questions of morality part 2: clues in the genes drawer

As you might guess, I think we can observe, in the natural world, ways in which conceptions of morality – ethics, distinguishing between rightness and wrongness – could have developed through the evolutionary process. And I’m also going to say that just because our sense of morality may have evolved from pre-human conditions of consciousness, doesn’t mean there is no God.

Evolution could have simply been the preferred method God enjoyed using to create everything. The panorama of evolutionary creation is an ongoing process which now includes the evolution of ideas, thoughts, concepts, human societies, and the flow of history. It is a process in which God can be understood as an active participant – or not. The two options are not mutually exclusive. They both work with the same set of data.

If concepts of morality have developed through the evolutionary process we should expect to see evidences of less-developed rudimentary pre-morality in other species. And, in fact, this is the case.

Studies of chimpanzees and other of our closest pre-human relatives have shown that they engage in deception, stealing, and adultery. You say, wait, animals just have sex with anyone they like, you can't call that adultery. Well, actually chimpanzees live in troops with strong social rules. The alpha male gets to have sex with the females of his choice and the other males don't get to have sex with anyone unless the alpha male allows it. And he only allows it with the low-level female – sometimes.

But females, even high level females, do have sex with the lesser males. They hide when they do it. This indicates that they know their activities can have bad consequences for them if seen by the rest of the troop. Adultery is, by definition, the violation of a social agreement about who you may and may not have sex with. This, therefore qualifies as adultery – on a very low level of course.

Chimpanzees and even other primates have also been observed to steal, and to conceal that stealing and to arrange situations to deliberately deceive other members of their troop.

The fact that they hide the activity from their own troop members is the significant aspect of this activity. The hiding of actions indicates the presence of an awareness of a mental category for violations of the social expectations of their own group. The presence of a mental category for violations is indication of the presence of the category of social expectations. In other words, the actions are exhibiting a sense of knowingly going against established troop social agreements suggesting the genesis of proto-moral concepts.


So, how might morality have developed through natural processes? See the next post