Here is part of a debate I am having on Academia.edu.

Sir,

Your argument repeatedly moves between questions that must be distinguished: how human beings acquired moral feelings, whether moral judgments are objectively true, why anyone is morally obligated to obey them, whether evolutionary explanations establish metaphysical naturalism, and whether the God revealed in Scripture exists.

These are related questions, but they are not interchangeable. An explanation of one does not automatically answer the others.

You want the Christian to defend theism, biblical revelation, and the moral authority of Scripture. Fine. But the same demand applies to your account. You cannot demand a complete evidentiary chain from Christianity while treating evolutionary hypotheses, philosophical naturalism, secular moral judgments, and claims of moral progress as though they form one established conclusion.

They do not.

I will address your principal arguments directly.

1. You Invoke Multiple Scientific Disciplines. What Exactly Do They Establish?

You appeal to evolutionary biology, comparative psychology, anthropology, archaeology, and neuroscience as evidence for naturalistic explanations of empathy, cooperation, and moral cognition.

But naming five disciplines is not the same as demonstrating the conclusion you want them to support.

Which particular findings establish which particular propositions? What does each study actually demonstrate? Which conclusions are direct observations, which are historical reconstructions, which are evolutionary hypotheses, and which are philosophical interpretations imposed on the findings?

Those distinctions matter.

Research may establish that humans and other animals exhibit cooperation, attachment, reciprocal behavior, social learning, threat responses, or behavior that resembles empathy. Comparative research may help explain how some of these capacities developed. Evolutionary models may propose mechanisms by which certain social tendencies were selected or maintained.

I am not required to deny those findings to challenge your argument.

The issue is not whether human moral cognition has an evolutionary history. The issue is whether an evolutionary history establishes the truth, authority, or binding force of moral judgments.

It does not do so by itself.

Suppose an evolutionary explanation successfully accounts for why human beings developed an aversion to harming members of their own group. That would help explain the origin of a psychological disposition. It would not, without additional premises, establish that harming an outsider is objectively wrong, that every human being possesses equal moral worth, or that a person is obligated to protect someone who offers no reciprocal benefit.

You need an additional argument to get from a description of how a disposition arose to a conclusion about what a person ought to do.

You cannot fill that gap merely by repeating the name of the discipline from which the descriptive explanation came.

If you have a specific study that you believe establishes an objective moral obligation, identify it and explain the inferential chain. If your studies establish the evolutionary development of moral cognition, then state that conclusion accurately. Do not claim that evidence for the development of moral cognition has already resolved the philosophical question of moral truth.

2. The Origin of a Moral Belief Is Not the Same as Its Truth

You correctly distinguish the origin of a belief from the truth of that belief. But that distinction cuts both ways.

Explaining why someone believes something does not establish whether the belief is true. It also does not establish that the belief is false.

An evolutionary account of religious belief would not, merely by explaining how religious beliefs might arise, prove that God does not exist. An evolutionary account of moral belief does not, merely by explaining how moral beliefs might arise, prove that moral claims are objectively true or false.

The same logical rule applies to every worldview.

If a person's moral conviction has an evolutionary history, the conviction might be true, false, partially true, or mistaken. Its origin alone does not settle the matter.

That means your account of moral cognition leaves a fundamental question open: What makes a moral proposition true, if anything does, beyond the fact that a human being or a society believes it?

If you defend moral realism, explain what makes moral facts real and what grounds their authority. If you defend a form of moral naturalism, identify the natural facts that make a moral judgment true and explain how you get from those facts to an obligation. If you defend a constructivist or conventionalist account, explain how the resulting standards can condemn a society whose accepted values are cruel or unjust.

These are not interchangeable theories. They face different philosophical questions.

You cannot simply move among them whenever one becomes difficult.

3. The Is-Ought Problem Has Not Disappeared Because Evolution Is Involved

Consider a simple example.

A population develops cooperative tendencies because cooperation contributes to group stability. That is a proposed explanation of behavior.

Now ask whether a person is morally obligated to cooperate when cooperation is dangerous, personally costly, or contrary to the interests of the dominant group.

The evolutionary explanation does not answer that question by itself.

You need a normative premise. You might argue that suffering matters, that human flourishing is valuable, that rational agents must respect one another, or that objective moral facts exist independently of individual preferences. But each proposal requires an argument.

The moment you introduce such a premise, you are no longer relying on evolutionary biology alone. You are making a philosophical claim about value, reason, human nature, or moral obligation.

