Currently, I am in the midst of my podcast series on the moral argument for God’s existence. This reminded me of an article that the famed atheist and philosopher of science, Michael Ruse, wrote in The Guardian back in 2010 as a response to the question, What can Darwin teach us about morality? Ruse’s multifaceted answer is intriguing, and at times, incoherent, but also quite enlightening about where atheistic and evolutionary thought leads.

Ruse admits that without God “there are no grounds whatsoever for being good.” Morality, he says, is just a matter of emotion and personal taste on the same level as “liking ice cream and sex and hating toothache and marking student papers.” But he’s quick to point out that just because there are no grounds for being good, it doesn’t mean we should be bad. While this is true insofar as it goes, it fails to answer the more important question: Why – in the absence of a moral law giver, and thus in the absence of any objective moral law – should anyone behave in ways traditionally thought to be “good” if and when it is in their own self-interest to do otherwise? In the name of what should they deny their own impulses? In the name of the Grand Sez Who?

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