Does our Morality come from our DNA?

Does our Morality come from our DNA?

Frank, is out of town for a week and has honored me by asking me to post a few blogs in his absence. My name is Neil Mammen, I consider myself a pop-apologist. I see my evening job as taking complex apologetic concepts, and simplifying it such that lay people can take timeless truths and rational arguments and use it in their daily discussions around the water cooler or class.

During the day, I design systems, circuits, ASICs and FPGAs as an engineer in Silicon Valley. I’ve done a lot of work in Video and Networking with about 4 startup companies and a few patents in my background. I grew up in Africa and the Middle East speaking Arabic and spent a lot of my younger life traveling and living around the world.

If you wish to read some of my other writings, and see a picture of the most gorgeous woman in the world (my wife) go over to my website www.NoBlindFaith.com or www.RationalFreeThinker.com.

The Background

A few months ago I was lucky enough be able to get one of the few non-student tickets to the Chris Hitchens vs. Jay Richards debate in a very crowded auditorium at Stanford University. Ben Stein of Expelled fame was moderating. Now for the sake of full disclosure I have to disclose that Jay Richards is a friend of mine so it makes sense that I’d be biased towards thinking he decimated Chris in the debate. However, you may find it interesting to note that even the founder of the “Atheists of Silicon Valley” agreed that Jay won the debate that day.

I would summarize the debate as such:

Jay: Here’s the evidence for the existence of God. (Lists the Moral, Telelogical, etc)

Chris: I hate religious people. Ad hominems, ad hominems, ad hominems, Mormons are weird and sick (goes off on some other unrelated issues)

Jay: We are not talking about Mormons? Let me expand on my previous arguments. (expands on it, does not take the ad Hominem bait)

Chris: Ad hominems, ad hominems, ad hominems, I have large sexual organs (seriously but uses the 4 letter words a juvenile would use). Religious people have killed lots of people.

Jay: Actually that’s not true (lists why, then provides more information on the previous arguments).

Chris: I have great sexual abilities, my male organ is humongous (says it the 7th grade way again). Jay do you actually believe in the Resurrection and the Virgin birth.

Jay: Yes I do.…. By the way do notice who has been throwing out insults and not really answering any of my arguments.

Chris: Why are you whining about me insulting you. More ad homimes. I live for sex and have lots of kids.

And so the debate ended.

Seriously, that was it. OK OK for a more detailed report see the link at the bottom of this entry by a journalist who attended.

The encounter and the Claim

After the debate was over I went over to chat with Jay. He was busy at first talking to some of the organizers. But up on stage were a couple of Chris’s fellow atheists; one was sporting a very faded “Atheist of Silicon Valley” t-shirt (not the founder noted above).

They seemed to be a in a bad mood and it turned out that they felt that Chris had let them down and not dealt with any of the arguments properly. I’m not sure why they were so antagonistic (sour grapes maybe) but they seemed to want to attack everyone after they attacked Chris for being incompetent. Chris of course refused to talk with them and ran off, probably to meet some of his like minded Stanford professors. I wasn’t going to play since I avoid debating with upset people whenever I can help it. What the point of a friendly discussion if it’s neither friendly nor a discussion?

In those cases, I merely ask questions and register their responses. For some reason that seemed to irritate them more.

One of the statements they made was that “morals don’t come from a “god”, they come from our DNA.” My first question was: Wait, if that’s the case then why do we DO “immoral” things.

The retort back was: Don’t interrupt me! I didn’t say that we are slaves to our DNA, did I (as you can see he was a bit touchy).

“Oh”, I said. “Interesting. I’ll have to think about that.”

Let’s think about this

So now I’ve had time to think about it. It doesn’t seem to make sense, nor does it seem rational. Let me see if I can state the problems I’m having.

First, understand that this was said in the context of the standard moral arguments that had already been made. i.e.

  1. You can’t say something is actually wrong without an absolute moral standard and
  2. You can’t have an absolute moral standard unless there was an absolute moral standard giver.

But

  1. The absolute moral standard giver has to be someone who has authority over all mankind, as anything else would merely be a cultural value or a preference and wouldn’t be “actually” wrong.

