Shifting topics to Free Will is the best response to saying "there is no morality apart from religious principles." That's ok. I was hoping someone could show me how morality works in an evolutionary world because my understanding of Darwinism and Neo-Darwinsim is they are diametrically opposed to each other.
You might have tried
The Moral Landscape by Sam Harris. He believes science has already begun to pin-down the causes of human "happiness", and that regulating this pursuit is the purpose of "social morality". pg 181
You want to talk about free will.
New Atheist Sam Harris also wrote an essay called
Free Will. In it he argues that man has no free will. Even the worst criminal that rapes and murders someone. His argument is based on the fact he is a neuroscientist and a philosopher. It can sound very compelling on the service. But even his New Atheist friend Dan Dennett whole heartly disagrees with him. See
Reflections on FREE WILL : A Review by Daniel C. Dennett : : Sam Harris
A Christian perspective.
One of the great thinkers of the 20th century puts it this way:
“God created things which had free will. That means creatures which can go wrong or right. Some people think they can imagine a creature which was free but had no possibility of going wrong, but I can't. If a thing is free to be good it's also free to be bad. And free will is what has made evil possible. Why, then, did God give them free will? Because free will, though it makes evil possible, is also the only thing that makes possible any love or goodness or joy worth having. A world of automata -of creatures that worked like machines- would hardly be worth creating. The happiness which God designs for His higher creatures is the happiness of being freely, voluntarily united to Him and to each other in an ecstasy of love and delight compared with which the most rapturous love between a man and a woman on this earth is mere milk and water. And for that they've got to be free.
Of course God knew what would happen if they used their freedom the wrong way: apparently, He thought it worth the risk. (...) If God thinks this state of war in the universe a price worth paying for free will -that is, for making a real world in which creatures can do real good or harm and something of real importance can happen, instead of a toy world which only moves when He pulls the strings- then we may take it it is worth paying.”
― C.S. Lewis,
The Case for Christianity
There is much to discuss here, but I will be away for a bit. I will try and check in while I am gone.
Prophet22