A Philosophical Inquiry into the Scientific Grounding of Objective Morality: An Analysis - Its All About Love: Growing Intimacy with Jesus

Section 1: Introduction: The Confluence of Science and Morality

In an era where the authority of science is paramount, the ambition to extend its methodological rigor into the domain of human morality represents a compelling intellectual project. The perceived objectivity and progressive nature of scientific inquiry stand in stark contrast to the seemingly intractable and often subjective disputes that characterize ethical discourse.¹ The prospect of resolving age-old debates about right and wrong through empirical investigation—of discovering a verifiable “objective moral law”—is a tantalizing one, promising to replace philosophical ambiguity with scientific certainty. This report undertakes a critical analysis of this very project, examining the philosophical architecture required to support such a claim and the formidable challenges it must overcome.

The direct impetus for this analysis, a blog post titled “Applying the Scientific Method to the Objective Moral Law,” is unfortunately inaccessible.³ Consequently, this report will proceed by reconstructing the most philosophically robust and charitable version of the argument implied by its title. This reconstructed position aligns closely with a prominent contemporary school of thought known as ethical naturalism, most famously articulated by thinkers such as Sam Harris in works like The Moral Landscape.⁴ The methodology of this report, therefore, is to build this “steel man” argument—one that posits morality can and should be understood as a branch of science—and then subject it to a rigorous philosophical evaluation using established principles of meta-ethics and normative theory.

The very ambition to apply the scientific method to morality is indicative of a broader intellectual trend, often termed “scientism”—the epistemological thesis that science constitutes the only legitimate path to knowledge. This underlying worldview, which implicitly devalues traditional modes of ethical inquiry such as philosophical reason, intuition, or revelation, provides a crucial context for understanding the motivations and potential blind spots of the argument under examination.⁴ The project is not merely a philosophical exercise but a manifestation of a worldview that privileges scientific epistemology above all others, a context that is essential for a complete critique.This report will argue that while science is an indispensable tool for informing moral reasoning by providing essential factual data about the world, it cannot, on its own, ground or derive foundational moral principles. The attempt to do so commits a critical logical error that separates descriptive facts from normative prescriptions. The analysis will proceed as follows: Section 2 will deconstruct the core concepts of “objective moral law” and the “scientific method” to establish precise definitions. Section 3 will reconstruct the strongest possible argument for a scientific morality based on an ethical naturalist framework. Section 4 will introduce the central philosophical challenge to this argument: David Hume’s is-ought problem, demonstrating the logical gap it fails to bridge. Section 5 will broaden the discussion by situating the argument within the context of alternative meta-ethical and normative frameworks, exploring its inherent consequentialist bias. Finally, Section 6 will conclude by synthesizing the findings and articulating the proper, albeit limited, role of science as a vital partner, but not a master, in the project of human ethics.

Section 2: Deconstructing the Core Concepts: “Science” and “Objective Morality”

Before reconstructing and evaluating the central argument, it is imperative to establish clear, academically-grounded definitions for its two conceptual pillars: the “objective moral law” and the “scientific method.” Ambiguity in these foundational terms can obscure the argument’s logical structure and its vulnerabilities. This section will provide the necessary clarification, drawing upon established philosophical and scientific principles.

2.1 Defining the “Objective Moral Law”: An Examination of Moral Realism

The phrase “objective moral law” presupposes a specific meta-ethical stance known as Moral Realism. Moral Realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world—features that exist independently of subjective opinion, belief, or cultural consensus.⁶ To claim that an objective moral law exists is to be a moral realist. This stance stands in direct opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism, such as ethical subjectivism or relativism, which deny the existence of such mind-independent moral facts.⁶

