Science of Good and Evil

by Michael Shermer

  Although in science we eschew intuition because of its many perils, we would do well to remember the Captain Kirk Principle that intellect and intuition are complementary, not competitive. Without intellect our intuition may drive us unchecked into emotional chaos. Without intuition we risk failing to resolve complex social dynamics and moral dilemmas, as Dr. McCoy explained to the indecisive rational Kirk: “We all have our darker side—we need it! It’s half of what we are. It’s not really ugly—it’s human. Without the negative side you couldn’t be the captain, and you know it! Your strength of command lies mostly in him.”

  Provisional Morality and Moral Justice: The Best We Can Do

  Provisional ethics fits well with the research on moral intuition because how we respond to moral problems depends on a combination of inherited moral sentiments and learned moral rules, the combination of which is often too complex to depend entirely on intellect and reason. There are moral principles that are provisionally true, and we can know and apply these principles best by listening to our moral intuition as well as our moral intellect. The little voice inside should be talking to the little calculator inside.

  It cannot be overemphasized that provisional ethics is not relative or situational ethics, nor is it an attempt to eschew moral responsibility or escape moral freedom. As an evolved mechanism of human psychology, the moral sense is transcendent of individuals and groups and belongs to the species. Moral principles, derived from the moral sense, are not absolute, where they apply to all people in all cultures under all circumstances all of the time. Neither are moral principles relative, entirely determined by circumstance, culture, and history. Moral principles are provisionally true—they apply to most people in most cultures in most circumstances most of the time. Although we are all subject to laws of nature and forces of culture and history that shape our thoughts and behaviors, we are free moral agents responsible for our actions because none of us can ever know in its entirety the near-infinite causal net that determines each of our individual lives. Good things and bad things happen to both good and bad people. There is no absolute and ultimate judge to mete out rewards and punishments at some future date beyond the human career on planet Earth. But since moral principles are provisionally true for most people most of the time in most circumstances, there are individual culpability and social justice within human communities that produce feelings of righteousness and guilt and mete out rewards and punishments such that there is at least provisional justice. Provisional ethics leads to provisional justice.

  Provisional ethics may not be ultimately satisfying for the moral absolutist, but since there is no justification outside of an omnipotent and omniscient God for such moral absolutism—and there is no convincing scientific evidence that such a God exists—then provisional ethics and provisional justice are the best we can do. If you want more— if you need some source of moral verification and objectification outside of yourself, your society, and your species—then you are living in the grip of a supernatural illusion. I’m sorry, but you can’t get more without eschewing reality. Given the nature of our universe, our world, and our selves, this is the best we can do. Fortunately, it is enough. It leads to a moral humanity because a moral nature is part of human nature. It exists independent and outside of any individual because it belongs to the species. As long as humanity continues so too will morality, provisional though it may be.

  7

  HOW WE ARE IMMORAL: RIGHT AND WRONG AND HOW TO TELL THE DIFFERENCE

  No man chooses evil because it is evil; he only mistakes it for happiness, which is the good he seeks.

  —Mary Wollstonecraft, Vindication of the Rights of Woman, 1792

  In the 1991 comedy film City Slickers, the story of three men turning forty (played by Billy Crystal, Daniel Stern, and Bruno Kirby) who go on a New Mexico cattle drive, there is much discussion about the purpose of life, the meaning of death, and especially sex. Crystal’s character Mitch, for example, explains to Phil and Ed (Stern and Kirby, respectively) that “Women need a reason to have sex. Men just need a place.” Despite this comedic observation, Mitch has been happily (and faithfully) married to his wife, Barbara, for many years; by contrast, Phil has been in a miserable marriage to his boss’s daughter and just got busted by his wife for having an affair with a young checkout clerk; Ed is the consummate playboy bachelor who recently—although somewhat reluctantly—tied the knot with his latest flame. As is often the case among men, the talk turns to sex and infidelity. Ed wants to know if Mitch would cheat on Barbara if he wouldn’t get caught. Mitch reminds him of what just happened to Phil. So Ed offers this scenario:

  ED: A spaceship lands and the most beautiful woman you ever saw gets out. And all she wants is to have the best sex in the universe with you. And the second it’s over she flies away for eternity. No one would ever know. You’re telling me you wouldn’t do it?

  MITCH: No. Because what you’re describing actually happened to my cousin Ronald, and his wife did find out about it at the beauty parlor. They know everything there! Look, what I’m saying is it wouldn’t make it all right if Barbara didn’t know. I’d know. And I wouldn’t like myself. That’s all.

  Ed persists in pushing Mitch with a cereal analogy, explaining that he has been selecting from a Kellogg’s variety pack all his life but now he has to eat the same cereal every day. “And then you wake up one morning, and you’re just not hungry anymore.” The problem, Ed confesses, is that his wife, Kim, wants to start a family, which means to Ed that he will never have sex with another woman. Poor Phil, whose life appears rather dismal at the moment, can’t understand why being married “to this gorgeous twenty-four-year-old underwear model who thinks the sun rises and sets in your pants” is not enough for Ed. Ed retorts: “You don’t understand. I don’t want to screw around on Kim.” Phil admonishes him: “So don’t.”

