ARGUMENT FOR GOD FROM ALTRUISM AND HUMAN PSYCHOLOGY

Science agrees that we have been wired to make specific moral judgments. In fact, it has been well noted that these judgments develop in tandem with our neurological development.

However, we differ in regards to the origins of this wiring – whether it’s evolution or God who has done the wiring. Evolution is based upon the understanding that evolutionary development is guided by the possible survival value our wiring gives us. According to this thinking, we have been wired with emotions that maximize a survival advantage and  the likelihood of passing on our superior genetic inheritance to the next generation. However, this understanding fails to adequately explain why we humans have altruistic motivations.

Here is why the God paradigm is superior to that of evolution:

1. We derive a deep moral satisfaction by doing the right thing.

2. While certain forms of altruism might be construed as giving humanity a survival advantage, the evolutionary understanding of altruism and our other psychological tendencies is inadequate.

3. Evolution cannot explain our deepest moral proclivities. However, the hypothesis that we are created in God’s moral likeness can explain these.

PREMISE #1  We derive a deep moral satisfaction by doing the right thing.

Humanity tends to value forgiveness, confession of wrongdoing, acts of love, and even loving our enemies. Although we might not derive immediate benefit from these behaviors, we tend to derive a deep satisfaction when we act in accord with our most deeply held values.

Mental health professionals recognize that living in accordance with our moral wiring is an important factor for mental health, although perhaps not for passing on our genes. Accordingly, Karen Wright wrote,

• "Eudaimonia refers to a state of well-being and full functioning that derives from a sense of living in accordance with one’s deeply held values."

Many have recognized a connection between happiness (sometimes referred to as “eudaimonia”) and the virtuous life:

• Plato argues that virtues are states of the soul, and that the just person is someone whose soul is ordered and harmonious, with all its parts functioning properly to the person’s benefit. In contrast, Plato argues that the unjust man’s soul, without the virtues, is chaotic and at war with itself, so that even if he were able to satisfy most of his desires, his lack of inner harmony and unity thwart any chance he has of achieving eudaimonia. Plato’s ethical theory is eudaimonistic because it maintains that eudaimonia depends on virtue. (Virtue is necessary for eudaimonia.) On Plato’s version of the relationship, virtue is depicted as the most crucial and the dominant constituent of eudaimonia. (Wikipedia)

Indeed, disharmony creates peace-depriving conflict. This is one of the reasons that we obsess. Obsession is a normal attempt to harmonize our thinking and moral intuitions with the rest of our lives. When these are in disharmony, peace is replaced by an endless running of obsessive mental tapes, seeking a way out – a place of peace.

Gautama Buddha recognized these truths and provided an eightfold strategy to avoid suffering and to restore peace known as the “middle way,” sandwiched between the extremes of self-denial and self-indulgence:

• "This is the noble truth of the way leading to the cessation of suffering: it is the Noble Eightfold Path; that is, right view, right intention, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness and right concentration."

For Buddha, Positive Psychologists, and even AA, there are certain objective principles – principles articulated in the Bible - like forgiveness and gratefulness, to which we must adhere for the sake of our peace-of-mind.  

Even atheists perceive these positive principles but pride themselves that they can be good without God. For them, morality is simply a matter of expedience, what provides the desired benefits. Atheist, humanist, and author of the Humanist Manifesto II, Paul Kurtz, affirms that pragmatism – the results - is the “only” possible justification for morality:

• "How are these [moral] principles to be justified? They are not derived from a divine or natural law nor do they have a special metaphysical [beyond the material world] status. They are rules offered to govern how we shall behave. They can be justified only by reference to their results."

However, this stance is at odds with itself. It affirms moral principles but not because they are objectively moral in themselves. Rather, altruism and other-centeredness is promoted for self-centered reasons – “their results.” Therefore, when we help our enemy, we are not doing it because it is the right thing to do, but because it brings favorable results.

It was this kind of thinking that turned me into a selfish nihilist in my first year at college. I had been volunteering in a project to help the disadvantaged but became increasingly aware that I was doing this for myself. I reasoned that if it’s all about me, then I should be genuine about it. I therefore quit the program to pursue what I now saw as the genuine truth – my own welfare.

Evolutionists also share this problem. While certain forms of altruism might be construed as giving humanity a survival advantage, the evolutionary understanding of altruism is necessarily self-centered and, therefore, not truly altruistic. Therefore, the theory of evolution cannot embrace a true, non-self-centered altruism.

PREMISE #2  While certain forms of altruism might be construed as giving humanity a survival advantage, the evolutionary understanding of altruism and our other psychological tendencies is inadequate.

In fact, humanity seems to possess many gratuitous traits, like our enjoyment of music, dance, and literature, that defy a Darwinian explanation. We are even psychologically constituted to seek to understand our place in the world and to comprehend our purpose and meaning within it. The late Jewish philosopher and theologian, Abraham Heschel, asserted this very thing:

• “It’s not enough for me to be able to say ‘I am’; I want to know who I am and in relation to whom I live. It is not enough for me to ask questions; I want to know how to answer the one question that seems to encompass everything I face: What am I here for?”

