A sermon on morality

What about evolved instincts as the basis of morality? The problem here is that we’ve inherited a great variety of inconsistent impulses that have only partial sway over us, even in extreme situations. That is, morality is not ‘hard-wired.’ The result is readily observable in the amazing variety of human moralities, which include all sorts of prohibitions and accepted practices. For example, the veneration of life-long virgins makes no sense from a strictly evolutionary perspective, since reproduction is evolution’s driver.

How do we know that morality develops from individuals’ interaction with their environment? Why else would we try to engineer our kids and ourselves through moral instruction, for example, by watching Mr. Rogers or attending a religious service? These efforts and less-explcit lessons from the School of Life observably make a difference, as people vary wildly across cultural contexts. Moreover, if parents move to a new milieu, their children will grow to be more like their neighbors than their ancestors. Further, some people’s values change drastically during their lives, as has been documented following extreme experiences.

Are these or any other values universal or absolute?

Recognizing that values are learned does not necessarily require abandoning the belief that some values are absolute, that the universe might have a moral code or even an ‘arc,’ as the famous statement says. Nonetheless, the clearer path through the forest of evidence does lead to the conclusion that all morality is contingent.

To my eye, the best evidence for the existence of a supernatural realm is that so many people believe in one. Yet, when we look at all the diverse practices found among humanity, we face an amazing variety of beliefs, including but not limited to: a single deity, multiple deities, multiple spirits but no deity, and no belief at all. Regarding the afterlife there are beliefs in a universal repository for the dead, a single life followed by heaven or hell, reincarnation restricted to another human or a few species, reincarnation into any organism, reincarnation via a totem, ghosts for a subset of the dead, ancestral spirits watching over a specific people and place, no afterlife, and more.

Moral beliefs – my topic here – are at least as varied. Nonetheless, a common approach is to ethnocentrically highlight some as more valid than others. For example, I’ve heard frequent reference to beliefs that “major religions” reputedly share, as if whatever the current majority view is can be assumed to be more valid than minority views – or the majority views of the past.

This approach is even less convincing if we actually analyze the claims being made, rather than simply allowing the comforting validation of our own values to wash over us. For example, I have heard many times that ‘all major religions’ teach the Golden Rule or at least to ‘love thy neighbor,’ meaning all humanity. That is, the religions that matter agree with Jesus’ central message as liberal Christians see it. But is this really a central teaching among people who believe in caste? Does it capture the main teaching of Islam, which (as I understand it) is to submit to the single god? Is it in the Ten Commandments?

Looking beyond the current biggies, we see very different ideas. Yes, almost every group probably has a saying that it’s important to be nice to other people by default, but they also might place more emphasis on quite contradictory values. For example, the Aztecs cut the beating hearts out of their many thousands of sacrificial victims – and, no, being eviscerated wasn’t an honor that they lined up for. The Chiricahua Apaches believed in opposing forces of creation and destruction (not understood as good and bad) that needed to be kept in balance. Furthermore, they found it natural to use their superior cleverness to take resources from people who were less savvy. The Hopis only admitted new clans into their society if the newcomers could demonstrate how they would uniquely benefit the existing society – that is, not out of pity or universal love, not to benefit the newcomers.

Overall, close observation suggests that humans, sufficiently prepared, can feel the warmth of moral satisfaction about a great variety of events, including revenge, coerced uniformity, mass slaughter, the humiliation of others, killing other animals for fun, suicide bombings, and, in contrast, the panoply of behaviors that I support. Given this manifest diversity, on what absolute basis can we state that one moral standard is right and the other wrong, unless we recognize the authority of a deity? But then we face the problem, introduced above, of identifying which deity or set of them is actually supreme and which interpretation of its laws is correct, etc. Why would humanity disagree so fully about something so fundamental, unless it’s not actually fundamental? A comparative perspective shows that claiming one’s own values to be absolutely applicable is ethnocentric.

