Atheist Ethicist: Evolution Accounts for Morality?

Atheist Ethicist: Evolution Accounts for Morality?

Alonzo Fyfe is amazing, and this is so eloquently stated and clearly correct there is nothing more I can add to it.

Consider this:

The fact is, evolution can't account for morality.

Neither can religion, by the way. This is not an either-or question. Evolution cannot account for the size of the Earth or the existence of the moon, but this does not imply that we must turn to scripture to find the answers. There is a third alternative.

Morality requires a community of two or more individuals engaged in intentional behavior (beings acting on beliefs and desires). It requires that some desires are malleable - they can be changed through interaction with the environment.

Once you have these elements, then you have a situation where one member of the community has reason to alter the environment in such a way so as to cause others to acquire desires useful to an agent. A community engaged in using environmental factors (e,g., praise, condemnation, reward, punishment) to promote desires generally useful and inhibiting desires generally harmful is a community with a moral system.

Have you ever noticed that when someone indicates that evolution accounts for morality, the immediate objection is that if that's the case, then there would be anarchy?  It's odd that this claim almost always comes from a theist (generally a Christian apologist, who is indicating that God is necessary for objective, universal moral values).  It may be an oversimplification, but it's certainly true.  Alonzo is spot on when he indicates that "morality requires a community of two or more individuals...", in fact, he could have labeled his post "Evolution Accounts For Morality?" and literally just said, "No, it doesn't, because morality requires nothing more than a community of two or more individuals engaged in intentional behavior (being acting on beliefs and desires, and it requires that some desires are malleable."  That's it, the argument was actually over before it began.  Why?  Because the entire basis for the idea that evolution can account for morality is based on things that happened to us (genetically) in our past.  But the above statement cuts that argument down at the knees.  How you ask?  Imagine two beings (agents who have intentional behavior) and they are (to some degree) open to changing their desires.  These two beings are in a room together.  What else do you need for morality to exist?  Morality is really just a word for the actions of these agents which affect each other.  Alonzo was correct in pointing out that it may be true that the agents are the product of evolution, but that isn't relevant to the question of morality.