Objective vs. Relative Morality

[The following is something I came up with after being told for the umpteenth time that atheists can't be moral or can't have a basis for judging "right" from "wrong" because they can only rely on "relative" moral standards.  Unlike theists, of course, who get their "objective" moral standards straight from God.]

Morality — the system or method by which we determine whether actions are “good” or “bad” — can either be “relative” or “objective” (a.k.a. “absolute”). Objective morality is morality based on universal principles that everybody agrees on, whereas relative morality is determined differently by different groups and is subject to change over time and in different places and cultures. Now, theists and atheists alike claim to be be able to determine right from wrong, good from bad, but what type of morality can each group actually claim to have? Objective or relative?

Let’s start with atheists. Now most atheists get their sense of “right” and “wrong” from the realization that other people are human beings the same as they are, and are therefore deserving of the exact same rights and respect as themselves. “People are people” may sound like a simple tautology, but it’s objectively true and it’s the core principle that provides atheists with the objective morality that lets them condemn slavery, murder, robbery, lying, etc. Now, this isn’t to say that all atheists are good people, since we all have free will and can decide whether to be good or bad, but at least atheists have something objective by which they can make value judgments in the first place.

What about theists? Well, they tend to rely more on wholly relative morality to make value judgments for the following reasons:

• Different theists believe in different Gods, each of which is said to have given different moral laws for us to follow. So, right there, theistic morality is wholly relative according to which God you believe in.
  


• Even within a single God belief (Christianity, say), there are tons and tons of different denominations and sects who all interpret the supposed “word of God” in different ways from a purely doctrinal standpoint. So, once again, even within the Christian faith, theistic morality is wholly relative according to which particular sect or denomination you belong to.
  


• Even within a single sect or denomination, it’s pretty much guaranteed that different preachers or even individual members will have their own specific interpretations as to just what their God wants them to do. Should you shun homosexuals or welcome them? Should you donate money to homeless people or is that just encouraging bad habits? Do women really need to be subject to their husbands’ will or not? Is it enough to just accept Jesus into your heart, or do you actually need to do good deeds and repent for your sins? Is it really harder for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven than it is for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, or is that just a metaphor? Does “turn the other cheek” mean you can’t own a gun for self-defense? Did God really just promise to “answer prayers” (and sometimes the answer is “no”) or did he actually promise to give “whatsoever we ask for in faith”? Is lusting after a woman in your heart really the same as committing adultery, or was Jesus just being metaphorical again? What’s the best way to “love thy neighbor as thyself” while still preventing transgender people from using the bathroom they feel most comfortable in? Is it OK to vote for somebody who claims to share your values if he talks about sexually assaulting women, mocks disabled people and lies all the time? What, actually, would Jesus do? And so on and so forth. Thus, theistic morality is wholly relative according to the individual beliefs of each particular theist.
  


• For theists that claim to get their morality from holy scriptures written thousands of years ago, many of the oldest commandments and moral codes from those books no longer apply today. The explanation for this is usually that those commandments were given for a specific group of people, that the culture and socio-economic conditions back then were different than they are today and/or that some sort of “new covenant” made those old commandments obsolete. It was OK to own slaves back then, but not today. It was commanded that disobedient children should be stoned to death back then, but we don’t need to follow that commandment today. Jews were required to keep kosher, but later Christians didn’t need to. All of which is to say that theistic morality can actually change over time and is wholly relative to the particular people to whom the moral commandments were given.

Now, keep in mind what I said earlier about atheists basing their morality on objective principles. Because these principles are objective, theists are capable of perceiving them as well. In fact, this is what allows, say, Christians to decide which parts of the Bible to follow in the first place and which parts should be ignored or reinterpreted away. The problem is, though, that many theists allow these objective moral principles to be overwhelmed by the teachings of their particular religion to the point where they are willing to discriminate against other people simply because this is what they have been taught is correct. Without the teachings of their religion they may never feel it right to, say, kill an infidel, or deny homosexuals the right to marry or treat other people as property. But because they have been indoctrinated to accept the relative morality provided by their religion, they end up chucking objective morality right out the window.

Now this isn’t to say that all theists are bad people or incapable of making moral judgments. After all, just because a moral principle is relative doesn’t mean it is wrong. But it does mean that their sense of right and wrong is at the whim of their religious indoctrination and this is why a lot of otherwise good people can be convinced to do some very bad things (or, as Steven Weinberg once put it, “With or without [religion] you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.” In other words, without a source of truly objective morals to rely on, theists can only do what they are told is right, regardless of whether it actually is right.

