a project of the National Humanities Center
» , Professor in Psychology, Director of the Living Links Center at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center, Emory University This obviously does not make me an expert on the Dutch painter, but having grown up with his statue on the market square, I have always been fond of his imagery, his symbolism, and how it relates to humanity’s place in the universe. This remains relevant today since Bosch depicts a society under a waning influence of God. depicts hundreds of erotic naked figures carrying or eating fruits, but is also full of references to alchemy, the forerunner of chemistry. The figures on the right are embedded in glass tubes typical of a , while the two birds supposedly symbolize vapors. His famous triptych with naked figures frolicking around — — seems a tribute to paradisiacal innocence. The tableau is far too happy and relaxed to fit the interpretation of depravity and sin advanced by puritan experts. It represents humanity free from guilt and shame either before the Fall or without any Fall at all. For a primatologist, like myself, the nudity, references to sex and fertility, the plentiful birds and fruits, and the moving about in groups are thoroughly familiar, and hardly require a religious or moral interpretation. Bosch seems to have depicted humanity in its natural state, while reserving his moralistic outlook for the right-hand panel of the triptych in which he punishes — the frolickers from the middle panel — but monks, nuns, gluttons, gamblers, warriors, and drunkards.
Five centuries later, we remain embroiled in debates about the role of religion in society. As in Bosch’s days, the central theme is morality. Can we envision a world without God? Would this world be good? Don’t think for one moment that the current battle lines between biology and fundamentalist Christianity turn around evidence. One has to be pretty immune to data to doubt evolution, which is why books and documentaries aimed at convincing the skeptics are a waste of effort. They are helpful for those prepared to listen, but fail to reach their target audience. The debate is less about the truth than about how to handle it. For those who believe that morality comes straight from God the creator, acceptance of evolution would open a moral abyss.
Echoing this view, : “If there is no order to the universe, and therefore some being, some force that ordered it, then who determines what is right or wrong? There is nothing immoral if there’s nothing in charge.” Similarly, I have heard people echo Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov, exclaiming that “If there is no God, I am free to rape my neighbor!”
Perhaps it is just me, but I am wary of anyone whose belief system is the only thing standing between them and repulsive behavior. Why not assume that our humanity, including the self-control needed for livable societies, is built into us? Does anyone truly believe that our ancestors lacked social norms before they had religion? Did they never assist others in need, or complain about an unfair deal? Humans must have worried about the functioning of their communities well before the current religions arose, which is only a few thousand years ago. Not that religion is irrelevant — I will get to this — but it is an add-on rather than the wellspring of morality.
Deep down, creationists realize they will never win factual arguments with science. This is why they have construed their own science-like universe, known as Intelligent Design, and eagerly jump on every tidbit of information that seems to go their way. The most recent opportunity arose with . A Harvard colleague, Marc Hauser, has been accused of eight counts of scientific misconduct, including making up his own data. Since Hauser studied primate behavior and wrote about morality, Christian websites were eager to claim that “all that people like Hauser are left with are unsubstantiated propositions that are contradicted by millennia of human experience” ( , 8 September 2010). A major newspaper asked “Would it be such a bad thing if Hausergate resulted in some intellectual humility among the new scientists of morality?” ( , 27 August, 2010). Even a to reaffirm the gap between human and animal by warning against “naive evolutionary presuppositions.”
These are rearguard battles, however. Whether creationists jump on this scientific scandal or linguists and psychologists keep selling human exceptionalism does not really matter. Fraud has occurred in many fields of science, from epidemiology to physics, all of which are still around. In the field of cognition, the march towards continuity between human and animal has been inexorable — one misconduct case won’t make a difference. True, humanity never runs out of claims of what sets it apart, but it is a rare uniqueness claim that holds up for over a decade. This is why we don’t hear anymore that only humans make tools, imitate, think ahead, have culture, are self-aware, or adopt another’s point of view.
Frans de Waal delivers an address on animals at the 2007 Autonomy Singularity Creativity conference at the National Humanities Center.
If we consider our species without letting ourselves be blinded by the technical advances of the last few millennia, we see a creature of flesh and blood with a brain that, albeit three times larger than a chimpanzee’s, doesn’t contain any new parts. Even our vaunted prefrontal cortex turns out to be of typical size: recent neuron-counting techniques classify the human brain as a linearly scaled-up monkey brain. No one doubts the superiority of our intellect, but we have no basic wants or needs that are not also present in our close relatives. I interact on a daily basis with monkeys and apes, which just like us strive for power, enjoy sex, want security and affection, kill over territory, and value trust and cooperation. Yes, we use cell phones and fly airplanes, but our psychological make-up remains that of a social primate. Even the posturing and deal-making among the alpha males in Washington is nothing out of the ordinary.
Charles Darwin was interested in how morality fits the human-animal continuum, proposing in : “Any animal whatever, endowed with well-marked social instincts … would inevitably acquire a moral sense or conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers had become as well developed … as in man.”
Unfortunately, modern popularizers have strayed from these insights. Like Robert Wright in , they argue that true moral tendencies cannot exist — not in humans and even less in other animals — since nature is one hundred percent selfish. Morality is just a thin veneer over a cauldron of nasty tendencies. Dubbing this position “Veneer Theory” (similar to ), I have fought it ever since my 1996 book . Instead of blaming atrocious behavior on our biology (“we’re acting like animals!”), while claiming our noble traits for ourselves, why not view the entire package as a product of evolution? Fortunately, there has been a resurgence of the Darwinian view that morality grew out of the social instincts. Psychologists stress the intuitive way we arrive at moral judgments while activating emotional brain areas, and economists and anthropologists have shown humanity to be far more cooperative, altruistic, and fair than predicted by self-interest models. Similarly, the latest experiments in primatology reveal that our close relatives will do each other favors even if there’s nothing in it for themselves.
Chimpanzees and bonobos to offer a companion access to food, even if they lose part of it in the process. And , such as when we place two of them side by side, while one of them barters with us with differently colored tokens. One token is ‘selfish,’ and the other ‘prosocial.’ If the bartering monkey selects the selfish token, it receives a small piece of apple for returning it, but its partner gets nothing. The prosocial token, on the other hand, rewards both monkeys. Most monkeys develop an overwhelming preference for the prosocial token, which preference is not due to fear of repercussions, because dominant monkeys (who have least to fear) are the most generous.
Even though altruistic behavior evolved for the advantages it confers, this does not make it selfishly motivated. Future benefits rarely figure in the minds of animals. For example, animals engage in sex without knowing its reproductive consequences, and even humans had to develop the morning-after pill. This is because sexual motivation is unconcerned with the reason why sex exists. The same is true for the altruistic impulse, which is unconcerned with evolutionary consequences. It is this disconnect between evolution and motivation that befuddled the Veneer Theorists, and made them reduce everything to selfishness. The most quoted line of their bleak literature says it all: “Scratch an ‘altruist,’ and watch a ‘hypocrite’ bleed.”
Not only humans are capable of genuine altruism, but also other animals. I see it every day. An old female, Peony, spends her days outdoors with other chimpanzees at the Yerkes Primate Center’s Field Station. On bad days, when her arthritis is flaring up, she has trouble walking and climbing, but other females help her out. For example, Peony is huffing and puffing to get up into the climbing frame in which several apes have gathered for a grooming session. An unrelated younger female moves behind her, placing both hands on her ample behind and pushes her up with quite a bit of effort, until Peony has joined the rest.
We have also seen Peony getting up and slowly move towards the water spigot, which is at quite a distance. Younger females sometimes run ahead of her, take in some water, then return to Peony and give it to her. At first, we had no idea what was going on, since all we saw was one female placing her mouth close to Peony’s, but after a while the pattern became clear: Peony would open her mouth wide, and the younger female would spit a jet of water into it.
Such observations fit the emerging field of animal empathy, which deals not only with primates, but also with canines, elephants, even . A typical example is how chimpanzees console distressed parties, hugging and kissing them, which behavior is so predictable that scientists have analyzed thousands of cases. Mammals are sensitive to each other’s emotions, and react to others in need. The whole reason people fill their homes with furry carnivores and not with, say, iguanas and turtles, is because mammals offer something no reptile ever will. They give affection, they want affection, and respond to our emotions the way we do to theirs.
Mammals may derive pleasure from helping others in the same way that humans feel good doing good. Nature often equips life’s essentials — sex, eating, nursing — with built-in gratification. One study found that pleasure centers in the human brain light up when we give to charity. This is of course no reason to call such behavior “selfish” as it would make the word totally meaningless. A selfish individual has no trouble walking away from another in need. Someone is drowning: let him drown. Someone cries: let her cry. These are truly selfish reactions, which are quite different from empathic ones. Yes, we experience a “warm glow,” and perhaps some other animals do as well, but since this glow reaches us the other, and via the other, the helping is genuinely other-oriented.
A few years ago Sarah Brosnan and I demonstrated that primates will happily perform a task for cucumber slices until they see others getting grapes, which taste so much better. The cucumber-eaters become agitated, throw down their measly veggies and go on strike. A perfectly fine food has become unpalatable as a result of seeing a companion with something better.
We called it , a topic since investigated in other animals, including dogs. , but refuse as soon as another dog gets pieces of sausage for the same trick. Recently, Sarah reported an unexpected twist to the inequity issue, however. While testing pairs of chimps, she found that also the one who gets the deal occasionally refuses. It is as if they are satisfied only if both get the same. We seem to be getting close to a .
Such findings have implications for human morality. According to most philosophers, we reason ourselves towards a moral position. Even if we do not invoke God, it is still a top-down process of us formulating the principles and then imposing those on human conduct. But would it be realistic to ask people to be considerate of others if we had not already a natural inclination for it? Would it make sense to appeal to fairness and justice in the absence of powerful reactions to their absence? Imagine the cognitive burden if every decision we took would need to be vetted against handed-down principles. Instead, I am a firm believer in the Humean position that reason is the slave of the passions. We started out with moral sentiments and intuitions, which is also where we find the greatest continuity with other primates. Rather than having developed morality from scratch, we received a huge helping hand from our background as social animals.
At the same time, however, I am reluctant to call a chimpanzee a “moral being.” This is because sentiments do not suffice. We strive for a logically coherent system, and have debates about how the death penalty fits arguments for the sanctity of life, or whether an unchosen sexual orientation can be wrong. These debates are uniquely human. We have no evidence that other animals judge actions that do not affect themselves as right or wrong. The great pioneer of morality research, the Finn , explained what makes the moral emotions special: “Moral emotions are disconnected from one’s immediate situation: they deal with good and bad at a more abstract, disinterested level.” This is what sets human morality apart: a move towards universal standards combined with an elaborate system of monitoring and potential punishment.
This is where religion comes in. Think of the narrative support for sympathy, such as the Parable of the Good Samaritan, or the challenge to fairness, such as the Parable of the Workers in the Vineyard with its famous conclusion “The last will be first, and the first will be last.” Add to this an almost Skinnerian fondness of reward and punishment — from the virgins to be met in heaven to the hell fire that awaits sinners — and the exploitation of our desire to be “praiseworthy,” as Adam Smith called it. We are sensitive to public opinion. In experiments, humans only need to see a picture of two eyes glued to the wall to respond with good behavior, which no doubt explains the image in some religions of an all-seeing eye to symbolize an .
Over the past few years, we have gotten used to a strident atheism arguing that God is not great (Christopher Hitchens) or a delusion (Richard Dawkins). The new atheists call themselves “brights,” thus hinting that believers may not be so bright. They urge trust in science, and the rooting of ethics in a naturalistic worldview.
While I do consider religious institutions and their representatives — popes, bishops, mega-preachers, ayatollahs, and rabbis — fair game for criticism, what good could come from insulting individuals who find value in religion? And more pertinently, what alternative does science have to offer? Science is not in the business of spelling out the meaning of life and even less in telling us how to live our lives. We, scientists, are good at finding out why things are the way they are, or how things work, and I do believe that biology can help us understand what kind of animals we are and why our morality looks the way it does. But to go from there to offering moral guidance seems a stretch.
Even the staunchest atheist growing up in Western society cannot avoid having absorbed the basic tenets of Christian morality. Our societies are steeped in it: everything we have accomplished over the centuries, even science, developed either hand in hand with or in opposition to religion, but never separately. It is impossible to know what morality would look like without religion. It would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause.
Bosch struggled with the same issue — not with being an atheist, which was not an option — but science’s place in society. The little figures in his paintings with inverted funnels on their heads or the buildings in the form of flasks, distillation bottles, and furnaces reference chemical equipment. Alchemy was gaining ground yet mixed with the occult and full of charlatans and quacks, which Bosch depicted with great humor in front of gullible audiences. Alchemy turned into science when it liberated itself from these influences and developed self-correcting procedures to deal with flawed or fabricated data. But science’s contribution to a moral society, if any, remains a question mark.
Other primates have of course none of these problems, but even they strive for a certain kind of society. For example, female chimpanzees have been seen to drag reluctant males towards each other to make up after a fight, removing weapons from their hands, and high-ranking males regularly act as impartial arbiters to settle disputes in the community. I take these hints of as yet another sign that the building blocks of morality are older than humanity, and that we do not need God to explain how we got where we are today. On the other hand, what would happen if we were able to excise religion from society? I doubt that science and the naturalistic worldview could fill the void and become an inspiration for the good. Any framework we develop to advocate a certain moral outlook is bound to produce its own list of principles, its own prophets, and attract its own devoted followers, so that it will soon look like any old religion.
Also known as s’Hertogenbosch, this is a 12th-century provincial capital in the Catholic south of the Netherlands. Bosch lived from circa 1450 until 1516.
Herculano-Houzel, Suzana (2009). The human brain in numbers: A linearly scaled-up primate brain. 3: 1-11.
Ghiselin, Michael (1974). . Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
Dixon, Laurinda (2003). . London: Phaidon.
| Tags: , , , | I really appreciate de Waal’s anchoring of moral behavior in our evolutionary past, contemporary animal behavior and our own human social instincts.
But even more important is his balanced approach to the question of god. So many atheists are hurling invectives at believers, viewing religion as a blot on human kind, that one yearns for a more calm, grounded argument that simply says that moral behavior does not depend on a belief in god. That humans have invented religion, that they has imbued it with a lot of moralistic teachings, and that they fight wars over whose god is the real, one, only god is simple fact. Morally bad behavior can be addressed in many ways, ostracism, banishment, arguments in the public square, various punishments. So, bad behavior in the name of a religious creed, can be equally countered. The fundamentalist, war mongering atheists are not helping themselves with their vituperation. If tolerance is to be expanded, a more pluralistic approach is needed. De Waal elegantly provides it.
I have had many friends over the years who are not members of any organized religion and who do not think of God in the classical third party context. These friends do not believe in heaven or hell, and yet, they are far more ethical and moral than many of those who do have traditional faiths.
There are three apparently universal virtues respected and sought by these friends: honesty, responsibility, and compassion. These goals are valued completely independent of any belief in life after death.
As de Waal has noted, empathy and expectation of reciprocation very likely play a role in the practical application of this value system. However, it is easy to imagine that communities sharing these goals would have had an advantage in the natural selection process. It is conceivable that, over many years of evolution, these propensities might have become incorporated into the feedback systems of our neurobiology.
Whatever the explanation, I know from years of experience that belief in God is not an essential requirement for (nor an assurance of) moral behavior.
You mention that “It would require a visit to a human culture that is not now and never was religious. That such cultures do not exist should give us pause.”
In his (1935), Will Durant mentions the existence of contemporary cultures without religion (p. 56): certain Pygmy tribes, the dwarfs of Cameroon, the Veddahs of Ceylon, etc.
While the book is out of date, there may indeed be such cultures. Could you do a fact-check on that?
It is probable that almost all religious dogma is based on the codification of evolved behaviors. Those who believe that this dogma receives its moral authority from God have boxed themselves in. If there is no God, then there is no moral authority.
But an understanding of the survival value of our evolved behavioral preferences can provide a strong foundation for advocating those preferences, far stronger than the slender reed of “God’s Word”. If there is no God, one can still rely on the principle that behaviors which promotes human survival are “good”. Those who argue that God’s morality is more important than human survival have a tough case to make. If there were no humans to engage in moral behavior, what’s the point of any morality?
Even though this existential imperative is “unconscious” in animal behavior, it provides a pretty good initial axiom for humankind’s rational exploration of good and bad behavior. I would certainly give more credence to a convincing explanation that a certain behavior promoted human survival than to anyone’s exhortation that the behavior was mandated by God, especially in light of the tenuous basis of God’s existence.
And I doubt that using human survival as a “greatest good” would lead to religion-like claims of moral authority by anyone. The rational analysis of the consequences of certain behaviors (nuclear war – bad, provision of adequate food for everyone – good) would trump any “authority’s” claim that a behavior that might lead to our extinction was good. The vast majority of behaviors for which there is no strong case to be made one way or another can fit in that great middle ground of “whatever floats your boat”, in which case we can happily ignore authority.
Unless of course, like most people, one has chosen to live in a culture where one voluntarily gives much prescriptive authority to majority decision. In that case we can keep our heads down and “go with the flow”, only seeking to persuade others when we think that a certain course of action is really repugnant and only taking action against others when it is immorally dangerous to humanity. I can live with that.
I do not see how the existence of a God must be postulated to create morality. Morality and good behavior are not necessarily the same thing. If the coercion, whether by God, or society is the only thing forcing good behavior, then I fail to see how that is morality. Morality is surely an inner sense of what is right or wrong. While, one can say that God has placed that in us, like a sort of spiritual pacemaker, it seems to be equally valid to say that we have evolved it because it is beneficial to our evolution as a species if we do not kill each other, steal from each other, or lie to each other so that we can co-operate with each other. Incidentally, even if you believe in God, this sense of morality can still be an evolutionary outcome, rather than the result of a God which gives out free will imposing it from outside.
Joe, I hope de Waal would disagree (as I certainly do) that science is somehow telling us that morality is all about defining human survival as the “greatest good”.
For our pre-cultural ancestors, moral emotions such as empathy and shame and innate judgments concerning fairness and willingness to risk injury and death to defend family and friends existed because they increased reproductive fitness. However, our ancestors were (based on likely similarities with chimpanzees) also jealous, greedy, deceptive, and sought to dominate others through violence. All of these positive and negative emotions and behaviors existed because in some environments they had increased reproductive fitness. The most you can say about even these pre-cultural ancestors is their ‘morality’ was a set of strategies for increasing reproductive fitness by increasing the benefits of cooperation in groups. Saying that human survival is the “greatest good” in a moral sense implies that jealousy, greed, deceit, and violence would be moral to the extent they increase human survival. This sounds unsupportable.
Defining human survival as the “greatest good” goes even further off target after the emergence of cultural moral standards. Groups can select cultural moral standards based on expected synergistic benefits (including both emotional goods and material goods benefits) from increased cooperation in the group. Indeed, particular cultural moral standards may have no effect on reproductive fitness or may even reduce reproductive fitness – for example, some moral standards advocate chastity.
It is important to understand that after the emergence of cultural moral standards, morality became un-tethered from reproductive fitness. The most accurate statement I am aware of science can make about morality (or at least a growing consensus I am aware of in evolutionary morality) is something to the effect of “Moral standards and behaviors are heuristics and strategies for increasing the benefits of cooperation in groups by acting unselfishly”.
The above assertion about moral standards and behaviors is an empirical claim that science should be able to show is either provisionally true or false. I look forward to the day it (or something close to it) becomes generally accepted as ‘true’ as a matter of science.
As F de W surely realises, corelation is not cause: that morality evolved in tandem with religion and the idea of God among humans does not necessarily mean that the former is a by-product of the latter!
The political animals that we are are perfectly aware that the propensity for good and bad within us is universal so it’s helpful to think that — in reference to the “fairness” principle — an omnipotent being exists to insure that others will abide by those rules we try to follow…
It seems to me that there is an unquestioned assumption in Frans de Waal’s essay, namely, that nonhuman animals do not have religion. In other words, the title of the piece, “Morals without God?” seems to be short-hand for the question, “Since human beings almost universally have religion, and other animals don’t, do we have reason to believe that, despite the continuity in something moral-like between other animals and ourselves, full-blooded morality requires religion?” Surprisingly, given the emphasis on that continuity in the bulk of the essay, de Waal’s answer appears to be “Yes.”
