as Popper pointed out (The Open Society and its Enemies), there is no way to escape to our responsibilities. A given moral authority is good if the rules it gives us are good, not the other way around.

“[resistance to critical dualism of facts and standards] is based upon our fear of admitting to ourselves that the responsibility for our ethical decisions is entirely ours and cannot be shifted to anybody else; neither to God, nor to nature, nor to society, nor to history. All these ethical theories attempt to find somebody, or perhaps some argument, to take the burden from us. But we cannot shirk this responsibility. Whatever authority we may accept, it is we who accept it. We only deceive ourselves if we do not realize this simple point.”

As an atheist, I would of course mention the Euthyphro dilemma (or at least, a modern version of it) as being a fairly hefty blow to a religious morality of the type that your Christian friend appears to have been alluding to.

I am yet to see decisive refutation of a modern version of it, but there may well be one that I have missed. I have read various attempts to escape either one or both of the horns of the dilemma, but I am yet to be convinced that the basic argument cannot be applied in the same way, and to each case, regardless.

But even if there is a decisive refutation, there are further arguments against the supposed objectivity of a religious morality. There would need to be a robust and reliably objective method for discriminating between, not only the myriad of moral codes and ethical principles of the thousands of distinct and often mutually exclusive religions of the world, but also between the 39,000 denominations of Christianity, specifically.

Without such an objective method, one has to wonder how exactly a Christian can be sure that they are adhering to an objective morality, at all? Would that not introduce a level of subjectivity in to the equation right from the off, leaving the Christian (or Muslim, etc) with absolutely no way of knowing whether they are following God’s will, or simply that of their fellow human beings? And would that not render any further beliefs that follow directly from that initial decision as decidedly subjective in nature, as well?

Also, unless your Christian friend can point to scriptural support — or some other method of communication by God — with specific commands dealing with all of the thousands of modern ethical issues (child custody cases, drink driving, etc) that we face — issues that were not even thought of at the time when the bible was constructed — one has to wonder how s/he decides what to do in those instances, let alone whether it can be said that their ethical choices are objectively grounded, or not?

And the very fact that Christians — not only from differing sects and denominations, but also two Christians from the very same sect — cannot decide between themselves what their supposedly objective moral code is supposed to command of them, casts serious doubt on any claims that they are following God’s will, at all.

Finally, unless a religious believer has shown how all secular attempts to ground morality objectively have failed, or at the very least, can show that it is not and never will be possible to do so, they are making a very bold claim indeed.

I’m not convinced by any such attempts, myself, but I wouldn’t claim to be able to show how all attempts that have ever been attempted have failed, or even that it is not possible to do so. I can imagine how it might even be possible to argue that murder and rape, as strictly defined, are always objectively wrong, for instance.

I think the easiest response to the lack of grounding of ethics without a god, would be to appeal to a kind of virtue theory. There is something intrinsically valuable about being a good person, like being healthy (plato).

On top of that, I don’t want to be a jerk. Being a moral person involves not being a jerk, and a person who has only a hedonistic worldview tends to be a jerk. I don’t need a God to tell me not to be a jerk, or to be rewarded for not wanting to be a jerk.

Someone who needs a ‘grounded’ version of moral value is always going to hold it bloodlessly, tending towards vacillation and post-hoc confabulations. This is true however transcendental or otherwise the source.

The urge to find grounds IMO has two intellectual sources: firstly, confusion about the ontological status of values, and, secondly, a tendency to focus on hard cases as examples in philosophical discussion.

But hardly anyone knows anything about the ontological status of ordinary physical objects, and we don’t wait for that to be ‘grounded’, at least in the context of action.

And re examples: think of sitting in a room in a small group of adults and one baby. One of the adults casually chooses to stub out their cigarette in the baby’s eye. What would we think of someone who needs ‘grounding’ to “really believe” that this was a bad action, or (more importantly) to intervene?

‘Grounding’ of morals is an intellectual exercise. A good and interesting one, but its purpose is to explain and extend what’s already there in the world of action and perception.

