Evolution and Ethics

Abstract

Evolution, German biologist Ernst Haeckel wrote in 1868, is “the magic word by which we shall solve all the riddles that surround us” (Haeckel, 1901). For those eager to rid the world of God, morality is sometimes viewed as the final frontier. It’s easy, so the story goes, to explain the natural world, including curiously strange human animals, through natural, evolutionary processes. But it’s not so easy to explain nonnatural properties like good and bad, or meaning and purpose in natural terms. Good and evil transcend the physical world and so suggest a supernatural source of morality. So the search is on for a natural (i.e., nonsupernatural) foundation for morality. Find the natural foundation for morality, and God is banished from the world altogether.