An Ethics without God That Is Compatible with Darwinian Evolution

Abstract

Building on my recent argument that an all-good, all-powerful God is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world, I explore what grounding ethics can have without the God of traditional theism. While theists have argued that ethics is grounded either in God’s commands and/or in his nature, I show that no such adequate grounding exists, even if my argument—showing that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world—were shown to be unsuccessful, and I further show that such a grounding is impossible, given that my argument is successful. I then go on to provide an account of the norms on which an ethics without God can be appropriately grounded and show how an ethics, so grounded, can be appropriately related to our biological and cultural past, present, and future, as understood through Darwinian evolutionary theory. In this way, I hope to undercut a recent attempt to use Darwinian evolutionary theory to debunk ethics.

Building on my recent argument that an all-good, all-powerful God is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world, I explore what grounding ethics can have without the God of traditional theism. While theists have argued that ethics is grounded either in God’s commands and/or in his nature, I show that no such adequate grounding exists, even if my argument—showing that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world—were shown to be unsuccessful, and I further show that such a grounding is impossible, given that my argument is successful.1 I then go on to provide an account of the norms on which an ethics without God can be appropriately grounded, and show how an ethics, so grounded, can be appropriately related to our biological and cultural past, present, and future, as understood through Darwinian evolutionary theory. In this way, I hope to undercut a recent attempt to use Darwinian evolutionary theory to debunk ethics.

1. The Logical Incompatibility of God and Evil

My argument begins by noting that all the goods that God could provide to us are either goods to which we have a right or goods to which we do not have a right. Each of these types can be further divided into goods that are logically dependent on God’s permission of horrendous evil consequences and goods that are not logically dependent on God’s permission of horrendous evil consequences. This gives us a fourfold classification of all the goods with which God could provide us.

I then set out three necessary moral requirements that apply to all the goods that God could provide to us. These requirements are exceptionless minimal components of the Pauline Principle never to do evil that good may come of it.

Here is the first requirement:

Moral Evil Prevention Requirement A2: Prevent horrendous evil consequences when one can easily do so without violating anyone’s rights and no other goods are at stake.

What is there not to like about the requirement? Surely, it is an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement.

The next requirement is the following:

Moral Evil Prevention Requirement B: Do not secure a good using morally objectionable means when you can easily secure the same good by using morally unobjectionable means.

Again, what is there not to like about this requirement? Is it not an exceptionless, necessary moral requirement, just like MEPR A?

The last requirement is the following:

Moral Evil Prevention Requirement C: Do not permit especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions to be inflicted on would-be victims when a greater good would result from preventing them.

This greater good would consist of an equal opportunity for soul making, the right to a decent minimum, and the avoidance of the irreparable harm of horrendous evil consequences, where harm is irreparable when there are no goods that God could provide to compensate those on whom the harm is inflicted that could not have been better provided, for example, by equally constraining both good and bad people, without permitting those horrendous evil consequences in the first place.3

This good is much greater than the good that logically results from God’s permitting such consequences which consists of an unequal opportunity for soul making, an inadequate minimum for some, as well as goods we do not need and can easily do without. In addition, the greatest good of the opportunity to be friends with God is in no way logically dependent on God’s permission of horrendous evil consequences. Hence, it can be enjoyed in conjunction with the greater goods that logically result from God’s prevention of such consequences.

Is MEPR C then not on a par with MEPR A and B, and as such an exceptionless necessary moral requirement? In the case of MEPR C, preventing the horrendous evil consequences does not provide the only good that is at stake for the would-be beneficiaries, as is the case for MEPR A. Nor is it the case for MEPR C that its would-be beneficiaries could receive whatever good is at issue without permitting horrendous evil consequences, as holds for MEPR B. Rather, for MEPR C, the goods that would-be beneficiaries could receive if God were to prevent the horrendous evil consequences at issue are just much greater than the goods that they could receive if God permitted those horrendous evil consequences, and this holds especially for those on whom the horrendous evil consequences would have been irreparably inflicted if God would have permitted them.

Hence, there is no way the moral argument for MEPR C could be any stronger. It has to be on par with MEPR A and B and, as such, an exceptionless necessary moral requirement.

In sum, all goods that could be provided to us are either goods to which we have a right or goods to which we do not have a right. Each of these types further divides into first-order goods that do not logically depend on moral wrongdoing and second-order goods that do logically depend on moral wrongdoing. With respect, then, to first-order goods to which we have a right and first-order goods to which we do not have a right, Moral Evil Prevention Requirements A and B morally constrain the pursuit of greater good justifications for both God and ourselves. And with respect to second-order goods to which we have a right and second-order goods to which we do not have a right, according to Moral Evil Prevention Requirement C, a much greater good would be secured though God’s preventing of horrendous evil consequences from being inflicted on innocent victims than would be secured from God’s permitting of such consequences.

Still, it might be objected that if God were ever to start acting as a preventer of last resort of horrendous evil consequences, good people would no longer have the motivation to prevent such evil consequences themselves. Now, I have argued that when we choose to intervene to prevent especially horrendously evil consequences of immoral actions, either we will be completely successful in preventing those consequences or our intervention will fall short. When the latter is going to happen, I claim, God should do something to make the prevention completely successful. Likewise, when we choose not to intervene to prevent such consequences, I claim, God should again intervene but not in a way that is fully successful. Here there is a residue of evil consequences that the victim still does suffer. This residue is not a horrendous evil, but it is a significant one, and it is something for which we are primarily responsible. We could have prevented those consequences, but we chose not to do so, and that makes us responsible for them. Of course, God too could prevent those harmful consequences from happening even if we do not. It is just that in such cases, God should choose not to intervene so as to completely prevent both the significant as well as the horrendous evil consequences of wrongful actions in order to leave us with an ample opportunity for soul making. I argued that if God were to prevent just the horrendous evil consequences of such actions in this way, it would clearly make the world much, much better than the world we currently inhabit, and it definitely would not turn the world into a moral kindergarten since we would be able to prevent both the significant and the horrendous consequences of immoral actions, sometimes with God’s help, when we would choose to do so; when we would choose not to do so, we would be responsible for the significant evil consequences of those actions that we imagine God would choose not to prevent in such cases in order to give us an ample opportunity for soul making. Instead of being a moral kindergarten, it would be a world that morally good people would prefer to inhabit. It would just not be our world in which the horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions abound, consequences that an all-good, all-powerful God of traditional theism, if he existed, would not have permitted.

