It is the dawn of early man. His opposable thumbs, his large brain, his ability to harness fire, have all come together to give him a talent for weaponry. Now, hunting has become easier and easier as he and his tribe have acquired the ability to be an ultimate predator and inadvertently wipe out his food supply or intentionally wipe out his competitors. He doesn’t though, not because he sees the numbers of herds are dwindling since that wouldn’t happen anyway at this stage of the population of his tribe but because there is something telling him to stop. Something about killing when it is so easily done strikes him as “wrong.” The reason is the natural counter-balance for developing a large brain, which can devise weaponry and act upon the environment, is the accompanying development of morality.
You see, morality – the ability to distinguish between right and wrong – is not a learned behavior or fabricated notion. It is wired through natural selection as a counter balance that keeps “enlightened” species from overrunning a planet and eventually destroying themselves. It is not to a species’ benefit to eliminate its own food supply burning through one subspecies after another down the food chain. What we know about evolution is that it serves the furtherance of life and morality in a civilized or “enlightened” people is a tool for that furtherance.
Evolution as a Tool of God
The most common fallacy about evolution however is the over-importance placed on “survival of the fittest.” You can be the meanest tiger in the jungle but if you’re sterile you are evolutionarily inept. Your genes for meanness are never passed on. The key to understanding evolution and the development of a species lies within “reproductive success.” I literally laugh when I hear that scientists ponder why we walk on two legs. Some theorize it was to see over tall grass, others that we needed to reach food in trees. Those thoughts are silly. We walk on two legs because the females of our species, millions of years ago, found it attractive and those genes for such a talent were passed on. To this date, dancing is still a part of courtship, even in bird species. Reproductive success can explain most if not all of the secondary characteristics of a species, the primary characteristics being those traits which allow the organism to survive to reproductive age. Take baldness for example, do you think it is any coincidence that baldness occurs after the reproductively active years in males?
Back to morality, another secondary characteristic in humans. Imagine the time when humans are developing greater brain capacities, developing weapons, greater hunting techniques, possibly even warfare. What is the natural counterbalance keeping this species from destroying itself and the surrounding environment? Another characteristic in the development of a higher level brain is its ability for self-awareness and the recognition of morality. Read the Bible. This is the point of human evolution that the parable of Adam and Eve is trying to describe. They ate from the Tree of Knowledge and saw that they were naked and became ashamed. Basically, they developed the ability for morality. Now, those of you who read the Bible and take each word literally need to come to terms with the fact that a burning bush or a parting sea pale in comparison, as far as miracles go, to the DNA molecule.
That is a perfect example of how science is serving to reveal the true miracles of God and that God works within our world and the way physics behaves, not outside of it. Likewise those of you who prop up the inconsistencies of three thousand year-old stories from the Bible as proof that God does not exist need to realize how ineptly equipped you are to make such a judgment. You are an evolved being with only five senses who cannot see ultraviolet rays or even hear a dog whistle. You are in no position to judge anyone who recognizes that something greater than themselves must exist.
The question is, though, how did this counterbalance of morality come into being? How is it the genius of evolution (as a tool of God) to foresee this problem of a self-aware human, with the ability to destroy his kind and his environment coming to rise? This is sort of like asking how did matter foresee anti-matter or how does a reproductive cell know how to split, or why does a heart start to beat. Receiving a larger brain is sought of like getting a new iPhone with an app for morality. It comes with the package. Now I could argue that if I received an iPhone with such an app I would have to conclude that an intelligent being put it there inferring intelligent design. I am not going to make that argument since I feel it attaches human-like qualities to something humans can’t comprehend.
Understanding through Physics
Let’s just call those things I mentioned earlier, a heart’s inclination to beat, matter canceling anti-matter, the counterbalance of morality, as divine, outside of our time-space reality and in a quantum world. This means that it’s source is incomprehensible to us. Now, some would argue, relativists in particular, that so-called morality, or God, Himself, is a creation of man not vice versa. This would be a contradiction to one of the basics of physics known as the Law of Conservation of Information (see Leornard Suskind The Black Hole War). This law, where “information” is every or any particle, iota, says that all the information of the universe is fixed. Every particle that exists today in our universe existed at its inception only the arrangement of those particles has changed. These are particles we can see and touch and other particles we could not detect or even comprehend. Consequently, if you were to propose, or your computations would lead to, the loss of information within our universe you would be proposing something that is against this basic law of physics. Likewise, if you were to propose the fabrication or creation of information you would be violating that same law.
