not only do Christians not have any means to derive a system of morality from their faith, they have every justification in the world to act immorally with impunity based only on their personal goals.

Morality Comes From God

Let us suppose that God is the source of all morality. For now, we will take the most extreme Christian view – that morality is impossible to derive from human wisdom, and that we must rely solely on the word of God to know what is right and what is wrong. If this is true, then it must be true that there is no logical reason to do what is right other than fear of God's punishment or desire for God's reward. If this conclusion seems odd, just consider the alternative. If we can think of any reason to do the morally correct thing, then we are basing morality on something natural. If it is right for me to feed my infant child because otherwise the child will die and that would cause me grief, then there is a natural reason for me to feed my infant child.

It doesn't take much thought to realize that morality doesn't derive solely from God. Virtually every day of our lives, we are faced with moral choices, and we reason out the best course of action. Our thought processes involve causes and effects, not calling to memory a set prescription from the Bible. It should be painfully obvious that if morality does indeed come from God, it is not solely dependent on arbitrary dicta. There are unmistakable real world consequences to our actions, and we can judge their relative value based on individual situations.

For emphasis, let's think of it another way. If God truly was the only source of morality in existence, then we should not be able to distinguish right from wrong except when it was specifically mentioned by God himself. When presented with a unique moral dilemma, we should be at a complete loss for any means of deriving the correct answer. This is obviously not so. As human civilization has advanced and technology has increased, we have created moral dilemmas that couldn't have been conceived when the Bible was written. In many cases, we have established very clear ideas of what is right and what is wrong.

There is only one thing we can do if we are to save the idea that God is the source of morality. We must admit that God has instilled in humans a conscience, and that man is able to reason out morality on his own without reference to an arbitrary set of rules. This is the position that most reasonably intelligent Christians take, for the simple reason that the exercise of a modicum of intelligence pretty much necessitates it.

Unfortunately, this position fails on several levels, although the failures are more subtle, and take a little more critical thinking. Straight out of the gate, we must ask a crucial question. If God has instilled in humans the ability to judge right from wrong, what is the Bible good for? This question isn't as flippant as it may appear. Pastors all over the world thump the Bible on their podiums while decrying Godless heathens who don't act as it dictates. In heated debates over moral hot button issues, the Bible is used as a final arbiter. God says it. I believe it. That settles it. Anytime the Bible disagrees with our innate sense of morality, we ought to believe the Bible over our own conscience.

We are forced now to ask the question. What is the final arbiter of human morality? Is it God's word or our conscience? If it is God's word, then we are headed back towards where we started, only now we are in a worse position. We've admitted that our conscience is a real, God-given tool for determining the morality of a given situation, but now we're also admitting that God's word trumps our conscience. This is another way of saying that when God wants us to do something, it is good, regardless of what our conscience says.

While many Christians would happily agree with this statement, it leaves us with a horrible dilemma. There are, at present, somewhere in the neighborhood of fifteen thousand denominations of Christianity, worldwide. Each one of them has different views on morality, ranging from the insignificant to issues of global human existence. We have two choices. Either there is one correct version of Christianity or there are multiple correct versions. If there is only one correct version, how are we supposed to identify it? Every denomination claims that it is the correct one (or at the very least, that it is one of the correct ones!) so we can't rely on these claims to make our decisions. Each denomination interprets the Absolutely True Word of God Which Trumps Conscience in a way that makes sense to them.

Let me reiterate that last sentence, because it's really important. Every denomination that believes the Bible trumps our conscience interprets the Bible in a way that makes sense to them. Did you catch the trap in this sentence? They use their conscience to decide which interpretation of the Bible trumps the conscience! Again, we are faced with a nasty choice. Either there is a correct version of the Bible that doesn't rely on conscience or logic to find, or we are right back to conscience and logic being the ultimate guide for morality.

If we assume that there is, in fact, a perfect interpretation of the Bible, we are at something of an impasse. Since logic and conscience can't be our criteria for making the decision, we must rely on something else, but what? Divine revelation? Again, every denomination makes some claim of divine revelation, so which one is correct? How will we decide? What if none of them are correct? What if, after reading the Bible, you come to the conclusion that everybody's got it wrong, and that you have the perfect interpretation. God has spoken directly to you, and you are certain you are correct. This is fine for you, but how am I to judge whether or not I believe you? You are now in exactly the same situation as the other fifteen thousand denominations. You must ask people to use either logic, conscience, or divine revelation to decide to believe you.

The sad truth is that if there is a true interpretation of the Bible that does not rely on human logic or conscience, then it is unknowable beyond individual interpretation, which is the same as saying that it's entirely subjective.

Did you catch that last sentence? If the Christians are right, then morality is completely subjective. What is it that Christians always say about atheists? Aren't they the ones who accuse atheists of having no basis for morality? According to them, the world would be ruled by anarchy and there would be no way to know right from wrong. Civilization would descend into self serving madness. The irony is that their very own doctrine, if true, leads inevitably to the very state they attribute to naturalism!

Now, we must backtrack. We have reached an absurd conclusion when we followed one line of reasoning. The other line must now be scrutinized. Since it is not possible that there is one correct version of Christianity, perhaps there are multiple correct versions. Again, we're faced with choices. Perhaps there are some things that are universally right and wrong, and some that are malleable according to individual situations. The other option is that all things are malleable and based on specific circumstances.

