Sunday, November 1, 2009 | Reason : In the News | print version

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Morality: no gods required

by Paula Kirby

Each week the Washington Post's On Faith team sends a question out to its Panel. This week, the question was as follows:-

Is there good without God? Can people be good without God? How can people be good, in the moral and ethical sense, without being grounded in some sort of belief in a being which is greater than they are? Where do concepts such as good and evil, right and wrong, come from if not from religion? From where do you get your sense of good and evil, right and wrong?

Can people be good if they don't think Charles Dickens was the greatest novelist in the English language? Or if they prefer cats to dogs? Or if they fail to resemble me in any other small detail? Ludicrously smug questions, of course, yet the religious never seem to blush when asking non-believers whether we can be good despite not sharing their peculiar beliefs.

And yet it is an important question for secularists to answer, because it is the myth that religious belief is somehow necessary for morality that is providing the life support for religion in many Western societies, long after we should have been reaching for the embalming fluid.

My sense of right and wrong comes from exactly the same source as yours: parental upbringing, society's norms, an evolved empathy with others.

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http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/paula_kirby/2009/10/morality_no_gods_required.html

Posted: Sunday, November 1, 2009 | Permalink

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1. Comment #428750 by TheLordHumungus on November 1, 2009 at 8:09 pm

Don't say "society's norms" are responsible for our morality because the religious will just say, "Religion is society's norm though, AHAh! Now I don't have to listen to anything else you say since I have this one argument to anchor myself to!"

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2. Comment #428751 by mrjohnno on November 1, 2009 at 8:17 pm

Paula is on fire. Might put her sig on ebay

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3. Comment #428754 by j.mills on November 1, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Again with the excellent writing. Couldn't you write something rubbish, just for variety, Paula? :)

Yes, I too noticed when I read the bible (six months I won't get back) that the OT is all for punishment and reward in this life, whilst the NT quietly nudges it forward into the next, where its glaring absence will be less noticeable...

As to sources of morality, I read in Ridley (I think) that parental influence is weaker than that of one's peers; and perhaps I flatter humans in thinking that introspection is also a source of morality - that some of it is our own choice. When Rosa Parkes sat in the white section of the bus, she wasn't acting in the interests of social harmony, but I'd call her action moral. My point being only, that nature and prevailing norms aren't the end of the matter: else morality would be static.

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4. Comment #428755 by Mitch Kahle on November 1, 2009 at 8:22 pm

Excellent piece in a widely read and respected publication.

Hopefully this article will be reprinted by newspapers across America.

Everyone should send a copy with link to their local editor.

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5. Comment #428761 by Border Collie on November 1, 2009 at 8:43 pm

Since when are they good with God?

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6. Comment #428762 by the great teapot on November 1, 2009 at 8:48 pm

Would you rather live in a world with no churches or a world with no police stations and law courts?

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7. Comment #428766 by j.mills on November 1, 2009 at 8:56 pm

Ha! If we were really moral creatures, there'd be no need for any of those!

I suppose we're "a bit" moral. That 4 out of 5 rule-of-thumb sets my ESS antennae a-wigglin'.

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8. Comment #428768 by Mr DArcy on November 1, 2009 at 9:17 pm

Assuming that morality does come from religion, what we have is but a mixed bag of chop suey. From Christianity I learn that it's okay to kill witches, but that there again that I shouldn't kill. That there is only ONE God, but that I mustn't worship any other gods. That I shouldn't eat shellfish or pork, but that it's okay to sacrifice the odd child or two. That I musn't covet my neighbour's ass (or wife), but that it's okay (imperative even) to slaughter neigbhouring tribes and kill all but the women of child bearing age, who will then belong to you.

I could go on, but the point is made! Confusion is all you get from religion. In all aspects: factually wrong about the universe, conflicting messages about behaviour, misleading belief in the supernatural, false promises of a better "life" elsewhere. Nope, not for me!

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9. Comment #428769 by Thanny on November 1, 2009 at 9:20 pm

A quibble: Judaism is nowhere near 4000 years old. More like 2500, if you want something recognizably Jewish. The belief system that became Judaism was still polytheistic before that.