We can also restate my argument to approximate the form that John Mackie should have used to succeed in his famous exchange with Alvin Plantinga, as follows:

• There is an all-good, all-powerful God. (This is assumed for the sake of argument by both Mackie and Plantinga.)
• If there is an all-good, all-powerful God, then, necessarily, he would be adhering to Moral Evil Prevention Requirements A–C.
• If God were adhering to Moral Evil Prevention Requirements A–C, then, necessarily, especially horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions would not be obtaining through what would have to be his permission.
• Horrendous evil consequences of immoral actions do obtain all around us, which, if God exists, would have to be through his permission. (This is assumed by both Mackie and Plantinga.)
• Therefore, it is not the case that there is an all-good, all-powerful God, which contradicts (1).4

2. Problems with Ethics with God

Now, many theists have thought that without the God of traditional theism, no ethics is justifiable, and, hence, these theists have been led to endorse a divine command theory of ethics. As a consequence, divine command theory has long been discussed by philosophers, at least since the time of Plato. In the Euthyphro, Socrates argues in favor of the opposing view that God commands things because they are right, and, hence, that morality is fundamentally independent of religion in a way that even God, assuming there is a God, would have to affirm. Yet, despite Socrates’s rejection of the view, there has been a long tradition of support for divine command theory.

Supporters often cite the following story from the Bible. In the book of Genesis, God tells Abraham, “Take your only son Isaac whom you love and go into the district of Mona and there offer him as a holocaust on a hill which I shall point out to you.” Abraham did as he was told, but as he was about to sacrifice his son, an angel of the Lord stopped him by telling him, “I know now that you fear God, since you have not withheld your only son”. And later he is told, “Since you have done this, and have not withheld your only son I will indeed bless you and will surely multiply your descendants as the stars of the heavens and sands of the seashore.”5

In this story, Abraham does not argue with God, as he had done on an earlier occasion when God proposed to destroy Sodom and Gomorra. At that time, Abraham argued with God and got a reprieve for the cities if “fifty just men” could be found in them. He then went on to obtain the requirement of fifty reduced to just ten. In this way, Abraham exhibited a willingness to argue with God.

With respect to God’s command to sacrifice his own son, however, Abraham does not argue with God at all. Rather, he immediately takes steps to do just what God commands him to do. In the end, Abraham is not required by God to make the ultimate sacrifice of his son. Instead, God is satisfied with Abraham’s willingness to do what he was commanded to do, and for that, Abraham is said to have been rewarded handsomely.

Now the Biblical story of Abraham’s near-sacrifice of his son has been taken to illustrate and support divine command theory. It purports to show how an action that we might otherwise think is wrong—intentionally killing one’s own innocent child—could be made the right thing to do simply by the commands of God.

During the Middle Ages, William of Ockham (1280–1349) extends this same divine command theory analysis to other actions:

The hatred of God, theft, adultery, and actions similar to these actions … can be performed meritoriously by an earthly pilgrim if they should come under divine precepts.6

In support of the same view, another medieval philosopher, Thomas Aquinas (1225–1274), provides the following explanation:

Adultery is intercourse with another’s wife, who is allotted to him by the law emanating from God. Consequently, intercourse with any woman by the command of God is neither adultery nor fornication. The same applies to theft, which is the taking of another’s property. For whatever is taken by the command of God, to whom all things belong, is not taken against the will of its owner, whereas it is in that that theft consists.7

(Thomas Aquinas (1946), In First Part of the Second Part, Q96 A5 Reply to Obj. 2.)

So, what Ockham and Aquinas are saying here is that acts which previously were wrong, such as intentionally killing an innocent person, theft, adultery, even hatred of God, are transformed into acts that should be performed if and when God commands them to be performed. This is because what made them wrong in the first place was simply that God commanded that they not be done. So, if God were to command differently with respect to those actions—command that they be done rather than that they not be done—then the moral character of them would change from being morally prohibited to being morally required.

2.1. How to Understand God’s Commands?

Nevertheless, there are serious problems with divine command theory. One is, even if we were to assume that there is a God, how are we to understand his commands? Thus, suppose we had a list of God’s commands; how should we understand them? We might think of God as a one-person legislature with ourselves having a role analogous to the judiciary and executive branches of government. God as the one-person legislature would make the commands/laws, and we, as the judiciary/executive, would have the task of interpreting and applying them.

There would be differences, however. The US judiciary in interpreting the laws often tries to determine what purpose the legislature had in passing a particular law, and whether that purpose accords with the US Constitution. And, sometimes, the US judiciary strikes down laws passed by the legislature as unconstitutional.

According to divine command theory, however, there would be no comparable role for humans to have with respect to the commands of God. We could not, for example, strike down any of God’s commands because they failed to accord with some independent moral standard. Thus, our role in interpreting and applying God’s commands under divine command theory would be narrowly circumscribed. Even so, there are further problems understanding what that role would be.

This is because divine commands could, presumably, come into conflict. Thus, suppose we had one divine command that we should each love and care for the members of our family and another that we should love and care for the deserving poor. Surely, these two commands would conflict when we are faced with the option of using our limited resources to either provide luxuries for the members of our family or use those same resources to provide for the basic needs of the deserving poor. Here we seem to require some kind of a background theory that compares the good that would be accomplished in each case, as well as weighs the competing obligations involved, and then makes a recommendation about what should be done.

