The Bankruptcy of Religious Morality

Morality is an issue of no small debate among the religious and non-religious. Some believers, like Christian apologist Matt Slick, argue that atheists can be moral only because “the law of God” is written on the hearts of all human beings, as it states in Romans 2:15.¹ According to others, morality without a religious foundation is not morality in any valuable sense. The Religious Right’s bastardization of Wikipedia, known as Conservapedia, features an article on Atheism and morality, where it is suggested that the absence of a religious foundation leads atheists into immoral behavior and an amoral philosophy. The majority of the article is made up of hasty generalization fallacies and examples of immorality (homosexuality, profanity, pre-marital sex, etc.) which are not demonstrably immoral outside of a narrow religiously fundamentalist mindset.

But is a religious foundation truly necessary for one to have a coherent or practical morality? The sad reality is that many who would answer yes often cherry-pick their moral instruction from their holy book and ignore or even attempt to justify the reprehensible teachings and stories of their faith. Yet more than this, there is a fundamental problem with religious morality that is not present in secular morality.

I. What is Religious Morality?

By “religious morality”, I mean any moral system that is constructed around a god or gods. Obviously this will exclude some forms of morality that are found in non-theistic religions, such as Buddhism or Confucianism, but I would also contend that these religions have moral systems that are, in terms of content, more kin to secular humanism than they are to religion. Thus, if some type of moral instruction is associated with a religion, I do not accept that this fact alone makes it a religious morality. As an example, the Golden Rule is found in many of the world’s religions, but it is also found outside religion, and, more importantly, the content of the rule is specifically human - no appeal to gods or supernatural beings is made. So I use “religious morality” to refer to moral systems that rely on divine non-human agents.

Possibly the most common kind of religious morality is that of Divine Command Theory. According to the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Divine Command Theory makes the claim that “morality is ultimately based on the commands or character of God, and that the morally right action is the one that God commands or requires.”² Put another way, Divine Command Theorists believe that moral statements reflect the attitudes of god, and so propositions like “x is good” really amount to “god commands x.” Whenever a religious believer holds something to be right or wrong based on what they believe their god has said about it, they are operating by Divine Command Theory. Christians, Muslims, Jews, Zoroastrians, Mormons, and even Hindus can all be Divine Command Theorists.

A great number of religious believers may profess a morality that is on par with Divine Command Theory, but many of these same individuals also make non-religious arguments for their positions. X isn’t just good because god says so, but because x is beneficial to society too. We show mercy to others because we want mercy shown to us. Most believers don’t seem to see a conflict in this reasoning, yet if something is good or bad by its own merit, the instruction of god becomes irrelevant. If we are capable of figuring out right and wrong for ourselves based on observation and thought about the world around us, then why do we need god to tell us what we already know? This will not only undermine Divine Command Theory, but it also concedes the viability of non-religious morality.

II. Deconstructing Religious Morality

The ancient Greek philosopher Socrates challenged religious morality in a similar manner in the Euthyphro dilemma. Does god command something because it is good, or is it good because god commands it? If we accept the first horn, that god commands x because it is good, then goodness is part of a moral standard that is independent of god. This means that religion is completely unnecessary for morality, which was hinted at in the previous paragraph. It also calls the sovereignty and omnipotence of god into question, being that there is something (goodness) over which god has no authority.

If we accept the second horn, that something is good because god commands it, then we put ourselves in the camp of Divine Command Theory. However, this option has problems all its own too. As I alluded before, a consistent adherence to Divine Command Theory means that the sole basis one will have for moral behavior is the will of god. Consequently, there can be no practical justification for any moral position under this view. If god’s will is the only moral standard that matters, then what we have is more like divine decree than morality.

Let’s proceed to a specific example. God cannot say “I will command x because x will help humanity achieve peace”, because then it is already established that there is a reason for x that is independent of god - doing x will help humanity achieve peace. One could also ask why peace should be valued by god. Why should god value love? Why should god value anything even for himself? These are questions of moral standards, and yet if god’s will is the only moral standard, then we have no answers to any of it. God values worship because god wills it. God values love because god wills it. These are arbitrary notions, not true reasons or explanations. Because of this, religious morality is subjective, not being based on any objective standard.

When good is defined as what god commands, goodness loses its meaning. What will it mean to say that god is good, except that god always obeys his own commands? Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that the most intelligent and powerful creator of the universe would be so irrational as to establish a moral standard in its own decrees. The German philosopher Gottfried Leibniz succinctly expressed his concerns on the issue:

Divine Command Theory reduces god to an irrational tyrant, reduces human beings to the subjects of the tyrant, and reduces morality to a baseless decree.

