Chapter 10
The facts that scientists have obtained through the scientific method have not always been used wisely or well. However, this is not the fault of the means that we used to obtain the facts. Just as we do not blame the invention of the wheel for human deaths, even though using wheels has meant the deaths of countless human beings through automobile accidents, we should not blame science when human beings make poor use of the knowledge that they have.
Why Religious People Are Sometimes Disturbed By Evolution
Two of the many things that religions do are first to explain the world, and then to present a moral code. They appear to derive their authority to present the moral code from the fact that they explain the world, or so it seems. Often, the explanation of the world—the creation myth—foreshadows the moral code.
So people sometimes believe that if you replace the creation myth with a scientific explanation of the world, then there will be no moral code. People are often attracted to ID because they want to have a Creator—that is, a God—because that way they can still insist on a moral code that they believe was handed down by God.
In fact, explaining the world and having a moral code are unrelated.
Science is really, really good at explaining the material world. As a method of investigating the material world, it can’t be beaten. In the past 400 years, it has advanced our knowledge of the physical world far more than in all the rest of human history put together. This has lead to better human health and increased our life-spans and opportunities for happiness and spiritual enlightenment and growth far beyond what most of our ancestors ever experienced.
But, science is a method of investigating the material world. Period. That’s all it is. It is silent on the subjects of values and morality. Those are different subjects.
We need to accept that explaining the material world and putting forward a moral code are separate jobs for the human race to do, and we need to start doing a whole lot of talking about values, without invoking anybody’s God or creation myth.
Moral Code, or a Values Free-for-All?
What does it mean to be good? People want a good, solid moral code. Most of us believe that the moral code that everyone else in the US and the world should follow is the one that we ourselves believe. However, getting everyone else to fall in line behind that idea just doesn’t work. So we need to have a long, national conversation about values, including the ones we want to have, and the ones we want to reject.
I know what you’re going to say. People want a simple moral code that they can follow, and they don’t want to have a national free-for-all about values. I understand. But the problem is that there is a national free-for-all about values going on right now whether any of us likes it or not. It is our duty to speak up, since I guarantee you that other people with different values will speak up, and often they will be very well funded and very well organized. So if we don’t speak up, then other people’s values may well be the ones adopted by the majority of the US and the world.
We often think of morality as being changeless, but some of this is an illusion. Slavery was once thought to be a perfectly reasonable and acceptable part of a good moral code. Today, you would find very few people in the United States who believe that slavery is good, despite the fact that many people prior to the Civil War pointed to the Bible for evidence that slavery was acceptable.
Religion has a major role to play in the development of values. Beauty, justice, and kindness, for instance, are not addressed directly by science. Religions can and should address these issues, and derive their moral authority from the good that can be done in the world by adhering to the ethics and moral code that they propose. Science can make an important contribution to this discussion by pointing out facts as it discovers them. Without these discussions, the world is left rudderless. We also need to set up institutions that help lead to good human behavior.
It should be presumed that if religions either opt out of a discussion of morals because they believe that their moral authority has been undercut by science, or if they ignore the facts that are presented by science, then others less caring than they are will happily rush in and provide the guidance that is otherwise not being given. This is what happens far too often in the present world, and it shows an open field in which science and religion can both participate, and may even act as partners.