The Sean McDowell Show - Debate Review: Is Morality Objective? Ehrman vs. McDowell

Episode Date: April 8, 2026

I sat down with Bart Ehrman to explore one of the most important questions in philosophy and faith: Is morality objective or is it simply a product of human development over time? Today, I'm reviewing the debate live with you!  READ: Love Thy Stranger: How the Teachings of Jesus Transformed the Moral Conscience of the West by Bart D. Ehrman (https://amzn.to/3O85zhU) WATCH: A New Approach to the Divinity of Jesus (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R9n4seBg1JQ) *Get a MASTERS IN APOLOGETICS or SCIENCE AND RELIGION at BIOLA (https://bit.ly/3LdNqKf) *USE Discount Code [smdcertdisc] for 25% off the BIOLA APOLOGETICS CERTIFICATE program (https://bit.ly/3AzfPFM) *See our fully online UNDERGRAD DEGREE in Bible, Theology, and Apologetics: (https://bit.ly/448STKK) FOLLOW ME ON SOCIAL MEDIA: Twitter: https://x.com/Sean_McDowell TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@sean_mcdowell?lang=en Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/seanmcdowell/ Website: https://seanmcdowell.org Discover more Christian podcasts at lifeaudio.com and inquire about advertising opportunities at lifeaudio.com/contact-us.

Life Audio. All right, welcome, friends, to our live debate review of the conversation I had with Bart Ehrman Over's book, Love Thy Stranger. Now, technically it wasn't a debate. It was a conversation, but we certainly, what I would describe, had a friendly debate back and forth. Going really into the question of his book, at the root of it, he makes the case. And the subtitle is how the teachings of Jesus transformed the moral,

conscience of the West. So I was stunned when I first read his book. He says things like hospitals and orphanages and like nursing homes and charity and forgiveness existed in the ancient world, whether in ancient Rome or in ancient Judaism, but it was never universalized until the person of Jesus. Now, there's a lot more in his book than we covered, but a number of times in the book, He gives his account of where our moral values and duties come from. He dismisses the moral argument. And so I was just really curious if this transformation of the West, he would say this is an objectively good transformation or it's just a change. Now, if you haven't seen that discussion yet or listened to it, you don't have to have heard it, I think, to benefit from our conversation.

We'll try to represent that fairly, but I would really encourage you to go back and listen to it. I think minimally, it was a charitable exchange. It got spicy. I thought in a good way in this sense we're both passionate and what we care about. It ended on a great note. And I think minimally there's clarity of where I think best explains a theistic worldview. And Bart gives an atheist, not the only atheist account of morality. And we both criticize the others and argued why we think where he's.

being inconsistent and we're wrong so people can watch it make up their own minds our guest today dr dave horner has been a friend gosh i got to think about this i got to do the math almost 25 years 23 years what year did you come to talbot by the way 25 years 25 years because i remember i think it was in your first class yeah that you ever taught i remember going to office hours and you were a little overwhelmed that you were shifting into talbot which is understandable but i want to know that when I think of who are ethicists, literally in the world, that I would want to make sense of this discussion, you're at the top of my list. You got your doctorate, not at Cambridge. Thank you for that. Want to clarify that, but Oxford, you've written a number of books. Your book,

meta-ethics is fantastic. I recommend it all the time. And you're also one of the funniest people I know, so don't let us down today. Oh, I'll try hard not to. I'll try hard not to. You don't have to try to be funny. Looks aren't everything. Okay, fair enough. Just be yourself as a win. So we're going to take some of your live questions, by the way. But to get started, I'm really curious. I haven't asked you this yet. Sent you the video, you listen to it, you read the transcript. Give us your reaction. And I'm still in some ways your students. You can say McDowell, let me give you a professorial critique. We want to know what you really think. I appreciate that. Well, I'm not going to give you

much of a critique because I thought it was great. I thought you did really, really well. But I think it was a, I thought it was a great exchange. I thought both of you guys were gracious. As you say, there's a little bit of spice there. But it was civil. It's the way it should be. So, and, you know, I, I, I hadn't read the book. I only had a few days, so I did get a Kindle version of it and skimmed over it. And it I think it's a, it's really an excellent book. Okay. I love, I love what he's arguing for, uh, as you, you do. And, uh, so the, you know, the, the, the, the sticking points that you were pushing, you know,

clearly you guys were, you were, you were frustrated. Sure. Right. That's true. Because you weren't seeing it the way he was, the point he was trying to make about objective in particular, right? Right. That's right.

