Many
people believe that morality and
religion are fundamentally
linked. They may see this as an
argument for God's existence (if
atheism's true, there can be no
moral facts; moral facts exist;
therefore God does too), but in
this essay I shall evaluate it
simply as a factual claim. If
you like, you can see me as
trying to undermine the first
premise of the argument I just
gave, claiming that morality can
- and in fact must - have a
purely secular foundation.
One
reason why some theists think
that morality presupposes God's
existence is that their beliefs
seems to give their lives clear
purpose, making them wonder what
purpose atheists can supply for
themselves. According to
Christianity, we have been
created by God in His image, so
as to fulfil the purpose He
intended us for. The Catholic
Church developed this basic idea
into the concept of natural law:
we can see how we should behave
by working out what our purpose
is; often, it will be manifest
in the way we have been
designed. The Pope's
condemnation of homosexuality is
an example of this theory at
work: the natural result of sex
is conception, and any sexual
acts not open to this
possibility involve an immoral
rejection of the purpose for
which God intended them.
Needless to say, this approach
to ethics is controversial; it
might be felt to be a poor
imitation of morality.
Regardless, few now think it
will do as a foundation for it:
it begs too many questions, and
fails to provide a justification
for many of our most basic moral
principles.
A
different explanation of the
purported link between God and
morality is the idea that we
have an obligation to obey His
commands because He is our
omnipotent creator, to whom we
owe our existence. The obvious
question is: "Why do we
have this obligation?"
Might doesn't make right, and
though people once believed that
children owed obedience to their
parents simply because they
depended on them, this view has
not stood up to reflection. It
is rather like the justification
given for feudalism: masters
protected their serfs, and it
was only fair that they receive
a share of the crops in return
for this. The flaw is of course
that the serfs never agreed to
this arrangement. Any notion of
a 'social contract' was a
fiction: feudalism bore a closer
resemblance to a protection
racket. If, by contrast, you
answer the question raised above
by saying "Because
obedience is the morally right
thing!" you will already
have assumed that morality
exists independently of God, or
else committed yourself to
circularity, since the 'divine
command theory' you are trying
to justify is supposed to
explain why things are right in
the first place. [1]
The
divine command theory bears an
obvious resemblance to the
'natural law' approach we
discussed just before. But it
involves a focus on God's orders
(the Ten
Commandments provide an
obvious example) rather than
features of His alleged
creation. The most common
objection to such an approach is
that it makes morality seem
rather arbitrary, at least
insofar as God's commands will
be at best contingently
connected to the human needs we
think anything deserving the
name 'morality' must
(necessarily, not contingently)
take into account. It implies
the theoretical possibility of
rape being right simply because
God commands this (if the Bible
is to be believed, He did in
fact command it from time to
time, but let us not dwell on
this). To this, you may respond:
"But God would never
command rape!" This would
have to be true were God
benevolent in any non-vacuous
sense, because a benevolent
being's choices are constrained
by external standards of right
and wrong. But this is just what
the divine command theory does
not allow. It thus paints a
thoroughly off-putting picture
of ethics, far removed from our
actual beliefs about it. When
you question those who advocate
the divine command theory, you
sometimes find that they do not
believe in any mind-indepent
standards of right and wrong
which people can guide people,
and therefore suppose that such
guidance can only come from
orders from on high, backed by
the threat of punishment.
Of
course, such a view is what lies
behind many people's claims that
atheists cannot be moral. The
presumption is that if you do
not believe you will be punished
for transgressions, there is no
reason to obey the dictates of
morality. If this were so, then
atheists would lack any reason
not to cheat or steal when they
would suffer no sanction for
doing so, whereas theists would
always fear the sancton of an
all-knowing God. In this life,
people who are bad quite often
get away with it, or even get
ahead because of it, and those
who believe the universe must
be just find this hard to
accept. Traditional religion
provides a way to avoid
accepting it: God judges
everything; if you're good, you
go to heaven; if you're bad, you
go to hell. Many people find
this profoundly satisfying.
