It has been said that evolutionists would rather play God than believe in Him. The axiom has a poster boy in Harvard biologist Marc D. Hauser. Hauser is the author of a new book, Moral Minds, which is the subject of a recent piece in the New York Times. In the book, Hauser posits that people are born with a moral grammar wired into their neural circuits by evolution. He proposes this theory in contrast to those who say that the ultimate source of morality is religion and that people learn moral behavior from their elders. It is, in essence, a gambit by Hauser to have science conquer what heretofore has been the territory of philosophers and theologians.Hauser’s “proof” that morality is wired into the brain as what he calls “moral grammar” consists of two observations. First, he notes that some advanced animals seem to have a rudimentary form of the sense of right and wrong. In humans, Hauser says that this sense is more developed because we possess the ability to remember bad behavior, quantify its costs, recall prior interactions with one another, and punish wrongdoers. Hauser neglects the question of why humans possess all of these other abilities that animals do not which seem to be key to making consistent moral decisions, but presumably he would say that these other characteristics happened to evolve along with the moral grammar.
Hauser’s second piece of evidence for the existence of moral grammar is the fact that believers in God and non-believers alike make the same moral judgments in many situations. Houser says this is because “the system that unconsciously generates moral judgments is immune to religious doctrine.” Decisions are made based upon moral grammar programmed into the brain and are rationalized by people after the fact using religious language.
Hauser should be commended for coming up with a creative way for evolutionists to explain moral behavior, but the very fact that he has bothered to do so raises a key question about his work. Why would an evolutionist be concerned about the source of morality at all? After all, if life is a purposeless accident that evolved from one-celled organisms into human form, then morality should not even exist. Put another way, for an evolutionist there is no such thing as “right” or “wrong” behavior; there is only behavior and consequences. Some behavior may lead to survival and the perpetuation of life while different behavior may lead to extinction, but for the evolutionist there is no telling which behavior might be which until extinction actually occurs. Evolution states that the fittest survive, but this does not mean that for the evolutionist survival is “right” and extinction is “wrong.” The goal of the theory of evolution is supposed to be simply to explain how life came to be in its present form without the aid of any supernatural force. It is not supposed to make judgments about whether the existence of life is a good thing, nor could it make such judgments because, by definition, evolution is a purposeless process. To borrow Hauser’s terminology, evolution lacks a moral grammar because it claims to be a science, which seeks to explain natural phenomena through observation and testing. Evolution, as a science, supposedly simply describes, it does not judge.
Morality throws a kink into the theory of evolution because it posits that there are reasons other than seemingly scientific ones that people act as they do. In other words, morality says that someone may perform a good deed simply because it is the right thing to do, not because it makes him or society more fit to survive. It would be easy for evolutionists to ignore morality if it only reared its head occasionally (mutation) or in only certain quarters (culture), but the fact is that it has popped up consistently across generations and cultures. People are always asking whether behavior is right or wrong. Because morality exists, evolutionary theory must account for its presence, but so far it has proven wholly inadequate to the task.
Hauser is attempting to rectify this deficiency, but he runs into a couple of scientific stumbling blocks in doing so. First, his proofs are conjectural in nature rather than empirical. Unless Hauser locates some kind of “moral gene” or synapse within the human body or brain, he cannot grab hold of this “moral grammar” of which he speaks. Instead, all he can do is posit its existence based on observing behavior. This leaves his theory open to accusations of being an after-the-fact rationalization of the existence of morality—the very charge he levels against religion.
However, lack of empirical proof has never deterred evolutionists, so they can forgive Hauser for this flaw. More problematic to other evolutionists is the fact that, in his quest to explain the existence of morality, Hauser relies upon a theory of behavior that runs counter to ordinary natural selection. Hauser says that moral grammar evolved because restraints on behavior are required for social living, and thus moral behavior is favored by natural selection because it helps the group survive.
The problem with this theory is that natural selection is typically considered to favor individuals, not groups. If a person acts in the best interest of a group rather than himself his actions do not necessarily perpetuate his own survival. But in order for the supposed gene that causes a person to act altruistically toward the group to be passed down, the individual who acts that way must survive and have offspring who carry the same gene. If natural selection favors those who are selfish, there is no evolutionary reason why altruistic behavior should still exist. For example: suppose a group of soldiers is on a battlefield and a live grenade rolls into their vicinity. If one of the soldiers jumps on the grenade in an altruistic effort to save his comrades, the rest of the soldiers may survive, but the one that demonstrated moral behavior dies. How is Hauser’s “moral grammar” passed on if those who possess it because weaker or die off due to their altruism? His only answer is that people act on behalf of the group rather than individualistically, but he has no real explanation as to why this is so.
