What if I told you that an absolute moral law existed? I'm not saying that one thing or another is absolutely right or wrong. Again, I'm not talking about abortion or lying or any one human behavior. I'm saying that absolutely everyone knows Right from Wrong. Yep, you know Right from Wrong and you know that you're supposed to do the right thing. This may sound a lot like religion, but you know what? This has absolutely nothing to do with religion. The absolute moral law is grounded in our own evolution.
Before you proclaim my Godlessness, let me say that I myself believe in the existence of the Almighty. I have a Christian world view. Even though my faith is strong, I emphasize that what I say has no bearing on God or religion. Science can neither
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Mike LopezMan at Large |
Do you have a conscience? A conscience is that feeling inside you that tells you to do the moral, or right, thing. Where did it come from? The popular answer is parents, teachers, books, movies, TV, and "society." Even if that is true, from where did society get morality? Well, I'd say that morality came from our common evolutionary ancestry. Then how come every society has a different morality? They are not really that different. The differences between cultures' moralities are like differences in skin color. Look under the surface and we're all the same.
The core message of every moral teaching is the same. What is this core message? Read on.
What is the purpose of life? The purpose of life is to survive. Not for an individual to survive, but for an entire gene pool to survive. Why do amoebas divide? The genes are programmed to do so. What else does life do? In a universe where everything moves towards disorder, life moves towards order. You have to agree with this. From the very beginning, the mechanisms of life have made order out of chaos. Life turns gases, liquids, minerals and vitamins into thinking beings.
Deep down in our genes, we have a tendency towards order and a will to survive. What is morality? Is it not a way to order the world so that everyone survives? That is the core message.
Let us assume that there is an absolute moral law that transcends cultural lines. What would happen if everyone in the world followed this law?
Everyone would exist in perfect order and everyone would survive. There would be no such thing as famine, murder, evil or sin. Everyone would be good. We would not only be totally moral, but everyone would be happy to choose the high road.
Just imagine if everyone followed all the traffic laws. At first, you might think, "Oh no, I can't speed." This is silly though because if you took the absolute moral law to heart, you wouldn't want to speed. You see, following the absolute moral law means that the world no longer needs laws. Why are external laws needed if everyone always does what is right? Could you imagine every person in the world having an inner voice telling him or her Right from Wrong all the time? I can imagine it because the whole world does have that voice.
The only problem with us right now is that a lot of people don't listen to it and the voice is not entirely uniform throughout all cultures. As evolving beings, we haven't quite consciously hit upon the absolute moral law that has slowly been written into our genes since the beginning of life itself. In this perfect world, we will have hit upon it.
Life is constantly moving towards greater order. If we are constantly evolving, then we must be evolving towards this perfect world. If we are evolving towards this perfect world, then there must be an absolute moral law. We may not know it consciously, but it does exist.
If the law exists and we are evolving towards its adoption, then we are all called to seek and find the law and embrace it. Thankfully, this also means that despite the actions of certain philosophical groups, humanity as a whole will continue to search for the absolute moral law and slowly adopt it. That is what evolution says. That also happens to be what most major religions say.
What do you think? Does it sound logical? Is it hogwash? I want to know what you think. In the future, I'll be relying heavily on your comments, arguments and suggestions to shape future topics.
- Mike Lopez can be reached over
e-mail at manatlarge@umich.edu.
09-22-99
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