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A Response to the Speculative Notion that the Laws of Nature Might Be Necessary

First of all, it is interesting to note that Wielenberg seems to agree with theists that there must be a necessary foundation of some sort for the existence of objective moral principles and beliefs. For if something is necessary, then that provides the stability needed for morality to be objective as opposed to just a subjective accidental human construct. Theists argue that God provides such a necessary foundation whereas Wielenberg asks his readers to consider that the laws of nature may be necessary. He wrote that “[i]f there is no God but the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, then the fact that there is no God to put in place just the right laws for moral knowledge to arise doesn’t make us any luckier to have moral knowledge than we would be if God did exist because the laws of nature couldn’t have been any different from what they are.”54 Whether one believes that God exists or not, it seems much easier to believe that, if He exists, then He exists necessarily, that is, easier than it is to believe that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary.  

Secondly, it is notoriously difficult to make the case that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, as Wielenberg readily admits.55 But even if some laws of nature are metaphysically necessary, this would not mean that the evolutionary path that led to human beings was necessary. Therefore, Wielenberg had to go even further and speculate that the evolutionary process that led to the development of human beings may itself have been necessary in some sense. He summarized this possibility as follows:

These considerations are hardly decisive, but I think they do indicate that it is a mistake simply to assume that it is nomologically possible for us (or other beings) to have evolved to m-possess radically different moral principles than the ones we actually possess. For all we know, m-possessing the DDE [a particular moral principle] is an inevitable outcome of the evolutionary process that made us capable of forming moral judgments in the first place.56

Wielenberg is forced into this remarkable speculation because he realizes that if the evolutionary process which supposedly produced human beings was contingent, if it could have occurred differently, then our moral beliefs could have turned out to be vastly different as well. Charles Darwin himself noted that if our evolutionary path were more similar that of bees, then “there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker-bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters; and no one would think of interfering. Nevertheless, the bee, or any other social animal, would gain in our supposed case some feeling of right or wrong, or a conscience.”57

Wielenberg claimed that theists are not in a position to argue that the laws of nature, as well as the evolutionary path which produced human beings, could have been different based on the fact that we can easily imagine them as being different. He explained his concern as follows:

One might be tempted to argue that the fact that it is easy to imagine the laws of nature being different than they are is an indication of their metaphysical contingency. However, theists typically maintain that God’s existence is metaphysically necessary; yet it is easy to imagine the non-existence of God. Therefore, theists cannot consistently appeal to the conceivability of different laws of nature to support the metaphysical contingency of the actual laws of nature.58

He is correct; just because a person can think of other paths evolution could have taken does not mean that those paths are actually possible. On the other hand, the supposed evolutionary tree would seem to say that evolution not only could have, but in fact did sprout off in many different directions, leading to radically different organisms. Thus the only imagination required is to consider an evolutionary path that results in beings who develop cognitive faculties like ours but do not have similar moral beliefs. It is difficult to think of reasons why we should believe such paths are impossible.

What is more, Wielenberg himself seems to have regularly affirmed that human beings were produced by an evolutionary process that was contingent and accidental. He wrote that “evolutionary processes have endowed us with certain unalienable rights and duties. Evolution has given us these moral properties by giving us the non-moral properties that make such moral properties be instantiated. And if, as I believe, there is no God, then it is in some sense an accident that we have the moral properties that we do.”59 He also wrote that “contemporary atheists typically maintain that human beings are accidental, evolved, mortal, and relatively short-lived…”60 Realizing the implications of this statement, he explained in a footnote that ‘accidental’ should not be understood as a result of entirely random processes because “[a]ccording to contemporary evolutionary theory, evolutionary processes are not, contrary to popular mischaracterizations, entirely chance-driven. Rather, they are driven by a combination of chance and necessity; see Mayr 2001, 119-20.”61 It is important to note that Mayr actually stated that chance rules at the first step of evolution, with the production of variation through random mutation, and that determinism only comes in during the second step through non-random aspects of survival and reproduction based on a particular species’ fixed, or determined, environment.62 Thus, if evolution works as atheists claim, that it was driven by accidental random mutations (which Wielenberg affirms), as well as chance changes in the environment (the success or failure of other competing species, climate changes, meteorites, etc.), then it is very difficult to believe that evolution had to necessarily produce human beings just the way they are.

