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Essay 10
Good, Evil, Morality, and the Church
Good, evil and morality are words that are very much part of our everyday usage. They are words that have thousands of years of association with religions of one sort or another. For a serious discussion concerning the concepts behind these words I would like to avoid using them and substitute the word behavior. Behavior can be positive, negative, self defeating, aggrandizing, demoralizing etc. It is not a term that we usually associate with religion, god and the devil. In my Nature’s Way philosophy, as I suspect in most alternative believers’ thinking, there is the belief that there is no supernatural force for good and evil. This way of thinking is a profound change from the way most of us have been brought up. It takes some time and effort to come around to this way of thinking.
So what is the source of what traditionally has been termed good and evil?
The rough and tumble of evolutionary development necessitated some pretty drastic measures to insure survival.
Our development into Homo sapiens didn’t come without a fight and we still have within our mental and psychological processes those drives that insured our survival.
When we look back through our evolutionary history we can speculate on the possible or probable antecedents to some of the characteristics that can cause concern in our human societies.
It is a tough pill to swallow but we are primates and a couple of our close cousins, the bonobos and chimpanzees may help us to understand why we are the way we are.
This past century there has been much research on primate behavior because of their close relationship to the human species.
Jane Goodall devoted her life to the development of close up and at times friendly relationships with Chimpanzees at the Gombe Stream Research Centre in
“Many people do not realize how chimpanzees stand out as preciously and uniquely important in this respect. Our best biochemical data suggest a time of six to eight million years (a geological yesterday) for the split from common ancestry of the human and chimp lineages (only gorillas approach this degree of evolutionary closeness with us, but latest evidence now indicates that contrary to long-held assumptions, chimps are actually closer to humans than to gorillas in terms of genealogical descent). Overall genetic similarity of human and chimp measures substantially more than nine-five percent, but a world of fascinating difference, including the biological essence of humanity, lies in the few percent that separate our two species.”
A more recent book titled “Tree of Origin” (2001) Harvard University Press, Frans B. M. de Waal, Editor, is a more extensive examination of primate behavior with nine different contributing authors. Author Karen B. Strier, page 71 outlines the relationship of our human species to our closest primate cousins.
“No one disputes the special place that chimpanzees and bonobos hold in comparative models of human social evolution. They are the only two living species of the genus Pan—and they share more than 98 percent of our DNA. By some estimates, all that distinguishes us from these apes is encoded in some 50 or so genes. These differences accumulated during the 5 million to 7 million years when the lineages leading to modern humans and Pan diverged from one another. This shared common ancestry makes the behavioral heritage of chimpanzees and bonobos an undeniable part of our own.”
Of particular interest is the research into the behavior of the bonobo primate. The bonobo has only recently become the object of serious research. Originally the bonobo was considered just a different version of the chimpanzee but it is now considered a distinct species with a whole range of behaviors that are not part of chimpanzee characteristics. Editor de Wall gives us an interesting look into the sexual practices of the bonobo in his article on page 52.
“Whereas in most other species sexual behavior is a fairly distinct category, in the bonobo it has become part and parcel of social relationships—and not just between males and females. Bonobos engage in sex in virtually every partner combination, male-male, male-female, female-female, male-juvenile, female-juvenile, and so on. They become aroused remarkably easily and express their arousal in a variety of mounting positions and genital contacts. Sexual behavior is flexible: bonobos use every imaginable position and variation. Whereas chimpanzees almost never adopt face-to-face positions, bonobos do so one out of three times during copulations in the wild, and even more often in captivity. Furthermore, the frontal orientation of the vulva and clitoris suggest that the female genitalia are adapted for this position.”
It is an interesting conjecture to consider that the great variety of sexual practices in the human species is really part and parcel of what should be considered normal behavior rather than deviant and harmful. Some religions refer to these deviant practices as sin which causes untold misery by many in our society. If a certain behavior within our society is harmful to the person or the society in general, then of course, society must do what it can to mitigate the harmful effects of a certain behavior. It is important, however, to remove the stigma of sin from these considerations.
