Morality Without God?

PHILOSOPHY IN ACTION

Small Books about Big Ideas

WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG,
SERIES EDITOR

This new series publishes short, accessible, lively, and original

books by prominent contemporary philosophers. Using the
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on our most pressing and difficult questions—from the com-
plex personal choices faced by ordinary individuals in their
everyday lives to the major social controversies that define our
time. They ultimately show the essential role that philosophy
can play in making us think, and think again, about our most
fundamental assumptions.
MORALITY WITHOUT GOD?

WALTER SINNOTT-ARMSTRONG

1
2009
 1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Sinnott-Armstrong, Walter, 1955–
Morality without God? / Walter Sinnott-Armstrong.
p. cm. — (Philosophy in action)
ISBN 978-0-19-533763-1
1. Religion and ethics. 2. Atheism. I. Title.
BJ47.S49 2009
170'.42—dc22
2008055136

1 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
 To Liz, Miranda, and Nick,
who show how good atheists can be.
This page intentionally left blank
 CONTENTS

Acknowledgments ix

Preface: Why This Book? xi

one Would You Marry an Atheist? 1

two What’s Wrong with Atheists? 15

three What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 29

four What’s Wrong? 53

five What’s So Divine about Commands? 91

six Why Be Moral? 113

viii Contents

seven What Do You Know? 129

eight Where Do We Go from Here? 147

Notes 158

Index 165

Index of Biblical Passages 171

 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

C hapter Five here derives from my chapter, “Why Tradi-

tional Theism Cannot Provide an Adequate Foundation for
Morality?” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough? edited by
Robert Garcia and Nathan King. Various passages through-
out several chapters here have origins in “Overcoming
Christianity” in Philosophers without Gods, edited by Louise
Antony. Thanks to these publishers and editors for permission
to adapt these materials.
Chapters Four and Six owe a tremendous amount to Bernie
Gert’s insights in Common Morality and in Morality: Revised
Edition. To avoid constant notes, I do not document every idea
that I took from Gert, but my great debt will be clear to any-
one who knows his work. I am also grateful to Larry Crocker
for several of my best quotations as well as numerous helpful
discussions and to William Lane Craig, Bruce Little, Dinesh
D’Souza, and audiences at my debates with Craig, Little, and
x Acknowledgments

D’Souza for showing me how evangelicals could best reply to

my arguments. I also appreciate the financial and (yes!) moral
support of Keith Augustine and Internet Infidels, who spon-
sored my participation in these debates.
Thanks also to David Lamb (who wrote his thesis with me
on this topic and provided invaluable research assistance), to
Jonathan Haidt (who made me rethink the value of religion),
and to Peter Ohlin from Oxford University Press (who gave
wise guidance and encouragement in this project among oth-
ers). I am also grateful to Steven Schragis and John Galvin for
enabling me to test my thoughts with a motivated and intel-
ligent slice of the general public at One Day University.
For comments on drafts, I thank Eyal Aharoni, Larry
Crocker, Bob Fogelin, Bernie Gert, Jonathan Haidt, Nate
King, David Lamb, Andrew Mansfield, Peter Ohlin, and Lucas
Swaine.
 PREFACE: WHY THIS BOOK?

And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest
of these is love.
(1 Corinthians 13:13)

What’s up with this title? Why is everything after the first

word struck through? Because the goal of this book is to show
that there really is no question about morality without God.
There is just plain morality.
This point should not be controversial, but it is. Many the-
ists are theists mainly because they believe, for whatever rea-
son, that morality depends on religion. Some of them don’t
even distinguish morality from religion. The Bible separates
faith from love (1 Corinthians 13:13), but many people who
profess to follow the Bible see religious faith and morality as
inseparable.
xii Preface

Unfortunately, the other side repeats this mistake. Many

atheists and agnostics also identify morality with religion.
When they give up religion, they also give up morality or, at
least, objective morality. Richard Taylor, for example, writes,
“the concept of moral obligation [is] unintelligible apart from
the idea of God.”1 Such proclamations confirm the fears of
the religious, but they depend on the same refusal to distin-
guish morality from religion.
This misidentification is pernicious. Our government
needs a separation between church and state but not a separa-
tion between morality and state. We all know people who do
not believe in any God or religion, and it will be very hard to
get along with them if we assume that they do not believe in
morality. If we do not get this distinction straight, our theo-
ries will be confused, and our lives will be contentious.
That’s why I wrote this book: to try to help readers
understand why morality has nothing essentially to do with
religion. I was motivated partly by my experiences in class-
rooms. I give lots of talks to college students as well as high
school students and the general public. Many of my students
quote, “If God is dead, everything is permitted,” attributed
to Friedrich Nietzsche and to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s character,
Ivan Karamazov. The atheists who accept this dogma con-
clude that morality is subjective. The theists who accept this
dogma conclude that atheists are dangerous. I want to show
both sides in this debate that they are mistaken, and their
blunder results from their shared but erroneous assumption
that “If God is dead, everything is permitted.” This book is an
extended refutation of that popular slogan.
“You will never convince anyone, and you will anger both
sides,” my friends warn. That has not been my experience. On
 Preface xiii

the assumption that “If God is dead, everything is permitted,”

people have only two options: They must either (a) believe
in God and follow a religion or ( b) admit that they and their
friends are not morally good, and those who harm them are
not morally bad, because nothing is really morally good or
bad, right or wrong. Many people long for a third option, and
it is easy to see why. Even if they believe in God, they still
want a morality that they can share with their friends who do
not believe in any God or in the same God that they believe
in. Without some shared views about the content of morality,
it is hard to see how friendships, communities, and countries
can last long.
This issue cannot be ignored. Too many people worry
about it. God and morality are among the most prominent
and important issues in most of our lives. They are important
not just today but also long ago, not just in your own local
area but also around the world, not just to theists but also to
atheists.
Unfortunately, both topics are also huge. Thick tomes have
been devoted to only part of morality. Other thick tomes
barely scratch the surface of only part of one religion. And, of
course, there are many different religions around the world.
I cannot cover them all. I want to keep this book short, clear,
and lively. Also, I don’t know enough to write about all of the
diverse religions. Who does? Each religion requires years of
study to fathom. So I need a focus.
I will focus on contemporary evangelical Christianity. Why?
One reason is that I know more about it, having studied it and
even believed in it at times. Another reason is that evangeli-
cal Christianity has a tremendous number of followers in the
United States as well as a growing number in the third world. As
xiv Preface

a result, evangelical Christianity has become a powerful politi-

cal force in the United States and other countries. It’s not just
that George W. Bush was tight with the religious right. So was
Ronald Reagan. Recent democrats—Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton,
and Al Gore—were also evangelicals in many ways. Barack
Obama was forced to broadcast his religious credentials, includ-
ing a debate at an evangelical church, in order to have a chance
at winning the presidency. Even after Obama won, he still had
to appease opponents by inviting a well-known evangelical, Rick
Warren, to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Evangeli-
cal Christians, thus, continue to have a tremendous influence on
politics in the United States, and they often push their political
agendas by means of moral arguments. There’s nothing wrong
with this in itself, but it does mean that both evangelicals and
their opponents need to figure out exactly how this particular
religious perspective or style is related to morality.
What about other forms of Christianity? I will mention
them from time to time, but I will not have them in mind
except when I name them explicitly. Many mild and moderate
forms of Christianity do not make such strong claims about
morality as evangelical Christians do.
Traditional Catholicism, for example, claims that even
atheists can know and follow the natural law, which does not
depend on religious revelation. Additional moral prohibitions
are based on revelation, so atheists cannot discover that part
of morality, and perhaps they are not bound by those revealed
restrictions. This Catholic view of morality is less prone
to condemn atheists wholesale, and it makes the conflict
between religion and atheism on morality less clear. That is
why I choose not to focus on it. Still, I will bring Catholicism
into the discussion at some points where it becomes relevant.
 Preface xv

Milder religious views do not call for radical changes in

our government, in our lives, or in our moral beliefs. Some
liberal Protestants and reformed Jews openly admit that they
are atheists, so their religion is more cultural than cognitive or
theological. They clearly do not challenge my main thesis that
morality is independent of religion and God.
Some new-age religions are downright unintelligible. It
might make some people feel good to talk about “a higher order
of existence” or a “guiding force or spirit.” However, if that is all
they say, such talk is empty. It does not really rule out anything, so
no experience or moral insight could count either for or against
it. It also does not matter much to most people. The kind of
religious beliefs that pervade people’s lives and lead them to take
stands on political and moral issues must be clear enough to give
definite guidance. There is no point in worshiping or praying to
something as indeterminate as a “guiding force.” No unspecified
“higher order of existence” could save believers or help them get
to Heaven or perform miracles or create the world.
Modern evangelical Christianity is much more detailed and
clear. These features are advantages for its adherents, because
they can tell how to follow it. They are also advantages for its
opponents, such as me, because we can tell what needs to be
refuted and what its implications for morality are.
What about other religions—Judaism, Islam, Buddhism,
Hinduism, and so on? Some of what I say will apply to some
of them as well. However, I will not try to sort out which of
my points apply to which other religions. That would take a
magic sorting hat, which exists only at Hogwarts. There are
just too many religions to try to talk about all of them.
It is still worth noting that some religions do not postulate
any personal God at all. They might even count as atheists on
xvi Preface

my definition. Polytheistic religions postulate more than one

god, and some of their gods are immoral by their own stan-
dards. These gods cannot be the ultimate basis of morality, so
these religions do not conflict with my thesis that morality is
separate from God and from belief in God. That is why I will
not spend time on such religions in this book.
Somewhat reluctantly, then, I will settle on evangelical
Christianity as my target. Much of what I say will apply to
other forms of Christianity and to some other religions, but
adherents of those religious views will need to judge for
themselves which of my arguments are relevant to them.
As the foil to evangelical Christianity, I will focus on athe-
ism. Why? Because I am an atheist. I do not adopt atheism
lightly or arbitrarily. I gave strong reasons for atheism in my
parts of a previous debate book with an evangelical Chris-
tian.2 That previous work rebuts the charge that atheism is
intellectually irresponsible, but the arguments for and against
the existence of God do not answer the current question of
how morality relates to religion or God.
Even if some argument did show that God created the world,
performs miracles, and appears to believers in their religious
experiences, none of these arguments would show that God is
all-good. After all, a very bad God could create the world, per-
form miracles, and appear to us. However, God must be good
in order to be the foundation of morality. Commands from an
immoral God would carry no moral weight, just as we have no
moral obligation to obey evil human tyrants. Hence, none of
the standard arguments for the existence of God suggests, much
less demonstrates, that morality depends on God or religion.
On the other side, I gave three arguments against the
existence of God. First, an all-powerful and all-good God is
 Preface xvii

incompatible with the amount and kinds of evil found in our

world. Second, an eternal and unchanging God could not
have any effect on events within time, so He could not cre-
ate the world or answer prayers. Third, if God existed, then
we would have better evidence than we do for His existence.
None of these arguments gives any indication of how moral-
ity can be binding without God, which is the issue here.
These arguments are also not conclusive. They don’t pre-
tend to be proofs. Hence, in addition to being an atheist, I am
also an agnostic, in a way. You can, after all, be both an atheist
insofar as you deny that God exists, possibly for strong reasons,
and also an agnostic insofar as you claim that nobody (includ-
ing yourself ) knows for sure whether or not God exists. That
combination is my view, so I am both an atheist and an agnos-
tic in this sense. To avoid terminological confusion, I will call
someone secular or a secularist when he or she is either atheist
or agnostic.
I am also a relative apatheist, because I am usually apathetic
about whether or not God exists. I do not spend my days
worrying about God—either the traditional Christian God
or Zeus, Thor, Krishna, or Allah—any more than I spend my
days worrying about ghosts, elves, leprechauns, Nessie (the
Loch Ness monster), or Bigfoot—or even advanced species
on other planets. It is important to realize that most atheists
and agnostics do not make their stance on religion central
to their lives in the same way as many evangelical Christians
do—and should, in their view. Except when I am writing
books like this, the only time my thoughts turn to religion
or God is when religious people raise such issues, such as
by confronting me personally or basing public policies on
religion.
xviii Preface

Because I am an atheist, agnostic, and apatheist, I thought

of starting a new club called the AAA, but that name was
taken. For simplicity, then, I will usually talk about atheism
and atheists. Much of what I say will, I hope, be congenial to
agnostics and, hence, to all secularists.
Those, then, are the main protagonists in this book. It is
written largely as a conversation between atheists like me and
evangelical Christians. Our conversation is about the relation
between morality and religion. Given the prominence of both
atheism and evangelical Christianity in the modern world,
I hope that this conversation will also be interesting to many
others who are neither atheists nor evangelicals. Despite my
specific target, much of what I say will have much broader sig-
nificance, because the relation between morality and religion
is surely a central issue for all religions.
Please do not expect too much. This conversation and my
arguments in it will not even pretend to provide irrefutable
certainty. I doubt that these issues could ever be settled to the
satisfaction of all. They definitely cannot be settled finally by
me or in a book short enough for me to write or for you to
read. My main goal is not to convert everyone to atheism. It is
only to show that atheists need not be arbitrary, unreasonable,
ignorant, inconsistent, irresponsible, disreputable, uncaring,
or, especially, immoral.
Morality Without God?
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 Chapter One

WOULD YOU MARRY AN ATHEIST?

Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righ-

teousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship
can light have with darkness?
(2 Corinthians 6:14)

T he answer is obvious for many people: No way! Many the-

ists would never consider marrying any atheist—no matter
how beautiful, intelligent, charming, fun, funny, courageous,
compassionate, and kind.
One of the main reasons is that they don’t trust atheists.
They think, “If God is dead, everything is permitted; so adul-
tery and spouse abuse are permitted, according to atheists.”
Who would want to marry anyone who sees nothing wrong
with spouse abuse? Or who has no morals whatsoever? Such
partners would cause trouble and then get into trouble. They
would infect children with depravity and could not be counted
on to help with the dishes.
2 Morality Without God?

Another reason for believers not to marry atheists is that

the Bible tells them not to: “Do not be yoked [mated] together
with unbelievers.” (2 Corinthians 6:14) This prohibition applies
equally to agnostics, who are included among unbelievers.
Many religious traditions also forbid marriage with religious
people from other equally religious traditions: “Do not inter-
marry with them.” (Deuteronomy 7:3) If you can’t marry believ-
ers in other religions, then surely you can’t marry an atheist!
These doctrines seem to be based partly on fear that members
of other religions will lead true believers out of the fold and,
hence, away from truth, light, salvation, and goodness. Athe-
ists create the same dangers or even more.
A theist still might marry an atheist if the theist were pretty
sure of being able to convert the atheist soon enough to avoid
trouble. After all, this particular atheist is intelligent and kind,
and intelligent and kind people are bound to see the light,
one might hope. But who wants to take that risk? Anyway, a
theist would be unlikely to marry (or even date?) a steadfast
open atheist.
The feeling is mutual, almost. Many atheists would never
seriously consider marrying an evangelical Christian, no mat-
ter how beautiful, intelligent, charming, fun, funny, coura-
geous, compassionate, and kind. Of course, one reason is that
evangelical Christians would never consent to marry them.
Marriage is a two-way street, after all. In addition, however,
many atheists find traditional theists gullible, close-minded,
and downright bizarre. The secular reaction to much religion
is expressed in Bill Maher’s 2008 movie, Religulous. Atheists
and agnostics wonder how anyone could believe in creation-
ism or intelligent design—or believe that prayers are literally
answered, sometimes by curing diseases—or believe in virgin
 Would You Marry an Atheist? 3

birth and resurrection, in Heaven and Hell, or that bread and

wine become body and blood (and then eat it!). Atheists often
also see religion as dangerous insofar as it contributes to wars
and leads to restrictions on abortion and embryonic stem cell
research as well as to prejudice against homosexuals, women,
and other innocent people. Who would want to marry some-
one who seems so uncritical, inflexible, and uncaring?
Of course, far from all religious people are uncritical,
inflexible, or uncaring. Most atheists admit this, and all should.
Atheists are often willing to overlook religious beliefs that are
thin enough. Some atheists even join Unitarian Universalist
congregations and accept their so-called religious principles:

• The inherent worth and dignity of every person

• Justice, equity and compassion in human relations
• Acceptance of one another and encouragement to
spiritual growth in our congregations
• A free and responsible search for truth and meaning
• The right of conscience and the use of the democratic
process within our congregations and in society at large
• The goal of world community with peace, liberty, and
justice for all
• Respect for the interdependent web of all existence of
which we are a part.

Atheists might have qualms about “spiritual growth” in the

third principle, though the term “spiritual” is so vague that
some atheists admit certain kinds of “spirituality.” Anyway,
the rest of this so-called religious declaration should strike
most atheists today as fairly innocuous or maybe even posi-
tively inspiring. Thus, there’s religion, and then there’s Reli-
gion. Atheists can accept and even admire some religions.
4 Morality Without God?

Nonetheless, most atheists would be just as reluctant to marry

any evangelical Christian as evangelical Christians would be
to marry any atheist.
Of course, traditional theists sometimes marry atheists. I was
an evangelical Christian myself when I met and fell in love with
my wife, who had been an atheist since birth. Her tolerance of
me at that time and for over thirty years of marriage has been
amazing! More recently, a friend told me that his openly athe-
ist son wanted to marry an evangelical Christian. Although
she was well into adulthood, she insisted on getting permis-
sion from her parents, who were also evangelical Christians.
They interrogated their prospective son-in-law vigorously for
long periods on several occasions before the parents finally
consented to the marriage. The couple is reportedly doing
well so far, but the point is that tons of mutual doubt and fear
had to be overcome, at least in their families. Some marriages
between theists and atheists succeed, but the road is rocky.
How can these marriages work? Maybe the atheist really
desires to believe or wishes that God exists. Maybe the theist
really has doubts about religion. Maybe true love overcomes
all differences. Maybe all of the above. Whatever the answer,
such marriages are “exceptions that prove the rule” in the
non-original sense that their rarity and difficulty prove that
the rule holds in general. The chasm between atheists and
theists is usually too broad to jump.
In many ways, these divisions are understandable and jus-
tifiable. Major religious differences suggest that a marriage
is likely to run into serious problems eventually. Disputes
about church, politics, friends, children, and even what to do
on Sunday morning would probably arise often if an atheist
married an evangelical Christian.
 Would You Marry an Atheist? 5

Marriage is just one example of this deep divide. It is a sym-

bol of wider problems in our society. Would you ever choose
an atheist as a business partner? As a lawyer? As a doctor? As a
therapist? As president? This last question was asked in a USA
Today/Gallup poll in February, 2007.1

If your party nominated a generally well-qualified person for

president who happened to be ___ , would you vote for that
person?

More than half of the people in this poll (who were, presum-
ably, representative of people in the United States) would not
vote for an open atheist, even if well-qualified and nominated
by the preferred party. “Marry an atheist? Hell, no. I wouldn’t
even vote for one.”

TABLE 1.1
Yes, I would vote No, I would not vote
for that person. for that person.

Catholic 95% 4%
Black 94% 5%
Jewish 92% 7%
A woman 88% 11%
Hispanic 87% 12%
Mormon 72% 24%
Married for the third 67% 30%
time
72 years of age 57% 42%
A homosexual 55% 43%
An atheist 45% 53%
6 Morality Without God?

According to another poll, only 14 percent of Americans

believe that our country is ready for an atheist to be presi-
dent. And Pete Stark is reportedly the only member in the
history of Congress who has openly announced that he does
not believe in any “supreme being.”
This state of affairs is sad. The distrust between atheists
and traditional theists forecloses manifold possibilities, not
just marriages and political careers. More generally, the dis-
trust between theists and atheists fuels misunderstanding and
antagonism—even hatred. These deep divisions in modern
societies get in the way of needed cooperation and progress.
Theists rarely talk about religion with atheists, except when
trying to convert them (for their own good, of course). Athe-
ists avoid such conversations as well, because letting theists
know that they are atheists might lead to personal repercus-
sions. Atheists fear that their views will alienate or even scare
friends and family members, as well as prospective clients and
customers. Besides, atheists do not want to spend their lives
talking about God any more than they want to spend their
lives talking about other things that they do not believe in,
such as Zeus, ghosts, and alien spaceships. Without discussing
these difficult topics in ways that facilitate mutual understand-
ing and respect, the situation will never improve.
Whose fault is it? There is plenty of fault to go around—on
both sides. It does not help when theists tell atheists that they
are going to Hell, that they are shallow (spiritually), or that they
are immoral or untrustworthy. All of these disparaging remarks
have been made about me to my face by theists who know noth-
ing about me other than that I am an atheist. It is hard to keep
talking to someone who misinterprets you as badly as this, even
if the person wants to keep talking to you, which is rare.
 Would You Marry an Atheist? 7

Sometimes theists do not seem to realize what they are

doing. When I published a very brief note on atheism in a
magazine,2 it elicited a large number of letters and emails.
My favorite response ( because it was so amusing) called me a
“small minded” “egotist,” “an arrogant fool,” and a “pompous
PhD,” then added “it is pathetic that the College allows you in
a classroom” and “That you don’t [believe in God], I am sorry
to have to inform you, calls into question your intelligence.”
Then it concluded, “Please be assured that this theist will
impartially consider any persuasive response you can offer
and, as such, I look forward to continuing this dialogue with
you.” Did the writer honestly think that I wanted to have a
dialogue with a stranger who would say such insulting things
about me in response to a short opinion piece? The critic had
not even bothered to read my book, which was listed at the
end of the short note.
My previous book on religion was a debate with William
Lane Craig, a prominent evangelical, who also abuses atheists.
In his opening statement, Craig wrote, “On the atheistic view,
there is nothing really wrong with your raping someone.”3
I will show later why this claim is false. The point for now
is that it is insulting. It also strongly suggests an unwillingness
to try to see the world from the other point of view.
Craig is not alone, of course. To pick just one more promi-
nent example, What’s So Great about Christianity? by Dinesh
D’Souza includes these pleasantries:

Atheism is the opiate of the morally corrupt. . . .

When an atheist gives elaborate justifications for why God
does not exist and why traditional morality is an illusion, he is
very likely thinking of his sex organs. It may well be that if it
8 Morality Without God?
weren’t for that single commandment against adultery, Western
man would still be Christian! . . .
This is the perennial appeal of atheism: it gets rid of the stern
fellow with the long beard and liberates us for the pleasures of
sin and depravity.4

Funny lines, but, as my sister says, the key to the man in ear-
nest is the man in jest. D’Souza asks atheists to debate him
and many refuse. In his blog, he then calls them cowards
and claims that they refuse because they have no adequate
response to his arguments. Au contraire! They refuse because
they do not relish being subjected to unjustified insults and
slimy insinuations. Anyone who writes like D’Souza does
not want to engage in genuine dialogue. Indeed, his writings
undermine real communication.
These outrages might be dismissed as mere exaggera-
tions by a few fanatics for rhetorical effect. But consider this
response by George H. W. Bush (who might be the least evan-
gelical president elected since Nixon):

Q: Surely you recognize the equal citizenship and patriotism of

Americans who are Atheists?
Bush: No, I don’t know that Atheists should be considered
as citizens, nor should they be considered patriots. This is one
nation under God.5

If atheists are not even citizens, much less patriots, then their
views should carry no more weight in choosing policies for
the United States than would the views of a citizen of Japan,
Australia, or Zimbabwe. Why bother to discuss our country’s
laws with such “outsiders”? They can’t vote here.
 Would You Marry an Atheist? 9

It is not only Protestants who dismiss atheism. The Catholic

Education Resource Center prominently exhibits an article by
James Gillis that begins baldly,

There are no atheists. At least no thinkers are atheists.6

Why talk seriously with anyone who is not a thinker (or who
thinks that you are not a thinker)?
A different charge is made by the Christian Cyclopedia of
the Missouri Synod Lutheran Church:

It is not possible for a man to be an atheist, in the commonly

accepted sense, in his innermost conviction.7

This pronouncement denies that atheists are sincere. Why

talk with people who do not say what they really believe?
Compare someone who starts to argue with you about which
candidate—McCain or Obama—should be president. You
state your preference, but then he asserts, “You don’t really
want him to win, in your innermost conviction.” How could
the conversation proceed from there?
Of course, not all theists assume the worst about atheists.
The examples that I chose are admittedly extreme. Still, there
are many more theists who have no qualms about insulting
atheists, and there are even more theists who stand on the
sidelines and listen to such insults without objecting. They let
more outspoken fellow-theists do their dirty work for them.
These theists are partly responsible for the culture wars that
they fight. They might not care. After all, Jesus reportedly
said, “Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the
earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have
10 Morality Without God?

come to turn a man against his father, a daughter against

her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law”
(Matthew 10:35). Still, whether or not they care, many theists
do stand in the way of communication and resolution of this
social problem.
Many atheists have contributed to the predicament as well.
Christopher Hitchens named his book, God Is Not Great: How
Religion Poisons Everything.8 This provocative subtitle is an
obvious exaggeration. It might make some atheists cheer and
laugh, and it might help Hitchens sell books. However, it is
not true, and it will not contribute to constructive conversa-
tion or mutual comprehension. Richard Dawkins called his
book The God Delusion,9 which suggests that theists are men-
tally ill, insofar as delusions are mental illnesses. Who wants to
talk with someone who is mentally ill or who thinks that you
are mentally ill? Sam Harris titled his book, The End of Faith:
Religion, Terror, and the Future of Reason,10 as if religious faith
has ended and secular reason is the only future—or else that
faith has terror as its purpose, in that Aristotelian meaning
of “end.” Even if we need to talk (or negotiate) with irratio-
nal terrorists, we do so reluctantly without trying to appreci-
ate their point of view so much as to overcome them. And
Dan Dennett’s title, Breaking the Spell,11 similarly suggests that
religious people are under a spell (cast by a witch?). Earlier,
Dennett among others labeled atheists “brights” and religious
people “dims.” Again, who holds serious discussions with dim
people who are under spells or with people who announce
that you are dim or under a spell?
Of course, you should not judge a book by its title any more
than by its cover. I do agree with many (though far from all) of
the claims and arguments made by Hitchens, Harris, Dawkins,
 Would You Marry an Atheist? 11

Dennett, and other “new atheists.” The point here is just that
their titles use a kind of rhetoric that can be fun for some, as
well as an effective marketing tool, but is likely to undermine
mutual appreciation. When atheists exaggerate and make fun
of religion, they foster the image of atheists as shallow, crude,
and even dishonest and immoral—certainly not friendly. They
confirm and reinforce the negative stereotypes of atheists that
many theists try to promote. These stereotypes are inaccurate,
as I will argue, but they are widespread, and part of the fault
lies with atheists themselves. Atheists who use such rhetoric
can fairly, if only partly, be blamed for the culture wars that
divide modern societies, especially in the United States.
Whoever is at fault, the problem cannot be solved without
honest and open exchanges of ideas. All too often, atheists and
theists move to towns or jobs or neighborhoods where they
will not have to listen to people who disagree with them. Or
they read books or watch news commentary only by people
who agree with them. If atheists and theists continue to hide
from each other, to refuse to talk about these crucial issues,
to shut off their minds when others criticize their beliefs, and
to block exchange by attacking anyone on the other side, then
there is little or no hope for progress.
Both sides should agree that sincere dialogue would be use-
ful. After all, theists think that atheists would find God if they
just opened their hearts and minds. And many atheists think
that theists would give up belief in God if they really thought
through the problems with and for religious belief. Religious
belief results from various forces, including emotions and social
pressures in addition to reflection, but reason and communica-
tion still have some role in assessing religious beliefs, like other
beliefs. If not, we are all up a creek without a paddle.
12 Morality Without God?

That is the spirit in which I offer this book. I am not trying

to put down religion. I will often go out of my way to admit
positive influences of religion and emphasize agreements
between atheists and religious people. But I also want to have
fun, and I hope readers will, too. What I say will, undoubt-
edly, offend many theists, since my position is that they are
mistaken in what they regard as the most important belief in
their lives. Nonetheless, we must be honest in order to under-
stand each other, so I will not hide what I think of their beliefs.
In criticizing their views, my goal is not to offend but only to
approach the truth. I hope that theists who read this book will
not be turned off or turn off their minds.
How can we begin communicating better? We need to
start with trust. Imagine that the proverbial used car salesman
tries to convince you that a car in his lot is a great bargain.
You probably wouldn’t and shouldn’t even listen. Why not?
Because you suspect that he will call it a great bargain even
if it isn’t, and even if he knows it isn’t. You can’t get useful
or reliable information from people like that. Moreover, you
would rightly fear that you might be harmed if you listen to
him, because he might convince you with tricks, and then you
might end up with a real clunker.
Similarly, if a friend tells you that a new model of car is
really wonderful, you won’t listen if you are aware that this
friend doesn’t know or care much about cars or that she has
perverse values—preferring small, noisy cars that use lots of
fuel. Shared values, mutual concern, and honesty are, thus, all
essential for communication.
A show of respect is also crucial. If you start a conversa-
tion by insulting your interlocutor, the conversation won’t last
 Would You Marry an Atheist? 13

long and won’t accomplish much. Just try it: Call someone a
jerk and see whether he sticks around to listen to you.
These observations explain what experience confirms:
Almost nothing turns people off more than telling them that
they are immoral. That particular insult accuses them of
being dishonest and of having perverse values, so it strikes at
the essential basis of communication.
Yet that is what theists tell atheists when they say that
morality depends on religious belief. Such moral condem-
nation widens the divide between theists and atheists. It also
fuels the fears that keep theists from listening to and coming
to know atheists as well as the fears that keep atheists from
publicly admitting that they are atheists. Sadly, atheists whose
professions depend on trust—doctors, lawyers, investment
counselors, store clerks and owners, and almost everyone
else—cannot openly announce their view of religion, because
they are likely to lose customers and clients as long as theists
think that atheists are less trustworthy than theists. That is
a lot of customers to lose, especially in certain areas of the
United States where evangelical Christianity flourishes, so
many atheists do not announce or even admit their atheism.
There is also prejudice on the other side, for some athe-
ists are reluctant to hire evangelicals or even devout Catholics
in positions of trust. However, that is rare in my experience,
partly because the majority is religious in the United States.
Except in a few unusual areas, religious people do not have to
worry that atheists won’t hire them, buy from their stores, or
become their clients.
In any case, my main concern here is with claims that
atheism is somehow linked to immorality because morality
14 Morality Without God?

depends on God or religion. By arguing against that common

assumption, I hope to clear at least one obstacle out of the
way of honest and open communication that hopefully leads
to mutual understanding and appreciation.
My strategy will be to divide and conquer. The claim that
morality depends on religion and God needs to be divided
into five distinct claims. The first is that all atheists (and
maybe also all agnostics) are morally bad. This comes down
to an empirical description of the behavior or motives of
individual people. The second claim is that secular societies—
filled with atheists and agnostics—are bound to become cor-
rupt and depraved. This prediction is also empirical, but it is
about whole societies rather than individuals. The third claim
is that objective morality makes no sense, has no firm founda-
tion, or cannot exist without God. This assertion enters the
philosophical realm of metaphysics or ontology, which stud-
ies existence. The fourth claim is that atheists (and, again,
perhaps also agnostics) have no adequate reason to be moral.
This claim is about rationality and reasons. The fifth claim is
that atheists (and also agnostics) cannot know what is morally
right or wrong without guidance from God or from religious
scriptures or institutions. This final claim lies within another
area of philosophy called epistemology, which studies justi-
fied belief and knowledge.
The following chapters respond to these five separate
claims in Chapters Two, Three, Four and Five, Six, and Seven,
respectively. Let’s start with the empirical claim that all athe-
ists are morally bad.
 Chapter Two

WHAT’S WRONG WITH ATHEISTS?

