A Tremendous Faith (part three)

by Arron Bergeron

The failure of the Psychological solution to the problem of evil

Theories of human nature have significant impacts on culture and society. We cannot ignore them, nor can we live without them. Who we believe man to be in his nature is a presupposition which, on personal as well as corporate tableaus, inform our decisions on everything from the political, judicial, familial, relational, and educational spheres of life. The extent of the impact each present accepted theory on human nature has, and the possible future consequences thereof, necessitates a sturdy and rigorous dissection of them to see if they can stand on their merits. The problem of cementing our own theories of human nature, as we will see, is that they are in and of themselves based upon presuppositions which also need to be tested rigorously. (Where does this regression end? We cannot continue on as such indefinitely.)

John Locke, for example, held to the theory of the blank slate. He believed that experience was the sole informing factor in men’s lives which dictated the outcomes of personality, character, and success.

Let us then suppose the mind to be, as we say, white paper void of all characters, without any ideas. How comes it to be furnished?  Whence comes it by that vast store which the busy and boundless fancy of man has painted on it with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of reason and knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, from experience.ⁱ

It was Locke’s attempt to find a theory of human nature which complimented his denial of absolutes implanted by God which led to this proclamation. What a dangerous philosophy indeed, that man is purely the result of nurture and of his environment. From this philosophy man can be said, on the most basic level, to be innocent of any and all evil he commits. Evil would in reality cease to be evil, and it would become mere preferences of the society at large, which coincidentally has just as much culpability in the evil if they created the nurturing environment. This is precisely the foundational assumption behind behaviorist psychology; namely that God does not exist, and we are biological machines, merely animals with moral agency as produced by evolution; all of human nature therefore is a collection of stimuli and responses which become retained in our psyche’s to determine future behaviors. Understanding of course not all behavior theorists need to be evolutionists or atheists, but those philosophies are implicit in the foundation of that brand of psychological theory. The idea of the blank slate not only fails to answer the problem of evil, it also fails to legitimize its obvious existence. It is a dangerous notion; remnants of it are still engrained in justice and policy throughout North America, and continue to aid evil rather than arrest it.

The nature of man is obviously not a blank page written on by environmental nurtures. Watch a child who aggressively strikes at blows when his desires have been stayed by an older sibling, and then lies about it to protect himself. No parent teaches this to a child, and says “now Johnnie, I know you’re only 18 months old, so I need to teach you to beat on people who impede you’re happiness. Oh! Yeah, and when in doubt, lie about it” Though we may still cherish the innocence of children, sin is in them from birth, and it is in you, and it is in me. It is part of the nature all men share. It is on this truth that the most recent attempts to explain human nature apart from God are built up.

Steven Pinker in his book “The Blank Slate”, admits that the “romantic notion that evil is a product of society has justified the release of dangerous psychopaths who promptly murdered innocent people. And the conviction that humanity could be reshaped by massive social engineering projects led to some of the greatest atrocities in history.”ⁱⁱ His response is a bold assertion of a human nature in all mankind which affects our decision making. Like the ghost in the machine, but without the ghost. Pinker, though not the spokesman for secular psychology, cannot deny human nature exists, but neither can he accept divine causes for that human nature. He asserts that human nature is purely the result of evolutionary processes;

“But the modern sciences of cosmology, geology, biology, and archeology, have made it impossible for a scientifically literate person to believe that the biblical story of creation actually took place. As a result, the Judeo-Christian theory of human nature is no longer explicitly avowed by most academics, journalists, social analysts, and other intellectually engaged people.”

He holds to the belief that man is purely the result of complex random chemical reactions, and that those reactions result in the genomes and the D.N.A. which have code written into them to account for human nature. Human nature predominantly is, to this psychologist, informed and directed by our D.N.A.  No matter what the ratio is between this nature and our environment, it is strictly as much a form of determinism as is behaviorism. A purely biological human nature leaves man subject to the chemical reactions within, as opposed to the external stimuli of behaviorism. In either case man is no longer culpable for his actions. Pinker’s definition of human nature is flawed, and therefore so is his solution to evil, as part an overarching understanding of that nature. That, however, is not where the flaws end.

I must say that psychology, for the most part, is suspect to begin with. But given the benefit of the doubt, I don’t see how psychology can possibly answer the problem of evil. Firstly, each diagnosis in psychology is really in effect a name given to a grouping of subjectively observed symptoms. The treatments of them are then treatments of symptoms, and not diseases. Diagnoses in and of themselves are not labels for the underlying problems. Secondly, this leads to a two pronged flaw in that we are dealing with descriptive norms instead the prescriptive, and that we are then in no way dealing explicitly with the evil at the root.

The branches of psychology which deal with scientific study of brain function can be considered actual science, as opposed to the various forms of psychotherapy on the market today. It is from this scientific perspective Pinker argues that study of the brain will aid psychologists in better understanding human nature, and therefore help us to become a better humanity.

“Though many of my arguments will be coolly analytical-that an acknowledgement of human nature does not, logically speaking, imply the negative outcomes so many people fear- I will not try to hide my belief that they have positive thrust as well. ‘Man will become better when you show him what he is like’, wrote Chekov, and so the new sciences of human nature can lead to a realistic, biologically informed humanism. They expose the psychological unity of our species beneath the superficial differences of physical appearance and parochial culture. They make us appreciate the wondrous complexity of the human mind, which we are apt to take for granted precisely because it works so well. They identify the moral intuitions that we can put to work in improving our lot. They promise a naturalness in human relationships, encouraging us to treat people in terms of how they do feel rather than how some theory says they ought to feel. They offer a touchstone by which we can identify suffering and oppression wherever they occur, unmasking the rationalizations of the powerful. They give us a way to see through the designs of self-appointed social reformers who would liberate us from our pleasures.”ⁱⁱⁱ

Generously granting the point that the descriptive essence of such psychology may or may not inform us about our natures, it still cannot give us a way to fix the problem unless we assume or interject some criteria of what should be normative. That cannot come from within the realm of observational science of any stripe. There is a leap of tremendous faith he and other secularists fail to acknowledge; what is in no way translates into what ought to be. Evil is the result of rebellion against that ought, and the greater the rebellion, the greater the evil will seem.

As the previous quote demonstrates, biologically informed humanism will not improve anything, unless they apply the criteria of happiness equals good and suffering equals bad. That criterion doesn’t stand up in the face of scrutiny. It also fails in the area of being scientific; it is not unlike the Epicurean philosophy the Apostle Paul confronted on Mars Hill.^iv The modern counterpart of it is called “Enlightened Self-interest”, which is equally philosophical, and unscientific. Clearly, modern psychological understandings of human nature do not offer any answers in dealing with the problem of evil, nor can they. The stains of the soul are deep, and psychology doesn’t even begin to deal with them, let alone understand the why it is so beyond the how it is so.

Notes:

1. Locke, J. “An essay concerning human understanding”, E.P. Dutton, New York, 1947.
2. Steven Pinker, “the Blank Slate; the Modern Denial of Human Nature”, Penguin Books, New York, 2002.
3. Pinker, “the Blank Slate…”, pg xi
4. The Holy Bible, Acts 17:18-34.