But I am moved to ask why we should accept the assumption that nonhuman animals lack religion. If at least the “building blocks” of morality are to be found in other animals, why should we not also expect that the same could be said about religion? Although I am not acquainted with the relevant literature, I’d bet my bottom dollar that this thesis has been defended somewhere with ethological evidence. Should we be at all surprised to learn that observation of other animals in their natural habitats shows them occasionally engaging in behavior that could plausibly be interpreted as, say, prayer-like, and given some kind of adaptive explanation? As de Waal says, “humanity never runs out of claims of what sets it apart, but it is a rare uniqueness claim that holds up for over a decade.”
Despite de Waal’s title, and the topicality of the question of morality’s dependence on religion, I’m not sure that this is the heart of the matter anyway. Of more significance may be his claim and argument that full-fledged morality is something distinctively human because only human animals seek, or are capable of seeking, “universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring and punishment.” Thus, it is our special cognitive and particularly intellectual capacities that set apart the human brand of compassion, fairness, etc. In this way de Waal seems to have the best of both worlds: Nonhuman animals must be recognized as moral progenitors, but human animals are still special in being the only full-blown moral beings.
I would like to point out that there are at least two other logical possibilities in light of both the data and defensible analyses of morality. First is that the tables could be turned. While it seems uncontroversial that no other animals will be pondering the relative merits of utilitarian and deontic ethics, or explicitly deriving decisions about what to do from first principles, or questioning the genuineness of their altruistic impulses because of knowledge of their own egoism or selfishness, or attempting to discern the implications for morality of its having some kind of evolutionary function, does it follow that the morality of other animals is thereby less moral? Why not argue just the opposite? Every one of those abilities could be seen as a corrupting influence on genuine moral responsiveness. For example: Who is more moral – the being who acts on spontaneous impulse to help another, or the being who calculates that she ought to and therefore does? Again: the one who feels a pure desire to come to another’s aid, or the one who has an altruistic feeling adulterated by awareness of a possible reward for so acting?
Finally, taking this a step further, might we not see our human capacity for seeking those “universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring and punishment“ as putting as at not only a moral disadvantage, as I have just suggested, but even an intellectual one? By this I mean: the real superiority we humans have may be our ability to imagine intellectual fantasies. Perhaps the notion of universal standards of morality that can be justified is as much a wisp o’ the wisp as the God we may also be uniquely-among-animals equipped to conceive.
I have been a longtime admirer of Frans de Waal as one of the surprisingly few researchers working to embed human emotion, reason, and ethics in their evolutionary context (Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is another). De Waal’s measured and grounded description of the bases of human morality is a welcome tonic, when some of the most prominent and strident among evolutionary theory’s supposed champions (including the atheist Richard Dawkins) speak contemptuously of religious metaphysics but seem to posit an extra-biological, almost numinous essence lighting the human brain in distinction from all others. I do not ascribe to any religion, but the ubiquity of belief strongly suggests that it has some adaptive value, and I am willing to suppose that my atheism might be of a piece with my choice not to have children: a marker or symptom of my general unfitness.
That said, I think an evolutionary perspective can support morality at its most abstract, paradoxically by insisting on our animal natures. The widespread reluctance to acknowledge how deeply we remain embedded in animal life has serious practical consequences, as it accelerates our destruction of the world we commonly inhabit. This is obvious in the sense that our failures of identification with other species remove barriers to violence and rapacious exploitation; it is less obvious in our expectation that “uniquely human reason” will rescue us from our own greedy appetites. We wishfully suppose ourselves ennobled by our comparatively well-developed cortices, but the reasoning (or rationalizing) power supplied by those wrinkly blankets obfuscates as much as it elucidates; it has made us masters at self-deception.
The rise of formal religion from evolved social norms is due simply to our inheritance of another primate behavior – the tendency of the tribe to submit, often without question, to the authority and leadership of a few dominant members. As we can see, this may or may not prove beneficial in a given situation.
Abrahamic religions are based on some ancient book, a cursory and objective evaluation of which shows that they fall far short of our secular laws in terms of compassion, justice, and, yes, morals. The concept of eternal punishment, for example, far exceeds our worst punishment of a death-sentence and cannot be morally justified, full-stop. You refer to the Fall, as another example. It’s nothing but a clever ruse to pronounce the innocent guilty of a crime they could not possibly have committed. Is there any parallel to this in our secular laws? (Apart from Nazism and other unsavory -isms?)
One only has to look at our secular laws — man made laws — to see that religion is unnecessary to define moralistic behavior. Consider, for example, any of the isolated pagan tribes that have not been reached by Abrahamic proselytizers. They seem to have managed fine without any capital-G singular god. Of course, they have their “religions” or superstitions; perhaps a substitute for a lack of scientific knowledge or even the guile of some power-hungry authority figures.
While I find the study of moral behavior in primates to be interesting, mixing religion into the equation turns it into another thing altogether. Your premise that atheists rely on science, and your question about what science has to offer, seems to be flawed if you define science in its classical sense. Science includes the study of behavioral patterns of primitive societies, advanced animals, and even religion. The ubiquity of Abrahamic religions is easily explained by a scientific examination of their characteristics, namely their reliance on the cornerstones of proselytization and income generation (Mass, Shabbat…) masked as they are as something else.
I find that Science is absolutely in the business of telling us the meaning of life and how to live our lives. If we only listened; if humanity had not been so polluted by organized religion, our overall condition and that of our limited planet would be much improved. Perhaps that is why there are “strident” atheists. What is obvious to them cannot be seen by the brainwashed.
Religion provides a motive for morality but does not define morality itself. If God would have us do what is right, then presumably that is because it right and not merely because wills it. Taking objective criteria for arbitrating between scientific theories as a model, it is possible to advanced counterpart criteria for arbitrating between theories of morality. The most defensible turns out to be the deontological conception of always treating other persons with respect and never merely as means. This is not only the only theory that satisfies the objective criteria but it also supports the “Golden Rule” of doing unto others as we would have then do unto us. I have spelled this out in (2005) and (2007). There are good reasons for doing what is right even in the absence of any God or gods. One of the features that distinguishes humans from other animals thus turns out to be that we can embrace a morality that transcends our biology. And this realization enhances our appreciation for our fellow humans and for the nature of human nature.
Is an action really altruism if we are driven to it by our instincts alone? Does an evolutionary account of morality live up to all we have envisioned morality to be? Sure, it provides an argument against the claims that without religion we would cease to act in the interests of other people, but is that really an account of morality? A person who has a natural drive to act in the interests of others seems less worthy of esteem than a person who has a natural drive to act in her own interests, yet nevertheless acts in the interests of others.
While this article may reveal evolutionary reasons that the average person wouldn’t be wholly selfish in the absence of religion, it does not provide any reason to believe that the average person wouldn’t also be also somewhat selfish in the absence of religion. Admittedly, the average Christian is probably somewhat selfish, but the view of morality espoused by Christianity is, at least, a higher ideal than merely a person giving into whatever mix of selfish and selfless instincts she may happen to have.
As our experience shows, and this article provides no reason to deny, people can have both selfish and selfless instincts. The question of morality is not, as this article assumes, whether abandoning religion in favour of evolutionary theory will lead to a purely cold and selfish society – it surely wouldn’t. The question of morality is whether abandoning religion in favour of evolutionary theory will destroy any reason to strive to become better people than we would become by our instincts alone. It’s not a question of how we would behave in light of our instincts, but rather a question of how we should behave in light of our instincts. This article provides no naturalistic answer to this true question of morality.
If naturalists want to maintain the essence of morality, they must provide some reason that people ought to defy those selfish instincts they may happen to have.
How does De Waal know that when he claims, for instance, that the golden rule is produced by mechanisms of empathy and reciprocity that such mechanisms are not also the byproduct of cultural development? Everyone runs to the guns of evolutionary accounts, but it seems uncertain that we can parse with exacting measure the point where culture and nature can be separated so easily.
I am not convinced that “veneer theory” can be dismissed as easily as, “Morality is just a thin veneer over a cauldron of nasty tendencies”. Morality as an existential concept is a human construct requiring complex language. In terms of our evolutionary development, complex language and therefore any definitions of morality are relatively modern and thus are veneer thin layers on top of the substrata of millions of years of evolution. It is not a thin veneer over a cauldron of nasty tendencies, but a thin linguistic veneer over millions of years of evolutionary pressures. De Waal cannot have it both ways. He cannot on the one hand observe empathy and altruistic behaviour in apes and then hesitate to describe them as moral beings, purely because they are unable to vocalise why, and on the other hand deny the concept of morality as a thin veneer even though the development of complex language and thus the existential concept of morality is relatively recent in evolutionary terms.
I would argue that morality is merely a label we slap on to our instinctive behaviours to help justify and rationalise our animal behaviour. The best illustration that morality is a veneer over our animal instincts is revenge. Revenge is one of those acts with no place in modern morality and yet people will often sympathise and empathise with the perpetrator of revenge whilst publicly decrying the act as immoral. It is an instinct. Revenge cannot be rationally defended as morally good (though people try) and yet it continues to permeate our culture (particularly movies), our psyches and the justice system, as though it has some sort of virtue.
I think the mistake made by people dismissive of “veneer theory” is that beneath the veneer is nastiness. This is not the case. Beneath the veneer is millions of years of evolutionary pressure, which is not evil, or good, but is exerting extraordinary and often subconscious influence on animals in order to propagate itself. Sometimes this results in what we now label “morally good” behaviour such as altruism, empathy and innate fairness, other times it results in what we label “morally bad” like greed, dishonesty and even genocide.
De Waal’s argument that it would be impossible to know what morality would look like without religion is nonsense. Despite the all-pervading influence of religion, the philosophical “golden rule” appropriated and adapted by nearly every religion is the basis for morality and the basis of the behaviour he observes in apes every day. No need for religion.
While thoroughly enjoying this article, I think it is necessary to address the claim that “New Athiests” are suggesting that science should, or even could, fill the ‘void’ that would be left should religion not exist.
Having read many of the works of the authors stated (amongst others), I can say with great confidence that, not only do the authors make these claims regarding morality, they go out of their way to state the opposite. Their main argument centres around the fact that we should question, sceptically, people who tell us how we should be living our lives such that some evidence is proferred as to why we should do as they say.
Given that, if one has atheistic beliefs, one does not believe in a god, why would a void exist at all, upon removal of religion? If you remove nothing (which is what god is to an atheist), you’re actually preserving the status quo.
Frans de Waal has made a most valuable contribution to a discussion that is not likely to end soon, given the starkly divergent philosophical premises of the participants. The two comments below are only intended to amplify the points de Waal has made so eloquently.
First, there is a large body of relevant literature on the evolution of Religious Prosociality, such as the works of Atran and Norezayan (2004), Norezayan and Shariff (2008), Shariff, Norezayan and Heinrich (2009), inter alia. This literature supports the points made by Prof. de Waal, suggesting that the evolution of religion in humans piggy-backed on various evolved pre-human precursors.
And second, Frans de Waal should be commended for pointing the finger at the rather bizarre human exceptionalism pushed by some linguists, most conspicuously—and persistently—N. Chomsky (viz his collaboration with M. Hauser & T. Fitch, in Science 2002). To many linguists who are interested in the evolution of mind, sociality and communication, this emphatically anti-evolutionary stance by prominent members of our discipline has been an abiding embarrassment (see Givon 2009). It takes the clear eyes of a primatologist to call the linguists’ bluff.
Tom Givon
Institute of Cognitive and Decision Science
University of Oregon
References:
Atran & Norezayan (2004) BBS, 27: 713-770
Givon, T. (2009) , Amsterdam: J. Benjamins
Norezaya & Shariff (2008) Science, 233
Shariff, Norezayan and Heinrich (2009), in Schaller, Norezayan, Heine, Tamagishi &
Kameda (eds 2009) , LEA
You are missing one critical element in your argument, that being that persons who have unhealthy narcissism (meaning a maladapted personality and grandiose, albeit, unhealthy sense of self) have a very different, if not absent, moral compass. They are motivated by excessive need for attention and domination. Therefore, this type personality throws aside common morals and ethics and will engage in lies, half-lies, deceit, aggression, covert and overt manipulation to get what they want from others. Their inability to recognize otherness is at the root of their blindness to morally acceptable behavior. Although we find many unhealthy narcissists in the clergy it is due to their need to align themselves with a superior ideology, and not to attend to the needs of others. It is Self first and others last and only present as props. Unhealthy narcissism develops as a result of inferior parenting, neglect, abuse, overvaluing or undervaluing the child thus resulting in the child suppressing the true authentic self. The pathology as recognized today is all but impossible to change. This behavior is encouraged and reinforced by competitive societies where winning is valued over everything else. Cooperation needs to be stressed and moral ethics taught to children to curb this behavior.
Communal living requires ethics, however basic, and every human community demonstrates these ethics in religion, and in law in more advanced groups. Religion and law formalize the community’s agreed upon ethics/morals, which explains why religion varies greatly around the world down through the ages, but the basic ethics has been and still is pretty similar around the world. ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (at least in this community) is as constant as anything in human systems. Community requires ethics, but how those ethics are lifted up in religion shows the creative side of humanity—not any absolute Truth.
If I may repeat something that has been said many times, the god that the writer and commentators do not believe in, I and my fellow orthodox Jews also do not believe in. The God of the Jewish Bible defines morality because he defines everything, having created it then and now. The thought that this magnificently ordered world and especially the complex living creatures on it came about by random mutations is absurd and were it not for self interest and peer pressure, honest scientists would admit it. Let’s face it, it took a long time for scientists to abandon other beliefs as well. I do not know much about biology, but there are many religious scientists that do and have told me that the chance of a Human eye with its support system (for example) developing by chance is very close to zero. But the alternative of a God defining moral behavior is unacceptable to the modern intellectual as it was to the ancient hedonists. I am not suggesting an equivalency, just a similarity. Humanist morality took a serious blow when the the most advanced and cultured civilization in Europe became Nazi. What happened? They reverted to their ancient gods of war and conquest. They abandoned whatever semblance of Biblical moralty their culture had and turned on the people who presented the Bible to the world. No, I’m sorry, there good social behavior without God-based religion, but no real absolute obligatory morality. Good behavior will stick when things are good, but not when things go bad – as they often have in human history.
Come on now, people. It is not surprising that everything inside a paper bag looks brown.
Many posters seem to discount the tint this culture casts on questions about religion and morality.
Why is it such a struggle for so many folks to recognize that the society we are living in is the product of only one of any number of possible cultural “solutions” to organizing intelligent social mammal life? Surely it must at least occur to some that Abrahamic religions dovetail nicely with male dominance and yet male dominance is hardly necessary for successful human life. In fact, some people might suggest it is quite the opposite.
Instead of starting with formulaic belief systems that brutal cultures have left us, why not start by asking what kind of a culture would conform to our better natures? Then maybe we’d get around to entertaining questions the answers to which have real consequences for human happiness. Like, how do we care for our children? How do we treat those who do the caring? How do we educate citizens and to what end? And so forth.
If bonobo and chimpanzee societies can differ as much as they do, how hard is it to imagine organizing ourselves differently than we do and yet still serve our human needs? So far we have tried the punitive, authoritative, hierarchical approach with great cost to life and liberty. We have chosen systems that reward the greedy and punish the meek. We have permitted great evil to be done in the name of religion, and left great good mostly to individuals.
Religion was developed to control people who were mostly not capable of self-regulation. But they were –and many remain– in this condition because we continue not to educate them in a moral culture. We tell children the story of “human nature,” as Dr. de Waal notes, in which “Morality is just a thin veneer over a cauldron of nasty tendencies.” Do you imagine this is the ideal way to encourage the development of their higher natures? We don’t have to take on faith what the consequences of our choices have produced; just look at the evidence in the world around us. What we haven’t tried is an approach that accepts the human tableau of instinctual behaviors and tries to bend us toward the good. Why not, I wonder.
First off one does not need a “God” to have a moral point of view. Anyone can have a moral framework, which allows one to decide, discern, and/or evaluate what are “good” and “bad” actions. The trick is, can this framework hold under examination? Frans de Waal seems to be arguing that our morals are based on social instinct, and presumably these instincts are based on traits/genes passed down by surviving creatures, who give birth to more creatures that survive and continue this cycle. Since Humans have “better” intellectual capacities, we gain a better “moral conscience”, and we develop social norms.
Let me find a definition of instinct. “1. (adj) instinct, inherent aptitude; inborn pattern of behavior often responsive to specific stimuli “the spawning instinct in salmon”; “altruistic instincts in social animals” and:
“2. (adj) instinct: natural inward impulse; unconscious, involuntary, or unreasoning prompting to any mode of action, whether bodily, or mental, without a distinct apprehension of the end or object to be accomplished.”
Let me get this straight. Our moral beliefs are as involuntary as “the spawning instinct of salmon”, or migration patterns of birds. Here lies the crux of the problem; we all have moral beliefs. We argue that rape is wrong, racism is wrong, big government is a bad thing, Capitalism is good thing, and Courage and Love are virtues worth having. No matter what we argue though, the assumption is that we are arguing above our own personal likes and dislikes. That what we are arguing for is rational. One aspect is rationality is the ability to discern between two opposing alternatives. We can actually see one course of action is “better” than another. For example I have A and B to choose from, but due to instinct, upbringing, societal constraints I can only choose B, then am I really rational?
The point is can we really say we are rational in our moral decisions, if they are based on instincts? The answer I believe would be no. Another problem has just occurred. If my moral thoughts are by definition irrational, then what about the other areas of my thought? My views on Science, Religion, Philosophy, and Politics are called into question. If moral thought is based on instincts and therefore irrational, then why not my other thoughts? A strange problem arises: can de Waal argue rationally that we are irrational? It might be true, but it does not seem possible to attain that height of sleight of hand.
I found De Waal’s commentary to be refreshing and timely. Ditto most of the comments. A recently published novel, , by Laurence Gonzalez, deals with some of the same issues, and I suspect many other readers of this blog would find it worth reading. Lucy is a bonobo/human hybrid, and her existence challenges many hominid belief systems, including some religious ones.
Are we born with this sense of morality or is it taught? Babies see it, live it, since their first moments after birth. What about children who have been neglected? They frequently have emotional and social issues.
While I agree that morality exists without God’s help, I also have to question how much is ingrained through social interactions when very young.
I think a number of different questions are being run together. For example:
1) Is it possible to believe that something is moral or immoral without believing that there is a God?
Of course, many atheists believe in and act on moral principles.
2) Is it possible for someone to behave in ways that we consider moral (or they consider moral) without their having a belief in God?
Of course, even theists can recognize that some atheists behave morally.
3) Are there any objective moral rules binding on us, i.e., a source of genuine moral obligation, without God?
Some theists believe that God is the source of normativity, the bindingness of morality on us. Kant, utilitarians, many others disagree. The issue here isn’t where we got the idea of morality, or why we sometimes behave morally, but what makes morality obligatory. I don’t see how comparisons with other primates help us answer this question. To inquire into the source of moral obligation is to inquire into the foundation of moral obligation, not its origin. After all, I may have evolved to believe certain actions are moral, and to act in accordance with those beliefs, even though nothing is genuinely, or objectively, obligatory.
We can grasp others’ mental contents -their beliefs and intentions, and also their interests and needs. These grasped contents are certainly weaker than ours. If there is a full contradiction between my own and not my own interests, it is due to the fact that only the former (in the beginning) are able to guide my behaviour. (What do I mean by full contradiction? It only focuses on really costly and effortful helping behaviour. In addition, this contradiction does not cease even after considering, firstly, kin altruism, secondly, reciprocal altruism, and thirdly, possible gains in social prestige for altruist behaviour.) However, human subjects know that both–my own and others’ interiority–are at a similar level morally speaking. I would suggest that this contradiction between an actual, practical, lower-rank status and a theoretical, recognisable equal-rank status is one of the defining features of human beings. This problem, this contradictory duality of opposed estimations, can only be alleviated by means of an effort aiming at focusing on the complete known reality.
Boyer, 2008 has suggested that the capacity for episodic future thought –also referred to as prospective mental time travel– may underlie the human ability to make choices with high long-term benefits. (It is well known that humans discount the value of future rewards over time. This issue –although, in my view, it is a less interesting one– is similar to the role of interests of others.) Likewise, the capacity for inner speech (an ability that arises at the age of seven) may support the effort aiming at focusing on the complete known reality -that is, on the truth. What is the conclusion? Morality -and moral freedom – is supported by the human capacity for objective (and not merely subjective, selfish) knowledge. Thus, morality would be beyond non-human primates. Since the Big Bang and since unicellular beings, a very long and, at the end of the day, clearly progressive evolution has produced us, our language, our developmental trajectory from children to adults and our capacity to focus on the truth or objective reality.