The suggestion that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary comes dangerously close, for an atheist such as Wielenberg that is, to another line of reasoning: fine-tuning arguments for the existence of God.63 Wielenberg himself admitted that “[t]here is… one view that might seem to require much less luck for moral knowledge than my view does. That is our old friend theism.”64 He continued by quoting the following comment by Parfit, another advocate of robust normative realism: “God might have designed our brains so that, without causal contact, we can reason in ways that lead us to reach true answers to mathematical questions. We might have similar God-given abilities to respond to reasons, and to form true beliefs about these reasons.”65 Mark Linville has even suggested a specific “moral fine-tuning argument… Certain of our moral beliefs – in particular, those that are presupposed in all moral reflection – are truth-aimed because human moral faculties are designed to guide human conduct in light of moral truth.”66 

Wielenberg explained that if it is metaphysically necessary that any being capable of forming moral beliefs at all possesses only true moral beliefs, then “there is no luck at all involved in the fact that Bart [a hypothetical person used as an example] m-possesses moral principles that correspond with moral reality rather than m-possessing radically different (and false) moral principles.”67 Possibly recognizing that this may be seen as a hint of fine tuning, he followed this up in a footnote by noting that “[p]erhaps Bart is lucky to exist at all, but that is a separate issue—one that connects with so-called ‘fine-tuning’ arguments, a topic I cannot engage in here.”68

The fine-tuning debate has sparked a lot of discussion over the last couple of decades, instigating a whole host of arguments for and against it. The fine-tuning argument itself, as well as the most common argument against it, the argument for a proposed multi-verse, are both based on the strong intuition that the laws of nature are contingent. Wielenberg’s suggestion that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary would thus effectively rebut the prominent positions on both sides of the fine-tuning debate. At the very least, this should give one pause in accepting Wielenberg’s speculative proposal that the laws of nature are metaphysically necessary.

Conclusion

Erik Wielenberg has argued for a position which he calls “godless robust normative realism.” Many have pushed back against positions like this with an argument that I have referred to as the lucky coincidence objection; it seems quite a lucky coincidence that our moral beliefs happen to match up with the objective moral facts postulated by the realist. Wielenberg’s response to this objection was to propose that there is a third factor at play—our cognitive faculties. He proposed that our cognitive faculties both cause moral properties to be instantiated and generate our moral beliefs, thus explaining why it is that the two correspond. I argued that his third-factor model failed to rebut the lucky coincidence objection for two reasons. First, to explain his third-factor model, Wielenberg used several concepts he borrowed from theism, concepts that seem quite out of place within the belief system of atheism. Given atheism, robust causal making and brute ethical facts seem quite fantastical. Thus I argued that atheists, if they are consistent, should reject his model. Second, I argued that he did not rebut the lucky coincidence objection because he did not eliminate contingency, he only moved it to a different location in an attempt to sweep it under the rug. I explained that there is still contingency in his model, namely, in his proposed relationship between our cognitive faculties and our moral beliefs. And where there is contingency, there is luck.

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[54] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 174.

[55] Ibid., 169.

[56] Ibid., 172.

[57] Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1998), 102.

[58] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 174.

[59] Ibid., 56.

[60] Ibid., 51.

[61] Ibid.

[62] Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is (New York: Basic Books, 2001), 120–21.

[63] Robin Collins, “The teleological argument: an exploration of the fine-tuning of the universe” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (eds. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 202–82.

[64] Ibid., 173.

[65] Derek Parfit, On What Matters, vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), 493.

[66] Mark D. Linville, “The moral argument,” in The Blackwell Companion to Natural Theology (eds. William Lane Craig and J.P. Moreland; Malden, Mass.: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 5.

[67] Wielenberg, Robust Ethics, 168.

[68] Ibid.

Adam Lloyd Johnson serves as a university campus missionary with Ratio Christi. He also teaches classes for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary and spends one month each year living and teaching at Rhineland Theological Seminary in Wölmersen, Germany. Adam received his PhD in Theological Studies with an emphasis in Philosophy of Religion from Southeastern Baptist Theological Seminary in 2020.

Adam grew up in Nebraska and became a Christian as a teenager in 1994. He graduated from the University of Nebraska and then worked in the field of actuarial science for ten years in Lincoln, Nebraska. While in his twenties, he went through a crisis of faith: are there good reasons and evidence to believe God exists and that the Bible is really from Him? His search for answers led him to apologetics and propelled him into ministry with a passion to serve others by equipping Christians and encouraging non-Christians to trust in Christ. Adam served as a Southern Baptist pastor for eight years (2009-2017) but stepped down from the pastorate to serve others full-time in the area of apologetics. He’s been married to his wife Kristin since 1996, and they have four children – Caroline, Will, Xander, and Ray.

Adam has presented his work at the National Apologetics Conference, the Society of Christian Philosophers, the Evangelical Philosophical Society, the International Society of Christian Apologetics, the Canadian Centre for Scholarship and the Christian Faith, the American Academy of Religion, and the Evangelical Theological Society. His work has been published in the Journal of the International Society of Christian Apologetics, Philosophia Christi, the Westminster Theological Journal, and the Canadian Journal for Scholarship and the Christian Faith. Adam has spoken at numerous churches and conferences in America and around the world – Los Angeles, Chicago, Charlotte, Boston, Orlando, Canada, Germany, the United Kingdom, and Switzerland. He is also the editor and co-author of the book A Debate on God and Morality: What is the Best Account of Objective Moral Values and Duties? published by Routledge and co-authored with William Lane Craig, J. P. Moreland, Erik Wielenberg, and others.