Yet, divine command theory provides no such background theory for resolving conflicts between commands. Under the theory, each command is obligatory simply because it is commanded by God. Conflicts that arise among God’s commands could be appropriately resolved only by yet another command of God that explicitly shows which command has priority. This is because, according to divine command theory, the resolution of conflicts could always go either way. So, there is no way for us to figure out, in advance, how it should go. This then would leave us with only a very minimal role when interpreting or applying the commands of God, and in cases where those commands conflict, we would be at a complete loss as to what to do.

2.2. Could God’s Commands Be Justified by Creation?

Now, divine command theorists like to appeal to the idea of God as Creator to justify their claim that there are no limits as to what sort of morality God could demand of us. As they see it, we have no other justifiable option but to do what God commands us to do, given that we are the product of God’s labor. But if this argument from creation works, an analogous argument from procreation seemingly works as well.

The analogous argument from procreation is based on the fact that children are the products of their parents, particularly their mothers. A fertile woman, assuming she has been freely given a sperm, can make a baby using no other resources than her own body and its nourishment. The materials used in reproduction, an egg and a sperm, in themselves, are thought to be of little value, and when a woman joins them together in her own body, the act of procreation looks like a paradigm case in which making creates a property right to what is made. But this would mean that a woman should own her children the way farmers own their produce, architects their blueprints, and artists their works of art. But at least today, a woman’s act of reproduction is not thought to give rise to a property right to the child thereby produced. When what is produced is a human being, a person’s productive labor is not thought to create an ownership right, the way it does in other contexts. Moreover, as human children grow to maturity, whatever guardianship rights their parents have over them are usually thought to diminish and ultimately disappear.

So why then should a theist think that, through an act of creation, God would derive unconditional and lasting rights over us when we do not recognize any analogous rights issuing from acts of procreation? Clearly, we do not think that acts of procreation give rise to property rights the way we do for other acts of human production. So why think that the act of creating human beings would have such different consequences from acts of procreating human beings?

What we really have here is a three-way comparison of divine creation, human procreation, and human production. Evaluating the three in terms of productivity, procreation is more similar to divine creation than it is to many acts of human production. Divine creation is supposedly making something valuable from nothing, while procreation is making something valuable from what has little value. If productivity is primarily what gives rise to property rights to what is produced, then women should have stronger property rights over their offspring than farmers should have over the bushels of corn they have produced. But if we do not draw this conclusion, it must be because we have judged that producing human beings does not give rise to property rights to what is produced. But if this is true for human reproduction, it should be true for divine creation as well. Consequently, divine creation would not give rise to property rights either. What this shows is that the idea that we were created by God no more supports the prerogatives of divine command theory than human procreation supports property rights to the children whom are thereby produced.

2.3. How Are We to Identify God’s Commands?

Another problem with divine command theory is determining what God has actually commanded to us do. It would seem that divine command theorists maintain that God’s commands are received through special revelations to particular individuals or groups. But if the commands of God are made known only to a few, how can others know what those commands are or when they are reasonably bound to obey them? Presumably, people can only be morally bound by commands they know about and have reason to accept.

To add a further complication, different individuals and groups have claimed to be recipients of special revelations that conflict in ways which would support conflicting moral requirements. Of course, if some of those who claim to have received a special revelation rise to power, they may be able to force obedience on the rest. But then others would have no independent reason to go along with that forceful imposition.

Probably the most serious problem with divine command theory is that just anything could turn out to be the right thing to do, such as torturing babies for the fun of it, depending on the sheer commands of God. But the idea that just anything could turn out to be the right thing to do, irrespective of how harmful and/or unfair it is to human beings, has been widely seen by theists and atheists alike to be sufficient to defeat the view. Hence, even if my argument against the existence of the God of traditional theism were not successful, a divine command ethics would still not serve to justify ethics.

What then about grounding ethics not on the God’s commands but on God’s nature?8 Here I contend that the standard of goodness, and especially the standard of moral goodness, must be a norm, a requirement that one ought to act or be in a certain way. In the case of morality, I claim that the ultimate norm can be expressed as treat all relevant interests fairly. By contrast, the God of traditional theism, if he exists, would be just a concrete rational being, not an abstract norm.9 Such a rational being, if he exists, like ourselves, would be subject to the requirements of morality.

Yet, while neither God’s commands, which could require just anything, nor God’s nature, which would be that of a concrete rational being and not an abstract norm, could serve as the ultimate justifier for ethical judgments, the God of traditional theism could still play an important role getting us to recognize both moral and nonmoral truths analogously to the way our parents and educators serve in such a role for us during the earliest stages of our lives and even later. Of course, there is a virtual lack of evidence that the God of traditional theism is serving in any such role with respect to us at any stage of our lives. Nevertheless, despite the lack of such evidence, it still seems logically possible that the God of traditional theism could be serving in such a role. Thus, the only way to rule out such a logical possibility is by appealing to my argument that shows that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world. Thus, if I have shown that it is logically impossible for there to be a God of traditional theism, given all the evil in the world, as I claim to have done, then it would also be logically impossible for there to be such a God, who, despite the virtual lack of supportive evidence, is actually helping us to recognize normative and nonnormative truths over the course of our lives.10

3. Ethics without God

Now, usually theists allow for the fact that atheists can know what is right and wrong and act morally without believing in the God of traditional theism. Support for this view can be found in both the Jewish and Christian traditions. For example, St Paul writes, “Even Gentiles, who do not have God’s written law, show that they know his law … since they show that the work of the law is written on their hearts”.11 But what does the metaphor that people have God’s law written in their hearts actually mean? It cannot mean that every human being from birth to death will recognize such a law. For example, infants will not recognize it, nor will those with severe intellectual disabilities, nor those who are completely senile. The reference class here has to be human beings with normal cognitive and emotional abilities, which function reasonably well. Presumably, it is this class of humans who would know that murder and stealing are morally wrong, and, more generally, that the pursuit of their own self-interest sometimes needs to be constrained in fairness by what is for the good of others, especially when doing so would avoid seriously harming them.

