Myth 1: Without religion we would have no moral values and our society would be worse off.
Surely, the argument goes, the benefit of having a god in your life is that it gives you rules to live by. “If God does not exist then everything is permissible,” said Dostoyevsky, and indeed, without the threat of eternal toasting what’s to stop us? And without a moral backbone based on religion, our society would suffer.
Of course, there are plenty of things to stop us from behaving totally selfishly. With, or without religion, human beings have tremendous capacity for empathy and often modify their behaviour because they know of the pain that they might cause others. And although religion is good at shunning, society is good at disapproving of behaviour in order to protect itself too. We have survived in our present form because we are good at stopping those things which are threatening to our tribe. With, or without a god, we are capable of love and altruism and nobility because of choice, rather than the desire to avoid the ultimate, eternal, divine shunning. I am sure that both theist and atheist would agree that morality based on positive choice is preferable to one based on fear.
There is also growing evidence that religion appears to have little clear positive benefit on society, and there is a case to be made that it is, in fact, very detrimental. Although there have certainly been many individuals from a religious perspective working tirelessly to promote good, there have been atheists doing the same, and the cumulative damage done by religion seems to far outweigh any societal benefit.
From a developmental perspective, it can be argued that the West went into the Dark Ages in the fifth century as the church stifled activity in the fields of medicine, technology, education, science, and it took over 1000 years for it to recover. And of course, the present obscene immorality of religion abounds - the decades of slaughter in Northern Ireland and the bloody clashes between Sunni and Shia Muslims over who has the best way of worshipping the same God; the thousands of Africans who have died of AIDS after following the proclamations of Catholic priests that condoms would not protect them against HIV, and the thousands of victims of Catholic sexual abuse; the warped version of Islam that led the 9/11 hijackers to believe that they would be spiritually rewarded for murdering thousands. The human, financial, and societal developmental costs of all these things are huge. No sane government would want to argue that they were somehow benefitting their country.
The financial cost alone to society is enormous, representing a huge drain on limited resources (particularly for poorer nations) - resources that could be better used for the benefit of humankind. In an interesting paper John Perkins tries to assess the economic cost of religion - keeping women from the workforce, time spent on religious activity, cost of defence resulting from religious conflict etc. He concludes: “While religious beliefs may be implausible, counter-factual and irrational, and while religious institutions may be immoral, may encourage outdated cultural practices and may stimulate dangerous conflicts, these faults do not entail religion’s most serious shortcoming. The main negative impact of religion on the world community today is its enormous economic cost, estimated here to be a fixed cost exceeding $US200 billion, which falls mainly on poor countries, and an annual cost, again exceeding $US200 billion, which falls mainly on the industrialised world. The cost of religion is not just a shameful waste of human potential, but also a waste of economic resources often by those who can least afford it. These are resources that should otherwise be used to improve the human condition.” Religion is a developmental brake.
There is mounting evidence from several sources continuing to challenge the myth that religion is somehow helpful to society. Gregory Paul compared data on the level of religiosity of people in 18 developed countries with data on various social ills. If religion is beneficial the level of faith in the population should correlate with people doing fewer bad things. But it doesn’t. The analysis revealed that higher rates of belief in a creator correlate with higher rates of homicide, juvenile and early adult mortality, STD infection rates, teen pregnancy and abortion.
A larger analysis by Gary Jensen compared homicide rates with measures of religiosity in 54 nations and found that nations with high numbers of people believing in both God and the Devil have the highest homicide rates. A third study published in 2003 found that levels of conservative Protestantism in cities in the southern US states correlated with homicide rates there: more conservative Protestants, more murders.
Of course, the correlational data between measures of ‘health’ and a lack of religion do not resolve questions of causality. Belief in God may lead to societal dysfunction; societal dysfunction may foster a belief in God. However, they suggest that atheism is compatible with the basic assumptions of a civil society, whereas the case for religion has yet to be proved. The above data certainly kicks the idea that faith automatically makes for a better and more moral society firmly into touch.
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I originally posted some of this material in comments on an interesting article called Harmless Believers by SilverTiger.
The topic of morality (or ethics or moral philosophy) is very deep and complex. We can do no more than provide a outline sketch in a comment and even so I have to apologize for its length.
The first argument I would advance against a religious or divine origin of morality is the universality of the main moral precepts. It has been pointed out time and again that each religion believes itself to be the unique source of truth and that all religions so disagree with one another that at most one (but most probably zero) can be true. This being so, if morality comes from religion, we would expect each religion to have a different morality just as it has a different theology from which its morality is supposedly derived. In reality, all religions share the same basic moral code. This is evidence that morality precedes religion and that religions merely “rebadge” it for their own purposes.
If people believe that moral precepts are “what God commands”, then we have to ask this question: does God command morality because it is good or is morality good because God commands it? If the first is true, then God is not omnipotent but is constrained by that which is good and is therefore not the source of the good. If the second is true, then God could command evil and we would be constrained to call it good because God orders it. This is both illogical and unacceptable. Some people do carry out evil acts in the name of God (e.g. religious terrorism) and world opinion has no hesitation in describing these acts as evil because they violate the universal moral code. Either way, this shows that the good (that which is the subject of morality) is independent of God and of religion.
