Keith Burgess-Jackson, J.D., Ph.D.

To the Editor:

Robert Wright notes that the speculations he outlines on how a moral sense could evolve are “compatible with the standard scientific theory of human creation.” Indeed, these speculations—actually rigorous abstract arguments—have been developed by evolutionary theorists who, like Mr. Wright, see our moral intuitions as real phenomena in need of an explanation.

But the point of these arguments is to demonstrate that there can be a traversable path, an evolutionary process, from, say, bacteria, to us (with our moral intuitions) that doesn’t at any point require that the evolutionary process itself have a purpose. In other words, their implication is that our moral sense would evolve even if there weren’t a creative intelligence in the background.

So the compatibility that Mr. Wright finds is trivial.

Go ahead and believe in God, if you like, but don’t imagine that you have been given any grounds for such a belief by science.

Daniel Dennett
Medford, Mass., Aug. 23, 2009
The writer is co-director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at Tufts University.

Note from KBJ: Who thinks that science provides grounds for religious belief? Robert Wright argues that science is compatible with religious belief. Professor Dennett may think the compatibility trivial, but not everyone does.