The fool hath said in his heart, “There is no God.” They are
corrupt, they have done abominable works, there is none that
doeth good.
(Psalms 14:1)

A theists are sinners—no doubt about it. They deny the exis-
tence of God as well as the Holy Spirit. That denial is blas-
phemy, so it is enough to make all atheists sinners. Indeed,
this sin is unforgivable forever:

every sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blasphemy
against the Spirit will not be forgiven. Anyone who speaks a
word against the Son of Man will be forgiven, but anyone who
speaks against the Holy Spirit will not be forgiven, either in this
age or in the age to come. (Matthew 12:31; compare Mark 3:28–
29, Luke 12:10, Hebrews 10: 26–27, 2 Thessalonians 1:8–9)
16 Morality Without God?

It is not clear why blasphemy against the Holy Spirit is worse

than speaking out against the Son of Man. Is the Holy Spirit
especially sensitive? And why are rape and murder forgiv-
able, but not blasphemy against the Holy Spirit? Is blasphemy
against the Holy Spirit that much worse than rape and mur-
der? Is eternal damnation a fair punishment for blasphemy
(even if committed by a confused adolescent)? But there it is,
right in the Bible.
Such passages provide quick and easy routes to the con-
clusion that all atheists are immoral: Atheists are sinners.
Sins are immoral. So, all atheists are immoral. Not just some
atheists—each and every atheist is immoral, sinful, unforgiv-
able, and condemned to eternal damnation, no matter how
much good he or she did for others in need.
Of course, this biblical argument completely begs the
question, because it depends on assumptions that atheists
reject—namely, that denying God and the Holy Spirit is a sin
and, hence, immoral. People who think that every word of
the Bible is true must believe that all atheists are sinners, but
this is no reason for anyone else to agree.
A theological argument is equally defective.

If there is a God, he is all-good, all-wise, and truly great, and for

that reason alone it is very good to worship him. But God is also
our supreme benefactor. . . . Hence, it becomes a duty to thank
God abundantly. . . . That means that grateful worship is a domi-
nant obligation.12

From the viewpoint of theism, we all have a strong moral obli-

gation to worship and obey God. He created us, so we owe
Him big time. We morally ought to thank him for providing
 What’s Wrong with Atheists? 17

an ideal world to live in. We ought to admire his power, wis-

dom, and goodness. We ought to worship Him and pray to
Him, as he told us to do. And, of course, we ought to obey
Him. Atheists cannot do any of this because they do not even
believe in Him. Doesn’t this show that their lives cannot be
fully admirable from a moral point of view?
No. If you know that another person sacrificed for your
benefit, then gratitude seems obligatory or at least good. At
least you ought to admit your benefactor’s existence. People
who refuse to recognize the existence of their parents, or who
refuse to respect their parents when their parents are respect-
able, are less than ideal morally. But contrast a case where
you do not know that your benefactor exists. Suppose you
are caught in a bad snowstorm on the top of a mountain. You
survive only because you find a cave to stay warm in. Suppose
that a benefactor dug that cave in the mountainside just so
that you could stay in it if you ever got caught in a storm up
there. If you know about this benefactor, then surely you owe
great gratitude. However, if you do not believe (and have no
reason to believe) that any benefactor carved out the cave for
your benefit, then there is nothing morally wrong with deny-
ing that the benefactor exists and refusing to express grati-
tude. That is parallel to the position of an atheist. Thus, if
God does exist, then believers owe Him gratitude, but it is
not immoral for atheists to refuse to worship, thank, or even
recognize God.
In order to show that atheists are immoral, theists need
to show that atheists perform acts that are immoral on non-
religious grounds, so that even atheists should recognize their
immorality. The Bible predicts that failure to acknowledge,
glorify, and thank God will lead to such acts:
18 Morality Without God?
[S]ince they did not think it worthwhile to retain the knowledge
of God, he gave them over to a depraved mind, to do what ought
not to be done. They have become filled with every kind of wick-
edness, evil, greed and depravity. They are full of envy, murder,
strife, deceit and malice. They are gossips, slanderers, God-haters,
insolent, arrogant and boastful; they invent ways of doing evil;
they disobey their parents; they are senseless, faithless, heartless,
ruthless. Although they know God’s righteous decree that those
who do such things deserve death, they not only continue to do
these very things but also approve of those who practice them.
(Romans 1:28–32)

Atheists and theists should agree that murder, deceit, slander,

and many other acts are immoral (for reasons that I will give
in Chapter Four). Hence, if atheists are more likely to commit
these kinds of acts, then they really are immoral in a way that
should bother atheists themselves.
The claim that atheists perform acts of these kinds is a
description or prediction of how atheists do or will act. It is
also a claim about individuals, not atheists as a group and not
secular societies. But is it true?

WHAT DO THEISTS REALLY THINK OF ATHEISTS?

Most theists whom I know deny that they really believe that
all atheists commit acts that both sides agree to be immoral.
After all, this claim would be both impolite and impossible to
justify. So theists usually announce right at the start that they
know some (or many?) good atheists. They even name their
favorites. Dinesh D’Souza, for example, writes,
 What’s Wrong with Atheists? 19
I have known quite a few atheists, and I am happy to testify that
they can be good and admirable people. Both Hume and Darwin
were famous for their decency and moral rectitude.13

Unfortunately, these admissions are usually tainted by qualifi-

cations and by conflicting assertions elsewhere. Just recall the
quotations from D’Souza above and add this one: “Atheism
is motivated not by reason but by a kind of cowardly moral
escapism.”14 This claim is universal. D’Souza does not say
that some atheists are cowardly moral escapists. That would
be true, by the way. Some atheists are bad in that way. But
D’Souza instead ascribes these goals and motivations to all
atheists without limit. It doesn’t seem to bother him that these
claims contradict his admission elsewhere that some atheists
are good and admirable people.
Other theists are less blatant. They explain away the good-
ness of atheists so as to give credit to Christianity. I have often
heard veiled criticisms like this: “These good atheists grew
up and live in a Christian culture. They have absorbed that
culture. That enables them to be good, despite being athe-
ists.” Thanks a lot! That’s like saying that some girls are good
at math because they absorbed math from the boys in their
classes. What a put-down! Why not simply admit that some
atheists are good people? After all, other people get credit for
their good deeds even though they grew up in the same cul-
ture. When theists explain away the virtue of good atheists in
this way, it suggests that they really doubt that atheists can be
virtuous on their own.
These doubts pervade common culture as well. Around
Halloween, many evangelicals set up “Hell Houses” that
explicitly display how horrible atheists are, in their view. They
20 Morality Without God?

never add any qualification like, “Of course, this applies to

only some atheists.” Recall also the poll cited in the previous
chapter. Over half of those surveyed reported that they would
not vote for an atheist who was nominated by their favorite
party and was well qualified. It is hard to think of any reason
other than that many theists distrust atheists even when those
atheists show how good they are. If the participants in this
survey are representative, then a lot more people than admit
it really do believe that atheists are immoral.

WHY DO THEISTS DISTRUST ATHEISTS?

Why do so many theists believe this? This prejudice might

come from the Bible. The story of humans as fallen and lost
without God’s redemption and grace runs throughout the
Bible. On a common interpretation, the point of the story
of the fall from the Garden of Eden is that man and woman
became rebellious and evil when they ate the apple from the
tree. (Genesis 2:17 also says, “when you eat of it, you will surely
die,” but Adam reportedly lived 930 years.) Their descen-
dants inherited responsibility for this original sin as well as
a tendency to commit further sins. Remember Sodom and
Gomorrah. The only way out of this curse of sin is Christ’s
saving grace through His sacrifice. Hence, only faith in Christ
can help us out of our state of immorality (see Romans 3:28).
That means that atheists are bound to be immoral, since they
have not been redeemed by Christ.
The point here is not that atheists are sinners simply
because they do not have faith in Christ. The claim is, instead,
that their lack of faith in Christ leads them to do acts that even
 What’s Wrong with Atheists? 21

they should recognize as immoral—acts like murder, rape,

lying, cheating, adultery, theft, and so on. Only love of God
can lead them (or anyone) away from such a life, according to
this view.
The same conclusion can be based on other theological
premises. Many Christians declare that God is so obvious that
anyone who denies God must have been taken over by Satan,
so such people must all be dangerous. With Satan inside them,
atheists can’t be trusted. Christians often see the contempo-
rary world as a struggle between God and Satan, just as some
Muslims see the West as the great Satan.
Of course, atheists reject all of this. These theological dog-
mas might explain why theists fear atheists, but they cannot
show that atheists are immoral in any way that counts here.
Atheists do not accept the story of the fall from the Garden
of Eden. Nor do they accept the view that the contemporary
world is a struggle between God and Satan. Hence, it is cheat-
ing to use those assumptions as premises in an argument for
the conclusion that atheists are immoral. It might be rational
for theists to believe that conclusion, given their assumptions,
if those assumptions are rational. However, those assumptions
provide no reasons at all for anyone who is not already com-
mitted to the Bible or those particular theological dogmas.
Notice also that these theological arguments apply not only
to atheists but also to agnostics and to people who follow reli-
gions other than Christianity. The question here is not only
whether all atheists are immoral but also whether all secular
people (including agnostics) and all followers of other reli-
gions are also immoral. The biblical and theological reasons
for the claim that all atheists are immoral would apply as well
to all secular people and also to all non-Christians, though
22 Morality Without God?

possibly not with the same strength. Thus, unless you really
think that all non-Christians are immoral, you must agree that
these biblical and theological arguments fail.

A FEW GOOD ATHEISTS

Whatever their reasons, and whether or not those reasons

are any good, many evangelical Christians do seem to think
that atheists are not morally good people. Of course, they are
right—about many atheists. Many atheists cannot be trusted.
Many atheists commit horrific crimes. Like many theists,
many atheists are bad people. But that is not because they
are atheists. It is because they are human. Any large group
of humans has both good members and bad members. That
holds for Christians as well as for followers of other religions,
and it also holds for atheists and agnostics.
While many atheists are bad people, many other athe-
ists are good people. Here are a few famous people who
are reported to be atheists and seem pretty good: Isaac Asi-
mov, Francis Crick, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Abraham
Maslow, George Orwell, Linus Pauling, James Randi, Carl
Sagan, Amartya Sen, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Penn ( Jillette)
and Teller, Alan Turing, Mark Twain, Kurt Vonnegut, and
James Watson. For more, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
Lists_of_atheists.15
Of course, any name on this list could be questioned. None
of these famous atheists is perfect. Who is? (Remember John
8:7: “If any one of you is without sin, let him be the first to
throw a stone at her.”) Still, many of these individuals led
exemplary lives of service and contributed greatly to the social
 What’s Wrong with Atheists? 23

good. They were kind, considerate, altruistic, and caring. You

can decide for yourself which of them are morally good, but
at least some of them are not morally worse than average for
our very imperfect species. Surely someone on this long list of
atheists passes muster. That is enough to refute the claim that
all atheists are immoral.
I have personally met many other atheists who are not
as famous but do display deep moral virtue. Though it will
embarrass her (sorry!), I will single out my wife, for she is
an unsung hero. Liz is a social worker who helps abused and
neglected children, as well as older clients, many of whom
suffered abuse as children. Her clients need help badly, and
Liz does her best to help them—often working on paper-
work well into the night and on weekends—with only rare
thanks from her clients, without adequate pay from her
employer, and with way too many regulations imposed by
the government and insurance companies. It is a miracle (in
the secular sense!) that she puts up with all of this heart-
ache. Why does she do it? Not for herself, although she
finds the challenge fascinating. Instead, she does her job
for the clients—for other people. If people like her are not
morally good, then nobody is. Yet she was raised as an athe-
ist and has remained an atheist all of her life. She alone is
enough to show that some atheists are positively good and
not immoral.
The number of examples grows quickly when we add
agnostics, who also do not believe in God. Any educated person
knows many such stories, so there is no need to repeat them
here. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_agnostics and
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_humanists, then pick
your own favorites. With all of these examples to the contrary,
24 Morality Without God?

there is no basis whatsoever for claiming that belief in God is

necessary for living a good life or for being a good person.
Finally, consider non-Christian religions. They all have
their heroes who spent their lives serving others, such as
Gandhi and the Dalai Lama. These additional examples also
show that belief in the God of Christianity is not necessary
for living a good life or for being a good person, much less for
avoiding depravity and immorality.
If so many people are so good without God, why don’t we
read more about them? One reason is that many good people
who are atheists do not make any big deal about being athe-
ists. “Good to meet you. I want you to know right from the
start that I do not believe in the ghosts, elves, Nessie, Bigfoot,
alien abductions, astrology, ESP, telekinesis, or God.” What a
weird introduction! New acquaintances don’t want to know
what we don’t believe. Why not? Because the fact that I don’t
believe in that stuff does not play much role in my life. I can
go a long time without caring about not believing in Nessie or
God, if nobody else brings them up.
There is a darker side to this story as well. Many people
hide their atheism (or even their doubts!), partly because they
fear prejudice and repercussions. Recall the evidence above
that many theists think of atheists as immoral. Hence, if you
own a business in some parts of the United States today, you
had better not let your customers know that you are an athe-
ist or else you will lose a lot of business. Atheists know this,
so they do not proclaim their atheism, at least not in the way
or to the extent that many evangelical Christians proclaim
their religion. But then when someone does something good,
few observers will know that it was an atheist who did that
good deed.
 What’s Wrong with Atheists? 25

In addition, bad stories make news. When atheists mis-

behave, the paparazzi swarm. When atheists do small kind-
nesses, no reporter shows up to tell the good news. The same
holds for everyone else. Few readers or viewers want to hear
about faithful husbands. “Here is a list of all of the movie
stars and politicians who did not cheat on their spouses last
year: . . . ” Boring! Click. Quickly change the channel or turn
the page. In contrast, we do hear about good athletes, not bad
ones. Why? Because the good athletes are the unusual ones.
What is unusual is interesting. Maybe the fact that we hear
more about bad atheists than about good atheists shows that
the bad atheists are the unusual ones. It certainly does not
show that there are no good atheists or even that good athe-
ists are rare.

THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD

It’s not enough, reply some theists, to show that some athe-
ists are very good, some are very bad, and most are in the
middle somewhere. The atheists who are good or middling
might behave themselves just because they fear that they will
be punished by the legal system if they do what they really
want to do. Without legal constraints, then, atheists would
quickly turn bad, even if they are good now. In contrast, the-
ists would still fear and love God, so they would not turn bad,
even if the law did not constrain them.
This claim is supposed to be based on history. Just look at
what happens when theists and atheists become absolute rul-
ers who do not fear punishment or any other costs of mis-
behavior. When theists become rulers, they often do things
26 Morality Without God?

that are bad, but not so bad. In contrast, atheist rulers cre-
ate disasters on a gigantic scale. D’Souza lists Hitler, Stalin,
and Mao among “atheist tyrants” who killed over 100,000,000
people together, in addition to depriving many more of basic
freedom and rights.16 The Crusades and the Inquisition were
minor indiscretions by comparison. History thus shows,
according to these theists, that atheists really are not only bad
but very dangerous when they are set loose to do what they
really want to do.
One problem here is that Hitler and his Nazis were openly
Christian. Hitler’s Mein Kampf often endorses Christianity.
The Nazi Party’s foundational points included these: “the
Party represents a positively Christian position without bind-
ing itself to one particular faith.”17 The Nazi Concordat of
1933 with the Catholic Church supported Catholic religious
instruction in schools. Hitler was continuously a member of
the Catholic Church, which never excommunicated him, and
he ordered his top lieutenants to remain in the Church. And,
of course, the holocaust extended centuries of Christian anti-
Semitism.
All of this historical evidence is dismissed by D’Souza and
others who contend that Hitler was an atheist. They cite pri-
vate records that are supposed to show that Hitler merely
used a public show of religion as a way to control the people
of Germany. Admittedly, Hitler’s private conversations, as
reported in notes, show that he was no orthodox Catholic. He
mocked transubstantiation for example. However, that hardly
shows that he was an atheist (or even that he was not a Cath-
olic), since many Catholics and other nonatheists doubt the
doctrine of transubstantiation. Hitler’s religious beliefs were
idiosyncratic rather than orthodox, but he seems not to be an
 What’s Wrong with Atheists? 27

atheist. Indeed, he reported pride in having “undertaken the

fight against the atheistic movement, and . . . stamped it out.”18
Debates rage over this historical issue.19 I doubt that it
matters much here. Even if Hitler was not an atheist, he was
probably not deeply religious, and Stalin and Mao were athe-
ists and even antireligious. There is also no denying that Stalin
and Mao were monsters. Their policies knowingly caused mil-
lions of deaths as well as other harms. So these miscreants (as
well as others) were both immoral and atheists.
Nonetheless, Stalin and Mao were not immoral because they
were atheists. That inference would commit the infamous fal-
lacy of post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of
this). The problem with this inference is that Stalin and Mao
were not at all typical of atheists. They were fanatics, ideo-
logues, absolutists, nationalists, and, of course, communists.
Those other aspect of their personalities and ideologies could
explain why they became mass murderers. If it does, then it
was not their atheism that made them bad. It was their inde-
pendent character flaws.
The examples of Stalin and Mao do suggest important les-
sons: It is silly to found a government on antireligion—just as
silly as founding government on opposition to belief in fairies
or Santa Claus. It is also destructive to found government on
antireligion. That is what Stalin and Mao did, in part. A driving
force in their deeds was an ideology of antireligion. This ideol-
ogy was so strong that it shared many features with traditional
religions. That ideology of antitheism should be rejected,
because it is so destructive. Nonetheless, antitheism is not athe-
ism. The facts that some atheists are also antitheists and that
this separate ideology leads some of them to commit atrocities
do not provide any evidence that atheism as such is bad.
28 Morality Without God?

More generally, even when atheists are responsible for mass

murder, as Stalin and Mao were, that does not show that
atheism itself is responsible for mass murder. When judging
a worldview or movement, it is not fair to pick a few excep-
tional cases. Both sides can play that game. New atheists, such
as Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, and Richard Dawkins,
cite many examples of religious rulers and leaders who have
done tons of harm. See their books.20 But that’s just the same
fallacy on the other side. A few bad apples in the religious bar-
rel also does not show that their religion is what made them
bad or that religion itself is bad.
“But the number of deaths is so much higher when atheists
rule!” In a short time, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao killed many more
victims than centuries of Crusades and Inquisitions. Granted,
but that might be just because they committed their crimes
in later times with higher population and improved (?!) tech-
nology of killing. The leaders during the Crusades and the
Inquisition lacked the ability to kill as many people as Hitler,
Stalin, and Mao did. Compare parallel arguments: The larg-
est mass murders in history have been done by people who
owned guns and believed in electricity. That does not show
anything wrong with guns or with modern scientific beliefs,
much less that guns and modern scientific beliefs turn people
into mass murderers. Analogously, the fact that the largest
mass murderers in history were atheists does not show that
atheism is what made them mass murderers.
Instead of name-calling and anecdotes, what we need in
order to judge religion and atheism fairly is careful experi-
ments and large-scale statistics. That is what the following
chapter will explore.
 Chapter Three

WHAT’S WRONG WITH

SECULAR SOCIETIES?

Then he [Abraham] said, “May the Lord not be angry, but let
me speak just once more. What if only ten can be found there
[Sodom]?” He [the Lord] answered, “For the sake of ten, I will
not destroy it.”
(Genesis 18:32)

W hen Evelyn Waugh converted to Catholicism, a fellow

believer is said to have asked, “How can you be a Christian
when you are such an asshole?” Waugh reportedly responded,
“Just think how much worse an asshole I would be if I were
not a Christian.” The lesson of this legend is that Christianity
might have a positive influence on every believer’s life, even if
some believers remain very bad. Hence, atheists cannot legiti-
mately cite evil Christians as evidence that Christianity has no
positive influence. By the same token, it is no more legitimate
to cite evil atheists as evidence either that atheism has no posi-
tive influence or that atheism is pernicious. Both theists and
30 Morality Without God?

atheists are human, so in each group some will be good, and

others will be bad. Which worldview is better overall cannot
be solved by picking good individuals on your side or bad
individuals on the opposing side, because your opponent can
always return the favor. We saw that in the preceding chapter.
It does not help to cite particular societies. The Soviet
Union was officially atheist, and the Soviet government did
commit many horrific acts. However, it was largely the lead-
ers who went astray, and they were fanatically devoted to an
extreme ideology, not just atheism. Among common Soviet
citizens, there were many good people, including many athe-
ists, although many other Soviet citizens remained religious.
More important, the Soviet Union is just one country. To gen-
eralize from a single example would be way too hasty.
To avoid such fallacies, we need careful experiments and
surveys that compare whole societies over time rather than
telling stories about individual people or individual societies.
This issue requires statistics rather than anecdotes.
The question is whether widespread atheism and agnosti-
cism lead to immorality. Many evangelicals say so. They claim
that a society will break down or sink into chaos and depravity
if too many of its members become atheists or agnostics.
This claim might be all about sex. Then the charge is that
societies with too many atheists and agnostics engage in too
much homosexuality and other so-called “perversions.” That,
of course, depends on how much is too much. Is 10 per-
cent too much? 20 percent? Why? In any case, higher rates
of homosexuality do not signal depravity unless you assume
that homosexuality is immoral. It isn’t immoral, on the secu-
lar view, when it does not cause harm and does express love,
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 31

which is or should be a value for theists as well as atheists and

agnostics. Homosexuals usually do not bother their neigh-
bors, much less practice pedophilia, as some unfounded and
vicious rumors suggest. Of course, religious believers might
cite biblical prohibitions on homosexuality (Leviticus 18:22,
20:13; Romans 1:26–27), but it is cheating to cite peculiarly
religious restrictions here to show that secular societies are
corrupt. Nobody would accept those assumptions if they did
not already believe in the conclusion, so such arguments get
nowhere.
There will be more to say about homosexuality (in Chapters
Four and Five), but the point for now should be clear: Atheists
and agnostics need not be bothered if secularization increases
behaviors that they do not see as immoral. This point applies
not only to dancing and eating pork but also to abortion, con-
traception, and divorce, which only some atheists and agnos-
tics see as signs of social malaise. In the absence of any shared
nonreligious basis for calling such acts immoral, they cannot
be neutral tests of depravity. Even if acts like these are more
common in secular societies, that alone would not be enough
to show that secular societies are decadent. Religious believ-
ers might see such societies as degenerate. Some nonbelievers
might agree. Their view might be defensible or even justified.
Still, this cannot be the basis for an argument that would or
should convince other people who do not share their moral
assumptions.
Nonetheless, atheists and agnostics should be bothered if
secularization did lead to behaviors that atheists and agnos-
tics themselves recognize as immoral. But does it? We need to
survey a variety of acts.
32 Morality Without God?

HOMICIDE

Atheists, agnostics, and theists should all agree that murder

is morally wrong (for reasons to be given in Chapter Four).
Homicide rates, then, provide one neutral test of whether
secular societies are corrupt in a way that should bother athe-
ists and agnostics.
Recent findings on this issue might be surprising. Gregory
Paul analyzed a survey of 23,000 people in seventeen devel-
oped democracies.21 The countries with high rates of religi-
osity tended to have higher (not lower!) rates of homicide,
juvenile mortality (including suicide), sexually transmitted
disease, and adolescent pregnancy and abortion. The United
States and Portugal are religious societies that stand out in
these respects in contrast with Sweden and Japan, which are
more secular. The same contrasts hold within the United
States between more secular areas, such as New England, and
more religious areas, such as the South, where these rates
were higher.
Of course, Paul’s study does not prove that religion causes
immorality. Other differences among the countries could
explain the high homicide rates in religious countries. The
most careful response to Paul, by Gary Jensen,22 looks at
even more countries (over 40) and uses sophisticated multiple
regression analysis to separate the effects of many different
factors, such as poverty and education. Jensen finds that inten-
sity of religious belief is positively correlated with higher
homicide rates. He also finds that the combined belief in both
God and the Devil is positively correlated with higher homi-
cide rates. However, non-intense belief in God alone (with-
out the Devil) is not related to higher homicide rates than in
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 33

secular societies. Thus, it is not clear that belief in God per se

leads to higher homicide rates.
Why are such religious beliefs correlated with homicide?
The statistics do not say. Some speculations are that (a) reli-
gion leads to moral dogmatism, which people use to justify
private revenge; or that ( b) religious people think they will
be forgiven as long as they have faith in God; or that (c) they
can blame their own bad acts on the Devil’s influence, so it
is not really their own personal fault; or that people who live
in harm-filled societies (d) need religion to give them hope
or (e) think that humans are bad by nature and so need to
be redeemed by God. Perhaps most plausibly, (f ) people tend
to believe that the Devil exists when they see lots of murder
going on around them. All of these explanations are specula-
tions, however. To choose among them, we would need more
empirical evidence and analysis.
In any case, these recent studies present substantial evi-
dence that belief in God at least does not lower homicide rates
(or the other kinds of “immorality” in Paul’s study). Thus,
they undermine the common claim that our communities
will sink into chaos and corruption if too many citizens give
up their religious beliefs and become atheists or agnostics.
Moral depravity does not pervade secular Sweden or Japan,
so why fear that anywhere else will degenerate if it becomes
secular?
A different kind of homicide occurs in unjust wars. Atheists
often claim that religion fuels aggressive wars, both because it
exacerbates antagonisms between opponents and also because
it gives aggressors confidence by making them feel as if they
have God on their side. Lots of wars certainly look as if they are
motivated by religion. Just think about conflicts in Northern
34 Morality Without God?

Ireland, the Middle East, the Balkans, the Asian subcontinent,

Indonesia, and various parts of Africa. However, none of these
wars is exclusively religious. They always involve political,
economic, and ethnic disputes as well. That makes it hard to
specify how much role, if any, religion itself had in causing
any particular war. Defenders of religion argue that religious
language is misused to justify what warmongers wanted to
do independently of religion. This hypothesis might seem
implausible to some, but it is hard to refute, partly because we
do not have enough data points, and there is so much variation
among wars. In any case, the high number of apparently reli-
gious wars at least suggests that secular societies are unlikely
to be more prone to murder in war.

LESSER CRIMES

What about other crimes? Here studies are mixed. One meta-
analysis of sixty studies concluded that people who believe
in and regularly practice a religion are somewhat less likely
to engage in crime.23 The relation, however, seems to vary
with kind of crime. One study suggests that religion is related
to fewer “victimless” crimes (such as drug use and consen-
sual premarital sex) but not to fewer crimes with victims.24
Another study surveyed seventy-five metropolitan areas in
the United States and found religion to be associated with
less larceny, burglary, and assault but no less murder or rape.25
Location also seems to matter. Studies conducted where
organized religion is strong tend to find a relation between
increased religion and reduced crime, whereas studies con-
ducted in areas where organized religion is weak tend to find
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 35

no relation (or only a very weak relation) between religion

and crime, according to one review.26
All of these studies reveal only correlations. They do not
show that religious belief or practice reduces crime. The
causal train might run in the other direction. Maybe juvenile
delinquents are less likely to obey their parents when their
parents tell them to go to church, so they end up going to
church less.
It is also plausible that adults who commit crimes or make
friends with criminals are less inclined to attend church, because
they find it tiresome to go to church every week and keep get-
ting told that they are sinners. So they go to church less often
or even become agnostics or atheists. A tendency for criminals
to leave religion could explain why religious people commit
less crime, even if religion does not cause anyone to com-
mit less crime. Current studies do not rule out such alterna-
tive causal hypotheses, so they do not really support the claim
that religion reduces crime at all. Crime might reduce religion
instead of religion reducing crime. We just don’t know.
We also do not know whether religious belief matters
apart from religious community. In almost all of the stud-
ies, the correlations were between reduced crime and church
attendance. Why would that be? Maybe because people who
go to church are social—they like other people—so they want
to avoid harming other people. Religious believers who avoid
church are more likely to be anti-social loners. Or maybe peo-
ple who attend church every week get reminded there of the
importance of morality and caring for others. Sermons often
include good moral messages, and such reminders can shape
behavior.27 If anything like this explains the correlations, then
belief in God has nothing to do with it. Atheists and agnostics
36 Morality Without God?

can join communities that regularly remind each other of

the importance of morality, and this will reduce their rate of
immorality without their believing in God.
As I said, we do not know whether this would work, because
we do not understand the causal mechanism. Indeed, we do
not even understand the correlations, and they are modest at
best. So my main point is only that these studies do not pro-
vide any real support for the claim that secular societies are
doomed to depravity.

