I once heard a TV preacher—I believe it was Garner Ted Armstrong—chastise all scientists within broadcast radius, admonishing them that morality cannot be retrieved from a database. He cautioned that the rockets returning from the moon never brought home any moral mandates and that no chemist in a laboratory ever found the formula for right and wrong.
The TV preacher proclaimed that morality requires a scriptural foundation. Hitler had similarly argued,
Secular schools can never be tolerated because such schools have no religious instruction, and a general moral instruction without a religious foundation is built on air; consequently all character training and religion must be derived from faith . . . We need believing people.[1]
Moralists have long taught that science shows us what is as opposed to what ought to be. Science doesn’t pass moral judgment on anything under its survey. It merely provides us with facts, which are just as useful to bad guys as they are to good guys.
The amoral reputation of science is reinforced by the portrayal of scientists as pallid, messy-haired nerds in lab coats, no more culpable than children absorbed in play. They may, however, appear reckless in their oblivious disregard for the consequences of their discoveries. Worse, they may assume the role of the “mad scientist” intoxicated by the power to manipulate nature. Each caricature is a graver insult.
The moralist invariably sees his own task as the higher one: penetrating beyond superficial facts and probing the marrow of normative values. Literary scholar Michael Pettinger puts science in its place:
Science neither exists in a historical vacuum nor supplies its practitioners with a moral compass. The scientific method of observation, hypothesis and experiment only serves to create a body of reliable knowledge. It offers no advice on what to do with that knowledge, except to use it to pursue more knowledge.[2]
I opened this chapter by describing cruel experiments on baby monkeys. Science clearly needs ethical oversight.
Nonetheless, Pettinger’s drab view of science as a mere data catalog is impoverished. Science is more than a big encyclopedia where we learn on page 6,486 that echidnas are unique in having four-headed penises.[3]+
To view science narrowly, as a dusty textbook crammed with arcane trivia, is to underrate its ethical relevance. Granted, the breeding rituals of the Patagonian armadillo aren’t of overriding concern to most of us, but profound ethical repercussions follow from, say, the exploration of the origin of the cosmos, the search for extraterrestrial life, and the physics of nuclear weapons. The image of our Pleistocene ancestors has largely supplanted the Adam and Eve myth and its associated concept of original sin.
Science has ethical relevance. We ceased burning witches when we learned that the belief in witchcraft is a dangerous and unscientific folly. We have begun to amend our moral posture toward mental illness, chemical dependency, epilepsy, sexual dysphoria, and other stigmatized conditions as we have acquired a deeper scientific grasp of the underlying causes. We are now more inclined to attribute disease to germs than to demons (which explains why your doctor asks you to describe your symptoms rather than your creed). The study of Earth’s ecology is reforming public attitudes toward our planet and its inhabitants. The blossoming of scientific knowledge over the past few centuries has contributed more to the reformation of society than have all theologians and armchair moralists combined.
Largely due to the rise of science, theologians have lost stature and are now viewed by educated people as antiquated, even atavistic. As writer H. L. Mencken remarked, “Skin a chimpanzee, and it would take an autopsy to prove he was not a theologian.”[4]
The relationship between religion and science has historically been ambivalent. Dinesh D’Souza, who credits the rise of science to Christianity, conveniently overlooks the dimly lit millennium of Christian influence preceding the rise of science. He boasts that early modern universities had religious sponsorship.[5]+ But he omits any mention of the historical context. In early America, atheism was a punishable offense and sometimes a capital one. (It remains a capital offense in 13 Muslim countries.[6]) Thomas Jefferson, advocating for the construction of secular universities, complained that the Presbyterians’ “ambition and tyranny would tolerate no rival if they had the power. Systematical in grasping at an ascendancy over all other sects, they aim . . . at engrossing the education of the country, are hostile to every institution that they do not direct, and jealous at seeing others begin to attend at all to that object.”[7] Journalist Katherine Stewart encapsulated evangelicals’ attitude toward the American public school system: own it or break it.[8]
C. S. Lewis said the Christian conception of God as the moral lawgiver paved the intellectual path toward the conception of God as author of natural laws, thereby inspiring the study of nature as an expression of devotion. Christian interest in the study of nature was further heightened by the desire to build apologetic arguments against a rising tide of skepticism.[9] The stifling influence of religious orthodoxy was the catalyst for founding independent scientific societies in Europe, such as the Royal Society in London and the Académie des Sciences in Paris, which typically elected their leadership from among their peers with no ecclesiastical oversight.