That is entirely legitimate. But it must be acknowledged.

The question is not whether science can inform moral reasoning. Obviously it can. Science can establish facts about consequences, injuries, needs, behavior, and the likely effects of policies. Those facts are indispensable to informed ethical judgments.

The question is whether empirical facts alone establish the normative authority of the standards by which those facts are judged.

You have not demonstrated that they do.

And appealing to a scientific explanation of why humans possess moral intuitions does not answer the question. It merely returns us to the origin of the intuition rather than the truth of its content.

4. Darwin's “Horrid Doubt” Does Not Disprove Evolution, but Neither Should the Question Be Dismissed

Darwin's July 3, 1881, letter to William Graham contains his well-known reflection about whether convictions arising in the human mind could be trusted if that mind had developed from the minds of lower animals.

The original letter also contains Darwin's statement about his “inmost conviction” that the universe was not the result of chance. Both parts matter to an honest reading of the document.

I am not presenting Darwin's doubt as a disproof of evolution. That would overstate the source and confuse an epistemological concern with a biological refutation.

The relevant question is narrower and more serious: What justifies confidence that the cognitive faculties we use to evaluate reality are reliable, especially when we are making claims that go beyond immediate survival and practical behavior?

An evolutionary explanation may support the reliability of some cognitive faculties. Accurate perception, memory, inference, and prediction can plainly contribute to survival. There is no need to pretend that natural selection favors only survival while never favoring truth.

But that observation does not settle every question about the scope and reliability of human reasoning. It does not automatically validate every abstract philosophical conclusion a human being reaches, including conclusions about metaphysics, moral realism, or the ultimate nature of reality.

The question is not whether evolution could produce useful cognitive capacities. It plainly could. The question is what additional account justifies confidence in the particular faculties and inferences on which a worldview depends.

That challenge applies to the theist and the naturalist alike. Neither side gets to declare its own reasoning reliable merely because it used that reasoning to reach its conclusion.

So let us keep the argument precise. Darwin's doubt is not a scientific refutation of evolution. It is a legitimate epistemological question about the relationship between the origin of cognition and our justification for trusting it. Dismissing it because it does not disprove evolution answers a question Darwin's letter does not need to settle.

5. Scientific Evidence for Evolution Does Not Establish Metaphysical Naturalism

This is one of the most important distinctions in the entire discussion.

Biological evolution concerns changes in populations, common ancestry, variation, inheritance, selection, and related processes. Metaphysical naturalism is a much broader philosophical position concerning what exists and whether reality is exhausted by the natural order.

The propositions are not identical.

A person may accept biological evolution without accepting that God does not exist. A person may accept scientific explanations of particular biological processes without concluding that nature is the whole of reality. Conversely, a person may accept naturalism, but that position requires its own philosophical defense.

If you believe evolutionary science establishes metaphysical naturalism, identify the argument that bridges the two. If you believe naturalism is independently justified, present that argument instead.

Do not use evidence for biological evolution as though it automatically settles the existence of God, the nature of moral truth, or the validity of biblical revelation.

That would be a category mistake.

And I will not accept the reverse mistake either. The existence of God does not automatically disprove evolution. The question of biological mechanisms and the question of ultimate reality must be argued at their respective levels.

The actual dispute concerns what the available evidence establishes, what philosophical conclusions follow, and what additional premises those conclusions require.

6. “Whose God?” Is a Further Question, Not a Refutation

You ask, in effect, which God I mean and why the biblical account should be accepted.

That is a legitimate question to raise after the case for theism and revelation has been examined. It is not, by itself, an argument against either.

The fact that multiple religious traditions make competing claims does not establish that all of them are false. Disagreement creates a problem requiring evaluation; it does not settle the result in advance.

If two witnesses give conflicting accounts of an event, the existence of disagreement does not prove that the event never occurred. We examine the testimony, its consistency, its historical setting, its explanatory power, and the reasons for accepting one account over another.

The same intellectual discipline applies to religious claims.

My position is not that every religion is interchangeable or that the question of religious identity is unimportant. My position is that the question must be addressed by examining the actual claims and arguments rather than treating religious diversity as a substitute for refutation.

For Christianity, that includes the claims concerning Jesus, the historical setting of the biblical writings, the content and coherence of the Christian account of God, and the grounds on which the biblical testimony is judged credible.

You may reject those grounds, but you must identify the grounds you reject and explain why.