As I put it:

If there is NO absolute moral standard, why was Hitler wrong?

If there IS an absolute moral standard, why do YOU get to decide what that is and not Hitler?

OK given all that, you can see why an atheist may find DNA as a source of morality appealing.

But here’s the problem I see with the DNA theory: If DNA is the source of our morality then can anyone really say that something is ACTUALLY wrong? Why is slavery wrong? After all, for most of the history of the human race, the majority of the human race and human cultures have felt and believed that slavery was acceptable (as long as THEY weren’t the slaves).

Even Africans have had slaves (and still do in Sudan where I grew up), and from what I understand of Native American cultures, they had slaves of other tribes, so did South Americans. In the Indian subcontinent, the concept of discrimination and pseudo slavery still exists in the caste system. And even if you were to find a few exceptions to the rule, you could not argue that a majority of the civilizations in history thought slavery was immoral. So you would have no basis to imagine that any group had DNA that was prompting them to think slavery was bad.

It wasn’t until the 1800’s when a group of (non-enslaved) Christians decided that slavery was immoral and just as importantly, had ALWAYS been immoral. But this was based on what they claimed was a law from God. These religious freaks were so convicted of this that they convinced William Wilberforce to work to change the British laws and ban slavery. This movement came to the states with Christians and the Quakers agitating for freedom for all mankind and eventually to the birthing of the Republican party and the freeing of the slaves in the US.

Note this later resulted in the Civil Rights movement that allowed me to legally marry my gorgeous wife less than four decades years later.

So the question is: Did everyone’s DNA suddenly change in the late 1800’s? How can one fathom such a physical change? Note it seems to me that it’s not sufficient for a few influential people to “feel” slavery was wrong. DNA is a physical thing, and it’s only passed on by direct physical inheritance. Thus it seems to me that the only way an anti-slavery moral value could be passed on would be to one’s kids. But that concept sounds ludicrous, for that would mean, one person would believe slavery was wrong through some genetic drift or  mutation (an abnormal event) and he would pass that “conviction” down to his offspring. This belief would also have to allow those who believed in slavery being wrong to survive better than the slave owners, and eventually those who believed slavery was wrong would become predominant in the population and they would then change the laws and thus the culture or vice versa. But anyone would imagine that oppressing some other culture and forcing them to work for you can only be economically prosperous and advantageous to having larger families. I.e. if I own slaves and have lots of free labor, I can have more kids and they will be richer than those poor genetic freaks whose DNA has made them think having free slaver labor is somehow immoral. Or even those poor self-righteous religious freaks who think all men have rights from some non-existent God.

Another Problem

And that’s just one problem. Another problem is seems is that if the moral code is written into our DNA, doesn’t that appear to refute evolution. After all the moral code seems to go expressly against the concept of selfish self preservation and survival of the fittest. Of course one could argue that our DNA has evolved in the last 6000 years of human civilization so now we “need” to be kind, sacrificial and share to survive. But that still doesn’t explain why sacrificing oneself for the sake of others who are not even related to you is of value. After all if as Dawkins has said, the gene is selfish, how selfish can a gene be if it’s willing to die to save the life of other people’s offspring. And how does that gene then get passed on. It would seem that the DNA of the people who survive would be the DNA that says DO NOT sacrifice your life for anybody but your own offspring.

So I’m curious how the DNA argument can stand. I’m open to suggestions. After all I could be wrong and could have missed something.

[For a journalist’s review of the Richards Hitchins debate go here:

I do not know the journalist, but coincidentally the insightful and articulate person he quotes toward the end of the review, with the last name Mammen is indeed my wife.]

/by

Berlinski: An argument against Religion is an argument against Math

David Berlinski, a secular Jew and author of The Devil’s Delusion (a great read, I might add), interviewed himself a couple of years ago here, and had this exchange with himself:

… But why should we take seriously religious beliefs that are lacking in evidence?

DB: We shouldn’t. But asking someone like Richard Dawkins about the evidence for God’s existence is a little like asking a quadruple amputee to run the marathon. The interesting point is elsewhere. There is no argument against religion that is not also an argument against mathematics. Mathematicians are capable of grasping a world of objects that lies beyond space and time ….

