I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (31 page)

T
HE
M
ORAL
L
AW
: W
HAT
D
O
D
ARWINISTS
S
AY
?

So the evidence for the Moral Law is sound, and objections to it miss the mark. How then do Darwinists deal with the question of morality? Actually, most Darwinists avoid the subject completely. Why? Because it’s not easy to explain how there can be objective right and wrong (which even Darwinists know in their hearts) unless there exists a Moral Law Giver.

Darwinist Edward O. Wilson is a notable exception. He claims that our sense of morality has evolved in the same way we ourselves have evolved—by natural selection. While he admits that “very little progress has been made in the biological exploration of the moral sentiments,” Wilson asserts that the biological process of people passing their genes on to their offspring “through thousands of generations inevitably gave rise to moral sentiments.”
¹⁶
In other words, morality is materially and genetically determined. It’s based on inherited feelings or instincts, not on an objective standard of right and wrong. We have already seen the inadequacy of natural selection to explain new life forms (chapter 6). As we’re about to see, natural selection is also inadequate to explain “moral sentiments” within those new life forms.

First, Darwinism asserts that only materials exist, but materials don’t have morality. How much does hate weigh? Is there an atom for love? What’s the chemical composition of the murder molecule? These questions are meaningless because physical particles are not responsible for morality. If materials are solely responsible for morality, then Hitler had no real moral responsibility for what he did—he just had bad molecules. This is nonsense, and everyone knows it. Human thoughts and transcendent moral laws are not material things any more than the laws of logic and mathematics are material things. They are immaterial entities that cannot be weighed or physically measured. As a result, they can’t be explained in material terms by natural selection or any other atheistic means.

Second, morality cannot be merely an instinct as Wilson suggests because: 1) we have competing instincts, and 2) something else often tells us to ignore the stronger instinct in order to do something more noble. For example, if you hear somebody who is being mugged calling for help, your stronger instinct may be to stay safe and not “get involved.” Your weaker instinct (if we may call it that) might be to help. As C. S. Lewis puts it,

But you will find inside you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.
¹⁷

Third, Wilson says that social morals have evolved because those “cooperative” morals helped humans survive together. But this assumes an end—survival—for evolution, when Darwinism, by definition, has no end because it is a nonintelligent process. And even if survival is granted as the end, Darwinists cannot explain why people knowingly engage in self-destructive behavior (i.e., smoking, drinking, drugs, suicide, etc.). Nor can Darwinists explain why people often subvert their own survival instincts to help others, sometimes to the point of their own deaths.
¹⁸
We all know that there are nobler ends than mere survival: soldiers sacrifice themselves for their country, parents for their children, and, if Christianity is true, God sacrificed his Son for us.

Fourth, Wilson and other Darwinists assume that survival is a “good” thing, but there is no real good without the objective Moral Law. In fact, this is the problem with pragmatic and utilitarian ethical systems that say “do what works” or “do whatever brings the greatest good.” Do what works toward whose ends—Mother Teresa’s or Hitler’s? Do whatever brings the greatest good by whose definition of good—Mother Teresa’s or Hitler’s? Such ethical systems must smuggle in the Moral Law to define what ends we
should
work toward and what really is the greatest “good.”

Fifth, Darwinists confuse how one comes to
know
the Moral Law with the
existence of
the Moral Law. Even if we come to know some of our “moral sentiments” because of genetic and/or environmental factors, that doesn’t mean there is no objective Moral Law outside ourselves.

This came up in the debate between Peter Atkins and William Lane Craig. Atkins claimed morality evolved from genetics and “our massive brains.” Craig correctly responded, “At best that would show how moral values are
discovered,
but it would not show that those values are
invented.”
Indeed, I may inherit a capacity for math and learn the multiplication tables from my mother, but the laws of mathematics exist regardless of how I come to know them. Likewise, morality exists independently of how we come to know it.

Finally, Darwinists cannot explain why anyone
should
obey any biologically derived “moral sentiment.” Why
shouldn’t
people murder, rape, and steal to get what they want if there is nothing beyond this world? Why
should
the powerful “cooperate” with the weaker when the powerful can survive longer by exploiting the weaker? After all, history is replete with criminals and dictators who have lengthened their own survival precisely because they have
disobeyed
all “moral sentiments” in their repression and elimination of their opponents.

I
DEAS
H
AVE
C
ONSEQUENCES

If the Darwinists are right that morality has a natural source, then morality is not objective or absolute. For if there is no God and humans have evolved from the slime, then we have no higher moral status than slime because there is nothing beyond us to instill us with objective morality or dignity.

The implications of this have not been lost on Darwinists and their followers. In fact, Adolf Hitler used Darwin’s theory as philosophical justification for the Holocaust. In his 1924 book
Mein Kampf
(“My Struggle”), he wrote:

If nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such cases all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.

But such a preservation goes hand-in-hand with the inexorable law that it is the strongest and the best who must triumph and that they have the right to endure. He who would live must fight. He who does not wish to fight in this world, where permanent struggle is the law of life, has not the right to exist.
¹⁹

Hitler, like other Darwinists, illegitimately personifies nature by attributing will to it (i.e., “nature does not
wish”
). But his main point is that there are superior races and inferior races, and the Jews, being an inferior race, have no right to exist if they don’t want to fight. In other words, racism and then genocide is the logical outworking of Darwinism. On the other hand, love and then self-sacrifice is the logical outworking of Christianity. Ideas have consequences.

