Category Archives: Ethics

Respect for the President

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[Historical Note: this blog post was written prior to the U.S. Presidential election of 2016.  However, it highlights an issue which I think has been a problem with American politics for as long as I’ve been paying attention to it.]

“You shall not revile God, nor curse the ruler of your people.” (Exodus 22:28)

Treat everyone with high regard: Love the brotherhood of believers, fear God, honor the king. (1 Peter 2:7)

Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established…. This is also why you pay taxes, for the authorities are God’s servants, who give their full time to governing.  Give to everyone what you owe them: If you owe taxes, pay taxes; if revenue, then revenue; if respect, then respect; if honor, then honor.  (Romans 13:1, 6-7)

Given the chaos of the election season, I just wanted to write a reminder to my fellow Christians who live in the United States about our civic and Christian duty to respect whichever person ends up being President next year.

I am writing this now, when both candidates have a significant chance of being elected, so that nobody will think I am a hypocrite, who only cares about this issue when somebody I like is in the White House.

(That does not mean I am neutral when it comes to this election.  While I am not a huge fan of either candidate this season, Donald Trump is far more dangerous, irresponsible, and crude than his rival, and I may have some personal difficulty in following my own advice if he is elected.  Although it is conceivable he would keep his promise to appoint justices to the Supreme Court in keeping with my own views, this year the “worst case scenarios” for the Executive Branch seem way worse than for the Judicial Branch.  But that doesn’t change what I am going to say.)

Anyway, the Bible says you are supposed to honor the ruler of your country, because all rulers are appointed by God—not in the sense that God necessarily approves of their rise to power, nor the things they do while in charge—but rather in the sense that it is God’s general will that governments exist and that, under normal circumstances, people should submit to duly constituted authorities.

There are two communities naturally ordained by God, based on the way he created human nature: family and governments.  Similarly, there are two communities that were supernaturally ordained by God: Israel and the Church.  The members of all these communities owe their leaders some degree of obedience and respect, because without that they cannot function as healthy communities.

In every other nation besides ancient Israel, God has left the details of how the government should be structured up to the human beings in that area.  At the time of the Bible, most governments were monarchies of various sorts.  Now we live in a democracy, where we have the privilege of choosing our own rulers.  That is a great blessing, but it does not change the fundamental reality of the situation.  Once we have chosen these rulers, in principle they have the exact same divine authority that would have existed in a monarchy—I mean when they are acting within the scope of their delegated powers; I’m very grateful we don’t live in a society where the president is an absolute dictator!  (The President has no direct authority to command American citizens except where authorized to do so by law.)

Just as it is God’s will that children should obey their parents, and (even after they grow up and are no longer subject to them) give them due honor for providing them with life, sustenance, and upbringing, so too should Christians obey legitimate government authority, and also give due respect to the individuals who exercise that authority, in a way that is appropriate given the democratic customs of our own society.

It does not matter if the individual in question is unworthy of the honor.  As people in the military say: “you salute the uniform, not the man”.  When Sts. Peter and Paul wrote their letters, most likely the man in charge was NERO CAESER, who was not a very nice man.  If you are concerned about infanticide, torture, foreign conquests, denial of religious freedom, undermining separation of powers, or the “Imperial Presidency”, well these things were all much worse in the Roman Empire than they are today, and yet the Apostles still taught that Christians should honor the king!  Jesus himself taught that we should “Render to Caeser what belongs to Caeser, and to God what belongs to God”.

Of course, sometimes other ethical principles must take precedence over that of obeying authority.  If our earthly leaders tell us to sin, then we must “obey God rather than men”.  For example, many early Christians were martyred rather than participating in the cult of Emperor worship.  A more recent American example was the civil disobedience that took place during the Civil Rights Movement.  In some extreme situations, a government may be so tyrannical that armed rebellion against it is morally necessary.  But I take it as obvious that the USA is not currently such a tyranny.

Of course, raw power is not the same as government authority.  To a brigand or conqueror who makes no pretense of ruling in his subjects’ interest, but merely comes to plunder and rape and kill, we owe no respect or obedience whatsoever, quite the contrary!  But once such a person sets up laws and officials in order to promote the common good of society, then to that extent it is a government, and it should be submitted to in ordinary affairs until such time as it can be replaced with something better.