Maybe your Christian friend is saying something about himself, that he (it sounds more like a “he” than a “she”) needs transcendental reasons for helping others. Actually, I don’t like being ordered around, so the fact that God or the government wants me to do something generally leads me to do the contrary. In reality, I don’t mind helping others and being moral (maybe not up to Singer’s standards). Being moral has to do with my sense-image, with my sense of dignity, with how I appear to others too, with my idea that selfishness and greed are ugly, with the fact that I’m concerned about others, with empathy, with not wanting to be a jerk, as Wayne puts in.

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Euthyphro and minor moral disagreements notwithstanding, every culture prizes charity over selfishness, honesty over deceit, loyalty over treachery, etc. While they may disagree on what set of acts count as “charitable,” and may never even engage in those acts, when pressed, the mass of humanity will admit that charity is generally good and that people should be more charitable, or that cold-blooded murder is bad, etc. So either a)morality is not as subjective as we think, or b) the subjective views on it are, at root, so universal as to suggest they are objective.

What the Christian in the discussion meant was “Such objective values must have a supernatural origin, and if such an origin does not exist, then the values aren’t objective, but are akin to individual tastes.” If we reduce morality to a set of rules (for the sake of simplicity) then it is clear that the rules apply to everyone and that there is no human authority high enough to decide what is good or evil (legal and illegal, advantageous and disadvantageous, yes- but not good or evil) Russell knew that, and what he meant was “I know there is no God, but dammit, I know there are morals, so here’s a grandiose reconciliation of those two ideas.” Both of the Christian’s and Russell’s arguments involve a quiet appeal to consequence (”We need a god for morality,” “we have morals, so we don’t need a God”) but those appeals are not central to the issue. The question ought to be: Since we know there are moral values, the bulk of which have not changed over recorded human history (however much the practice of them may have), what does that tell us about the universe? To me, it seems to point to the existence of some god, some time, to at least have ordained some things as moral, and some as not. That the god may be gone, or disinterested, or even evil are all beside the point, since the laws he may have given are so widely agreed upon.

PS: To say that morality flows from one’s “pretty-good-guyness” displays a hideous hubris (if morality is real, anyway). Anyone posting on this blog has access to an internet connection, and therefore to a certain standard of living that is, as Peter Singer has pointed out, nearly murderous in its inequity (iniquitous in its inequity?). If morality exists (I’m not sure it does) then it involves a lot more than not stealing candy or cheating on tax returns, and none of us are moral enough to declare ourselves good.

Rather than posting a long comment, I invite you to read “Must Values Be Objective?” on my weblog: http://khashaba.blogspot.com/2006_01_01_archive.html
It is also included in my latest book The Sphinx and the Phoenix (2009).

The argument is like this: All humans live their lives in the middle of huge overlapping narratives. People make these narratives up, but they become embedded in communities and come to dictate what lives are like and what meaning everything has. One example is where value is based on “good will or pleasure or happiness”, one where “divine purpose” gives everything a certain glow and another where “God’s unfolding plan” is the defining storyline.

There is no logical argument between them, as there is no argument between two novels. Some stories are used better than others.

“Only with religion do you get a proper moral code”.

So far as I can see religion has been a major cause of war, persecution, torture, man’s inhumanity to man. The most grotesque vile and loathsome acts have been perpetrated in the name of religion. Somebody wants me to base my moral code on something with that track record? They can’t be serious. I am confident I know what is the good thing to do and the bad thing to do in most situations in life and am prepared to accept responsibility for my own judgements. To have need to refer to some very ancient instructions in a book largely based on deluding mythology for advice on how to behave decently seems to me preposterous. Wayne Yuen suggests Virtue ethics as a way of life; the flourishing but fair man. If one wants some sort of indication on how to behave then perhaps some variation of this could be appropriate.