If we accept the former option, we are immediately forced to address the question of which things are universals, and which are subjective. Unfortunately, this is no easier than the dilemma we faced earlier. Either logic and reason can tell us the answer, or it must be found in the Bible, or through divine revelation. If it is found in the Bible, then where is it? Having read the bible myself, I can recall no such clear cut explanations of morality. Instead, I remember reading contradictory edicts from God himself. Don't kill, unless God orders you to, or if it's lawful to kill. Then again, turn the other cheek and repay evil with kindness. Then again, Jesus came to uphold the law. Then again, Jesus came to repeal the law. Then again, it is better to kill yourself than to cause a child to stray. Then again, suicide is an unpardonable sin. Then again, and again, and again, and again.¹

The latter option leaves us in a real pickle. If all things are malleable and based on specific circumstances, then the only conclusion is that there is nothing that is set in stone. There are no absolutes, and God's word is not the final arbiter over conscience. With no instance by instance definitive statement from God himself, there is no way to ascribe any absoluteness to any moral imperative, and we clearly have no such step by step guide.

If there are no absolutes, and God's word is not the final judge of what is moral and immoral, how is a Christian to judge right from wrong? At the risk of becoming pedantic, I'm afraid I must point out that there are two choices. Either the Christian can continue to use the Bible, or church doctrine, or some other source as a basis for morality, or they can admit that morality is ultimately judged by humans on a case to case basis, without any arbitrary intervention by God.

If some theist source is used, then the Christian is right back where we ended up earlier – arbitrary subjective morality. If it is admitted that morality is ultimately judged by humans, we have relegated God to irrelevance. Whether or not God created man with a conscience or the conscience evolved is a pointless distinction. If the conscience, or logic, or any other natural method is used to determine morality, then man can determine morality without God. The foundation of one of religion's most ardent claims collapses. Man does not need God to live morally.

Morality By Plato

Having extracted God from the process of arbitrating morality, we must now address the question of morality as an absolute. Is there some kind of platonic model of morality that is universal to all humans? Are some things absolutely right and some absolutely wrong, or is morality subjective and arbitrary? Perhaps God created man and instilled in him an instinctive knowledge of the perfect good, much like Plato's perfect conceptualizations of imperfect reality. If this is true, perhaps humans are always striving towards perfection but always falling short. Maybe this is the true nature of the biblical “Fall of Man.” In fact, maybe this is the difference between Christians and non-Christians. Maybe God gives Christians an extra “morality boost” and allows them to see a clearer image of the cave wall.

As we did with all the previous claims, lets assume this to be true and see where it leads us. Let us suppose that for every human interaction conceivable, there is a “perfect” morally good action for every individual to take. The first question we must ask is what scale is being used to judge perfection. Is perfection based on the greatest good for the greatest number of people? What about reduction of suffering? Perhaps equality is the ultimate measure. (But, if it is equality, in what sense do we mean equal? Equality of opportunity, or resources, or happiness, or what?) To say that there is a perfect morality is to admit to a scale. Perfect must be judged in relation to something, or the word has no meaning.

Perhaps now is a good time to explore a hypothetical situation to see if we can gain some real world insight into the possibility that there is such a thing as perfect morality. Suppose that there is a man who has a wife and family. He has a good job, with enough time to spend with his children and his wife, enough free time to avoid getting overworked, and enough money to pay all the bills. (Talk about a hypothetical situation!) One day, this man discovers that his boss is involved in a large scale fraud that, if allowed to continue, will cheat hundreds of thousands of people out of large amounts of money. Unfortunately, the fraud is so pervasive throughout the company that if the whistle is blown, the company will surely fail, and all the employees will not only lose their jobs, but many of them will be pulled into years of lawsuits, whether they were knowingly involved or not.

If you are like most people, you have decided that despite the personal loss and the potential problems for other employees, the only moral thing for the man to do is blow the whistle on his company. There are other jobs, and it's selfish of him to hold onto his perfect little life knowing that it will cause great harm to so many people. Furthermore, “shit happens,” as the saying goes, and it's unfortunate that many of the employees will be caught in the mess, but it's just a case of bad luck. It can't be helped.

Does this situation tell us anything about the concept of perfect morality? Let's look at it from the perspective of the greater good. It is true that more people will be helped by blowing the whistle than not. In terms of financial success, the greater good will be served. However, in order to achieve the greater good, there must be lesser bad. Some people, including the whistle blower, will have to suffer financially. Where there is financial gain, there is also financial loss.

Mathematically, there is almost certainly an optimum financial solution to this problem. Perhaps there is a course of action that could minimize financial losses to employees as much as mathematically possible while maximizing the financial gain of those who will benefit from having the fraud exposed. We can say that in terms of financial good, there is a perfect solution to this problem. Maybe it involves a different employee blowing the whistle, or the boss having a fit of conscience and admitting his fraud. What the action is is irrelevant. The broader point is that there is a perfect solution.

Unfortunately, it's not as simple as that. When I began discussing the greater good, I assumed that good to be financial. If we use another measure, we might find completely different results from taking the “perfect” moral action. Supposing that the fraud comes to an end in the best possible way financially, what can we say about the solution based on equality? For instance, if the investors who were going to be defrauded were all upper class and wealthy, the huge financial losses they would take might lower their status to upper middle class, where they would still be quite comfortable. On the other hand, the employees of the company might all be in the lower middle class, and the setbacks from losing their jobs might throw them squarely into poverty, even though the financial losses were minimized as much as possible.

If this were the case, could we then say that a greater good had been achieved? What if there were a total of five hundred children of employees, and as a result of their parents losing their jobs, four hundred of them ended up having to go to lesser schools with poor standards? Knowing that these children will grow up and have children of their own, and knowing that poverty tends to breed more poverty, can we really say that blowing the whistle accomplished a greater good?

We haven't even begun to look at the measures of individual happiness or minimization of suffering. I'm sure there are at least a dozen other measures by which a moral action can be judged, and it's entirely likely that in this very situation, each measure comes out differently on the grand scale of moral correctness.