And he wasn't. getting the point that you were trying to make about objective. That's right. And so, you know, in terms of diagnosis, we can kind of run with that if you want. But that really was key. And so clarity on that is important. I think you were speaking as a philosopher trying to get philosophical, conceptual clarity. I think he's approaching it as a historian and from an anthropological point of view.

and has a kind of view of what objective means that you just filtered everything that you said, you know, through that conception. And you weren't able to really, you know, land either one of you because you're operating in different conceptions. I think you're right. The conception of objective that you were operating with is the way philosophers think about it, the way meta-ethics, folks in meta-ethics think about it. I wish he would get that. But he was gracious, and so I thought it was a great exchange. Good. That's interesting to look at it historically versus, say, philosophically,

although we were both weighing into each of those issues. I also think he's looking at the issue somewhat pragmatically, and I drew this out a little bit at the end, and we'll come back to this, is at the very beginning he's talking about how he lost his faith, went to Moody, Wheaton, grew up in the church, real struggle for him. he describes in his book on suffering, that it was not something he took lightly. But he describes here how he was afraid somewhat that if he left his faith, he would have no moral compass.

And he wouldn't be an ethical person. And he's like, I'm still ethical. Well, what I was trying to get at is say, of course you can be ethical without believing in God. but what is the basis of what is a good life? That deeper question is the philosophical one that I was getting at. We'll circle back to that. I'm curious, if you don't, we can move on the next one,

but did you have any questions for me from going through this? I'm not going to pretend to be the expert on this. You've studied it more than I have. Well, I mean, I would just say one area, we need to talk about objective and try to land the plane on that. But I think the word universal, I think that's another term that was probably, there are two ways you can interpret the term universal. One is it applies to everyone. And that's the way you were using it, I think. These are universal objective moral values, that is, that they apply to everyone.

He was, I think, interpreting universal as everyone agrees with it. And so he saw, well, hey, you know, there are cultures that don't agree with lots of things that you hold morally and he holds morally. So, therefore, it's not a universal. Okay. So, you know, that's just one of those things that I don't know if universal is worth dropping from the vocabulary or at least explaining. But objective is the term we should use as more clear. Okay. So let's come back to that.

I think that's important. I want to ask you to define it because you do in your book on meta-ethics. We're going to take some questions. If you have question type question in caps, stated as succinctly as you can. I already see some popping up here. I see a little comment from somebody that says someone like Sean claiming he has access to objective morality from a source shows he suffers from delusions of grandeur. Now, partly, I'm not offended by this remotely. I go, is there something wrong with having delusions of grandeur?

Is that the way we shouldn't operate? At one point, there seems to be a criticism that I'm claiming to have access to objector morality. And then there's a criticism of me, which seems to imply at least an objective standard and a normative way that we should live. Part of what I'm trying to point out in this discussion is that because people are made in the image of God, And we live in God's world. We can't escape awareness that we do know right and wrong. Even those like Bart who are atheists and agnostics, at some point, they're going to say things like, well, I think my morality is superior.

Well, it's subjective. That makes no sense. At some point, they're going to criticize others for being racist and sexist and fill in the blank, which if it's all preference, actually makes no sense. And so I think this comment to me is pointing out that the person is not understanding my point. And by the way, would you agree with this that I'm not uniquely saying I have access to objective morality? The vast majority of people who have ever lived either claim or function as if they are moral realists and that we can know right and wrong. Is that fair? Yeah.

Yeah, in fact, J.L. Mackey, who was an Oxford atheist philosopher, said that is the common view. Our moral practices, our moral language, our moral concepts, all presuppose moral realism. That is that there are real moral facts, moral obligations, moral duties. When we make moral judgments, they are objectively true or false. That's how. You know, that's the common view. That's common sense morality. Now, he disagrees with it, but he understands and he says, I have a burden of proof here then. If I'm going to reject that, and all of our common moral experience points to that, I'd better have a really good argument. I don't think he has a very good argument, but at least he recognizes that. Okay, good. So I think we're kind of dancing around me, my moral realism and objective morality. So I could read this from your book. Here's a quote that Bart says, and then I like, we just clarify us at least what we mean and what philosophers mean by objective morality.

