Seeking Kindness in a Straw Brain
Posted on May 29, 2007
Filed Under Worldview |
Shankar Vedantam (Washington Post) articled today about an experiment conducted at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Neuroscientists had given volunteers “moral” problems to solve while scanning their brains, hoping to find out if different brain areas were activated depending upon whether or not they chose a selfish response or a benevolent response. Sure enough, when a volunteer chose to be unselfish, the researchers found that a particular area of the brain lit up—an area that normally activates in response to food or sex. The stated conclusion was that they were homing in on the basic reason that humans act benevolently: simply for pleasure.
Let’s talk about why this experiment and many others are being conducted in the first place. Why are we so interested in locating a “benevolent” gene?
The answer lies primarily in the nasty problem that exists when one begins with a naturalistic worldview—one in which all reality is found within the cosmic cube. Nothing, absolutely nothing, exists outside of that natural box. And everything, absolutely everything that is, or was, or ever will be, is found inside of that box. The contents consist of matter and energy—nothing else. All of the complex stuff inside has arisen from the random, mindless, purposeless forces that are naturally found within the box. So, human beings—and their brains—exist because over a long period of time, the laws of natural selection and favorable mutation have made it so.
Now, if we begin with this philosophical basis, it leads us to somewhat of a problem. The logical conclusion is that the human mind is nothing but a physical stimuli-response machine. The honest person who walks this path will naturally be a behaviorist (ala B. F. Skinner). But, that leaves us rather cold. That means that there is no free will. Man thinks and acts in a particular way only because he must think and act in a particular way. In one of the many creation/evolution debates that Dr. William Provine and Dr. Phillip Johnson held, Dr. Provine listed his 5 implications for evolutionary biology. One implication was that there was no free will. He called free will an “unintelligible idea.” Why? Because raw evolutionary thinking demands nothing else. Another of Provine’s implications was that there exists no ultimate foundation for ethics. This is also logical. If you and I are acting, not out of free will, but out of a cause and effect, stimuli response mechanism, then we cannot be held responsible for what we do or fail to do. We act as we have to act.
So, now we come to the dilemma—or at least one of them. Why do we have an impulse to be nice? Why are we benevolent and kind to those in need?
Lucia Hall, writing in the Humanist Journal (Jul/Aug 1986) was addressing this problem when she stated this:
“…Since the source of this impulse cannot be found in reason, we need to look to an irrational, emotional response that has evolved as part of the human species.”
Why can’t it be found in reason? Because evolution demands the opposite. The weak must die. There is no room in here for “moral” thinking. If anything, we should find a ruthless bent toward the destruction of the weak and helpless. If the child has a defect, let it die. Any “soft hearts” in a dog-eat-dog kind of a world, will not survive very long. The little lion cub who feels badly about taking down the zebra will eventually starve to death and his unfortunate gene of benevolence will perish with him. So, Lucia laments, we must find some irrational, emotional response that has arisen through evolution.
This is exactly what the researchers are hoping to find. If they can connect benevolent actions to some emotional or irrational cause, then they believe they will have rescued evolutionary theory from one of its conflicts with reality. So far, they think they are finding it: benevolent thinking gives us a sense of pleasure. Can we grant them success in vindicating naturalism and evolution?
No, not at all.
To this point, they have only found that a pleasure area of the brain lights up when a “moral” decision is made. It may be that they are uncovering the physical manifestations of the “conscience” that God placed within man. I wonder, however, what would happen if they scanned the brain of those who thought that killing innocent people was a moral act? Those whose consciences have been “seared” (1 Tim 4:2)? Would their “pleasure” sensors light up? Probably so. What have we proven? When we do things that we believe are right, we sense pleasure. That still doesn’t answer why. Nor does it answer what is right and what is wrong.
But that is the whole purpose of this entire pursuit. This next point is very important. We need to be keenly aware that all of this is leading to an attempt to declare that “moral” or “ethical” values are truly relative. Why are they? Because they are merely the result of primitive pleasure sensors. We do them because it makes us feel good. Therefore, there is no transcendent standard of right and wrong. That conclusion is the ultimate objective.
Want proof?
Here is how the article ends, referencing Marc Hauser, a Harvard researcher in morality:
“Hauser said the idea [that morality is simply a built-in natural function] could shed light on contradictions in common moral stances. U.S. law, for example, distinguishes between a physician who removes a feeding tube from a terminally ill patient and a physician who administers a drug to kill the patient. Hauser said the only difference is that the second scenario is more emotionally charged — and therefore feels like a different moral problem, when it really is not: “In the end, the doctor’s intent is to reduce suffering, and that is as true in active as in passive euthanasia, and either way the patient is dead.”
So, in the end, what we are searching for is a way to declare that ethics and morality are nothing more than irrational, emotional firings within the synapses of our brain matter. Nothing more and nothing less. So, if you think that homosexual activity is wrong, well, that’s only because you have to think that way. Your straw brain made you think it. So, don’t tell me that your straw brain idea of what is right and wrong is better than my straw brain’s idea.
How intolerant!
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8 Responses to “Seeking Kindness in a Straw Brain”
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Dr. Del Tackett is president of the Focus on the Family Institute and Senior Vice President to Focus on the Family. He is also the architect and chief spokesperson for Focus on the Family's The Truth Project--a nationwide initiative designed to bring the Christian worldview to the body of Christ.
