The purpose of the article is to discuss the problem of the relationship between religion and morality in the context of atheistic propaganda, based on scientific naturalism and neo-Darwinism in particular. In the beginning, the author considers the widespread view of the historical primacy of morality and shows that this primacy is not as obvious as it seems to naturalists. Then an attempt is made to correct the view of the relationship of those cultural institutions in history and to outline the conditio sine qua non of their genesis concerning the unique human ability to symbolic creativity. The article analyzes the strategy, which is frequent in evolutionary-naturalistic discourse and aimed at separating religion and morality. Besides, the ideological background of the naturalists’ views is revealed. Unable to give an adequate justification of the ought within the framework of consistent naturalism, always fraught with ethical nihilism, they develop the idea that morality is so deeply embedded in our nature that we do not particularly need conscious motives to be good. Accordingly, they declare religion to be a superficial and historically accidental phenomenon belonging only to the cultural-semiotic sphere and having no deep roots beyond it. Despite the authoritativeness of its demands, religion, they say, does not reach the depths of human consciousness, and the motivation it generates is ineffective in comparison with the dispositions set by natural selection.
Key words: theory of evolution, Darwinism, ethics, nihilism, New Atheism, primitive forms of religion, Richard Dawkins, Frans de Waal
DOI: 10.22250/20728662_2023_4_126
About the author
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Anton V. Karabykov – DSc in Philosophy, CSc in Philology; Professor at the Department of Philosophy, V.I. Vernadsky Crimean Federal University; 4 Vernadskogo prosp., Simferopol, 295007, Russia; This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. |