Is There Such a Thing as “Objective” Morality?

[Note: I have previously written about what morality means to an atheist here: On Morality.  Here I discuss the claim by theists that they -- and they alone -- have access to a set of "objective" moral principles.]

For any sort of moral principles to be objective, they would have to be unchanging and apply to all people in all circumstances. One way to possibly have some sort of objective morality would be to have it imposed from an external source such as a God of some sort, in which case morality becomes whatever that God says to do or not do. Unfortunately, even if you believe in a God of some sort (which I don’t), using a God as the source of objective morality quickly becomes an exercise in futility because:

• Nobody can agree upon what, exactly, God has said to do and not do, even among members of the same religious communities.
  
• Many of the things God supposedly told his children to do and not do thousands of years ago seem to have been tailored specifically for the culture in which his children lived back then [Gee, an “objective” morality that changes over time, go figure…].
  
• God apparently refuses to provide any clarification today to clear up the various misinterpretations regarding his moral principles.

Another way to possibly have some sort of objective morality is to claim that there are fundamental laws of nature that somehow dictate what is “good” and “bad” when it comes to how we treat our fellow man. I know a number of atheists who really try to make this argument, presumably so that they can silence the theists who keep claiming that atheists can’t be moral since they have no basis for objective morality. I’m not swayed by this, however.

First of all, I’m not at all swayed by the claim that objective morality is even needed in the first place to be moral. Morality is a set of principles that govern how we act toward one another, and one can follow those principles regardless of whether those principles are based on some “objective” or “absolute” standards or laws.

Second of all, I’m not convinced that there are any absolute natural laws or principles that determine (or can be used to determine) whether our actions are objectively “good” or “moral”. At most, I think that humans have, on the whole, an innate sense of empathy toward each other that tends to make us feel happy when others are happy and sad when others are sad, and that can certainly for the basis of a general principle of “treat others the way you want to be treated,” but that only goes so far. That innate empathy often only extends to members of our immediate family or tribe, and sometimes doesn’t even go that far. It is also possible to derive some general moral principles from our long experience with civilization and our experimental discovery of what sorts of laws best help a society to run smoothly. Once again, though, I hesitate to call these in any way “objective” or “absolute” since so many different societies and cultures throughout recorded history have come up with radically different laws.

The closest thing to any sort of “objective” morality I think we could ever really come up with is the simple realization that all humans are equally deserving of the same respect simply be virtue of being human. Different actions and situations may warrant different treatment, but the underlying principle of respect would remain a constant.

"Molecules In Motion"

There's a recurring statement that comes up in a variety of contexts, whether it be discussions of free will, morality, evidence of God's existence, etc., that atheists believe that nothing exists in the universe except for matter and energy and therefore must think that human beings are nothing more than "molecules in motion" (or words to that effect).  For example, when discussing morality, a theist might claim that atheists have no way of justifying a belief in morality without a belief in God since, after all, atheists think we're all just a bunch of molecules in motion (or matter and energy) following Newton's laws of motion and acting in predetermined ways based on stimuli.  Or something like that.  So, the argument goes, how can there be any morality if we are not free to choose our own actions?

This same argument is used to explain why there supposedly can't be any sort of free will without there being a supernatural being to give us that free will.  Sometimes it's even used to prove the existence of God, since there's supposedly no other way that consciousness could possibly arise from "mere" matter and energy.

When this argument is raised, in whatever context, the person representing the atheist point of view often tries to defend how its possible to have morality based on natural laws that are wholly apart from human consciousness.  Or perhaps that it doesn't matter whether we "really" have free will as long as we think that we do and act in accordance with that belief.

Personally, I think trying to argue along these lines misses the boat.  Once again, theists are just presenting another form of "Argument from Ignorance" and claiming that, since atheists can't explain it, God must be the answer.  However, rather than falling into this trap and trying to explain something that may very well be inexplicable, I think it's better to simply acknowledge that we don't know how consciousness and free will could arise from matter and energy.  The fact that we can't explain it doesn't mean that it has to be God.  It just means that we can't explain it.  And it also doesn't mean that the theist explanation of God is the correct explanation, either.  I mean, if we're going to assume that any explanation must be better than no explanation, then I'll go ahead and posit that consciousness and free will arises due to the presence of immaterial and undetectable "mind" particles that permeate the universe and accumulate over time in our brains.  Sure, I have no evidence that these particles exist, let alone that they do what I claim they do, but apparently that doesn't matter as long as they explain the observed phenomena that we do have consciousness and free will, right?  And can anybody prove that my immaterial and undetectable particles don't exist?

