I’m blogging through Nancy Pearcey’s excellent book Total Truth as part of a book discussion I’ve been doing. Last time, I covered Chapter 6 which dealt with evidence for design. This time, I’m on chapter 7, “Today biology, tomorrow the world”, which deals with how Darwinism and scientific materialism have influenced science and society beyond biology – and the problems they have caused there.

This chapter looks at the application of Darwinism to social and cultural issues in the context of evolutionary psychology. The idea, of course, is that natural selection explains why we are the way we are; it must be able to explain all aspects of human belief and behavior.

One of the struggles in this area, of course, is to account for altruistic behavior and self-sacrifice. Heroic self-sacrifice of the type we witnessed by the first responders in the Sept. 11 attacks is difficult to explain in this framework, but we’ll not address that issue in this post and focus on the chapter.

What about the science?

Pearcey notes that the science in this area isn’t compelling; it’s difficult to actually do experiments. She quotes geneticist H. Allen Orr, who says, “The ugly fact is that we haven’t a shred of evidence that morality in humans did or did not evolve by natural selection.” Scientists propose thought experiments about a hypothetical gene which caused us to be nice to strangers, but that’s not a real experiment. At some level, though, it’s easy for scientists to believe that evolution explains all of human behavior, because once we believe the worldview that evolution explains the origin of all life around us, then evolution must explain the origin of morality as well.

If everything evolved, then evolution explains even our worst deeds

Pearcey goes on to note how, some years ago, several authors wrote a book explaining how rape is not a pathology but evolutionary adaptation produced by natural selection. If natural selection produced all that we have here, then all behavior that survives today must have conferred some type of evolutionary advantage – even crimes as terrible as rape, as these authors argued. Randy Thornhill, one of the authors, said in defense of his views on rape, “every feature of every living thing, including human beings, has an underlying evolutionary background. That’s not a debatable matter.”

Pearcey argues that evolution and evolutionary ethics are “a package deal. If you accept the premise, then you must accept the conclusion.” The premise, of course, is that everything around us, and even our own desires and actions, are the product of evolution via natural selection. If this is the case, then it must explain even our failings and “wrong” desires and actions, like rape.

Pearcey goes on to cite a number of other examples of what evolutionary psychologists have explained from this perspective, such as infanticide and bestiality. She quotes original sources for each and goes into some detail on their explanations; I urge you to read it.

On the issue of infanticide, Pearcey quotes Orr, who objected about the lack of evidence, “Where are the twin studies, chromosome locations, and DNA sequences supporting such a claim? The answer is we don’t have any. What we do have is a story – there’s an undeniable Darwinian logic underlying the murder of newborns in certain circumstances.” But there’s no real evidence, just a story about how evolution might explain infanticide. Pearcey writes:

Ultimately, the fatal weakness of evolutionary psychology is that it is so elastic that it can explain anything. Evolution is said to account for mothers who kill their newborn babies – but if you were to ask why most mothers do not kill their babies, why, evolution accounts for that too… [The theory] is so flexible that it can be twisted to say whatever proponents want it to say.

Does evolution leave any morality?

Pearcey quotes biologist William Provine, who said that the Darwinian revolution is still incomplete because people haven’t embraced its moral and religious implications, that “There is no ultimate foundation for ethnics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will.” She quotes a number of examples of thought along these same lines, including from Alfred Kinsey, Peter Singer, and even from the popular culture like Broadway shows and popular songs.

Singer, she notes, originally resisted applying evolution beyond biology, but then later changed his mind, writing that we must “face the fact that we are evolved animals and that we bear the evidence of our inheritance, not only in our anatomy and our DNA, but in our behavior, too.” In other words, we must consistently apply this thinking – not just to understanding our origins, but to understanding morality.

Pearcey notes, however, that this theory undercuts itself. “If all our ideas are products of evolution, then so is the idea of evolutionary psychology itself. Like all other constructs of the human mind, it is not true but only useful for survival.” She adds, “Once the very possibility of objective truth has been undermined, then Darwinian evolution itself cannot be objectively true.” Or she quotes an audience member from one of her talks, who said, “These guys who think all our ideas and believes evolved… do they think their own ideas evolved?”

