I believe that I’m like everyone else in that my propensity to attach moral value to things (eg. treating certain actions as if they have an inherent 'should not be done’-ness) is the product of evolution.

I believe that the specific things that I end up passing moral judgment on, the content of my morality, is a product of both biological evolution and the cultural norms of the societies in which I’ve lived.

I’m persuaded that moral realism is false; I think moral facts almost certainly don’t exist, despite our strong intuitions that they do. This makes me a moral nihilist. I sympathise with moral fictionalism as described by J. L. Mackie and Richard Joyce. This is the idea that, for us as 'normally situated agents’, it’s in our best interests to continue to maintain our moral discourse; in other words to continue to listen to our moral intuitions, to use moral language and to act as though moral facts do exist, except in our most critical moments (such as when we’re discussing philosophy).

A defense of moral fictionalism is outside the scope of this reply but here’s a PDF excerpt from Joyce’s book The Myth of Morality that goes into more detail.

My experience is that moral fictionalism is not emotionally satisfying—we want our strong moral intuitions to reflect underlying facts about the universe. It’s not comfortable to realise that they probably don’t.

Now that I’ve sketched my opinions about morality, I’d like to examine the question from another angle.

If you don’t believe in God, what is the basis of your morality?

The question carries the implication that God can provide a valid basis for full-blooded moral realism. The suggestion is that the existence of the biblical character Jahweh provides the necessary preconditions for the existence of moral facts, while without him, justified belief in moral facts is in danger.

I already explained that I don’t believe that moral realism is true, but that’s not because I don’t believe in the existence of gods. Even if the universe did include an invisible, all-powerful overlord, it’s not clear to me how this situation would make moral facts viable, if they otherwise wouldn’t be.

The dominant meta-ethical theory among theists seems to be Divine Command Theory. The essence of this idea is that things are moral or immoral because God commands or forbids them; God’s act of commanding or forbidding things is what makes them good or bad.

The theist asserts that what this magical being commands constitutes morality. But this seems like an unjustified, ad hoc assumption to me, no better than an atheist flatly insisting that moral facts simply exist, in the universe. If divine command theory can legitimately ground moral facts, then so can the naive moral realism of this hypothetical atheist.

So God-belief is a red-herring in this discussion. The assumption of a deity doesn’t allow a person to argue for moral realism with any more force than is available to an atheist.

Posted: June 13th 2009

See all questions answered by bitbutter

All human morality comes from the same place. It is the product of our biological and cultural evolution. Moral codes evolve as the societies in which they are practiced evolve.

Religions do not create morality. For the most part, they have simply co-opted moral codes as a way to reinforce their own belief systems. If you claim to be the arbiter of an absolute moral code, it’s much easier to enforce your edicts throughout a general population that worships the deity for whom you claim to speak. The notion that, without religions, human morality is based on no more than the whims and wishes of individuals is patently false.

The biological sciences have begun to show us tantalizing glimpses of the precursors of human morality in the behavior of the primates who are most closely related to us. At the same time, we have learned much more about the evolution of societies and the role of cooperative behavior in their formation.

The absolute morality preached by religions has never been all that absolute anyway. if you analyze the history of religions and the diversity of opinions among the religious, you will find they are, literally, all over the moral landscape.

Posted: June 12th 2009

See all questions answered by George Ricker

Before I answer the question, I’d like to first address something that is implicit in the question – that god is a source of morality.

In my mind, the essence of morality is a code of conduct that one aspires to because one thinks that is the right thing to do. This requires two things:

First, morals are reasoned. Or, to put it another way, to have a moral position on when murder is justified requires analysis. Is it okay in self-defense? Is it okay in defense or property? Is it okay when sanctioned by the state? etc.

Second, morality implies a choice. You choose to do that which is right because of what you believe, even if you could behave otherwise with no consequences. For example, I’m pretty sure I could cheat on my taxes for a fair benefit and not get caught, but I choose not to do that.

So, to get back to my point, behaving the way that your religion tells you to is not a moral decision. It’s not a reasoned approach – it’s just following the rules somebody else came up with, nor is it a dispassionate choice – you’re doing it because if you do you end up in heaven and if you don’t you end up in hell. It’s a legal question – is my behavior against god’s rules? – not a moral question.

That most theists don’t understand this is more than a little annoying. Ethics has been studied for thousands of years and there’s a lot of good, approachable work out there to read.

Now, finally, on to your question – where does my morality come from? Well, there are really two answers to that question.