The bottom line, as always, is that atheism is not a claim to have all the answers about everything in the universe -- it is simply a lack of belief in the claim made by theists that they do have all the answers to everything in the universe.  Sure, I suspect that scientists (not "atheists", mind you) will someday figure out just how consciousness and free will arises naturally from matter and energy.  Or perhaps they really will find evidence of the "mind" particle I joked about earlier.  But until they do, it doesn't mean that the "God" explanation must be true in the meantime, any more than it was true that Thor was responsible for thunder until we figured out how it was really caused.

Some Random Questions for Theists

OK, I've been watching some debates between theists (usually Christians) and theists again, and as usual I thought of a bunch of questions I really wish I had been able to ask.  I'm not saying these are unanswerable questions, especially since 2000 years of formal apologetics have allowed modern theists to come up with some sort of answer to just about anything thrown their way, but I'd like to think they are questions which would, at the very least, indicate the weakness of some of their positions and assertions.

• Why do you keep asserting that the universe was "obviously" finely tuned to support life (and specifically intelligent human life), when 99.99999999... % of the known universe is utterly and completely hostile to the existence of life (let alone to human life)?  Is all the rest of the vastness of space just for the sake of decoration?


• You've said that the observed suffering in the natural world is the direct result of mankind sinning in the Garden of Eden and causing the world (universe?) to enter into a fallen state with suffering and death.  If God is all powerful, however, why did he create a universe where man's sinning would affect all of creation and not just man?  Why would God punish innocent animals instead of just punishing mankind?


• In the past, theists have claimed that the creation of the universe "out of nothing" proves the existence of God since there's no other possible explanation.  Now that physicists have described ways in which a universe could have arisen out of nothing by purely natural processes, why does it matter whether physicists can prove that this is how it actually happened?  Since you previously said God must exist because there was no other possible way it could have happened, isn't it a sufficient refutation of your "proof" that there is, in fact, at least one possible way after all?


• As a Christian, what does it matter that some percentage (that you completely made up) of humanity throughout history has had some sort of spiritual experience that lead them to believe in some sort of god or gods?  Even if that somehow proved that there was some sort of God (which it doesn't, since it would only prove at most that humans have a tendency to believe in supernatural beings), what justification is there for assuming that the "God" in question is the Christian one and not, say, the God of Islam, Zoroastrianism, Norse mythology, etc.?


• How can you claim that the Bible is evidence of the existence of God and then admit that much of it is allegorical and not to be taken literally?  Especially when, once upon a time, it was all thought to be literally true until science and evolving societal norms slowly but surely proved that more and more of it couldn't possibly be literally true??  Also, how do you determine which parts are literally true and which parts are merely allegorical??  Does it bother you that the determination of which parts are literal and which parts are allegorical has changed over time, indicating that there is no "correct" answer other than "everything is literally true that hasn't yet been shown to be demonstrably false or distasteful to our modern sensibilities"?


• On a related note, how can you claim that "absolute morality" can only come from God and then acknowledge that the only source we have for what God's morality actually is (i.e., the Bible) contains numerous laws and principles that do not apply to today's society and therefore are not absolute?


• You claim that God is necessary in order to explain what the purpose of life is, which is something science cannot do.  What justification do you have for the assertion that life must necessarily have a purpose in the first place, other than the fact that you find the notion of a life without a purpose to be too depressing to contemplate?


• Once you have "logically proven" the necessity of some sort of timeless and immaterial supernatural being in order to explain the creation of the universe and all its laws (leaving aside for the moment the question as to whether you actually did prove anything), how do you get from that supernatural being to the God of your particular religion and your particular sect of your particular religion? If you're trying to prove something, it's not enough to just say you have faith in your God or that your God personally spoke to your heart. You're perfectly entitled to your faith, but that's not the "proof" you promised to provide.

Top Ten Misconceptions about Atheists - Part Four

Misconception Number Four -- Atheists Cannot Act Morally

OK, I discussed morality in some depth earlier in this post, but it bears repeating here the common misconception that a belief in God is required for somebody to act in a moral way and that, therefore, atheists cannot be moral.

