“But the God hypothesis for morality and altruism has its own problems. It fails, for example, to specify exactly which moral judgments were instilled in people by God and which, if any, might rest on secular reason. It doesn’t explain why slavery, torture, and disdain for women and strangers were considered proper behaviors not too long ago, but are now seen as immoral. For if anything is true, God-given morality should remain constant over time and space. In contrast, if morality reflects a malleable social veneer on an evolutionary base, it should change as society changes. And it has.”
Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 177
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Jerry Coyne 154
American biologist 1949Related quotes

“Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality.”
Testaments Betrayed (1995), p. 7
Context: Suspending moral judgment is not the immorality of the novel; it is its morality. The morality that stands against the ineradicable human habit of judging instantly, ceaselessly, and everyone; of judging before, and in the absence of, understanding. From the viewpoint of the novel’s wisdom, that fervid readiness to judge is the most detestable stupidity, the most pernicious evil.

The Pragmatics of Patriotism (1973)
Context: Selfishness is the bedrock on which all moral behavior starts and it can be immoral only when it conflicts with a higher moral imperative. An animal so poor in spirit that he won't even fight on his own behalf is already an evolutionary dead end; the best he can do for his breed is to crawl off and die, and not pass on his defective genes.

“It doesn’t trivialize morality to argue that it is based on evolution and secular reason.”
Source: Faith vs. Fact (2015), p. 190

Carol Derby & Ken Ham, "The 'Evolutionizing' of a Culture", War of the World Views: Powerful Answers For An "Evolutionized" Culture (2006), p. 11 http://books.google.com/books?id=RTc_lsnp0r0C&pg=PA11

Youtube, Other, The Damn Commandments https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8u3z69YpLx0 (January 7, 2015)

Sociology and philosophy (1911), D. Pocock, trans. (1974), p. 51.

“Gods, all this maneuvering for moral advantage. You’d think we were married.”
Source: The Republic of Thieves (2013), Chapter 1 “Things Get Worse” section 8 (p. 51)

Source: Attributed from posthumous publications, Dialogues of Alfred North Whitehead (1954), Ch. 22, August 30, 1941.