In our search for truth, it seems to me that we need a completely different approach altogether. The answer is an actual problem, for our very thoughts are but an automated process. We feel, we think, we believe things are. But whether things are or aren’t, it is a matter of personal experience. Is there God? If not, then we have to throw away a fact that there’s such thing as universal consciousness. Then why are we working so hard on creating such? Why do we establish connections, why do we try and find people who’d agree with us on a given statement?
On the other hand, you have morality, the moral freedom. We use it, we claim it’s there to undo the chaos, to support life; a building block of progress, both inwards and outwards. But then why does our society flourish, with immorality in its very core? Personally, what would you choose: an eternal afterlife, or providing your loved ones with the things they need now?
Morality and God is all the same. We give it different properties, we try and organize it, we try and find it a place in our tiny little space called ego, put a label on it and then find something else to do. In my opinion, it all comes down to personal choice – whichever it is, it is the right one!
The main problem of morality without God, is that it is either nonsensical, nonexistent, or a distortion of the true meaning of the word. Science is a very powerful tool, but it is limited in that it can only describe the world as it is. If we take science/naturalism seriously, we must admit that all teleological explanations, all purposes, all non-material things are illusory at best. What we refer to as “right” or “wrong” is at bottom a judgment rendered by society expressing its preferences–likes and dislikes–for no reason other than the operations of blind chance. Certainly, you may think you have logical and well-considered reasons for believing such ideas, but in reality it is simply that your neurons are firing a certain way due to genetics, environmental conditioning, and chance. The “morality” of a highly educated philanthropist is equal to that of a petty thief. Ultimately, the naturalistic view believes that “morality” in the truest sense of the word, is an illusion.
Stating that morality cannot exist without God does not mean that religious people are more moral than non-religious people or atheists. It is simply admitting the fact that any discussion of morality that does not presuppose a God, or at least something higher than mere fermions and bosons, is somewhat ridiculous. To actually get anywhere in most discussions of morality, we say “assume life has meaning”, “assume we have control over our actions”, “assume our ideas of right and wrong matter” without any explanation or support for these assumptions. Using a philosophy that ultimately destroys these assumptions to build something on top of them is useless. Any such moral debate will, under some level of scrutiny, collapse under its own weight.
I do find it interesting that the existence of altruistic instincts is being used as evidence against religion. If there is a Creator God, is it so surprising that he would create human beings with some kind of natural inclination to moral behavior? Even the Bible says “Indeed, when Gentiles, who do not have the law, do by nature things required by the law…. they show that the requirements of the law are written on their hearts” (Romans 2:14-15). It seems to me the heart of this argument is a chicken-and-egg type question: Did God provide revelation to clarify the morals he had already written into our biological make-up? Or did humans somehow evolve conscience-like instincts and then invent religion as a means of justifying it? I feel that how we answer such questions will go a ways toward deciding how seriously we should take morality.
The conclusion we end up with often depends upon where in the continuum of the story of life we start and stop. The question may not simply be answered because conscious (but not self-conscious)animals exhibit traits which self conscious human mind defines as displaying a kind of morality that religion claims is rooted in God. But doesn’t true morality demand self-consciousness–that is that we knowingly act in an unselfish manner for another’s benefit? At least some philosophers and religionists alike have concluded that the highest morality is giving up one’s own life to save another…a child or perhaps a fellow soldier. That kind of choice would not seem destined to insure the survival of the best among us. It would be hard to argue that animalistic behavior which might seem to us as rudimentary morality would seem to the animal as such. They just do what their conscious but not self-conscious brains direct them to do. With this as context, the notion that “brain is consciousness and mind is God” perhaps points to the larger question: if self-consciousness is required as the basis for true moral choosing, where then did it come from? Self-conscious human beings, not God, created their religions. But what makes an animal self-conscious rather than just conscious? To me it is a reality question not a religious question. If we start the story at what we think is the beginning instead of part way along, is it possible/likely that it was and is God after all who created a reality in which human beings could evolve (perhaps God’s process for growth to perfection in the finite?) to a point where they would come to manifest characteristics–like self-conscious morality–which must surely be inherent in an absolute creator personality? And is it also possible that it is unique personality which God bestows on humans during the evolutionary process which forever separates personal human beings as self-conscious from their animal forbears whose growth apparently stopped (at least so far) at the level of consciousness.
Moral Systems Without God
In his compelling analysis, Frans de Waal aligns human morality with nonhuman moral instincts, while simultaneously distinguishing human morality as efforts to “judge the appropriateness of actions” that do not affect us. As he puts it, distinctly human morality is characterized by “a move toward universal standards combined with an elaborate system of justification, monitoring, and punishment.” This statement, however true, begs the question of “why”. Why do we care what others do? De Waal notes that “at this point religion comes in,” and he describes how religious beliefs may provide something that science cannot. Without disagreeing with this latter point, must religion come in to explain the uniquely human rules of engagement? As another evolutionary psychologist, I wonder how evolution supports the considerable amounts of energy and time that go into monitoring and punishing others, not to mention the mental gymnastics required to justify our behavior. Surely evolutionary pressures run counter to this extreme level of investment in matters that do not affect us. Or do these matters affect us? Are we missing some sort of profound benefit to our genes that justifies these top-down, conscious and unconscious mental gymnastics that are time consuming, and result in compulsive monitoring of ourselves and others?
To address this question requires that the analysis consider selection pressures on qualities that are uniquely human. Many scientists agree that humans are unique in the extent to which they must give prolonged care to helpless infants. My work suggests that this uniquely human condition shaped a human capacity for suppressing self-interest, at high cost, over long periods of time, and even in the absence of reciprocity. The implication of this capacity is that self interested motives such as the desire for resources and sex are at war with our “other-regarding” motives that direct sustained help to others. It is not unreasonable to speculate that this almost ubiquitous war between self and other, and among others, (moral dilemmas) produces “WarGames” (MGM,1983), systems of moral thought that help us run simulations to decide when and whether we should choose ourselves or others. This process would create increasingly intricate and subtle neuroanalytic capabilities for attempting to solve the unsolvable. Because these mechanisms, iterated over time, equip us with rather large computational devices, we are able to anticipate the inherent tragedies that result from this war between self and other, and among different others. Whether it is a jealous lover who cannot reconcile his hatred and love for his wife or a single mother who cannot reconcile her cocaine addiction with her need to work for a living, on some level we know that motivational conflicts can and do result in tragedy. As we are interdependent with individuals in our social world, perhaps it is in our evolutionary interest to use our reason to create and follow rules, to reduce (even slightly) the prevalence and incidence of harm to all. In this way, the uniquely human part of morality—our allegiance to creating, following, and enforcing rules—may amount to a desperate act of altruism, so compelling that we give up our own freedom, wants, and needs to try to prevent the horrific inevitable consequences of being endowed with competing and contradictory social instincts.
As for God and religion, perhaps it takes faith in a higher power to live with the irresistible conclusion that the war between self and other cannot be won. But then this means that faith also excuses us from following the moral systems that are distinctly human, permitting arguably the most heinous types of tragedy.
In the final paragraphs of the essay, Prof de Waal expresses concern about the moral status of a prospective religion-free society (although in a pluralistic society, the question seems better addressed at the level of community, defined broadly). It isn’t clear whether implicit in his concern is that the moral status of some religion-infused societies/communities is (or ever was) admirably high. If that is implicit, it would be enlightening to hear about those societies/communities. Surely no one in this forum considers the moral status of contemporary religion-infused societies (including, sadly, the US) even acceptable, never mind admirably high (or can have failed to note that the moral status of the US seems steadily to decline as the degree of religious infusion increases). It’s enough to “give us pause”.
Commenter Paul makes a point that I think warrants elaboration. Many who thankfully did “absorb the basic tenets of Christian morality” (as practiced rather than preached) from the society of their youth (in my case, a “morality” that included 50s Bible belt racism, sexism, homophobia, tribalism, et al) nor any other dogmatic and theistic belief system nonetheless feel no void in need of being filled, whether by science or anything else. Such people are often labeled “nihilist”, commonly but mistakenly understood to be a debilitating curse. Yet in my experience, they often are a generally cheerful, productive, and arguably “moral” bunch. So, I suggest that we actually do have some idea of what a religion-free community might be like, and it’s actually rather attractive.
As for criticism of the polemic strategies of so-called “new atheists” (seemingly quite irrelevant to the topic at hand but apparently in some circles), it should at least be accurate lest it worse on the critic than the target. Eg, the observation about “brights” is at best misleading (see Brights Movement entry in wiki), there is nothing “supposed” about Dawkins’ status as a “champion” of evolutionary theory, and the incoherence of “fundamentalist, war mongering atheists” admits no substantive response.
I think that Buddhism would answer a lot of Professor de Waal’s questions. This is because Buddhism is not based on any God (Buddha was just a man) to make sure that you are moral, but stresses the importance of practicing selfless behavior as guided by your conscience. In fact, doing “good” because it is stated somewhere in a scripture or commandment is less valued in Buddhism than doing a good deed out of the compassion in your heart.
Furthermore, Buddhist practice and beliefs are scientifically-based. Many of the things that Siddhartha predicted when he was here on earth are just starting to be confirmed scientifically. This includes the size of atom and dark matter.
Maybe what religion is good for is practicing what we intuitively know. We cannot always count on science to prove something before we believe it because there are limitations on how fast science can improve and how fast it can generate information. Therefore, as science catches up, we can try to live our lives to the fullest by using our most powerful tool-the mind-to truly “know.” This is the benefit of Buddhism.
Science and Religion
What is striking about the hundreds of reactions to my blog here and elsewhere (such as opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com) is that even though 90% of my text questions the religious origins of human morality, and wonders if we need a God to be good, it is the other 10%, in which I tentatively assign a role to religion, that has drawn by far the most ire. Atheists don’t like any less than 100% agreement with their position.
To have a productive debate, religion needs to recognize the power of the scientific method and the truths it has revealed, but its opponents need to recognize that one cannot simply dismiss a social phenomenon found in every major society. If humans are inherently religious, or at least show rituals related to the supernatural, there is a big question to be answered. The question is not whether God exists, or not — which I find a monumentally uninteresting question defined by the narrow parameters of monotheism — but why humans universally feel the need for supernatural entities. Is this just to stay socially connected or does it also underpin morality? And if so, what will happen to morality in its absence?
Just posing such an obvious question has become controversial in an atmosphere in which one has to be either pro science or pro religion. How did we get maneuvered into this polarization, this small-mindedness, as if we are taking part in the Oxford Debating Society, where all that matters is winning or losing? Remember, we are talking about how to lead our lives and why try to be good — very personal questions — and all we get is a shouting match. There are in fact no answers to these questions, only approximations, and while science may be an excellent source of information it is simply not designed to offer any inspiration. It used to be that science and religion went together, and in fact (as I tried to illustrate with Bosch’s paintings) Western science ripened in the bosom of Christianity and its explicit desire for truth. Ironically, even atheism is a product of this desire, as explained by the philosopher John Gray:
Those who wish to remove religion and define morality as the pursuit of scientifically defined well-being (à la Sam Harris) should read up on earlier attempts in this regard, such as by B. F. Skinner, who thought that humans could achieve greater happiness and productivity if they just followed reward and punishment schemes. Skinner’s colleague John Watson envisioned “baby factories” which would dispense with the “mawkish” emotions humans are prone to, an idea applied with disastrous consequences in Romanian orphanages. And talking of Romania, was not the entire Communist “experiment” an attempt at a society without God? Apart from the question how moral these societies turned out to be, I find it intriguing that Communism began to look more and more like a religion itself. The singing, marching, reciting of poems and pledges and waving in the air of Little Red Books smacked of holy fervor, hence my remark that any movement that tries to promote a certain moral agenda — even while denying God — will soon look like a religion. Since people look up to those perceived as more knowledgeable, anyone who wants to promote a certain agenda, even one inspired by science, will inevitably come face to face with the human tendency to follow leaders and let them do the thinking.
Individual and Community
The German philosopher Immanuel Kant saw as little value in human kindness as former U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney did in energy conservation. Cheney mocked conservation as “a sign of personal virtue” that, sadly, wouldn’t do the planet any good. Kant praised compassion as “beautiful,” yet considered it irrelevant to a virtuous life. Who needs tender feelings if duty is all that matters?
I had to think of this reading Andrew Jehan’s commentary that anyone with a natural drive to act altruistically may be less deserving of our esteem than someone who has no such drive, yet still shows altruism. The opposite view was voiced by Joel Marks, who prefers someone with the spontaneous impulse to help over someone who helps based on the calculation that it will be good to do so. It is an interesting dilemma, comparable to the question whom you want to be married to, someone who loves you or someone who is equally nice but acts out of duty? The latter partner is surely putting in more effort, and deserves our admiration, but I’d much prefer the former. Human morality is sturdier and more reliable if supported by genuine prosocial tendencies, which is why it is so important to demonstrate, as I have done in my primate research, that many of these tendencies are older than our species.
Morality is a system of behavioral rules that transcends the individual. Self-interest is of course recognized, but it is weighed against the interests of the larger community. The typical argument runs like “we understand that you might want to steal someone else’s possessions, but if everyone were to do so, society would fall apart, and you would not like it either if it happened to you.” Morality appeals to the community level, and indirectly to your own interests as a member of the community. It is designed to reduce strife and promote social cohesion. Concern about the community is to some degree recognizable in chimpanzees, but humans are masters at it and have turned it into a set of social norms that everyone is supposed to obey.
This is in everyone’s interest, albeit to differing degrees (e.g. the rich have more interest in rules of possession than the poor). So, when Stephanie Brown comments that “surely evolutionary pressures run counter to … investment in matters that do not affect us,” her interpretation of the disinterestedness of Adam Smith’s “impartial spectator” may be a bit too literal. Smith meant that we judge situations as moral or immoral even if we are not directly involved, but this is not to deny our interest in the moral level of society as a whole. Morality promotes cooperation, as Darwin already speculated, so it is important for us to monitor it at every level, whether we are directly affected or not. As soon as morality begins to crumble around us, our own well-being as a member of society is at risk.
This conversation, while ending here, continues on Facebook. Join us there by logging on to your Facebook account and proceeding to our group: .
» 
Moral Standards and Goodness Can’t Exist Without God
Atheists’ argument that goodness and moral standards can exist without God does not hold up. If there’s no God, people don’t live after death and aren’t held accountable for their actions, good or evil. That’s why Dostoevsky said, “Destroy a man’s belief in immortality and... everything would be permitted, even cannibalism” ( The Brothers Karamazov ).
To say that an atheistic worldview provides no basis for the existence of good and evil does not mean that atheists have no sense of right and wrong. They do. They live in a culture influenced by a historic belief in God and the morality revealed in Scripture. This provides them a residual basis for believing that moral categories are important, while their own worldview doesn’t.
How does an atheistic worldview explain an atheist’s morals? Suppose time, chance, and natural forces accounted for us. If we could move from nonlife to life and from irrational to rational—quantum leaps, to say the least—then what more could we do than invent pragmatic social rules to govern group behavior? Since the powerful make the rules and they would survive longer by making the weak serve them, then why would anyone but the weak want life to change?
If the natural world is all there is, would mankind get its morals from animal instincts? A gazelle runs from the cheetah, but gazelles don’t sit around the campfire and discuss how unfair it is for cheetahs to kill gazelles. Neither do cheetahs wrestle with the morality of whether they should kill gazelles. Do fish have rights that sharks should recognize and respect? Are sharks evil for eating fish? Would a good shark refrain from taking advantage of vulnerable fish? If so, how long would it survive?
In an evolutionary worldview, why object to stronger human beings stealing from or killing weaker ones? Wouldn’t this simply be natural selection and survival of the fittest, not a question of right or wrong?
It doesn’t help to define happiness as pleasure, as opposed to pain. Being eaten by cheetahs doesn’t make gazelles happy, but eating gazelles makes cheetahs happy. Animals can experience “happiness” or lack of it, but that doesn’t provide a moral code. Animal ruthlessness and lack of compassion for the weak is simply how the system works. How could anyone view it as evil?
The naturalist may claim that the survival of the fittest is descriptive, not prescriptive; that it describes the world as it is, not as it should be. But on what does he base any sense of should? Why “should” he operate differently than the way the natural order operates, since he’s part of that natural order himself? Any appeal to natural law seems baseless, unless there is a Creator, a Lawgiver, who has built into us a sense of that natural law.
Atheists who have thought through the implications of their worldview occasionally admit its utter moral emptiness. Unbeliever William Provine put it this way in a debate: “Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear.... There are no gods, no purposes.... There is no life after death.... There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans.”
Notice his admission that there is no ultimate foundation for ethics. The naturalistic worldview has no basis for declaring some things good and others evil.
But surely something within Dr. Provine can look at good and rejoice, then look at evil and cry out, “This is wrong!” What is it that cries out? The Bible calls it the conscience, God’s law written on our hearts (see Romans 2:15). We have a moral code, a natural law built into us. That’s what allows us to step outside of what we see around us and call it good or evil.
Excerpted from If God Is Good: Faith in the Midst of Suffering and Evil .
Photo by Lachlan Gowen on Unsplash
Randy Alcorn ( @randyalcorn ) is the author of over sixty books and the founder and director of Eternal Perspective Ministries .
Randy's Blog
Every week, we share three resources to help you develop an eternal perspective..
Subscribe to have them delivered to your inbox.
Does God Exist? A Summary of Some Arguments for His Existence
Where Do Human Rights Come from?
If There Is No God, Why Is There So Much Good in the World?
Secondary Menu
Morality without god (philosophy in action), walter sinnott-armstrong.
Oxford University Press
The author brings to bear convincing examples and data, as well as a lucid, elegant, and easy to understand writing style. This book should fit well with the debates raging over issues like evolution and intelligent design, atheism, and religion and public life as an example of a pithy, tightly constructed argument on an issue of great social importance.
- Learning Objectives
- Departmental Newsletter
- Research Highlight
- Why Philosophy?
- Philosophy Major/Minor
- Certificate: Philosophy, Politics & Economics
- Graduation with Distinction
- Global Education
- New to Philosophy?
- Related Certificates
- Language Requirements
- Future Research Statement & Oral Examination
- Preliminary Examination
- Dissertation
- Dissertation Defense
- Professional Development
- Placement Guide
- Financial Support
- How to Apply
- Center for Comparative Philosophy
- Duke Causation Group
- Du Châtelet Prize
- Graduate Certificate Program
- Imagination and Modal Cognition Lab
- Project Vox
- Summer Seminars in Neuroscience and Philosophy
- Affiliated Programs & Centers
- Selected Faculty Books
- Journal Articles and Papers
- Primary Faculty
- Secondary Faculty
- Affiliated Faculty
- Postdoctoral Researchers
- Emeritus Faculty
- Graduate Students
- Visiting Scholars
- For Our Students
- Assisting Duke Students
- Equip Project
- RF Chapters
- Translations
Get Dr. Craig's newsletter and keep up with RF news and events.
Can We Be Good without God?
Why God is the only sound foundation for morality.
Can we be good without God? At first the answer to this question may seem so obvious that even to pose it arouses indignation. For while those of us who are Christian theists undoubtedly find in God a source of moral strength and resolve which enables us to live lives that are better than those we should live without Him, nevertheless it would seem arrogant and ignorant to claim that those who do not share a belief in God do not often live good moral lives—indeed, embarrassingly, lives that sometimes put our own to shame.
But wait! It would, indeed, be arrogant and ignorant to claim that people cannot be good without belief in God. But that was not the question. The question was: can we be good without God? When we ask that question, we are posing in a provocative way the meta-ethical question of the objectivity of moral values. Are the values we hold dear and guide our lives by mere social conventions akin to driving on the left versus right side of the road or mere expressions of personal preference akin to having a taste for certain foods or not? Or are they valid independently of our apprehension of them, and if so, what is their foundation? Moreover, if morality is just a human convention, then why should we act morally, especially when it conflicts with self-interest? Or are we in some way held accountable for our moral decisions and actions?
Today I want to argue that if God exists, then the objectivity of moral values, moral duties, and moral accountability is secured, but that in the absence of God, that is, if God does not exist, then morality is just a human convention, that is to say, morality is wholly subjective and non-binding. We might act in precisely the same ways that we do in fact act, but in the absence of God, such actions would no longer count as good (or evil), since if God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. Thus, we cannot truly be good without God. On the other hand, if we do believe that moral values and duties are objective, that provides moral grounds for believing in God.
