"Those who do not move, do not notice their chains."
― Rosa Luxemburg
Q: Which of the above were ensouled?
Recently, I left the following comment on a YouTube video about the origin of morals:
At its foundation, human morality comes from our evolutionary wiring for in-group loyalty and out-group threat response: helping and protecting "us" was good, and harming "them" was acceptable or even virtuous if it defended the group. Early moral rules were basically internal cooperation contracts — don't betray your own people — not universal principles. Over time, culture, reason, and empathy expanded the moral circle beyond the tribe, but the primitive template is still there underneath: what feels "moral" or "immoral" is heavily influenced by who we count as part of "us".
Pretty straightforward, right?
Naturally, I received almost immediate blow-back:
All of what you wrote is at its foundation just another theory. You have no idea where human morality comes from. So zip it.
No idea? Really! Do you think that's true?
I pushed back with:
Calling a body of evidence just a theory is the refuge of someone who hasn't bothered to learn what a theory is. If you have a superior explanation for the origins of morality, do present it. If not, the instruction to 'zip it' seems better directed at yourself.
He responded:
There is only one explanation for morality, as I have stated, but you simply don't seem to want it to be true. There's no point in me telling you again if you are blind to the answer.
Oh my! He still hadn't said what he thought the true origin of morality was, but his tone made it easy to guess he probably meant some kind of divine source. On a whim, I searched his username and found a Facebook page under the same name — its content made it obvious he meant exactly what I suspected, so I replied:
And here it was I was thinking Nature's grand truth had been revealed to me alone. You needn't reply, Timmy. I now have a thorough understanding of what you could bring to a discussion. It's my sincere hope that one day you can free yourself from intellectual intimidation, transcendental blackmail, and religious misology.
The conversation ended there.
So, how about the soul's connection to morality?
From a theistic perspective, the origin of the soul and the origin of morality need to line up, because the soul is supposed to be the thing that connects humans to a god and makes moral responsibility possible. If those origins don't match, you get contradictions: beings with souls but no morality, beings with morality but no souls, or evolutionary ancestors whose moral status flips on and off from generation to generation. A consistent theistic worldview cannot separate the two without falling into holes it can't crawl out of.
Of course, one option is to simply reject biological evolution entirely.
But if you accept evolution in the materialist sense, then metaphysical naturalism requires that morality must have a natural origin — which is the position I take — and the idea of an immaterial soul raises more problems than it solves. When did a soul first appear in evolution? Was ensoulment sudden, meaning one generation had it and the previous didn't? Or gradual, which would imply partial souls? Do non-human animals have souls? Which ones — primates, mammals, everything with a nervous system? And what about extinct hominins like Neanderthals, Denisovans, or Homo erectus? What about hybrids (Homo sapiens × Neanderthal)? Would their children inherit full souls, partial souls, or none?
It makes absolutely zero sense to me, but you can understand why some people feel compelled to reject evolution on account of their religious beliefs — it contradicts their entire framework for where souls come from, how morality comes into the picture, and what supposedly makes humans special.
Here's a theistic attempt to square the soul onto human evolution.
Not a complete list, but here are a few things I think are wrong with the paper:
- Says the soul is beyond science, then uses scientific evidence to argue about when it appeared.
- Treats a supposedly transcendent, non-material soul as something you can detect through archaeology.
- Uses circular logic: assumes souls exist → assumes burials mean souls → finds burials → concludes souls existed.
- Assumes burial equals belief in an afterlife, ignoring simpler, non-religious reasons for burying the dead.
- Reads too much into symbolic objects, treating them as proof of spiritual thinking.
- Holds science to a high standard of evidence but gives religious claims a free pass.
- Claims the mind is non-material without backing it up, and against what neuroscience shows.
- Rejects emergentism just because the author "can't imagine" how it would work.
- Makes claims that can't be tested or disproven.
- Mixes science, theology, and philosophy as if they're the same kind of evidence.
- Interprets every piece of data in a way that supports the conclusion the author already believes.
The author's arguments depend on presuppositions. Look, we at least know the universe exists. If the author can presuppose a supernatural soul (or creator) without evidence, then it's certainly fair for me to presuppose an infinite Universe or a Multiverse — ideas grounded in physics that does not necessitate a divine creator. You can read further about the fallacious nature of the First Cause or Prime Mover argument.
I've always considered it a very weak argument, because a First Cause doesn't have to be supernatural. Even if the argument worked (it doesn't), all it would show is that causes can't regress infinitely. But why posit a divine cause and stop there? If something has to be the stopping point, it could just as easily be the universe itself. The argument begs a lot of questions that I won't take up here.
People are free to believe in a soul that lives on after death, but there's no scientific evidence for it, and everything we know about the mind comes from the brain. If we stick to evidence, then morality had to evolve as early humans learned to live in groups. Many animals already show basic moral behaviors like cooperation, fairness, and empathy, and these traits helped our ancestors survive by keeping groups stable. Over time, human cultures built more complex rules on top of these instincts, but the basic source of morality is our biology, not a supernatural soul. Morality doesn’t need a supernatural explanation — it only needs evolution, empathy, and the social world our ancestors built.
Happy Holidays!