Evolution and Moral Theology

          I imagine that moral theology has tended to operate or be considered in terms of moral finality, or final cause:  toward what end  or towards what result was an action intended?  But I wonder to what extent since Darwin published, that question has been asked with regard to early, primitive, or emergent humanity.  I haven’t really considered why or toward what purpose sado-masochistic urges or instincts came to exist in our race.  They would seem to serve only evil purposes, something contrary to or destructive of human civilization.  Yet human or even any intelligent life seems to do anything with some purpose or intention, and thus almost by definition towards some gratification—even if that gratification be only of a mental or imaginatively realized kind.  Why should there be pleasure in another’s pain, either physical torment or mental, torture or humiliation?  How can or could one or some of us impose that upon others or another?  Cleary by denying, blocking, or frustrating their will: overcoming it, overpowering it, enforcing necessity rather than choice, submission rather than freedom. That implies the acquisition of superior power on the part of one side or agent as opposed to another.  That in turn implies a resultant gratification in an agent’s becoming able to acquire that power.  There is pleasure in dominance, especially as acquired, whether by personal effort or by gift from another.  Did the advancement of our species require effort?   Assuredly.  A genetic impulse towards power, towards supriority over others, is therefore—or at least was—advantageous for our species. Hierarchy was at least at one time evolutionarily advantageous—progressive.

             All life has some ability or propensity, however limited, towards action.  Clearly some life forms are more gifted with this ability than others, and that has to be due to genetic variance, however random in its origin and development.   If that is true within our species, as it seems assuredly to be, the survival of a social, intercommunicative, linguistic species would seem to necessitate cooperation, interaction, and therefore decision, and thus some acceptance or acknowledgment of priority with respect to making decisions, and thus an inequality of power at some point.  If progress implies decision, and the survival, the life of a species, a genetically implanted aptitude for survival, is it not likely that some inclination in members of the species either towards assertion or submission would be genetically implanted?  Is it altogether  surprising, then, if at least in some human individuals a genetically implanted tendency either towards leadership or submission be present, and thus inherent, and further, evident in individuals, given opportunity for growth and experience?  And is it not likely that at least in some cases, an inherent tendency to gratification either in dominance or submission be operative and eventually evident?  Hence sado-masochism as a real if not universal trait in some individuals.