  Can Ed “just say no” to the temptation of an extramarital affair? Was Phil justified in having an affair since his wife was a ball-busting banshee who regularly refused him sex? Are Mitch’s high moral standards the norm or the exception, and is his reason for not accepting the ultimate offer of safe sex—that even if his wife never found out he would know and that is reason enough—a higher moral reason than fear of retribution? In this chapter we shall consider how we are immoral by examining a number of principles that help us tell the difference between right and wrong. We will also apply these principles to a number of ethical issues (truth telling and lying, adultery, pornography, abortion, cloning and genetic engineering, and animal rights) to examine where science, fuzzy logic, and provisional ethics can help us resolve them, or at least inform our moral decisions.

  The Ask God Principle: Religious Right and Wrong

  At the underpinning of all theistic ethical systems is the belief that without God there is no ultimate basis for determining right and wrong. We have already seen the limitations of theistic ethics, but there are two additional questions to consider here: (1) what if the moral issue is not discussed in the sacred writings of the individual’s religion? Cloning, stem cell research, and genetic engineering are not discussed in the Bible, of course, so what are Jews and Christians to think about these very real moral issues? They either have to attempt to infer from ancient biblical writings something that is loosely related to the modern moral issue, or they have to think it through for themselves; (2) what if the moral issue is discussed but is clearly inappropriate or outright wrong in its moral command? With both of these limitations the believer is often forced to selectively read the sacred text, picking and choosing passages without consistency.

  Consider, for example, the many Old Testament moral rules that make one blanch with embarrassment for believers. (All biblical passages cited below are from the Revised Standard Version.) For emancipated modern women thinking of adorning themselves in business attire that may resemble men’s business wear (or for guys who dig cross dressing), Deut. 22:5 does not look kindly on such behaviors: “A woman shall not wear anything
that pertains to a man, nor shall a man put on a woman’s garment; for whoever does these things is an abomination to the Lord your God.” An even worse abomination is a rebellious child. Deut. 21:18—21 offers this parental moral guideline: “If a man has a stubborn and rebellious son, who will not obey the voice of his father or the voice of his mother, and, though they chastise him, will not give heed to them, then his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city at the gate of the place where he lives, and they shall say to the elders of his city, ‘This our son is stubborn and rebellious, he will not obey our voice; he is a glutton and a drunkard.’ Then all the men of the city shall stone him to death with stones; so you shall purge the evil from your midst; and all Israel shall hear, and fear.”

  If that isn’t ridiculous enough, here is the Bible’s recommendation on how to deal with women who may or may not have had sex before marriage. According to Deut. 22:13—21: “If any man takes a wife, and goes in to her, and then spurns her, and charges her with shameful conduct, and brings an evil name upon her, saying, ‘I took this woman, and when I came near her, I did not find in her the tokens of virginity,’ then the father of the young woman and her mother shall take and bring out the tokens of her virginity to the elders of the city in the gate.” (For those not accustomed to reading between the biblical lines, the phrase “goes in to her” should be taken literally, and “the tokens of virginity” means the hymen and the blood on the sheet from a virgin’s first sexual experience.) If the father of the bride can produce the tokens of virginity, then he “shall spread the garment before the elders of the city. Then the elders of that city shall take the man [the husband] and whip him; and they shall fine him a hundred shekels of silver, and give them to the father of the young woman, because he has brought an evil name upon a virgin of Israel; and she shall be his wife.” However, lo to the woman who has dared to have sex before marriage. “But if the thing is true, that the tokens of virginity were not found in the young woman, then they shall bring out the young woman to the door of her father’s house, and the men of her city shall stone her to death with stones, because she has wrought folly in Israel by playing the harlot in her father’s house; so you shall purge the evil from the midst of you.”

  Finally, for those of you who have succumbed to the temptations of the flesh at some time in your married life, Deut. 22:22 does not bode well: “If a man is found lying with the wife of another man, both of them shall die, the man who lay with the woman, and the woman; so you shall purge the evil from Israel.” Do Jews and Christians really want to legislate biblical morality, especially in light of the revelations of the past couple of decades of the rather low moral character of some of our more prominent religious leaders? And on the legislation question, those on the religious right who are lobbying for the Ten Commandments to be posted in public schools and courthouses should note that the very first one prohibits anyone from believing in any other gods besides Yahweh. (The first commandment is “Thou shall have no other gods before me,” a passage indicating that polytheism was commonplace at the time and that Yahweh was, among other things, a jealous god.) That is to say, by posting the Ten Commandments, we are sending the message that any nonbelievers, or believers in any other god, are not welcome in our public schools and courtrooms. Fortunately, the First Amendment of the Bill of Rights prohibits such religious exclusionary practices.