ABUSE

To the contrary, some crimes seem to be increased by reli-

gion. If so, secular societies will include fewer of these par-
ticular crimes.
One example is sexual abuse by clergy, especially but not
exclusively Catholic priests. The victims can be nuns or other
clergy, but often include young boys and girls. One study esti-
mates that 2 percent of priests are pedophiles,28 which would
be around nine hundred priests in the United States, but this
number is speculative. More than three hundred lawsuits have
been filed.
Some atheists take great pleasure in bringing up sexual
abuse by clergy, because it exemplifies the depths to which
religious people can sink. However, as I have emphasized
before, we are all humans, so it should not be surprising that
many religious people go very bad. The question is whether
religion exacerbates the problem.
Some aspects of the Catholic church, such as vows of celi-
bacy and strict hierarchies, might contribute to the rate of abuse
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 37

by clergy. Perhaps more pedophiles become priests as a way of

fighting their desires for sex with children but then find them-
selves in intimate circumstances with children who trust them
and who will not be able to report sexual encounters, partly
because of doubts of being believed, given the high esteem for
priests. This hypothesis suggests that it is particular institutions,
rather than belief in God, that create this problem. If so, the
institutions might need reform, but these sad events do not
show anything about religions without such institutions.
On the other hand, the problem of sexual abuse is not lim-
ited to Catholic priests. About 75 percent of Methodist cler-
gywomen and also of female rabbis indicate sexual abuse by
male clergy, according to one study.29 So this problem might
be due to something about religion in general rather than the
institutions of any particular religion. We do not know.
Domestic abuse is a separate issue. The Bible is basic for all
Christians, and it seems to endorse what would be considered
child abuse today:

Do not withhold discipline from a child; if you punish him with

the rod, he will not die. Punish him with the rod and save his soul
from death. (Proverbs 23:13–14: see also 13:24, 20:30)

The Bible also endorses a fixed hierarchy among spouses:

Now as the church submits to Christ, so also wives should sub-

mit to their husbands in everything. (Ephesians 5:24; see also
Colossians 3:18, 1 Peter 3:1)

“Everything”! Must wives submit to beatings? Marital rape?

Verbal and psychological abuse? Financial domination? The
38 Morality Without God?

Bible does not say so explicitly, and many churches have taken
strong stands against domestic abuse, but it is still easy to
imagine how abusive fathers and husbands would interpret
the Bible as justifying abuse.
Do they? That depends. Several surveys have found cor-
relations between more frequent church attendance and less
domestic abuse.30 As before, these are only correlations, so
they could reflect a tendency for abusers to stop going to
church or stop their spouses from going to church, where
the abuse might be revealed. This relation also seems to vary
among Christian denominations. In one study, conservative
Protestant women reported more abuse than other women.31
Another study found that fundamentalist Protestants were
more likely to report being sexually abused by a relative,
though non-religious and liberal religious participants were
likely to report being abused by a non-relative.32 Such con-
fusing findings raise questions and exclude confidence in any
simple conclusion.
Another basis for skepticism concerns the definition of
abuse. Many cases of abuse are immoral according to both
sides, but some other cases might be unclear. Different stud-
ies count different behaviors, and many rely on self-report,
which leaves the definition of abuse unclear. Is spanking child
abuse? The law says that it is if it leaves bruise, but that hardly
matters morally. Is it abuse when a husband controls his wife
by withholding their money or by loudly denouncing her for
disobeying him? Such domination strikes me as unfair, but it
might not be seen as abuse or as immoral by some who take
the Bible literally when it says, “Wives should submit to their
husbands in everything” (Ephesians 5:24). But then it might
seem illegitimate to count such behaviors against religion,
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 39

just as it was illegitimate to count homosexuality against secu-

lar society. To determine whether and how secularization and
religion are related to morality, it is better to stick to examples
that both sides see as immoral.

CHEATING

Let’s move beyond violent crime. Another good test case

for whether secularization leads to immorality is cheating
and lying, since atheists and agnostics agree with theists that
cheating and lying are immoral. Several studies have found
that highly religious people report that they cheated less than
atheists and agnostics reported that they cheat. Other stud-
ies, however, found the opposite for lying, namely, that more
religious people reported lying more often than less religious
people.33
Unfortunately, these studies depend on self-reports. The
fact that one group reports that they cheated less often does
not mean that they really did cheat less often. It would not
be surprising if cheaters forget or lie about how often they
cheat. Indeed, one study34 of more than 14,000 adolescents
found that 13 percent reported having taken a public or writ-
ten pledge to remain a virgin until marriage. More than half
of that 13 percent denied a year later that they had ever taken
such a pledge. This denial rate was 73 percent among those
who had sex in the intervening year and 42 percent among
those who called themselves “born-again Christians” in the
first year. Also, among those who admitted in the first year
that they were not virgins, 28 percent of those who had taken
virginity pledges in the intervening year and 18 percent of
40 Morality Without God?

those who had become “born-again Christians” in the inter-

vening year later claimed in the second year that they were
(had become?) virgins. This shows how unreliable self-reports
can be in surveys about pledges and cheating. Thus, in order
to determine whether religion reduces actual cheating or
lying, experimenters need to devise ingenious ways to deter-
mine rates of actual cheating.
Some classic studies measured the rates of peeking dur-
ing eyes-closed tests and of changing answers when students
were allowed to grade their own tests.35 They found no rela-
tionship between religion and cheating in a large sample of
11,000 students.
In a more recent study,36 a teaching assistant intention-
ally gave students one more point than they deserved on a
quiz. Students were then told that they might have received
an extra point by mistake, so they should regrade their own
quizzes and write on the top of the next assignment either
“I owe you a point,” “Quiz graded correctly,” or “You owe
me a point.” Out of 130 students, only 32 percent honestly
admitted receiving the extra point, 52 percent said that the
grade was correct, and 16 percent actually tried to get another
point. The researchers had obtained background information
on religious beliefs, and they found that the one-point error
was honestly reported by 45 percent of those who attended
church weekly or more often but by only 13 percent of those
who attended church once a year or less. This study, thus, sug-
gests that people who are more religious do cheat less often
than less religious people.
It would be a mistake to put too much emphasis on one
small study. Replication in larger and more diverse samples
is needed. It is also worth mentioning that even if religious
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 41

people cheat less, they still cheat a lot. It’s not as if religion
makes people honest.
Still, if this result holds up, then atheists will have to admit
that people who go to church more often do cheat less. Does
this show that religious belief makes people cheat less? No.
As before with crime, the causal train might run in the other
direction. People who are inclined to cheat and perform other
kinds of immoral acts might attend church less often or even
become agnostics or atheists. If that’s the real story, then reli-
gion does not make people cheat less. It makes cheaters less
religious. Again, we don’t know.

DISCRIMINATION

Some religions teach that we are all God’s children, so we

should all be treated equally or at least fairly. Atheists and
agnostics might seem to lack such a solid basis for condemn-
ing discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance. D’Souza
goes even further when he claims, “The death of Christian-
ity must also mean the gradual extinction of values, such
as human dignity, the right against torture, and the rights
of equal treatment asserted by women, minorities, and the
poor.”37
D’Souza gives no empirical evidence for this prediction.
His fear, thus, might exemplify the common mistake of bas-
ing predictions about your opponents on your own internal
sense of how those other people think and feel. We all—
atheists and theists alike—need to learn to listen and observe
instead of trying to feel our way into the lives of people who
seem distant to us.
42 Morality Without God?

The scientific literature tells the opposite story. One review

concludes:

Using a variety of measures of piety—religious affiliation, church

attendance, doctrinal orthodoxy, rated importance of religion,
and so on—researchers have consistently found positive correla-
tions with ethnocentrism, authoritarianism, dogmatism, social
distance, rigidity, intolerance of ambiguity, and specific forms of
prejudice, especially against Jews and blacks.38

To Jews and blacks, we can add women and homosexuals.

Much of this prejudice is based on the Bible, which condemns
homosexuality (Romans 1:26–27), blames Jews for the crucifix-
ion of Jesus (Matthew 27:20–23; Mark 15:11–14; Luke 23:20–23;
John 19:4–16), and prohibits women speaking in church (1 Cor-
inthians 14:33–35; 1 Timothy 2:12)—all in the New Testament.
Discrimination is also officially built into many religious insti-
tutions, such as when women are not allowed to become
priests.
Other passages send opposite messages, and many Chris-
tians, including many evangelicals, do not share these preju-
dices and even fight against them. I gladly admit all of that.
There are many good evangelicals. But then we still need to
ask whether religion has a general association with prejudice,
discrimination, and intolerance that good religious individu-
als overcome.
Many studies suggest an association between religion
and discrimination, but the degree varies. Some groups of
church-goers have been found to be less prejudiced than oth-
ers, but none has been found to be less prejudiced than non-
religious people.39 One recent study, however, does find that
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 43

“devotional religiosity independently predicts tolerance and

rejection of scapegoating” although still “coalitional religios-
ity independently predicts intolerance and scapegoating.”40
When religion is related to prejudice and discrimination, the
strongest relationships are with religious fundamentalism.41
These are only correlations, however, so we cannot infer that
fundamentalism causes prejudice. It is just as possible that
people with prior prejudices tend to leave other religious ori-
entations and turn to fundamentalism.
This talk of “prejudice” and “discrimination” is, admittedly,
not always neutral. Religions that condemn homosexuality as
immoral will deny that their so-called prejudice or discrimi-
nation against homosexuals is illegitimate. In their view, they
are fighting immorality. The same goes, presumably, when
they “discriminate” against atheists. They might also claim
that it is not unjustified prejudice or discrimination to prevent
women from becoming priests, require them to obey their
husbands, and forbid them to speak in church, because their
scriptures command this. They are not themselves prejudi-
ced simply because they do what God told them to do, in
their view.
It is not clear how far this defense goes. When two gay-
bashers tortured Matthew Shepard and left him to die on a
fence, some religious zealots defended this murder by citing
Leviticus 20:13: “If a man lies with a man, . . . they must be put
to death.” Slavery has also been defended by citing the Bible.
And, of course, anti-Semites often cite biblical passages to
justify discrimination against Jews to the point of genocide.
Nonetheless, if religion is related to such extreme prejudice,
then that should and would trouble most religious believers
(just as Stalin and Mao should and do trouble atheists).
44 Morality Without God?

Even when discrimination, prejudice, and intolerance are

less dramatic, the secular perspective remains very different.
The forms of discrimination and intolerance that are justi-
fied by religious scriptures and rules might not seem unfair to
religious people who accept that religion, but those acts still
do seem unfair to people outside of those religions. If secu-
lar societies have less discrimination and intolerance of these
kinds, then secular societies will seem better, not worse, than
religious societies, at least to secular people.

CHARITY

Simply not killing, stealing, abusing, cheating, and discrimi-

nating is not enough to make you morally good. Morally
good people also perform positive acts of helping the needy,
according to most atheists and agnostics as well as theists.
Thus, if secular people and societies do not help the needy,
they lack moral goodness. A lower rate of helping the needy
by secular people would hardly reveal the kind of depravity
and degradation that so many theists fear from secular cul-
ture, but it would still be a serious defect.
Secular people and societies are morally deficient in just
this way, according to a recent popular book by Arthur Brooks:
“Religious people were 25 percentage points more likely to
give than secularists (91 to 66 percent). Religious people were
also 23 points more likely to volunteer (67 to 44 percent).”42
The discrepancy looks larger for amounts donated: “In 2000,
religious people—who, per family, earned exactly the same
amount as secular people, $49,000—gave about 3.5 times
more money per year (an average of $2210 versus $642). They
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 45

also volunteered more than twice as often (12 times per year
versus 5.8 times).”43 Of course, many donations by religious
people are to religious causes, but the difference remains when
we leave out religious donations, claims Brooks: “Religious
people are more charitable in every measurable nonreligious
way—including secular donations, informal giving, and even
acts of kindness and honesty—than secularists.”44 It is worth
spending time on Brooks’s argument, because it has attracted
a lot of attention and is repeated by many evangelicals.
To assess Brooks’s generalizations, we need to dig deeper.
In particular, we need to ask why religious people donate more
to charities. Brooks avoids this question, because “judging
motives is misguided. Charity is a behavior, not a motive.”45
He is clearly correct that behaviors are different from motives.
It is disingenuous, however, to criticize “judging motives” in
a book titled Who Really Cares. Caring is about motives, not
behavior. Thus, if we want to find out who really cares, we
must ask about motives.
Motives are difficult to pinpoint, but there is little doubt
that expected rewards and punishments affect not only behav-
iors but also motives in many people. The Bible says that
those who help the needy will receive “eternal life” whereas
those who fail to help the needy will suffer “eternal punish-
ment” (Matthew 25:46; see also Luke 6:38). Since these verses
are well known, it seems likely that many religious people
donate more to charity than they otherwise would at least
partly in order to buy their way into Heaven or buy their way
out of Hell. Of course, this motive is not shared by all reli-
gious people—probably not even most. Many religious peo-
ple work hard and long for charities in order to help the needy,
not just to help themselves. Still, while some religious people
46 Morality Without God?

are good, others are not so good, and the bad ones probably
have bad motives.
Several religious traditions also specifically require tithing
(Leviticus 27:30). When tithing is demanded as a strict duty,
whose fulfillment is rewarded by Heaven and whose viola-
tion is punished by Hell, then it should not be surprising that
many believers tithe and that their motive is often (though not
always) their own self-interest.
Forced gifts, however, bring no moral credit. Imagine that
an employee gives a donation to his boss’s favorite charity only
because his boss told him that he would be promoted if he
donated and fired if he didn’t. Does this donation show that
the employee is morally good? Of course not, partly because
he would have donated even if he despised the beneficiaries.
This employee might have donated to that charity even with-
out the boss’s promises and threats, but that is hard to tell
after the promises and threats are made. More generally, we
cannot be sure who deserves moral credit when donations are
forced.
The same goes for religious people. If they donate to chari-
ties after they have been promised Heaven for donating and
threatened with Hell for failing to donate, then it is not clear
whether they deserve moral credit for donating, because their
motives are clouded. Probably most religious believers would
donate to the same charities without the promises and threats,
but which ones would do so is hard to tell once they believe in
such extreme promises and threats.
Let me repeat: I am not saying that all religious people who
help the needy are motivated by God’s promises and threats.
That claim would be wildly inaccurate. I doubt that many reli-
gious people have Heaven and Hell in mind when they help
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 47

the needy. Most religious people give to charities because they

want to help people in need. So do most atheists and agnos-
tics. What is not clear, however, is how much of the statistical
differences in charitable giving between secular and religious
people can be explained by religious promises of Heaven and
threats of Hell. To the extent that the difference in behavior
is due to such self-interested motives, these differences show
nothing about which group is morally better, much less “who
really cares,” as Brooks’ title suggests.
Still, if religious people do in fact give more, isn’t that good?
After all, gifts to charity help the needy regardless of motive.
People in need who are helped usually do not know or care
whether their benefactors had purity of heart.
It is also not clear, however, that religious people really
do donate more to charity than nonreligious people. Most
of Brooks’s evidence depends on self-reports.46 He himself
admits that “churchgoers [might] inflate their charitable giv-
ing in surveys . . . because of the perceived pressure to behave
charitably as a person of faith.”47 That pressure alone might
explain the differences reported in the surveys, even if there
was no real difference in behavior at all. What benefits others
is actual behavior, so we need some way to find out who really
did donate to charity or help the needy. According to one
standard review, “when we turn to studies that incorporate
actual behavioral measures of helping, there is little evidence
that religious people are more helpful than less religious or
non-religious people.”48 This suggests that the self-reports on
which Brooks relies so heavily are not reliable.
Brooks’s categories also confuse the issue. He defines “reli-
gious people” as those who attend a religious service “nearly
every week or more” and contrasts them with “secular people”
48 Morality Without God?

defined as those who “attend infrequently (a couple of times

a year) or never—or they say that they have no religion.”49
This definition of “secular people” oddly includes religious
believers who attend church rarely. That misnomer distorts
Brooks’s results if religious believers who attend church less
often also donate less to charity than religious believers who
attend to church more regularly. That trend seems plausible
if believers who attend less church are less socially inclined as
well as less often reminded of charities and their importance.
If rarely attending religious people are included within the
category of “religious people” then the statistical differences
between “religious people” and “secular people” might dis-
appear. We don’t know, so, without redefining his categories,
Brooks cannot reach any justified conclusion about real athe-
ists and agnostics.
Yet another serious flaw is Brooks’s dismissal of political
actions and donations. He insists that “government spending is
not charity.”50 This restriction sounds plausible, but it distorts
the issue. For one thing, voting to tax yourself more, such as
on a school bond issue, is very much like contributing to char-
ity, especially if you have no children in public schools. It is a
conscious decision to try to make your money serve the needs
of others. So is choosing to live in a state with high taxes to
pay for social services that you personally do not use.
Moreover, strong religious belief is associated in the United
States with conservative politics and skepticism about the role
of government in solving economic problems. As a result,
religious people are more likely to think that problems associ-
ated with poverty should be solved by private charities rather
than by government programs. In contrast, secular people
are more likely to think that it is the government’s job to help
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 49

needy people. They often add that it is more effective and fair
for the government to provide needed services, because the
burden of supporting private charities is not spread evenly
and their resources are not reliable during economic down-
turns. Whether or not this “liberal” view is correct, those who
believe it are more likely to focus on promoting government
programs instead of private charities. Brooks himself admits
this, in effect, when he says, “charity and conservative views on
forced income redistribution go hand in hand.”51 This means
that both sides try to help the needy, although they try in differ-
ent ways. Neither side has a monopoly on beneficence, even if
they have different views on how best to be beneficent.
Finally, we can repeat the lesson from earlier sections: cor-
relation is not causation. Assume for the sake of argument
that secular people do less for charity and religious people are
motivated not by self-interest but by caring. Does this show
that religion makes people better? No. As before, the causal
train might run in the other direction. It seems plausible that
people who do not want to spend their time or money work-
ing for charities will be less likely to attend church, where they
are hounded and pressured to do what they do not want to
do. Instead of religion increasing charity, it might just push
out people who are less charitable.
In order to move beyond correlation to causation, psychol-
ogists manipulate variables. In one recent study,52 twenty-six
religious students (including twenty-four Christians) were
compared with twenty-four other students (including nineteen
atheists). All of the subjects were asked to unscramble sen-
tences, but these sentences included religious words (“spirit,”
“divine,” “God,” “sacred,” and “prophet”) for only half of
the subjects. These subjects were, thus, “primed” to think of
50 Morality Without God?

religious concepts. Both groups of subjects were then given ten

$1 coins and told that they could either keep all of these coins
or give some of them to another subject who had received
no coins and who would never learn their identity. Subjects
with religious priming gave $4.22 on average, whereas subjects
without religious priming gave only $1.84 on average. No sta-
tistically significant differences were found between religious
and nonreligious subjects. This result suggests that religious
priming increases giving among theists and atheists alike.
A follow-up study replicated the main effect in the general
public and added a twist. Some of the subjects were primed
not with religious concepts but with words referring to sec-
ular institutions of justice, such as “civic,” “jury,” “court,”
“police,” and “contract.” It turned out that this secular prime
had nearly as much effect as the religious prime ($4.44 with
the secular prime and $4.56 with the religious prime in con-
trast to $2.56 with neither prime).
This ingenious experiment finally supports a causal conclu-
sion. Since religious priming affects giving, and church atten-
dance involves repeated religious priming, this is probably
one mechanism by which church attendance increases chari-
table giving. This claim might seem sympathetic to theists.
However, religious belief is not what caused the giving, since
the effect occurred with atheists as well as theists. Church
attendance rather than religious belief is what matters on this
model. Moreover, atheists and agnostics can achieve the same
effect by priming secular moral concepts. This model, thus,
predicts that secular societies will not have significantly less
charitable giving if they make an effort to prime moral con-
cepts, possibly by setting up communities that meet regularly
to discuss helping the needy.
 What’s Wrong with Secular Societies? 51

Of course, more research is needed before any causal con-

clusion can be secure, and more work is needed by us all—
atheists and agnostics as well as theists—to make more people
more inclined to help the needy. Still, the emerging picture
suggests that secular societies are far from doomed to selfish-
ness, if they learn lessons from religious groups about how to
make people more charitable.

OVERALLS

This chapter has barely scratched the surface. Our discussions

of homicide, theft, abuse, cheating, discrimination, and char-
ity have been too quick, incomplete, and inconclusive. Many
moral topics and tons of empirical studies have not been men-
tioned. Still, I hope that some general themes have come out.
First, we don’t know a lot. Most of the studies relating athe-
ism or religion to immorality are flawed or limited in serious
ways. Psychologists of religion have a lot more work to do.
Second, religious people have their virtues, and so do atheists
and agnostics. If current studies are accurate, religious people
are somewhat more charitable, but then secular people are less
prejudiced. Neither side has a monopoly on virtue overall.
Third, the reported differences are between group aver-
ages. That means that any given atheist or agnostic might be
extremely charitable, and any given religious individual might
not be prejudiced at all. No study warrants any moral judg-
ment about any particular individual based on whether he or
she is religious or atheist or agnostic.
Fourth, these studies do not justify any claim that secular
societies will descend into sleaze or that theistic societies will
52 Morality Without God?

become authoritarian. The discovered differences are nowhere

near dramatic enough for any generalization that crude.
Fifth, we can all improve by learning from each other.
Atheists can learn from theists about how to induce charity.
Theists can learn from atheists about how to become more
tolerant. Plus, we can also all learn from each other about the
morality we share.
What can we do with these lessons? One way to choose
your worldview is practical: Choose your worldview by choos-
ing which kind of person you want to be or which kind of
people you want to live with. The empirical evidence outlined
in this chapter can be helpful in making that choice.
It is crucial, however, not to confuse that practical choice
with distinct intellectual issues. The fact that a worldview
is statistically associated with a desirable kind of person or
action does not show that the claims of that worldview are
true. Such statistics do not show either that God exists or that
God does not exist, for example.
A statistical or causal relation between religious belief and
moral behavior also cannot show that “If God is dead, every-
thing is permitted.” The empirical evidence in this chapter
addresses the very different question of whether “If people believe
that God is dead, then they are more likely to act as if they believe
that everything is permitted.” In contrast, the claim that “If God
is dead, everything is permitted” is about God rather than about
belief in God. It is also about which acts are permitted rather
than about which acts are done. Theists use this popular slogan
to assert that nothing can be objectively morally wrong if God
does not exist. The question, in short, is whether atheism entails
nihilism, which is the denial of all real moral values, duties, and
obligations. The next chapter answers that new question.
 Chapter Four

WHAT’S WRONG?

So in everything, do to others what you would have them do to

you, for this sums up the Law and the Prophets.
(Matthew 7:12)

How does morality matter? Let me count the ways. Moral-

ity separates us from lower animals. It also enables us to get
along with other humans. Laws cannot replace morality
without becoming oppressive. If most of us did not embrace
morality, life for all of us would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brut-
ish, and short,” as Hobbes famously put it.53 To live our lives,
we need morality. To understand our lives, we need to under-
stand morality.
On a more personal level, we all need to make choices, many
of which involve moral considerations. We face temptations
to cheat on taxes or spouses, to break a promise that we regret
making, to lie in order to gain an advantage in a competition,
54 Morality Without God?

to strike out at someone who angers us, to ignore someone

who needs us, and even to steal when we are needy ourselves.
We do not always get to do what we want most, if we accept
moral restrictions. Of course, our moral beliefs also lead us to
take stands on large and controversial issues like abortion, the
death penalty, preventive war, environmental damage, affir-
mative action, pornography, gay marriage, vegetarianism,
and so on. Which stand we take on such moral issues affects
how we vote in elections, which laws we support, and which
groups we join.
Some people might believe that they can go through life
without holding any moral position one way or the other on
anything, but that can’t work for long. We all eventually need
to think about what is or is not immoral both for ourselves
and for others. Thus, if atheism did undermine morality, it
would make life much harder than it already is.
Of course, we all need to decide not only whether morality
has force for us but also which kind of morality to adopt in
our lives. The shape of morality is very different for religious
believers than for atheists. Two visions of morality compete
in contemporary society. On one view, morality consists in
obeying God’s commands. On the other view, morality is
independent of God and religion. Morality instead concerns
harms to other people. These competing visions of morality
lead to very different government policies, educational meth-
ods, medical practices, and ways of life. They lead to oppos-
ing stands on, for example, abortion, gay marriage, teaching
evolution, prayer in schools, and displaying the Ten Com-
mandments in courthouses. Even the words of the Pledge of
Allegiance are disputed on moral grounds based in religious
views.
 What’s Wrong? 55

Sometimes the influence of religion is hidden. At one con-

ference that I attended, scientists spelled out many wonderful
prospects for medical advances from stem cell research, and
they also showed the need to use stem cells from embryos
instead of other sources. Then a few speakers argued against
embryonic stem cell research on openly religious grounds.
Nobody knew quite what to say in response. How can you
argue with religious dogma? It seemed like an easy case to
me, but I worried that I was missing some secular objec-
tions. So I asked one speaker who had been on a govern-
ment commission that had heard over a hundred witnesses
for and against restrictions on embryonic stem cell research.
He reported that not one single witness had spoken against
such stem cell research other than witnesses who were there
specifically to represent openly religious groups. This answer
confirmed my view that there were no nonreligious reasons
against embryonic stem cell research. Yet our government was
restricting this useful research by limiting funding in response
to organized religious groups. “Doesn’t that conflict with our
Constitution’s clauses on religion?” I asked. The speaker’s
answer was clear, “Yes.” But that did not stop the government
policy or its religious advocates.
I suspect that part of the reason religious views of moral-
ity have such prominence is that contrasting secular views
are fragmented and disputed. Another reason is that religious
views are allowed to continue without careful criticism. In
order to get straight on these important and divisive issues,
then, we need to understand these two competing visions of
morality and of its relation to religion.
My goal in the next two chapters is to explore the philo-
sophical basis for these two views—starting with the secular
56 Morality Without God?

view and then turning to the religious view in the following

chapter. The issue here is not empirical, so I will not cite scien-
tific studies or historical examples. The issue is also not about
religious belief or practice. Instead, our new question is about
God and whether God’s existence is necessary for the exis-
tence of objective moral values and wrongness.
Many theists claim that God is necessary for objective
morality, so atheism implies nihilism or, at least, the denial of
objective morality. The next two chapters together argue for
the opposite conclusion: Morality does not depend on God.
Moral wrongness can exist without God.
My opponents in these coming chapters are not just evan-
gelicals. Many other kinds of Christians as well as many other
religions also hold that morality depends on God.
Nonetheless, many religions advocate pretty much the
same moral prohibitions as my secular account, so what I say
here will probably seem very familiar. I hope so. My goal is
not to be strikingly original. The point is only to show that
this core of morality can be articulated without relying on
God or on anything that is peculiar to any particular religion
or to religion in general. Hence, there is no need to accept
any religion or to believe in God in order to accept and under-
stand basic morality.
As always, my arguments will not persuade all read-
ers. Nonetheless, I do hope to instigate further dialogue, to
increase understanding of the secular position, to reduce fear
of atheists and agnostics, and to make immoderate religious
believers less confident and self-righteous.
The first step on this journey is to see how atheists and
agnostics understand morality without God. This step is sur-
prisingly short and simple.
 What’s Wrong? 57

HARM-BASED MORALITY

Consider rape. Rape is immoral. I hope you agree. Everyone

I know—whether theist or atheist or agnostic—agrees that
rape is morally wrong. Even most rapists admit that rape is
immoral, although they do it anyway. Good arguments need
to start from common ground that both theists and secular-
ists can agree on. Hence, this moral judgment is a good place
to start.
The question is not whether rape is immoral, but why it is
immoral. On the secular view, the answer is simple: Rape is
wrong because it harms the victim for no adequate reason.
The victim feels pain and fear, loses freedom and control, is
subordinated and humiliated, and suffers in many other ways.
These harms are extreme and long lasting. They are not justi-
fied by any benefits to anyone, even if the rapist gains some
minor and sordid pleasure. That is all it takes to explain what
makes rape wrong, although much more could be added, as
we will see.
What about rape without harm? Imagine that a woman
is raped by her doctor while lying unconscious in her private
hospital room, and she never finds out. That act is immoral as
well, but there is no harm—is there? Yes, there is harm in this
case, too. Harms include more than just pain. Loss of ability
and control are also harms, and the doctor causes his victim
to lose her ability to control what happens to her body in a
very intimate way. He also violated her dignity and her rights,
and such violations can count as harms. In all of these ways,
he did harm her, even if she never found out. Furthermore,
the doctor at the very least created a great danger, since his
victim might find out that she was raped, and then she would
58 Morality Without God?

suffer pain and humiliation. Significant risk of serious harm is

enough to make this doctor’s act immoral, even if it caused
no actual harm.
This simple account applies as well to other kinds of immo-
rality. Why is it morally wrong to kill other people? Because
it harms them by depriving them of life. Why is it morally
wrong to hit, kick, stab, or shoot other people? Because it
harms them by causing pain. Why is it morally wrong to kid-
nap children? Because it harms them by terrifying them and
taking away their freedom to go where they want. Why is it
morally wrong to blind people? Because it harms them by tak-
ing away their ability to see. Why is it morally wrong to steal
money from neighbors? Because it harms them by reducing
their ability to buy what they want. Why is it morally wrong
to break promises to friends? Because this may make them feel
hurt, lose trust, become less friendly, and suffer lost opportu-
nites, such as when they fail to arrange for someone else to
help them because they thought that you were going to help
them. Why is it morally wrong to lie? Because lies can under-
mine trust and mislead people into doing what harms them.
And so on. All of these kinds of immorality are tied to harm
of one kind or another in one way or another.
Of course, this simple story raises many questions. I can-
not answer them all here. But I will say a few brief words
about some of the main issues.