The rise of modern atheistic philosophy, like the rise of Protestantism before it, was the product of escalating literacy and secular knowledge. The scientific enterprise inspires many people, religious and nonreligious. Unfortunately, some movements and cults are less inspired by the quest for knowledge than by envy for the social clout of science. These cults, eager to tap into science’s awe factor while evading its rational scrutiny, hitch their stars to pseudoscience.
Think of Deepak Chopra’s quantum babblings or the Raëlian Church’s obsession with UFOs, mind transfers, and human cloning. Scientology, concocted by sci-fi author L. Ron Hubbard, features the galactic overlord Xenu delivering aliens to primitive Earth. Our “souls” (but not our minds) are extraterrestrial thetans, who entered our evolutionary history and underwent traumatizing hardship while inhabiting clams.[10] The eclectic Aum Shinrikyo (meaning “supreme truth”) doomsday cult released lethal sarin nerve gas in a Tokyo subway in hopes of launching an apocalypse. Members of this cult wore electric headsets that supposedly synchronized their brain waves with the leader, who claimed to be both Christ and the first “enlightened one” since Buddha.[11] The Heaven’s Gate cult planned to flee Earth on an alien spacecraft trailing comet Hale-Bopp in March 1997, uniformly dressed and wearing Star Trek-inspired armbands. Most members committed suicide.[12]+ Child molester,[13] convicted con man,[14]+ and presidential candidate[15] Joseph Smith received a divine revelation that Mormon gods live on the planet Kolob, inspiration for the planet Kobol in the television series Battlestar Galactica.[16]+
It’s not only whacky fringe cults that feign affiliation with science. Mainstream apologists falsely boast that the Quran or Old Testament presaged the discovery of the Big Bang. They, like all cultists, try to appropriate the prestige of science while they brusquely winnow out its inconvenient findings, methods, and implicit morality.
Implicit morality? Yes, contrary to what Pettinger suggested, the practice of science presumes a whole suite of ethical values. Foremost among these values is the love of truth. This powerful, childlike virtue is the root of science.
Science does more than exemplify and promote the love of truth. It also makes predictions. Making predictions is a forward-looking enterprise, which implies a desire to be present in the future. The practice of science therefore reflects devotion to life.
Beyond the love of truth and life, science fosters appreciation of widespread education, respect for the free exchange of ideas, an ability to trust others and admit mistakes, tolerance, creativity, diligence, and appreciation of good communication skills. Science is a social force, drawing diverse people together for the common purpose of discovery. Scientific knowledge becomes community property, uniting us in a shared vision of the cosmos and ourselves.
Each generation of scientists passes its accumulated information base and theoretical constructions to the next generation, like Olympiads who pass the torch—except that the advance of science more closely resembles a chaotic marathon of runners collectively passing along a starry field of lighted matches.
Science could never have arisen if Homo sapiens were a solitary animal who did not communicate with his fellows. Nor could it thrive if its participants were habitually dishonest concerning their discoveries and clinical studies. Science thus incentivizes pro-social tendencies.
Ambition, greed, and zeal afflict all people, of course, including scientists.[17] In response, scientific associations have devised internal methods to filter out bias and detect errors or fraud. These methods include double-blind tests, control versus treatment groups, large randomized samples, and peer review. Efforts are underway to address dubious statistical methods such as p-hacking, self-citations, pay-to-play journals, as well as problems in the peer-review process that grant more publicity to original positive results and less to follow-up studies that disconfirm those initial results.[18]+ Scientific techniques can be applied to improve both our research and our publication processes, in accordance with the Luke 4:23 admonition, “Physician, heal thyself” (KJV).
