"Atheism Provides No Basis for Ethics"

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Contents 1 Definition 2 Origins 3 Quotations 4 Discussion 4.1 A mish-mash of faulty reasoning 4.1.1 The Genetic Fallacy 4.1.2 Composition Fallacy 4.2 "Morality depends on God" 4.3 What is the basis for atheistic morality? 4.4 Nuances of "atheism provides no basis for ethics" 5 Related Topics 6 References 7 Comments

[edit] Definition

"Atheism provides no basis for ethics" is the claim that, by the virtue of failing to affirm the existence in any gods, a person cannot legitimately justify any moral claim (this is logically distinct from the claim that atheists cannot behave morally at all). This claim follows as a consequence of Divine Command Theory, which is the position that some or all moral claims are logically dependent on the existence of God to be true and morally binding.

[edit] Origins

Just as ancient as the appeal to the gods to explain good fortune and natural disasters, so too are the gods called upon to explain why we observe moral good and evil. As morality and the gods' wills were seen as inserparable, it would have seemed logical to assert that anyone who denied the gods likewise denied morality altogether; this attitude is summed up in the famous verse Psalm 14:1:

The fool says in his heart,

"There is no God."

They are corrupt, their deeds are vile;

there is no one who does good.

[edit] Quotations

• "Apart from God there is no basis for truth or ethics." [1]
• "I am not saying that every atheist feels obligated to go kill people. In fact, such an obligation (if not for the variable of self-interest) would make no sense. I’m saying that, to an atheist, there’s nothing wrong with killing people (since morality is nothing but subjective opinion). An atheist, if true to his title, sees nothing wrong with events like Columbine, September 11, the Oklahoma City bombing, etc." [2]
• "In the atheist mindset... there is no natural reason to have a morality or a conscience. Beyond fear of getting caught and punished, there is no natural, rational reason for personal morals." [3]
• [What would you do if you stopped believing in God?] "I don't know, I guess I would probably have sex with as many pretty women as possible and cheat on my taxes and few other things that I thought I could get away with without getting caught. I would also try to make as much money as possible by just about any means possible, ie using other people as stepping stones. And just live for immediate gratification." [4]

[edit] Discussion

The belief that atheists cannot be moral is widespread, but the existence of millions of moralistic atheists indicates that the claim is empirically false. This criticism of atheism generally comes in three forms:

1. an unsophisticated version of the Genetic Fallacy. For example, atheism by itself is the single belief in the non-existence of god, it has no moral prescriptions; critics then take this fact to the absurd extreme that those without god must therefore have nothing else.
2. begging the question that morality is necessarily dependent on the will of God. (See main article: Divine Command Theory)
3. a strawman of atheism which assumes that secular morality is trivial, tantamount to subjectivism, or selfish.

Each of these problems will be considered in greater detail below:

[edit] A mish-mash of faulty reasoning

[edit] The Genetic Fallacy

Fundamentally, atheism by itself says nothing about the rightness or wrongness of any actions; critics implicitly assume that adherents to an amoral theory can possess no morality themselves. These kinds of criticisms come in several forms:

• "If we're just a cosmic accident, what is the basis for morality?"
• "If atheists believe we evolved, then they should believe that might makes right (social darwinism)."
• "Morality that comes from fallible humans is wrong".
• "If everything reduces down to chemical reactions, how is anything right or wrong"

These criticisms miss the point for two reasons:

1. Atheism is a single statement about whether someone believes or disbelieves in God, it is not a complete worldview in itself. Atheism can and is accomodated with greater worldviews, such as humanism, political opinions, and even some religious beliefs (for example Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism, etc.).
2. There is no logical connection between the origins of humans and whether morality exists.

[edit] Composition Fallacy

The criticisms against atheism above also betray a form of the composition fallacy, or the belief that if parts of a whole have a certain property then the whole must have the same property. Or, put more simply, critics fallaciously assume that if atheism is fundamentally amoral, then worldviews which incorporate atheism must be amoral as well. (And often overlooked fact is that the statement "god exists" prescribes no morals, so ironically the same fallacious reasoning could be applied to theism as well.)

Many individual facets of people's worldviews are amoral, but it does not follow that the whole of a person's worldview should be amoral as well.

[edit] "Morality depends on God"

It isn't necessarily true that all theists believe that God prescribes morality, for instance deists believe in a god (of sorts) but deny that their theism is relevant to their moral convictions.

And it isn't necessarily true that one needs to observe the existence of God to adhere to a moral code, a letter titled Atheists deny God, not Morality sums this up succinctly:

Atheism only denies the existence of God. It does not imply the absence of a basis for morality. Jainism, Theravada Buddhism and Confucianism are some atheistic religions which contain moral doctrines without including a God/dess who must be worshipped.

These religions, especially Jainism, are even stricter than most theistic religions on the morality of killing: even the accidental crushing of an insect is heavily avoided.

I challenge any individual to study the Noble Eightfold Path and read the Sutra Pitaka, Kalpa Sultra, Abhidharma Pitaka and other Buddhist and Jain texts and then logically demonstrate that these atheistic doctrines do not promote an admirable code of morality.

[edit] What is the basis for atheistic morality?

The answer to the question "if not God, what foundation is morality built upon" can be answered in the most glib and oversimplified fashion: anything that is not God. (This is not to say that all secular morality has the same merit, i.e. this does not say reasoned reflection has the same value as picking moral rules out of a hat.) This answer, while not terribly profound, is the only possible way to accomodate the many interpretations of non-theistic morality that range from absolutionist and realist positions to relativist and subjectivist interpretations of morality.

