{"id":324,"date":"2006-02-16T09:06:08","date_gmt":"2006-02-16T17:06:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tgdarkly.com\/blog\/?p=308"},"modified":"2006-02-16T09:06:08","modified_gmt":"2006-02-16T17:06:08","slug":"more-on-natural-law-and-transcendence","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/2006\/02\/16\/more-on-natural-law-and-transcendence\/","title":{"rendered":"More on Natural Law and Transcendence"},"content":{"rendered":"

In comments to a prior post on Natural Law<\/a>, Ahab stated <\/p>\n

You may be right that morality is ultimately grounded in some transcendent being. But it seems as reasonable, if not more so, to me to ground it in human beings and their evolutionary development. We can trace the precursors of morality in the social systems of animals. I don\u2019t know how you could begin to do the same for some transcendently based moral system. . . . But I didn\u2019t see you give any reason for why God is the way He is, other than saying \u201cbecause.\u201d I\u2019m guessing or assuming you think that God is a necessary being and that explains it.
\nIf that is your position, then I think it more likely that the necessary being is not God but matter. <\/em><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

These are excellent points, and I wanted to move them up here and take a few minutes to respond.
\n
\nAs to the evolution of moral inclinations, I’m not so sure, as an empirical matter, that an evolutionary pathway for morality is all that reasonable. The nature of the mind is hotly contested and little understood in biological science. It’s not clear that biology entirely determines the mind. Many mainstream (i.e., non-creationist) biologists hold that even if sentience is an evolutionary development, once sentience is achieved, the further development of the mind cannot be explained in evolutionary terms, since that development is directed by minds and not only by natural selection acting on random mutations. Thus, the concept of “evolution” is probably something of a misnomer as applied to morality and social interaction.<\/p>\n

Moreover, even if all or part of the moral sense could be accounted for in evolutionary terms, that would not answer the question of transcendence. Natural Law posits that God built the moral law into creation as a necessary extension of His character. Evolution occurs according to the physical laws God also built into the universe. There is nothing inconsistent with Natural Law theory in saying that God built into the universe the conditions necessary for our moral evolution and subsequently directed the course of evolution so that we would develop into morally aware creatures. “Evolution,” then, might provide a mechanism for the physiology that supports the moral sense (and even that is debateable), but it doesn’t answer the deeper questions Natural Law theorists ask.<\/p>\n

As to tracing the “precursors” of transcendently based moral system and the reasons why “God is the way He is,” the answer that God is a “necessary being” is part of it. It is true that Natural Law theory must stop at God. God is, indeed, the point at which we say “just because.” But that to me is a significant part of the argument’s appeal. Aristotle’s concept of the “unmoved mover,” as adopted by Acquinas, holds great appeal and logical force.<\/p>\n

Some will object that the unmoved mover is no explanation at all because we cannot explain where the unmoved mover came from or why he\/it is as he\/it is. But that response misses the point. Logic suggests that causation is not infinte; something is the uncaused cause. The concept of God as an uncaused cause, a being beyond which no greater being can be conceived, at least rescues us from the infinte regress of causation. I don’t think this “ontological argument” offers an empirical “proof” of God, but I do think it supports a coherent and rational narrative.<\/p>\n

The alternative of an infinte regress of causes seems like less<\/em> of an explanation, not a more reasonable one. I can’t see how “matter” could provide an equally satisfying answer, since something must have caused “matter” to exist. Indeed, big bang cosmology says matter came into existence after the big bang; there is no satisfying explanation for the “singularity” that existed before then. String theory — again highly speculative and controversial — suggests a cyclical view of big bangs and universe creations beyond the singularity, but that continues to beg the question of first causes. Moreover, “matter” implies no teleology, while the history of life does seem to suggest a purposefulness (even apart from any particular “intelligent design” arguments).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In comments to a prior post on Natural Law, Ahab stated You may be right that morality is ultimately grounded in some transcendent being. But it seems as reasonable, if not more so, to me to ground it in human beings and their evolutionary development. We can trace the precursors of morality in the social […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-324","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-theology"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p824rZ-5e","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/davidopderbeck.com\/tgdarkly\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}