How did humans create morality? What does evolution say? The scientific answer to all the great fallacies
In today's era, science has revealed everything that man once considered supernatural. Microbiology, neuroscience, brain circuits, genetics, and the theory of evolution have explained where consciousness came from, how human society was formed, and how behaviors emerged.
But despite all this knowledge, a fundamental misunderstanding repeatedly comes to the fore.
If consciousness and moral values are evolutionary, then do they have no reality?
Does injustice also become right?
Is everything that happened in history an experiment of nature?
That's why it's okay. The real problem here is the abundance of scientific fallacies.
In this article, I am opening up these same misunderstandings. These are the questions that have been itching in the minds of humanity for centuries.
If human consciousness is the result of microbiology, neuroscience, and evolution, are moral values also evolutionary?
Are human justice, compassion, mercy, and cooperation all the products of biological advantage?
Are these values not an absolute truth?
Are they just experiments of nature?
Let's understand these fallacies one by one.
Fallacy No. 1
If evolution is blind, then the Holocaust, slavery, wars, and occupations are all right?
The basic confusion here is that evolution does not call what happens “right”; it only tells us which behavior happened temporarily and why.
For example, earthquakes are also nature, storms are also nature, but no one says that storms are “right.” Similarly, acts like wars, the Holocaust, and slavery were “blind triggers” of nature, but as conscious humans progressed, they called these behaviors wrong because they were against long-term survival, large-scale cooperation, and large social systems.
That is, it is one thing to be like this and another to consider it morally right. Evolution remains silent on the other. Here, human consciousness makes its own decision.
Fallacy No. 2
The survival of the fittest is the principle of evolution, so wars will never end
This is a very old and incorrect interpretation of evolution. Darwin said “Survival of the fittest,” but “the fittest” is not always the strongest; the fittest is the fittest. The one who cooperates more creates more group stability and leads more generations to success.
That is why human history shows that empires based on power have ended, while civilizations based on cooperation and order have lasted longer. In long-term evolution, not the powerful individual but the strong social system wins. That is why science says that the human mind is constantly reducing war madness and increasing social cooperation.
Although there are wars in the world, violence has decreased in proportion to the population compared to the past. This is a proven scientific fact.
Fallacy No. 3
If consciousness is evolutionary, how can it question evolution itself?
This is the most powerful question, and neuroscience answers it. The human mind was not created just for survival, but survival made it so complex that it started questioning its origin. This is called “emergence”.
A complex mind emerges from simple systems that can also question its creator mechanism (evolution).
For example, a computer has a basic circuit, but the software running on this circuit becomes more complex than the circuit. Similarly, evolution has shaped the brain. Created and the brain developed the ability to ask more complex questions than evolution
This is not a “blind change” but a natural feature of the “complex adaptive system”. Human consciousness is a product of evolution, but can think beyond the limits of evolution. This is the real power of the human brain.
Fallacy No. 4
If every social value is formed from the experiences of nature, why do you call the values of the past wrong
The main thing to understand here is that the experiences of nature were only an initial sorting. The human brain went beyond this sorting. Groups that buried girls alive disappeared because they were going against their own survival.
Societies based on oppression collapsed from within because trust was lost. Systems based on violence could not grow because order, justice, trust, and cooperation were necessary for a large social network.
That is why there were many behaviors in the past, but they were not “correct”. When the human brain developed, it decided for itself which values give survival and which lead to destruction.
Morality is not the forcibly given principles of nature; they are the result of the collective thinking of the human brain, and the brain is still improving them.
Fallacy No. 5
If everything is evolution, then there is no reality of truth and falsehood
This is also a simple fallacy. Truth is that which allows the system to last longer. Lie is that which breaks the system.
In evolution, only those societies survive that have the principles of less loss, more cooperation, and more stability.
This is the reason why the human mind has gradually developed justice, mercy, cooperation, and common rules, because these have become the long-term guarantee of collective survival.
Absolute truth has not fallen from the sky, but the truth of collective survival has been created by the human mind itself and improved over and over again.
What is the real truth?
Evolution only provided the raw material. The human mind created consciousness, ethics, laws, society, and principles from this raw material. Evolution does not say that all behavior is equal.
The human mind has proven that the path that causes less harm, gives more stability, and creates a civilization that lasts longer is the real and better path. That is why oppression, war, violence, genocide, a system based on force, has certainly happened in the past, but it was never right.
That is why man calls them wrong because human consciousness now thinks beyond the blind experiments of nature. This is a scientific fact that people have spent centuries understanding. And if this fact is understood correctly, the entire discussion of ethics becomes clear.