The Moral Landscape: How Science Can Determine Human Values
Some have argued that the "viability" of an organism is the primary issue here: for without some extraordinary intervention such twins cannot survive. But many fully developed human beings answer to this condition of utter dependency at some point in their lives (e.g., a kidney patient on dialysis). And embryos themselves are not viable unless placed in the proper conditions. Indeed, embryos could be engineered to not be viable past a certain age even if implanted in a womb. Would this obviate the ethical concerns of those who oppose embryonic stem-cell research?
At the time of this writing, the Obama administration still has not removed the most important impediments to embryonic stem-cell research. Currently, federal funding is only allowed for work on stem cells that have been derived from surplus embryos at fertility clinics. This delicacy is a clear concession to the religious convictions of the American electorate. While Collins seems willing to go further and support research on embryos created through somatic-cell nuclear transfer (SCNT), he is very far from being a voice of ethical clarity in this debate. For instance, he considers embryos created through SCNT to be distinct from those formed through the union of sperm and egg because the former are "not part of God's plan to create a human individual" while "the latter is very much part of God's plan, carried out through the millennia by our own species and many others." 95 What is to be gained in a serious discussion of bioethics by talking about "God's plan"? If such embryos were brought to term and became sentient and suffering human beings, would it be ethical to kill these people and harvest their organs because they had been conceived apart from "God's plan"? While Collins's stewardship of the NIH seems unlikely to impede our mincing progress on embryonic stem-cell research, his appointment is one of President Obama's efforts to split the difference between real science and real ethics on the one hand and religious superstition and taboo on the other.
Collins has written that "science offers no answers to the most pressing questions of human existence" and that "the claims of atheistic materialism must be steadfastly resisted." One can only hope that these convictions will not affect his judgment at the NIH. As I have argued throughout this book, understanding human well-being at the level of the brain might very well offer some answers to the most pressing questions of human existence—questions like, Why do we suffer? How can we achieve the deepestforms of happiness? Or, indeed, Is it possible to love one's neighbor as oneself? And wouldn't any effort to explain human nature without reference to a soul, and to explain morality without reference to God, constitute "atheistic materialism"? Is it really wise to entrust the future of biomedical research in the United States to a man who believes that understanding ourselves through science is impossible, while our resurrection from death is inevitable?
When I criticized President Obama's appointment of Collins in The New York Times, many readers considered it an overt expression of "intolerance." 96 For instance, the biologist Kenneth Miller claimed in a letter to the editor that my view was purely the product of my own "deeply held prejudices against religion" and that I opposed Collins merely because "he is a Christian." 97 Writing in The Guardian, Andrew Brown called my criticism of Collins a "fantastically illiberal and embryonically totalitarian position that goes against every possible notion of human rights and even the American constitution." Miller and Brown clearly feel that unjustified beliefs and disordered thinking should not be challenged as long as they are associated with a mainstream religion—and that to do so is synonymous with bigotry. They are not alone.
There is now a large and growing literature—spanning dozens of books and hundreds of articles—attacking Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennett, Christopher Hitchens, and me (the so-called New Atheists) for our alleged incivility, bias, and ignorance of how "sophisticated" believers practice their faith. It is often said that we caricature religion, taking its most extreme forms to represent the whole. We do no such thing. We simply do what a paragon of sophisticated faith like Francis Collins does: we take the specific claims of religion seriously.
Many of our secular critics worry that if we oblige people to choose between reason and faith, they will choose faith and cease to support scientific research; if, on the other hand, we ceaselessly reiterate that there is no conflict between religion and science, we might cajole great multitudes into accepting the truth of evolution (as though this were an end in itself). Here is a version of this charge that, I fear, most people would accept, taken from journalist Chris Mooney and marine biologist Sheril Kirshenbaum's book Unscientific America:
If the goal is to create an America more friendly toward science and reason, the combativeness of the New Atheists is strongly counterproductive. If anything, they work in ironic combination with their dire enemies, the anti-science conservative Christians who populate the creation science and intelligent design movements, to ensure we'll continue to be polarized over subjects like the teaching of evolution when we don't have to be. America is a very religious nation, and if forced to choose between faith and science, vast numbers of Americans will select the former. The New Atheists err in insisting that such a choice needs to be made. Atheism is not the logically inevitable outcome of scientific reasoning, any more than intelligent design is a necessary corollary of religious faith. A great many scientists believe in God with no sense of internal contradiction, just as many religious believers accept evolution as the correct theory to explain the development, diversity, and inter-relatedness of life on Earth. The New Atheists, like the fundamentalists they so despise, are setting up a false dichotomy that can only damage the cause of scientific literacy for generations to come. It threatens to leave science itself caught in the middle between extremes, unable to find cover in a destructive, seemingly unending, culture war. 98
The first thing to observe is that Mooney and Kirshenbaum are confused about the nature of the problem. The goal is not to get more Americans to merely accept the truth of evolution (or any other scientific theory); the goal is to get them to value the principles of reasoning and educated discourse that now make a belief in evolution obligatory. Doubt about evolution is merely a symptom of an underlying condition; the condition is faith itself—conviction without sufficient reason, hope mistaken for knowledge, bad ideas protected from good ones, good ideas obscured by bad ones, wishful thinking elevated to a principle of salvation, etc. Mooney and Kirshenbaum seem to imagine that we can get people to value intellectual honesty by lying to them.