Hence, it is perplexing to find that some theists—sometimes the very same theists who affirmed that atheists can know what morality requires and abide by it—also affirm that for atheists, everything is permitted (Craig 2010, Chapter 6; D’Souza 2006). This view is also found in Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov where Ivan Karamazov is said to have asserted it. Actually, Ivan never directly asserts it in the novel, but the claim is mentioned and affirmed by other characters who report hearing it from Ivan. Moreover, when Ivan’s half-brother Smendyakov kills their father after hearing what Ivan reportedly said, Ivan is forced to acknowledge the destructive consequences that rejection of belief in God can have. Commenting on the novel, Dostoevsky himself expresses the fear that the absence of belief in divine retribution would undercut moral behavior in society, which, of course, mistakenly assumes that people all too often behave morally out of self-interest (Dostoyevsky 1987). Others, rejecting this assumption, maintain that people can be motivated to act morally even when they recognize that it is not in their self-interest to do so.

3.1. No God, No Objective Ethics?

Nevertheless, the claim that if God is dead, then everything is permitted is usually understood to imply something stronger than just that there would be no divine retribution for wrongdoing. It is usually understood to imply that without God, there cannot be an objective morality. Clearly, it is this latter interpretation that most strongly opposes the view that atheists can know what is right and wrong and act accordingly. Interestingly, we can find theists and atheists on both sides of this issue, with one side maintaining that without God, there is no objective morality, while the other side maintains that even if God does not exist, there is an objective morality that people can affirm and abide by. So, let us try to determine whether this conflict can be resolved by more closely examining how people come to know and abide by morality.

Earlier, exploring St Paul’s idea that we all can come to know the requirements of morality “in our hearts”, I proposed that human beings with normal cognitive and emotional abilities that function reasonably well can come to know the requirements of morality and abide by them. Yet how do we do this? If this way of coming to know the requirements of morality is to be open to theists and atheists alike, it cannot involve recognizing the requirements of morality to be the commands of the God of traditional theism or grounded in his nature since atheists deny that any such God exists, and, of course, my logical argument from evil has shown that such a God is logically impossible, given all the evil that exists in our world. Hence, what we find in our hearts or nature should be interpreted not as a law that presupposes a lawgiver but rather as a natural ability to regard certain actions as wrong or unfair, something we even discover, to our surprise, in other primates and mammals (De Waal 1997).

3.1.1. The Basic Norm of Morality

So why not understand moral requirements to be based on an appropriate weighing of our own interests and the interests of others? Surely, atheists as well as theists could come to know what is in their own self-interest, as well as what is in the interest of others. Of course, these determinations would have to be made simply on the basis of what we can know about ourselves and others, independently of any theological beliefs that we may or may not happen to have.12 Such an appropriate weighing of competing interests of ourselves and others should then enable us to understand that murder and stealing are morally wrong, and, more generally, that the pursuit of our own self-interest must sometimes be constrained by the sake of the interests of others, especially when doing so avoids inflicting serious harm on others. We also need to go further and take the most basic norm of morality to be to treat all relevant interests appropriately—that is, fairly—and then understand all other moral norms as derivable from this one most basic norm. So understood, moral requirements would clearly be accessible to theists and atheists alike.

3.1.2. Lawgivers and Morality

Now, do theists have a viable alternative account of morality to the one I have just proposed? We have seen the problems that divine command theories face. In fact, the very idea of a divine lawgiver as the ultimate source of morality is deeply problematic. To further see this, consider the case of human lawgivers. What gives such lawgivers any moral authority over us to obey them? Obviously, it will not do for just anyone to proclaim that he or she is a lawgiver and then just issue commands that we are then supposed to obey. Lawgivers have to be related through at least an implicit agreement to those who are said to be subject to them in order for those lawgivers to have moral authority over those subjects. Even then, there are limits to what laws any subjects would be morally required to obey. The idea that there is a higher law or moral authority that no human authority could justifiably ask us to go against was recognized by the Nuremberg Tribunal after World War II and applied against high-ranking Nazi officials who offered the defense that they were just following orders (MacDonald 2015).

Yet, granted that human lawgivers are constrained by a higher moral law, could theists not just claim that this higher moral law in turn derives its authority from God and from God alone? The problem with doing this is that we could still ask why then should we obey God? For example, if God were a morally evil being, it surely will not follow that we would be morally required to obey his commands. Hence, God, if he exists, would have to be good, and in particular, he would have to be morally good, in order for his commands to have any moral authority over us at all. However, to say that God, if he exists, is morally good is to say that what God does and what he commands, accords with the requirements of morality. But then, we can ask what grounds or justifies the requirements of morality?

3.2. No “Oughts” from an “Is”

Now, I have been suggesting that particular requirements of morality are to be justified by appealing to the basic norms of morality, which in turn are justified by appealing to the most basic moral norm, which is to treat all relevant interests fairly. Yet is that most basic norm of morality in turn justified by appealing to an even more basic norm? Shortly, I will show that it is, but here, I just want to point out that the ultimate justification for the requirements or norms of morality must be another norm, or, put another way, it must be an ultimate ought; it cannot be a purely factual claim. Here, David Hume is right; we cannot derive an “ought” from an “is” in morality, or anywhere else. Failure to recognize that this is the case is the core mistake made by divine command theories in all their varieties because they all attempt to ultimately ground the “oughts” of ethics in a fact, namely the fact of God’s existence. Rejecting any foundation of this sort, I contend that the “oughts” of ethics need to be grounded instead in one or more fundamental oughts.13 In this respect, morality is analogous to logic and mathematics. For example, in logic, it makes no sense to ask who causes the law of identity to be true or whose command makes it true. Nor in arithmetic, does it even make sense to ask who causes 2 + 2 = 4 or whose commands make it be the case? Similarly, in morality, I contend that it does not make sense to ask who causes torturing infants for the fun of it to be morally wrong or whose commands make that action morally wrong. Rather than by being caused or commanded to be the case, each of these claims is properly said to be justified by appealing to the ultimate axioms or norms of the domain to which it belongs. Thus, in morality, torturing infants for the fun of it is wrong because it is a clear violation of morality’s most basic norm to treat all relevant interests fairly. If any further moral justification for this claim were needed, that is it; nothing else is required. Seen in this light, it should be obvious that divine command theory in all its varieties is simply a nonstarter as the justification for morality.

