Morality and Science
“We’re a species that is capable of almost dumbfounding kindness. We nurse one another, romance one another, weep for one another. Ever since science taught us how, we willingly tear the very organs from our bodies and give them to one another. And at the same time, we slaughter one another. The past 15 years of human history are the temporal equivalent of those subatomic particles that are created in accelerators and vanish in a trillionth of a second, but in that fleeting instant, we’ve visited untold horrors on ourselves—in Mogadishu, Rwanda, Chechnya, Darfur, Beslan, Baghdad, Pakistan, London, Madrid, Lebanon, Israel, New York City, Abu Ghraib, Oklahoma City, an Amish schoolhouse in Pennsylvania—all of the crimes committed by the highest, wisest, most principled species the planet has produced. That we’re also the lowest, cruelest, most blood-drenched species is our shame—and our paradox.”
Read the full article on Time.com Although the article makes a few claims that I’m not too sure about, it was still an interesting one to read. The whole issue of morality is one that has been playing on my mind lately and the idea that many of the rules are ‘hard-wired’ into us is a fascinating one. It doesn’t make a particular moral tendency ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ in an objective sense, but it is consistent with the theistic concept of a ‘moral law’ ‘written on our hearts’.
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