INTRODUCTION 

This is the third article in a series on how one might offer several different moral arguments that all (1) focus on our knowledge of moral truth and (2) reinforce each other so that their joint force is even stronger than that of each individual argument.[1] This series of articles focuses specifically on three well-known arguments for God’s existence that have to do with our moral knowledge. After examining the third argument (one given by Angus Ritchie) in this article, the series will conclude next time by offering a strategy for how the arguments can be used in conjunction so that they reinforce each other.

ANGUS RITCHIE’S ARGUMENT 

Unlike Linville, Plantinga, and Smith, Angus Ritchie grants that naturalism allows for moral knowledge and treats it as a fact in need of explanation. Although he allows for moral knowledge in a naturalistic world, his view is similar to that of Linville and Plantinga in the sense that he focuses on the challenge to moral knowledge faced by evolutionary naturalism (EN). He contends that “purposive accounts of the universe” are the only accounts that can explain our moral truth-tracking abilities and show why we have moral knowledge, and theism is the best of such accounts. Ultimately, Ritchie’s “central contention” is that “all secular theories which do justice to our most fundamental moral convictions” by affirming that we have objective moral knowledge leave an “explanatory gap” in terms of justifying adequately how humans “developing in a physical universe which is not itself shaped by any purposive force” are able to “apprehend objective moral norms.”[2] Let us examine Ritchie’s view.

Ritchie first makes the case for why he is willing to grant that genuine moral knowledge would be possible even if naturalism were true. Ritchie thinks that the process by which we form moral beliefs seems similar to how we form nonmoral beliefs, and this process seems to be reliable. He thinks that excluding moral beliefs from being true would be arbitrary and unjustified. While Linville and Plantinga have no problem with holding that our moral beliefs would be undermined on EN because such beliefs would have a defeater, Ritchie disagrees. Not only in ethics but also in math and science, we make intuitive judgments and systematize them into rules, and this process appears to be “indispensible.” Abandoning this kind of reasoning, he thinks, means rejecting “objectivism in all areas of knowledge,” which is a self-refuting position.[3] Ritchie thus is not inclined to deny that moral knowledge would be justified if naturalism were true, opting instead to contend that such knowledge cannot be adequately explained. While one might disagree with Ritchie at this juncture by recalling Plantinga’s point (from Part I of this series) that the features of the actual world (e.g., the fact that we seem to have knowledge and that this knowledge might seem indispensible to us) are irrelevant to his case that we have a defeater for knowledge in a naturalistic world, let us not be concerned with this at the present. For regardless of whether or not Ritchie is correct that moral knowledge is justified on naturalism, one could grant this point for the sake of argument and endeavor to show, as Ritchie attempts to do, that this knowledge cannot be adequately explained on naturalism.

While Ritchie allows that one is justified in having knowledge regardless of whether one can explain why he has it, he emphasizes that it is nevertheless problematic for a worldview if it cannot explain why we have moral knowledge.[4] Ritchie stresses that demanding a naturalistic explanation for why we have the capacity to track moral truth is a legitimate and essential demand to make. This is because natural selection is routinely put forth by naturalists as the explanation for our cognitive ability to track truth, since it is claimed that holding true beliefs would provide a survival advantage. Indeed, Ritchie himself—contra Plantinga—grants that natural selection is perfectly able both to justify and explain our beliefs when it comes to “physical perception and theoretical reasoning.” But, argues Ritchie, natural selection does not have the same power to explain why we can track moral truth. This is because “whereas there is a plausible correlation between maximal survival value and truth in the case of perceptual and theoretical reasoning, no such correlation is plausible in the moral case.”[5] This is because some things valued as moral by our cognitive faculties do not aid in survival. So if the naturalist admits that there is no evolutionary advantage to some of our moral beliefs, then those moral beliefs cannot be explained well by naturalism; however, if the naturalist claims that all of our moral beliefs do aim at survival and species replication, then this is morally problematic because some actions that are conducive to survival seem to be immoral (e.g., using eugenics to purify the human race).[6]

Ritchie rebuts four sorts of objections to this reasoning. Let us consider them in brief. First, there is the objection made by Richard Dawkins that natural selection allowed us to evolve consciousness, which in turn allows us to reason to moral truths that transcend natural selection and survival-aimed beliefs.[7] But Ritchie points out that natural selection does not explain the apparent truth “of those of our capacities which generate moral judgments which conflict with the imperatives to maximize species-replication.”[8] Second, a naturalist may contend that “all true moral judgments are analytic statements” (true by definition) so that “our capacity for moral knowledge would flow directly from our capacity for deductive reasoning.” However, analytic statements “lack the substantive content which moral judgments so clearly contain.” For example, there is nothing logically necessary about the claim that “one ought to care for one’s children.”[9] Third, Roger Crisp argues that we should seek pleasure and avoid pain. He claims this benefits survival and is the foundational explanation for all our moral beliefs. But the problem is that humans value things like accomplishment, personhood, and authentic understanding that do not depend on how we subjectively feel inside.[10] Finally, one may argue that evolving theoretical reasoning skills has survival advantage, and the ability to morally reason results from having general theoretical reasoning skills even though moral reasoning itself has no survival advantage. But “moral reasoning involves cognitive processes that are very clearly distinct from theoretical reasoning.” For example, “one can be an excellent theoretical reasoner and have the moral sensibilities of a sociopath.”[11]

Ritchie also evaluates prominent secular ethical theories and shows how they each fail to explain moral knowledge. He makes a good case that “all secular accounts either” allow for “insufficient objectivity” or suffer from “the explanatory gap (that is to say, they are unable to account for the human ability to track moral truth in our moral reasoning).”[12] He concludes that the explanatory gap either cannot be explained or the explanation involves design/purpose, and he gives a seven-premise argument that God is the best explanation of human moral knowledge.[13] Ritchie contends that regardless of whether God used guided evolution or some other method of designing humans, a guided process is needed to explain adequately our moral knowledge.

1. These articles are adapted for a popular audience from an article that I published in the Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics (Volume 12, 2019, pp. 49-64) that is titled “Toward a Cumulative Epistemic Moral Argument for God’s Existence.”

2. Angus Ritchie, From Morality to Metaphysics: The Theistic Implications of Our Ethical Commitments (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 4.

3. Ibid., 16-18.

4. Ibid., 44-47.

5. Ibid., 54-55.

6. Ibid., 56-58.

7. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Random House, 2006), 222.

8. Ritchie, From Morality to Metaphysics, 58-59.

9. Ibid., 59-61.

10. Ibid., 61-64.

11. Ibid., 65.

12. Ibid., 110. Ritchie deals with the “quasi-realism” of Simon Blackburn and Allan Gibbard; the “rational procedures” view of Christine Korsgaard and “reasons fundamentalism” of Tim Scanlon; Philippa Foot’s natural law theory involving “Aristotelian categoricals”; and the “second nature” view of John McDowell along with the similar view held by David Wiggins.

13. Ibid., 164.