The power of the phrase “Objective Moral Law” is not merely philosophical but also rhetorical. It skillfully conflates the existence of objective moral facts (the core claim of moral realism) with a specific source of those facts (the natural world, as studied by science). This is a crucial distinction that a proponent of a scientific morality often elides. Moral Realism itself is a broad philosophical position. A moral realist could believe that objective moral facts are non-natural, grounded in divine command, Platonic forms, or the dictates of pure reason.⁸ However, by pairing the concept of an “Objective Moral Law” with the “Scientific Method,” the argument implicitly commits itself to a specific and more controversial subset of moral realism: Ethical Naturalism. This is the view that moral facts are not just objective, but are also natural facts, reducible to or constituted by features of the empirical world, such as facts of biology, psychology, or sociology.⁹ This unstated narrowing of the field is a significant philosophical move, as it dismisses other forms of moral realism without argument. The analysis must therefore focus not on moral realism in general, but on this specific, naturalistic variant.

To fully grasp this position, it is useful to deconstruct moral realism into its two primary components:

The Semantic Thesis

The semantic thesis of moral realism concerns the meaning of our moral language. It holds that the primary role of moral predicates like “right” and “wrong” is to refer to moral properties, such as rightness and wrongness. Consequently, moral statements like “slavery is unjust” are not mere expressions of emotion (as an expressivist might claim) or commands. Instead, they are propositions that purport to represent moral facts and can, therefore, be evaluated as true or false.⁶ This cognitivist feature allows for the application of ordinary rules of logic to moral statements, enabling us to say that a moral belief is contradictory or unjustified in the same way we would about a factual belief.⁶

The Metaphysical Thesis

The metaphysical thesis concerns the nature of moral reality itself. It asserts that moral propositions are true when they accurately correspond to this reality—when the actions or objects being assessed possess the relevant moral properties.⁶ Crucially, these moral facts and properties are held to be robust and their metaphysical status is not relevantly different from other kinds of facts, such as those in chemistry, biology, or mathematics.⁶ For the ethical naturalist, these are facts about the natural world. For instance, a moral realist might claim that the statement “‘killing a defenseless person is wrong’ is a fact in the same way that ‘two plus two sums to four’ is a fact”.¹⁰

The Experiential Argument

One of the most powerful intuitive arguments in favor of moral realism is that it aligns with our common experience of morality. Proponents argue that ordinary people experience morality as “realist-seeming”.¹³ When we condemn an act of cruelty, it feels as though we are stating an objective truth about the act, not merely expressing our personal disapproval. Our moral practices, which involve argumentation, criticism, and the belief in moral progress, seem to presuppose that there are objective moral truths to be discovered.¹³ While this experience does not prove that moral realism is true—appearances can be deceiving—it provides strong prima facie reason to take the position seriously and explains its intuitive appeal.¹³

2.2 Defining the “Scientific Method”: A Tool for Descriptive Inquiry

The second core concept is the “scientific method.” While there is no single, monolithic “method,” the term generally refers to a set of principles and procedures for the systematic pursuit of knowledge involving empirical observation and testing.¹⁴ Key tenets include:

Empirical Observation: Science is grounded in data collected through observation and experimentation.¹⁴
Hypothesis Formation: Scientists formulate testable hypotheses to explain these observations.
Prediction and Falsifiability: A scientific hypothesis must generate predictions that can, in principle, be proven false. Science does not prove things to be true with absolute certainty; rather, it corroborates hypotheses by failing to falsify them.¹⁵
Verification and Repeatability: Results should be repeatable and verifiable by other researchers to ensure objectivity and reliability.¹⁶

The crucial characteristic of the scientific method for this analysis is its fundamentally descriptive nature. Science is a powerful tool for producing “is” statements—factual claims about the nature of reality. It can describe the physical laws that govern the universe, the biological processes that constitute life, and the neurological states that correlate with subjective experiences like happiness or suffering.⁴ For example, science can tell us that a certain social policy leads to a measurable increase in public health, or that a particular neurochemical is associated with feelings of empathy. However, the scientific method, in and of itself, does not produce prescriptive (“ought”) statements. It can describe the consequences of an action, but it cannot declare those consequences to be morally “good” or “bad,” nor can it command that we ought to pursue a particular outcome.¹⁶ This distinction between the descriptive capacity of science and the prescriptive nature of morality is the central axis upon which the entire argument turns.