Consider, then, the hypothesis that God exists. First, if God exists, objective moral values exist. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is right or wrong independently of whether anybody believes it to be so. It is to say, for example, that Nazi anti-Semitism was morally wrong, even though the Nazis who carried out the Holocaust thought that it was good; and it would still be wrong even if the Nazis had won World War II and succeeded in exterminating or brainwashing everybody who disagreed with them.
On the theistic view, objective moral values are rooted in God. God’s own holy and perfectly good nature supplies the absolute standard against which all actions and decisions are measured. God’s moral nature is what Plato called the “Good.” He is the locus and source of moral value. He is by nature loving, generous, just, faithful, kind, and so forth.
Moreover, God’s moral nature is expressed in relation to us in the form of divine commands which constitute our moral duties or obligations. Far from being arbitrary, these commands flow necessarily from His moral nature. In the Judaeo-Christian tradition, the whole moral duty of man can be summed up in the two great commandments: First, you shall love the Lord your God with all your strength and with all your soul and with all your heart and with all your mind, and, second, you shall love your neighbor as yourself. On this foundation we can affirm the objective goodness and rightness of love, generosity, self-sacrifice, and equality, and condemn as objectively evil and wrong selfishness, hatred, abuse, discrimination, and oppression.
Finally, on the theistic hypothesis God holds all persons morally accountable for their actions. Evil and wrong will be punished; righteousness will be vindicated. Good ultimately triumphs over evil, and we shall finally see that we do live in a moral universe after all. Despite the inequities of this life, in the end the scales of God’s justice will be balanced. Thus, the moral choices we make in this life are infused with an eternal significance. We can with consistency make moral choices which run contrary to our self-interest and even undertake acts of extreme self-sacrifice, knowing that such decisions are not empty and ultimately meaningless gestures. Rather our moral lives have a paramount significance. So I think it is evident that theism provides a sound foundation for morality.
Contrast this with the atheistic hypothesis. First, if atheism is true, objective moral values do not exist. If God does not exist, then what is the foundation for moral values? More particularly, what is the basis for the value of human beings? If God does not exist, then it is difficult to see any reason to think that human beings are special or that their morality is objectively true. Moreover, why think that we have any moral obligations to do anything? Who or what imposes any moral duties upon us? Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science, writes,
The position of the modern evolutionist . . . is that humans have an awareness of morality . . . because such an awareness is of biological worth. Morality is a biological adaptation no less than are hands and feet and teeth . . . . Considered as a rationally justifiable set of claims about an objective something, ethics is illusory. I appreciate that when somebody says ‘Love they neighbor as thyself,’ they think they are referring above and beyond themselves . . . . Nevertheless, . . . such reference is truly without foundation. Morality is just an aid to survival and reproduction, . . . and any deeper meaning is illusory . . . . [1]
As a result of socio-biological pressures, there has evolved among homo sapiens a sort of “herd morality” which functions well in the perpetuation of our species in the struggle for survival. But there does not seem to be anything about homo sapiens that makes this morality objectively true.
Moreover, on the atheistic view there is no divine lawgiver. But then what source is there for moral obligation? Richard Taylor, an eminent ethicist, writes,
The modern age, more or less repudiating the idea of a divine lawgiver, has nevertheless tried to retain the ideas of moral right and wrong, not noticing that, in casting God aside, they have also abolished the conditions of meaningfulness for moral right and wrong as well. Thus, even educated persons sometimes declare that such things are war, or abortion, or the violation of certain human rights, are ‘morally wrong,’ and they imagine that they have said something true and significant. Educated people do not need to be told, however, that questions such as these have never been answered outside of religion. [2]
He concludes,
Contemporary writers in ethics, who blithely discourse upon moral right and wrong and moral obligation without any reference to religion, are really just weaving intellectual webs from thin air; which amounts to saying that they discourse without meaning. [3]
Now it is important that we remain clear in understanding the issue before us. The question is not : Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives? There is no reason to think that atheists and theists alike may not live what we normally characterize as good and decent lives. Similarly, the question is not : Can we formulate a system of ethics without reference to God? If the non-theist grants that human beings do have objective value, then there is no reason to think that he cannot work out a system of ethics with which the theist would also largely agree. Or again, the question is not : Can we recognize the existence of objective moral values without reference to God? The theist will typically maintain that a person need not believe in God in order to recognize, say, that we should love our children. Rather, as humanist philosopher Paul Kurtz puts it, “The central question about moral and ethical principles concerns this ontological foundation. If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, are they purely ephemeral?” [4]
If there is no God, then any ground for regarding the herd morality evolved by homo sapiens as objectively true seems to have been removed. After all, what is so special about human beings? They are just accidental by-products of nature which have evolved relatively recently on an infinitesimal speck of dust lost somewhere in a hostile and mindless universe and which are doomed to perish individually and collectively in a relatively short time. Some action, say, incest, may not be biologically or socially advantageous and so in the course of human evolution has become taboo; but there is on the atheistic view nothing really wrong about committing incest. If, as Kurtz states, “The moral principles that govern our behavior are rooted in habit and custom, feeling and fashion,” [5] then the non-conformist who chooses to flout the herd morality is doing nothing more serious than acting unfashionably.
The objective worthlessness of human beings on a naturalistic world view is underscored by two implications of that world view: materialism and determinism. Naturalists are typically materialists or physicalists, who regard man as a purely animal organism. But if man has no immaterial aspect to his being (call it soul or mind or what have you), then he is not qualitatively different from other animal species. For him to regard human morality as objective is to fall into the trap of specie-ism. On a materialistic anthropology there is no reason to think that human beings are objectively more valuable than rats. Secondly, if there is no mind distinct from the brain, then everything we think and do is determined by the input of our five senses and our genetic make-up. There is no personal agent who freely decides to do something. But without freedom, none of our choices is morally significant. They are like the jerks of a puppet’s limbs, controlled by the strings of sensory input and physical constitution. And what moral value does a puppet or its movements have?
Thus, if naturalism is true, it becomes impossible to condemn war, oppression, or crime as evil. Nor can one praise brotherhood, equality, or love as good. It does not matter what values you choose—for there is no right and wrong; good and evil do not exist. That means that an atrocity like the Holocaust was really morally indifferent. You may think that it was wrong, but your opinion has no more validity than that of the Nazi war criminal who thought it was good. In his book Morality after Auschwitz , Peter Haas asks how an entire society could have willingly participated in a state-sponsored program of mass torture and genocide for over a decade without any serious opposition. He argues that
far from being contemptuous of ethics, the perpetrators acted in strict conformity with an ethic which held that, however difficult and unpleasant the task might have been, mass extermination of the Jews and Gypsies was entirely justified. . . . the Holocaust as a sustained effort was possible only because a new ethic was in place that did not define the arrest and deportation of Jews as wrong and in fact defined it as ethically tolerable and ever good. [6]
Moreover, Haas points out, because of its coherence and internal consistency, the Nazi ethic could not be discredited from within. Only from a transcendent vantage point which stands above relativistic, socio-cultural mores could such a critique be launched. But in the absence of God, it is precisely such a vantage point that we lack. One Rabbi who was imprisoned at Auschwitz said that it was as though all the Ten Commandments had been reversed: thou shalt kill, thou shalt lie, thou shalt steal. Mankind has never seen such a hell. And yet, in a real sense, if naturalism is true, our world is Auschwitz. There is no good and evil, no right and wrong. Objective moral values do not exist.
Moreover, if atheism is true, there is no moral accountability for one’s actions. Even if there were objective moral values and duties under naturalism, they are irrelevant because there is no moral accountability. If life ends at the grave, it makes no difference whether one lives as a Stalin or as a saint. As the Russian writer Fyodor Dostoyevsky rightly said: “If there is no immortality, then all things are permitted.” [7]
The state torturers in Soviet prisons understood this all too well. Richard Wurmbrand reports,
The cruelty of atheism is hard to believe when man has no faith in the reward of good or the punishment of evil. There is no reason to be human. There is no restraint from the depths of evil which is in man. The Communist torturers often said, ‘There is no God, no hereafter, no punishment for evil. We can do what we wish.’ I have heard one torturer even say, ‘I thank God, in whom I don’t believe, that I have lived to this hour when I can express all the evil in my heart.’ He expressed it in unbelievable brutality and torture inflected on prisoners. [8]
Given the finality of death, it really does not matter how you live. So what do you say to someone who concludes that we may as well just live as we please, out of pure self-interest? This presents a pretty grim picture for an atheistic ethicist like Kai Nielsen of the University of Calgary. He writes,
We have not been able to show that reason requires the moral point of view, or that all really rational persons should not be individual egoists or classical amoralists. Reason doesn’t decide here. The picture I have painted for you is not a pleasant one. Reflection on it depresses me . . . . Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality. [9]
Somebody might say that it is in our best self-interest to adopt a moral life-style. But clearly, that is not always true: we all know situations in which self-interest runs smack in the face of morality. Moreover, if one is sufficiently powerful, like a Ferdinand Marcos or a Papa Doc Duvalier or even a Donald Trump, then one can pretty much ignore the dictates of conscience and safely live in self-indulgence. Historian Stewart C. Easton sums it up well when he writes, “There is no objective reason why man should be moral, unless morality ‘pays off’ in his social life or makes him ‘feel good.’ There is no objective reason why man should do anything save for the pleasure it affords him.” [10]
Acts of self-sacrifice become particularly inept on a naturalistic world view. Why should you sacrifice your self-interest and especially your life for the sake of someone else? There can be no good reason for adopting such a self-negating course of action on the naturalistic world view. Considered from the socio-biological point of view, such altruistic behavior is merely the result of evolutionary conditioning which helps to perpetuate the species. A mother rushing into a burning house to rescue her children or a soldier throwing his body over a hand grenade to save his comrades does nothing more significant or praiseworthy, morally speaking, than a fighter ant which sacrifices itself for the sake of the ant hill. Common sense dictates that we should resist, if we can, the socio-biological pressures to such self-destructive activity and choose instead to act in our best self-interest. The philosopher of religion John Hick invites us to imagine an ant suddenly endowed with the insights of socio-biology and the freedom to make personal decisions. He writes:
Suppose him to be called upon to immolate himself for the sake of the ant-hill. He feels the powerful pressure of instinct pushing him towards this self-destruction. But he asks himself why he should voluntarily . . . carry out the suicidal programme to which instinct prompts him? Why should he regard the future existence of a million million other ants as more important to him than his own continued existence? . . . Since all that he is and has or ever can have is his own present existence, surely in so far as he is free from the domination of the blind force of instinct he will opt for life—his own life. [11]
Now why should we choose any differently? Life is too short to jeopardize it by acting out of anything but pure self-interest. Sacrifice for another person is just stupid. Thus the absence of moral accountability from the philosophy of naturalism makes an ethic of compassion and self-sacrifice a hollow abstraction. R. Z. Friedman, a philosopher of the University of Toronto, concludes, “Without religion the coherence of an ethic of compassion cannot be established. The principle of respect for persons and the principle of the survival of the fittest are mutually exclusive.” [12]
We thus come to radically different perspectives on morality depending upon whether or not God exists. If God exists, there is a sound foundation for morality. If God does not exist, then, as Nietzsche saw, we are ultimately landed in nihilism.
But the choice between the two need not be arbitrarily made. On the contrary, the very considerations we have been discussing can constitute moral justification for the existence of God.
For example, if we do think that objective moral values exist, then we shall be led logically to the conclusion that God exists. And could anything be more obvious than that objective moral values do exist? There is no more reason to deny the objective reality of moral values than the objective reality of the physical world. The reasoning of Ruse is at worst a text-book example of the genetic fallacy and at best only proves that our subjective perception of objective moral values has evolved. But if moral values are gradually discovered, not invented, then such a gradual and fallible apprehension of the moral realm no more undermines the objective reality of that realm than our gradual, fallible perception of the physical world undermines the objectivity of that realm. The fact is that we do apprehend objective values, and we all know it. Actions like rape, torture, child abuse, and brutality are not just socially unacceptable behavior—they are moral abominations. As Ruse himself states, “The man who says that it is morally acceptable to rape little children is just as mistaken as the man who says, 2+2=5.” [13] By the same token, love, generosity, equality, and self-sacrifice are really good. People who fail to see this are just morally handicapped, and there is no reason to allow their impaired vision to call into question what we see clearly. Thus, the existence of objective moral values serves to demonstrate the existence of God.
Or consider the nature of moral obligation. What makes certain actions right or wrong for us? What or who imposes moral duties upon us? Why is it that we ought to do certain things and ought not to do other things? Where does this ‘ought’ come from? Traditionally, our moral obligations were thought to be laid upon us by God’s moral commands. But if we deny God’s existence, then it is difficult to make sense of moral duty or right and wrong, as Richard Taylor explains,
A duty is something that is owed . . . . But something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as duty in isolation . . . . The idea of political or legal obligation is clear enough . . . . Similarly, the idea of an obligation higher than this, and referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawmaker higher . . . . than those of the state is understood. In other words, our moral obligations can . . . be understood as those that are imposed by God. This does give a clear sense to the claim that our moral obligations are more binding upon us than our political obligations . . . . But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of a moral obligation . . . still make sense? . . . . the concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart form the idea of God. The words remain, but their meaning is gone. [14]
It follows that moral obligations and right and wrong necessitate God’s existence. And certainly we do have such obligations. Speaking recently on a Canadian University campus, I noticed a poster put up by the Sexual Assault & Information Center. It read: “Sexual Assault: No One Has the Right to Abuse a Child, Woman, or Man.” Most of us recognize that that statement is evidently true. But the atheist can make no sense of a person’s right not to be sexually abused by another. The best answer to the question as to the source of moral obligation is that moral rightness or wrongness consists in agreement or disagreement with the will or commands of a holy, loving God.
Finally, take the problem of moral accountability. Here we find a powerful practical argument for believing in God. According to William James, practical arguments can only be used when theoretical arguments are insufficient to decide a question of urgent and pragmatic importance. But it seems obvious that a practical argument could also be used to back up or motivate acceptance of the conclusion of a sound theoretical argument. To believe, then, that God does not exist and that there is thus no moral accountability would be quite literally de-moralizing, for then we should have to believe that our moral choices are ultimately insignificant, since both our fate and that of the universe will be the same regardless of what we do. By “de-moralization” I mean a deterioration of moral motivation. It is hard to do the right thing when that means sacrificing one’s own self-interest and to resist temptation to do wrong when desire is strong, and the belief that ultimately it does not matter what you choose or do is apt to sap one’s moral strength and so undermine one’s moral life. As Robert Adams observes, “Having to regard it as very likely that the history of the universe will not be good on the whole, no matter what one does, seems apt to induce a cynical sense of futility about the moral life, undermining one’s moral resolve and one’s interest in moral considerations.” [15] By contrast there is nothing so likely to strengthen the moral life as the beliefs that one will be held accountable for one’s actions and that one’s choices do make a difference in bringing about the good. Theism is thus a morally advantageous belief, and this, in the absence of any theoretical argument establishing atheism to be the case, provides practical grounds to believe in God and motivation to accept the conclusions of the two theoretical arguments I just gave above.
In summary, theological meta-ethical foundations do seem to be necessary for morality. If God does not exist, then it is plausible to think that there are no objective moral values, that we have no moral duties, and that there is no moral accountability for how we live and act. The horror of such a morally neutral world is obvious. If, on the other hand, we hold, as it seems rational to do, that objective moral values and duties do exist, then we have good grounds for believing in the existence of God. In addition, we have powerful practical reasons for embracing theism in view of the morally bracing effects which belief in moral accountability produces. We cannot, then, truly be good without God; but if we can in some measure be good, then it follows that God exists.
Michael Ruse, “Evolutionary Theory and Christian Ethics,” in The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), pp. 262, 268-9.
Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985), pp. 2-3.
Ibid., p. 7.
Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit (Buffalo, N.Y.: Prometheus Books, 1988) p. 65.
Ibid., p. 73.
Critical notice of Peter Haas, Morality after Auschwitz: The Radical Challenge of the Nazi Ethic (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1988), by R. L.Rubenstein, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 60 (1992): 158.
Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Brothers Karamazov , trans. C. Garnett (New York: Signet Classics, 1957), bk. II, chap. 6; bk. V, chap. 4; bk. XI, chap. 8.
Richard Wurmbrand, Tortured for Christ (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1967), p. 34.
Kai Nielsen, “Why Should I Be Moral?” American Philosophical Quarterly 21 (1984): 90.
Stewart C. Easton, The Western Heritage , 2d ed. (New York: Holt, Rinehart, & Winston, 1966), p. 878.
John Hick, Arguments for the Existence of God (New York: Herder & Herder, 1971), p. 63.
R.Z. Friedman, “Does the ‘Death of God’ Really Matter?” International Philosophical Quarterly 23 (1983):322.
Michael Ruse, Darwinism Defended (London: Addison-Wesley, 1982), p. 275.
Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason , pp. 83-4.
Robert Merrihew Adams, “Moral Arguments for Theistic Belief,” in Rationality and Religious Belief , ed. C. F. Delaney (Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre dame Press, 1979), p. 127.
Ethics Without Gods
This essay was written by Frank Zindler, former President and current Board Member of American Atheists.
One of the first questions Atheists are asked by true believers and doubters alike is, “If you don’t believe in God, there’s nothing to prevent you from committing crimes, is there? Without the fear of hell-fire and eternal damnation, you can do anything you like, can’t you?”
Introduction
It is hard to believe that even intelligent and educated people could hold such an opinion, but they do! It seems never to have occurred to them that the Greeks and Romans, whose gods and goddesses were something less than paragons of virtue, nevertheless led lives not obviously worse than those of the Baptists of Alabama! Moreover, pagans such as Aristotle and Marcus Aurelius – although their systems are not suitable for us today – managed to produce ethical treatises of great sophistication, a sophistication rarely if ever equaled by Christian moralists.
The answer to the questions posed above is, of course, “Absolutely not!” The behavior of Atheists is subject to the same rules of sociology, psychology, and neurophysiology that govern the behavior of all members of our species, religionists included. Moreover, despite protestations to the contrary, we may assert as a general rule that when religionists practice ethical behavior, it isn’t really due to their fear of hell-fire and damnation, nor is it due to their hopes of heaven. Ethical behavior – regardless of who the practitioner may be – results always from the same causes and is regulated by the same forces, and has nothing to do with the presence or absence of religious belief. The nature of these causes and forces is the subject of this essay.
Psychobiological Foundation
As human beings, we are social animals. Our sociality is the result of evolution, not choice. Natural selection has equipped us with nervous systems which are peculiarly sensitive to the emotional status of our fellows. Among our kind, emotions are contagious, and it is only the rare psychopathic mutants among us who can be happy in the midst of a sad society. It is in our nature to be happy in the midst of happiness, sad in the midst of sadness. It is in our nature, fortunately, to seek happiness for our fellows at the same time as we seek it for ourselves. Our happiness is greater when it is shared.
Nature also has provided us with nervous systems which are, to a considerable degree, imprintable. To be sure, this phenomenon is not as pronounced or as ineluctable as it is, say, in geese – where a newly hatched gosling can be “imprinted” to a toy train and will follow it to exhaustion, as if it were its mother. Nevertheless, some degree of imprinting is exhibited by humans. The human nervous system appears to retain its capacity for imprinting well into old age, and it is highly likely that the phenomenon known as “love-at-first-sight” is a form of imprinting. Imprinting is a form of attachment behavior, and it helps us to form strong interpersonal bonds. It is a major force which helps us to break through the ego barrier to create “significant others” whom we can love as much as ourselves. These two characteristics of our nervous system – emotional suggestibility and attachment imprintability – although they are the foundation of all altruistic behavior and art, are thoroughly compatible with the selfishness characteristic of all behaviors created by the process of natural selection. That is to say, to a large extent behaviors which satisfy ourselves will be found, simultaneously, to satisfy our fellows, and vice-versa.
This should not surprise us when we consider that among the societies of our nearest primate cousins, the great apes, social behavior is not chaotic, even if gorillas do lack the Ten Commandments! The young chimpanzee does not need an oracle to tell it to honor its mother and to refrain from killing its brothers and sisters. Of course, family squabbles and even murder have been observed in ape societies, but such behaviors are exceptions, not the norm. So too it is in human societies, everywhere and at all times.