While it is invariably advertised as an expression of "respect" for people of faith, the accommodationism that Mooney and Kirshenbaum recommend is nothing more than naked condescension, motivated by fear. They assure us that people will choose religion over science, no matter how good a case is made against religion. In certain contexts, this fear is probably warranted. I wouldn't be eager to spell out the irrationality of Islam while standing in the Great Mosque in Mecca. But let's be honest about how Mooney and Kirshenbaum view public discourse in the United States: Watch what you say, or the Christian mob will burn down the Library of Alexandria all over again. By comparison, the "combative-ness" of the "New Atheists" seems quite collegial. We are merely guilty of assuming that our fellow Homo sapiens possess the requisite intelligence and emotional maturity to respond to rational argument, satire, and ridicule on the subject of religion—just as they respond to these discursive pressures on all other subjects. Of course, we could be wrong. But let's admit which side in this debate currently views our neighbors as dangerous children and which views them as adults who might prefer not to be completely mistaken about the nature of reality.
Finally, we come to the kernel of confusion that has been the subject of this section—the irrelevant claim that "a great many scientists believe in God with no sense of internal contradiction." 99 The fact that certain people can reason poorly with a clear conscience—or can do so while saying that they have a clear conscience—proves absolutely nothing about the compatibility of religious and scientific ideas, goals, or ways of thinking. It is possible to be wrong a
nd to not know it (we call this "ignorance"). It is possible to be wrong and to know it, but to be reluctant to incur the social cost of admitting this publicly (we call this "hypocrisy"). And it may also be possible to be wrong, to dimly glimpse this fact, but to allow the fear of being wrong to increase one's commitment to one's erroneous beliefs (we call this "self-deception"). It seems clear that these frames of mind do an unusual amount of work in the service of religion.
There is an epidemic of scientific ignorance in the United States. This isn't surprising, as very few scientific truths are self-evident and many are deeply counterintuitive. It is by no means obvious that empty space has structure or that we share a common ancestor with both the housefly and the banana. It can be difficult to think like a scientist (even, we have begun to see, when one is a scientist). But it would seem that few things make thinking like a scientist more difficult than an attachment to religion.
Chapter 5 THE FUTURE OF HAPPINESS
No one has ever mistaken me for an optimist. And yet when I consider one of the more pristine sources of pessimism—the moral development of our species—I find reasons for hope. Despite our perennial bad behavior, our moral progress seems to me unmistakable. Our powers of empathy are clearly growing. Today, we are surely more likely to act for the benefit of humanity as a whole than at any point in the past.
Of course, the twentieth century delivered some unprecedented horrors. But those of us who live in the developed world are becoming increasingly disturbed by our capacity to do one another harm. We are less tolerant of "collateral damage" in times of war—undoubtedly because we now see images of it—and we are less comfortable with ideologies that demonize whole populations, justifying their abuse or outright destruction.
Consider the degree to which racism in the United States has diminished in the last hundred years. Racism is still a problem, of course. But the evidence of change is undeniable. Most readers will have seen photos of lynchings from the first half of the twentieth century, in which whole towns turned out, as though for a carnival, simply to enjoy the sight of some young man or woman being tortured to death and strung up on a tree or lamppost for all to see. These pictures often reveal bankers, lawyers, doctors, teachers, church elders, newspaper editors, policemen, even the occasional senator and congressman, smiling in their Sunday best, having consciously posed for a postcard photo under a dangling, lacerated, and often partially cremated person. Such images are shocking enough. But realize that these genteel people often took souvenirs of the body—teeth, ears, fingers, kneecaps, genitalia, and internal organs—home to show their friends and family. Sometimes, they even displayed these ghoulish trophies in their places of business. 1
Consider the following response to boxer Jack Johnson's successful title defense against Jim Jeffries, the so-called "Great White Hope":
A Word to the Black Man:
Do not point your nose too high
Do not swell your chest too much
Do not boast too loudly
Do not be puffed up
Let not your ambition be inordinate
Or take a wrong direction
Remember you have done nothing at all
You are just the same member of society you were last week
You are on no higher plane
Deserve no new consideration
And will get none
No man will think a bit higher of you Because your complexion is the same Of that of the victor at Reno 1
A modern reader can only assume that this dollop of racist hatred appeared on a leaflet printed by the Ku Klux Klan. On the contrary, this was the measured opinion of the editors at the Los Angeles Times exactly a century ago. Is it conceivable that our mainstream media will ever again give voice to such racism? I think it far more likely that we will proceed along our current path: racism will continue to lose its subscribers; the history of slavery in the United States will become even more flabbergasting to contemplate; and future generations will marvel at the the ways that we, too, failed in our commitment to the common good. We will embarrass our descendants, just as our ancestors embarrass us. This is moral progress.
