There is a common belief amongst theists that its all very well not believing in that there is god, but that the consequences of not doing so somehow undermines the basis of morality. Humanity has no reason to be moral, and – by extension – feels free to commit acts of ‘immorality’. God acts as an overseer of morality.
This argument was more intelligently put forward again in the Washington Post a couple of years back. The author, Michael Gerson, in arguing for a theistic morality, accepts that atheists can do good (he doesn’t, for example, use the tired argument of fundamentalists that attributes (falsely) Nazism and Stalinism to “atheism”); and that people – atheist or not – are capable of both acts of kindness and cruelty. However, he does go on to say:
So the dilemma is this: How do we choose between good and bad instincts? Theism, for several millennia, has given one answer: We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it. While many of us fall tragically short, the ideal remains.
Atheism provides no answer to this dilemma.[...] In a purely material universe, what possible moral basis could exist to condemn them? Atheists can be good people; they just have no objective way to judge the conduct of those who are not.
There are two problems with this argument.
The first relates to the definition of atheism. Atheism is properly defined as an absence of belief in a god. One of the problems is that, unusally and purely for historical reasons, we have a label for this particular kind of absence of belief. One normally labels ideologies and followers of particular schools of thought, that is, positively about claims and people who make them. So one is a fascist, socialist, Jewish, Hindu, logical positivist, neo-realist, Cartesian, etc. But in this case, it’s actually an absence of belief that is labelled. It’s used negatively to describe something not believed in. I cannot think of any other example where this occurs.
There’s no problem inherent with that, except that it can lead people to assume that if you are an atheist, you must therefore you must hold particular views. The use of such a lable implies a world-view, school of thought or some kind of acceptance of basic principles to which the term (“atheist”) is also assumed to refer. There’s no reason, actually, for an atheist to subscribe to the principles of evolutionary biology or “Big Bang” theory, and all the other things that atheists are supposedly believe in, based on his or her disbelief in a god. In fact it’s not what they believe in that makes them an atheist, but rather what they don’t believe in – gods, such as the ones posited by ancient and modern religions, whether it be the Ancient Greek religion, or Christianity. Given this, it is of no surprise that “atheism” (the absence of belief in a god) does not offer moral guidance. It offers absolutely nothing, and is not supposed to, over and above a convenient label for people who follow a particular faith to describe thouse who happen not to share that faith.
The second is point is more prosaic – that is, religious people and religious societies have done, and continue to do, ‘bad’ things: it’s an old argument, but no the less valid for it. One doesn’t have to cite the Crusades or the witch burning and hanging, or the inquisition, etc., etc. The point is that with theism, people are in fact not noticeably morally better than without – so why subscribe to theistic morality?
Rather than put forward an argument for theistic morality, Gerson rather examines what he appears to believe to be an “atheist” response, his previous claim about atheism lacking any moral answer notwithstanding: ‘Some argue that a careful determination of our long-term interests — a fear of bad consequences — will constrain our selfishness.’ He dismisses this, partly because ‘Some people are very good at the self-centered exploitation of others’, and without any ‘moral basis’, there is no way for atheists to ‘judge the conduct’ of other people.
It’s a naive caricature of what a so-called “atheistic” (ie secular) morality might look like, to begin with (if indeed that’s what it is supposed to be). And of course there are atheists and who are able, objectively, to decide that person x is morally wrong in a given action, based on their own secular moral framework: objectivity is not the issue. But the idea that morality needs something akin to a divine seal of approval (which presumably is what ‘moral basis’ refers to) is particularly odd: is it really the case that murder is wrong for the theist because – and only because – God said so? Is this the only thing that is stopping theists from killing each other? And does it actually stop theists from committing murder? In Gerson words, how effective is it actually at stopping the ‘bad instincts’ of human nature, such as ‘cruel exploitation, uncontrollable rage, icy selfishness and a range of other less desirable traits’?
Of course it’s not as simple as that, which is precisely the point: the other factors are as likely to be social, secular, factors or individual human failings; not theological. All of which begs the question, what is it that a theistic morality actually provides that a secular morality does not? After all, why is slavery wrong, a practice the Bible appears not just to condone (in both Testaments), but more obviously fails to condemn as an immoral practice? Why is it right – as most people believe – that people should have religious freedom to worship in their own way, if they choose to? From a moral point of view, humans are in fact no better off with religious-inspired, theistic morality than they are without it.
Finally, what is the theistic answer that Gerson promotes? It’s that ‘We should cultivate the better angels of our nature because the God we love and respect requires it’. It’s genuinely difficult to see how this differs from a secular version, which might be: “cultivate our better nature because all we have on this planet is each other”.