The scientific spirit provides a positive example for culture at large. It holds up a clear ethical ideal, accessible to the scientist and nonscientist alike, so that when we fall short of that ideal, as we all do, it stands above us to help us rise again. The model scientist pushes her theories as far as the facts justify and then no further. She convinces with evidence, not through stupefying indoctrination and certainly not by applying the heretic’s whip. She makes no appeal to personal interest, political advantage, race, gender, or honors. The only form of persuasion respected in a scientific forum is sound reasoning built upon observable, testable facts.
In the arena of jurisprudence, this spirit of disinterested judgment forms the basis of our concept of justice. Procedural due process is at heart the application of the scientific attitude to the law.
Democracy is the political corollary to the scientific method. The moral principles requisite to the advance of science, such as personal equality, universal education, and free communication, correspond precisely with those social characteristics most essential for the operation of a democracy. It is no coincidence that scientifically advanced nations are among the most democratic. Freedom of thought and freedom of action arise from the same cultural climate. Within a well-run research lab, just as within a democratic society, all people may participate on an equal footing, limited only by their own abilities and application.
The practice of science entails a wealth of ethical, social, and political principles. Science springs from specific moral values and, in turn, fosters the spread of those moral values. It is impossible to have an amoral science.
That does not imply that we should have a dreamy-eyed romantic view of science. To the contrary, if science has taught us anything, it is that we must remain skeptical and clear-eyed. We need ethical oversight of all scientific research, as well as open scrutiny by critics like Michael Pettinger and the TV preacher.
The TV preacher scoffed that no chemist in a laboratory ever discovered the formula for right and wrong, yet the chemistry of hormones is relevant to morality. The TV preacher said that the rockets returning from the moon never brought home any morality, yet when we view the Apollo 8 astronauts’ “Earthrise” photograph, do we not feel the unity of all earthly life, and isn’t this a potent moral message?
The moon rockets were ultimately propelled not by liquid hydrogen, RP-1, or a mix of hydrazine and dinitrogen tetroxide, but rather by a suite of moral values: our love of knowledge, adventure, truth, life, and civil society. Science is permeated, beginning to end, with morality. Physicist Victor Stenger, in response to the 9/11 terrorist attack, highlighted another moral advantage of science over religion: “Science flies you to the moon. Religion flies you into buildings.”[19]
This chapter has emphasized four points: (1) we humans acquired our basic moral sentiments through an evolutionary process, (2) our subjective moral impulses can be regulated in accordance with objective moral standards based on human nature, (3) our highest moral values are shaped and reinforced by thoroughly godless activities, including the practice of science, and (4) secular Enlightenment values are preferable to those of hell-mongering superstitions and manipulative cults.
In short, the moral argument is debunked. Morality has natural origins and requires no god for its propagation.
[1] Adolt Hitler, April 26, 1933 speech in The Speeches of Adolf Hitler, April 1922–August 1939, vol. 1 of 2, ed. Norman H. Baynes (Oxford University Press, 1942).
[2] Michael Pettinger, “New Atheism and the Same Old Story,” Huffington Post, August 20, 2012, updated October 20, 2012, https://www.huffpost.com/entry/new-atheism-and-the-same-old-story_b_1788708.
