richard_dawkins_-_the_god_delusion

214 T H E G O D D E I. U S I O N
true, it is better, much, much better, to believe a noble
myth, like Plato's, if it leads to peace of mind while we
live. But your world view leads to anxiety, drug addiction,
violence, nihilism, hedonism, Frankenstein science, and
hell on earth, and World War III... I wonder how happy
you are in your personal relationships? Divorced?
Widowed? Gay? Those like you are never happy, or they
would not try so hard to prove there is no happiness nor
meaning in anything.
The sentiment of this letter, if not its tone, is typical of many.
Darwinism, this person believes, is inherently nihilistic, teaching
that we evolved by blind chance (for the umpteenth time, natural
selection is the very opposite of a chance process) and are
annihilated when we die. As a direct consequence of such alleged
negativity, all manner of evils follow. Presumably he didn't really
mean to suggest that widowhood could follow directly from my
Darwinism, but his letter, by this point, had reached that level of
frenzied malevolence which I repeatedly recognize among my
Christian correspondents. I have devoted a whole book
(Unweaving the Rainbow) to ultimate meaning, to the poetry of
science, and to rebutting, specifically and at length, the charge of
nihilistic negativity, so I shall restrain myself here. This chapter is
about evil, and its opposite, good; about morality: where it comes
from, why we should embrace it, and whether we need religion to
do so.
DOES OUR MORAL SENSE HAVE A
DARWINIAN ORIGIN?
Several books, including Robert Hinde's Why Good is Good,
Michael Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil, Robert
Buckman's Can We Be Good Without God?, and Marc Hauser's
Moral Minds, have argued that our sense of right and wrong can be
derived from our Darwinian past. This section is my own version
of the argument.