“If you don’t believe in god, then where do
you get your morals from?”
It’s the
elephant in the room. We can try to avoid it. We can pretend it doesn’t exist.
We can tell ourselves “we’ve moved beyond god-bashing.” But in any discussion
with traditional theists, if you can’t answer this question then you might as
well ask for directions to the local NAMBLA office.
First, what
do we mean by morals, and how are they different from ethics? These terms are often
used interchangeably, and their meanings may be dependent on context. For now,
let’s agree that “ethics” refers to a set of principles, or a logical framework
for making decisions about how to behave under given circumstances, while
“morals” refers to one’s personal convictions or beliefs about what is right or
wrong. For example, a defense attorney may have a personal moral conviction
that murder is wrong, but may also have a standard of professional ethics that
requires mounting a vigorous defense of a client charged with murder.
Morals, like
many human characteristics, vary from person to person. They have both a genetic
or “nature” aspect and a learned or “nurture” aspect. They also can be
organized hierarchically, similar to Maslow’s hierarchy of needs, starting from
the more essential moral traits that are required for species survival and
building to more sophisticated moral questions that come into play once
survival issues have been addressed.
At the base
of the hierarchy, the “nature” aspect of morality is a function of biological
evolution and survival. For example, most mammals have evolved in such a way
that parents care for their offspring from birth until they are able to fend
for themselves. Unlike some insects or reptiles which may produce hundreds or
thousands of young per parent (who can “afford” to lose a fair number to
predators without jeopardizing the species), most mammals produce only a
handful or fewer of young per year. Since there are so few offspring per
reproductive cycle and the offspring are relatively helpless, mammals have
evolved strong parental attachment and nurturing behavior. In humans, this is
expressed as the moral value of “motherly love”.
Our innate
morality – the “nature” component – is built up from universal, evolutionarily
successful traits such as parents caring for their young, close family members
not interbreeding, and aversion to harmful foods. These behaviors have become
instinctive because they facilitate propagation and survival of the species.
Parents that don’t care for their children are less likely to be represented in
the gene pool. Incest is considered taboo because of the increased incidence of
genetic abnormalities in the resulting offspring.
Once the
basic survival of the species has been addressed, the next level of the moral
hierarchy is groups. As our species evolved from small packs of hunter
gatherers to larger agrarian settlements, cities, and nation states our learned
morality – the “nurture” component – has developed to accommodate the increased
complexity of our resulting communities. Humans, like our primate relatives,
are social animals. Our species has thrived because of our ability to form
stable groups. Other primates have the brain power to manage tribes of 50
members or less, while our larger human brains facilitate relationships in
groups of 150-200 members. The tribes that were successful in the earliest days
of human evolution were the ones that practiced reciprocity, loyalty, and
generosity within the tribe. A team of hunters that share their bounty will
tend to do better over the long haul than a selfish lone-wolf hunter who has
more than he can eat on good days but goes hungry on the days in between kills.
Groups that transmit these learned behaviors to their children tend to be more
successful than those that don’t.
Civilized
society depends on shared rules and collective responsibility. Larger
communities lead to specialization and interdependency, which require
cooperation and trust. These are facilitated by teachable moral values of
honesty, integrity, fairness, reciprocity, etc.
These moral values are judged by their effectiveness. Someone who lies
and cheats may achieve success in the short term, but will harm the community
in which they operate over time.
Once the
moral values essential to the survival of individuals and communities are established, moral development can advance to areas of personal or group
preference. Some examples of these moral preferences include religious beliefs,
family structure (arranged marriages versus romantic love), and capital
punishment. Religions can be a type of community structure of their own, and we
can study which types of rules and ethical structures have been most successful
in preserving various religious communities. Strict authoritarian religious
codes have survived for millennia, despite the encroachment of conflicting
truth claims from modern science, although in evolutionary time scales modern
science only appeared on the stage a few moments ago.
For those
moral values that are a matter of preference, and not survival value, how do we
go about deciding what is moral and what is immoral? We can go in one of two
directions. We can look internally to what feels right, or is consistent with
thoughtfully determined first principles. Or, we can look externally to follow
the guidance and influence of family, respected peers, or established societal
norms. Of course, it’s not really that simple. What “feels right” to us
internally is likely to be a product of the familial and social environment in
which we developed. And today’s societal norms will have been influenced by the
reasoned first principles of leaders in the past.
So what can
we use as first principles? Some possible choices include
- ·
Trust
and follow authority
- ·
Maximize
common good
- ·
Maximize
personal gain
- ·
Minimize
suffering
- ·
Maximize
inherent worth and dignity of every person
Each of
these has its pros and cons. Following authority requires you to have enough
autonomy to make an informed decision regarding which of competing authorities
to follow, and then expects you to abandon that autonomy from that point on.
Maximizing the common good, or utilitarianism, runs into a problem if the
greatest common good can be achieved by intense suffering on the part of a
minority. Maximizing personal gain, the libertarian ideal, implies that the
best of all possible worlds will result if each person is free to pursue their
own selfish objectives. I don’t fully understand why that outcome is likely
given our nature as social or tribal animals, and I don’t believe the record of
history supports this premise, but many reasonable, intelligent people hold
this view these days.
