Philo

Volume 12, Issue 2, Fall/Winter 2009

Theism and Naturalism

Is Morality Undercut by Evolutionary Naturalism

This paper surveys the argument that a secular world-view that is committed to a neo-Darwinian account of human origins generates a vicious form of moral skepticism. The argument turns around the claim that Darwinism entails the unreliability of moral sense or conscience. This argument is analyzed and found wanting. It rests on a major error about the scope of evolutionary biology in explaining human thought.