Asking “Whose God?” does not answer those questions. It opens them.

And your own position faces the same demand. Which version of naturalism do you defend? Which theory of moral truth do you accept? Which account of reason do you rely upon? Which standard makes your preferred moral conclusions objectively correct?

If the question of ultimate authority is legitimate for Christianity, it is legitimate for your worldview as well.

7. Scripture Is Not an Accidental Collection of Moral Opinions in My Argument

You challenge the authority of biblical revelation. I understand that challenge. But you should not confuse my stated starting point with a claim that Scripture has already been demonstrated to you on premises you accept.

My position is explicitly Christian. I regard Scripture as an authority concerning God, human nature, sin, moral responsibility, and the ultimate moral order. I do not pretend that I approach these questions from a philosophical position without foundational commitments.

Psalm 14:1 and Romans 1:18–20 belong to that biblical framework. They express the scriptural account of human accountability and the relationship between humanity and God. They are not being cited as though quoting a verse automatically forces a skeptic to accept the verse's authority.

The argument is that Christianity offers an account of moral reality in which human beings are accountable to a moral authority beyond the preferences of individuals, the conventions of societies, or the commands of political rulers.

You may dispute that account. But the existence of a dispute does not mean that my position is simply an unexplained preference, any more than your rejection of revelation makes your own philosophical foundations disappear.

Every worldview has foundational commitments. The serious question is whether those commitments are coherent, defensible, and capable of supporting the conclusions drawn from them.

If you believe biblical revelation is false, make the case against its truth or reliability. If you believe its moral claims are inconsistent, identify the passages, establish the context, explain the alleged inconsistency, and show why your proposed interpretation is superior.

Do not substitute the bare fact that you do not recognize Scripture as an authority for an argument proving that Scripture cannot be an authority.

Those are different propositions.

8. The Old Testament Must Be Examined, Not Reduced to a List of Objections

You raise concerns about troubling passages in the Old Testament. Those questions deserve examination, but they cannot be settled by extracting a passage from its literary, historical, legal, and theological context and then assuming that the first modern impression of the text is the final moral judgment.

The relevant questions include what the text actually commands or describes, whom the passage addresses, what type of writing is involved, what the historical circumstances are, how the passage relates to the broader biblical narrative, and what moral principle is being challenged.

There is also a distinction between describing an act, regulating an existing social practice, permitting an act under specified conditions, and commanding an act as a universal moral obligation. Those categories cannot responsibly be treated as synonyms.

This does not mean every difficult passage can be resolved by announcing that it has a context. Context must be demonstrated, not used as an escape hatch.

But your critique has the same obligation. You must establish what a passage means before you can establish that its meaning is morally indefensible. You must also explain the standard by which you reach that judgment.

If your objection is that a biblical text describes or permits conduct you consider wrong, explain why the relevant conduct is objectively wrong and what makes your standard authoritative.

You might appeal to suffering, human dignity, autonomy, equality, or flourishing. Those are serious moral considerations. But their application and authority still require an account. You cannot establish the truth of your standard merely by expressing moral revulsion toward a text.

And you cannot infer that every Christian interpretation of a passage is identical, any more than you can assume that every secular moral theory reaches the same conclusion.

The proper response is detailed textual and moral analysis, not a shortcut from discomfort to disproof.

9. Moral Progress Requires a Standard by Which Progress Can Be Measured

You suggest that human moral progress can be understood independently of divine revelation.

That proposition needs more work than the phrase “moral progress” ordinarily receives.

Societies unquestionably change their moral beliefs, laws, customs, and practices. Some changes reduce suffering, protect vulnerable people, extend legal protections, or limit arbitrary power. Other changes can produce new injustices or simply replace one set of social preferences with another.

The fact that a society changes does not, by itself, establish that it has improved.

Progress is a directional judgment. It means that one condition is better than another according to some standard.

If you say that the abolition of a particular injustice represents moral progress, explain why the change is an improvement rather than merely a change in social consensus. If the answer is that the practice violates human dignity, explain what makes that dignity real and why it imposes an obligation on those who deny it. If the answer is that the practice causes unnecessary suffering, explain why suffering has normative significance rather than merely being an event that human beings dislike.

I am not claiming that secular philosophers have never attempted to answer these questions. They have. Secular moral realism, contractualist theories, consequentialism, and other approaches deserve to be evaluated on their actual merits.

I am demanding that you identify the account you defend and show why it succeeds.