HARMS

First, what are harms? Most people agree that harms include
death, pain, and disability. Disability includes loss of freedom
 What’s Wrong? 59

and maybe also false beliefs insofar as false beliefs make peo-
ple unable to achieve goals. Just imagine trying to buy a car
when you believe that cars are sold at grocery stores.
Of course, these harms sometimes bring benefits in their
wake. Death can end pain. Pain and disability can build char-
acter. Nonetheless, these harms are bad at least when they
bring no benefit. Indeed, they seem bad to some extent even
when their disvalue is overridden by the greater value of cer-
tain resulting benefits.
The argument here is not that almost everyone agrees that
death, pain, and disability are harms and bad, so they are.
Much less am I saying that agreement is what makes them
bad. That argument would be just as silly as saying that most
people believe in miracles, so there must be miracles. The
case of miracles is different, simply because miracles conflict
with scientific observation and theories, so we have plenty
of reasons to doubt that miracles occur. In contrast, there is
no reason to doubt that death, pain, and disability are bad.
The belief that they are bad coheres with our other beliefs
about what is rational and moral (as we will see). Then, in the
absence of any reason to doubt, and in the presence of coher-
ence among beliefs, the fact that so many smart people agree
after thorough reflection provides strong reason to believe
that death, pain, and disability are bad. It is still possible that
everyone is mistaken. However, if you and I also agree with
all of them, and if our beliefs are coherent, so we have no
reason to deny what seems obvious, then we are justified in
believing that death, pain, and disability are bad.
Despite these agreements, there are also many disagree-
ments about what counts as a harm and about what counts as
causing harm as well as about which harms are worse. Does
60 Morality Without God?

boredom count as pain or harm? Do authors harm their read-

ers when they write boring books? Are bad tastes harmful? Do
restaurants harm their customers when they serve dishes that
their clients dislike? On a larger scale, are women harmed by
not being allowed to enter male bathrooms or to join male
fraternities? Do drivers of large SUVs harm other people by
sticking out of parking places or by contributing to global
warming? Many questions like these are difficult to answer
confidently, and any answer will produce disagreements.
Nonetheless, these disagreements should not hide the fact
that we agree on a lot. Almost everyone agrees that death,
pain, and disability are bad. That is enough for the minimal
account that I am trying to outline here.
What makes these harms bad? That is another tough ques-
tion that I do not need to answer here. It is enough for my
argument that these harms are bad, even if it is not clear what
makes them bad or what it means to call them bad. Still, if
you demand a general account of why these harms are bad,
my colleague Bernard Gert plausibly identifies something as
bad when it would be irrational to seek it (or not to avoid
it) without an adequate reason.54 Pain, disability, and death
are bad on this account, because anyone who seeks them (or
does not avoid them) without an adequate reason is irrational
to that extent. Just imagine someone who seeks pain when
that pain would not bring any benefits—it would not prevent
any pain, disability, or death for anyone or bring any plea-
sure or ability to anyone. Even masochists seek pain because
it gives them pleasure, often sexual. People who cut or burn
themselves usually think that this will relieve the guilt or self-
loathing that they would otherwise feel. These cases, thus,
do not undermine the point that you would have to be really
 What’s Wrong? 61

crazy to seek pain for its own sake without any other reason
whatsoever. The same goes for death. People often seek death
to avoid the horrible pain and indignities of a terminal disease
or to gain glory and freedom for their homeland. Some reli-
gious people, such as suicide bombers, might seek death to
further a political cause and also to gain access to Heaven at
the same time. However, someone who wanted to die just for
the sake of dying and for no gain to anyone at all would be
really crazy—that is, irrational in a strong sense.
This answer leads to another question: What is irrational-
ity? No answer can avoid controversy, but one sign that an act
is irrational is that you would never advise anyone you care
about to do it. Just imagine that your child told you that she
is going to kill herself. You ask, “Why?” She says that she has
no reason at all, she just wants to die. Would you advise her
to go ahead? Of course not. That shows that you consider the
act irrational. The same story would apply if she said that she
was going to blind herself or cause severe pain to herself for
no benefit to anyone. You would never advise her to do acts
like these, either. To call such acts irrational is, then, at least
partly, to say that you and other normal people would never
advise your friends (or anyone you care about) to do them.
Indeed, you would advise your friends not to do such acts.
This little theory reveals more about what counts as harm.
Suppose your son says that he wants to play Russian roulette
with one bullet in the chamber of a six-shooter. He does not
want to die, but he does want to cause a risk of death to him-
self. Why? For no reason at all. You would advise him not to
do this, I assume, so it is also irrational to cause a significant
risk of death to oneself without a reason. That means that
such risks of harm also count as harms.
62 Morality Without God?

Next, suppose that your son has a disease such that he will
become paralyzed if he does not take his medicine. He has no
reason not to take the medicine, because it is free, tasteless,
and lacking in side effects, but he says that he does not want to
prevent his paralysis. Here he does not cause the paralysis. The
disease does that. But you still would advise him to take his
medicine, I assume. Why? Because it is irrational for him to fail
to prevent the harm, even if he does not cause that harm him-
self. Since failure to prevent a loss is just as irrational as causing
that loss, a loss of ability or life also counts as a harm.
We might be able add to this list of harms. Maybe some
items on this list are more controversial than I have suggested.
Certainly each item needs to be specified more precisely. Still,
the general shape of the list is pretty secure, I hope. So let’s
move on.

FROM SELF TO OTHERS

In the examples so far, a person causes harm to herself. There

is nothing immoral about that. Causing harm to oneself with-
out an adequate reason is irrational, not immoral. If I really
want to cause pain to myself for no reason at all, you may call
me crazy. If you care about me, you would probably advise
me not to do it. However, it would be inaccurate and mislead-
ing to call such acts immoral.
Morality enters the story when harm is caused not (or not
only) to oneself but to other people. Causing pain, disability,
or death to others for no adequate reason is immoral. Why?
The basic answer is that we have no reason to claim any spe-
cial moral status for ourselves.
 What’s Wrong? 63

Suppose someone walks up and hits you on the nose. You

ask why he did that. He says, “No reason. I just felt like it.” You
would think that his hitting you was morally wrong. Wouldn’t
you? You might not think this if he said that he saw a deadly
stinging insect on your nose and he needed to kill it in order
to save your life. You might also withhold adverse judgment
if he said that his hand hit your nose only because he had an
epileptic seizure or he fell when someone tripped him. Still, if
he has no such justification or excuse, and if he admits it, then
you would confidently believe that he did you wrong.
Now suppose that you are the one who hit him for no good
reason. If it was wrong for him to hit you, wouldn’t it also
be wrong for you to hit him? We are imagining, of course,
that you have no excuse or justification for hitting him. You
hit him only because you feel like it. Moreover, you also have
no special moral status. Morality protects him no more and
no less than it protects you. He has exactly the same moral
rights not to be hit as you have. He also has exactly the same
rights to hit you as you have to hit him. Or, at least, you have
no reason to claim any more rights than he does. Thus, if it is
morally wrong for him to hit you for no reason, it is also mor-
ally wrong for you to hit him for no reason.
Next put it all together: It is morally wrong for him to hit
you for no reason. If that is morally wrong, then it is also
morally wrong for you to hit him for no reason. Therefore, it
is morally wrong for you to hit him for no reason.
Will this argument convince everyone? Of course not. Argu-
ments in morality never convince everyone. But it should con-
vince everyone. The only way around this conclusion is either:
(a) to admit that everyone in the world is allowed to hit you on
the nose whenever he or she feels like it or ( b) to claim that you
64 Morality Without God?

are allowed to hit others when they are not allowed to hit you.
Response (a) is abhorrent. Response ( b) is arbitrary. Some people
might not care about being hit or about being arbitrary. None-
theless, their lack of concern need not stop us from criticizing
them. Anyone who denies this conclusion is, thus, subject to
criticism. That is enough for the argument to justify morality.
It might sound as if this little argument simply applies the
Golden Rule. It does not. In fact, the Golden Rule is not so
golden when you look at it carefully. Matthew 7:12 says, “do to
others what you would have them do to you.” Well, I would
have men (and women!) give me a million dollars. Does that
mean that I should or must give them a million dollars? Of
course not. Sometimes the Golden Rule is formulated nega-
tively: “Do not do unto others what you would not have them to
do to you.” That version is not much better. A judge who sen-
tences a criminal to jail would not want the criminal to sentence
him (the judge) to jail. Does that mean that the judge should (or
must) not sentence the criminal? That would be absurd.
Defenders of the Golden Rule will accuse me of misinter-
preting it. The judge has a reason to sentence the criminal,
since the criminal committed a crime, whereas the criminal
has no reason to sentence the judge, assuming that the judge
committed no crime. But notice that the judge still would not
want to be sentenced even if the judge did commit a crime.
What matters to the moral status of imprisonment is not what
the judge or the criminal wants but rather whether there is
an adequate reason to cause the harm of imprisonment. That
is what my little account of morality says. If it is also what
the Golden Rule really means, then my only complaint is that
the Bible and other religious texts misstate what the Golden
Rule really means. What really makes certain acts immoral is
 What’s Wrong? 65

not what I or anyone wants but, instead, that such acts cause
harm to other people for no good enough reason.
Religion has clearly helped many people see or appreciate
the force of the considerations behind my argument. Some-
thing like the Golden Rule can be found in many religious texts
from a wide variety of religious traditions. Followers of those
traditions usually interpret it in commonsensical ways rather
than in the way that makes judges look bad and sadomasoch-
ists look good. Religious believers sometimes infer that reli-
gion should get credit for the moral insight behind the Golden
Rule and that atheists will be morally hindered because athe-
ists cannot rest their views on the Golden Rule. Much the
opposite, however, the fact that the Golden Rule is stated in so
many diverse religious traditions shows the insights behind the
Golden Rule do not really depend on any religious tradition
in particular. Those moral insights are part of common sense.
Every religion needs to reflect this common sense in order to
grow and survive for long. Religions also need to recognize the
value of families. That does not show that religion gets credit
for families. Hunter-gatherers had families long before they
had anything like today’s religious beliefs, such as evangelical
Christianity. Analogously, the Golden Rule depends on a basic
moral insight that was crucial to society regardless of religion.
Hence, secular harm-based morality is not dependent on any
particular religious tradition or on religion in general.

EXTENSIONS

Secular harm-based morality can be extended to many other

kinds of acts. Suppose you duck, so the person who was trying
66 Morality Without God?

to hit you in the nose misses you entirely, and you are not hurt
at all. No harm done! Nonetheless, you would, I imagine, still
think that it was morally wrong for the aggressor to try to hit
you. One reason is that he might have hit you, so he caused a
risk of harm to you. (Recall that it is irrational to risk harm to
yourself even if the gun does not fire in Russian Roulette.) But
suppose he is very slow, and you are very quick, so there is no
significant chance that he will hit you. You would still judge
that his failed attempt was morally wrong. And you still have
no more moral rights than he does. Hence, it would also be
morally wrong for you to try to hit him, even if you missed.
Some acts that are immoral do not cause harm directly
by themselves, but they still indirectly bring harms in their
wake. Suppose you tell me a secret about a past indiscre-
tion when you were young, and I promise not to tell any-
one. Despite my promise, I go ahead and reveal your secret
to a mutual friend. This friend thinks nothing of it and soon
forgets, so my act of breaking this promise does not seem
to harm you directly. Nonetheless, I created a risk that our
mutual friend would tell your secret to others. Even if our
friend tells nobody else but only tells you that I had told your
secret to him, then you would probably suffer disappoint-
ment, anger, and maybe fear that the secret would spread.
You also would be unable to trust me as you had before, and
our friendship would be undermined. Revealing secrets is a
risky business, even when you get away with it. Moreover,
by telling your secret to our friend, I reduced your ability to
control who knows your secret, and this disability is a kind of
harm. In these and other ways, then, breaking promises has
at least indirect connections to harm, and that is what makes
it morally wrong.
 What’s Wrong? 67

Promises also play a different role in harm-based morality.

If I promise to drive you to the airport at a certain time, but
I never show up, so you miss your plane, then I caused you
harm, because I am responsible for your loss. In contrast, sup-
pose we are roommates, and you expect me to get home at
the time when you need a ride just because I usually get home
then, but I never promised to come home at that time. Then,
if you miss your flight, I am not responsible, and I did not
cause the harm. In this way, my promise affects whether my
act counts as causing a harm.
The notion of causation also shows how harm-based
morality can incorporate special duties and obligations, such
as duties to family and maybe sometimes country. Imagine
that a child is not educated, so she suffers a loss of ability and
opportunity in her future life. Her parents failed to educate
her, but so did their neighbors as well as strangers on the other
side of the world. Who is responsible for the harm to this girl?
Her parents are the cause of that harm, because she is their
child, not the child of neighbors or strangers. In this way, spe-
cial relations can determine who is the cause of a harm and,
thus, whose act violates harm-based morality.
This does not mean that we have no obligations to strang-
ers. As we saw when discussing irrationality, it is also irratio-
nal to fail to prevent serious harm to oneself for no adequate
reason. The lesson for morality is that we also should not
fail to prevent important harms to others when we have no
adequate reason not to prevent those harms. A common
example is a baby who crawls into a pool and starts to drown.
If I can save this baby’s life at no cost other than my getting
wet, which is not an adequate reason to let the baby die, then
it would be immoral for me to walk away and let it drown.
68 Morality Without God?

Maybe I shouldn’t save it when somehow I know that it will

grow up to become a mass murderer. Maybe I don’t have to
save it when other people can and will save it if I don’t. Maybe
I have an excuse when saving it would be dangerous or when
there are too many drowning babies for me to save them all.
Moral theorists and common folk disagree about how far any-
one needs to go to prevent harm to others. It is not contro-
versial, however, that we should prevent a serious harm to
another nearby person when nobody else can prevent it and
we can easily and safely prevent it with no significant cost to
anyone.
This does not mean that we must always do everything that
we can to minimize the amount of harm in the world. That
would require too much. We do not have to give to CARE
every time we receive a request. Nor are we morally required
to volunteer at every soup kitchen. To fulfill that unlimited
demand, we would all have to spend our entire lives helping
the needy. Still, we ought to do something. It is often hard to
tell how much is too much to demand, and when we should
or must help a particular person or group in need. Nonethe-
less, although the limits are controversial, it should not be
controversial that we do have at least some positive duties to
help the needy and to educate the ignorant in order to prevent
the same old harms of death, pain, and disability.
Overall, there are many different kinds of immoral acts and
many different ways for immoral acts to be related to harm,
but what makes them all immoral is some relation to harm to
others for no adequate reason. Those harms occur and those
acts cause them regardless of whether the agent or the victim
believes in God, and also regardless of whether there is a God.
Hence, this harm-based morality is completely secular.
 What’s Wrong? 69

WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT YOU?

Theists often object that secular moralities cannot explain

why humans are special. Other animals can also suffer and
cause death, pain, and disability. Moreover, if humans evolved
from ancestor species, as did other current species, then there
is no hard and fast line between humans and other species or,
at least, between humans and their ancestral species. There
are only incremental differences along a continuum. How-
ever, morality is peculiar to humans. When male lions have
forcible sex with female lions, those acts are not immoral.
When humans do analogous acts, they are immoral. If harm
to the victim is what makes rape immoral, then why isn’t it
also immoral when a male lion causes pain by having forced
sex with a female lion? We need an explanation of this moral
difference. Religions can explain this by saying that humans
are chosen by God for a special role in the cosmic drama.
What can atheists say?
Simple: humans are moral agents, because they are free
and have free will. This freedom does not mean that human
acts and wills are not caused. Instead, the only kind of free-
dom needed or useful here involves the ability to reflect on
and respond to reasons. Partly by means of language, humans
are able to reflect on the reasons for or against their choices
in many cases (though not all). They often try to act accord-
ing to those reasons, and they also often succeed (though not
always).
Lions are not free in this way. Lions follow their instincts
rather than reflecting on their choices. That is why you can
lure an escaped lion back into its cage with a piece of meat
on a string, but it usually takes much trickier traps to catch
70 Morality Without God?

an escaped convict. Moreover, lions cannot judge their own

acts or the acts of others, as far as we know, by thinking about
morality. Their actions are not determined by any conception
of what is moral or not. That explains why moral rules and
principles do not apply to lower animals any more than they
apply to avalanches that kill people.
In contrast, humans do have the ability to know what is
right and wrong, again only usually. This point is recognized
in the story of the Garden of Eden (Genesis 2–3) where eat-
ing the apple from the tree of the knowledge of good and
evil was what set humans apart from other animals. Because
normal adult humans have the ability to tell what is moral and
immoral, and because they also have the ability to reflect on
their choices and conform to what they take to be moral, they
are governed as well as protected by morality—or, in other
words, they have moral duties in addition to moral rights. In
this respect, humans are special, even according to secular
morality.
Indeed, humans are special in pretty much the way that
theists themselves claim. Many religions present free will
and knowledge of good and evil as the distinguishing mark
that shows why humans are made in God’s image and are his
favorite species. This religious gloss is unnecessary. You don’t
need to add that humans were made in God’s image or that
we are His favorite species or anything religious. The reason
we have moral duties is simply because of our special abilities
that even atheists and agnostics can recognize.
This point also answers a common conundrum. If intel-
ligent but bloodthirsty Martians descended onto Earth and
began killing humans, how could we convince them that
killing us is morally wrong? Theists could proclaim to the
 What’s Wrong? 71

Martians that we humans are endowed by God with special

moral rights, but what could a secular moralist say to the
Martians? Atheists and agnostics could repeat the same argu-
ment as above. Since the Martians are intelligent, they should
recognize that we are able to formulate and follow moral
rules and principles. Then, if we harmed them for no ade-
quate reason, they would see their rights as violated and our
acts as wrong. But they have no reason to ascribe moral rights
to themselves and moral duties to us without granting those
same rights to us and moral duties to themselves.
Of course, this abstract reasoning will not stop blood-
thirsty Martians, but then neither will a declaration that we
have rights from God. If we could somehow convince the
Martians that God will punish them if they kill us, that might
work; but how could we convince them of that? In any case,
the secular argument that I outlined above will give them a
moral reason not to harm us, even if they do not care about
that reason. There are some situations that mere reasoning
cannot get you out of, but that does not show that the reason-
ing is faulty. The fault lies in those nasty Martians, who won’t
listen to good reasons.

EXCEPT

It is time to explain the perpetual exception clause: “. . . unless

you have an adequate reason.” It is obviously not always wrong
to harm other people. Judges and police cause harm when
they jail criminals. Doctors cause harm when they amputate
limbs. But those harms are caused in order to prevent greater
harm in the future. That is why these acts are not immoral.
72 Morality Without God?

It is still true that these kinds of acts are morally wrong in

other cases where they cause harm for no adequate reason.
In addition to the degree of harm, consent also affects
whether a reason is adequate. Boxers cause lots of harm to
their opponents, but that need not be immoral if valid con-
sent was given. However, criminal sentencing shows that
actual consent is not always necessary. It is also not clear that
consent is sufficient to justify harm. In Germany recently, a
cannibal was convicted for killing and eating someone who
consented on videotape to be killed and eaten. Consent in
such cases might be invalid if it is based on a mental illness,
so the victim is incompetent to give consent under that condi-
tion. Then the fact that he actually consented is not adequate
to justify causing him death. There was a heated dispute in
Germany about whether his consent was valid and whether it
did justify the cannibal’s actions.
Many other moral disagreements also concern when rea-
sons are adequate to justify harm and who should not be
harmed. Is the fact that someone committed murder in the
past an adequate reason to kill that person even if killing him
will bring no further benefits in the future? Is “[an] eye for [an]
eye” (Exodus 21:24) an adequate reason? Many disagreements
in morality are also about non-moral facts, such as whether
affirmative action will harm the groups that it is trying to
help. These disagreements are intriguing. That is why they fill
debates and classes in ethics. Still, our fascination with these
disagreements should not hide the underlying agreement that
it is morally wrong to cause harm in the many cases where no
normal informed person sees any reason as adequate.
Some empirical evidence of near-universal agreement comes
from the Moral Sense Test Web site at Harvard University
 What’s Wrong? 73

run by Marc Hauser, Fiery Cushman, and Liane Young.55 They

and their colleagues have accumulated responses to various
moral dilemmas by over 200,000 people from more than one
hundred countries. There is surprising agreement on some of
their cases. Consider, for example, the side track case, where a
runaway trolley will kill five people on the main track unless
Denise pulls a lever to turn the trolley onto a side track where it
will kill only one person. Around 90 percent agree that it is per-
missible (that is, not morally wrong) for Denise to pull the lever.
This response is not affected much by religion, culture, gender,
or any of the other demographic factors that they explored.
There is, thus, consistent agreement that saving five lives in this
way is an adequate reason to do what will knowingly lead to
someone else’s death. The agreement would, presumably, be
even higher if there were 100 people on the main track and/or if
there were only a flower, a dog, or a murderer on the side track.
I also hope that almost everyone would agree that it would be
morally wrong for Denise to pull the lever if there were ten
people on the side track and only five on the main track. If so,
there is near-universal agreement that saving five lives is not an
adequate reason to cause ten deaths. Most people forget about
cases like these because they are so obvious and boring. Still, a
fair assessment of what counts as an adequate reason to cause
harm should not forget such clear cases. Indeed, it should be
based on them.
Another major source of disagreement is scope. The gen-
eral principle that it is immoral to cause harm for no adequate
reason does not say whom it is wrong to cause harm to. The
group to whom it is wrong to cause harm can be called the pro-
tected class. In earlier times, some people denied that women
and slaves were in the protected class. Thankfully, those
74 Morality Without God?

debates are over, but other scope questions remain: Are ani-
mals, including chimpanzees and chickens, in this protected
class? Are fetuses at any stage of development protected?
What about patients in persistent vegetative states? What
about future generations? What about Martians, if there are
any? I mention these controversies not to resolve them. It
would be foolish to try to settle such issues here. I need not
solve all moral problems in order to show that many moral
judgments can be based on my harm account.
It is enough that many cases are clear. People almost always
admit that others who are like them in whatever ways they see
as relevant are also in the protected class. It should not be sur-
prising that adult white men think that other adult white men
are in the protected class, women think that other women
are in the protected class, and slaves presumably thought that
they should be protected as well. This tendency suggests that
a failure to include all rational humans in the protected class
is due to a failure of impartiality or else a misunderstanding
of those other people. Besides, all the readers of this book,
I hope, will agree that all rational humans—including women
and slaves as well as citizens of foreign countries and believers
in other religions—should be seen as falling in the protected
class. It is just as wrong to harm them as any other person.
The crucial point here is that this commonsensical view of
morality has no need of God. Harmful acts can be immoral
on this basis even if God does not exist, simply because these
harmful acts would still hurt other people even if God did
not exist. Some harms are worse than others, and that can
sometimes be used to determine which reasons are adequate
to justify causing which harms, even if God does not exist or
never tells us which harms are worse. And we can cite human
 What’s Wrong? 75

abilities to explain why we have moral duties that other ani-

mals lack, even if we are not special in any God’s eyes. This
harm-based account of morality is totally secular. As a result,
it can be accepted by atheists, by agnostics, by believers in
non-Christian religions, and even by evangelical Christians
(although they might deny that this is all there is to morality,
as we will see). That acceptability across the board is one of
its advantages.

OBJECTIVITY

This account also makes morality objective. If what makes an

aggressive war morally wrong is that it hurts innocent peo-
ple, then whether it is wrong does not depend on my desires,
such as whether I want to harm those people. It also does not
depend on my beliefs, such as whether I believe that the war
will hurt those people. (A reasonable mistake might excuse it,
and overriding benefits might justify it, but harmful acts like
wars are still presumptively wrong insofar as they need to be
excused or justified.) Thus, atheists and agnostics can hold not
only that there are moral facts but also that these moral facts
are objective rather than subjective.
In contrast, many theists claim instead that what makes
rape immoral is only that rape violates God’s command. This
alternative account makes morality less objective than on the
harm-based account. On the divine command theory (which
will be discussed in the following chapter), what is morally
wrong depends on God, so moral wrongness is objective only
in the weaker sense that whether an act is morally wrong does
not depend on whether we humans think that it is morally
76 Morality Without God?

wrong. On that divine command theory, moral wrongness is

not objective in the stronger sense that whether an act is mor-
ally wrong does not depend on whether anyone thinks that
it is morally wrong. Its wrongness does, after all, depend on
what one person—namely, God—thinks, wills, or commands.
There is no such dependence on the secular harm-based view
of morality, where moral wrongness is objective even in the
stronger sense that whether an act is morally wrong does not
depend on whether anyone (including God) thinks that it is
morally wrong. Thus, the harm-based account makes moral-
ity more objective than the theistic theory.
This point might seem surprising, because theists often
say that, without God, morality must be subjective. Not so.
Some atheists and agnostics are relativists, conventionalists,
constructivists, non-cognitivists, and even nihilists. However,
their position on morality need not be shared by all atheists.
What atheists agree on is that God does not exist. They need
not (and do not) agree on the abstruse question of whether
morality is objective. Anyway, whether or not other atheists
agree, I myself disavow subjectivism, relativism, egoism, nihil-
ism, conventionalism, non-cognitivism, and postmodernism.
I do believe in moral truth, moral universals, and some kinds
of moral knowledge. The little discussion in this chapter tells
you roughly why.
Of course, this harm-based account of morality is not con-
clusive and needs to be developed. What if it were shown to be
inadequate? There are many other secular alternatives ranging
from contractualism to Kantianism and virtue theory. But sup-
pose that all of those secular moral theories were inadequate.
That would be a problem for atheism only if theists could give
a better answer. They cannot. As we will see in Chapters Five
 What’s Wrong? 77

through Seven, the alternative theistic theory of morality has

much more serious problems of its own. Besides, even if we
cannot say why it is immoral to cause unjustified harm to oth-
ers, that should not make us doubt that it is immoral for moral
agents to cause unjustified harm to others. Atheists can, thus,
legitimately hold on to objective morality, even if nobody has
a fully satisfying account of its ultimate basis.

FAMILY AND COUNTRY

Is my account complete? Not in this way: Many moral issues

have not been discussed. But the question here is, instead,
whether all immorality is harm-based. Even if some acts are
immoral because they cause unjustified harm, other acts also
seem immoral independently of harm. Jonathan Haidt has
argued forcefully that “liberal” harm-based morality includes
only part of what counts as morality according to many peo-
ple, especially non-Western cultures and “conservatives” in
the West.56 The three main areas that harm-based morality is
supposed to miss are hierarchy, loyalty, and purity.
Although Western moral codes tend to be individualistic,
hierarchical social relations are central to many moral codes,
even in the West. For example, parents have special obliga-
tions to children, and children have special duties to parents.
I already responded to this objection in part when I pointed
out that parents rather than neighbors are the cause of harm
to a child when that child suffers from neglect. On the other
side of life, if elderly parents suffer from neglect, because
nobody visits them or helps them, their children’s choices to
spend their time and money elsewhere rather than caring for
78 Morality Without God?

their parents can make those children the cause of harm to

their parents. Other people—both acquaintances and strang-
ers—also fail to visit or help those elderly parents, but these
other people are not the cause of the harm if they have no
special relation to those elderly people. Moreover, the parents
are harmed more when their own children do not visit or help
them in old age, if only because they would usually prefer to
see their own children rather than a stranger. The same points
apply, of course, to siblings and other family members in
need. Thus, it is not hard for harm-based accounts of moral-
ity to incorporate special obligations to families.
The same goes for obedience to authority. When a child
disobeys a parent, this disobedience creates family problems.
Even when the child’s disobedience causes no immediate
harm, it fuels future tendencies to disobey on later occasions
when disobedience will be harmful or at least risky. Every par-
ent knows these dangers. Similar dangers can arise from dis-
obedience to most laws.
In addition, loyalty to your family, company, or country can
help that group run smoothly and thereby avoid the harms
that result when that group fails to run smoothly. Eastern
moralities call this social harmony, but we can just as well call
it avoiding harm. Social cohesion and feelings of social attach-
ment are very important to many people, so losing them is
harmful. There is no reason why harm-based morality cannot
recognize and even emphasize social goods and harms like
these.
This way of viewing loyalty and social relations might still
strike some critics as missing something important. How-
ever, I am not suggesting that people should think only about
 What’s Wrong? 79

avoiding harm when they visit their elderly parents or join

patriotic celebrations. I also admit that disagreements remain
about what exactly is morally right or wrong in tricky situa-
tions. Nonetheless, the secular harm-based account is able to
explain why disloyalty and disrespect for legitimate authori-
ties is normally immoral.
Harm-based accounts can also explain the limits of these
areas of morality. Loyalty to an in-group goes too far when
it turns into social exclusion. Why? Because the people who
are excluded get harmed, often very badly, and also because
the in-group itself could benefit from those who are excluded.
Similarly, respect for authority goes too far when it leads to
blind obedience. Why? Because blind obedience harms rather
than helps the group to which one is loyal. When parents order
their children to engage in immoral acts or unwanted sex, it is
not immoral for these children to disobey. When employers
order their workers to engage in immoral acts, such as by skirt-
ing safety regulations, it is not immoral for these employees to
disobey. And when governments order their citizens to fight
unjust wars, it is also not immoral for these citizens to dis-
obey. Citizens might owe a certain degree of deference to the
judgment of governments, who often (though not always)
have better information. However, when citizens have strong
enough reasons to distrust the government and also strong
enough reasons to believe that obedience would be too harm-
ful, then disobedience might be true patriotism. We would
probably disagree about particular examples, but what matters
here is only the general point: The limits of loyalty and author-
ity are determined by harm, so this area of morality causes no
trouble for the secular harm-based view.
80 Morality Without God?