But here's one thing Bart wrote when I pressed him. He said, direct quote, I would say some things are objectively good in my opinion. I think it's good that we have hospitals. It's good we have orphanages. These are, it's good that we have disaster relief programs. I think these are a good thing. It's my, this is my personal opinion. Since it's my personal opinion, I don't think it's objective.

Now, in some ways, I mean, I could nitpick here. I realize this is a transcript and we were talking things through. He goes, it's objective and that ends by saying, I don't think it's objective. On one hand, he's like, oh, these are objectively good, but then says they're his opinion. So what do philosophers mean by objective morality? not even Christian philosophers. What does that mean, objective morality? Well, objectivity in this sense, and we use the term objectivity in different ways, right? You know, being objective when we look at evidence and all that kind of stuff. But when we talk about objective moral properties or objective moral

claims and judgments and so on, we're talking about the status. So if we're talking about facts, moral facts, we're talking about the nature of those facts and the ontological status. We're basically saying that their existence doesn't depend on my believing that they exist or proving that they exist. And maybe it's easier to talk more about moral judgments that refer to those moral facts, like the one you used in the, well, let's just take his, that it's good that there is, there are hospitals, let's say. Okay. That's a moral judgment, right? And it's an objective moral judgment, most of us would say. All that means is what makes it true or false is not the person speaking, not the subject who is talking, who believes it or approves of it or prefers it. It's the object of the proposition. That's where we get the word objective. That is to say, what makes it.

true that hospitals are good are that hospitals are in fact good, the goodness of hospitals, the goodness of the existence of hospitals. Notice that doesn't imply anything about, hey, I, if I say that, if I believe that to be the case, I am claiming omniscience or I could never possibly be wrong, you know, or anything like that. I just think that the truth status of that statement is something that's just, it's not on me. It's about the, you know, the thing that I'm talking about. Now, of course, I as a subject am important, you know, whether or not I believe it. That's an important thing.

But I'm not making it true by believing it, and I'm not making it false by not believing it. That's really the distinction. Okay. So if I said, like, Kobe Bryant was 6'7, that's about the object, Kobe Bryant. Yeah. Now, if you say, no, he's six foot five, or he was, the fact that you think is six foot five doesn't change the objective fact that he was six foot seven. Yeah. Well, and you saying that he was six foot seven doesn't make it true either, right? It's exactly right. What makes it true or false is the height of Kobe Bryant. Okay. Okay. Good. Now, if I said Kobe Bryant was fun to watch, now that's more about me, the subject.

Exactly. Whether I enjoy watching and play or LeBron or Jordan or I don't even like basketball. Now we're talking about preferences that are subject dependent. Right. So the first one, you can be right or wrong based on the object itself. The other one, it's not really right or wrong because it's just if I enjoyed it or not. Right. Again, if we put it in the language I was using before, what makes that statement true,

I like watching Michael Jordan or whoever, Kobe Bryant or whoever we're talking about. Sorry. Yeah, I know you're doing great. Well, what makes that true? Just that you like it, right? It's not, it's not Kobe Bryant that makes it true. It's your preferences. So that is a subjective claim, we might say.

Whereas the claim that he is, whatever height, that's an objective claim. It's about what makes it true or falls. Either the object versus the subject. And we do this in science. We do this in history. We also do this in morality. But the way we know science is different than the way we know history. Right.

It's different than the way we know. When life unravels, hope can feel out of reach. But what if God is still weaving something beautiful? I'm Kirby Kelly. And in my new book, The Fabric of Hope, I want to show you that even in seasons of suffering, waiting, and uncertainty, God is never absent or far away. Through honest stories and encouragement, this book invites you to see where God is at work stitching the broken pieces of your story with purpose.

If you're longing for hope that holds, the fabric of hope is for you. Find it wherever books are sold. No moral claims. Exactly. Okay, so there's not a lot of debate about how we, well, maybe there is. It depends on how deep we get in academics. But science, very simply, we can test things, we can study things, empirical analysis, history, we're looking at some physical remains, documents, and we're assessing things,

maybe not with certainty, but probability. That's how we know things in science and history. How do we know things when it comes to morality? Because we don't assess them on probability scales like we do history for the past. We don't study them and say a test tube like we do science. How do we know things in morality? The way we know things in morality, the way we know things in morality is insight into the moral structure of things that doesn't come from empirical investigation or something like that. It's a good parallel would be how do we know the laws of logic? How do we know math?