… Come again …DB: No need to come again: I got to where I was going the first time. The number four, after all, did not come into existence at a particular time, and it is not going to go out of existence at another time. It is neither here nor there. Nonetheless we are in some sense able to grasp the number by a faculty of our minds. Mathematical intuition is utterly mysterious. So for that matter is the fact that mathematical objects such as a Lie Group or a differentiable manifold have the power to interact with elementary particles or accelerating forces. But these are precisely the claims that theologians have always made as well – that human beings are capable by an exercise of their devotional abilities to come to some understanding of the deity; and the deity, although beyond space and time, is capable of interacting with material objects.

… And this is something that you, a secular Jew, believe? …

DB: What a question! I feel like I’m being interviewed by the Dean at some horrible community college. Do you believe in the university’s mission – that sort of thing. Look, I have no religious convictions and no religious beliefs. What I do believe is that theology is no more an impossible achievement than mathematics. The same rational standards apply. Does the system make sense; does it explain something? Are there deep principles at work. Is it productive? 

You can get Berlinski’s new book here.  Comments anyone? 

/by

Atheists: What Evidence Would You Need To See?

There are several intelligents atheists and skeptics who have responded to posts on this blog in recent weeks.  I appreciate the spirited and mostly respectful debate, as well as the contribution of several theists and Christians.  I’d like to pose a question to the atheists and skeptics and ask everyone to comment.  Here it is:

What evidence would you need to see for you to be reasonably convinced that a theistic God exists?

I look forward to your responses.

/by
Who Really Commits the "God of the Gaps" Fallacy?

Who Really Commits the “God of the Gaps” Fallacy?

, ,

The following is adapted from chapter 6 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist:

The God-of-the-Gaps fallacy occurs when someone falsely believes that God caused the event when it really was caused by undiscovered natural phenomena. For example, people used to believe that lightning was caused directly by God. There was a gap in our knowledge of nature, so we attributed the effect to God. Darwinists assert that theists are doing the same thing by claiming that God created the universe and life. Are they correct? No, for a number of reasons.

 

First, when we conclude that intelligence created the first cell or the human brain, it’s not simply because we lack evidence of a natural explanation; it’s also because we have positive, empirically detectable evidence for an intelligent cause. A message (specified complexity) is empirically detectable. When we detect a message like “Take out the garbage, Mom” or 1,000 encyclopedias we know that it must come from an intelligent being because all of our observational experience tells us that messages come only from intelligent beings. Every time we observe a message, it comes from an intelligent being. We couple this data with the fact that we never observe natural laws creating messages, and we know an intelligent being must be the cause. That’s a valid scientific conclusion based on observation and repetition. It’s not an argument from ignorance, nor is it based on any “gap” in our knowledge.

Second, Intelligent Design scientists are open to both natural and intelligent causes. They are not opposed to continued research into a natural explanation for the first life. They’re simply observing that all known natural explanations fail, and all empirically detectable evidence points to an intelligent Designer.

Now, one can question the wisdom of continuing to look for a natural cause of life. William Dembski, who has published extensive research on Intelligent Design, asks, “When does determination [to find a natural cause] become pigheadedness? . . . How long are we to continue a search before we have the right to give up the search and declare not only that continuing the search is vain but also that the very object of the search is nonexistent?” Consider the implications of Dembski’s question. Should we keep looking for a natural cause for phenomena like Mount Rushmore or messages like “Take out the garbage-Mom”? When is the case closed?

Walter Bradley, a coauthor of the seminal work The Mystery of Life’s Origin, believes A there ­doesn’t seem to be the potential of finding a [natural explanation] for the origin of life. He added, AI think people who believe that life emerged naturalistically need to have a great deal more faith than people who reasonably infer that there’s an Intelligent Designer.” Regardless of whether or not you think we should keep looking for a natural explanation, the main point is that ID scientists are open to both natural and intelligent causes. It just so happens that an intelligent cause best fits the evidence.

Third, the Intelligent Design conclusion is falsifiable. In other words, ID could be disproven if natural laws were someday discovered to create specified complexity. However, the same cannot be said about the Darwinist position. Darwinists don’t allow falsification of their “creation story” because, as we have described, they don’t allow any other creation story to be considered. Their “science” is not tentative or open to correction; it=s more closed-minded than the most dogmatic church doctrine the Darwinists are so apt to criticize.

