Morality apart from God

Hardline secularists tell me that without religion, morality can still flourish. Morality is independent of religion, morality is achievable without God. Is it true?

It is an interesting concept, this morality. What is right, what is wrong? It doesn't seem natural or part of a strategy for survival; we don't see animals pondering whether killing other members of its kind is morally acceptable. Since it is an almost abiological idea, quite unique -- at least in the same degree -- to humans, it is no wonder, then, that science has almost nothing to say about morality, since there is little or no empirical evidence that morality exists in the natural world. It almost stands as evidence of a creator: the very fact that we have the knowledge of right and wrong, unnatural as it may be, seperating us further from other animals.

What is even more interesting is that people who rely on a completely naturalistic understanding of the universe -- no God, biogenesis, goo-to-you Darwinism -- will insist that morality, which we understand to be a non-naturalistic phenomenon, can be achieved through natural means.

Real Right And Wrongs?

Often this subject is never pondered on enough to come to any real conclusion. Are there absolute right and wrongs? If so, who has the authority & insight to define the absolute moral system? Or, is everything relative? For example, in a relativistic moral system, one man's wrong is another man's right. Theft may be wrong for you, but for a starving man who needs food for survival, theft may be morally acceptable because of his circumstances. Or perhaps a family stranded in the recent hurricanes may be justified in stealing food from an abandoned supermarket. Such cases are not so black-and-white, morally speaking.

Let's consider a very widely accepted action that most humanity, both religious and secular, consider immoral: murder of an innocent human being without justification.

For both secular and religious, there are exceptions to the no murder rule. For example, some religious may say some murders are warranted due to the evil nature of the individual. Some secularists may say the murder of a human fetus is an exception because the human fetus is unwanted. Some people, both religious and secular, say that the death penalty is an exception because the individual being murdered is not innocent. Likewise, members of both groups may claim that murdering an individual in times of war may be warranted because there is no other choice but to kill or be killed, ala self-defense.

Morals As Act-based & Situation-based

This demonstrates one attribute about morality: morality is not solely act-based, but is act-based and situation-based. In other words, laws abolishing acts without situational exceptions would not work: imagine if the killing of humans altogether were outlawed. While it's a wonderful and utopian idea, in such a situation, if a man attacked you with a knife in an alley, you could not defend yourself, lest you kill the man -- even accidentally -- with his own knife. A law with no situational exceptions is draconian.

This point is critical to understanding morality: as demonstrated in the paragraph above, morality is not solely act-based. No, morality is situationally-based, as well as act based. This applies to both the religious and secular ideas of morality, as demonstrated above.

I make this point because I've occassionally encountered people who hate God and hate followers of God; they have made mocking attacks on the faith in God using these fallacious arguments:

"How can your god be a good god? God killed people in the Bible: he destroyed Job's family, ordered the killing of whole ethnic groups, killed every first born of in Egyptian, I could go on.... Yet, you claim your god is the standard for good -- ha!"

When one looks at this on the surface, it appears the secularist is right! Oh, how evil God is, killing all these people, ordering the killings of Job's family, slaughtering the Canaanite people, killing Egyptian firstborn children, how evil!

What's more, this kind of argument particularly appeals to us in the modern day of terrorism, where we hear of killings carried out in the name of God (e.g. America's 9/11, Spain's bombings, Britain's subway attacks, Iraq's beheadings, Israel's almost weekly terror attacks, etc.) We see these killings, condemn them as evil, and then associate killing in the God with Islamic terror, which we believe to be morally wrong. Thus, if Islamic terror is wrong, then all killings of human beings in the name of God is wrong, thus this argument is a bullet that splits the forehead and influences the reader that God is evil, or at very least, any killings that God performed in the Bible were evil acts. If such acts are evil, then Scripture is not a righteous book since it condones killing in certain situations. And if Scripture is not a righteous book, then it certainly is not the Word of God, certainly not inspired by God. If it's not inspired by God, then it is useless as anything but a museum piece.

So what is the answer to this argument? The answer is now clear: the argument conveniently ignores situational morality, and focuses on only act-based morality. It focuses solely on the act of killing, but ignores the purpose of the killing. Let me pose a parallel argument which can easily be seen as folly:

"How can your country be a good country? Don't you know that during the 1940s, your country carried out the killings of millions of Germans, Japanese, and Italians. No, your country is an evil country that has killed millions -- millions! -- of people over the last 50 years, what a tragic history of evil and immoral behavior your country has! Yet, your country claims to be a standard for freedom - ha!"

Any idiot can see that this argument is flawed: it conveniently ignores the situational facts. The situation, of course, is the second World War. Yes, it's true, the United States and the United Kingdom has killed millions of people, even civilians. However, these killings stand justified in the face of a Nazi regime that was, morally speaking, evil. Adolf Hitler was an evil person, I think we can all agree.

Likewise, the secularist's argument that God is evil because he killed and ordered the killings of certain groups of people or individuals is flawed because it ignores situational morality, focusing only on the acts of killing. Yes, it's true that God killed certain individuals, as well as ordered the killing of certain groups of people. However, these killings stand justified in the face of evil individuals, evil people groups, or for the purpose of bringing a better good (as was the case in Job). If God really does exist, one can only assume that He has plenty of reason for his actions, and these reasons would be on par or greater than our human reasons for the justifications of killing certain individuals or people groups.