Evolutionary psychology seeks to hold on to morality, but struggles

A good worldview, or theory, ought to explain our experience and help us understand life around us. If we are simply pre-programmed products of our environment, though, what does that mean for human dignity and moral freedom? Pearcey argues that evolutionary psychologists struggle to answer this question and end up urging us to go against our genetic programming.

She quotes Robert Wright’s book, “The Moral Animal”, who says, “We believe the things – about morality, personal worth, even objective truth – that lead to behaviors that get our genes into the next generation.” He adds, “Free will is an illusion” or a useful function, and says that all truth claims “are, by Darwinian lights, raw power struggles.” But then he goes on to argue that we need to work on “correcting the moral biases built into us by natural selection” and practicing the ideal of “brotherly love”.

She notes that Richard Dawkins reaches similar conclusions in his book “The Selfish Gene”; though he argues that we are machines and robots built by genes to perpetuate ourselves, but then says:

We have the power to turn against our creators. We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyrrany of the selfish replicators.

Pearcey writes:

Like all of us, Dawkins knows from actual experience that we do make genuine choices. Yet there is nothing in evolutionary psychology to account for this power of choice – and so he simply makes a leap of faith to a conclusion totally unwarranted by his own philosophy.

What these examples tell us is that evolutionary psychology fails the practical test: No one can live by it. Since universal human experience confirms the reality of moral choice, evolutionary psychologists cannot actually live on the basis of their own deterministic theory. They may try to, but when the contradiction between theory and life grows too pressing, they suddenly abandon the theory and proclaim their autonomy from the power of the genes.

She notes that Pinker added, “If my genes don’t like it, they can go jump in the lake.”

I’d add that C.S. Lewis addresses this issue himself in his classic book “Mere Christianity”. He writes:

But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if you try breaking one to him he will be complaining ‘It’s not fair’ before you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter; but the, the next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter, and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong… what is the difference between a fair treaty and an unfair one?

Lewis here is making the same point, far earlier: However much we might want to avoid it, we do know that there are such things as right and wrong, and find ourselves compelled to hold on to these truths at some level.

In any case, I think Pearcey argues convincingly that Darwinism makes it difficult to hold on to a traditional view of morality. Evolutionary psychologists seem to end up holding on to the same view of truth that Pearcey has critiqued so often in this book – a two level view, one where some truths are universal, and another, subjective level where we still cling to ideas of morality that are ultimately (in this view) meaningless but still crucial for us to live our lives.

Whence morality?

Pearcey then tackles Singer’s book “A Darwinian Left” in which he argues that our new view of morality must be based on transcending Darwinian morality – by using our reason to escape our natural impulses. Only through reason will genuine altruism develop. He writes that we should consider:

deliberately cultivating and nurturing pure, disinterested altruism – something that has never existed before in the whole history of the world.

How would natural selection itself allow us to create something out of nothing? Where would we get this new power to create something that has never existed? If our reason itself results from natural selection, how could it have the power to override it? Pearcey writes: “Here reason is treated as far more than a utilitarian instrument: It is nothing less than the means of achieving freedom,” and she quotes Pinker who indeed says reason can serve as the basis for a new kind of freedom.

This marks a worldview failure

These arguments are a leap of faith. These philosophers are finding that their worldview fails to explain reality as they experience it, so they must add new elements for which they have no evidence. Again, Pearcey:

If our worldview doesn’t fit the larger reality we are trying to explain, then at some point we will find that we cannot follow it – that it is not a workable guide for navigating the world. C. S. Lewis once wrote, “The Christian and the Materialist hold different beliefs about the universe. They can’t both be right. The one who is wrong will act in a way which simply doesn’t fit the real universe.”

Here, then, we’re finding that those who adhere to evolutionary psychology themselves recognize that they cannot live consistently with their own theory; they find they need to reintroduce morality even though it doesn’t fit within their worldview.

Christian morality fills the gap

Historic Christianity explains the origins of morality, providing the truth these authors have been missing. We were designed for a purpose, the Bible teaches, and morality is about conforming to ideals established by God, and about the purpose for which God designed us. The world is broken and fallen at present, but salvation provides a way for us to be put back on track towards the purpose for which God designed us.

Evolutionary psychology, however, says the opposite – there is no underlying design or purpose, and no real morality, except as a product of natural selection.

I hope we can join in agreeing that the world does have value and meaning, and this originates beyond the natural world, with its creator.