How do we understand our own states of consciousness? None of those are physical things. Truth is not a physical thing, but it's real. Okay. So one of the problems that a lot of people have is they think that the only thing that could be objective is what is somehow empirically verifiable, you know. But, you know, we all hold things to be true that aren't physical. As our friend Greg Kokel puts it, you can't weigh truth, you know, you can't put truth in a beaker or weigh it with a yardstick or something like that. Yeah, that's a good way to put it.

But if we didn't have truth, we couldn't operate, right? We understand it's a relationship between a proposition and reality. Okay. And relations are not physical things, but they're real. And that's part of one of the things that we have to kind of get over sometimes when it comes to morality. So when we're talking about moral properties and moral duties and so on, we're talking about non-physical relations between things. Okay.

So I've heard someone compare it to, like, say, a logical premise of, like, all men are mortal. Socrates is a man. Therefore, Socrates is moral. And somebody goes, prove that. And all I do is I say, well, look at it. You can see it. Right, right.

It follows logically. If you think it's false, you just can't see what it is. you can't prove it beyond that other than make connections and you see it or you don't. Our moral faculties are similar to that. And that was a point I was raising. Like if you think it's, is it morally wrong to burn a child alive for adult entertainment? And some people have said to me, Sean, why do you use such a graphic example? Because I want to use one that's clear that it's really hard to wiggle out.

Like, is it okay to torture? someone's like, well, what if you have a nuclear weapon, maybe? And I don't want that nuance. I want what hopefully is a clear example. And this is where William Lane Craig is like, if you don't think that's wrong, you don't need an argument, you need a therapist. Yeah. You're not seen right. You know, and Aristotle said, you know, all arguments ultimately, you know, you can't prove everything.

There are things that are true and necessarily true that. don't need an argument, and you can't give an argument for it. But you can pull away certain illusions that cloud it, but you have to see it. So I think that your example is great because that's what you're doing. You know, we're saying, okay, let's find a very vivid, clear example. Do you see that? And, you know, somebody who doesn't, well, they don't. But, you know, 100% of people pretty much see it.

They do. Now, again, I don't want people to confuse. We might differ over the particulars is torture ever right, particulars of immigration, gun control, whatever. But the underlying moral sense and expectation that we have real right and real wrong, that's what's universal. Yes. So I was trying to argue that Jesus.

expanded our commitment to strangers. But he's not introducing people who didn't believe in objective right and wrong to objective right and wrong. He's expanding the way they should live out that awareness of right and wrong. And that's what Lewis argued, of course, an abolition of man. That sense is universal. And I think I think that's a great way to do it. That's exactly Right. So another way to think about it is that those things that are common that we find across the board, you know, morally speaking, are general. They're sort of like the general structure of reality. That's what philosophers call the natural moral law, right?

But then there are more specific ways of living those things out that are going to be much more sensitive to, worldview beliefs and so on. They're going to start in cultural practices and things like that. They're going to differ a bit. So what Jesus did was fill out and specify in a thicker way, a more specific way, something that was there intuitively to everyone, but they would not apply it that way without the specific content of what Jesus was saying when he was saying, look, Because he wasn't just giving, you know, floating admonitions to love thy stranger. He was saying, no, here's what, here's what God is like. And here's what human beings are like.

Every single human being is created in the image of God and has worth and dignity. And therefore, we need to take care of them. It was a new, you know, a new vision, not just of morality, be it a vision of reality that built on what they, you know, some of the general things they had. but it was more specific and it actually entailed these new things that Bart is arguing came into the world. They're not radically new. As you say, they're expansions or developments or specifications more. That's good. And that's kind of the heart of what I'm getting at here is we can make a case for objective morality, historically speaking, as Lewis does, across the different moral codes, basic.

beneficence and justice and mercy and care for elder we can get it through the way that we actually live by introspection and awareness and i also say by people who say there's no such things reject morality at some point are going to reveal that they're living as if they believe there's an objective moral code and will contradict themselves that was my argument now our viewers and listeners can decide if they think Bart is right and I contradict it. I think I'm right and he contradicts. So, of course, I'm making my argument here. They can decide that.