Religious Morality Is Not Righteousness

One thing I don't want to incite in you, the reader, is a feeling of superiority coming from the religious side of the fence. Don't get me wrong, religious people have carried out some definitely evil acts in the world: the Crusades, modern Islamic terror, modern abortion clinic bombings: these things were all the result of men, being filled with a zeal for God, carrying out acts of violence against people they see as immoral. The recipient side of these attacks, of course, see the attackers as immoral. I won't address each instance here, but I will say that at least someone is in the wrong here, if not all of them. I will say that we can't look at God using a reflection of the actions of supposedly Godly men; that is, if one man claims to be a godly person and does something immoral, that does not make him a reflection of God, does it? No. Like all humans, religious people are flawed and don't always take the right path, despite the right path being clearly defined in Scripture.

Problems With Secular Morality

We now know that morality defines acts as wrong, with certain situational exceptions. Both the secular and religious camps can find common ground there. So what's the problem, then, with morality seperate from God?

One arising issue is that there can be no standard of morality. There cannot be any absolutes, because for an absolute right and wrong to exist, there would need to be someone to create these absolutes, and who is to say which person should get the honor of creating absolute right and wrongs? I had a conversation sometime ago with someone who visits this blog on occassion, discussing the right and wrongs of homosexuality. For her, she could not say that homosexuality was right or wrong, because who was to say that it is? No person can say for sure, because that would be nothing more than human opinion and bias.

Problems With Legal-based
Secular Morality

Or maybe you're a relative moralist that believes morality is defined by written law. This argument has been prevalent in the people group that oppose the US & UK war on Iraq. They will say,

"The war/George Bush/Tony Blaire is evil because the UN did not issue a resolution of approval. It is illegal by international standards, and therefore is an immoral war!"

Ignoring the question of the morality of the Iraq war, I will answer the group of relative moralist that define morality as written law. I answer by firstly asking, whose laws do you follow? The United States' law? The United Kingdom's laws? The United Nation's laws? Don't be so foolish: one can be despicable, even evil, while still following written law perfectly. For example, there is no law that says we should stop the ethnic cleansings in various African nations, and we saw the United Nations do nothing in several instances. In such cases, how dispicable, how evil that body is for its inaction! Likewise, one cannot say that by following only legal writ you can be perfectly moral. What's more, let's not forget that morality can include often overlooked acts such as feeding the needy, giving to the poor, giving to charity, helping elderly, respecting one's parents, loving one's neighbor. If no one did these things, we would live in a world quite cold, one could say even evil. Yet as far as I am aware, the laws of the United States, United Kingdom, and United Nations require none of these moral acts. Relative morality with a legal foundation doesn't work for these reasons.

Shooting Holes in Secular Morality

Regardless of whether a relative moralist believes legal law defines morality, without absolute morality, you get into this fuzzy world of relative morality. Homosexuality is wrong for you maybe, but not for me, I say. Don't push your morality on me! Those are your morals, not mine! Or so goes the arguments ubiquitous in the morally relative world we live in today. Any fool can see relative morality doesn't work: imagine you believe cursing is wrong. Well, I don't, so I'm going to curse at you in front of your children. Or maybe you believe slicing the throat of random bypassers is probably immoral. Well, I don't, so that makes it OK for me to slice your throat. Natural law may compel you to defend yourself; you may return with retribution; and with that, we get into vigalante eye-for-an-eye justice, which doesn't make for a very peaceful or moral world.

Of course, those are extreme examples, so here's one that might hit a little closer to home for some of you. The People for Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) will say it is unethical -- immoral -- for one to kill & eat an animal. Some of the omnivores among us will counter, saying, "Nonsense. Eating the flesh of animals is quite natural and is an important part of our survival." Which is it, is it moral or not? You would never know for sure in the secular world, because there is no absolute standard of what is right and wrong. Yet there are secularists saying that such an act is immoral.

On a related but rather laughable note, just the other day a Linux zealot (that is, someone who strongly believes the Linux-based operating systems are God's gifts to mankind) was trying to convince me that any software that doesn't use the GPL software license is (ahem) immoral, because it restricts the rights of the end users. In fact, the leader of the open source software movement, an devout atheist by the name of Richard Stallman, espouses this very idea of the immorality of commercial software (or at least, non-GPL software, which virtually all commercial software is). With this comes yet another example of secular, relative morality.

We see then that morality is not being pushed only by the religious who espouse a morality based on what we believe to be the inspired words of God, but is also pushed by the secular crowd, based on...whatever happens to be the majority's in vogue morality at the moment.

Therein lies a problem of relative morality: times change, people change, and thus, any arguments of morality coming from the secular camp are moot! After all, your morality is not mine, and your view of what's right and wrong are only based on the moving target of what's moral in the world today; heck, what we consider unethical or immoral today in the secular world, will no doubt become totally acceptable and ethical in tomorrow's secular world. The need for an absolute moral system becomes apparent.

We all have our own personal morals, whether relative or absolute. We all have taken a leap of faith in saying one thing is wrong: for secular morality, this leap of faith is based on crumbling sand, the words of contemporary men. For the fortunate people who've found God, this leap of faith is based on the solid rock of Christ and the words of Creator of the universe.