[3] Other science trivia: Possums are unique among animals in having thirteen nipples. A pelican is a theropod dinosaur. There is enough water in Lake Superior to submerge all of North and South America in one foot of water. There are 8 times as many atoms in a teaspoonful of water as there are teaspoonfuls of water in the Atlantic Ocean. Some comets have moons. The average height of Indonesian adults is 61.8 inches, the lowest in the world. Once a sea squirt larva finds a suitable spot to anchor itself, it digests its own brain. To see the entire Earth (nearly half its surface area) without moving your head, you must be about 700 miles high. Female southern pine beetles (Dendroctonus frontalis Zimmermann) fart a pheromone to attract males. The male and female American lobster (Homarus americanus) release pheromone-rich urine from pores at the base of their antennae (on their faces) to impress potential mates. Male giraffes taste the female’s urine to see if she is ready to breed. Some people, such as some in the Mennonite community of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, suffer from a metabolic disorder known as Maple Syrup Urine Disease (MSUD) that causes their urine to smell like—you guessed it—maple syrup. (In stark contrast, my urine smells like piss.) Male hippos “tail flick” their feces as a territorial display. (My wife does this, too, and I’ve noticed that our dinner guests immediately cease monopolizing the conversation.) About 90 percent of India’s surface water is contaminated by feces (even though my wife has never been to India). Up to 70% of the sand on white sandy beaches in the Caribbean has been pooped by parrotfish, who gnaw on corrals. All salt ultimately comes from sea salt. Lightning strikes Earth forty-four times per second. An individual blood cell takes about sixty seconds to make a complete circuit of the body. A blood cell typically lives about four months. Giraffes have seven neck vertebrae, as do humans. Babies under one month have very little color vision. Pineapples, oranges, and tomatoes are berries. Leech saliva contains anesthetics to numb their victims, as well as vasodilators and anticoagulants to keep their victims’ blood flowing freely. The age of the Appalachian Mountains (500 million years) is greater than the age of Saturn’s rings (400 million years). Saturn’s rings are believed to be the debris left over from the collision of two icy moons whose orbits crossed. The combined weight of all humans is half that of krill. Tropical hawk moths defend themselves from echolocating bats with blasts of ultrasound from their genitals. Grasshoppers are 40 percent protein, whereas beef is only about 24 percent protein. The gravity on Saturn’s moon Titan is so low and its atmosphere so thick that you could fly if your arms were strapped into fabric wings. (Well, except for the fact that Titan’s atmosphere lacks oxygen, so you’d be too dead to fly.) If your body were smeared across Earth’s surface, it would create a film about one atom thick (and you’d be dead). Remove all empty space within the atoms of your body and you’d be microscopic (and dead, of course). Armadillos sleep 80 percent of their lives. Changes in the direction and speed of the jet stream alter the length of a day by as much as 120 microseconds (millionths of a second). We’re accustomed to the notion of warm-blooded animals, but even some plants (such as Nelumbo nucifera) are endothermic. Most people have never seen snow. Humans have more sweat glands on the bottom of their feet than anywhere else. Canada contains 9 percent of the world’s forest area. A person generates enough saliva in their life to fill two Olympic-sized swimming pools. Crocodiles existed 25 million years before alligators. Camels evolved in North America. Sheep store fat in their tails, much as camels store fat in their humps. Camel humps contain less fat than do their muscles. More oxygen comes from the oceans than from trees. The sands of Arabia are deep enough to bury a 50-story building. The faces carved into Mount Rushmore will probably be too eroded to recognize in about 2.4 million years. Every person alive today shares an ancestor with you within the past 3,000 years. If someone says you drink too much coffee, you can truthfully reply that you’re drinking fruit juice, since coffee beans are actually seeds from the fruit of any of the 6,000 species of the tropical Coffea plant. An ostrich’s eye is bigger than its brain. Zebras injure more zookeepers than do any other zoo animals. Cows kill more people than sharks; in fact, cows rarely have opportunities to kill sharks. Neutron stars are so dense that a clump of a neutron star about the size of your pinky toe weighs as much as a large mountain here on Earth. About one-third of people feel an impulse to sneeze when looking at