Such an introspective trait seems to exceed and defy what the evolutionary paradigm can reasonably explain. It might even interfere with the business of survival and passing on the human genetic inheritance. Just ask Hamlet!

John M. Gottman, professor of psychology and cofounder of The Gottman Institute for marriage improvement wrote about another gratuitous human requirement – the need for honor, respect, and appreciation:

• “The typical conflict-resolution advice won’t help. Instead, you need to understand the bottom-line difference that is causing the conflict between you—and learn how to live with it by honoring and respecting each other.” 

If our heads are cluttered with these additional psychological needs, the pursuit for survival and passing on our genes is somewhat displaced. It would therefore seem that these needs would not provide any survival advantage. Instead, they might even prove disadvantageous.

In “The Significant Life,” attorney George M. Weaver has made a strong case that the drive to establish our self-importance is so compelling that it even eclipses the drive for survival:

• Individual humans are not concerned so much about the survival of the species as they are about their personal survival or significance. In order to push ourselves beyond our confining space-time limits, we as individuals try to set ourselves apart from the rest of humanity. It is unsettling to admit that one is average or ordinary – a routine person. (7)

Weaver documents this convincingly. Even those who commit horrific self-destructive acts do so to establish their importance:

• In 2005 Joseph Stone torched a Pittsfield, Massachusetts apartment building… After setting the blaze, Stone rescued several tenants from the fire and was hailed as a hero. Under police questioning, Stone admitted, however, that he set the fire and rescued the tenants because, as summarized at trial by an assistant district attorney, he “wanted to be noticed, he wanted to be heard, he wanted to be known.” (44)

Evidently, this drive for significance is so powerful that it can overrule the drive for survival. One mass-murderer gunman explained in his suicide note, “I’m going to be f_____ famous.” (45)

This need to be famous is potentially anti-social. It detracts from the viability of the social group by creating fragmentation. But how can the biblical paradigm account for this human drive? When we do not find our significance in God, we are psychologically coerced to pursue it elsewhere.

This drive for significance can be so compelling that we will sacrifice our future for it. Weaver reports that:

• More than two hundred people confessed in 1932 to the kidnapping and murder of the infant son of famed aviator Charles Lindbergh. (50)

If humanity had always evolved in a way that would confer a survival advantage, it is hard to explain many of our individualistic human traits. Instead, if we had more of a group-oriented nature like the ants or the bees, we might have fared better.

Also, from the perspective of evolution, our altruistic moral wiring will only confer a survival advantage when we act altruistically towards those who will reciprocate. We should only forgive those who can repay our forgiveness. If instead we forgive our enemies, they may interpret this as weakness, which might encourage them to attack us.

Likewise, we should only confess our wrongdoing when we can derive a clear benefit. After all, such a confession can be used against us. Also, we should only love those who are in a position to repay us.

CONCLUSION: Evolution cannot explain our deepest moral/psychological proclivities. However, the hypothesis that we are created in God’s moral likeness can explain these.

It is also highly ironic that a book completed 2000 years ago could more accurately explain the human condition than the “scientific” fruits of our modern age.

Meaning, Virtue, Altruism, and the Existence of God

 

We want to live meaningful lives, filled with significance and purpose. We sense that there is something correct and fulfilling about living a life of virtue and other-centeredness. However, I don’t think that we can do so coherently without God. In fact, this quest points to the existence of God. Here’s how:

1. Meaning exists.
2. Meaning cannot exist without God.
3. God must exist.

1. Meaning exists. Although we cannot directly see it with our eyes, but we can observe the way it affects us and others. In this sense, it is like a law of science. We cannot observe gravity, but we can observe the way it impacts us. We can even produce formulas describing the predictable effects of gravity.

Although we cannot produce formulas – at least, none have been put forth at this point – we can observe a law of meaning, virtue, or altruism. When we live virtuously, it impacts us in somewhat predictable ways:

a)    We make others feel good.

b)    We feel good about ourselves - A sense of satisfaction, completeness, rightness.

c)     When we hurt others, we experience internal conflict. We try to rationalize our bad behavior or simply suppress it.

d)    When we apologize, we feel that we did the right thing, even if the other person doesn’t receive our apology. When they do, we experience peace or reconciliation.

Besides, if an objective meaning is to be denied, then we’d also have to conclude that there is nothing objectively the matter with rape, kidnapping, murder, or torturing babies. However, we find such a conclusion to be repugnant.

2. Meaning cannot exist without God. Most agree that we cannot create a law of meaning in the same way that we cannot create a law of gravity or any other law of science. We just don’t have that power. If we did, there would be a billion competing humanly-created laws and utter chaos.

