ethical life as a juvenile game of heavenly reward and hellish punishment, which infantilizes morality to a matter of self-centered prudence and fear, nonreligious ethics emphasize rationality and understanding as more mature ways to address and minimize malevolence. And rather than terrorize children with the fear of eternal torture, nonreligious orientations cultivate reflective understanding of actions and consequences among children, employing love and explication over scare tactics. Whereas theistic ethics have ultimately been predicated on a principle of “might makes right,” secular humanist ethics are predicated on how best to alleviate the suffering of sentient beings. Christocentric ethical systems have hinged upon the notion that we are born sinners who must actively choose to be moral—a willful choice that goes against the grain of our fallen selves—but secularism embraces the growing body of scientific evidence illustrating the degree to which a proclivity toward cooperation and sociability, care and concern, and altruism and love are the observable outgrowth of our evolved natures.
As more and more of us let go of God, so too must we counter and ultimately reject the notion that our morals come from said God. They don’t.77 Morality and ethics grow out of the human experience: our genes, our minds, our emotions, our evolutionary history, our experiences, our communities, our cultures, and our societies.
I should note here that the very terms “morality” and “ethics”—terms that I’ll employ throughout this book—are virtually synonymous in everyday usage. As American philosopher Ryan Falcioni notes, “moral” and “ethical” basically mean the same thing,78 both having to do with how we treat others, whether our actions are helpful or harmful, and the degree to which we reduce or increase suffering. That said, I generally use the term “moral” to refer to personal values and behaviors that increase the well-being of sentient beings, while “ethical” signifies principles and orientations that aim to increase justice and fairness in society. Again, the terms are nearly interchangeable. And both function better when there’s no God in the picture.
But how does godless morality work? How can people be moral if they don’t believe in God? How does morality even function if there is no Supreme Overlord issuing forth moral edicts and ethical commandments, watching over us all, judging, rewarding, and punishing? Can objective morality exist without God? And what specific moral precepts, ethical imperatives, and cardinal virtues do nonbelievers actually live by?
In the pages that follow, these questions will be answered as thoroughly and as thoughtfully as possible. First, in Part One, the traditional, hegemonic ethical framework for thousands of years—theistic morality of religious faith—will be debunked and deconstructed. Although most people the world over continue to think that morality begins and ends with God, it doesn’t. In Part Two, the nonreligious sources of secular morality will be explored and explained, and the core virtues of atheist ethical living—what I call the “secular seven”—will be presented. Part Three will consider challenges to secular morality, along with respective solutions.
“One is often told,” British philosopher Bertrand Russell quipped nearly one hundred years ago, “that it is a very wrong thing to attack religion, because religion makes men virtuous. So I am told; I have not noticed it.”79
In a world where many of those in top positions of power are strongly religious or are supported by the strongly religious—from Donald Trump in Washington, D.C., to Mohammed bin Salman in Saudi Arabia, from Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil to Vladimir Putin in Russia, from Benjamin Netanyahu in Israel to Ali Khamenei in Iran, from Recep Erdoğan in Turkey to Aung San Suu Kyi in Myanmar, from Viktor Orbán in Hungary to Iván Duque Márquez in Colombia, from Mohamed Abdullahi Mohamed in Somalia to Narendra Modi in India, and well beyond—it is not wrong to attack religion, at least not its most destructive and oppressive manifestations. Skeptical criticism, given the power religion wields, is morally obligatory.
And as for Professor Russell’s noting that religion doesn’t actually seem to make people virtuous, he’s spot-on. When the world’s largest Christian organization, the Roman Catholic Church, claims to possess a monopoly on morality while at the same time commanding people not to use condoms—and also aiding and abetting thousands of child molesters—the link between religion and morality cries out for suspicion. When Evangelical Christians insist that the Bible is the sole source of moral guidance, while at the same time championing the proliferation of guns, the ripping apart of refugee families at our borders, and the active thwarting of efforts to halt global warming, the relationship between religious faith and ethical living begs for scrutiny. When orthodox Jews insist that God’s commandments form the foundation of moral society, while at the same time denying women in abusive relationships the right to divorce, engaging in ritualistic animal cruelty, and championing the violent oppression of the Palestinian people, the insistence that God is necessary for a moral existence necessitates deconstruction. And when Islamic fundamentalists in Saudi Arabia or Iran champion themselves as the divinely mandated arbiters of moral law, while at the same time beheading enemies of the state in public squares, imprisoning homosexuals, and denying democracy, the connection of theism to ethics demands debunking.
While there is much good within religious life—such as supportive community, strengthened family bonds, meaningful rituals, and charity—the stubborn fact remains that supernatural beings do not create morality and the worship of almighty gods is not the source of ethical living. Rather, the alpha and omega of moral life is us, warts and all.
WHY MORALITY CANNOT BE BASED ON FAITH IN GOD
Back in 2010, leading social scientist and professor of public policy at Harvard University Robert Putnam, along with his colleague David Campbell, published a massive empirical analysis of religious life in America. The tome was called American Grace, and it was chock-full of findings that shed light upon numerous facets of religious belief, behavior, and belonging.
Putnam and Campbell reported that, on average, religious people are more charitable than their secular peers. When it comes to things like generosity and volunteering, frequent churchgoers give and do more than non-churchgoers. For example, among the most religious segment of their national sample, the average amount of annual donations to charitable causes per household was $3,000, but among the most secular segment, the average amount was $1,000. And among the most religious swath of Americans, only 6 percent said that they had made no charitable contributions in the previous year, but among the most secular swath of their sample, 32 percent reported as much. The secular, it seems, are stingier. And not only are highly religious individuals more likely to donate to both religious and nonreligious causes, and not only are they more likely to do volunteer work, but they are also more likely to give
