God and Morality

"A man's ethical behavior should be based effectually on sympathy, education, and social ties and needs; no religious basis is necessary. Man would indeed be in a poor way if he had to be restrained by fear of punishment and hopes of reward after death." (Cline, n.d., Para. 4) I believe that a person can be moral without believing in God. I will discuss that morality does not rely on religion, the evidential support and religion is a poor moral guide.

Bernard Williams, an English philosopher, stated the "utilitarian outlook" (a popular ethical position wherein the morally right action is defined as that action which effects the greatest amount of happiness or pleasure for the greatest number of people) is "non-transcendental, and makes no appeal outside human life, in particular not to religious considerations." (Williams, 1972. Pg 83) Williams also argued that "Either one's motives for following the moral word of God are moral motives, or they are not. If they are, then one is already equipped with moral motivations, and the introduction of God adds nothing extra. But if they are not moral motives, then they will be motives of such a kind that they cannot appropriately motivate morality at all ... we reach the conclusion that any appeal to God in this connection either adds to nothing at all, or it adds the wrong sort of thing." (Williams, 1972, pg 64-65)

Socrates provides one of the earliest known refutations of the idea that morality requires religion. His line of reasoning is described by Peter Singer:

"Some theists say that ethics cannot do without religion because the very meaning of 'good' is nothing other than 'what God approves'. Plato refuted a similar claim more than two thousand years ago by arguing that if the gods approve of some actions it must be because those actions are good, in which case it cannot be the gods' approval that makes them good. The alternative view makes divine approval entirely arbitrary: if the gods had happened to approve of torture and disapprove of helping our neighbors, torture would have been good and helping our neighbors bad. Some modern theists have attempted to extricate themselves from this type of dilemma by maintaining that God is good and so could not possibly approve of torture; but these theists are caught in a trap of their own making, for what can they possibly mean by the assertion that God is good? That God is approved of by God? (Singer, 2010, pg. 3-4)

Singer (2010) states that morality "is not something intelligible only in the context of religion". (pg 3)

Atheistic philosopher Julian Baggini stated that "there is nothing to stop atheists believing in morality, a meaning for life, or human goodness. Atheism is only intrinsically negative when it comes to belief about God. It is as capable of a positive view of other aspects of life as any other belief." (Baggini, 2003, pg 3) He also states that "Morality is more than possible without God; it is entirely independent of him. That means atheists are not only more than capable of leading moral lives, they may even be able to lead more moral lives than religious believers who confuse divine law and punishment with right and wrong." (Baggini, 2010, pg 37)

Cases can also be seen in nature of animals exhibiting behavior we might classify as "moral" without religious directives to guide them. These include "detailed studies of the complex systems of altruism and cooperation that operate among social insects" and "the posting of altruistic sentinels by some species of bird and mammal, who risk their own lives to warn the rest of the group of imminent danger." (Dixon, 2008, pg 117)

Greg Epstein (2010) states that "sociologists have recently begun to pay more attention to the fact that some of the world's most secular countries, such as those in Scandanavia, are among the least violent, best educated, and most likely to care for the poor" (pg xi) He adds that, "scientists are beginning to document, though religion may have benefits for the brain, so may secularism and Humanism." (Epstein,