The Bible passages above make it clear that we are required to give respect and not merely grudging obedience to our leaders.  Of course, it is perfectly acceptable to criticize the President’s policy decisions, to sound the alarm at usurpations of power, to whistleblow crimes, to reject immorality etc.  You are not required to agree with him or her, any more than the command to “honor your father and mother” means you must always agree with their decisions.

What is not acceptable is to take a constant tone of bitter disrespect, to express continual contempt, to make mean-spirited jokes (a genuinely funny joke is another matter), to make unwarranted comparisons to Hitler and Stalin, to believe every slanderous rumor you hear about them, to despise half the population for voting for them, etc.

Whenever a party’s own politician is in charge, they can see quite clearly just how deranged the critics on the other side have become, and how it harms our ability to unite as a nation and make important decisions.  I urge you all to remember that the same thing is true when the other party’s choice is in charge.  Politicizing every single issue isn’t actually good for the country.  Each of the last 3 Presidents has been hated by the opposition party to a far greater extent than can possibly be healthy.  And “the other party started it” is not a good excuse.

Just as in other areas of life, people tend to rise and fall towards the expectations other people set for them.  As St. Chesterton once wrote:

“It is a practical course to destroy a thing; but the only other practical course is to idealize it. A respected despot may sometimes be good; but a despi[sed] despot must always be despicable.”

[Brackets are my own speculative attempt to correct what I believe to be a 111 year old typo.]

If whatever the President does is viewed as an unprecedented assault on all the liberties we hold dear, the there is no incentive for them to be better than that, because the other side won’t respect them even if they do follow the law.

We should also remember to pray for them, not just that they would do a good job, but also because the job is spiritually dangerous and they risk losing their own souls in the process.  Few Presidents escape the White House without rubbing off part of their consciences, through supporting actions that they would at one time have been outraged at.

Since the President is the representative of the whole nation, whoever curses the President also curses the nation, and therefore curses himself.  So instead be a blessing.  The same principles apply in politics as anywhere else:

Do not repay anyone evil for evil.  Be careful to do what is right in the eyes of everyone. If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with everyone.  Do not take revenge, my dear friends, but leave room for God’s wrath, for it is written: “It is mine to avenge; I will repay,” says the Lord. On the contrary:

“If your enemy is hungry, feed him;
if he is thirsty, give him something to drink.
In doing this, you will heap burning coals on his head.”

Do not be overcome by evil, but overcome evil with good. (Romans 12:17-21)

Some last thoughts about voting:

1) Mathematically, your vote can make a significant difference on average (at least if an election is close).

2) There are other elections on Nov 8 besides the Presidential election, and they are also important!  Please research the candidates and cast an informed vote.

3) But, if you’ve walked into the voting booth just to vote for President, and you have no idea who or what the other things on the ballot are, then I recommend you leave these other ballot questions blank so that the voters who have researched those issues can decide them.  Please don’t cast an uninformed vote; that just adds noise to the system.

In the Red Light District

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I’m in the middle of a six week trip in Europe; currently I’m attending the Amsterdam String Workshop.

I’m reminded of something that happened to me a year-and-a-half ago December when I visited the String Theory group in Amsterdam.  I didn’t realize until I starting doing touring on Sunday that my hotel was close to the main “red light” district, where the alleyways are full of semi-naked women in booths selling their bodies to the tourists.  The main red light district is right in the middle of the oldest part of town, well worth seeing for the architecture, if you can ignore the vice peddling (which is easier during the daytime).

I was absolutely shocked in the red light district—but not by the prostitutes or the drug use, which I had expected.  (Although these things are bad and degrading, don’t do them.)  There is a beautiful old Dutch Reformed church there, dating from the 1300’s, which I wanted to see.  I went in to see the church, but whoever was in charge had allowed an artist to set up a crass avant garde multi-media work of art in the interior, with disturbing images of unwholesome faces projected on the blank walls speaking nonsense phrases, and even representations of bright neon casino scratch pads, glowing on the floor!  I felt it was an extremely disrespectful, if not diabolical, use of a space dedicated to our Father in heaven, and in which faithful Christians were buried.

