Chemical Villains
The strict scientific materialism that positions itself so prominently in public discourse has some interesting implications. One is highlighted in the most recent Time magazine. The cover story features an investigation into what makes us good or evil. The article fails to delve into the deeper questions of what constitutes a right or wrong action, rather arguing that social constructs have encouraged the development of moral systems. Yet throughout the article the idea of morality is never questioned.
Ultimately the materialism they assume means that morality, like everything else can be reduced to one thing: chemicals. What else is there? Every action, feeling, motive, sense and thought is one hormone or another acting on our organs and producing one response or another. This response has an effect upon our behaviour that either has had a beneficial or detrimental effect upon the viability of the species, and the development of our species and the cultures surrounding it will inform the emotional response and moral categorization of it. This is the ultimate consequence of ardent materialism. Love your spouse and children? Only because it has proven beneficial to the survivability of previous generations. The proponents of these philosophies seem to rarely (if ever) follow it through to its ultimate conclusion.
Most people hold to at least two conflicting worldviews, a scientific materialism that governs a large part of their lives and a pseudo-spirituality that governs the rest. Eventually this will become untenable and we will have to begin to grapple either with a world in which the things we generally hold to be the most meaningful are really not, or a world in which the spiritual permeates all things much more deeply than we readily recognize.
I think we’ll come to see that there’s more to love than chemicals.
http://www.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,20071203,00.html