While it is beyond the scope of this article to evaluate or develop the following philosophies, it is worth noting several influential moral theories that have foundations not rooted in theism:

• Hedonism - an ancient philosophy championed by Epicurus that defines happiness and pleasure through moderation, ascetism, and tranquility as the highest good.
• Utilitarianism - a popular moral theory around the turn of the 17th century, having several influential proponents such as John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Henry Sidgwick, R. M. Hare, and Peter Singer [5]. In its classical form, utilitarianism is a more sophisticated form of hedonism in that it identifies happiness and pleasure as intrinsic goods. But, unlike hedonism which states that personal happiness is most relevant, utilitarianism is altruistic and defines moral rightness and wrongness to the extent that it affects the happiness of all others affected.
• Rational Egoism (also known as ethical egoism) - a view argued persuasively by Jan Narveson and Robert Nozick (and less persuasively by the likes of Ayn Rand) that states one ought to behave in ways that satisfy their own interests.
• Social contract theories - a more sophisticated form of egoism which asserts that morality ought to be viewed as a series of agreements between two or more rational self-interested agents.
• Prima facie duties - the most famous postulation of this basis in ethics is Kant's formulation "Act so that the maxim [determining motive of the will] may be capable of becoming a universal law for all rational beings".
• Moral Realism - an ancient form of morality that asserts that moral statements are not "created" by humans, but rather "discovered"; this would be similar to the way that mathematical or scientific laws are discovered. This kind of morality would imply that certain moral statements are brute facts independent of the will of any human or god. Some forms of moral realism may argue that, like mathematics, morality may be founded on a basis of unprovable axioms; other forms of moral realism argue that moral rules exist, but (like the laws of nature) we can only model close approximations of them.
• Moral Pragmatism - an interpretation of morality that, to a greater or lesser extent, denies the existence of absolute wrongs and absolute rights, but rather identifies morality as practical rules. In this way, it makes sense that killing and gratuitous violence are immoral, because they are antisocial, and that the antisocial disvalue of these actions can be known without divine revelation.
• Subjectivism - a view that moral statements are expressions of personal feeling. This position would seem to concede that atheists can provide no further basis for morality, but it would also condemn theists to the same criticism.

It is clear that morality independent of the will of God has a fairly rich tradition in philosophy. A case can be made that some (not all) theists make the argument that atheists can't be moral not because they have actually refuted all or even a few of the above secular moralities, but perhaps they are ignorant of them. In any case, it appears that secular morality, in its most generalized form, is based on the capacity to make reasoned value judgments and weigh our actions against those values; the capacity for anyone (including atheists) to make reasoned value judgments seems to be empirically verified, so it isn't apparent what reason there is to deny that atheists and atheists alone are incapable of having a basis for morality.

[edit] Nuances of "atheism provides no basis for ethics"

Perhaps these nuances can be expounded in greater detail, but there are a few unusual recurring themes in most criticisms against atheistic morality:

• Fear-based morality: it is the idea that if there were no God, then there would be no fear of the consequences for committing moral wrongs. However, unless one is a rational egoist, it isn't clear that the rightness and wrongness of actions is logically dependent of whether we suffer the consequences of our actions.
  • Implicit condemnation of rational egoism: as theists are so quick to criticize secular morality as being nothing more than fulfillment of self-interests and self-gratification, it seems odd that they appear to be arguing that rational egoist theories of morality are inadequate, yet they appear to reaffirm the idea that it is reasonable to behave in ways pleasing to God out of the self-interest to acheive salvation and avoid punishment.
  • Divine punishment vs. natural punishment: even if it is ignored that fear-based behavior has anything to do with morality, we still have much to fear in the absence of God: our governments and the people we hurt by our moral wrongs. In the first case, it is empirically verifiable that behavior is causally affected by a fear of being fined or put in jail (i.e. people won't shoplift if they suspect a security camera is watching them); in the second case, it could be argued that it is easier to live in morally acceptable ways rather than in a perpetual state of war, man against man.
  • Endorsement of "might makes right": in light of suffering the consequences of our actions being the basis for behaving morally, it appears that theists may be inadvertantly endorsing a might makes right morality. In other words, it seems they are arguing that rules made by the strongest, most powerful beings are the correct ones for no other reason than the fact that being can crush dissenters like a bug. This kind of moral thinking is ironically identical to the kind of social darwinism that theists claim would form the basis for morality if God didn't exist.
• Implicit condemnation of unsupported assumptions: it seems that attacks on atheistic morality seem to derive from the idea that moral judgments are essentially unsupported assumptions, or asserted without argument (such as the claim that pain is morally wrong). However, it seems odd that many theists will concede to the idea that morality that is based on God's will with no further argument is adequate. (It should be added that if arguments were provided to complement God's will, then those reasons demonstrate that morality exists outside of God's will.)
• Reliance on "absolute morality": It is certainly arguable that some forms of secular morality are absolutist (such as categorical imperatives), but theistic claims seem to emphasize especially that morality must be a series of absolute and categorical commands. It isn't clear why this conception of morality is superior to competing conceptions of morality, such as those which assert that moral actions be judged on a case-by-case basis.

[edit] Related Topics

• Religion and Philosophy
  • Divine Command Theory

[edit] References

[edit] Comments

For all contributors:

• Try to keep the "Definition" as straight and encyclopaedic in style as possible. Use the "Discussion" section for editorialising

• Use the references section for footnotes to books and other sources