Finally, it’s actually the Darwinists who are committing a kind of God-of the-Gaps fallacy. Darwin himself was once accused of considering natural selection “an active power or Deity” (see chapter 4 of Origin of Species). But it seems that natural selection actually is the deity or “God of the Gaps” for the Darwinists of today. When they are totally at a loss for how irreducibly complex, information-rich biological systems came into existence, they simply cover their gap in knowledge by claiming that natural selection, time, and chance did it.

The ability of such a mechanism to create information-rich biological systems runs counter to the observational evidence. Mutations that aren’t neutral are nearly always harmful, and time and chance do the Darwinists no good, as we explained in chapter 5. At best, natural selection may be responsible for minor changes in living species, but it cannot explain the origin of the basic forms of life. You need a living thing to start with for any natural selection to take place. Yet, despite the obvious problems with their mechanism, Darwinists insist that Natural Selection covers any gap in their knowledge. Moreover, they willfully ignore the positive, empirically detectable evidence for an intelligent being. This is not science but the dogma of a secular religion. One could say that Darwinists, like the opponents of Galileo, are letting their religion (or at least their philosophy) overrule scientific observations.

 

Dr. Frank Turek (D.Min.) is an award-winning author and frequent college speaker who hosts a weekly TV show on DirectTV and a radio program that airs on 186 stations around the nation.  His books include I Don’t Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist and Stealing from God:  Why atheists need God to make their case

/by

Obscuring Clear Statements with "Clarifications"

Thomas Sowell continues his brilliant insights into the current presidential campaign.  Speaking of Barack Obama’s comments on how average folk in small towns are “bitter” and “cling to guns or religion,” Sowell points out:

In politics, the clearer a statement is, the more certain it is to be followed by a “clarification,” when people react adversely to what was plainly said.

Obama and his supporters were still busy “clarifying” Jeremiah Wright’s very plain statements when it suddenly became necessary to “clarify” Senator Obama’s own statements in San Francisco.

People who have been cheering whistle-blowers for years have suddenly denounced the person who blew the whistle on what Obama said in private that is so contradictory to what he has been saying in public.

However inconsistent Obama’s words, his behavior has been remarkably consistent over the years. He has sought out and joined with the radical, anti-Western left, whether Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers of the terrorist Weatherman underground or pro-Palestinian and anti-Israeli Rashid Khalidi.

Obama is also part of a long tradition on the left of being for the working class in the abstract, or as people potentially useful for the purposes of the left, but having disdain or contempt for them as human beings.  (Read the complete column here.)

Perhaps Obama made those statements– which were given at a supposedly private function–  because he actually believes them.  His voting record and associations seem to suggest that is the case.  I have not heard him clearly apologize or retract the sentiment behind the statement.  If he believes what he said, at least we know the truth.  No further “clarifications” are necessary.

/by

Forward this Column or Get Stuck on Stupid

,

Dr. Mike Adams is at it again talking about the work we’re doing here at CrossExamined.org:  Forward this Column or Get Stuck on Stupid.  Thanks Mike for making Christian Apologetics mainstream!

/by

Is Intelligent Design Science? If not, Neither is Darwinism

The discussion on this blog has lately turned to the question of whether or not Intelligent Design is science (see comments on recent posts).  To generate some more discussion, I offer the following post adapted from Chapter 6 of I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist:

The Darwinists= claim that Intelligent Design is not science cannot be determined from science itself.  Science requires philosophical assumptions, and Darwinists philosophically rule out intelligent causes before they look at the evidence. As we have seen, science is a search for causes, and there are only two types of causes: intelligent and nonintelligent (natural). But, of course, if your definition of science rules out intelligent causes beforehand, then you=ll never consider Intelligent Design science.