The holes in Hauser’s theory illustrate what happens when evolutionists play God. The Times story notes that “Matters of right and wrong have long been the province of moral philosophers and ethicists. Dr. Hauser’s proposal is an attempt to claim the subject for science, in particular evolutionary biology.” I find this quite hypocritical considering that evolutionists consistently chide believers in God for supposedly overstepping their boundaries and “mixing science and religion,” particularly in matters concerning the origins of life. Apparently this is not a two-way street and evolutionists are allowed to try and explain anything and everything.
Yet morality implicates aspects of life beyond the physical. The right and wrong of a matter are much more complex than the matter itself. This is why science cannot answer all of the important questions of life. The Enlightenment period is generally considered to be a time of great advancement in science given that the contributions of Sir Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Benjamin Franklin, and others revolutionized human understanding of the material world. However, in hindsight history has judged the Enlightenment to have made the mistake of assuming that all of life could be quantified by observation, experience, and reason. Enlightenment thinking was a seminal reason for the emergence of what historians call the “Romantic Age,” which emphasized abstraction, emotion, and passion. Enlightenment thinkers committed the sin of all human philosophies throughout history: assuming it was the “theory of everything,” capable of divining answers to all human inquiries.
Evolutionists, including Dr. Hauser, are committing the same fallacy. Not content with attempting to answer questions about the origins and existence of life (which give them enough trouble), evolutionists like Dr. Hauser are trying to extend evolution’s sphere of influence into areas which it cannot make any legitimate claim of expertise whatsoever. The fact is that life it too complicated for one theory or method of investigation to answer all questions. More important than whether a theory or system answers all questions is whether it answers the right questions. Because science is devoted to the study of the material world, I would argue that it cannot answer the most vital questions of life, which include why we exist, what makes us yearn for something beyond the material world, what happens to us after death, and, yes, why a core part of our make-up seems obsessed with the rightness or wrongness of our actions.
Though the Harvard biologist undoubtedly thinks he is clever in his attempt to have evolution answer a vital life-question, all Dr. Hauser has, in fact, done is repackage an age-old philosophical/theological theory in evolutionary wrapping paper. As far back as the Greeks with Aristotle as well as the Stoics, people have posited the idea that there is a universal good embedded in nature. Saint Augustine infused a religious aspect into the idea, and St. Thomas Aquinas provided a full-fledged theory of what is known today as natural law.
In its simplest form, natural law theory holds that God embedded core principles of right and wrong into the very fabric of nature and the human heart. This natural law commonly manifests itself through what we call the conscience. Romans 2:14-15 says that “by the nature of things the requirements of the law are written on [men’s] hearts” and that “their consciences bear witness” to the law. The natural law provides general guidance about the basics of right and wrong, but it requires reinforcement through teaching and explication based on deep thinking. Even with these, it does not provide a complete picture for moral living, which is why God gave us his special revelation, the Bible.
The key difference between natural law theory and Hauser’s theory is absolutes. Because natural law holds that general standards of right and wrong are woven into the fabric of nature and the human heart, those standards do not change over time. In contrast, Hauser’s theory says that “[t]he universal grammar is a system of rules for generating syntax and vocabulary, but it does not specify any particular language. This is supplied by the culture in which a child grows up.” Thus, morality for Hauser and other evolutionists is culturally dependent; culture evolves and changes over time, which means that morality changes as well. Despite positing that there is a “universal sense of right and wrong” which is “hardwired” into the human brain, Hauser ensures that there is fluidity to the moral standards in his theory.
This flexibility in standards is ultimately why Hauser is concerned with the existence of morality. He and other evolutionists desire to take the moral high ground from believers in God because then people can mold morality according to their own preferences. But a personal standard that shifts with culture, time, and events is no standard at all. A true standard of right and wrong requires an impartial anchor, one Whom “does not change like shifting shadows” (James 1:17) and is “the same yesterday, today, and forever.” (Hebrews 13:8).
For morality to exist, it must contain absolutes. The existence of morality tells us that our actions carry consequences beyond our personal material survival. We possess an internal compass divining right from wrong because we were created by an eternal God who is the foundation upon which those absolutes rest. A person can talk about “right and wrong” and dress up a theory of morality using fancy scientific language, but unless the theory starts with the One who spoke us into existence, its moral language will always be slurred.
