A few years ago he wrote a column for USA Today in which he argued that belief in God is not necessary for one to live a moral life. He complains that:
As a biologist, I see belief in God-given morality as American's biggest impediment to accepting the fact of evolution. "Evolution," many argue, "could never have given us feelings of kindness, altruism and morality. For if we were merely evolved beasts, we would act like beasts. Surely our good behavior, and the moral sentiments that promote it, reflect impulses that God instilled in our soul."Coyne believes that human morality is a consequence of the evolutionary process coupled with human reason. God is unnecessary. There are at least four things wrong with Coyne's rejection of the belief that God is in some sense necessary for ethics. First, "God-given morality" is not incompatible with evolution. God could be the ground both of moral value and of evolutionary change.
There is a serious incompatibility, however, between "God-given morality" and Coyne's naturalism, i.e. his belief that the natural world is all there is. If naturalism is true then there is no God and thus no "God-given morality."
Second, no one argues that evolution could not, at least in theory, have bestowed upon us the sentiments Coyne lists. The problem is that if evolution is the source of these impulses then it's also the source of avarice, bigotry, cruelty, etc.
If we believe that evolution has produced all human behavioral tendencies, on what basis do we decide that one set of behaviors is good and the other bad? Are we not assuming a "moral dictionary", so to speak - a standard above and beyond nature by which we adjudicate between behaviors to determine which are right and which are wrong?
If so, what is that standard?
Third, if an impersonal, mindless, random process is the ultimate source of these behaviors it can't in any moral sense be wrong to act contrary to them. If moral sentiments are the product of natural selection and chance chemical happenstances in the brain there's no non-arbitrary moral value to anything.
Right and wrong reduce to subjective likes and dislikes, and that leads to moral nihilism.
Finally, in the absence of God in what sense are we accountable for our actions? And if we're not accountable, if there's no reckoning for how we behave, what does it mean to say that a given behavior is "wrong"? If there are no posted speed limits on a highway and no enforcement, what does it mean to say that one is "wrong" to go as fast as one wishes or thinks is prudent?
The most it can mean is that other people won't like it, but why should anyone care whether others approve of how he or she behaves?
We'll look at another aspect of Coyne's argument tomorrow.