Consequently, there are no truly original thoughts, no truly original works. Something cannot come from nothing. In fact, nothing or nothingness cannot exist. Therefore, to suggest that life or man sprouted spontaneously and randomly would be against the laws of physics. Now, one could argue that man has rearranged particles to come up with the notion of God but that would be more an explanation of religion. The truth is that morality must have been present at the moment man transcended his environment with production of weaponry and fighting techniques, becoming self-aware with his larger brain, or else he would have wiped out his food supply or other members of his species. Something had to be there in his brain to tell him, “Stop, don’t do this, something’s wrong with this.” That is when man became human. Long before there was the institution of religion, there was morality and it had to have to come from somewhere. What took it to the next level was evolution.
Our larger brains come predisposed for morality but its furtherance is a function of evolution. Always remember, it’s about “reproductive success.” The gene gatekeeper, if you will, is the female. The female is the nurturer, wired for care-giving, feeding, comforting and any male exhibiting the moral acts of mercy, kindness, respect for nature and other humans would become more attractive than a merciless hunter/killer. It is with this process that man’s morality grew exponentially and how we became civilized.
This is proof that morality has a scientific basis since it serves a purpose in natural selection. This does not negate God; it supports the existence of a God since the Law of Conservation proves that morality cannot stem from nothing. Call that “something” whatever you wish, in either case it is incomprehensible to you. It is not the job of science to contemplate God; that is the job of religion and we don’t teach religion in schools we teach science.
Morality: The Cornerstone of our Republic
Since morality exists, existed long before religion and has a integral part in the evolution of man, it can be taught as science in our schools without mention of God and maintain our country’s obligation to keep religion out of government yet not abandon morality. The next, logical extension of morality is the existence of Natural Law. This is, thankfully, the death-null of relativism. Relativism is at the root of everything that is wrong in our schools and our society and is not to be confused with tolerance. Morality is an innate tool whose use is to recognize Natural Law, certain absolutes from which nature cannot vary. The only problem is we have not mastered its use. There are issues in which gray areas arise, issues we then seek for answers in religion.
Relativism states that there are no absolutes – no rights or wrongs – and that everything is relative. The major problem with that is of course that statement itself is an absolute. What they’re really saying is: “Everything is relative except the fact that everything is relative.” As you can see, it is a flawed, self-defeating philosophy and is the mirror image of socialism, and socialist dictatorships throughout history. What socialists are saying is: “Everything belongs to society except that which is controlled by the state.” Since everything is controlled by the state nothing belongs to society or the people. It is no coincidence that socialists and communists are the first to denounce and even outlaw religion.
Our founding fathers understood Natural Law and morality. It is why Ben Franklin suggested the words “self-evident” to Madison and Jefferson that men with morality have that tool to recognize basic human rights and that these rights stem from a law greater than man’s law and because they have this tool these truths are self-evident. He used the words “self-evident” to replace the words “sacred and undeniable” not to disparage religion but to illustrate that it was even a more basic concept than the complexities and distortions that might come with religious content. If our rights are founded in Natural Law, no man can take them away. They can violate them, imprison you, falsely, for things you might say, but this would be in direct contrast to what America, by their pen, believed.
All this can be and needs to be taught in our schools and can be done so without uttering the word “God” not that He is a shameful concept or something to run away from, but that He is a personal concept whose relationship with the believer must be protected from a societal consolidation at all costs. This is not to say that God is relative. God is absolute. People’s belief in and relationship with God is relative. The government or society as a whole has no claims to a God. Doing so would infer superiority over that God in the governing of people. The power of governing stems from the people, not over them from a government above who has absorbed the power of a God, even if through association only. This is why church and state are separate not because people in the statehouse shouldn’t believe in God but because it is a personal belief and relationship.