Section 3: Reconstructing the Argument for a Scientific Morality

Having defined the key terms, it is now possible to construct the most coherent and persuasive version of the argument for applying the scientific method to the objective moral law. This “steel man” argument is best framed as a form of ethical naturalism, modeled closely on the framework proposed by Sam Harris, which explicitly seeks to ground moral truth in scientific facts about the well-being of conscious creatures.⁵ The argument’s apparent strength lies in its seamless integration of a normative claim with empirical claims, presenting morality as just another scientific problem to be solved. This framing is psychologically compelling but, as will be shown, philosophically precarious.

The argument can be presented in a clear, syllogistic form, moving from a foundational value judgment to a conclusion about the role of science.

Premise 1 (The Normative Anchor): The foundation of morality is the well-being of conscious creatures. An action is morally “right” insofar as it promotes well-being and morally “wrong” insofar as it diminishes it.

This first premise establishes the standard of value. It defines “good” as that which contributes to well-being, flourishing, and the avoidance of suffering. Harris refers to this as a “moral landscape,” a hypothetical space with peaks of maximal flourishing and valleys of extreme suffering.⁵ This premise serves as the normative anchor for the entire system. It is an axiom, a starting point that is asserted rather than derived. The claim is that any other conceivable moral system (e.g., one based on religious purity, national glory, or abstract rules) is either a proxy for well-being or is not a system of morality at all. This premise sets the goalposts for what morality is about.

Premise 2 (The Naturalistic Bridge): Well-being is not a supernatural or abstract concept; it is a state of the natural world, dependent on facts about brains, biology, social structures, and the environment.

This premise forges the critical link between the normative concept of “well-being” and the empirical world. It argues that flourishing and suffering are not mysterious, non-physical phenomena. Rather, they are entirely dependent on events in the world and on states of the human brain.⁵ Happiness, security, health, and social connection have neurophysiological and sociological correlates. They are natural phenomena that can be studied. This premise effectively brings morality out of the realm of the transcendent and places it firmly within the domain of the natural sciences. If well-being is a function of brain states and their interaction with the world, then there must be scientific truths to be known about it.⁴

Premise 3 (The Epistemological Tool): Science is the best method for discovering objective facts about the natural world, including the complex causal relationships that determine states of well-being.

This premise establishes the proper tool for the job. If well-being is a natural phenomenon (as per Premise 2), then the scientific method—with its reliance on empirical observation, controlled experimentation, and verifiable data—is the most reliable, if not the only, means of understanding it.¹⁴ Science can investigate which economic policies, social institutions, medical practices, or personal habits actually lead to greater well-being and which lead to greater suffering. It can identify the variables that control moral behavior and, in principle, allow for the development of cultural practices that increase its occurrence.⁴

Conclusion: Therefore, science can determine which actions, policies, and systems of living best promote well-being and are thus objectively “right.” Science is capable of discovering the “objective moral law.”

The conclusion follows logically from the premises. If morality is about maximizing well-being (P1), and well-being is a natural, measurable state of the world (P2), and science is the best tool for measuring and understanding the natural world (P3), then science becomes the ultimate arbiter of moral truth. Moral questions become, in principle, scientific questions. For example, the question “Is Policy A better than Policy B?” translates to the scientific question “Which policy leads to a greater flourishing of conscious creatures?” According to this argument, there are correct and incorrect answers to such questions, and they are discoverable through empirical inquiry.⁵

This reconstructed argument is elegant and powerful. It offers a vision of morality that is objective, progressive, and grounded in our best methods of acquiring knowledge. It purports to move ethics beyond endless debate and into the realm of solvable problems. However, its structural integrity rests entirely on its ability to navigate a foundational challenge in moral philosophy, a challenge to which the analysis now turns.

