Although it is likely that two often go together – that is, most materialists accept the neo-Darwinian version of events. Regardless, the point still remains that morality (or more specifically, the reality of objective moral standards and our moral obligations) is difficult to account for in a materialist worldview.

Bill Muehlenberg, CultureWatch

Another provocative post. Thank you!

One distinction I think is worth mentioning (not sure anyone did) is the “is versus ought” distinction, which often gets traced to Hume. Just because something is the case (slavery, inequality, etc), doesn’t mean it ought to be the case. And morality seems to be all about what we ought to do.

So evolutionary ethicists face an apparently insurmountable logical hurdle. If you grant that evolution has instilled certain tendencies in us (a propensity to defend kin and family, a repugnance to certain sexual practices, a feeling of obligation in matters of gratitude or revenge), that is still no reason that we ought to follow these tendencies.

Now, to me that’s the main problem. Where do we get guidance as to what we should do and should not do? I think a lot of philosophical ethics has attempted (with limited success) to try to answer that. For instance, Kant claimed you could somehow derive ethics from pure reason, Sartre thought the source was arbitrary choice, utilitarians (and ancient Greeks) thought that ethics was linked to happiness, and that you could derive ethical rules from objective facts about what makes people happy.

I think all this is the first point made by your article. How could any materialist be a “moral realist”. How could they claim any sort of objective moral laws.

Your goes on to make a second point. “The problem is that this entire framework of Darwinian analysis does not even come close to explaining morality” — and therefore that the materialist worldview is unconvincing. I have to say that I find this argument unconvincing, if I understand it properly.

If by morality you mean “people’s beliefs about what they should and should not do” or “how people happen to behave” — well, a materialist has many ways of addressing these questions. He or she doesn’t need to speak in evolutionary terms. It’s like asking about any behaviour, or custom, or cultural artifact. Why is that one culture believes touching a cow is wrong, and another culture believes that infanticide is acceptable, and another culture believes that chopsticks are the best way to eat rice, and another culture hates Jews, and another culture spells a word “shew” rather than “show”? All these things have explanations in tems of social conditioning, custom, transmission of information and attitude and value and belief. The fact that evolutionary theory alone is a clumsy tool to explain their causation doesn’t discredit a materialistic worldview.

Ken Masterman, Alberta, Canada

And when things are bad we turn to God to blame Him and accuse Him for disrupting our lives, when maybe we should be asking God, ‘am I really living for nothing?’

It can sometimes be hard to consider where God is in the grand picture of things, and why He doesn’t seem to be there, when you don’t want Him to be there.

Yet I guess that many good laws have come into society out of the wisdom of God found in the Bible, whilst we are constantly looking elsewhere or to ourselves to solve new problems. But if we don’t want to accept God when seeking help and asking for solutions, and rather use Him to ridicule in the hard times similar to a punching bag, I suppose it will never be easy to see the good in God.

Sure, when I was about 8 and my mum told me to stop eating cheese or I’d be sick, it was easy to pretend she didn’t exist, until I started to feel sick and then I was angry with the facts. And sure, when I was forced by my mum to get to primary school and learn, I hated it and thought she was torturing me, but I guess I’m thankful now seeing I made it through high school and have a good job. And yes, when I was 13 and my grandma passed away I was extremely sad, thankfully my mother was there to comfort me. I guess despite never knowing why I was told to do something, where the future leads or why certain things happen, my mum has always been there… and not to divert too much, maybe it is the same with God.

Sometimes God maybe giving us instruction, but we are arrogantly not listening, and maybe we are getting angry with the outcomes from that. Maybe God at times is teaching us, or at least He wants to, but we don’t want to take the lessons, and so we never learn. And maybe some things we don’t understand, because we cannot see it from the big picture. It is for Him to see the big picture, and for us to trust God as our Father

Maybe actually attempting trusting God, praying and fasting consistently, asking God to reveal himself, would actually bring results, if one is truly interested in meeting God, rather than just saying I’m open to something if it hits me in the face.

In most cases people usually look at facts and then look for solutions to problems. It is interesting and unfortunate, that in society today it can be a common habit in our difficult busy culture to go to work, come home, watch the news, and go to bed. Each night one can fill up on information about problems.

Rather than just coming home to the news report of a night, maybe we should listen to the problems reported by the news, and read the solutions from the Bible as well.
Matthew Law

I’d like to agree with Bill. The simple explanation for evil is sin and that we do have free will. We face everyday with lots of choices. Ignorance to God does not lead to good things, but leads to selfish behaviours.

You made a comment on the Old Testament and the New Testament, saying that “The Old Testament runs around in circles postulating different explanations, while the New Testament basically says we should suffer in this life but things will get better in the next. Altogether rather unsatisfactory, especially as there is no evidence for the existence of life after death.” The reasons why you find this unsatisfactory is that you have not allowed the word of God to say what it wants, but only what you want it to say. It seems that you have read the Bible with the motive to judge it.