The African apes – whose genes are ninety-eight to ninety-nine percent identical to ours – go about their lives as social animals, cooperating in the living of life, entirely without the benefit of clergy and without the commandments of Exodus, Leviticus, or Deuteronomy. It is further cheering to learn that sociobiologists have even observed altruistic behavior among troops of baboons. More than once, in troops attacked by leopards, aged, post reproduction-age males have been observed to linger at the rear of the escaping troop and to engage the leopard in what often amounts to a suicidal fight. As the old male delays the leopard’s pursuit by sacrificing his very life, the females and young escape and live to fulfill their several destinies. The heroism which we see acted out, from time to time, by our fellow men and women, is far older than their religions. Long before the gods were created by the fear-filled minds of our less courageous ancestors, heroism and acts of self-sacrificing love existed. They did not require a supernatural excuse then, nor do they require one now.
Given the general fact, then, that evolution has equipped us with nervous systems biased in favor of social, rather than antisocial, behaviors, is it not true, nevertheless, that antisocial behavior does exist, and it exists in amounts greater than a reasonable ethicist would find tolerable? Alas, this is true. But it is true largely because we live in worlds far more complex than the Paleolithic world in which our nervous systems originated. To understand the ethical significance of this fact, we must digress a bit and review the evolutionary history of human behavior.
A Digression
Today, heredity can control our behavior in only the most general of ways, it cannot dictate precise behaviors appropriate for infinitely varied circumstances. In our world, heredity needs help.
In the world of a fruit fly, by contrast, the problems to be solved are few in number and highly predictable in nature. Consequently, a fruit fly’s brain is largely “hard-wired” by heredity. That is to say, most behaviors result from environmental activation of nerve circuits which are formed automatically by the time of emergence of the adult fly. This is an extreme example of what is called instinctual behavior. Each behavior is coded for by a gene or genes which predispose the nervous system to develop certain types of circuits and not others, and where it is all but impossible to act contrary to the genetically predetermined script.
The world of a mammal – say a fox – is much more complex and unpredictable than that of the fruit fly. Consequently, the fox is born with only a portion of its neuronal circuitry hard-wired. Many of its neurons remain “plastic” throughout life. That is, they may or may not hook up with each other in functional circuits, depending upon environmental circumstances. Learned behavior is behavior which results from activation of these environmentally conditioned circuits. Learning allows the individual mammal to learn – by trial and error – greater numbers of adaptive behaviors than could be transmitted by heredity. A fox would be wall-to-wall genes if all its behaviors were specified genetically.
With the evolution of humans, however, environmental complexity increased out of all proportion to the genetic and neuronal changes distinguishing us from our simian ancestors. This partly was due to the fact that our species evolved in a geologic period of great climatic flux – the Ice Ages – and partly was due to the fact that our behaviors themselves began to change our environment. The changed environment in turn created new problems to be solved. Their solutions further changed the environment, and so on. Thus, the discovery of fire led to the burning of trees and forests, which led to destruction of local water supplies and watersheds, which led to the development of architecture with which to build aqueducts, which led to laws concerning water-rights, which led to international strife, and on and on.
Given such complexity, even the ability to learn new behaviors is, by itself, inadequate. If trial and error were the only means, most people would die of old age before they would succeed in rediscovering fire or reinventing the wheel. As a substitute for instinct and to increase the efficiency of learning, mankind developed culture. The ability to teach – as well as to learn – evolved, and trial-and-error learning became a method of last resort.
By transmission of culture – passing on the sum total of the learned behaviors common to a population – we can do what Darwinian genetic selection would not allow: we can inherit acquired characteristics. The wheel once having been invented, its manufacture and use can be passed down through the generations. Culture can adapt to change much faster than genes can, and this provides for finely tuned responses to environmental disturbances and upheavals. By means of cultural transmission, those behaviors which have proven useful in the past can be taught quickly to the young, so that adaptation to life – say on the Greenland ice cap – can be assured.
Even so, cultural transmission tends to be rigid: it took over one hundred thousand years to advance to chipping both sides of the hand-ax! Cultural mutations, like genetic mutations, tend more often than not to be harmful, and both are resisted – the former by cultural conservatism, the latter by natural selection. But changes do creep in faster than the rate of genetic change, and cultures slowly evolve. Even that cultural dinosaur known as the Catholic Church – despite its claim to be the unchanging repository of truth and “correct” behavior – has changed greatly since its beginning.
Incidentally, it is at this hand-ax stage of behavioral evolution at which most of the religions of today are still stuck. Our inflexible, absolutist moral codes also are fixated at this stage. The Ten Commandments are the moral counterpart of the “here’s-how-you-rub-the-sticks-together” phase of technological evolution. If the only type of fire you want is one to heat your cave and cook your clams, the stick-rubbing method suffices. But if you want a fire to propel your jet-plane, some changes have to be made.
So, too, with the transmission of moral behavior. If we are to live lives which are as complex socially as jet-planes are complex technologically, we need something more than the Ten Commandments. We cannot base our moral code upon arbitrary and capricious fiats reported to us by persons claiming to be privy to the intentions of the denizens of Sinai or Olympus. Our ethics can be based neither upon fictions concerning the nature of humankind nor upon fake reports concerning the desires of the deities. Our ethics must be firmly planted in the soil of scientific self-knowledge. They must be improvable and adaptable.
Where then, and with what, shall we begin?
Back to Ethics
Plato showed long ago, in his dialogue Euthyphro, that we cannot depend upon the moral fiats of a deity. Plato asked if the commandments of a god were “good” simply because a god had commanded them or because the god recognized what was good and commanded the action accordingly. If something is good simply because a god has commanded it, anything could be considered good. There would be no way of predicting what in particular the god might desire next, and it would be entirely meaningless to assert that “God is good.” Bashing babies with rocks would be just as likely to be “good” as would the principle “Love your enemies.” (It would appear that the “goodness” of the god of the Old Testament is entirely of this sort.)
On the other hand, if a god’s commandments are based on a knowledge of the inherent goodness of an act, we are faced with the realization that there is a standard of goodness independent of the god and we must admit that he cannot be the source of morality. In our quest for the good, we can bypass the god and go to his source!
Given, then, that gods a priori cannot be the source of ethical principles, we must seek such principles in the world in which we have evolved. We must find the sublime in the mundane. What precept might we adopt?
The principle of “enlightened self-interest” is an excellent first approximation to an ethical principle which is both consistent with what we know of human nature and is relevant to the problems of life in a complex society. Let us examine this principle.
First we must distinguish between “enlightened” and “unenlightened” self-interest. Let’s take an extreme example for illustration. Suppose you lived a totally selfish life of immediate gratification of every desire. Suppose that whenever someone else had something you wanted, you took it for yourself.
It wouldn’t be long at all before everyone would be up in arms against you, and you would have to spend all your waking hours fending off reprisals. Depending upon how outrageous your activity had been, you might very well lose your life in an orgy of neighborly revenge. The life of total but unenlightened self-interest might be exciting and pleasant as long as it lasts – but it is not likely to last long.
The person who practices “enlightened” self-interest, by contrast, is the person whose behavioral strategy simultaneously maximizes both the intensity and duration of personal gratification. An enlightened strategy will be one which, when practiced over a long span of time, will generate ever greater amounts and varieties of pleasures and satisfactions.
How is this to be done?
It is obvious that more is to be gained by cooperating with others than by acts of isolated egoism. One man with a rock cannot kill a buffalo for dinner. But a group of men or women, with lots of rocks, can drive the beast off a cliff and – even after dividing the meat up among them – will still have more to eat than they would have had without cooperation.
But cooperation is a two-way street. If you cooperate with several others to kill buffaloes, and each time they drive you away from the kill and eat it themselves, you will quickly take your services elsewhere, and you will leave the ingrates to stumble along without the Paleolithic equivalent of a fourth-for-bridge. Cooperation implies reciprocity.
Justice has its roots in the problem of determining fairness and reciprocity in cooperation. If I cooperate with you in tilling your field of corn, how much of the corn is due me at harvest time? When there is justice, cooperation operates at maximal efficiency, and the fruits of cooperation become ever more desirable. Thus, enlightened self-interest entails a desire for justice. With justice and with cooperation, we can have symphonies. Without it, we haven’t even a song.
Let us bring this essay back to the point of our departure. Because we have the nervous systems of social animals, we are generally happier in the company of our fellow creatures than alone. Because we are emotionally suggestible, as we practice enlightened self-interest we usually will be wise to choose behaviors which will make others happy and willing to cooperate and accept us – for their happiness will reflect back upon us and intensify our own happiness. On the other hand, actions which harm others and make them unhappy – even if they do not trigger overt retaliation which decreases our happiness – will create an emotional milieu which, because of our suggestibility, will make us less happy.
Because our nervous systems are imprintable, we are able not only to fall in love at first sight, we are able to love objects and ideals as well as people, and we are able to love with variable intensities. Like the gosling attracted to the toy train, we are pulled forward by the desire for love. Unlike the gosling’s “love,” however, our love is to a considerable extent shapeable by experience and is capable of being educated. A major aim of enlightened self-interest, surely, is to give and receive love, both sexual and nonsexual. As a general – though not absolute – rule, we must choose those behaviors which will be likely to bring us love and acceptance, and we must eschew those behaviors which will not.
Another aim of enlightened self-interest is to seek beauty in all its forms, to preserve and prolong its resonance between the world outside and that within. Beauty and love are but different facets of the same jewel: love is beautiful, and we love beauty.
The experience of love and beauty, however, is a passive function of the mind. How much greater is the joy which comes from creating beauty. How delicious it is to exercise actively our creative powers to engender that which can be loved. Paints and pianos are not necessarily prerequisites for the exercise of creativity: Whenever we transform the raw materials of existence in such a way that we leave them better than they were when we found them, we have been creative.
The task of moral education, then, is not to inculcate by rote great lists of do’s and don’ts, but rather to help people to predict the consequences of actions being considered. What are the long-term as well as immediate rewards and draw-backs of the acts? Will an act increase or decrease one’s chances of experiencing the hedonic triad of love, beauty, and creativity?
Thus it happens, when the Atheist approaches the problem of finding natural grounds for human morals and establishing a nonsuperstitious basis for behavior, that it appears as though nature has already solved the problem to a great extent. Indeed, it appears as though the problem of establishing a natural, humanistic basis for ethical behavior is not much of a problem at all. It is in our natures to desire love, to seek beauty, and to thrill at the act of creation. The labyrinthine complexity we see when we examine traditional moral codes does not arise of necessity: it is largely the result of vain attempts to accommodate human needs and nature to the whimsical totems and taboos of the demons and deities who emerged with us from our cave-dwellings at the end of the Paleolithic Era – and have haunted our houses ever since.
- What is Atheism?
- American History
- Biblical Contradictions
- Did Jesus Exist?
For more than 60 years, American Atheists has fought to protect the absolute separation of religion from government and to elevate atheists and atheism in our nation’s public and political discourse.
Quick Links
- Support Our Work
- News & Blog
- Frequently Asked Legal Questions
© American Atheists, Inc. | 225 Cristiani St. Cranford NJ 07016 | (908) 276-7300
Your ticket for the: Ethics Without Gods
Sign in through your institution
- Browse content in Arts and Humanities
- Browse content in Archaeology
- Anglo-Saxon and Medieval Archaeology
- Archaeological Methodology and Techniques
- Archaeology by Region
- Archaeology of Religion
- Archaeology of Trade and Exchange
- Biblical Archaeology
- Contemporary and Public Archaeology
- Environmental Archaeology
- Historical Archaeology
- History and Theory of Archaeology
- Industrial Archaeology
- Landscape Archaeology
- Mortuary Archaeology
- Prehistoric Archaeology
- Underwater Archaeology
- Zooarchaeology
- Browse content in Architecture
- Architectural Structure and Design
- History of Architecture
- Residential and Domestic Buildings
- Theory of Architecture
- Browse content in Art
- Art Subjects and Themes
- History of Art
- Industrial and Commercial Art
- Theory of Art
- Biographical Studies
- Byzantine Studies
- Browse content in Classical Studies
- Classical History
- Classical Philosophy
- Classical Mythology
- Classical Numismatics
- Classical Literature
- Classical Reception
- Classical Art and Architecture
- Classical Oratory and Rhetoric
- Greek and Roman Epigraphy
- Greek and Roman Law
- Greek and Roman Archaeology
- Greek and Roman Papyrology
- Late Antiquity
- Religion in the Ancient World
- Social History
- Digital Humanities
- Browse content in History
- Colonialism and Imperialism
- Diplomatic History
- Environmental History
- Genealogy, Heraldry, Names, and Honours
- Genocide and Ethnic Cleansing
- Historical Geography
- History by Period
- History of Agriculture
- History of Education
- History of Emotions
- History of Gender and Sexuality
- Industrial History
- Intellectual History
- International History
- Labour History
- Legal and Constitutional History
- Local and Family History
- Maritime History
- Military History
- National Liberation and Post-Colonialism
- Oral History
- Political History
- Public History
- Regional and National History
- Revolutions and Rebellions
- Slavery and Abolition of Slavery
- Social and Cultural History
- Theory, Methods, and Historiography
- Urban History
- World History
- Browse content in Language Teaching and Learning
- Language Learning (Specific Skills)
- Language Teaching Theory and Methods
- Browse content in Linguistics
- Applied Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Computational Linguistics
- Forensic Linguistics
- Grammar, Syntax and Morphology
- Historical and Diachronic Linguistics
- History of English
- Language Acquisition
- Language Variation
- Language Families
- Language Evolution
- Language Reference
- Lexicography
- Linguistic Theories
- Linguistic Typology
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Phonetics and Phonology
- Psycholinguistics
- Sociolinguistics
- Translation and Interpretation
- Writing Systems
- Browse content in Literature
- Bibliography
- Children's Literature Studies
- Literary Studies (Asian)
- Literary Studies (European)
- Literary Studies (Eco-criticism)
- Literary Studies (Modernism)
- Literary Studies (Romanticism)
- Literary Studies (American)
- Literary Studies - World
- Literary Studies (1500 to 1800)
- Literary Studies (19th Century)
- Literary Studies (20th Century onwards)
- Literary Studies (African American Literature)
- Literary Studies (British and Irish)
- Literary Studies (Early and Medieval)
- Literary Studies (Fiction, Novelists, and Prose Writers)
- Literary Studies (Gender Studies)
- Literary Studies (Graphic Novels)
- Literary Studies (History of the Book)
- Literary Studies (Plays and Playwrights)
- Literary Studies (Poetry and Poets)
- Literary Studies (Postcolonial Literature)
- Literary Studies (Queer Studies)
- Literary Studies (Science Fiction)
- Literary Studies (Travel Literature)
- Literary Studies (War Literature)
- Literary Studies (Women's Writing)
- Literary Theory and Cultural Studies
- Mythology and Folklore
- Shakespeare Studies and Criticism
- Browse content in Media Studies
- Browse content in Music
- Applied Music
- Dance and Music
- Ethics in Music
- Ethnomusicology
- Gender and Sexuality in Music
- Medicine and Music
- Music Cultures
- Music and Religion
- Music and Culture
- Music and Media
- Music Education and Pedagogy
- Music Theory and Analysis
- Musical Scores, Lyrics, and Libretti
- Musical Structures, Styles, and Techniques
- Musicology and Music History
- Performance Practice and Studies
- Race and Ethnicity in Music
- Sound Studies
- Browse content in Performing Arts
- Browse content in Philosophy
- Aesthetics and Philosophy of Art
- Epistemology
- Feminist Philosophy
- History of Western Philosophy
- Metaphysics
- Moral Philosophy
- Non-Western Philosophy
- Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Action
- Philosophy of Law
- Philosophy of Religion
- Philosophy of Language
- Philosophy of Mind
- Philosophy of Perception
- Philosophy of Mathematics and Logic
- Practical Ethics
- Social and Political Philosophy
- Browse content in Religion
- Biblical Studies
- Christianity
- East Asian Religions
- History of Religion
- Judaism and Jewish Studies
- Qumran Studies
- Religion and Education
- Religion and Health
- Religion and Politics
- Religion and Science
- Religion and Law
- Religion and Art, Literature, and Music
- Religious Studies
- Browse content in Society and Culture
- Cookery, Food, and Drink
- Cultural Studies
- Customs and Traditions
- Ethical Issues and Debates
- Hobbies, Games, Arts and Crafts
- Natural world, Country Life, and Pets
- Popular Beliefs and Controversial Knowledge
- Sports and Outdoor Recreation
- Technology and Society
- Travel and Holiday
- Visual Culture
- Browse content in Law
- Arbitration
- Browse content in Company and Commercial Law
- Commercial Law
- Company Law
- Browse content in Comparative Law
- Systems of Law
- Competition Law
- Browse content in Constitutional and Administrative Law
- Government Powers
- Judicial Review
- Local Government Law
- Military and Defence Law
- Parliamentary and Legislative Practice
- Construction Law
- Contract Law
- Browse content in Criminal Law
- Criminal Procedure
- Criminal Evidence Law
- Sentencing and Punishment
- Employment and Labour Law
- Environment and Energy Law
- Browse content in Financial Law
- Banking Law
- Insolvency Law
- History of Law
- Human Rights and Immigration
- Intellectual Property Law
- Browse content in International Law
- Private International Law and Conflict of Laws
- Public International Law
- IT and Communications Law
- Jurisprudence and Philosophy of Law
- Law and Politics
- Law and Society
- Browse content in Legal System and Practice
- Courts and Procedure
- Legal Skills and Practice
- Legal System - Costs and Funding
- Primary Sources of Law
- Regulation of Legal Profession
- Medical and Healthcare Law
- Browse content in Policing
- Criminal Investigation and Detection
- Police and Security Services
- Police Procedure and Law
- Police Regional Planning
- Browse content in Property Law
- Personal Property Law
- Restitution
- Study and Revision
- Terrorism and National Security Law
- Browse content in Trusts Law
- Wills and Probate or Succession
- Browse content in Medicine and Health
- Browse content in Allied Health Professions
- Arts Therapies
- Clinical Science
- Dietetics and Nutrition
- Occupational Therapy
- Operating Department Practice
- Physiotherapy
- Radiography
- Speech and Language Therapy
- Browse content in Anaesthetics
- General Anaesthesia
- Browse content in Clinical Medicine
- Acute Medicine
- Cardiovascular Medicine
- Clinical Genetics
- Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics
- Dermatology
- Endocrinology and Diabetes
- Gastroenterology
- Genito-urinary Medicine
- Geriatric Medicine
- Infectious Diseases
- Medical Oncology
- Medical Toxicology
- Pain Medicine
- Palliative Medicine
- Rehabilitation Medicine
- Respiratory Medicine and Pulmonology
- Rheumatology
- Sleep Medicine
- Sports and Exercise Medicine
- Clinical Neuroscience
- Community Medical Services
- Critical Care
- Emergency Medicine
- Forensic Medicine
- Haematology
- History of Medicine
- Browse content in Medical Dentistry
- Oral and Maxillofacial Surgery
- Paediatric Dentistry
- Restorative Dentistry and Orthodontics
- Surgical Dentistry
- Medical Ethics
- Browse content in Medical Skills
- Clinical Skills
- Communication Skills
- Nursing Skills
- Surgical Skills
- Medical Statistics and Methodology
- Browse content in Neurology
- Clinical Neurophysiology
- Neuropathology
- Nursing Studies
- Browse content in Obstetrics and Gynaecology
- Gynaecology
- Occupational Medicine
- Ophthalmology
- Otolaryngology (ENT)
- Browse content in Paediatrics
- Neonatology
- Browse content in Pathology
- Chemical Pathology
- Clinical Cytogenetics and Molecular Genetics
- Histopathology
- Medical Microbiology and Virology
- Patient Education and Information
- Browse content in Pharmacology
- Psychopharmacology
- Browse content in Popular Health
- Caring for Others
- Complementary and Alternative Medicine
- Self-help and Personal Development
- Browse content in Preclinical Medicine
- Cell Biology
- Molecular Biology and Genetics
- Reproduction, Growth and Development
- Primary Care
- Professional Development in Medicine
- Browse content in Psychiatry
- Addiction Medicine
- Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
- Forensic Psychiatry
- Learning Disabilities
- Old Age Psychiatry
- Psychotherapy
- Browse content in Public Health and Epidemiology
- Epidemiology
- Public Health
- Browse content in Radiology
- Clinical Radiology
- Interventional Radiology
- Nuclear Medicine
- Radiation Oncology
- Reproductive Medicine
- Browse content in Surgery
- Cardiothoracic Surgery
- Gastro-intestinal and Colorectal Surgery
- General Surgery
- Neurosurgery
- Paediatric Surgery
- Peri-operative Care
- Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery
- Surgical Oncology
- Transplant Surgery
- Trauma and Orthopaedic Surgery
- Vascular Surgery
- Browse content in Science and Mathematics
- Browse content in Biological Sciences
- Aquatic Biology
- Biochemistry
- Bioinformatics and Computational Biology
- Developmental Biology
- Ecology and Conservation
- Evolutionary Biology
- Genetics and Genomics
- Microbiology
- Molecular and Cell Biology
- Natural History
- Plant Sciences and Forestry
- Research Methods in Life Sciences
- Structural Biology
- Systems Biology
- Zoology and Animal Sciences
- Browse content in Chemistry
- Analytical Chemistry
- Computational Chemistry
- Crystallography
- Environmental Chemistry
- Industrial Chemistry
- Inorganic Chemistry
- Materials Chemistry
- Medicinal Chemistry
- Mineralogy and Gems
- Organic Chemistry
- Physical Chemistry
- Polymer Chemistry
- Study and Communication Skills in Chemistry
- Theoretical Chemistry
- Browse content in Computer Science
- Artificial Intelligence
- Computer Architecture and Logic Design
- Game Studies
- Human-Computer Interaction
- Mathematical Theory of Computation
- Programming Languages
- Software Engineering
- Systems Analysis and Design
- Virtual Reality
- Browse content in Computing