Section 4: The Central Philosophical Challenge: Hume’s Is-Ought Barrier

The argument for a scientific morality, however elegantly constructed, confronts a formidable and long-standing philosophical obstacle: the is-ought problem. First articulated by the Scottish philosopher David Hume, this problem posits a fundamental logical gap between statements of fact and statements of value. This section will explicate Hume’s challenge, apply it directly to the reconstructed argument, and demonstrate why the argument fails to surmount this critical barrier. The is-ought problem is not merely a technical, logical puzzle; it is a fundamental guardian of human freedom and value-setting. If “ought” could be derived from “is,” then facts about the world could directly compel our values, potentially leading to a deterministic and authoritarian view of morality where dissent is not just immoral, but factually incorrect. Hume’s barrier preserves a necessary space for human choice and commitment in the realm of values.

4.1 Hume’s Guillotine: The Unbridgeable Chasm Between Fact and Value

In his A Treatise of Human Nature, David Hume observed that moral philosophers often begin by making a series of descriptive statements about the world or human nature—statements using the copula “is” or “is not”.⁹ Then, he noted, they make a sudden and “imperceptible” shift to prescriptive statements, employing “ought” or “ought not.” Hume argued that this shift is a new kind of relation or affirmation, and it is “altogether inconceivable” how this new relation could be a logical deduction from the preceding ones, which are “entirely different from it”.⁹

This principle, often called Hume’s Law or Hume’s Guillotine, is the thesis that a prescriptive or normative conclusion (an “ought” statement) cannot be logically derived from a set of premises that are purely descriptive or factual (a set of “is” statements).⁹ The logical force of this point is that the conclusion of a valid deductive argument cannot contain information that is not already present, at least implicitly, in its premises.¹⁷ An “ought” expresses a value, a prescription, a reason for action, which is a different kind of information than a factual description. To derive an “ought” in the conclusion, one must have an “ought” somewhere in the premises.¹⁸

For example, consider the following:

Premise (Is): Ingesting cyanide causes cellular asphyxiation, leading to death.
Premise (Is): Todd is a human being.

From these purely descriptive premises, one cannot logically deduce the conclusion:

Conclusion (Ought): Jane ought not cause Todd to ingest cyanide.

The conclusion only follows if we add a normative premise, such as:

Hidden Premise (Ought): One ought not cause the death of another human being.

The is-ought problem highlights that facts alone are motivationally and normatively inert. They tell us how the world is, but they do not, by themselves, tell us how it should be or what we should do.⁹

4.2 Applying the Guillotine to the Scientific-Moral Argument

When we examine the reconstructed argument for a scientific morality through the lens of Hume’s Guillotine, its central logical flaw becomes apparent. The argument masterfully uses science to connect a series of “is” statements, but it ultimately makes an illicit leap to an “ought” conclusion.

Let us revisit the argument’s structure:

Science can establish the descriptive fact: “Action X is a state of affairs that maximizes scientifically-measured metrics of well-being (e.g., health, longevity, subjective reports of happiness).”
The argument then concludes: “Therefore, we ought to do Action X.”

This is a textbook example of the is-from-ought fallacy. The conclusion contains the prescriptive term “ought,” which is not logically contained within the scientific, descriptive premise. The entire argument only appears to work because it has smuggled in a foundational normative premise, which was presented as the “Normative Anchor” in Section 3:

“We ought to value and pursue the well-being of conscious creatures.”

This crucial premise is not, and cannot be, a conclusion of science. Science can describe what well-being is in neurological or sociological terms, and it can identify the causal pathways that lead to it. But it cannot prove that well-being ought to be our ultimate moral goal. This is a foundational value judgment, a choice about what is intrinsically good, that must be made before the scientific enterprise can even begin its work of measurement and optimization. The scientific morality project does not discover this foundational value; it presupposes it.