Even so, our idea of platonic morality is not dead. Perhaps there is a set number of measures by which morality can be judged, and in any given situation, there is an action which is the perfect balance of all of the measures, such that there is no way for a better outcome. To help you think of this concept more clearly, let's say that there are one hundred moral measures, and let us assign a value of zero to one hundred for each of them in any given situation. It's patently obvious that very few, if any, situations will allow an outcome of one hundred one hundreds. Every dilemma will have a number of solutions, each of which is better by some measures and worse by others.

If this is true, then we're left with a puzzle. How do we decide which way to weight the scale? In other words, do we always pick the solution that has the highest aggregate score – the highest total number when we add up the score from all hundred measures? If that's true, what if the solution to a particular problem includes a zero (meaning morally awful) in the category of “Preserving Human Life”? Do we weight “Preserving Human Life” more than “Promoting Individual Happiness”? If so, how do we determine the system by which we will achieve our perfect mathematical formula?

By now, it should be painfully obvious that there is a problem with the notion of Platonic moral perfection. The fact of the matter is that different people have different goals, and different needs, and when morality involves multiple people (as it almost always does) what's good for one person will be less good for another, and with no way to say definitively which person should take precedence, most moral decisions will be ambiguous in some sense.

The Danger of Christian Morality

Before we explore what science says about human morality, I want to take a slight detour and explore some of the consequences of morality as described by Christians. The main point I wish to hammer home is that not only is the Christian model of morality wrong, it is decidedly harmful as well. Imagine a discussion with a believer that goes something like this:

Skeptic: Is it wrong to kill your own child?

Believer: Yes.

Skeptic: Is it always wrong?

Believer: Yes. God has told us that we shall not kill.

Skeptic: And this is absolute and universal. There is never any time when it is ok to kill your child?

Believer: (feeling a little twitchy... he suspects a trap.) Well, I suppose there are some instances. (Perhaps he remembers that God, in the Old Testament, demanded that disobedient children be stoned to death.) But except for really extraordinary circumstances, it's wrong.

Skeptic: What if God told you to do it?

Believer: (Squirming noticeably in his seat.) God wouldn't do that.

Skeptic: How do you know? He ordered people in the Old Testament to do it. He ordered Abraham to do it. Can God do anything he wants to do?

Believer: Erm... well... yes, he can, but he wouldn't.

Skeptic: Well, you believe that he wouldn't, but by your own admission, and by the words of the Holy Scriptures themselves, God has done it, and could very well do it again if it pleases him to do so. Stop squirming around this, and just answer the question. If God told you to kill your child, and you knew with 100% certainty that it was God telling you, would it be a good thing to kill your child?

Believer: Um... well... I don't know if it would be good, exactly, but it would be God's will, so um...

Skeptic: Wait a minute. You're saying that God's will can be evil?

Believer: No, that's not what I said. I just said it wasn't good.

Skeptic: So, it's neutral? There are only three choices, right? Good, bad and neutral. Which is it?

Believer: Well, um... I don't know, exactly...

Skeptic: Ok. Let's get down to brass tacks. If you knew for certain that God wanted you to kill your own child, would you do it?

Believer: (scurries out of the room, making signs of the cross and genuflecting furiously)

From this little discussion, we can see that not only do Christians have nothing solid on which to hang their moral hats, they actually have a very dangerous excuse for doing vicious and horrible things and calling them good, or at worst, neutral. A brief look through history (some of it not particularly far in the past) we see many examples of people doing horrible things in the name of religion and calling them good. I'm not suggesting that every evil act ever committed by a Christian has been because of this kind of justification, but surely there have been many people who have used it.

Lest I be accused of creating a strawman, I want to be clear on one thing. I'm not suggesting that people would not do evil except for Christianity, or that non-Christians haven't done very horrible things. However, I want to make it perfectly clear that the Christian version of morality gives implicit and explicit permission for people to do evil and call it good. While it's true that removing this system of morality from the public consciousness wouldn't eradicate all evil in the world, it would most certainly eradicate some, and that, to me, seems a worthwhile endeavor.² In the words of the Nobel Prize winning physicist (and descendant of a holocaust survivor) Steven Weinberg, "With or without religion, good people can behave well and bad people can do evil; but for good people to do evil—that takes religion."

As I have hopefully made crystal clear, there simply is no basis for morality from God or scripture. At best we are left with a hopeless subjective conundrum and at worst, we have an excuse to do things that all sane people know to be wrong.  Now that we have exposed Christian morality for what it really is, we can begin to delve into the questions from a more reasonable perspective. What does science say about morality? For that matter, what exactly is morality? If morality is not absolute, what is it? If it's not completely subjective, how do we decide what is right and what is wrong?

These questions do not always have easy answers, but they do have answers. Again, we're going to need to learn some real science and be prepared to face whatever answers we find, even if they don't line up with what we were taught as children.

1When faced with this fact, many Christians fall back to the assertion that careful reading of the Bible with an open and honest heart will reveal the “true” intent of the author. Of course, this fails for the same reason that all claims of revelation fail. They are necessarily subjective!

2I should mention the other side of the Christian morality argument. It is often suggested that despite the problems with Christians sometimes doing evil in the name of God, Christianity encourages people to do good that they would not ordinarily do.  It's not within the scope of this entry, but evolutionary psychology explains quite parsimoniously that this notion is bunk.  People of all religions (and non-religions) have always been inspired to acts of charity.   It is just divisive and exclusionary thinking to suggest otherwise.

Morality and Fear

I'm afraid I've gotten off topic more than I'd like in the last few weeks.  This blog is primarily for discussing human nature, science, and what it means to be atheist.  Today, I'd like to briefly discuss one of the most volatile issues between theists and atheists, namely godless morality.

A fellow blogger recently voiced his discontent with Christopher Hitchens' standard response to the accusation that godless morality is a scary thing.  Hitchens reply is usually that he is appalled to think that anyone would be good just because they're afraid of a big supernatural hammer.  True morality, he asserts, comes from within oneself, not from without.