Nor could the nonexistence of God undercut the justification of morality and nothing else. Given that the works of Shakespeare would have objective value for us whether or not God exists, then so should the norms of morality have objective value for us whether or not God exists. The only reason we might think that morality, unlike great works of art or literature, lacks objective value in the absence of the existence of God is the idea that God’s commands or his nature are the ultimate grounds for morality—an idea we have now shown to be faulty even without appealing to the logical argument I have presented earlier against the existence of the God of traditional theism.

Accordingly, I take the norm “treat all relevant interests fairly” and all those norms that can be derived from it to be the basic requirements of an objective morality. Morality then would be the standard by which everyone’s relevant interests are treated fairly. Moral requirements would then apply to any being who is capable of fairly assessing the relevant interests of others and acting upon that assessment. It does not matter whether God or just natural forces brought such beings into existence. The standard of morality applies to them either way.14

As we noted, theists generally want to allow for the fact that atheists can distinguish right from wrong, that they can be morally good people. What atheists lack, according to theists, is an ultimate justification for what they judge to be right and wrong. Yet, for atheists, to accurately distinguish right from wrong, they must have a standard for doing so that is accessible to them, and, as long as they are atheists, that standard cannot be God’s commands or his nature. Theists tend not to say what is the standard that atheists accurately use to distinguish right from wrong other than to say it is written in their hearts. But theists do need to go further, and, if they attempt to do so, I do not see how they could do better than the standard of treating all relevant interests fairly that I have defended here. The advantage of the standard I have defended is that it gets the justificatory job done without the deficiencies that comes from using a standard that ultimately appeals to God’s commands and his nature. Here, theists have not shown how they can do better.

Objective Morality and Change

Furthermore, on the account I have offered, what are objective moral requirements here and now can change. Consider, for example, the objective moral requirement to not plunge a knife into some other innocent human being’s chest.15 Suppose our human nature were to change such that when someone plunged a knife into our chests, we died instantly and then immediately sprang back to life with a feeling of intense pleasure. If this became the new reality for us, then from that moment on, there would be a new objective moral requirement to plunge knives into people’s chests as often as possible. Likewise, if the circumstances of our lives were to change such that everything we needed was always in plentiful supply, the prohibition against theft could be seen to no longer apply to what we needed.

So, the actual requirements of morality for here and now can be seen to change, while still remaining objective, if there are appropriate changes in human nature or in the circumstances of our lives that are relevant to the application of the basic norms of morality.16 Still, while, particular requirements of morality for here and now can and do change, the ultimate requirements of morality do not change, which is a very important feature of an objective morality.

3.3. Moral Agents and Change

Going still further, think of a future like the one depicted in the “Planet of the Apes” where apes had become the only full moral agents and humans had evolved into something like apes today.17 Of course, in the first “Planet of the Apes” film, the three humans who return to earth as astronauts are also full moral agents, until one of them is lobotomized, while the rest of the human population who have survived on earth have become incapable of speech and are technologically deficient compared to the apes currently inhabiting the planet. Yet here I am imagining a still more radical turnabout, where moral values are understood and followed to the degree that they are understood and followed only by apes who now happen to exist. Yet even then there would still be objective moral values in this ape-dominant world analogous to moral values in our present-day human-dominant world.

So, if we were to rewind the evolutionary process, we might well see other kinds of creatures than ourselves capable of being moral. Even in our world, objective unfairness is perceived and responded to, not just by ourselves but, as we noted earlier, by other animals as well (See De Waal 1997). Still, in the world we are in, we are the only species that is fully capable of being moral or immoral. Yet that could change. For instance, humans could cease being full moral agents, with no other species immediately replacing us as such. But even if that were to happen, the most basic norm of morality, and even some lesser basic norms would still hold true for any future moral agents that evolution might produce.18

3.3.1. From Rationality to Morality

I have claimed that the most basic moral requirement is to treat all relevant interests fairly. Yet cannot the supremacy of this norm be challenged both from a self-interested and from an altruistic perspective? Thus, imagine an egoist claiming that what we ought to do is always do what best serves our own self-interest and a pure altruist claiming that what we ought to do is always do what best services the interests of others. Obviously, the most basic requirement of morality that I propose attempts to venture in between these two perspectives. But is there any good argument for doing so?

Good arguments are, by definition, nonquestion-begging—that is, they do not assume what they are trying to prove. So, the question at issue here is which perspective each of us should take as supreme, and obviously, this question would be begged if we just assumed from the start that we should take either the egoistic or the altruistic perspective as supreme.

Suppose then we were to ideally rank our true egoistic interests from the highest ranking to the lowest ranking while at the same time ranking our true altruistic interests for the highest ranking to the lowest ranking. We would then face two kinds of cases: cases in which there is a conflict between our relevant egoistic and altruistic interests and cases in which there is no such conflict.

It seems obvious that where there is no conflict and both interests are conclusive interests of their kind, both interests should be acted upon. In such contexts, we should do what is favored both by our egoistic and altruistic interests.

Now, when we rationally assess the relevant interests in conflict cases, three solutions are possible:

• Egoistic interests always have priority over conflicting altruistic interests.
• Altruistic interests always have priority over conflicting egoistic interests.
• Some kind of compromise is rationally required. In this compromise, sometimes egoistic interests have priority over altruistic interests, and sometimes altruistic interests would have priority over egoistic interests.

Once the conflict is described in this manner, the third solution can be seen to be the one that is rationally required. This is because the first and second solutions give exclusive priority to one class of interests over the other, and only a question-begging justification can be given for such an exclusive priority. Only by employing the third solution—sometimes giving priority to egoistic interests and sometimes giving priority to altruistic interests—can we avoid a question-begging resolution.