SEX

Real trouble seems to arise for a harm-based account if any

immorality is harmless. Then that account covers only part
of morality, not all of it.
Most proposed examples of harmless immorality concern
sex. The Bible and traditional religions condemn masturba-
tion as immoral. Some even say that masturbators are bound
for Hell. Why? Usually the reason is that masturbation is dirty
or unnatural. It is obviously not unnatural in the sense that it
violates laws of nature, like the law of gravity. If it violated
laws of nature, nobody could do it; but they do. Masturba-
tion might be unnatural in the sense that it is artificial, at least
in some cases. However, being artificial would not make it
immoral. There is nothing immoral about artificial flowers.
Instead, the best argument against masturbation claims that
our sex organs have a natural function or purpose, which is
to reproduce, and masturbation uses those sex organs apart
from or contrary to that natural function or purpose.
The situation is not so simple, however, because sex organs
have more than one function. The extensive nerve endings
in our sex organs are there for the purpose of giving plea-
sure. That is why we evolved to have so many nerve endings
in that location. Thus, masturbators use those organs—the
nerve endings—for the purpose that they evolved (or were
designed?) to serve. In this respect, masturbation is natural
even in the sense that refers to purpose or function.
Moreover, even if masturbation did not serve the natural
purpose of our bodily organs, it is not always immoral to use
our organs for new purposes. It was not immoral for Houdini
to untie knots with his toes during his magic tricks.
 What’s Wrong? 81

What about using bodily organs contrary to their natu-

ral purpose or function? It is dangerous to use your teeth to
open a bottle, because they were not made for that purpose.
Granted—I do not advise opening bottles with your teeth. But
why not? Because it risks breaking your teeth, which will hurt
a lot and make it harder to chew food. Again, we are back to
harm. In the old days, some moralists claimed that masturba-
tion was harmful, because it supposedly made masturbators
unable to resist temptation or to enjoy normal reproduc-
tive sex. Today, however, experts report that masturbation is
extremely common, and there is little, if any, reason to predict
that masturbation will cause harm. Even if it did, it would
probably cause harm only to masturbators themselves, so it
would be only irrational and not immoral. But imagine that
somehow masturbation caused harm to others, such as by
breaking up a marriage or by causing serious loss of self-con-
trol that left masturbators unable to resist cheating in harmful
ways. That still would not spell trouble for my harm-based
account of morality, because then what made masturbation
immoral would just be the harm that it caused to others.
Why am I talking about masturbation at all? It is not a
pressing moral issue in our culture. One point is to show how
arbitrary and weird moral prohibitions become if they are
based on what is “unnatural” rather than on what is harmful.
A more pressing issue in our culture is homosexuality.
Many theists object to homosexuality because it is unnatural.
But if that is supposed to be enough to make homosexual-
ity immoral, then they have to infer that masturbation is also
immoral on the same grounds. (Indeed, the same grounds
would also make it immoral to have heterosexual sex while
using birth control or after menopause.) I just argued that
82 Morality Without God?

those grounds don’t work in the case of masturbation. Thus,

merely being unnatural also cannot be enough by itself to
show that homosexuality is immoral.
Theists might respond in several ways. First, they might
say that homosexuality is dirty or impure or disgusting or
repugnant. However, homosexuals do not find it so, and nei-
ther do I. Homosexual sex can be an expression of true love.
True love is not disgusting. It is beautiful. Moreover, what is
disgusting or repugnant (to some) need not be immoral. Just
think about touching vomit, if you don’t mind. That’s disgust-
ing, but not immoral.
Many opponents of homosexuality argue, instead, that the
“homosexual lifestyle” is unhealthy. There might be some-
thing to this (although many of my friends might be shocked
to hear me say so), but only if we are talking about the wild
lifestyles that these critics have in mind. Many homosexuals
do engage in lifestyles that are far from ideal for them and for
others. Of course, heterosexuals do so, too. And many homo-
sexuals have long-lasting love-filled relationships. So do many
heterosexuals. It is not being homosexual or heterosexual that
makes a relationship moral or immoral. Instead, it is being
loving, stable, and healthy. Why? Because unloving, unstable,
and unhealthy relationships are harmful to the people in
them. Just ask those people themselves. Again, it all comes
back to harm as the basis for morality. When sex is a harmless
expression of true love, whether heterosexual or homosexual,
then what’s the problem?
What about harm to so-called traditional family values?
I value many aspects of traditional families (especially my
own!), and it would be immoral to undermine the ability of
people to form such families when and how they want. Still,
 What’s Wrong? 83

nobody has ever explained how stable loving homosexual

relationships take away anybody else’s ability to live the way
he or she wants with whatever family values he or she wants.
Public recognition of homosexual marriages is another mat-
ter, which I will not address, because it would take us too far
off topic. The point here is only that homosexual love and
its expression in homosexual sex need not cause harm of any
sort that would make it immoral.
Sometimes evangelicals retort, “What if everybody did
that?” Here, “If everybody were homosexual, nobody would
have children, and the human species would die out, so
nobody should be homosexual.” The form of this argument
is common but faulty. Just ask yourself: What if everyone
chose not to have children? Then the species really would die
out. Does that mean that it is immoral for anyone to choose
not to have children? Is it morally obligatory to have children?
Of course not. The problem arises only if everyone actu-
ally makes that choice, but they won’t. Similarly for homo-
sexuality: Even if there would be problems if everyone had
homosexual sex, that would not show anything wrong with
homosexuality, because only a minority want to have homo-
sexual sex. Instead of asking, “What if everyone did that?” we
should ask, “What if everyone were allowed to do that?” If
everyone were allowed to have homosexual sex, there would
be no problem. Besides, even if everyone were exclusively
homosexual, that would not destroy the species. Homosexu-
als can have children, if only the laws would let them. They
cannot have children with their life partners, but they can use
artificial insemination, and many do.
Of course, some theists still might respond by quoting the
Bible:
84 Morality Without God?
Do not lie with a man as one lies with a woman; that is detest-
able. (Leviticus 18:22)

If a man lies with a man as one lies with a woman, both of them
have done what is detestable. They must be put to death; their
blood will be on their own heads. (Leviticus 20:13)

Because of this, God gave them over to shameful lusts. Even

their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.
In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with
women and were inflamed with lust for one another. Men com-
mitted indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves
the due penalty for their perversion. (Romans 1:26–27)

I will argue in Chapters Five through Seven that such divine

commands, even if they are divine, are no basis for moral
judgments. But then such biblical passages pose no threat to
my secular harm-based account of morality.
It is not always so clear, however, whether a moral belief
depends on religious assumptions. Many religious thinkers
go out of their way to deny that their moral prohibitions on
harmless acts depend on religion. They often refer instead to
“natural law.” In some cases, that label is just a hidden way
of referring to a religious basis. If the reason we ought to
follow “natural law” is only that God laid down that law, or
if what makes something “unnatural” is only that it violates
God’s plan for nature, then the real basis of natural law is reli-
gious after all. That religious basis is not accepted by atheists,
agnostics, and followers of other religions, so they need not
worry about that kind of natural law. In contrast, if “natural
law” really refers to something natural as opposed to super-
natural, then naturalistic atheists and agnostics might be able
 What’s Wrong? 85

to accept it. I will not survey the many versions of natural

law theory here. All I need to say is that atheists can accept
natural law if it really is natural, but they can reject it as dubi-
ous if it turns out to be supernatural. Either way, natural
law theories cannot create any real trouble for atheism or
agnosticism.
Religion-based prohibitions cannot be used against my
secular harm-based theory because I am not trying to give an
account of everything that anyone thinks is immoral. That
would be pointless and impossible, because people disagree so
much. I am only trying to suggest an account of what makes
acts immoral when they really are immoral. If my account
does not imply that a certain act—such as homosexual sod-
omy—is immoral, that feature is no problem at all for my
theory unless that act really is immoral.
What about weirder kinds of “harmless immorality”?
Incest between consenting adult siblings (with no offspring or
regrets), necrophilia (with prior permission), and cannibalism
(without killing) might be examples in some very, very special
circumstances. Such acts seem immoral, and, although they
are almost always harmful or at least dangerous, we might
be able to imagine unusual circumstances where these acts
cause no harm to anyone. If they really are immoral even in
those odd cases where they are harmless, then my harm-based
account of morality is not complete.
There’s that pesky little word “if ” again. These acts do
strike me, like most people, as immoral. But maybe this is just
because these acts are disgusting and inadvisable, rather than
immoral. Or it might be because these acts always create risks
of harm, even when no actual harm occurs. I am not certain.
Are you? How can you be sure? After all, our moral intuitions
arose in normal situations to deal with common acts, not with
86 Morality Without God?

such strange cases, so it is not clear that our moral intuitions

are reliable in this peculiar arena.
Anyway, if my harm-based moral theory is incomplete, so
be it. It still reveals what makes almost all common immoral
acts immoral. It also shows that much of morality has noth-
ing essentially to do with God. Call that harm-based core of
morality “shared morality,” because it is shared with theists,
who agree that rape, murder, theft, child abuse and neglect,
and so on are morally wrong. There might be a few additional
moral prohibitions that are not harm-based, possibly includ-
ing prohibitions on all incest, necrophilia, and cannibalism,
and these might be justified without reference to either harm
or religion. Call this part “extra morality.” Yet another class
of moral beliefs cannot be justified without religious backing.
Call them “religious morality.”
My goal is not to provide an account of extra morality. Nor
do I need to deny all extra morality. After all, even if some
extra morality is based neither on harm nor on religion, that
cannot support the slogan that “If God is dead, everything is
permitted.” Even without accounting for extra morality, a
harm-based account of shared morality is enough to show
that at least some (indeed, many) acts are not permitted even
if God is dead.
My goal is also not to provide an account of religious
morality. I want to argue against religious morality. If a moral
prohibition depends on religious belief, so that it cannot be
justified apart from religious belief, then I and other atheists
would reject it. I would also oppose anyone enforcing it on
other people who do not share that religious belief, because
such prohibitions are so often abused and harmful. My secular
harm-based account of morality does not support religious
 What’s Wrong? 87

morality as accepted by other people, but so what? That is a

feature rather than a bug of my account.
Some theists might still have a sense that atheists and agnos-
tics are missing something important. A community needs to
share a common moral code in order to function properly and
for its members to feel connected to each other. Some theists
have a strong sense that a harm-based morality is just too thin
to support society. There is something to this: How would
you like it if your neighbors repeatedly and openly practiced
incest, necrophilia, or cannibalism, even if only when those
acts were truly harmless? This would make many people very
uncomfortable, and that matters to social cohesion and trust.
However, discomfort is a kind of harm, and social breakdown
and distrust cause still more harms, so harm-based morality
can accommodate these points. Besides, as far as I know, there
has thankfully not been any great rush to commit incest,
necrophilia, or cannibalism. Even people who deny that these
acts are immoral in extremely unusual circumstances do not
go out and do them. Murder, rape, theft, fraud, and domestic
abuse are much more common. The serious problems for our
societies lie in causing harm to others.
Of course, some opponents might claim that atheism is
the first step down the slippery slope to harmless immoral-
ity and the next step is to harmful immorality. One step leads
to the next inevitably, they fear. This claim about how beliefs
lead to actions is a prediction that is subject to empirical evi-
dence. You cannot decide this question by looking deep into
your own soul, since the question is about other people as
well as yourself, and all of us are partial on such issues. The
only reliable way to tell whether secular harm-based morality
really does lead to harmful actions, and whether it is enough
88 Morality Without God?

for communities to thrive, is to observe impartially the actual

behaviors and conditions of secular individuals and societies.
We discussed some evidence in Chapters Two and Three.
What matters in the present chapter is only that, if (another
big “if ” that I deny) a secular harm-based account of morality
really did lead people to cause harm to others, then it would
be immoral by its own lights, or at least spreading the word
about it would be presumptively immoral. It still might be
true. It still might capture the immorality of what really is
immoral. That is enough for this chapter.

OBJECTIONS

This completes my positive argument for a secular harm-

based account of morality. I have not, of course, come any-
where near to resolving all moral problems. Indeed, I have not
resolved any controversial moral problem. That was not my
aim. I actually doubt that we can resolve many difficult moral
issues, so we need to learn humility in the face of basic moral
questions. But I have not argued for that either. My only goal
has been to show how atheists and agnostics can provide an
initial rough outline of the beginning of an objective account
of the shared part of morality without invoking God.
Many questions remain, of course, and they lead to objec-
tions. I will try to answer the main objections in the remain-
ing chapters.
First, even if my secular theory works fine, is there a reli-
gious alternative? The most common religious account of
morality is a divine command theory. If that theory provides
a better foundation for morality, then my secular view is in
 What’s Wrong? 89

trouble. I will criticize that alternative so as to respond to this

objection in Chapter Five.
Second, even if my secular theory tells us what is immoral,
does it give us enough reason to be moral? Some theists charge
that secular moralists have no adequate answer to the peren-
nial question, “Why be moral?” If so, that would be a major
gap in the secular harm-based account. I will respond to this
objection in Chapter Six.
Third, how can we figure out what is morally wrong or right
in difficult cases? Religious moralists can look to revelation
and prayer. How can secular moralists make tough decisions?
Without an answer to this question, the secular harm-based
account might not be of much practical use. Chapter Seven
will respond to this objection.
Each of these objections captures one of the main ways
in which theists claim that morality depends on God or on
religious beliefs and traditions. In responding to these objec-
tions, I will, in effect, be completing my demonstration of
how morality works just fine without either God or religion.
This page intentionally left blank
 Chapter Five

WHAT’S SO DIVINE ABOUT

COMMANDS?

So Joshua defeated the whole land . . . ; he left none remaining,

but destroyed all that breathed, as the Lord God of Israel
commanded.
( Joshua 10:40)

T heists often assert that atheists can’t really believe in

objective morality. These theists are not talking about what
is psychologically possible. Their claim is that a certain com-
bination of views is incoherent and indefensible. They think
that objective moral values, facts, or truths could not exist if
God did not exist; so, if I really followed out the implications
of my views on God, then I would have to give up my views
on morality in Chapter Four and, instead, become a moral
nihilist or subjectivist.
In support of this charge, theists often cite our old foe, “If
God is dead, everything is permitted.” But why believe this?
92 Morality Without God?

Just because Nietzsche or Ivan Karamazov said it? Theists think

that Nietzsche and Ivan are wrong about almost everything
else, so why agree with them on this point? Theists might be
suggesting that since Nietzsche and Ivan are atheists, all other
atheists must agree with them. “Atheists think this, and you
are an atheist, so you must believe it, too.” That’s silly. Atheists
do not have to agree with everything that other atheists say.
Atheism does not have any creed or catechism that all atheists
must accept on pain of expulsion (from what?). Atheists agree
that God does not exist. Beyond that, atheists disagree about
all sorts of things, so you can’t legitimately hold all atheists
responsible for a mistake by some atheists.
Most atheists today, myself included, believe in evolu-
tion. Theists often claim that evolution undermines objective
morality because evolution implies that morality evolves, so
evolution excludes any universal, absolute, or objective moral-
ity. This argument misunderstands evolution. What evolves
are species and their traits. Humans evolved to have less hair
and also to be better at physics and mathematics than their
ancestors. That does not suggest in any way that the laws of
physics and mathematics evolved. Although we as a species
evolved so as to be able to discover and appreciate the laws of
physics and mathematics, the laws themselves were the same
in the day of the dinosaurs: 2 + 2 = 4 and E = MC2 were both
true when T Rex ruled.
Morality is like physics and mathematics in this respect
(though not in many other respects, of course). What evolves
are only moral beliefs and attitudes, not moral facts or truths.
When T Rex ruled, there were no free agents to rape or be
raped, but it was still true that free agents ought not to rape
other free agents. This moral principle can be true even at
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 93

times when it does not apply to anyone because nobody

could break it. After all, rape is wrong even for people who
are alone on inescapable islands or who are quadriplegics so
they could not rape anyone. The moral prohibition on father-
daughter rape does not have exceptions for fathers who have
no daughters and are now sterile, or even for women who
cannot be fathers. Rape can’t be wrong for some people but
not for other people. The fact that a moral prohibition cannot
be broken, so it does not apply to a particular case, does not
make it false in that case. Hence, it is not all that odd to say
that moral prohibitions held even before there were humans
who could violate them.
At later times, many of our human ancestors did not
believe that slavery and marital rape were immoral, but it
was true that slavery and marital rape were morally wrong,
even in those dark days of the past. The reason should be
obvious by now: Slavery and rape caused harm to victims
who were people, so they were protected by the same moral
rules as everyone else. These victims had moral rights even if
most people at the time did not recognize their rights.
In other cases, which acts cause harm and, hence, which
acts are morally wrong do change, simply because the cir-
cumstances change. In modern Western societies, it is harm-
ful to fail to teach your children to read and write, but this was
not harmful in the Middle Ages, when most people did not
need to read or write. Nonetheless, these cases are different
from slavery and rape, because slavery and rape were harm-
ful even during times when they were not seen as immoral.
Hence, the fact that circumstances change—so some acts that
did not cause harm in the past do cause harm now—does
not at all undermine my point that other acts that did cause
94 Morality Without God?

harm without any adequate reason were immoral. They were

immoral even at times when people failed to recognize their
immorality.
Thus, the basic moral law against causing harm without
an adequate reason does not change any more than the basic
laws of mathematics and physics. This constancy follows from
the objectivity of morality on the secular harm-based account
and is completely compatible with the evolution of human
moral beliefs and attitudes. Evolution properly understood,
then, is no problem for atheists and agnostics who believe in
objective morality.
The only remaining reason for thinking that atheism
implies nihilism is that morality depends on commands by
God. Many theists accept such a divine command theory of
morality. If it is true, then atheists who do not believe in God
also should not believe in morality or, at least, in objective
morality. This view deserves a chapter of its own, because it is
central to the outlook of so many respectable theists, includ-
ing most evangelical Christians, and because it presents the
main religious alternative to my secular harm-based morality.
In this chapter, I will try to show why this position falls apart.

WHAT IS THE DIVINE COMMAND THEORY?

A divine command theory of morality claims that what makes

immoral acts immoral is that God commanded us not to do
them. Some versions refer, instead, to God’s will instead of
explicit commands, but that variation will not matter here.
Besides, if God’s will is never revealed to us in a command,
then it is hard to see how it could be fair to hold us responsible
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 95

for acting contrary to His will. Hence, I will focus on theories

that base morality on God’s commands, not just His will.
It is crucial to distinguish this divine command theory from
the claim that God wants us not to harm each other, so He
commands us not to harm others, unless, of course, we have
an adequate reason. That “God cares” view would be compat-
ible with a harm-based account of what makes acts immoral.
The divine command theory is also distinct from the view
that we come to know what is morally wrong or right by see-
ing what God commands, because He knows best which acts
cause harm to others without an adequate reason. That “God
knows” view is also compatible with my position that harm is
what makes those acts immoral.
In contrast with these other religious accounts, the divine
command theory claims that God’s commands constitute
moral wrongness as well as moral duties, obligations, and
rights. Constitution is a very strong relation that reveals not
just which acts are morally wrong but what makes them mor-
ally wrong. We might, for example, tell whether a liquid is
water by how it looks and tastes, but what makes it water
is its chemical composition—H2O. Analogously, according to
the divine command theory, God’s command not just a way
of discovering what is morally wrong. It is the very essence of
moral wrongness.
This relation of constitution implies universal generaliza-
tions in both directions. All water is H2O, and all H2O is water.
Similarly, if God commands us to do something, then it is our
moral duty to do it, whatever it is. If God commands us not
to do something, then it is our moral duty not to do that,
whatever it is. And if God does not command us either to do
it or not to do it, then it is morally neutral in the sense that we
96 Morality Without God?

do not have a moral duty either to do it or not to do it, again

whatever it is. In short, divine commands are both sufficient
and necessary for moral duties.
This strong divine command theory of morality is com-
mon among evangelical Christians. It is also useful for our
conversation here, because it provides a clear foil to my secu-
lar harm-based account. Consider rape, again. According to
the harm-based account, what makes rape morally wrong is
roughly the harm it causes. According to the divine command
account, what makes rape wrong is that God commanded us
not to rape. The contrast could hardly be more stark. More-
over, if the divine command theory were true, it would follow
that, “If God is dead, everything is permitted.” If there is no
God to command us, and if all moral wrongness were con-
stituted by God’s commands, then no acts would be morally
wrong.
This conclusion follows because the standard divine com-
mand theory is about all moral duties, rights, and wrong-
ness. Every moral duty is supposed to be constituted by a
divine command. A partial divine command theory could,
in contrast, claim that only some moral duties are based on
divine commands.57 Rape and murder, for example, might be
immoral because of the harm they cause, whereas failure to
pray or keep the Sabbath holy might be immoral because of
God’s commands. This partial divine command theory might
be easier to defend, but it is not relevant here. Without univer-
sality, the divine command theory would not imply “If God is
dead, everything is permitted.” If even part of morality is not
based on divine commands, then that part of morality keeps
some acts from being permitted even if God is dead. Hence,
this partial divine command theory would not conflict with
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 97

the harm-based theory of at least part of morality. That is

why I will focus here on the divine command theory as a the-
ory of all of morality.

WHY BELIEVE IT ?

Although many evangelical Christians and other theists advo-

cate a divine command theory, it is hard to find any reason to
espouse it. It is not entailed by any biblical passage. It is hard
to imagine that God revealed it in a prayer or a religious expe-
rience. So, why should anyone accept it?
The best argument—because it is the only argument—
is that “Moral laws presume a moral lawgiver.”58 This quip
might seem to spell trouble for a secular account of morality.
Even if a harm-based account shows that it is morally bad to
hit others, it still might fail to capture moral law, duty, obliga-
tion, and wrongness. For real obligations, duties, and wrong-
ness, these theists argue, someone must have the authority to
issue laws and then to hold people responsible. That’s where
God comes in. Only God has the authority to issue moral laws
and to hold people morally responsible, so God is required
for any moral law to exist. And if God is necessary for moral
laws, then He is also necessary for moral duties, obligations,
and wrongness. So they say.
It is not clear why an authority is supposed to be neces-
sary for moral wrongness. After all, there is something logi-
cally wrong about contradicting yourself. There is something
epistemically wrong about believing in life on Mars for no
reason at all. And there is something rationally wrong about
causing oneself severe pain for no reason (recall Chapter
98 Morality Without God?

Four). No specific person or God issued these laws of logic,

epistemology, or rationality. Thus, there do seem to be sev-
eral kinds of wrongness that do not depend on any specific
lawgiver. If we get moral wrongness out of the harm-based
account without God, why isn’t this enough?
Those kinds of wrongness involve violations of general
rules, which could be called laws, such as laws of logic, of
epistemology, and of rationality. There are also natural laws
without a lawgiver. What makes them laws is that they hold
in counterfactual situations: The law of gravity would hold
even if the particles of the universe were arranged in very dif-
ferent patterns. These laws of nature are not normative, but
the basic laws of logic, epistemology, and rationality, which
are normative, also hold in counterfactual situations: Hasty
generalization would be a fallacy even if it were committed
on another planet. This is the basis for calling them laws. But
then there do seem to be laws without any lawgiver in a vari-
ety of cases.
Still, let’s assume for the sake of argument that moral laws,
duties, and wrongness do require something with the author-
ity to hold people responsible. God cannot play that role for
atheists, so what can? Why not other humans? We each have
the authority to hold people responsible for violating moral
duties. If my neighbor steals jewelry from his grandmother,
then surely I have the authority to criticize him and his action
(even if he is let off on a legal technicality). You do, too. You
and I do not have the authority to put him in jail or to send
him to eternal torment, but all that shows is that moral sanc-
tions take other forms. Morality is enforced verbally by pub-
lic condemnation or socially by ostracizing violators. If you
think those sanctions are too little, just imagine how you
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 99

would react if someone publicly denounced you as a thief

(or even just a liar) and then refused to have anything to do
with you. That could be a death sentence in hunter-gatherer
times, and it is very disagreeable even today. Moreover, we
all have the authority to vote for representatives who enforce
moral norms through formal institutions, such as by legal
punishments. Much criminal law and some tort law enforces
morality. We collectively have the authority to impose such
sanctions. Thus, there are plenty of authorities—you and me
and other humans—to enforce moral obligations, if any such
authority is needed.
Dictators might seem to create problems for this account,
if dictators cannot be punished legally, criticized openly, or
ostracized. It might be useful to make sure that dictators
believe in God, so that they will believe that someone above
them will hold them responsible if they violate morality. How-
ever, this objection confuses actual punishment with liability
to punishment. People who act immorally often do not in fact
get punished. That’s a fact of life. Nonetheless, they are liable
to punishment. If another human were to criticize or punish
them, then they would have no legitimate complaint. That
was the point above. Such liability to punishment is enough
to ground moral wrongness and moral duties, even without
actual punishment.
Some readers will not be satisfied. They want a guarantee
that everyone who acts immorally will be punished. You can-
not get that guarantee without God. But the demand for that
guarantee is unreasonable. There are few guarantees in this
world, and we all have to learn to live without them. If you
postulate a supernatural power to guarantee whatever you
hope will happen, then you will end up believing all kinds
100 Morality Without God?

of nonsense. The fact that such postulation leads to absur-

dity when it is generalized shows that we should not always
require such a guarantee. It might seem reasonable to you in
the case of a Christian God, but this cannot be used as an
argument against atheism.
Another source of dissatisfaction might be the need for a
lawgiver in addition to a law enforcer. Even if other people
have enough authority to hold people responsible, they do not
make the rules in morality. If they did, morality would not be
objective in the strong sense (defined in Chapter Four).
Now the question is why we should assume that moral
wrongness requires any specific person who is the lawgiver. You
can refer to “the moral law,” but that is misleading. Moral wrong-
ness is what really needs to be explained, and there is no more
need for a lawgiver in order to explain moral wrongness than
there is to explain the wrong answer on a math test, the wrong
conclusion to an argument, the wrong belief about life on Mars,
the wrong investment in the stock market, or the wrong move
in chess. As we saw above, lots of rules can be called laws with-
out a lawgiver. Hence, atheists can admit that there are moral
laws, but only in a sense that does not require a lawgiver.
The problem here is that “moral law” is only a metaphor.
Moral rules are like government laws in some ways. They
are normative generalizations that restrict actions by people
on the basis of their relations to other people. However, that
does not mean that moral “laws” must share every feature
with government laws. Government laws do require a law-
giver (normally, though not in the case of customary laws).
Secular moral theorists can coherently claim that the meta-
phor breaks down at just this point: Moral laws do not require
a lawgiver in the way that government laws do.
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 101

Besides, the notion of God as a moral lawgiver has its own

problems. It is not only that God does not exist, or that God
does not issue commands, or that, even if He did, we could
not know what He commanded (see Chapter Seven). Even if
God did exist and did issue known commands, why would you
and I be morally required to obey them? One common answer
is that God will punish us if we disobey Him. That would
give us a strong self-interested reason to obey, but that reason
would hardly be a moral duty. I might have a self-interested
reason to obey the commands of a tyrant who will punish me
if I disobey, but I still do not have any moral duty to obey that
tyrant. Another common answer is that we owe God grati-
tude for creating us. However, although children should also
be grateful to their parents for creating them, children do not
have a moral obligation to do everything that their parents tell
them to do. Yet another common answer is that God the father
knows best, so, if God tells us that an act is morally wrong,
it is. But how do we know that God is always correct? Unless
we have some independent reason to believe that certain acts
are morally wrong, we have no reason to believe that God is
correct when He indicates to us through His commands that
those acts are morally wrong. This answer, then, also cannot
tell us why we morally must obey God’s commands. Without
any reason to accept that assumption, we have no reason to
accept the divine command theory.

WHAT’S WRONG WITH DIVINE COMMANDS?

Even if a theory is not justified, it still might be true. This

general point holds as well for the divine command theory.
102 Morality Without God?

Despite the lack of any good argument to support it, many

people still seem to believe that morality is constituted by
divine commands.
But think about it. The divine command theory says that
what makes rape immoral is nothing more nor less than a
divine command not to rape. That means that if God had
not commanded us not to rape, then there would be noth-
ing immoral about rape. Absurd! The victim would still have
been harmed just as much, and there would still be no ade-
quate reason to justify that harm. Hence, rape would still be
immoral.
Let’s go further. The divine command theory claims that
it is immoral to disobey God’s commands. Then, if God had
commanded us positively to rape, then that command would
have created a moral requirement for us to rape. More absurd!
If God threatened to torture everyone eternally if I did not
rape someone, this horrible consequence of refusing might
perhaps create a moral obligation for me to rape; but then the
basis of the moral obligation would be to prevent the harm to
the others, not to obey the tyrannical command for its own
sake. No command by any third party could by itself create a
moral obligation to rape.
The problem, to mimic the theistic slogan, is that “If God’s
commands constitute morality, then everything is permit-
ted.” Since the source of the command rather than its content is
what creates moral obligations on this view, moral obligations
could have any content whatsoever, no matter how absurd or
arbitrary.
This problem is not new, and several old responses are
well known, but no response is adequate. Defenders of the
divine command theory often reply that God never would or
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 103

could command us to rape. But how do they know this? After

all, God commanded Abraham to kill his son, Isaac (Genesis
22:2). (Abraham did not kill Isaac in the end, but he did com-
mit attempted murder, and he also had a moral obligation
to kill Isaac during the time before God rescinded His com-
mand, according to the divine command theory.) God also
commanded the Israelites to destroy “all that breathed” in an
entire country ( Joshua 10:40; compare 11:20), and this time
the command was reportedly carried out. So, how can we be
sure that commanding rape is beyond the pale for God?
The common retort is that God is all-good, and rape is bad,
so God would or could never command rape. But murder is
also bad, so what about God’s commands to Abraham and
Joshua? Besides, this argument assumes that rape is bad on
independent grounds. We need those independent grounds in
order to know that God would not command it. But this just
admits that not all moral standards depend on divine com-
mands after all.
Admittedly, this standard says only that rape is bad, not
that it is wrong. Hence, theists could try to escape by saying
that God commands us not to rape, because rape is bad on
independent grounds. These grounds might even be harm-
based. Still, they insist, rape does not become morally wrong
until God commands it.
Wrongness is, admittedly, distinct from badness. Nonethe-
less, this response falls flat. Because rape is so bad in a moral
way, it would be bad for God to command us to rape. It would
also be bad for Him not to command us not to rape. The
badness of rape, thus, puts moral constraints on God’s com-
mands. But then it seems that we would not have any moral
duty to obey such bad commands, even if God issued those
104 Morality Without God?

bad commands. It also seems that we would have a moral duty

to do what He should have commanded even if He did not
actually command it. Our moral duties, then, do not really
depend on what God does command. They depend on what
He should command, and that in turn depends on which acts
are bad enough. So our moral duties, as well as moral obliga-
tions and wrongness, end up depending on harm rather than
on divine commands after all.
These objections might seem too tricky because they ask
about the moral implications if God were to do something
that God could not do by His very nature. It’s like asking
what my pet cat would look like if she were a fish. Similarly,
defenders of the divine command theory often claim that it
makes no sense to ask whether rape would be wrong if God
commanded us to rape or failed to command us not to rape,
because it is not possible for God to do such things.
There are technical ways to handle counterfactuals with
necessarily false antecedents, but this topic is way too difficult
to go into here.59 Still, we can think about the opposing coun-
terfactuals: If God commanded us to rape, then rape would
still be morally wrong. And if God did not command us not
to rape, then rape would still be morally wrong. That’s what
secular moralists want to say, and it sure seems plausible to
most people, regardless of any technical details about coun-
terfactuals with impossible antecedents.
The point can also be brought out by considering other
religions. Imagine a religion that postulates a god (named
Bacchus Goldstein) who, by its very nature, commands every-
one to drink wine every day but never to eat pork. Can we rea-
sonably ask what our moral obligations would be if there were
no god who issued those commands? Sure. Can we reasonably
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 105

ask what our moral obligations would be if that god did exist
but did not issue those commands? Yes, again. We would be
asking about a situation where there is a god close enough to
be identified as the same god but whose nature differs enough
that he did not care about wine or pork. My cat is essentially
feline, but it still makes sense to say that, if my cat were a
fish, she would have gills and fins instead of lungs and legs.
Similarly, we can say that, if Bacchus Goldstein did exist but
did not care about wine or pork, and if all morality depends
on commands of Bacchus Goldstein, then we would not have
any moral obligations regarding wine or pork.
Of course, rape is not like wine or pork, because rape is
immoral. That’s the point. If the immorality of rape depended
on God’s commands, then it would be just like wine and pork
in my example. The postulation of a God whose nature is
to issue commands about wine and pork cannot make those
commands any less arbitrary. Similarly, to postulate a God
whose nature is to forbid rape cannot make that command
any less arbitrary, unless there is an independent standard by
which rape is immoral. So there must be such an independent
moral standard.
The same point applies when Christians define God to be
all-good, unlike Bacchus Goldstein. If all we knew was that
God is all-good, but we did not know that rape is bad, then we
would not know whether or not God could command rape. In
order to get from the premise that God is all-good to the con-
clusion that God could never command us to rape, we need
to assume that rape is bad and wrong. That suppressed prem-
ise requires an independent standard that makes rape bad and
wrong. Divine command theorists cannot assume such a stan-
dard, because the whole point of divine command theory is
106 Morality Without God?

to deny any such independent standard of moral wrongness.