There were a small number of middle aged couples roaming around looking a bit perplexed.  I was outraged.  I said to myself “How DARE they do this to my Father’s house!” and I couldn’t stay there any longer because I could not contain my rage.  (I said something about it to the poor lady handing out tickets at the entrance.  I tried to make it clear to her that my anger was not directed at her, but I had to say it to somebody.)

As I was wandering around in a daze, I noticed that there was another church in the district, a Roman Catholic church, which was free for anyone to enter.  (The first church had had a 10 euro entrance fee, which is also wrong—what if one of the prostitutes felt a sudden urge to go into a church and pray?—but one quickly becomes desensitized to fees for entering famous churches in Europe).  It was full of tourists but pious ones, and I felt such relief to know that, despite the theological differences, there was some place in the area dedicated to God which was still held sacred, and where the people had natural feelings.  I sat down in an empty pew and wept.

Depression

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I’m not feeling particularly depressed at the moment, but it’s something my personality tends towards in general, and I was just talking to someone about it by email.  I thought I’d collect some thoughts here.

A lot of people are deceived by what I call the “emotional prosperity gospel”, that Christians should expect be happy all the time.  Many of these people would never be deceived for a minute by the financial version of the prosperity gospel—that Christians will become rich.  But both are based on a superficial reading of the Bible which totally ignores the fact that Christ was “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief”.  The prophet Isaiah, speaking of the one who was to come, writes this dialogue between God and our Messiah:

He said to me, “You are my servant,
Israel, in whom I will display my splendor.”
But I said, “I have labored in vain;
I have spent my strength for nothing at all.
Yet what is due me is in the Lord’s hand,
and my reward is with my God.”  (Isaiah 49:3-4)

This is not, of course, the end of the passage.  God’s plans do end with joy.  But depression is often found in the middle of things, in the difficulty and orneriness of life.

The emotional prosperity “gospel”—which is really no gospel at all—ignores that the Prophets and Apostles often had emotional poverty as well as financial poverty.  2 Corinthians makes it clear enough that St. Paul was not always happy, even though he found joy in his sorrows.

We live in a fallen world, and our bodies and minds are broken in various ways.  Emotions are physiological, not just spiritual; our bodies affect our minds and vice versa.  So depression is partly a medical issue.  If the chemical balance in our brain is off, it can cause us to feel sad, or withdrawn, or lazy without being able to help it.  This web comic is famous for its accurate depiction of what severe depression can be like:

http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2011/10/adventures-in-depression.html
http://hyperboleandahalf.blogspot.com/2013/05/depression-part-two.html

Because depression is partly a physiological issue, there are physical changes which can be helpful.  Many people find that getting better sleep, exercising more, and/or making dietary changes can help.  I get seasonal depression in the wintertime, and in the evenings, and I have a lightbox which produces bright light, which I occasionally use to feel better.

For severe depression, it can be appropriate to seek medical help, such as drugs or psychotherapy.  (For talk therapy, I would recommend that Christians normally try to find a psychologist who is also a Christian, if reasonably possible.  If you just want someone to prescribe drugs, this might be less relevant.)

This link says more about what to expect if you go to a doctor:
http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/06/16/things-that-sometimes-help-if-youre-depressed/

Many people are resistant to doing this because they think if they get help it means they are “crazy”.  If there’s one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that we’re all a little bit crazy; people should realize that mental issues are normal and common, and not look down on themselves for being born a human being.

If someone can’t walk because they have a broken leg, we wouldn’t just tell them to trust God and snap out of it—we might pray for a miracle, but we should also go to the doctor.  It ought to be the same when the organ that’s broken is our brain.  Also, we wouldn’t say that a crippled person was “irresponsible” and “immature” for using a physical crutch, if it helps them to function better in their everyday life.  So we shouldn’t say this about psychological crutches either.