I think we should also distinguish between morality on one hand and moral behaviour on the other. When religious believers try to justify the belief that morality comes from God they point to the good moral behaviour of believers. This is irrelevant to the origins of morality. We can find plenty of examples of atheists behaving morally and plenty of cases of religious believers behaving immorally.
I suggest that “morality” is a set of beliefs about how we should behave based on our experience of what “works” in life. For example, telling the truth is seen as “morally good” and lying is seen as “morally bad”. Why? Because if everyone lies all the time, then speech itself becomes meaningless. For speech to have meaning at all, the presumption must be that people by and large speak the truth. Or again, it is considered morally good to care for one’s children and morally bad to neglect them. But if all parents neglected their children all the time, the race would quickly die out. Thus the “Anthropic Principle” applies here in this form: to survive at all, an intelligent species must be biased towards telling the truth and caring for its children. Therefore any intelligent race that survives will necessarily have these traits, i.e will be moral.
The examples in the preceding paragraph are not meant to provide a complete explanation of where morality comes from but they do show that there are good reasons for the existence of at least some moral precepts quite independently of religion. This shows that there is no reason to suppose that without religion there would be no morality.
Thanks ST. I think your comments substantially and authoritatively develop the argument that it is perfectly possible to be moral without faith and that it is almost crass to suggest otherwise.
Very good post and an excellent comment too. This whole area of a non-religious basis for morality (and creativity, esthetics) is one I want to explore in some depth. When I was losing my faith, the one idea that kept me tied to religion was my belief that human morality was evidence of the imago dei, the image of God that is supposed to be imprinted in humankind. I’m fascinated by some items I’ve read from primate (and other) studies, etc., indicating that “moral” behavior is not limited to humans, nor even primates. Findings like these undercut the whole imago dei argument as I had framed it.
I also like the well-known Euthyphro argument, cited by Tiger.
Religion could be seen as some outdated defunked rules no longer relevant to any society or individual.
Take God out of the 10 Commandements:say some philosopher wrote them instead. There would be many people who would say that most of them are not a bad blue print to live by.
There are a thousand and one reasons why we could choose to live without any form of religion, based on all the examples here, but I don’t think for one minute being someone who has no faith, (what ever that means to them), is going to make the world a better place.
Having a christain faith is having a personal relationship with God/Christ as I don’t have to say, you already know that, but you have choosen to end this relationship, because his people did not meet the high evangelical standards, based on lots of rules interpreted by people from their own slant, that you came to expect.
People are in a large part full of errors, talents, mistakes, love, hate and all other manner of things that make up this extremely complex life- form called the human race.
Jesus came to set us free not to bind us in chains, fear and rules what ever the “church” saw fit to control us, by fear of hell and damination.
To believe is a choice;to not believe is a choice.
My choice is to live my life asking for direction and purpose within a relationship with Christ. Many will scorn and ridicule me, saying where is the evidence, the research to back up your feelings? All I know is from my personal experiences of people who have witnessed the occult; the conclusion for me is there has to be the other side out there, if such experiences have been defeated. This was my own origin of faith as you know.
Onethoughtfulwoman: What I am hearing from your comment is, “Stuff the arguments, I rely on experience.” This is, of course, your prerogative. My problem with that is that I know that all round the world people are claiming to know all kinds of religious things based on experience, and all these experiences are leading them to contradictory truths. Any devout follower of any religion will doubtless be able to claim deep and significant religious experiences. But experiences need to be interpreted. The question we all need to ask is, “Are we interpreting our experiences in the correct way that makes sense with what else we know about the world?”
If you haven’t already read it, you might find Nessie, God, and the Creation of Meaning interesting. (On the other hand, you might not.
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I haven’t read it but I will and will leave any comments. Thanks as always for the reply.
My stand on morality is that religious morals are no different from penal law.
Normally, laws are a response to damaging human behaviour. Before there were cars, there was no need to have drinking-and-driving laws.
The Levitical law and the Ten Commandments were written to modify human behaviour in need of regulation, back in the day.
It follows that morality is born as a mode of survival for our human race. In the animal kingdom, even, those who threaten the pack’s survival are often shunned.
Who needs God or the Bible, when we have a more urgent need in front of us. The need to get along and to survive with as little hurt as possible.
Ancient laws, like those on the Bible, are more detrimental than useful, because they pertain to the survival of people who were in completely different circumstances than ours. And by adopting these regulations today, we become immoral because they are counter productive to our present reality.
If you don’t believe me ask the African-Americans who were kept slaves based on Biblical morality.
Morality, then, in order to be “moral” most be dynamic and up-to-date, and it usually follows behaviour–it cannot precede it, for it must be flexible and ever changing.
The “standard,” then, becomes those actions which favour the well being of the majority.
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