4.3 An Evaluation of Attempts to Bridge the Gap

Proponents of ethical naturalism have proposed several ways to bridge the is-ought gap. However, upon closer inspection, these attempts fail to solve the fundamental problem.

One common approach is to appeal to goal-dependent oughts, also known as instrumental reason.⁹ This argument takes the form: “If you have goal G, and action A is the necessary means to achieve G, then you ought to do A.” For example, “If you want to be healthy, you ought to eat a balanced diet.” This form of reasoning is perfectly valid. Science can certainly help us determine the best means (A) to achieve a given end (G).

However, this does not solve the is-ought problem for foundational morality. It simply pushes the “ought” back to the adoption of the goal itself.⁹ The scientific morality argument can be rephrased as: “If you want to maximize the well-being of conscious creatures, then you ought to follow the dictates of science.” But this leaves the most important moral question unanswered: Why ought we to adopt the goal of maximizing universal well-being in the first place? Why should an individual value the well-being of all conscious creatures over their own personal gain, their family’s advantage, or their nation’s glory? Science, being descriptive, cannot provide a binding answer to this question of ultimate ends. It can only provide guidance once an end has been chosen.²⁰

Another attempt, famously made by the philosopher John Searle, tries to derive an “ought” from institutional facts. Searle argues that from the descriptive statement, “Jones uttered the words ‘I hereby promise to pay you, Smith, five dollars’,” one can derive the prescriptive conclusion, “Jones ought to pay Smith five dollars”.¹⁸ This is because the institution of “promising” has a constitutive rule that making a promise places one under an obligation. While this argument is clever, it is limited to specific, human-created social institutions. It cannot be used to ground a universal moral law based on natural facts like brain states or biological flourishing, which exist prior to and independent of any such institutions.

Ultimately, the project of deriving an objective moral law from the scientific method fails because it attempts to build a normative structure on a purely descriptive foundation. Science can illuminate the landscape of facts, but the act of declaring certain features of that landscape “good” and worthy of pursuit remains an act of human valuation, a step across Hume’s unbridgeable chasm.

Section 5: Alternative Frameworks and Broader Implications

The failure of the scientific-moral argument to overcome the is-ought problem does not conclude the philosophical inquiry. It is crucial to place this failure in a broader context, exploring both the meta-ethical alternatives and the normative consequences of adopting such a framework. Analyzing the argument’s inherent biases reveals not only what it is, but also what it is not, and what valuable ethical perspectives it necessarily excludes.

5.1 Moral Realism vs. Moral Relativism: Competing Ontologies

The reconstructed argument is fundamentally a defense of moral realism—specifically, ethical naturalism. Its primary meta-ethical opponent is Moral Relativism, the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to a particular standpoint, such as that of a culture or an individual, with no standpoint being uniquely privileged over others.²¹

Moral relativism comes in several forms ²²:

Descriptive Relativism: The empirical claim that different cultures do, in fact, have radically different moral values. This is an anthropological observation.²²
Meta-Ethical Relativism: The philosophical thesis that there are no objective grounds for preferring the moral values of one culture over another. Truth in morality is relative to a chosen framework.²³
Normative Relativism: The prescriptive claim that we ought to tolerate the moral views and practices of other cultures, given that there are no universal moral principles.²²

The proponent of a scientific morality often presents the debate as a stark choice: either we accept an objective morality grounded in science, or we descend into a relativistic “anything goes” nihilism where slavery and genocide are just “different” cultural choices.²¹ However, this presents a false dichotomy.

The failure of a scientific moral realism does not automatically vindicate moral relativism. The philosophical landscape is far more complex. There are other forms of moral realism that do not depend on a direct, logical derivation from empirical science. For instance, non-naturalist moral realism posits that moral facts are objective but are not reducible to natural facts. They might be known through a faculty of rational intuition, be grounded in the nature of rationality itself, or originate from a divine source.⁸ These positions maintain moral objectivity without committing the naturalistic fallacy. Therefore, rejecting the specific project of a scientific morality does not force one into the arms of relativism; it simply reopens the door to a wider range of philosophical options for grounding objective morality.