To be sure, the fruits of the Spirit include joy and peace.  I would question the faith of a supposed Christian who never found any emotional consolation at all in Christ’s resurrection.  Despair, a belief that God can’t make your life better, that is a sin.  And we need to spend time in the Scriptures learning about God’s promises about salvation, prayer, and the redemption of the world.  But there are many moods in Scripture: it contains Lamentations, Eccelesiastes, and the questioning Psalms, alongside the exhortations to rejoice and be glad.  If the Bible had only authorized some kinds of feelings, it would be superficial, unadapted to the world, uninspired.  Fortunately, God gave us something better than this.  Christ was fully human, not just divine.

Emotions come and go.  Depression often dampens all emotions, making it seem difficult to feel anything at all.  It is commonplace that “love”, the primary fruit of the Spirit, has to be regarded primarily as an act of the will instead of an emotion.  I would suggest that “joy” and “peace” are the same way, and that it is possible to be sad or depressed and still have an attitude of rejoicing.  And one can’t forget that it’s the “peace that passes understanding”, not the peace that comes from a well-calibrated cocktail of genes and circumstances.

Some Christians have both kinds of peace and are naturally happy and bouncy all the time; that’s okay too as long as neither kind of Christian looks down on the other kind for being different from them.  Our emotional “set point” is largely the luck of the draw, it’s what we do with it that matters.  Depression can, at times, be a legitimate response to the fallenness of the world.  We are pilgrims on a journey, not yet settlers in our final home.  Sometimes we have no choice but to feel sad.  But we can try to direct our negative emotions towards the things that actually matter in the world.

God can and does rescue many people from depression in this life.  But our faith is not primarily about this life, it is primarily about looking forward to the next, which will last forever.  Remember, St. Paul opined that Christianity just isn’t worth it, if it only helps us in this life (1 Cor 15:19).  This is an increasingly unpopular thing to say in an increasingly worldly age.

But paradoxically, looking forward to Heaven makes us better able to deal with Earth.  Earthly sorrows are not as big of a deal, if we know that they are going to come to an end.  If we suffer with Christ, we will also reign with him.

Why are Internet discussions less polite?

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In the comments section of another post, St. Martel observes that:

Discussion fora on the Internet do have a tendency to make people a little less polite than they would be in person.  Not sure why that is…

[May I point out how glad I am that my readers are capable of noticing this and correcting for tone on their own?  Yes, I may?  Okay, I will then.]

I think there are 3 main reasons why internet discussions are less polite:

1) Anonymity.  People feel free to say things they wouldn’t otherwise say when it can’t be traced back to their “real” identity, so that there are no consequences (for those with limited capacity to feel guilt, anyway).

While this probably accounts for many of the worst abusers, I don’t think it’s all that relevant in the case of a) people like myself who blog under our real names, or b) people with robust consciences who don’t like trolling and insulting people so much.

2) Lack of bodily interaction.  We human beings consist of both bodies and souls.  When we have conversations face-to-face, we aren’t just communicating with words.  Our social instincts, evolved over millions of years, involve all kinds of subtle communications when we talk in person.  Even merely talking over the phone (by voice) provides subtle clues which are not present in internet conversations.  Whereas, on the internet we have a conversation between disembodied minds.  Don’t get me wrong, it’s a wonderful technology, but it’s missing a lot of color, the sense of the other person as a person, the embodied almost-sacramental aspects of human relationships.

Hence the email convention of including a smiley to say when we are joking. :-)  (That wasn’t a joke, that was just an example of a smiley.)  Although, that doesn’t always work either.  As my father St. Larry once said:

You know how people are sometimes rude on Usenet or on a mailing list. Sometimes they’ll write something that can only be taken as a deadly insult, and then they have the unmitigated gall to put a smiley face on it, as if that makes it all right.

This helps explain why you should avoid quarrelling with somebody by email.  It seldom brings disputing parties into agreement.  Emotionally tense situations are best resolved in more personable settings, if you can handle it.  (Though sometimes email or a physical letter can be useful to broach a sensitive topic if you’re too chicken to initiate the exchange in person.  But that’s different from quarrelling.)

