Morality and God: the misconceptions

As the debate over God's existence rages between theologians and atheists, morality is often used by believers as a defense to support their claims and beliefs. I have seen this done more and more frequently as science continues to invalidate many historical claims made by religions. Numerous religious supporters are unable to accept the historical assertions in the Bible, Quran, and Torah. As a result, many argue for God's existence on a morality level making many outrageous and unsupportable claims about morality and God. Here are some of the questions and arguments I've heard recently, and I'll respond to each of them.

1. If we didn't have religion, everyone would commit crime and chaos would ensue.

This is one of the weakest arguments I've heard for defending religion. People make bold statements like, "There will be no reason for everyone to not steal, rape, and kill without religion and God". This is almost comically wrong. Of course that won't happen! I would like to think that people have more faith and respect for humanity than to think chaos would result from a lack of religion. People would still have an intuitive urge to do good and to be moral simply because society has evolved to understand the tremendous benefits of moral behavior. People will still think murder and rape is wrong because they have been educated to understand the horrors that it causes, and prison will always serve its purpose as a deterrent for those immoral enough to disregard the laws. People will continue to do tiny, everyday moral acts of goodness because of the indirect benefits that we've learned result from such behavior. People will still want to be seen as good people. People still will want others to do nice things for them when they do nice things for others. And people will still be deterred by legislation and law enforcement. We do not live thousands of years ago where legislature and law enforcement was in its infancy. We now have advanced significantly enough as a society to not need such nonsense as an omniscient being to keep order and peace in the world. It is true that maybe a couple thousand years ago a god may have been necessary to help keep some sort of order, but we have evolved enough as a species to not need to rely on unsupportable assertions to be the backbone of our morality. We are intelligent enough today and civilized enough today continue acting morally without religion.

2. You cannot have morality without a transcendent, all-powerful, all-knowing being to give you that morality.

Moral behavior is derived from agreed upon values by members of society, which is precisely how our morals are constructed today. Religions derive their morals from a holy book written a few thousand years ago, which claims to be the divine word of God. The problem is that this divine holy book contains incredible amounts of blatantly immoral acts, yet religions claim the texts to provide the great authoritative morality of God. The morals in these holy books are remarkable for the time period in which they were written, however, when applied to today's society, they are often outdated. Religious authorities are holding on to these ancient morals, and won't accept some of the more applicable and improved morals of today. Anyone can point to countless immoralities in the Bible, yet people still want us to get our morality from the Bible. It is completely contradictory. As this thinking isn't bad enough, it is used to oppress millions and millions of people in this world, but since this oppression is derived from religion, it is highly protected from criticism by the public.

For example, simply because a few lines in the Bible state that homosexuality is wrong, we now have millions of people being denied rights, only because religious people were taught by high-clergy long ago that homosexuality was immoral. Yet religious people have no problem denying all of the rape, incest, genocide, and slavery that is repeatedly endorsed by the Bible. Extremely contradictory! What's even worse, is that science has disproved so many of the preached teaching of religions, yet religions continue to be stubborn, and reject a lot of scientific proof. Religions need to explain themselves.

3. But how do we get objective morality without a transcendent god setting the universal rules of morality?

Precisely! Morality is not objective; it is subjective. It is subjective because morality is based upon the knowledge of the individual subject and the affects his actions have on himself as well as others. Morality is contingent on the existence of consciousness and rationale thought. If the entire earth were void of consciousness, morality would be nonexistent. This brings about an interesting question. If someone commits an immoral act such as rape, but the individual is unaware that the act is wrong, is the act still immoral. If a wild bore rapes another wild bore, is it immoral? If a human rapes another but is completely ignorant to the immoralities and negative effects it has, is it still immoral? It is a tough question, I do not have definitive answer, however, this question ignites my belief about what objective morality should be, if it does in fact exist at all.

As I have said in prior posts, any objective morality should come from maximizing well-being for the greatest number of people. If there is anything in this world that we SHOULD do, it is this. I believe that this philosophy is the closest possible thing to objective morality. This type of ideology fundamentally works to better everyone's life and continues the advancement of humanity. The area where this ideology is subject to criticism, is that the definition of well-being is very open to interpretation. People must account not only for physical well-being, but social, emotional, and even spiritual well-being. Since people won't always agree on what well-being means, it is important to have intellectual debates about how to maximize well-being. This is essentially what all of politics does. Politicians debate their beliefs and ideas and argue why their diplomacy is better for the masses. This type of intellectual debate is the only thing way that our morality can evolve and improve, as we gain a better understanding of what benefits the most people in the greatest possible. If everyone's morality derived from this ideology as opposed to ancient "holy" books, the world would be a much better place.

This is a fantastic debate on morality and God between Sam harris and William Lane Craig.