Whereas our species seems to have retained from our antecedents some of the same sexual practices as the bonobo primate, we unfortunately have retained some of the same violence prone tendencies of the chimpanzees. It is important to understand that the chimpanzees and bonobos are not our antecedents but rather they both have the same common antecedent as our human species. Chimpanzees, bonobos and Homo sapiens had the same antecedent with each species taking a different evolutionary path some 5 to 7 million years ago.
Another author from the above book, Anne E. Pusey, reviewed the research concerning the behavior of chimpanzees related to their tendency to participate in a variety of violent activities. This particular research describes what happened when two unrelated communities of chimpanzee males had a territorial confrontation. This quote is from page 17.
“What ensued permanently changed our view of chimpanzees. The Kasekela males mounted a vicious gang attack on the male. As one male held the victim down, pinning him to the ground, others hit and bit him. The brutal attack lasted for ten minutes, and the male was mortally wounded. Over the next two years, several more lethal gang attacks were observed on single members of the Kahama community, some deep within that community’s range, until none were left. The result was that the Kasekela community expanded its range into the south. Soon, however, it was pushed back by a still stronger community from the south, and the community from the north also started encroaching on its territory. Over the same period each community engaged in patrols and aggressive intergroup interactions with neighboring unhabituated communities.”
Sounds like what is happening in our large cities and between some countries. Too bad that we humans didn’t retain more of the conciliatory nature of the bonobo rather than the aggressive nature of the chimpanzee. Of course, we may then have not made it through the evolutionary process to the present day. Our savior now from these violent tendencies is the creation and support of strong, flexible institutions that base their decisions on a clear understanding of the source and character of these violence prone characteristics.
Thousands of years of development in religions, farming, city dwelling, clans, tribes and a multitude of institutions have knocked the edges off these evolutionary drives but they are still there and can become prominent in the occasional individual or when society fails to manage the tendencies underlying these drives. Aggressiveness, acquisitiveness, selfishness, self-defense, survival, sexual and other drives are all part of our makeup that has made our place in the 21st Century possible. The challenge is to develop societies and institutions that are able to mitigate the negative aspects of our evolutionary past while building on the positive aspects. We have a tendency to think of man as basically an aggressive, violent example of evolutionary development but this hardly does justice to our species. We love and protect our young, we gather in sociable groups, we develop institutions and we have those important emotional characteristics such as sympathy and empathy. We are surely not all bad. Given the opportunity, mankind has an impressive history. We just don’t have it all completely together yet.
One of the advantages the alternative believer has in the development of attitudes and institutions that promote positive behavior is that ideas and systems from all sources are usable. In my Nature’s Way system the second category of ideas is a source that is available for the development of attitudes and institutions. This second category is not considered as basic beliefs because of this lack of supporting evidence and long term reasonableness. This does not mean that the ideas do not have merit and usefulness. Because many consider a particularly guideline as coming from God, this does not mean that alternative believers must reject that guideline.
The Ten Commandments are the perfect example. From Exodus 20, they are as follows:
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I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the
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Thou shalt have no other gods before me.
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Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water beneath the earth:
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Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate me,
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And shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love me and keep my commandments.
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Thou shalt not take the name of the LORD thy God in vain: for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain.
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Keep the sabbath day to sanctify it, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee.
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Six days thou shalt labour, and do all thy work:
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But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, nor thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thine ox, nor thine ass, nor any of thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates; that thy manservant and thy maidservant may rest as well as thou.
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And remember that thou wast a servant in the
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Honour thy father and thy mother, as the LORD thy God hath commanded thee; that thy days may be prolonged, and that it may go well with thee, in the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee.
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Thou shalt not kill.
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Neither shalt thou commit adultery.
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Neither shalt thou steal.
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Neither shalt thou bear false witness against thy neighbour.
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Neither shalt thou desire thy neighbour's wife, neither shalt thou covet thy neighbour's house, his field, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, his ox, nor his ass, or any thing that is thy neighbour's.”
