Escape from the Acid Bath

Can Darwinism Support Morality?

The late atheist philosopher Daniel Dennett claims in his book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meaning of Life, that Darwinism is “a universal acid” that dissolves all elements of objective purpose in nature and culture. How could a theory of the origin of species possess such corrosive force? Dennett argues that Darwinism is not only a naturalistic account of the evolution of life, but also a worldview that is universal in scope and unsparing in its effects. In a sense, he is continuing Nietzsche’s declaration that when “God is dead,” nothing remains the same.¹ All the beliefs and practices supported by a Christian worldview must die along with God. Dennett cites atheist philosopher Karl Marx, who was exultant about Darwin’s On the Origin of Species:

Darwin’s book is very important and serves me as a basis in natural science for the class struggle in history. One has to put up with the crude English method of development, of course. Despite all deficiencies, not only is the death-blow dealt here for the first time to “teleology” in the natural sciences but their rational meaning is empirically explained.²

With the death of teleology comes the death of any moral ordering of the natural world according to a divine plan or an objective standard. This acid eats through any moral law, whether based on the Bible or on what can be known about reality by virtue of being human—otherwise known as the natural law (see Romans 2:14–15).

Morality Without God & by Evolution

A welter of atheist writers claim that morality can be rooted in Darwinian evolution and needs no supernatural assistance.³ Although I will mention a philosophically telling comment by Darwin, I will address Darwinism more as a naturalistic and atheistic worldview. According to Darwinists, evolution provides us with a standard version of morality supported not by religion, but by science. We can be good without God, and we can know what is good without God. In other words, morality can be naturalized and fit into the secular evolutionary narrative.

Those naturalists who want to support the dignity of humans, some modicum of human rights, and the need for altruism often appeal to biological and social evolution as their basis. As their story goes, reproductive success (the engine of evolution) requires more than organisms of one species dominating those of another species in an egotistical “survival of the fittest” wherein nature is “red in tooth and claw” (Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s phrase). Group selection demands that individuals work for the good of the group—the species or some other subclass—in order to promote fitness. Species may also need to get along with each other, not just consume each other, in order to survive and reproduce. However, this coevolution is not all sweetness and light, since the predator-prey relationship is part of it and species may engage in an “arms race” against each other’s threats of attack.

So in the long biological and social evolution of humanity, certain moral norms were selected for the good of the species. Among these are cooperation, mutual respect, altruism, and other positive traits, none of which need any theistic or immaterial scaffolding. Of course, along the way, history has been repeatedly seized and savaged by war, racism, slavery, female subordination, planned famines (Stalin’s Holodomor, for example), genocide, and lots more nastiness and cruelty. It is not just nature that is often “red in tooth and claw.” Humanity is stained as well. From a biblical viewpoint, nature itself is fallen and is thus not an adequate basis for morality.

The upshot is that mere nature as construed by materialism—the collection of all physical things and processes, describable by natural science, and organized by mindless natural laws, plus nothing—has, in itself, no normative properties, neither with respect to moral obligation nor with respect to virtues (and vices), nor with respect to intrinsic value.

And, as such, the universe does not care, issue commands, punish evil, or reward the good. As Richard Dawkins wrote,

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, nor any justice. The universe 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.⁴

The Moral Problem with Darwinism

A naturalistic account of nature (with neo-Darwinism as the reigning theory) can only describe what is, not what ought to be. As C. S. Lewis wrote,

From propositions about fact alone no practical conclusion can ever be drawn. This will preserve society cannot lead to do this except by the mediation of society ought to be preserved. This will cost you your life cannot lead directly to do not do this: it can lead to it only through a felt desire or an acknowledged duty of self-preservation. The Innovator is trying to get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premisses in the indicative mood: and though he continues trying to all eternity he cannot succeed, for the thing is impossible.⁵

If we appeal to nonhuman living nature for moral guidance we find predation, cannibalism, and deception—as well as beauty and cooperation. Human history is a jumble of the same, plus all the uniquely human contributions, such as pettiness, racism, and genocide. As Aristotle said,

For as man is the best of the animals when perfected, so he is the worst of all when sundered from law and justice. For unrighteousness is most pernicious when possessed of weapons, and man is born possessing weapons for the use of wisdom and virtue, which it is possible to employ entirely for the opposite ends. Hence when devoid of virtue man is the most unholy and savage of animals, and the worst in regard to sexual indulgence and gluttony.⁶

“Law and justice” are not simply read off the record of human or nonhuman history. A purposeful human nature (based on a design plan) and a normative moral standard are required, neither of which atheism can provide. So the evolutionist’s problem is threefold.

(1) There is no standard to decide what behavior and values ought to be conserved from the vast array of biological possibilities. Social Darwinism advocated letting the “favored races” succeed and the others fail. Few would accept this today, but if not, why not?

Typically, Darwinists take something as good, then consider how to produce it and preserve it. So in The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris specifies what he takes as good for humanity and then advocates what ought to be done to further these conditions. However, he never justifies the initial judgment of value. He cannot do so on Darwinian grounds. He must philosophically cheat to retain morality.

(2) Even if principles for behavior are found that are conducive to survival, these principles would not necessarily be morally good. Surviving and being good are two different things. Darwin himself thought nature could have been otherwise.

If…men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering.⁷

In this macabre alternative scenario, the human conscience would look quite different than it does today. On this account, our deepest moral convictions about human dignity and proper treatment would be rendered mere happenstances of biology. This is counterintuitive, to say the least. We need a better explanation for conscience and its contents.

(3) If we must make moral decisions based on instinct, we are left with an unreliable faculty for moral judgments, since our instincts are often in conflict. Should we save ourselves or give ourselves to others? Should we favor family or country? We may be torn, but without an appeal to objective moral value, we are left to our biological drives. As Lewis argued, we need a standard above our impulses.

Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard. The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.⁸

According to Lewis, conscience has access to “objective moral value,” which can adjudicate between competing instincts. But this notion ill fits naturalism.

Some atheists embrace Darwinism but posit the existence of objective moral facts independent of the natural world—a view sometimes called atheistic moral realism. Of course, this far-flung and ad hoc metaphysics has nothing to do with Darwinism; it rather exposes Darwinism’s intrinsic and inexorable inability to ground anything like a coherent or livable morality on its own merits. But certainly, morality based on the character of a self-existent, eternal, and personal being provides a better foundation than to posit immaterial moral principles that are inexplicably just there in the twilight zone of a godless world.

No Acid Bath

If Darwinism were true, it would, as Dennett claimed, dispense a universal acid, eating through all traditional morality and all objective meaning and purpose. Darwinism can provide no basis for moral principles that transcend nature. But given our knowledge of basic morality, we can see that Darwinism must not be true—even apart from the scientific evidence against it. We can avoid the acid bath by affirming the existence of objective morality and by finding a sure support for it in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

—This article was adapted from Christian Apologetics: A Comprehensive Case for Biblical Faith, by Douglas Groothuis, pp. 341–345.

Notes
1. Friedrich Nietzsche, “The Gay Science,” 125, in The Portable Nietzsche, trans. Walter Kaufmann (1968), 95.
2. “Marx to LaSalle in Berlin,” 1860; I have given the fuller quotation than the one Dennett gives.
3. I am not considering those who try to combine some form of evolution with theism, but rather philosophical naturalists.
4. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1996), 133.
5. C.  S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man (New York: Macmillan, 1955), 43.
6. Aristotle, Politics, 1253a, Perseus Digital Library.
7. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 102.
8. C.  S. Lewis, Mere Christianity, C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperCollins, 2017), 12.