I have also felt a vague discomfort with this response for years.  The thing is, it's only partly true, and it's skirting around a bigger issue.  Theists are right to be afraid of godless morality.  Yep.  I said it.  Godless morality is a scary thing, and theists are right to fear it.  Atheists also ought to fear it.  It's scary.

Unfortunately, it's the hand we've been dealt, and making up stories to make it seem less scary doesn't accomplish anything -- nothing good, anyway.  Atheists debating morality with theists make a fundamental mistake out of the starting block.  They allow themselves to be caught using theist models and trying to make atheist morality fit.  When a theist speaks of the difference between theist and atheist morality, he is literally not saying anything, for there is no difference.  There is no god, so morality cannot derive from it.  All theists are functioning within the same moral paradigm as atheists.  They're just lying to themselves and others about it.

This is why I don't like invoking the Crusades.  All of the atrocities attributed to God are directly attributable to humans and human nature.  We do have an evil side.  It's really nasty.

The reality of human morality is that it is subjective.  It is not, however, arbitrary.  As I've previously mentioned, killing is not always wrong to humans.  Most people get turned on by Dirty Harry or James Bond or some other hero from that genre of movie.  There's a reason we spend millions of dollars to watch the good guy shoot all the bad guys.  We like killing bad guys.

Young men join the army in droves, and not because of the health insurance.  They want the chance to kill, or the chance to help someone else kill.  It's exciting and sexy.  They'll get laid more because they are in an organization formed with the express purpose of killing other humans.

We are animals, and animals kill.  It's a fact of life.  We also steal, rape, embezzle and defraud.  It is part of the human experience.  Everyone reading this blog has done something that they knew was wrong, and they knew it was wrong while they did it.  Nevertheless, they did it, and they would do it again if put in the same situation.

So yeah, theists are right to be afraid.  Humans are scary creatures.  The thing is, we're also good creatures, and we are instilled with empathy for others.  More importantly, we have amazing intellects which are capable of recognizing our own dark drives for what they are -- evolutionary adaptations.  We are not bound by our natures in the same way as dolphins who gang rape females.  We have the choice of looking at our own bad behavior and deciding not to do it anymore.  More importantly, we have the capability of building societies which encourage good behavior while making bad behavior less appealing.

There are human societies in which murder has been all but eliminated.  In a recent television program about a certain city in Japan, the commentator mentioned the collective shame felt by one city -- a city of millions of residents -- in which eight murders were committed in one year.  (I believe it was eight.  It was less than ten, at any rate.)  It didn't take god to do this.  It took human ingenuity and good planning.

The fact is, with knowledge, humans are capable of great engineering feats, and we should not exclude human society from the discussion.  Humans work just like anything else -- we follow natural laws.  We have set natures which give us the capacity for good and evil, and we do good or evil based upon our environment, not our inherent goodness or badness.  This simple fact can change the world if we only embrace it instead of fearing it.  Change the environment, change the behavior.

This is the true explanation of morality.  It's a little scarier than believing everything will be ok because God said it would, but let's be honest.  God's had his chance.  He failed.  It's time to see what humans can do on their own.

On Morality, "Should," and Murder

The “Should Trap” and How we Ought to Behave

I've frequently mentioned the trap hidden in the word, “should.” It's time now for us to look at exactly what the word means, what it doesn't mean, and how a good understanding of these things will allow us to understand how humans form concepts of morality. We'll soon see that everything from what we should eat for dinner to who we should vote for in the upcoming election to whether or not we should have children or adopt – all of these questions become much easier to answer when we realize exactly what we're asking.

Like so many words in the English language, “should” has multiple meanings. “Should I decide to get married, I will do so in a courtroom, not a church,” is one possible usage. This is a relatively uncommon usage. It essentially means, “If I decide to get married.” Another usage involves probability. “The Patriots should win the Superbowl next year.” We're saying that we believe the Patriots are more than 50/50 favorites to win the Superbowl. We can also use it as a way to blunt or soften an otherwise harsh statement, as in “I should think that it's a bad idea to drive in your condition.”

All of these usages are irrelevant to the topic at hand. We are going to be using the word as expressing a sense of obligation or necessity: “You should go to the bathroom before we leave the house.” If you think about this statement for a moment, you realize an essential part of any sentence using the word with this meaning. There is an unspoken, yet implicitly understood, phrase at the end of it: “You should go to the bathroom before we leave the house IF you don't want us to have to stop at a gas station on the way.” Of course, there may be other equally valid phrases – “IF we're going to make it on time,” for instance. Stopping at a gas station takes longer than walking to the bathroom now, and we're in a rush.

Any statement about what we should do is really an IF-THEN statement, or a contingency. In other words, a certain outcome is contingent upon us doing a certain thing. “You should temper the milk before adding it to your hot pan, IF you don't want the sauce to curdle.” There are different ways of expressing contingency. The word must is stronger than should. “You must keep your speed under sixty-five miles per hour if you are to obey the law.” There is no wiggle room in this statement. If we exceed sixty-five, we will be breaking the law, regardless of whether or not we are caught. On the other hand, we should drive under seventy if we don't want to run an excessive risk of being pulled over in a sixty-five zone. We know that the chances of being pulled over are very slim if we maintain a speed of five miles per hour over, but it's not certain.

This all seems very simple, but we are talking about relatively uncontroversial topics. Let's talk now about something from the opposite end of the spectrum. Should abortion be legal? If you are like the majority of people, you have a strong opinion on this question, but let's make sure that our opinion is based on an accurate and well constructed contingency. We need to be able to construct a sentence in the following form: “Abortion should be legal if X is to occur.” The letter “X” represents some outcome on which the legality of abortion is contingent. Perhaps we can make a statement with more certainty by saying that abortion must be legal. Let's look at some possible sentences.