So on the one hand, arguing with somebody face-to-face can trigger an unpleasant sense of  Conflict! Conflict! with an accompanying adrenaline surge.  It’s annoying if your body starts trembling with fear when your mind just wanted to have a nice friendly conversation about how somebody else is wrong about politics or something.  On the other hand, we instinctively know this and most of us adapt in order to be more personable and friendly when there’s an actual face on the other end.   It’s much easier to see what’s going on and correct it mid-stream.  This leads to a 3rd point:

3) Long comments with a delay in responding.  If I speak to you in person, then if I put my foot in it and begin to misunderstand you, or say something insulting, you will immediately respond and I have the ability to self-correct before anything goes too terribly wrong.

But if I’m in an argument on the Internet, that’s not how things work.  Suppose you read a long response from somebody and you start obsessing about in what ways it is wrong and needs correction.  So then you write a long response of your own, but it’s pretty easy to get carried away.  If the tone is wrong, it won’t be corrected until several hours or days later when an equally strongly worded message comes back, and that of course will itself generally be a disproportionate response (for the same reason) which triggers a similar reaction.

Of course, the whole thing can be nipped in the bud if both parties make a conscious effort to be unusually polite and respectful, but it’s surprising just how much greater an effort it takes.

But even if the discussion is totally polite, there’s a downside for philosophy.  Long-winded comments make it too easy to talk at cross purposes, without correction from the other point of view.  After all, when I’m writing a long argument I’m putting myself into the brain state where I am right and the other person is wrong, and one stays there for quite some time.  This is dangerous to one’s sense of balance and fairness.

Psychological studies have shown that when people hear evidence that their own strongly-held political views are wrong, the usual response is to argue against the new evidence.  Paradoxically, this causes them to become more certain of their previous point of view [too lazy to find a link right now, but I promise I’m not just making this up].

From this perspective, arguments are rather dangerous things!  Simply by expressing an argument for X, one naturally causes somebody on the other side to compensate by arguing for ~X.  But this puts them in the position of a lawyer trying to make the best case for one side, not a judge disinterestedly weighing the evidence for and against.  And as we all know, lawyers have a tendency to come to believe that their own side is right (even if it was basically a coin-toss which side they would be assigned to in the first place.)

This is something I worry about quite a bit as somebody who enjoys arguing about religion on my blog (and in person).  Rational people should settle disputes rationally, but what if providing rational arguments don’t tend to actually cause this to happen?  What does one do instead?

One could compensate for this by asking people to argue for the other side of the debate for a change (one implementation of this is the Ideological Turing Test, adapted to religious arguments by St. Leah Libresco.)  But this only works if we presuppose a strong interest in finding the truth.  The “debate team” mentality where the goal is to win by coming up with sophistical bogus arguments, is not really improved by the fact that the positions are assigned randomly.  That just makes it even more relativistic.

To try to get around some of these issues, the Socratic method of dialogue requires that the participants ask each other questions instead of arguing directly, and respond by making short speeches, not long.  The other rule is that you can take things back as needed without any shame, instead of getting stuck defending one’s initial reaction to the question.  As St. Socrates says to Polus in St. Plato’s Gorgias:

SOCRATES: Illustrious Polus, the reason why we provide ourselves with friends and children is, that when we get old and stumble, a younger generation may be at hand to set us on our legs again in our words and in our actions: and now, if I and Gorgias are stumbling, here are you who should raise us up; and I for my part engage to retract any error into which you may think that I have fallen-upon one condition:

POLUS: What condition?

SOCRATES: That you contract, Polus, the prolixity of speech in which you indulged at first.

POLUS: What! do you mean that I may not use as many words as I please?

SOCRATES: Only to think, my friend, that having come on a visit to Athens, which is the most free-spoken state in Hellas, you when you got there, and you alone, should be deprived of the power of speech—that would be hard indeed. But then consider my case:—shall not I be very hardly used, if, when you are making a long oration, and refusing to answer what you are asked, I am compelled to stay and listen to you, and may not go away? I say rather, if you have a real interest in the argument, or, to repeat my former expression, have any desire to set it on its legs, take back any statement which you please; and in your turn ask and answer, like myself and Gorgias—refute and be refuted.