3.3.2. Morality as Compromise

Notice too that this standard of rationality will not support just any compromise between the relevant egoistic and altruistic interests. The compromise must be a nonarbitrary one, for otherwise, it would beg the question with respect to the opposing egoistic or altruistic perspectives. Such a compromise would have to respect the rankings of both egoistic and altruistic interests imposed by the egoistic and altruistic perspectives, respectively. Accordingly, any nonarbitrary compromise among such interests in seeking not to beg the question against either egoism or altruism will have to give priority to those interests that rank highest in each category. Failure to give priority to the highest-ranking egoistic or altruistic interests would, other things being equal, be contrary to reason.

Of course, there will be cases in which the only way to avoid being required to do what is contrary to your highest-ranking interests is by requiring someone else to do what is contrary to his or her highest-ranking interests. Some of these cases will be so-called lifeboat cases, as when two individuals are stranded in a lifeboat that has only enough resources for one to survive. Although such cases are surely difficult to resolve (maybe only a chance mechanism, like flipping a coin, can offer a reasonable resolution), they surely do not reflect the typical conflict between our relevant egoistic and altruistic interests. Typically, one or the other of the conflicting interests would rank significantly higher on its respective scale, thus permitting a clear resolution.19

Now to view morality as a nonquestion-begging compromise between our egoistic and altruistic interests is also to view morality as fairly taking into account those same interests. This is because the standard of nonquestion-beggingness that is required of good arguments is the same standard of fairness that morality applies to all relevant interests. In this way, the fairness that morality requires of us when we are dealing with conflicts between ourselves and others reflects and is justified by the fairness that is required of us in argumentation. This means that the most basic norm of morality—treat all relevant interests fairly—is further justified by the nonquestion-begging requirement of good argumentation.20 In this way, the basic norm of morality is shown to be rationally preferable to both its egoistic and altruistic alternatives.

Now, a fair assessment of the relevant interests can be given in a number of ways. For example, one could employ a Rawlsian veil of ignorance with parties in an original position representing all relevant interests. That would result in each person having a right to the resources and opportunities for a decent life.21 Of course, there will be some variation with respect to what is to count as a fair evaluation of all relevant interests, but it should not be that different if every effort is made to carry out that evaluation in a nonquestion-begging way. Moreover, given that a society’s laws need to be coercively enforced, the justification for coercively enforcing them must be reasonably acceptable to all those on whom the laws are imposed. (Sterba 1998) Showing that the laws fairly take into account all relevant interests provides just such a justification whereas claiming that the laws accord with God’s commands and his nature does not unless this second justification were somehow shown to be equivalent to the first, and even then it would be clear that the first justification is more fundamental. Hence, even if the God of traditional theism exists, his commands and his nature would not be the justification we should use for enforceable moral requirements.

In sum, we have seen that theists have wanted to argue that ethics is ultimately grounded in God’s commands and in his nature. Yet, even on the assumption that the God of traditional theism exists, I have shown that neither God’s commands nor his nature serve to provide an adequate justification for ethics. Rather, I have shown that ethics can be justified by appealing to the basic norm of morality, which is to treat all relevant interests fairly, which in turn, can be justified by appealing to the nonquestion-begging requirement of good argumentation. Moreover, given the success of my logical argument against the God of traditional theism, any attempt to ground ethics on the commands or the nature of such a God would have to fail since my argument rules out the very existence of that God, given all the horrendous evil consequences that exists in our world.22

4. Ethics and Darwinian Evolutionary Theory

Yet how does the account of ethics I have provided relate to our biological and cultural past, present, and future as understood through Darwinian evolutionary theory? Clearly, the starting point for Darwinian evolutionary theory is the idea that human beings are animals, and, like all animals, we are products of natural selection. In Darwinian evolutionary theory, natural selection is a process where organisms with favorable traits are more likely to reproduce and survive. Natural selection produces entities unintentionally designed to keep themselves alive and to create more of their kind by making sure their genes are passed on to the next generations either (1) by creating organisms with their genes, (2) by aiding the survival of other organisms that share their genes (kin selection), (3) by helping others who help them to ultimately pass on their own genes (reciprocal altruism), or (4) by helping their gene owner’s group to do better than other groups even at some cost to the gene owners themselves (group selection) (See Wilson 2004; Stewart-Williams 2018; Wright 2004).

Yet humans are not only good at passing on their genes. We are also good at passing on what Richard Dawkins has called memes (See Dawkins 2016). For Dawkins, memes are ideas, beliefs, practices, tools, and anything else that can get passed on via social interactions. Often the memes that survive are those that benefit the individual or the group. Sometimes, however, memes survive because they are good at surviving, even though they might not be good for the individual or the group that has them.

Hence, natural selection operating on genes gives rise to organisms that are designed to pass on their genes, turning us into gene machines, and natural selection operating on memes gives rise to ideas and technologies that, in effect, convert our gene machines into meme machines that devote their time and energy to passing on their memes (Stewart-Williams 2018, Chapter 6).

This account of Darwinian evolutionary theory is said to answer long-standing questions about human nature and human behavior. Why are men more interested than women in uncommitted sex with many partners? (Answer: To take advantage of the greater opportunities they would thereby have to pass on their genes) Why are women choosier about whom they sleep with? (Answer: So that they will not waste the fewer opportunities they have to pass on their genes). For similar reasons, men are said to favor good looks and youthfulness, while women are said to favor status and wealth in choosing sexual partners. And, of course, both men and women are repulsed by the idea of mating with siblings or other close kin because of the negative impact doing so would have on passing on their genes (Ibid.).

Yet while Darwinian evolutionary theory does help us explain human behavior to some extent, it does little to help us morally evaluate human behavior that is so explained. Take, for example, the greater interest men have in uncommitted sex that is explained by Darwinian evolutionary theory. In this case, Darwinian evolutionary theory reaches no conclusion about the acceptability or unacceptability of such behavior and thus fails to condemn this behavior of men when it imposes unfair risks on women who are not equally interested in having uncommitted sex, which is frequently the case.