- Business Applications
- Computer Security
- Computer Games
- Computer Networking and Communications
- Digital Lifestyle
- Graphical and Digital Media Applications
- Operating Systems
- Browse content in Earth Sciences and Geography
- Atmospheric Sciences
- Environmental Geography
- Geology and the Lithosphere
- Maps and Map-making
- Meteorology and Climatology
- Oceanography and Hydrology
- Palaeontology
- Physical Geography and Topography
- Regional Geography
- Soil Science
- Urban Geography
- Browse content in Engineering and Technology
- Agriculture and Farming
- Biological Engineering
- Civil Engineering, Surveying, and Building
- Electronics and Communications Engineering
- Energy Technology
- Engineering (General)
- Environmental Science, Engineering, and Technology
- History of Engineering and Technology
- Mechanical Engineering and Materials
- Technology of Industrial Chemistry
- Transport Technology and Trades
- Browse content in Environmental Science
- Applied Ecology (Environmental Science)
- Conservation of the Environment (Environmental Science)
- Environmental Sustainability
- Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Environmental Science)
- Management of Land and Natural Resources (Environmental Science)
- Natural Disasters (Environmental Science)
- Nuclear Issues (Environmental Science)
- Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Environmental Science)
- Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Environmental Science)
- History of Science and Technology
- Browse content in Materials Science
- Ceramics and Glasses
- Composite Materials
- Metals, Alloying, and Corrosion
- Nanotechnology
- Browse content in Mathematics
- Applied Mathematics
- Biomathematics and Statistics
- History of Mathematics
- Mathematical Education
- Mathematical Finance
- Mathematical Analysis
- Numerical and Computational Mathematics
- Probability and Statistics
- Pure Mathematics
- Browse content in Neuroscience
- Cognition and Behavioural Neuroscience
- Development of the Nervous System
- Disorders of the Nervous System
- History of Neuroscience
- Invertebrate Neurobiology
- Molecular and Cellular Systems
- Neuroendocrinology and Autonomic Nervous System
- Neuroscientific Techniques
- Sensory and Motor Systems
- Browse content in Physics
- Astronomy and Astrophysics
- Atomic, Molecular, and Optical Physics
- Biological and Medical Physics
- Classical Mechanics
- Computational Physics
- Condensed Matter Physics
- Electromagnetism, Optics, and Acoustics
- History of Physics
- Mathematical and Statistical Physics
- Measurement Science
- Nuclear Physics
- Particles and Fields
- Plasma Physics
- Quantum Physics
- Relativity and Gravitation
- Semiconductor and Mesoscopic Physics
- Browse content in Psychology
- Affective Sciences
- Clinical Psychology
- Cognitive Neuroscience
- Cognitive Psychology
- Criminal and Forensic Psychology
- Developmental Psychology
- Educational Psychology
- Evolutionary Psychology
- Health Psychology
- History and Systems in Psychology
- Music Psychology
- Neuropsychology
- Organizational Psychology
- Psychological Assessment and Testing
- Psychology of Human-Technology Interaction
- Psychology Professional Development and Training
- Research Methods in Psychology
- Social Psychology
- Browse content in Social Sciences
- Browse content in Anthropology
- Anthropology of Religion
- Human Evolution
- Medical Anthropology
- Physical Anthropology
- Regional Anthropology
- Social and Cultural Anthropology
- Theory and Practice of Anthropology
- Browse content in Business and Management
- Business Strategy
- Business History
- Business Ethics
- Business and Government
- Business and Technology
- Business and the Environment
- Comparative Management
- Corporate Governance
- Corporate Social Responsibility
- Entrepreneurship
- Health Management
- Human Resource Management
- Industrial and Employment Relations
- Industry Studies
- Information and Communication Technologies
- International Business
- Knowledge Management
- Management and Management Techniques
- Operations Management
- Organizational Theory and Behaviour
- Pensions and Pension Management
- Public and Nonprofit Management
- Social Issues in Business and Management
- Strategic Management
- Supply Chain Management
- Browse content in Criminology and Criminal Justice
- Criminal Justice
- Criminology
- Forms of Crime
- International and Comparative Criminology
- Youth Violence and Juvenile Justice
- Development Studies
- Browse content in Economics
- Agricultural, Environmental, and Natural Resource Economics
- Asian Economics
- Behavioural Finance
- Behavioural Economics and Neuroeconomics
- Econometrics and Mathematical Economics
- Economic Systems
- Economic Methodology
- Economic History
- Economic Development and Growth
- Financial Markets
- Financial Institutions and Services
- General Economics and Teaching
- Health, Education, and Welfare
- History of Economic Thought
- International Economics
- Labour and Demographic Economics
- Law and Economics
- Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics
- Microeconomics
- Public Economics
- Urban, Rural, and Regional Economics
- Welfare Economics
- Browse content in Education
- Adult Education and Continuous Learning
- Care and Counselling of Students
- Early Childhood and Elementary Education
- Educational Equipment and Technology
- Educational Strategies and Policy
- Higher and Further Education
- Organization and Management of Education
- Philosophy and Theory of Education
- Schools Studies
- Secondary Education
- Teaching of a Specific Subject
- Teaching of Specific Groups and Special Educational Needs
- Teaching Skills and Techniques
- Browse content in Environment
- Applied Ecology (Social Science)
- Climate Change
- Conservation of the Environment (Social Science)
- Environmentalist Thought and Ideology (Social Science)
- Management of Land and Natural Resources (Social Science)
- Natural Disasters (Environment)
- Pollution and Threats to the Environment (Social Science)
- Social Impact of Environmental Issues (Social Science)
- Sustainability
- Browse content in Human Geography
- Cultural Geography
- Economic Geography
- Political Geography
- Browse content in Interdisciplinary Studies
- Communication Studies
- Museums, Libraries, and Information Sciences
- Browse content in Politics
- African Politics
- Asian Politics
- Chinese Politics
- Comparative Politics
- Conflict Politics
- Elections and Electoral Studies
- Environmental Politics
- Ethnic Politics
- European Union
- Foreign Policy
- Gender and Politics
- Human Rights and Politics
- Indian Politics
- International Relations
- International Organization (Politics)
- Irish Politics
- Latin American Politics
- Middle Eastern Politics
- Political Methodology
- Political Communication
- Political Philosophy
- Political Sociology
- Political Theory
- Political Behaviour
- Political Economy
- Political Institutions
- Politics and Law
- Politics of Development
- Public Administration
- Public Policy
- Qualitative Political Methodology
- Quantitative Political Methodology
- Regional Political Studies
- Russian Politics
- Security Studies
- State and Local Government
- UK Politics
- US Politics
- Browse content in Regional and Area Studies
- African Studies
- Asian Studies
- East Asian Studies
- Japanese Studies
- Latin American Studies
- Middle Eastern Studies
- Native American Studies
- Scottish Studies
- Browse content in Research and Information
- Research Methods
- Browse content in Social Work
- Addictions and Substance Misuse
- Adoption and Fostering
- Care of the Elderly
- Child and Adolescent Social Work
- Couple and Family Social Work
- Direct Practice and Clinical Social Work
- Emergency Services
- Human Behaviour and the Social Environment
- International and Global Issues in Social Work
- Mental and Behavioural Health
- Social Justice and Human Rights
- Social Policy and Advocacy
- Social Work and Crime and Justice
- Social Work Macro Practice
- Social Work Practice Settings
- Social Work Research and Evidence-based Practice
- Welfare and Benefit Systems
- Browse content in Sociology
- Childhood Studies
- Community Development
- Comparative and Historical Sociology
- Disability Studies
- Economic Sociology
- Gender and Sexuality
- Gerontology and Ageing
- Health, Illness, and Medicine
- Marriage and the Family
- Migration Studies
- Occupations, Professions, and Work
- Organizations
- Population and Demography
- Race and Ethnicity
- Social Theory
- Social Movements and Social Change
- Social Research and Statistics
- Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
- Sociology of Religion
- Sociology of Education
- Sport and Leisure
- Urban and Rural Studies
- Browse content in Warfare and Defence
- Defence Strategy, Planning, and Research
- Land Forces and Warfare
- Military Administration
- Military Life and Institutions
- Naval Forces and Warfare
- Other Warfare and Defence Issues
- Peace Studies and Conflict Resolution
- Weapons and Equipment
Morality Without God?
- Cite Icon Cite
- Permissions Icon Permissions
Some argue that atheism must be false, since without God, no values are possible, and thus “everything is permitted.” Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that God is not only not essential to morality, but that our moral behavior should be utterly independent of religion. He attacks several core ideas: that atheists are inherently immoral people; that any society will sink into chaos if it is becomes too secular; that without morality, we have no reason to be moral; that absolute moral standards require the existence of God; and that without religion, we simply couldn’t know what is wrong and what is right. Sinnott-Armstrong brings to bear convincing examples and data, as well as a lucid, elegant, and easy to understand writing style. This book should fit well with the debates raging over issues like evolution and intelligent design, atheism, and religion and public life as an example of a pithy, tightly-constructed argument on an issue of great social importance.
Personal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
- Add your ORCID iD
Institutional access
Sign in with a library card.
- Sign in with username/password
- Recommend to your librarian
- Institutional account management
- Get help with access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
- Click Sign in through your institution.
- Select your institution from the list provided, which will take you to your institution's website to sign in.
- When on the institution site, please use the credentials provided by your institution. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
- Following successful sign in, you will be returned to Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
- Click Sign in through society site.
- When on the society site, please use the credentials provided by that society. Do not use an Oxford Academic personal account.
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
- View your signed in personal account and access account management features.
- View the institutional accounts that are providing access.
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
- About Oxford Academic
- Publish journals with us
- University press partners
- What we publish
- New features
- Open access
- Rights and permissions
- Accessibility
- Advertising
- Media enquiries
- Oxford University Press
- Oxford Languages
- University of Oxford
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University's objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide
- Copyright © 2024 Oxford University Press
- Cookie settings
- Cookie policy
- Privacy policy
- Legal notice
This Feature Is Available To Subscribers Only
Sign In or Create an Account
This PDF is available to Subscribers Only
For full access to this pdf, sign in to an existing account, or purchase an annual subscription.
- Liberty University
- Jerry Falwell Library
- Special Collections
Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion
Home > Divinity > Quaerens Deum > Vol. 6 > Iss. 1 (2021)
Morality Without God
Luke Hancock Follow
This paper evaluates a moral system that does not rely on God. M.B. Wilkinson's morality is founded apart from God but can still be consistent with the existence of God. This paper explains and evaluates Wilkinson's attempts to solve the Euthyphro Dilemma and the is/ought gap by establishing a metaphysic and ontology upon which he bases his moral system.
Recommended Citation
Hancock, Luke (2021) "Morality Without God," Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion : Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 3. Available at: https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/lujpr/vol6/iss1/3
Since January 13, 2021
Included in
Religious Thought, Theology and Philosophy of Religion Commons
- Journal Home
- Submit Article
- Most Popular Papers
- Receive Email Notices or RSS
Advanced Search
Home | About | FAQ | My Account | Accessibility Statement
Privacy Copyright
Numbers, Facts and Trends Shaping Your World
Read our research on:
Full Topic List
Regions & Countries
- Publications
- Our Methods
- Short Reads
- Tools & Resources
Read Our Research On:
A growing share of Americans say it’s not necessary to believe in God to be moral
Most U.S. adults now say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values (56%), up from about half (49%) who expressed this view in 2011. This increase reflects the continued growth in the share of the population that has no religious affiliation, but it also is the result of changing attitudes among those who do identify with a religion, including white evangelical Protestants.
Surveys have long shown that religious “nones” – those who describe themselves religiously as atheist, agnostic or “nothing in particular” – are more likely than those who identify with a religion to say that belief in God is not a prerequisite for good values and morality. So the public’s increased rejection of the idea that belief in God is necessary for morality is due, in large part, to the spike in the share of Americans who are religious “nones.”
Indeed, the growth in the share of Americans who say belief in God is unnecessary for morality tracks closely with the growth in the share of the population that is religiously unaffiliated. In the 2011 Pew Research Center survey that included the question about God and morality, religious “nones” constituted 18% of the sample. By 2017, the share of “nones” stood at 25%.
But the continued growth of the “nones” is only part of the story. Attitudes about the necessity of belief in God for morality have also changed among those who do identify with a religion. Among all religiously affiliated adults, the share who say belief in God is unnecessary for morality ticked up modestly, from 42% in 2011 to 45% in 2017.
Among white evangelical Protestants, 32% now say belief in God is not necessary to have good values and be a moral person, up from 26% who said this in 2011. To be sure, most white evangelicals still say belief in God is necessary for morality. But the share who say belief in God is a necessary underpinning of being moral has declined from 72% to 65% in just six years.
Religious “nones” themselves, in addition to growing as a share of the population, have simultaneously become more likely to reject the idea that believing in God is necessary for morality. In 2017, 85% of religious “nones” say belief in God is unnecessary for morality, up from 78% who said this in 2011.
The trends in opinion on this question also point in the same direction among white mainline Protestants, black Protestants and white Catholics. Recent changes among these groups, however, have not been statistically significant.
- Atheism & Agnosticism
- Beliefs & Practices
- Religiously Unaffiliated
Gregory A. Smith is a senior associate director of research at Pew Research Center .
8 facts about atheists
Around 4 in 10 americans have become more spiritual over time; fewer have become more religious, spirituality among americans, chinese communist party promotes atheism, but many members still partake in religious customs, many people in u.s., other advanced economies say it’s not necessary to believe in god to be moral, most popular.
901 E St. NW, Suite 300 Washington, DC 20004 USA (+1) 202-419-4300 | Main (+1) 202-857-8562 | Fax (+1) 202-419-4372 | Media Inquiries
Research Topics
ABOUT PEW RESEARCH CENTER Pew Research Center is a nonpartisan fact tank that informs the public about the issues, attitudes and trends shaping the world. It conducts public opinion polling, demographic research, media content analysis and other empirical social science research. Pew Research Center does not take policy positions. It is a subsidiary of The Pew Charitable Trusts .
© 2024 Pew Research Center
Be thinking
Can moral objectivism do without god.
The most discussed moral argument for God’s existence is currently the argument concerning the ontological basis for objective moral values:
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist 2. Objective moral values do exist 3. Therefore, God exists [1]
Although consistent atheists must avoid accepting both premises of this logically valid syllogism, it’s not hard to find atheists who endorse either premise. Hence, this argument can be defended by quoting exclusively from atheists. After sketching a defence of both premises, and dealing with the frequent confusion between epistemology and ontology amongst its critics, this paper will focus upon defending the first premise against two objections from atheist Russ Shafer-Landau’s otherwise excellent book Whatever Happened to Good and Evil ? (Oxford, 2004).
Premise One: ‘If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist’
Traditionally, atheists have acknowledged that God is a necessary condition of objective moral values (i.e. the sort of moral truths that are discovered rather than invented by humans and which are "valid and binding whether anybody believes in them or not" [2] ). For example:
• Jean-Paul Sartre: "when we speak of 'abandonment' – a favourite word of Heidegger – we only mean to say that God does not exist, and that it is necessary to draw the consequences of his absence right to the end. The existentialist is strongly opposed to a certain type of secular moralism which seeks to suppress God at the least possible expense. Towards 1880, when the French professors endeavoured to formulate a secular morality, they said … nothing will be changed if God does not exist; we shall rediscover the same norms of honesty, progress and humanity, and we shall have disposed of God as an out-of-date hypothesis which will die away quietly of itself. The existentialist, on the contrary, finds it extremely embarrassing that God does not exist, for there disappears with Him all possibility of finding values in an intelligible heaven. There can no longer be any good a priori , since there is no infinite and perfect consciousness to think it. It is nowhere written that 'the good' exists, that one must be honest or must not lie, since we are now upon the plane where there are only men. Dostoevsky once wrote: 'If God did not exist, everything would be permitted'; and that, for existentialism, is the starting point. Everything is indeed permitted if God does not exist, and man is in consequence forlorn, for he cannot find anything to depend upon either within or outside himself." [3]
• Paul Kurtz: "The central question about moral and ethical principles concerns their ontological foundation. If they are neither derived from God nor anchored in some transcendent ground, they are purely ephemeral." [4]
• Julian Baggini: "If there is no single moral authority [i.e. no God] we have to in some sense 'create' values for ourselves ... [and] that means that moral claims are not true or false… you may disagree with me but you cannot say I have made a factual error." [5]
• Richard Dawkins: "The universe that we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose [i.e. no God], no evil, no good, nothing but pitiless indifference." [6] Dawkins concedes: "It is pretty hard to defend absolutist morals on grounds other than religious ones." [7]
By distinguishing between various different properties of ‘the moral law’, philosophers have put forward a variety of independent reasons to accept the first premise of the moral argument:
The argument from moral prescription
Beyond its objectivity, what is sometimes called the ‘moral law’ is not analogous to the scientific concept physical ‘laws’. When I trip up, falling is something I am caused to do, not something I am obliged to do! The ‘moral law’, on the other hand, prescribes (but does not cause) actions that I am obligated to do or to refrain from doing. While I never fail to ‘obey’ the ‘law’ of gravity, I often fail to ‘do the right thing’. A physical law describes what is the case, and can be used to predict what will be the case, but it doesn’t prescribe what ought to be the case as does the ‘moral law’. Now, as Francis J. Beckwith and Greg Koukl observe: "A command only makes sense when there are two minds involved, one giving the command and one receiving it." [8] If an objective moral law has the property of being a command that we receive, then there must be an objective, personal, moral commander beyond individual or collective humanity. As G.E.M. Anscombe affirmed concerning an objective moral law: "Naturally it is not possible to have such a conception unless you believe in God as a lawgiver; like Jews, Stoics, and Christians… you cannot be under a law unless it has been promulgated to you…" [9]
The argument from moral obligation
Francis J. Beckwith observes how "our experience indicates that moral obligation ... is deeply connected to our obligations toward other persons." [10] I have moral obligations, but since I can’t be obligated by anything non-personal (e.g. the evolutionary history of my species), I must be obligated by something personal. Since there are objective moral obligations that transcend all finite persons (or groups thereof), there must therefore be a transcendent personal reality to whom we are most fundamentally obligated. As H.P. Owen argues:
On the one hand [objective moral] claims transcend every human person... On the other hand we value the personal more highly than the impersonal; so that it is contradictory to assert that impersonal claims are entitled to the allegiance of our wills. The only solution to this paradox is to suppose that the order of [objective moral] claims ... is in fact rooted in the personality of God. [11]
Richard Taylor agrees that the idea of a moral obligation or duty more important and binding than those imposed upon us by other individuals or by the state is only intelligible if we make reference to a person who transcends us all:
A duty is something that is owed... But something can be owed only to some person or persons. There can be no such thing as duty in isolation... the idea of an obligation higher than this, and referred to as moral obligation, is clear enough, provided reference to some lawmaker higher... than those of the state is understood... This does give a clear sense to the claim that our moral obligations are more binding upon us than our political obligations... But what if this higher-than-human lawgiver is no longer taken into account? Does the concept of a moral obligation... still make sense?... the concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart form the idea of God. The words remain, but their meaning is gone. [12]
The argument from moral ideals
We appear to apprehend and to measure ourselves against a moral ideal . But it’s hard to conceive of this ideal as an impersonal, abstract reality: "It is clear what is meant when it is said that a person is just; but it is bewildering when it is said that in the absence of any people, justice itself exists. Moral values seem to exist as properties of persons, not as mere [Platonic] abstractions..." [13] Hence A.E. Taylor argued that:
were there no will in existence except the wills of human beings, who are so often ignorant of the law of right and so often defy it, it is not apparent what the validity of the law could mean. Recognition of the validity of the law thus seems to carry with it a reference to an intelligence which has not, like our own, to make acquaintance with it piecemeal, slowly and with difficulty, but has always been in full and clear possession of it, and a will which does not, like our own, often set it at nought, but is guided by it in all its operations. [14]
The argument from moral guilt
Beckwith argues that a non-personal ground of an objective moral law that transcends human subjectivity "is inadequate in explaining the guilt and shame one feels when one violates the moral law. For it is persons, not rules or principles, that elicit in us feelings of guilt and shame." [15] As Paul Copan asks: "Why should we feel guilt towards abstract moral principles?" [16] Since it would be inappropriate to feel guilt or shame before an abstract (impersonal) moral principle, and since it is appropriate to feel guilt and shame before the objective moral law, that moral law cannot be an abstract moral principle. In other words, objective moral values must be ontologically grounded in a transcendent personality before whom it is appropriate to feel moral guilt (it's worth noting that the possibility of objective forgiveness for moral guilt is equally dependent upon the moral law having a personal ground).
