It's amazing that science, which claims to have a monopoly on understanding nature, cannot just call this "natural law." It would go counter to their philosophy, I suppose, if morality did not"evolve"
like everything else in their world-view. This is as much of a news flash as that blockbuster some years ago that "Prayer helps in healing illness." Well, you don't say! How 'bout dat!
tootuned | 05.30.07 - 12:55 pm | #

A couple weeks ago I attended a talk on charitable giving. After the talk, the speaker spent some time discussing his research with the audience. He spoke about how he encountered 2 important categories of people in his research--those who took religion seriously, and those who didn't. He said that the two groups almost never understand each other. They don't think the same way. They don't speak the same language, and they continue to talk past each other in their discussions.

I think this "news flash" is similar. Who ever said that altruism is "a superior moral faculty that suppresses basic selfish urges?" What are they talking about? Where did they get this idea that there's this moral faculty outside of nature that exerts itself on nature? These natural scientists sound like a bunch of damn gnostics.

The aforementioned speaker also talked about the genetic influence on spirituality, and his experience is that many Catholics (he himself is also Catholic) don't like to hear about it. I don't know why, especially when you consider it in light of the medieval personality types.

There's a definite need for somebody (no doubt much smarter than me) to write a book that explains the language and ideas of religionists to non-religionists and vice versa. Without it, so many people continue to fight against a phantom of their own creation.
Greg | 05.30.07 - 2:42 pm | #

I'm not even sure if self-interest and altruism are the right ways to think about ethics. The hard-core self-interest nut can claim that altruists are secretly self-interested, after all.

It'd be interesting to see how such things are "scientifically" defined and quanitfied.
Kevin Jones | Homepage | 05.30.07 - 4:35 pm | #

Argh. That Crick quote annoys the crap out of me. If he wanted to be consistent about it then he should have said:

Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather undesigned.

The idea that "evolved" is contradictory to "designed" is a load of baloney that needs to be taken behind the metaphysical barn and killed with a metaphysical axe.

See Schönborn's Reasonable Science, Reasonable Faith for one of the most sensible discussions of this issue.
Jon W | Homepage | 05.30.07 - 5:09 pm | #

The menace of the professional scientist who tries to be an amateur philosopher

Excuse me, but don't know that some of the prominent scientists in history were actually Catholics?

Here are even some examples of scientists who were actually Catholic clergy in fact:

1. Mendel, a monk, first established the laws of heredity, which gave the final blow to the theory of natural selection.
2. Copernicus, a priest, expounded the Copernican system.
3. Steensen, a Bishop, was the father of geology.
4. Regiomontanus, a Bishop and Papal astronomer; was the father of modern astronomy.
5. Theodoric, a Bishop, discovered anesthesia in the 13th century.
6. Kircher, a priest, made the first definite statement of the germ theory of disease.
7. Cassiodorus, a priest, invented the watch.
8. Picard, a priest, was the first to measure accurately a degree of the meridian.
Huh? | 05.30.07 - 7:47 pm | #

To hear the likes of Richard Dawkins tell it, religious faith is merely an evolutionary fluke- and he fully expects that we'll abandon faith now that he's explained that it's nothing more than a bunch of genes hard-wired to give us an outdated message, a message that deprives us of all kinds of pleasures (sexual and otherwise).

Well, now that we "know" altrusim is nothing more than an evolutionary fluke, shouldn't we abandon it and revel in selfishness?
astorian | 05.30.07 - 10:51 pm | #

"Lately, I think your low self-esteem has just been good, common sense."
-- Spanglish
Bubbles | 05.31.07 - 4:45 am | #

Catholics are quite free to suppose that the Creator *of course* made it natural for us to feel pleasure at doing what is right.

That is very true, but for clarity's sake we should specify that both Aristotle and Aquinas said that we need to LEARN to find pleasure in the good - that we must be HABITUATED to have our feelings of pleasure properly trained....
jmt | 05.31.07 - 9:13 am | #

Over the long run we do learn the pleasure of good for ourselves - rarely indeed some some old guy regret all the customers he didn't snub, or the offensive language he never used on his nephew.

But we do need to be properly trained in virtue, like jmt said.

Histor
Histor | Homepage | 06.02.07 - 4:14 pm | #

"Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see was not designed, but rather evolved."

Please read that quote from Crick in context. It does not mean what Mark thinks it means.
Katherine | 06.03.07 - 8:35 am | #