One of the arguments creationists use on occasion
to justify their belief in the Bible is that a society that doesn’t have a
religious book that forms the basis for their moral values then that society
will descend into some sort of a moral pit.
Murder, robbery and rape will run rampant.
Putting their argument another way, even if
evolution is scientifically valid they say that we shouldn’t acknowledge that
because of the very immoral society that will necessarily result if that society’s
religious book – e.g. the Bible – is discarded as not God’s Word.
Often those people will argue that evolution will
encourage atheism and atheism will reduce the moral values in a society. So the acceptance of evolution is a
stepping-stone to atheism. They believe
that atheism is morally bad and so evolution is sort of an enabler of moral
evils even if it is not the direct cause.
One example of the use of that argument comes
directly from a religious leader[1]:
“Evolution
is the foundation of an immoral worldview.”
That argument is rampant with logical flaws.
First of all, history demonstrates that the
acceptance of scientific facts doesn’t necessarily diminish the influence of
the Bible.
Prior to, and during the Reformation in Europe,
all Christian theologians interpreted the Bible as saying that the universe is
centered on Earth – geocentrism. In the
21st century it is difficult to understand the theological
importance of that.
The Earth was considered to be a very special
place since it was where God put creatures “made in his image”. That is a self-evident fact if the Earth is,
indeed, at the geometric center of the universe.
However that is much less obvious if, instead, the
Earth is a mid-sized planet going around a mediocre star in an obscure part of
a galaxy with many billions of similar stars within a larger universe with many
billions of similar galaxies. Those
conditions make it much less likely that the Earth is the “special place” that
the Bible says it is.
Yet now, there is very little argument in favor of
geocentrism. The scientific facts are so
persuasive that no significant theologians still argue in favor of the argument
for the Earth being at the center of the universe.
So this is an example of a scientific fact that was
initially thought to go against the Bible and even against significant
theological claims. That fact is now
widely accepted. Has that eliminated the
influence of the Bible on our society?
Hardly.
Theologians adapted their beliefs.
They found ways to reconcile the Bible with science.
There would seem to be no doubt that the same
thing can happen with evolution. Some
theologians have already made that accommodation. In fact some theologians welcomed Darwinian
evolution when that idea was first presented to them.
Francisco Ayala, a Roman Catholic theologian as
well as a respected scientist, put it like this[2]:
“Traditional
theology distinguishes three kinds of evil; moral or sin, the evil originated
by human beings. Pain and suffering as experienced by humans. And physical evil
such as floods, tornados, earthquakes and the imperfections of all creatures.
“Theology
has an answer for the first 2; sin I a consequence of free will. Pain and
suffering are caused by war, injustice and other forms of human wrong doing,
they are also a consequence of free will; people choose to inflict harm on one
another. On the flip side, good deeds people do can alleviate human suffering.
“What
about natural disasters? Enter modern science into the theologians reasoning.
Physical events are built on the structure of the world itself. The extreme
violence of supernova explosions and chaotic frenzy at galactic centers are the
outcome of the laws of physics, not the design of a fearsome deity. If God is
the designer o life, whence the lion's cruelty, the snake's poison, and the
parasites that secure their existence only by destroying their host?
“The
theory of evolution provided the solution to the remaining component of the
problem of evil. As floods and drought were a necessary consequence of the
fabric of the physical world, predators and parasites, dysfunctions and
diseases were a consequence of the evolution of life. They were not a result of
deficient or malevolent design: the features of organisms were not designed by
the Creator.
"Evolution
by natural selection is Darwin's answer to Paley. It is also the solution of
the last prong of the problem of evil. Theology professors in Salamanca saw in
the theory of evolution a significant, even definitive, contribution to
theodicy.”
So there seems to be no doubt that evolution can
be adapted to Christian theology in the same way that geocentrism was.
The second argument against the claim that
acceptance of evolution by a society will diminish moral values is that, if that
is true, we should be able to see some evidence of that since there are
currently a lot of people who believe in evolution.