This unamended version of the Ten Commandments seems pretty far removed from life as we know it in the
The Commandments as listed were probably needed within that historical period but the references concerning God seem pretty severe several thousand years later. The better known Commandments, ‘thou shalt not kill, commit adultery, bear false witness against thy neighbor, covet thy neighbor’s wife and property and steal’, still have relevance to our society. To say categorically that these ‘shalt nots’ should be part of our unbending guideposts is a step I would be unwilling to accept. They don’t belong carved into concrete at the statehouse but they are good guidelines. There are, however, some important exceptions. We do not hesitate to kill a dangerous dog within our midst but we do, at times, hesitate to kill the much more dangerous animal, the predator par excellence, the human being. Many in our society feel that the elimination
of dangerous predators in our midst is both necessary and justifiable.
The dictionary definition for adultery is ‘voluntary sexual intercourse between a married person and a partner other than the lawful husband or wife. This Commandment, although widely violated, commends a practice that helps to build solid families. The other common Commandments, concerning stealing, bearing false witness and coveting your neighbor’s wife and property are good guidelines. The sometimes overwhelming power of the sexual drive makes a couple of these Commandments impractical in our modern societies. While I personally don’t consider the Commandments as coming from God, they nevertheless have value in recommending positive behavior.
Another well known document that is a part of a physicians training is the Hippocratic Oath. The oath is quite long and I don’t want to quote it here. In general, it charges physicians to always proceed with the best treatment insuring the life of the patient. There are, of course, situations that challenge the practicality and the humanity of the limitations of this oath. On occasion the media is full of news of situations where a person has completely lost all mental capabilities or is irretrievably lost to any kind of reasonable life style. The question being, is it humane and practical to sustain this person’s life? It is a slippery slope for physicians but one that needs defining and institutional development. I had this brought home to me on a very personal level. My father lived to be 97 and although he had serious memory problems and at times he would become confused, he was doing pretty well. His last fifteen years he lived in a beautiful nursing home that was very much like a swank hotel. At times he would walk out of the nursing home and end up getting lost in the nearby town. Finally they put him on the third floor of the nursing home where he would have to be accompanied to leave the floor. My dad’s mental and physical abilities did not warrant his being assigned to that floor but it was a method of keeping him at the nursing home and not getting lost in town. As a result of visiting the third floor of the nursing home every couple of weeks, I have a very clear picture of that situation. At that time, they had a couple of dozen patients that didn’t know where they were or who they were. Some could not eat by themselves or use the bathroom. They would sit in the hallway in a wheelchair all day long, head bowed down, completely gone from this world. We wouldn’t allow this to happen to our animal friends but yet it can happen to our human relatives and friends. So here is an exception to the concept of ‘do no harm’. Granted, we need laws and institutions to make these difficult decisions possible. This exceptional situation does not, however, lessen the value of the Hippocratic Oath.
The subject of behavior could easily occupy an entire book or a series of books. It is not the purpose of my short book to be exhaustive on any of these issues but rather to illuminate some beliefs and attitudes that perhaps are not commonly known. Evolution, atheism, agnosticism, deism, anthropology, micro-biology, neural biology, psychology and most of the remaining sciences are all moving into new territory. We need to try to keep up. It is no longer sufficient to depend on the practices and traditions of the past. Some of our cherished beliefs have been found to be false. Our personal behavior and our behavior as a community and country need to reflect the very best information available. We can no longer assume that God is going to get us out of the messes that we get into.
We automatically assume that good, evil, and morality are the sole province of a church where the concept of a god is the central tenant of the church’s existence.
There is much to commend churches and the variety of activities and support that are available to its members.
Although not a big admirer of the Catholic Church, I couldn’t help but being impressed of its utility during a recent trip to
So why not a church where the central concept does not revolve around God but rather around a defined set of beliefs taken from traditions and documents throughout history that have been found to be beneficial to mankind.
If we alternative believers are really convinced in the merits of our beliefs, then we must make available institutions and systems where young and extended families can benefit from traditional church activities without the onus of accepting dubious beliefs.
I no longer identify with the
In the final Essay, ‘Confidence’, I have outlined some of the basic concepts of the
