Objection · Case 05 · Relativism

The is-ought gap cuts both ways. “God commands X” is also an “is”; you can’t get “I ought to do X” from it without a bridging premise. If Hume defeats evolutionary ethics, doesn’t he defeat divine command ethics too?

One objection from the free evidence repository at apologetics.pro.

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Response

A sharp objection. The theistic reply is that the bridging premise is different in kind. A perfectly good being who made you, and to whom you owe your existence, wills X is not merely a natural fact, since goodness and obligation are already built into the description, whereas your ancestors who did X had more offspring contains no normative content at all. Whether that reply succeeds is the Euthyphro question again, which is treated under the transcendent-source exhibit. The honest framing is that both sides face a grounding problem and the argument is about which grounding is more plausible.

About this exhibit

This objection is to Evolution, or evolutionary ethics, as in Ruse and Wilson.

The evolutionary account says our moral sense is a survival tool. We feel that fairness is binding because ancestors who cooperated left more descendants. Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson state the…

Under Claim 04: If objective moral duties are real, the best explanation is a moral source beyond human beings rather than personal taste, cultural agreement, or evolution.