However, many stoics will say that this is unnecessary, since we can create our own meaning. We can simply decide to visit shut-ins and bring food. While, I applaud people who devote themselves to the virtuous, altruistic life, I don’t think that they can coherently or rationally live this way. Perhaps this next question will illustrate the problem:

“Why should we live virtuously?” Most appeal to a pragmatic rationale - that it brings benefits to live virtuously:

• When we live other-centeredly, we bring maximum benefit to ourselves and to others. 

While I agree with this, this cannot be the center-piece of our thinking. Here’s why:

a)    Without God, we cannot consistently use objective value-laden terms like “benefit,”  “right,” “wrong,” “just” or “unjust.” This is to acknowledge a higher, universal moral law – the very thing that they deny. Is the removal of “pain” beneficial? Why? Perhaps we need pain? To answer this question, we have to appeal to unchanging objective principles that define human thriving. Instead, those who reject objective universal moral principles are reduced to saying, “Well, this feels right or beneficial to me,” or “The majority of people feel this way, at least for now.”

b)    However, if there is no higher law, why then should we even be concerned about what the majority thinks! There is no objective principle to invest the majority with any intrinsic significance.

c)     Meaning cannot be retained if we acknowledge that it is something that we created and can be changed at will. It carries no normative authority over our lives. If virtue is merely our own creation, it cannot inspire us to live sacrificially. It is like mentally creating for ourselves a wife and children and adoring them in our imagination. Such adoration is delusional.

d)    Pragmatism – the cost/benefit analysis – does not always lead to virtue. Instead, it often leads inhumane behavior. At best, we can say that virtue produces benefits most of the time. Is it pragmatic and rational to rescue Jews from the Nazis if you risk the death of your entire family by doing so? Of course not!

Therefore, a purely pragmatic justification for virtue isn’t adequate or even rational. Perhaps even more seriously, there is incoherence at the very base of a pragmatic justification for the virtuous life. By its very nature and at its core, pragmatism is selfish. It considers the personal benefits. However, virtue is supposed to be unselfish and other-centered! How then can we practice other-centeredness when we are practicing virtue for our own motives!

If there is no higher moral truth, our feelings become supreme. They oppress us and force us into bondage. With what can we resist them, if there is no transcendent moral truths by which to trump them? How can pragmatic considerations overrule them if fulfilling our feelings is of supreme benefit?

The stoic will resist this logic, claiming that their feelings are not supreme but, instead, their principles. However, if their principles are subjectively and pragmatically derived, then they fail the consistency test, since their principles are derived from their feelings. This puts their feelings at the helm of their ship.

Once the stoic attempts to justify virtue on the need to be “other-centered,” we have to ask:

• Why should we live other-centeredly? You deny the existence of objective moral law. If so, why even bother with others? Instead, just be concerned about what you are really all about – your feelings, being #1 and those who feed #1.

If the stoic rejects objective moral principles, he must resort to pragmatism – the cost/ benefit analysis – to bridge the huge gulf to the land of altruism.

However, when altruism is separated from objective moral law and the law-Giver, absurdities pop up. For one thing, those who practice a pragmatic virtue must borrow Christian principles that do not coincide with pragmatic thinking. Today’s stoic believes in equality and doing right to all people. However, they lack a sufficient basis for their concept of equality. After all, some humans make positive contributions to society; some make negative. Some are educated; some are not. Some build relationships; others tear them down. From where then does this objective concept of equality come? From the Bible!

Other absurdities arise from this disconnect between virtue and objective values. The psychotherapist affirms the need for unconditional positive regard (UPR) – the necessity of regarding their clients positively as a foundation for nurturing therapeutic relationship. However, without transcendent moral law, there is no adequate rational basis to always regard all one’s clients in a positive light. Some clients might even provoke a sense of disgust.

Therefore, the secular therapist must justify UPR in terms of the benefits to both client and therapist. However, having rejected moral law, the therapist cannot be transparent about his thoughts and feelings. Instead, he must put on a face – the very thing that will eventually undermine relationships. In contrast, the Christian can coherently express her high regard for the client, even while being honest about her negative feelings. However, if our negative feelings are all that we have, then we cannot be honest. Let me illustrate the difference:

a)    “I don’t like you, but you are capable of doing better,” or

b)    “I don’t like you, but you have inestimable worth as God’s creation, and so my feelings are only secondary.”

The first claims that worth is performance based. Therefore, if the client does not produce, he has no worth. And if he does produce, his product may not measure up to social standards. The second claims that, because of God, worth is intrinsic to the person and, therefore, transcends whatever the therapist might feel about the client. Worth comes from God and not human opinions. Consequently, the Christian therapist must acknowledge that her feelings are no more than a momentary reaction in the face of the Transcendent.

Attempts to pragmatically justify the virtuous life are doomed to failure. Instead, we have to be convinced about the intrinsic correctness of virtue and it’s inseparable connection to Deity.

3. God must exist. If we believe that meaning exists, and that it cannot exist without God, then God must exist!