III. Salvaging Religious Morality

Recognizing the consequences of the Euthyphro dilemma, many believers have sought out other ways of grounding morality in their religion. The most common way is to allege that the dilemma is a false one, claiming that there is some other third option not considered. An example of this comes from an article on the Christian apologetics site Stand to Reason, authored by Gregory Koukl.⁴ Koukl argues that an objective standard for morality exists in the “immutable character” of god, and thus god’s commands are not whims because they are rooted in his character. But does this really resolve the dilemma?

It deserves to be pointed out that a dilemma that has a third option introduced to it may not always break, but can become a trilemma, especially when the third option is as problematic as the first two, and this is what we find with Koukl’s ‘solution.’ Does god have control over his character, or does he not have control over his character? If we accept the first horn, that god does have control of his character, then we fall right back into the dilemma. God controls his character, and in doing so he determines what is moral. This doesn’t even negate the arbitrariness of god’s commands, since now it is just his character that is being arbitrarily decided.

What if we accept the second horn, though, that god does not have control over his character? This is presumably what Koukl implies by saying god’s character is “immutable”, or cannot be changed. However, this option poses difficulties for god’s omnipotence and sovereignty yet again, since there is then something above god that he has no authority over: his character. Moreover, it means nothing to say that god’s commands flow from his character, because we don’t know god’s character to be good. For this idea to have any meaning, goodness has to be defined, and even if it is an essential property of god’s character, we still have no information about what that property is.

The essential character of a one gallon jug is that it holds a gallon of liquid. But the character of the jug is not actually what defines a gallon. Human beings have devised standards of weight and measurement, among which is the gallon. This is likely why Koukl fails to define goodness in the article, because he knows that if he simply calls it “god’s character” then he has defined nothing, and if he tries to define it in virtually any other way, we will just end up with something else that’s either arbitrary or independent of god. So he resorts to claiming that we need not have a definition of good, because we intuitively know it. But what is it we have in our intuition, and is this not the spitting image of the relativism so often criticized by apologists like Koukl himself?

Attempts to expose the dilemma as false have been unsuccessful for many centuries, and this is yet another example. To simplify, Koukl claims that god commands what is good because good is in his essential character, and Christians believe this to be true because they feel it deep down inside. For reasons that should be obvious by now, this is no threat to the Euthyphro dilemma at all, but only a lot of smoke and mirrors.

IV. The Writing Isn’t on the Wall

I previously noted that some religious believers, like Matt Slick and Greg Koukl, conclude that atheists are capable of being moral persons due to the grace of god, who has written his law on the hearts of every human being. Condescending as their claim is, it implies some problems for theists too. There are certainly areas of intense disagreement, not only among believers and non-believers, but among bible-believing Christians as well. If intuition helps guide Christians to any sense of morality, you might think there would be less Christians involved in rape, murder, theft, and other immoral behaviors. Yet what we’ve found through sociological research reveals almost the opposite. In a 2009 study, Phil Zuckerman found that of the top 50 safest cities to live in, nearly all are predominantly non-religious.⁵ The study even found lower divorce rates among the non-religious.

Just within the Protestant Christian church we can find vicious debates over the morality of abortion, gay marriage, stem cell research, abstinence, and other issues. It seems as though god doesn’t give every believer the same intuition software. While some Christians accuse the others of being insincere in their faith, there is no real basis for such discrimination. There are different kinds of believers because the bible is not a step-by-step book of answers. Even the apostle Paul struggled with the “grey areas” of morality in 1 Corinthians 10. Some ancient Christians strictly forbade eating meat sacrificed to idols (Acts 15:29), but others argued that it was justifiable because idols are nothing real to a Christian. Paul’s highly relativist solution was to say it’s good for some and bad for others.

This is what you get when intuition is made the standard for morality. Not everyone has the same sense of responsibility or knowledge, and this is as true among any religious group as it is among believers and non-believers. To a fair extent, intuition is a reliably good way of making decisions, but many of our decisions also affect others, and so it is important to have more of a grounding for our morality than simple feelings and instinct. Our intuition is often driven by emotion, while reason will allow us to take a necessary step back and examine the circumstances from a more informed and thoughtful angle. It is doubtful that intuition may guide us to what is good unless we already have some pre-existing idea of goodness, given to us by society, family, religion, or something else.

Although many believers claim their faith as motivation for innumerable moral actions, like giving to charity, feeding the homeless, and so forth, these are all - without exception - actions that atheists are just as capable of performing. On the other hand, religion can mischaracterize moral goods as moral evils and cause harm where secular morality would not. Despite a complete lack of evidence for the harmfulness of homosexuality, some believers maintain that it is still immoral simply because their religion declares it to be. On several issues, religion barely shows a semblance of uniformity in moral intuition, and it ruthlessly belittles intuition that contests its claims. Hence, there is no reason at all to think that the law of any god is written on our hearts.