Many abortion rights activists say that abortion should be legal because women have the right to make their own choices about their bodies. To rephrase it as a contingency, we will say that IF women are to have reproductive control over their own bodies, THEN abortion should be legal. Others use a different approach. IF we are to reduce the number of deformed, chemically addicted, unwanted, or severely retarded babies, THEN abortion should be legal. There are many more arguments, and I'm sure that astute readers have already begun to dissect and critique the ones I've made based on their own opinions. I do not intend to answer this question, so forgive me for not listing every possible contingency statement.

What about abortion opponents? Probably the most common statement has to do with the sanctity of human life. IF we are to respect the rights of the unborn, THEN abortion should be illegal. IF a fetus is a human, THEN it should have all the rights of a human. Again, depending on your own view, you've probably raised your eyebrow at something inherent in these statements. When we talk about critical thinking, debate, and evidence, we'll dig deeper into this kind of complicated question, but for now, I want you to see that regardless of the peripheral issues, each side of the abortion debate is creating their own contingency statement, and it's based on what they believe to be a good outcome. For abortion rights advocates, they envision a society where individual adults have as much freedom of choice as possible. For opponents, society would give equal legal rights to the unborn and the born, restricting freedom of choice to gain legal recognition of the sanctity of human life.

A Taste for Something Sweet

Now that we've looked at two very opposite questions, let's try to establish how we can start from scratch, with nothing but our knowledge of human nature, and develop a working model of what we should or should not do. We'll use something that's pretty much universal, and also very well understood – the sweet tooth.

Why is a taste for sweet food pretty much universal to humans? Across all cultures, humans crave sugar in some way or another. Not only that, but our taste develops well before we can learn it culturally. It is clearly a biological constant among humans, but why is this? To answer this question, we must remember that human nature is nothing more than a reflection of the evolutionary forces that created us. If we crave sweets, then there's a good evolutionary reason for it. Also, we must remember that the agricultural revolution happened so recently in our evolutionary past that we are, for all intents and purposes, post-industrial humans with pre-agricultural brains. We have the same instincts and emotions as we did forty or fifty thousand years ago when we were hunting and gathering in small tribal groups of twenty to perhaps two hundred.

As we look across the animal kingdom, we realize that natural selection has 'learned' to encourage beneficial behavior. In even the most unintelligent species, we recognize something in common with humans. That is, the experience of both pain and pleasure. Things that are painful are generally avoided, and things that are pleasurable are generally sought out. Pain and pleasure are nature's way of getting us to do what is best for us while avoiding that which is harmful. It's obviously not a perfect system, but we must remember that natural selection is not concerned with the individual. It is diversity which makes a species adaptable and likely to survive, but diversity is a double edged sword. By creating lots of highly varied individuals, natural selection has made things very bad for some and very good for others. Nature is an amazingly complex system, and the 'rules' of pain and pleasure are general guidelines that tend to benefit the entire species – not each individual. We must always remember this humbling truth. Natural selection could care less about you or me. We are both little more than genetic dice rolls in a much larger game.

Now, with a little educated guesswork, we can come up with the correct answer to the sugar question, an answer which science has verified. In nature, things that taste sweet are ripe. More than that, very few naturally poisonous substances are sweet. So, as man was evolving, the members of the species that ate more ripe fruit and avoided poisons became the best nourished, and consequently, the most reproductively successful. Within perhaps ten or twenty thousand generations, those humans who tended to eat poisonous food died out, leaving virtually all of humanity in possession of a sweet tooth. The species had evolved an adaptive trait that made it more successful.

Pre-agricultural man had two principle pursuits in life. He wanted to avoid starvation, and he wanted to reproduce. The former was usually critical to the latter, so food gathering was probably the most common activity for our ancestors. Most fruits that our ancestors would have eaten were under 10% sugar. Not only that, fruits are almost all more than 80% water, and contain fiber and important nutrients. If you think for a moment about the natural growing season of most fruits, you will realize that the average human would have had very few opportunities to get fruit, and consequently, sugar. It would have been terribly important to get the accompanying nutrients whenever possible. Sugar was an indicator of foods that were high in nutrients. Not surprisingly, our sweet tooth is one of our strongest taste cravings.

As a result of this adaptation, we in the post-industrial world crave sweets, and enjoy them when we get them. There's a big difference, though. Post-industrial man has something that pre-agricultural man did not – processed sugar. We have learned to farm beets and sugar cane, and aided by advanced tools, to extract the pure sugar. We can use it to flavor everything from barbecue sauce to tiramisu to cough syrup to coffee. We can get sugar year round.

There's another adaptation we must consider. Our ancestors had to catch pretty much any protein they were going to consume. Protein came primarily from animals, and most of the animals we lived with were faster than us. To put it simply, it cost us a lot of calories to catch and kill our dinner. In addition, we were very seldom certain that we would find a meal tomorrow, or the day after. Food for us, like every other creature, was a hit and miss proposition. To that end, we developed a propensity for gorging. If there was a dead antelope by the fire, we consumed not just enough to sate our hunger, but as much as we possibly could, for that stored fat energy might well be the difference between a successful hunt in a week. It could literally be the difference between life and death.

By now, you've probably anticipated where I'm going with this. Very few humans expend energy in catching their food anymore. Not only that, but we get to eat our fill every day, and we add pure sugar to a large percentage of our food items. Our natural desire to gorge ourselves only compounds the problem.

According to the 2008 stat sheet from the American Heart Association, more than 9 million children under 19 years old are overweight. Nearly 14 percent of preschool children are overweight. Overweight adolescents have a 70 percent chance of remaining overweight as adults. Obesity increases as we reach adulthood. Among women between 30 and 40 years old, 34 percent are overweight. The link between obesity and myriad health problems is so well documented as to be incontrovertible.