So I guess the really philosophical way to argue on the Internet is chat!  Text chats (IM) are still disembodied, but they have a much quicker turn-around time, perfect for Socratic dialogue.  I use gmail chat all the time to talk physics with my physics collaborators, but I don’t usually have philosophical discussions that way.  But maybe I should.

Questions about Adam

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In the comments to my post on Flesh and Sprit II: Original Sin, a couple readers asked questions about the historicity of Adam:

1) A reader who goes by the pseudonym i like pizza asks:

i don’t want to get too off-topic here, but i’m curious about your thoughts on whether or not adam was a historical person. and if you believe that he was not, what are your thoughts on paul apparently believing (and teaching?) that he was (rom 5:12-20; 1 cor 15:45-49)?

What counts as believing and teaching that Adam was historical?  I know a lot of conservative Christians use this argument: person or event X is mentioned by Jesus or an apostle in the New Testament and therefore X must have been historical.  Well that doesn’t follow.  As an example, I don’t believe Adam and Eve were necessarily historical individuals, and yet I still referred to their story in Genesis.

Suppose for the sake of argument that the Adam story was a mythical story, inspired by God, which illustrates a point about the human condition, and that St. Paul knew this.  Would it follow from this that St. Paul would never refer to that story in his own writings?  Not unless we think that St. Paul couldn’t have found any value in the story unless it was historical.  But the rabbinic use of midrashim (fictional stories to tell a point, often about biblical characters) shows that they did not in fact think this way.

Basically the argument is circular: you should take Genesis literally because St. Paul did, and we know St. Paul was, because no reasonable person could get meaning out of the Adam story unless they themselves took it literally.  But that is exactly the question which is at stake.

Did St. Paul in fact believe that Adam was a historical person?  I doubt he ever considered the issue explicitly, but very likely he assumed he was (Acts 17:26 is probably better evidence for this than his epistles).  Did he teach that he was historical?  Well, we have to decide what do we mean by this…?

If the question is, does St. Paul’s teaching collapse as meaningless if Adam was not historical, I think the answer is clearly no.  The point of the references to Adam in Romans and 1 Corinthians is to establish the existence of a sinful human nature to illustrate by comparison the new human nature which comes from Christ.  But this purpose is served just as well by a mythical Adam representing some pre-historical rebellion against God with unknown details; since the resulting Old Human Nature is in any case a real thing that exists in the present and needs redemption.  In any case, St. Paul also emphasizes the differences between the two figures:

But the gift is not like the trespass. For if by the one man’s trespass the many died, how much more have the grace of God and the gift overflowed to the many by the grace of the one man, Jesus Christ.  And the gift is not like the one man’s sin, because from one sin came the judgment, resulting in condemnation, but from many trespasses came the gift, resulting in justification. (Roms 5:15-16)

We could also ask, did St. Paul make it explicit that one could not disbelieve in a historical Adam and still be a Christian?  This is not a silly thing to ask, because earlier in the 1 Cor 15 passage he did do exactly this, when it comes to the question of whether Christ really rose from the dead.

But if it is preached that Christ has been raised from the dead, how can some of you say that there is no resurrection of the dead?  If there is no resurrection of the dead, then not even Christ has been raised.  And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith.  More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead. But he did not raise him if in fact the dead are not raised.  For if the dead are not raised, then Christ has not been raised either.   And if Christ has not been raised, your faith is futile; you are still in your sins.  Then those also who have fallen asleep in Christ are lost.  If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are of all people most to be pitied.  (15:12-9)

There is no similar statement that the Christian preaching and faith are useless unless Adam was really historical.  St. Paul’s teaching is relentlessly Christological.  Everything, including Old Testament stories, is important only for the light it sheds on the Christ-event.  Christ is the center, so it matters whether he was historical.  Adam is peripheral; his story is there to teach us more about the meaning of Jesus and the Church (who is the new Eve, the spouse which was formed from his pierced side after he had fallen into the temporary sleep of death).