I am currently agnostic due to the fact that it’s almost, no is frightening to think of morals without religion. If there is no all powerful judge determining what’s right and wrong, if this life truly means nothing, then what is stopping any one person from acting on pure personal pleasure? Without religion defining right and wrong there would be little advancements, no civilizations, only chaos. Although religion has caused numerous atrocities we will never know what it has prevented. It’s easy to pick out the flaws in anything. It’s much more difficult to see what could have, but never was. When you say you know the difference between good and bad are you not simply agreeing with the argument that religion is the base for all morals in the sense that your basing right and wrong on the definition religion gives it. Religion is a part of our world and whether it is the answer to life is a personal decision but whether it benefits society is a clear answer. Yes.

There are many different ways of taking the assertion that religion is fundamental to morality. At the most profound there is talk of the metaphysical underpinning of nature itself mediated by the Tao, Dharma, Being, Sat-Chit-Ananda, The One/TheTrue/The Good. Down from those heights in the foothills where most of the religious population lives we have religion as ethos where the standard demarcations of good conduct and bad are mapped. Below that again we have the rank superstition of lucky green hankies blessed by TV pastors and New Age promises of power over your fate mediated by crystals.

My point: just talking about religion en masse as though it were a single unitary clearly distinguishable entity is simplistic.

In reference to the contribution of Kyle Braley:

I would not deny that the innate desires of the human being unfettered i.e in A State of Nature, can lead to what Thomas Hobbes described as a condition of “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.”

In this connection you say that without religion defining right and wrong there would be little advancements, no civilizations, only chaos. From what I know it does appear that there is some variation between different religions as to what is right and wrong. I would not dispute that some tenets of religion are well meaning but often we are commanded not to steal, rather than do not steal because——. The little boy who tells his father that he does not steal because the Bible tells him not to, has no grasp of the bad ramifications of stealing.

In the main the above State of Nature has been politically controlled. People on pain of punishment, obey the law of the land. There is an article on Wikipedia “Social Contract” which is enlightening here. (There are some reservations about the scholarship of this article and the above quotation from Hobbes is incomplete there, but notwithstanding it is worth a read should one not be already familiar with how Social Contracts have intervened in shaping the behaviour of human beings.) My argument here is that Moral commands emanating from religion alone, have not been responsible for shaping the approved behaviour of Human beings, and they mostly demand blind unreflective obedience on pain of punishment or censure from some construct of bygone human imagination.

An interesting point arises in a cases where a moral obligation is in opposition with a legal one; which one should take precedence?

‘It’s much more difficult to see what could have, but never was.’ I am not sure that this is a helpful point in an enquiry of this nature. Surely we are only considering what has happened not what might have happened, something we can never be sure about.

I cannot deny that when I do what I think is the best thing, or as I originally said, the good thing, it may correspond to what a religion might decree but this is only coincidental not causative.

Interesting discussion, and I’m a bit unwilling to butt in, but the thing I found most weird about the two views is that one seems to ground meaning in the existence of an afterlife (there’s no meaning if this short life is all there is) and the other finds meaning the thought that this short life really is all there is. Two different sorts of meaning? Different premises, obviously I suppose, but I’m having trouble working out what they are.

I notice that people in the comments here did not actually say what they base their morals on. The best they have come to is that one does not need god to be moral or not to be a jerk. But notice that it is not a basis for morals. I hope people realize that the vast majority of humans actually accept a religion because they don’t want to look like jerks to their family or friends or neighbors.

Sometime back there was a post on this blog on whether a particular lady should or should not commit suicide. In the comments there many have argued that inherently there is nothing wrong with she committing suicide but she should consider the pain she would cause to her family. So, my question is if one comes from an orthodox religious family and realizes the futility of life, should he choose to disappoint and cause pain to his family by openly being an atheist/agnostic?

Another question. On that same suicide post, Wayne Yuen gave an example of that lady and her sister being the only life on a flat boring planet and considered the question in that context. So, lets now suppose, in addition to the situation described by Yuen, that the lady’s sister is about to die in the next few minutes. Then is it ok for the lady to commit suicide?

Re the contribution of Author P:
I would like to know what justification you have for saying “the vast majority of humans actually accept a religion because they don’t want to look like jerks to their family or friends or neighbors.”
Is there some accredited and published research in, for instance a sociological journal or similar,which indicates this to be the case? If that really is the manner in which the majority of human beings are making their decisions then God (if you exist) help us.

