I am by nature a “lumper” rather than a “splitter”.   As I see it there are two great religions in the world…….Darwinian evolution and intelligent design.

I am a Christian……..I believe in intelligent design. I believe that we were built by a creator and then put here. I don’t accept the theory that we are a giant cosmic biochemical accident. In order for my belief system to hold water, I have to accept as fact 2 ideas that cannot be proven:

1. An intelligent creator made everything here for his own purposes.

2. Christ lived, died, and arose…….and by doing so, bought for me a place in paradise.

Without these 2 central tenets, my belief system falls flat on its face. Because I accept these basic ideas ON FAITH, you call my belief system a religion.

The secular humanist believes in Darwinian evolution. We don’t talk about this, because Darwinian evolution is “scientific”; but, the Darwinian also accepts ideas that cannot be proven.

1. A collection of simple atoms can assemble themselves into complex molecules, assemble the molecules into a cell, become alive and reproduce.

2. That cell can then, given a lot of time, by the action of hundreds of billions of consecutive, additive, adaptive, yet random chemical accidents, turn into Angelina Jolie.

There is not a whiff of laboratory evidence that either of these things ever happened or that they are even possible. In short, the Darwinian must accept these tenets ON FAITH. Because if they are not true, then his entire belief system fails.

Darwinian evolution is a religion for the same reason that intelligent design is a religion. Both are founded on faith.

So what is the difference between these 2 religions? And, how do we choose?

Intelligent design has a creator. The creator offers an afterlife but has expectations of us. Darwinian evolution has no creator, no afterlife, and no expectations. In essence, the choice is between a religion that offers an afterlife but imposes expectations and a religion that is free from expectations(rules) but offers no hope of an afterlife(you die then you’re dirt).

Intelligent design is constraining but hopeful. Darwinian evolution is liberating but hopeless. And you pretty much have to choose……….I used to try to split the difference and believe both…… but I found it to be intellectually dishonest. If you try to believe in God (the creator) and evolution (the accidents) at the same time, you wind up believing that God built paradise(because you want an afterlife) but that everything else is an accident (because the scientists told you so).

I believe that Darwinian evolution has done more damage to Christianity than any other idea in the history of mankind. If you accept Darwinian evolution, then there is absolutely no need to believe in God. Why should you believe that God created paradise if you don’t believe that he could create the dirt beneath your feet? This is where the trouble begins. It is very easy to take the next intellectual step. No creator……No God. And that is, in fact, what is happening in our world. People are turning away from Christianity. Why? Because we no longer need God. Science has it all covered.

I believe that those who take that next step after Darwinian evolution…………that is, abandonment of God………will miss out on paradise at the very least.   Even worse……………for them that is the best possible case scenario.

I believe that more people will miss out on paradise over Darwinian evolution than over murder, rape, lies, theft and mistreatment of their neighbors combined. It is these, at risk, people that I worry about.

So……..the next time somebody pokes fun at creationists, stand up for the intelligent designer…….the guy who formed you and put you here. They will likely laugh at you, though perhaps not to your face. But, you may reveal a little crack in THEIR religion…….a tiny defect in their belief system that the creator can slip in through. You might save them from the Darwinians.

First, what is a “moral code”. It’s a group of ideas, maybe even rules that you fall back on when making decisions about how you will run your life. Usually, we go to our moral code when trying to decide whether something we want to do is right or wrong. Today’s question deals with how you choose your code.

Specifically I’m asking for a citation. What book, religion, or philosophy did you find your moral code in? As a young man, the first moral code that I followed was from the Boy Scouts. I don’t claim to have met this code in my life. It is a goal

Be Prepared

On my honor, I will do my best to do my duty to God and my country and to obey the Scout law, to help other people at all times, to keep myself physically strong, mentally awake, and morally straight.

A scout is: Trustworthy, Loyal, Helpful, Friendly, Courteous, Kind, Obedient, Cheerful, Thrifty, Brave, Clean, and Reverent.

Later, I added the Bible:

Love God, Love your neighbor. Don’t lie, steal, or murder. Honor your parents, sex is for husbands and wives, don’t covet, rest on Sunday.

There are other moral codes…….I chose these because they are widely accepted…….. and they make sense. Obviously, the fact that I am a Christian played a part as well.

The point here is not which moral code you choose. The point is……is your moral code external or internal? An external code is likely objective. There are many to choose from. Some are very good, some are very bad. If you choose an external moral code, the code you choose will define you as a human being. It is very likely that your opinion of the people around you is largely shaped by their choice of a moral code. FWIW…… their opinion of you is shaped by your moral code. This may explain why people sometimes react to you in ways that you don’t understand……. or like. Another point about the external moral code is that there is a moral authority that validates the rules…..in my case, the creator of the universe.

The problem is that most people do not choose an external moral code. If you cannot name the book, religion, or philosophy that is the source of your code, then you fall into one of two camps.

The purely internal moral code:

This is a set of ideas and rules that you use to guide your life. They are rules that YOU made up because they make sense to you. The problem here is that when you make up your own set of rules, you tend to come up with rules that say that anything that you really want badly is OK. Your internal rules rarely restrict your behaviour. If you really want to have an amorous relationship with a goat……..it’s probably going to be OK in your home grown moral code. The main use for your code, then, is to beat up others because they aren’t following your rules. But, they are YOUR rules…….. there is no good reason to expect others to follow your rules. What you can expect, is that they will follow their rules……and since all of these rules are home grown, their rules are just as valid as yours.

The no code plan:

In this case, you have no foundational set of rules, internal or external. You decide each case based on the facts at hand. This allows you flexibility. What is wrong today may be ok tomorrow, based on changing circumstances. The no code plan, however, is highly susceptible to manipulation, justification, and rationalization. We humans are masters at this. The no code plan also makes it hard for others to deal with you. The friend who wouldn’t lie to you on Monday may decide that lying to you is OK on Tuesday based on circumstances.

