Intermission

Wherein I take a break from focusing on specific chapters and talk about whatever I want.

I've been listening to a phenomenal radio program called Radio Lab recently (www.radiolab.org). Like This American Life, in each episode they explore one theme.

In their morality episode they try to explain what morality is and where it comes from. One point they make is that humans like to think that morality is unique to our species, that it makes us special in some way.

This turns out not to be the case though. Chimpanzees display what we would characterize as moral behavior as well. They give the example of a scientist dropping some food into a habitat where a large group of chimps live. Two chimps start fighting over the food and the alpha male intercedes, takes the food, and marches all the chimps into one area where the food will be divided equally among them.

There are many more examples of moral behavior like this in chimps, which of course causes us to suspect that maybe humans aren't that special after all in our ability to tell right from wrong.

Then one of the hosts tries to sort this out, determined to show that human morality is different from chimp morality in some fundamental ways. To do this, he poses a thought experiment, one that a chimp would not be able to answer:

Say you are in a village under attack by an enemy force. You have a small child, only a few months old, and you, your child, and others from the village are hidden in some secret chamber as the enemy is searching for you.

Then the child begins to whimper and you know that it is on the verge of crying, making enough noise to draw the enemy to you and kill all of you. So the horrible dilemma is you can either smother the baby, killing it but saving you and your fellow villagers, or you can allow the baby to cry, killing all of you.

There's no real right answer. When asked this question, about half the people say they'd kill the baby while half say they wouldn't. Indeed, of the two hosts of the show, one takes one side and one takes the other.

The first argues the logic of killing the baby. Sure, it's a terrible choice to have to make, but the baby is going to die in either scenario, so you might as well save yourself and your fellow villagers.

The other host concedes the logic of that choice, but as a father himself, he knows that he would never be able to kill his own child.

What makes this a uniquely human question is that humans, unlike chimps or any other animals, have the capacity to feel guilt and shame. The guilt and shame that would be attached to killing your own child. The scientist whom they are interviewing agrees that both shame and guilt are expressions that primates don't have. So the hosts conclude that guilt and shame are at the center of our unique human morality.

I think this idea dovetails quite nicely with what the Bible has to say about human morality as well. Because if you recall, after Adam and Eve have eaten the fruit from the tree of knowledge between good and evil, the emotion that they suddenly able to feel is shame. That is why they cover up their nakedness and hid from God.

Maybe this is just a coincidence. But I think it is very compelling how the Bible is very specific in linking the emotion of shame with the knowledge between good and evil.