This morning I bought some dog food. My poor pet needs to live too, so I went to the grocery store to buy him some tasty beef and vegetable dry mix. While I was in line I noticed a title on the magazine rack that caught my attention: “The Science of Good and Evil: Time Magazine Special Edition”. I’m in the business of figuring out good and evil, so I bought the magazine as future source material and hopefully, I will be able to glean new insights from the current scholars of the day. That is of course if you think Time Magazine is the leading voice in ethics and philosophy.

The opening article is written by Jeffry Kluger, and he begins in a quandary: “It’s not just that we’re evil – though we are…The bigger problem is we are fools.” Why are we fools you may ask? Because instead of running from danger when evil shows up, some people rush “foolishly, perilously, wonderfully – toward it.” And “it” more specifically is the evil danger that could kill you; like a bomb, gun, or madman with a knife. Why would an evolutionary creature who is designed to survive run into a situation to help people when it may cost them their life? That is the question.

Now listen close to his answer:

“Ethicists, anthropologists and evolutionary biologists have tried for a long time to figure out why we do these things – putting ourselves in mortal danger to save other people and, in so doing, defying our one great evolutionary imperative, which is to stay alive ourselves…Humans, instead, are guided by a sort of moral grammar – a primal ethical structure on which decency is built…You know when a sentence is right and when it isn’t, even if you can’t explain why, and you know the same thing about goodness too.”

Did you notice anything missing? The opinion of the theologian and minister. Where are their voices? No one cares about what God and his messengers have to say, heavenly answers no longer matter. Talk about being marginalized! God has been pushed to the edges, he is old now, his opinion is outdated.

So, according to Kluger, we need to listen to the ethicist, the moral philosopher. But isn’t he the one who has been arguing till he is blue in the face to get us to see that everything is relative? But if everything is relative why does this question of good and evil even matter to him? Because, according to Kluger’s opening remarks, they can’t deny evil exists! And yet they have no way to categorize it. For the last 100 years, the ethicist has lost his voice – just read two of the most influential ethicists in the 20th Century, Rousseau and Sartre, and you will learn, as Queen sings, “Nothing really matters” anymore. That is why science has gotten into the picture.

Enter the anthropologist and evolutionary biologist. It seems they are the only ones left who have something intelligent to say about this matter (remember God is not wanted). We are now told that science, which only used to answer the “what and how” questions, can now answer the “why” question. We are told that smart people can now use math, metrics and scientific theory to study cultural trends and human relationships. By evaluating patterns of behavior we are able to now explain how history evolves – good is what moves society forward. That is why we are told to applaud the new social movements of the day; it is a great thing that a boy can now be a girl, or two men can raise a child just fine without a mother, or sexual coupling no longer needs marital commitment to be considered right and good.

Ironically, the evolutionary biologist will never logically point out how homosexual behavior, by its very nature, defies the great evolutionary imperative as well – because you know two men cannot have a baby together, don’t you? That surely is not a good survival technique, and yet they never question it. But who cares, they are scientists and science is never wrong, so we must allow them in to give answers to why people do good things in the face of evil.

Kluger tries to make sense of this, “Yes, we’re savage; yes, we’re brutal…but we’re close kin, too.” The theory of evolution is built on savagery, it has always been “bloody in tooth and claw” as Lord Tennyson has said, but now they want to say it also is built on compassion. But how, isn’t that a blatant contradiction? Not when you are scared of letting God in the conversation. Human pride demands for you to try to figure this out without him.

But evil demands real answers. Silly speculation is not enough. Listen to Kluger again:

“A similar reductionist argument is made by scientists who scan the brain and actually see where goodness lives. Moral behavior is processed in the prefrontal cortex and mesolimbic region. It follows a very mappable neuronal path that is no more complex than the one that allows you to throw a baseball or write your name, and that’s no more lyrical either. And yet these answers just ring wrong.”

Why do these reductionist scientific answers ring wrong? Even to the scientific minded?

Because man is made in the image of God, and speculative solutions are not enough. But if all you listen to is the ethicist, anthropologist and evolutionary biologist you can never come to that conclusion. When God no longer matters, evil will always be a mystery, and good will never make sense.

That is modern man’s biggest problem, the person with all the answers is no longer allowed to speak.