The problem isn't just sugar. We also crave fat, for obvious reasons. Fat is one of the best ways to store energy in the body. Stored energy was crucial to our ancestors, but it is literally death to us today. Salt was an extremely precious commodity well into the modern human era. Today, it is available for a nickel a box at the supermarket, and is added to virtually everything we cook. Our ancient instincts have turned on us, and we are eating ourselves to death. Potato chips, candy, Big Macs, cheesecake, and All-You-Can-Eat Buffets are slowly and consistently killing us.

How does this relate back to our discussion of the word should? Very clearly, as it turns out. Remember, in order to make a statement about what we should do, we must provide an outcome. The chain is quite clear. Salt, sugar, and fat are clearly important to the human diet, but with science, we have identified clear dangers to our health that result from consuming too much of any of them. We can say with scientific certainty that IF we wish to increase our chance of being healthy and living for a long time, we SHOULD take special care to monitor our intake of calories, sugar, salt, and fat.

How much should we monitor our diets? Again, the answer depends on our goals. If we wish to give ourselves the maximum chance of a very long life, we will have a lot of work ahead of us, because very few foods today are designed with that goal in mind. We must balance our desire for a long and healthy life with the time constraints of our work and leisure time, as well as our income (eating a maximally healthy diet is much more expensive!) and ultimately, the amount of pleasure we are willing to sacrifice today for the goal of living a long life.

Here, we get a sneak peek at the conclusion of this line of inquiry. If we see that, say, 90% of the food industry produces food that is less than optimally healthy, should we all become full time activists, trying to change the way food is produced worldwide? Optimal food production is clearly a reasonable goal, if we believe healthy eating is the most important thing to aim towards. If we think about this for a second, though, we will realize that it's absurd to suggest that everyone in the world do such a thing. Clearly, the conception of absolute normatives (“should” statements) is on shaky ground. If everyone works toward food production, where will everyone live? Who will run the police departments? Who will study energy sources for the future? There are many, many competing goals in the world, all of them with their own merits.

But Isn't There More To It?

Sugar craving is something virtually all humans do. It's part of our nature. As such, it's a great example for illustrating several common misunderstandings of what morality is. The first, and the most obvious, is the appeal to nature. As we have clearly demonstrated, all of our natural inclinations are not inherently good for us. Remember, our sweet tooth is something that benefited our species at a time when we desperately needed it. Today, indiscriminate indulgence of that which feels natural is the equivalent of signing our own death warrant, at least when it comes to food.

We can also see the beginnings of another fallacy, the false dichotomy. Many moralists will argue that a certain moral issue is black or white, wrong or right. By looking at the natural, healthy consumption of fat, sugar, and salt, and comparing it with unmoderated consumption of all three, we can see that there are an almost unlimited number of positions along the middle ground. If it can be scientifically demonstrated (and it can) that a diet of say, five percent excess fat, sugar, and salt will have a minimal effect on our health, particularly if we counteract the effect to some degree with exercise, how can we say that based solely on health and longevity, it's wrong to consume such a diet?

Here, we see another error lurking just around the corner. Is our diet truly based solely on our own health? If we eat our fill, will someone else starve? Is it cruel to eat foix gras? If raising enough of a certain crop to sate our national appetite causes us to harm the environment, is that morally wrong? Is it actually justifiable to say that everyone in the world should always eat as healthy as possible? If someone is dying of cancer, for instance, should they still adhere to eating practices that will never be a benefit to them? These are all questions that need answers, and in each case, we can use science and a proper understanding of the word “should” to find answers.

In less enlightened times, philosophers decided that animals were simply automatons, put on earth to perfectly mimic life, which only human beings had, because only humans had souls. As a result of this scientific inaccuracy, it was considered acceptable to nail a living dog to a plank by its feet and cut it open while it was still alive to see how it worked. Today, through the critical lens of science, we know that dogs do indeed feel pain. We have come to the conclusion that such research is morally wrong. At the risk of overgeneralizing, I will hazard a guess that virtually every sane person on the planet would agree that nailing dogs to planks and cutting them open while alive is wrong.

Why is this, though? If we can find an evolutionary explanation for our sweet tooth, and find a middle ground, can we also examine the mutilation of living animals? Why do humans cringe at the sight of other humans in pain? Why would we do the same for dogs, when they are not members of our own species? Why can some people wring the neck of a chicken, cook it, and eat it for dinner, while other people become sick to their stomach at the sight of a steak?

Our ability to recognize pain in others, and our aversion to seeing it, is rooted in our social nature. Remember that our ancestors lived in small tribal groups, and were probably all closely related. They also depended upon each other for their survival. If the group weakened, the chance of each individual to survive lessened. Those of our ancestors who developed a negative response to pain in their kin were more likely to try to help prevent or alleviate this pain. When everyone in the tribe had this tendency, a sort of mutual protection pact resulted, even though it would be millenia before such a thing would ever be written down.

Why, then, do we fight wars? Why do soldiers experience excitement, jubilation, and even sexual pleasure when they take the life of an enemy soldier, or worse, an enemy civilian? Again, the answer lies in our genes. To the eyes of natural selection, the tribe is almost like an organism itself. Each member, like an individual cell in a large organism, contributes to the survival of the whole. As we've seen previously, natural selection is driven by several competitive forces – interspecies, intraspecies, parasitic, and environmental. The superorganism, that is, the tribe, is at a state of relative equilibrium, competing within itself for mating, power, and social status, but the ultimate goal is the survival of the tribe. With limited resources in any patch of land, the encroachment of another tribe meant the threat of death by starvation. Those of our ancestors who were instinctively driven to drive off or kill members of other tribes were able to protect their own resources, ensuring survival of the tribe.