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Hi
It hurts my brain and my hart but we must keep communicating with one another.
Seeking Kindness in a Straw Brain…
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Another creationist fundamentally misrepresents evolution. Evolution does not say “only the strong survive, let the weak die”. Evolution says that hereditable traits that are conductive toward higher reproductive success will be preserved in a population. If a genetic predisposition toward altruism in a species benefits the species as a whole, then that genetic trait will be preserved.
It’s not a difficult concept, except for creationists who lie about what evolution states so as to find bogus “contradictions” of it in biology.
First I want to Thank you for Starting the Truth Project. You don’t know how many Christians and non-Christians that I have had experience of that don’t think that the Truth is important! I guess that may makes me a fundamentalist and people are afraid of that “label”. I have been labeled as a zealot and bold by those same people! Whatever!
Who is funding all this research? So much money wasted on nothing? Couldn’t they have spent it on something that would help someone?! Maybe they were afraid their brains wouldn’t light up in the right area?!
Gods Blessings,
tj
Excellent article and I enjoy reading your blog.
I hope evolutionists will keep reading. The “attack dog” response above by dimensio (to which your response is thoughtful, and well done) reveals a lack of honesty and objectivity from the evolutionist.
Your article is reasonable and intelligent, but I understand why it offends the evolutionist. If your reasoning is stupid or your facts are incorrect, then the issues you raise are of no account.
Many evolutionists are uninformed as to the flaws of evolution. I studied biology 25 years ago as an undergraduate. There was certainly no mention or discussion given on the fossil record as a testament to the veracity of darwinian evolutionary theory.
The point was assumed. Some of the students may be have been thinking as I was … “where’s the beef”? That dates me, and gen xers may not understand. Where is the growing, mountain of data for evolution?
The data is not there. It was not there 25 years ago, and its still not there.
Why hasn’t it been found? Can anyone tell me anything true about evolution? A paleontologist asked that, not a creationist.
Not yet, not in the fossil record. Not in biochemistry. Not genetics. But since “there is no God”, or to be fair, since there must be a naturalistic reason for the universe and our existence, evolution seems, at least to evolutionists, to be the only valid explanation.
Creation is not a counter movement reacting against the naturalistic juggernaut. Would the search for what is true about evolution lead somewhere else?
Dimensio’s comments are worth reading. But in looking at human history, they cause me consternation.
What if an altruistic people (we’re all in the same species)runs into conflict with, say, a people of a militaristic nation following an evolutionist who believes in the survival of the fittest and his particular race as that fittest. If he persuades the people and his military follows his directions, them all the altruistic genes amount to precious little. Or if altruistic peoples are captured by a leader who has a socialistic bent and who desires to maximize the human potential by perfecting the environment (man is basically good, his environment corrupts him). He is treated brutally, the paradise promised never materializes, and his spirit is crushed. If, in altruism, you speak against this injustice, you find yourself directed into reeducation (if not the Gulag or cemetery).
This is more than an academic discussion. Ideas do have consequences - and some very terrible consequences.
In my personal walk, I find myself warring with base impulses. Lie if its convenient. Steal if its likely you’ll not be caught. Have sex whenever and with whomever I want (spread some superior genes around). Follow God? Why? Why place or embrace restraints upon my natural proclivities?
What I have learned from my faith informs my decisions. I have submitted to God and now no longer let my natural impulses rule. I did not have to be taught to lie, steal, hit, etc. I had to be taught not to. But the “natural” bent was toward selfishness and evil. My brain would probably light up in doing such evil things. But now my pleasure comes from pleasing another,and I rely upon Him for the strength to be victorious in doing so.
While Dimensio speaks of what evolution says or does not say, we can never divorce from such discussions what evolutionary theory has actually wrought in our history and may well birth in our future. It isn’t a pretty picture. Nor is man when divorced from the responsibility and accountabily for immoral and evil choices. (Assuming such concepts as morality and evil are not expunged from our memory once genetics become enthroned as the causational king.)
David Gilmore
I read the somewhat acerbic comment by dimensio which essentially claimed that a false argument was being made by creationists. He made a fairly reasonable statement from an evolutionist’s viewpoint, (i.e. if a trait is beneficial it will be retained) but I noticed that he failed to point out any examples that would show it was beneficial in terms of species development and/or survival, either as a whole or individually. Also, I’m trying to figure out why any non-reasoning species, that is any species incapable of rational thought, would be too concerned about any survival other than their own. Why then retain something that benefits the whole, and not themselves? This requires the ability to reason, and we are back at square one, since according to evolutionist, we evolved from much simpler, non-reasoning lifeforms.
Science is one of those disciplines that seeks to correct itself, and is “happiest” in doing so. Towards the end of his life Dr. Carl Sagen stopped practicing science and began preaching bunk Science-ism. We can formulate hypothesis, observe, take measurements, attempt to draw accurate conclusions, all in His name or for disproving same. The straw man argument given in the beginning of second series (Philosophy & Ethics) is fallacious, and I am surprised Dr. Tackett utilized it, and continuous to argue in that vein in the above. I do look forward to the rest of the series to see how he deals with Science per se.