But that's where I think morality is inescapable. And so in part of the book, he talks about morality being subjective, but then makes very clear moral condemnations of certain behavior, which if his ethic is actually taking to its logical extreme or its natural conclusion. because he talked about having certain inclinations for a drink and then certain inclinations for moral behavior, then there really is no difference between racism and sexism, giving to the poor, taking advantage of the poor. But his life doesn't reflect that. Hence, he gave away one and a half million dollars, amazing on his blog.

That's great. Like I applaud him for that. I wish more Christians would do that. We could take cues from that. Absolutely. But if morality is just subjective, then why is he doing that? We didn't get into this. I didn't want to press it too much, but I think he's doing it because in his heart, he

knows this is a good thing to do and people have human value. I don't think his worldview can ground it. Now, let me – we'll come back to that a little bit. But here's the argument that Craig makes is he says if there is no, if God does not exist, there's no foundation for objective moral values and duties. So if there is no God, Dr. David Horner trained at Oxford, why would you argue there's not an adequate foundation for moral values and duties? Well, let me contrast Bart with Nietzsche here. Okay. All right.

That's interesting. So that might be one way to attack this. So attack this. I like that language. Let's go. We're attacking it, baby. Attack this question. I'm not attacking you.

And I'm not attacking Barth. Ah, good. My only defense is I might be quicker than you. That's all I got in you, or not. Yeah. Oh, you are. You definitely are. So Nietzsche made a very similar art.

argument, similar argument to Bart. Okay. So Bart's thesis is that in this book, that this love thy stranger ethic, this Jesus ethic, is new. It came in that didn't have, so loving people that are outside your social and biological kin just wasn't in Greek philosophy. And by the way, I teach Greek philosophy and Roman philosophy. Awesome. I mean, there's a lot of great treatment that he gives at that. So he knows that stuff really well.

But it's not there. And so this is something new, which is Tom Holland and others have argued this. And, well, Nietzsche actually made sort of a similar argument, or at least the the same conclusion. He said, Christian ethics, the Jesus ethic, loving thy stranger, is a, came into the world through Jesus with his very specific set of doctrines about, you know, God, about human beings and all that kind of stuff. It makes sense in that worldview.

This conclusion, which Nietzsche rejects, he thinks it's bad, it's counter-evolutionary. it actually doesn't, you know, it goes against evolution. He says, and he says this explicitly in Twilight of the Idols, that these secular British moral philosophers, the utilitarians and so on, you're helping yourself to a Christian ethic, but you don't believe in the worldview that supports it, that makes sense out of it. And to be consistent, you should reject it. Okay. So then we have Bart making the same kind of argument about that Jesus brought this in, but he's rejecting that. You know, he wants to keep the ethic, and he wants to say it doesn't depend on the worldview beliefs in which it was originally cast.

And what Craig is saying and what we're saying, I think, is that, no, wait a minute, we're with Nietzsche on this. Actually, these moral doctrines are not floating around in nothing. They are embedded. They are actually, they rest upon a way of looking at the world. We call that worldview or metaphysics. What's real? What's important? What's good?

What human beings are and so on. And that's what makes sense out of these things. So if you accept the conclusion, so if you're Nietzsche, you say, well, I reject the conclusion, therefore I have to reject the worldview. Okay. What Craig is saying, if you accept the conclusion like Bart does, that actually there really are objective moral values, and these, I mean, not just the Jesus values, but in general, then you need to ask the worldview question.

Okay. What set of beliefs, what picture of reality makes? sense out of this. What's the best explanation for this that gives an adequate foundation to it? It's just not to say, I like the conclusion, which, of course, we do like the conclusion. Bart loves the conclusion. Sure, yeah. So it's kind of funny, there's a sort of a three-way contrast between Nietzsche and Bart. They're both atheists. They both tell the story of Jesus transforming things. They disagree on what to do with it. A Christian. Christians want to say, well, yeah, we affirm that Jesus made a transformation, but it's really an expansion of something that's even bigger.

And the best explanation for all of that is the Christian worldview that Jesus represents. In some ways, the power of Nietzsche is he understood if we get rid of God and God is dead, we have become untethered to the sun, so to speak. Exactly. You understood that means there's no objective morality. There's no human value that falls from this. So it's the Uber man or the Superman or power that now reigns the day. And so as much as Nietzsche can be the bad guy in certain circles, I think he's a brilliant writer. I'm a fan in a lot of ways because he cuts through the bologna.