V. The Damage of Religious Morality

As just stated, religion can provide an impetus to cause harm in how it may mischaracterize moral goods (or even non-moral issues) as moral evils. There are too many stories of gay children being driven to suicide by bullying, and on more than a few occasions, the bullying comes from religious students or religious groups.⁶ Pro-life Christians like Eric Rudolph have justified the bombing of abortion clinics on their reading of the bible.⁷ Abstinence-only education, which is often closely related to a religious agenda, has contributed to higher teen birth rates by neglecting to inform youth about the reality and benefits of contraception, as many health professionals have noted.⁸

These are just a slim few examples of the real damage that religious morality can do. Arguments from scripture, religious authority, and faith are nothing other than appeals to the will of god. It’s our old friend: Divine Command Theory. Like I have previously explained, there are no reasons or justification for morality under Divine Command Theory - what is good is only good because it’s god’s will. When we remove reason from the moral equation, damage like this is to be expected, unfortunately. These individuals who bully teens, who bomb abortion clinics, and who miseducate the youth do so out of intuition. They believe in what they do because it’s what they have been taught and it feels right to them.

In the past, religious “morality” has fueled the destruction of entire peoples (Deuteronomy 7:1-2), intense hatred and discrimination against non-Christians (the Inquisition, as well as Martin Luther’s infamous work On the Jews and Their Lies), and intra-religious paranoia that resulted in the deaths of untold thousands of innocent people (the Burning Times, witch trials, etc). Although the damage today is only a fragment of what it once was, the irrational foundation still remains and is still defended by apologists. In an essay entitled, Is Yahweh a Moral Monster?, Christian apologist Paul Copan justifies the Israelites committing infanticide in the bible by explaining that “Death would be a mercy, as they would be ushered into the presence of God and spared the corrupting influences of a morally decadent culture.”⁹

Here we see the true outcome of real religious morality. Anything is justifiable as long as it is the will of god. God willed that the Israelites should slaughter “men and women, children and infants, cattle and sheep, camels and donkeys” among the Amalekites (1 Samuel 15:3), and if god wills it, it must be good. Religious morality abandons reason in favor of obedience, and in doing so it carries a terrible toll with it. Without reason, what could not be defensible in the service of a god? Furthermore, many of the worst imaginable things a god might will for us to do have already been willed by this god before, according to the Hebrew scriptures, including rape, murder, genocide, and slavery. Who’s to say Yahweh, Jesus, or Allah wouldn’t will them again?

VI. Morality for Anyone

The good news is that you need not subscribe to religious morality even if you are religious. In fact, I’d argue that the overwhelming majority of religious believers do not adhere to religious morality. When you ask the average person why they do good deeds, they will almost always give a practical reason. Frequently, it revolves around some form of the Golden Rule, or even something akin to karma. We help others because we appreciate being helped when we need it. We help others because we may care about them or love them. Sometimes we help them because we feel an obligation, one driven perhaps by guilt, for example. But rarely, if ever, do we help others merely because god wants us to. It’s a nice line to recite for the appearance of humility, but it’s always accompanied by other practical reasons for being moral.

If you think I’m stretching myself too thin here, into the realm of assumption and speculation, I need only point out the fact that all religious believers forget, ignore, or drastically reinterpret certain commands in their holy books. Few will pretend to be perfect, however, nor should they. The point is that we want reasons for what we do, and unless we are given them, we typically abstain from acting. There is nothing wrong with this, and religious believers are still very capable of maintaining a morality that can coincide with their faith, but if this morality is founded in religious doctrines and dogma, it will be bankrupt of any value and meaning, as has been shown.

Secular morality avoids these pitfalls by placing morality back where it belongs: in the hands of the species that exercises it. If you and I were to consent to something that involves only the two of us and harms no one else in any significant way, what will be gained by interjecting a third party to mediate the arrangement? Nothing! Advice like “love others” is not valuable because of where it comes from, but because of what it teaches. This is the essence of secular morality. Good is what achieves mutual happiness, what fulfills the best desires, what is beneficial to well-being, and what is conducive to the betterment of a society. Though these are debatable concerns in some sense, they do actually have answers, and ones that are practical reasons for acting morally.

Defending religious morality, theists work to save the sinking ship of what is merely mindless absolutism and a feeling of moral supremacy. While each is undoubtedly enticing in its own right, neither one is a worthy substitute for the coherence and eminent value afforded by secular morality. The irony is that religions recognized secular morality long ago through the Golden Rule and other principles that invoke no deity, and yet many modern believers question the possibility of morality without god, as if it’s a new and startling concept. In fact, religious morality is naught but a grotesquely reanimated corpse, initially killed by Socrates before it had barely even been born. It’s high time that we acknowledge this death and move on. Secular morality is the only viable morality that remains, but fortunately it is morality for anyone - religious or not.