By ethics I mean a system of ideas concerned with defining what is morally "right" and "wrong". Alternatively, ethics is concerned with what we "should" or "should not" do.
The question of ethics is important to everyone, because we all live in a world where we are vulnerable to pain. The actions of others have the potential to bring us satisfaction, or they can hurt us. Most people want to live in a world where the amount of suffering is minimised and the amount of satisfaction is maximised. Acts that cause gratuitous suffering are generally regarded as "wrong". People have different kinds of reasons for saying that someone "should" do this or that, or that such an act is "good". These reasons could have to do with pleasure, political or religious convictions, or the reduction of suffering.
In the western world not everyone is agreed that God, as defined above, really exists. Some use their atheism as a justification to do anything that feels good to them, regardless of the consequences. Other atheists however, notably many humanists, are optimistic about humanity's potential for good with no reference to God. They are determined to demonstrate that they can do as much good as anyone, and that believing in God is totally unnecessary for being moral. One atheist said to me, "I do everything that you do". Indeed, some might see belief in God, especially the God of the Bible, as a hindrance to true morality.
Here is the question at issue. Can there be a solid foundation for morality and ethics in a world without God? In other words, if there is no God, do concepts such as "right" and "wrong" make real sense? Can anyone know what we should or should not do?
To some, the answer might appear to be a simple "yes". Citing the failures and abuses of religionists over the years, and pointing to non-theists who live very decent lives and who make a contribution to society in many areas, some make a case that belief in God has little relation to morality. People like Prof. Richard Taylor argue that the basis for morality in human affairs is convention. Over the centuries mankind has come through experience to understand that certain things like stealing, murder and rape are not conducive to what we want in life, and so, by convention, society has declared these things to be "wrong". In this thinking, mankind has gotten this knowledge through experience, through accumulated wisdom and not because of the existence of God or some pantheon of deities. In this view, religions have only for the most part confirmed what mankind had already learned through experience and common sense. So why think that God is somehow the foundation for morality?
Is it all really that simple?
The above reasoning sounds smart, but there are certain questions which are not answered so simply. In one debate, the celebrated atheist Bertrand Russell was asked, "Do you believe in the existence of right and wrong?" to which he responded "Yes". When asked how he could distinguish between what was right and wrong, he replied that for him it was like distinguishing between two different colors. When pressed on this point, this eminent scientist and philosopher could only reply that he distinguished between right and wrong on the basis of how he felt. The problem with this view is that in some primitive cultures, people have felt that it is good to eat your enemies, while other cultures are horrified even at the thought of such a thing. People feel different ways about the same thing. How do we decide who is right if both "feel" they are right. Who decides which people's judgments are to be the standards by which the behavior of others is to be judged? Those in power? Those with access to the channels of mass media? Does the owning of a television station make one's opinion and preferfences more "right" than the views of a poor man living off the land in the country somewhere?When "man is the measure of all things", the question becomes, "Which man?" Some believe that Evolution is working to the eventual development of a kind of "superman" who, by virtue of his natural and intellectual superiority, will by some kind of Natural Law have the authority to rule over the ignorant and inferior masses (for their own good, of course). Ideas like this were popularised by philosophers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, the God-hating author of books such as "The Antichrist". Adolph Hitler and Joseph Stalin were a couple of more significant readers of Nietzsche in the history of the 20th century. It seems that this kind of philosophy, when put into practice by those with the strongest "will to power" brings only misery and devastation in its wake. These elitist ideas which view only certain enlightened and superior ones as the source of wisdom concerning what all men should do can have dangerous repercussions.
The problem of ethics becomes even more thorny when we consistently hold that there is no God. Why is this? Well, suppose there is no God. How did we get here? The only answer to this would be: we evolved through the combination of time, chance, matter and energy. If this is true, what is a human being? A human being, by this view, if a chance happening, a dynamic collection of molecules and atoms organised into a system with certain complex properties - a biological machine, if you will, that has come into existence through a sheer fluke. The organisation of the various systems in a human being, including the genetic code, and the brain, have all come about for no other reason except that the laws of physics have caused it to happen. Over so much time and space, it just so happened that systems capable of duplicating themselves called "cells" spontaneously formed through the certain transfer of energy interacting with some other chemicals that just happened to be the right ones and so on. By a enormously long process of trial and error, these systems eventually pulled themselves up by their bootlaces, so to speak, in order to produce all the animal life we see, including humans. Humans are seen as nothing more than highly complex animals.
For the sake of the argument I will grant that all this is true. Now observe what follows. The first thing to note is that any sense we may have of having a free will - the capacity to make independent decisions - is merely an illusion. What we believe, and what we decide must come from the laws of physics. There is no independent "self". If I "decide" to steal, it is because of the action of certain neurones in the neural net I call "my brain". This brain always acts as a function of its previous states and the stimuli which come to it. All these things are rooted in the laws of physics, which are impersonal, and operate in the same way, regardless of what we "think" or "believe" about them. There is no mysterious spiritual force needed to explain anything - no vitalistic essence which is needed to make these things work. No, everything is just an evolving physical state.
According to this view, ethical systems have also evolved because such systems give a survival advantage to those systems in which the system of ethics operates. Its pretty easy to see that a society that valued above all the extermination of those one disagreed with would soon eliminate itself, only to leave societies with a more "humane" ethic to survive and multiply. From this it is argued that ethical systems are as much a part of biological evolution as anything else. There is no need here for God to explain how these things came about.
If you are going to hold to this world view, you need to be willing to recognise that you only hold it because of a series of fluke chemical reactions that happened in your brain. Whatever you might think of your own intelligence, emotional life or decision making ability, it is after all, nothing but a meaningless accident. You can assign some arbitrary meaning to it if you like, but even such an assignment is nothing more than another "state" in your brain caused, once again, by the mindless forces of physics, which, "just simply are".
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