Remember that pleasure is nature's way of encouraging a behavior, and pain is its way of discouraging it. Also remember that our brains are the same today as they were in the days when a small grove of fruit trees might be the difference between survival and starvation. Cooperative pacts and international treaties were simply not possible because there were neither the resources, the language, or the advanced abstract thought necessary to conceptualize such things. Like all the other animals who lived in small social groups, the choice was clear. Either drive the competitors away, kill them, or die.

Ancient humans, then, developed what seems to us to be a contradictory nature. They were appalled at pain experienced by their 'fellow man,' and delighted with pain inflicted on 'the enemy.' Once we understand that these feelings are normal, natural, and instinctive, we can begin to look at the question of murder in the same way that we approached the question of sugar intake. We can recognize that in a post-industrial world, our instinctive desires are not necessarily to our advantage. We can look at the real, scientific picture of what the world is, and make decisions about what our laws should be, and what our own actions should be, based on our goals. In other words, we can say, IF we want a society that accomplishes X, then we SHOULD or MUST have Y laws about killing other human beings.

But what about animals? Why do we feel empathy and sorrow for animals when they are clearly not part of our tribe? The answers to this would take a great deal of space to adequately explain, but if you think about a few of our instinctive traits, you can probably understand at least some of the reasons. Humans have instinctive nurturing tendencies. All humans, and especially women, and even more so, mothers, naturally feel nurturing instincts towards our babies. This isn't a uniquely human trait, of course. All animals that nurture their young feel some degree of the same thing. In nature, something that works for one species often works for another species. Human babies have fat cheeks, big eyes, and big heads. These traits are common in many baby animals, not just humans. In fact, many adult animals appear to humans to have baby like qualities.

Additionally, humans do not experience feelings of animosity towards things that are not a threat. Notice that the things we find most cute in the animal kingdom are those that very seldom kill humans – baby seals, for instance. Where we see things that resemble humans, and we perceive no threat, our other instinct, nurture, can kick in. This tendency varies widely among individuals, which explains why humans have invented both cock fighting and PETA.

Next, consider that animals benefit from not being killed by humans. We cannot overstate the complexity of natural selection. Notice that humans have driven whales to the brink of extinction, and we don't find them particularly adorable. Dogs and cats, on the other hand, are nearly ubiquitous in our society, and we think they're very cute. Animals that are unlikely to inspire animosity or a killing instinct in other potential predators have a much greater survival capacity than those that do. Humans are part of the ecosystem, and as such, we've been at least a partial cause of selective pressure on other species for our entire history!

Finally, think about fishermen. Recreational fishermen put sharp hooks through the mouths of fish, and then let them freeze to death in a cooler, all with a calm, removed demeanor, and almost nobody on the planet protests. The observation that humans feel empathy towards animals is highly subject to bias. We feel empathy for some animals, and indiscriminately kill others. Our moral outrage varies tremendously with regard to other life forms. We have no problem killing rats by the million, but killing a hamster from the pet store is considered immoral. Once again, the quest for an absolute answer to the question of morality looks to be on thin ice.

Ok, So What's The Right Answer?

We've talked about sugar, and it's fairly clear that there's no single right answer. We've talked about animals and witnessed our own bias when it comes to moral outrage. Nevertheless, murder is in a special category, right? It's human life we're talking about, after all. So, what is the correct moral law with regard to murder? Are we ready to say with certainty that we shouldn't kill at all, or that we should only kill for certain offenses, or that war is never the answer? Can we finally answer the question of what morality is, with only science as our guide?

If you are asking this question, then you are forgetting a couple of fundamental truths about natural selection. First, you're forgetting that diversity is the biggest strength of natural selection. Second, natural selection is not concerned with the individual. It is concerned with the species. If we're still expecting a single answer to a question of morality, we must be getting that expectation from somewhere, but it's not science. All of the evidence points to a dynamic and changing relationship between members of a species, between different species, and species and their environment. If anything is constant in nature, it is that nothing is constant. Many, if not most, highly socialized creatures are known to commit murder in some form or another, whether it's infanticide, inter-tribal warfare, or intraspecies competition over territory or mates.

If you find yourself insisting that there has to be an answer to the ultimate question of morality, where are you getting this idea? What scientific theory led you to believe such a thing exists? If you can't think of one, perhaps the idea came from elsewhere. Maybe it's the idea that humans are better than, or higher, than the animals. We've already seen that this is not so. We are very smart products of evolution, but we are products of evolution, and nothing more. Maybe it's the idea that we can rise above our nature and use our brains to end suffering for everybody. While this sounds noble, we must ask what the justification is for wanting this. Once we offer our justification, we must realize that someone else can offer an equally reasonable goal for humanity which does not include the eradication of all suffering or rising above killing. For instance, one might point out that without suffering and death, humans will literally multiply exponentially, and will probably destroy our habitat, and we may all die. Though we can't be one hundred percent certain of this, there are extraordinarily strong indications that this is true.

In good science, the researcher usually expects a certain answer from his experiments. This is because he's formed a hypothesis based on what he's observed. The experiment is a way of either verifying or falsifying his educated guess. The good scientist will recognize that both results are possible, and will be prepared to accept either. Though he may be disappointed with the findings, his ultimate goal is discovering the truth of reality, not ensuring the correctness of his own guess.

Likewise, when we approach the question of morality, we must be prepared for what science tells us. When we look at the life on earth, we see everywhere the undeniable proof that competition is what drives natural selection. We see that life and death are part of reality, and that there is no such thing as an eternal environment. Things change for individuals within a species, for the species itself, and for the competitors outside of the species. As much as we might want to believe in a reality where any taking of human life is morally wrong, we must, if we are to search for truth, realize that this does not, and cannot exist.