He does. Yeah. There's no doubt about that. So we're doing a... Can I just tell you a quick anecdote? So when I was at Oxford, I went to a debate on the question, do we need God in order to be good? And on the atheist side was a guy named Jonathan Glover. And so he's a prominent atheist philosopher.

And we talked for quite a long time afterwards. He's also a Nietzsche specialist. And so we got into this very question. He said Nietzsche was afraid. Well, he wasn't afraid, but Nietzsche predicted that within 100 years of his time, belief in God would disappear and people would actually live out the implications of that. And Glover said, I think he's right about that. When life unravels, hope can feel out of reach.

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And is there any way that you as Christians and we as atheists can kind of work together to try to keep these values alive? So his concern was more prudential and pragmatic. Even, hey, if Christianity is false, we kind of need these values, which is interesting because we're going to survive and flourish and thrive better with Christian values. values, he seems somewhat to be implying as I'm understanding you, which doesn't make sense if there's no God, we're not made in God's image. Why would evolution wire us with those kind of beliefs? And we could tell some story. Now, let's take this a little further. I want to pause so people understand what we're doing here. We're just doing a review of my discussion with Barterman about whether morality is objective or subjective. Like the way you phrased it is right. What makes the best

sense of the world. Are the feelings and inclinations we have that we should tell the truth and care for the poor? Are they clues that we have duties to love one another? And there's an immaterial realm and maybe a moral law giver. And my guest today, Dave Horner is one of my colleagues at Talbot School Theology. Your book is the number one. I recommend meta ethics, a short companion.

You wrote with J.P. Morland, one of my friends and heroes. endorsed it, it's great. So there's ethics we can talk about, but metaethics are the bigger questions about the grounding of ethics. So I'll just hold it up here for folks. Metaethics, wonderful book. Check it out. The grounding that Ermin gave is a common one, not for objective morality, but for the feelings

and beliefs we have about morality is an evolutionary one. And so in part, I wrote down a few things I've thought about since then, but I want to know from you what would be the problem or problems with an evolutionary explanation for morality. Well, can I take a slightly different direction first? For the record, you can do whatever you want to. Okay. Well, that's right. And then I'm your teacher. So shut up and listen to me.

Which makes you my elder. And I'm definitely your elder. I think you're the first one who told me to shut up and listen on the podcast. I will remember this. I love it for the record. Good. But I think there's actually attention. I'd love to see what you think about this.

I think there's attention in Bart's own view. Okay. Between his conviction that all we have is evolution has produced these inclinations to value, you know, he's got these inclinations to want to help the poor and all that kind of stuff. And it's just in the DNA. thing, you know, and that's all you need to do. That's all you need to do. You know, there doesn't need to be a basis for it beyond that. And then on the other hand, there's his thesis that something new came into the world with Jesus that wasn't in the world before that

and doesn't exist, I would think he would want to say, in the parts of the world that are outside the influence of Christianity. And that's what he holds. He holds to this Christian view. Okay. He also acknowledges that evolutionary biology can explain, he argues that it can explain altruism within kinship groups, but not outside of that. That's true. And so this is new for Jesus, you know, that love thy stranger.

So that does, you know, what Jesus produced and he now, and Bart now lives by it, doesn't seem to be to be an evolutionary explanation for the values that he actually holds. That's interesting. When you compare it back to what you said about Nietzsche and Jesus' ethic being kind of contrary to evolution, there's a certain tension that's maybe there? Yeah, but I'm just thinking, even if we deny that. And I think Nietzsche is probably right about this. But in any case, even if Bart is completely right about evolutionary biology and so on, the thesis of his book is not merely evolutionary. It's that something new came in that is inexplicable in terms of mere DNA type stuff. So I don't know how that fits in. That's a really interesting question.

I don't know totally how to answer that. There's so many angles here to this that we didn't even get into. And some of the questions I didn't ask him were not in his book, and it felt like it would have been taken the topic aside. But even how evolution in principle, which is a physical, material process, can generate things like inclinations and beliefs, desires, which are not physical. those things are not in your brains those things are immaterial they're not like muscle and blood and senews and bones that have weight and extension and color they're immaterial and you say well

evolution just wires us to have these feelings they go well what exactly is a feeling explain that to me in material terms and you can't in some ways it's getting something immaterial from something that's purely material, which you could argue is something from nothing, that there's not anything immaterial built into matter. We didn't get into that, but that's an additional problem to me, how a physical process can generate things like duties and obligations and beliefs in the first place. It's a category fallacy. Now, I have a few other things I want to run off you here.