Hence, they cannot appeal to the wrongness of rape in order
to show that God could never command rape. And if God
could command rape, then the divine command theory yields
implausible results. Either way, it is in trouble.
This dilemma is, of course, related to the problem sug-
gested long ago by Socrates in Plato’s dialogue, Euthyphro.
That dialogue is about piety, but its basic point can be
extended to show that divine command theories fall into a
dilemma: Assume that God commanded me not to rape. Did
God have any reason to command this? If not, then His com-
mand was arbitrary, and an arbitrary command can’t make
anything morally wrong. On the other hand, if God did
have a reason to command us not to rape, then that reason
is what makes rape morally wrong, and the command itself
is superfluous. Hence, divine commands are either arbitrary
or superfluous. Either way, morality cannot depend on God’s
commands.
Many theists try to fend off this standard objection by
claiming that God could not command rape because his com-
mands flow necessarily from his nature. That dogma does not
solve the problem, however, both because commands that
flow from a god’s nature can still be arbitrary (as in the case
of Bacchus Goldstein) and because, even if the Christian God
is all-good by His very nature, we cannot know that He would
not command rape unless we assume that rape is immoral for
some independent reason. But if there is such an independent
reason against rape, then that reason is what makes rape mor-
ally wrong, and the command itself is superfluous. So we are
back in Euthyphro’s dilemma. The divine command theory
has no way out of this dilemma.
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 107

BUT THAT’S NOT ALL

The preceding dilemma might strike some readers as just a

little too tricky (or confusing), so it is worth adding that the
model of morality proposed by the divine command theory is
implausible in more commonsense ways as well. I will quickly
mention two more problems.
First, the divine command theory suggests that moral
wrongness comes from a person who created you, is more
intelligent than you, has power over you, issues commands,
and punishes noncompliance. That makes morality a lot like
family rules. The analogous position on family rules is that
what makes it wrong for children to break family rules is sim-
ply that their parents issued those commands. The problem
with this account should be obvious. Consider a small boy
who thinks that what makes it morally wrong for him to hit
his little sister is only that his parents told him not to hit her
and they will punish him if he hits her. As a result, this little
boy thinks that if his parents die, then there is nothing wrong
with hitting his little sister. Maybe some little boys think this
way, but surely we adults do not think that morality is like
this. To see morality this way is, in a word, childish.
Indeed, to call the divine command theory childish is insult-
ing to children. Older children know better. Larry Nucci60
found that almost all Amish teenagers said that if God had
not commanded them not to work on Sunday, then it would
not be wrong to work on Sunday. In his terms, they saw this
wrongness as conventional and dependent on authority. When
asked why it is wrong to hit other people, many of these
Amish teenagers replied that hitting is wrong because God
commanded them not to be aggressive or violent. Luckily,
108 Morality Without God?

Nucci did not stop there. He went on to ask these same Amish
teenagers whether it would still be morally wrong to hit other
people, if God had made no rule against hitting other people.
More than 80 percent of these Amish teenagers replied that
hitting would still be immoral. In Nucci’s terms, they treated
the wrongness of hitting as moral rather than conventional
(or authority dependent) even though they had talked about
it as if it were conventional. Their responses, thus, show that
even teenagers who were brought up in a strict religious way
and who espouse the divine command theory still recog-
nize that morality has a sound foundation outside of God’s
commands.
Second, the divine command theory also makes moral-
ity hard-hearted. Divine commands by their nature allow no
exceptions for the sake of human welfare. If God commands
us to kill nonbelievers, then, according to the divine command
theory, it becomes morally wrong not to kill non-believers
regardless of how much suffering obedience will cause to
innocent people. God is supposed to have taken account of
that suffering before He issued His command, so, if there
were justified exceptions, God would have said so. Indeed,
God often rules out exceptions explicitly:

If your brother, the son of your mother, or your son, or your

daughter, or the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is
as your own soul, entices you secretly, saying, “Let us go and
serve other gods,” . . . you shall not yield to him or listen to him,
nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him, nor shall
you conceal him; but you shall kill him. (Deuteronomy 13:6–9;
see also Exodus 22:20, 2 Chronicles 15:13—So much for family
values!)
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 109
. . . when the Lord your God has delivered them over to you and
you have defeated them, then you must destroy them totally.
Make no treaty with them, and show them no mercy. (Deuteron-
omy 7:2: see also 20:10–16 and Joshua 10:40 and 11:20—So much
for the Geneva Conventions and just war theory!)

The lack of concern for human welfare is blatant.

Of course, modern Christians ignore these commands:
They make treaties and do not kill unbelievers. We are grate-
ful. Nonetheless, this defect of divine command theories con-
tinues to the present day. Consider contemporary religious
opposition to research using embryonic stem cells. Almost
nobody opposes embryonic stem cell research except on the
basis of religious views. Those who do oppose embryonic
stem cell research claim that it is morally wrong no matter
how much good it would do. Even if embryonic stem cell
research is needed to cure juvenile diabetes, to enable para-
plegics and quadriplegics to walk again, and so on, as many
doctors claim, it would still be morally wrong if what makes
it wrong is simply that God commanded us not to do it. This
view of morality has separated morality from human suffer-
ing by basing morality on commands coming from another
world. Such a view is callous.
Many good Christians would reply that God commands us
not to harm others and to help others in need. Those com-
mands are not hard-hearted. Maybe not, but suppose that par-
ents command their son to be nice to his little sister. Their son
is then nice to his sister, but only because his parents ordered
him to be nice to her. If they had not commanded him to be
nice to his sister, then he would not be nice to her. This boy
might not seem hard-hearted, but his motivations are far from
110 Morality Without God?

ideal. Analogously, anyone who helps and refrains from harm-

ing others just because God commanded her to do so might
not be hard-hearted, but her motivations are far from ideal.
It would be better for them to help and refrain from harming
other people out of concern for those other people.
That is what we ought to teach our children. Studies of
development and education show that children develop better
moral attitudes as adults if they are raised to empathize rather
than to obey commands without any reasons other than to
avoid punishment.61 To raise children to obey God’s com-
mands just because God commanded them will undermine
true caring and true morality.
Many Christians do, of course, help others because they
care about those others. They are good people. Still, if that is
their only motivation, then they are not really following the
divine command theory. They are, instead, following a harm-
based morality. Like the Amish teenagers, they do not let
their religion undo their common sense here. That is wonder-
ful, but it cannot save the divine command theory from the
charge of being hard-hearted.
Of course, motivations might be mixed. Some Christians
help the needy and avoid harming other people both because
they care about those people and also because of God’s com-
mands. That’s also fine, at least if their concern for those oth-
ers is sufficient to motivate them to avoid and prevent harm
even without God’s command. But then, again, the divine
command theory is not really necessary after all, so this case
again cannot save the divine command theory from the charge
of being hard-hearted.
The crucial cases are Christians who act morally solely
because they take God to have commanded them to do so
 What’s So Divine about Commands? 111

and, especially, those who would obey what they take to be

God’s commands even if they think that their acts will cause
serious harm to innocent people without any compensating
benefit to anyone. Those are the people who really follow the
divine command theory, and they are hard-hearted, because
concern for other humans plays no essential role in their
actions. I doubt that many Christians really are like this, but
that is because most real Christians, like the Amish teenagers,
have more common sense than is built into the divine com-
mand theory.

This discussion is incomplete. All I have tried to do is present

the basic ideas behind the divine command theory and some
of its main problems. To complete our comparison of the sec-
ular harm-based theory with the divine command theory, we
need to ask at least two additional questions. First, is there an
adequate reason to be moral on either theory? Second, how
can we know what is right or wrong according to either the-
ory? These questions will occupy us in the next two chapters.
This page intentionally left blank
 Chapter Six

WHY BE MORAL?

But the cowardly, the unbelieving, the vile, the murderers, the sex-
ually immoral, those who practice magic arts, the idolaters and all
liars—their place will be in the fiery lake of burning sulfur.
(Revelation 21:8)

Ouch! Burning sulfur! That sounds horrible, and it lasts for-

ever, reportedly. All who are faced with a threat like that have
very strong reasons to be moral—or, at least, to do as they
are told. What reason to be moral could a secular morality
possibly propose that could be as strong as a threat of eternal
torment? And if a moral theory cannot provide an adequate
reason to be moral, isn’t that a serious deficiency?

SECULAR REASONS

Even without Hell, secular moralists can still give a variety

of reasons to be moral. First, despite popular rumors, it is
114 Morality Without God?

normally in our interest to be moral. Immorality rarely pays.

Sure, some people get away with horrible misbehavior, but the
odds are against them. When people cheat, steal, or kill, they
take big chances. And even if they get away with it, they usu-
ally won’t be happier, or much happier, than if they had made
more modest gains honestly. They will often be hounded by
guilt or fear of rivals or of punishment. The life of a crook
is not really as sweet as it might seem or as cool as it is por-
trayed in some popular fiction. Thus, even if our only reasons
were based on self-interest, we would still almost always have
strong reasons to be moral.
But not always. Harming others is sometimes in some peo-
ple’s best interest, even considering probable costs. In those
cases, some theists say that only a divine threat of Hell pro-
vides a reason to be moral. Since atheists and agnostics do
not believe in God, they do not believe in divine retribution
for sins, so they have to admit that sometimes some people
could get away with immorality and then they have no self-
interested reason to be moral. Does that mean that these
people have no reason at all to be moral? No. That conclusion
would follow only if every reason had to be self-interested,
selfish, or egoistic. There is no basis for that assumption.
Many reasons are not based on self-interest. That should be
common ground between theists and atheists. Despite what
theists often assert or assume, there is no connection whatso-
ever between atheism and egoism. Atheists can recognize and
act on nonegoistic reasons as much as anybody else can.
To understand how nonegoistic reasons work, we need to
ask what a reason is. This abstract question is rarely asked, but
its answer is simple: A reason is a fact with rational force. Its
force can turn an otherwise irrational act into a rational act.62
 Why Be Moral? 115

For example, imagine that I pay someone to cut into my

abdomen with a sharp knife, knowing that this will cause me
intense pain. Also imagine, if you can, that I have no reason
to do this. Maybe I have a desire to be scarred or to feel pain,
but fulfilling that desire gains no benefit for me or for anyone
else. This act seems irrational. Anyone who does this needs
psychiatric help. I assume that you agree. If not, substitute
your own example of an irrational act.
A fact that turns this act from irrational to rational is then a
reason. What kind of fact does that? Suppose that I pay a doc-
tor to cut into my abdomen with a sharp scalpel in order to
remove my kidney because it is diseased and will kill me if it
is not removed. In this new situation, it is no longer irrational
but is, instead, rational for me to pay this doctor to cut into my
abdomen, even knowing that this will cause me intense pain.
The fact that paying this doctor to cut into me is necessary to
save my life turns an otherwise irrational act into a rational act.
Thus, the fact that this act prevents my own death is a reason
(and, indeed, an adequate reason) for me to do this act.
This reason is self-interested. What about other people?
The same account of reasons applies again. Just imagine that
I am paying the doctor to remove my kidney so that it can be
transplanted into my spouse, who will die without my kid-
ney. Again, it is no longer irrational but is, instead, rational for
me to pay the doctor to cut into my abdomen, knowing that
this will cause me intense pain (even with anesthesia). The
fact that paying this doctor to cut into me is necessary to save
my spouse’s life again turns an otherwise irrational act into a
rational act. Hence, the fact that this act prevents this other
person’s death is a reason (and, again, an adequate reason) for
me to do it.
116 Morality Without God?

Nothing essential changes if the transplant recipient is a

stranger. Suppose I hear about someone who will die without
a kidney, so I decide to pay a doctor to remove my kidney
and transplant it into the stranger, who consents. Maybe not
many people would do this, but those who contribute organs
are not being irrational, so the fact that this act saves a strang-
er’s life is a reason (and an adequate reason) to do it.
One more variation: Instead of being the donor, imagine
that I am the one who needs a kidney transplant. If a suitable
kidney is available from a corpse of someone who consented
before dying, then it would be irrational for me to decline to
pay the doctor to cut my abdomen and transplant that kidney,
assuming that I had no reason not to use this kidney (such as
that it might be defective or someone else needs it). In con-
trast, imagine that I can take a kidney from a live patient in
a neighboring hospital room with no risk to myself, but that
patient did not consent to donate a kidney. Now it is no lon-
ger irrational for me to refuse to take that kidney. If taking
the kidney would harm someone else without consent, then
I would not be crazy to refrain from taking it. If I do refrain,
then I will not be refraining for no reason at all. The harm to
that person is, thus, a reason for me not to take that kidney,
even if taking it posed no risk to me personally. And, again,
this reason is adequate to make what I do rational.
Cases like these show why and how harms to others pro-
vide reasons for me. The fact that an act prevents harm to
another person can be a reason for me to do that act. The
fact that an act causes harm to another person can be a rea-
son for me not to do that act. These facts are reasons, even
if the other people are strangers. Crucially, these reasons are
 Why Be Moral? 117

not self-interested. They are facts about the interests of other

people, not me.
These unselfish reasons can answer the question, “Why
be moral?” On my harm-based account, what makes an act
immoral is that it causes harm or fails to prevent harm to oth-
ers. The question “Why be moral?” then asks what reason
I have to avoid harming others or to prevent harm to others.
My answer should be obvious by now: The fact that an act
causes harm to others is a reason not to do that act, and the
fact that an act prevents harm to others is a reason to do that
act. There is, then, always a reason to be moral on this secular
account. And often these reasons are adequate, because they
are strong enough to make it rational (or not irrational) to be
moral.
To return to our paradigm of immorality, what reason do
I have not to rape? My main reason is not that my act will hurt
me. It is that rape hurts the victim—the person who is raped.
That reason is enough to show that it is not irrational for me
to refrain from rape, even if I wanted to rape, and even if rape
were in my own self-interest. Because it harms the victim,
I would not be crazy to refrain from doing it. If I choose not
to do it because it would harm the victim, then I will not be
choosing for no reason at all. In this way, avoiding or prevent-
ing harm to others is a reason for me.
Of course, some rapists might not care about harming oth-
ers. They are rapists, after all. However, all that shows is that
they lack motivation to be moral. Motives are crucially differ-
ent from reasons. Even if rapists lack motivation not to harm
their victims, there is still a reason for them not to harm their
victims, because it would not be irrational or crazy for them
118 Morality Without God?

to refrain from harming those other people simply in order

to avoid harming other people. A harm-based account thus
shows that there is a reason for them to be moral, even if it
takes something else—such as good character or training—to
motivate them to be moral.
Although reasons are distinct from motives, they often
go together. The secular harm-based reason to be moral can
motivate people to be moral as long as they care about
other people. Almost all atheists and agnostics do care
about other people, just as theists do. Theists sometimes
talk about atheists as if they are all selfish egotists, but
that is inaccurate (as we saw in Chapters Two and Three).
Without that faulty assumption, there is no basis for claim-
ing either that atheists and agnostics have no reason to be
moral or that they are not motivated to be moral.
Nonetheless, some people still wish for a reason that is
strong enough to motivate everyone to be moral and also to
make it always irrational to be immoral. I doubt that secular
moral theories can establish that strong kind of reason to be
moral. For people who really do not care about others, the
solution is found in retraining or restraining rather than in
theory.
Is this limitation a problem for secular accounts of moral-
ity? I doubt that, too. If we demand this extreme kind of rea-
son to be moral, then we are bound to be disappointed. The
solution to our disappointment is to give up this demand, not
to imagine a higher power that we want to fulfill an illegiti-
mate demand. Besides, this limit on secular theories would
be a problem only if the alternative religious account could
provide a better reason to be moral. It can’t. That is what I will
show in the next section.
 Why Be Moral? 119

RELIGIOUS REASONS

What reason can religious moralists give to be moral? Hell,

they’ve got lots of reasons. Eternal bliss for being moral, and
eternal damnation for not being moral. In some religions,
such as in Judaism, there is no Hell of this kind. Many Chris-
tians also do not believe in Hell. But, if there are Heaven and
Hell, what more could you want?
We could want the right kind of reason. Imagine that the King
of Curls threatens to kill all of his subjects who do not shave their
heads on May 21, though there is nothing special about that date.
Now all of his subjects have a reason to shave their heads, right?
Yes, they have a reason of one kind. However, the command to
shave their heads on that date is just as arbitrary as it was before.
There is no reason to pick that date instead of another or to pick
shaved heads instead of mohawks or shaved legs. When the rea-
son to do something is based on force or threat, it need not bear
any connection to the content of the command.
This point extends easily to reasons to be moral. Imagine a
mother trying to teach her son not to hit his sister. The mother
might try to convince her son that harm to his sister by itself is a
reason for him not to hit her. Or the mother might just threaten
to lock her son in the basement for a week (or a lifetime?) if he
hits his sister. This threat will, indeed, give him a reason not
to hit his sister. However, it will not give him the right kind of
reason. It will not teach him to care about his sister.
Divine threats of Hell or promises of Heaven operate in
the same way. If our only reason to be moral is to avoid Hell
or get to Heaven, then our motivation is far from ideal. Even
a total psychopath, who cares about nobody else, but who
believes in Hell, would have this reason to be moral, but this
120 Morality Without God?

reason would not give the psychopath any reason for the con-
tent of the moral restrictions themselves. The psychopath
would still see moral restrictions as just as arbitrary as a law
requiring him to shave his head on May 21.
Different audiences react to this point in different ways.
Some people really want a reason to be moral that will moti-
vate psychopaths, even if it is not connected to any reason why
certain acts are immoral. They are rightly scared of psycho-
paths, so they want a reason that will convince psychopaths to
be moral. Other people want a reason to be moral that does
not leave morality arbitrary, because the reason to be moral
shows why those moral acts are moral. They want a moral
reason rather than a selfish reason. I share the latter goal, but
I can appreciate the former wish. Unfortunately, I doubt that
the former wish can be fulfilled. No reason will succeed in
convincing everyone to be moral. This is another obvious but
hard fact of life that we need to learn to live with.
Besides, religions do not really teach that all immorality
will be punished. Theists sometimes assert that punishments
and rewards are distributed perfectly according to desert:

On the theistic view, God holds all persons accountable for their
actions—evil and wrong will be punished and the righteous will
be vindicated. Despite the inequities of this life, in the end the
scales of God’s justice will be balanced.63

However, as we saw, that is not what the Bible says:

[E]very sin and blasphemy will be forgiven men, but the blas-
phemy against the Spirit will not be forgiven. (Matthew 12:31; see
also Mark 3:28)
 Why Be Moral? 121

“Every” means that rapists (along with murderers and thieves)

will be forgiven, if only they later turn to Christ and sincerely
ask forgiveness. But then they are not punished after all.
Moreover, as we also saw, the Bible tells believers that God
commands them to kill non-believers (Deuteronomy 13:6–9,
quoted above; see also Exodus 22:20, 2 Chronicles 15:13). Thus,
the Bible suggests that killing nonbelievers is morally required
rather than morally wrong. If so, and if you kill such a non-
believer, you will not be punished. You might even be rewarded.
However, it is actually morally wrong—not right—to kill
another person just because that other person does not share
your religion. I hope you agree! Hence, the Bible does not say
that all people who do what really is immoral will be punished.
What it says, instead, is that all people who disobey God will
be punished.
Finally, the Bible is filled with stories, such as the Great
Flood, where whole groups of people are punished for the
sins of only some, even though many of those punished
were too young to have been morally guilty of anything,
much less anything bad enough to warrant a death penalty.
(Abraham sees this as unjust: “ . . . to kill the righteous with
the wicked, treating the righteous and the wicked alike. Far
be it from you! Will not the Judge of all the earth do right?”
Genesis 18:25). Because of stories like that, the Bible cannot
support the prediction that only wrongdoers will be punished
or that the righteous will be vindicated. If innocent people
get punished along with guilty ones, then such group punish-
ment gives no incentive to avoid wrongdoing—although you
should pick your friends wisely. Since many innocent people
get punished, and many guilty people get forgiven, the Bible
does not really give everyone a reason to be moral.
122 Morality Without God?

The divine command theory also undermines hope for

a universal reason to be moral. Divine command theorists
claim that acts are morally wrong only because those acts
violate divine commands. Thus, people who do not and can-
not know what God commands them to do also do not and
cannot know which acts are morally wrong. However, when
people have (and had) no way to tell whether their acts are
wrong, even if those acts really are wrong, those people do
not deserve to be punished. It is not their fault. That is com-
mon sense as well as common criminal law (in a standard
version of the insanity defense). But then people who cannot
know God’s commands also cannot deserve to be punished.
Assuming that God will not punish those who do not deserve
to be punished, many wrongdoers who cannot know God’s
commands will not be punished after all.
To illustrate the point, consider a possible divine command
not to sculpt statues of Jesus. People who had never heard that
command could not know that it is morally wrong to sculpt
statues of Jesus, so they should not be held morally respon-
sible if they do sculpt statues of Jesus. God might build into
them a natural aversion to sculpting statues of Jesus, but they
still would not know that it is morally wrong, because they
would have no idea what makes it morally wrong to sculpt
statues of Jesus, and they would have no reason to believe that
their aversion reflects moral wrongness if moral wrongness is
constituted by divine commands.
Now compare horrible murderers who lived before Jesus
and never had any access to a Bible or to Christian beliefs.
There are plenty of examples, including Sulla, dictator of
Rome; but pick your own favorite. If the divine command the-
ory were correct, then the command not to murder would be
 Why Be Moral? 123

like the command not to make statues of Jesus. But then these
murderers could not know that it is morally wrong to mur-
der, so they would not deserve to be punished. That’s absurd.
Of course, these murderers deserve to be punished, even if
they had no access to any divine command. The reason is that
these murderers could know that it is wrong to murder on
the basis of the harm to their victims. If harm is the basis of
moral wrongness, these murderers can know what is immoral
and can justly be held responsible. But if the basis for moral
wrongness really were divine commands, then these murder-
ers could not know that murder is morally wrong, so they
could not be justly held responsible or punished.
Divine command theorists usually reply at this point that
God implanted in everyone a natural ability to see what is
morally right or wrong. That is supposed to explain how our
ancient murderers could know that their acts were wrong.
Maybe so, but maybe not. How can we tell? In any case, this
response really just admits the point. Ancient murderers as
well as modern people like us know which acts are immoral
by seeing the harms that acts cause, not by thinking about
divine commands. They do know what is immoral but not in
anything like the way that the divine command theory would
suggest. In this respect, secular theories have a better explana-
tion of how ancient murderers could deserve to be punished.
Moreover, although ancient murderers could know what
was morally right and wrong, they still did not know about
Heaven and Hell. Hence, if their reason to be moral was only
that immorality would land them in Hell and morality would
get them to Heaven, then these ancient murderers could not
know of any reason to be moral. In contrast, they did have
a reason to be moral and they could know it, if the fact that
124 Morality Without God?

their acts caused harm to others was a reason for them to be

moral, as secular accounts claim. In this respect, secular theo-
ries have a better explanation of how ancient murderers could
become aware of a reason to be moral.
Finally, what about modern atheists and agnostics? Do they
have any reason to be moral, according to religious views?
That depends on who goes to Heaven and Hell. On one view,
Heaven is a reward for freely chosen good works, and Hell is a
punishment for freely chosen bad works. This view does give
atheists and agnostics a reason to be moral, as long as they can
know which acts are moral or immoral. The problem is that
this view conflicts with many Bible verses.
Some passages in the Bible (as well as many Christian
churches) seem to endorse predestination:

What then shall we say? Is God unjust? Not at all! For He says to
Moses, “I will have mercy on whom I have mercy, and I will have
compassion on whom I have compassion.” It does not, therefore,
depend on man’s desire or effort, but on God’s mercy. . . . God has
mercy on whom he wants to have mercy, and he hardens whom
he wants to harden. (Romans 9:14–18; see also Ephesians 1:4–5)

The author of Romans (reportedly Paul) realizes that this

harsh doctrine might not seem fair, so he quickly adds,

One of you will say to me: “Then why does God still blame us?
For who resists his will?” But who are you, O man, to talk back to
God? (Romans 9: 19–20)

This retort hardly answers the question. The doctrine of

predestination still seems unfair, because people do not have
 Why Be Moral? 125

control over whether they end up in Heaven or Hell. It is up

to God, who “has mercy on whom he wants to have mercy,
and . . . hardens whom he wants to harden.”
This dubious doctrine also robs atheists and agnostics (along
with everyone else) of any religious reason to be moral. Since
God is all-knowing and unchanging, He made up his mind a long
time ago about where you would end up, and nothing you do
now can change your fate. If you are headed for Hell, no good
work can change that. If you are headed for Heaven, no immo-
rality can change that. On this view, then, Heaven and Hell do
not really give anyone any reason to be moral, because being
moral does not affect where you end up.
Fortunately (?!), the Bible is not consistent. Other passages
suggest different views of Heaven and Hell. Unfortunately,
these other doctrines also undermine any religious reason
for atheists and agnostics to be moral. We already saw Mat-
thew 12:31, which says that anyone who blasphemes against
the Holy Spirit will never be forgiven. Add that to this lovely
sentiment:

If anyone sins deliberately by rejecting the Savior after knowing

the truth of forgiveness, this sin is not covered by Christ’s death;
there is no way to get rid of it. There will be nothing to look for-
ward to but the terrible punishment of God’s awful anger which
will consume all his enemies. (Hebrews 10:26–27)

I used to be an evangelical Christian. Now I am an atheist. This

verse, thus, implies that even Christ’s death cannot get me out
of Hell. But this gives me nothing to lose by acting immorally
and nothing to gain by acting morally. Whether I lie, cheat,
and steal—or whether I convert back to Christianity—cannot
126 Morality Without God?

ever have any effect on my ultimate fate, according to this

verse. Hence, Heaven and Hell supply me, among others,
with no reason to be moral. It’s lucky that I believe in a secu-
lar reason to be moral!
Forget about me. What about a confused teenager who
wavers back and forth in her Christian beliefs? She is doomed
without hope, according to this verse. What about innocent
young children? They are also doomed, because of original
sin, if they have not accepted their Lord Jesus Christ as their
Savior, according to common doctrines based on several Bible
verses. That is why children are baptized so early. What about
very good atheists, who sacrifice and work hard to help oth-
ers? Doomed again. They can only be justified (that is, saved)
not by works but by faith, at least according to some verses: “a
man is justified by faith apart from observing the law” (Romans
3:28; see also Ephesians 2:8–9). The Christian doctrine is not
just that all of these people go to Hell. Christians also hold
that God is all-good, so He does not send anyone to Hell who
does not deserve it. These two Christian doctrines together
imply that all of these people deserve to go to Hell. Forever.
That does not sound like morality to me. What about you?
Of course, many Christians deny that they hold this moral
view. They have to deny it in order to remain credible. However,
it sure seems to follow from common doctrines and the Bible
verses that I quoted. If the whole Bible is literally true, then
very good atheists all go to Hell and deserve to go there.
Traditional evangelical Christians have a choice. They can
follow the Bible and hold that very good atheists all deserve to
go to Hell and are headed for Hell eternally. That option is so
harsh as to be implausible, if not downright immoral. Or else
they can admit that very good atheists do not deserve eternal
 Why Be Moral? 127

damnation, but then they need to admit that parts of the Bible
are not literally true. You cannot keep your moral bearings
without giving up on the literal truth of the whole Bible.

MEANING WHAT ?

Fine, you say, so Heaven and Hell are no good as reasons to be

moral, but at least they last forever. The problem with avoid-
ing harm to others is that anything I do is finite. If I cheat a
rival in order to get a job, he will be harmed unfairly, but how
much does that matter? He and I are both going to die any-
way. Indeed, our whole species will disappear by evolving into
something else. And the Earth is going to be engulfed by the
Sun in about four billion years. So a little harm now does not
make any real difference to the big picture. It’s nothing com-
pared to eternity. And avoiding harm also doesn’t matter. It’s
all meaningless. In contrast, God does make an infinite differ-
ence. So do eternal salvation and damnation. That is why only
religion gives a truly meaningful reason to be moral, accord-
ing to some theists.
My response recalls Alvie Singer’s mom in Woody Allen’s
movie, Annie Hall. As a young boy in Brooklyn, Alvie is suffer-
ing existential angst as a result of discovering that the universe
is expanding. Alvie’s mom quips, “What does that have to do
with Brooklyn? Brooklyn is not expanding.”
The conflict is between those people who are satisfied to do
what they can in the temporary world that they inhabit and
other people who feel that morality and all of life are empty
and ultimately meaningless unless they have some kind of
eternal significance. These conditions can be called finiphilia
128 Morality Without God?

and infiniphilia, respectively. Finiphiles love their finite world

but still grant that infinite gains are meaningful. The conflict
arises only because infiniphiles (or infiniphiliacs?) love the infi-
nite so much that they deny that finite goods, harms, and lives
have any meaning at all in the face of eternity.
The problem with infiniphilia is that it robs us of any incen-
tive to improve this finite world. Indeed, it gives us reason to
destroy this finite world if we need to do so in order to reach
an eternal Heaven. Just think of suicide bombers. If this is the
best that theism can do, then it cannot provide a sound reason
to be moral. Nor can it provide meaning in this life.
On the secular view, the reason to be moral lies in avoiding
or preventing harm to others. The others who are benefited
will eventually die, but that does not show that nothing was
accomplished. Those individuals and their lives were better
off because someone chose to act morally instead of immor-
ally, so they were harmed less than they otherwise would have
been. That harm is avoided forever, even if other harms occur
later. This matters to any caring person. It would be sad if that
were not enough reason to be moral. It would also be sad if
helping others were not enough to give meaning to our lives.
Luckily, it is.
 Chapter Seven

WHAT DO YOU KNOW?