The question concerning admitting atheism to one’s religious family is similar to the quandary, which some homosexuals face in admitting their sexual preference to the family. If such admissions are likely to cause severe mental and or physical injury to say a parent than it would be best to keep quiet. It just depends on the degree of pain or injury a revelation is likely to generate and this can only be decided by the person in question after serious consideration. One certainly cannot be expected to run one’s life with the proviso that parents and family must approve of all that one does.

As I recollect Waynr Yuen’s planet had a population of merely two. One is on the verge of death and you say, the other kills herself just prior to the death of the sister. You ask is it OK for the lady to commit suicide. I am thinking OK by whom? The planet will be uninhabited in a few moments. One is tempted to say so what? Wayne does not appear to have introduced a mythological God into his equation so there are no complications from that aspect. There is in any case no one left there for a God to punish. One could say wait until God gets his hands on her then she will pay for it; but we, in my opinion, get into great difficulty when God enters any discussion, which is then paused perhaps indefinitely, whilst we consider how to define and deal with that concept.

Re to Don Bird:
I am not quoting from any journal or a systematic study. It is just from daily observations that one can say that a vast majority of people just adopt a religion so that they conform to the societal standard (i.e. not being a jerk). In general, a person (excluding atheists/agnostics and a minority of converts by choice) adopt the religion of their family. Through out the world religion, culture and traditions are inseparable. So, if one wants to conform, the easiest route is to accept all of them. I don’t think the vast majority really thinks deeply enough to weigh the different options (they might not even know of the possibility of existence of other options) and then adopt a religion or a belief system.

Your answer to my first question is interesting in the above context. You suggest that an atheist/agnostic should at least consider seriously the consequences before he reveals his beliefs or lives according to his beliefs. The vast majority do not even have an opinion OF THEIR OWN on the relevance of god to their life. So, it is natural for them to just conform.

I think my second question was misunderstood. I’ll try asking the question through another means. On the same suicide post, another commenter made a point which he attributed to Camus - “the only serious philosophical question — or at least the first one — is whether to live or die.”

So, my question is what motivates someone who sees the futility of life and yet lives a moral and “energetic” life? My point is if one can unambiguously make the decision to live actively it is understandable that one doesn’t need god to ground one’s morals in. But neither on that suicide post nor here does anyone answer this question conclusively.

I’d still be interested to hear from anyone why they find ‘morals’ to need ‘grounding’? Consider it in te context of an obvious case, not a contrived philosophical hard case. Best to consider an example in which only a psychopath would be expected not to agree on the right reaction/action. It’s easy to come up with examples.

They perhaps consider why, in such cases, apparent attempts to ‘ground’ a moral response feel so different from their tone in things like stories about trolleys, etc. Which kind of example casts the clearest light on the actual nature of ethical responses, and why?

Re: P of 21st Nov.

I was not brought up by religious parents. They were not atheists but they told me that if anybody asked what religion I followed it was best to say Church of England. I was taught to say prayers each night, which I did because I thought it was just something people did. I guess my mother was of the same opinion. Aged about 10 I did attend a Christian Church for about a year. This I found a curious experience. Everybody seemed so miserable all the time. I could never understand exactly who or what this God was and any answers to my questions concerning this only served to convince me they were sort of making it all up as they went. I accordingly remained unconvinced and still am.

Be that as it may. I think we have to consider here people who are reasonably serious about religion in that they feel it necessary for one reason or another to at least, pay lip service to a religion, or at the other end of the scale are devout believers. Some abide by Pascal’s wager believe in God just in case he is there. Your expression societal standard probably also covers a lot what I mean here. I think where we differ is that when you say people adopt the religion of their family I would claim that they never had the chance to choose. They were brainwashed from birth to follow whatever religious belief their parents had, or purported to have. This was also reinforced by religious stories at school and probably prayers. The more devout the family the more effective the brain washing and many were influenced for life. You are probably right when you say the vast majority rarely if ever reflect deeply on their beliefs and in many cases they would also be unable to pursue a critical appraisal of religion.