The racism associated with evolution was exposed during the famous 1925 Scopes Trial. The high school biology textbook that occasioned the trial spoke of five races of man, and concluded that the “Caucasians” are the “highest type of all.”
²⁰
This, of course, directly contradicts biblical teaching (Gen. 1:27; Acts 17:26, 29; Gal. 3:28). It also contradicts what is affirmed by the Declaration of Independence (“all men are created equal”).

In more recent times, Princeton professor and Darwinist Peter Singer has used Darwinism to assert that “the life of a newborn is of
less
value than the life of a pig, a dog, or a chimpanzee.”
²¹
Yes, you read that correctly.

What are the consequences of Singer’s outrageous Darwinian ideas? He believes that parents should be able to kill their newborn infants until they are 28 days of age! These beliefs are perfectly consistent with Darwinism. If we all came from slime, then we have no grounds to say that humans are morally any better than any other species. The only question is, why limit infanticide at 28 days, or, for that matter, 28 months or 28 years? If there is no Moral Law Giver, then there’s nothing wrong with murder at any age! Of course, Darwinists such as Singer might reject this conclusion, but they have no objective grounds for disagreeing unless they can appeal to a standard beyond themselves—a Moral Law Giver.

James Rachels, author of
Created from Animals: The Moral
Implications of Darwinism,
defends the Darwinian view that the human species has no more inherent value than any other species. Speaking of retarded people, Rachels writes:

What are we to say about them? The natural conclusion, according to the doctrine we are considering [Darwinism], would be that their status is that of mere animals. And perhaps we should go on to conclude that they may be used as non-human animals are used—perhaps as laboratory subjects, or as food?
²²

As horrific as that would be—using retarded people as lab rats or for food—Darwinists can give no moral reason why we ought not use
any
human being in that fashion. Nazi-like experiments cannot be condemned by Darwinists, because there is no objective moral standard in a Darwinian world.

Two other Darwinists recently wrote a book asserting that rape is a natural consequence of evolution.
²³
According to authors Randy Thornhill and Craig Palmer, rape is “a natural, biological phenomenon that is a product of the human evolutionary heritage,” just like “the leopard’s spots and the giraffe’s elongated neck.”
²⁴

Shocking as they are, these Darwinian conclusions about murder and rape should come as no surprise to anyone who understands the moral implications of Darwinism. Why? Because according to Darwinists,
all
behaviors are genetically determined. While some Darwinists might disagree with the implication that murder and rape are not wrong (precisely because the Moral Law speaks to them through their consciences), those conclusions are the inexorable result of their worldview. For if only material things exist, then murder and rape are nothing more than the results of chemical reactions in a criminal’s brain brought about by natural selection. Moreover, murder and rape can’t be objectively wrong (i.e., against the Moral Law) because there are no laws if only chemicals exist. Objective moral laws require a transcendent Law-Giver, but the Darwinian worldview has ruled him out in advance. So consistent Darwinists can only consider murder and rape as personal dislikes, not real moral wrongs.

To understand what’s behind the Darwinist’s explanation of morality, we need to distinguish between an assertion and an argument. An assertion merely states a conclusion; an argument, on the other hand, states the conclusion
and then supports it with evidence.
Darwinists make assertions, not arguments. There is no empirical or forensic evidence that natural selection can account for new life forms, much less morality. Darwinists simply assert that morals have evolved naturally because they believe man has evolved naturally. And they believe man has evolved naturally, not because they have evidence for such a belief, but because they’ve ruled out intelligent causes in advance. So the Darwinian explanation for morality turns out to be just another “just-so” story based on circular reasoning and false philosophical presuppositions.

S
UMMARY AND
C
ONCLUSION

When we conduct our seminar, “The Twelve Points That Show Christianity Is True,” the following two statements about morality immediately capture the attention of the audience:

If there is no God, then what Hitler did was just a matter of opinion!

and

If at least one thing is really morally wrong—like it’s wrong to torture babies, or it’s wrong to intentionally fly planes into buildings with innocent people in them—then God exists.

These statements help people realize that, without an objective source of morality, all so-called moral issues are nothing but personal preference. Hitler liked killing people, and Mother Teresa liked helping them. Unless there’s a standard beyond Hitler and Mother Teresa, then no one is really right or wrong—it’s just one person’s opinion against that of another.

Fortunately, as we have seen, there
is
a real moral standard beyond human beings. C. S. Lewis wrote, “Human beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do not in fact behave that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it. These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and the universe we live in.”
²⁵

Hopefully we’ve done some clear thinking in this chapter. Here’s a summary of what we’ve covered:

1. There is an absolute standard of right and wrong that is written on the hearts of every human being. People may deny it; they may suppress it; their actions may contradict it; but their
reactions
reveal that they know it.

2. Relativism is false. Human beings do not
determine
right and wrong; we
discover
right and wrong. If human beings determined right and wrong, then anyone would be “right” in asserting that rape, murder, the Holocaust, or any other evil is not really wrong. But we know those acts are wrong intuitively through our consciences, which are manifestations of the Moral Law.

3. This Moral Law must have a source higher than ourselves because it is a prescription that is on the hearts of all people. Since prescriptions always have prescribers—they don’t arise from nothing—the Moral Law Prescriber (God) must exist.