Almost 500 Emory University faculty and students have expressed their dismay that their commencement speaker this morning does not toe the ideological line when it comes to evolutionary biology. Yes, gasp, the renowned Johns Hopkins neurosurgeon Ben Carson does not believe in evolutionary theory. Not only that, the biology professors at Emory and their supporters accuse him of committing a thought crime because he allegedly “equates acceptance of evolution with a lack of ethics and morality.”
Since I am a historian who has studied and published on the history of evolutionary ethics, I was rather surprised by the Emory faculty’s consternation. Last summer I attended a major interdisciplinary conference at Oxford University on “The Evolution of Morality and the Morality of Evolution.” Thus I am well aware that there are a variety of viewpoints in academe on this topic. Nonetheless, many evolutionists—from Darwin to the present (including quite a few at that Oxford conference)—have argued and are still arguing precisely the point that Carson was highlighting: They claim that morality has evolved and thus has no objective existence.
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