Personally,
I am drawn to the inherent worth and dignity argument. It acknowledges that,
while we may be responsible for our choices, none of us are fully responsible
for our circumstances. None of us chose our parents, or their wealth, or their
social connections. None of us chose our IQ, or our innate athletic prowess, or
the shape of our noses, or our hairlines. All of us are products of our
environments and our biology in ways that run too deep for any of us to fully
grasp -- ways that include intangibles like work ethic. So none of us can claim
any inherent superiority over anyone else, which leaves us all inherently equal
in worth. And that feels right to me.
If we decide
to follow external authority, we have a few options. As children, we have
little choice but to follow the edicts of our parents. If we attend school, we
can comply with school rules and policies. As adults, we can focus on
compliance with city, state, and national laws and regulations, or we can
choose to comply with the dictates of a chosen religion. As mentioned
previously, some level of internal guidance is required to choose among
competing external authorities, unless one is content to conform to the
religion of one’s parents. And this is actually the most common method by which
people arrive at membership in a particular religion.
So, where do
we get our morals from? Our sense of what is right is a combination of behavior
that is necessary for the species (such as parents caring for their young),
supportive for groups (such as altruism and reciprocity), or elective for our
personal well-being (such as feminism or GLBT rights.) Some values are
genetically inherited, some are learned, and some are chosen. Some values can
be evaluated in terms of what works and what doesn’t, and some values are a
result of personal preferences which in turn are a product of our environments.
Now, back to
the first part of the original question: “If
you don’t believe in god, …” In my experience, people who start their
questions about morality with that qualifier are operating on a set of
assumptions or assertions that includes some or all of the following:
- ·
There
is a god – a supernatural, all-powerful, all-knowing creator and sustainer of
the universe
- ·
This
god is concerned with human morality
- ·
This
god has established a definitive code of human morality
- ·
This
god communicates his/her/its moral code to humans
- ·
They
(the questioners) believe in the existence of this god
- ·
They
have established reliable communication with this god
- ·
Their
own personal morals are based on communication received from this god
- ·
This
god is monitoring their behavior and tracking their compliance with his/her/its
moral code
- ·
They
will be judged and rewarded after they are dead, based on their degree of
compliance with this revealed moral code during their earthly lives
- ·
Anyone
who does not believe in this god will be punished for this lack of belief after
they are dead, regardless of how “nice” they may have been while alive.
Most of these assertions are highly
subjective, and those who hold them tend to be resistant to any logical
arguments or evidence to the contrary. Setting aside for now the assertions regarding
the existence of a god and eternal punishment or reward in an afterlife, I
would like to focus on the topic of how, exactly, people who think they get
their morals from a god actually get their morals from a god.
What I
observe is that people who claim to get their morals from a god have generally
been raised by parents who instilled the idea of a god and this god’s rules
into them from an early age. There are exceptions, of course, and some people
are persuaded to adopt these beliefs as adults, under peer pressure from other like-minded
adults. I observe that people receive these god-rules by hearing them from
their parents as children, by hearing them from preachers and Sunday School
teachers in church, and by reading about them in various sacred texts. In other
words, people receive these god-rules from other people in much the same way as
they learn about history, current events, restaurant menus, and any other way
that people receive ideas and information about people, places, and things:
from other people.
What I have
yet to observe, either personally or via verifiable anecdote, are people
receiving moral wisdom via direct voices in their head which are not their own.
Such incidents have been recorded in ancient religious texts (the story of Abraham
and Isaac comes to mind), but in modern times when people base their actions on
voices they claim to be hearing in their heads we are more likely to have them
locked up for observation than to hail them as a source of moral inspiration.
Another
concern often raised by the traditionally religious is that without a
scorekeeper god, humans would have no incentive to behave morally. This premise
has several weaknesses. First, many of our moral tendencies (parental care, for
example) are better explained as evolutionary survival mechanisms than as
arbitrary rules to be followed. Second, many moral principles (such as
reciprocity, aka “the golden rule”) have existed in all cultures and all
recorded history and predate modern religions in general and the Abrahamic
religions in particular. Finally, history provides little evidence that belief
in a scorekeeper god inoculates people against bad behavior. For further
information see: the crusades, the inquisition, witch burnings, holy wars,
human slavery, Catholic priest pedophilia, abortion clinic bombings, and 9/11.
Finally,
there is the picking-and-choosing problem. If you want to disapprove of
homosexuality because of a specific biblical passage in Leviticus, fine, but
then you also have to stone your disobedient children and put to death any
woman who does not bleed properly on her wedding night. And if you don’t
approve of human slavery, you sure as heck didn’t get that moral value from the
bible.
To sum up: “If I don’t believe in god, where do I get my
morals?” My morals are based on a combination of innate feelings based on
evolutionary survival mechanisms, learned behavior based on the environment in
which I was raised, and voluntarily chosen values based on first principles. In
other words, I get my morals the same places you get yours. Unless you’re
hearing voices.
Add Clint Eastwood to this growing list of Republicans who support gay marriage, although I don't see him adopting a red and pink equality symbol. He told GQ in 2011 that he "doesn’t “give a f*** about who wants to get married to anybody else” and that instead of “all this bulls*** about ‘sanctity,’” we should “just give everybody the chance to have the life they want.” How very Dirty, Harry.
