Can We Be Moral Without God?
I have recently been deeply pondering the relationship between morality and society. The question driving me is whether society defines its moral precepts, or whether morality exists independently. In the end, I think it’s some combination of the two: the trolley car tests point to a universal moral compass, but in other cases we have more liberty to define boundaries — sexuality and drug use, for example.
Anyway, the conclusion I am leaning towards leaves no room for morality from god, or other supernatural source. This flies in the face of those who think god’s law is a moral standard, and that without it, our world would be some frightening combination of The Garden of Earthly Delights and Mad Max. These religious types equate god with morality, and therefore maintain that a world without the former entails a world without the latter. However, I think their line of reasoning is fallacious.
The religious person first looks at the world around them, and sees it is governed by moral principles, and then looks for a source for these principles. However, unlike a sociologist, anthropologist, or biologist, they default to “goddidit” immediately, and say “mystery solved.” They then say, “if you don’t acknowledge my hypothesized source of morality, morality will cease to exist.” This is insane.
If you know anything about history, it is readily apparent that the so-called “moral absolutes” of religion are bent to the trends of the era. Things like slavery, which the bible permits, are thrown out and judged immoral when society says they are, and things like divorce get reclassified as permissible when the bible cleary says they aren’t. This is strong evidence that our morals do not derive from god.
Further evidence that morality is not indexed to religiosity is the atheist, like myself. I am not running through the streets raping children and stealing VCR’s, and neither are my buddies over at Unreasonable Faith. The atheist understands perfectly well that morality just is. You don’t kill and lie, because it’s a dick thing to do, not because your imaginary sky-papa told you not to.
I know that what it really comes down to is religious people are unsettled by the “just is” part. Morality has to come from somewhere, they’re right, but we don’t have to immediately identify the origin, and build it an altar to keep it from forsaking us. Leave it to the philosophers and social scientists, and in the meantime, just be happy I won’t steal your cookies.
March 17th, 2009 at 6:54 pm
The other side of the question is – can God be moral without us? Who brought God to the table? Does he sit down with you every night at dinner and instruct you how to live? I don’t think so. People who you’ve never met have had a “vision” or “sense” of God and have passed that vision on through teachings or writings and some take that as gospel. But does it come from God or from humans who believe they have been instructed by God? Every “God message” has come through a fellow human who has his/her own experience coloring the message. There are “smiting” Gods and there are “forgiving, turn the other cheek” Gods. Will the real God please stand up.
I know this blogger personally and he is one of the most moral and righteous “do no harm” people I have ever met. He is also a “born again” atheist, brought up in a mostly fundamental Christian setting. Does his moral sense derive from his atheism or is it a vestige of his Christian background? I don’t know, but I can’t imagine him being any other way. It’s certainly possible his moral sense is a product of his Christian upbringing.
But in any case, it’s still not “God” dictating his morality but the interpretation given to “God talk” by his early teachers, plus his own logical and instinctive assessment of the value of certain behavior.
My take is that morality is a human construct and subject to change. As is our concept of a higher being. That doesn’t mean there isn’t one, just that we are not capable of perceiving its totality. We are only capable of noticing our own characteristics and calling them “God.”
PS – What’s a “trolley car test”?
April 1st, 2009 at 9:07 am
I obviously agree. To me, it’s terrifying to designate the ’source of morality’ as an entity which we may never understand.
The trolley car problems are a series of hypothetical situations presented to subjects of thought experiments. They involve various permutations of the basic situation ‘a trolley is going to hit people, what do you do?’ In one example, you have the option of pulling a switch to redirect the car onto another track, where it will kill one person instead of five. In another, you have to push a fat man onto the track.
They are sometimes referenced to show that people have a universal moral sense, because the many different subjects usually agree on what is an ethical course of action in each particular circumstance.