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10. Comment #428770 by the great teapot on November 1, 2009 at 9:27 pm

So there are 12 million psychopaths living in the UK and that's just the ones with no empathy to humans, never mind the ones who pull wings off flies and eat the livers of force fed geese because they know there is no pay back.
I am staying home tomorrow.

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11. Comment #428774 by bendigeidfran on November 1, 2009 at 9:35 pm

She's very good. Without gods.

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12. Comment #428775 by BigJohn on November 1, 2009 at 9:37 pm

Nice blog, Paula! The usual logical, cogent, and fluent discussion I have come to expect from you. Your brain matches your beauty. What a superb combination! WOW!!

Has anyone gone to look at the Newsweek Washington Post comments? It is obvious that no one is watching that comment thread. What a bunch of crap there is on there.

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13. Comment #428778 by Paula Kirby on November 1, 2009 at 9:45 pm

the great teapot: So there are 12 million psychopaths living in the UK

No! I don't think everyone who will break the rules if they think they can get away with it is necessarily a psychopath, do you? There are all sorts of shades of grey when it comes to criminality. I saw recently - and I'm sorry, I can't remember where, so I can't cite the reference - that on average about 1% of any population will have psychopathic tendencies. And even then, they don't all end up committing axe-murders. I reckon you're probably safe to go to work as usual!

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14. Comment #428785 by Szymanowski on November 1, 2009 at 9:58 pm

Consider also the Milgram experiment (showing the proportion of people who will do something really quite immoral if they feel authority demands it - possibly about 2/3).

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15. Comment #428786 by kev_s on November 1, 2009 at 10:01 pm

Wow Paula ... you certainly attracted some low-life in the comments under your article in the Washington Post! Nice fish though.

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16. Comment #428787 by Serdan on November 1, 2009 at 10:02 pm

j.mills:

perhaps I flatter humans in thinking that introspection is also a source of morality - that some of it is our own choice.

I would suggest that we are meme machines and that our "choices" are products of the interaction of memes. Introspection allows greater interaction between memes that your mind already contains and may even give rise to new memes. The vast majority of your ideas are actually products of a collective meme pool. In this view introspection is a way of facilitating the mutation of memes obtained from the meme pool. Interaction with other meme machines after introspection has occurred then sends any new mutations back into the meme pool.

I better stop now before I start rambling.

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17. Comment #428788 by kaiserkriss on November 1, 2009 at 10:05 pm

Great article Paula; I now have something to reference when I try to justify being a "moral" person and an atheist at the same time, something many of my "believing" associates have a problem with.

Keep up the good work. I hope you have a long contract with the Washington Post. jcw

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18. Comment #428792 by Sonic on November 1, 2009 at 10:52 pm

Wow -- Paula, the last paragraph of your piece is comprised of thoughts I think to myself but I don’t dare express because I lack the finesse to steer their raw power. I'll read this article again to learn how these thoughts can be brought to bear with such subtlety.

Also, thank you for representing freethought in such a positive light.

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19. Comment #428798 by healthphysicist on November 1, 2009 at 11:06 pm

I tried to learn more about the 4:1 ratio, by clicking on the link in the article. But the video it links to doesn't discuss it.

Is there another link?

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20. Comment #428799 by Ned Flanders on November 1, 2009 at 11:12 pm

"And yet it is an important question for secularists to answer"

Hi Paula, I agree if you mean that in the philosophical sense - I do not accept that because the religious make a claim such as "you can't be good without God" that the secularist is therefore automatically obliged to answer. It is giving their view too much credibility in the first place.

Replace "God" with "fairies" and suddenly the demand for a secular viewpoint evaporates.

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21. Comment #428805 by Paula Kirby on November 1, 2009 at 11:47 pm

Ned Flanders: Hi Paula, I agree if you mean that in the philosophical sense - I do not accept that because the religious make a claim such as "you can't be good without God" that the secularist is therefore automatically obliged to answer. It is giving their view too much credibility in the first place.

I certainly don't mean it's an important question because it has any merit; it is important purely and simply because it carries weight in the public's mind.

I have written before about my astonishment at people I know who call themselves Christian, not because they actually believe (they don't believe any more than I do), but because 'we try to lead good lives'.

