Doctrinaires

The New York Times has a really interesting article today entitled "Science of the Soul" that tries to encapsulate the recent discoveries giving evidence for a physical background of morality. Evolutionary biologists have known for years that many seemingly difficult-to-explain human "moral" attributes could be explained by survival-influenced evolutionary behavior (to take a simple and obvious example, it behooves a parent to share their food with their offspring, even though they then get less, because it increases the chance of their genes' survival).

Now, it seems, neuroscientists and evolutionary biologists are finding structures within the brain that can be directly linked to these behaviors - not only in humans, but also in other animals. Of course, religious conservatives are in an uproar. One of the central tenets of pretty much any Judeo-Christian religious doctrine is that man is special: he has a soul, and was created as the caretaker of the earth (a concept which has historically led to a lot of mistreatment of animals and "sub-human" humans).

The more science discovers, the less is left to be explained by religion. If I were a Catholic bishop, I would feel threatened by each new discovery, too. But inevitably what happens in these scenarios is that church doctrine doesn't change until it is absolutely forced to by prevailing wisdom. By then, it is apparent to everyone how asinine the church's position on the issue is - think the "sun revolving around the earth" situation. This phenomenon doesn't only take place in the catholic church - it is also present in protestant, Muslim, and Jewish thought patterns. The Catholic church is simply the easiest to follow because of its official, centralized doctrine. In the article, this 1996 quote from Pope John Paul II illustrated precisely what I am saying:

Although he noted that in the intervening years evolution had become “more than a hypothesis,” he added that considering the mind as emerging merely from physical phenomena was “incompatible with the truth about man.”

Sooner or later, this kind of thinking inevitably catches up to the church, and they are left with egg on their faces. Simply stating a "truth about man" that flies in the face of all available evidence is an affront to curious, thinking people everywhere. When I hear of a quote like this, I feel much less bad about the decline of the church. They have no one to blame but themselves.