The first reason such a reality cannot exist is the very obvious fact that competition often involves directly conflicting goals, both of which have their own legitimate justification based on facts. If I am to protect my children, I must kill the man who intends to kill them. If I am to preserve the sanctity of every human life, I must hold my trigger finger, even though the man who is trying to kill my children can only be stopped if I shoot and kill him. But, if I do not kill him, my children will die, and my inaction will have caused death.

If someone objects that the man should not be trying to kill my children, he is falling prey to a fallacy. Science has shown us with empirical certainty that deviance is unavoidable within society. All conventions will be broken by at least some of the members of a society. If you think about it, this is obvious, for if there was no deviation, there would be no rule. Somewhere in the world, someone will try to kill another man's children, and the man will have to make a choice as to who will die.

Death is inevitable. Competition is instinctive and unavoidable. Goals are necessarily different for individuals, and groups of people, whether families or tribes or countries or global alliances, will always seek to ensure their own survival. We can imagine a world where we completely overcome our own instincts, but such is the stuff of science fiction and religion, not reality. Our instincts are what make us human, and our instincts drive us inevitably to conflict, which often results in death.

So Does This Mean I Can Just Kill You?

No. If you believe this, then you have ignored the most crucial message that science has to teach us about morality. This doesn't take any philosophy to answer. It only takes historical observation. In all of recorded history across all cultures, there has never, ever been a time when humans arbitrarily killed other humans. Never. In all of the collected archaeological data in the world, there is no compelling case for humans ever arbitrarily killing other humans. As long as humans have had societies, they have had agreements, whether unspoken, verbal, or written into law, about when killing is acceptable, and when it is not. These agreements are part of the balance of natural selection. If intraspecies competition leads to extinction, the species will die. On any legitimate computer simulation, a population which arbitrarily kills its own kind will become extinct. Science gives us the answer, as clear as day. If humans had ever developed the tendency to kill arbitrarily, we would not be here to ask the question of why we do not.

More compelling still, in all of nature, there is no evidence of any intelligent creature that arbitrarily kills its own kind. Across all intelligent species, where there is intraspecies killing, there is always a reason for the killing. Period. Nature is yelling at us. It is screaming to us. It is telling us in the most certain terms that we could ever see that there is something inherent in us which prevents us from crossing certain boundaries. In nature, we see the same thing, over and over. In bee hives, females who try to lay their own eggs are killed or banished by other workers loyal to the queen bee. This behavior is entirely instinctive, and is not driven by the intelligent desire to follow laws, or some higher mandate. It is simply the way that bees have survived, and it is the way we have survived since before we were intelligent enough to ask why we don't kill our own.

Among many ants, there are often coups, where a young female gathers enough followers to overthrow the queen and take her place. Again, this is entirely instinctive behavior, programmed through long eons of reproductive successes and failures. Yet, humans do the same things, over and over, through history, all the while thinking ourselves to be above the animals.

The answer to the question of morality is that there is no single, immutable answer, but there are the realities of nature. Like all social animals, we have individuals who try to further their own goals at the expense of other members of the group. Sometimes they succeed, and other times they fail. Depending on our own perspective, sometimes we approve of deviants, and sometimes we disapprove. We love Dirty Harry for killing the bad guys, and we despise Ted Bundy. This is instinctive, and is based on that apparent contradiction we saw earlier. Our ancestors survived by killing outsiders and protecting insiders. Ted Bundy killed insiders. Dirty Harry killed the enemy. Where things get trickier is when the enemy is not so clear cut. When American soldiers killed civilians in Vietnam, they were killing people who had the same desires, goals and instinctive drives as everyone else. To the Vietnamese families, the Americans were the enemy, and rightly so.

The goals of the war were based on a great many false beliefs. The North Vietnamese government believed that communism was a workable political system. Experience and science have taught us that this is false. Americans believed that stopping communists at all costs was a reasonable goal. Much of the American public believed that the war was started by the communists, when in fact, the incident in the Gulf of Tonkin was likely provoked by the Americans. Few Americans knew of the American and French governments' politically suspect motivations for being involved in the first place.

Could knowledge of reality have changed history? If the leaders of the communist regime knew for certain that communism would collapse under its own weight, would they have continued to infiltrate other countries? Would America have gone to war if it was universally known that there were nefarious reasons for doing so? It's impossible to answer these specific questions, but we can use the questions themselves as evidence of our incredibly dynamic sense of morality.

At this point, we can review history and see how science has improved the human condition, specifically with regard to morality. Once we learned that there are no such thing as witches, we recognized the inherent danger of allowing young girls to point out people at random and use that 'evidence' to justify killing those who were likely innocent of any wrongdoing. We know from history and from psychology that humans given unchecked power over others will abuse their power for their own gain, and so we create governments with checks and balances. We know that our instincts instill in us desires that often contradict our own best interests, so we learn to balance our instincts against our goals.

Finally, we know that the human condition is dependent on competition. From the level of our genes up to individuals, and ultimately to global alliances, competition is inherent in nature, and will never go away. We recognize that even though these questions of morality do not have universal answers, they most definitely have answers on a local level with regard to a specific goal. The more we acknowledge our instinctive desires, the more accurately we can judge whether or not they apply to a specific situation. If we are aware that our inherent desire is to kill all of our adversaries, it becomes easier to recognize that our desire to go to war with a rival country might be detrimental to everybody, and that there might be a middle ground, as there is with sugar consumption. By allowing science to document human nature in an unbiased manner, we can recognize the dangerous legacy of some of our instincts. Again, by using science, we can objectively evaluate which goals truly are better from whatever perspective we agree on. We can set our goal and then determine the best way to get there. It's not a perfect answer for those who still want to believe that utopia is possible, but it is the real answer.