So long as people associate religion with trying to lead a good life (and the reality is that they do; even many non-believers do), there will be support for religion playing a role in public life and influencing government policy. In the UK I would say it's not the believers who keep religion in its position of influence - there aren't enough of them to do it on their own; it's the many many 'believers in belief' who know they don't need religion to be moral in their own lives, but who fear that others do. These are the people we need to get through to.

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22. Comment #428815 by Sonic on November 2, 2009 at 12:19 am

Ned, your position may be superior in some realm of academic debate, but in a realm of national or international politics, it’s fiddling while Rome burns. For example, here in the USA, there is a religious test for public office (despite the Constitution) that a Presidential candidate must be Christian -- or conceivably Jewish like Vice President Joe Biden -- but definitely not Muslim -- and definitely NOT an atheist, rationalist, or freethinker. I mention Presidential politics not as an end in itself, but as a symptom of the trouble in public discourse. The requisite attention wasted on religiosity is at best a distraction from real issues, and at worst, a prevention of discussion of issues of real consequence.

If we want to fix these problems in public discourse and politics, then as Paula wrote, the question of whether people can be good without God is “an important question for secularists to answer”. If you see “God” and “fairies” as equivalent, then I’m happy to agree with you personally, but all those “fairy”-worshipers each get a vote, and that causes real problems.

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23. Comment #428820 by chewedbarber on November 2, 2009 at 12:32 am

Excellent, but I fear we're doomed.

From another response to the same question,

Some of the most ethical people I know are atheists and agnostics. One can certainly be moral without believing in God, but this is because men can surely breath without being aware of the existence of oxygen. God is the cause of moral goodness, but nobody has to recognize the cause in order to get the benefit.

http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/onfaith/panelists/john_mark_reynolds/2009/10/is_there_good_without_god.html

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24. Comment #428824 by Art Vandelay on November 2, 2009 at 12:44 am

Yes, fabulous article, moving into the realm of game theory. I think I've read something of Richard's on the same subject.
If my memory serves, it is also the case that, as people developed the art of detecting lies (and cheating the 'system' invariably involves deception), from another's facial micro-movements/body language, so the deceiver's armoury evolved to separate the conscious mind from the Machiavellian subconscious- it helps if you believe your own lies. Suddenly Ray Comfort springs to mind.
Anyway, what better way of justifying bad behaviour than invoking a deity? Far from bestowing morality, religion could have been invented to buffer the mind against reason and give the individual a pseudo-external excuse for selfish, deviant behaviour: God's will be done.

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25. Comment #428825 by kaiserkriss on November 2, 2009 at 12:46 am

Sonic:

From a quick google on religious "test for public office", there were countless entries indicating that as you pointed out the issue is unconstitutional and has been declared unconstitutional several times over by the Supreme Court and State Courts.

If this is still an issue, it goes against the principle of freedom of religion, or in our case non religion, in other words we have a choice, that is not foisted upon us by Big Brother.

Surely, individuals trying to test for religion should be prosecuted to the full extent of the law until the practise stops and is shown to be futile.. jcw

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26. Comment #428827 by j.mills on November 2, 2009 at 12:59 am

Serdan (#16), you are an illusion-popping meanie. I pride myself on being more than a mere croupier, shuffling memes in and out. Harrumph! However, Dennett and neurology are persistently nibbling away at such comfortable intuitions. I'm sure it won't be long before Dan convinces me there's nobody at home in my head at all! *Sigh*

Paula, no doubt this 4 out of 5 thing is a rough-and-ready, not a universally applicable ungolden rule. But might we usefully also de-simplify it by transferring it to behaviour rather than individuals? That is to say, 4 out of 5 times, human beings (taken all together) will take the ethical option, even though individual human beings needn't be all bad or all good and might vary in their decision ratios? Does research support that, or are there truly lots of goodies and baddies, 'fixed' in their behaviours?

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27. Comment #428828 by j.mills on November 2, 2009 at 1:01 am

kaiserkriss, it's down to individual US voters to decide what to take into account when choosing a president. And Studies Have Shown that most of 'em won't vote for an atheist. Whaddaya gonna do? Examine their votes, interrogate their motives and haul 'em all up before the Supreme Court?

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28. Comment #428829 by Quine on November 2, 2009 at 1:16 am

Comment #428828 by j.mills:

Whaddaya gonna do?

Educate them to the fact that they have already been voting for Atheists quite often, but did not know it.