Of course it’s difficult to quantify “morality”
and therefore find statistics that could be used to compare moral values between
different groups. One statistic that
could be used involves crime rates. It
seems reasonable that higher crime rates, particularly violent crime rates, would tend to be an indication of lower moral
values.
It’s difficult to find statistics relating a
belief in evolution to crime rates. But
there are numerous statistics relating atheism to crime rates. There is, in fact, a correlation between a
belief in evolution and atheism. (It is
obviously an oxymoron to have an atheist believe in an inerrant Bible.) And, in fact, creationists are implying that
evolution leads to atheism and atheism is the cause of a diminishment of moral
values. So we should be able to
relevantly compare atheism to crime rates and get some sense of whether or not
a belief in evolution / atheism does indeed diminish moral values.
It turns out that does not seem to be the case as
a number of statistics show otherwise[3].
Atheists are very much under-represented in
prisons. In the United States, atheists
make up roughly 10% of the general population but less than 1% of the prison
population[4].
From country-to-country, there is a strong
correlation between a high level of atheism and a lower crime rate. “Japan (the most atheistic nation in the G-8)
has the lowest murder rate while the United States (the most Christian nation
in the G-8) has the highest. Japan used to have much stronger religious faith,
and a state religion, and guess what: Japan was remarkably aggressive and
militaristic when "Shinto" was at its peak, and during WW2, when its
Emperor was regarded as a God.
We see a similar trend in states of the United
States. “Louisiana, with America's
highest church attendance rate, has twice the national average murder rate.”
In fact, there seems to be no evidence that
atheism – and implicitly a belief in evolution – lower moral levels in a
society. If anything we see that the
evidence points in the other direction.
Some people argue that it is religion based on a
holy book that causes more evil than anything else. That argument is, I believe, best made by the
physicist Dr. Victor J. Stengler[5]:
“Theists
try to counter all this [claims that religion causes immoral behavior] by
pointing to the mass-murdering atheists of the twentieth century: Stalin, Mao,
Pol Pot, Nicolae Ceaucesco, Enver Hoxa and Kim Jong-Il, as if this somehow
justifies the religious mass murders that they can hardly deny. Hitler is usually included in that list, but
he was a Catholic. Indeed the Roman Catholic Church never
excommunicated a single Nazi but in 2010 it excommunicated nun Margaret McBride
for allowing an abortion that was necessary to save the life of a pregnant
woman suffering from pulmonary hypertension.
“Religion
scholar Hector Avalon has studied documents from the Stalin era that only
became recently available. He points out
that there in no documented statement in which Stalin justified his actions by
saying something such as, ‘I don’t believe in God therefore I am committing
violent act X’. On the other hand, in
all of the examples we saw above of terrorists associated with religion, you
can find direct statements of the form, ‘God wants X, therefore I am committing
violent act Y. Avalon says, ‘We cannot
find any direct evidence that Stalin’s personal agenda killed because of
atheism’.
“Now
you might argue that while Stalin did not kill in the name of atheism, his
godlessness failed to promote any restraint on his behavior. But then, neither has godliness provided much
constraint to the murderers of history.”
This is not to say that religion causes immoral
behavior directly. But it does show that
atheism – and implicitly a belief in evolution – does not cause immoral
behavior. So such arguments are
fallacious.
[1] Moon,
Rev. Sun Myung. 1990 (27 Mar.). Parents day and I.
http://www.unification.net/1990/900327.html
[2] "Darwin's
Gift To Science and Religion", p. 4-5
[3] http://atheism.about.com/b/2004/12/26/atheism-theism-and-violence.htm,
referenced on April 16, 2012
[4]
This particular statistic may have many other explanations. For example, it is possible that prison
inmates who self-identify as atheists may lose rights or be subject to attacks
by non-atheist inmates. They may even
lose out on some of the rare social activities that take place in prison.
[5]
“God and the Folly of Faith”, Prometheus Books, 2012, pp.255-256