This
whole line of thought is based
on an overly narrow
understanding of the reasons one
might have for behaving morally,
however. It presumes that these
reasons would have to be
'prudential' - i.e. based on the
belief that acting morally is in
one's self-interest. But people
sometimes act morally even when
they realise that this will not
be good for them; they have a
concept of 'good' which diverges
from that of 'good for me'.
Morality is not about
self-interest; sometimes, it is
about sacrificing your
self-interest for the good of
others. Atheists defend morality
not as a set of arbitrarily (or
self-interestedly) chosen social
rules, but as a set of
principles we cannot help but
feel bound by when we consider
how our actions affect our
fellow creatures.
As
it happens, some thinkers have
argued that the very existence
of such a sense of conscience is
evidence for God, Immanuel Kant
and John Henry Newman among
them. Strictly speaking this is
not our concern: the
independence of morality and
religion is quite compatible
with the existence of God. It
only becomes our concern when
people argue that the existence
of conscience (or 'duty', as
Kant put it, doubtless helping
his point) logically presupposes
a being to whom we owe
responsibility. If we accept
this, God may look like the only
candidate: He is, after all,
thought of as being the only
Person outside the ordinary
universe, who sees and judges
every crime we commit. Newman,
in particular, advanced this
line of thought, asking why
people would feel guilty if they
did not think they were being
watched.
I
cannot claim that I know where
conscience comes from, and the
suggestion that it has been
implanted by God to keep us on
the straight and narrow makes a
satisfying just-so story.
However, there is no reason to
think that it is the only
explanation possible. In
particular, the claim that if
humans developed through
(unguided) evolution, they would
not have had consciences is
false. For one thing, it would
be wrong to assume that a
conscience is an unmitigated
curse from an evolutionary
perspective: humans have done
rather well by their ability to
cooperate. For another, it is
extremely likely that a
full-fledged conscience, in all
its aspects, is not a specific
adaptation, but a byproduct of
our advantageous cognitive
capacities: get one, and you get
the other.
What
of the claim that a conscience
makes no sense unless there is a
supreme being for us to be
accountable to? There are two
ways to defuse it. The first is
to grant for the sake of the
argument that our sense of
conscience presupposes that we
are accountable to someone, but
points out that the people our
actions would affect make a
perfectly good candidate for
this. The second is to point out
that there is no good reason to
grant that our sense of
conscience does presuppose
that we are accountable to
someone, once we reject the view
that moral obligations are based
in self-interest, or analogous
to legal obligations.
In
this essay, I have tried to show
that there is something wrong
with every single way of linking
morality to religion. I am not,
of course, claiming that
religion cannot have things to
say about morality (we might
indeed owe a debt of obedience
to God, if he existed - my point
was only that this must be based
on some logically prior
morality), nor that it cannot
help people do what is (as an
independent matter of fact)
right. [2] But
I do claim that ethics is better
served by a purely secular
(meaning religiously neutral,
rather than explicitly
atheistic/materialist)
foundation. Only then will we do
justice to its primary concern:
our duties to other humans.
Piety is all very well, if God
exists. But it is not
everything, and to claim that it
is diminishes morality rather
than elevating it.
Endnotes
1.
In a concise form, I have just
raised the objection to basing
morality upon religion raised by
Plato in his famous dialogue Euthyphro.
Rather than expand on this
objection in my essay, I have
thought it best to let Plato
speak for himself (using
Socrates as his mouthpiece) by
providing a link to the dialogue
here.
2.
Though the evidence seems to
suggest otherwise. A survey by
the Barna Research Group in
Venture, California has found
that atheists have the lowest
divorce rate of any religious
affiliation, and fundamentalist
Baptists the highest.
Strikingly, as denominations got
more conservative, their
behaviour got worse on a variety
of indicators. Admittedly
atheists may cohabit more often
(not in any way a sign of
immorality, so far as they are
concerned), but there is plenty
of other evidence. For example,
many of the
people who opposed the Nazis
and saved Jews while Germany's
95% Christian population mostly
did nothing were atheists. This
may, however, have something to
do with the fact that atheism
was then (and to some extent
still is) disproportionately
common among people who could be
described as 'intellectuals'.
Were it to become more
widespread, I suspect the
average atheist would not behave
better than the average
believer, much as I'd like to
think otherwise.
