Evolutionary ethics raises important questions because it attempts to explain morality primarily through natural development, survival, reproduction, and social cooperation. In one sense, I understand why some people find this approach appealing. Human beings do seem to have moral instincts, empathy, concern for children, social bonds, and cooperative behaviors. An evolutionary account may describe how certain moral impulses became useful for human survival. However, the major problem is that explaining where a moral feeling may have come from is not the same thing as explaining why it is truly right or morally binding.

Before addressing evolutionary ethics directly, it is helpful to consider Kant’s duty-based ethic. Kant rightly emphasized duty, human dignity, and moral responsibility. However, as McQuilkin and Copan argue, a secular Kantian ethic struggles to explain why human beings possess dignity and moral worth if they are merely the result of valueless material processes.[1] R. C. Sproul summarizes Kant’s moral argument well when he writes, “Kant argues for the Christian God on the basis that he must exist for ethics to be meaningful.”[2] This is important because even Kant recognized that morality points beyond mere human preference. Duty requires a foundation deeper than social usefulness, biology, or personal feeling.

The most compelling problem with evolutionary ethics, in my view, is the inability to move from “is” to “ought.” McQuilkin and Copan make this point clearly when they argue that naturalism can describe how human beings function or behave, but it cannot prescribe how they ought to act.[3] In other words, even if evolution explains why I feel a strong impulse to protect children, help my neighbor, or cooperate with my community, that still does not explain why I am morally obligated to do those things. Hunger, fear, and reproduction may also be hardwired into human beings, but we do not usually describe those instincts as morally true or false. They simply are. Morality, however, involves obligation. It says, “You should do this,” or “You must not do that.” Evolutionary ethics struggles to explain where that binding “ought” comes from.

C. S. Lewis makes a similar point in Mere Christianity when he argues that morality cannot be reduced to instinct alone. Lewis writes, “The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys.”[4] That illustration is helpful because instincts may be real, but they still need to be ordered by a higher moral law. Sometimes an instinct should be followed, and other times it should be resisted. For example, the instinct for self-preservation may be natural, but love may call a person to sacrifice for another. Evolution may explain the presence of instincts, but it cannot tell us why one instinct ought to rule over another.

This matters because survival value is not the same as moral goodness. A behavior may help a person or group survive, but that does not automatically make it morally right. Cooperation may promote survival, but in some situations, deception, violence, selfishness, or the elimination of the weak might also appear to benefit a group. If morality is grounded only in biological advantage, then ethics becomes unstable and dependent on whatever helps survival or reproduction. That is a dangerous foundation for human dignity, justice, and sacrificial love.

I do not think McQuilkin and Copan overstate the case when they critique evolutionary ethics as the ultimate foundation for morality. Their argument is strong because evolutionary ethics cannot fully account for human dignity, moral responsibility, free will, reason, conscience, or duty apart from God.[5] If humans are merely the products of mindless, impersonal, valueless material forces, then it becomes difficult to explain why human beings possess intrinsic worth. As McQuilkin and Copan argue, it makes better sense to say that value comes from value, rather than that value somehow emerges from valuelessness.[6] Baggett and Walls make a similar argument by presenting theism as a better explanation for morality than secular alternatives, especially when accounting for moral value, obligation, knowledge, transformation, and rationality.[7]

At the same time, I would make a distinction. If someone uses evolution only as a possible description of how certain moral capacities or social instincts developed, then the critique may not apply in the same way. A Christian could believe that God providentially designed human beings with moral awareness, empathy, conscience, and social responsibility. In that limited sense, evolutionary explanations may describe part of the process. However, they cannot replace God as the foundation of morality. Description is not foundation.

This is why I do not believe evolutionary ethics, as an ultimate grounding system, is compatible with belief in God as the foundation for ethics. If evolutionary ethics claims that morality is merely a biological illusion or survival mechanism, then it directly conflicts with Christian ethics. But if evolutionary insights are placed under the larger truth that God is Creator, moral lawgiver, and the source of human dignity, then they may help describe aspects of human moral experience without becoming the foundation of morality.

Therefore, the Christian rejection of evolutionary ethics is not simply based on a rejection of evolution. The deeper issue is that evolution alone cannot bear the weight of moral obligation. Only a good, personal, rational God can provide a foundation strong enough for objective moral truth, human dignity, and binding ethical responsibility.

Bibliography

Baggett, David, and Jerry L. Walls. God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

Lewis, C. S. “Mere Christianity.” In The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics. New York: HarperOne, 2007.

McQuilkin, Robertson, and Paul Copan. An Introduction to Biblical Ethics: Walking in the Way of Wisdom. 3rd ed. Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014.

Sproul, R. C. The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World. Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000.

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[1] Robertson McQuilkin and Paul Copan, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics: Walking in the Way of Wisdom, 3rd ed. (Downers Grove, IL: IVP Academic, 2014), 179–80.

[2] R. C. Sproul, The Consequences of Ideas: Understanding the Concepts That Shaped Our World (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2000), 116.

[3] McQuilkin and Copan, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 182.

[4] C. S. Lewis, “Mere Christianity,” in The Complete C. S. Lewis Signature Classics (New York: HarperOne, 2007), 20.

[5] McQuilkin and Copan, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 181–83.

[6] McQuilkin and Copan, An Introduction to Biblical Ethics, 181.

[7] David Baggett and Jerry L. Walls, God and Cosmos: Moral Truth and Human Meaning (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 8, 19.