You cannot treat moral progress as an established objective fact when it supports your position, then treat the grounding of objective morality as an irrelevant philosophical complication when you are asked to explain it.

Nor does the historical existence of moral wrongdoing among Christians disprove Christianity's moral claims. It establishes that Christians, like other human beings, have acted contrary to moral principles they professed. Hypocrisy can discredit a person's conduct or testimony in particular circumstances, but it does not logically establish that the moral principle itself is false.

The question remains: what makes the reform genuinely right, rather than merely popular, politically successful, or historically later?

That is the question your account must answer.

10. Animal Behavior Does Not Supply a Complete Moral Theory

Animal behavior is relevant to the study of social behavior and the possible evolutionary roots of human moral cognition. But examples of cooperation, aggression, care, infanticide, or killing cannot be translated directly into moral conclusions.

The wolf literature associated with L. David Mech, research by Gilmore and colleagues on cannibalism among sand tiger shark embryos, and the work of Packer and Pusey on infanticide in lions illustrate that animal behavior includes patterns that can be investigated in terms of ecology, competition, reproduction, and survival.

These examples do not disprove evolution. They do not prove that animals have no capacities relevant to social behavior. Nor do they establish that human morality is wholly unrelated to our evolutionary history.

Their relevance is more limited and more precise: the biological occurrence of a behavior does not, by itself, establish that the behavior is morally right.

If a behavior occurs in nature, its natural occurrence is not a moral authorization. Predation occurs in nature; that fact does not establish a human moral obligation to prey on the vulnerable. Cooperative behavior occurs in nature; that fact alone does not establish an objective duty to cooperate.

A descriptive account of animal behavior is not yet a normative theory.

If you wish to derive a moral conclusion from an evolutionary account, you must explain the additional reasoning that supports that conclusion. You cannot move from “this behavior evolved” to “this behavior is morally justified,” or from “this disposition has biological roots” to “this moral judgment is objectively true.”

That is precisely the inference that requires examination.

11. Rowe's Problem of Evil Does Not Settle the Entire Question of God

The philosophical problem of evil deserves a direct answer, not a dismissal. William Rowe's 1979 article, “The Problem of Evil and Some Varieties of Atheism,” is an important contribution to that debate.

But the existence of a serious argument against a particular conception of God is not identical to a demonstration that every form of theism is false.

The force of an argument from evil depends on its premises, the nature of the evil under consideration, the account of divine power and goodness being challenged, and the reasoning connecting those premises to the conclusion.

A critic must establish the relevant premises and defend the inference. A theist must answer the actual argument rather than simply declaring that human beings cannot understand God's purposes.

Neither side is entitled to an automatic victory.

Christianity also distinguishes between God's sovereignty and human responsibility. Genesis 50:20, Luke 22:22, and Acts 2:23 illustrate the biblical claim that events can occur within divine purposes while human agents remain accountable for wrongdoing. These passages do not, by themselves, solve every philosophical problem concerning evil, but they show that the biblical framework is not simply that whatever happens is therefore morally innocent.

The Christian account must be evaluated as a whole, including its treatment of suffering, justice, human responsibility, redemption, and final judgment.

If you believe Rowe's argument succeeds, identify the premises you consider decisive and explain why the relevant theistic responses fail. Merely citing the existence of evil does not eliminate the need to defend the inference from evil to the nonexistence of God.

Likewise, merely appealing to providence does not eliminate the theist's responsibility to address the argument.

The question must be argued, not assumed.

12. Claims About Reason Must Be Applied Consistently

Your argument depends on reason, evidence, inference, and the capacity to distinguish truth from error. So does mine.

The question is whether the worldview you defend gives an adequate account of those capacities and the standards by which your conclusions are justified.

Evolutionary explanations of cognition may contribute to that account. They do not automatically render reason unreliable, and I am not claiming that they do. But neither does an evolutionary explanation, by itself, establish that every philosophical inference made by an evolved mind is justified.

The same standard applies to my reasoning. I cannot prove Christianity merely by assuming that every Christian conclusion is correct. I must offer arguments and evidence appropriate to the claims being made.

But you cannot demand that standard from me while allowing your own conclusions to travel farther than your evidence supports.

If a scientific finding supports a biological conclusion, state the biological conclusion. If you draw a philosophical conclusion from it, identify the additional premises. If you make a moral judgment, explain the normative standard. If you reject revelation, explain why the rejection is justified.

