The Science God:

                             Moral Values, Scientific Thought, and Belief in a Deity

      by Dwight Wendell

Introduction

In this book, the first thing I will try to do is reason my way to a moral code that is grounded in observations of the physical world. Only after that task is done will I talk about how grasping that code then leads us to further conclude that belief in God is a rational choice for a modern, informed person to make.

Once we see that there is a moral code embedded in reality, we are gradually drawn on to the conclusion that a “sort of God” does exist. I’m content with the term “sort of God.” The more unique and personal the view of God that each reader comes to by the time he or she has finished reading this book, the happier I’ll be. In the end, that concept of a deity has to be personal – i.e. it has to shape a person’s daily actions – or it has no real meaning in that person’s life at all.

To appease atheist readers, I will say the theistic conclusion of my case will be held back till the last two chapters of the book. We’ll focus first on combining some basic ideas from Science and Moral Philosophy. God can wait a while.

                

   

                             Human thinking engaging with empirical reality

                                     Boat-building Near Flatford Mill 1815

           (credit: John Constable [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

 

   

            Liberty Leading The People  (Human thought engaging human reality)

                            (credit: Eugène Delacroix, via Wikimedia Commons) 

I have been studying this problem of what moral means – what makes “right” right – for more than 50 years. From the time I was a boy, through a long career teaching in the British Columbia school system, 8 years of post-secondary study, three degrees (two undergraduate, one graduate), time in agriculture, six rock bands, and small business, time spent raising three kids, and a lot of life. However, all these experiences neither add to, nor detract from, my case. They aren’t relevant. The case must stand on its own.

It is also worth noting here that the ideas, historical records, perspectives, and texts I discuss in this book are mostly those of a man who was born into, and molded by, Western culture. I know that plenty of other effective ways of handling the world – in other words, other ways of life – are available today. I will also say from the outset that I know that in every era in history, nations rise to dominance over their neighbors for only a few generations. Then, the dominant one gets passed by a competitor, almost always by war.

But one of this book’s goals is to show a way past our habit of advancing one culture to dominance over its neighbors by war. I’ll say more on the possibilities of our species finding a way to evolve without war as we go along. For now, I’ll be content to say that this dream is not at all far-fetched or ridiculous. 

In my lifetime, I saw the USSR go from being a monolithic super-power to a footnote in History. Without a world war. I sometimes still can’t quite believe it. Furthermore, there have been civilizations in the past in which large areas and populations existed under one umbrella of law. Societal scale change is possible. The trick for us will be to learn to bring about that change without war. And it will begin from patient, diligent, focused efforts by a determined few who are guided by a model of human cultural evolution that works.

In addition, I will say to my doubters at the outset: if you’re skeptical about our species’ ability to live by both reason and love, you haven’t contemplated the alternatives: ignorance and suspicion. These will lead to the people of the world choking to death in an atmosphere too toxic to breathe. Or worse. Whole nations scorched by nuclear blasts. Let those images renew your resolve. We can do this. We will do it. Why? Because we must.

It’s true that I am a son of the West. I tend to think and speak using the ideas and terms that I learned in my country and its schools. However, I believe the conclusions I draw in this book are universal; they can be extracted by logic from data: the historical records and the daily life experiences of any nation.

The set of ideas that I will construct for readers of this book leads logically to a modern theism. In other words, Faith and Reason are not enemies, nor should they be called friends. They are different aspects of the same thing.

The version of “Reason” I will use in this book will be the inductive one called “Science”. I will show that Science supports a model of cultural evolution on which we can build a universal moral code. This universal moral code, with a few other models from Science added, will lead us to belief in a deity.

In short, we can use the scientific method, apply it to evidence, and reason our way, via a small number of steps, to belief in God. That is the point of this book.  

I believe that our era is the most comprehensively logical era in the history of our species. Science and the methods of Science are increasing in influence in our world with every day that passes. We celebrate that fact because we have seen too often in our history that most of the cruelties done by humans to other humans were rooted in false beliefs. When a false belief gets widely accepted in a society, soon some members of that society are deemed by the community to be in violation of one of the rules that derive from that false belief. Persecution of these members then quickly becomes “normal”. It’s easy to burn witches, once you have proved to your satisfaction that there really are witches all over.

Thus, superstitions nearly always lead to cruelty. Whether or not a woman is a witch can’t be determined by throwing her in deep water to see whether she floats. There are no witches in the first place and never were. Belief in witches created this cruelty. Science frees us from this kind of nonsense.    

But at the same time, Science has all but destroyed the moral codes we used to use to guide us as we make choices, act, and move through our lives. The old moral codes haven’t held up well under the pressures of Science.

Most people today are aware of this dilemma. We feel encouraged when we see the material progress Science has brought us, but then, almost immediately, we feel frightened by the moral emptiness of Science’s worldview. The desperate search for what right is can be seen in popular songs, movies, etc.. For example, in Joker, a recently popular movie, the main character asserts near the end of the film to a TV talk show host who is interviewing him: “comedy is subjective”. Then, he rages about how his city has ignored mentally ill people like him. His host is indifferent. So, he kills his host on live TV. And laughs. It is clear as the film ends that he feels he is just as moral in that act as any who would castigate him are in their actions in their lives. He did what made him happy. It felt right, therefore, it must be right, i.e. morality is subjective. It has no scientific basis.

Science has given us many wondrous devices and processes, but so far it has refused to tell us when, or even whether, we should use these wonders.   

