The standard of value is the goal
2. The question “Is it moral to gratuitously torture children?”
Not if the ultimate goal and standard of value is life and life proper to a rational being. Life is the ultimate goal of a rational ethics based on reason and reality.
Ultimate goal? Standard? Value? Rational being? Rational ethics? Reason?
The time has come to take seriously the fact that we humans are modified monkeys, not the favored Creation of a Benevolent God on the Sixth Day. In particular, we must recognize our biological past in trying to understand our interactions with others. We must think again especially about our so-called “ethical principles.” The question is not whether biology—specifically, our evolution—is connected with ethics, but how. As evolutionists, we see that no [ethical] justification of the traditional kind is possible.Morality, or more strictly our belief in morality, is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends. Hence the basis of ethics does not lie in God’s will…. In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate. It is without external grounding. Like Macbeth’s dagger, it serves a powerful purpose without existing in substance.
Ethics is illusory inasmuch as it persuades us that it has an objective reference. This is the crux of the biological position. Once it is grasped, everything falls into place.
- Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, The Evolution of Ethics
In a universe of blind physical forces and genetic replication, some people are going to get hurt, other people are going to get lucky, and you won’t find any rhyme or reason in it, nor any justice. The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.
- Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences that Charles Darwin understood perfectly.
1) No gods worth having exist.
2) No life after death exists.
3) No ultimate foundation for ethics exists.
4) No ultimate meaning in life exists.
5) Human free will is nonexistent.
- William Provine (from Darwin Day speech)
Consider this, to remove any ‘creator’ from our very existence including the beginning of our universe is to remove any ‘thought or intelligence’ from the equation. By definition, you are ultimately left with an existence from stupidity.
Something has to give here. If "life" is the goal of morality then it is not moral to help those with inferior genes. Moreover if morality is a byproduct of evolution, then it is also in error to not favor peoples who are similar to you genetically over those who are different than you genetically in many cases (not all--it could make genetic sense in some cases if the need to broaden your gene pool is greater than the pressures of competition for territory and resources).
Even Charles Darwin opined that taking care of weak individuals and invalids etc was moral--right after he pointed it out it was obviously contrary the good of our gene pool to do so. Seems this serves as a concrete counter-example to your premise unless Mr Darwin was quite mistaken.
Sorry, if materialism is correct, then modern concepts of ethics are obviously in error, and if you think it through no ethical statement would be either valid or not valid in the sense of the western notions we have of ethics and Natural Law that even our materialists seem to embrace in practice. Rather all ethical judgements would be echoes of the advantage of those having them and would be nor more valid than any other phenomena would be. You might as well decide if what a computer did was "ethical" when it followed a program. Or if a chair is "ethical" for just being about obeying the laws of physics.