This turns out to be a general problem for Darwinian evolutionary theory. While the theory claims to provide a general explanation for human behavior, it neither praises nor condemns any of the behavior it claims to explain, and this extends even to such large-scale human activities as the Civil Rights Movement or the Holocaust—both of which fall under the explanatory scope of the Darwinian evolutionary theory of genes and memes. Hence, there is a clear need to bring the evaluative resources of ethics to bear on the explanations provided by Darwinian evolutionary theory in order to determine what our moral response should be to them.23

Sharon Street’s Debunking Argument

So why then does Sharon Street think that the possibility of objective moral norms guiding our behavior can be debunked by the findings of Darwinian evolutionary theory? (Street 2006). Street thinks our genes operating through kin selection and reciprocal altruism could push us in immoral directions and, hence, undermine our commitment to objective moral norms.24 Needless to say, this can happen, but probably more often kin selection and reciprocal altruism will favor what is at least morally permissible, and sometimes even what is morally required.

So, what is the problem? Does the possibility of objective moral norms guiding our behavior require that those norms never be challenged by other norms and inclinations rooted to some degree in kin selection and reciprocal altruism? If moral norms must be unchallenged before we can perceive them to be objective moral norms and act on them, then it would seem that there could be no such norms.

But why think that objective moral norms must be unchallenged before we can acknowledge them and act on them? Do we not often come to appreciate moral norms and act on them just when they conflict radically with other norms or inclinations we might have or imagine ourselves to have? Are not moral norms characterized not by the absence of conflict and challenge from other norms and inclinations but by the way the moral norms fairly resolve the conflict and challenges that confront us in our lives? If so, experiencing such norms without conflict or challenge cannot be a necessary condition for our acknowledging their applying to us, as Street seems to think.

Now, Street is really questioning whether there are any moral norms that we would recognize as applying to ourselves that are untainted by our genetic endowment. Thus, she asks us to imagine that our genetic endowment were like that of lions, such that “males in relative frequent circumstances had a strong unreflective evaluative tendency to experience the killing of offspring that were not their own as ‘demanded by the circumstances.’” (Street 2006, p. 120). Alternatively, we are asked to imagine that we were like bonobos, such that “we experience sexual relations with all kinds of partners as called for in all kinds of different circumstances”. (Ibid.). Lastly, we are asked to imagine that we were like social insects “perhaps possessing overwhelming strong unreflective evaluative tendences in the direction of devoting ourselves to the welfare of the entire community”. (Ibid.). Street thinks that were we to have anything like these alternative genetic endowments, our norms would be different from the norms we presently have in ways that are tainted by the basic evaluative tendencies imbedded in those imagined different genetic endowments, thus making it only possible for us to have, at best, a subjective ethics (Street 2006, p. 121).

Yet, these imagined different genetic endowments need not give rise to subjective moral norms. Instead, they can lead us to somewhat different applications of the same objective moral norms we currently should be employing in our lives.

Take the example of male lions who have taken over a pride and then killed off offspring that are not their own. How are we to imagine humans who are like lions? Are we to imagine humans to still be full moral agents? If so, they would have to be radically different from lions as we know them because they would have to have vastly improved communicating and toolmaking skills in order to be moral agents and still be like lions. Alternatively, we could imagine ourselves becoming like lions who are different from lions as we presently know them because their females are able to join together and protect all of their young offspring from males who have taken over their pride, and not just protect some of them, as they presently are able to do (Packer 2023). If this were to happen, infanticide would have ceased among the lions, but without the lions becoming full moral agents guided by moral norms. Hence, either our becoming like lions while retaining our status as full moral agents would involve a drastic change in what it is to be a lion, with the result that, as lions with such status, we should condemn and try to prevent infanticide using the same objective moral norms we now use to oppose this practice. Alternatively, we could be like lions who cease to practice infanticide for reasons such as I indicated, but then we would not be full moral agents and, so, not be able to utilize objective moral norms to effect such a change. In either case, our becoming like lions would not entail our acquiring and utilizing subjective moral norms, as Street maintains.

Of course, we humans have sometimes engaged in infanticide or worse. Consider for instance, what, according to the Bible, the Israelites did under God’s direction to the native people they found occupying land in Canaan they wanted for themselves. Thus, in Samuel 15:2–3 (King James Version, 1611) we find God telling his people:

“Now go and smite Amalek and utterly destroy all that they have, and spare them not, but slay both man and woman, infant and suckling, ox and sheep, camel and ass”.

Similar fates were ordered by God for other groups occupying Canaan as the Israelites moved into it.

Nevertheless, we now recognize that the rules of war that we humans employed at earlier times were seriously defective, and we have subsequently developed ways of fighting wars while constraining our behavior toward innocent women and children—indeed all noncombatants—even though our practice still falls far short of fully abiding by such constraints, thus showing that opposing immoral influences are still operative in our lives (Solomon 2023). Still, we would maintain that humans during Biblical times, like ourselves, were full moral agents ultimately subject to the same objective moral norms as ourselves.

In the case of bonobos, female bonobos collectively dominate males, thereby reducing violence in the troops in which they live today within the borders of the Democratic Republic of Congo. Bonobos use all varieties of sexual contact—male–female, female–female and male–male—as forms of greeting, to defuse conflicts, or just for mutual pleasure. Given this wide-ranging use of sex, it is impossible for male bonobos to know who their own offspring are, and so, most of the parental care is assumed by the mother. At puberty, female offspring leave to join a different troop, which helps reduce conflict between troops, whereas male offspring remain in the same troop in which they are borne, bonded with and protected by their mothers throughout their lives (De Waal 1998, 2013).

