The Science God (Introduction continued) 

Our era sees itself as 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 many in the tribe to be in violation 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 gradually freed us from it.

However, at the same time, science has all but destroyed the moral codes we once used to guide us as we made choices, acted, and moved 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.

Science has given us many wondrous technologies, 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, an ancient custom in many lands, 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, 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, went further. She 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. Our records tell us that in the past,  we've had plenty of mystics, texts, and personal epiphanies, but they have too often been at odds with each other, and their practical results often have proved inconsistent. They look unreliable. So, the world's people are more and more looking to science and scientists to do all sorts of tasks, among them to create a moral code for us all to live by. However, in response to this call, science has refused to even attempt to say anything useful about what makes "right" right or "wrong" wrong. 

 

                                   (Kentaro IEMOTO) (via Wikimedia Commons) 

And with no comprehensive moral code to guide us, where are we by trial and error going to end up? Environmental scientists describe for us a nightmare planet with such toxic air, water, and soil that human life is no longer viable on this planet, 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 the hazards that we’ve created 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 motivate 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 aimed for, and for long stretches of time, even achieved, societies close to this ideal. In our time, we must do better still.

This book attempts to solve the dilemma of our time, the dilemma that has left us not so much struggling to live up to our moral values, as wondering what those values are, and whether such things as moral values 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”. 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."