The Moral Emptiness of Naturalism (Pt. III)

This is the third and final part of our look at an essay by Richard Weikart, a professor of modern European history at California State University, in which he addresses the inability of naturalism to provide a coherent basis for ethics. Scroll down for the first two installments.

In today's post we'll look at Weikert's critique of the attempt by biologist Jerry Coyne to derive ethics from biological and cultural evolution. He notes that Coyne's writing on this topic presupposes an objective moral standard, the existence of which he nevertheless denies:

Coyne is an emeritus professor of evolutionary biology at the University of Chicago and a prominent atheist. In his 2015 book, Faith Versus Fact, Coyne argues that morality is the product of both evolutionary and cultural processes. He vigorously denies that there is anything fixed or objective about morality.

However, despite his moral relativism, later in his book Coyne inexplicably states, “Indeed, secular morality, which is not twisted by adherence to the supposed commands of a god, is superior to most ‘religious’ morality.”

It escapes Coyne’s notice, apparently, that for one kind of morality to be superior to another, there has to be some yardstick outside both moral systems to measure them by.

In other words, if human beings are the product of evolution then all of our behaviors are also the product of our evolutionary development. How then do we determine that charity is good and selfishness is bad if they're both the residue of the evolutionary process?

The only way we can make that judgment is if we compare the two behaviors to some objective standard to see which one conforms best to that standard. Yet Coyne's philosophy doesn't allow for the existence of such a standard so his judgments of good and bad are completely arbitrary.

Weikert continues:

When Coyne confronts specific moral precepts, he falls into the same contradiction. In a 2017 blog he argues that infanticide and assisted suicide should be permitted, and he insists that the increasing acceptance of them in our society is a sign of moral progress. He proclaims, “This change in views about euthanasia and assisted suicide [i.e., its legalization in some states and countries] are the result of a tide of increasing morality in our world.”

Now, some commentators (such as myself) would argue the exact opposite: that the increasing acceptance of euthanasia and assisted suicide is evidence of our moral decline. But laying aside whether I am right or Coyne is right on this specific moral issue, both of our moral claims — that there is moral progress or moral decline — imply that we are moving toward (or away from) some objective moral goal.

Unless there is an objective moral standard how does Coyne know that any behavior represents moral progress? All that he actually seems to be saying is that a behavior represents moral progress if it's a behavior that he likes.

Weikert goes on to discuss a study done by John Evans, a sociology professor at the University of California, that shows a correlation between one's worldview and one's view of human rights:

[Evans] divided people’s views of humanity into three broad categories: theistic, biological, and philosophical. The theistic view of humanity is characterized by the view that humans are created in the image of God. The biological view of humanity sees humans as the product of evolutionary processes and as exclusively physical beings. The philosophical view understands humans to be defined by their having certain traits, such as consciousness, the ability to plan their future, and so forth.

What Evans discovered was that people embracing the theistic view of humans have greater respect for human rights than those espousing the two secularist views. Evans, as a secularist who nonetheless believes in human rights, is clearly uncomfortable with his discovery.

This result should not be surprising since only the theist who believes that all human beings are created by God in His image and loved by Him have any basis for thinking that objective human rights could even exist. In any other worldview human rights are simply an arbitrary fiction men fabricate to make it easier to live together in society.

For Evans to believe in objective human rights requires a non-rational leap of faith out of his naturalistic worldview and into the worldview of the theist. He must piggy-back, as it were, on theism to get him to objective human rights while all the while rejecting the theistic assumptions that allow for those rights to exist in the first place.

Secularists like Evans want a kind of Christianity without God, but a Christianity without God provides no more solid foundation for ethics than any other worldview, and is just as nonsensical as every other system of thought that tries to hold on to beliefs about right and wrong in the absence of any objective standard for them.