If Adam’s story is of great and irreplaceable value in explaining the true meaning of Christ’s sacrifice, then for that very reason, the Holy Spirit was justified in putting that story in our Bible, regardless of whether it happened literally.

2) St. Declan writes:

I’ve been reflecting on my belief in evolution and Christianity as a whole and realized that there are many questions to think about that I can’t appropriately answer.

You mentioned evolutionary psychology as an explanation of why we have sinful inclinations. Yet some advanced mammals like chimpanzees seem to demonstrate an ability to go against their evolutionary instincts by demonstrating kindness to a wounded chimp when other chimps don’t. Does this demonstrate that animals too, can sin?

And if animals can sin, then it would seem that Pauline soteriology is pretty false: Sin didn’t enter the world through one man. What do you think Dr Aron?

About a year ago I read a very interesting book about The Moral Lives of Animals, by a zoological writer named Dale Peterson.  It had a bunch of very interesting examples of moral-like (and immoral-like) animal behaviors.

One could quibble whether many of the examples should really qualify as ethics: if an animal mistreats another animal and the other animals get annoyed, so the first one stops, is this really ethics or just obvious social behavior?  Granted that chimps engage in e.g. rape, do they actually feel guilty about it?

But it seems clear enough that there exist social instincts in animals which could at least be called proto-ethics.  I don’t think Christians have any need to deny this.  Why shouldn’t God provide the early animals with some moral-like instincts, especially if he intended one of them to evolve into a species capable of bearing his Son.  It would be a much worse world if no animals ever felt affection for each other or for us.  But recall what I said in my previous post:

Or if we were still just animals, who had never known better, we would still have the innocence of animals.  A cat is morally innocent when it plays with a mouse, not because that is morally wonderful but because it doesn’t know any better.  But now we know better (or else ought to know better but are in denial), and it pains us to experience our own worst impulses.

Do animals sin?  A sin is an offense against God (Psalm 51:4).  For something to rise to the level of sin, the organism in question needs to be high enough to potentially be in relationship with God and feel guilty for disobeying.  (Or to deny the possibility of any such higher authority in order to avoid feeling guilty, which is a different manifestation of the same issue.)  I don’t see any evidence that any animals are sinners in this sense.

An animal may loosely be said to commit an ethical (or more accurately social) violation against another animal, but human beings don’t usually morally condemn them for this because we don’t consider them morally responsible because they are animals.  So presumably God doesn’t either.  No animal is smarter than a 4 year old human, and we barely consider 4 year-olds to be morally responsible (we treat them as if they were in order so that they grow up to be morally responsible, but we don’t consider them e.g. criminally or spiritually responsible).  We have Reason, a qualitatively greater capacity for abstraction, which allows us to recognize a Law which comes from somthing above us.  (Even if not all of us humans conceptualize that Law as being related to a divine Lawgiver, we still tend to act as if it did.)

So far as I can tell, animals are not capable of belief in God.  I would be extremely interested in whether humans could teach chimps about the existence of God, but I doubt the type of scientists who currently do chimpanzee-learning experiments would countenance that one.

The closest an animal ever comes to sinning, is if they are domestic pets, and they rebel against a human being in authority over them.  Cats and dogs are both capable of adoring human beings as a higher order of creature, though cats are rather weak on the concept of obedience.  So let’s consider a bad dog who disobeys and then feels shame after being scolded by his master.  Since human beings are created in the image of God and are his priests to the animals, this is like sin.  But it is only an analogy, since sin, properly speaking, is a spiritual offense against God, not a social offense against Man.

(Of course, for us humans, who have been raised to the divine image and can recognize consciously the value of human beings in the abstract, for us to sin against other human beings is to sin against the God who made them.)

So understood in this theological sense, the first sin must, almost by definition, have come after the first moment that a being recognized their Creator as being in authority over them.  There could have been plenty of affection, cooperation, violence, or theft before that time, but this was the moment that human beings in a spiritual sense came to be.

Of course, my speculations about the actual course of pre-historic events are just that: speculations.  But if there is going to be a speculative field of secular evolutionary psychology, I don’t see why Christians shouldn’t join in the fun.