Then God said, “Take your son, your only son, Isaac, whom you
love, and go to the region of Moriah. Sacrifice him there as a
burnt offering on one of the mountains I will tell you about.”
(Genesis 22:2)

Imagine that you heard a voice in your head commanding

you to murder your son. In 1976 in New York City, David
Berkowitz responded to such a voice by killing six people.
How would you know whether it was a delusion or God
speaking to you? This question raises difficulties for the divine
command theory, according to secular moral theorists.
On the other side, theists sometimes claim that atheists and
agnostics cannot know which acts are morally right or wrong
without guidance from God. It is too easy to say that we ought
not to cause harm without an adequate reason. What is hard
is to figure out whether we have an adequate reason.
130 Morality Without God?

Both sides, then, face a common challenge: How can you

know what is morally right or wrong? Of course, we all have
to admit that often we do not know what is morally right or
wrong. Most people are way too confident in their moral
views. Many disagreements are too complex and profound to
be resolved. Still, any account of morality needs to give us
some idea of how to struggle with, and form defensible judg-
ments about, difficult moral cases. The question is whether
secular or religious views of morality can succeed in this
task.

LET’S TALK

The problem for secular accounts of morality is not that they

have no way to settle difficult moral issues. The problem is
that they have too many ways. Secular moral theorists have
come up with a variety of methods for justifying moral judg-
ments and settling moral issues. I will not try to go through all
of the methods here. Luckily, I don’t need to. My goal is only
to show how secular moral theorists can reach some reason-
able conclusions in practice.
The basic story has been told many times before.64 Roughly,
you test your moral views on one issue against your moral
views on other issues along with your nonmoral beliefs. You
also need to check to make sure that no self-interest, pecu-
liar social force, or cognitive illusion is distorting your moral
view of each particular case. Then you compare your own
moral judgments with those of other people who have gone
through the same process but who look at the issue from dif-
ferent perspectives. When all of this comes together to form
 What Do You Know? 131

a coherent consensus, then you are justified in believing your

moral judgment.
A good model of this general method is a hospital ethics
committee. The members of these committees vary in their
expertise—medicine, surgery, pediatrics, and so on—as well
as in their professions in the hospital—doctors, nurses, social
workers, lawyers, administrators, clergy, philosophers—and
should include community members as well. The committee
members also ideally vary in their culture—Hispanic, Asian,
black, and so on—at least in cases where culture becomes
relevant. This diversity in expertise and culture enables the
committee to consider the many facts as well as the various
perspectives that bear on each case.
In addition, members should be required to withdraw
when they are too emotional or biased about a particular
case before them. The committee should work together for
a long period so that they can compare a wide range of cases
and learn the skills needed for productive deliberation. In
practice, a subcommittee that is on call often needs to make
a quick decision based on shared experience, and only later
can they present the case to the whole committee at a regu-
lar meeting for further discussion. Still, if there is time and
need, then they discuss each case fully. When such a diverse,
knowledgeable, and impartial group reaches consensus
about the moral wrongness of a certain act, then they and
we are justified in believing that the act is indeed morally
wrong.
An example should help to bring these abstractions down
to earth. This case illustrates a real problem that hospital eth-
ics committees have faced many times and that has been con-
troversial in the past.
132 Morality Without God?

Imagine that a doctor thinks a female patient with breast

cancer should get a single mastectomy. The doctor realizes
that an alternative treatment would be a lumpectomy plus
radiation, but the survival rate of the lumpectomy is only
90 percent to 95 percent, whereas the survival rate of the mas-
tectomy is slightly higher: 95 percent to 98 percent. ( These
figures are for illustration only.) The doctor fears that the
patient might choose to take her chances with the radiation
treatment, but he thinks that she should not risk it. For this
reason, he wants to recommend a mastectomy without tell-
ing her about the lumpectomy alternative. He brings this case
to the hospital ethics committee, of which you are a member,
and asks whether it would be morally wrong not to tell the
patient about the possibility of lumpectomy plus radiation.
How can the committee go about answering his question?
They need to gather accurate information about recovery
rates and difficulties adjusting to prostheses for patients like
this one (and not just for patients in general). Then they need
to get to know the patient, including not only her level of
competence for medical decision making but also her person-
ality and interests. How much will the loss of a breast affect
her self-image, confidence, and happiness? The committee
might also consider effects on the patient’s spouse and family,
since the patient’s interests are affected by how they react. The
patient’s religion is also relevant if any proposed treatments
conflict with her religious views, as in the case of Jehovah’s
witnesses who refuse blood transfusions. Next the commit-
tee should consider applicable laws and hospital policies, as
well as likely effects of changing those policies in various
ways. If doctors are allowed to withhold information about
alternative treatments in cases like this one, how would that
 What Do You Know? 133

general policy affect public confidence in doctors? The com-

mittee should also listen to the doctor and any other person-
nel who have moral or other qualms about one or another of
the treatments or about withholding information. Not all of
this information is needed in every case, but it should be avail-
able and considered whenever it is relevant and might affect
the decision.
After gathering this information, the committee needs to
deliberate long enough and carefully enough to reach con-
sensus. This might or might not take a long time, but it is
often crucial. It can be useful for them to think through vari-
ous principles about when it is morally permissible for a doc-
tor to withhold treatment information. They should try to
imagine themselves in the positions of the various people
involved, especially the patient and doctor. Would you feel
mistreated if a doctor did that to you? They should also con-
sider analogies: What if your investment counselor or stock
broker intentionally withheld information about a potential
investment because he thought it was too risky for you even
though he thought you might want to take that risk? Would
that be morally justified? Exercises and analogies like these
help to increase impartiality and focus on the morally relevant
features.
The committee should try to include a wide variety of
moral perspectives. In this case, it seems crucial for the com-
mittee to include some women who might have a better sense
of why this patient might be willing to increase her risk of
death in order to avoid a mastectomy. It should also include
doctors and nurses who might appreciate why the doctor
wants to withhold information, hospital administrators and
lawyers who could provide insight into hospital policies and
134 Morality Without God?

potential effects of violating or changing them, and also, of

course, representatives of various religions—as well as a phi-
losopher with training in moral theory.
If this diverse committee reaches consensus after gather-
ing information and deliberating carefully and thoroughly,
then they can be justified in forming and holding that moral
judgment. They can even have moral knowledge, if they get it
right. There are, of course, no guarantees that they will reach
the correct conclusion, but sometimes it seems obvious that
they do, because even initial opponents come over to the con-
sensus position after feeling the force of the arguments. This
consensus won’t always emerge, but often it does. When it
does, they can obtain justified moral belief and even moral
knowledge.
In our illustrative case, consensus was reached. Although
in the past doctors often used to withhold information about
alternative treatments that they thought inadvisable, after
many hospital ethics committees discussed many such cases,
a strong consensus emerged that a competent patient must
be told about all alternative treatments that would be medi-
cally acceptable and not irrational for the patient to choose.
This requirement is now written into law in many jurisdic-
tions. That history shows that this procedure really can work
to produce shared answers to previously controversial moral
questions.
It is crucial here that such hospital ethics committees have
no need to cite the Bible or refer to God in any way. They do
not need to pray together or have any religious experience
or revelation. Some committee members can even be athe-
ists and agnostics. This shows how justified moral belief and
 What Do You Know? 135

even moral knowledge can be achieved in controversial cases

without religious belief.
Furthermore, it usually would not help them to refer to
God or to religion. Suppose one committee member cites a
religious experience, perhaps while praying. Why should the
other members accept that personal revelation? Contempla-
tive prayer can aid reflection in some people, but that reflec-
tion will still need to be explained to the rest of the committee.
Next, suppose a member cites the Bible. Why do the others
have to believe what the Bible says? Even if they all agree
that the Bible is the inerrant word of God, they can always
reinterpret the Bible or apply it in a different way to the case
at hand. Suppose a member says that his minister told him
what the Bible really means. Why should anyone agree with
that particular minister, who is, after all, a fallible human? Of
course, some scripture or religious authority might guide
them if they all adhere to the same religious perspective, but
that would defeat the purpose of diversity on the committee.
Only one moral perspective would be represented, and that
perspective might be distorted. On a diverse committee with
multiple perspectives, religious documents and ministers
should be trusted only if their moral proclamations are plau-
sible and supported by independent reasons that everyone can
recognize. Often they are, but then it is those independent
reasons that help the committee come to know what is mor-
ally right or wrong.
Secular moralists conclude that God and religious belief
are not needed for moral knowledge. In this way, atheists and
agnostics can know what is morally right or wrong just as
much as theists do.
136 Morality Without God?

THE GOOD BOOK

I would never deny that there are serious limitations and ques-
tions for the secular method of forming moral judgments in
difficult cases. Life is hard. The question, however, is whether
religion really makes life and moral problems any easier. I will
argue to the contrary that religion makes it even harder to
know what is morally right or wrong.
Consider the divine command theory: How can we know
what God commands? Suppose you wonder whether it is
immoral to leave home without a cross (say, on a chain around
your neck). If the divine command theory is correct, then you
need to find out whether God commanded you not to leave
home without a cross. You cannot settle this issue simply by
finding out that leaving home without a cross causes no harm
to anyone, unless you assume that God’s only command is
not to cause harm, but why would you assume that? You also
cannot rely on your moral intuitions unless you have adequate
reason to think that your intuitions accurately reflect every
divine command. Even if your moral intuition tells you that
nothing is immoral about leaving home without a cross, there
might be some divine command that you missed which makes
it wrong to leave home without a cross. This possibility exists
unless your own intuitions capture every divine command,
but you cannot know that without already knowing all that
God commanded. You also cannot rely on testimony from
other people, unless you have some adequate reason to think
that they are inspired by God or that their intuitions reflect
every divine command; but again you cannot have any such
reason without already knowing all that God commanded.
Thus, the divine command theory makes it very hard or even
 What Do You Know? 137

impossible to tell whether it is morally wrong to leave home

without a cross.
The problem is obviously that we have no sound way to
determine what God commanded. Even if theists could show
that God exists, that still would not help at all in determin-
ing what God commands. God is, after all, supposed to be a
profound mystery, whose ways are not our ways. His com-
mands, then, might be very far from what we think He ought
to command.
Divine command theorists often announce what God com-
mands, as if they know. The commands that they ascribe to
God are often (though not always) plausible. However, what
makes us and them accept that God commands those actions
rather than others is that we already and independently have a
reason to believe that certain acts are immoral. Assuming God
is good, of course God would command us not to rape. But
the only way we can know that God would issue that com-
mand is that we already know that rape is immoral. There is
no way to know what God does or would command without
already knowing what is morally right and wrong.
Divine command theorists sometimes say that we can
know what God commands by knowing God’s nature: “God’s
own holy and loving nature supplies the absolute standard
against which all actions are measured.”65 But is it fair to
require mere mortals to be like God (as in Matthew 5:48)? In
any case, it is not clear how we are supposed to know God’s
infinite and incomprehensible nature well enough to use it as
a standard in real life in this world. God is so different from
us that what is good for him might not be good for us. Even
if it is good for God to be faithful or punitive, for example, it
does not follow that it is good for us humans to be faithful or
138 Morality Without God?

punitive. We are so different from God in so many ways that

God’s standards of goodness might be very different from
our own standards of goodness, as theists themselves often
suggest when trying to explain how a good God could allow
so much apparently uncompensated suffering in the world.66
For all of these reasons, we cannot know God’s commands by
knowing His nature.
Religious people might try to know divine commands
directly through prayer or listening to God. That is really dan-
gerous. Remember David Berkowitz. You need some way to
tell whether God is speaking instead of Satan or some delu-
sion. It is hard to see how to do that if you lack any indepen-
dent moral compass in advance.
Finally, we might seem to be able to know divine com-
mands through Holy Scriptures. D’Souza, for example,
claims, “In various religions, traditional morality is contained
in some form of a written code. The best example is the Ten
Commandments.”67 One question, of course, is how D’Souza
determines which code is best. However that question is
answered, the Ten Commandments hardly contains all of tra-
ditional morality. Since most people today do not remember
them, here they are from Exodus 20:3–17 (compare Deuteron-
omy 5:6–21):

1. You shall have no other gods before me.

2. You shall not make for yourself an idol in the form of
anything in heaven above or on the earth beneath or in
the waters below. You shall not bow down to them or
worship them; for I, the Lord your God, am a jealous
God, punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to
the third and fourth generation of those who hate me,
 What Do You Know? 139

but showing love to a thousand generations of those

who love me and keep my commandments.
3. You shall not misuse the name of the Lord your
God, for the Lord will not hold anyone guiltless who
misuses his name.
4. Remember the Sabbath day by keeping it holy. Six
days you shall labor and do all your work, but the
seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it
you shall not do any work, neither you, nor your son
or daughter, nor your manservant or maidservant,
nor your animals, nor the alien within your gates. For
in six days the Lord made the heavens and the earth,
the sea, and all that is in them, but he rested on the
seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath
day and made it holy.
5. Honor your father and your mother, so that you may
live long in the land the Lord your God is giving you.
6. You shall not murder.
7. You shall not commit adultery.
8. You shall not steal.
9. You shall not give false testimony against your
neighbor.
10. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house. You shall
not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his manservant
or maidservant, his ox or donkey, or anything that
belongs to your neighbor.
Notice the bit in Commandment 2 about “punishing the chil-
dren for the sin of the fathers.” If this is what D’Souza calls
“traditional morality,” what’s so great about it? It is not fair
to punish me for what my great-great-great-grandfather did.
The same goes for the apparent endorsement of slavery in
140 Morality Without God?

Commandments 4 and 10, since “manservant” and “maidser-

vant” are just modern euphemisms for male and female slaves.
Notice also what is missing. There is nothing about not
cheating, breaking promises, or hitting other people. There is
no mention of caring for children or helping the needy. There
is also nothing about incest, necrophilia, cannibalism, or patri-
otism. Moreover, nothing specifies what counts as murder or
stealing, much less coveting. Hence, this list cannot be used to
settle any difficult moral issues, much less all of them.
Finally, it is not clear whether the first four commandments
are supposed to apply to anyone other than Jews. After all,
many non-Jews have no way of knowing which day is the Sab-
bath. But if these rules apply only to Jews, then they have little
to do with morality, which is supposed to apply to all people.
For these reasons, the Ten Commandments are not such a
great guide to morality after all.
What about the rest of the Bible? Maybe we can find out
what is moral or immoral by reading that. Unfortunately,
the rest of the Bible contains some horrible moral messages.
I already quoted Romans 1:27 in the New Testament saying
that homosexual love is an “indecent . . . perversion” as well as
Leviticus 20:13 (see also 18:22) saying that homosexuals “must
be put to death.” I also quoted Deuteronomy 13:6–9 (see also
Exodus 22:20, 2 Chronicles 15:13, Hebrews 10:28–29) on killing
non-believers, and Joshua 10:40 and 11:20 on genocide com-
manded by God. Then we saw Proverbs 23:13–14 recommend-
ing beating children with rods, and Ephesians 5:22–24 (plus
Colossians 3:18, 1 Peter 3:1, 1 Corinthians 11:3) demanding that
women submit to their husbands in everything. On punish-
ment, I discussed Genesis 6 endorsing worldwide punishment
by flood and Revelation 21:8 on eternal damnation for liars
 What Do You Know? 141

and cowards (does that punishment fit the crime?). Here’s a

sample of even more moral wisdom from the Bible:

On slavery:

If a man sells his daughter as a servant [that is, slave], she is not
to go free as menservants do. (Exodus 21:7—How much for your
daughter?)

If a man beats his male or female slave with a rod and the slave dies
as a direct result, he must be punished, but he is not to be punished
if the slave gets up after a day or two, since the slave is his prop-
erty. (Exodus 21:20–21—At least this gives slave-owners incentive
to keep their slaves alive for a few days after beating them!)

Slaves, obey your earthly masters in everything; and do it, not

only when their eye is on you and to win their favor, but with
sincerity of heart and reverence for the Lord. (Colossians 3:22;
see also Ephesians 6:5–8; 1 Timothy 6:1–3, Titus 2:9–10, 1 Peter
2:18–19—“Everything”? What about demands for sex?)

On women:

When you go to war against your enemies and the Lord your
God delivers them into your hands and you take captives, if you
notice among the captives a beautiful woman and are attracted
to her, you may take her as your wife. (Deuteronomy 21:10–11; see
also 20:14—What if I prefer a captive girl who is not beautiful?)

As in all the congregations of the saints, women should remain silent

in the churches. They are not allowed to speak, but must be in sub-
mission, as the Law says. If they want to inquire about something,
142 Morality Without God?
they should ask their own husbands at home; for it is disgraceful for
a woman to speak in the church. (1 Corinthians 14:33–35: see also
1 Timothy 2:12—Female evangelicals, take heed; but silently!)

On divorce:

Anyone who divorces his wife and marries another woman com-
mits adultery against her. And if she divorces her husband and
marries another man, she commits adultery. (Mark 10:11–12;
compare Matthew 5:32—This sure boosts the rate of adultery.)

If a man commits adultery with another man’s wife—with the

wife of his neighbor—both the adulterer and the adulteress must
be put to death. (Leviticus 20:10—This would reduce modern
population problems.)

On family values:

Anyone who curses his father or mother must be put to death.

(Exodus 21:17; see also Leviticus 20:9; Deuteronomy 21:18–21; Mark
7:10; Matthew 15:4–7—What about victims of child abuse?)

And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or

mother or children or fields for my sake will receive a hundred times
as much and will inherit eternal life. (Matthew 19:29: see also Mark
10:29–30; Luke 18:29–30—Is this bribery for deserting children?)

If anyone comes to me and does not hate his father and mother,
his wife and children, his brothers and sisters—yes, even his own
life—he cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:26; see also Matthew
10:35—“hate”!)
 What Do You Know? 143

Okay, so maybe I went a little too far with these quota-

tions. I do not want to offend anyone. If I did, I am sorry. But
I do want to show how many passages like these occur in the
Bible. Bad moral advice is not just an occasional aberration in
the Bible. There’s lots of it—lots more than I listed.
When I gave some examples like these in a debate with
Dinesh D’Souza, he responded, “I guess the Rabbis have a lot
to explain.” Yes, but so do Christians. Many of the above quo-
tations come from the New Testament. Besides, the New Tes-
tament says that the Old Testament laws still apply (Matthew
5:18, Luke 16:17). At least it is hypocritical to cite the Ten Com-
mandments or “an eye for an eye,” but then turn around and
dismiss other parts of the Old Testament as if Christianity has
nothing to do with that part (the largest part!) of the Bible.
In another debate, Bruce Little honestly admitted, “My job
would be a lot easier if passages like those were not in the Bible.”
Right! Maybe God is testing believers. Christianity is not sup-
posed to be easy. But that retort does not make it any easier to see
why anyone should follow the moral advice in these passages.
“You are taking these passages out of context,” say reli-
gious believers. Well, look for yourself. I did check the textual
and historical context of these passages, and it does not make
them look much better. Consider, for example, the endorse-
ment of selling your daughter into slavery in Exodus 21:7.
Here is what follows:

If she does not please the master who has selected her for him-
self, he must let her be redeemed. He has no right to sell her to
foreigners, because he has broken faith with her. If he selects
her for his son, he must grant her the rights of a daughter. If he
marries another woman, he must not deprive the first one of
144 Morality Without God?
her food, clothing and marital rights. If he does not provide her
with these three things, she is to go free, without any payment of
money. (Exodus 21:8–11)

These limits make life easier for daughters who are sold into
slavery, but they are restrictions on the buyer, not the seller of
his own daughter. Anyway, they hardly make such sales mor-
ally permissible, as the Bible suggests.
What about the historical context? Weren’t the rules in
Exodus an improvement on the previous practice of selling
daughters into slavery without such protections? Maybe, but
that does not make them good advice for today. The question
here is whether the Bible can give us reliable moral advice in
the modern world, not whether it shed a little light in very
dark times (which it did).
Besides, even if some of these passages can be reinter-
preted to make them a little more palatable, not all of them
can. The demands that slaves and women obey their masters
and husbands are unequivocal. So are the condemnation of
homosexuality and the endorsement of eternal damnation
for liars, cowards, and atheists.
And why reinterpret any of them? The divine command
theory suggests that we might as well take them literally. If
God commands women not to speak in church, then it is
immoral for them to speak in church. Period. No need to rein-
terpret. The command is the end of the matter. There is no
external morality that could tell us how to reinterpret these
demands, according to the divine command theory.
I do not cite these passages in order to show disrespect for
Christianity, Judaism, or the Bible. On the contrary, it is disre-
spectful not to take the Bible seriously. It is, after all, the basis
 What Do You Know? 145

for all of Christianity. If the Bible is supposed to be a major

source of moral knowledge, then we need to look carefully at
what it actually says.
There are, admittedly, also some very nice passages and
messages in the Bible. I love the parable of the Good Samaritan
(Luke 10:30–35), verses like “Love your neighbor as yourself ”
(Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:31, Luke 10:27, James 2:8), and many
other New Testament passages about helping the needy (for
example, Ephesians 4:28, James 2:15–16) and peace (for exam-
ple, Matthew 5:39, Luke 6:29). These are the only verses that
become topics for sermons in the best churches. The verses
that I cited above are rarely mentioned in sermons, since it is
easier for believers to ignore them.
The point, then, is not that the Bible is a bad book. Like
most books written by humans, the Bible is a mixture of good
and bad. As such, it cannot serve as a reliable guide to moral-
ity. If we follow all of the Bible literally, then we will be led
astray into immorality because of passages like those I cited.
On the other hand, if we pick and choose which Bible pas-
sages to follow, then we need not be led into immorality, and
we might even be led toward morality, but we will need to use
our prior moral views to guide our choice among the various
passages. Either way, the Bible cannot provide a solid founda-
tion for morality or for knowledge of morality. To the con-
trary, you need morality as a user’s guide to the Bible.
In the end, we all need to work with our moral intuitions
after testing them against the facts and the perspectives of other
people, as in a hospital ethics committee. That method is neither
foolproof nor airtight. But there is no real alternative. Religious
thinkers need to depend on it just like anyone else. Hence, it is
no objection to atheism or agnosticism that they use it, too.
This page intentionally left blank
 Chapter Eight

WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?

Neither do people light a lamp and put it under a bowl. Instead

they put it on its stand, and it gives light to everyone in the house.
In the same way, let your light shine before men, that they may
see your good deeds and praise your Father in Heaven.
(Matthew 5:15–16)

I have argued against five ways to interpret the thesis that

there cannot be morality without God. Chapter Two: Belief
in God is not needed in order for an individual to be a mor-
ally good person. Chapter Three: Belief in God is not needed
in order for a society to avoid depravity and disintegration.
Chapters Four and Five: God is not needed in order for certain
acts to be objectively morally wrong. Chapter Six: Belief in
God is not needed in order for us to have a reason to be moral.
Chapter Seven: Belief in God is not needed in order for us to
know what is morally wrong.
148 Morality Without God?

Of course, theists might propose new ways in which moral-

ity is supposed to depend on God or on religion. This project
is part of an on-going dialogue. Nobody can declare the final
word. Still, I hope that my brief survey covers enough and
my arguments are strong enough to create serious doubt that
morality depends on God or on religion in any way.

SO WHAT ?

The next question is why this matters. In which ways would

America look different if it embraced a secular harm-based
morality instead of a religion-based morality?
A secular harm-based morality might seem to translate into
major changes in government policies and civic life within the
United States and elsewhere. A religious view of morality and
the consequent fear of atheism seem to lie at the very basis
of some stands on abortion and contraception, embryonic
stem cell research, educational policies (such as teaching evo-
lution and prayer in public schools), public displays of religion
(such as exhibiting the Ten Commandments on courthouse
walls and including the words “under God” in the Pledge of
Allegiance), the death penalty, and, of course, gay marriage
and allowing gays to adopt and serve as foster parents. If fear
of atheism and identification of morality with religion are
undermined by my arguments, then these arguments should
affect debates on all of these issues.
The effects will not be straightforwardly liberal or conser-
vative. I have avoided these political labels so far in this book,
because they are confused. Some conservatives want to enforce
“traditional” values at the national level with constitutional
 Where Do We Go from Here? 149

amendments, but other conservatives argue for states’ rights

that would be limited by those very constitutional amendments.
Libertarians call themselves conservative, although they usually
disagree with social conservatives on abortion, homosexuality,
and drug policy. And, of course, a self-styled conservative who
was enthroned by the conservative branch of the conservative
party—namely, George W. Bush—oversaw tremendous expan-
sion of government and of the federal deficit. Bush also initiated
an adventure in foreign nation-building in Iraq that overturned
traditional values embodied in centuries-old prohibitions on
preventive war. All of this used to be contrary to conservative
creeds. It is not clear what conservatism amounts to any more.
The same goes for liberalism. Many liberals fight for restric-
tions on pornography and hate speech even though classic
liberals were champions of free speech. Liberals often favor
regulations that restrict the liberty of businesses and their
owners. Some self-styled liberals want to limit religious prac-
tices in public places, such as schools and courthouses, as well
as how parents choose to educate their children. In college
admissions and elsewhere, some kinds of affirmative action
are in effect required, whereas other kinds are forbidden, but
either way the choice is limited by liberals. Such liberalism has
little to do with liberty in any common sense.
My point is not to pick sides in the fight between conser-
vatives and liberals. That dichotomy is dead, dying, or dor-
mant—or at least it should be, in my opinion. Even where
there is a clear liberal side and a clear conservative side, it is
simplistic to take one side or the other on all issues. Each side
usually has part of the truth, and the real task is to uncover
that truth. That’s not easy, and one reason is that religion has
distorted the debates and deepened the divisions.
150 Morality Without God?

Instead of picking sides in a false dichotomy, we need to

rethink these political issues in terms of harm—that is, pain,
death, disability, and so on. When we consider abortion,
embryonic stem cell research, the death penalty, prayer in
schools, teaching evolution, gay marriage, gay adoptions, and
so on, we should not ask which stand is liberal or conserva-
tive. We also should not ask which stand is consistent with our
religion or with any religion. To determine what is morally
right, we should instead ask who gets harmed, how, and how
much. The debates should be about how to avoid and prevent
harm, not about how to conform to religious dogmas or how
to appease religious extremists.
Where will this harm-based discussion lead? That is not
clear, but the changes might not be radical. As I have empha-
sized, many religious people are good and already want to
avoid and prevent harm to others. Many of them, like the
Amish teenagers, do not let their religious doctrines override
their common sense. They might, then, act much as they did
before, even if they gave up the divine command theory and
any fear of atheism. But at least they would base their posi-
tions on the real foundation of morality, which is avoiding and
preventing harm.
Other religious people, in contrast, really do base their
stands on religious doctrines and on the divine command
theory of morality as well as on a resulting fear of atheism.
My arguments cut the foundation out from under such posi-
tions, so those positions should crumble. Of course, I doubt
that extreme theists will respond, “Oh, wow, I never thought
of that. I guess you are right. I need to change my whole life.”
Still, if they followed the arguments this far, then they should
at least have less confidence when they criticize atheism and
 Where Do We Go from Here? 151

when they base their political positions on the Bible. That lack
of confidence might lead them to think again about morality
and religion.
We need to think about this together. Good theists are on
the same side as atheists and agnostics. We all want to move
beyond the culture wars that create antagonism and stifle
progress. The question is how to do this. I do not have any
definite answers, but I do want to close by mentioning a few
initial steps that might help some.

WHAT’S A THEIST TO DO?

Theists can help by fighting antagonism against atheists and

agnostics. When religious leaders broadcast nasty insults
against atheists and other non-believers, good theists who care
about the truth as well as about avoiding harm to other people
should stand up and protest. After all, atheists and agnostics
are often not present to defend themselves, and they would
be dismissed anyway. So atheists and agnostics cannot do it
alone. Theists need to help to solve the problem of mutual
distrust.
In particular, whenever someone says, “If God is dead,
everything is permitted,” theists (as well as nontheists) should
ask, “Why do you think that?” There is so little basis for this
quip that merely asking the question should undo its detrimen-
tal effects, at least along with the arguments in this book.
Religious proselytizers often try to convince people to
believe in God not (or not only) by giving positive reasons for
God but, instead, by inducing fear of nonbelief and of atheism
in particular. Potential believers rightly do not want to give up
152 Morality Without God?

morality or become immoral, so they accept religion in order

to avoid the moral nihilism that is supposed to follow from
atheism. This negative basis for religious belief is defective both
intellectually and practically. Good theists who want their reli-
gion to benefit believers without harming nonbelievers should
speak up against this common ploy by proselytizers.
Religious believers also need to fight excesses in the name
of religion, especially their own religions. When leaders in
their religions claim that God is on their side in an unjust war,
in opposing embryonic stem cell research, or in denouncing
homosexuals and their supporters, good theists within those
religions need to speak up to make it clear that these leaders
do not speak for their whole congregations. Silence is a dis-
service not only to the victims of such excesses but also to the
more moderate and defensible religious views within those
congregations.
When a religious group goes too far, good people who
hold religious beliefs need to be ready to separate themselves
from that group—not immediately but eventually. An admi-
rable example is Jimmy Carter, who severed his ties with the
Southern Baptist Convention (to which more than 40,000
churches belong) when they advocated a literal interpreta-
tion of the Bible, declared their opposition to women as pas-
tors, and called for wives to be submissive to their husbands.
If Carter had remained in such a group, then he would have
compromised his principles of gender equality, his good name
would have lent support to a position that he opposed, and
his reputation would have been tarnished. If more religious
believers showed this kind of courage and leadership, then
religious excesses would become less common. That would
help religious believers in addition to nonbelievers.
 Where Do We Go from Here? 153

Consider also Carlton Pearson, a graduate of Oral Roberts

University who ran an evangelical mega-church. According to
some reports,68 he worried about whether eternal torment was
appropriate punishment for his grandparents, who had commit-
ted adultery, and for a close friend in his church and ministry,
who announced that he was homosexual. The final straw came
when Pearson watched a news story about refugees in Rwanda
and thought that they must also be going to Hell if they are
Muslims. At that moment, he had a revelation that “After death,
everyone is redeemed. Everyone.” Pearson calls this universal-
ism the “Gospel of Inclusion.” He is reportedly writing a book
in which he “will vociferously oppose this religious, arrogant,
ignorant, spirit of self-righteousness, bigotry and intolerance,
that is rampant among us who call ourselves evangelicals.” In
response, prominent evangelicals have denounced and ostracized
Pearson, and his church has diminished in size, but he says that
he is still as happy and confident as ever. The point here is that by
giving up traditional doctrines of Hell, Pearson avoids many of
the problems for religion that I have raised in this book. He also
undermines some of the motivation for fearing atheists. Maybe
theists can even marry atheists if atheists are not immoral, as
I argued, and also not bound for Hell, as Pearson thinks. It took
tremendous courage for Pearson to change his religious views
publicly. That kind of courage is what we need in order to end
the culture wars that divide modern societies.

