November 13, 2006

Dear Colleague:

    Time Magazine organized a 90-minute debate on "Science and Religion" between two distinguished biologists, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, and Francis Collins, author of The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence of Belief. At one point the argument turned on the question of morality. To Collins, the human moral sense, which goes far beyond "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours," points to the existence of God. "Evolution may explain some features of the moral law, but it can't explain why it should have any real significance. If it is solely an evolutionary convenience, there is really no such thing as good or evil." To which Dawkins replied, "Even the question you're asking has no meaning to me. Good and evil—I don't believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil. I think that there are good things that happen and bad things that happen." Collins: "I think that is a fundamental difference between us. I'm glad we identified it." (Time, 13 November, 2006, p. 55).

    One chasm that separates me from my fellows is the seriousness with which we take "good" and "evil." To me, there is real good and real evil, both within us and out there in the world. So when a guy like Dawkins says there is no good and evil, only "good things that happen and bad things that happen," the one strong sense I get out of his view is his wish to downgrade morality, to sweep an awkward fact—our strong moral sense—under the evolutionary carpet. Dawkins and scientists of his bent, who are legion, don't seem aware that they are using a scientific theory to avoid, rather than confront, inconvenient data.

    Good and evil are much on my mind because "Human Goodness" is my most recently completed project. I must say I cheered myself a great deal as I catalogued the range and variety of human goodness and as I became more and more aware that they defy explanation by the usual sociological factors of family background, education, and culture, and that they, not only in their range and variety but also in their extremism, make the sociobiological explanation, favored by Dawkins and Co., farcically inadequate.

    And evil? If you are not persuaded by accounts of good, arguing that they can all be covered by the Darwinian theory, what about accounts of evil? Consider just a couple of documents from the Belgian Congo. Some villagers cut the rubber vines too deeply, killing them. A local officer wrote to his boss: "Decidedly these people of Inongo are a bad lot... We must fight them until their absolute submission has been obtained, or their complete extermination. Inform the natives that if they cut another single vine, I will exterminate them to the last man." Another Belgian officer, known as "bas genoux" to the natives for they all had to approach him on their knees, had bushes and trees cleared around his house "so that from his porch he could use passers-by for target practice... If he found a path in the forest not well-maintained, he ordered a child killed in the nearest village" (Adam Horchschild, King Leopold's Ghost, p. 228, 234). For the Belgian officer, what greater good than have natives approach him on their knees and wield the power to kill as punishment, or for his pleasure? As for the natives of the Congo, well, as Dawkins says, "bad things happen."

Best wishes,

Yi-Fu