Morality Without God?

141 Pages·2009·0.55 MB·English

by  Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

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 powerful tools of philosophical
reasoning, the authors take on our most pressing and difficult questions—from
the complex 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
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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 978-0-19533763-1
1. Religion and ethics. 2. Atheism. I. Title.
BJ47.S49 2009
170′.42—dc22
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.
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments
Preface: Why This Book?
ONE Would You Marry an Atheist?
TWO What’s Wrong with Atheists?
THREE What’s Wrong with Secular Societies?
FOUR What’s Wrong?
FIVE What’s So Divine about Commands?
SIX Why Be Moral?
SEVEN What Do You Know?
EIGHT Where Do We Go from Here?
Notes
Index
Index of Biblical Passages
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Chapter Five here derives from my chapter, “Why Traditional Theism Cannot
Provide an Adequate Foundation for Morality?” in Is Goodness without God
Good Enough? edited by Robert Garcia and Nathan King. Various passages
throughout 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 anyone 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 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 sponsored 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 others). I am
also grateful to Steven Schragis and John Galvin for enabling me to test my
thoughts with a motivated and intelligent 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 theists are theists
mainly because they believe, for whatever reason, 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.
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 distinguish morality from religion.
This misidentification is pernicious. Our government needs a separation
between church and state but not a separation 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 theories 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 classrooms. 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
conclude 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