Moral knowledge: theism vs. Naturalism

Abstract Noah McKay (2023) has proposed a novel argument against naturalism. He argues that while theism can explain our ability to arrive at a body of moral beliefs that are generally accurate and complete’, naturalism fails to do so. He argues that naturalism has only social and biological grounds to account for our moral beliefs, which means that naturalism can only claim pragmatic value for our moral beliefs. McKay dedicates his paper to arguing against naturalism. This paper will focus on theism and examine whether theism can explain what naturalism cannot. Theism could rely on guided evolution or the miraculous intervention of God. In contrast to naturalism, theism has revelatory and supernatural grounds for our moral beliefs. This paper will demonstrate some of the challenges that these grounds would encounter. Finally, McKay’s argument implies a dichotomy between unguided evolution and theism, which rests on a problematic assumption about evolutionary theory; by abandoning the assumption, the dichotomy also dissolves.