You Can’t Have it Both Ways

One of the uncomfortable yet essential dictums of mechanistic evolution is that only the fit survive; in other words, the unfit don’t. From simple cell (is there actually any such thing?) to complex humanity, only so-called survival-enhancing mutations make it. Weakness is discriminated against; weakness is biologically culled, as it doesn’t enhance survival. 

And it appears that survival is the prime objective of non-directional, randomly selective evolution. The fact that evolution can have no objective seems conveniently forgotten, because the moment you add the idea of an objective, you admit teleological purpose. God forbid! It’s important for evolution to be evolution that no intelligence/mind is given agency. It’s random – completely. Everything that is, is because of random mutations (most of which are inevitably harmful). We have what we have, what we have has survived, and who survives but those who have. Whoever, whatever is strongest wins. 

The strong, because of perceived evolutionary advantage, are the outcome of a random system, whether they be a plant, a person, or a people. Whoever rules does so until someone stronger overcomes them. The weak are disposed of. This is our history according to evolutionary theory: Rome was sacked by those who became stronger; Germany was defeated because they lost to greater powers; and if they’d won, they’d have won because they were stronger, not because they were right, or ordained to win, or any such fancy. 

Why do we bother trying to impose international law or support the weak when the fittest are the only ones fit enough to survive?

So, we are compelled to introduce such things as fairness, but fairness is a nonstarter, as fair isn’t an evolutionary construct; it’s more the refuge of the weak, the sentimental. 

What of morality?  It is also a nonstarter, as physical processes don’t beget kindness or love, nor anything in the grand constellation of morality. Cells don’t speculate or philosophize. They are organic, not spiritual or rational. Meaning is imposed, not inherent, and if imposed, where does our imposition come from? 

No, evolution does not have a moral code, except that the fit survive, and that is hardly a moral code. 

But do we really believe this, as we demand some form of morality to adjudicate between people and situations? The problem is that you must admit to a moral code, which implies something more significant than evolution is at play. Morality comes from somewhere, but not us, as in, from our cells, our physical substance. Never has. It can’t. 

Because of this, evolutionary theory is being constantly revised because of inherently awkward questions like, where does morality come from, are being asked. If evolution doesn’t have the answers, where does one go? 

The point is: you can’t be an evolutionist and ask for random mutations, bolstered by enormous timeframes, to provide moral direction to humankind. Billions of years is not a magical elixir that transforms random processes into non-random morality. It is exactly this that is pedaled by those wanting to rescue science from intelligence (God). 

If we truly were just biological beings, then there is nothing to discuss, nothing to debate, much less anything to call sacred or human rights or justice.  

Either we are the result of random biological mutations with no ought to, nor a whiff of imperatives, so that what is is what is, and the way things are is the way things are. In other words, those at the top are there by a non-designed inevitability. The rich, the powerful, the strongest still win. 

Or we admit to the inherency of a moral framework, and the existence (not found under a microscope) of concepts of justice and love. But these aren’t the product of mechanistic, emergent evolution. Something else, or to be more precise, someone else is involved. 

Simply stated: you can’t have it both ways.