Abstract

How do we and should we decide what is morally right and what is morally wrong? For much of human history, the teachings of religion were presumed to provide either the answer, or much of the answer. Over time, two developments challenged this. The first was the establishment of the discipline of moral philosophy. Foundational texts, such as Immanuel Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, and the growth of coherent, nonreligious approaches to ethics, notably utilitarianism, served to marginalize the role of religion. And then, second, the twentieth century saw the rapid growth of evolutionary biology with an enthusiastic presumption that biology was the source of ethics. Here, I begin by discussing these developments and then examine the extent to which religion is still needed for a coherent account of ethics.