I suspect that most people operate somewhere between and an internal code and the no code plan. They have a few basic rules; but, often make their moral decisions on the fly using the facts at hand.

I believe that the best choice, not necessarily the easiest, is to adopt a good external moral code and follow it as closely as you can. This will restrict your behavior a bit. It will cut way back on manipulation, justification, and rationalization. It will make you a much more predictable person for your friends, family, and acquaintances. I recommend the 2 codes at the top of this post. They have served me well for most of my 65 years.

Fair warning…….. this post likely contains things that you will not like. It is unusual to be able to offend and annoy people on both sides of an issue at the same time.         What can I say…….it’s a gift.

First off…….. some ideas and definitions. The analysis that follows is based on these precepts.

1. There is an afterlife…. the Bible says so……. but in addition there is something written on our hearts that tells us so. You can argue about the details, but I believe in an afterlife that is beyond scientific explanation. The afterlife will be divided into a “nice place” (paradise) and a “not nice place” (hell). I want to end up in the nice place even though I am a bit unclear on the details.

2. All humans are fallen, imperfect beings……..We all do bad things. There are differences in degree, but we all fall short. I’m a better person than Hitler.   But;     God’s spectrum of good to evil is so vast, that,  compared to God,   the difference between me and Hitler is pretty small.  In a word…… it’s insignificant. To use a metaphor…… If evil is San Francisco and good is Boston, then Hitler is the west side of tenth street in St. Louis……and I’m in the middle of tenth.  Looking west from Boston, Hitler and I are hard to distinguish.  BTW,  my apologies to the good people of San Francisco.

3. According to social scientists, those who identify as Christians are just as likely to do bad things as those who identify as non-Christians. This ranges from priests abusing children to using the handicapped spot when you have no significant handicap. (That just drives me crazy)

4. Admission to paradise is through grace……acknowledging Christ and accepting his gift of forgiveness.

So here is the analysis:

If we are all fallen beings, and entry into paradise is through Christ’s forgiveness…….. then paradise is not going to be full of “good people”………….. it will be full of forgiven sinners. Doesn’t seem fair, does it? If you aren’t annoyed yet, just wait……it gets worse.

There is a corollary. Hell is not going to be full of “bad people”……. it will be full of unforgiven sinners.

Even worse…… the people in hell are not going to be substantially different from the people in paradise.

Kind of adds a new urgency to the business of “marketing” Christianity to our friends and family doesn’t it?

This just doesn’t seem fair, does it? Our human need for justice cries out……. the bad people must be punished……at least all of those people who are “badder” than me. We want THEM to go to hell.

But, in the process, we overlook the fact that we are sinners too. If you really want fair……. If you really want justice……..then we all go to hell….. both sides of tenth street.

There are 2 choices here:

Plan A………..the Fair plan……….. We all go to hell.

Plan B………..God’s plan…………….We accept Christ’s gift and go someplace better than we deserve.

Plan B looks like the “hot ticket” to me.

It is very common to talk to somebody who is skeptical about matters of spirituality. After all, if you can’t see it, it can’t be real……..Right? This same person, however, will believe just about anything you tell them as long as it is “scientific”. There is very little skepticism in our world about matters of “science”. I think we need to take science with a grain of salt. To put it another way, we need to asses matters of science with the same cautious, critical eye as we do matters of spirituality. As a disclaimer, I worked 40 years in a job that was applied science. I am by nature and training a scientist.

So……why should we look at science with the eye of a skeptic?

1. The scientists haven’t figured it all out yet. Every year we learn more. In 10 years we will know twice what we know now. In 10 years, some of what we “know” today will be wrong. We will look back and laugh at how naive we used to be. In 1492 the greatest scientific minds of the age told Columbus that the world was flat. In the middle ages they were in laboratories trying to turn lead into gold. In the late 1700’s, they bled George Washington to treat his pneumonia. In 1980, they believed that ulcers were caused by stress and treated them by cutting out your stomach. The scientists are smart, most of them are honest, and they are trying hard. But, THEY DON’T KNOW EVERYTHING.

As Will Rogers said, “It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you in trouble…….it’s what you KNOW that ain’t so.”

2. Astrophysicists are the people who tell us how the universe formed and how it behaves…….how we got here.  They describe with complete confidence the “big bang”, the expanding universe, black holes and so on. But, if you question them closely, they will say that their theories don’t fully explain the universe. In a word, the theories are wrong …….or at least incomplete. For the universe to behave as they say it does, there must be much more mass and energy out there than they have found. They call this “missing” stuff “dark matter” and “dark energy”.  Here’s the rub. The “missing stuff” amounts to about 80% of the observable universe. In other words, the scientists who are telling us how we got here are basing their theories on observations of a system that they have only seen 20% of. This is not a great confidence builder. One of the “missing” things is the “Higgs boson”……and no I can’t explain it. They even call it “the God particle”. This may be an astrophysics joke.

If somebody proposed to explain to you how your car works after inspecting in detail the radio, A/C, and heater, but without ever having seen what goes on under the hood, they would likely get it wrong……and, you would be correctly skeptical.

Scientists cannot prove that God doesn’t exist. They don’t even try. They don’t have the tools to assess the supernatural. And yet, the conclusion that we must draw from listening to them,  is that they have everything figured out…….. and that God isn’t involved. If you think about it, they begin with the tacit assumption that God does not exist, because any explanation that involves the supernatural is discarded.

All that I am asking you to do is to maintain a healthy doubt…..a healthy skepticism about science and it’s limitations.

Because, in that 80% of the universe that we haven’t seen…….yet……. there is plenty of room for God.