A 'Religious' Problem

For the third time this week, someone said to me, "I'm not really a religious person," so I'd like to respond to what might be a common misunderstanding of the Christian religion. It made me wonder how a "religious" person is different from a regular person. If these three friends represented only anecdotal accounts, it wouldn't be worth blogging about, but I fear it represents an underlying assumption that's widely held.

Last month, famous biologist and UCI professor Dr. Francisco Ayala donated $1.5 million dollars to a UCI genetics program. Dr. Ayala was awarded the Templeton Prize in March which comes with the cash prize matching this gift he gave to the University. The Templeton Foundation was impressed by Ayala's work in solving the problem of faith and science. In reference to this, Ayala told the press "We don't have belief in evolution; belief is accepting something for which we have no evidence" ($1.5 Million Dollar Prize Donated to UCI, Orange County Register, April 22, 2010, Local 3) So, according to Ayala, once we relegate faith to the private and personal realm, and we allow science to determine the reality of our daily lives, the problem goes away. In short, science is objective; religious belief is not.

An Evolutionary Explanation for Morality

It seems as though college students want to be lectured more about morality these days. At least that's the impression we get at one community college in south Orange County. In addition to the February 26th McDowell-Corbett debate (organized by Apologetic Junkie) on the question “Is God the Best Explanation for Moral Values?” there was another moral-themed academic event on the Saddleback College campus on the same night, on the same topic, and in the same room that we used for the overflow crowd just a few hours later. World renowned evolutionary biologist Francisco Ayala was a guest lecturer in a lecture series sponsored by the biology and chemistry departments in a talk entitled “Biological Foundations of Morality”.

Ayala’s argument is that morality comes from both biological and cultural evolution which he develops through two main contentions: 1) The human propensity for a “capacity for ethics” (ability to perceive moral actions as good or evil) is a result of biological evolution, and 2) the development of “moral norms” (socially acceptable conduct) comes about through cultural evolution.