POST-MODERNISM AND evolving ETHICAL BEHAVIOR 2

By James Wilson

            In nature so-called evolution depends on a natural process called mutation.  New species can only be created if a genetic change occurs in specimens of an old one.  That is what distinguishes evolution from adaptation – which is a real phenomenon in both nature and human nature.  Adaptation simply describes a process in which natural traits that favor survival and prosperity come to dominate already existing species.  A famous example is the case of the English moths common to English towns during the Industrial Revolution.  Some were black and some were white.  The black ones were protected from predators by their ability to blend in with the sooty atmosphere; soon most surviving moths were black because the white ones had been eaten.  Ironically, when environmental and technological advances moderated the soot, the surviving white moths were better suited to survival and the adaptation process reversed.  It had nothing to do with anything called evolution.  In fact, every mutation observed in modern times – such as the occasional two-headed goat or even Dolly the cloned sheep – exhibits no survival capability and dies in a short time.  Mutations have never facilitated survival.  And no case of permanent genetic modification in a species has ever been demonstrated in fossil or nature – thus the phrase “so-called evolution.”  But why is this important?

            The same principle holds for human nature.  Human beings are the most adaptable creatures on the planet; we were created that way by our Creator.  We were created to engage with God and with one another, but with the capacity to disengage if we choose.  Engagement is the essence of high human living in the image of a God Who engages.  We honor those who sacrifice for others and reserve our highest praises for those who give their lives, whether Martin Luther King, who dies a martyr’s death, or the anonymous firefighter rushing into a burning building – or the cousin who donates a kidney.  Jesus said there was no greater love than the one who laid down his life for his friend.  Disengagement is the very essence of sin – original sin – depicted in the Bible through Adam and Eve disengaging from God to seek knowledge – independent of relation to Him – and later disengaging from one another when Adam blames the whole mess on Eve.  Once the original decision is taken to be persons of engagement or disengagement subsequent decisions tend to follow the line of the original.  This complex of traits tends to define each of us to this day.  When people of disengagement encounter the Son of God and accept His offer of eternal and abundant life they adapt to Him – over time; it’s a process – and become really human.  Rejection of the Son leads in the opposite direction.  Nothing has changed – there has been adaptation but no evolution – since time began.

            Fast forward to the post-modern world.  We are as hungry for quick and easy answers as Adam and Eve ever were, and we don’t like accountability any more than we like living in the tension between what – or whom – we know and do not know.  In our disengagement we still long for community and communion.  We side with those we think are like us.  In politics if we are conservative we trend to icons like talk-show hosts Rush and Hedgecock, and consultants like Gordon Liddy and Mark Fuhrman – conveniently forgetting Hedgecock was hounded from office for financial misdeeds, Liddy a common burglar, and Fuhrman just a cop who planted evidence.  (Limbaugh remains clean but fallible.)  If we are liberal we trend to icons like Hilary and Al Sharpton, conveniently forgetting the woman who claimed it didn’t matter why people died in Benghazi and the scandals associated with her name, or the fact that Sharpton began his career with the fictional rape of Tawana Brawley and advanced it with the trumped up rape charges against four Duke University athletes.  If these folks – liberal or conservative – speak in line with our prejudices we tend to applaud them.  If they resemble a type we call victim so much the better.  Many consider this retreat into subjectivism – just another name for tribalism – an evolutionary advance for human nature.

            The solution?  If not Christians we can seek – through innate integrity and strength – to discover a balance between objective assessment of facts in each case and the larger human realities behind them.  (Good luck with that; it never worked before.)  If Christians – or wanting to be – we can re-submit each of our values to the Creator of value.  He embraces and enables repentance.  But let’s not kid ourselves that there is anything new under the sun.