Rather than rehash the entire discussion here, let me just make a few bullet points that explain why this misconception is, well, a misconception:

• There are entire societies that lack a belief in God, such as communist China, that are full of people being nice to one another and treating each other in a way that is, by all accounts, very moral.
  
  
• Morality existed long before the Bible was written.  Even if you accept the Bible as a literally and exclusively true account of human history, does anybody really think that people thought it was perfectly OK to murder, steal, lie, etc., before Moses was given the Ten Commandments?  Did people really need to be told, "God says that murder is wrong" before they were able to figure that out on their own?  Seriously?
  
  
• If "absolute morality" comes from God and is the only way to avoid any sort of "relative morality" (i.e., where different cultures think different things are moral and immoral), then why are there so many religions who interpret the same moral laws in different ways?  Why do some Christians believe homosexuality is a sin, while others think it's perfectly fine?  Why do some Christians feel that divorce is a sin, while others think it is perfectly fine?  Having a source of "absolute morality" doesn't seem to mean all that much as long as nobody can actually agree what that source actually says.
  
  
• On a related note, if God is supposed to provide "absolute morality" that is required for us to behave in a moral way, why have those moral precepts changed over time?  Why did it used to be a sin to eat pork and eat shellfish and wear fabric made of two kinds of cloths, but now it's not a sin?  Why it used to not be a sin to own slaves, but now it is a sin?  The standard answer seems to be that Old Testament laws (some of them, at least) were given to a particular people living in particular circumstances and no longer apply to our circumstances today.  Except, isn't that the very definition of "relative morality"?  And isn't it awfully convenient that the laws that "no longer apply" today just happen to be the ones that we don't actually want to follow today?
  
  
• Most importantly, who decided that any sort of "absolute morality" is even needed in the first place in order to be moral?  Morality is just a word, a human construct, that defines how people think we should act toward one another.  It varies from time to time, from place to place and from group to group.  At it's most basic, morality is simply a feeling that we should treat other people the way we want to be treated.  Or, more simply, don't be a dick toward others.  It's rooted in our evolution as intelligent, empathetic creatures and likely evolved as a way to help humans live together in a society instead of having to go it all on our own.  As a result, concepts of morality can and do evolve over time as societies evolve and there's no need to point to any sort of "absolute" morality in order to whether an act is moral or not within a particular society.   We may think France is "immoral" because they let women walk around topless at beaches.  Arab countries feel the United States is "immoral" because we let women walk around with their hair and faces exposed.  And each culture is convinced that their beliefs are guided by "absolute" moral principles handed down from on high.
  
  
• In short, you don't need to believe in God to think you should treat other people with respect, and a belief in God certainly doesn't lead all believers to treat others with respect.  In fact, you could argue that humans are inherently moral creatures and it takes a belief in God (or religion, if you prefer) to convince people to treat other people as "lesser beings" for not sharing those beliefs.

All right, my "few" bullet points ended up being more than just a few.  Just think of this post as strengthening my previous post on the subject rather than rehashing it.

Something from Nothing?

Many modern Christian apologists delight in attacking atheists for their supposed belief that the universe was created “out of nothing,” presumably in reference to the Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe. I’ve always felt this was a very off means of attack, however, for the following reasons:

1. First of all, Christian theology itself has long taught that God created the entire universe ex nihilo (literally, “out of nothing”). So, apparently, creating something out of nothing is only a ridiculous idea if God didn’t do it. That’s very helpful if you are then going to define God as basically “that being who is the only being who can create something out of nothing.” You can then argue that (a) the universe was created out of nothing, (b) only something we will arbitrarily call “God” can create something out of nothing because we say so, therefore (c) “God” exists.
2. Second, this whole line of attack completely misrepresents what science actually says about the origin of the universe. The so-called “Big Bang” theory does not actually state that the universe was created “out of nothing.” Instead, it claims that the entirety of the universe was once condensed into an infinitesimally small point billions of years ago and that it expanded from that point. There are various competing theories as to how the universe came to be condensed into a tiny point in the first place and what caused it to expand (including the theory of a cyclic universe that constantly expands and then contracts over and over again, the theory that our universe branched off of another existing universe, etc.), but none of these theories claim that the universe suddenly appeared out of nowhere. Which is to say that there is nothing whatsoever in the current scientific understanding of the origin of the universe that requires the existence of some sort of “being” who can create things out of nothing.
3. For centuries, even thousands of years, Christians have believed that the Earth and entire universe was created sometime in the last 10,000 years. Many modern “intellectual” or “sophisticated” Christians today acknowledge the scientific evidence and discoveries that show the Earth is actually around 4 billion years old and that the universe far older than that, although there are still plenty of fundamentalist Christians who think the whole universe was created some 6,000 years ago. What I find hilarious is that these modern Christian apologists are willing to chuck out the literal words of the Bible and accept what science has to say about the age and origin of the universe, but then want to take what science says and somehow use it to support what the Bible says about God creating the universe. Creating the universe in six days? Well, that just an allegory. But the bit about God doing it? That’s literally true!

