In a series of posts on evolutionary ethics, one of the responses that I have received is the claim that evolutionary ethicists never claimed to be able to do what I argued it cannot do.
If this is true . . . if the accusations are false . . . this does not affect my main point in the least. I am still correct in what I say evolutionary ethics cannot do.
However, that thing that evolutionary ethics cannot do is answer the theist's concerns about the possibility of morality without God. It cannot provide us with an account of really is right and wrong. It cannot account for morality itself.
It can, perhaps, explain a "sense" of right and wrong. However, without an independent account of what right and wrong is in fact it can never say anything about how to calibrate that sense. It cannot tell us when our sense misfires and tells us that something is right when it is actually wrong, or tells us that something is wrong when it is actually right.
A fallible sense that cannot be calibrated is pretty much a waste of energy.
If this sense can be calibrated, then what is it calibrated to? What is "right" and what is "wrong" such that we can tell when this sense misfires?
Now, the fact is, since we are speaking in evolutionary terms, this sense, even if it existed, would never be calibrated to true right and true wrong. It would be calibrated to genetic survival.
If true right happens to be harmful to genetic replication, then it is not the creature whose sense is calibrated to true right that will survive. It is, in fact, the creature whose sense is calibrated away from true right - a creature that is blinded to true right - that will have genetic fitness.
Unless, of course, we make the claim that "true right" corresponds directly to genetic fitness.
On this account, we take everything else we know about evolution and we add the following. Genetic fitness also happens to be infused with an entity that we can call "true right". And, as it turns out, humans evolved a faculty to perceive "true right". In doing so, humans have increased their genetic fitness, and that is one of the reasons we are still around today.
However, we can take Occam's Razor and cut out this entity of "true right" and lose nothing from the theory of evolution. The mother who suckles her child does not do so because suckling her young has this quality of "true right" that she has the capacity to sense. She suckles her young because she wants to suckle her young.
The person who risks his life to save his neighbor does not do so because this act of self-sacrifice is infused with a quality of "true right" that the agent seeks and responds to. The agent sacrifices himself for another because he wants to.
Now, what happens when we cut this essence of "true right" out of our ontology?
This leads to one of two results.
Option 1: We are back to square 1. We have a "sense" of right and wrong, but we still do not have an idea of what "true right" and "true wrong" is. Therefore, we still lack any way to determine whether this sense is correctly calibrated. Furthermore, we have reason to believe that this sense has been hijacked to sense genetic fitness instead of "true right".
Option 2: We do not have a "sense" of right and wrong to calibrate.
In the context of this discussion, it does not matter which option we choose. We still have nothing to say to the theist about the possibility of "true right" and "true wrong" without the existence of God.
Perhaps it is a mistake to say that evolutionary ethicists claim to be able to give us a God-free account of "true right" and "true wrong". However, even if this was a mistake, my original point stands. When atheists debate theists on matters of ethics, the vast majority of them cannot even begin to give a sensible account of "true right" and "true wrong."
They cannot answer the question that the theists are asking.