I still remain of the opinion that if one has such beliefs or practices none of which offend the law of the land, but which one KNOWS will be sorely injurious to one’s relatives in the event they be advised of them, then one should keep quiet.

Your question is “what motivates someone who sees the futility of life and yet lives a moral and “energetic” life”? In the grand scale of things a human life is pointless, in fact I don’t think anything is actually going anywhere. There will be no grande finale, nothing actually, for anything to aim at. That said however Humans are a product of evolution and as such have inherited survival mechanisms. In fact everything survives until such time as it is overcome by natural forces greater than itself. The human being in addition to the rest of the animal Kingdom and the plant kingdom is programmed for survival. If we do not act decently towards each other we could return to a State of nature described by Thomas Hobbes as a condition of “continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.” I do not think anybody in their right senses would want that. Additionally if you ask around people are pretty adamant that they do not want to die, and would like to live a healthy life for as long as possible. One way of doing this is to act morally towards each other, more chance of a better life, than we act immorally. There is no need to introduce a god into all this it is just common sense to put it crudely. Additionally I do not think people ponder over-much on the futility of life as I have described it above they try to make the best of what they have got, even if it is at times a ‘bad job’, survive and propagate the race. It is all about survival. So far as I remember the conclusion of Camus’ “Myth of Sisyphus” was something along these lines.

You ask for a conclusive reply to your question and I am not sure there is one. I have merely given you mine, and doubtless there are many who disagree strongly with me.

Re Don Bird:
Thanks for the long reply. Your reply brings up more questions in mind.

I agree that one doesn’t necessarily need the notion of god to be moral if the decision to “live” has been taken. “Common sense” is enough.

I also accept that humans, as do all other life forms, have an inherent survival mechanism. However, the survival mechanism is of a short term nature and may not necessarily be of much help in long time scales, say about a few years to a few decades.

For example, lets consider global warming/resource crunch that threatens to possibly take us back to the condition, you described through the words of Hobbes, in the next 20-25 years. There are many people who simply are not aware of the problem. But the key decision makers and the major stake holders in the society are well aware of the situation but live in denial.

If as you say we are all survival machines we would by now be thinking and working on nothing but solving the problem. But that is not the case and hence we have to realize that we live not merely because we are programmed to live but more importantly because society rewards us, in the short term, to want to live and that is why we live. To me accepting such a reward is not very different from the rewards the society offers for conforming to certain opinions/views/religions. And just as a serious observer questions dominant views and religions he must also question why he should live. I haven’t been able to find an answer to it and am not very hopeful of ever finding one.

“… survive and propagate the race”. If a person genuinely sees the futility of life and the pain that life generally is, should he have kids? I mean if he does is he being selfish, in that he does not care (not in the material sense) for the “sufferings” of his kids just so that he may conform to society?

BC - good question: why think morality needs a grounding? I’m not sure it does, come to think of it, particularly if you leave the trolley out of it. If you actually try to work out what’s right and why you think it’s right, you can dig down into your reasons as far as you like. That’s looking for a grounding, I suppose. But you need never hit bedrock.

Maybe, as I think Russell said in a story somewhere, it’s turtles all the way down.

James - it’s not that I don’t think the grounding question is interesting. It has happily (?) occupied many a philosopher at book length, after all. I’m just yet to be convinced that practical ethical judgement is any more in need of grounds than in any other domain. If we’re going to allow ontological discomfort to infect our sense of the validity of our judgements, then we might as well do so equitably. A physical turtle is hardly less problematic than an ethical one, after all.

