Have our ethics have evolved to the point where humanity can now recognize them as products of evolution, so we can now make ethical choices because we’re intellectually superior?

This text is from a transcript of a talk by David Gooding, entitled ‘Are You Worth More than a Pig?’ (2007).

Theodosius Dobzhansky, the great Russian-born scientist and ethicist, would not accept Social Darwinism at any cost. He held that, as we evolved, mankind eventually evolved language. And being able to talk to one another, we were able to reason together in what I have called social contractarianism and make our own rules, and that's how it should be. Ethics in that sense has evolved.

I should not want to question the fact that mankind has gone through its childhood stage—the New Testament says so—and has come to adulthood, but I think the basic principles remain the same. They are not things that we evolved to, as far as I understand it. 'You shall not lie—you shall not give false witness' (Exodus 20:16): how could that have been the result of chance progress?

In thinking it through, I want to ask myself, is it an invention that this or that philosopher invented? If that is so, why should I accept it? I would need another reason for accepting it, unless you say, 'My position is so rational that you couldn't possibly disagree if you wanted to be rational.' But then I look around all the rational people I know and have read of in this world, and the rationalists disagree among themselves on ethical things.

Therefore, it seems to me that our reasoning on ethical things is based on something far more fundamental, and not the result of evolution. It is the result of God the Creator's law being written on our hearts. At least that is how I would understand it.

May I just add that I start, as I said, from a biblical position and, as I understand it, God early on told his people that his rules were an expression of his character. Being a personal God, he summed up the rules like this:

And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength . . . and your neighbour as yourself. (Mark 12:30–31)

Ethics, according to Bible, is ultimately a question of a love relationship with a personal God, in the full sense of the term 'love'. You might say, 'I love this landscape,' meaning you like it very much; but in that sense you can't love impersonal things. This, as I understand it, is the heart of ethics: a personal relationship with a personal God, whose rules and whose laws are an expression of his character. 'If you love me,' said Jesus Christ, 'you will keep my commandments' (John 14:15).

I don't think that merely thinking about these things ethically would necessarily have brought us to the view that we should be kind to one another. But I think the Bible's scheme of ethics is on a higher plane.