  To be fair, not all biblical ethics are this antiquated and extreme. There is much to pick and choose from that is useful for our thinking about moral issues. The problem here is consistency, and selecting ethical guidelines that support our particular personal or social prejudices and preferences. When slavery was the social norm, it was simple for proslavery defenders to point to passages such as those in Exod. 21, which outlines the rules for the proper handling of slaves, for example: “when you buy a Hebrew slave, he shall serve six years, and in the seventh he shall go out free, for nothing,” and “when a man sells his daughter as a slave, she shall not go out as the male slaves do,” and, finally, slave families should be kept together, unless the master gave the slave a wife, who then bore him children, in which case the master gets to keep the woman and children when the slave is sold. If you are going to claim the Bible as your primary (or only) code of ethics and proclaim (say) that homosexuality is sinful and wrong because the Bible says so, then to be consistent you should kill rebellious youth, nonvirginal premarried women, and adulterous men and women. Since most today would not endorse that level of consistency, why pick on gays and lesbians but cut some slack for disobedient children, promiscuous women, and adulterous men and women? And why aren’t promiscuous men subject to the same punishment as women? The answer is that in that culture, at that time, men legislated and women obeyed. Thankfully, we have moved beyond that culture. But what this means is that we need a new set of morals and an ethical system designed for our time and place, not one scripted for a pastoral/agricultural people who lived 4,000 years ago. The Bible and other sacred texts have wonderfully edifying and sometimes transcendent passages, but we can do better.

  The Ask First Principle: Secular Right and Wrong

  If we cannot reliably turn to the Bible and other sacred texts to determine moral right and wrong, to whom shall we turn? If we cannot ask God, whom shall we ask? One answer can be found in the first moral principle, the Golden Rule: “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.” The Golden Rule is a derivative of the basic principle of exchange reciprocity and reciprocal altruism, and thus evolved in our Paleolithic ancestors as one of the primary moral sentiments. (If I’m right about this, then it means that religion did not invent the Golden Rule and other moral principles; it co-opted them, then codified them.) In this principle there are two moral agents: the moral doer and the moral receiver. A moral question arises when the moral doer is uncertain how the moral receiver will accept and respond to the action under question. In its essence this is what the Golden Rule is telling us to do. By asking yourself, How would I feel if this were done unto me? you are asking, How would others feel if I did it unto them? But the Golden Rule has a severe limitation to it: what if the moral recipient thinks differently from the moral doer? What if you would not mind having action X done unto you, but someone else would mind it? Most men, for example, are much more receptive toward unsolicited offers of sex than are women. Most men, then, in considering whether to approach a woman with an offer of unsolicited sex, should not ask themselves how they would feel if the roles were reversed. We need to take the Golden Rule one step further, through what I call the ask first principle.

  There is one surefire test to find out whether an action is right or wrong: ask first. The moral agent should ask the moral recipient whether the behavior in question is moral or immoral. If you aren’t sure that the potential recipient of your action will react in the same manner you would react to the moral behavior in question, then ask. Consider an easy test of the ask first principle—adultery. If you want to know if having an extramarital affair is moral or immoral, ask first the potentially affected moral recipient—your spouse: “Honey, is it okay if I sleep with someone else?” You will receive your moral answer swiftly and without equivocation. In this example, as with so many others, you do not actually have to ask the question to know the answer. The thought experiment alone should give you a strong sense of what is right and wrong.

  Such moral thought experiments are at the heart of moral reasoning. For this process you can monitor your own sense of guilt and other emotions as a guideline. Imagine, in the above example, how you would feel if your partner had sex with someone else. I mean, literally imagine it. For a few people, perhaps, their marriages and relationships are so dead that such fantasies have no effect—truly a sign that the emotional attachment has been severed. For most people, however, imagining their partners having sexual relations with others is extremely emotionally disruptive. There is, in fact, solid scientific research on this subject. Evolutionary psycholo
gist David Buss wired up subjects to monitor their pulse, blood pressure, breathing rate, and perspiration (the basic measurements used by the polygraph, or lie detector). He then asked them to imagine their significant other having sex with someone else. For most of Buss’s subjects, their heart rate and blood pressure went through the roof, their breathing became rapid and forced, and their bodies perspired profusely.1 It is not a big leap of the imagination for the moral doer to project that response onto the moral receiver to get an answer to the moral question.

  The Happiness Principle: Personal Right and Wrong

  In addition to asking the moral receiver, what other criteria might we use to judge the rightness or wrongness of an action? For millennia, philosophers and observers of human behavior have noted that we have a tendency to seek pleasure and avoid pain. Pleasure and pain encompass many things, from pure physical to pure ethereal states. We may find pleasure in a kiss or an idea. We may experience pain in a slap or an insult. Happiness is a good synonym for pleasure, and unhappiness is a good synonym for pain, and thus we may state that one of the fundamental drives of human nature is that we all strive for greater levels of happiness and avoid greater levels of unhappiness, however these may be personally defined. Happiness and unhappiness, then, are emotions that evolved as part of the suite of emotions that make up the human psyche.