5.2 Normative Implications: What Kind of Morality Would Science Discover?

Even if we were to grant the argument its foundational premise and ignore the is-ought problem for a moment, it is critical to analyze the kind of normative ethical theory that would emerge. The methodology of a “scientific morality”—which involves defining a goal (well-being) and then measuring the impact of actions on that outcome—is inherently and inescapably Consequentialist.²⁵

Consequentialism is the class of normative theories holding that the consequences of one’s conduct are the ultimate basis for any judgment about the rightness or wrongness of that conduct.²⁸ An action is deemed morally right if it produces the best overall outcome. The most famous version is Utilitarianism, which defines the best outcome as that which maximizes happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of people.²⁶ A scientific morality based on maximizing “well-being” is a form of act consequentialism, where the rightness of an act is determined solely by its contribution to the total sum of well-being in the world.²⁷

This inherent consequentialist bias means that such a system is structurally incapable of accounting for the core insights of the other two major branches of normative ethics: Deontology and Virtue Ethics.

Clash with Deontology

Deontology is an ethical theory that judges the morality of an action based on its adherence to a set of rules or duties, regardless of the consequences.³⁰ Associated with Immanuel Kant, deontology posits that certain actions are intrinsically right or wrong. It emphasizes concepts like universal moral laws, human dignity, and inviolable rights.³² For a deontologist, the “Right” has priority over the “Good”; certain duties must be fulfilled even if doing so leads to a suboptimal outcome.³⁴

A scientific, consequentialist morality would be fundamentally at odds with this. Because it judges actions solely by their outcomes, it could, in principle, justify actions that a deontologist would consider categorically forbidden. For example, if a scientific “well-being calculus” determined that sacrificing one innocent person would save five others, leading to a net increase in overall well-being, the consequentialist framework would deem it the morally right action. Deontology, in contrast, would likely forbid this act as a violation of the innocent person’s right to life and a breach of the perfect duty not to kill.³³ The scientific framework has no conceptual space for notions like inherent rights or duties that are immune to a cost-benefit analysis.

Clash with Virtue Ethics

Virtue ethics shifts the focus of moral evaluation from actions or their consequences to the character of the moral agent.³⁶ It asks not “What should I do?” but “What kind of person should I be?” The primary moral concepts are virtues like courage, honesty, compassion, and justice. A right action is defined as the action a virtuous person would perform in the circumstances.³⁷ This approach emphasizes the agent’s motivations, intentions, and inner state. For a virtue ethicist, an action can produce a good outcome but still be morally deficient if it was performed from a vicious motive (e.g., giving to charity merely to appear generous for personal gain).

A purely outcome-focused scientific morality would be blind to this crucial dimension of ethics. It measures external results, not internal character. It could assess whether an action increased well-being, but it could not distinguish between an act of genuine compassion and an act of calculated self-interest that happened to have the same positive result. The cultivation of phronesis (practical wisdom) and arête (virtue), which are central to this ethical tradition, are processes of character development that cannot be captured by measuring external consequences.³⁷

The adoption of a scientific-moral framework, therefore, is not a neutral discovery of morality but the forceful imposition of one particular normative theory (Consequentialism) at the expense of all others. The following table provides a clear comparative analysis of these fundamental differences.

Table 1: Comparative Analysis of Normative Ethical Theories

Feature	Consequentialism	Deontology	Virtue Ethics
Core Principle	Maximize good outcomes (e.g., well-being)	Adherence to moral rules/duties	Cultivation of virtuous character
Focus of Evaluation	The consequences of an action	The action’s conformity to a universal rule	The agent’s character and motivations
Primary Question	“What action produces the best results?”	“What is my duty?” / “What are the rules?”	“What kind of person should I be?”
Source of Morality	The state of the world after the action	Reason, divine command, universal law	Phronesis (practical wisdom) & Arête (virtue)
Weakness Example	Can justify harming a few for the many’s benefit	Inflexible (e.g., Kant’s murderer at the door)	Lacks clear, specific action-guidance

This comparison reveals the significant cost of adopting a purely scientific-consequentialist morality: the loss of robust concepts of inviolable rights, absolute duties, and the intrinsic importance of human character and intention.