In the New Testament where it says we should “suffer” in this life, simply means to stand strong- not to conform to the ways of this world. This is our struggle. Again, it means to endure.

Why would God allow you to live with Him if you didn’t want anything to do with him in this life time? Do you have evidence that there isn’t a life after death?

No matter how much you fight God, he still loves you. More then your mind or intellect can understand. He knows you by name. He knows you more then your closest confidant. Whether you choose to accept it or not is up to you.

Kind regards,

Olive Pearl Oliverio, Vicco

My heart goes out to you.
The inability to believe that we were created by a loving God, that we were made and molded by a God who created a world as complex though wonderful as this, seemingly forces you to believe in only one other thing, evolution. Personally I don’t see why one argument negates the other, but many people seem to have their socks above their knees about this one, so assuming that evolution and creationism can only be true if the other is false then atheist live in a sorry state.

Atheist are forced to believe that there is no such thing as love. I make no apology to atheist’s in saying this, because they are the ones who believe this and not I. But it is impossible for you to love your wife, your husband, your spouse! If we truly and completely evolved from slime and later on apes, the only instinct that you feel that comes close to the emotion of love is lust! The need to procreate that has ‘evolved’ in us all in order that our species may survive.
You do not, and can not love you’re children either! Please do not misconstrue your ‘care’ for them as love, your apparent ‘care’ for them is purely selfish! Nothing more than innate bond that evolved beings share with their young in order that their ’seed’ may survive.

Love is a connection given to us by God upon creation, we know and understand Love because we have a God who Loved us first.

If you do not, can not believe in a God who gave us love, how can you beleive in love itself? I mean, I would love to have my cake and eat it too, but lets be honest, the only thing you’ll be left with if you try is vomit.

It may be hard to take in, again I make no apology.
I also have a solution for you guys, you need not lie anymore in saying “I love you” instead say “I lust after you, I cannot control myself on heat, because that is the way we evolved due to special survival, and you so happened to be the closest one of my species around when I entered into puberty, that would accept me.”

Yes it’s a few more words, but probably closer to your truth.

Darius Khor

“Not too long ago, the scientific establishment believed the Earth is flat…”

This is a myth, as conclusively documented by historian Prof. Jeffrey Burton Russell, in his book Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus & Modern Historians; see summary.

Jonathan Sarfati, Brisbane

How many times do we see the news and get outraged at social injustices, human suffering and violent behaviour of people causing harm to others. Where did we acquire such emotional responses and qualities?
Evolutionist atheists insist that random chemical events acting on inanimate material produced highly ordered animate creatures, such as human beings – with consciousness. We are conscious, and conscious that we are conscious. Darwinism cannot explain consciousness arising from blind, non-deterministic chemical (re)arrangements. Logic, intuition and even more importantly (for the sceptics), science shows us this fact. Granted, neural transactions accompany thoughts – modern neuroscience has located brain regions responsible for different kinds of mental activity. But to say that a given thought, emotion or feeling is based on a specific set of neural transactions is as inane as suggesting that the writing of a bestseller is achieved by having pen and paper. Consciousness and thought then are not simply physical transactions.

A conglomeration of genes and clusters of genes do not merely make human beings. Yes, DNA constructed into genes code for the physical component, but do not account or explain joy, happiness, anger and the plethora of human emotions. One cannot pin down a gene or cluster of genes translated into protein molecules to account for human emotional activity. We’re putting the ‘cart before the horse.’ When it comes to human reasoning, feelings, emotions and thought, genes are subservient. For example, a very joyous occasion gives rise to the secretion of serotonin in the brain, triggering a cascade of chemical events. In other words, it is our mental condition that regulates this type of expression in gene activity. Not the other way around!

For too long atheists have been using a reductionist approach rather than employing an accompanying holistic attitude. My concern is that people all too readily accept the current evolution model. They believe that science has all the answers. Has science really proven from slime to man? It has not. Not too long ago, the scientific establishment believed the Earth is flat…heavier than air flight was impossible. Newtonian mechanics was the only explanation of all natural laws of how the Universe works. Now we have Einstein’s relativity and quantum mechanics which provide a further, more detailed understanding of the operation of natural laws. Science does not have the definitive answers – only approximations; even more so when it comes to biological evolution. Science can measure and test quantum phenomena, relativistic events and real world stuff. It cannot test evolution.

We have been created by God, not goo!

Jim Karkaloutsos

Can you explain how you obtained your sense of right and wrong, fair and unfair from? If, as human beings, we are all just a cosmic accidents which emerged by chance from a pre-biotic soup, then surely we would never even think about suffering as being alien to how things are. Instead we would simply accept that suffering is how things have always been. Yet deep down within each of us there is a sense that pain, suffering and death are not how things should be. Where did we get that from?
Been to any funerals lately ? why do people cry and weep at such events, if evolutionary advances requires death then you should be excited about innocent children dying – after all that’s progress ! Of course that’s nonsense, your revulsion for evil in this world declares God, because you (made in his image) seek justice.

Dallas James, Victoria