On Morality

As an atheist, I have often been told that I am incapable of being a truly “moral” person and that if I raise my son as an atheist he will grow up without morals as well. The argument is usually that “morality” (in the sense of knowing right from wrong, good from bad) comes directly from God and is defined by his nature. Therefore, the argument goes, if one does not believe in God there is no place to look for a source of absolute morality.

I reject this argument for two main reasons:

1. The argument presupposes that there is, in fact, such as thing as “absolute morality.” At best, I think you can say that humans are naturally social and empathetic creatures and that certain behaviors help the survival of the species as a whole. But what the specifics are can and do change from one society to another and one era to another within the same society, and I think you would be hard pressed to find many moral principles that are shared across all cultures or even all religions. Even within a single religion, moral principles regularly change over time. For example, in the days of the Old Testament it was apparently perfectly moral to own slaves and commit wholesale genocide (as long as God commanded it, of course). Conversely, it was immoral to eat shrimp or wear fabric made of two different types of thread. If you ask a Christian why such things are not followed today, you will usually get a response along the lines of how those commandments were given to meet the needs of the society that existed at the time and don’t apply to our society today. Which is, of course, the very definition of moral relativity.
   
   I think the closest one could get to any sort of “absolute” moral principle (despite the fact that it was violated repeatedly in the Old Testament on the direct order of God) would be the principle that we should treat each other the way we ourselves want to be treated (the so-called “Golden Rule”). Christians seem to think that Christ came up with this, but the principle existed for thousands of years prior to Christ’s supposed birth in a variety of other cultures. And, as I mentioned, the Old Testament is replete with examples of God commanding his people to commit all sorts of atrocities in his name in direct contradiction to this principle.
   
   
2. Our only knowledge of God’s commandments and essential nature comes from the scriptures, and those scriptures portray him in large part to be capricious, jealous and vindictive (especially in the Old Testament where people get smitten left and right for all sorts of trivial crimes). It’s all well and good to use logical arguments to hypothesize as to what God’s essential nature “must” be, but if you look at what is supposed to be an accurate record of what God actually said and did, we see a being at odds with his supposed goodness.
   
   I would argue, in fact, that nobody actually gets their moral guidelines directly (or exclusively) from the Bible. Instead, they use their own innate sense of morality to decide which parts of the Bible they want to follow. Perhaps you really like the bits about loving thy neighbor, honoring thy father and mother and taking care of the poor and afflicted? Are you not quite as excited about the bits commanding you to stone homosexuals to death or permitting you to beat your slave as long as he doesn’t die? Morality isn’t doing what God tells you to do – it’s deciding which parts of “God’s words” are actually worth following in the first place.
   
   Now, I have been told that this “innate moral sense” of which I speak is actually some sort of "Light of Christ" which comes directly from God. If that were the case, however, then it doesn’t explain the inconsistency of having God tell us one thing in the supposedly inerrant scriptures and then giving us the ability to determine which parts are false...
   

As an aside, I’ve frequently been struck by the observation that theists tend to have a much lower opinion of humanity than atheists. Most atheists I have talked with seem to accept that morality, while not absolute, has it's origins in the social and evolutionary development of our species. It evolved as a survival trait and is simply part of what makes us human. We treat each other the way we would like to be treated because, on the whole, it makes living together easier. Most theists I have talked with, on the other hand, seem to think that man is basically a depraved animal driven by the basest of motives, perfectly willing to lie, cheat, kill, rape, steal, etc., at all times, held in check solely by enforced obedience to a set of divinely revealed rules and regulations. OK, so they never actually say it quite like that, but the implication always seems to be there.

I just have always found it ironic that Christians (in particular) rail against evolution because it somehow debases humanity and makes us appear no better than any other animal, and yet they are the ones who think we would all run around acting like "animals" if it weren't for their archaic moral codes.