Aled Griffith

Hi Richard, you and I once had a conversation about this: "Justin: But if we’d evolved into a society where rape was considered fine, would that mean that rape is fine? Richard: I don’t want to answer that question. It’s enough for me to say that we live in a society where it’s not considered fine. We live in a society where selfishness, failure to pay your debts, failure to reciprocate favours is regarded askance. That is the society in which we live. I’m very glad – that’s a value judgement – glad that I live in such a society. JB: But when you make a value judgement don’t you yourself immediately step outside this evolutionary process and say that the reason this is good . . . is that it’s good? And you don’t have any way to stand on that statement. RD: My value judgement itself could come from my evolutionary past. JB: So therefore it’s just as random, in a sense, as any product of evolution. RD: You could say that. In any case, nothing about it makes it more probable that there is anything supernatural. JB: OK. But ultimately, your belief that rape is wrong is as arbitrary as the fact that we’ve evolved five fingers rather than six? RD: You could say that, yeah." You *could* say that. And if you are a thoroughgoing materialist you *should* say that. You were being perfectly consistent with your wordlview. So why does it feel so... wrong? Why do we recoil at the idea that our belief that rape is wrong is just the happenstance of the hand the forces of socio cultural evolution have dealt us? Deep down we know that’s not how humans should treat one another. Biology alone isn't enough. I believe the only way to ground the belief that rape really is wrong; that there are better and worse ways to treat each other; i.e. that morality is objective... is that there is a Moral Lawgiver beyond nature.