Those are not special burdens imposed on naturalism. They are the ordinary demands of coherent argument.

13. The Evidence Must Be Distinguished From the Interpretation Placed on It

This is the central methodological issue.

A finding may be genuine while a proposed interpretation of that finding remains disputed. A source may accurately report an observation without establishing every conclusion later attached to it. A theory may explain part of a phenomenon without exhausting every question about its meaning.

That is why I distinguish direct evidence, inference, broader philosophical interpretation, and claims about ultimate reality.

Darwin's letter is evidence of Darwin's expressed epistemological concern. It is not proof that evolution is false.

Research on animal behavior is evidence about the behaviors studied. It is not, by itself, a complete theory of objective moral obligation.

Evolutionary accounts of human moral cognition may explain important aspects of how moral dispositions developed. They do not automatically establish metaphysical naturalism or settle the truth of moral propositions.

Rowe's argument is a philosophical argument about evil and theism. Its conclusion depends on the premises and inferences that must be defended.

And the existence of disagreement over biblical interpretation does not, by itself, establish that biblical revelation is false.

The same discipline must apply to your claims and mine. I will not inflate a source beyond what it supports, and I will not permit a source to be treated as though it proves a conclusion it does not address.

That is not retreat. It is the difference between making an argument and merely announcing a conclusion.

14. The Questions You Need to Answer

Let us bring this down to the specific points that remain unresolved.

First: Which particular findings from evolutionary biology, comparative psychology, anthropology, archaeology, or neuroscience do you believe establish more than the development of moral cognition? Identify the findings and show the reasoning that connects them to your conclusion.

Second: What account of moral truth do you defend? Are moral propositions objectively true, or are they ultimately grounded in individual attitudes, collective conventions, rational constructions, natural facts, or something else? State the theory and defend it.

Third: If you believe moral progress is objective, what standard makes one moral condition better than another? Why is that standard binding on a person or society that rejects it?

Fourth: What argument takes you from biological evolution to metaphysical naturalism? If your position is that evolution and naturalism are separate questions, then acknowledge that evolutionary evidence alone does not settle the existence of God.

Fifth: What is your actual argument against the authority of biblical revelation? Is it historical, textual, philosophical, moral, or some combination? Identify the relevant evidence and explain the inference. “Whose God?” is not a substitute for that work.

Sixth: In your treatment of Darwin, do you distinguish the historical fact that he expressed a doubt about cognition from the separate question of whether the doubt establishes a successful objection to a particular epistemology? It must be distinguished.

Seventh: When you appeal to moral progress, do you distinguish a change in social consensus from an objectively justified improvement? If you do, identify the standard that makes the improvement objective.

These questions are not distractions from your argument. They are the questions your argument raises.

Conclusion: Do Not Confuse an Explanation With a Foundation

Sir, I am not asking you to abandon evolutionary science, and I am not claiming that the existence of God can be established by inserting a biblical quotation wherever a scientific explanation leaves a question open.

I am challenging the leap from an account of how human beings developed moral capacities to the claim that the philosophical questions of moral truth, obligation, reason, and ultimate reality have therefore been settled.

They have not.

You are entitled to argue that naturalism offers the better explanation. You are entitled to challenge Christian revelation. You are entitled to argue that a particular conception of God is inconsistent with the existence of evil. But each of those positions requires its own argument.

You cannot establish metaphysical naturalism simply by citing biological evolution. You cannot establish objective morality simply by explaining the evolution of moral cognition. You cannot establish moral progress simply by identifying changes in social attitudes. You cannot refute biblical authority simply by pointing to disagreement over interpretation. And you cannot settle the problem of evil merely by naming the suffering that gives rise to it.

Those are conclusions that must be argued for, not conclusions that arrive automatically with the terminology.

My Christian position is explicit: moral authority is not created merely by individual preference, collective agreement, political power, or biological history. I understand moral responsibility within a framework in which human beings answer to God. That framework has theological and philosophical commitments, and I am prepared to defend them.

You should be equally explicit about yours.

The burden of proof is not a privilege reserved for the Christian. It applies to every substantive claim, including the claims that naturalism is true, that a moral judgment is objectively justified, that one society has made moral progress, and that biblical revelation should be rejected.

So let us stop treating the explanation of moral origins as though it were the resolution of moral philosophy. Identify the evidence, state the inference, defend the premises, and show precisely what follows.

That is the standard I am applying to your argument, and it is the same standard I am willing to have applied to mine.

Charles 😊