These four arguments form a powerful cumulative case for the first premise of the moral argument.
Premise Two: ‘Objective moral values do exist’
Whilst no one who accept the first premise of the moral argument can consistently remain an atheist unless they reject the existence of objective moral values, as John Cottingham observes: "To everyone’s surprise, the increasing consensus among philosophers today is that some kind of objectivism of truth and of value is correct…" [17]
For example, drawing upon the ‘principle of credulity’, atheist Peter Cave argues that: "whatever sceptical arguments may be brought against our belief that killing the innocent is morally wrong, we are more certain that the killing is morally wrong than that the argument is sound… Torturing an innocent child for the sheer fun of it is morally wrong. Full stop." [18]
Indeed, to think that any argument against moral objectivism is compelling would be to embrace the self-contradictory position that (a) there are no objective moral values, and that (b) one objectively ought to accept subjectivism! As Margarita Rosa Levin comments in a related context:
Even the enemies of objectivity rely on it... the skeptic states a position that cannot possibly be sustained or rationally believed [because] he is in effect asking you not to apply his assertion to his own position, without giving any reason for exempting his own words from his own general claim. His position is futile and self-refuting; it can be stated, but it cannot convince anyone who recognizes its implications. [19]
Ontology not Epistemology
Writing in his fascinating study of Ethics, Evil and Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999), atheist Colin McGinn affirms:
When I assert 'this is good' or 'that is evil', I do not mean that I experience desire or aversion, or that I have a feeling of liking or indignation. These subjective experiences may be present; but the judgment points not to a personal or subjective state of mind but to the presence of an objective value in the situation. What is implied in this objectivity? Clearly, in the first place, it implies independence of the judging subject. If my assertion 'this is good' is valid, then it is valid not for me only but for everyone. If I say 'this is good', and another person, referring to the same situation, says 'this is not good', one or other of us must be mistaken... The validity of a moral judgment does not depend upon the person by whom the judgment is made... In saying that moral values belong to the nature of reality... the statement implies an objectivity which is independent of the achievements of persons in informing their lives with these values, and is even independent of their recognising their validity. Whether we are guided by them or not, whether we acknowledge them or not, they have validity... objective moral value is valid independently of my will, and yet is something which satisfies my purpose and completes my nature... [20]
Since McGinn accepts the first premise of the moral argument, he suggests that it is possible "to detach moral objectivity from any religious worldview – so that we do not need to believe in God in order to find morality both important and binding." [21] Here McGinn exhibits a common confusion, in that he conflates the argument for God as the ontological basis for objective moral values with the un-biblical epistemological claim that belief in God is a necessary condition of knowing the difference between right and wrong (cf. Romans 2:14-15). As J.P. Moreland and William Lane Craig caution:
The question is not : Must we believe in God in order to live moral lives? There is no reason to think that atheists and theists alike may not live what we normally characterize as good and decent lives. Similarly, the question is not : Can we formulate a system of ethics without reference to God? If the non-theist grants that human beings do have objective value, then there is no reason to think that he cannot work out a system of ethics with which the theist would largely agree. Or again, the question is not : Can we recognize the existence of objective moral values without reference to God? The theist will typically maintain that a person need not believe in God in order to recognize, say, that we should love our children. [22]
Rather, as Paul Copan explains, the moral argument urges that although " Belief in God isn’t a requirement for being moral... the existence of a personal God is crucial for a coherent understanding of objective morality." [23] In other words, although the non-theist can do the right thing because they know what the objectively right thing to do is, their worldview can’t cogently provide an adequate ontological account of the objective moral values they know and obey.
Russ Shafer-Landau on objective values without God
Atheist Russ Shafer-Landau does an excellent job of defending moral objectivism in his book Whatever Happened to Good and Evil ? (Oxford University Press, 2004):
some moral views are better than others, despite the sincerity of the individuals, cultures, and societies that endorse them. Some moral views are true, others false, and my thinking them so doesn’t make them so. My society’s endorsement of them doesn’t prove their truth. Individuals, and whole societies, can be seriously mistaken when it comes to morality. The best explanation of this is that there are moral standards not of our own making. [24]
Shafer-Landau acknowledges that many people think there is a connection between objective moral value and God:
This includes theists, many of whom believe in God precisely because they believe in ethical objectivity, and see no way of defending this idea without God. But it also includes all those atheists who embrace moral [subjectivism], just because they believe that the only escape from it is through God, whom they reject. [25]
According to Shafer-Landau, the position of many atheists can thus be expressed in the following ‘argument from atheism’ for moral subjectivism:
Premise 1) Ethics is objective only if God exists. Premise 2) But God does not exist. Conclusion) Therefore ethics isn’t objective. [26]
As a case in point, the late J.L. Mackie acknowledged that objective moral values would be evidence for God:
if we adopted moral objectivism, we should have to regard the relations of supervenience which connect values and obligations with their natural grounds as synthetic; they would then be in principle something that a god might conceivably create; and since they would otherwise be a very odd sort of thing, the admitting of them would be an inductive ground for admitting also a god to create them. [27]
Mackie sidestepped the moral argument by embracing the ‘argument from atheism’ and rejecting the objectivity of moral value: "if we adopted instead a subjectivist ... account of morality, this problem would not arise." [28] Unlike Mackie, Shafer-Landau isn’t prepared to reject moral objectivism, so he rejects the other premise of the moral argument, saying that "both theists and atheists can (and should) reject" [29] the 'argument from atheism'.
On the one hand, since its second premise is "just an assertion of atheism" [30] , theists will naturally reject the argument from atheism:
It may be that God really does not exist. But unless the atheist can provide compelling argument to that effect, then you theists out there are within your rights to reject the Argument from Atheism. And agnostics are pretty much in the same boat [because] they’ll neither accept nor reject its second premise ... and so will refrain from endorsing its conclusion. [31]
On the other hand, Shafer-Landau thinks that atheists can and should reject the ‘argument from atheism’. Since the ‘argument from atheism’ is logically valid, and since Shafer-Landau accepts its atheistic second premise, he rejects its first premise (which amounts to denying the first premise of the moral argument). To justify this denial, Shafer-Landau tries to rebut what he mistakenly takes to be the only line of thought that ties moral objectivity to God’s existence:
In my experience, people tie objectivity to God because of a very specific line of thought. The basic idea is that all laws (rules, principles, standards, etc.) require a lawmaker. So if there are any moral laws, then these too require a lawmaker. But if these moral laws are objective, then the lawmaker can’t be any one of us. That’s just true by definition. Objectivity implies an independence from human opinion. Well, if objective moral rules aren’t authorised by any one of us, then who did make them up? Three guesses. In a nutshell: all rules require an author. Objective rules can’t be human creations. Therefore objective rules require a nonhuman creator. Enter God. [32]
Shafer-Landau thus reduces the premise that ‘If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist’ to the premise that "all laws require a lawmaker" . Even if he can rebut the latter premise, it doesn’t follow that he has rebutted the former premise; but let us examine each precondition of success in turn.
Shafer-Landau’s question-begging rebuttal of Premise One
Since the justification for the moral argument’s first premise, according to Shafer-Landau, is the belief that "all laws require a lawmaker" , he concludes that atheists:
must either reject the existence of any objective laws, or reject the claim that laws require lawmakers. Since they can easily accept the existence of some objective laws (e.g. of physics or chemistry) they should deny that laws require authors. [33]
Of course, Shafer-Landau is correct when he says that "If you are an atheist, you do, in fact, believe that all objective laws lack a divine author." [34] But the question here is not what atheists do believe, but rather what they can and should believe. As a rebuttal to the premise "all laws require a lawmaker" , the mere observation that atheists believe in the laws of physics without believing in a creator is lacking (obviously relevant theistic arguments are simply being ignored here [35] ). The reason atheists believe in objective laws without a lawmaker is that atheists don’t believe in an objective lawmaker: "Who made the second law of thermodynamics true? No one. If these laws are objective, then we certainly didn’t create them. And if God doesn’t exist, then, obviously, God didn’t make them up either. No one did." [36] Here we clearly see that Shafer-Landau’s rebuttal of the moral argument is based upon the question-begging assumption that God does not exist . Landau is offering "just an assertion of atheism" [37] , an assertion that theists and agnostics will naturally reject: "It may be that God really does not exist. But unless the atheist can provide compelling argument to that effect, then you theists out there are within your rights to reject [this rebuttal]." [38] Shafer-Landau answers the moral argument like so:
If objective ethical rules require God, that’s because (i) rules require authors; (ii) therefore objective rules require non-human authors; (iii) therefore objective moral rules require a nonhuman author; and (iv) that must be God. Each of these steps follow naturally from the preceding one. Atheists reject the conclusion (iv). Therefore they should reject the initial claim that got them there: (i). [39]
Theists and agnostics will hardly be impressed by this mere "assertion of atheism" . [40]
Equivocation is illogical
Shafer-Landau sportingly allows the theist another move; namely, the claim that:
normative laws – those that tell us what we ought to do, how we should behave – do require an author... Even if we concede the existence of scientific laws without lawmakers, we still need some reason to think that moral rules, which are obviously normative, are also authorless. [41]
Shafer-Landau questions any development of the moral argument based upon the distinction between normative and non-normative rules, since "The best reason for thinking that moral laws require an author is that all laws require an author. But that reason, as we’ve seen, is mistaken. What other reason could there be?" [42] Of course, his reason for rejecting the premise that all laws require an author is question-begging, so he’s not off to a good start here. However, he does launch an independent counter-attack upon taking the normative nature of the moral law to be significant:
Not all normative laws require lawmakers. For instance, the laws of logic and rationality are normative. They tell us what we ought to do. But no one invented them. If you have excellent evidence for one claim, and this entails a second claim, then you should believe that second claim. If you are faced with contradictory propositions, and you know that one of them is false, then you must accept the other. If you want just one thing out of life, then you ought to do what’s necessary to achieve it... [43]
Unlike the example of the laws of nature, theists can agree with Shafer-Landau that no one, not even God, ‘invented’ the laws of logic. However, when Shafer-Landau writes that "If you have excellent evidence for one claim, and this entails a second claim, then you should believe that second claim" [44] he equivocates between moral and pragmatic senses of the word ‘should’. Logic qua logic has nothing to say about what objectively ought to be the case morally speaking . Logic can tell us that if we want to accept whatever conclusion is validly deducible from certain premises, then such-and-such is the conclusion that we should accept. But this is a pragmatic (if-then) ‘ought’. Logic can’t tell us that we have a categorical moral obligation to ‘be reasonable’ or to value truth over falsehood. Why not agree with Nietzsche that "The falseness of a judgment is to us not necessarily an objection to a judgment... The question is to what extent it is life-advancing, life-preserving, species-preserving, perhaps even species-breeding..." [45] ? The fact that we can distinguish morality from logic shows that logic isn’t normative in the moral sense of the term . As atheist Kai Nielsen acknowledges: "Pure practical reason, even with a good knowledge of the facts, will not take you to morality." [46]
Shafer-Landau’s reductionist strategy
Shafer-Landau response to the moral argument is to reduce the premise that "If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist" to the proposition that "all laws require a lawmaker" , but his rebuttal of the latter claim begs the question. He then attempts to rebut the modified premise that "all normative laws require a lawmaker" by committing the fallacy of equivocation. But what of his overarching strategy of reducing the premise that 'If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist' to the premise that "all laws / normative laws require a lawmaker" ?
First, although Shafer-Landau’s reduction of the first premise is clearly in the same ballpark as the argument from prescription , it is at best ‘sitting on the bench’. We must be careful to distinguish between positing a moral prescriber as an explanation of the fact that objective moral norms are experienced as prescriptions , and positing a moral prescriber as an explanation of the objectivity of moral values . While the moral argument posits God as the ontological ‘ground’ of the existence of objective moral values per se , it doesn’t employ the concept of prescription for this purpose. The problem with employing the notion prescription in this way , as Shafer-Landau points out, is that it gives the false impression that the moral law is contingent and arbitrary , in that (like gravity) it only exists because God happens to have created it (the terminology of a moral ‘law-giver’ is especially susceptible to this misleading interpretation). Instead, the concept of moral prescription relates specifically to our experience of moral values as facts that prescribe our behaviour . To put the argument from moral prescription another way (by replacing the terms in Shafer-Landau’s own sketch of the moral argument):
(i) a prescription requires a prescriber; (ii) therefore objective prescriptions require non-human prescribers; (iii) therefore objective moral prescriptions require a nonhuman moral prescriber; and (iv) that must be God.
Since Shafer-Landau admits that "Each of these steps follow naturally from the preceding one" [47] when the argument is framed in terms of rules and rule-givers, he ought to admit that each of these steps follows naturally from the preceding one now that we have simply replaced the terms.
Second, Shafer-Landau’s reduction strategy simply ignores the premise-one-supporting arguments from obligation , moral ideals and guilt that we examined above. In effect, Shafer-Landau critiques a straw man.
Euthyphro non sequitur
In Plato’s Euthyphro dialogue, Socrates asks: "Is what is holy holy because the gods approve it, or do they approve it because it is holy?" [48] This question is often taken to entail that ‘God’ is a redundant explanation for the objectivity of moral values. On the one hand, if we ground morality in God’s commands, morality becomes arbitrary (if something is good simply because God commands it, he could just have easily commanded the opposite). On the other hand, if we don’t ground morality in God’s commands, morality must be independent of God’s commands , and thus (so it is frequently but mistakenly urged) independent of God . As Bertrand Russell argued:
if you are quite sure there is a difference between right and wrong, you are then in this situation: is that difference due to God’s fiat or is it not? If it is due to God’s fiat, then for God himself there is no difference between right and wrong, and it is no longer a significant statement to say that God is good. If you are going to say, as theologians do, that God is good, you must then say that right and wrong have some meaning which is independent of God’s fiat, because God’s fiats are good and not bad independently of the mere fact that He made them. If you are going to say that, you will then have to say that it is not only through God that right and wrong came into being, but that they are in their essence logically anterior to God. [49]
Shafer-Landau uses the Euthyphro dilemma to argue that: "ethical objectivists – even the theists among them – should insist on the existence of a realm of moral truths that have not been created by God." [50] I agree. To say that God ‘creates’ moral truths by merely issuing contingent prescriptions entails the self-contradictory claim that objective moral truths are contingent and arbitrary . However, Shafer-Landau jumps from the need to reject the ‘arbitrary’ horn of the Euthyphro dilemma to the conclusion that "even if you believe in God, you should have serious reservations about tying the objectivity of morality to God’s existence." [51] Here we have a simple non sequitur that equivocates between (a) the conclusion that the objectivity of objective moral values is not grounded in God’s commands and (b) the conclusion that the objectivity of objective moral values is not grounded in God’s essential nature .
As has already been noted, we must distinguish between positing a transcendent moral prescriber as an explanation for the prescriptive nature of objective moral values , and positing a transcendent person as an explanation of the objective existence of moral values . While the moral argument posits a personal God to account for the existence of objective moral values per se , it doesn’t employ the concept of God qua moral prescriber for this purpose. Rather: "God’s commands are good, not because God commands them, but because God is good . Thus, God is not subject to a moral order outside of himself, and neither are God’s moral commands arbitrary. God’s commands are issued by a perfect being who is the source of all goodness." [52]
As Keith E. Yandell warns: "The Euthyphro argument nicely raises some issues, but it does not settle anything. There are alternatives in addition to the two that the Euthyphro argument considers. The argument would succeed only if there were not." [53] The Euthyphro dilemma destroys the ‘Divine Command Theory’ according to which "actions are right because (and only because) God commands them." [54] Shafer-Landau is therefore right to say that "the best option for theists is to reject the Divine Command Theory" [55] ; however, he is wrong to conclude from this that the moral argument is therefore unsound, because the moral argument simply doesn’t depend upon Divine Command Theory. As William Lane Craig observes:
Plato himself saw the solution to this objection: you split the horns of the dilemma by formulating a third alternative, namely, God is the Good. The Good is the moral nature of God himself. That is to say, God is necessarily holy, loving, kind, just, and so on, and these attributes of God comprise the Good. God’s moral character expresses itself towards us in the form of certain commandments, which become for us our moral duties. Hence God’s commandments are not arbitrary, but necessarily flow from his own nature. [56]
This understanding of the relationship between God and Goodness, which side-steps the Euthyphro dilemma, is called ‘essentialism’ (because it sees Goodness as part of God’s ontological essence).
While many atheists grant the existence of a connection between objective moral values and the existence of God, and therefore accept moral subjectivism, a significant number of contemporary atheists endorse moral objectivism. Atheists who endorse moral objectivism have to take issue with their fellow atheists over the first premise of the moral argument, despite the powerful cumulative case that supports it. Atheist Russ Shafer-Landau ably defends moral objectivism, and (unlike certain other atheists) he understands that the first premise of the moral argument is ontological rather than epistemological in character. However, in attempting to avoid the conclusion of the moral argument, Shafer-Landau attacks a straw man by begging the question, equivocating and drawing a non sequitur from a false dilemma.
