My Kind of Theology

Robert Wright, the author of The Evolution of God, has a recent op-ed in the New York Times, suggesting that hardcore atheists and creationists could find some common ground.  I loved this article.  He offers examples of how those with a highly scientific worldview (like myself) could still potentially find room for purpose of a divine nature, properly defined.

Some excerpts:

If evolution does tend to eventually “converge” on certain moral intuitions, does that mean there were moral rules “out there” from the beginning, before humans became aware of them — that natural selection didn’t “invent” human moral intuitions so much as “discover” them? That would be good news for any believers who want to preserve as much of the spirit of C. S. Lewis as Darwinism permits.

Something like this has been suggested by the evolutionary psychologist Steven Pinker — who, as a contented atheist, can’t be accused of special pleading.

Mr. Pinker has noted how the interplay of evolved intuition and the dynamics of discourse tends to forge agreement on something like the golden rule — that you should treat people as you expect to be treated. He compares this natural apprehension of a moral principle to the depth perception humans have thanks to the evolution of stereo vision. Not all species (not even all two-eyed species) have stereo vision, Mr. Pinker says, but any species that has it is picking up on “real facts about the universe” that were true even before that species evolved — namely, the three-dimensional nature of reality and laws of optics.

Similarly, certain intuitions about reciprocal moral obligation are picking up on real facts about the logic of discourse and about generic social dynamics — on principles that were true even before humans came along and illustrated them. Including, in particular, the non-zero-sum dynamics that are part of our universe.

As Mr. Pinker once put it in conversation with me: “There may be a sense in which some moral statements aren’t just … artifacts of a particular brain wiring but are part of the reality of the universe, even if you can’t touch them and weigh them.” Comparing these moral truths to mathematical truths, he said that perhaps “they’re really true independent of our existence. I mean, they’re out there and in some sense — it’s very difficult to grasp — but we discover them, we don’t hallucinate them.”

I am finding myself more and more interested in this kind of natural theology, and I wonder how much serious work has been done in the area.  Based on my experience, scientists tend to do a poor job when it comes to serious philosophy.  On the other hand, non-scientists tend to have a poor understanding of various important nuances of a scientific theory.  In my view, philosophers of science tend to score best when it comes to both understanding the science and analyzing it from a philosophical point of view, but at times, there can be a relativist strain in the field.  Barring that, I think philosophers of science with somewhat of a “spiritual” component are best poised to offer worthwhile ideas.  I wonder how many such people exist.

Later on, Dr. Wright ends with:

William James said that religious belief is “the belief that there is an unseen order, and that our supreme good lies in harmoniously adjusting ourselves thereto.” Science has its own version of the unseen order, the laws of nature.

On a somewhat unrelated note, Dr. Wright writes:

[E]volutionary psychologists have developed a plausible account of the moral sense. They say it is in large part natural selection’s way of equipping people to play non-zero-sum games — games that can be win-win if the players cooperate or lose-lose if they don’t.

Markets do a great job at creating positive-sum games.  Barring fraud and large, distorting informational asymmetries, two parties to a trade generally participate in it if and only if they expect to come out ahead.  However, many people have a natural aversion to markets.  I only wish that evolution had endowed all humans with market-friendly propensities.  The world would be a much better place.

But maybe I am jumping the gun.  People do have natural tendency to trade, as Adam Smith noted (see here).  They do see most trades they partake in as being in their own interest.  Unfortunately, they often lack an abstract understanding of how free trade is just and benefits all parties involved, and so, they fall prey to arguments developed over the last 150 years to the contrary. In addition, money tends to cloud their judgment, as they view the person who received the money (and not the good) as the beneficiary.

Market-friendly individuals like myself understand that the economic justification for free markets is based on the structure of the world and the constraints it places on humans and their ability to achieve their goals.  At least part of our understanding of markets is based on something that is “out there”, similar to the laws of physics.  As my friend Roman Jury says, “The law of comparative advantage is the closest thing that economists have to a Newton’s Law.”  Perhaps, evolution has naturally guided people to trade (which is in their own interest), but has made people ill-equipped to abstractly understand why their instinct actually serves their interest and what the best societal structure is to allow such instincts to serve their interests to the maximal extent possible.

People should follow their (evolutionary?) instincts to trade, and partake in what is perhaps the greatest positive-sum game known to man, the free market.

(Hat tip: Chris)