Excellent points, and images do achieve much to influence us. It is complicated. When we emotionally talk of nuking North Korea, some seem to lose the fact that it also involves nuking masses of innocent oppressed people who have no say in the matter,
This thread appears to be conflating evolutionary origins with some sort of current evolutionary ethics goal. Look at the Bible. Only with Jesus and the Holy Spirit are we able to be good. Further the Book of Revelation speaks of very dismal events in the future with a definite parting of the ways between those who accept Jesus and those who don’t. This is hardly evolutionary. Past need not be prologue to the future.
Then how were all of these cultures able to be good without knowing about Jesus or the Holy Spirit?
You’ll be pleased to know that Jeffrey Schloss of BioLogos has said that non-believers can lead a good life. I think we know that intuitively–we don’t have a separate set of laws/rules just for non-believers.
I think this is poorly phrased - it is only through Christ and the Holy Spirit can we be accepted by God - and the remission of our sins.
The bible refers to people as doing good (and also evil).
Perhaps poorly phrased. There is common grace that helps all, believer and non believer , to be good at some level. I was trying to emphasize the idea that we cannot improve on our own and certainly cannot rise to the righteousness shown by Jesus.
With respect to the how do all of these cultures able to be good without knowing Jesus: typically a closer look at cultures finds a sinful underside such as oppression of an internal or peripheral sub group(s) which is approved and maintained in the long term. Here diagnosing and attempting to fix a sinful problem is a mark of righteousness
What it means that we can only come to God in Jesus remains a puzzle to the materialists reading the bible. They cannot comprehend the idea of who - or what - Jesus is, e.g. the living word of God. You will only come to God by living his word - e.g. to love thy neighbour like thyself (please not yourself, no narcissism intended, it’s a third person rule)
would imply a materialistic view of evolution. In Jesus dying without physical children he lives on in the heart of everyone who understands him and as he can live in us we can learn to live in him. As I say
To live forever is the art
to learn to live in every heart.
so instead if disconnecting from our origin we need to learn to connect with it, in physical and metaphysical terms.
You may be surprised to find that even those you do not think of as social animals are social as they support their ecosystem, thus are social beyond the hive. If they don’t, the ecosystem as the social unit, is so “antisocial” and eliminates them.
What @Susan_Linkletter so admires in Jesus is his ability to explain to us the law of evolution, or continuous existence. It has existed since the beginning of time, as it allowed order to propagate. Ethics are not an evolutionary construct, but biological evolution is a consequence of the laws of ethics, like the laws of physics are not a construct of the physical world but the physical world is the consequence of the laws of physics. They are our to discover and to obey, not ours to construct.
So in an abstract way, if you know Jesus, e.g. the living word of God you know God, even if you do not call it Jesus, as Jesus does not define the living word of God but the living word of God defines Jesus
As a matter of history, the British were an imperial power before Darwin published. Your perspective is short sighted if you need a special critique for current politics.
I do not understand why the date of Darwins publication would matter in light of current politics and ethics. Evolution did not start with Darwin, it was happening long before people became aware of it.
For us to reconcile Christianity and evolution, we need to disconnect our origins from our present state.
You will have to explain that one. How does one disconnect from our present state?
The imperial vs Darwin’s issue is that the post that I responded to asserted that Darwin’s ideas were prior justification for imperialism.
Any ethics that we have should transcend Darwin’s publication date or current political climate or just about all worldly events. because God’s teaching hasn’t changed.
How does one disconnect from our present state?
Not disconnect from our present state but disconnect our present state from (evolutionary)_ origins. However God got us to the point that we are now, Biblical ethics are different than the practices that give evolutionary success. Hence we need to drop evolutionary ethics in favor of revealed ethics based on agape love.
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What are evolutionary ethics?
Alas, the term Evolutionary Ethics is not well defined. Further, it seems to mean different things to different people. There are the dark takes on it that the Nazis and Marxists had on to the much kinder vision on the topic that Marvin Adams (see above) has. I was using a vague definition that evolutionary ethics is ethics based on and compatible with the evolutionary mechanism as seen in the fossil record and in selective breeding endeavors such as purebred dogs. Here it would be helpful to define the term.
I’m still not sure what you’re getting at.
Biblical ethics are a the backbone of evolution, e.g. to love thy neighbours like thyself. The odd thing is that this might include the need to decimate one neighbour for the sake of the survival of all the others if that one destroys the ecosystem. usually the system defines this by deletion of those that turn from the “WE” to the “I”, e.g. to love thyself on the cost of thy neighbours as it changes the conditions from wellness to illness, thus destabilises the system, which is what the bible teaches.
The problem of the idea of evolving ethics is the thought that morals are changeable. The most obvious case is our change in what is ethically acceptable in the light of the change of our sexual conduct. However if you look at the rise of multi-drug resistant STD’s you might figure that biological evolution does regulate our understanding of what is morally acceptable, but then the time-constants of the biological feedback loop are just a bit too long for the average human to grasp. So,playing to be one flesh whist desperately avoiding the responsibility of becoming one flesh is an act of ultimate selfishness, and declaring your reproductive system to be your recreational system is as logically coherent as trying to pretend you could change the laws of physics to slow down the speed of light. But then, with those who struggle with the fall, it has always been the problem of “my will be done”
But in the Bible morals are changeable. Jacob had two primary wives and two secondary wives. In the Bible slavery was acceptable.
Jesus told the Pharisees and the Sadducees that the morality which was approved by them was wrong.
Thanks for the note, this is the most concordist view of evolutionary ethics that I have ever seen. Is there as book or website that goes into more detail on this, and perhaps similar, positions on this topic?
Gentle reminder - -
**Challenging the source of morality of a Christian Universe is not usually part of a discussion of **
Evolution-God-Guided (EGG).
All things mortal come short of the glory of God and the mysteries of His ways.
I am not following you. Please explain which comment of mine you are addressing.
Was this morality by any chance in conflict with the law? Jesus correctly challenged them for having become a law to themselves as the morality they derived from the study of the Torah was by his understanding in conflict with the spirit of the Torah.
The bible does not demand monogamy, and slavery as you might think of was under the death penalty in biblical times. The bible actually introduced the death penalty for killing your slave - unlike the other tribes around them and abandoned the concept of sacrificing humans to appease God, something one ought to understand when reading the bible.
I was replying to Marvin Adam’s reply to me which discussed a type of evolutionary ethics.
guess you clicked in the wrong place. Delighted to hear that my attempt to make sense of ethics and evolution resonates with you, but I haven’t found yet anyone that thinks along the same lines. But then there aren’t many with a brain the size of a planet 
- sarcastic mode off - e.g. I just haven’t searched long enough. It’s as always, that when you think that you have an original idea that you will discover that someone had it ages ago. In this case you can be forgiven for thinking that this idea is so old that it must have been around since the beginning of the universe
If you find any book or website supporting my view,please let me know. It would make it easier to defend my point in debates as it always sounds better when you can point out that someone else said that, particularly when it is published somewhere, thus shielding you from personal attack.