Is there a foundation for ethics in a world without God?

Definitions: by God here I mean an eternally existing, sovereign, Personal Being who created all things, and who is the ultimate lawgiver and judge of all things.

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".

Furthermore, if someone kills you in order to rape your children and steal your belongings, this too, is just a consequence of the mindless laws of physics. If determinism is true, then it is hard to see how such a thing could be classified as good or evil. It just had to happen, for no other reason than the laws of physics! But this would mean that there is no such thing as right and wrong, except as categories in your brain (which by the way, may have just ceased to function). Even if by other biological flukes others also considered this action to be "wrong" there might still be others who somehow "feel" you deserved it for one misguided reason or another. Since both views are ultimately caused through the same things - i.e. the mindless operations of physics in a Universe which just "is" and possibly "always was", how can one view be considered superior to another? The whole thing, even if "wrong for you" or "wrong for someone else" might well be "right for the killer" or those who sympathise with his point of view? But if such a state of affairs can be described as "moral" or "ethical" then I fear we have lost the plot and are not talking about the same thing. After all, the main reason for studying and thinking about ethics is so that we may do what is wise and so have a better life.

But the philosophical problems for non-theists in the realm of ethics do not end here. There are many others. For example, how do we decide what the meaning of a word like "good" is? How can we decide if one alternative is "better" than another? In a non-theistic world view it is hard to see how we can find any clear point of reference with which to compare various options from a moral point of view. In a non-theistic view, there are no absolute norms, no "laws" by which we can decide if something is right or wrong. By what standard can anything be judged to be "better" or "worse" than its alternatives?

Totalitarian systems have tended to define what is good, right and intelligent in terms of the whims and desires of the ruling dictator. Woe betide those who would rise up from within such a system to denounce the dictator as a cruel, tyrant - as an evil despot! Some people believe that the State defines what is right and wrong. Can a State never be wrong? What happens when two different States come into conflict one with another? This is not just a theoretical question. It happens all the time in our world! Who decides which state is "right" and which is "wrong". The Serbian media and even some very clever American intellectuals such as Noam Chomsky portrayed NATO as acting like a kind of Nazi, Fascist power, while the Western media generally sought to show how evil the Serbs were in the atrocities they committed against children and other ethnic groups they sought to control. But if there is no God, who ultimately decides which nation is right? Was NATO right because they effectively bomber the Serbs into submission and destroyed their economy in the process? Did the Serbs have a right to defend their own territorial borders? If not, which country does? If "might is right" then we would have to conclude that Hitler acted morally correctly in sending millions of Jews to their death in the Holocaust of the Second World War, since he certainly had the power to do so. Is that the kind of morality we want to embrace? If not, what is the alternative?

Of course, men have tried to come up with a number of alternatives. Various shemes of Utilitarianism have been proposed. All of these have the problem that our human knowledge is so incomplete with regard to the effects of our actions. They also lack an absolute norm which really is necessary if terms such as "better" or "good" are to have some kind of universal meaning.

If ethics is derived by convention, how do we know which convention is right when two groups have a conflict? How do we decide what is right then, in the case where there is no standard or principle coming from a divine lawgiver. Who decides what convention is to be universally binding? Can we be sure that the ones deciding this are not themselves acting from undesirable motives?

If there is no God, then human beings are just animals. If two animals fight in their struggle for survival, and one kills another in order to get some food, is there something evil about that? If not, why would it be evil for two humans to do the same thing in times of conflict over food, water or oil? Its true that when all things are in abundance and shared equally such questions may not arise, but history has shown that people are not very much inclined to share their resources to the point of equality. There will always be "haves" and "have nots", and there will always be conflict. Communist revolutionary theory considered it ethical to kill the rich capitalists in order to move towards a better future society. If this is OK, then presumably Africans, Indians and Russians all have a moral right, perhaps obligation, to kill us westerners who enjoy the lion's share of the worlds resources today. What can be "wrong" with such thinking if we are just cosmic accidents and the only rule is "survival of the fittest" - so that whatever happens is "right".

To me it seems certain that mankind will never come to agree completely about what ought to be done. Therefore no convention will be universally accepted to form a sound basis for ethics without God. Even within cultures, there are subcultures that get into conflict because of disagreements about what is right. Even families can be very divided, as the divorce courts have proven. What then, is the hope for a solid foundation for ethics if there is no Divine Lawgiver or Judge?
 

Michael Fackerell

Utilitarianism (or Generalism)

Generalists believe that while there are generally binding moral principles, there are none that are universally binding. Utilitarianism is a form of generalism which proposes that ethical judgments should be based on the likely "good" an action would produce, weighed against its negative effects.

In generalism, nothing is good or bad in or of itself. Everything is to be judged by the effects the action produces. In this view, the choice to attempt a rescue which turned out to be unsuccessful and caused also one's own death would be considered "evil" because it had a bad outcome.

When you don't have an absolute standard, it is hard to exactly define the word "good". Utilitarians tend to define it in terms of the pleasure it creates in us less the suffering it creates. Of course these things are hard to quantify, and we often cannot foresee the consequences of our actions before we make the choice.

Another problem with generalism is the belief that the end justifies the means. Hitler's goal to have a more perfect race was good, but his means of attaining it were evil. The end cannot justify the means - the means must justify themselves.

Generalism leaves us with conflicting and incomplete rules without an absolute standard by which to judge things. Furthermore, it merely assumes that the maximisation of pleasure is a good thing. The decision to make pleasure of some sort the goal turns out to be a convention. Any other convention could have been chosen in a world where everything is governed by materialistic forces.

In practice, people don't think that someone else's pain is as important as their own pleasure. How many utilitarians are willing, on the basis of their philosophy, to live in the simplest possible conditions in order to provide as much needed food and medicine to the starving millions of Africa and thus minimise the suffering in the Universe and increase the overall "net" pleasure, at their own personal expense? How many people are willing to make sacrifices that seriously impinge upon their own long term comfort and opportunities in order to relieve the suffering of people they have never met? There may be some, but it should be clear that very few are willing to follow their own ethical principles, arrived at either by convention or by some kind of altruistic thinking.

Debate Between William Craig and Richard Taylor on this subject