a light because the optic nerve signal that gets sent to the brain to constrict the pupils leaks electrical current into the nearby trigeminal nerve and causes the brain to falsely perceive an irritant in the nose. To help owls detect sound directions on the vertical axis, their left ears are positioned lower on their heads than are their right ears. Dolphins must surface for air every ten minutes, whereas sloths can hold their breath for up to 40 minutes. The moon, because it lacks an Earthlike atmosphere to reflect sunlight, has darker surface shadows than does Earth. Women blink more often than men, especially if they take oral contraceptives. The size of electrons remains a mystery, although we know they’re smaller than 10-18 meters in diameter. Humans around the globe produce roughly 80,000 sneezes per second. About 47 percent of bearded men have traces of fecal matter in their beards—the problem is not beards. Meerkats are the most homicidal animals on Earth. Groups of meerkats are called mobs. More than half the people infected with leprosy live in India. Leprosy, caused by a soil bacterium, occasionally infects chimps or red squirrels, and it frequently infects armadillos. A photon can take forty thousand years or more to travel from the sun’s core to its surface, but only 8.3 minutes to travel to Earth. (Technically, it’s not really the same photon, since it gets absorbed by atoms and then another photon gets re-emitted as a result, and this happens over and over.) The human eye cannot detect single photons; the minimum threshold of perception is 9 photons per millisecond. A T-rex would have to eat a human about every other day or so to get enough calories. The chameleon is the only animal with a tongue that can extend twice its body length. Tapeworms up to 130 feet (40 meters) in length live in whale intestines. Ninety-five percent of animal species are invertebrates. All the water on Earth could make a water planet 435 miles (700 kilometers) in diameter. An Earth-sized eyeball could fill the ocean with only a few tears. (Okay, tears don’t come from the eyeball, but you know what the hell I’m saying.) The amount of water in Earth’s atmosphere is six times as much as in all rivers and lakes combined. Mercury and Bromine are the only elements on the periodic table that are liquid at room temperature. Earth travels in its orbit around the sun by the diameter of Earth in approximately seven minutes. Iguanas have a light-sensitive patch (parietal eye) atop their heads to sense predatory birds. Pigeons are better at recognizing themselves in a mirror than are three-year-old humans. Moon’s orbit is retreating from Earth about 3.78 cm (1.5 inches) per year. When poured, cold water makes a higher-pitched sound than hot water. On average, a person inhales a molecule from a meteoroid every four months. To evade detection by herbivorous insects, the leaves of the woody vine Boquila trifoliolata change size, shape, color, orientation, and vein patterns to blend into the surrounding foliage. Three-fourths of the world’s food supply comes from 12 plants and 5 animal species. When you lose weight, your fat cells decrease, not in number, but in size. Meanwhile, 84 percent of the fat you burn exits your body in your breath, while the rest exits as water. No mammal species has yet been discovered that does not engage in playful behavior. You are about to think about tonguing your left ear.
[4] H. L. Mencken, Baltimore Evening Sun, April 4, 1927.
[5] For example, Harvard University, the oldest university in the United States, founded in 1636, had Puritan roots. Yale University was founded in 1701 by Congregationalist ministers disgruntled by Harvard’s growing liberalism. Back then, secular schools received no funding—or even a charter to operate. Likewise, the Catholic Church sponsored religious art, while the Council of Trent (1545–1563) banned artists from painting landscapes and other profane (i.e., nonreligious) subjects. Remember that the next time apologists brag that religion inspired the great 16th century Renaissance art. ♣ Dan Graves, “Yale Founded to Fight Liberalism,” Christianity.com, April 2007, http://www.christianity.com/church/church-history/timeline/1701-1800/yale-founded-to-fight-liberalism-11630185.html.
[6] Doug Bandow, “Freedom of Thought Under Siege Around the Globe: When You are Not Free to Not Believe,” Cato Institute: Cato at Liberty, December 31, 2013, https://www.cato.org/blog/freedom-thought-under-siege-around-globe-when-you-are-not-free-not-believe.
[7] Letter from Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper dated November 2, 1822
[8] Presentation by Katherine Stewart Richard Dawkins Foundation for Reason & Science, “Are Good News Clubs Good For Our Children?” June 12, 2013, YouTube video, 1:48:51, https://youtu.be/LHu4TM1X4YU.