But in some ways, it would seem to me that if we take an evolutionary perspective, we have been fooled into believing that we have obligations, fooled into believing that there's a real right and wrong because we all do. But we're actually deeply believing something that's false. Now, if that's the case, let me read a couple quotes from this. Michael Ruse, who passed away a few months ago, really jovial, thoughtful philosopher of science, who's an atheist. He said, I appreciate when someone says, love thy neighbor as thyself. They think they are a fern above and beyond themselves. Nevertheless, such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction.

And any deeper meaning is illusory. It's illusory. It doesn't. exist. Now, you went on to say, basically, evolution has fooled us into thinking, we had these obligations and we don't. So when I hear that, I have two questions. I go number one, if I've been fooled into thinking I have these obligations, then why do they have any force? Why should I follow them? And second, what else have I been fooled about with evolution that I can't trust that I also deeply believe as much as I believe anything else, those are two pretty big problems to me

that stem from taking an evolutionary ethic. So it's like you're trying to explain it here, but then it guts the entire project, raises further problems. Do you agree with those too? Do you think those are real problems in the evolutionary ethic? Tell me what you think about that. Sure. I think you're exactly right. And one other place, Ruse says that, that, and he says we believe, we believe these things, by the way. So this, this, this, this, this, this applies to, to Bart. The, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the only way it works is that we come to believe these moral, uh, duties as objective, uh, duties. Oh, or, or else it's not going to

affect the way we believe, you know, so he is a scientist, he's using the word objective. Mm. And it wouldn't work if we didn't actually think they were objective, which is kind of interesting. What is it about being human that means I should respect you, I should not exploit you, and so on. What is it? What is it about humans? And all of the human rights doctrines, the whole idea of human rights emerged from the conviction that every human being is created in the image of God. So there's a kind of sacredness that we should respect.

I once did an informal debate with Michael Tully who advocates for infanticide. And he makes us— Advocates for it. Oh, yeah. If you want it, if you want to do it. Oh, yeah, that makes— Not that we should go kill every infant. But if your infant is disabled or whatever and you want to do that, you should be perfectly free to do that.

And he makes it kind of a similar argument. He says, in Greek and Roman times, in many parts of the world, infanticide is practiced. The only reason we don't practice in fantasite, he said, is because of the Jewish and Christian view of the image of God. And since we don't believe that anymore, it's open season. Wow. I said, well, if you really think the only way to hold to human equality and human dignity is to see it grounded in the doctorate, of the image of God, that's a pretty doggone good reason to believe in the doctrine of the image of God, right? Because we see that to be true. So this is, again, this is back to Nietzsche in Bart. I think Bart really does believe the Christian ethic. I think he thinks it's true. He

doesn't want to anchor it in a Christian worldview. And so, okay, it's just good enough that I prefer this. But I think Nietzsche would say, no, it's not good enough. That is the power of Nietzsche. And the way you phrase this is really helpful. Yes, we're equally human, but what is it about us being equally human that gives us equal value and equal rights? And that's where we take a step back and we go, oh, we say within a Judeo-Christian tradition, Human beings are made in the image of God.

The Imago dee reflect our creator who's the basis of moral values in his character. So we have a grounding and an explanation for this. But if we place it within an evolutionary perspective, we got here in his own words, by the way. This is actually what I thought was really interesting. He's talking about his Christian friends who think he's deceived when he insists that a deep commitment, and to other members of our species that originated through time, matter, and chance. Why would human beings that have emerged through that process have value? It's not an adequate grounding, so we're equally human, but on your worldview,

we're equally just products of chance. There's no purpose. I don't know how things like value even emerge in the first place through time, matter, and chance, which is a material process. And so being equally human doesn't account for it. Then if you say things like, well, we have intelligence and we have creativity, these things make us value. I always thought, you know what, if animals could vote, cheetahs would be like, nah, it's speed that makes us. And elephants would be like, it's size that makes us.

Why do those things in themselves? Now they have instrumental value, but do they have intrinsic value? And if we ground value in say intelligence, does that mean that professors who maybe this sounds presumptious? But our job is to think and read and analyze ideas. We live in the intellectual realm. Do people who are smarter have more value than those who have less? These are the doors you open up into absurdity. And so I was just talking about our students.

