Evolution explains our moral sense, so we don't need God to explain morality

What evolution plausibly explains

It's very likely that evolution shaped our capacity for moral feeling. Cooperative groups survive better; parents who care for children pass on their genes. Charles Darwin himself speculated in The Descent of Man about how social instincts could give rise to a moral sense. Christians have no reason to deny that God could use natural processes to give us moral faculties, just as he gave us eyes through natural processes.

Explaining feelings vs explaining truth

The key distinction is between why we have moral beliefs and whether those beliefs are true. Evolution might explain why we feel that betraying friends is wrong. It can't tell us whether betrayal really is wrong. Those are different questions. An account of how we came to believe something doesn't settle whether the belief is accurate.

The debunking problem

In fact, an evolutionary account can cut against moral confidence. If our moral beliefs were selected only because they helped us survive, not because they track moral truth, then we have reason to doubt them. The philosopher Sharon Street pressed this point in a well-known 2006 paper, "A Darwinian Dilemma for Realist Theories of Value." Her conclusion was not theism but that moral facts must depend on our attitudes. Darwin himself noted that if humans had been raised like hive-bees, we might think it a duty for sisters to kill their brothers.

So evolution alone may lead to moral skepticism, not to robust morality. That's a big price. Most of us are more certain that torturing children is wrong than we are of any theory that says it might not be.

How theism fits

If God exists and is good, it makes sense that he would shape us, through whatever process, to recognise real moral truths. Our moral faculties would then be generally reliable, even if imperfect. That explains both the biological history and the authority of morality. This is why the moral argument for God doesn't conflict with evolution; it asks what makes our evolved moral beliefs true.

Animals and morality

Animals show empathy and cooperation, which is fascinating. But we don't hold a wolf morally guilty for killing a lamb. Humans have something more: the capacity to judge our instincts, to say that a strong urge is wrong and should be resisted. C.S. Lewis noted in Mere Christianity that the moral law is the thing that tells us which instinct to follow.

A fair concession

Evolutionary psychology has genuine insights, and Christians shouldn't treat it as a threat. It may explain a lot about how morality develops in us.

How to explain this to a friend

With a friend, start by agreeing that evolution probably shaped our moral feelings. That takes the heat out of the conversation. Then ask the key question: if our moral sense is just a survival tool, how do we know it's telling us the truth? Most people are more confident that cruelty is wrong than that it merely helped our ancestors survive, and that tension is worth exploring together.

The bottom line

Evolution can tell a story about how we came to have moral feelings. It can't tell us whether those feelings point to anything real. If morality is real, we still need to explain it, and that is where the conversation in What is evil? and the moral argument begins.