We can imagine men recognizing the immorality of joining together with other men to dominate women, and then ceasing to do so. As a result, these men would be more like bonobos in this respect. Yet, these men would still not be like bonobos in that they would be acting as full moral agents who were just more closely adhering to the moral norms that should have been guiding their behavior all along. We could also imagine men recognizing that they are morally required to be more engaged with childcare even with respect to children to whom they are not biologically related. Thus, if men were to undergo such a moral transformation, they could conceivably also use sexual contact as forms of greeting, to defuse conflicts, or just for mutual pleasure, and so, in these respects, be more like bonobos. Nevertheless, since such behavior would ultimately be rooted in humans, particularly men, adhering more closely to the objective moral norms that govern their lives, they would still be different from bonobos because, not being full moral agents, bonobos would not be regarding their behavior as morally permitted or morally required by objective moral norms that apply to them.

Turning to the case of ants, there are more than 12,000 species constituting conservatively 20% of the biomass of the earth. In general, there are three castes of ants: queens, workers, and males. The queens are just the egg-makers, and the males are just the sperm-makers. Thus, neither is involved in directing the day-to-day operation of the colony. That is undertaken by the worker ants who, in the course of their lives, transition between the main jobs that need doing in a colony, such as caring for the eggs and larva, doing other work in the hive, leaving the hive to search for food, and finally, in their still vigorous old age, defending the colony against intruders. The worker ants also make the decisions as to when and where to relocate the colony. It was in the Cretaceous period that ants evolved their communal lifestyle that enabled them to adapt and flourish everywhere except Antarctica and a few remote and inhospitable islands (Foitzik and Fritsche 2021).

Now, Street rightly thinks that expressing a devotion to the entire community would make us more ant-like. Yet, would it be too morally demanding for us to give up our surplus resources so that everyone who does their best to contribute to society will have sufficient resources for a decent life? And would it be too morally demanding for existing generations to limit their use of resources to just what they need for a decent life so as many future generations as possible could come into existence and similarly have sufficient resources for a decent life. In From Rationality to Equality, I have argued that neither of these requirements would be too morally demanding. Hence, I hold that a greater devotion to the welfare of the entire human community would fit well with our existing moral requirements. Being more ant-like here could then be understood for us to be just more like we should be if we better adhered to the moral norms that governed our lives. In this respect, however, we would also be unlike ants because we would be contributing to the greater development of the entire human community as was required by the moral norms governing our lives, thus being, in this respect, very unlike ants.

Of course, we humans could, over time, maybe as a result of the drastic consequences of climate change, cease to be full moral agents, as depicted in the “Planet of the Apes,” but here, to deal with Street’s examples, we need only focus on transformations in which we become more lion-like, more bonobo-like, or more ant-like without ceasing to be full moral agents.

Earlier in this paper, both egoistic and altruistic interests were each seen as sometimes opposed to the requirements of morality. There, it was argued that only a moral compromise of these interests could be given a nonquestion begging justification. Now here, analogously, kin-selection and reciprocal altruism can also be seen as sometimes opposed to the requirement of morality. Hence, here too it can be argued that only a moral compromise of kin selection and reciprocal altruism with more altruistic interests can be given a nonquestion-begging justification. This means that Darwinian evolutionary theory is not a completely new challenge to the objectivity of morality. Rather, it parallels the challenge that egoism has long been seen as directing at morality, a challenge that I have argued can be met by utilizing a nonquestion-begging compromise of both egoistic and altruistic interests.

It may be that Street failed to see how the norms of morality could be used, as I propose, to evaluate what Darwinian evolutionary theory explains because she thinks that the truths of a moral realist account of morality “might be anything”. (Street 2008). Thus, she tells us that according to such an account, survival might be bad, our children’s lives might be worthless, and the fact that someone has helped us might be a reason to hurt the person in return”, and presumably conclusively the case (Ibid.). As a consequence, for Street, a moral realist account of morality turns out to closely resemble a divine command account of morality for which, as I argued earlier, just anything could turn out to be the right thing to do, irrespective of how harmful and/or unfair it is to human beings. Notice too that it was just this feature of divine command theory that both theists and atheists alike took to be sufficient to defeat the view.

By contrast, if a moral realist account of morality is understood as a system of norms, the highest moral norm of which is to treat all relevant interests fairly and is derivable from an ultimate norm of rationality—the principle of nonquestion-beggingness—then it will be possible to use the account to evaluate kin selection, reciprocal altruism, and other past, present, or future outcomes of Darwinian evolution to determine when such outcomes can be morally justified and to what degree more altruistic behavior is morally required. Understood in this way, the outcomes of Darwinian evolution can be appropriately integrated into an objective ethics, thus eliminating any need for the subjectivist (antirealist) ethics that Street proposes.

Now, one easy way to see how Street is wrong about the implications of Darwinian evolutionary theory, with respect to our abilities to come to know normative and nonnormative truths, is to realize that according to Darwinian evolutionary theory, whatever survives the evolutionary process is adaptive or a byproduct of what is adaptive.

Now, ask yourself whether we, surviving humans, have the abilities to come to know normative and nonnormative truth. I think it is obvious that we do have such abilities, or we would not be able to participate in any productive discussion here. Hence, these abilities must be adaptive or the byproduct of what is adaptive, or we would not have them. Either way, by exercising these abilities, we do come to know normative and nonnormative truths even while recognizing the influence of Darwinian evolutionary. Moreover, if one were tempted to appeal to the guiding interventions of the God of traditional theism rather than just to our surviving abilities under Darwinian evolution to explain how we do come to know normative and nonnormative truths, one needs only to take into account how that move would be precluded by my argument that the God of traditional theism is logically incompatible, especially with all the horrendous evil consequences in the world.25

5. Summary

In sum, building on my recent argument that an all-good, all-powerful God is logically incompatible with all the evil in the world, I have explored what grounding ethics can have with and without the God of traditional theism. Opposing the view that without God everything is permitted, I have argued that with or without God, ethics must be given an independent justification, the highest moral norm of which is to treat all relevant interests fairly, and that norm in turn is derivable from an ultimate norm of rationality, the principle of nonquestion-beggingness. I further go on to show how an ethics grounded on just such norms can be appropriately related to our biological and cultural past, present, and future as understood through Darwinian evolutionary theory, thereby undercutting Sharon Street’s attempt to use Darwinian evolutionary theory to debunk just such an objective ethics.