From the old codes of right and wrong, we keep getting directions that we can see are obsolete. For example, executing murderers can easily be shown to be counterproductive. But in the meantime, the new gurus of the West – scientists – when they are asked to define right and wrong, say Science can’t comment on morality or, worse yet, some flatly assert that all moral values are only fantasies and daydreams, entirely arbitrary, about as real as Santa Claus. ^1.

As Einstein saw it, “Science can only ascertain what is, but not what  should be; [but] outside of its domain, value judgments of all kinds remain necessary.” ^2.

On the other hand, Ruth Benedict, one of the leading anthropologists of the twentieth century, asserted that “morality differs in every society, and is a convenient term for socially approved habits.” ^3.

Science has given us the capacity to do harm on a planetary scale. Because of that, we need guidance; we need moral guidelines and not just piecemeal ones. We need a comprehensive moral system that can tell us, as we choose among the myriads of actions that we could do, which ones we should do.

Thus, the finding of a new moral code is desperately urgent in our time.

Science is the method for approaching truth that is trusted the most in these times. We have had plenty of gurus, mystics, holy texts, and personal epiphanies, but they are nearly always at odds with each other, and their practical results are few and inconsistent. They look utterly unreliable. So the world’s people are more and more looking to Science and scientists to create a moral code for us all to live by – while Science has flatly refused to even attempt to do so.  

   

                                                       Beijing air pollution 

                                  (Kentaro IEMOTO) (via Wikimedia Commons) 

Environmental scientists have described for us the nightmare referred to above. A planet so toxic in its air, water, and soil that life is no longer viable here except, perhaps, in a few places under plexiglass domes.

The physicist’s nightmare is even more horrifying. Einstein said our gaining control of nuclear energy set us drifting toward “unparalleled catastrophe.” ^4.

            

                   Hiroshima after atomic bombing  (credit: Wikipedia Commons)

We have a reasonable chance of surviving if and only if we can work out a new moral code that we can all agree to live by. Not a moral code that prescribes every citizen’s behavior in every detail. That would be unrealistic. But one that provides guidelines that motivates us all, regardless of culture, to treat each other with respect and to let others live their way as long as it is not directly harming ours. A code by which individuals and groups right up to the size of whole nations can resolve disputes.  A set of principles that will enable a global rule of law. A few empires of the past, containing many nations inside wide borders, have come close to this ideal. In our time, we must do better still.

This book is going to attempt to solve the core problem in the dilemma of our time, the dilemma that has left us not so much struggling to live up to our moral ideals, as wondering what those ideals are, and whether such things as ideals are even relevant in our world today. Do right and wrong even really exist?

Moral relativism is the position in Philosophy that says there is no basis in the factual, material world for any moral “values”. Relativists argue that no one has made a sound, evidence-based case for any moral code because no such case can be made. Moral codes are just expressions of tastes that were programmed into us as children. Right and wrong are words that may make sense in a particular society at a particular time, but they are only tastes that most of the people in that society agree on for the time being. They change from era to era and place to place. In short, the only honest thing one can say about morality, according to moral relativists, is: "When in Rome, do as the Romans do."

On the other hand, moral realism says that there must be a material, scientific explanation for moral codes – what they are, and how and why they work.

All phenomena in reality can be explained in scientific ways. That’s a basic tenet of Science. Moral realism sets out to find a scientific explanation for what we call our “moral codes” – the justifications we give when we’re asked why we make the choices that we make and do the things that we do .

In this book, I will work out a solution to our moral dilemma, a solution based not on holy texts or personal epiphanies, but on logical arguments supported by replicable evidence. However, I admit that readers will have to give their full attention to following the arguments I present here. This book aims to fill a tall order; the case for its thesis can’t be put in a line or two.

I also begin with a warning. I will try hard to make my case objective, but I know it is also going to become personal. I don’t apologize for this. I will discuss matters that I believe are profoundly important for us all – in all aspects of our lives, from international relations to daily social confluence.

This book is going to start out being objective in tone, but later, it’s going to get personal. As it must. If I didn’t “care” deeply, I would not write at all.      

But back to the main task. The big question in our Age of Science is this one: How can an informed human being in modern times find balance between Morality and Science? These two domains of knowledge are usually viewed as being incompatible.  

The answer is that they are so far from incompatible that the pronoun “they” doesn’t fit here. In reality, only a single system of ideas is being discussed. There is a way of understanding all that we know, a way that integrates all our models of our world, including the moral ones and the scientific ones. In short, when correctly understood, Science is Religion.

                       

                       

                

                       Human facing raw nature: Wanderer Above The Sea Of Fog

   (credit: Caspar David Friedrich [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons)

So. In this book, I aim first to do what Philosophers call "derive ought from is.” Show there is a logical base for a moral code (the "ought" part) discernible in the facts of the physical world (the "is" part). In short, a moral code is visible in the events of the real world, and we can figure that code out simply by looking at the evidence – in Science, in History, and in daily life. This claim will then serve, in my last two chapters, as the core of my case for theism.

This book is an attempt to solve the dilemma of our time. I think I’ve untangled that dilemma.

Someone has to solve this dilemma or we’re going to destroy ourselves.

I have to try.                

Notes

1. Emrys Westacott, “Moral Relativism,” International Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2012.http://www.iep.utm.edu/moral-re/#SH3b.

2. Albert Einstein, Leopold Infeld, “The Evolution of Physics: From Early Concepts to Relativity and Quanta,” (Touchstone Books, 1934).

3. Benedict, Ruth "Anthropology and the Abnormal," Journal of General Psychology, 10, 1934.

4. Albert Einstein, from a telegram to prominent Americans, May 24, 1946.