The right and wrong of right and wrong (Aug. 31)
By Chuck Doud
The Madera Tribune
I did not know about this until reading about it over the weekend, but there is a field of study out there called evolutionary psychology. Those who are doing the studying say evolution tends to favor those with the most moral outlooks.
There’s basically no evidence to support this other than the assumptions of psychologists who have not found paying jobs in any other research. In fact, most evidence points the other way. The cave people who killed the most animals and also killed the most cave people were the ones who seemed to survive, rather than the ones who wanted to sit around the campfire and sing “Kum bay ya.” The Roman Empire was built at the point of a sword, not by community organizing.
Religion and philosophy prospered only after armies and navies made it possible.
That doesn’t mean there weren’t religionists and philosophers who were operating independently of the armies and navies, but there is nothing to suggest that those noncombatants were favored by evolution. In fact, they probably got themselves slapped around a lot if they attempted to interfere.
Eric Feline, writing in The Wall Street Journal, tells the story of a Harvard scientist, Marco Hauser, who was found guilty of misconduct in his study of the morality of nature. He wrote the book “Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong.” After they read it, some scientists got aboard that train and began writing that morality was strictly an evolutionary survival mechanism.
But Hauser faked some of his research, and thus some of his conclusions. It appears he, himself, missed the evolutionary-morality bus, and instead threw himself under it.
Religion and philosophy keep us reminded of what is right and wrong, because as humans, we know right and wrong often are in flux. That is especially true when Congress and the Legislature are in session.
Cats, on the other hand, are born knowing what is right and wrong. Having lunch is always right. Not having lunch is always wrong. Everything else is commentary.