The irony for the Darwinists is this: if Intelligent Design is not science, then neither is Darwinism. Why? Because both Darwinists and Intelligent Design scientists are trying to discover what happened in the past. Origin questions are forensic questions, and thus require the use of the forensic science principles we already have discussed. In fact, for Darwinists to rule out Intelligent Design from the realm of science, in addition to ruling out themselves, they would also have to rule out archaeology, cryptology, criminal and accident forensic investigations, and the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). These are all legitimate forensic sciences that look into the past for intelligent causes. Something must be wrong with the Darwinists= definition of science.

Table 6.2 shows the difference between empirical science and forensic science:

Empirical (Operation) Science             Forensic (Origin) Science

Studies present                                         Studies past

Studies regularities                                 Studies singularities

Studies repeatable                                  Studies unrepeatable

Re-creation possible                              Re-creation impossible

Studies how things work                       Studies how things began

Tested by repeatable experiment        Tested by uniformity

Asks how something operates              Asks what its origin is

 

Examples:                                                 Examples:

How does water fall?                                     What=s the origin of a hydroelectric plant?

How does rock erode?                                 What=s the origin of Mount Rushmore?

How does an engine work?                         What=s the origin of an engine?

How does ink adhere to paper?                 What=s the origin of this book?

How does life function?                               What=s the origin of life?

How does the universe operate?                 What=s the origin of the universe?

What about God of the Gaps?  Next post.

/by

Who Made God?

The following is from I Don’t Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist, pages 92-93:   In light of all the evidence for a beginning of the space-time universe, the Beginner must be outside the space-time universe. When God is suggested as the Beginner, atheists are quick to ask the age-old question, “Then who made God? If everything needs a cause, then God needs a cause too!”

As we have seen, the Law of Causality is the very foundation of science. Science is a search for causes, and that search is based on our consistent observation that everything that has a beginning has a cause. In fact, the question “Who made God?” points out how seriously we take the Law of Causality. It’s taken for granted that virtually everything needs a cause.

So why then ­doesn’t God need a cause? Because the atheist’s contention misunderstands the Law of Causality. The Law of Causality does not say that everything needs a cause. It says that everything that comes to be needs a cause. God did not come to be. No one made God. He is unmade. As an eternal being, God did not have a beginning, so he ­didn’t need a cause.

“But wait,” the atheist will protest, “if you can have an eternal God, then I can have an eternal universe! After all, if the universe is eternal, then it did not have a cause.” Yes, it is logically possible that the universe is eternal and therefore ­didn’t have a cause. In fact, it is one of only two possibilities: either the universe, or something outside the universe, is eternal. (Since something undeniably exists today, then something must have always existed; we have only two choices: the universe, or something that caused the universe.)

The problem for the atheist is that while it is logically possible that the universe is eternal, it does not seem to be actually possible. For all the scientific and philosophical evidence (SURGE– Second Law, Universe is expanding, Radiation Afterglow, Great galaxy seeds, Einstein’s GR– radioactive decay, and the Kalam Cosmological Argument) tells us the universe cannot be eternal. So by ruling out one of the two options, we are left with the only other option–something outside the universe is eternal.

When you get right down to it, there are only two possibilities for anything that exists: either 1) it has always existed and is therefore uncaused, or 2) it had a beginning and was caused by something else (it can’t be self-caused, because it would have had to exist already in order to cause anything).  According to overwhelming evidence, the universe had a beginning, so it must be caused by something else– by something outside itself.  Notice that this conclusion is consistent with theistic religions, but it is not based on those religions– it is based on good reason and evidence.

So what is this First Cause like? One might think you need to rely on a Bible or some other so-called religious revelation to answer that question, but, again, we don’t need anyone’s scripture to figure that out. Einstein was right when he said, “Science without religion is lame; religion without science is blind.” Religion can be informed and confirmed by science, as it is by the Cosmological Argument. Namely, we can discover some characteristics of the First Cause just from the evidence we’ve discussed in this chapter. From that evidence alone, we know the First Cause must be:

  • self-existent, timeless, nonspatial, and immaterial (since the First Cause created time, space, and matter, the First Cause must be outside of time, space, and matter). In other words, he is without limits, or infinite;
  • unimaginably powerful, to create the entire universe out of nothing;
  • supremely intelligent, to design the universe with such incredible precision (we=ll see more of this in the next chapter);
  • personal, in order to choose to convert a state of nothingness into the time-space-material universe (an impersonal force has no ability to make choices).