Author: P
Comment:

You speak of the survival mechanism as being a short term nature.
I suggest it is of a staggeringly vast term nature for the following reasons. The Ginkgo tree is virtually unchanged over 170 million years. Crocodiles Are believed to have changed little since the time of the dinosaurs. They are believed to be 200 million years old whereas dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago; crocodiles have also survived great extinction events. There is a large number of similar examples in the plant and animal kingdoms. It is the species which have long term survival and this is nothing but transmission of genetic material. Richard Dawkins in ‘The Selfish Gene’ has pointed out that animal and vegetable organisms e.g. Humans and say, the Ginkgo tree, are merely vehicles for genes. Constructed by genes to ensure their own propagation. You are right when you say the survival term is of short nature provided you refer to the vehicles of genetic transmission. If one is already of the opinion that life is futile how much worse is it to find each one of us is nothing but a short term transmission agent, completely useless after we loose the ability to reproduce.
This however does not entail that the innate propensity to survive is not found in organisms. The longer fertile life extends the better chance of long term survival of the species.

So far as global warming us concerned, we are obviously not all working on the problem and many lack the vision to appreciate the seriousness of it. However due to genetic variations in the human race some are better adapted to employ their superior intellect in an effort to solve or at least ameliorate the problem. As you say there are also some of power and influence who are in denial. Dispositions in the human race do vary but even so I think survival is basic to all although it probably varies in strength from one individual to another. What is medical science but a vast program to prolong life and reduce suffering?

You ask why should the serious observer live? I can think of no reason why he should, moral or otherwise, apart from the fact he will upset his family if he dies especially by his own hand. Better ask perhaps why does he continue to live? As I have tried to point out here my belief is that nearly all organisms are genetically programmed to so far as possible, avoid death. Additionally Shakespeare, in Hamlet act 3 scene 1 line 56 et seq gives some good reasons for not doing away with oneself; but it is probably not an antidote for a determined suicide.

Your final paragraph raises an interesting problem. The short answer to which is that we are once again, by those wretched genes, often overwhelmingly urged to reproduce, come what may. How ever I think there is a moral issue here, which should conspire to resist the reproductive urge. I am myself unable to understand why people who know they are most probably, or even certainly, going to bring into the world a badly handicapped person would wish to proceed and cause a life of misery to someone. People seem to have babies for their sake never for the baby’s sake. I have a recollection of blind people wanting their child born blind rather than sighted because they would feel more comfortable with a blind child. Such a decision to my mind boarders on the criminal e.g. blinding a sighted child. I find it hard to disagree with your final paragraph other than to say people just do continue to reproduce and bring children into what seems to be in perhaps the short run, a dying planet.

I was talking of individuals’ survival mechanism being of a short term nature. For example, the rise in blood pressure and alertness of mind when some danger is perceived. This danger is usually of a short term nature - like a predator nearby or when one slips so as to regain balance etc. We do not have an inherent mechanism to alert us to dangers such as posed by say substance addiction, global warming or an economic crisis, which are basically phenomena that extend over longer time scales.

“What is medical science but a vast program to prolong life and reduce suffering?” - I was referring to suffering of a psychological nature and I don’t think medical science has been of any help in reducing it nor am I hopeful that it would ever.

I agree that the question of whether to live or die is a very tough question to answer and I won’t press on it. But “nearly all organisms are genetically programmed to so far as possible, avoid death” is not such a universal rule. Consider the thousands of people who have or are willing to blow/kill themselves for petty causes - terrorists, Kamikaze pilots, some Samurai warriors and thousands of others through out history.

I think, perhaps, most posters are missing the most basic intended meaning of your Christian friend. Without something ‘transcendental’ there is no objective reason to consider any action morally ‘good’ or ‘bad.’

Just because you or I think something is ‘good’ doesn’t make it so. Somebody else might think the opposite.

There have been cultures that were built on raiding and looting. The people doing this didn’t consider themselves evil. They just figured they were stronger than their victims and they could do it so they did. We might declare them ‘evil’ but they didn’t declare themselves ‘evil.’

If there is no absolute standard of good and evil outside ourselves, then it’s just ‘might makes right.’ whatever group of people decides on a standard and enforces it most effectively defines ‘good’ and ‘bad’ whether it is Athenians, Spartans, Persians, slaveholders, marauders, imperialists, dictators, child abusers, tea totalers, republicans or democrats.