With regard to morality, Christians believe that human beings are moral beings with the knowledge of good and evil and with a disposition to conform to the rules of right conduct. In answering the question, “How are human beings moral beings?” the Bible teaches that we, who are created in the image of God, have the moral law written in our hearts by God (cf. Romans 2:15). With regard to the question, “Why are we moral beings?” Christians would assert that we are moral beings to glorify God.
The atheist, on the other hand, rejects God’s existence. Thus the atheist rejects creation and subscribes to evolution.
So the atheist should answer these two questions:
(1) How did human beings become moral beings?
(2) Why does morality exist in a human being?
Before the atheist answers the abovementioned questions, an important question that needs to be answered is, “Are human beings moral beings?”
Infants are not born as “blank moral slates,” says an article in Mail Online, “Professor Paul Bloom, a psychologist at Yale University in Connecticut, whose department has studied morality in babies for years, said: 'A growing body of evidence suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. 'With the help of well designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. 'Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bones.'”1
Since human beings are moral beings, it is incumbent upon the atheist to answer the question, “How and why are human beings moral beings?”
Some atheists believe that morality is an illusion, whereas other atheists believe that there are objective moral values. A proper study should consider both positions. Hence, we adopt a two-pronged scheme to understand this subject:
(1) In the first scheme of study, we consider atheists’ contention that morality is illusory, meaningless, or that it is impossible to explain without positing God. If atheists believe that morality is an illusion (there is no morality), then the question, “How and why are human beings moral beings?” need not be answered. This is addressed in this article.
(2) The second scheme of study will take into account the book Moral Landscape authored by the New Atheist, Sam Harris, who posits objective moral values. So we should examine the possibility of the existence of objective moral values without any source (because atheists reject God, who is the source of everything that there is) and without any possibility of objective moral duty (if there is no source, there is no need to be dutiful)? This would be addressed in PART 2 of this article.
Part 1: Morality Is An Illusion In The Evolutionary Paradigm
Some atheists believe that any deep meaning to morality, such as the existence of objective moral values, is illusory. Christian apologist, William Lane Craig’s article entitled “Can We Be Good without God?” expounds this position by citing the atheist philosopher Michael Ruse, “Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, writes, The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love they neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . . .”2
Here’s Craig’s interpretation of Michael Ruse’s rejection of objective moral values, “As a result of socio-biological pressures, there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of “herd morality” which functions well in the perpetuation of our species in the struggle for survival. But there does not seem to be anything about homo sapiens that makes this morality objectively true.”3
Then there are atheists who believe that it is not plausible to explain the ‘how’ of morality in human beings without positing the existence of God. Christian apologist, Brett Kunkle of the Christian apologetics ministry Stand to Reason says, “J.L. Mackie, one of the most prominent atheist philosophers of the 20th century, said this: “Moral properties constitute so odd a cluster of qualities and relations that they are most unlikely to have arisen in the ordinary course of events, without an all-powerful god to create them.” 4 (Emphasis Mine).
Secular philosophers understand that evolution deprives morality of its meaning in the atheistic worldview. Craig cites the eminent American Philosopher and ethicist, Richard Taylor, to emphasize this fact, “The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that, in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well. Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things are war, or abortion, or the violation of certain human rights, are ‘morally wrong,’ and they imagine that they have said something true and significant. Educated people do not need to be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion. [2]
He concludes,
Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning.”5
Moral obligations are also a meaningless term in the atheistic worldview. Brett Kunkle writes, “If humans are simply more developed animals, why think there are moral duties to which they are obligated? Male great white sharks are under no obligation to refrain from forcibly copulating with female great whites. Male lions are under no obligation to refrain from killing all the young lion cubs in a pride they have just taken over. Notice, we do NOT use moral terms to describe such behavior. We do not call the shark’s behavior “rape” and we do not call the lion’s behavior “infanticide.”
Natural science is a descriptive enterprise, only telling us what is the case, not what ought to be the case. For example, nature can describe what it is to be healthy, but it cannot generate a moral obligation to be healthy.”6
Brett Kunkle also cites Richard Taylor, who has understood that evolution cannot explain moral obligations, “The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough…. Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawgiver higher…than those of the state is understood. In other words, our moral obligations can…be understood as those that are imposed by God…. But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of moral obligation…still make sense? … The concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from the idea of God. [3] .”7
Furthermore, evolution deprives human beings of any intrinsic value thereby rendering morality a meaningless term. Kunkle cites Richard Dawkins, who explains this fact, “In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, or any justice. The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference…. DNA neither knows nor cares. DNA just is. [4]”8
Kunkle goes on to add, “On a naturalistic evolutionary scenario, human beings are nothing special. The universe comes into existence through the Big Bang and, through a blind process of chance and necessity, evolves all the way through to us. The same process that coughed up humans also coughed up bacteria. Thus, there is nothing intrinsically valuable about being human. Indeed, on this view, to think humans beings are special is to be guilty of speciesism, the view that one’s own species is somehow superior to other species…But what other result should we expect from valueless, cause-and-effect physical processes? There is no reason to think that an impersonal, valueless process could produce valuable, rights-bearing persons.”9
Finally, evolution hits a vital nail in the coffin of morality when it deems freewill or human freedom as non-existent, “If we are the products of evolutionary forces, how did moral freedom and responsibility emerge? There is no reason to think, given our supposed materialistic and deterministic origins, that we have free will. Atheist philosopher Thomas Nagel states that there is “no room for agency in a world of neural impulses, chemical reactions, and bone and muscle movements”; naturalism strongly suggests that we are “helpless” and “not responsible” for our actions. [5]
Of course, if there is no free will, then no one is morally responsible for anything. Determinism puts an end to objective moral duties because on this worldview, we have no control over what we do. We are nothing more than puppets in a cause-and-effect universe.”10
In conclusion, since evolution deems morality and human freedom as meaningless and illusory, evolution cannot explain ethics.
Endnotes:
1http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1275574/Babies-know-difference-good-evil-months-study-reveals.html
2https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/can-we-be-good-without-god/
3Ibid.
4https://www.str.org/blog/why-evolutionary-ethics-fails-to-account-for-objective-morality#_ftn3
5https://www.reasonablefaith.org/writings/popular-writings/existence-nature-of-god/can-we-be-good-without-god/
6https://www.str.org/blog/why-evolutionary-ethics-fails-to-account-for-objective-morality#_ftn3
7Ibid.
8Ibid.
9Ibid.
10Ibid.
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