[9] David C. Lindberg, “Chapter 7: Roman and Earlier Medieval Science—The Role of Christianity” in The Beginnings of Western Science, 2nd Edition (University of Chicago, 2007).
[10] Janet Reitman, Inside Scientology: The Story of America’s Most Secretive Religion (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), 29 (“denyer” engram that causes rejection of dianetics), 40. (E-Meter based on lie detector used by Carl Jung and other psychologists).
[11] “Aum Shinrikyo: The Japanese cult behind the Tokyo Sarin attack,” BBC News, July 6, 2018, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-35975069
[12] The thirty-nine regular members of the cult wore cheap uniforms consisting of sweatpants, plain black T-shirts, matching running shoes, and the forementioned armbands. They wolfed down applesauce—sounds good so far—that was laced with copious amounts of phenobarbital—ooh, that’s not good. Phenobarbital is a depressant. Overdose symptoms include nystagmus. That’s the involuntary rapid and (usually) side-to-side movement of the eyes. It looks freaky, whether you’re looking from the outside or inside. The nystagmus is accompanied by blurred or double-vision, which is often followed by coma and then death. The cult members chased the phenobarbital-laced applesauce with vodka. They also had plastic bags over their heads so they would suffocate if the poison failed to do its job. Each of these dead cult members was found to have a five-dollar bill and three quarters in their pockets. An article in The San Francisco Chronicle reported that this might have had something to do with Mark Twain. A story in Mark Twain’s book “Captain Stormfield’s Trip to Heaven” allegedly indicated that “The fare to get to heaven on the tail of a comet was $5.75.” As it turns out, there is no such statement in Twain’s book. Indeed, that’s not even the correct title of his book. It’s titled “Captain Stormfield’s Visit to Heaven.” Thomas Nichols was among the dead cult members. His sister was the actress Nichelle Nichols, who played the role of the communications officer Lieutenant Uhura in the original Star Trek TV series, and in whose honor Asteroid 68410 Nichols is named. ♣ See also: https://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1893&dat=19970331&id=B70vAAAAIBAJ&sjid=eN0FAAAAIBAJ&pg=1942,4869913. See also: https://web.archive.org/web/20061211012614/http:// www.crimelibrary.com/notorious_murders/mass/heavens_gate/5.html
[13] “Mormon Church Admits for First Time That Founder Joseph Smith Had a 14-Year-Old Bride,” Huffington Post, October 27, 2014, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/10/27/mormon-joseph-smith-teen-bride_n_6054272.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592.
[14] In People of the State of New York v. Joseph Smith (1826), Smith was ruled “a disorderly person and imposter.” Source: Krakauer, Under the Banner of Heaven, 59.
[15] Andrew K. Garr, “Joseph Smith: Campaign for President of the United States,” Brigham Young University, https://www.churchofjesuschrist.org/study/ensign/2009/02/joseph-smith-campaign-for-president-of-the-united-states?lang=eng.
[16] There’s some dispute over whether Kolob is a star or planet. Joseph Smith referred to it as a heavenly body. His Book of Abraham sometimes referred to planets as stars.
[17] Relevant articles: The Economist magazine (September 10, 2011) and Discover magazine (April 2012).
[18] One improvement in science publications is to use “Registered Reports.” As explained by Spencer Greenberg, “A Registered Report is where you submit to a journal before you run your study. You submit to them saying, ‘Here’s what I’m going to do. Please evaluate my paper and accept or reject it. And then if you accept it I will then go collect my data and analyze it.’ You’ve already kind of pre-confirmed you’re going to publish it. What’s really nice about a Registered Report is it removes the weird incentive to have the results turn out a certain way. You’re going to get your publication whether it comes out positive or negative or whatever you find, so now you don’t have that weird incentive pushing on you. You can just focus on whatever the results really say.” ♣ “80,000 Hours” podcast transcript, Robert Wiblin and Keiran Harris, pub. March 14, 2024, https://80000hours.org/podcast/episodes/spencer-greenberg-money-happiness-hype-value/?t=1887
[19] Stenger, The New Atheism, 59.