Section 6: Conclusion: The Limits and Possibilities of a Scientific Morality

This report has undertaken a critical examination of the ambitious project to apply the scientific method to discover an objective moral law. By reconstructing the strongest possible version of this argument through the lens of ethical naturalism, the analysis has revealed that while the project is appealing in its promise of clarity and objectivity, it ultimately fails on fundamental philosophical grounds. The central conclusion is that the attempt to derive prescriptive moral truths directly from descriptive scientific facts cannot succeed because it inevitably founders on Hume’s is-ought barrier. It presupposes the very foundational values it claims to discover.

The core error at the heart of this project can be identified as a form of the Naturalistic Fallacy, a term coined by G.E. Moore.¹⁷ This fallacy is committed when one attempts to define the property of “good” in terms of some other natural property. The scientific morality argument defines “good” as “that which maximizes the well-being of conscious creatures.” While well-being is undoubtedly something most humans value, defining it as being synonymous with “good” is a philosophical move, not a scientific discovery. Science can describe the properties of well-being, but it cannot prove that this description is the definition of moral goodness itself.

However, to conclude that science cannot ground morality is not to conclude that science has no role to play in ethics. On the contrary, this analysis affirms that science is a vital and indispensable partner to ethical deliberation. Its proper role is not to dictate our ultimate values, but to provide the crucial factual knowledge needed to pursue them intelligently. The contributions of science to ethics are profound and manifold:

Illuminating Consequences: Science is our most powerful tool for understanding the complex causal chains in the world. For any ethical framework that cares about outcomes—which includes not only consequentialism but also forms of deontology and virtue ethics that are not entirely indifferent to consequences—scientific knowledge is essential. It tells us which policies are likely to reduce suffering, which medical interventions are effective, and what environmental practices are sustainable.¹⁶
Debunking False Factual Claims: Many immoral practices throughout history have been justified by false empirical beliefs (e.g., beliefs about the biology of different races or the psychology of different genders). Science serves a critical moral function by debunking these falsehoods, thereby removing the purported factual justification for prejudice and discrimination.
Understanding Human Nature: Fields like evolutionary psychology, neuroscience, and sociology provide deep insights into the drivers of human behavior, including our capacities for empathy, altruism, and tribalism. This knowledge is invaluable for any system of moral education, particularly within a virtue ethics framework, as it helps us understand the raw materials of character that need to be shaped and cultivated.⁴

In synthesis, the relationship between science and morality is best understood as a partnership between an expert navigator and a captain. Science, the navigator, can provide the most accurate maps of the world, chart the safest and most efficient course to a given destination, and warn of unforeseen obstacles and consequences. It can tell us how to get where we want to go. However, science cannot choose the destination for us. The captain—representing humanity—must make that choice. The selection of our ultimate moral goals, the definition of what constitutes a life of flourishing and meaning, remains the domain of philosophical reflection, human reason, and moral commitment. Science can illuminate the path, but it cannot tell us which path is worth walking.

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Sharing

Jesus last words on Earth were to his disciples, can be found in Matthew Chap 28 when Jesus told his disciples, “Then Jesus approached and said to them, “All power in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Go, therefore, and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the holy Spirit, teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you. And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age.”

Jesus calls all of us to share in his redemptive mission here on Earth. I would ask you to share this Scripture reflection with your family, your friends and your acquaintances, and then share it with a couple of individuals that you may may not be comfortable sharing with, keeping in mind always the words of Jesus, And behold, I am with you always, until the end of the age

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Author was assisted by AI in the drafting of this Post