WHAT’S AN ATHEIST TO DO?

Of course, atheists also need to fight excesses by other atheists.

When Christopher Hitchens says, “Religion poisons everything”
154 Morality Without God?

in the subtitle of his book,69 instead of cheering or laughing at

his jokes or remaining silent, atheists need to point out that this
subtitle is inaccurate and insulting. Corrections like this do not
undermine solidarity among atheists, if there is any. They sup-
port atheism by showing that atheists are not as crude, unfriendly,
and dishonest as many theists claim. Atheists cannot expect the-
ists to recognize and stand up against the excesses of religious
belief, unless atheists recognize and stand up against the excesses
of atheism.
Civility does not mean that atheists should remain silent.
Criticism of religious beliefs is often considered impolite or
unconstitutional, but it isn’t (since the religion clauses of the
First Amendment apply only to government). To treat reli-
gion like a senile relative whose bizarre statements should not
be questioned seriously is neither fair to religious believers
nor illuminating for nonbelievers. Atheists need not speak out
against every religious claim. When a friend needs to believe
in God in order to be able to face a crisis, it is cruel to announce
your atheism and argue that the friend’s religious views are
bunk. Nonetheless, there remain many occasions when athe-
ists can and should speak out. We should not let politicians,
in particular, base government policies on religion without
being questioned. We should not let religion distort academic
and popular discussions. When such occasions arise, atheists
need to speak out. This is the only way to pave the road to
real progress.
Atheists and agnostics also need to appreciate the many
good aspects of religion. I am not talking only about stained
glass windows, cathedral architecture, and gospel songs,
although I love all of that. “Amazing Grace” is amazing, even
if it is only a song. If atheists cannot see that, their lives will
 Where Do We Go from Here? 155

be poorer. Even more important, there’s wisdom in many ser-

mons and in the Bible. Sometimes you have to dig it out of
a lot of surrounding hatred and mythology, but myths often
contain important insights into human concerns. Atheists can
learn from sermons and from the Bible without believing in
God. This should come as no surprise, because religions and
preachers would not get far if they failed to maintain some
contact with common sense.
It is also important for atheists and agnostics to admit what
they cannot provide. In particular, they cannot provide the
confidence of religion. People want a goal and guidance for
their lives. Otherwise, choices overwhelm. People also want
answers to questions. Otherwise, insecurity undermines. Reli-
gion provides guidance and answers that these people need.
Atheists and agnostics cannot provide such simple certainty.
However, the fact that we cannot figure it all out is no rea-
son to postulate God. It is, instead, a reason to be modest and
admit that neither you nor I can solve all mysteries. Atheists
and agnostics can reduce the need for simple, certain answers
by recognizing that we are all in the same boat—we all know
very little for sure about many important issues in our lives.
Atheists and agnostics need to help people learn to live with
widespread uncertainty.
Certainty is not all that atheists lack. It would also be com-
forting to believe that we will end up in Heaven, if only because
it would make problems in this life seem more tolerable. And,
when people hurt us or our friends, it would be satisfying to
believe that God will get them back—though not with eternal
torture. Religious believers also have positive feelings toward
a larger group of people who share their religion, but atheists
and agnostics lack that kind and degree of social solidarity.
156 Morality Without God?

Atheists and agnostics also often lack connection to tradition

that can make you sense that many others have agreed with
you in the past and will agree with you in the future. Secu-
lar people need to recognize what religious people gain from
their religion, so that they can think creatively about how to
fulfill those needs and desires without belief in God.
Atheists can also learn from religions about how to help
people in need. I myself turned to evangelical Christianity
after moving from Memphis north to prep school. I was very
lonely because my schoolmates made fun of my heavy south-
ern accent. During those rough times, there was one group
that always welcomed me warmly and seemed genuinely glad
to see me: the Christian fellowship. These Christians helped
me in a time of need, and I am grateful. Atheists and agnos-
tics need to learn to reach out as these Christians did.
Churches and religions also do an effective job at inspiring
believers to care for others and help others in need. Atheists
and agnostics need to learn how to train their children and
friends to be more caring. A useful step could be broadcast-
ing the true message that helping the needy is one of the best
ways to make yourself happy and give meaning to your life.
Secular communities also need to build institutions, such as
Ethical Culture and the American Humanist Association,
that provide places for atheists to join together in meaningful
ceremonies and constructive joint action. These institutions
will demonstrate that atheism is not dangerous and does not
undermine true morality.
All of this can be done without believing in God, so there is
no reason for atheists to downplay this good side of religion.
Atheists and agnostics still need to criticize falsehoods in reli-
gion as well as the excesses of religion, especially when they
 Where Do We Go from Here? 157

lead to harmful government policies. But then atheists and

agnostics can still learn from religion about how to accom-
plish the goals—such as preventing and avoiding harm—that
secular and religious people share.
Finally, atheists and agnostics need to turn their lives into
examples for others. This theme is common in religious
sermons, but it applies to secular people as well. If atheists
and agnostics show that they are good people by doing good
works, then it will become harder and harder for any theists
to get away with saying that atheism leads to immorality.
This final chapter might seem uncomfortably like a ser-
mon, so let me return to my main theme. Morality has noth-
ing essential to do with religion or with God, so atheists need
not be immoral in any way. If we can get everyone to recog-
nize this, we will all be better off.
 NOTES

p reface

Epigraph: All Bible quotations are from the New International

Version, unless otherwise noted.
1. Richard Taylor, Ethics, Faith, and Reason (Englewood Cliffs, NJ:
Prentice-Hall, 1985), 84.
2. William Lane Craig and Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A
Debate between a Christian and an Atheist (New York: Oxford Uni-
versity Press, 2004).

text

1. www.gallup.com/poll/26611/Some-Americans-Reluctant-Vote-
Mormon-72YearOld-Presidential-Candidates.aspx.
2. “Can You Believe It?” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine (May, June
2004), 30–33.
3. Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong, God? A Debate Between a Christian
and an Atheist (New York: Oxford University Press, 2004), 18.
 Notes to Pages 8–27 159
4. Dinesh D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity (Washing-
ton, DC: Regnery, 2007), 267, 269, and 272.
5. Free Inquiry 8, no. 4 (1988), 16. I owe this quotation and the
next two to Larry Crocker.
6. www.catholiceducation.org/articles/apologetics/ap0023
.html.
7. www.lcms.org/ca/www/cyclopedia/02/display.asp?t1=
A&t2=t.
8. Christopher Hitchens, God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons
Everything (New York: Hachette, 2007).
9. Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion (New York: Houghton Mif-
flin, 2006).
10. Sam Harris, The End of Faith: Religion, Terror, and the Future of
Reason (New York: Norton, 2004).
11. Dan Dennett, Breaking the Spell (New York: Penguin, 2006).
12. Richard Swinburne, “What Difference Does God Make to
Morality?” in Is Goodness without God Good Enough? edited by
Robert Garcia and Nathan King (Lanham, MD: Rowman &
Littlefield, 2009), 55–156. See also Mark C. Murphy, “Theism,
Atheism, and the Explanation of Moral Value,” in Is Goodness
without God Good Enough? ed. Garcia and King, 118.
13. D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity, 226.
14. D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity, xvii.
15. See also James A. Haught, 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People
with the Courage to Doubt (New York: Prometheus, 1996).
16. D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity, 214.
17. Twenty-five Points (1920), Point 24. I owe all of the information
about Hitler in this paragraph and the next to Larry Crocker.
18. Hitler Speech, Berlin, 24 October 1933.
19. See generally, Richard C. Carrier, “Hitler’s Table Talk: Troubling
Finds,” German Studies Review 26, no. 3 (October 2003), 561–76.
160 Notes to Pages 28–35
20. Hitchens, God Is Not Great; Harris, The End of Faith; and Daw-
kins, The God Delusion.
21. Gregory Paul, “Cross-National Correlations of Quantifiable
Social Health with Popular Religiosity and Secularism in Pros-
perous Democracies,” Journal of Religion and Society 7 (2005),
1–17. See also the Human Development Report 2005, by the
United Nations Development Programme (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005), which finds many of the most secular
societies to be the healthiest.
22. Gary Jensen, “Religious Cosmologies and Homicide Rates
among Nations: A Closer Look,” Journal of Religion and Society
8 (2006), 1–14.
23. C. J. Baier and B. R. E. Wright, “ ‘If you love me, keep my
commandments’: A Meta-Analysis of the Effect of Religion
on Crime,” Journal of Research in Crime and Delinquency 38
(2001), 3–21. I owe this reference, as well as much of the sci-
ence in the rest of this chapter, to B. Spilka, R. W. Hood, B.
Hunsberger, and R. Gorsuch, The Psychology of Religion: An
Empirical Approach, 3rd ed. (New York: Guilford, 2003). Any
reader who seeks more details could not find a more careful
scholarly source than this standard textbook.
24. B. A. Chadwick and B. L. Top, “Religiosity and Delinquency
among LDS Adolescents,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Reli-
gion 32 (1993), 51–67.
25. W. S. Bainbridge, “The Religious Ecology of Deviance,” Amer-
ican Sociological Review 54 (1989), 288–95.
26. W. S. Bainbridge, “Crime, Delinquency, and Religion,” in Reli-
gion and Mental Health, edited by J. F. Schumaker (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1992), 199–210.
27. See the discussion of Shariff and Norenzayan (2007) in the text
accompanying note 52 below.
 Notes to Pages 36–42 161
28. A. W. R. Sipe, Sex, Priests, and Power: Anatomy of a Crisis (New
York: Brunner/Mazel, 1995).
29. J. T. Chibnall, J. Wolf, and P. N. Duckro, “A National Survey of
the Sexual Trauma Experiences of Catholic Nuns,” Review of
Religious Research 40 (1998), 142–67.
30. For a summary of such surveys, see Spilka et al., The Psychology
of Religion, 439–43.
31. M. B. Brinkerhoff, E. Grandin, and E. Lupri, “Disaffiliation:
Some Notes on ‘Falling from the Faith,’ ” Sociological Analysis
41 (1992), 15–31.
32. R. Stout-Miller, L. S. Miller, and M. R. Langenbrunner, “Reli-
giosity and Child Sexual Abuse: A Risk Factor Assessment,”
Journal of Child Sexual Abuse 6 (1997), 15–34.
33. For a summary of studies on both sides, see Spilka et al., The
Psychology of Religion, 420–22.
34. Janet E. Rosenbaum, “Reborn a Virgin: Adolescents’ Retract-
ing of Virginity Pledges and Sexual Histories,” American Jour-
nal of Public Health 96, no. 6 (2006), 1096–103.
35. H. Hartshorne and M. A. May, Studies in the Nature of Character,
Volume 1: Studies in Deceit, Volume 2: Studies in Service and Self-
Control (New York: Macmillan, 1928/1929).
36. R. D. Perrin, “Religiosity and Honesty,” Review of Religious
Research 41 (2000), 534–44.
37. D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity, 78. See also 268.
38. D. M. Wulff, Psychology of Religion: Classic and Contemporary
Views, 2nd ed. (New York: Wiley, 1997), 223.
39. Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, 459. See also 458–78,
which summarize numerous studies; and C. D. Batson, P. A.
Schoenrade, and L. W. Ventis, Religion and the Individual: A
Socio-Psychological Perspective (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1993).
162 Notes to Pages 43–60
40. Ian Hansen and Ara Norenzayan, “Yang and Yin and Heaven
and Hell: Untangling the Complex Relationship between Reli-
gion and Intolerance,” in Where God and Science Meet: How the
Brain and Evolutionary Studies Alter Our Understanding of Reli-
gion, edited by P. McNamara (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2006),
Vol. 3.
41. Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, 466 and 472.
42. Arthur C. Brooks, Who Really Cares (New York: Basic Books,
2006), 34.
43. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 34. This figure is for the year 2000.
44. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 38.
45. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 42. See also 26–29 and 94.
46. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 186.
47. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 214.
48. Spilka et al., The Psychology of Religion, p. 447. See also Batson
et al., Religion and the Individual.
49. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 34.
50. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 20, his italics. See also 6 and 25.
51. Brooks, Who Really Cares, 55.
52. Azim F. Shariff and Ara Norenzayan, “God Is Watching You:
Priming God Concepts Increases Prosocial Behavior in an
Anonymous Economic Game,” Psychological Science 18, no. 9
(2007), 803–9. See also J. C. Ortberg, R. L. Gorsuch, and G. J.
Kim, “Changing Attitude and Moral Obligation: Their Inde-
pendent Effects on Behavior,” Journal for the Scientific Study of
Religion 40 (2001), 489–96.
53. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan, Part 1, Ch. 13.
54. Bernard Gert, Common Morality (New York: Oxford University
Press, 2004) and Morality, Revised Edition (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2005). Much of my argument in this chapter
and also in Chapter Six is greatly indebted to Gert.
 Notes to Pages 73–130 163
55. A popular presentation of some of these data can be found in
Marc Hauser, Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal
Sense of Right and Wrong (New York: Ecco, 2006).
56. See, for example, Jonathan Haidt and Jesse Graham, “When
Morality Opposes Justice: Conservatives Have Moral Intu-
itions that Liberals May Not Recognize,” Social Justice Research
20 (2007), 98–116.
57. For an example of such a theory, see Swinburne, “What Differ-
ence Does God Make to Morality?” in Is Goodness without God
Good Enough? ed. Garcia and King.
58. D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity, 233. See also C. S.
Lewis, Mere Christianity (London: G. Bles, 1952).
59. See Louise Anthony, “Atheism as Perfect Piety” in Is Goodness
without God Good Enough? ed. Garcia and King.
60. Larry Nucci, “Children’s Conceptions of Morality, Social Con-
ventions, and Religious Prescriptions” in Moral Dilemmas: Phil-
osophical and Psychological Reconsiderations of the Development
of Moral Reasoning, edited by C. Harding (Chicago: Precedent
Press, 1986).
61. Martin L. Hoffman, Empathy and Moral Development: Implications
for Caring and Justice (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
2001).
62. This account of reasons comes from Bernard Gert, Common
Morality.
63. William Lane Craig, “Opening Statement” in Is Goodness with-
out God Good Enough? ed. Garcia and King.
64. For example, in Walter Sinnott-Armstrong, Moral Skepticisms
(New York: Oxford University Press, 2006), chap. 10. For those
who know this work, I should mention that all of my epistemic
claims in the present book should be taken to be relative to the
modest contrast class.
164 Notes to Pages 137–154
65. Craig, “Opening Statement” in Is Goodness without God Good
Enough? ed. Garcia and King, p. 30. Compare Matthew 19:17:
“There is only One who is good.”
66. See my chapter 4 in Craig and Sinnott-Armstrong, God?
67. D’Souza, What’s So Great about Christianity, 252.
68. See www.newdimensions.us/, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/
id/14337492/, and http://earnestlycontending.blogspot.com/
2007/06/reverand-carlton-pearson-from-oral.html.
69. Hitchens, God Is Not Great.
 INDEX

abortion, 3, 32, 54, 148–50 apatheists, xvii

abuse Asimov, Isaac, 22
child, 37–38, 86, 142 assault, 34
domestic, 37–38, 87 atheism, xi–xvi
sexual, 36–37 attendance, at church, 35, 38, 40–42
verbal, 37 authority, obedience to, 78–79
adultery, 1, 8, 53, 139, 142
affirmative action, 54, 72, 149 Berkowitz, David, 129, 138
aggression, and atheism, 33–34 Bible
aggressive war, 75 homosexuality and, 140, 144
agnosticism, xvii, 30, 85 morality and, 37, 136–45
Allah, xvii murder and, 103, 122–24, 129, 139
Allen, Woody, 127 slavery and, 43, 141, 143–44
“Amazing Grace,” 154 blasphemy, 15–16
amendments, constitutional, 148–49 born-again Christians, 39–40
American Humanist Association, 156 Brooks, Arthur, 44–45, 47–49
animals, and morality, 69–70 Buddhism, xv
Annie Hall (movie), 127 Bush, George H. W., 8
answered prayer, 2 Bush, George W., xiv, 149
antireligion, 27
anti-Semitism, 26, 43 cannibalism, 72, 85–87, 140
antitheism, 27 caring, 61–62, 110, 117–19, 128
166 Index

Carter, Jimmy, xiv, 152 Crusades, 26, 28

Catholic Church cultural religion, xv
hierarchy of, 36 culture wars, 9, 11, 151, 153
Nazi Party and, 26 Curie, Marie, 22
prejudice against, 13 Cushman, Fiery, 73
priests of, 36–37
view of morality of, xiv Dalai Lama, 24
Catholic Education Resource Center, 9 dancing, 31
Catholicism, xiv, 29 Darwin, Charles, 19
causation Dawkins, Richard, 10, 28
morality and, 67 death
v. correlation, 49 avoidance of, 58–62, 68–69
celibacy, 36–37 of Christ, 126
charity, 44–51 of God, xii, 1, 52, 86
cheating, 39–41, 53 penalty, 54, 121, 148, 150
child abuse, 37–38, 86, 142 redemption after, 153
Christ, death of, 126 deceit, 18
Christian Cyclopedia, 9 Dennett, Dan, 10–11
Christianity, evangelical, xv–xvi Devil, 32–33
church attendance, 35, 38, 40–42 disability, 58–60, 62, 66, 68–69, 150
church-state separation, xii, 55 discrimination, 41–44
Clinton, Bill, xiv disease, sexually transmitted, 32
cognitive illusion, 130 divine command theory, of morality,
cognitive religion, xv 75–76, 91–111, 129, 136–45, 150
Commandments, Ten, 54, 138–40, divorce, 31, 142
143, 148 dogmatism, moral, 33, 42, 150
commands, of God, 54, 91–111, domestic abuse, 37–38, 87
136–45, 148 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, xii
communism, 27 drug policy, 149
Concordat of 1933, 26 drug use, 34
conservatism, 38, 48–49, 77, 148–50 D’Souza, Dinesh, 7–8, 18–19, 26, 41, 138
constitutional amendments, 148–49 duties, moral, 52, 67–68, 70–71, 75,
constructivism, 76 95–104
contemplative prayer, 135
contraception, 148 Edison, Thomas, 22
contractualism, 76 egoism, 76, 114, 118
conventionalism, 76 embryonic stem cell research, 3, 55,
correlation, v. causation, 49 109, 148, 150
Craig, William Lane, 7 empiricism, 14, 51–52
creationism, 2 environmental damage, 54
Crick, Francis, 22 epistemology, 14, 97–98
crimes, 34–36 Ethical Culture, 156
 Index 167

ethics, committees on, 131–35, 145 Golden Rule, 64–65

ethnocentrism, 42 Gore, Al, xiv
Euthyphro (Plato), 106 Gospel of Inclusion, 153
evangelical Christianity, xiii–xvi, 13, 30, government, 48–49
45, 97
evolution, 54, 92, 148, 150 Haidt, Jonathan, 77
exclusion, social, 79 harm-based morality, 57–58,
existence 65–68, 75–81, 84–89,
of God, xvi–xvii, 15, 56, 101 94–98
study of, 14 harms, 58–62
extra morality, 86 Harris, Sam, 10, 28
hate speech, 149
faith Hauser, Marc, 73
marriage and, 1 heaven, 3, 45–47, 61, 128
morality and, xi hell
family rules, 107 avoidance of, 45–47, 113–14, 119
family values, 77, 82–83, 108, 142 belief in, 3, 123–27
finiphilia, 127–28 condemnation in, 6, 80, 153
forgiveness hell houses, 19
Holy Spirit and, 15–16, 120–21, 125 hierarchy
morality and, 33 in Catholic Church, 36
murder and, 16, 121 morality and, 77
free speech, 149 spousal, 37
free will, 69–70 Hinduism, xv
fundamentalism, 43 Hitchens, Christopher, 10, 28, 153–54
Hitler, Adolf, 26–28
Gallup polls, 5, 5t Hobbes, Thomas, 53
Gandhi, Mohandas, 24 Holy Spirit, 15–16, 120–21, 125
gay marriage, 54, 83, 148 homicide, 32–34. See also murder
Geneva Conventions, 109 homosexuality
genocide, 140 Bible and, 140, 144
Gert, Bernard, 60 marriage and, 54, 83, 148
Gillis, James, 9 morality and, 30–31, 39, 43, 54,
global warming, 60 81–85, 149, 153
God homosexuals, prejudice against, 3,
belief in, 32–33 42, 152
commands of, 54, 91–111, hospital ethics committees,
138–40, 148 131–35, 145
death of, xii, 1, 52, 86 Houdini, Harry, 80
existence of, xvi–xvii, 15, 56, 101 humans, special status of, 69
goodness v. badness of, xvi Hume, David, 19
morality and, xvi, 56, 74–75 hypocrisy, 143
168 Index

illusion, cognitive, 130 Mein Kampf (Hitler), 26

incest, 85–87, 140 Methodist clergy, 37
Inclusion, Gospel of, 153 miracles, xvi, 59
infiniphilia, 127–28 Missouri Synod Lutheran Church, 9
the Inquisition, 26, 28 mixed marriages, 1–2
intelligent design, 2 moral dogmatism, 33, 42, 150
intolerance, 41–44, 153 moral duties, 52, 67–68, 70–71, 75,
irrationality, 60–62, 66–67, 114–18 95–104
Islam, xv morality
issues, of morality, 129–45 animals and, 69–70
atheism and, 14
Jensen, Gary, 32 Bible and, 37, 136–45
Jesus Christ, 9 Catholic view of, xiv
Jewish (Reformed) view, of morality, xv causation and, 67
Jews, prejudice against, 42 divine command theory of, 75–76,
Jillette, Penn Fraser, 22 91–111, 129, 136–45, 150
Judaism, xv extra, 86
juvenile mortality, 32 faith and, xi
forgiveness and, 33
Kantianism, 76 God and, xvi, 56, 74–75
kidnapping, 58 harm-based, 57–58, 65–68, 75–81,
Krishna, xvii 84–89, 94–98
hierarchy and, 77
larceny, 34 homosexuality and, 30–31, 39, 43, 54,
liberalism, 49, 77, 148–50 81–85, 149, 153
Libertarianism, 149 Jewish (Reformed) view of, xv
Little, Bruce, 143 murder and, 18, 21, 32, 58, 86–87,
logical fallacies, 27, 30 96, 140
loyalty, 77–79 objective, 14, 75–77
lying, 39, 53, 58 prayer and, 17, 96
Protestant view of, xv
Maher, Bill, 2 rape and, 57–58, 69, 75, 86–87, 92–93,
Mao Tse-tung, 26–28, 43 96, 102–6, 117, 137
marital rape, 37, 93 reasons for, religious, 119–27
marriage reasons for, secular, 113–18
faith and, 1 revelation and, xiv
gay/homosexual, 54, 83, 148 sex and, 80–88
mixed, 1–2 shared, 86
Maslow, Abraham, 22 slavery and, 93, 139
masturbation, 80–82 theistic theory of, 76–77
McCain, John, 9 moral rights, 70
meaning, 3, 127–28, 156 Moral Sense Test, 72
 Index 169

mortality, juvenile, 32 polytheism, xvi

murder pornography, 54, 149
Bible and, 103, 122–24, 129, 139 post hoc ergo propter hoc, 27
forgiveness and, 16, 121 postmodernism, 76
morality and, 18, 21, 32, 58, 86–87, prayer
96, 140 answered, 2
penalty for, 72–73, 113 contemplative, 135
of Shepard, 43 morality and, 17, 96
war and, 34 in schools, 54, 148, 150
predestination, 124
Nazi Party, 26 pregnancy, adolescent, 32
necrophilia, 85–87, 140 prejudice, 41–44, 51
new age religions, xv against atheists, 13, 20, 24
Nietzsche, Friedrich, xii, 92 against blacks, 42
nihilism, 52, 76 against Catholics, 13
Nixon, Richard M., 8 against evangelicals, 13
non-believers, 108, 121, 140, 151 against homosexuals, 3, 42, 152
non-Christian religions, 21–22, 24 against women, 3, 42
non-cognitivism, 76 premarital sex, 31, 34
normative principles, 98, 100 preventive war, 54
Nucci, Larry, 107 priests, Catholic, 36–37
promise breaking, 53, 58, 66–67, 140
Obama, Barack, xiv, 9 protected classes, 73–74, 93
obedience, to authority, 78–79 Protestant view of morality, xv
objectivity, in morality, 14, 75–77 purity, 77
ontology, 14
Orwell, George, 22 rabbis, 37
Randi, James, 22
pain, 57–62, 115 rape
paparazzi, 25 crime of, 16, 21, 34
patriotism, 8, 79, 140 marital, 37, 93
Paul, Gregory, 32 morality and, 57–58, 69, 75, 86–87,
Pauling, Linus, 22 92–93, 96, 102–6, 117, 137
Pearson, Carlton, 153 rationality, 98, 115–16
pedophilia, 31, 36 Reagan, Ronald, xiv
penalty reason, 71–75, 93–95
death, 54, 121, 148, 150 reasons to be moral
for murder, 72–73, 113 religious, 119–27
persistent vegetative states, 74 secular, 113–18
Plato, Euthyphro, 106 redemption, after death, 153
Pledge of Allegiance, 54, 148 Reformed Jewish view, of morality, xv
pledge of virginity, 39–40 relativism, 76
170 Index

religiosity, devotional v. coalitional, 43 Sulla (dictator), 122

religious community, 35
religious societies, 32 Taylor, Robert, xii
religious wars, 34, 61 Teller, Raymond Joseph, 22
Religulous (movie), 2 Ten Commandments, 54, 138–40, 143, 148
revelation, as basis for morality, xiv theistic theory, of morality, 76–77
rights, moral, 70 Thor, xvii
rules, family, 107 tithing, 46
torture, 41
Sagan, Carl, 22 traditional values, 149
Satan, 21, 138 transubstantiation, 26
school prayer, 54, 148, 150 Turing, Alan, 22
secret-keeping, 66 Twain, Mark, 22
secularists, xvii
secularization, 31, 39 Unitarian Universalists, 3
secular societies, 14, 32, 44 universalism, 153
self-interest, 46–49, 101, 114–17, 130 unjust war, 152
Sen, Amartya, 22
sex vegetarianism, 54
morality and, 80–88 vegetative states, 74
premarital, 31 verbal abuse, 37
sexual abuse, 36–37 virgin birth, 2–3
sexually transmitted disease, 32 virginity pledge, 39–40
shared morality, 86 virtue theory, 76
Shepard, Matthew, 43 Vonnegut, Kurt, 22
Sinnott-Armstrong, Elizabeth (Liz), 23
slavery war(s)
Bible and, 43, 141, 143–44 aggressive, 75
morality and, 93, 139 culture, 9, 11, 151, 153
slaves, 73–74, 139 murder and, 34
Socrates, 106 preventive, 54
sodomy, 85 religious, 34, 61
Son of Sam, 129 unjust, 152
special status, of humans, 69 Warren, Rick, xiv
spousal hierarchy, 37 Watson, James, 22
Stalin, Joseph, 26–28, 43 Waugh, Evelyn, 29
Stanton, Elizabeth Cady, 22 Wikipedia, 23
Stark, Pete, 6 worship, 16–17
stealing, 54, 58, 98
stem cell research, 3, 55, 109, Young, Liane, 73
148, 150
suicide bombers, 61, 128 Zeus, xvii, 6
 INDEX OF BIBLICAL PASSAGES

OLD TESTAMENT 20:13, 43, 84, 140

27:30, 46
Genesis Deuteronomy
2–3, 70 5:6–21, 138
2:17, 20 7:2, 109
6, 140 7:3, 2
18:25, 121 13:6–9, 108, 121, 140
18:32, 29 20:10–16, 109
22:2, 103, 129 20:14, 141
21:10–11, 141
Exodus
21:18–21, 142
20:3–17, 138
Joshua
21:7, 141, 143
10:40, 91, 103
21:8–11, 144
11:20, 103
21:17, 142
2 Chronicles
21:20–21, 141
15:13, 108
21:24, 72
Psalms
22:20, 108, 121, 140
14:1, 15
Leviticus Proverbs
18:22, 31, 84 13:24, 37
20:9, 142 20:30, 37
20:10, 142 23:13–14, 37, 140
172 Index of Biblical Passages
NEW TESTAMENT Romans
1:26–27, 31, 42, 84, 140
Matthew 1:28–32, 18
5:15–16, 147 3:28, 20, 126
5:18, 143 9:14–18, 124
5:32, 142 9:19–20, 124
5:39, 145 1 Corinthians
5:48, 137 11:3, 140
7:12, 53, 64 13:13, xi
10:35, 10, 142 14:33–35, 42, 142
12:31, 15, 120, 125 2 Corinthians
15:4–7, 142 6:14, 1–2
19:29, 142 Ephesians
22:39, 145 1:4–5, 124
25:46, 45 2:8–9, 126
27:20–23, 42 4:28, 145
5:22–24, 37–38, 140
Mark 6:5–8, 141
3:28–29, 15, 120 Colossians
7:10, 142 3:18, 37, 140
10:11–12, 142 3:22, 141
10:29–30, 142 2 Thessalonians
12:31, 145 1:8–9, 15
15:11–14, 42 1 Timothy
Luke 2:12, 42
6:29, 145 6:1–3, 141
6:38, 45 Titus 2:9–10, 141
10:27, 145 Hebrews
10:30–35, 145 10:26–27, 15, 125
12:10, 15 10:28–29, 140
14:26, 142 James
16:17, 143 2:8, 145
18:29–30, 142 2:15–16, 145
23:20–23, 42 1 Peter
2:18–19, 141
John 3:1, 37, 140
8:7, 22 Revelation
19:4–16, 42 21:8, 113