Another reason to question the existence of a universal moral order is that individual adherents of a particular set of values will be inconsistent. If rich people truly believed in the absolute goodness of the Golden Rule, then they wouldn’t be rich for long. Or older people who claim that their children’s and grandchildren’s welfare means everything to them – perhaps citing evolutionary principles – would live in penury and take measures to limit their own lifespan to maximize their descendants’ inheritance; instead, they take cruises, go golfing, etc. I am not criticizing them; rather, my aim is to point out that it is commonplace to balance contradictory moral stances – in this case, the implicit value of looking after one’s perceived self-interest. The folks who truly act as if their stated values are absolute are unusual, and the predominance of moral compromises strikes me as another indication that people most often recognize, if incoherently, that aspirational, supposedly universal values are not always the best guide. Can so many people be wrong about something so basic?

Let’s look at this question from a broader perspective. Homo sapiens didn’t exist until very recently compared to the age of the universe – about 300,000 years out of more than 13 billion years, or about 1/40,000th. Did an absolute moral order lie in wait all that time? Moreover, humans are animals with animal ancestors. Shouldn’t an absolute set of values apply to our ancestors as well? Indeed, all other organisms around today have an equally long history of evolution, and the majority have shorter generations and thus have had more opportunity to evolve genetically; it seems inconsistent to argue that a fundamental morality applies only to us, now, and it seems absurd to apply morality to bacteria, grasses, or praying mantises. (But don’t get me started on spoonbills.)

Some people have argued that evolution is the root of morality, that it entails certain principles that we might take as values to live by. This perspective depends on present-day individuals feeling a stake in future evolutionary outcomes, which is dubious for people and laughable for most other organisms. In any case, this is a misreading of how evolution works. First of all, natural selection is simply the increase in genetic features in future generations that increased reproduction in this generation. It has nothing inherently to do with an individual’s happiness, longevity, intelligence, wealth … And thus it’s amoral: competition, cooperation, self-sacrifice, infanticide … anything that might improve an individual’s reproductive success under one set of circumstances might lead to its line’s extinction under other circumstances. Furthermore, who’s to say that the furtherance of a genetic line or even of our species is inherently good? Is the success of mosquitoes good? In short, evolution, like shit, just happens, and it’s arbitrary to cite evolution as the basis for rules for living.

Given the relative and historical development of values, how should we act on them?

Humans inevitably will develop moral stances, albeit internally contradictory ones. Humbly recognizing that our values are a cultural and historical product rather than a universal revelation does not eliminate the psychological importance of morality. That is, I still feel my values deeply. So why would I not foster their spread and enactment? Thus, my belief in the contingent basis of morality doesn’t weaken my commitment to my values.

But there are some tendencies I recognize in myself that perhaps spring from this relativistic view.

• First, morality doesn’t exist in the ether, outside of individuals. If you ‘hate the sin’ (e.g. racism) then you hate the aspects of the ‘sinner’ that led to the ‘sin’ (e.g. racist actions).
• But people don’t have autonomous souls that choose evil (i.e. free will); individuals develop only from interaction with their environment. And, thus, they can change. So absolute terms such as evil and sin – or holy – strike me as cartoonish, bolstering the ethnocentrism and self-congratulation of those who wield them. One of my core beliefs is that ‘there, but for the grace of a different milieu, go I.’
• Perhaps this humble viewpoint regarding the basis of my morality also makes it easier for me to admit that I balance contradictory values – that I act on selfishness, too. Indeed, one of the reasons I explicitly recognize for going to UU services is to limit this less-explicit, self-serving set of values by reinforcing the more community-oriented ones emphasized in the UU covenant. That is, I am consciously choosing an environment that will shape my balance of values toward agape. Indeed, recognizing the competing tendencies within me does not provide me with an internal license to horde my resources; instead, I might be more likely to see each economic choice as one between my own satisfaction and helping others – for example, a donation that could provide truly basic resources to impoverished people around the world. So perhaps this perspective on morality helps me to work out such contradictory pressures more directly than if I thought that admitting self-interest would send me to hell or into a wretched reincarnation.
• Like UUism as I’ve experienced it, I’m not so concerned whether people who agree with me on how to act also agree with my cosmology. Indeed, it’s my impression that in the United States these days many people are more set in their explicit values than in their cosmologies. What’s more important to me is how we can act on these values most efficaciously, including how we can foster these values in others.

I’ve held this perspective for several decades, but – who knows? – maybe experience will lead me to think differently in the future.