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29. Comment #428830 by kaiserkriss on November 2, 2009 at 1:21 am

j.mills:

Point taken; I was thinking more along the lines of people having to take oaths declaring allegiance to a deity. Sooner or later the "political correct" or "Constitutional stand" will become the norm and people will look down on religites much as smokers are despised today..
It's a matter of education and pounding in the obvious until " resistance becomes futile"..jcw

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30. Comment #428832 by Sonic on November 2, 2009 at 1:22 am

kaiserkriss, I’m sorry, where I wrote “there is a religious test for public office” I meant “effectively”. Of course there is no law establishing a religious test for public office, because any such law would be struck down as unconstitutional. The problem is the majority of voters require or respond to some display of religiosity, and the voters require that religiosity to be Christian. And that can’t be prosecuted. This is why I care about the zeitgeist, and I like the bus ads, etc.

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31. Comment #428834 by kaiserkriss on November 2, 2009 at 1:30 am

Sonic:

Thanks for the clarification. Should I ever run for office (fat chance of that happening) I would declare myself a pastafarian and change my name from Christof to Christian. ;-) jcw

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32. Comment #428846 by christianapologetic on November 2, 2009 at 3:35 am

I find it interesting that after all the fuss she puts up she never brings up the fact that billions of people believe in God.

Not being hostile; just pointing that out. Somebody had to say it.

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33. Comment #428847 by chewedbarber on November 2, 2009 at 3:50 am

Ohh, I'm connecting the dots. -pfft

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34. Comment #428848 by BlueCollar8theist on November 2, 2009 at 3:52 am

Excellent, excellent writing! Well-stated points and responses throughout!

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35. Comment #428850 by lesmwill on November 2, 2009 at 4:01 am

Several items come to mind:

1. "Morality is grounded in man's own rational nature, is self-legislative; and therein lies man's absolute worth and dignity". - Emmanual Kant

2. "Objections to religion are of two kinds. One is intellectual, the other is moral. The core of intellectual objections is that there are no grounds in reason to think any religion is true. The moral objection is that the ethical precepts of religion are outmoded and cruel, compared to contemporary standards of human conduct." - Joseph Fletcher, 'Encyclopedia of Unbelief, Vol II, pg 459'

3. If any one judges their god, gods or religion to be moral, from where are they getting their morals?

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36. Comment #428851 by Quine on November 2, 2009 at 4:03 am

Comment #428846 by christianapologetic:

... she never brings up the fact that billions of people believe in God.

The number drops substantially if you try to find a common deity. You may get people to check a religious box on a survey, but if you try to get them to list the attributes and history of their professed deity, you get stuff all over the map. Of course, in the past almost everyone believed that the Earth was flat, so popularity of belief won't trump the facts over the long term.

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37. Comment #428853 by Alternative Carpark on November 2, 2009 at 4:18 am

Ms. Kirby for Prime Minister.

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38. Comment #428854 by Quine on November 2, 2009 at 4:28 am

Comment #428852 by christianapologetic:

... billions of people won't be surprised.

Are you saying you expect multiple contradictory deities to exist? Because if it turns out to be only Ganesh, billions will be surprised.

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39. Comment #428855 by pipsy on November 2, 2009 at 4:33 am

No matter how many billions believe in a god not one has a scrap of evidence for their gods existence and that is a fact! We DO know the answer, unsurprisingly enough god does not exist!

I see an avatar of a kid holding a pipe. I do not see a kid smoking.

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40. Comment #428857 by Rodger T on November 2, 2009 at 5:19 am

Is it just me or were the comments to Paulas article in the Wash.Post all in fluent gibberish?

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41. Comment #428858 by SaintStephen on November 2, 2009 at 5:29 am

It was only later, when it became patently obvious that this wasn't the case, that some Jews started to think that the promised reward or retribution must come after death.

I found this humorous, Paula, especially after just viewing Dan Dennett as SNL's John Lovitz, at the AAI conference in Burbank. Dan could imitate one of the quick thinking Jewish temple elders: "The rewards come in the next life, not this one. Yeah, that's the ticket!"

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42. Comment #428862 by Enlightenme.. on November 2, 2009 at 5:41 am

Paula K#13:

"..that on average about 1% of any population will have psychopathic tendencies. And even then, they don't all end up committing axe-murders."..

