What do you think?
Can people ever stop killing each other?
I just watched a TED talk from back in 2013 by a young man named Zack Kopplin. It was entitled, "
The Cost of Teaching Creationism." There were many comments lauding and praising him as a young person being willing to stand up for what he believed and be an activist against what he considered to be pseudoscience. I'm confident that he has matured and improved his craft over the past 10 years. A cursory Google search shows that he went to college and became an activist, promoting science over religion based on a naturalistic (non-supernatural) methodological empiricism approach to life.
He seems to believe that such a stance would be better for mankind. Yet, such a position ignores huge parts of reality and sociological phenomena. Many people who do not believe in any form of supernatural realities ultimately reducing human beings - by definition - to exceedingly sophisticated biological deterministic machines. I can appreciate such idealism and hope for mankind, but taken to it's logical extreme is dangerous and harmful. In addition, our shared human experienced lives can not function based on this position.
Historically we have always had wars, muggings, rapes, human trafficking, slavery, and many other dark and terrible activities. I am an optimist, but I do not think such things will disappear from mankind. I hate thinking this way but the history of mankind tells me otherwise. Of course I can not see into the future but I am convinced that we will not stop evil and Kopplin's idealism seems to not take this into account.
You see, Zack and others in his circle would like to discredit (and thereby shut down by lack of support) organizations like the Discovery Institute and right-wing "Christian" churches and or organizations. To be sure, I too stand opposed to certain "Christian" ideas that strive to philosophically force science and reason into their limited understanding of the Bible in the name of what we call in Christian circles, inerrancy. I can easily argue that ridged young-earth creationism sometimes hurts and not help the cause of the faith community. Even so, removing or rejecting a worldview that includes the supernatural would make evil worse.
The 20th century is an example of what happens when societies and movements use purely naturalistic approaches to justify programs and solutions to their understanding of human problems and to life itself. In his book, "The Greatest Show on Earth", Richard Dawkins promotes the idea that we can breed human beings just like we can breed other animals to get better, stronger, and smarter human beings[1]. That is a very dangerous idea, but logically, there is nothing to morally prevent it if enough people promoted such ideas. Ultimately, if we are exceedingly sophisticated biological deterministic machines, then by nature, we have no intrinsic value.
Promoting such ideas that ultimately eliminate religion from society would likely make the problem of evil get worse, not better. To make the song
Imagine by John Lennon a reality would likely require incredible violence and inhumane policies and laws to bring it about and it would not last even one generation. But, as I said, I don't know the future - no one does, but there is no reason why theist and atheist alike can't work together to try to make life better for each other and for our children and grandchildren.
Human nature allows for
cognitive dissonance so that the non-theist, the naturalist, the humanist and the atheist can sincerely and authentically embrace morals, goodness, love, and purpose. These values are borrowed from the theist and in Western society, ultimately borrowed from Christianity. It also allows for the Christian believer to inconstantly practice things that are patently in conflict with a Christian worldview such as human slavery or promoting an immoral political candidate in the name of God as opposed to being prophetic and calling for change. (When key people from the faith community try to hold society accountable, they loose their heads, like John the Baptist, or they get shot, like Marin Luther King, Jr.)
Human nature as understood theologically from a Christian perspective is flawed and damaged because of what we call the fall of mankind. We do not consider human nature to be natural. We do not embrace the idea that our psyche was being developed in the Serengeti some 200,000 years ago, in our ancestors learning to avoid the saber tooth tiger while hunting and gathering food, and mating like animals! For all of recorded and known history of mankind, the conflict that occur between people that often spill blood have required intervention from others to stop. The intervention is sometimes more violent than the original conflict.
Without police and without armies, chaos regularly occurs. When police were removed or ineffective during the 2005 Hurricane Katrina disaster, some people acted out on their selfish, evil desires[2]. When the riots occurred in 1992 because police officers were acquitted after being charged with excessive force, people lost control[3]. When the soldiers reached Baghdad in the 2003 Iraqi war looking for weapons of mass destruction, the police were not to be found and the people rioted. The solders had no training nor instructions on policing[4].
My point in the three examples above is that, by our nature, we will continue to selfishly do things that hurt each other, often causing death and destruction. Human being are not, by nature, good. Not to mention that in the West, the definition of good is borrowed from some form of Christianity. Christians are accused and blamed for terrible things and asked to defend God for not stepping in and preventing such violence[5]. Even so, the idealism of the young Mr. Kopplin (and I assume and hope he still has) can not account for my premise that human nature will not change. To attempt to eliminate the bad part of our behavior will require, in my assessment, bad things to happen, just as they did in the 20th century because powerful people brought into an ideal that was impossible to achieve.
Finally, if persuasion and reason should prevail in convincing people to NOT act on their selfish proclivities but instead to show more altruistic and good behavior, there will still be a need for policing and courts, and laws. There will still be a need for hospitals and soup kitchens and shelters. Most utopian ideas would likely become dystopian realities. I love Star Trek and the idea of the United Federation of Planets, but before the Vulcans and Klingons show up, we first need to figure out how to live with our flawed human nature and figure out how to get along as one species, and live in peace with each other.
[1] From Chapter 2 of his book, entitled, "DOGS, COWS AND CABBAGES" Dawkins writes, "Political opposition to eugenic breeding of humans sometimes spills over into the almost certainly false assertion that it is impossible. Not only is it immoral, you may hear it said, it wouldn't work. Unfortunately, to say that something is morally wrong, or politically undesirable, is not to say that it wouldn't work. I have no doubt that, if you set your mind to it and had enough time and enough political power, you could breed a race of superior body-builders, or high-jumpers, or shot-putters; pearl fishers, sumo wrestlers, or sprinters; or (I suspect, although now with less confidence because there are no animal precedents) superior musicians, poets, mathematicians or wine-tasters. The reason I am confident about selective breeding for athletic prowess is that the qualities needed are so similar to those that demonstrably work in the breeding of racehorses and carthorses, of greyhounds and sledge dogs. The reason I am still pretty confident about the practical feasibility (though not the moral or political desirability) of selective breeding for mental or otherwise uniquely human traits is that there are so few examples where an attempt at selective breeding in animals has ever failed, even for traits that might have been thought surprising. Who would have thought, for example, that dogs could be bred for sheep-herding skills, or 'pointing', or bull-baiting?"
[2] See NPR story as an example, on some of the violence. Click here: ==> [Post-Katrina Chaos]
[3] This is where Rodney King asked his famous question, "Why cant we all just get along". Click here: ==> [1992 Los Angeles Riots]
[4] This Baltimore Sun article explains that a week after US soldiers entered Baghdad in the 2003 war, "...virtually every government ministry here in flames, Baghdad and the entire country were operating essentially without a government, public services or police protection [emphasis mine]." Click here: ==> [Mayhem is Amok in Baghdad]
[5] This short post does NOT begin to address natural disasters that have often killed thousands. One of the worse was the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004 which killed approximately 250,000 people! Think about it: a quarter of a million souls lost in one disaster! Where was God is a natural and reasonable question to which Christians,. by definition - if there really is a God - are not able to and logically cannot answer.
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