The first is that morality is an outgrowth (ie “evolution”) of the fact that humans are descended from social animals. We are social animals because our ability to pass our genes on to our descendents is much greater than it would be if we were not (in fact, human babies would not survive at all if we weren’t social animals). You can see lots of examples of social animals, each with their own set of rules, programmed into them genetically, and humans are no different, though we have the ability to go beyond our programming.

Which brings me to my second answer. For me personally, my morality comes from the sum of what I have read, studied, and experienced as a human being. If you want a label, I would probably choose “humanist”, but atheists as a rule don’t tend to be “joiners”, so I don’t usually label myself that way.

Basically, I think that morality is all about balancing the rights of the individual and the group. I think most things (I haven’t thought deeply enough to know whether there’s exceptions, and I don’t like absolute statements) should be permitted unless they cause harm to others. You obviously need a decent definition of harm, but I tend to be pretty tight with the definiton.

Or, to put it another way, if it doesn’t cause me real harm (physical, mental, financial), I think what you do is your business. Illegal drugs and prostitution have some public health issues associated with them, but that’s a separate issue.

Posted: June 12th 2009

See all questions answered by Eric_PK

As already noted, we all have a built in instinct as to what’s moral and what isn’t. Our personal Jiminy Crickets are a good starting point, although many people’s crickets have been infected with religion and can’t do their job well.

You can reach every legitimate moral precept without religion, relying solely on logic and reason. For instance, I don’t steal my neighbors stuff because I don’t want him to steal my stuff, because I wouldn’t enjoy using it knowing it wasn’t really mine and because I don’t want to be a thief. I don’t cheat on my wife because I still love her, made a promise to her I don’t want to break, and don’t want to risk a 30 year marriage.

Conversely, there’s no logical reason to hate homosexuals, so I don’t, even though most religions tell me I should.

While fear of consequences is a small part of my morals, fear of punishment isn’t. Fear based morals are, in my opinion, vastly inferior to reason based morals.

It’s interesting to note that while atheists make up 15% of the population in the US, they only account for .2% of the prison population. What does that say about atheist morals?

Posted: June 12th 2009

See all questions answered by Dave Hitt

The basis of my morality is the same as yours: parental upbringing, society’s norms, an inherent empathy with others, which has evolved along with us because we are social animals who thrive best in groups (whether that’s families, local communities or nations) and successful living in groups requires behaviours which show consideration to others.

If you think your morality comes from God, how do you account for the fact that you can recognise that ‘Love your neighbour as you love yourself’ is a command which it is still worth trying to follow today, but that slavery really is wrong in all circumstances even though God himself says that it’s permissible provided the slaves in question are not Israelites (Leviticus 25)?

Our moral values do not come from the Bible or from God. On the contrary, it is our inherent moral sense which leads us to RECOGNISE which bits of the Bible (and other writings) are helpful as guides to moral behaviour, and which are not. The bits which are universally recognised as good, sound values, by the way, pre-date Christianity by several hundred years and were present in Taoist, Buddhist and Hindu texts that originated up to 500 years before Jesus was even born, and the moral teachings contained in them had long been familiar in all the civilisations on Earth – Egyptian, Babylonian, Persian, Greek and Hindu. And belief in a god of any kind was not required for them either: Socrates was asking ‘How should we live?’ nearly a thousand years before Christianity took hold, and there were no supernatural beliefs underpinning his ideas.

We do not need God to be moral. In fact, our innate moral instincts tell us that many of the acts and commands attributed to God are themselves morally repugnant. And most immoral of all is the Christian teaching that even a newborn baby is so steeped in wickedness and corruption that she deserves to burn in hell for all eternity. Any philosophy that teaches us to view our fellow humans as bad and wicked, especially if they do not subscribe to our own belief system, is going to be actively dangerous and work against our ability to live together in harmony – and it is our need to do this which underlies all genuinely moral precepts and behaviour.

Posted: June 12th 2009

See all questions answered by Paula Kirby

The law’s a good start. Then there are guides like the Golden Rule which are not religious (though many religions have adopted that one) but have proven themselves beneficial. Abstract concepts like honour and justice are similarly reliable. Finally there’s the near-universal empathy we humans feel for each other. Many secular philosophies exist which codify these things, but observing the things themselves is often enough.

Any of the above can be challenged, because although they have enough tangible support to be objective they are not absolute. The advantage they have over the absolute moralities of religion is that we know they’re there.

Posted: June 11th 2009

See all questions answered by SmartLX