-------

Some of them will end up being company directors!

From Andy Thomson's talk at the AAI;

http://richarddawkins.net/article,4459,From-the-Heavens-or-From-Nature-The-Origins-of-Morality,Dr-Andy-Thomson-RDFRS-AAI-Josh-Timonen

------------

chewedbarber#23

That Reynolds quote;
"God is the cause of moral goodness"
Or; the Moral Law is imprinted on the human heart.

I learnt this concept in Sunday school as a child.
As articulated by Frank Turek in both of his debates with Christopher Hitchens;

http://vimeo.com/1904911

http://vimeo.com/6148456

I was unimpressed with Hitch's willful ignoring of Turek's argument, so much so that I felt myself 'siding' with the slippery Turek!

This by the way also defeats the Hitchens challenge (not by negation, but neutralisation)

-----
Should one cease to believe; should one cease to behave?
-----

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43. Comment #428863 by Sarmatae1 on November 2, 2009 at 5:57 am

43. Comment #428858 by SaintStephen
Dan could imitate one of the quick thinking Jewish temple elders "The rewards come in the next life, not this one. Yeah, that's the ticket!"

That was a deepity.

EDIT: That part of Dan's talk was hilarious, wasn't it just.

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44. Comment #428864 by jamiso on November 2, 2009 at 6:27 am

Nope...lets not let them turn the question on us...

Let me ask....can you be 'good' in a modern sense if you really follow the bible or quran as your ultimate source of morals?

Now that is a good question, because if you read the books (and I'm aware most people dont), you will find that they are..IMHO very immoral.

22. Comment #428815 by Sonic: quick correction, Joe Biden is not Jewish, think you are mixing him up with someone else....unless there is a really hardcore zionist plot I dont know about

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45. Comment #428866 by outwitted by fish on November 2, 2009 at 6:43 am

jamiso:

22. Comment #428815 by Sonic: quick correction, Joe Biden is not Jewish, think you are mixing him up with someone else....unless there is a really hardcore zionist plot I dont know about

He's probably thinking of Joe Lieberman, who was the Democratic nominee for vice president in 2000. Joe Biden is Roman Catholic.

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46. Comment #428871 by mmurray on November 2, 2009 at 7:43 am

Are you saying you expect multiple contradictory deities to exist? Because if it turns out to be only Ganesh, billions will be surprised.

Presumably including christianapologetic if the username means anything.

Michael

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47. Comment #428873 by Mr DArcy on November 2, 2009 at 8:17 am

I wasn't arguing the fact that since there are billions of people who believe in God that that makes it true, I'm saying that when and if we DO find out that answer, billions of people won't be surprised.

You guys will though. LOL

My threat detection meter has registered a mild "Well you were warned". I hope christianapologetic feels suitably righteous having done his/her good deed for the day. You know what chris? I'm absolutely certain that your God, and all the others, exist only as imaginary characters in peoples' minds. There is no evidence of any deity. Optical telescopes can now look out some 11 billion light years or so. Guess what, no trace of God! You'd think there'd be just a tiny little glimpse of this creator of the universe that gives us our morals, but no, not a dicky bird. Now I wonder why?

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48. Comment #428876 by Stafford Gordon on November 2, 2009 at 8:38 am

Nutshelled!

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49. Comment #428878 by Quetzalcoatl on November 2, 2009 at 9:22 am

christianapologetic-

I find it interesting that after all the fuss she puts up she never brings up the fact that billions of people believe in God.

Nor did she mention that 2.0 plus 2.0 = 4.0. Now that's interesting.

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50. Comment #428879 by Follow Peter Egan on November 2, 2009 at 9:25 am

Paula Kirby wrote: So long as people associate religion with trying to lead a good life (and the reality is that they do; even many non-believers do), there will be support for religion playing a role in public life and influencing government policy. In the UK I would say it's not the believers who keep religion in its position of influence - there aren't enough of them to do it on their own; it's the many many 'believers in belief' who know they don't need religion to be moral in their own lives, but who fear that others do. These are the people we need to get through to.

Yes. That's the commonest argument I have about religion, always with atheists and/or weak tea Christians.

Eminently sensible article, Paula.

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