Recommended Resources
Recommended Books on the Moral Argument, www.amazon.co.uk/Books-on-the-Moral-Argument-for-God/lm/R1YZ0ZOU0NDK3T
William Lane Craig v. Sam Harris, ‘Is the Foundation for Morality Natural or Supernatural?’, www.rfmedia.org/av/video/craig-vs-harris-foundation-of-morality/
Peter Kreeft, ‘A Refutation of Moral Relativism’, www.peterkreeft.com/audio/05_relativism.htm
Peter S. Williams, ‘The Meta-Ethical Argument for Theism’, www.damaris.org/cm/podcasts/375
Peter S. Williams, ‘Meta-Ethics and God’, www.damaris.org/cm/podcasts/528
On-Line Reading
Robert M. Adams, ‘Moral Arguments for God’, www.lastseminary.com/moral-argument/Moral%20Arguments%20for%20Theistic%20Belief.pdf
Francis J. Beckwith, ‘Why I Am Not A Moral Relativist’, www.familychristian.com/chapters/19307.pdf
J. Budziszewski, ‘Can We Be Good Without God?’, www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0000054.cfm
Paul Copan, ‘God, Naturalism and the Foundations of Morality’, www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/God-naturalism-morality.pdf
Paul Copan, ‘Morality and Meaning Without God: Another Failed Attempt’, www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/morality-meaning.pdf
Paul Copan, ‘Can Michael Martin be a Moral Realist?: Sic Et Non’, www.paulcopan.com/articles/pdf/Michael-Martin-a-moral-realist.pdf
F.C. Copleston v. Bertrand Russell, ‘A Debate on the Existence of God’, www.philvaz.com/apologetics/p20.htm
William Lane Craig, ‘The Indispensability of Theological Meta-Ethical Foundations for Morality’, www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5175 [requires log in to the Reasonable Faith site for access]
William Lane Craig v. Richard Taylor, ‘Is the Foundation for Morality Natural or Supernatural?’, www.reasonablefaith.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=5305 [requires log in to the Reasonable Faith site for access]
C.S. Lewis, ‘Right and Wrong as a Clue to the Heart of the Universe’, http://afterall.net/papers/491366
C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man , www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/arch/lewis/abolition1.htm#1
Mark D. Lindville, ‘The Moral Argument’, http://commonsenseatheism.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Linville-The-Moral-Argument.pdf
Steven Lovell, ‘God as the Grounding of Moral Objectivity: Defending Against Euthyphro’, http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/annotations/euthyphro.html
J.P. Moreland, ‘The Ethical Inadequacy of Naturalism’, http://afterall.net/papers/24
Michael C. Rea, ‘Naturalism and Moral Realism’, www.lastseminary.com/moral-argument/Naturalism%20and%20Moral%20Realism.pdf
Peter S. Williams, ‘The Abolition of Man: Reflections on Reductionism with Special Reference to Eugenics’, www.lewissociety.org/abolition.php
Peter S. Williams v. Carl Stetcher, ‘Morality and the Biblical God’, www.bethinking.org/who-are-you-god/advanced/god-questions-1-morality-and-the-biblical-god.htm
[1] William Lane Craig, God ? A Debate Between A Christian And An Atheist (ed. James P. Sterba; Oxford, 2004), p.19. See also: William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith : Christian Truth and Apologetics , third edition (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2009) & On Guard : Defending Your Faith with Reason and Precision (Colorado Springs: David C. Cook, 2010). [2] Ibid , p.17. [3] Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism (New Haven, Conn: Yale University Press, 2007), p.28, www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm [4] Paul Kurtz, Forbidden Fruit (Prometheus, 1988), p.65. [5] Julian Baggini, Atheism : A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2003), pp.41-51. [6] Richard Dawkins, ‘God’s Utility Function’, Scientific American , November 1995, p.85, my italics. [7] Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (London: Bantam Press, 2006), p.232. [8] Francis J. Beckwith & Gregory Koukl, Moral Relativism : Feet Firmly Planted in Mid-Air (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker, 1998), p.166. [9] G.E.M. Anscombe, ‘Modern Moral Philosophy’, Virtue Ethics (eds., Roger Crisp & Michael Slote; Oxford, 1997), pp.31 & 39. [10] Francis J. Beckwith, ‘Moral Law, the Mormon Universe, and the Nature of the Right We Ought to Choose’, The New Mormon Challenge (ed. Francis J. Beckwith et al ; Jonathan Ball Publishers, 2002), p.230. [11] H.P. Owen, ‘Why Morality Implies The Existence Of God’, Philosophy of Religion : a guide and anthology (ed. Brian Davies; Oxford, 2000), p.648. [12] Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1985), pp.83-84. [13] J.P. Moreland & William Lane Craig, Philosophical Foundations For A Christian Worldview (Downers Grove, Illinois: IVP, 2003), p.492. [14] A.E. Taylor, Does God Exist ? (London: Fontana, 1961), p.107. [15] Beckwith, op. cit. , p.230. [16] Paul Copan, True For You, But Not For Me (Minneapolis, Minnesota: Bethany House, 1998), p.62. [17] John Cottingham, ‘Philosophers are finding fresh meanings in Truth, Goodness and Beauty’, The Times (June 17, 2006). [18] Peter Cave, Humanism (Oxford: OneWorld, 2009), p.146. [19] Margarita Rosa Levin, ‘A Defence of Objectivity’ Classics of Philosophy Volume III – The Twentieth Century (ed. Louis J. Pojman; Oxford, 2001), pp.550 & 558. [20] Colin McGinn, Ethics, Evil and Fiction (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1999). [21] Ibid , p.vii. [22] Moreland & Craig, op. cit. , p.492. [23] Copan, op. cit ., p.45. [24] Russ Shafer-Landau, Whatever Happened to Good and Evil ? (Oxford, 2004), p.viii. [25] Ibid , p.75. [26] Cf. Shafer-Landau, ibid , p.75. [27] J.L. Mackie, The Miracle of Theism (Oxford University Press, 1982), p.118. [28] Ibid . [29] Shafer-Landau, op. cit. , p.76. [30] Ibid . [31] Ibid . [32] Ibid , pp.75-76. [33] Ibid , p.76. [34] Ibid , p.77. [35] Cf. John Foster, The Divine Lawmaker : Lectures on Induction, Laws of Nature, and the Existence of God (Oxford, 2004); Alexander R. Pruss, ‘The Leibnizian Cosmological Argument’; William Lane Craig, ‘The Kalam Cosmological Argument’ & Robin Collins, ‘The Teleological Argument: an exploration of the fine-tuning of the universe’ in The Blackwell Companion To Natural Theology (eds. William Lane Craig & J.P. Moreland; Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009); William Lane Craig, Reasonable Faith : Christian Truth and Apologetics , third edition (Wheaton, Illinois: Crossway, 2009); Bruce L. Gordon, ‘Balloons On A String: A Critique of Multiverse Cosmology’, The Nature of Nature : Examining the Role of Naturalism in Science (eds. Bruce L. Gordon & William A. Dembski; Wilmington: ISI, 2011). [36] Shafer-Landau, op. cit . [37] Ibid , p.76. [38] Ibid . [39] Ibid , p.77. [40] Ibid , p.76. [41] Ibid , p.77. [42] Ibid . [43] Ibid . [44] Ibid . [45] Friedrich Nietzsche, Beyond Good and Evil (aphorism 4), http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Truth#Nietzsche [46] Kai Nielsen, ‘Why Should I Be Moral?’, American Philosophical Quarterly 21, 1984, p.90. [47] Shafer-Landau, op. cit. , p.77. [48] Plato, Euthyphro , 10a, Plato, The Collected Dialogues of Plato , (trans.) Lane Cooper (eds. Edith Hamilton and Huntingdon Cairns; Princeton University Press, 1961), p.178. [49] Michael Peterson et al, Reason and Religious Belief : An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (Oxford, 1992), p.85. [50] Shafer-Landau, op. cit ., p.79. [51] Ibid , p.78. [52] Beckwith, op. cit. , p.232. [53] Keith E. Yandell, ‘Theology, Philosophy, And Evil’, For Faith And Clarity (ed. James K. Beilby; Grand Rapids: Baker, 2006), p.240. [54] Shafer-Landau, op. cit. , p.80. [55] Ibid , p.83. [56] William Lane Craig, God, Are You There ? (1999), pp.38-39.
© 2011 Peter S. Williams This paper appeared in Norwegian in the Scandinavian apologetics journal Theofilos ( www.theofilos.nu/?lang=no ) and appears on bethinking.org by the kind permission of its author.
Peter S. Williams
You might also be interested in
Stephen Fry and God
Ian Paul responds to Stephen Fry's comments on what he would say to God.
Life after God? - The Ethics of Peter Singer
A careful examination and critique of the ethical approach proposed by philosopher Peter Singer.
Dominion - a critical review
Marcus Paul
An in-depth engagement with historian Tom Holland's account of Christianity's lasting impact on thinking and morality of the West.
- Advanced Search
- All new items
- Journal articles
- Manuscripts
- All Categories
- Metaphysics and Epistemology
- Epistemology
- Metaphilosophy
- Metaphysics
- Philosophy of Action
- Philosophy of Language
- Philosophy of Mind
- Philosophy of Religion
- Value Theory
- Applied Ethics
- Meta-Ethics
- Normative Ethics
- Philosophy of Gender, Race, and Sexuality
- Philosophy of Law
- Social and Political Philosophy
- Value Theory, Miscellaneous
- Science, Logic, and Mathematics
- Logic and Philosophy of Logic
- Philosophy of Biology
- Philosophy of Cognitive Science
- Philosophy of Computing and Information
- Philosophy of Mathematics
- Philosophy of Physical Science
- Philosophy of Social Science
- Philosophy of Probability
- General Philosophy of Science
- Philosophy of Science, Misc
- History of Western Philosophy
- Ancient Greek and Roman Philosophy
- Medieval and Renaissance Philosophy
- 17th/18th Century Philosophy
- 19th Century Philosophy
- 20th Century Philosophy
- History of Western Philosophy, Misc
- Philosophical Traditions
- African/Africana Philosophy
- Asian Philosophy
- Continental Philosophy
- European Philosophy
- Philosophy of the Americas
- Philosophical Traditions, Miscellaneous
- Philosophy, Misc
- Philosophy, Introductions and Anthologies
- Philosophy, General Works
- Teaching Philosophy
- Philosophy, Miscellaneous
- Other Academic Areas
- Natural Sciences
- Social Sciences
- Cognitive Sciences
- Formal Sciences
- Arts and Humanities
- Professional Areas
- Other Academic Areas, Misc
- Submit a book or article
- Upload a bibliography
- Personal page tracking
- Archives we track
- Information for publishers
- Introduction
- Submitting to PhilPapers
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Subscriptions
- Editor's Guide
- The Categorization Project
- For Publishers
- For Archive Admins
- PhilPapers Surveys
- Bargain Finder
- About PhilPapers
- Create an account
Morality Without God
Reprint years, other versions.
No versions found
PhilArchive
External links.
- From the Publisher via CrossRef (no proxy)
Through your library
- Sign in / register and customize your OpenURL resolver
- Configure custom resolver
Similar books and articles
Citations of this work.
No citations found.
References found in this work
No references found.
Academia.edu no longer supports Internet Explorer.
To browse Academia.edu and the wider internet faster and more securely, please take a few seconds to upgrade your browser .
Enter the email address you signed up with and we'll email you a reset link.
Ethics Without God? The Divine in Contemporary Moral and Political Theory
Edited, with Jeffrey Langan and Fulvio Di Blasi (St. Augustine's Press, 2008) Front matter available here (title page, table of contents, preface by Ralph McInerny, Introduction by editors).
Related Papers
Michael Sohn
Roger Haydon Mitchell
James R M Wakefield
"The scientific revolutions of the nineteenth century had major repercussions on Western moral philosophy. In the Christian tradition, God had been assigned two special roles: first as the creator of the world, including humanity; and second as its moral legislator, overseeing the actions of each person and distributing rewards or punishments according to whether they conformed to a divinely-sanctioned universal moral law. If this view were correct, people would have a clear, pragmatic reason to try to live well: they would gain the favour of God and be rewarded in the afterlife. However, since the case for the creator God’s existence had been undermined, the existence of a divine and all-knowing legislator could no longer be assumed. This led some philosophers to conclude that the language of morality was ultimately meaningless. Moral philosophers who were sceptical about God's existence faced several difficult questions. Why, if at all, should we be interested in doing ‘the right thing’? How can any version of morality have sufficient authority for anyone to have reasons, and especially decisive reasons, to behave according to it? Are there any distinctively moral reasons at all? If the decision to act morally is really pragmatic—that is, we refrain from lying, cheating and stealing because we will otherwise be punished—is the content of morality, or the specific rules that we ought to follow, ultimately arbitrary? This presentation will describe some of the ways in which moral philosophers have responded to the (possible) absence of a divine legislator. Among the theories discussed will be utilitarianism, which is the doctrine of promoting human happiness, developed as a scientifically-grounded alternative to dogmatic rule-following; natural law theory, which says that morality is derivable from facts about human nature; and constructivism, which says that moral authority is created by means of rational procedures. As we will see, the central challenge for each set of theorists is to locate the source of moral authority not in some external entity, but within the very people who are supposed to be answerable to it."
This article provides an overview of the history of what is termed the secular moral project by providing a synopsis of the history of the moral argument for God’s existence and the various historical processes that have contributed to the secularization of ethics. I argue that three key thinkers propel the secular moral project forward from the middle of the 19th century into the 20th century: John Stuart Mill, whose ethical thinking in Utilitarianism serves as the background to all late 19th century secular ethical thinking, Henry Sidgwick, who, in the Methods, indisputably establishes the secular autonomy of ethics as a distinctive discipline (metaethics), and finally, G.E. Moore, whose work, the Principia Ethica, stands at the forefront of virtually all secular metaethical debates concerning naturalism and non-naturalism in the first half of the 20th century. Although secular metaethics continues to be the dominant ethical view of the academy, it is shown that theistic metaethic...
Faith and Philosophy
Michael Budde
Choice Reviews Online
Kristen Irwin
Religious Studies Review
Joerg Rieger
Journal of Religious Ethics
Eric Gregory
This essay on Richard Miller’s Friends and Other Strangers (2016) locates its arguments in the context of how the practice of religious ethics bears upon debates about normativity in the study of religion and the cultural turn in the humanities. After reviewing its main claims about identity and otherness, I focus on three areas. First, while commending Miller’s effort to analogize virtuous empathy with Augustine’s ethics of rightly ordered love, I raise questions about his use of Augustine and his distinctive formulation of Augustinian “iconic realism.” Second, I suggest his discussion of public reason is at odds with the dialogical spirit of the book and may distract from the democratic solidarity required by our political moment. Third, more briefly, I highlight the practical implications of Miller’s vision for higher education at both the graduate and undergraduate level.
Philosophia Christi
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.
RELATED PAPERS
Yong (Michael) D Kim
Keynote Address, Acton University, The Acton Institute, June 16, 2016
W. B. Allen
maurizio mori
Scottish Journal of Theology
Gethin Rhys
Dr. Jalal S L
Studies in Christian Ethics
Christopher Insole
Myles Werntz
Ramon Llull Journal of Applied Ethics
Joan Cabó Rodríguez
Oxford Handbooks Online
Paul Cliteur
Evangelical Review of Theology
Thomas K Johnson
Annual Review of Anthropology
Valentina Napolitano , Carlota McAllister
Concilium: Politics, Theology and the Meaning of Power
Hille Haker
Kohei Nagashima , Giada Scotto
Tebogo M Mokobane
Contemporary Pragmatism
Lenart Škof
The Heythrop Journal
Lluis Oviedo
Journal of Analytic Theology
Christian B. Miller
Nathan Pinkoski , Ashleen Mencahca-Bagnulo
Jennifer A Herdt
Douglas R McGaughey
Journal of Church and State
Micah Watson
European Journal for Philosophy of Religion
Dieter Schönecker
Christopher Tollefsen
Ani Donpedro , Dominic Obielosi
Marc Clauson
RELATED TOPICS
- We're Hiring!
- Help Center
- Find new research papers in:
- Health Sciences
- Earth Sciences
- Cognitive Science
- Mathematics
- Computer Science
- Academia ©2024
IMAGES
VIDEO
COMMENTS
Mammals may derive pleasure from helping others in the same way that humans feel good doing good. Nature often equips life's essentials — sex, eating, nursing — with built-in gratification. One study found that pleasure centers in the human brain light up when we give to charity.
Morality without God Essay. Morality without God This question begins by assuming morals were created entirely by God and not just approved of by God. It also bypasses the possibility that there is no such God and man created morals using the authority intrinsic in the idea of a God in order to enforce them; thus raising the possibility that ...
Without meaning, life has no significance or hope." -Pastor Rick Warren, in The Purpose Driven Life. In the last couple of decades, religious affiliation has been on a steep decline in all ...
I said I would. The first distinction (I said) that needs to be made is one between moral epistemology (how we come to know about morality) versus moral ontology (what is morality as such ). I would never claim—and, in fact, have never claimed, so far as I can remember—that people could not be moral without belief in God. That's just ...
Yes, people can be "good" without believing in God. First, we need to make sure we are simply talking about someone demonstrating good moral behaviors. Scripture is clear that none of us is good enough to merit salvation or earn our way into heaven (Psalm 14:1-3, Romans 3:10-12, Ephesians 2:8-9). We aren't talking about that standard.
In "Good Minus God," Louise M. Antony writes: I gather that many people believe that atheism implies nihilism — that rejecting God means rejecting morality. A person who denies God, they reason, must be, if not actively evil, at least indifferent to considerations of right and wrong…. It is only if morality is independent of God that we ...
The main problem of morality without God, is that it is either nonsensical, nonexistent, or a distortion of the true meaning of the word. Science is a very powerful tool, but it is limited in that it can only describe the world as it is. ... In the final paragraphs of the essay, Prof de Waal expresses concern about the moral status of a ...
By Randy Alcorn. April 21, 2021. Atheists' argument that goodness and moral standards can exist without God does not hold up. If there's no God, people don't live after death and aren't held accountable for their actions, good or evil. That's why Dostoevsky said, "Destroy a man's belief in immortality and... everything would be ...
Morality and Meaning Without God: Another Failed Attempt A Review Essay on Atheism, Morality, and Meaning Published in Philosophia Christi New Series 6/2 (2004): 295-304. Posted by permission. ... Martin tackles objections to morality without religion (chapter 2). He looks at arguments from motivation, derivation, materialism and naturalism. In ...
2009. Some argue that atheism must be false, since without God, no values are possible, and thus "everything is permitted." The author argues that God is not only not essential to morality, but that our moral behavior should be utterly independent of religion. He attacks several core ideas: that atheists are inherently immoral people; that any ...
The Necessity of a Theistic Basis for Morality. Presented by Will Honeycutt Evangelical Theological Society's 61st Annual Conference New Orleans, Louisiana Friday, November 20, 2009. One could call 2009 the year of the bus, especially for atheists. The godless are. becoming extremely bold with their message of unbelief, with a desire to ...
Thus, we cannot truly be good without God. On the other hand, if we do believe that moral values and duties are objective, that provides moral grounds for believing in God. Consider, then, the hypothesis that God exists. First, if God exists, objective moral values exist. To say that there are objective moral values is to say that something is ...
Ethics Without Gods. This essay was written by Frank Zindler, former President and current Board Member of American Atheists. One of the first questions Atheists are asked by true believers and doubters alike is, "If you don't believe in God, there's nothing to prevent you from committing crimes, is there?
Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Morality Without God, Oxford UP, 2009, 172pp., $24.95 (hbk), ISBN 9780195337631. Walter Sinnott-Armstrong's book is titled Morality Without God, one of those unpronounceable names, like Prince's symbol circa 1993. Would that it were simply unpronounceable and not deeply ambiguous. Does it mean that the idea of ...
And religion has once again begun to make its way back into public schools, seeking equal status alongside a scientific theory of human nature.. Yet problems abound for the view that morality comes from God. One problem is that we cannot, without lapsing into tautology, simultaneously say that God is good, and that he gave us our sense of good ...
Abstract. Some argue that atheism must be false, since without God, no values are possible, and thus "everything is permitted.". Walter Sinnott-Armstrong argues that God is not only not essential to morality, but that our moral behavior should be utterly independent of religion. He attacks several core ideas: that atheists are inherently ...
Hancock, Luke (2021) "Morality Without God," Quaerens Deum: The Liberty Undergraduate Journal for Philosophy of Religion: Vol. 6: Iss. 1, Article 3. This paper evaluates a moral system that does not rely on God. M.B. Wilkinson's morality is founded apart from God but can still be consistent with the existence of God.
Imagine, Morality Without God There are various religious institutions throughout the world. These establishments' basis is upon a common view of moral principles. Each religion differs in opinion of how these principles were founded and these differences of opinion have caused hardship for humanity. Humanity is in dire need of moral content without a connection to various traditional ...
A growing share of Americans say it's not necessary to believe in God to be moral. Most U.S. adults now say it is not necessary to believe in God to be moral and have good values (56%), up from about half (49%) who expressed this view in 2011. This increase reflects the continued growth in the share of the population that has no religious ...
1. If God does not exist, objective moral values do not exist. 2. Objective moral values do exist. 3. Therefore, God exists [1] Although consistent atheists must avoid accepting both premises of this logically valid syllogism, it's not hard to find atheists who endorse either premise.
This essay defends the basis of morality as held by non-believers by arguing that we just like believers learn our morality by learning our language - which necessarily involves learning about the world, the "forms of life". ... Morality and Meaning without God, Another Failed Attempt: A Review Essay on 'Atheism, Morality, and Meaning'.
Nietzsche would eventually insist that traditional morality could not be sustained without God, but the project of modern philosophy largely assured that morality did not depend, metaphysically or epistemologically, on theological commitment. ... The main essays explore a place for the role of God in ethical and political thought. Jeffrey ...