These characteristics of the First Cause are exactly the characteristics theists ascribe to God. Again, these characteristics are not based on someone=s religion or subjective experience. They are drawn from the scientific evidence we have just reviewed, and they help us see a critically important section of the box top to this puzzle we call life.

(The book then goes on to build the case that this is the God of Christianity.)

/by

Google: Religious Pro-Lifers Need Not Apply

Seems like the Google we all love has some very one-sided rules when it comes to advertizing.  While Google accepts ads in support of abortion, they don’t allow “abortion and religion-related content.” This is from the UK’s Daily Mail:

[Google’s]  Dublin-based advertising team replied: “At this time, Google policy does not permit the advertisement of websites that contain ‘abortion and religion-related content’.”

Google does, however, accept adverts for abortion clinics, secular pro-abortion sites and secularist sites which attack religion.

The Christian Institute has now started legal proceedings against Google on the grounds that it is infringing the Equality Act 2006 by discriminating against Christian groups.

It is seeking damages, costs and the permission to publish its advertisement.

Mike Judge, Christian Institute spokesman, said: “For many people, Google is the doorway to the internet.

“If there is to be a free exchange of ideas then Google cannot give special free speech rights to secular groups whilst censoring religious views.

“To say that religious sites with material on abortion are ‘unacceptable content’ (while) advertising pornography is ridiculous.”

Funny how making this ad hoc connection to religion only seems to muzzle one side– the pro-life side (how many religions do you know that would advertize in support of abortion?).   Google’s values aren’t nearly as good as their search engine.

/by

Christians Beware: Intellectual Predators at College

When it comes time for college, parents often think they’re sending their children off to a religiously-neutral site to learn objective facts about the real world.  Unfortunately, they’re far more likely to drop their child into one of the most liberal, anti-Christian environments anywhere on American soil.  That’s where some college professors act as intellectual predators, purposefully seeking to undermine the faith of young Christian students.

Some professors make no effort to hide this. Professor Richard Rorty, who taught at Wellesley, Princeton, the University of Virginia and Stanford, admitted that he and many of his colleagues are actively trying to destroy the faith of Christian kids in college.  He warned parents to recognize that as professors “we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable.”  He said that we professors “arrange things so that students who enter as bigoted, homophobic religious fundamentalists will leave college with views more like our own.”

Rorty followed that wake-up call to parents with an overt poke in the eye.  He claimed that students are fortunate to find themselves under the control “of people like me, and to have escaped the grip of their frightening, vicious, dangerous parents.”

”Did you hear that parents?  According to Rorty and his like-minded colleagues, you and your Christian views are dangerous.  That’s why they are intent on mocking your religious beliefs to the point that your children are too embarrassed to admit them.  They want your children to abandon your “homophobic” beliefs and adopt their way of thinking.  That way, your kids will turn out more like them than like you.

Professor Steven Weinberg, of MIT, Harvard, and now the University of Texas, harbors the same anti-religious agenda expressed by Rorty.  An atheist and physicist, Weinberg said, “I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive of religious belief, and I’m all for that.” If scientists can destroy the influence of religion on young people, “then I think it may be the most important contribution that we can make.”

I thought imparting truth was the most important contribution a professor could make.  Not for Weinberg—it’s his anti-religious agenda.  In fact, his anti-religious agenda is so overriding that it distorts his interpretation of the evidence.  The discoveries of modern science don’t point away from God, but directly to Him. Unfortunately, few college students know this, which allows Weinberg to spin the evidence the other way.  In doing so, he accomplishes what he believes is the most important contribution of a college professor– destroying the parent’s religion in the eyes of their children.

These two professors are not atypical.  A recent survey shows that professors are five times more likely to be atheists than the general public.  It also found that 53% of college professors view Evangelical students unfavorably.  In fact, Evangelicals are, by far, the most disliked religious group on campus (Muslims were not liked by 22% which means that in the United States of America, professors are two and half times more likely to dislike an Evangelical student than a Musllim student).

No wonder 75% of Christian kids leave the church in College.  It’s anything but a religiously-neutral environment.  Equip yourself or your child before attending.

/by