I am bolstered in this expectation by my view of the moral landscape: the belief that morality is a genuine sphere of human inquiry, and not a mere product of culture, suggests that progress is possible. If moral truths transcend the contingencies of culture, human beings should eventually converge in their moral judgments. I am painfully aware, however, that we are living at a time when Muslims riot by the hundreds of thousands over cartoons, Catholics oppose condom use in villages decimated by AIDS, and one of the few "moral" judgments guaranteed to unite the better part of humanity is that homosexuality is an abomination. And yet I can detect moral progress even while believing that most people are profoundly confused about good and evil. I may be a greater optimist than I thought.
Science and Philosophy
Throughout this book, I have argued that the split between facts and values—and, therefore, between science and morality—is an illusion. However, the discussion has taken place on at least two levels: I have reviewed scientific data that, I believe, supports my argument; but I have made a more basic, philosophical case, the validity of which does not narrowly depend on current data. Readers may wonder how these levels are related.
First, we should observe that a boundary between science and philosophy does not always exist. Einstein famously doubted Bohr's view of quantum mechanics, and yet both physicists were armed with the same experimental findings and mathematical techniques. Was their disagreement a matter of "philosophy" or "physics"? We cannot always draw a line between scientific thinking and "mere" philosophy because all data must be interpreted against a background theory, and different theories come bundled with a fair amount of contextual reasoning. A dualist who believes in the existence of immaterial souls might say that the entire field of neuroscience is beholden to the philosophy of physicalism (the view that mental events should be understood as physical events), and he would be right. The assumption that the mind is the product of the brain is integral to almost everything neuroscientists do. Is physicalism a matter of "philosophy" or "neuroscience"? The answer may depend upon where one happens to be standing on a university campus. Even if we grant that only philosophers tend to think about "physicalism" per se, it remains a fact that any argument or experiment that put this philosophical assumption in doubt would be a landmark finding for neuroscience—likely the most important in its history. So while there are surely some philosophical views that make no contact with science, science is often a matter of philosophy in practice. It is probably worth recalling that the original name for the physical sciences was, in fact, "natural philosophy."
Throughout the sections of this book that could be aptly described as "philosophical," I make many points that have scientific implications. Most scientists treat facts and values as though they were distinct and irreconcilable in principle. I have argued that they cannot be, as anything of value must be valuable to someone (whether actually or potentially)—and, therefore, its value should be attributable to facts about the well-being of conscious creatures. One could call this a "philosophical" position, but it is one that directly relates to the boundaries of science. If I am correct, science has a far wider purview than many of its practitioners suppose, and its findings may one day impinge upon culture in ways that they do not expect. If I am wrong, the boundaries of science are as narrow as most people assume. This difference of view might be ascribed to "philosophy," but it is a difference that will determine the practice of science in the years to come.
Recall the work of Jonathan Haidt, discussed at some length in chapter 2: Haidt has convinced many people, both inside and outside the scientific community, that there are two types of morality: liberal morality focuses on two primary concerns (harm and fairness), while conservative morality emphasizes five (harm, fairness, authority, purity, and group loyalty). As a result, many people believe that liberals and conservatives
are bound to view human behavior in incompatible ways and that science will never be able to say that one approach to morality is "better" or "truer" or more "moral" than the other.
I think that Haidt is wrong, for at least two reasons. First, I suspect that the extra factors he attributes to conservatives can be understood as further concerns about harm. That is, I believe that conservatives have the same morality as liberals do, they just have different ideas about how harm accrues in this universe. 3 There is also some research to suggest that conservatives are more prone to feelings of disgust, and this seems to especially influence their moral judgments on the subject of sex. 4 More important, whatever the differences between liberals and conservatives may or may not be, if my argument about the moral landscape is correct, one approach to morality is likely more conducive to human flourishing than the other. While my disagreement with Haidt may be more a matter of argument than of experiment at present, whichever argument prevails will affect the progress of science, as well as science's impact on the rest of culture.