Evolution and ethics : human morality in biological and religious perspective /

An understanding of human beings as morally responsible agents, possessing both knowledge of good and evil and the freedom to act rightly or wrongly, has played an important part in Christian religious and philosophical traditions. Evolutionary biology challenges this tradition in a number of ways. Are humans uniquely made in the image of God, or is our nature shared with our animal cousins? Are humans nothing but biological organisms? Is our behavior programmed by our genes? Is the moral law--God's law--somehow objectively rooted in God's creation, or is it a functionally useful product of human evolutionary history? How can the Christian ethics of universal love be reconciled with narrower evolutionary accounts of altruism? These are some of the questions considered in the essays collected in this anthology. Authors include theologians, philosophers, and natural scientists. Despite differences, they address these issues (with some few exceptions) as Christians who accept evolutionary biology and seek to engage in a constructive dialogue between science and religion. The essays make valuable contributions to sorting through a number of important and timely issues in the foundations of morality. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates through faculty/researchers. R. Hudelson University of Wisconsin--Superior