I teach a class here. I'm in our apologyx program at Talbot full time. but I just got done teaching an undergrad class, Gospel Kingdom culture, and I said, you know, evolution produced us and it produced animals. Why do human beings have more value? And the example I gave was from the gorilla Harambe. You remember in the zoo a few years ago? And that two or three-year-old kid climbed in with this massive gorilla,

and it was kind of harrowing, how strong this thing was just moving this kid around like it was a leaf. I said, did they do the right thing shooting the gorilla and not the child? Everyone that I heard was like, this is tragic and it's terrible, but they did the right thing. Well, that only makes sense if human... Spring is full of special days. Easter, Mother's Day, graduation, and Father's Day. And Crosswalk has made it easier than ever to find the perfect faith-filled gift for every one of them. The Crosswalk's spring gift guide is your one-stop destination for meaningful gifts

your loved ones will treasure from Bibles and devotionals to books that inspire. It's all right there at crosswalk.com. Visit crosswalk.com today and find a gift that speaks to the heart. To have intrinsic value. So the way you're moving, if I'm understanding correctly, is saying we know we have more values and duties. We know we have human value. Let's move back and say what worldview best explains that. We all live and act as if there's moral duties. Maybe Jesus expanded that, but throughout the history of the world, these have been as clear to us as anything. So what worldview best explains this? Our commitment to moral values and duties is a clue to the kind of universe we live in. Is that fair?

Sum up how you connect that. Yeah. And I would quote one of our friends, common friends, Paul Copan. Yeah, maybe a friend. I don't know. I'm kidding. He was on recently doing the hell debate. So, total friend. But he has this great slogan, from valuelessness, valuelessness comes. And that's, that's the, you know, the evolutionary story is a cause. material story. It's not a value story. So we ask, okay, so yeah, we can we can call homo sapiens, you know, the product of all this stuff, but what gives them value? Oh, wait a minute, value. Now we're talking about something different. We're talking about something normative that has

otness to it and all that kind of stuff. Where does that come from? It doesn't merely come from valuelessness, the best way to explain it is to start with value. That ultimate reality, God is himself a person, a moral being who created with moral intentions and created us to flourish and to exemplify and live out this kind of moral vision that he has. And Jesus filled in a whole lot of it that wasn't clear to everybody before. But you're starting with value and you're ending with value. If you start with valuelessness, I don't see how you get to value.

I think that's really well said. So when it's all said and done, there's agreement between Bart and myself, Nietzsche and others, that we have at least moral feelings and inclinations. We all live as if caring for people is better than not caring for people. Hopefully you and I, that reflects our Christian faith.

we certainly see that in Bart's case, given one and a half million dollars away from his blog, remarkable. And we expect people to keep their promises. We expect people to tell the truth. We realize that it's good when somebody offers forgiveness to somebody else. And we celebrate movies like you knew is coming back to superheroes in matter time, Dave. We celebrate movies like Endgame in which Iron Man will. willingly lays down his life as a sacrifice for others,

that's what a real hero is. If this came from evolution, then we've been fooled. And that life is no better than any other life, morally speaking. But honestly, none of us actually believe that. We know we live in a moral universe. That means there's more that exists than what we can. can touch, taste, and feel. And it raises the question, what makes, what gives us obligations, what gives us value, what gives us duties, this is sounding a lot like God. That's my argument.

Now, your book, Met Ethics, it's great. I want to recommend it one more time that people will pick it up. And maybe people will come, the philosophy program, Dave, I've said this a bunch of times, the M.A. Phil program was, it was really life-changing for me. I've known my wife since third grade. And there's two or three times in my life, she says, I have distinctly seen the most change in me. One was, really... Was this for the better? Just checking. Well, there is no such thing as better. That's right. That's right. We've moved beyond. Or you're just preferences anyway, right? Inclination. Yes. Positively, I should qualify. And studying there was really formative for me. And so I hope people watching will think about studying in person or distance.

M.A. Phil program. May Apologize program. Pick up a copy of Med Ethics. And while you're at it, make sure you hit subscribe. We've got a lot more conversations like this coming. And let us know if these kinds of conversations are helpful to you. This is our Talbot Tuesday, bringing faculty to you in the case like Dave Horner here, literally one of the experts in the world who studied at Oxford University to these kinds of issues.

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