Where do our morals come from? Primatologist Frans de Waal has a fascinating article titled Morals Without God? where he poses the questions: Can we envision a world without God? Would this world be good? The article is long but well worth reading and here I will outline his main thesis.

He begins by saying that evolution poses a direct challenge to the idea of a god-given morality, which is why so many religious people react negatively to it.

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.

Like me, de Waal finds quite repellant (and counter to the evidence) the idea that we can only have morality if there is a god.
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The idea that there is an objective morality founders on the fact that our moral standards have changed dramatically over time. An objective god-given morality is one that presumably should be both universal and unchanging with time since god is presumably omnipresent and unchanging. And yet that is obviously at odds with history, where most moral judgments have varied from place to place and over time. Many of the most appallingly evil actions are condoned and even encouraged in religious texts as coming from god, though such actions are now disowned. If there is an objective morality, why was it not obvious to people before and why were there different standards for different communities?

What we do see, though, is a pleasing convergence in moral standards as time goes by, even though we still have far to go. This is almost entirely due to cultural awareness spreading. In just a couple of centuries we have decided that slavery is evil and that discrimination on the basis of gender, sexual preference, disability, race and ethnicity, and age is wrong. We no longer tolerate human sacrifices or child labor. We find torture abhorrent, which forces governments that still practice it to do it in secret or resort to euphemisms to hide their shame. We are less tolerant of wanton cruelty to animals, though we still eat them. Except for a few countries like Saudi Arabia, we no longer punish people for offences by amputating limbs or stoning or beheading.

These recent advances in our moral sensibilities are largely or entirely cultural developments that had nothing to do with god. In fact, they are counter to god’s supposed commands since many of these cruel practices originate in the allegedly holy books and are supposed to be god’s recommended policies. The importance of culture in advancing the idea of what is good is tremendous. We have made great strides in this area without appealing to god so those who argue that without god we would be morally worse off are fighting a losing battle.

This excellent video clip from QualiaSoup will give you, in less than ten minutes, all the arguments you need to debate anyone who claims that morality can only come from god.

The argument is summarized in the slide at the 8:10 minute mark where he says:

• NO ONE can claim to KNOW that any god exists
• Even if god does exist:
  • NO evidence there is only one god
  • NO evidence it is a personal god
  • NO evidence its nature is perfect
• NO reliable source of divine values
• NO consistent morality among theists
• VIOLENT moral disagreement among theists
• NO objective method for deciding whose interpretation of divine values is correct

NO CONSISTENT INFALLBLE THEISTIC MORALITY

I find the idea that we can only have morality because of religion quite repellent. What does it say about someone that the only reason they don’t murder, rape, or steal is because they think god will punish them?

In this video clip, Edward Current imagines what would happen if god disappeared.

The idea that we need a god in order to arrive at moral principles on which to base our lives and societies seems to me to be so self-evidently absurd that I really cannot take seriously anyone who advocates it.

Yes.

It is a simple answer to a simple question. It should be quite self-evident to anyone. And yet, religious people manage to get some atheists to actually debate it. P. Z. Myers has posted all the YouTube links to a recent debate between Sam Harris and theologian William Lane Craig on the topic “Does Good Come From God?” I watched about half of it and although it was mildly interesting, I tuned out because I have little patience for discussions based on unexamined and unsubstantiated premises.

Craig was trying to make the case that without a god, there can be no objective morality or standards for what is good. My response to that argument is “So what?” What makes people think that the universe ought to have objective morality? All these discussions about how there must be a god because without a god people would go berserk and murder everyone else and life would be awful and not worth living seems to me to be missing the point. We cannot will god into existence just because we can’t bear the thought of life without god.

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